Page 192 of We Redeemed the Rain

I couldn’t see the smirk on her face or the challenge in her eyebrow, but I heard it—loud and clear. She spoke into the walkie as she went, playing coy. “No, I don’t feel a thing.”

I laughed. “I’m literally watchin’ you shield your eyes.”

That caused her to skitter to a stop and look around.

I hit the button again. “Up here, darlin’.”

Her gaze traveled to the hayloft doors, and she leaned back with a laugh. She lifted the walkie. “What are you doing?”

“Get up here.”

“Hm. I’m busy.” Her tone saidbeg me.

Gladly.

“No you ain’t.”

She jumped up under the cover of the porch. Mirroring me, she leaned against a railing. The distance hid the details of her face, but the way her chin was tipping up proved she was looking right at me. She slowly lifted the walkie to her lips. “Why? What’s up in the hayloft besides boring old hay?”

“Come up here and you’ll find out.” Grinning like a fool, my fingers found the top button of my beige flannel shirt. I undid the first, the second, the third.

She was unimpressed. “Is that littleroutinesupposed toswayme?”

“Oh, it’s already swayin’ you. Your voice hides nothin’.”

She didn’t laugh into the walkie, but her laughter carried over the sound of the rain picking up.

I continued, “By this point, we ought’a just make it tradition, don’t you think?”

The last two times it rained, we found ourselves in the hayloft together. The first time, it was happenstance—we truly needed hay and got sidetracked. The second time, we sneaked past the guys and slipped into the hayloft without anyone knowing.

But today, every last one of them were at the rodeo. The ranch was ours. She could’ve stripped down in the barnyard and no one would’ve been the wiser.

“Tradition, huh?”

“Yep.”

She confirmed my idea. “So every time it rains, you want to sneak into the hayloft together?”

“We’re in Texas—it’s not like it rains all the time.” I raised my hand to continue unbuttoning. “Productivity slows during showers anyway.”

She was silent, watching me open my shirt. Heat poured into mybody by the bucketful. I moved my hand to my belt buckle and whispered into the walkie talkie, “Come help me.”

Suddenly, the sky opened. The shower morphed into a downpour.

A streak of pink, squealing in the cool water, darted across the open distance. In a few seconds, her feet hit the rungs of the wooden ladder with muted thuds. Her head popped through the opening, a wide smile stretched across her face.

Wordlessly, she approached me, her eyebrow arching when she saw the quilt I’d laid over the hay. She stopped one foot away, her chest still heaving from the rush of adrenaline. Rain water weighed down the pink material, her shirt draping over her curves in a way that had me itching to free her, one button at a time.

A breeze from the open doors hit us. She blinked against it then shivered.

“You cold?”

She nodded, and I lifted my arms to embrace her.

The experience of Bea tucked against my heart is pages and pages of words in its own right. Every time I hold her, another part of me is resurrected from the flood. Sexual desire aside, I didn’t realize how much my life needed touch. I had no idea how desperately I needed physical associations with people—hand-shaking, friendly hugging, pats and claps on the back. It’s a part of being with others.

The Thompsons got me used to all that in a hurry.

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