Page 22 of Stolen By the Billionaire
“I don’t think it is,” Sarah mused, rubbing her face.
“Yeah, I directed them down the road but didn’t get too specific.”
“If they’re meant to find me, they will. Was one of them real tall with blue eyes and a little bit of a British accent?”
“No. The sorta-tall one had brown eyes, and they all just sounded like Easterners or something.”
“Huh. Okay, then. Thanks for letting me know.”
Maybe she should get her varmint rifle out of the gun safe.
Sarah worked through her chores, feeding and watering and herding the animals to their daytime locations, and was about halfway down the morning list when she found one of the water lines to a watering tank had been chewed through during the night.
Some coyote or other predator had been mouthy during the nighttime hours. That was probably what had set Remi off. She needed a utility knife and some waterproof tape to fix it.
She shoved the big ol’ barn door aside, slipping in so she could get her supplies. The door’s creak echoed through the farmyard as the metal wheels rolled on the track.
Her metal toolbox of odd tools rested on the utility shelves in an unused stall, and she grabbed it and went back outside to clean up the mess. The homemade container was made of bent sheet metal, soldered on the corners and enameled red, and the hinges squeaked when she wrenched open the lid.
Her dark braid swung over her shoulder a few times and got in the way as she trimmed the edges of the line and glued a joint into it.
The watering trough was full, so no one had been without water. In the summer heat beginning to scald her back with the rising sun, livestock could dehydrate and die quickly.
Her braid swung again, nearly dragging her hair through the glue.
Maybe she should cut it off, but then she’d have to do something more with it than just braiding it to keep it out of her face. Sarah was not a blowout type of girl.
The repair took longer than she’d thought, as it always did, and thus the time was after seven-fifteen when she lugged her tool kit back into the barn. Already, it was going to be a long day on the farm.
She was walking through the barn and back to the storage stall when a dark silhouette coalesced on the straw covering the concrete floor.
A man stepped out of the stall into the wan sunlight and towered over her. He wore a desert camouflage uniform this time, its pixelated fabric the pale ochre of the hay bales he must’ve been hiding behind. His skin was a few shades tanner than the straw, and his eyes were the blue of the Iowa sky outside.
Tiny lines gathered around the corners of his eyes like he was squinting, making him look older.
“You have to come with me,” the man said in a deep, too dang familiar voice.
Definitely the same man.
“Oh, no way,” Sarah said, stumbling backward.
Without the jungle-camo grease paint slashing diagonal blocks over his skin, his jaw was strong and cut like a geometry angle, and his cheekbones were deep lines above.
That jerk was handsome without his camouflage paint.
She dropped the tool kit with a clang and clatter and sprinted for the barn door, her boots clomping over the straw-strewn concrete.
“Hey, stop!” he yelled.
Like heck. She wasn’t a stupid inbred chicken who’d stand in the middle of the chicken yard and watch an incoming eagle snatch her.
Sarah poured energy into her farm-strengthened thigh muscles and pumped her legs as fast as she could, slamming her boots against the floor.
Light footsteps chased her.
She reached for the barn door, intending to swing around it and shove it closed to buy herself some distance. The sliding door stuck on its rusty track and required muscle to open from the inside.
A hand clamped on her shoulder like a horse bite, and her feet slid on the straw.
