Always on My Mind Read Online Free PDF

woman who had sworn off men and relationships.
    Forcefully pushing the heady vision of the two of them naked together away, she walked out into his bedroom and ran her hand over the dark-blue bed cover. Everything in his room was simple. Clean. And purely masculine.
    Lori left the master bedroom and slowly made her way through the rest of the house to verify that her work had been top-notch. She’d not only swept and mopped the floors, cleaned both bathrooms, and made both the master and the guest beds, she’d wiped down the refrigerator inside and out and cleaned the oven, too, for sheer shock value. Lord knew, she had been shocked by just how toxic the oven cleaner smelled. Fortunately, she’d been wearing thick yellow gloves at the time, so she hadn’t seared the skin off her hands.
    Cleaning a farmhouse wasn’t the most enjoyable job she’d ever had, but at least she felt the satisfaction of a job well done. Sure, it wasn’t a job she’d ever planned on doing, but she’d always figured that if she was going to do something, she should take the time to do it right.
    She’d kept her shoes off and had taken her tights off as well when they’d started to shred at the knees, so that she was left wearing only the stretchy pink top that came to the middle of her thighs like a miniskirt. It was just as well, considering what sweaty work cleaning was. She was just stretching the bodice away from her skin to fan herself when Grayson walked into the kitchen through the back door.
    He stopped dead in his tracks as he stared at her in her barely-there outfit, the top pulled halfway down the swell of her breasts. She dropped the fabric like it was on fire, but the damage had already been done. It wasn’t as bad as if he’d found her in the bathtub, she supposed. But that was little comfort when he was looking at her with such intense heat that she couldn’t believe she wasn’t spontaneously combusting right where she stood.
    It was only natural in a tense situation like this that she’d fall back on years of being a motormouth. “I was just about to come get you so that you could take a look at what I’ve done. I cleaned the whole house, and I can take you back to look at the bathrooms or you could just stick your head into the oven to see how I even clean—”
    “What happened to your pants?” His words sounded like the gravel she’d driven over to get to his farmhouse.
    “My tights,” she corrected as she swiped her tongue across her suddenly dry lips, “were a mess after the chickens, so I took them off.”
    She realized now that maybe that hadn’t been her best decision of the day as she looked down and saw how much bare skin she was showing Grayson. As a dancer, she’d long ago gotten over feeling self-conscious about showing off her body. It was not only a part of her job, but frankly, it was also a large part of her identity as a pretty, desirable woman.
    Only, she wasn’t dancing here in Grayson’s kitchen...and she didn’t want to make him want her.
    At least, she silently corrected, she shouldn’t want him to want her.
    Grayson’s jaw was tense as he shifted his gaze from her bare legs to her face. He hadn’t ogled her, clearly didn’t even want to be looking at her bare skin, and yet with nothing but that one quick glance, she felt as if she’d stripped away all of her clothes rather than just her tights.
    “Don’t you have other clothes with you?”
    “In my car,” she told him, “but I didn’t want to waste any time changing into them.”
    At her honest answer, he sighed, looking momentarily worn out. And more than a little pained. She also refused to drop her gaze any lower than his face. That was gorgeous enough for her teeter-tottering peace of mind. If she let herself appreciate his broad shoulders, or his large hands, or his well-muscled hips and thighs—
    Ugh, she needed to stop letting her hormones run away with her. Why couldn’t he have been a grizzled old farmer?
    Because