Free Always on My Mind by Bella Andre

see a muscle now jumping in his jaw.
    “New York.”
    “What part?”
    “The city.”
    Okay, now they were getting somewhere with his new, fancy two -word answers. “I love New York City. I almost went to Columbia,” she told him, “but in the end I couldn’t imagine being that far away from my family.” And dance training had taken precedence over everything else. Maybe, she wondered now that she was giving up her dance career, it might have been a good idea to get a broader education. Although the truth was that no matter what her future held, she wouldn’t have given up all those years of dancing from morning until late into the night for anything.
    Grayson had stopped at a stop sign now and was staring at her, his dark, haunted eyes full of surprise. “Columbia is my alma mater.”
    “You went to Columbia?” Realizing how her question sounded, she said, “Not that I don’t think it takes a lot of brains to run a big farm like yours. I’m sure it does. I’ve just never met anyone who graduated from an Ivy League and became a farmer. What was your degree in?”
    “Finance.”
    Both of her eyebrows went up. “So if you have a degree in finance from one of the best universities in the country and only bought your farm three years ago, what were you doing for all the time in between?”
    By now she honestly wasn’t trying to irritate him—she was simply curious about him.
    “I get it,” he said, instead of answering her last question. “You’re not happy with the way I dealt with the pig getting out, so you’re going to torture me with endless questions.”
    “My ears are still ringing from your yelling.”
    “Would it make you happier if I apologized?”
    She crossed her arms over her chest and raised an eyebrow. “You? Apologize?” She made a clear sound of disbelief. “I’m pretty sure I’m going to see one of your pigs fly first.”
    He stopped at another stop sign and turned his too-beautiful face to hers. “I’m sorry. I was an ass. It won’t happen again.”
    “I was with you all the way up until the ‘won’t happen again’ part. You and I both know it will.” She couldn’t hold back her grin. “Probably inside of the next ten minutes. Especially since I do a pretty good job of living up to the nickname my family gave me as a little girl.”
    “Nickname?”
    She was so pleased by his unexpected interest in her that she turned the full wattage of her grin on him. “Naughty.”
    Despite the fact that his irritated expression remained in place, she could have sworn his lips were twitching as he put his foot down on the gas pedal.
    How fun would it be to actually see him smile? Lori knew she shouldn’t want it as badly as she did. Alas, she had never been very good at being prudent.
    Not when impulsive had always been so much more fun.
     
    * * *
     
    After Grayson headed toward the hardware section, Lori found the cutest cowboy hat ever. She immediately plopped it onto her head to buy along with new boots, then waved at her teenaged friend behind the deli counter.
    His face immediately turned red, just as it had the first time she’d talked to him, and his voice broke as he said, “Hello.”
    She was just about to go over and do a little flirting with him when she realized her bag was buzzing. She pulled her phone out with far more caution than she usually did. Normally, her cell was like a fifth appendage. But she wasn’t ready to talk to anyone yet, and if anything other than her sister Sophie’s face had appeared on the screen, Lori would have dropped it right back into her bag unanswered.
    “Hey, Soph,” she said as she put it to her ear, “how are the cutest little babies in the world doing?”
    “They’re fine,” Sophie said, which was strange, because normally, asking her about her kids meant getting a good ten minutes of details that Lori was certain only a mother herself could possibly care about. “I got a call from a friend in Chicago who went to see your