by Kim Law
The sky was a clear blue today, and he couldn’t have set the scene any better.
“Whose house is this?” She asked the question more softly, as if the serenity of the land had overtaken her.
“It’s mine,” he said simply.
He’d put the truck into park, and Jill turned in her seat, this time being the one to face him. His breaths remained short, his nerves tight, but he forced himself to look over at her.
“This is yours?” Her blue-green eyes lost the pain that had been so clear before. She shifted in her seat, peering out through all four windows, and after taking in a full 360-degree view, she once again faced him. “How much land is here?”
“Three hundred acres.”
Her mouth hung open. “What are you going to do with it?”
He gave a little shrug. “I don’t know.”
Jill shifted in the seat to face the front window, and all Cal could hear for the next several minutes were the breaths she took. She looked both right and left once again, as well as straight ahead at the house, and she even leaned forward and stared up at the sky. Once she’d gotten another good look, she dropped back to the seat.
“It’s gorgeous,” she said. “Both the house and the land. And this view is one in a million.”
“No one knows I bought it,” he admitted. He had no idea why he’d told her that.
She slid him a glance. “No one?”
He shook his head. He hadn’t even told his grandmother. He would eventually, though. He’d bring her out to see it.
“Marci thinks she’s going to be the one to finally ‘snag’ you,” Jill told him, and he understood where she was going with her comment. He’d heard that Marci had been claiming as much, yet he’d never had the urge to bring his supposed “girlfriend” to his home.
“Marci doesn’t know,” he told her. “She thinks if she manages to ‘snag’ me, as you put it, that she can talk me into moving into the house her father bought her.” Which was huge and came with every feature a person could possibly want. But it was totally not his style. It was all straight lines and sleek polishes.
“Those were her words,” Jill pointed out. “Not mine.”
Cal shrugged again. “She hasn’t said them to me.”
He didn’t want to talk about Marci.
He didn’t even want to think about Marci.
He nodded toward his house. “It was built in the ’50s. I’m renovating it in my spare time.”
“I’m doing the same to the house I bought last year.” She bit her lip on a laugh. “Mine is a tad smaller, though.” She stared at the home he’d someday live in. “And nothing at all like this.”
He tried to look at it through her eyes. “This one is too big for me.”
“But it’s so perfect.” She said the words wistfully, and Cal found himself watching her again. He’d once sworn to build her a house like this. He’d forgotten that until now. They’d planned to fill it with kids.
He pictured inky-black-haired kids running around the yard. Then Jill stepping out on the front porch with a baby to her breast.
Damn. He still had feelings for her. He’d thought he’d gotten over that.
“Maybe I’ll buy some cows,” he said. He had to get his mind on something other than Jill. And cows were an option.
“Or horses.” She pointed to an open field. “Can’t you imagine horses running through that pasture? A barn tucked up next to those back trees.”
“There’s a pond in that area, too. You can’t see it from here, though.” He pointed out another section of land. “But there’s also one back there. In that dip just before the hill. You can see that one from the back of the house.”
That wistful sound hit his ear again. “Ponds are nice.”
He nodded, but he said nothing else. They just sat there, enjoying the moment, while he tried his best to keep his mind on cows and horses.
After several minutes, he knew it was time to go. He had to get out of there. Otherwise, he’d be tempted to head down the hill instead of away from it. And if he got her down there, he wasn’t sure whether he’d want to show her the workshop he’d fixed up for himself, whether he’d point out the pond he’d mentioned could be seen from the house . . . or if he’d lead her through his home and try to talk her into testing out the springs in his new king-sized mattress.
He glanced over at her. He had issues. “You ready to head back?”
She nodded.
Allowing himself to consider no other options, he circled the truck around and headed back the way he’d come.
“They’re going to be watching for us,” she pointed out. “Cameras will probably be trained on the truck the second we roll back into town.”
“I imagine they will be.” He watched his land in his rearview. He had to get his mind on something else. “This is going to be a hell of an interesting show by the time they air it. They’re so in our faces all the time. Do they do this to all competitors?”
“I have no idea. I’ve never seen an episode.”
He laughed lightly. “Me neither. Though Marci has tried her best to talk me into a Texas Dream Home marathon ever since she found out I was doing the show.”
They fell silent again as he circumvented the ruts, and when he made it back to the highway, he decided to share one more piece of info with her. It felt important. “Marci didn’t find out about me being on the show until last Monday, either.”
Jill nodded. “And I haven’t watched any television since I moved back home.”
Cal turned to her, but she was looking out her window again.
“I don’t even own a TV,” she said softly.
He got the significance. “I take it that’s a personal choice? Not one dictated by finances?”
“Personal choice,” she acknowledged.
He wanted to reach over and squeeze her hand again, but he wasn’t sure she’d accept the action as she had earlier. “I’m sorry LA didn’t turn out the way you’d hoped.”
She merely shrugged.
