My Bluegrass Baby (17 page)

“Staring into space isn’t going to get the tea made,” I chided myself. Securing my
towel, I made my way to the stove, careful to avoid the windows. I didn’t know if
my neighbor was doing his sweaty work out in the yard, and I didn’t fancy being winked
at wearing this getup.

Setting the tea bags on the counter, I began rummaging through the cupboards, finding
dirty, abandoned cookware, but no kettle or cups. I opened the top cupboard nearest
the refrigerator and—

“ACCCK!” I shrieked at the sight of beady black eyes glaring out at me from the cupboard
shelf. The furry gray creature’s mouth opened, revealing rows of sharp, white fangs.
It swiped its paws at me, claws spread, and hissed like a brassed-off cobra.

I let loose a bloodcurdling scream and ran stumbling out of the kitchen, through a
screened door, and into the moonless purple light of early evening. With my eyes trained
behind me to make sure . . . whatever it was didn’t follow me, I slammed into a solid,
warm object. The force of my momentum had me wrapping my arms and legs around it as
I struggled away from the fanged menace.

“Oof!” the object huffed.

The object was a person. To be specific, the shirtless, sweaty person who’d been standing
in my garden earlier. Dropping a couple of yard tools with a
clank
, he caught my weight with his hands, stumbling under the impact of struggling, panicked
woman. Certainly as surprised to find me in his arms as I was to be there.

Slashing sandy eyebrows shot skyward. The full lips parted to offer, “Hello?”

Oh, saints and angels, I was doomed. He was even better-looking up close. Tawny, whiskey-colored
eyes. A classic Grecian nose with a clear break on the bridge. Wide, generous lips
currently curved into a naughty, tilted line as he stared up at me.

Completely. Doomed.

Focus, I told myself, there’s a mutant rodent in your cupboard, waiting to devour
your very soul, then terrorize the townsfolk.

“In my kitchen!” I shouted in his face.

“What?” The man seemed puzzled, and not just by the fact that I seemed to be wrapped
around him like some sort of cracked-up spider monkey.

“In. My. KITCHEN!” I yelled, scrabbling to keep my grip on his shoulders while leaning
back far enough to make eye contact. Despite my all-out terror, I couldn’t help but
notice the smooth, warm skin or the tingles traveling down my arms, straight to my
heart. He smelled . . . wild. Of leather and hay and deep, green pockets of forest.
As my weight shifted backward, his large, warm hands slid around my bottom, cupping
my cheeks to keep me balanced against him.
“Th-there’s a creature!” I cried. “In my kitchen! Some demon rat sent from hell! It
tried to bite my face off!”

The fact that his hands were ever so subtly squeezing my towel-clad ass managed to
subdue my mind-numbing terror and replace it with indignant irritation. I didn’t know
this man. I certainly hadn’t invited him to grope me, spider-monkey climbing or no.
And I had a perfectly lovely boyfriend waiting for me at home, who would not appreciate
some workman’s callused hands on my ass.

“You can move your hands now,” I told him, trying to dismount gracefully, but his
hands remained cupped under my left cheek.

“Hey, you tackled me!” he protested in a smoky, deeply accented tenor.

I narrowed my eyes. “Move your hand or I’ll mail it back to you by a very slow post.”

“Fine.” He sighed, gently lowering me to my feet. “Let’s get a look at this creature
in your kitchen.”

Struggling to keep my towel in place, I led him into my kitchen and tentatively pointed
toward the home of the Rodent of Unusual Size. I could hear the beast hissing and
growling inside, batting at the closed door with its claws. I was surprised it hadn’t
managed to eat its way through yet. But somehow, my would-be rescuer seemed far more
interested in looking around, noting the pile of luggage by the door.

“Haven’t had much time to unpack yet, huh?” he asked. I glared at him. He shrugged.
“Fine, fine, creature crisis. I’m on it.”

He opened the cupboard door, let out a horrified gasp, and slammed it shut. He grabbed
a grimy old spatula I’d left on the counter during my rummaging and slid it through
the cupboard handles, trapping the monster inside. He turned on me, his face grave
while his amber eyes twinkled. “You’re right. I’m going to have to call in the big
guns.”

He disappeared out the door on quick, quiet feet. I stared after him, wondering if
I’d just invited help from a complete lunatic, when the early evening breeze filtering
in through the back door reminded me I was standing there in just a towel. I scrambled
over to my suitcase and threw on a loose peasant skirt and a singlet. I wondered what
he meant by “big guns.” Was he calling the police? The National Guard? MI5?

I was slipping on a pair of knickers under my skirt just as my bare-chested hero came
bounding back into the kitchen with a large, lidded pot and a spoon.

“Are you going to cook it?” I gasped, ignoring the bald-faced grin he gave my lower
quadrants as my floaty blue skirt fell back into place.

“Well, my uncle Ray favors a good roast possum. He says it tastes like chicken,” he
drawled, holding the lid over his thick forearm like a shield as he tapped the spatula
out of place. “Personally, I have to wonder if he’s been eating chicken that tastes
like ass, but that’s neither here nor there.”

I darted away as he opened the cupboard door. A feral growl echoed through the empty
house as he maneuvered the lid down and the pot over the front of the cupboard. He
used the wooden spoon to reach over the grumpy animal and nudge the possum into the
pot. He slapped the lid over it, turning and giving me a proud grin.

“Thank you.” I sighed. “Really, I don’t know what I would have done—”

The giant rat began thrashing around inside the pot and making the lid dance.

