Showing posts with label Farmer Hero. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Farmer Hero. Show all posts

Friday, August 22, 2014

GETTING DIRTY by Erin Nicholas


Sapphire Falls Book Three

Travis Bennett is exactly the kind of guy Lauren Davis has been avoiding for the past nine years. Religiously. Stubbornly. Successfully. She knows too well how easy it is to let lust ruin perfectly laid plans. And a small town farmer with no ambitions beyond the borders of his own cornfield is not going to change her mind. She’s got important stuff to do. Her company is literally working to stop world hunger. Her plans are much bigger than Sapphire Falls. No matter how hot those farmers might be. 

The problem is—Lauren is falling in love. With Sapphire Falls. To kick her sudden desire to buy a welcome mat and start baking pies, she asks Travis to help her get over her crush. She wants him to show her what life in the small town is really like behind all the sweetness and sunshine and remind her that there’s no place for French manicures and Gucci heels on the farm. 

Travis has everything he wants or needs—a quiet, simple life in his hometown, a successful farm and his friends and family all around. A hoity-toity city chick who looks down on everything from the local coffee to his favorite music is the last girl he wants sticking around. So he agrees to her crazy plan. He can definitely show her the less-than-glitzy, rough-around-the-edges side of Sapphire Falls. In fact, things just might get downright dirty.

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~Excerpt~

© copyright Erin Nicholas, 2014

“Whatever.” She was leaving. What the hell she was doing in the midst of chickens and cows, she didn’t know, but this was Sapphire Falls and it was the annual town festival—most of both of those things didn’t make sense to her.

She turned her back on the calf… and ran directly into a hard chest.

And something cold and wet.

“Ah!” She jumped back, shaking her hands free of the icy liquid that cascaded down the front of her soaking into her shirt and freezing her skin.

It was a warm June evening so she was quickly more concerned about the fact that the liquid was purple. On her white shirt. Because of course it was.

She looked up into the grinning face of the man whose grape slush had just soaked her.

Travis Bennett. Because of course it was. She sighed. Mud, cornstalks, manure… she’d had all of that on her at various times in Sapphire Falls and Travis Bennett was always the cause.

“Why am I always getting dirty when you’re around?” she demanded, grasping the front of her blouse and pulling the wet stickiness away from her stomach.

“Oh, darlin’ that ain’t dirty.”

No apology, no reaching for a napkin, no sheepish look. All she got was “darlin’” and the word “ain’t”. In a drawl that was like fingernails on a chalkboard. Oh, and a big, fat, cocky grin.

“I’m soaking wet!”

His grin pulled up more on one side. “Now that I have some theories about.”

Lauren narrowed her eyes and planted a hand on one hip. “Theories about what exactly?” She knew where he was going with this, but she wanted him to say it so she could shoot him down. Like every other time he’d made any kind of sexual innuendo.

“You being soaking wet when I’m around.”

She gestured to her clothes. “Clearly, you need carnival food to get me wet, Farmer Boy.”

“No kiddin’. I woulda pegged you for a fancy schmancy wine and caviar girl.”

Liquor actually. She loved a good martini.

“But hey, a girl who likes meat on a stick and funnel cakes is my kinda lady.”

Meat on a stick. Yeah, right. Though funnel cakes weren’t horrible. They involved powdered sugar after all.

She blew out an exasperated breath. Travis talked like a hick. Why did she want to put her hand down the front of the blue jeans that had been covered in who-knew-what in the course of the years he’d owned them?

Travis was a farmer. A small town farmer. A small town farmer who had never traveled outside of the county in which he’d been born—and his father had been born and his grandfather had been born. She knew the type. Too well. She’d been surrounded by the type, involved with the type, in love with the type, until she escaped to the city. Where she’d found real life. Real culture. Real coffee.

And it didn’t matter what city. She loved them all. Traffic, people, action… life. And not a cornfield or haystack for miles.

She was a city snob, a small-town-phobic. She knew it. She owned it.

And no good-looking, suntanned, slow talking, cheap beer guzzling small town farmer was going to change her opinion.

“Clearly the slushie needs to be applied externally for it to get me wet,” she told the cheap beer guzzling small town farmer she wanted to lick from head to toe. In a cornfield.

She hated him.

“You city chicks are into some weird stuff,” Travis said. “But darlin’, I’ll apply anything you want anywhere you want.”

Stupid tingles all over her body.

She put on an unaffected expression. “And I suppose it would be some sexy set-up like the bed of your truck with mosquitos buzzing around and maybe some straw poking me in the ass while we’re at it?”

He gave her a slow grin. “You, me, the bed of my truck... I’ll put twenty bucks on soaking wet in five minutes.”

The bed of his truck. Of course.

But it wouldn’t take five minutes and he knew it. Somehow.

Damn him.

Wednesday, October 24, 2012

TWELVE KISSES LATER by Sandra Sookoo

TWELVE KISSES LATER by Sandra Sookoo

Can you find true love in a kiss? How about a dozen?Lucy Duckworth is comfortable with her life and in her own skin, and her habit of picking up orphaned cats is charmingly noble. Yet when her roommate asks her to fill in at a kissing booth during the Winter Carnival, Lucy's even-keeled existence suddenly tilts.

Matthew Kincaide has one simple motto: live off the land, keep your head down, don't talk a whole lot and never trust a woman. Divorced and not about to give a female control over him again, all he wants is to deliver his animals for the petting zoo and go home. Too bad his annoying brother coaxes him into buying tickets for the kissing booth.

