Hutch laughed again, shook his head. He’d have sworn he’d never miss being nagged by a woman, but he surely had. Having Opal around was like having a mom again—a good feeling, even if it was a bit on the constricting side. “I’m going to see Kendra,” he admitted. “And don’t ask me why, because the whole thing was her idea and I don’t have the first clue what she wants.”
Opal’s eyes were suddenly alight with mischievous supposition. “Well, now,” she said. “Kendra wants to see you. As for what she wants, anybody but a big dumb cowboy like you would know that from the get-go.” She paused to reflect for a few moments, and at the tail end of the thought process, she was looking a little less delighted than before. “You get on the wrong side of her again? Is that it?”
“I’m always on the wrong side of Kendra,” Hutch said lightly. But the view is good from any direction.
Opal shuffled past him, yanked open the refrigerator, and neatly rearranged everything he’d just shoved in there. “Make sure you pick up some flowers on your way over,” she instructed, dusting her hands together as she turned to face him again. “That way if you are in the doghouse, which wouldn’t surprise me, Kendra might forgive you quicker.”
“Forgive me?” Hutch echoed, pretending to be offended. “I haven’t done anything she needs to forgive me for.”
“Maybe not recently,” Opal conceded, with another sniff and a glance that begrudged him all grace. “But you did enough damage to last a lifetime back in the day. Get the flowers. There were some nice Gerbera daisies at the supermarket when I was there yesterday.”
Hutch executed a deep bow of acquiescence.
Opal gave a scoffing laugh, waved a hand at him and went off to get ready for a wild night of Bingo.
* * *
KENDRA PEERED INTO the yellow glow of the porch light and caught her breath.
She’d been expecting Hutch, of course, but for some reason, every encounter with the man, planned as well as unplanned, made her feel as though she’d just taken hold of the wrong end of a cattle prod.
He wore newish jeans, a crisply pressed and possibly even starched cotton shirt in a pale shade of yellow, polished boots and a good hat instead of the usual one that looked as though it had just been trampled in a stampede or retrieved from the bed of a pickup truck.
And he was holding a colorful bouquet of flowers in his left hand.
He must have misunderstood her phone call, she thought, with a sort of delicious desperation. Her heart hammered against her breastbone, and her breathing was so shallow that she was afraid she might hyperventilate if she didn’t get a grip.
After drawing a very deep breath, Kendra opened the front door; he’d seen her through the frosted oval window, so it was too late to pretend she wasn’t home.
He took off the hat with a deftness that reminded her instantly of other subtle moves he’d made, under much more intimate circumstances, way back in those thrilling days—and nights—of yesteryear.
“The flowers were Opal’s idea,” he said first thing.
Kendra’s mouth twitched with amusement. Hutch was doing a good job of hiding the fact, but he was as nervous as she was, maybe even more so.
“No wine?” she quipped. “You’re slipping, cowboy.”
He let his gaze range over her, just briefly, as she stepped back so he could come inside. “I figured that would be pushing my luck,” he said, and she couldn’t tell if he was kidding or serious.
Kendra led the way through the house to the kitchen and offered him a seat at the table. She’d long since cleared away all evidence of supper, supervised Madison’s bath, read her a story and heard her prayers, and she’d checked on the child a couple of times over the past half hour, as well.
Both Madison and Daisy had been sound asleep each time she looked in.
Kendra accepted the flowers, found a vase and arranged them quickly. The colors, reds and maroons, oranges and deep pinks and purples, thrilled her senses, a riot of beauty.
When she turned around with the bouquet in hand, she nearly collided with Hutch.
Color climbed her cheeks and she stepped around him to set the flowers in the middle of the kitchen table.
“There’s coffee, if you’d like some,” she told him, feeling as shy as if he were a stranger and not a man who’d made love to her in all sorts of scandalous places and positions.
Stop it, she scolded herself.
