I blinked and found myself face to face with high cheekbones, a city-boy beard, and forest-green eyes that were too beautiful for me to tell if the gaze swimming behind them was amused or annoyed.
“The fuck are you sitting on my lap for?”
Okay. We’ll go with annoyed then. I scrambled to my feet. Being upright gifted me the perspective I’d lacked in a heap on the ground. I stared down at the man attached to the spectacular face and my heart skipped a beat. Stretched out on the black foam mat, he had long legs and lean arms. Strong shoulders and . . . perfect feet. Seriously, I was transfixed by them. In a world where I was surrounded by riding boots and wellies, I rarely got to see anyone’s feet, and until this moment, I hadn’t realised how much I was missing out. Straight toes and elegant bones. Damn. My hands itched to touch them—
Jesus. What’s wrong with you?
I had no idea, but the longer I stared at the man and his pretty feet, the harder it became to look away.
He cleared his throat. Reality kicked me in the nuts. Brilliant. I was making an idiot of myself for the second time in the space of four and a half seconds. “Uh. Sorry. I didn’t see you down there.”
“Clearly.”
Again, it was hard to tell if the bloke was laughing on the inside or about to get up and deck me. “In my defence, I wasn’t expecting to come across anyone lying on the grass.”
His sexy frown deepened. “Well, get used to it. This is a great space for working out with the early morning sun. I might bring some classes down here.”
“You’re the new Pilates coach?”
“Yup. Cole Maguire.” He sprang to his feet like a cat but didn’t extend his hand, which I was glad about. I’d always hated the custom of holding hands with a stranger, even for just a few seconds. Add in the fact that Cole was sexy AF and my palms were sweating up a storm, and I was pretty relieved that he seemed to have no intention of touching me.
And disappointed because my oversexed imagination knew no bounds when it came to making me feel like a hormonal teenager.
Rattled, I stepped away and retrieved my paintbrushes from the ground. “I’m Toby.” I kept my eyes down. “I’ve come to paint your walls.”
“I figured. I was expecting you, just not so intimately.”
Intimately. My blood rushed again. Thankfully, I had my dad’s floppy dark hair, and it chose just the right moment to fall into my face and conceal my flushed cheeks. I couldn’t cope with this shit. When I’d first come to work on the farm, Joe had been the only hot bloke around, and he never said words like intimately. I missed those days in no way whatsoever because he was so much happier now, but seriously. Did every man Harry brought to the farm have to be so sinfully fucking attractive?
Maybe it was just me. Maybe I was so sex deprived that, at this point, any man would float my boat. Whatever. All I knew right now was that Cole’s close proximity was making me fit to implode.
“Are you okay?”
“Hmm?”
“You seem a little tense,” Cole said. “Not a morning person?”
“Not by choice.”
Cole laughed. For some reason, it surprised me, and I swung my gaze back to him before I could check myself. Wow. If I’d thought Cole was attractive when he was kind of glaring at me, I was legit floored by the barest hint of his smile. It made his eyes somehow greener, and they contrasted with silky chestnut hair that was scraped back into a messy knot.
I was staring again, and I couldn’t stop. “Uh. Anyway. I’d better get on. Are you okay for me to go in and get started?”
Silence. Cole eyed me in a way I couldn’t describe. Then he shrugged and jerked his head at the cottage. “Have at it, mate.”
Cole
The painter gathered his things and disappeared into the cottage. I watched him go with conflicting feelings. On the one hand, I was rubbish at small talk, so I was pleased to see the back of him. On the other, the rear view of him was as distracting as the front. Toby was sinewy and lean, with strong, hardworking hands and ink-dark hair. His deep brown eyes seemed to have no end, and the flush staining his suntanned cheeks was all kinds of adorable.
His accent did odd things to me too. It was different to the brief introduction I’d had to Joe’s Cornish brogue. It was softer, with a faint Irish lilt, and lacked the growl and surly delivery I’d got from Joe. Toby was, apparently, shy, and fuck me if that didn’t press all my buttons.
Not that I was looking to get my buttons pressed. Last time that had happened, the bloke had taken one look at Ella on my lock screen and booked it out of the door. As if hooking up on Scruff meant he’d become an overnight stepmonster to a newborn. Arsehole. I only used hook-up apps so I didn’t have to talk to people, but being rejected five minutes into a handjob on the grounds of my personal circumstances had stung. No one had told me that becoming a father would mean I was instantly unattractive, and it bothered me more than I cared to admit.
Sighing, I rolled up my yoga mat and tucked it under my arm. The temptation to bypass the cottage and head straight for the clinic was strong, but I ignored it. I wasn’t expected at work until Monday, but even a flyby recon mission would earn me more conversation than I was in the mood for. With any luck, Toby would be engrossed enough in his work for me to slip upstairs and hide in the shower.
Or, as it turned out, my convoluted brain would do a summersault by the time I got inside and mourn the fact that he was nowhere in sight.
What the fuck is wrong with me?
As if I knew. I blamed the country air and the best night’s sleep I’d had in months. Without the noise and light pollution from the city, I’d tapped out as soon as my head had hit the pillow and woken at dawn like I’d just blinked with an energy I couldn’t explain tingling in my veins. I’d embraced it at first, but in the cold light of day, it was pretty disturbing. In the city, I’d worn my cloak of discontent like a security blanket, and insomnia had been my friend for years. I didn’t know how to behave without it, and frankly, I still had plenty to worry about, so its absence didn’t make any sense.
Without any real conscious thought, I found myself traipsing through the tiny cottage in search of my new friend. It didn’t take long to find him. He was in the courtyard around the back, mixing water into a tub of white paint.
“Shoestring budget?”
He glanced up, revealing the flush had faded from his cheeks. “Nah. Plastered surfaces are porous, so it needs a few diluted coats before I get to the real stuff.”
If I’d cared enough to dissect that, I’m sure it would’ve made sense, but I knew even less about decorating than I did about horses. But still, I leaned in the patio doorway, somehow unable to walk away from Toby. I was in love with his hands. They were calloused and strong and such a contrast to his sweet face, I couldn’t stop my gaze swinging incessantly between the two.
“I was planning on painting everything white,” Toby said when I failed to respond to his explanation. “But Joe doesn’t care about stuff like that, so I can probably sneak another colour if you have any preferences.”
“Hmm?”
So eloquent.
“Colours,” Toby repeated. “For the walls. You got any preferences?”