Lucy's and Matthew's first kiss ends with a violent sneeze, but she can't forget that first lip-tingling, take-me-away moment. Though Matthew's shocked by his first reaction, he lines up for a second chance. Surely lightning can't strike twice. Will winter fun and a random accident derail their quest to find out how many kisses it takes to fall in love?


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~Excerpt~

"There's no way I'm getting in that kissing booth." Lucy Duckworth crossed her arms over her chest and shook her head for emphasis. The vigorous motion sent her brunette curls bouncing over her shoulders. She glared at the closed bathroom door her roommate had disappeared behind. All three of Lucy's cats lined the hallway, staring as well. "The only way that would ever happen is if you were dying."

"I think I am." The unmistakable sound of barfing followed the pathetic statement.

"Pam, are you okay?" Lucy knocked on the door. Her anger evaporated in the face of her concern. The calico sat on Lucy's feet.

Another round of heaving preceded an answer. "I knew when that grumpy woman coughed on me two days ago I'd get the flu. I just knew it." The toilet flushed. The tap water ran, and seconds later, the bathroom door opened. Pam stood in the frame, her skin pale, her eyes watery, and her chin quivering. She wiped her nose on the sleeve of her oversized blue Indiana Pacers sweatshirt. She must really be sick if she's chosen to cover all possible skin like that. "Holy crap, there's no way I can go to the Winter Carnival like this, let alone kiss guys, unless you want me to infect the whole town."

Lucy's shoulders slumped. The black cat, Shadow, brushed against Pam's shins. "No, you should be in bed." She followed her friend into her room and waited while the other woman climbed under the covers, closely followed by Shadow. "Do you want some ice water or ginger ale?" She tucked a brown paisley comforter around Pam then smoothed sweaty blonde bangs away from her warm forehead. "You have a fever." Shadow curled into a ball at her side, purring.

"I just want to sleep." Pam's brown eyes widened. "Please say you'll take my place at the booth? Or do it at least until I can track down someone else, okay?"

"I don't know.­" Her stomach clenched. In her twenty--seven years, she'd only been kissed a handful of times. Knowing she'd have to do it multiple times with strangers this evening sent shivers crashing down her spine - and not the good kind. "Kissing's your thing, and you're so comfortable around guys.­" Pam's string of broken hearts and less--than--moral love life was legendary, at least around Francesville.

"Come on, Lucy." A string of coughing interrupted Pam's speech. "It's for a good cause. Playground equipment for the elementary school. Just think of those excited kids when they get their shiny, new playground this spring."

Crap. Lucy chewed her bottom lip. She never could resist helping others - human or feline. "Fine, but you have to feed the furries later, since I probably won't be home tonight until ten."
As she spoke, the other two cats - the calico, Happy, and a ginger male, Punkin - jumped onto the bed and settled in.

Pam nodded. She snuggled into the covers. "Deal. Don't bring any more back with you, even if they do look at you with big eyes and have a great purr. We're running out of room with these three."

"I'll try." Taking in stray cats had become a problem. The three she already owned were hers because she couldn't place them in homes. Francesville didn't have an animal shelter, so there was no other option for the strays. Dogs and cats that were caught by the local population or small police force were taken to the pound in the next town over.

"No trying. I mean it. No more cats, all right? I'm feeling like the old woman who lived in a shoe, except with cats instead of kids. Sooner or later, Old Man Harley will come for an inspection, then we'll both be thrown out."

That was true, and an ongoing fear both she and Pam shared. When they'd leased the tiny two--bedroom house from the older man who'd owned the property for almost thirty years, it had been with the caveat that he might pop in from his RV travels anytime to look over the property. That and he'd explicitly told them they couldn't have pets, not even a hamster or a goldfish.
"I promise. No more cats."

"Or anything else. I mean it. Heaven knows if you come across a wounded bird while you're out there, you'll bring it home." Another bout of coughing had Pam wiping her mouth on her sleeve again as her eyelids fluttered closed.

"I know, I know. Hope you feel better." Lucy exited and left the door open in case the cats needed out.

Once in her bedroom, she grabbed a pillow off the bed and screamed into it, releasing the built-up tension. It was a stress relief mechanism she'd used since her teens when things were rough dealing with her mom. As it was, she still heard her proper grandmother lecturing her: Ladies don't outwardly show any expression except being pleasant. Men don't want to be weighed down with female histrionics.

She took a deep breath, let it out, then tossed the pillow onto the bed. Though her grandmother had passed away more than five years before, her old-school views of male and female relations lingered. How disappointed would the old lady have been, had she found out Lucy hadn't gotten around to dating for the sheer excuse that she found the company of rescue cats more fun? Plus, Francesville wasn't exactly chock--full of good men.

Not her immediate concern. Lucy planted her hands on her hips and contemplated her closet. What did a woman wear when she'd be presented with dozens of strangers all intent on smooching? Naturally, her thoughts and worries focused on the upcoming debacle. She'd be manning the kissing booth tonight under duress - a job Pam did every year with enthusiasm. Pam had guys lining up to wait for half an hour just for a shot at her famous pucker. Of course Pam enjoyed the task. She used to say it was a good way to weed out guys without having to date them. A guy who can't kiss isn't worth knowing, was her favorite motto.

Ugh. Now it's my job.

Did that mean she needed long-wearing lip gloss or just lip balm, and was there something wrong with her that the thought of having to lip tango with strange men had her pulse pounding and palms sweating?

After yanking a pair of jeans from the dresser, Lucy stormed into the closet and grabbed a thick, ivory sweater from a shelf. The cable-knit piece would keep her warm enough with a scarf, and if she were lucky, she wouldn't need a coat. Too many things to keep track of at the carnival made for a better night.

Pam owes me big time.

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