Dirty: The Complete Series (Secret Baby Romance Love Story) (3 page)

I
chatted with Lane for a few minutes while we waited for my Dad and found out
that I was right—he was looking for a steadier job to add to the work at the
drug store to help pay for his mother’s treatment. He drank down about half of
the coffee with a little cream and no sugar, and then Dad arrived to chat with
him about the job.

I
picked Addie up and took her for a quick walk around the house in between
interviews while I thought about the applications we’d gotten.

The
town wasn’t all that big—fortunately and unfortunately. Most of the emails I’d
gotten were from college guys, and the ones who might actually stand a chance
among the young men were the ones who’d obviously grown up on a farm
themselves. I didn’t think even they really had any idea of how hard it would
be to combine school and work, but I couldn’t help respecting their resolve and
determination to earn some money.

There
were a few people from town that I knew at least by reputation if not by face;
people like Lane who were looking for ways to make some extra money, or people
who were in-between jobs and looking for something that would last them a few
months of steady pay before another project came along.

The
work was going to be pretty tough: it was almost planting season, and the new
expansion on Dad’s property had to be fully cleared and the ground prepared for
seed before we could sow it. Whoever Dad decided to hire, they were going to be
working hard.

I
got into the flow of the interviews. Dad didn’t take too long with any of them,
no more than about thirty minutes at the most, just to talk about what the
hours would be like, what the work would entail, the usual things like that. By
mid-afternoon, I was ready to be done with it; I hadn’t had to deal with so
many people coming and going since Addie had been born, almost a year before,
and at that I hadn’t had to entertain them, at all.

“How
many more of these do we have today?” I sighed and looked over the list I had
compiled from the applicants I’d narrowed down as being the most likely to be a
good fit. There were only three names left on the list: Cade Wilson, who I
thought I might have gone to school with—though I was pretty sure he’d been a
year or two ahead of me if so—as well as Ben Yates and Kyle Northrop.

Ben
had called while Dad was with the last candidate to say that he had to
reschedule; one of his kids had gotten hurt falling out of a tree and had to go
to the hospital. That left two more.

A
knock at the door interrupted my thoughts and after checking to make sure that
Addie was well and fully occupied with a toy, I went to go get it.

The
man on the other side of the door was probably 6’4”, way taller than me and
even a bit taller than my dad or brother, and had medium brown hair that fell
just to his shoulders, along with the prettiest pair of hazel eyes I’d ever
seen in my life. He was broad in the shoulders, with a muscular chest that his
collared, v-neck shirt did nothing to hide. In fact, he looked like he could
pick me up and throw me across the room if he wanted to—but thankfully he
didn’t look at all like he wanted to.

“You
must be Autumn,” the man said, smiling. I pushed aside the rush of heat that
rose up in me at the sight of him.

“I
am,” I said, smiling as politely as I could. “I assume you’re Cade Wilson?” I
had thought I’d recognize Cade when I saw him—he would have gone to school with
me, and surely I’d seen him around—but the man in front of me was drop-dead,
mouth-watering gorgeous, and if I had seen him, I would have committed his name
to memory.

“Pleased
to meet you,” Cade said, nodding. “Your father said I could come a bit early since
one of the other folks canceled?”

“Yeah,”
I told him. “Fellow by the name of Ben Yates—one of his kids had to go to the
hospital, so he had to go with. Come on inside.” I stepped back from the door
and let Cade into the house, trying to keep how flustered I was about him at
the back of my mind, or at least off my face.

“Is
this your daughter?” Cade sat down on the couch and gestured to Adelyn.

“She
is!” I knelt down at my baby’s side and tried to keep her from putting something—I
didn’t know what—in her mouth.

“Can
I get you anything? Lemonade? Coffee?” I’d said it so many times that afternoon
that I was starting to get sick of even the idea of lemonade or coffee, but
somehow with Cade, I really—really—wanted to get him something to drink. I
wanted to cook him dinner.
Down girl!
I took a quick, deep breath to get myself under control once more.

“I
think I’ll buck the trend you’ve probably been seeing today and ask for
lemonade—as long as you don’t have to make it from scratch for me right now,
that is.” I laughed.

“No,
I made up a whole pitcher before anyone got here,” I reassured him. “I’ll get
you a glass.” Mom was working on pulling together dinner, and I told her to go
get Dad again. “Tell him that Cade Wilson is here.”

“You
look like you’re running a fever, girl,” Mom said, looking me over. “Maybe I
ought to get a peek at this Cade.” I rolled my eyes, but I couldn’t quite hide
the little shake in my hands as I poured lemonade from my mom’s old-fashioned
glass pitcher into one of the bigger glasses we kept around for guests.

“He’s
pretty, but he’s also qualified,” I told her sharply. “Besides, it’s not like
I’d see very much of him if he ended up working here.” Mom raised an eyebrow
and turned to go get my dad, while I went back into the living room to give
Cade his drink.

I
found him talking to Adelyn, who was responding—more happily than she had with
several of the other prospects—with bursts of babble. “Your daughter has very
interesting opinions on the matter of whether green or purple is the better
color,” Cade informed me.

“Has
she, now?” I knelt down next to Adelyn, who was waving around a green block.
“What did you tell Mr. Wilson about colors?” Adelyn looked up at me with her
big, bright eyes and beamed.

“Ah-ga!
Ah-ga-ga-boo.” I giggled, shaking my head at her nonsense.

“That’s
a very good point, little bug,” I told her.

“This
is excellent lemonade,” Cade said when I looked in his direction again.

“Thank
you. My secret is that I put the peels in with the rest—gives it more lemon
flavor.” Cade nodded and took another sip before setting his glass down.

“Is
your father serious about hiring someone?”

