Not surprisingly, Lissa insisted on sitting next to Jace and having him help her with her food.
"I really didn't invite you over here tonight to babysit for me," Rennie apologized.
But again Jace didn't seem to mind. The man was just a Pied Piper with kids, Clair decided, feeling slightly better about Willy's rejection of her in favor of Jace since Lissa was doing the same thing to her aunt.
Still, though, as the evening wore on, Jace's attention was almost completely usurped by Lissa and Willy, and Clair began to find herself missing his company and longing for the dinner party to come to an end so she could get next door with just Jace and Willy again.
Luckily both two-year-olds had early bedtimes, and by eight o'clock Jace announced that the pretend cake Lissa was serving him would have to be his last because he and Clair had to get Willy home.
It helped Clair's attitude considerably to hear Jace include her, but she reminded herself that she was going to practice restraint when it came to him as they finally thanked Rennie for the meal and left.
"We're going to let Clair read our story tonight," Jace told Willy as they crossed the yards amid the first flakes of snow to fall, just as the weatherman had predicted. "How 'bout she helps you on with your pajamas, too?"
No," Willy answered unceremoniously. "No see me,” he declared as he had in the past.
“He is very modest," Clair commented with a laugh.
“And stubborn, too," Jace added, ruffling the toddler’s hair as they went inside.
Clair had the strangest sense at that moment that she was coming home, and it hit her so hard that it stopped her in her tracks in the entryway.
Very weird, she decided. And not at all helpful in maintaining that restraint she was working at. Nor was it helpful when she had a flash of the two of them pulling Willy to bed for the night and then retiring themselves to Jace's bed like the married couple they suddenly seemed. To indulge in a night filled with the sensual benefits a married couple could so freely share. But that wasn't going to happen, she lectured herself dimly, and she needed to stop her brain from torturing her with totally inappropriate fantasies.
“Give me about five minutes to get him into his pj’s and then come on up," Jace advised as he ushered Willy upstairs.
Clair spent those five minutes reminding herself that she was only there for Willy's sake and that there was absolutely nothing – or at least there should be absolutely nothing – between her and Jace.
But as she finally climbed the stairs behind them and passed what she knew was Jace's bedroom, she still had a hot flash of unwanted desire that danced right up her spine.
Willy's door was open when she reached it, and she could see Jace snapping her nephew's pajamas bottoms to his pajama tops so she knew the coast was clear, but she knocked on the doorjamb, anyway.
"Come on in," Jace invited from where he sat on the edge of the mattress with Willy standing in the vee of his thighs.
Then to Willy he said, ''What do you say you and Clair sit in the rocker tonight and I'll stay over here?"
"No. You hode me," Willy demanded.
"You'd be able to see the pictures a whole lot better if Clair holds you."
"No."
Jace gave her an I-tried shrug of his eyebrows as Willy ran for the rocking chair and dragged it to the bedside the moment Jace was finished fastening his pajamas.
"Sit, Unca Ace," Willy ordered and the two of them took up the same position they'd adopted since the first night Clair had been with them, leaving her to perch on the edge of the bed again, in the spot Jace had just abandoned.
Green Eggs and Ham was the evening's selection, and Clair put as much verve as she could into the reading, making sure that once she'd read the rhyme on each page she held the book across the breach between bed and rocker for Willy to see the pictures.
He was snuggled against Jace's chest with his favorite reindeer washcloth, and he enjoyed the book – smiling at the pictures and repeating words to Jace for emphasis. Clair's being there and doing the reading were only incidental, and Willy never responded directly to her, tuning her out as if she were just the instrument delivering his entertainment, like the television set.
At the end of the story her nephew's eyelids were hi ivy, and once again, by the time Jace had him situated under the covers and tucked in, the little boy was sound asleep and didn't even know he was kissed good night by them both.
Then they tiptoed out of his room and down the stairs.
“That was a lively rendition of Green Eggs and Ham, Jace said as he led the way into the living room, apparently just assuming she would stay awhile tonight as she had the previous evening.
Not that Clair was unhappy with the assumption. She’d been longing since the moment she'd left him in the driveway late that afternoon for time alone with him, and it was nice that she didn't have to trump up an excuse to finally get that.
“Maybe you should give up your ad agency job and go on the road as a storyteller," he added, teasing her as he sat sideways on the sofa, bracing his cowboy-booted foot on one knee while he rested the other knee on the cushion and patted the spot just in front of it in invitation.
Clair didn't hesitate to accept the invitation. In fact, she unintentionally sat so close to him that his shin ran the length of her hip and thigh, sending a charge through her at that initial, innocent contact.
She couldn't move away without making it an issue, though, so she had to stay put. But she tried not to like it so much.
"I don't know," she said to his comment about going on the road as a storyteller. "I don't think it offers a very good benefits package. I'd probably better stick with the agency."
"And what exactly do you do there? You've never said."
"I'm an account executive. The youngest woman in the history of the company to be promoted that high."
"Pretty impressive. I'll bet that took no small number of hours, including plenty of overtime."
