Betting the Farm Read Free Page A

waggling the empty bottle in front
of her face. Her bottom lip poked out in a fake pout then she giggled again.
    “S’fine. I haven’t done shots in years,” she drawled, her
Southern lilt getting more pronounced the drunker she got. Her words came
slowly enough he could watch her lips form them.
    Christ.
    She’d eaten off her lipstick and Fritz wanted to smother
that soft, pink mouth with a hard kiss, see if she still tasted as sweet as he
remembered. Her bare feet were braced against his dashboard, the tips of her
toes painted the same crimson shade as her dress. The hem of said dress had
slid down her thighs toward her lap and the fancy updo her hair had been in
earlier was coming loose and falling around her shoulders. Fritz had rolled the
windows down because he figured she could use the fresh air, and it was
whipping the silky strands across her face. Every once in a while she’d
impatiently push it back with her hands or puff it away from her mouth.
Meanwhile, he kept a death grip on his steering wheel to keep from touching
her.
    Impressive diamond studs sparkled in her earlobes
occasionally when they caught the moonlight, a blatant reminder of the kind of privileged
life she was accustomed to living. It also hadn’t escaped his attention that
her left ring finger was bare.
    Fritz pulled into the edge of one of his family’s cornfields
and cut the truck’s engine, leaving the radio playing softly on a local country
station. Drawing his knee up, he turned his body to face her on the seat.
    “I thought you were engaged, Kai.”
    She held up her left hand between them, wiggling her
fingers. “Not anymore. We broke up six months ago. I can’t remember now what I
found interesting about him. Phillip was a bore with a capital B. He could bore
air, he was so boring.” She busted out laughing at her own silly joke.
    Why did that little piece of information make him happy? He
tamped that emotion back down into its place. She certainly didn’t seem torn up
about the breakup.
    “How did he take it when you broke it off?”
    “Claimed I was making the biggest mistake of my life by
dumping him. He said, ‘I’m going to be a United States senator one day, and you
could be the wife of a senator, and you’re throwing all that away’. Whatever.”
She waved her hand through the air dismissively. “Like I care ’bout that crap.
I never said I wanted to be a senator’s wife. I didn’t wanna be a lawyer’s wife
either. Mostly I jus’ didn’t wanna be his wife. He was sooo bore-ing.”
    Fritz chuckled. “You mentioned that. Were your parents upset
you ended it?”
    “Oh. My. God! You would’ve thought I committed murder or
somethin’. You know how my mother is—always pushing. Tonight at Stacey’s
wedding she was forcin’ Trent Lathrop on me.” Her face scrunched into a
grimace. “Ewww, he’s jus’ nasty, with his big ol’ fat belly and bad comb-over
and reeeeally bad breath.” Collapsing in another fit of giggles, she slid
farther down in the truck seat.
    He liked her like this—soft and feminine, relaxed and sexy,
letting her guard down. Gone was the stubborn wench from inside the bar. It
wouldn’t last, he knew. She’d wake up tomorrow morning with the mother of all
hangovers and be as cranky as they come. Still didn’t mean he wouldn’t like to
be around her in the morning, stupid as that thought was. Right now though, he
was going to enjoy her for as long as he could, even if it was a form of
self-torture.
    “I’m still thirsty. Do you have anything else to drink?” she
asked.
    “I think I’ve got water in the cooler in the back of my
truck.”
    Fritz jumped down to the ground and rummaged through the ice
in his cooler until he found a bottle of water. Living in the South and working
on a farm, he always carried around something cold to drink, even in the
wintertime. He wiped the moisture from the outside of the bottle on the leg of
his jeans and climbed back inside the truck. Kai was