Still, she had to go. And he had just the plan to make it happen.

"I need to see how you do with some basic farmhouse ch.o.r.es."

He had to give her credit; even though she had to know exactly the kind of ch.o.r.es he was talking about-ones that included toilet brushes and floor mops-she didn't let her smile waver.

"That sounds great," she said, though it was clearly anything but great, but instead of following him into the house, she added, "And if I do a good job with those ch.o.r.es, you'll give me the job?"

Stubborn didn't even begin to describe this girl. Working not to feel too much respect for her determination, he studied her carefully for a few moments. Her nails were long, and while there was dirt under then now, they were well manicured, and her hands were soft and smooth. He'd bet all one thousand of his acres that she hadn't done a lick of cleaning in her entire life. With those legs, and that body, she'd probably spent it as some rich man's pampered mistress.

"If you make it all the way through the list of farmhouse ch.o.r.es," he said as easily as he could around the twisting in his gut at the thought of Lori in another man's bed, naked and breathless as she came for him, "you can have the job on probation." He turned away before she could see the reaction he was having to her.

"Probation?"

He shot her a look over his shoulder. "One hour at a time, Lori. That's how we'll take it before I know whether or not I can count on you."

"You can count on me," she said in a firm voice as she suddenly blew past him and into his living room. And then, suddenly, she was making a happy little surprised sound.

"Oh, look at her." Lori rushed over to his mangy, ratty old former barn cat who was nearly done with her ninth life. "She's beautiful!"

"Are you sure we're looking at the same cat?" Frankly, he was amazed Lori had even been able to tell the thing was female.

"She can hear you, you know," she said in a chiding tone, and then, "What's her name?"

He wanted to remind Lori that she was gunning for the role of farmhand, not new best friend who would chat with him all day long. He liked his solitude, d.a.m.n it. Still, he'd already figured out that not answering one of her pointless questions wouldn't make her stop asking them.

"Mo."

She raised an eyebrow. "Your cat's name is Mo?"

"That's right."

She turned back to the cat and cooed as she stroked it. "How could anyone call such a pretty little girl such an ugly boy's name." She scowled up at him. "One of the Three Stooges, no less!" Again, she focused on the cat. "You were waiting for me to come here, weren't you, so that I could give you love...and a good name."

Love. The word hit him hard right in the center of his solar plexus, knocking the air from his lungs. He thought he'd known about love once upon a time, but he hadn't known a d.a.m.n thing about what love really was. The only thing he knew for sure now was that his life was better off without it.

His voice was fiercer than it needed to be as he said, "You're not going to rename my cat."

But it was as though she couldn't hear him...even though he knew she had because he was only a handful of feet away from her and the cat.

"I've got the perfect new name for you!" She looked so excited that the cat actually raised its tired head and blinked at her. "Sweetpea."

Grayson refused to think any of this was cute. "Mo," he repeated. "Its name is Mo."

"It is a she. And her name is Sweetpea." She bent over to press kisses to the cat's head, then promptly started sneezing.

"You're allergic to cats." The statement came out as an accusation. He told himself he didn't care if he was being too harsh with her. He didn't want her here anyway.

"No, I'm not." She sneezed again, but continued petting the cat. "Your house must be dusty."

It wasn't, but he said, "Good thing cleaning it is part of my farmhand's job description, then, isn't it? I'll show you where the cleaning supplies are so you can get started."

She seemed to deflate a little bit at the housecleaning reminder, but instead of leaving the cat's side, she said, "How old is she?"

He'd worked with bulls for long enough to know that sometimes it was easier to wait for them to come to him than it was to try to shove them into the breeding chute. He leaned against the doorjamb and tried not to notice how pretty Lori looked sitting cross-legged on the floor petting the cat. When the sun streaming in through the window hit her hair just right, the glossy, dark-brown strands held as many shades of red as the leaves on the maple tree in the fall.

"Old."

Her expression didn't change at his terse response. She didn't shrink back, or even look particularly irritated with him. Irrationally, it made him want to see what he could do to get a response out of her.

"How old?"

"I don't know."

"Well, then, when did you get her?"

"I found her in the barn when I bought the place." Since he knew the question was coming, he added, "Three years ago." He looked down at the animal that had purred its way into his heart, even though he'd refused to have one again. "She wouldn't leave."

"You're lucky she stayed with you."

"Lucky?" He had to laugh at that, a rough and jagged sound that held no joy at all. "She'll only eat wet food, she coughs up hairb.a.l.l.s the size of tennis b.a.l.l.s, and she sheds all over everything."

"I never had a pet."

Lori's pout only served to make her lips look more kissable. Helplessly, he found himself wondering what she would taste like if he ran his tongue all along her full lower lip. What would she do if he bit lightly at the flesh? Would she shiver and moan against his mouth?

