“John Paul Coltrane, get yourself down here now,” Hunter called in a booming voice as he set a platter laden with scrambled eggs, bacon and sausages on the table.
“He’s doing something with his hair to look nice for Terese,” Carla confided.
Hunter grimaced. “Not that slicking up the front with soap again?”
“I think so.”
“He did that last night, too.”
“Well, I’m going up to clean the bathroom and I’ll send him down,” Carla said. Then, as she headed out of the kitchen, she added, “If I don’t see you again before I leave, Terese, it was nice meeting you.”
“You, too,” Terese said with more enthusiasm now that she knew the other woman wasn’t Hunter’s girlfriend.
“I’m headin’ out again, too. I’ll take this coffee to the barn with me,” Willy added, retracing his steps through the mudroom.
And suddenly the whirlwind that Terese had walked in on had passed and she was alone with Hunter.
And much happier than she’d been moments earlier.
Of course Hunter was oblivious to the turmoil she’d just induced in herself, and he merely motioned toward one of the barrel-backed chairs for her to sit down.
“We might as well get started before everything’s cold,” he said, not taking the chair across from her until she was seated.
Terese had been so enmeshed in imagining a romance between Hunter and Carla that she hadn’t taken much of a look at Hunter before. But now she did, surreptitiously making note that ranch-wear was pointy-toed cowboy boots, jeans that fitted him to perfection, and a chambray shirt with the sleeves rolled up to just below his elbows, exposing muscular forearms and wrists that seemed sexier than mere forearms and wrists could possibly be.
“So Willy and Carla are married?” Terese heard herself say without considering—until after the fact—whether she was being nosy.
But if Hunter thought she was, he didn’t seem to take offense. He just answered her question. “They’ve been married for a long time now. Since we all graduated from high school.” He handed her the platter of food and then added, “I was best man at their wedding and they were best man and matron of honor at mine.”
“You must be very good friends,” Terese said as she took some of the eggs and a piece of bacon.
“Willy’s more than a good friend,” Hunter amended, putting some of everything on Johnny’s plate and then serving himself. “Will’s closer to me than my brother. We work together every day. Spend time together when we aren’t workin’. We own a boat together. We fish and hunt and watch every football game together. He’s Johnny’s godfather. I’d give him the shirt off my back if he needed it, and I know he’d do the same for me. And Carla… Well, Carla was my wife’s best friend and she’s Johnny’s godmother. I don’t think Johnny or I could have made it through the last two years without them both.”
Which left Terese feeling all the more ridiculous for the conclusion she’d jumped to about the woman and her relationship with Hunter.
What had gotten into her? she asked herself.
But she decided it was some kind of fluke that would never happen again and that it was best to put it behind her.
“I’ve never had friends like that,” she admitted then. “I couldn’t even say any of that about Eve.”
“I don’t think many people are lucky enough to have friends like Will and Carla.”
Johnny came running into the kitchen then, putting an end to the conversation as he climbed onto the chair between Terese and his father.
“Eggs?” he complained.
“Eggs,” Hunter confirmed.
Johnny made a face, but his father was prepared and drowned the scrambled eggs in ketchup before the little boy could say more.
Johnny’s hair was, indeed, standing straight up in front the way it had been the night before, but he’d foregone the necktie today in favor of a flannel shirt, jeans and miniature suede work boots.
And as he settled in to eat his breakfast and outline once again for Terese what he had in store for her today, everything suddenly seemed right to her again.
Which, on some level, she knew was a feeling she should probably resist.
Instead she merely sat there and enjoyed it.
Johnny had no problem occupying Terese’s day. While Hunter and Willy repaired a tractor engine, the little boy devoted himself to teaching her about the workings of the ranch and demonstrating how to do his own chores.
Terese was astonished by how much the four-year-old knew about the animals and their care, and by what chores he could actually do himself.
He was responsible for feeding the chickens and collecting their eggs, for giving oats to the horses and making sure there was water in their troughs. He had a pony of his own, that he fed, watered, brushed and exercised with great pride. And he did a lot of fetching and carrying for his father and Willy.
Coming from a privileged upbringing in which she’d been shamelessly pampered by nannies and servants, at first she found it somewhat harsh that Johnny wasn’t left to four-year-old entertainments. But as the day went on, she saw that he liked helping out, that it gave him a strong sense of himself and his own abilities, and Terese learned that there were merits to it.
Plus, it wasn’t as if Johnny didn’t have a lot of playtime mixed into the day. He did. There was time for him to show her sword fighting with one of the rails on the paddock fence. Time for him to set up his army men in the barn. Time for him to fashion a number of dirt hills for his toy off-road vehicles to climb and crash.
There was also time for him to introduce Terese to the barn cat and her kittens, time to play with the kittens that liked him better than Terese and crawled all over him, making him roll on the ground in giggles as they did.
There was also time for him to show her the nest of mice he’d found under a shed behind the barn, where he relished lying on his belly watching them—something Terese refused to do, recoiling at the sight when she realized what creatures he’d surprised her with.
