Amanda Berry - His Small-Town Sweetheart

He couldn’t imagine the pain of having her folks split their family in half. What must that have felt like for her? Had she felt like the last one to get picked? If her mother hadn’t moved so far away, would Sam and Nicole have been split up?

“You ready to get hosed down?” he asked as the truck doors slammed behind them.

She lifted her eyebrow at him. “You aren’t serious.”

“How else are you going to get all the pig smell off you?” Sam flicked a chunk of mud from her shoulder. “I can’t exactly let you into the house looking like that.”

Her smile was downright wicked when she stepped close to him. “If I’m going to get hosed down, then you are, too.”

She put a handful of mud from her leg on the front of his shirt and smiled up at him. “Just so you know, if you hadn’t grown so big, I’d have just tackled you in the mud.”

The images she conjured in his mind were enough to make him welcome the cold hose water. The truck engine vanished into the distance, leaving him and Nicole alone. If she wanted to play with mud, he decided two could play at this game.

Chapter Four

Nicole took one look at the mischievous look in Sam’s eyes and knew she was in trouble. So when he bent over to scoop up some mud, she shoved him off balance.

“Hey!” He fell to the side and into the mud. She took the opportunity to turn to make her getaway.

If the mud hadn’t sucked down her boots, she might have made it, too.

As she tried to pull free of the mud, Sam said, “Not so fast, Nikki.”

His hand wrapped around her calf and yanked her backward. She lost her balance and fell backward on top of him. The air rushed out of her lungs, but at least he was more solid than the mud beneath his back.

“I hope your plan was for me to squish you more into the mud and get more on you,” Nicole said. She started to struggle to get up, but his hands on her hips stopped her.

“If you squirm any more, we are going to have more than just a mud problem,” he said through his teeth.

Heat rushed to her cheeks. She glanced over her shoulder. Sam half leaned out of the mud, but he was definitely more covered in it than she was. A spark of heat in his eyes made her aware of the intimacy of their position. The warmth of him against her backside surged through her. If it hadn’t stunk like crazy and the flies weren’t trying to bite every piece of mud from her body, she might have been tempted to...

She looked away. He was probably worried about an elbow to his crotch, and here she was getting all hot and bothered while covered in mud and...stuff. She took a deep breath and instantly regretted it. It was the other stuff that made her wrinkle her nose.

Needing to keep things easy, she glanced back again and flashed him a grin. “Afraid I’ll get more mud on you?”

“I don’t think that’s possible.” He pushed her up by her hips until she could regain her footing. “And here I thought you’d play fair.”

She turned to watch him peel himself out of the mud. “There’s nothing fair about your height or weight advantage. You just fall easy.”

He raised his eyebrow at her as he stood up. “Maybe unbalanced in a pigpen, I fall easy.”

She shook off what mud she could. This wasn’t exactly facial or soothing mud bath material. “It’s starting to itch.”

“That’s because it’s drying. We should go over to the hose.” He started to lead the way out of the pen.

“You aren’t serious about the hose?” When he didn’t respond, she added, “Seriously? When there is a perfectly good hot shower in the house?”

He stopped and faced her. “We’re not allowed to track mud through the house.”

“Isn’t it your house?” She crossed her arms. “If I’d known about the lack of warm water facilities, I would have fallen in the mud at my own house.”

“You’re welcome to walk home.” He gestured for her to go ahead.

There was a lot of land between the two houses, and going the road way wouldn’t be any better. Screw that. “Oh, no. You drove me here, and you’ll be driving me back.”

“I suppose you could ride in the truck bed, but only after I’ve had a chance to shower and change.”

She weighed her options. Cold and dripping wet followed by a nice warm shower or being eaten alive by flies and itching from the drying mud for some unknown amount of time? She could feel Sam watching her as she made her decision. “What will I change into?”

His eyes flared hot for a second before his cool demeanor slipped back into place. Probably just her imagination running wild. To Sam she’d always just been that annoying tomboy from next door, who happened to be his best friend.

“I’m sure I can find you a T-shirt and sweats,” he said.

“Somehow I don’t think we are the same size like we were way back when,” she grumbled. She’d always liked wearing her boyfriend’s shirts, but she needed to remember Sam was just a friend, even if wearing his clothes seemed intimate. “I suppose I’ll let you hose me down, but on one condition.” She held up her finger.

“What’s that?” The corner of his mouth twitched.

She narrowed her eyes and shook her finger at him. “As long as you don’t like it.”

A laugh burst from his lips. Her heart skipped a beat at the sound as she smiled up at him. It didn’t last long, but it soothed her to know that he still could laugh.

His mouth settled into a small smile that made her catch her breath. “I’ll try. But you better not have any fun hosing me down, either. This isn’t the water balloon fight of ’95.”

Shaking off the sudden feelings of giddiness bubbling under the surface, she said, “Okay, hug on it.”

He held out his hands. “No—”

As if that would stop her. She stepped into his arms and squeezed him around the waist. The mud on them made weird smacking noises. She laughed as she released him. “See, that wasn’t so bad.”

“Says you.” He continued toward the back of the house where the hose was. Hose water was hose water, and she’d never had a warm soak from a hose. The water out here was either from the well or the cistern. Either way, it would be frigid underground water, regardless of the warm weather.

“Don’t you have a pond that we can jump into?” She stopped a few feet away from him as he went to turn the hose on.

“Not unless you want to get eaten by mosquitoes.” He turned the handle, and the rush of water could be heard flooding through the line. He picked up the other end of the hose as the water cascaded to the ground. “Besides, it’s a runoff from the hog pens. You’d get cleaner from rolling in the pens.”

The spray created a rainbow. Of course, a rainbow would normally be a happy thing, but not when it was created by water from the Arctic.

“Wait.” She held up her hands to ward off the oncoming blast of cold water. “What if I just take off my clothes?”

“I don’t think—”

His words stopped the second she started unbuttoning her shirt. “It’s not like we’d be naked. I have on a bra and underwear, and I’m sure you are wearing some sort of underwear. The mud would mostly be our heads, which would be just fine walking through your house. Not that our heads walk, but—”

“Nicole.” Her name was gruff, almost strangled, on his lips.

“I’m just trying to make it easier on us.” She stopped unbuttoning her shirt and glanced up at him, uncertain of what she was going to see.

His eyes were glued to her hands as they hovered over the last button. She watched in fascination as he swallowed. Her skin prickled, and it had nothing to do with the heat or the drying mud. She had thought to avoid the chill of the hose water, but at the intensity of his gaze, she would almost have welcomed the cold.