Dirty: The Complete Series (Secret Baby Romance Love Story) (9 page)

I
looked around my living room. It wasn’t a bad place, and I usually kept it
mostly neat, but having a woman living with me would—I knew from
experience—make things that much better. I finished up my meal and my beer and
headed for the shower to get cleaned up, trying to think of how I would go
about meeting such a woman without having to get involved with the bar scene.

I
sighed and shook my head; there were only two women I saw on a normal basis who
weren’t at the bars, and one of them—Mrs. Nelson—was married, and too old for
me. The other was off-limits.

I
decided to make it an early night so I could get started on cleaning as soon as
I got up the next morning, but I couldn’t quite get rid of the thought of
Autumn in my head.

Chapter
Eleven

Autumn

After
the initial hustle of getting the new fields cleared and everything planted,
things began to slow down. Obviously, there’s never a situation where there’s
nothing at all to do on a farm, but Dad, Tuck, and Cade could ease up a bit on
the fields about a month into the growing season and get to work on other
things.

Dad
told me more than once that he hadn’t realized just how much having an extra
pair of hands around the place would make things easier. The three guys managed
to knock down the old perimeter fence where it divided the new fields from the
old ones and smooth out the territory between the two pieces of land on the
property. They built a new hen house for the chickens and broke down the old
one—which was really getting neglected-looking after a harsh winter.

I
had my own chores to work on, of course, and I tried to keep my mind on them as
best as I could. There was always something to do around the house, and of
course Adelyn, at about ten months of age, still needed constant attention and
supervision.

She
was starting to figure out how to get up onto her feet, but she couldn’t walk
more than a couple of steps before her legs gave out and she started to crawl
again. She was also less and less content with merely hanging out in her playpen
and playing with her toys. I was definitely going to need to find solutions for
her to have space to play without being in danger.

With
work out in the fields slowing down a bit as Dad, Tuck, and Cade let nature
more or less take its course with the plantings, I saw Cade more and more. I
ran into him going out to the old henhouse while they built the new one to
collect the day’s eggs or recruited his help moving big bags of fertilizer
around so that I could dose the vegetable garden.

Tuck
and Dad had never had as much to do with the kitchen garden as Mom and I did,
but once or twice Tuck and Cade helped me weed—and especially as the weather
intensified with summer, the weeds seemed to spring up almost overnight. Cade
helped me to tie the bean plants to their little trellises, and he found me a
new hoe when the head broke off of the body of my old one.

I
found myself watching Cade work the few times I had the excuse to see him
around the farm. As the spring heated up and grew more sweltering, heading
towards summer, it was hard not to notice that Cade tended to wear lighter,
brighter clothes, and that when he sweat through his shirt, I could see every
line and plane of his muscled body underneath.

I
had to be careful not to be too obvious in my staring. Tuck was always looking
for some way to tease me, and if he thought I was truly interested in Cade,
he’d never let me live it down.

It
just so happened that I would find myself working on one of my own projects not
too far from where the guys were working on something else or that I would have
a chance to take a break and play with Adelyn right at the same time that they
were taking a break to gulp down water or eat something.

I
was at least a little clever in my attempts to get close to the guys. I knew
Tuck was hungry more or less constantly, so a few times a week, I’d manage to
find twenty minutes or more to whip something up as a snack to take out to
them—chips, sandwiches, or cut-up fruit, little things that would help pass the
time and keep them fueled throughout the day.

Since
Dad was working with Tuck and Cade often enough, I could pretend I’d been
thinking of him or my brother when I made the snacks, instead of the farmhand.

I
walked out of the kitchen with Addie on my back, held in the body-wrap that one
of my friends had gotten me for my baby shower. I had some cheese cubes and
some of last year’s pickles—bread and butter, along with some of the last jar
of dill pickles—and some crackers, along with a thermos of iced tea. They had
water out along the fence line where they were slowly doing repairs, but I knew
that both Tuck and Cade would appreciate the change in beverage.

I
took the short route out to the perimeter fence, breathing in the fresh, clean
air and listening to Addie burble and occasionally let out sounds I’m sure she
thought were proper words as we walked.

There
was actually a breeze, which was a blessing. There were no clouds at all in the
sky, and if there hadn’t been some cool air flowing around us, it would have
been unbearably hot. Even the short route out to the fence wasn’t that short—it
was just the easiest method of getting there, instead of walking through the
growing corn and soybean rows.

“Hey,
fellas,” I called out as I got closer to the fence where they were working.
“Thought you might like a little snack.”

“You’re
always so thoughtful,” Dad said, looking up as I approached. “What have you got
for us, girl?” I shrugged, setting the basket I’d been carrying down carefully.

“Just
some cheese and crackers and pickles, along with a bottle of iced tea. It’s not
much, but I figured it’d go down pretty well.”

Cade
looked up from his work and I tried not to stare at how gorgeous he looked. He
hadn’t cut his hair—but it was pulled back into a ponytail at the base of his
skull, little strands of it sticking to his face and neck where they’d escaped
from the elastic. He was wearing a tee shirt and jeans, his jacket tossed over
the already-mended part of the fence when it got too hot. He looked absolutely
delicious, and I had to turn my attention onto my dad to keep from staring.

“What
kind of pickles?” Tuck set his tools down and wiped his hands on the front of
his overalls.

“Bread
and butter, and some of last year’s dills,” I told him. “We need to clear out
the pantry anyway—the vegetables in the kitchen garden are about to start
coming in, and we need the space to put stuff away.”

“I
love bread and butter pickles,” Cade said, beginning to set down his tools.
“Thanks for this.”

