Page 12 of Extreme Romancing in Idaho

I lifted my chin and stretched my back as I slowed the tractor for another turn. We’d beaten it once, and we would beat it again. I didn’t care what those doctors in Salt Lake said.

With the tractor facing our house once again, I saw our pick-up truck bouncing toward me through the field.

Papa?Had something happened?

I slammed the tractor to a stop, pulled the parking brake, and threw myself out of it. I hit the ground running. The truck slowed next to me, but Mama wasn’t the one driving it.

Remington? The perfect ten from the airport? My previous thoughts came together into the apparition in our farm truck … only he was real.

The womanizer had returned.

I skidded to a stop in the soft, plowed dirt and put a hand to my chest. My heartbeat knocked against it.

He opened the door.

“What in the hell are you doing out here?” My shock at seeing him came out abruptly in my question. I sucked in air through my nose and slowly let it out through my mouth. Thinking before speaking had never been one of my strengths.

“Well, I—uh—heard you were lookin’ at hiring some help—”

“No.” The word flew out of my mouth before it’d been fully formed in my mind.

“Your mom offered me a job. She told me to come out here and have you show me where to get started.”

Mr. GQ himself, Mr. I-can-get-any-woman-I-want, was coming to work on my farm.

Turd in a bucket! How much was Mama paying him? I’d fought her about hiring help. We couldn’t afford hiring a high school kid, let alone a full-grown man with brand new clothes and enough money to fly here to go BASE jumping. I tilted my head at him, looking for a tag on his crisp Wranglers, bright-white shirt, and brown Carhart jacket zipped to his mid-chest.

When I finished with him, his shirt wouldn’t be white. And was that a Stetson on his head? Hats like his cost well over a thousand dollars. What the hell was a man who could drop that kind of money on a hat doing here, in my field, asking to buck hay and feed slop to the pigs?

For once, I didn’t speak.

He slapped his hands together. “Where do I begin?”

“You ever worked on a farm before?” I asked.

“Sure. I’m from Texas.”

Like being from Texas qualified you for farm labor. “You can drive a tractor?”

“Yes sirree.”

“Buck hay? Feed chickens?”

“Yep.”

“You know how to milk cows?” I asked, even though we didn’t own a dairy. We ran beef cows on our land; milking day and night wasn’t something I’d choose to do with the rest of my life.

“Uh-huh. But I may need a refresher course on that one.” He held his pointer finger in the air.

I kicked my boots lightly in the dirt. If we were playing Bullshit, I’d write a big BS on his forehead. “Okay. Get in that tractor and drive it to the end of the field.” If he could get it in gear with the implement running, I’d strip off my shirt and jump in the ditch.

“That tractor. Right now. The big one.” He took a few steps toward my John Deere.

“I don’t see any other tractors.” I held my hands out, palms up, and swept them in all directions.

He laughed. “No. I guess not.”

He approached my Deere slower than my Grandma Anne and placed his foot on the step, giving me a pleasant view of his butt in those tight jeans. Dang. I bet I could break a board on it.

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