Hutch’s eyes twinkled as he watched her—he was seeing too much. Although he could be infuriatingly obtuse, he had a perceptive side, too. One that generally worked to his advantage. “Thanks,” he said, “but I’ve had plenty of java already. One more cup and I’ll be up all night putting a new roof on the barn or something.”
Kendra smiled at the image, calming down a little on the inside. “I’ll just look in on Madison once more,” she said, and beat a hasty retreat for the hallway. What was it about Hutch that made all her nerves rise to the surface of her skin and sizzle there, like some kind of invisible fire?
He said nothing as she hurried away, but she would have sworn she felt the heat of his gaze wherever her shorts and tank top left her skin bare—on the backs of her arms and calves, on her nape.
Madison, she soon discovered, was still asleep in her “princess bed,” or doing a darned good job of playing possum. Daisy, curled up by Madison’s feet, raised her downy golden head, yawned and descended back into the realm of doggy dreams.
Since there was no excuse for lingering—and she’d been the one to suggest this rendezvous in the first place—Kendra forced herself to go back to the kitchen and face Hutch.
He was still standing in the center of the room, hat in hand, and he pulled back a chair at the table for her as adeptly as if they’d been in some fancy restaurant instead of her own modest kitchen.
She sat, interlaced her fingers on the table top and silently wondered why she’d gotten herself into a situation like this—it wasn’t like her. The pop-psychology types would probably say she had an unconscious agenda—sex, for instance.
Definitely not true.
Sex was out of the question with Madison in the house.
Thanks to this particular cowboy, though, the small kitchen seemed charged with the stuff, even electrified.
While Kendra’s brain was trying to make sense of her own actions, Hutch hung his hat from a peg beside the back door and came to sit down across from her. He watched her in silence for a few moments, his expression solemn, and finally uttered a mildly plaintive, “What?”
Kendra, all fired up over his promise to take Madison for a horseback ride earlier, felt silly now. Why hadn’t she simply said what she wanted to say while they were on the phone before?
Because she’d wanted to see Hutch, that was why. Ever since she’d watched him on Tara’s porch, through those binoculars, he’d been on her mind. She was trying to prevent Madison from being disappointed over a much wanted horseback ride that didn’t ever quite happen—any mother would feel the same—but in retrospect, the requested meeting looked...well...transparent.
God, this was embarrassing.
“This is really no big deal,” she began awkwardly. “It’s just—”
And then she couldn’t force out another word. Her face burned and she wanted to look away from Hutch’s face, but pride wouldn’t let her take the easy way out.
“I’m listening,” he reminded her quietly.
“Madison is really counting on a horseback ride,” Kendra blurted, still awkward.
He raised one eyebrow in silent question. “And?” his expression prompted.
“I’m getting this all wrong,” Kendra fretted. “It seemed like such a good idea before, to get everything out in the open and all that, but now—”
Hutch looked genuinely puzzled, maybe even flummoxed. If Kendra hadn’t felt like such an idiot the look on his face would have made her laugh.
“But now?” he urged, his voice low and baffled. “You’ve decided against letting Madison go
for a horseback ride?”
Suddenly, she giggled. It was some kind of nervous reaction, of course, but the release of tension was welcome, even though it did feel a lot like the spring of an old-fashioned watch breaking and spinning itself unwound. “No, that isn’t it,” she managed, after a moment of recovery. “I just got to thinking that you might forget what you told Madison, about going riding, I mean, and she’s—”
“She’s counting on it,” Hutch confirmed, looking only slightly less confused than before. “Kendra, what the hell are you talking about?”
This time the giggle came out as a half-hysterical little laugh. She put a hand over her mouth and rocked, hoping the mysteries of incontinence would not be revealed to her. Especially in front of Hutch Carmody.
Before she could frame an answer, though, Hutch’s eyes darkened with realization, reminding her of a sky working up a booming spate of thunder that might last for a while instead of blowing over quickly.
“You just automatically assumed I’d let her down, is that it?” he demanded, leaning in a little. His eyes flashed with indignation.