“It’s
nothing,” I said with a shrug. I carefully shifted Addie around from my back to
my front, holding her just above my hip. She was getting big enough that I was
going to be grateful when she was able to mostly move around on her own—even
though I was sure that she’d also be going a mile a minute, running everywhere
as soon as she could. “Just figured you guys would appreciate it.”

“And,
you wanted an excuse to get out of the house,” Tuck suggested. He began
rummaging around in the basket I’d brought, pulling out the cups and the
thermos of tea. Dad grabbed one of the containers of cheese and Cade wiped his
hands on his jeans before going for the Tupperware with the bread and butter
pickles.

“I
figured some fresh air would do Addie some good,” I said. As if on cue, Adelyn
began to squirm in my arms and I looked around to make sure there wasn’t
anything that could get her in the grass along the fence line before I put her
down to crawl and toddle.

“These
are amazing,” Cade told me around a mouthful of pickle. I grinned.

“Mom’s
special recipe,” I explained. “I don’t even know it—she won’t let me watch her
the whole time. There always seems to be something she needs me to go look for
and get for her right in the middle of making up the brine.”

“She’ll
have to pass it along to you eventually,” Dad pointed out. “She won’t be around
to make ‘em forever, and that woman won’t let herself die until she’s sure her
best ideas get passed down.”

I
laughed. “She might tell Addie and not me, though,” I countered. “I’ll have to
beg my own daughter for my mom’s recipe.”

“The
one you really need to get out of her is the chocolate cake recipe,” Tuck said.
“That is heaven on a plate.”

I
stood around and chatted with them for a few minutes, milking the time I could
take away from the house. I tried to make sure that I talked to Tuck and Dad as
much as or more than I talked to Cade, but I couldn’t be sure that I was
keeping to that—it was too easy to fall out of focus around the muscled,
gorgeous man.

I
went back to the house with Addie in tow, asking the guys to bring the basket
and containers back when them when they finished up for the day.

I’d
been thinking of Cade more and more as the days went by. I knew that I couldn’t
do anything with him—Dad had even told me that he’d made Cade promise not to
fall in love with me as a condition of getting hired—but I’d been lonely for a
while. It was hard not to want to be with someone.

I’d
told myself over and over again that I had to wait since it wasn’t fair to
Addie for me to date around, trying to find someone I could be with long-term.
I had to be pretty sure that whoever I dated or got serious with was going to
stick around. I had also pretty much come to the conclusion that it would be a
couple of years before I would even really have a chance to get to know anyone
well enough to date.

But
in spite of knowing that Cade was off-limits, I couldn’t make myself stop
thinking about him. And, I couldn’t stop thinking about how lonely I was. I had
plenty of work, and I had the love of my parents and my daughter, but I wanted
more.

I
wanted someone who I could come home to who wasn’t a baby. I wanted someone who
could do the household chores with me, someone who could occasionally help take
care of Addie who wasn’t my parents or my brother. I wanted someone who I could
wake up next to and go to sleep next to.

Almost
worse than that was the feeling of restlessness that kept coming up in me every
single day. Before the season had started, I’d felt a little jittery, a little
tied down, every now and then.

But
as Addie started to slowly show signs of independence, I found myself getting
more and more restless with my day-to-day life. The chores I did around the
farm were enough to fill hours, but they were so mundane, and I’d done them for
so long, that they didn’t seem to be enough to fill my mind at the same time. I
wanted more than what I had—and I knew I should be grateful, but I couldn’t
help it.

I
made myself get back to work on the laundry when I got back to the house, but
my thoughts were full of Cade for the rest of the day, right up until he
stopped by the house with Tuck and Dad to drop off the basket and thermos
before heading home.

I
stayed in the house; if I went out to talk to him for a few minutes, I was
certain I would end up trying to waylay him for an hour, or that I’d make it
obvious to Tuck that I was into Cade. I couldn’t let my brother get his hands
on something he could hold over my head.

Chapter
Twelve

Cade

I
gathered up the tools that Robert Nelson had given me to help Tuck with the
tractor. We’d come to the conclusion that fixing it was outside of our
abilities, and without the tractor in operation, the fields were going to be
left alone until the next day. “I hate to send you home early, but there’s not
really much to do around here for the rest of the day,” Bob said with a little,
almost embarrassed shrug.

“I
don’t mind,” I told him, smiling easily. “The odd half-day can be nice, as long
as it’s not a normal thing.”

“The
mechanic from the John Deere store said he’d be able to come by in the
morning,” Tuck pointed out. “As long as he’s on time, and has the part he
needs, we should be up and running no more than about an hour late.”

“Do
you want me to wait for you to call me, or should I just come by at the usual
time?” The tractor had crapped out halfway through the morning, and Tuck and I
had spent the rest of the morning trying to get it pulled apart to find out
what was wrong with it.

“I
think just come by in the morning; if it takes longer for the mechanic to fix
the tractor, then we’ll find something else for you to do,” Bob said.

I
followed Tuck and Bob back to the house, talking about what would need to get
done. Since we were knocking off hours early, we’d end up having to make the
time up maybe on Saturday—certainly I was counting on staying late at some
point during the week to come.

It
wasn’t the most crucial part of the growing season, but as the corn grew up and
up, and the soybeans started putting on more and more leaves, losing the
tractor even for half a day was going to present some problems.

The
Nelsons had to keep their crops fertilized and keep the pesticide on them—and
they had to make sure that they kept the weeds down and everything straight. It
would be even more important once harvest time came around. Without the
tractor, they’d risk losing crops.