Love Means No Shame - Andrew Grey

the line.
    “Raine, how are you? It’s good to hear from you again. I called, but you must have been out.” Geoff closed the ledgers and books, putting things away while he talked.

    “Yeah, I got your message. I was at Spank. God, was that place hopping. Bet you miss the nightlife.” He could almost see Raine dancing at Spank, having a good time.
    “Don’t really have time to miss it. Way too busy with planning, the accounts, learning everything my dad did around here. But I go riding every day, and the guys are really cool, and I’ve met some people I went to high school with.”
“Sounds dreary, but then again, so is the office now that you’re gone.”
“You were talking about leaving the company before I left,” Geoff reminded him.
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“I’m looking. Mr. Vain certainly isn’t making this place any more fun, that’s for sure. Everything is about making him look good, and that man is
    dumb .” Raine made all kinds of sounds to illustrate just how dumb he was, and that started Geoff laughing. It felt good to laugh, really laugh. “So I gotta ask, have you met any hot country boys? Like you see on calendars and stuff.” Geoff snickered. “No. I haven’t met any boys at all, not really. The only guys are the ones who work for me, and most of them are married. Besides, I’ve been too busy.” He really had. His days started early, and he was exhausted by the time he went to bed.

    “You said most of the guys are married. What about the other ones?” Raine would pick up on that.

    Geoff heard the television click on in the living room: Len watching some sitcom, the laughter carrying into the office. “Jesus, Raine, you want me to rob the cradle or something?”
    “What about the guy you found sleeping in the barn? He didn’t sound too young.”
“Eli?”
    “He’s over eighteen, isn’t he? Is he cute?” Geoff was about to answer when something clicked in his brain. Eli was cute… in fact, Eli was…. He pulled his mind away from that thought. There was no way he was thinking about Eli like that.
    “Well?” Raine asked persistently.
Geoff just couldn’t go there. “Eli’s Amish, Raine.” He tried to make the very idea sound ridiculous so Raine would drop it.
    “You mean Amish Amish, like they-use-horse-and-buggies Amish?” Geoff laughed; he couldn’t help it. The disbelief in Raine’s voice was completely priceless. To someone like Raine, who couldn’t get along without his cell phone, microwave oven, video games, and every other electronic device known to man, the thought 54
    Love Means … NO SHAME
of going without any of it must have sounded like a stint in pure hell.
“Yes, no-electricity-no-cars-no-television Amish.”
“Yeah, okay, he may be electronically challenged, but is he cute?”
    Geoff was so not going there. He lowered his voice, not wanting Len to overhear, because he knew how this was going to sound. “He works for me. It doesn’t matter if he’s cute, gorgeous, sexy, or a stud and a half. I can’t be thinking about him or any of the guys who work for me like that. It wouldn’t be right.”
    “It wouldn’t be right for you to do anything, but you have eyes. You can look, can’t you?”
“Raine! Can we please talk about something else?”
“What else is there to talk about? You moved away to become a poor farmer, leaving the rest of us to fend for ourselves in the big city.”
    God, Raine could be such a smartass. And Geoff was anything but a poor farmer. He’d reviewed all the accounts and had even gone to the bank to make sure they were right. The farm as it stood did very well, and his dad had set aside ten percent of the profits each year, for God knows how long, in an emergency fund to tide them through lean years. That fund was now enough to run the farm for five years. But there was no way he was telling Raine that. The man would be in the car in five minutes and on the way there to “help” Geoff spend it.
    “You could always come for a visit. I’d love to take you riding.” Raine on a horse; now that would be a sight.
“Riding what? I only ride one thing, and you know it.” 55
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    “If you’ve never been on a horse, then you don’t know what you’re missing. Fifteen hundred pounds of hot, sweaty, pounding muscle between your legs. What more could you ask?” That set them both cackling to beat the band.
    Geoff heard something in the background that sounded like Raine’s bell. “I gotta go,” Raine