Cowboy, Stay with Me

Chapter Thirteen: Down-Home Charm

Sean slowly ambled towards her, thumbs hooked through the belt loops of his jeans, an odd, helpless sort of smile on his face.

Lucy folded her arms as she waited for him to approach her. "You know, unless you're here to arrest me, I really don't see a reason why you need to be here."

"Put you in handcuffs? Hmmm, tempting."

She gritted her teeth tightly together. "Take a hint, Kallaghan!"

"I got you a new cellphone." He informed her, choosing to ignore what she'd just said. "My men found yours in the cornfield last night, but it was smashed to bits. Someone musta stepped on it by accident in all the ruckus."

"Oh, wow, thanks." She said, accepting the slender little device. It was pink and shiny. "Oh my, an iPhone. How much do I owe you?" She chuckled nervously.

She made a decent living running the daycare, since she was the principal owner and general manager of the whole operation, but she liked to live a frugal lifestyle and she certainly didn't need anything as fancy as an iPhone.

"Not a dime. You had a free upgrade."

Her eyes widened. "How did you even manage to access my account anyway?"

"I'm a US Marshal, sugar, I can do pretty much whatever I want." He gave her a benign smile. "Well, anyway, I had so much fun helping you out yesterday, I thought I'd come back and see if you had any more chores for me."

She studied him. "Sean," she groaned quietly, "why're you doing this to me?"

"Because," he eased the last few steps closer to her, "I just have such an enduring love for...menial yard work."

Lucy closed her eyes, slumping in defeat. "Fine. Fine, you weirdo. You wanna help out so darn bad? Come on, I'm sure I can find something for you to do."

###

Lucy hated to admit it, but she actually ended up having a little bit of fun.

Getting to boss Sean around was fairly therapeutic, she could admit that much.

Amanda insisted that Lucy take it easy on him, so she only had him help with exercising some of the horses. When he finished with that and was still lurking around, Lucy set him to washing all the various vehicles that they had on their property.

Every time she walked through the driveway between the house and the garages, he would try to spray her with the hose and she soon regretted giving him the job.

He laughed unapologetically as he eyed her sopping wet T-shirt, the white cotton material clinging to her body. "That's what you get for giving me the job of some teenager!"

She growled, throwing a wet washrag at his head. "Then stop acting like one!"

Lucy went to go change out of her damp clothing. When she came back down to the yard, it was to find Kailee sitting on her butt on the ground, wailing her little blonde head off.

Worse, Sean was just standing there, staring down at her with an odd look on his face.

"Sean!" Lucy rushed over to the crying toddler. "What happened?"

Kailee seemed uninjured, but something had clearly upset her. Lucy couldn't believe that Sean was simply standing there as if suddenly stricken into a catatonic state.

"A dog ran by and knocked her over, that's all." Sean said woodenly.

Lucy picked Kailee up off the ground, glancing over to where the two border collies were playing. They had the run of the farm and kids got bowled over by them all the time, it wasn't a big deal as long as a responsible adult was around.