Irritating.
Nearly as irritating as watching her struggle with bags of dirt the size of her body with no one to help her.
She grins as I approach, the plastic seam of the bag dragging across her chin as she turns to look my way. “Good morning!”
My brow furrows. She sounds chipper. Just as chipper as Oma when she talks about how lovely Julia is.
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Which makes me wonder if she’s mocking me.
This must be a cosmic joke that everyone is in on. I’m just trudging around, putting in long days on the farm, waiting for the next shoe to drop, and they’re all laughing at me.
Ha ha, look at Emmett having to face his annoying rival’s little sister every day while preparing to do the dumbest thing he’s ever done.
Sure, everyone on staff has signed NDAs. Hell, I’m not even allowed to publicly date anyone else until this farce airs—over a year from now.
I can’t even put my finger on why I’m so agitated by her presence. If she spills this secret to her brother and all the other guys on tour, then she does it—I’ll survive by crying into my piles of money for having done the show.
“Morning,” I grumble back, sounding more surly than I intend.
She turns away, dropping the bag with a loud “Oof” on the ground near a wine barrel that’s been cut in half. Then she turns back to her car, drawing my gaze with her as she goes. Which is when I notice the trunk of the small, white Subaru loaded to the roof with bags of dirt. I can’t even see through the windows, which means I have no idea how she managed to drive safely.
“What are you doing?”
“Moving bags of soil from my car to these planters,” she replies simply, while pointing at the barrels.
She says it as if I’m the idiot.
“Your car is full to the brim, Julia. How did you even check your rearview mirror with all that in there?”
“Oh, it’s very simple.” She dusts her hands off on a pair of shorts while turning to face me. “I didn’t.”
The muscle in my jaw ticks as I imagine her driving down the highway through Emerald Lake. The road is busy with international tourists and out-of-town summer yuppies who have no idea where they’re going.
She’s already heaving another bag out of her car when I get around to talking again. “You know you can order a load of soil and they just deliver it, right?”
Julia looks back up at me with mock alarm on her face. “You can?”
I cross my arms. “Is this going to be how the next couple of months play out between us, Julia?”
“I don’t know, Emmett. Is it?” She huffs, tossing the bag on top of the other. “I’m minding my own business, trying to make a good impression and complete the tasks I’ve been assigned without asking a lot of questions or eating up the budget. So you can carry on doing whatever you came here to do, or you can help me. But this whole concerned father figure schtick has gotta go.”
My tongue pops into my cheek as I regard her. All fucking sass.
But without another word, I move in her direction.
And I start unloading bags of dirt.
Like I said, irritating.
We finish unloading in silence.
“Thanks for pitching in,” she huffs, wiping the dirt from her tight bike shorts and matching crop top. I try not to let my eyes wander, watching for no longer than is strictly necessary.
Instead, I toss her a tight smile and a quick, “You bet,” before turning to leave.
I’m not even ten steps away when I hear another car door open, followed by a dragging sound, then a metallic crashing sound. And then an “I’m okay!”
She said she doesn’t need my help. But when I glance back over my shoulder, I see her awkwardly trying to handle a box about the same size as her body. One corner of it is crushed.
My eyes flutter shut for a beat, and I groan. I can’t escape her; she’s truly everywhere. And it’s only been a week.
“Julia,” I say, exasperation bleeding into my tone.
“It’s all fine!” She waves me off. “Nothing to see here.”
I turn and watch for several seconds as she pulls a mishmash of tools out of her car and scatters them on the ground.
“What are you doing?”
“Building you a looove seat,” she replies with a teasing flourish. “So you can sit and talk to the camera about your deepest thoughts and feelings.”
The back of my neck itches at the mere mention of talking about my feelings. And she can tell. She’s teasing me, and she knows it.
“A dream come true,” I quip, deciding not to let her get under my skin. Even as she opens the box.
“Right?” she gushes as she lifts the manual and flips it toward me, pointing at the line drawing of the love seat with an excited grin. “And look. It swings.”
I almost laugh. Almost. I can’t help myself. There’s something about Julia that puts me at ease even though I don’t want to be. When I look at her, my brain tells me do not trust when every other part of me seems so ready to let my guard down. “Why would I need it to swing?”
“I thought it might be my little way of helping soothe your bad moods. You know, like rocking a small child.”
My bad moods? I look her over, eyes slipping from her face, down over her bare legs and back up.
“I’m not in a bad mood. And if I wanted you to soothe me, I wouldn’t ask you to push me on a swing.”
My lips tip up in a slow smirk, and her eyes widen for a beat. But the innuendo doesn’t fluster her in the way I hoped. Instead, she just huffs out an amused laugh and crouches down to reach for the screwdriver. “Save it for the cameras, Bush.”
Immune.
She directs her attention back to the instructions, turning the booklet as though she’s held it upside down.
It makes me wonder why she’s here doing this by herself. Surely there are other people on the payroll who should be building these parts of the set. But if I’ve learned anything about Julia in these early days, it’s that she’s eager to prove herself to Richard and the rest of the crew—and if that means going above and beyond her job description, then so be it. And to her credit, she’s been extremely productive. The bunkhouse and surrounding yard have come together over the past week.
But that doesn’t prevent confusion from touching Julia’s features as she stares down at the sheets.
Her brow furrows.
Her nose wrinkles in that same way I’ve noticed before.
I prop my hands on my hips and let out a weighty sigh. “Do you want help with that?”
“No,” she replies a little too quickly, eyes slicing up to mine for a beat.
“All right,” I say, resignation in my tone as I trudge toward her and swipe the manual out of her hands.
Because she may not want my help, but she looks like she might need it. And apparently, I have some sort of affliction when it comes to helping Julia Silva.
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CHAPTER 8
Julia
“WELCOME TO ROMANCE RANCH! Where ten lucky ladies are going to be courting our cowboy, professional bull rider Emmett Bush. Right here on a picturesque farm in Canada. I’m your host Brad Nelligan…”
The man with the too-tight face carries on introducing the show, but I find myself taking a long look around the guesthouse as the sun sets beyond it.
Quite frankly, I am brimming with pride.
I stand with the crew, our backs to the rest of the farm as we face the bunkhouse where the contestants will live for the next month. The building is unrecognizable from the first day that Leon and Tina gave me a tour of the place and fed me freshly baked cookies. The main set is several minutes down a gravel road and much farther into the sprawling property, which has helped to maintain privacy up at their home.
