Page 4 of Where It All Began
So, he was going to let her stay the night at least,she thought, relieved. “That’s okay. I’ve got my sleeping bag in the car.” Phoebe prided herself on being a low-maintenance woman. She wore her long hair straight so she didn’t need to deal with the case of Aqua Net most of her friends went through in a month. Her clothes were mostly variations on a theme: denim and cotton. And she was perfectly comfortable sleeping on a bare mattress or the floor of a tent.
“Bathroom’s back that way.” John jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “I’m across the hall. I’m going to grab a shower, and then maybe we’ll figure out what to do with you. If you need anything just holler.” He was gone before she could respond.
She smirked at his choice of words. Holler. Yep, she was definitely in farm country and with a farmer of few words. It was fine with her. Phoebe had more than enough words to make up for John’s lack.
The springs sang as she sank down on the mattress. She plumped the lone pillow and flopped back against it and wondered if John really believed he had a choice about her staying.
Chapter Three
What in the hell had he gotten himself into?John shook his head under the lukewarm water that trickled from the showerhead. He added “give the water heater another kick” to his list of immediate fixes.
He’d been mentally prepared to share his summer with Allen the grad student. Allenthe man. He’d talk to him about the ins and outs of a small family farm. And in return, Allen would lend a much-needed hand in the fields. It was a simple, mutually beneficial arrangement that had just gone to hell.
Phoebe Allen, with her pretty bottle green eyes and long hair the color of deer hide, was not what he’d signed up for. And he knew exactly who had set him up. John was familiar with the mutterings from Blue Moon Bend’s older generation. They were concerned about his well-being. Twenty-eight, living alone on two hundred ramshackle acres, unmarried? He scrubbed the grit and grime off his knuckles with more violence than necessary.
Helikedhis life. Hisquietlife on his very own plot of land. Here, it was one step at a time, moving with nature. He wasn’t boxed up in some cubicle being a yes man and shuffling mounds of paperwork, worshipping a clock, and praying for vacation days. Here he had the greens of the grass, the whisper of the breeze through the leaves, skies that went on forever. Every day in nature was a vacation. And for company, John had Murdock and the frogs in the creek.
In fact, John thought bitterly as he swiped shampoo through his mop of hair that he’d been meaning to cut, he wasn’t quite sure what had him agreeing to house a grad student for a few weeks in the first place. He could have gotten the help he needed just as easily in trade with another farmer.
He was just the latest victim of Blue Moon’s mojo.
“Must be tough out there all by yourself on that farm. You could probably use some help, couldn’t you?”
He’d thought at the time that she was referring to a farm hand. But it was clear as day now that she’d meant a wife. It was a known fact that if anyone was single in Blue Moon long enough, they’d be fixed up and married off before they knew what hit them.
And Mrs. Nordemann had pulled the trigger on him.
Grabbing for the soap again, he went over their conversation in his head.
“An excellent student—strong, smart, good head for numbers,” Jillian Nordemann, who had married at nineteen and made it her mission in life to shove everyone else into the same wedded bliss, had practically glowed while reciting the assets of her second cousin’s kid in grad school. “You could use some help around the farm. An extra pair of hands. You won’t regret it. That I guarantee,” she’d insisted.
He couldn’t recall her using the very important pronoun that would have tipped him off to the fact that “he” was a “she.”
It wasn’t that John had anything against dating or marriage or even the very attractive woman in his guest bedroom. He just wasn’t ready. He didn’t need a girlfriend or a wife right now. He needed a capable pair of hands to get him through the summer on the farm. The water sputtered once, signaling the end of the hot water supply, and he twisted the knobs. This house wasn’t much of a home, and when he was ready to find Mrs. Pierce, he’d damn well want to present her with something more than a shitty farm house, a falling down barn full of rusty equipment, and a meager crop yield.
He had plans. Goals. He wasn’t about to drag someone in on the ground floor. And if hewereready, that woman would not be Phoebe Allen. She was too smart-mouthed, too opinionated, too busy. She would turn his quiet, comfortable life into chaos.
He wanted to use his two hands to build his future and didn’t need anyone else interfering with the decision-making. John hated being maneuvered into a decision he’d rather not make, and it looked like Mrs. Nordemann and Phoebe had accomplished just that.
He ran a threadbare towel over his hair and across his chest and caught the grimness in his own expression in the mirror.
He’d known it was only a matter of time before someone meddled in his life. He shouldn’t be surprised. He was a lifelong Blue Mooner. And if he were inclined to act like it, he’d just scheme right back. He felt the upward turn in the corner of his mouth as he scrubbed a hand over the stubble he hadn’t gotten around to shaving for the last few days.
Maybe he’d give them exactly what they wanted?
He’d give Phoebe the unforgettable, hands-on farm experience she demanded, and the second she cried uncle, he’d send her packing to Mrs. Nordemann’s front door. If he ruined Mrs. Nordemann’s attempts at a fix-up, he could buy himself at least a year before she wrangled another candidate for the future Mrs. Pierce.
He’d be back to his solitude in no time.
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John changed into his last pair of clean Levi’s and a t-shirt he found on his bedroom floor that smelled vaguely fresh and headed downstairs where he found Phoebe making herself right at home. Her fancy electric typewriter took up half the kitchen table. She wiggled out from under the table on her hands and knees. Her denim skirt rose higher and higher on the curve of her rear end as she made her way out. She didn’t wiggle far enough and cracked the top of her head on the underside of the table.
“Shit!”
He smirked from the doorway and watched as she sat down in the chair, rubbing her head. She flicked a switch, and the typewriter hummed to life.
“Ahh,” she sighed, satisfaction blooming on her face.
