Loving The Country Boy (Barrett's Mill Book 4) by Mia Ross Page A

there might be. Since that was something he had no intention of finding out, he pushed the question aside. “I am, thanks. Toss it down and I’ll catch it.”
    Unfortunately, her throw went astray, and he had to dart his bad arm out to keep the bottle from falling into the creek below. Wincing, he let out an unconscious grunt that made her gasp.
    “Oh, Heath, I’m sorry! I’ll go get Scott.”
    “No!” The whip in his voice stopped her cold, and he regretted his harsh reaction to her offer. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to yell at you. I’m fine, just a little sore from hanging under here like this.”
    “You’re not fine,” she informed him primly. “You can lie to me, but you should be honest with yourself.”
    “That sounds familiar,” he joked.
    “You should take your own advice. You should also come up here and have something to eat. It’s past lunchtime.”
    Squinting up at her, he grinned. “You’re starting to sound like your grandmother.”
    “That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me,” she replied, beaming down at him. “Now, get up here. I’m sure one of the boys will help you finish that up later.”
    “Yes, ma’am.”
    While Heath pulled himself up and clambered over the railing, he noticed she didn’t turn and go back inside but waited for him on the walkway. Watching over him protectively, she reached out to steady him as he cautiously lowered himself down to the weathered planks. Small as she was, there wasn’t much she could’ve done for him if he lost his balance, but he appreciated her thoughtful gesture all the same.
    “Safe and sound,” he assured her, coiling his well-used rappelling gear into a neat bundle he slung over his right shoulder. The left one was still barking, and he decided to give the strenuous stuff a rest for now.
    “You looked right at home down there,” she commented as they made their way into the mill house. “Did you used to do a lot of that kind of thing?”
    “Yeah. That was one of the skills that got me my oil rig job.” The job that had nearly cost him his life, he recalled grimly. Shoving the uncharacteristic negativity back where it belonged, he tapped into some more pleasant memories. “On the weekends a bunch of us would go into the mountains to camp and go climbing. It was tough, but the views from the top of those peaks made it all worthwhile.”
    “I can only imagine.”
    In the lobby Heath glanced over the Dutch door into the office. Stunned by what he saw, he had to look again to be sure his eyes weren’t deceiving him. They weren’t, and he whistled in amazement. “It looks great in there. What’d you do—burn everything?”
    “Filing, filing and more filing,” she replied with a laugh. “I’ve spent most of the week logging things in and moving them from the ‘to-do’ pile to the ‘done’ pile. It was tedious and boring, but I finally got everything caught up and put away.”
    Something in her tone alerted him that things weren’t as simple as that, and he frowned. “And?”
    She studied him for a few moments, and he got the distinct impression she was trying to decide if she could trust him with whatever she had to say. Looking over her shoulder, she came back to him and murmured, “Not here.”
    “How ’bout out there?” he asked, nodding out the side window toward the woods. “I could use a walk, anyway.”
    “What about your lunch?”
    Reaching over the door, he plucked an old wool blanket off the chair where Daisy liked to nap and draped it over his shoulder. “We’ll call it a picnic. I’ll even share my sandwich with you.”
    “Gram packed me some leftovers. I just didn’t have the stomach for them earlier.”
    Must be bad, he thought while Tess got her own lunch from the small office fridge. When they had everything, he followed her down the porch steps and out toward the trail Boyd had worn through the undergrowth from the sawmill to Scott and Jenna’s place upstream.
    Figuring she needed