“Assuming she doesn’t cause any more disasters,” he said.
“Well, sure, assuming that,” Connor conceded, sinking deeper into the couch, his legs sprawled out in front of him, his arms spread out across the back.
“Which is a big assumption, all things considered.”
“Untwist your panties,” Connor said. “You’re just still pissed because I did this without consulting you. And you don’t like change. And you don’t like feeling out of control.”
Well, dammit, was he that obvious?
“This isn’t about me. It’s about her.”
“Sure,” Connor said, resting his head on the back of the couch and drawing his hat down over his eyes.
“Will you stop that?” Eli asked.
“What?”
“Stop being so damned disengaged all the time.”
Connor straightened, pushing his hat back. “Sure, Eli. You going to arrange to have my wife returned to me?”
Eli’s chest seized up, his heart squeezed tight like it was locked in a vise. “You know I can’t.”
“Then maybe fuck off and stop commenting on how disengaged I am.”
It was rare for Connor to acknowledge that he was still grieving Jessie. But then, it was rare for Eli to call Connor on his bullshit in a serious way.
“Fair enough,” Eli said, his voice coming out tight.
“Now, I believe you were ranting about our tenant.” Typical of Connor. Get really pissed, then pretend it hadn’t happened.
“I was. She has plans. And dammit, Connor, I sort of have to side with her on them.”
Now Connor’s body registered some tension. “What kind of plans?”
“Community barbecue plans,” he said.
“And how does this concern me?”
“Because she wants to host things here,” he said. “Particularly, she’s planning on having a county-wide Independence Day celebration here on our ranch.”
Connor had the decency to look perturbed about that. “Here? On the ranch? I won’t have to do anything, will I?”
Eli let the implosion happen internally. He hadn’t imagined his brother would actually propose that he help out with things, but then, it would have been nice if everything that wasn’t cows didn’t fall to him.
Which was maybe really unfair of him, but at the moment he didn’t care.
“We’ll have to clear things with you and your schedule. And I would guess base some things around what fields you want your cows in at a given time. Also, if any barns are going to be used, that needs to be cleared with you.”
“Right. Fine. Just...when plans get more advanced, run dates and things by me and I’ll see what I can do.”
The fact that it made Connor look so damn tired brought Eli back from annoyance to pity. “Great. Sounds like a plan.”
Connor frowned. “What happened to your tie...and...all of you?”
“What?” Eli looked down and saw the streak of dirt on his tie. It screamed feminine handprint to him, but he was pretty sure that to the unknowing observer it looked like a streak of dirt. Still, it made him feel a lot more like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar than he would like. And it made him think about what had happened between him and Sadie, which, in all honesty, he hadn’t stopped thinking about since he stepped onto Connor’s porch, but now he just felt like his face was projecting the words so Connor could read them easily.
He tried to remind himself that Connor wasn’t that perceptive. And then he wondered what was wrong with him because any normal man would feel some sense of pride over kissing a woman as pretty as Sadie.
But then again...what they’d shared wasn’t exactly a kiss so much as an explosion that happened to be detonated by the meeting of their lips.
“You look like you rubbed up against the side of a barn.”
Eli looked at the rest of his uniform, heat making his face sting. He could see where every inch of her had been pressed against every inch of him. “Something like that,” he said.
Connor narrowed his eyes. “Something like that?”
“I wasn’t paying attention.”
“You pay attention to everything. Which means...you paid extra close attention to whatever happened to your uniform, because obviously you’re lying.”
“Why the hell have you chosen to get engaged with what’s happening right this moment?”
Connor raised a brow. “I think this is the first time I’ve ever caught you doing something you weren’t supposed to do.”
“I’m an adult. As long as it’s inside the law there’s nothing I’m not supposed to do.”
“But let’s be honest, Eli, the laundry list of things you think you can’t do is longer than your arm.”