Unfortunately there was the sight of something else that she didn’t recoil from as the day passed. A sight that she couldn’t be distracted from even by her interest in everything Johnny did and said. A sight she was drawn to again and again against her will.
And that was the sight of Hunter at work.
Of Hunter leaning over the tractor engine with that taut derriere jutting out into view.
Of Hunter hoisting a bale of hay and making the muscles of those bare forearms bulge.
Of Hunter tossing a pair of leather straps over a broad, straight shoulder.
Of Hunter stretching his back with an arch that jabbed his chiseled chin toward the sky.
Of Hunter combing his fingers through his sun-streaked hair.
Of Hunter walking across the paddock with the long-legged, confident saunter that was almost a swagger.
Even the sight of him wiping grease off his hands engrossed her and caused her to stare almost trancelike until Johnny’s voice pulled her out of it.
Okay, so the man was something to behold, she kept telling herself. That didn’t mean she had to behold him.
But then, before she knew it, her gaze would snag on something about him, and she’d realize only after several minutes that she was staring again.
By the end of the day, she was very frustrated with herself and her lack of self-control. Frustrated and disgusted.
“You’d think you’d never seen a good-looking man before,” she said angrily to her reflection in the bathroom mirror of the cabin when she made a stop there to freshen up before dinner.
But even once she’d brushed out her hair and twisted it into a roll at the back of her head that left a spray of wavy ends at her crown, and reapplied a little mascara and lipgloss, she wasn’t convinced that she could practice any more self-control through the evening to come than she had all day long.
The best she could hope for as she went from the cabin to the house in the dusk wa
s that she would eventually get her fill of this man who seemed to attract her attention like metal attracted a magnet and then this phenomena would pass.
And she did hope it would pass. Never in her life had she been so distracted by a man—by any man—and it made her uncomfortable. Not to mention that it just seemed so strange…
When she reached the house Terese did as Hunter had urged her that morning—she walked in without knocking.
“Hi, I’m back,” she called as she did, not hesitating to go from the mudroom into the kitchen.
As she expected, Johnny and Hunter were there. Hunter was sitting on one of the chairs at the table pulling on a cowboy boot and Johnny was kneeling on the seat of another chair.
“You want to, don’t you, T’rese?” Johnny said, rather than answering her greeting.
He was apparently trying to convince his father of something and enlisting her in the process.
“I don’t know if I want to or not since I don’t know what we’re talking about,” she told her nephew.
“I’m not sure how the subject came up,” Hunter said before his son had explained, “but I hear you’ve never roasted marshmallows over a fire.”
That only compounded her confusion. “I’m not sure how most of the subjects came up today,” she confessed, “but no, I’ve never roasted marshmallows over a fire.”
“So that’s why…” Johnny said with precise emphasis on each word as if to make his argument clearer “…we should have a nighttime picnic with a fire so we can do the marshmallows and T’rese can taste ’em.”
“Not to mention that then Johnny can have them, too,” Hunter said to Terese.
A nighttime picnic. So that was what the little boy was angling for.
Terese didn’t have any feelings about it one way or another, though. Because yet again her attention was wandering to Hunter.
He’d showered and shaved since they’d gone their separate ways half an hour earlier, and changed into a pair of darker jeans and a blue Henley shirt. He’d washed his hair, too, because it was slightly damp yet and combed straight back to dry.
It struck Terese that she’d seen him in a variety of clothes, and that it didn’t matter how he was dressed, he was appealing in everything. The realization offered her no aid in getting her fill of the sight of him.
“You want to, don’t you, T’rese?” Johnny repeated the question he’d greeted her with, saving her from herself as he had on several occasions throughout the day by forcing her to concentrate on him rather than his father.
“That’s completely up to your dad,” she said, hesitant to support Johnny’s side if it was going to cause a problem.
“It’ll be fu-un. Like campin’…” Johnny cajoled in a singsong that was obviously designed to be irresistibly tempting. “We can just go to the pond—that’s not far—and we can have a fire and make hot dogs and beans and marshmallows.”
“You have this all worked out, do you?” Hunter asked.
Johnny just gave him a too-innocent shrug.
Hunter shifted his gold-speckled gaze to Terese. “Well, T’rese,” he said, mimicking his son’s version of her name. “What do you say? Does that sound like dinner to you?”
“Sure, why not?” Terese conceded, liking it every bit as much when the father said her name that way.
“Then I guess that’s what we’ll do. Did you bring a warm jacket?” he asked then.
Even though it was late October, the weather had been unseasonably warm and the forecast for the entire week was for more of the same. The evenings cooled down considerably, but Terese hadn’t expected to be outside for any length of time after dark so she’d only packed a very light jacket. Which was what she told her host.
“I don’t think that’ll be enough,” he said. “I’ll give you something of mine to wear.”
“So we’re goin’?” Johnny demanded, his excitement on the verge of erupting.
“We’re goin’,” Hunter confirmed. “But you’ll need warmer clothes, too. I want you in your sweatshirt and your field coat.”
