Page 4 of There's Pumpkin About You
“Sooooo time to go,” I mumble.
Just as I’m stepping back to leave, pain flashes through my body and I scream until my throat becomes hoarse. On instinct, I close my eyes and flail my arms around me, hoping to spare myself from another attack from the evil spirit.
It’s only when a deep voice booms, “What the fuck?” that I dare myself to open my eyes. My screams continue when my eyes meet two slanted, rectangular ones and a loud bleating echoes around the haunted space.
With every one of my screams, the goat in front of me bleats just as loudly, as if I’m the one that bit it.
One of my frantic steps away ends with me getting one foot caught behind the other, sending me flying towards the ground. Something loud falls to the ground, and just as I brace for impact, a strong arm wraps itself confidently around my waist, halting my tumble in its tracks, and a final shriek escapes me as my hands connect with a rock-hard chest and a muscular arm wrapped in a sling and a bright orange cast.
The entire space falls back into its eerie silence, and even the dreaded goat doesn’t dare to make another sound. Myworld seems to stop as I stare at a strong chest covered by a cotton t-shirt. Trying to recenter myself, everything, from that damn goat to the stranger’s chest, all feels as if it has been crammed into the same second, a blend of time that leaves me feeling nothing and everything.
“You okay?” the deep voice asks, not sounding at all as if he actually cares.
“Yeah,” I whisper, my breath coming out as a puff of air against his chest.
“Then you can stop touching me.”
It’s now that I realize his arm has vanished from my waist, and the only thing keeping us in such close proximity is my hand clutching the t-shirt he’s wearing underneath a recognizable plaid shirt.
I jump backward and try to discreetly wipe the tingling sensation away from my waist, and he rubs at his chest.
When I look up at my savior, I find myself eye to eye with what appears to be a very pissed off Finch brother with his arm in a sling.
“Now you can tell me what the fuck you’re doing in my barn.”
ChapterThree
GUS
Her touch doesn’t bug me, and that bugs me.
There is something about the way she’s grabbing my shirt like a lifeline, something that makes me want to hold her there until she is fine. Which is why I’m so grateful when she leaps back, putting some much-needed distance between us. I roll my shoulder carefully to help ease the twinge of pain that has come from helping her, and push my glasses back up my nose.
She shakes her head, brown curls flying, and she steels her features, a look of annoyance taking over what would otherwise be a pleasant face to look at. “The real question should be why the hell did your goat bite my ass?” she snaps as she glares at Emilio.
“Emilio doesn’t bite people,” I answer blankly.
“Well, I have the bite mark on my ass to prove that that’s a bunch of crap.”
She has a beauty spot above her lip that my eyes keep flicking to. There’s about a one-in-four-hundred chance of someone having a beauty spot in that exact position. Less than a one per cent probability.
I spout facts when I’m uncomfortable. And I’m suddenly very uncomfortable.
“What are you doing in my barn?” I ask again as I look around me for the axe that I’d dropped while rushing to stop her fall.
She frowns, dark eyebrows dip down towards honey-brown eyes that glisten like jewels in the sunlight, even in the shade of the old barn.
“The door was open,” she replies snippily.
“So you thought you’d just let yourself in even though the place doesn’t belong to you?”
“The door was open,” she repeats impatiently.
“And that makes a difference how?”
She presses her lips together and I watch the action with a fixation I’ve only ever had for facts. “It doesn’t.”
“Exactly.” I move to the side and motion towards the doors. “So why are you still in it?”
