Dirty: The Complete Series (Secret Baby Romance Love Story) (15 page)

She
was as pretty as ever, in a loose cotton dress and a pair of boots, her hair
pulled back from her face. She’d left Addie back at the house.

“What
are you up to today, girl?” Bob Nelson helped himself to a fried chicken wing
and looked at his daughter.

“Mom
has decided in her infinite wisdom that we need to clear out the attic,” Autumn
said tartly. “We spent the whole morning on it, just about.”

“And
yet you still had time to fry up chicken and make salads,” I pointed out. “And,
dress up for us.” Autumn rolled her eyes, blushing slightly.

“Well,
I made the salads last night and hid them out in the outside fridge,” she said.
“After I got out of the shower, I fried up the chicken and made the lemonade.
Simple as pie.”

“I
could use a shower,” I said, tugging at my sweat-soaked shirt. “Maybe I ought
to just hose myself off right now, come to think of it.”

Autumn
snorted. “It’d give you relief for all of ten minutes before the heat made the
wet clothes unbearable,” she told me playfully. “Better by far to duck behind a
tree and take a hose shower.”

I
raised an eyebrow. “You’re a mother,” I said, playfully tart. “You shouldn’t be
suggesting that strange men go get naked behind trees. People might think the
worst of you.”

“I
was just making a suggestion,” she said primly. “Since I didn’t want you to be
wandering around my father’s fields in wet, stiff clothes.”

“Getting
mighty flirtatious between the two of you,” Tuck said, looking at me sharply.

“Just
normal banter,” I said with a shrug, eating a bite of potato salad.

“I’m
not allowed to have a nice conversation with someone?” Autumn gave her brother
a firm look, and then glanced at her father doubtfully.

“Depends
on how nice,” Tuck said. Bob’s phone rang in his pocket, and I watched him
gather up his paper plate and walk away to have his conversation.

“Something
wrong with your lemonade, Tuck? It sounds like it’s made you sour,” Autumn
asked her brother.

“Nothing
wrong with the lemonade; just don’t exactly appreciate my sister distracting
one of our employees.”

“I
don’t feel distracted,” I said, shrugging off the idea of it. “We’re on a
break, anyway, aren’t we?” Tuck held my gaze for a minute, and I was sure he was
going to say something more, but then he looked down at his plate and picked up
another piece of fried chicken to take a bite.

Autumn
reminded us to gather our trash when we were done and to remember to bring the
picnic basket back with us when we came back to the house for the day. I could
tell that Tuck’s comments had rattled her—they weren’t like his usual jokes
regarding her “crush” on me.

I
felt more than a little uneasy, too, and as soon as Autumn headed back to the
house, I finished off the food on my plate as quickly as possible, not saying
anything at all to Tuck.

I
had never quite figured out what his issue with me was. Even before he’d had
any real reason to suspect there was something between his sister and me, he’d
had that conversation with his father that I’d overheard. I wasn’t sure if he
was just against the idea of a farmhand working for his father at all or of it
was something specific to me.

But
I knew I couldn’t afford to lose the job at this point. Into the summer, it was
difficult to get another job if I got fired from this one, and I wasn’t about
to give Tuck the satisfaction of getting his father to fire me for cause,
anyway. Whatever it was that he had against me, I was determined not to let
Tuck win.

I
gathered up my trash and put it in the bag that Autumn had left with the picnic
basket. “Not a bad meal, all things considered,” I said, setting the trash bag
aside and making sure that everything else was back in the basket. I was pretty
sure that it would more or less keep for a few hours yet—there were cold packs
in the basket, and the choices Autumn had made wouldn’t turn as easily—and we
might get hungry for more later.

“Pretty
good meal,” Tuck agreed. I cleaned off my hands, found my sprayer, and got back
to work as quickly as I could, remembering the look that had come over Bob
Nelson’s face at Tuck’s pointed remarks.

