The bed of his truck was stacked high and wide with bags about the same size as me. Jesse lifted each one, threw it over his shoulder, and walked it to the tailgate as he had my bag. Like those bags were filled with packing popcorn. Farm work obviously gave a person superhuman strength and, from what I’d witnessed earlier from my spy spot on the laundry room floor, superhuman muscles as well. He wasn’t even breathing heavily.
Yeah, the way my heart started hammering in my chest and the way my whole body went all tingly was pretty much the opposite of winding down.
Jesse had just tossed another bag onto the ground when he froze. His whole body went wire straight right before he started to twist around.
“Crap,” I hissed, dropping to the floor as fast as gravity allowed me. He knew I’d been watching him . . . spying on him. He knew.
Jesse was as hardwired to me as I was to him and, right then, that scared me more than anything else. I didn’t like letting people get close. I didn’t want them to see past the smoke and mirrors.
I stayed cowered down on the floor for so long, I fell asleep there. My dreams that night, as always, were in black and white.
Another soft rapping on the door. Another groan from me. I sensed a routine forming.
“Rowen?” Lily’s voice was just as timid as it had been yesterday morning. And by morning, I mean butt crack of dawn. “Rise and shine time.”
I groaned and attempted to peel myself from the floor. The carpet was practically pasted to my cheek. “I will rise, but I do not shine,” I croaked as I stood. “Even if I did, I sure as heck wouldn’t this early.”
Lily laughed a few soft notes. “I’ll see you downstairs.”
“Yay,” I said with a hefty dose of sarcasm. Before shuffling over to the dresser, I took a quick peek out the window. Jesse and his truck were long gone, and the barn was dark. After peeling out of the clothes I’d slept in, I grabbed the first jeans and shirt my hands touched. Lily was a couple inches shorter than me and a rail, so the jeans were tight—Jesse’s jeans tight—and the tee fit kind of snugly, too. At least I’d have more than Maytag and Whirlpool to keep me company. Wearing tight, uncomfortable country digs was worth it.
I was sure my black boots looked ridiculous with the rest of my get-up, but the other shoes I’d brought would have looked even weirder. A quick mirror check revealed I was a mess. A hot, crazy-haired one. Not wasting any time, I undid my braid from yesterday, tore a brush through my unruly hair, then re-braided it. I wiped away the smears of what was left from yesterday, but I didn’t apply any more makeup. It was too early, I was too tired, and I doubted if Midnight Scarlet lipstick paired well with a simple, sky blue tee.
Great. I had on that tee. Talk about a Freudian slip . . .
I flipped off my reflection before leaving the room. A peek inside each of the girls’ rooms showed them empty, beds made, and no clothes dotting the carpet. I was less and less surprised by that sort of things when it came to the Walkers.
When I rounded the corner into the kitchen, I found it much the same as it had been yesterday morning. Rose and the girls were all busy prepping something for breakfast, zipping around the room like little worker bees.
When Rose spun away from the fridge, she smiled when she took me in. “I think we just put a little bit of country in this girl,” she said, setting a couple cartons of eggs on the counter.
I made a non-committal motion with my hand. “Here I am. Put me to work.” The girls stopped what they were doing to check me out, too. They weren’t as good at hiding their surprise.
I gave Lily a What do you think? look, and she flashed me a thumbs up. She was infinitely more sure about the way I looked than I was.
“Have you ever made pancakes before, Rowen?” Rose asked, waving me over with a spatula.
“Not exactly,” I said, eyeing the frying pan suspiciously. “But I’ve eaten my fair share.”
“Then that qualifies you. Come on over,” she said, stepping aside to give me the front and center position. “Clementine already mixed the batter up, so all you need to do is pour it onto the griddle, flip them, and throw them onto the platter.”
Clementine waved at me from where she was whipping up something else. A seven-year-old was kicking my ass in the home economics department. I wasn’t sure whether to be proud of myself or ashamed.
“Do you have a diagram or directions I can follow?” I asked as Rose handed me the spatula ceremoniously. “Because this is not going to be pretty.”