He had to forcefully shake the sensual visions out of his head before he could focus on what she was saying. "...Mom always said eight kids were more than enough to contend with."

"You have seven brothers and sisters?"

c.r.a.p, he hadn't meant to ask her anything personal, but the question had slipped out in his surprise at what she'd just said. If she had all those brothers, why wasn't one of them out here dragging her back to her real life?

She smiled up at him from where she was sitting, still cuddling his cat, and yet again, he felt the beautiful force of her smile in every cell.

"Seven siblings and a whole bunch more cousins. I've got family pretty much everywhere."

The word family slapped into his heart like she'd let loose a taut rubber band against it, just the way it had when she'd been talking about love.

What the h.e.l.l was he doing? He couldn't make the mistake of letting her think they were going to be friends. If she managed to make it through the rest of the day, she wasn't going to stay long. As quickly as she'd blown in, she'd blow out again. He couldn't make the mistake of getting attached to her.

Which was why he knew better than to let Lori get attached to anything here, either.

"Mo is going to die soon," he told her in a matter-of-fact tone. "Real soon."

Lori lifted wide eyes to him, then immediately pulled the cat all the way onto her lap, which prompted a fit of rapid-fire sneezes. Of course, good old Mo was so old and tired that the cat barely reacted to the loud sounds as she settled deeper into Lori's arms.

"How can you say that about your own cat? It's like you don't even have a heart."

He preferred it that way. Not having a heart meant nothing could hurt him again.

Grayson didn't care one bit for worrying about this beautiful stranger getting attached to his dying cat...or to him.

"She has leukemia," he said, his voice gentler now simply because, for all that he might want her to think it, he wasn't a monster. "The vet expected her to go months ago. He doesn't know how she's managed to hang on this long."

From out of nowhere, he was struck with the thought that maybe Mo had held on until Lori came-that she'd needed a softhearted woman to make a fuss over her in her final days.

But that was crazy. As totally, completely nuts as Lori actually thinking she could be his farmhand.

He pushed away from the door. "Time to clean."

Chapter Four.

Lori had never thought she'd need to call on her dance training to clean a toilet or make a bed, but in order to clean Grayson's house perfectly she'd needed every ounce of the precision and focus that she used in her ch.o.r.eography, rehearsals, and performances.

She washed her hands, then took a step back to the doorway to survey her work. The sink, tub, and shower sparkled the way they would have in a TV ad; the mirror didn't have a single smudge or speck of dust on it; and she'd folded the fresh towels she'd found in the linen closet like those in a high-end hotel. Grayson, fortunately, wasn't a particularly messy man, which was surprising, considering how much dirt there was all around him on his farm. And while the farmhouse hadn't been changed from what she guessed was turn-of-the century architecture, the bathrooms were gorgeous and completely luxurious.

What she wouldn't give for a soak in the clawfoot tub, she thought as she stretched out her back and legs. But she could only imagine what Grayson would do if he found her in one of the tubs. Then again, he'd been so grumpy from the moment she showed up on his farm that it was more than a little tempting to mess with him like that.

Only, it would end up messing with her, too. Because if the way her body was heating up at just the thought of Grayson finding her taking a bath was anything to go by, she had a bad feeling that being naked in one of his tubs would lead to nakedness in other places...like his bed.

And that she'd like it too much for a woman who had sworn off men and relationships.

Forcefully pushing the heady vision of the two of them naked together away, she walked out into his bedroom and ran her hand over the dark-blue bed cover. Everything in his room was simple. Clean. And purely masculine.

Lori left the master bedroom and slowly made her way through the rest of the house to verify that her work had been top-notch. She'd not only swept and mopped the floors, cleaned both bathrooms, and made both the master and the guest beds, she'd wiped down the refrigerator inside and out and cleaned the oven, too, for sheer shock value. Lord knew, she had been shocked by just how toxic the oven cleaner smelled. Fortunately, she'd been wearing thick yellow gloves at the time, so she hadn't seared the skin off her hands.

Cleaning a farmhouse wasn't the most enjoyable job she'd ever had, but at least she felt the satisfaction of a job well done. Sure, it wasn't a job she'd ever planned on doing, but she'd always figured that if she was going to do something, she should take the time to do it right.

She'd kept her shoes off and had taken her tights off as well when they'd started to shred at the knees, so that she was left wearing only the stretchy pink top that came to the middle of her thighs like a miniskirt. It was just as well, considering what sweaty work cleaning was. She was just stretching the bodice away from her skin to fan herself when Grayson walked into the kitchen through the back door.

He stopped dead in his tracks as he stared at her in her barely-there outfit, the top pulled halfway down the swell of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. She dropped the fabric like it was on fire, but the damage had already been done. It wasn't as bad as if he'd found her in the bathtub, she supposed. But that was little comfort when he was looking at her with such intense heat that she couldn't believe she wasn't spontaneously combusting right where she stood.

