“As far as I can tell, there was only one problem with that kiss,” Miles said finally, his voice a bit deeper than usual.
I glanced up at him warily, acutely aware of his fingers pressing into me, absently toying with my shirt at my lower back. “What?”
A broad smile crossed his face. “You misjudged the mistletoe by at least thirty feet.”
“What?” I whirled around, looking up toward the rafters where I had just kissed Miles. He was right. There was no mistletoe. Looking around, I spotted it under doorways and windows and a few strategic and obvious places around the center of the room. But I couldn’t have been farther away from the green parasitic plant if I had tried.
“Was that just a warm-up for you? Should I move us closer for round two?”
“It counts,” I said indignantly. For some reason, I had the urge to laugh but had to stifle it.
He grinned, tilting his head toward me. “It doesn’t.”
“It does,” I insisted.
“You know, for such a rule follower, you’re sure willing to sell your lying, cheating soul for this.”
The laugh I was trying so hard to keep hidden bubbled out of me just then. I drew my hand up to my mouth in an attempt to stifle it, but it was not meant to be. Life for me was dangerous when I had so many emotions and so much blood currently coursing through my body.
A smile lit Miles’s face as he watched me, no doubt pleased at the effect of his words. I did my best to stifle my reaction.
“It counts,” I said finally.
“It so does not. We’re gonna need a redo before this week’s over.”
And in case you were wondering, those were the words on repeat in my stupid, dumb head as I fell into a restless sleep later that night.
NINETEEN
"Good-night, my-” He stopped, bit his lip, and abruptly left me.
Charlotte Bront? - Jane Eyre.
“So, I just squeeze it?”
It was 7 am the next morning. I was standing in a barn next to Miles, his dad, and a 1500-pound Holstein cow who kept whacking me on the side of my head with her tail. Miles moved to stand between me and the tail and handed me a small plastic cup with a squirt of chocolate syrup inside, which seemed to be some sort of satanic ritual with the Taylor family.
“Squeeze and pull.” He mimicked the downward squeezing motion again with his hands.
I took a deep breath and sat on the stool, staring at the plump udder, now at eye level, in dread.
“What’s her name?” I asked, stalling shamelessly.
Jack Taylor laughed. “Depending on her mood, we call her a lot of things, but the polite one we tell people is Snowflake.”
“Hey, Snowflake,” I whispered as I leaned in closer, my hand inching toward the lady’s privates. “Sorry about this.”
Miles chuckled as he squatted down next to me. “You’re doing her a favor. I promise, she’s used to it.”
My hand stalled, so he took it and placed it on the cow. “Now just squeeze it gently and pull it toward your cup.” He held his own cup filled with chocolate syrup under a different teat and squeezed, easily filling his cup with frothy white milk.
“Show off,” I muttered.
“Chicken,” he countered.
I repositioned my hand to where it felt the most comfortable. It had a soft, rubber-like feel that was slightly disturbing. I squeezed and pulled. Nothing happened. I tried again. Same.
“Keep going. It’s like sucking through a straw, it takes a few pulls to get the milk coming.”
After a few more failed attempts, Miles once again placed his hand over mine and helped to guide my hand. Very soon after, milk was streaming into my cup. Miles removed his hand and let me keep squeezing. A smile leapt onto my face. I hadn’t expected to feel so proud. I had just milked a cow. Who would have thought? Laura Ingalls Wilder had nothing on me.
Miles grinned at me. Once I had enough milk in my cup, he held out a plastic spoon.
“This might be a good time to tell you that I hate milk.”
When I didn’t take the spoon, he leaned over and stirred it himself. “Good thing this is chocolate milk, then.”
“No. I hate all forms of liquid squeezed from a cow's”—I glanced down to the cow munching on grain beside me—“lady bits.”
Miles and his dad had a good, long laugh over that while I stood there stiffly, chin up, taking in the fascinating scenery around the barn, before meeting the watering eyes of Jack, and a small laugh broke free.
“It’s on the bingo card,” Miles said, clinking his glass to mine in a toast. “On three.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Suck it up.”
“Milk is gross.”
“One.”
“Miles, no.” I grasped his shirt in panic until I felt his muscles against my fingers, and I dropped my grip awkwardly. “I milked it. Isn’t that enough?”
“It’s fresh. It’ll taste better than anything you’ve had.”
“I don’t want to!” My voice sounded pathetic and immature even to my ears, but I couldn’t help it. The cup was warm in my hand. Warm. I honestly hated the taste of milk, and I highly doubted that the warm frothiness I watched spew out directly from a hulking, stinking bovine would help me to suddenly like it. Bile rose up in my throat, and I fought to swallow it down.
“Two.”
“I’ll do another mistletoe kiss,” I bargained breathlessly in a panic, glancing toward Jack, making sure he was out of earshot, filling some buckets with grain for the cows to munch on while in the barn.
Miles was about to say three before he stopped short, humor in his gaze. “I know you will because you missed the first time.”
“I didn’t miss.”
He snorted. “The mistletoe was nowhere near us.”
“You didn’t notice either.”
He leaned in closer, mischief running rampant all across his face. “Who said I didn’t?”
My mouth dropped open.
“Three.”
He clinked his plastic cup against mine and drained it in seconds, leaving a frothy line across his lip that he casually licked away. For a second, my eyes traveled downward across his lean body full of lines and hidden muscles and wondered if milk really was the key to doing a body good.
He leaned in close, bracing himself with a hand on my shoulder. The second his lips brushed against my ear, I froze. “Carrots, you’re a wild woman now. There’s nothing you can’t do. You jumped into a frozen pond. You had a non-mistletoe kiss with a hot guy. You just milked a cow. You can do this. I know it. You can drink these two ounces of milk.”
I pulled back from his laughing face and scowled at him. He had been doing so well.
Jack made his way back to where we were standing with a grin on his face as he nodded toward my cup. “You haven’t drunk it yet?”
I stared into the cup. Before I could let myself overthink what I was about to do, I brought the cup to my lips, closed my eyes, and chugged.
The moment the milk hit my throat, I gagged, the warm foam too much for my sensitive palate. Warm, frothy brown milk spewed out my mouth and nose, spraying both Jack and Miles. I coughed and sputtered a bit longer before facing the men. Both were wiping at the excess moisture across their faces and bodies.