Holding up her finger, she turned to the griddle. “Ladle. Scoop.” She grabbed the ladle and scooped out a full serving of batter. “Pour.” The batter sizzled as it hit the griddle surface. “Repeat.” She was pouring another ladleful, then four more, before I blinked. “Flip.” She flicked the spatula in my hand, patted my cheek, then went back to her eggs. “Ladle. Scoop. Pour. Repeat. Flip.”
“Burn,” I said, studying the six pancakes as though they were a puzzle. “Fail.”
As I was about to attempt to flip a pancake, Hyacinth shouldered up beside me. She smiled as she nudged me. “Wait until tiny bubbles surface around the outside before you flip them.”
It wasn’t even dawn, and I’d already learned something new.
“Thanks,” I replied, matching her smile before she got back to work pulling plates out of a cabinet. They used plates? Real plates they had to wash? Along with air conditioning, paper plates must not have made their way to the Walkers’ corner of the world yet.
I turned my attention back to the pancakes, watching them so intently I don’t think I blinked once. The second those bubbles started popping to the surface, I wielded my spatula and flipped the first pancake.
It was a proud moment. Not only had I managed to flip it without getting batter all over the place, the cooked side was a perfect golden brown. If that was all there was to cooking, I had it down. No problem.
I repeated the process with the other five; all were a beautiful golden brown. As soon as I let myself get a little cocky, like I was the modern day Betty Crocker, the kitchen door to the porch flew open. Goosebumps trailed up my spine. I hadn’t yet turned my head, but I was as sure the person who’d just stepped into the kitchen was Jesse as I was sure the air in the kitchen had gotten a little thin.
“First one to breakfast,” Lily said in a teasing voice. “Big surprise.”
“It’s not my fault the rest of the guys like to sleep in ‘til the last possible minute. I’ve been up for an hour checking the new calves, and I’m hungry. I’m a growing boy.” I willed myself to stare at the pancakes. I willed myself to not let his voice get to me. I willed myself to be unaffected by his presence.
I wasn’t very willful.
My body twisted around of its own accord, and my eyes locked on his at the same time his locked on mine.
Jesse. Smile. Dimples. Jeans. Hat.
I grabbed the edge of the counter to keep from wavering.
“Look at you,” he said, hanging his hat on one of the pegs sticking out of the wall. I guessed they were for hanging hats. Lots of hats. He headed my way, rumpling Clementine’s hair as he walked by her. Toward me. Where I braced myself against a countertop to keep from passing out. “Country looks good on you, Rowen.” Jesse ran his eyes down me before stopping a few feet in front of me. When he glanced down at my shoes, his smile pulled higher. He was in his standard blood-cutting-off jeans, boots, and hat, but he had on a tan Carhartt jacket over yet another clean white tee. How many of those things did he go through in a day?
“And silence might look good on you if you ever gave it a try,” I threw back, right before I realized four other people were in the room. Four women who had stopped what they were doing to watch the two of us with rapt interest.
Catching Rose’s stare, I shrugged. “Your son likes to talk. He really likes to talk,” I added, remembering all the things he’d said in the past few days. The frequency of his words wasn’t really the issue; it was the power behind them.
Rose
studied the two of us for another moment, almost like she was trying to put her finger on something, before getting back to cracking eggs into a skillet. “Breakfast in five, girls. Get movin’.”
Just like that, Jesse’s sisters’ attention moved from us back to breakfast.
“How are those pancakes coming along?” Jesse asked, leaning closer to inspect the skillet.
“Swimmingly,” I replied, checking them. No bubbles yet.
He moved a little closer. So close, I could tell he’d recently taken a shower. He still smelled like soap and shampoo. “You really do look nice, you know,” he said, his voice quieter.
I huffed. “Really? Because you seemed to be a pretty big fan of that outfit I wore yesterday.” My mind flashed with the memory of him catching me checking him out.
“That was pretty great, you’re right.” His eyes told me he was reliving the memory of me on all fours. “But this look appeals to me in a different way.”
