Free Packing Heat by Penny McCall Page B

when he stepped forward he got his point across loud and clear. It was a whole different dynamic, Harmony decided, when that pitchfork was aimed at her.
    She put her hands up in the universal I-mean-no-harm gesture, making her jacket gap open—which made the farmer’s eyes bug out and his face go even redder.
    “You bring a weapon here?” he thundered.
    “Time to go,” she said, slipping her hand into Cole’s and backpedaling to the door they’d come through the night before. They hightailed it down the conveyor, Cole taking a precious moment to look it over in the predawn light.
    “It’s horse-powered,” he said. “Pretty ingenious.”
    Harmony rolled her eyes. “Nerd.”
    “The Amish are really good at engineering,” Cole said defensively, following her into the cornfield, the dry stalks rattling around them like bamboo wind chimes.
    “I’m just happy they don’t believe in guns. Or phones.”
    “They believe in the police, and that one believes we snuck into his barn to have sex.”
    “You speak German?” Harmony asked, surprised enough to look over her shoulder at him.
    He waggled his brows back at her. “Didn’t need to understand German to get that.”
    Neither did she, but she’d decided the subject of sex was off limits so she let it go. “Do you really think he’ll go to the police?”
    “He was pretty mad. We probably aren’t the first couple to sneak onto his property for a booty call.”
    “We’re not a couple, and that wasn’t a booty call. And why would anyone do that?”
    “Don’t know,” Cole said with a shrug in his voice. “It’s probably like the Mile High Club.”
    Harmony had never really understood that one, either. Why have sex in a tiny airplane bathroom or a scratchy hayloft when you could—
    “You’re thinking about sex, aren’t you?”
    “Yep,” she said, mostly because he wouldn’t expect it, “in a bed, with satin sheets and champagne, and all night so you don’t have to race through it, because if you’re with someone who counts, you don’t need some kind of stupid thrill to get in the mood.”
    There was silence behind her. She glanced back. Cole had stopped walking—and breathing. He was about twenty yards behind her, his eyes on her backside. She turned the rest of the way around and his gaze rose about eighteen inches, so she crossed her arms over her breasts and waited until he made eye contact.
    “You’re playing with fire,” he said.
    “You’re the one who keeps bringing up sex.”
    “And you’re supposed to keep shooting me down.”
    “I’ll try to remember that,” she said, which wasn’t just a smart-aleck comeback. Testosterone might be making him forgetful, but there were moments . . . Take the way he was looking at her right now. Hot, burning her up, making her remember the heat and solidness of him against her last night and the way he’d kissed her, strong and hard. If she hadn’t been shocked enough to shove him away, she wouldn’t have cared if there’d been a bed. Hell, she wouldn’t have cared if there’d been a horizontal surface. The tree would have done just fine as long as she got him inside her, just as fast and hard—
    “Stop looking at me like that,” he said, his voice even deeper than usual, impossibly deep, stroking over her nerve endings and throbbing in places she shouldn’t be thinking about in Cole Hackett’s vicinity.
    “I will if you will.”
    He let his chin drop to his chest, and she could see him taking slow, even breaths.
    “Chanting mantras?”
    “Reminding myself you’re a pain in the ass,” he said, “with an FBI badge.”
    “Whatever works for you.” Harmony started off into the corn again, but in a couple of steps Cole overtook her.
    “I think you should walk behind me for a while.”
    Harmony couldn’t help but smile over that, even if it was sadly unprofessional of her. Sure, she was a federal agent, but she was also a woman, and what woman wouldn’t be flattered to know