Kendra straightened her spine. Lifted her chin a notch or two. “Not exactly,” she hedged. “Not exactly”? mocked a voice in the back of her mind. Come on. He’d just verbalized her precise thoughts on the matter. She’d been afraid he’d hurt and disappoint her little girl, and decided not to let it happen—that was the size of it.
“If you’ll remember,” Hutch went on, filling her in in case she hadn’t noticed the figurative skywriting arching across the firmament overhead, “I told Madison she could ride one of my horses if it was all right with you. You’re the one who didn’t want to commit to a straight-out ‘yes’ and just barely settled for ‘maybe.’ And now it’s my fault for letting her down?”
Kendra swallowed miserably. Looked away.
“Kendra,” Hutch insisted. Just that one word, just her name, was all he said, but it carried weight.
“All right,” she whispered, meeting his gaze again. “I’m sorry. I was wrong. Can we just get past that, please?”
His mouth smiled, but his eyes were solemn, even sad. “I meant what I said before,” he finally replied. “If you’re agreeable, we’ll put Madison on the gentlest horse I own and she’ll have her ride. Or she can ride with me, whatever you think best.”
Kendra’s throat tightened and she had to look away once more before reconnecting. Those eyes of his seemed to see into the deepest part of her, seeking and finding every secret she’d hidden away over the years, even from herself.
“When?” she asked, still mortified by her own behavior but trying to put a good face on things. “Madison will expect specifics.”
He smiled again, this time with his whole face. “Whenever you say,” he answered.
Kendra sighed. The ball was in her court and he wasn’t going to let her forget that. “Tomorrow?” she threw out tentatively. “After she gets out of preschool?”
“That’ll work,” Hutch said, watching her. “About what time should I expect you and the munchkin to show up on Whisper Creek?”
“Three-thirty? Is that too early? I know you probably have a lot of work to do and I wouldn’t want to impose or anything.”
Lame. Of course she was imposing—but she was in too deep and there was no other way out.
“Three-thirty,” Hutch agreed. Then, unexpectedly, he reached across the table and closed his fingers gently around her hand. “One question, Kendra. Why was it so hard for you to get all this said? We have a history, you and I, and not all of it was bad—not by a long shot.”
“I’m—not sure,” Kendra admitted softly.
“That’s an honest if inadequate answer,” he said, but his grin, if slight, was genuine. He got up, walked over to retrieve his hat, held it in one hand as he looked back at Kendra. “Tomorrow, three-thirty, Whisper Creek Ranch?”
“If it’s inconvenient for you, another time would be fine, honestly—”
Hutch narrowed his eyes, not in anger, but bewilderment, as though by squinting he might make out some aspect of her nature he hadn’t spotted before. “Women,” he said with a note of consternation in his voice.
Kendra got to her feet, led the way back through the house toward the front door. “Men,” she retorted with a roll of her eyes.
She’d never planned for it to happen, and maybe Hutch hadn’t either, but once they’d stepped beyond the cone of light thrown by the porch fixture, into the soft, summery shadows, they found themselves standing close to each other—too close.
Hutch curved a hand under Kendra’s chin, lifted her face and kissed her, as naturally as they would have done in the old days.
And Kendra kissed him back, her body coming awake as both new and very familiar sensations took hold, expanding and contracting, soaring and then plummeting.
Kendra gave a silent gasp. It was still there, then, all of it, the passion, the need, the wildness, the things she’d tried so hard to forget over the years since their breakup.
She knew she ought to change directions, put on the brakes before they collided in the train wreck of the century—but she just couldn’t.
She was lost in that kiss, lost in the way it felt to have Hutch’s arms around her again, strong and sure, holding her close.
Her knees went weak, and she knotted her fists in the fabric of his shirt and held on, and still the kiss continued, seemingly taking on a life of its own, now playful, now deep and commanding.
“Mommy?”
The word, coming from just beyond the screened door, sliced down between them like a knife.
Both of them stepped back.