He pulled out on the highway, and they rode for several miles with neither feeling the need to speak, and when he turned onto Main Street, he caught sight of Loretta sitting in her car at the gas station. The second her gaze landed on them, she lifted her phone to her ear. Their return was being reported at that very moment.
Cal looked over at Jill, not quite ready to get back to “reality,” but knowing they had no choice. But he found himself wanting to stir the pot just a bit more before they returned. He wanted to be a bug in her ear, just as he knew she would be one in his. “You know,” he started. “We couldn’t have had sex, anyway.”
Surprise rounded her eyes. “What are you talking about?”
“When we drove away before. You started yelling at me that I shouldn’t think we were going to have sex. But I wouldn’t have ever thought that, because the rule is that we can’t have sex while either is still angry with the other, right? No sex until the anger passes.”
He could see her processing his words, but he didn’t have a clue what she might be thinking. Nor did he know if she even remembered the rule. They’d come up with it together.
She finally nodded. “Right. No sex until the anger passes. And the anger isn’t passing.”
He nodded, as well. “Good thing we’re not planning on having sex, then.”
Chapter Eight
“Sometimes a man can come in handy. But then . . . you also have fingers for that.”
—Blu Johnson, life lesson #89
Good thing we’re not planning on having sex, then.
Jill stared at the cards in her hand, but as had been the case with every round they’d played during the last two hours, she couldn’t concentrate.
Good thing we’re not planning on having sex.
Why had he brought that up? But then, why had she?
Because the only thing she’d now thought about for days was having sex with Cal.
“Rummy!” Heather slapped her cards on the tab
le, fanning them out, then held her arms up as if she’d just kicked a field goal. “Boom. In your face.”
Jill and Trenton both leaned forward to scrutinize the winning hand, while Aunt Blu tossed down a shot of whiskey.
“I swear, you girls want to play rummy just to see me get drunk,” Aunt Blu said, her words slightly slurred. “Father Kibby is going to give me the evil eye tomorrow morning.”
“Father Kibby will only give you the evil eye because you didn’t invite him over to share.” Trenton eyed the bottle of Jim Beam while Heather poured.
“Bottoms up, ladies.”
Jill and Trenton downed their shots.
“Good Josephine, Heather.” Trenton coughed. “Give us a break with this stuff.”
“No one breaks until—”
“I call uncle.” Jill raised her hand. “You know whiskey isn’t my thing.”
In fact, drinking was rarely her thing. Mostly just when they had Saturday-night game nights, and only then if Aunt Blu had no girls. Seeing as there were currently no foster girls in the house, she and Trenton would both be staying the night with Heather. Assuming they could even make it down to her place in the dark.
“I double her uncle,” Aunt Blu announced with one finger raised in the air and her eyes half-shut. She pushed back from the table, but didn’t go anywhere. She just sat there blinking, as if trying to bring the room into focus. “How many hands did I lose?”
“All of them,” Heather snickered.
“And Jill and I only won one each,” Trenton added. She licked a drop of whiskey off the side of her thumb.
Other than Heather, they were all about half a gust of wind from falling face-first on the floor, and calling uncle admitted it. And all of them hated calling uncle.
“Trenton?” Heather prodded.
Trenton groaned. “Uncle.”
Heather stood and did her victory dance. Which looked very similar to a chicken dance.
“So how’s the house coming?” Aunt Blu asked. She stared a little too hard at Heather, likely directing the question at her simply because Heather was the one who sat directly across from her.
“The house is coming along great,” Heather answered. “We got most of the drywall up already, the wiring and plumbing finished this morning, and we start mudding and putting the windows in next week.”
“We also have these cool beams ordered for the living room ceiling,” Jill added. “Totally perfect for Texas. You should come out and see it.”
Aunt Blu had been to the house before they’d started demo, but she hadn’t wanted to be in the way after that. She preferred doing the whole “before and after” thing if she could stay away until the work was done. “I’ll get out there eventually.” She had her eyes closed again. “That little fella called me today. Wants to interview me in a couple a weeks.”
Jill smiled. Aunt Blu called Patrick “that little fella,” and Jill thought it fit.
“I’ll prolly wait until then to come out.” Aunt Blu nodded, then she swayed in her chair.
Trenton and Jill reached out to steady her.
“Want us to help you to bed?” Jill asked.
She was rewarded with a hazy gray-eyed glare. “I am not ready for bed, and when I am, I’ll see myself to gettin’ there.” She turned to Trenton. “Everyone in town is talking about you running off with Cal the other day. What was that about?”
Trenton pointed to Jill, and Aunt Blu swung her gaze back to the other side of the table.
“They said you were gone a long time.” Blu now spoke to Jill.
“I was,” Jill admitted. “That little fella ticked me off, and I needed to cool down.”
“So you went on a drive with Cal?”
Jill really didn’t want to go into the specifics. Heather and Trenton had grilled her over it when she’d returned, of course, and she’d told them about Patrick pushing for details concerning the day of. She hadn’t explained in depth what she’d truly flipped out about, or why she’d gone after Cal when she had, but given that Cal had been playing into Patrick’s games to get them on screen together, she’d let them believe she’d thought Cal had a part in it.
