Crushing on Love (The Bradens of Peaceful Harbor, Book Four) by Melissa Foster Read Free Book Online Page A

never know what a girl likes.”
    Great. Now he was hard.
    In an effort to distract himself, which wasn’t easy with her bent at the waist in front of him, he said, “You should tie your hair back when you’re out here working.” So my mind doesn’t wander.
    She poked his stomach. “You could have mentioned that an hour ago.”
    “You were out here researching for weeks. How’d you get untangled then?” He unwound the last strand. “Okay, you’re free.”
    “Thank you.” She straightened her spine and ran her fingers through her hair. “I remembered to tie my hair back when I was working alone.” Her eyes slid down his body. “You’re a bit of a distraction.”
    He’d like to distract her, all right, but she had another man waiting for her tonight, and it was his own damn fault. He could have stopped it.
    “Maybe you’re just too excited about your date to concentrate.” His gut twisted at the thought of Shannon going out with Will, but he couldn’t afford to get any more tangled up in her than he already was.
    “Hardly,” she said, pulling him back to the moment. “Are you sure this is gray fox territory?” She walked around a group of pine trees.
    He’d guided her to this area because he knew that just ahead, beyond a thicket of trees, there was a fox den, but he’d given her no forewarning, wanting to enjoy her reaction. When he’d been out looking for the partiers earlier, he’d checked on the dens, and was happy to see they were all in use again this year.
    She rounded another group of trees and turned a wide smile to him, pointing to scat—fox poop—on the ground. The sun was just beginning to set, casting an orange glow behind her.
    “This whole mountain is fox territory,” he said. And I’m looking at the foxiest thing around.
    She took a notebook from her backpack and began taking notes and sketching the area. Evening brought a different sort of peacefulness to the mountain, as diurnal creatures settled in safely for the evening, giving way to nocturnal wildlife. The air turned crisper, stealing the vanilla-butterscotch smell of ponderosa bark and bringing out sharper, earthier scents.
    “Hey,” she said. “You look like you’ve disappeared into some far-off land.”
    “Nope. Right here with you.” He didn’t understand how anyone could stand in this forest and not lose himself in the beauty of it.
    “What about crowdfunding?” She stepped over a large branch, and he grabbed her arm, steadying her.
    “Crowd whatting?”
    “Crowdfunding. Surely you’ve heard of it. It’s when you list a project online and promote it to groups who you think will want to take part in the effort.” She moved around the thicket, searching the ground. “Lots of little donations can equate to a massive amount of money. I read about a family who raised two hundred thousand dollars for their daughter’s surgery. Crowdfunding is used for everything from buying a car and making a music video to buying property or taking care of bills after accidents or when someone falls on hard times.”
    “Online begging. No thank you.”
    She glared at him. “It’s not like that. People don’t see it that way. They want to help.”
    “I didn’t take you for naive, city girl.”
    “If by naive you mean not thinking the worst about others, then I guess you would consider me naive. There are good people out there. Like the connections you already reached out to.”
    “Those are people I know and trust. They aren’t strangers.”
    “So you only trust people you’ve met?” She took a step behind the thicket and stopped short. She held her finger over her lips and pointed to a kit—a baby fox—peeking its fuzzy little head out from the base of a hollow tree. Her shoulders rose, and she shivered with excitement. She had no idea what her gleeful reaction did to him. This was nature’s foreplay at its best.
    They watched the kit peek its head out, then disappear into the dark den. A few seconds later