I did a quick check of the kitchen to make sure no one was paying us any attention. “In what way?”
“In a quid pro quo kind of way.”
I rolled my eyes. Apparently someone had gotten an A in Willow Springs English. “Why’s that?”
“Because every time you make fun of how tightly my jeans hug my backside, I can throw the same thing right back at you.”
I didn’t need to look to confirm he was inspecting my backside. Lily’s borrowed jeans suddenly seemed to be squeezing the hell out of my ass.
“Don’t you have some cows to milk or something?” I elbowed his stomach. Yep, it was just as hard as it’d been last night.
Jesse laughed and shook his head. “We’re not a dairy farm here, Rowen. We’re a beef ranch.”
Sorry, I didn’t speak hick. His chuckling unsettled me in a couple different ways.
“Then maybe you could go unload another truckload of ginormous bags.” A clamp for my mouth would have so come in handy.
“So that was you spying on me again last night,” he said, his voice so damn confident. “I knew someone was watching me, and I figured it was you.”
I glared at those six pancakes. Still no bubbles. “And why would you figure it was me?”
“Well, you know,” he said.
“No, I don’t know.”
He leaned his hip into the counter. “Given your track record of spying on me.”
“For Pete’s sake,” I said, tempted to dump the bowl of batter over his head. “I wasn’t spying on you in the laundry room. I was hiding from you.”
“You were hiding from me?” He crossed his arms.
I nodded.
“And what about last night when you were watching me from your window? Were you hiding from me then?” My hands actually moved for the batter bowl.
“I had 911 on standby in case you keeled over from a heart attack lifting one of those suckers,” I snapped back. “It was my civic duty. Now, if you’re done harassing me for one morning, I’ve got some pancakes to attend to.”
Jesse glanced at the pancakes, and he looked like he was about to bust up laughing before he caught himself. “I’m done harassing you for one morning. But do you think it’d be all right if I offered a heartfelt apology?”
Say what?
I studied his face to see if it was some kind of trick to get me to continue battling it out with him, but his expression was flat. His eyes clear.
“Proceed,” I said with a wave of my magic spatula.
Jesse sucked in a breath before proceeding. “I’m sorry for what I said last night. I had no right to stick my nose into your business and start making assumptions about your life.” His words flowed with such ease it seemed he’d rehearsed them. “I’ve only known you a couple of days. That’s not long at all. I don’t know you well enough to pretend like I know you and your problems. But I want to know you. I want to know your problems. That is . . . if you want to know me.”
One corner of my mouth pulled up. Luckily, it was on the side he couldn’t see. Jesse could make one hell of an apology. I had to give him that.
But I couldn’t let him off so easily.
“Why do you want to know me better?” I said, checking the outlet to make sure the griddle was still plugged in because those suckers were not bubbling. “So you can tease me more specifically? So you can expose my weakness and take advantage of it?”
Jesse moved a step closer. I felt his upper half against my side. I grabbed the ledge of the counter again. “So when I ask you on a date, I’ll know where to take you to really impress you.” His mouth was so close to my ear I felt the warmth of his breath.
I whipped my head around to meet his eyes. Damn. He was dead serious. His gaze drifted to my mouth right as the kitchen door flew open again.
“Save some of the food for us, Jesse!” a man’s voice ordered good-naturedly as a staggered line of men in hats and boots streamed into the kitchen.
Jesse stepped away from me, but he didn’t look away. Before turning toward the table, he tilted his chin at me. “Check those pancakes. I think they’re smoking.” His dimples set into his cheeks. “What can I say? I have that effect on things.”
I was ready to glare at him when that burnt smell entered my nose. A quick inspection of the griddle revealed that my lovely golden pancakes were, indeed, smoking.
“Shoot,” I said, unsure how I managed to censor myself in the midst of my first attempt at breakfast going up in flames. Or, up in smoke. “They never bubbled!” I fumbled with the spatula and tried to slide it under the center pancakes.
Even through the hustle and bustle of the rest of the ranch hands making their way into the room, I heard Jesse’s amused chuckle from back at the table.