"Plenty," she confirmed. "I've worked six-day weeks almost every week since I started, and more nights and Sundays than I'd like to count. Sometimes it feels as though I live in my office and just pit-stop at my apartment. Plus I've only taken two weeks vacation in eight years."
"You must really like the work."
"I love it."
"I thought you might have been talkin' from your own perspective today when you were sayin' workin' might give my mother a feeling of usefulness and independence."
"Definitely independence. Being able to get out on my own, not to have to rely on my father, was a big deal to me. A very big deal. It isn't easy to be dependent on someone who isn't dependable."
"You say that as if your job is your lifeline."
"I guess that's how I've always seen it."
"Be hard to change it in any way then, I'd guess."
Clair had the sense that he was doing to her what she’d done to him whenever the opportunity had presented itself – subtly making his own case in regards to who was better equipped to raise Willy without coming right out and saying it.
“I don't see any reason why I should have to change it," she said.
"Well, for instance, if you ever got married or had kids those are things that cause changes in lifestyle.''
“I think I could adapt."
Jace smiled as if he knew better. "I'll bet you don't even have a cat because it takes too much time you can’t spare, and you probably bought a goldfish that died of neglect."
"It was a fungus in the bowl," she defended before recalling that he was only guessing.
But this was definitely not something she wanted to get into with him so she tossed the conversational ball into his court. "What about you? Have you ever worked outside of ranching and farming?"
"Sure. I worked my way through college doing a lot of things that taught me I didn't like any job that cooped me up. Especially in an office. Sittin' behind a desk is my idea of hell."
"What kinds of jobs did you have?"
&nb
sp; "Telephone soliciting.Checkin' groceries. Book-keepin'. Clerkin' in an electrical supply company. Packin' meat. Then I tried tendin' bar and could stand that enough to stick with it until I graduated. But the day I had that degree in my hand I high-tailed it back here to do what I'd learned through experience was what I wanted to do."
"Work on the family ranch," she concluded for him.
"Right. Now I do odd jobs to make a little extra money when I need it, but basically I'm a man of the land."
"And you wouldn't want to change that," she countered pointedly.
Jace gave her a lopsided grin that awarded her match point. "No, I wouldn't."
And apparently he didn't want to talk about that any more than she did because what he did change was the subject. "So does your bein' so devoted to your work mean you haven't had time for romance?"
"Romance? Who has time for romance these days?" she joked.
"No romance?" he said as if it were a crime against nature.
Clair couldn't resist smiling at the subtle compliment that she appreciated more than she wished she did.
"Well, I was engaged until just a little while ago."
And she suffered a twinge of leftover pain that came with the memory.
"Engaged? That's somethin'," he said, his interest obviously piqued. "Who was the lucky man?"
"His name is Lyle White. He's a professor of philosophy at the university."
"A gentleman and a scholar?"
Clair gave a wry chuckle that lacked mirth. "I hadn't thought of him that way, but I guess so."
"How had you thought of him?"
"Mostly I've thought of him as the antithesis of my father."
Jace made a face and let out a grim chuckle. "That was his selling point? That he wasn't like your father? Doesn't sound like romance to me."
"No, I suppose it doesn't. And now that I think about it, there wasn't a lot of romance in the relationship. But Lyle is reliable and steady and stable, and in comparison to Dad, that had its appeal."
“You were swept off your feet by reliable, steady and stable?"
“There was no being swept off my feet," she said, thinking that more of that was going on with Jace than it ever had with Lyle White and wondering suddenly why she'd been so willing to accept the lack of it with Lyle.
“But you thought reliable, steady and stable was enough?"
“I guess I did."
"And then you wised up and got out?"
"Well, sort of."
"How sort of."
She couldn't tell him that the real catalyst to her breakup with Lyle had been when she'd told him she'd decided she wanted to raise Willy, and Lyle had said he didn't want his life disrupted by a child, that if she pursued her nephew, they were through. And she'd opted for being through.
But she could tell Jace what she'd realized about the relationship after the fact.
"I guess you could say I wised up when I looked back at things. That was when I saw just how stuck in his ways Lyle was. How intractable. How obstinate and inflexible. Among other things."
"Don't leave me hanging. Among what other things?"
Clair took a deep breath and sighed it out, feeling worse and worse the more they talked about Lyle, yet compelled to go on in spite of it. “The academic life can be pretty insular and within it Lyle is a big deal. He's widely published. He's respected and considered a great mind, a great thinker. That gives him a lot of status, and that status comes with some pretty big ego boosters. He's accustomed to having things his way and that's how he likes it. Even in our relationship everything had to revolve around him. I had to be the one to bend, to always give up what I wanted. He even insisted that I see my friends only when he wasn't around- – like for weekday lunches or evenings when he was busy, because he didn't want to associate with them. He really didn't want to associate with anyone who didn't fawn all over him."
"And you finally got fed up?"
