A Risk Worth Taking Read Online Free PDF Page A

little machines usually obliged, but today was supposed to be ninety
and humid enough to feel like a hundred. It wasn’t even June yet. What the
hell? How did people survive in humidity like this their whole lives?
    I
positioned my stool so the air hit me just right from both sides and then bent
down and went to work in the dirt trough set up in front of me. I kneaded the
black earth in my hands slowly, falling into a rhythm with my fingers, stopping
every so often to add handfuls of fertilizer and the vitamins I’d developed
specifically for this project. The last batch had been closer—Mazie said the
herbs I’d given her had been responsible for the best Greek salad she’d ever
tasted—but when I’d rubbed it on the cut I’d gotten from removing a stubborn
splinter, it hadn’t helped the healing process a single bit. Fail. Back to the
drawing board.
    When
I finished working the soil, I smoothed it out along the trough until it was
full enough. I used my finger to poke holes and then dropped my seeds inside
before lightly covering them again. I did the same in two other troughs before
I went back and drenched them with water. No automatic sprinklers for these
babies. They needed to be cared for by hand. Like a woman, they needed a personal
touch.
    It
would be days before the next batch was ready to test. A fact that developed
patience in even the most rushed grower. The vitamins had proven to be the key
to faster growth. Sort of an all-natural steroid, a recipe I’d picked up in New
Mexico as a way to hurry things along between the sporadic rainfalls of the
southwest.
    Once
the vitamins were in and the plants set, all that remained was the wait.
Luckily for me, I’d figured out something else to do while I waited.  A mental
image of Summer in those denim shorts she wore today flashed in my mind. I
couldn’t help but smile as I remembered how sexy she’d looked with her feet
tucked up underneath her ass in that desk chair, coffee mug pressed between her
lips. To be that mug. To have any part of me pressed between those full lips …
    But
damn, she was jumpy. If I hadn’t heard the story from Casey, I would’ve thought
she’d been burned instead of the one doing the heartbreaking. So why did she
look like a deer in headlights every time I got close?
    “Judging
by the look on your face, I’d say I was interrupting. Kinda’ creepy considering
you’re in here alone. You need a minute?”
    I
hadn’t realized I’d been cheesing like an idiot until my smile faded when the
sight of Casey’s face replaced the memory of Summer’s. “I’m good. Your ugly mug
snapped me right back to reality,” I said, throwing a rag at him. “What do you
want?”
    He
caught it with a grin and stopped to lean on the raised planter bed a few feet
away. “Poker at our house tonight. Joe‘s bringing the beer. You in?”
    “I’m
in. Is that all?”
    “Not
quite. What has you smiling like the cat that swallowed the canary?” he asked.
“The heat getting into your brain?”
    “Some
kinda heat,” I muttered.
    Casey’s
smile widened. “You referring to my sister?”
    I
wasn’t sure how Casey would feel to know exactly how I’d been thinking of his
“sister.” Namely, with her legs wrapped around my waist. Or shoulders. Maybe it
was best to keep it to myself. “Maybe,” I answered.
    He
snorted. “You’re such a bad liar. I saw it coming a mile away, anyway.”
    “Saw
what? There’s nothing to see.”
    “Again,
bad liar. If it makes you feel any better, it was way more obvious on her end.”
    “It
was?”
    Casey
nodded. “You gonna do anything about it?”
     I
shot him a look and kept my hands in the dirt. The pressure of my kneading
increased. This was where it got tricky. “Define ‘anything.’”
    Casey’s
eyes narrowed. “Put it this way. I’m an easygoing guy. Feel free to do whatever
the mood strikes. But know this. She took a spill when her mom ended things with
her dad. Still hasn’t gotten back