I
felt irritable towards Tuck for and I was sure that Autumn was no happier than
I was, but I couldn’t do anything about it apart from showing that I wasn’t distracted,
that I was working just as hard as ever.

I
was pretty sure that no one other than me and Autumn knew for sure that we’d
had sex, or that anything had happened between us more than the most innocent
movie date possible. I doubted that she’d even told her mom, much less her
brother or her dad; but if they started to suspect that there was more than
flirtation between us, things could go downhill fast.

I
got to work, spraying my allotted row with fertilizer, focusing intently on my
work. I heard Tuck walking through one of the adjoining rows, though the corn
was a bit too high to actually see him, and I assumed that at some point,
Robert Nelson had finished his meal and gotten back to work, as well.

I
thought about Autumn; she was vulnerable, and I knew it. She was living with
her parents, and I could understand that they wanted to protect her, but she
was a grown woman, and it wasn’t as though she should have to be single
forever. She would need someone to help support her emotionally, beyond just her
parents, while she raised Addie. And, Adelyn deserved a father. Not that I was
considering myself for the job, but it seemed like everyone wanted to protect
Autumn so much that they weren’t willing to let her live her life.

As
I came to the end of one of my rows, I looked up and saw that Bob Nelson was
watching me intently. “How many rows have you gotten done?”

I
shrugged. “About five, since lunch,” I replied. I wasn’t all that sure how long
it had been since our break, but I knew it hadn’t been all that long. “Think
I’ll get another ten or so done before we knock off for the day.”

Bob
Nelson nodded curtly and started off towards his own corner of the field once
more, without saying anything about why he’d been watching me. Even without a
comment on it, though, I was pretty sure I knew the cause: Tuck’s stupid
remarks.

I
took a deep breath through the face-cover I wore to keep from inhaling
fertilizer and turned my attention back onto the work in front of me. I
couldn’t do anything better to testify on my own behalf than to do the best
work possible, especially while Bob Nelson was watching me so intently. I
couldn’t afford to screw up.

Chapter
Nineteen

Autumn

It
was just after six in the afternoon, and I was still more than a little
unnerved by the lunch break I’d taken with Tuck, Cade, and Dad.

I
had heard the guys coming back to the house at the end of the day and taken my
dinner back to the guesthouse, telling Mom that since Addie seemed to be
feeling a little off, I’d spare her the excitement of dinner at the table with
so many people and feed her at my place. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to risk
seeing Cade again, but that I didn’t want for Tuck to see me and Cade together
for a while.

It
was obvious to me that Tuck had some kind of issue with the possibility of Cade
and me getting together, and I didn’t want to give him any kind of reason to
get hostile.

I
had to wonder what it was that was setting my brother off. It couldn’t just be
a matter of Cade and me flirting, Tuck had never had an issue with me flirting
with anyone before. I could almost wish he’d taken issue with me flirting with
Titan when I’d first gotten together with my ex—but then, nobody had known any
better than I had that Titan would end up cheating on me and abandoning me when
I was in my second trimester of carrying his child.

There
was something more at play in my brother’s mind, but I had no idea what it was.
Maybe Cade had said something to piss him off, and I just hadn’t been there to
know about it? Or maybe it had something to do with Tuck’s insecurities—or
maybe my brother was still carrying a grudge from that argument that he and
Cade had had at the dinner table weeks before.

Whatever
it was, my brother was not being reasonable, but I couldn’t really tell him
that.

I
ate my dinner and fed Addie hers, watching a show on TV that I’d seen a dozen
times before. Part of me wanted to go back to the main house on the farm, but I
reminded myself that I didn’t really want to deal with Tuck in whatever current
state of mind he was in. I’d much rather have a quiet—if boring—night to myself
with my daughter and deal with whatever was going on with Tuck another day.

