Page 15 of Winning His Wager
She’d had on a polo shirt for the inn, and the buttons at the top had been undone. She was small, but she was fucking hot. He’d noticed all right.
Now that he’d seen that fact, he couldn’t stop seeing it. Every time he saw her.
But she hadn’t recognized him yet. Hadn’t realized it was Will who had passed her on Wreck Curve Road the day that the judge had been arrested.
It had just been four days ago.
If Dylan figured it out, he would be royally screwed. The cops were already looking at him—he wasn’t an idiot. He had been friends with Kurt and Ashton since junior high. Of course, they would find out his name. And come around. Just like they had when Oliver had gone stupid like he had. Of course, that bastard Cade Newlin had been the one to give them his name and Cade was all jazzed up with the cops now.
They would be looking at him. Will had to not be stupid.
Drooling over one of the women who was there that day was stupid. Why couldn’t he remember that?
“Thanks again, Will. Come back soon, okay?” Dylan told him. Will just grunted and nodded. He couldn’t meet her in the eyes. He had before—she had those green eyes the guys talked about sometimes. Talley girls had green eyes and great tits. That’s what he had thought before—and his friends had all agreed with him.
Dylan had the eyes, but her tits were really small. He didn’t care. He’d give his left leg to get to see them, touch them. Tits didn’t have to be huge, they just had to be there.
It was damned stupid. Dylan was the one woman on the planet who could puthimthere that day. Could send his ass to jail.
He had no business wanting her at all.
9
Fletcher Tyler worked like a beast.Dylan could say that one hundred percent. He was up early every day to deal with whatever livestock he had out there. She hadn’t ventured past the house and the garage yet. Dylan did not like the snow one bit, thank you very much. Not since finding two dead men in it recently and everything.
He came in sopping wet and cold most times; she learned to put him some fresh clothes in the dryer the instant she heard him out there on the back porch. So they’d be nice and toasty. She thought he’d appreciated it, but other than a quietthank you, nothing was really said about it. Thank you, and then he’d get back to what needed done.
He was one of the hardest-working men she had ever known.
Do, do, do.He was constantly doing something.
Well, so was she. She had made a list that second evening after she’d come back from the diner. Things that needed immediate attention versus those that could wait. She’d cornered him to get approximate times on meals. Mostly, she stayed inside and kept the man’s house, and he did all the rancher-y things a rancher needed to do while spending his very sparse free time studying experimental herd management techniques and soil management—both using really wicked-looking drones and sophisticated monitoring systems. He didn’t have the drones yet, but he had diagrams and specs and literature and reports and everything.
Spread outeverywhere.
She’d read it—very, very intriguing. She had so many questions. She was going to get him to answer them eventually.
When he didn’t act nervous and afraid of her and everything.
Four-foot-eleven Dylans were apparently very scary to six-foot-four Fletchies. She was luring him into complacency with…food. The man adored food and turned into putty whenever she fed him. Each and every time.
The man absolutely did not know how to cook for himself. Even if he’d had the time—which he didn’t. No wonder he had spent so much time at the diner or the inn.He was hungry.
Well, eating out got really expensive. Fletcher couldn’t afford that.
The man didn’t just need a housekeeper—he needed a Fletcher- keeper!
She had found his business ledgers on the coffee table, where he had been trying to balance the books. He was doing a decent job of it, but, well, she was better. She had taken classes in the art of running a business, after all.
It wasn’t her place to intervene, but she had seen several places where she could streamline his system. But…she knew how egos worked. She kept that knowledge to herself. It wasn’t the right time now. That whole scared-of-Dylan thing he had going on and everything was a bit prohibitive. She didn’t even know why she was so terrifying, either.
Now, she was just focused on feeding that man so he didn’t starve while he was out there cozying up to his cows or playing science cowboy or whatever—or go broke trying to feed himself at the inn all the time.
Dylan knew how to cook, and she knew how to stretch food. Her father hadn’t always hadgoodjobs when she was a kid. Food hadn’t always been as available as she had wished. They had never gone to bed hungry, ever. But grocery money had been a lot tighter than her parents knew she had realized.
That was the main reason she’d started gardening when she was eleven in the first place. She’d started with lettuce greens back then and then tomatoes. Started zucchini and squash after that. All the basics.
Well, she suspected Truckboy Tyler didn’t know what to do with a vegetable that didn’t come in a can. Or…recognized them, either.