LITMIR.BIZ

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      “Know what, I was about to leave. It was nice meeting you.” This particular job she did not need. There were others. Dammit, there had to be. Jobs where people were less abrasive and the money-men more congenial.

      She stepped past him.

      “Just a minute.” He blocked her path. “Why are you here?”

      Ignoring his knife-edged cheekbones and grim jaw, she looked square into the steel of his eyes. “I came about the job advertised in the paper.”

      The man blinked once, clear shock on his face. “You want to milk cows?”

      If it meant keeping a roof over her brother’s head and money in his college fund. She hiked her chin. “I have experience.”

      He scanned her body. “A little slip like you? Shoving around thousand-pound cows?” A soft chuckle. “I don’t think so.”

      “I’m not a slip. I’m five eight and weigh—”

      “One-twenty.”

      Her turn to blink.

      “I’m a doctor. I know the human body.”

      He was…Michael Rowan? Top surgeon at Blue Springs General? Well, no doubt he knew the female body best of all, then. With that face, he probably had a different girlfriend every weekend.

      “You need to eat more,” he continued, jerking her rumination off balance. “You’re at least fifteen pounds underweight.”

      “Excuse me?” So she didn’t eat properly half the time. He didn’t know her life. Didn’t know she slogged every night at her accounting courses. Of her need for a career, a stable source of income. Dr. Michael Rowan knew nothing about her.

      His eyes softened abruptly. “I apologize. Bad habit I have, giving unwanted medical advice. Need to curb that.” A tiny smile altered the line at the edge of his mouth.

      She nodded. “Just tell me where I can find M. Nelson.” In minutes she’d be out of his hair, out of his life.

      “She’s out of town.”

      “Your foreman’s a woman?”

      “No foreman. My grandmother.” In a placid state his eyes were dull silver. “A combination of family names as well as ownership. I didn’t want the clinic staff hounded with a bunch of calls.” He tilted his head, a pleat between his black brows. “You were to answer the ad through The Blue Sentinel.”

      Her face warmed. She had wanted to impact with charm, wit and intelligence. Face-to-face. Michael Rowan, she saw, was not a man easily impacted. “Well,” she said. “I’m probably late, anyway.” The ad had run in three issues of the biweekly paper.

      He studied the horse in the distance. “How’d you know it was Rowan Dairy?”

      “Word gets around.”

      Weariness marked his eyes as he studied her. Scraping his hands down stubbled cheeks, he released pent-up air. “Again, my apologies.” He held out a hand. “Michael Rowan.” His fingers wrapped around hers, warm and firm. His look wrapped around her heart, cool and steady. She let go.

      “I know. We went to the same high school.” The way his eyebrows took flight had her lips twitching. “I was beginning middle school when you graduated.”

      “McKay… The name’s familiar. Have you been to the clinic?”

      “I don’t get sick.”

      “Live around here, then?”

      “In Blue Springs.”

      “I see.” He tucked his hands into the pockets of his black dress pants and looked at her as if he could see beyond her skin, into her body. Into her.

      She turned toward the knapsack sitting in the dirt by the gate. Hoisting the bag to her shoulder, she said, “I need this job, Doctor Rowan. Are you hiring?”

      “That depends.”

      “On?”

      His hands came free of their pockets. Dust scuffed his shoes as he walked toward her. “On your expertise.”

      “Four years, three months.”

      He opened the gate, held it. She passed through. An efficient tug, a thunk of the wooden bar and it closed behind them. “Come up to the house,” he said. “Might as well get this over with, right now.”

      “Over with?”

      A sigh. “When you’re applying for a job, Ms. McKay, the employer—me—needs to ask some questions. But, I’m not doing it with horse dung on my shoes.”

      A tobacco-brown smudge clung to the side of his left loafer. Rolling her lips inward, she looked to the pasture where the stallion grazed, picture-perfect in the distance. I’m not afraid of you. Or your famous owner.

      “Ms. McKay. If it’s all the same to you, I’d like to eat tonight before I go to bed. I’ve had a long day.”

      “Sorry,” she said. “I have a habit of—”

      With a crisp turn, he strode off.

      Daydreaming.

      So much for conversation. She watched him go. Each cant of his succinct hips plied tiny creases into the fine, white shirt at his belt. He had those streamlined Tiger Woods buttocks. And long, long legs—which, at the moment, wolfed up ground.

      The job, Shanna. You need the job. Remember that.

      She hurried after him.

      The trail wound through a hundred yards of spruce, cedar and birch. The trees blocked the barnyard from a two-story yellow farmhouse. Why hadn’t she noticed it before, this century-old Colonial—its tall windows and ample verandah strung with boxes of red and white geraniums overlooking paddock and pasture? No front lawn. Instead, a cornucopia of lush, leafy produce—beans, peas, onions, carrots, potatoes, squash and corn—fanned toward the pastures. Behind the house, the forested hill rose rapidly. She imagined its warm, emerald quilt of Douglas fir offered cozy vistas in bleaker seasons.

      They crossed the driveway where the final rays of the day’s sun glossed a black Jeep Cherokee. Her dented two-toned silver pickup remained down at the barn where she’d parked it, drawn first to the farm’s animals instead of to its people.

      The doctor walked down a flagstone path along the side of the house, to the rear door. There, from a cement stoop, he tossed his shoes to the grass. He held open the door. “Come in.”

      Leaving her pack, she toed off her sandals and followed. The mudroom was neat and compact while the adjoining large, bright kitchen supported a greenhouse window she inherently loved.

      The living section…

      Oh, my.

      A wood-beamed ceiling spanned a sunken room. Ebbing daylight spilled from wide, tall windows and warmed a bouquet of lemon oil. At the base of an oak staircase, hung a woman’s painted portrait. Her resolved, dark beauty emanated power.

      “Ms. McKay?”

      She jerked around. He stood in a small study, watching her. How long had he been waiting?

      “Your home is lovely,” she told him, meaning it.

      “Thank you.” He gestured to the den’s single leather chair. “Please. Sit down.”

      From the rolltop desk he picked up a pen and a black notebook, then settled on the window seat, ankle on knee. Scribbling in the booklet, he waited until she eased onto the dough-soft seat where she kept her back straight, her feet planted, and her fingers loosely laced in her lap. She curbed the urge to touch the three staggered dream catchers swinging from her ears.

      Confidence, Shanna.

      “Where did you gain your dairy experience?”

      “Lasser

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