It was only natural in a tense situation like this that she'd fall back on years of being a motormouth. "I was just about to come get you so that you could take a look at what I've done. I cleaned the whole house, and I can take you back to look at the bathrooms or you could just stick your head into the oven to see how I even clean-"

"What happened to your pants?" His words sounded like the gravel she'd driven over to get to his farmhouse.

"My tights," she corrected as she swiped her tongue across her suddenly dry lips, "were a mess after the chickens, so I took them off."

She realized now that maybe that hadn't been her best decision of the day as she looked down and saw how much bare skin she was showing Grayson. As a dancer, she'd long ago gotten over feeling self-conscious about showing off her body. It was not only a part of her job, but frankly, it was also a large part of her ident.i.ty as a pretty, desirable woman.

Only, she wasn't dancing here in Grayson's kitchen...and she didn't want to make him want her.

At least, she silently corrected, she shouldn't want him to want her.

Grayson's jaw was tense as he shifted his gaze from her bare legs to her face. He hadn't ogled her, clearly didn't even want to be looking at her bare skin, and yet with nothing but that one quick glance, she felt as if she'd stripped away all of her clothes rather than just her tights.

"Don't you have other clothes with you?"

"In my car," she told him, "but I didn't want to waste any time changing into them."

At her honest answer, he sighed, looking momentarily worn out. And more than a little pained. She also refused to drop her gaze any lower than his face. That was gorgeous enough for her teeter-tottering peace of mind. If she let herself appreciate his broad shoulders, or his large hands, or his well-muscled hips and thighs- Ugh, she needed to stop letting her hormones run away with her. Why couldn't he have been a grizzled old farmer?

Because if there was one thing that Lori had never excelled at, it was self-control.

She thought he muttered a curse-one she agreed with heartily-before he said, "Show me what you've done."

Working to fight her awareness of him as she took him through the house, room by room-especially in the bedrooms, where she couldn't believe she actually started blushing-she knew he couldn't fault her on one single aspect of the job she'd done.

Then again, Victor shouldn't have been able to fault her dancing or ch.o.r.eography, either, but somehow he'd managed to do it anyway, hadn't he?

When they made it back to the kitchen and Grayson was just closing the oven after running his finger along the inside walls and having it come up clean, rather than covered in grease, she said, "I did a good job." It wasn't a question, it was a statement.

He turned back to her, his expression utterly unreadable. "You did."

"So, where are my quarters going to be? That cottage I saw out back?" She tried not to sigh as she said, "I'm guessing I'll need to clean that, too, won't I?"

He looked surprised by her questions. "You don't have anywhere to stay?"

She gave him a surprised look of her own. "Of course I don't. I figured a farmhand would need to live onsite to help with all the-" She had no idea at all, really, about what the list of ch.o.r.es would be, apart from cleaning and dealing with chickens. "-farming." When her comment fell into a weighted silence, she said, "If you don't need anything else right now, I'll go get my things out of my car and take them to the cottage."

"You can't stay in the cottage."

She stopped halfway to the door. "You can't kick me out. We had an agreement. If I did a good job with the ch.o.r.es, then I could have the job." She lifted her chin. "And we both know that I did a kick-a.s.s cleaning job."

He ran his hand through his hair, leaving the dark strands standing on edge. Darn it, even that was s.e.xy. Clearly she sucked at being immune to gorgeous men, even when it was imperative for her mental and emotional health.

"The reason you can't stay in the cottage," he gritted out one tense word a time, "is because it doesn't have a roof on it."

It only took a second for alarm to hit her. "I can't stay here. In this house." She swallowed hard. "With you."

Without saying another word to her, he picked up the phone and made a quick call to what sounded like a local bed and breakfast. He was polite enough to the person he was speaking to, but when he hung up a minute later, the phone slammed so hard into its cradle that the whole thing vibrated.

When all she could do was shake her head at the idea of sleeping here with Grayson, he said, "If you can't stand the thought of staying here with me, you're welcome to the barn. Mo used to like it just fine."

G.o.d, what had happened to her life? All afternoon, he had been trying to get her to give up on her farmhand goal, but she was far too stubborn to give in. Only, she hadn't counted on sleeping only one wall away from a man she knew next to nothing about besides the fact that he was grumpy, and gorgeous, and didn't much seem to like her.

But she'd already walked away from one job this week. She couldn't stomach leaving another one so soon. Besides, she was the one in charge of her life, d.a.m.n it, and right now she was h.e.l.lbent on trying her hand at farming.

So she was going to stay.

And didn't people always say that everything looked better in the morning?

"While the barn sounds simply lovely, I'll bring my bags into the guest room."