Chapter Two of Kerry's Raine

Chapter Two

“Little sis huh?” Raine said to her with a look she hadn’t noticed before in his eyes, he looked like he was mad.

“For years, I love those two to death.” She shrugged her shoulders, tipping her head back to look up into his dark brown eyes, eyes that had haunted her dreams for the last two years. “They take care of me; make sure I don’t have to deal with the people I want to leave me alone. They love me.”

She turned away to re-open the door to the refrigerator as it had drifted shut during her tickle match with Nathan. “Now, what can I make you for dinner?”

  “Kerry, I can’t stay for dinner.” But he wanted to, it was just too much to ask of a man though, especially when he found out that his walking dream was single after all. “I have to get the equipment home and there is still a lot to get done today.”

  “Oh.” Stepping away she let the door close and walked over to the table to grab her glass of champagne and lift it to her lips with a shaking hand.

“I’m sorry, I wish I could stay for dinner but with it being haying season and all it’s pretty much impossible, maybe we could get together on a Sunday or something.” Why were her hands shaking? The shaking got worse as she lifted the glass to her lips and drained it in a few fast gulps before she poured another one.

  “Did you want to try this before I finish it off?” She held up the bottle of golden liquid, one eyebrow rising in question as he watched her, she was scared of something and now was deliberately ignoring his invitation for a Sunday dinner. His heart sunk, he was sure that he had blown it but what could he do, he was a farmer and there was work that just couldn’t wait this time of year.

“It’s the good stuff huh?” He smiled, hoping to ease whatever was upsetting her.

“Oh the best really, Nathan always brings me a couple of bottles when he comes out here.” She shrugged again, looking out the window over the sink to where his tractor was waiting for him. “I don’t guess you should have this and then be driving that down the road should you?”

“No, not really, I wish I could though.” He shoved his hands in his back pockets, his palms were itching to reach out and run his hands over her hair, her face, and her shoulders. “Maybe Summer could come over and share it with you; I know she would love it.”

“She’s at her Mothers with the kids this week. Nathan didn’t know that when he made the trip.”

“He comes out to see her too?”

“Sort of, they’re friends and they don’t like me to be alone after he’s been here for one of these short trips. “ Smiling she raised the glass she was holding to her lips and he watched as she swallowed, wanting nothing more than to be the glass she held, the champagne she was drinking or simply be anything that she wanted. Then he shook his head, remembering in a flash that she had invited him for dinner and he had turned her down, what the Hell was he thinking?

  “Listen, I tell you what I can do. I’ll take the equipment home and come back; it should take me about an hour or so if that’s all right?” Please say yes, please say yes, he was almost ashamed to be chanting in his head as he was mentally filing away all of the things that he would have to rush to get to in the morning if he took the night off to have dinner with her.

  “I don’t want to make extra work for you; I know you have so much to do this time of year.” Smiling and looking sad she shook her head, and then she turned a little away from him. “I might just go into town or something instead.”

“You hate going into town.”

“I know, but…maybe Millie is still working and I can bug her down at the Co-Op for a bit and then drive into Traverse later, get a welcome back present for Summer and the kids for when they come home from her Mothers’ you know?”Turning back to face him she was surprised to see him looking so worried. “I’ll be fine; I’m a big girl, all grown up now.”

“I tell you what, how about we compromise?” He took the bottle of Crystal that was almost empty and held it up. “Let’s take this along, and you can ride over with me to my place, then we can come back and have something for dinner, how does that sound?”

“Where would I sit?” Eyes that big and blue should be illegal he decided as he watched her smile. “Besides, if a cop sees us won’t you get into trouble for an open intoxicant or something?”

  “No, that won’t happen.” Laughing he shook his head, his heart racing at the smile on her face. “So come on, get your shoes on and let’s get out of here for a little while, you look like you could use a rescue from whatever is bothering you and some time spent out in the sunshine for a change. You can sit on the fender of the tractor and be perfectly safe.”

“Sugar.” She laughed and he smiled and shook his head, not understanding what she meant. “It’s a song I like, you’ve probably never heard of it.”

“Well maybe you can play it for me when we get back then.” He walked out of the kitchen with the bottle of champagne in his hand. “I’ll meet you outside.”

