him a long look that he couldn’t even come close to reading. Then she gave a small nod. “Good idea.”
“How’s that?” Cole asked automatically.
She reached down for another post. Cole stood back, not wanting an elbow to the lip, but this time she lifted and twisted and eventually worked it free of the pile without doing either of them any damage.
She held up the post. “Johnson.”
Cole stared at her. “You’re naming the posts?”
“I’m working out my aggressions, as you suggested. Johnson always made me ask for information I needed twice. Or three times. Power game.” She heaved the post toward the pickup, where it landed square in the middle of the bed with a rattling bang. “Take that, Johnson.”
“Good aim this time,” Cole muttered. “Who’s next?”
Taylor grabbed another post and didn’t bother pulling, but instead twisted. And twisted some more. “Melanie. Didn’t do her job. Talked about me behind my back. Still…” yank “with…” twist “…the company…” A few seconds later, Melanie joined Johnson.
Cole tipped his hat back. “Anyone else?”
Taylor propped her gloved hands on her hips and pursed her lips as she considered the roster in her head. “One more.” She took hold of a gnarly rusted post, twisted, yanked, pulled, tripped and fell backward on her ass. She got back up, took another crack at the post, then eventually worked it free. Perspiration beaded on her forehead. “Erickson.”
“Ex-boyfriend?”
“My supervisor, who encouraged me to believe I was irreplaceable and that I should continue to work eighty-hour weeks.” She heaved the post. It hit the bed of the truck on end and ricocheted out, landing on the ground. She climbed off the pile and retrieved Erickson.
“He always was a slippery dude, but I thought he was on my side.” She threw the post back into the truck.
“Do you maybe want to bend him a little?” Cole asked, gesturing to where the post now lay.
She met his eyes, wiping her glove over her forehead, leaving a rusty smear. “You have no idea,” she said grimly.
He reached down and started working a post free with his good hand. “Did you like anyone you worked with?”
Taylor also started working on freeing a post, more gently this time. “Of course.” She gave him a sidelong look. “Some people even liked me.”
Cole let out a snort. “Imagine that.”
“Watch it,” she said pleasantly. “The next post might have your name on it.”
“I’ll take care.”
“You better.”
Cole pulled his post free and handed it to Taylor. “Pretend it’s Johnson.”
Her gaze held his as she took the post from him. Are we playing?
Maybe a little.
She heaved the post. It landed perfectly in the bed of the truck, and then she reached into the pile and chose her next victim. “I’m still not convinced this isn’t busywork.”
“Ask Karl.”
“Oh, yeah. I’m going to call Grandpa to ask if you were supposed to clean up the boneyard. Then he’ll ask why, and I’ll have to come up with a watered-down version of what’s going on.”
“Why watered down?”
Her hair spilled over her shoulder as she turned toward him. “Because I don’t like to upset him, and I think you’re using that to your advantage.”
“No, Taylor. I’m striking while the iron is hot.” She smirked as he echoed her words. “You’re the one who chose to land here.”
“And I’m the one who agreed to this deal.” She went to work on another post that slid free with relative ease because it was one of the few straight ones. She held it up, and he pointed to the place where they’d stack the salvageable posts. She laid it down and went to work on another.
“I’m a hard worker,” she said as she methodically twisted and pulled a pretzel of a post, “but this isn’t the kind of work I do.” She shot him a look. “Don’t you have any financial stuff you need advice on?”
“Uh…”
Her expression darkened as she caught the reason for his hesitation. “We addressed that.”
“Yes.” He carefully freed a post and laid it in the straight-post pile. “I don’t blame you for trying to pay off student loans and feeling bulletproof.”
“But you still think I’m entitled.”
“If our positions were reversed…”
She let out a breath. “Things look different on the outside.”
“What?”
She put her hand on her hip. “I guess I’m saying walk a mile in my shoes. Your perspective might change.”
“I guess that goes both ways.”
“I guess.”
The conversation ended there and, oddly, the tension between them seemed to dissipate as they worked in an almost companionable silence. Almost. He was too damned aware of her noncompanionable assets for it to be fully companionable.
“Did you live alone in the city?”
She stopped pulling on a post and shot him a frown.
“Yes.” The word came out cautiously, as if she were expecting a setup, but this time he was just curious.
“Then living alone in the bunkhouse isn’t a big change.”
“No. It is a big change. Being alone is the only part of my life that’s the same.”
Over the course of the next hour, they sorted through the worst part of the web of bent and tangled posts. He heard Taylor’s stomach growl a couple of times, but when he asked if she wanted to stop for lunch, she shook her head. “I don’t eat much when I’m stressed.”
But she did work. Cole would give her that.
“You should eat something.”
“Thanks, Mom, but I’d just as soon finish my hours and be free of this.”
“I need to eat.”
She shrugged. “Whatever.” The post she was working on finally came free, and she tossed it into the truck bed. “I don’t mind continuing.”
“I mind.”
She rubbed her shoulder. “Fine, but you should know that once I stop, I may never get going again.”
“Maybe you can pretend the next posts are the assholes who robbed you.”
He caught the flash of amusement in her eyes, there and gone. He wished it had stayed. There were layers to Taylor. A woman beneath the princess exterior whom he thought he could like. He just needed to find her.
What the hell was he thinking?
He didn’t need to find a hidden side to Taylor. He needed to focus on the job at hand and his life ATL—After Taylor Leaves.
* * *
BY THE TIME the day was over, Taylor would have happily killed for a long, hot soak. She briefly thought about negotiating for use of the tub—Cole was showing signs of being reasonable—then decided that maybe she didn’t want to be naked that close to him, even if there was a door between them.
The guy set her on edge. And every now and again a random hot thought would flash into her head. What did he look like naked? Pretty damned awesome.
So,