“They don’t bubble once you flip them over, silly,” Lily said, appearing out of nowhere. Grabbing the spatula, she had all of those pancakes off the griddle faster than I could have removed one of them.
“Then how do you know when they’re done?” I asked, grimacing when I saw the damage. One side was golden brown, and the other side was a crispy char black.
Lily dropped a pat of butter onto the griddle, swirled it around, then poured six more pancakes. “You just get a feel for it. Through a lot of trial and error.” Her eyes dropped to the ruined pancakes, and she smiled.
“Story of my life,” I muttered. “The trial and error part. I still haven’t experienced the whole get-a-feel-for-it part yet.”
“Tomorrow’s another day,” she replied, focusing on the pancakes. “Dream big.”
I lifted my brows. Was that what I thought it was? A note of smartass in sweet Lily Walker’s vocab? I didn’t realize that characteristic ran in anyone in the family other than Jesse.
“Why don’t you pour the coffee?” Lily suggested. “Carefully.”
“No guarantees.” I made my way over to the coffee pot and hoped I didn’t spill hot coffee on some poor cowboy’s crotch.
In a minute’s time, the kitchen had filled up with more cowboys than I could count. The couple dozen pegs sticking out of the wall were almost all filled with different kinds and colors of cowboy hats. Apparently wearing your hat to Rose Walker’s table wasn’t tolerated. The guys milling about the room were as varied as their hats. Tall, short. Slim, stocky. Young, old. Light skinned, dark skinned. It was the most varied group of cowboys I’d ever seen.
Well, it was really the first group of cowboys I’d ever seen.
However, one characteristic joined them all together. They all drank coffee. And a lot of it. Before Rose and the girls had finished setting all the breakfast goods on the table, I’d gone through three full pots of coffee. I understood why Rose prepared a few gallons of it in advance.
Jesse introduced me to everyone as I milled my way around, and everyone greeted me with a tip of their head and some sort of greeting followed by ma’am. By the time everyone had full plates, I felt as comfortable as I could around a couple dozen ranch hands, and I knew that was thanks to Jesse and his easy introductions. He was a member
of the club, and he saw to it I became one right off the bat.
It was nice to be included. It was nice to feel a part of something.
It was the first time I’d had that in a while.
“More coffee?” I asked, stopping behind Jesse. His cup was still half full.
He twisted in his seat, a smile already on his face. “Please,” he said, handing me his cup. My fingers grazed his when I took the cup, and if I’d ever felt a more intimate touch, I couldn’t recall it. God. One finger graze and my heart thrummed like it was about to take off.
As I poured, Jesse’s eyes shifted to mine and they didn’t look away. Mine didn’t either, or . . . they couldn’t. When Jesse Walker looked at me that way, it was all I could do to look back and stay upright.
“Coffee,” he said suddenly, glancing at his cup.
My eyebrows came together.
“Overflowing.” He smirked at the cup so I really couldn’t peel my eyes away.
A few chuckles sounded around us.
“Pooling on the floor.” When Jesse reached for his napkin, I finally caught up.
Gauging from the size of the puddle, coffee had been spilling over the side of the cup for longer than a second or two.
“Shit,” I said, righting the coffee pot immediately. Setting it on the table, I grabbed a stack of napkins before kneeling beside Jesse. “I mean . . . shoot.”
“Nah,” he said, wiping up the sea of coffee in one long sweep. “You mean shit. This is definitely a mess worthy of a shit, not a shoot.”
I smiled at the floor as I wiped up the last of the coffee. “At least it didn’t end up in your lap.”
“I’m counting my blessings as we speak.” His hair fell over his forehead, moving in ways that made me want to run my fingers through it as he continued to scrub the floor. His hair was really much too nice to stay hidden beneath a cowboy hat all day. “So . . . have you decided?”
“Decided on what?”
“If you’re going to let me take you out some time. You know, a date? Something other than kneeling on a floor and cleaning up coffee?” Jesse’s gaze stayed on the spot where the coffee had been. Almost like he was suddenly shy.
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