“I want that thing tested for steroids!” I yelped.

“It’s just a baby,” he said, placing one of his ham-sized hands on the lid. “These
things burrow in pretty much wherever they want to, doors and walls be damned. A cousin
of mine went to tuck his daughter in one night and found one cuddled with her stuffed
animals.”

“This is a baby?” I peered down at the dancing pot. “How big do the mothers get?”

He shrugged. “Better question: where is his mama?”

“Oh,” I groaned as he opened the back door, crossed the yard, and gently shook the
possum out of the pot and into the tall grass near the trees. I called after him,
“Why did you have to say that? I have to sleep here!”

Climbing my back steps, he looked far more relaxed than he should have been after
evicting a vicious furred fiend from my kitchen. Shirtless. “I have to sleep here,
too. And if it makes you feel better, there’s a good chance that the mama could be
sleepin’ under my side of the house,” he told me. “I’m Jed, by the way.”

I giggled, a hysterical edge glinting under the laughter, as he extended his hand
toward me. “You’re kidding.”

He arched a sleek sandy eyebrow. “I’m sorry?”

I cleared my throat, barely concealing a giggle. “No, I’m sorry. I’ve never met a
Jed before.”

He chuckled. “I’d imagine not, with that accent and all.”

Now it was my turn to raise the bitch-brow. He of the sultry backwoods drawl was mocking
my accent? That was disappointing. Since landing in New York, I’d worked hard to control
whatever lilt I’d picked up since moving in with Nana Fee. It wouldn’t do for the
locals to know where I was from.

“Your accent,” he said, his forehead creasing. “Boston, right? ‘Pahk the cah in the
yahd’? ”

I blushed a little and regretted the bitch-brow. I’d forgotten how muddled my manner
of speaking was compared to my new neighbors’ Southern twang. My accent was vaguely
Boston, vaguely Irish. Nana Fee had tried to correct my lack of
R
’s in general and attempted to teach me Gaelic, but the most I picked up were some
of the more interesting expressions my aunts and uncles used. Mostly the dirty ones.
So I spoke in a bizarre mishmash of dialects and colloquialisms, which led to awkward
conversations over what to call chips, elevators, and bathrooms.

“Oh, right,” I said, laughing lightly. “Boston-born and raised.”

Technically, it wasn’t a lie.

Jed looked at me expectantly. I looked down to make sure I hadn’t forgotten some important
article of clothing. “If you don’t give me your name, I’m just going to make one up,”
he said, leaning against the counter. “And fair warning, you look like a Judith.”

“I do not!” I exclaimed.

“Half-dressed girls who climb me like a tree are usually named Judith,” he told me
solemnly.

“This happens to you often?” I deadpanned.

He shrugged. “You’d be surprised.”

“It’s Nola,” I told him. “Nola Leary.”

“Jed Trudeau,” he said, shaking my outstretched hand. “If you don’t mind me sayin’,
you look beat. Must’ve been a long flight.”

“It was,” I said, nodding. “If you don’t mind, I think I’ll just go back to bed.”

There was a spark of mischief in his eyes, but I think he picked up on the fact that
I was in no mood for saucy talk. His full lips twitched, but he clamped them together.
He held up one large, work-roughened hand. “Hold on.”

He disappeared out the back door and I could hear his boot steps on the other side
of my kitchen wall. He returned a few moments later, having donned a light cotton
work shirt, still unbuttoned. He placed a large, cold, foil-wrapped package in my
hands. “Chicken-and-rice casserole. One of the ladies down at the Baptist church made
it for me. Well, several of the church ladies made casseroles for me, so I have more
than I can eat. Just pop a plateful in the microwave for three minutes.”

I stared at the dish for a long while before he took it out of my hands and placed
it in my icebox. “Do local church ladies often cater your meals?”

“I don’t go to Sunday services, so they’re very concerned about my soul. And I can’t
cook to save my life. They’re afraid I’m just wasting away to nothing,” he said, shaking
his head in shame, but there was that glint of trouble in his eyes again. He gave
me a long, speculative look. “Well, I’ll let you get back to sleep. Welcome to the
neighborhood.”

“Thanks,” I said as he moved toward the door. I locked it behind him, turning and
sagging against the dusty curtains covering the window in the door. “If there are
any greater powers up there—stop laughing.”

I massaged my temples and set about making my tea. Jed seemed nice, if unfortunately
named. And it was very kind of him to give a complete stranger a meal when he knew
she had nothing but angry forest creatures in her cupboards. But I couldn’t afford
this sort of distraction. I’d come to the Hollow for a purpose, not for friendships
and flirtations with smoldering, half-dressed neighbors.

Just as I managed to locate a chipped mug in the spice drawer, a loud, angry screech
sounded from somewhere left of my stove. I turned and fumbled with the locked kitchen
door, yelling, “Jed!”

Enjoyed
My
Bluegrass
Baby
?
Look for the next delicious Bluegrass romance by Molly Harper
Available October 2013 from Pocket Star Books

ALSO BY MOLLY HARPER

The Care and Feeding of Stray Vampires

Driving Mr. Dead

Nice Girls Don’t Have Fangs

Nice Girls Don’t Date Dead Men

Nice Girls Don’t Live Forever

Nice Girls Don’t Bite Their Neighbors

How to Flirt with a Naked Werewolf

The Art of Seducing a Naked Werewolf

And One Last Thing . . .

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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are
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Copyright © 2012 by Molly Harper White

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ISBN 978-1-4767-0605-4