Heated Rush - Leslie Kelly [51]
“Exactly. I had posters of foreign cities on the walls of my room growing up, maps, brochures from the Peace Corps, even the military. Anything that would take me someplace far away and different.”
His eyebrows shot up and he turned to cast a quick, surprised glance at her. “The Peace Corps? Yes. But the military?” Shaking his head at the very possibility, he didn’t even have to say what he was thinking.
Not that he was wrong. “Hey, I was just thinking of all the angles.” Remembering the brouhaha that had accompanied the arrival of an envelope from the Army with her name on it during high school, she rolled her eyes. “But I didn’t seriously pursue it. My father told me he’d lock me in the basement if I even thought about enlisting.”
He chuckled.
“My mother was worse. She told me I’d be putting my brothers’ lives at risk because all of them would have to enlist, too, to keep me safe, including Randy, who was eleven at the time.”
Damn, her mother was good at getting her own way. At least, she had been. Not anymore. Annie had had her taste of freedom and she’d never give it up. “That’s another reason he’s delaying telling them he wants to sign up now,” she added.
“Twenty-one’s better than eleven,” he said with a laugh. The laughter quickly faded and his tone became serious. “Chicago’s not far enough for you, though, is it? Not in the long run.”
Funny that he’d figured that out so quickly. “I love Chicago, and I’m not at all unhappy there. I’ve got a great business and lots of friends, and someday I’m sure I’ll be happy to settle down and raise a family there.”
“But?”
“But you can bet I’m hoarding my pennies so that I can see some of the world before that day comes.” She shook her head and stared at the trees whipping by along the side of the highway. “To the rest of the Davises, Green Springs is the world, and that’s exactly the way they like it.”
“Different dreams,” he mused, his voice so low, she almost didn’t hear it over the wind. “None better. None worse. Just different.”
Different dreams. That’s what it all came down to.
She didn’t reply, didn’t need to. Because with those words, he’d nailed it. Why Annie had left, why her family had been upset about it. Why she hated going back to deal with their disappointment again and again. Even why Sean was sitting beside her in the car, about to help her get through the weekend with a combination of half-truths and excuses.
She had different dreams…which they didn’t understand.
Yet somehow, the man sitting beside her, who she’d known for less than a week, did.
SEAN DIDN’T QUITE know what he was expecting when he pulled up the narrow lane to Annie’s childhood home. He’d certainly seen plenty of farms back in Ireland, many of them on Murphy land his father had rented out to others. But most of those were small, family-run operations with sheep grazing on lush green fields, a dash of color on their backs distinguishing one owner’s flock from the next. Small cottages would dot the landscape, with ramshackle barns and old-fashioned plows rusting in the fields.
Nothing like this.
“Good God, it looks like a factory!” he said as he drove alongside the enormous, entirely modern barn, two stories tall, and a few hundred feet long.
A small fleet of trucks was parked at the end of it, all bearing the same dairy logo of a jolly cow. Impeccably maintained equipment was visible through the wide-open doors of another building, and several workers dressed in khakis and uniform shirts were in sight.
“I was picturing something more like…”
“Green Acres?”
He glanced at Annie, who had noted his surprise and was amused by it. “What’s that?”
“An ancient show on TVLand about…never mind, it doesn’t matter.” She pointed to the top of a hill beyond the barns and a huge, sloping field where horses grazed lazily under the bright June sky. “There’s the house.”
Another surprise.
Annie’s parents’ home was enormous, a sprawling, three-story farmhouse, painted a bright yellow with contrasting white shutters around every window. Curved flower beds overflowing with daffodils that