I
nodded. “He knows he and my brother can’t cover the new ground all on their
own—or at least, that even if they did, they would make more money to have a
third person helping them.” I didn’t mention that Tuck still insisted that a
farm hand was a waste of time and money.

“I
hope I can work for him, then,” Cade said. “I’m in between construction jobs at
the moment—my most recent contract ended this week—but I’ve got some experience
working on farms. And, of course, your dad has a really good reputation in
town.”

“I’m
glad to hear it.” I didn’t know what else to say; fortunately, Dad arrived from
outside then and invited Cade to bring the lemonade with him while they stepped
outside to talk about the job.

As
Cade got up and followed Dad out into the fields, I thought to myself that I
wasn’t sure whether I really, truly wanted him to have the job or if I wanted
him to be rejected for it outright—he was definitely a distracting person to be
around.

Chapter
Four

Cade

I
was actually surprised at how surprised I was to find that Autumn Nelson was a
beautiful woman. Somehow, I’d thought she would be plain, but when she answered
the door, I had to force myself to focus on the interview ahead of me.

She
was slightly on the short side, with long, auburn hair and big, bright green
eyes—the kind that made you think she had secrets she was dying to tell, but
was too smart to give away. Pregnancy had been kind to her, and if she’d taken
on any “baby weight” it was hard to tell, even in the jeans and tee shirt she
wore.

I
followed Bob Nelson out of the house and into the field, and he led me across
the already-broken ground he’d been farming for decades to the new plot of land
he’d bought only about a week or two before.

“As
you can see, it’s going to be a good bit of work before we can even start
laying down seed through here,” he said, gesturing to the expanse of land that
he could now call his. It had been cleared out by a crew—that much I could
tell—but there was still evidence of the grass and other plants that had
inhabited the area before they’d been razed.

“I
can certainly help with that,” I said, nodding to the land in front of me.
“Part of the work I’ve done on construction sites has been clear-outs. What
kind of equipment do you have on the farm for it?”

“Same
as any farm in the town,” Bob said with a shrug. “Some of that grass has tough
roots—I was thinking I’d give it a day to burn it all out, carefully, and then
go through with the tractor and plow, give it a couple of days, and then divide
it up into sections.”

“That
sounds reasonable,” I said. “You’d probably want to go through at least once
with some hand-tools, as well, make sure every last one of those roots is
pulled up, right?” Bob Nelson grinned.

“Right
on point,” he told me. “Then, of course, once I’ve got the rows cut and all
that done, the actual seeding would come and it will move forward like every other
part of this farm.”

“Would
I be working only this section?” Bob shook his head.

“I’d
want you to basically be an extra set of hands. This section is going to take
the most work starting off, but between the three of us—that would be you, me,
and Tuck, my son—we’d cover the whole property.” He looked at me, and I took a
sip of Autumn’s delicious lemonade.

“That
sounds about like what I would have expected,” I told the older man. “I’m glad
I saw the job posting—and I think I’ll be a good fit here.”

“Have
you worked on a farm before?” Bob settled himself against a fencepost, and I
set down my glass on another beam.

“I
worked some farms my family members have had in the past,” I said. “Doing much
the same stuff—clearing, planting, fertilizer and all that. None have been as
big as this, but I know the basics.”

“I
saw on your resume that you mostly do construction work,” Bob said, making the
comment almost a question.

“I
take the work that I can,” I said with a half-shrug. “When there’s a
construction job open, I take that. But I’ve also done handyman work, odd jobs,
that sort of thing.”

“Are
you going to be available the whole season? From now until harvest is through?”
Bob looked at me intently, and I nodded.

“I
wouldn’t apply for a job that I didn’t think I could stick around for until the
end,” I told him. “If you were to hire me, I wouldn’t even start looking for
the next job until maybe the last week here.” Bob Nelson smiled slightly.

“You’re
obviously strong enough to do the work,” he said approvingly. “You’re good to
work up to twelve hours, I hope? Of course, you’ll get overtime for anything
over forty hours.”

“I
know that farm work isn’t exactly normal hours,” I said. “That tends to happen
with construction and day-labor, too. I’m happy to work until you call the end
of the day.”

Bob
went over more of the details—what chemicals I’d be handling, asking whether or
not I was comfortable with particular tools of the trade, what experience I had
with different things around the farm, different tasks I’d be assigned.

I
thought—I hoped—that I’d come across well, based on how in-depth his questions
were. I was pretty sure that I had to be one of the better candidates for the
job overall; but, of course, there could be someone going to the college nearby
who had grown up on a farm and knew even better what to do.

“I
think I’m comfortable giving you the job,” Bob said. “I know you by reputation,
but I went ahead and gave one of your references a call—the supervisor on the
last project you had. He had nothing but good things to say about you, and that
goes a long way towards making me want to hire you.”

“I
appreciate it, sir,” I said, inclining my head towards him.

“There’s
one catch, and I want to make it clear right off the bat,” Bob continued,
holding my gaze intently. “You can only work for me if you swear to me that you
won’t fall in love with my daughter or get involved with her; I need you to be
able to focus.”

I
bit back a laugh at the requirement, realizing that it would probably not sound
good for me to laugh at the idea of falling in love with Bob Nelson’s daughter.
“I can promise you, I focus on work when I’m at work. Your daughter is
beautiful, but I am here to be out in the fields. I’m not here to flirt with
anybody or find a new girlfriend.” Bob Nelson extended his hand to me and I
shook it.

“I
still have to meet with one or two other applicants,” he said, smiling in that
tired, older-man way again. “But you can consider the job yours, as far as I’m
concerned. You’ll start on Wednesday—it’ll be a short week, but there are some
things I need to get done before I’m ready to get things rolling. I’ll get
Autumn to send the paperwork stuff you have to do.”