That was all Johnny needed to hear. He leaped off the chair and ran out of the kitchen, hollering, “I’ll be right back!”
“How are you at makin’ hot chocolate?” Hunter asked her then with a note of challenge in his voice that was similar to the one last night when he’d let her know he doubted she could cook.
“I think I can handle it,” she said.
“You’ll have to pour it into a thermos, too.”
He was teasing her. The crooked half smile that played around the corner of one side of his mouth gave him away.
“A thermos?” she repeated as if she’d never heard of such a thing.
“It’s like a carafe, only with insulation and a screw-on top to keep things inside warm.”
“Ah, a carafe. That I understand,” she joked. “All I can promise is that I’ll picture how our cook would do it and try to master the skill.”
Hunter laughed and she liked the sound much too much. “That’ll be your job, then. I’ll pack up everything else we’ll need and get you a coat.”
His coat.
Why did the thought of wearing something of Hunter’s make her feel as excited as Johnny was by this impromptu picnic?
Terese was beginning to think that breathing manure fumes all day had done something to her sanity.
But all she said was, “I’ll get the milk,” putting herself into motion before she went any crazier than she already had.
Less than an hour later they were on their way in Hunter’s big black pickup.
Hunter was driving and Johnny was safely belted into the center of the bench seat, while Terese sat on the passenger side, snuggled inside the big flannel-lined jean jacket that Hunter had loaned her. That Hunter had held out for her to slip into.
It still smelled faintly of his aftershave, reminding her that he’d worn it himself. That his broad shoulders and strong back and mighty pectorals and powerful biceps had all been encased in that coat just the way she was at that moment.
But she kept telling herself not to think about it. And especially not to think about the secret little rush it was giving her.
The pond was on Coltrane property and they took a dirt road that began behind the barn and headed out into the open countryside.
Terese was glad Hunter seemed to know where he was going because without any illumination except a full moon and the truck’s headlights, she could barely tell where the road actually was. But he didn’t seem to have any trouble and within minutes they were pulling up to a small pond beneath a stand of old oak trees that formed a semicircle around the far side of it.
“We can swim here in the summer but not tonight,” Johnny informed Terese as they got out of the truck.
Hunter had brought several split logs with them for firewood but he dispatched Johnny to collect some kindling, leaving the truck lights on long enough for that to be accomplished and for the fire to be lit.
Once it was blazing, the truck lights were turned off and they were left to the warm, golden glow of the bonfire. They sat down on logs that acted as benches along the bank of the pond.
“What about cooking hot dogs on the end of a stick over a campfire? Have you ever done that?” Hunter asked Terese as Johnny hunted for just the right sticks for the job and his dad began to unload the picnic basket he’d packed.
“Never,” Terese said.
“She go’d to boarding school,” Johnny offered from not far away. “But I still don’t understand. Don’t all schools have boards? In the walls or something?”
It hadn’t occurred to Terese that this was how Johnny would take her statement about her schooling.
“Boarding school means that you live at the school,” she explained.
“Do you sleep in your desk?” Johnny asked, baffled.
“No, you have school in a school building and you live in a separate building,” she said.
“With your family?”
“No, with
your classmates. Your family stays at home.”
“You don’t live home with your mom or dad or anybody?” the little boy said, sounding slightly horrified. “No.”
“And you never got to go campin’ or cook on a fire or nothin’?”
Terese smiled. “No, there was no camping or cooking on a fire. We ate all our meals in the dining hall.”
“I wouldn’t like that,” Johnny decided.
“It wasn’t a lot of fun,” Terese assured him, thinking back on the stuffy, regimented environment where camping or cooking anything over an open fire would have been considered barbaric or unbearably pedestrian.
“What about in the summer?” Johnny persisted when he’d shown her the fine art of poking the sticks through their hot dogs and they were all holding their dinner over the fire. “If you didn’t go campin’ in the summers, what did you do?”
“I went to Europe most summers. Do you know anything about Europe?”
“Yep,” the little boy said authoritatively, surprising her. “My dad’s goin’ there in how many days now?”
He’d begun that statement answering Terese’s question but ended it with a query for his father.
“I don’t know that I’m going at all now,” Hunter said as if he didn’t want to talk about it.
Johnny didn’t take note of his father’s reply; he simply filled Terese in on the details. “It’s a trip to look at some bulls so we can get our herd bigger and tougher. It’s ’portant.”
“Looks like we’re about ready to eat these hot dogs,” Hunter said then, giving Terese the impression that he was trying to change the subject.
But hot dogs and beans were a good distraction for Johnny. He took Terese under his wing and taught her how to pull the hot dog off the stick by using the bun, what condiments were best, and how to eat the beans they’d warmed by placing the opened can just above the flames.
Beans weren’t Terese’s favorite food but she genuinely enjoyed the hot dog and she let her fellow diners know it.
“I think this was a really good idea,” she told them, surprised that Hunter’s smile seemed as pleased as his son’s.
For Love and Family Page 5