  With a bemused smile on her face and champagne glowing in her veins she wondered exactly what did one wear for a tractor ride down the road. Then she looked down at her ratty old jeans and her tank top and figured that what she was wearing was probably fine. Following him out she slid on what she referred to as her ‘barn boots’, a pair of Justin’s that she had had for well over a year now and she was ready, finishing the rest of the glass she had in her hand and setting it on the table in the foyer as she grabbed her keys and locked her door behind her with a song she loved echoing in her head and making her smile.

The ride to his house wasn’t what she had expected at all. The heat of the day was refusing to let up and yet the little bit of breeze from the tractor going down the road helped. The sound was so loud that she couldn’t hear the things he was trying to tell her as she sat on the fender hanging on for dear life with one had while the other hand clutched the bottle of champagne, watching the woods and then the fields pass by as they drove along. She could smell the flowers of summer in the air and the scent of freshly mown hay drying in the summer sun and she closed her eyes and tipped her head back, drinking in the scents and relaxing with the feel of the sun on her face.

  She felt something on her knee, where her jeans had ripped away and looked down to see his hand resting there on her skin. It was warm and rough, calloused the way a person’s hands were when they worked as hard as he did, two of the fingers missing from this hand from what she assumed to have been a farming accident.  She liked the feel of it, the look of it there on her knee she decided after only a moment’s thought and when he moved it, looking apologetic she grabbed it and put it back where it had been, smiling at him and taking a drink from the bottle with a wink and his answering smile made something inside her warm in a way no sunshine ever could.

  She took a break from looking at the countryside and watched him for a bit, wondering why he was so nice to her right now when they had always acted like they barely knew each other before. His face was lined by the years spent in the sun and wind and it was tanned as well by all of his years spent outside. His nose had been broken and had never healed right, but it gave the rest of his handsome features seem more real and less perfect than they were. He was so handsome, tanned, tall, and muscular that she had to wonder what he was doing giving her a ride on his tractor for and then wanting to come back to her place for dinner when they really didn’t get along for the most part.

She didn’t realize that she had let go of the fender with her one hand and was running it up and down his arm while she was looking at him until she felt his thumb stroking the skin in the inside of her knee. Startled and embarrassed she looked away and reached for the edge of the fender again, taking another drink of the champagne to try to hide her flushed face as he looked at her with his unreadable eyes. He let go of the steering wheel for a second and reached for her hand, placing it over his where it rested on her knee as she looked at him and smiled, her face still flushed and leaving her feeling like a school girl and not the thirty –three year old woman that she was.

They were there far sooner than she had expected, the tractor pulling in to his place on the corner of Walton and Summit City roads before she knew it. The cattle lowing in the pasture could barely be heard above the echoing in her ears as he turned off the tractor and she smiled as he helped her down to the ground, her legs a little wobbly from the vibration of the machine. Laughing he helped her stand and then he took the now empty bottle of champagne form her.

“So how was it?”

“That was fun.” Her laugh was a little forced, she had never been to his place before and she didn’t know what to expect, she had already let him touch her more than she had let most people over the last few years and she was nervous. She looked away over the pasture and the fields that he had planted to corn this year, trying to get back the distance that she didn’t want between them because she was more comfortable with it.

  “Hey, don’t do that, not now.” His hand reached out and cupped her chin, turning her face back to him and up so that he could look down into her eyes. “We’re friends ok? Tractor ride, dinner, I don’t expect anything from you that you don’t want to give.”

Sighing she smiled up at him, relief washing over her and leaving her feeling foolish. “So we’re friends huh?”

“I like to think so.”

“I’m not always nice to you though.” Unthinking she took the hand touching her face and gripped it, pressing her lips to his palm for a second before laughing. “In fact, Millie and Summer tell me that I’m really bitchy to you all of the time.”

“Oh I just figure that you do that because you have a terrible time resisting my charm and it makes you mad.” At her shriek he stepped back and laughed, neither one of them aware of his hired hands watching them and smiling. She reached out and pinched his arm and he laughed harder, walking backwards towards his house. “Now, you can either come inside while I change and make a few phone calls, or you can walk over there and see the calves playing in the pasture.”

 “I pick the baby cows; they are certainly more charming than you.” She stalked away towards the pasture gate, her low-heeled boots sounding loud as she stomped over there, her semi-dramatic exit ruined by the fact that she was giggling as she strode away.