“You didn’t tell me the cowboy man was here,” Madison said innocently, rubbing away sleep with one hand even as she pressed her little nose against the worn screen, looking curious but nothing more. Her sidekick, Daisy, did the same.
“I didn’t want to wake you up,” Hutch said chivalrously. “Your mom and I were deciding on when you ought to take that horseback ride we talked about.”
Madison’s eyes instantly widened, and she stepped back far enough to open the screen door so she and Daisy could bolt through the gap.
“Really?” the child cried. “When? Where?”
Hutch lifted her easily, naturally into his arms, grinned. “Really,” he said. “Tomorrow afternoon, at my ranch.”
“I told you she’d ask for specifics,” Kendra managed to say. Her face was still flaming, her heart was pounding, and she was frantic to know how much Madison had seen, and understood, before interrupting that foolish, wonderful kiss.
Madison literally squealed with delight. “Yes!” she cried, punching the air with one small, triumphant fist.
Hutch chuckled and set her back on her bare feet, tousled her tumbling copper curls lightly, though by then his gaze was fixed on Kendra again. She couldn’t read his expression very well, since he was standing on the fringes of the glow from the porch light, but she saw the white flash of his teeth as he smiled.
“I guess that’s settled, then,” he said. He set his hat on his head, tugged at the brim in farewell and added, “Good night, ladies. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
And he turned to go.
“Wait!” Madison blurted, and Kendra was relieved to realize she hadn’t been the one to speak, because that exact same word had swelled in the back of her throat and very nearly tumbled out over her tongue.
Wait.
Wait for what? A second chance? A miracle? Some passage opening between now and the time when everything had been good and right between them?
You’re losing it, Kendra thought to herself.
Hutch paused at the top of the steps, turned to look back over one shoulder and waited quietly for the little girl to go on.
Kendra had forgotten that quietness in him. Hutch was still a rowdy cowboy inclined toward the rough-and-tumble and that probably hadn’t changed, but he carried a vast silence inside him, too, as though he were somehow anchored to the core of the univer
se and drew confidence from that.
“Can Daisy come, too?” Madison asked earnestly.
“It’s all right with me if it’s all right with your mother,” Hutch replied almost gruffly.
Kendra didn’t dare say anything, so she nodded. She wanted Hutch to stay, though. She wanted more of his kisses, and still more, and she ached to return to the sweet, secret places where she knew they would take her.
But it wasn’t going to happen, she told herself. Not tonight, anyway.
Hutch went his way—down the walk, through the gate, around to the driver’s door of his truck; and she went to hers—back into the house, with Madison and Daisy.
* * *
HEADED HOME TO the ranch through a pale purple summer night, Hutch felt exuberant and scared shitless, both at the same time. The aftereffects of the kiss he and Kendra had shared on her porch still reverberated through his system like bullets ricocheting around inside a cement mixer and every instinct urged him to get far away from the woman, fast.
Except that there was nowhere to go.
He rolled down the window, switched on the radio and sang along with a country-western drinking song at the top of his lungs for the first mile or so, and by the time he was about to round the last bend, some of the adrenaline had ebbed and there was at least a remote possibility that he could think straight.
He wasn’t speeding—the ticket Boone had given him was still fresh in his mind—but he nearly hit the critter sitting in the middle of the road anyhow.
He swerved, screeched to a stop, shut off the engine but not the headlights, and shoved open the door. Sprinting around the back of the truck, he was surprised—and relieved—to see that the animal, either a black dog or a very skinny bear, was still in one piece. The creature hadn’t moved from the middle of the road, and as he approached, it whimpered low in its throat and cowered a little.
“You hurt?” Hutch asked, mindful that another rig could come around the bend at any moment and send both him and what turned out to be a dog headlong into the Promised Land. Swiftly, he crouched, ran experienced rancher’s hands over the creature’s matted back and all four legs. He stood up again. “Come on, then,” he said, satisfied that nothing was broken. “Let’s see if you can walk.”
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