Page 3 of Stealing Kisses

I’m a professional athlete, for Pete’s sake.

Glancing down at his feet, trying once more to see himself through her eyes, he laughed at his desire to knowherthoughts. Just then, the sound of hooves clopping into the distance signaled that the object of his thoughts had left.

“You could give me a ride,” he hollered after her, into the vacant space where the Titian goddess had been seconds before.

She didn’t respond, just kept riding off into the sunset.

Teddy didn’t move, admiring horse and rider until they disappeared into the horizon.

Then he followed them.

Twenty minutes later, a break in the pasture revealed a road and an open gate. A metal sign over a cattle guard announced Teddy had arrived atO’Casey Farm. The name fit. The feisty lass had to be an O’Casey.

Teddy followed the road until he came upon a sprawling farmhouse. An explosion of flower beds, shrubs, colorful planters, and winter flowers offered a much warmer welcome than had the cool queen, whom he suspected ruled the land with a fierce fist.

No one answered when he knocked on the front door, so he meandered around the wide front porch, complete with wooden rocking chairs, inviting pillows, and even a soft, well-used quilt folded across the railing. He continued to the side yard, where the red-headed beauty sat on her knees among tall green stalks. Whistling to announce his arrival, Teddy approached with caution. When he’d reached where she was extracting vegetables from the ground, he peered over her shoulder.

“Potatoes?” Teddy wondered aloud.

“You’re more lost than you were before,” she said by way of greeting, without even sparing him a quick glance.

“With such warm and fuzzy welcoming vibes, I couldn’t help but see where you were headed.” A happy-go-lucky smile accompanied his rebuttal.

She flashed him a glare of pure irritation.

Instead of rising to her bait, Teddy crouched beside her. He paid attention to what she was doing and how she did it, and then he began digging in the dirt, replicating her task.

“I got one,” he exclaimed a few minutes later, raising his find in the air with a punch of victory.

She didn’t congratulate Teddy, but she did grin…well, it was almost a grin…just a tiny bit of a change in the pursing of her lips, but he saw it. And it sparked a hum in his chest.

They worked in silence— well,relativesilence, since Teddy hummed or whistled all the while.

When they’d made several piles of potatoes, Teddy’s new fascination stood up, whisked the dirt from her hands and jeans,and walked into a shed on the far end of the garden. She returned with four wooden crates.

She filled a crate with the potatoes they’d already unearthed. Teddy followed her lead and filled a second crate. Then she dug for more potatoes, so Teddy rooted around the soil for more potatoes, too.

Again, the enigmatic woman said nothing. To balance her silence, Teddy filled the space with a steady stream of upbeat whistles and hums.

On numerous occasions, Coach Hayes had also commented, often in exasperation, that he had never known a person to have a song in his heart 24/7 until he’d met Teddy; Coach vowed he wouldn’t mind going back to that quieter time. But Coach never meant it. And Teddy never took offense; good vibes weren’t meant to be tamped down. No, those set on grumpiness and frowns, cantankerous old coaches and stunning new strangers alike, challenged Teddy. Their crankiness became a gauntlet, daring Teddy to step up his game; their behavior inspired him to be more joyful, more vocal, and more playful until he got a reaction.

In the garden, Teddy and his reluctant leader didn’t stop harvesting the vegetables until all four boxes threatened to overflow with a colorful array of gold, red, brown, and purple potatoes.

With the wooden crates too full to fit another potato, their digging was done.

“Are all these for us?” Teddy asked.

She flashed a smirk of disdain in his direction, exactly like the one she’d used upon his arrival in her garden.

“I mean, I love meat and potatoes, but that’s a lot of potatoes!” he explained.

“There is nous. These are for the produce stand I’ll have this weekend at the Sweetheart Festival.” It was the most forthcoming she’d been in hours.

She stood and dusted off her jeans. Teddy stood and wiped his dirty hands on his pants, too. When she gathered trowels, he picked up the rest of the hand tools. When she bent to pick up a crate, Teddy intervened.

“I’ll get those,” he announced, stepping between her and her heavy boxes of vegetables. “Just show me where to go.”

“I already tried that,” she said with a sardonic glare. “It didn’t work,” she reminded him. Then she stepped around him, hefting a box that had to weigh fifty or sixty pounds.

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