Page 32 of The Payback Adventure
“Dog-doo, horse-doo, cat-doo. I’ve had it with doo-doo.” Henry propped the shovel against the barn, stripped off his filthy gloves, and threw them on the ground. “Being a fairy godfather has never been this hard before.”
Henry’s new best friend stared up at him with sleepy brown eyes.
“You look how I feel.” He rubbed the mangy mutt’s head. Henry had noticed a lump of fur in a corner of the barn on his third day on the farm. He’d thought it was a dead animal, but the dog named Ruffian had only been sleeping. “Too bad there’s no time to be tired. Only time to work.”
Work.
Henry hated working. He hated everything about life on the farm. The never-ending exhaustion, the won’t-wash-off dirt, the thin, sandpaper-like towels hanging in the bathroom.
It didn’t help that he was the worst farmhand in the history of agriculture. So far, he’d done nothing but cause trouble and make mistakes. Mistakes in front of the family, their friends, and Elisabeth. She’d seen him get chased and stung by bees, pop a wheelie when he dropped the rototiller and nearly crushed Ruff, upset the chickens in the henhouse, break a day’s worth of eggs, and fall face-first while mucking out the barn.
Henry turned on the faucet outside the barn and rinsed his hands.
This job was crushing his ego. Who was he kidding? He hadn’t an ounce of pride left.
But Henry was all Elisabeth had. He couldn’t let her down. Or Sam. Or Abby. Or Caitlin. Or Ruff. Or the nameless gray cat that now slept on his chest every night.
Quitting had never sounded so good to him. But it wasn’t an option. Forget about faking an injury and spending a much-needed day in bed. He couldn’t donate money and make it all better, or he’d lose the stupid adventure.
“It sucks, but I’m stuck.” Henry dried his hands on a dingy monogrammed linen handkerchief that had once been white. “For a month.”
Henry couldn’t believe Cynthia had done this to him.
And one thing was clear. He didn’t want to see how the other half lived. He didn’t want to know how the other half struggled. He didn’t want to be the other half.
If Cynthia was trying to teach him a lesson, he’d learned a big one. He was happy that he was rich and didn’t have to deal with life like Elisabeth did. He was only supposed to behere for a month, but she faced this day in and day out. She’d done this for four years. Henry didn’t know how she managed it or why she kept doing it.
He couldn’t wait to get back to his real life. Once in Portland, he could do more for Elisabeth and her family as Henry the billionaire than he ever could as Henry the farmhand. “I could stay here forever and never be good enough for this job.”
Ruff groaned.
“Don’t worry, boy. I may not be cut out for farming, but she put her trust in me to do this job, so that’s what I’ll do.” Henry removed his hands from the water. Dirt was still caked under his fingernails and embedded in the dry cracks of his hands, but that was as good as it would get. “Even if it kills me.”
Which, Henry realized grimly, it just might.
Ruff’s ears perked up. Footsteps crunched on the gravel, and Henry looked that way. Elisabeth walked toward him. She wore jeans and a red field jacket. Her hair was pulled back into a braid, and she wore no makeup once again. She looked more beautiful than any woman had a right to look. He only wished she didn’t have those dark circles under her eyes that never seemed to fade, even after a full night’s sleep.
Henry shoved the handkerchief into his back pocket.
She greeted him with a smile. “Good morning, Henry.”
Seeing her made his morning better. Now if he could get his act together and do something right, things would be more tolerable. “Morning.”
“How are you today?” she asked.
Bone-weary and hating life. His best effort wasn’t good enough—for the farm or Elisabeth. Just like his parents had always said about him. This adventure was only proving the truth.
Henry forced a smile. “Just fine.”
“You missed breakfast.”
He’d fallen asleep after the alarm went off. It had been physically impossible for him to crawl out of bed, especially with Ruff dozing on his legs and the fat, nameless gray cat asleep on his chest. But when he finally woke, he skipped breakfast so he wouldn’t start the morning behind schedule. “I wasn’t hungry.”
His stomach growled.
She removed something wrapped in a paper towel from her jacket pocket and handed it to him. “In case you get hungry.”
Elisabeth was so sweet, always thinking of others. He unwrapped the paper towel and saw a rectangular piece of something. The white icing with red sparkles looked interesting. But edible? He was almost too hungry to care whether it was or not. “What is it?”