Of
course, I didn’t end up getting my wish. A little after sundown, I heard a
knock at my door. Mom would have called or texted me, and Dad never came by at
night. I couldn’t think of any of my friends who it could be, and I certainly
didn’t think that Cade would have had the gall to sneak back onto the property
and knock on my door after leaving for the day—not the way that things were
between him and Tuck already. So before I even opened the door, I was fairly
certain it was my brother.

“Tuck,”
I said, confirming it in the sight of the young man standing on my front porch,
“I’m tired and Addie is grouchy. What do you want?”

“I
want to talk to you about Cade,” he said. “Let me in, will you?” I considered
it; I could call my parents, but that wouldn’t resolve the issue.

“I’m
trying to get Addie calm enough to go to sleep at a reasonable time tonight,” I
warned Tucker. “So if you’re planning on yelling at me, I want you to walk
right back to the house and save it for another day.”

“Why
are you flirting with him so hard?” Tuck crossed his arms over his chest.
“Haven’t you learned anything from how Titan treated you?” My eyes went wide
and I stared at my brother in shock at what he’d said. I felt my cheeks burning
with embarrassment at the suggestion that Tuck was making.

“Are
you trying to say that every man on the planet is exactly like Titan? That
you’d leave the mother of your child—your fiancée—behind because you’d found
someone you liked better, because you’d cheated on her?” I took a deep breath
and glanced over my shoulder into my house. Addie wasn’t kicking up a fuss, but
I’d heard my own voice rising in anger at what Tuck had said.

“No,”
he replied sharply. “But just because I’m not a shit like Titan doesn’t mean
that other guys aren’t. You don’t even know Cade—and a guy who’s single at his
age… Well, it doesn’t speak well of him.”

I
rolled my eyes. “You’re talking like Cade is forty or something,” I said,
shaking my head. “He’s not even thirty yet. And it’s not like you’re all that
much younger than he is!”

“Still,”
he insisted. “I don’t like it. I don’t like what you and he are like together.”

“What
we’re like together?” I stared at my brother in disbelief. “What we’re like
together is two grown adults who are moderately attracted to each other. It’s
just flirting—it’s nothing serious.” But even as I said it, my heart beat
faster in my chest. I hoped against hope that it
was
something more serious, but I couldn’t very well tell my
brother that, could I?

“Why
are you even fooling around with him? Don’t you have any loyalty?”

I
blinked, trying to work my mind around whatever it was my brother was trying to
suggest. “How would flirting with Cade have anything to do with loyalty—to
anyone?

Tuck
crossed his arms over his chest. “Look, I know you’ve got a kid and all, and
it’s shitty that Titan abandoned you, but that doesn’t mean you can try and cut
me out of what I’m due.”

I
closed my eyes, shaking my head.
What was
Tuck even talking about?
I had no idea. “You’re going to have to get a lot
clearer if you want me to explain anything to you,” I told him, opening my
eyes. “Because right now, I have no idea what you’re going on about.”

“Pretty
convenient that you’re into a guy that you talked Dad into hiring right after
he bought a new piece of land to add to the farm,” Tuck pointed out.

“Dad
hired Cade on his own merits,” I said. “What does the expansion have to do with
anything?”

He
scowled at me. “You talked Dad into getting a new farmhand with the new
expansion of the farm,” he said firmly.

“Okay,
yeah—because he wasn’t sure that you and he would be able to handle it on your own,
and I can’t help out,” I countered.

“Then
you agree to do all the legwork for him, and magically we get this guy who it
turns out you’re into,” he continued.

“No—I
didn’t even know him before Dad hired him,” I protested. “And I’m into him
because I’ve started to get to know him over the weeks.”

“So,
you really expect me to believe this wasn’t a set-up?”

I
stared at my brother. “I expect you to believe that because it wasn’t a set-up
at all,” I told him firmly. “I picked the resumes that looked the most like
what Dad would need, Dad interviewed the applicants, and Cade got the job. What
the hell is eating you?”