  He watched her go with a smile on his face, liking the way she walked and enjoying the fact that she was at his home for the first time ever. She was right where he had wanted her to be for so long now and he didn’t know what to do with her, it was just crazy, he thought and he shook his head, feeling the grin on his face widen as she pulled some grass from near the fence and tried to get the claves to come to her. He felt a tug on the bottle in his hand and looked over to see his Cousin Terrance standing there, trying to see what the bottle was.

 “Damn man, a three hundred dollar bottle of champagne for a tractor ride?” Terrance whistled low and made no effort to hide the grin from his face. “Nothing like wooing a woman with style huh?”

“I am not ‘wooing’ her you ass.” Grabbing the bottle back he looked at it a little closer. “This stuff really cost that much?”

  “You don’t know?” Terrance put his hand over his heart and looked shocked. “I am disillusioned; here you always told me that you knew everything.”

 “I’ll never figure out why you couldn’t have been swallowed, it would have made my life so damn easy.”

  “Oh, that’s ‘cause Mom and Dad are good Catholics; I’m pretty sure that the Pope decided blow jobs were a form of birth control back in the day and made them against church law.” Grinning at the look of shocked amusement on Raines face he continued with that train of thought. “Poor Pop, I bet he never knew what a blowjob was until they got cable TV.”

  “You know the next time you go to Church you are going to be hit by lightning right?” He couldn’t help it, Raine just had to laugh, knowing that Terrance himself went to Church more often than anyone else in the family; he had at one time wanted to become a Priest.

  “No, you know I will confess, do penance and then have to do it again later when it comes to me.” Shaking his head and laughing he slapped Raine on the shoulder. “These things just come out of my mouth and I don’t know where they come from, I think I get it from you Old Man.”

  “Old Man is it? I can still kick your ass boy!” Laughing, still watching her try to pet the calves through the gate he slapped his cousin’s shoulder back and has him stumbling in the yard as they began to walk towards the house.

  “Ah, but then if you hurt me I wouldn’t be able to do the chores for you tonight so that you can go spend some alone time with the pretty local Romance Writer.” The last he said in a lascivious tone, wiggling his eyebrows dramatically. “I’ll even plan on staying the night just in case you get her drunk enough to be invited to stay over.”

Raine grabbed him by the arm and swung him around so that they stood face to face, the shorter younger man suddenly still, knowing he had said the wrong thing and not quite sure why. “Don’t you ever refer to her that way!” He said between gritted teeth, his eyes fierce and he shook his cousin for emphasis. “She’s a talented person and a sweet lady, and I would never expect to be asked to stay the night at her house, she’s not that kind. Understood?”

Terrance nodded and mumbled a ‘yes sir’ before Raine had even finished the word ‘understood’. He couldn’t ever remember his older cousin ever taking an evening off in the summertime before, there was too much work to do. He had also never seen him get so angry so fast, so she had to mean more than a friend and this was more than just dinner. For that alone in his mind the woman they had all whispered about and listened to Raine swear about when she made him mad was worth all of the respect in the world and he had a feeling that he knew he was going to like her more after this.

“That’s good, keep it that way.” Raine nodded his head and turned towards the house once more. “You know what needs done, now get to it, I don’t pay you to talk.”

Once Raine was in the house Terrance once again eyed the woman that no one really knew very well. She was climbing over the fence, talking to the calves and their incredibly large mothers with her feet bare, her Justin’s lying just on the other side of the fence. Lord, he prayed as he heard his cousin’s voice inside the house, sounding happy as he asked Summer for advice, please let these two people find the happiness they need. He had a feeling that for whatever reason, they needed each other, and they really deserved a good dose of happy.

Suddenly he jumped, pulled out of his reverie by the sight of the bull charging across the field, his wide head down as his muscular body tore across the pasture. Miss Frost was standing there with her back to the fast approaching animal, an animal that shouldn’t even be in that particular field at all, and she had no clue that she was in danger. She was too far from the fence now to get to safety in time, he ran, knowing he would be too late, yelling for his cousin, yelling to her and praying that somehow someone could get there in time to save her from the fast moving mass of ferocious muscle headed her way.

Copyright protected (copyright 2008 M.P.O.) No use of this publication in any for is allowed without express permission on the author. Photograph copyright protected 2011.