Read Online Rescued by the Farmer by Mia Ross - Free Book Online

she needs a place to hide.” Crossing his arms, he pegged Drew with a stern, head-of-the-family kind of look. “How’m I doing so far?”
    “I totally agree, which is why I had Harley do a quick check on her in the sheriff’s database. Nothing popped up.”
    “That’s nuts,” Josh muttered with a dark look. “Anyone with eyes can see someone hit her not long ago. You mean to tell me she didn’t report it?”
    “Some women never do,” Mike replied in a somber voice. “They’re afraid to make the guy even madder by getting the law involved.”
    “Who could do that to a sweet woman like her?” Josh demanded.
    “I don’t know,” Drew replied. “But he better pray that he never meets up with me.”
    His brothers nodded in agreement, and he felt a rush of gratitude for their support. As Bekah had pointed out more than once, she was a stranger here in Oaks Crossing, and it would be easy for most folks to ignore what was right in front of their faces.
    But not his family, Drew thought proudly. No matter how hard it might be for them, Kinleys always tried to do the right thing. In fact, he mused as he and Mike climbed into the hayloft, how hard something was usually told him that it was the right way to go. That was probably on a motivational plaque somewhere, but being a Kentucky farm boy, he’d learned it the way he learned most things.
    The hard way.
    Caught up in his mental wandering, he missed the bale that Josh tossed up to him, and it knocked him to the dusty floor near the edge of the hayloft. Glaring down at the wagon, he yelled, “Hey!”
    “Sorry, man. You were lookin’ right at me, so I figured you were ready.”
    They began to argue about what being “ready” to catch a seventy-pound bale of hay looked like, and Mike stepped in to restore some peace. “Drew, if you’re lost in space, take the rest of the day off and come back tomorrow. If you fall over the side and break your neck, Mom’ll kill me.”
    “I’m fine,” Drew insisted stubbornly. “Josh caught me by surprise is all.”
    That started another round of arguing, and finally Mike ended it. “Enough!”
    Even though they were all grown up now, he and Josh never messed with their big brother when he yelled like that. It was his end-of-my-rope bellow, and he only hauled it out when he meant business. After a deep breath to cool a temper that could still be as bad as it had ever been, Mike ordered Josh to head back out to bale one more wagonload of hay and bring it in before dark.
    When he was gone, Mike turned to Drew with a disgusted look. “You two have to figure out how to get along better. You’re driving me insane.”
    “It’s his fault for being such a pain.”
    “I’m gonna tell you what Dad used to tell me when I said that about you,” Mike shot back. “You’re older, and you should know better.”
    “Aw, come on,” Drew whined. “I can’t help that I was born two years earlier than him.”
    “If he was the older one, I’d be having this pointless conversation with him. Now, get down there and start tossing that hay up here before I send you out to dig ditches or something.”
    “You’re all heart, big brother.” Grinning, Drew jumped from the loft down onto the top layer of hay. They’d been doing this kind of work most of their lives, and they quickly got into a rhythm that whittled down the wagonload and started filling in the blank spaces in the storage area above.
    After they’d been at it for a while, they took a break for some water. Sitting on a bale down below, Drew looked up at his twice-married brother, who sat with his battered cowboy boots dangling over the loft’s edge. “Can I ask you something?”
    “Shoot.”
    “How did you go from being divorced and ‘never gonna get married again’ to proposing to Lily?”
    “Faith.”
    The answer came without hesitation, and Drew cocked his head in disbelief. “In what?”
    “Oh, not mine,” he amended with a chuckle. “Lily’s. She saw past