She’d spoken to Patrick upon returning, as well, and as Cal had guessed, the only specifics the show had were what had come from the police report. She’d made it clear once again that the day of was off limits, and that if they didn’t adhere to that deal, then she would be done. They could sue her for the rest of her life if they wanted, but she’d walk. And Heather and Jill would go with her.
They’d agreed.
“I went on a drive with Cal because I thought he’d set me up,” Jill told Aunt Blu now. “He shoved me in his truck to keep me from beating the crap out of him in front of everyone, and we were heading down the road before I realized what was going on.”
“Good for him.” Blu turned her shot glass upside down on the table and leaned in to peer through the bottom part of the glass. “That boy always did care about you.”
No one said anything for a moment, and Jill reached out to scoop up the cards. She didn’t intend to deal another round, but shuffling them would keep her hands busy. At the same time, Trenton reached over and stole a chocolate-covered raisin from Aunt Blu’s bowl. Blu smacked Trenton’s hand.
“They also say you’ve been more mellow since that ride,” Aunt Blu continued.
Jill frowned. No one had seen her be anything but mellow until she’d flown into a rage and run across the yard. In fact, they’d seen nothing remotely similar to that in twelve years—the chair incident at the café notwithstanding. But memories were long in their town, and one mistake could bring it all back. “I am more mellow,” she assured her foster mother. “It wasn’t my best look that day, so I refuse to go off like that again.”
“Good. I always hated getting that call.”
“That call” would be the two times Jill got picked up by the police for fighting. She’d not been the easiest teenager to take in.
Aunt Blu scrunched her nose then and peered down toward her mouth. She’d apparently moved beyond talking about that week’s episode at the house and was now trying to see her own nose. Jill kept a straight face because Blu hated when they got her drunk and laughed at her, but Heather wasn’t so chivalrous. She flat-out chortled.
“Your nose is still there, Aunt Blu.”
Blu slapped her hand on the table and looked at Heather. “I reckon I know there’s a nose there. I was just trying to see if it’s my nose or someone else’s.”
Jill and Trenton joined in on the laughter, and as Blu tried to shoot them both her evil glare, they reached out to once again steady her. “It’s your nose, Aunt Blu,” Jill assured her. “No one switched it out when you weren’t looking.”
“Good. Because you know people do that.”
Jill nodded. “I know.” She inched her bottle of water closer to her foster mother, but didn’t suggest she drink it. Blu didn’t take the hint. Jill went back to shuffling the cards as Aunt Blu tried again to see her nose, and Heather rose to get more water for everyone. Trenton muttered something about peeing on herself if she didn’t get to the bathroom and left the room, stumbling only slightly when she got up too fast.
Jill stayed where she was. And she thought about Cal.
And that drive.
And the fact that Cal had a three-hundred-acre farm that no one but she knew about.
She’d run those facts through her head multiple times over the last few days. Never would she have pictured that kind of acreage for Cal. Not that it was hard to come by in their part of Texas, but just that it seemed so . . . settled.
Yes, they’d gotten married, and yes, leading up to that marriage, they’d talked of building their own home someday. And filling it with kids. But she’d always imagined their home would be much less rustic and in a much more populated area. With maybe a quarter acre of land.
Yet the pride that had washed over Cal while looking out over his property had been unmistakable. He was in love with
the spot he was carving out for himself, and she could see why. She just couldn’t figure out his reasoning for being so secretive about it.
She kind of liked knowing she was the only person he’d told, though.
“What do you think, Jilly?”
Jill pulled her attention back from Cal and realized that Trenton had returned to the table. She’d brought the basket of leftover rolls from dinner, and she passed them around. Jill took one, needing to soak up some of the whiskey swilling around inside her. Aunt Blu did not.
“What do I think about what?” Jill asked.
Trenton nodded to Heather. “About Heather fixing you up with Little Red.”
“Who’s Little Red?” Aunt Blu squawked out.
Jill just stared. What had she missed?
“He works for Cal,” Heather explained to Aunt Blu. “He’s this sweetheart of a man who looks like he shouldn’t even be old enough to drive, much less date, but he’s totally got the hots for our Jill.”
“He doesn’t have the hots,” Jill protested.
Heather smiled innocently. “Yet look at you. You’re blushing just like Little Red does when he looks at you.”
Jill made a face at Heather. She was blushing and she knew it. But only because it was so endearing the way Doug’s cheeks heated every time he saw her.
“And for the record,” Heather continued, “the whole thing wasn’t my idea, but I do think you should do it. He stopped me yesterday, asking about you. Said he wouldn’t be back at the house for a couple of weeks, but he was ‘surely hoping’ to see you before then.” She waggled her brows at Jill. “He practically begged me to set something up.”
“I hope you told him no.”
“I told him I’d do my best.”
“Heather. You know I don’t date.”