"For the most part I just did all the adapting to keep the peace," she admitted, embarrassed by the truth in it. "But I was starting to get fed up when he wanted me to give up my apartment and move in with him. He lived a block away from campus and I lived near my office. I suggested a compromise – that we move to a totally new place that was halfway between so we'd both have about the same commute. But there was no way he was doing that. And then, in the middle of that struggle, I learned about Kristin."
Clair ended on an ominous note and needed a moment to calm her own emotions before she could go on.
“He wasn't sympathetic?" Jace said in an undstanding, compassionate voice.
“Worse. He said she deserved what she got and I should just close the book on that part of my life and be glad it was done with."
“And the idea of Willy?"
Clair had another, stronger sense that Jace knew why she was in Elk Creek. But she'd gone from feeling bad in the telling of this to feeling relieved to get it off her chest, so she said, "Lyle told me to just forget I'd ever found out about Willy. Nephew or not, I should just write him off. He said Willy would probably grow up to be no better than his mother, anyway, and at least I wouldn't have to be bothered with someone that ignorant a second time."
“Nice guy,'' Jace commented under his breath, raising his eyebrows at what Clair had just confided.
"I didn't realize just how not nice he was until that moment. I said what if I wanted to be 'bothered' with Willy. He said he didn't – that he absolutely refused to be. And in the end I decided that the expense of my adapting to him that far was just too high. I'd already given up more than I should have to be with him. I wasn't giving up Willy, too."
She half expected Jace to remind her that she didn't have Willy. Lyle had, after all.
But Jace didn't do that. He didn't seize the opportunity to address in any way what she'd alluded to without coming right out and saying it – that she wanted Willy, that she wanted to raise him herself.
Instead he said, "Still, it must have hurt you. If you were engaged to the man, you must have loved him."
"I loved him. But in retrospect I discovered that I didn't love him the way I should have loved him to marry him. What we were talking about before – the reliable, steady, stable, not-like-my-father stuff? I think that played a bigger part in my choosing Lyle than love or passion." Or the kind of desire she felt every minute she was with Jace....
"Then I think it was good you got out when you did."
"Me, too," she agreed, but in a voice so low it sounded wounded even to her.
"Do you really?" Jace asked, his denim-blue eyes probing hers as if for an answer.
"I really do," she said after considering it, able to add some conviction to her tone this time because she'd realized in that moment of thinking about it that she honestly did feel it was good that she got out of the relationship with Lyle.
"It hasn't been easy, I'll admit that," she said then. "Lyle was my philosophy professor the last semester of college – that's how we met – so we were together for a long time. And I'd accepted his ring, I was going to marry him. Since we broke up I've felt bad about it, but not devastated the way I would have if I'd been in love with him. In fact, I've felt almost relief, which tells me he wasn't right for me."
Jace nodded his head, slowly, thoughtfully, still searching her eyes, her expression. "But it hurts just the same," he nearly whispered.
Clair shrugged one shoulder weakly. "Yes," she conceded. "It especially hurt that he was so callous about Kristin. He was around before all this happened with her. He knew how close we were."
Jace reached over and took her hand, holding it as softly as if it were a butterfly, rubbing the back with a tender thumb. "You deserve better, Clair," he said. “Much, much better."
And although she hadn't thought that before, Jace's saying it made her believe it. It even made her smile. “I do," she agreed with some vigor.
A smile tugged at Jace's mouth, too, and as if that conclusion freed them of the somber subject; he got up from the
couch suddenly and took her with him to the picture window.
"Here it comes," he said in a brighter tone, referring to the full-blown snow that was falling just beyond the porch,
Standing beside him, Clair watched the big, fat, fluffy flakes floating to the ground, and seeing the pure, crystalline glow of moonlight reflected off each one while being with Jace, having him hold her hand, was enough to make her feel a whole new sense of well-being.
"It's beautiful, isn't it?" she whispered, as if a louder voice might disturb it. "Mmm."
He sounded so in awe that she just had to take her eyes away from the silent spectacle outside to glance up at his perfectly chiseled profile and see his appreciation herself. And she knew when she did that he'd been right about himself when he'd said he was a man of the land. He was. A man of the land and of all of nature. Elemental. Of the earth. Definitely not someone who would ever be happy cooped up in an office the way she was every day.
And despite the fact that they were so different – as different as night and day – he was very appealing to her. This rugged man who had been honed by working with his hands, by the outdoors. Who could be so gentle that his hand around hers was featherlight.
As if he felt her staring at him, he turned and again looked deeply into her eyes.
There was no artifice about him. No posturing. No need to be revered by other people, because he knew who and what he was and was comfortable with it. Confident in his own abilities. In himself. And seeing it made something in Clair's heart seem to open up. To blossom. Something she didn't understand. Something she thought she should probably try to combat.
But it felt too nice to fight. At least for that moment. And instead she just let it fill her with warmth and wonder and a kind of joy she couldn't ever remember feeling before.
“So much for knowin' better," he said to himself as he placed his other hand along her cheek and leaned over enough to capture her lips with his.
That first kiss was so soft, so sweet, so chaste, that Clair was almost afraid it would be like the first kiss he’d ever given her and would end too soon.
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