Something Borrowed

Chapter 16

***Hello! Sorry for the delay! If you're reading/enjoying this story please let me know! I am forever on a rollercoaster of self-doubt and I lack proficiency in writing-related self-soothing, so external validation is always appreciated 😂 Cheers!***

Josh

"What are you doing?"

Josh choked down a yelp and spun around, damn near shooting out of his skin. His wife had a damned annoying habit of sneaking up on him.

Near two months had passed since he and Amelia had been married. Fall had given way to a bitter, brutal winter. And, while the weather chilled. his relationship with his wife had, quite unexpectedly, warmed. At first all he knew of her was her beauty and her quiet, calm nature. Now he'd come to know more.

He knew her laugh was free and frequent, but that tears sat stubbornly in her eyes and refused to fall except in the heaviest moments. He knew that she was intelligent and well-read, and that she possessed an infinite ability to create stories and scenarios for her own entertainment. He knew she snored lightly when she slept on her back, that she wrinkled her nose when she was annoyed, and that she was terribly, frighteningly light on her feet. He had half a mind to hang a bell around her neck to save himself the embarrassment of damn near pissing himself every time she walked up while he had his back turned.

"I have half a mind to hang a bell around your neck," he growled, scowling at her as she sat on a bale of hay, wrapping her arms around her legs and grinning sweetly.

"I'm sorry," she said, but that silly smile told him she wasn't sorry at all. She thought it was amusing, and he reconsidered his threat. Maybe he'd just let her kill him with fright, and then he could die looking at that goofy smile and listening to her laugh.

"No you're not," he said, turning his back to her once more and bending to scoop more soiled straw into the wheelbarrow.

"I am!" she exclaimed from behind him, and he heard her shifting on the hay bail. "But you didn't answer my question. What are you doing?"

"Mucking stalls," he said shortly. There was no use in elaborating. Another thing he'd learned about her was that she loved to learn. She'd pick a subject and then grill him on it until she was satisfied, or until something else called them back to earth. He liked her questions-- liked talking to her, liked the way it felt when she dragged the answers out of him-- so he never expedited the process by giving her the full explanation right away.

"What does that mean? Put it in words for a city girl, remember?"

"I'm cleaning the stalls," he obliged, dumping another shovel full of malodorous straw onto the pile. Not that he minded her company, but she had a tendency of finding him when he was up to his knees in manure or falling off horses or elbow deep up a cow's rear end. He wished she'd sneak up on him sometime when he was doing something more glamorous. He had aspirations to move up to the bed sometime soon. It was cold as hell on the floor, but he sincerely doubted she'd want him sharing her warmth if all her images of him were covered in excrement, dirt, and embarrassment.

"So that hay is old," she said, and he didn't have to turn to know she was gesturing the wheelbarrow.

"Old and soiled," he said, his nose twitching at the acrid stench of urine and feces. It didn't bother him much but he was sure it bothered her. She bathed often and she always smelled faintly of roses. Roses did not meld well with the barn.

"So you'll take the old hay out..."

"It's actually straw."

"What?"