Page 38 of Hogging the Hunk
It was too bad he wasn’t playing poker at Clint’s. He would have cleaned up.
“Maren went out to milk the goats.” Nothing about his statement was sexy. Yet, goosebumps raced every which way along my skin. The culprit was his voice. It was the audible equivalent of barbeque sauce, with its rich, dark, tangy flavors. “I told her I didn’t mind buying a quart of what she milked this morning, except she kept insisting it be fresh.”
Leave it to Maren to ditch me to entertain a guest when she could have taken the easier route and given him a bottle from her stash in the fridge. There was that feeling again—the uneasiness gave me pause. A sneaking suspicion that she and Granny were in cahoots entered my mind and stuck there like a burr in a wool sweater. “Technically, she’s not entirely wrong. The fresher the milk, the better it is for the baby. Er, in this case, piglet.”
“That’s the argument she used on me, too,” Milo answered quietly.
“How’s your piglet doing? Granny told me how you got it. Said she heard it straight from Bonita’s own mouth because she was working the day it came in.”
Milo jerked his head toward me and I was pinned in place with his eyes, which seemed to glow. With what? Interest? No, something more than that. Keen attentiveness? Whatever was going on in his head, there was a definite hunger in his look. Even with the time I’d accumulated in Milo’s presence, I realized there was a lot I didn’t know about him. How to read his subtlety was one of the biggest and most irksome.
“What did you hear about it?”
“Nothing particularly outrageous.” I tidied my cuticles with my thumbnail, like the story was old news. “It happened a couple weeks ago, when we got that downpour. Ronald Calhoot came in with a runt that he didn’t want, so you kept it.”
“Yeah.” Milo’s hand found his hair and he slid his fingers through the dark waves. “That’s the gist of it.”
Our already floundering conversation fizzled out. Without warning that Milo would be coming, I hadn’t had a chance to prepare myself with chit-chatting prompts to fill the silence. There was so much I wanted to say to Milo. However, Ellie had wrapped them in imaginary caution tape. I could blame Greg, too. Despite the spiderweb of emotions he’d snagged me in, where I felt very unsure of what I wanted for the future, there was a continued, underlying longing for him. Greg and I were so perfect together, it was almost like we’d won the lottery finding each other.
It dawned on me that maybe I didn’t yearn for Greg as much as I missed the idea that I’d been lucky enough to have met a soulmate. I assumed that was Greg.
Wrong.
I picked at a loose thread on the hem of my sleeve. “I don’t think I thanked you for bringing over the towel that day. It was very neighborly of you.”
“Neighborly?”
“Yeah. Thoughtful. Kind. Whatever synonym you prefer.”
My gratitude made Milo beam, more than I would have expected. “It was my pleasure. I sometimes feel bad for you, having to work in such a cramped space. You can’t possibly have everything you need.”
Work. Good. Something we could talk about that wasn’t dangerous. “It’s not so bad. There are certainly limitations to having such cramped quarters, but it also forces my colleagues and I to be efficient. Plus, the RV might appear small from the outside. Looks can be deceiving. Have you ever been inside one?”
“Only a camper my aunt and uncle used to take me in on the occasional summer road trip.”
“Well, mine expands while parked. You should swing by over a lunch break and I’ll let you poke around. See the magic of an expandable motorhome. Or, motoroffice, I guess?”
“I should. I’ll admit, I’ve been curious to see your set-up. Maybe I ought to get something like that rig so I can have a traveling vet clinic with me. I could preg-check cows at the rear and neuter dogs up front.”
His unexpected humor surprised me, and I laughed. “Wouldn’t that be useful? Yes, definitely come over. I’ll give you a full tour, from the captain’s chair at the wheel to all the secret compartments where you could store a year’s supply of sterile sutures without anyone knowing they’re there.”
I reined myself in. The idea of having Milo in my work RV made my stomach do an uncoordinated flip. Sure, the RV expanded a couple of feet, but that didn’t make the rooms that spacious. Having Milo in such close quarters, where I might stand so close I could count the flecks of gold in his eyes or become intoxicated by his scent, didn’t seem like such a good idea. I’d already done that once in his truck, and look where that led me. Following an afternoon with him, I didn’t know what I felt for Milo anymore.
Apparently talk of my work was a no-go. Time to change gears away from any idea of spending time with Milo. Something polite, yet unattached. Maybe if I let Milo do the talking, he’d keep me at arm’s length without me even having to try.
Don’t you dare think about his arms again, Beckett.
An instantaneous vision of him cradling the snow white clinic cat—Aspen, wasn’t that her name?—in his arms thundered through my mind. Was there anything better than seeing a strong man gently handling something furry and cute?
Too late.
His sculpted arms were apparently all I could think about.
I tamped down my growing blush, clasped my hands, and smiled attentively at him. “Tell me more about your piglet. Is she cute?”
Milo’s expression became wistful, and it made me smile so hard my cheeks hurt. All my assumptions about Milo were confirmed. Any man who was that enamored by a helpless creature that could do nothing for him but be sweet and useful for companionship had to be a pretty decent human. “So adorable. She’s pink with dark, sooty black splotches, has these long lashes, and her tiny snout is always on the move. Her appetite is alive and well. She’s always rooting around for more milk.”
“Does she have a name yet?”