“A job?” Joslyn managed. “How—? Who—?”
“Sheriff Slade Barlow, that’s who,” Opal answered, almost jubilantly. “Who else have I seen since I got here, besides you?”
“Slade offered you a job?” Joslyn asked, more than surprised.
“Yes, ma’am,” Opal said.
“As what?”
Opal laughed. “Well, it wasn’t a deputy’s position,” she teased. “As a cook and a housekeeper, silly.”
“Oh,” Joslyn said, not sure how she felt about this development. Of course she wanted Opal to stay on in Parable for as long as possible, but if she was keeping house for Slade Barlow, she, Joslyn, would run into him all the time.
Sure, she’d agreed to go to the livestock auction with him—what could happen there, especially with his teenage daughter along, too? But Opal was practically family, and Joslyn wanted to spend time with her.
If Opal worked for Slade, though…
“You’d be living at his place?” Joslyn asked, thinking of the charming, if run-down ranch house he’d just moved into.
“Probably,” Opal replied. She brought the plate of scrambled eggs and toast to the table and set it down in front of Joslyn. “Eat,” she commanded.
Joslyn obediently picked up her fork.
Beneath the table, a recently fed Lucy-Maude twined her sleek body around Joslyn’s ankles. Joslyn had evidently been forgiven for last night’s indignities—shots, a blood test, a thorough veterinary examination. It was official: there would be kittens, and sooner, rather than later.
Opal, meanwhile, went back to the counter to toast some bread for herself. “I told him I’d need to meet that stepdaughter of his and get a look at the house I’d be looking after,” she went on, “but this has all the earmarks of an answered prayer, as far as I’m concerned. Like I told you, I miss working.”
Opal’s scrambled eggs were, as always, delicious. Joslyn ate hungrily.
“Are you sure you’re up to it?” she asked between bites.
Opal brought her toast to the table on a small plate, fetched a banana from the bunch resting in the fruit bowl and sat down across from Joslyn. She didn’t answer, just looked amused and puzzled, both at once.
“I mean, it’s a big house, and nobody’s lived in it for a while, so it needs work and—” Joslyn caught herself. What was she doing, making a case against the very thing she wanted so much—for Opal to stay in Parable? She swallowed hard. “And what about your sister-in-law? Wouldn’t she be all alone if you left?”
Opal frowned, putting down her first slice of toast. “My sister-in-law,” she said, “is as sick of me as I am of her. Besides, she’s got a million friends.”
Joslyn had a mouthful of scrambled eggs by then, so she didn’t answer.
“Don’t you want me to take this job?” Opal asked very quietly.
“Of course I do,” Joslyn replied, as soon as she could speak. “It’s just—well—you’d be working awfully hard, it seems to me.”
Opal grinned. “And you think that might kill me off?”
Joslyn shook her head. “No, I just—”
Opal reached across the table, took her hand and squeezed it. “Work doesn’t kill half as many people as retirement does, to my way of thinking,” she declared. “Fact is, I’ve seen it do more than one person in before their time.” She paused, took another bite of toast, chewed and swallowed. “Anyhow,” she went on, when she was ready, “I think Slade mainly wants somebody to look after that girl of his while he’s working. You ever met her?”
Joslyn nodded. “Once,” she said, remembering the encounter at the Butter Biscuit Café. “Her name is Shea, and she seemed nice enough.”
Opal produced a business card from the pocket of her fresh cotton dress—this one was blue with little white flowers on it—and set it on the table for Joslyn to see.
“Fine, then,” she said. “I’ll give Slade a call in a little while. When you get off work this afternoon, you can drive me there to meet the child and eyeball that house.”
And that was the end of it. Opal had spoken.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
SLADE WAS UP ON THE RANCH house roof when Opal and Joslyn drove up just before six that evening. He worked shirtless, rimmed in the last dazzle of sunlight, with his worn-out jeans riding low on his lean hips.
Joslyn’s palms turned sweaty the instant she spotted him, and she tightened her fingers around the steering wheel of her car. Her heart pounded with a longing—even a need—she didn’t dare recognize, let alone give a name to.
Opal, buckled in on the passenger side, chuckled. “Now, that,” she observed, ducking her head slightly to get a better look at Slade through the windshield, “is a man.”
Amen, Joslyn thought. But what she said was, “You’d think he’d bother to wear a shirt when he’s expecting company.”
Her tone was downright grumpy.
Joslyn’s remark made Opal grin broadly as she unhooked her seat belt and pushed open the car door to get out.
By then, Slade was climbing down the ladder leaning against the house, and Shea and Jasper spilled out of the back door just as he set his booted feet on the ground.
With a grin, he retrieved a navy blue T-shirt from the sawhorse he must have draped it over before the climb, tugged it on over his head. The hard muscles of his abdomen rippled as he completed the process.
Jasper trotted circles around Joslyn, barking excitedly.
Shea, clad in jeans and a loose pink T-shirt, laughed and ordered kindly, “Jasper, chill.”
Joslyn wrenched her eyes away from Slade’s midsection, but not quite quickly enough. The spark in his eyes, bluer than his shirt, said he’d caught her staring.
She blushed as a melting sensation warmed between her hip bones, but she managed a smile as Opal stepped forward in her colorful dress and a pair of crepe-soled shoes, holding out a hand to the teenager.
“I’m Opal,” she said. “You must be Shea.”
Shea nodded, clearly pleased, and shook hands with Opal. “Nice to meet you, Mrs.—?”
“Just Opal,” Opal replied. “Unless, of course, you want me to call you Miss Barlow?”
Shea’s glance at Slade was brief, but Joslyn noticed the fleeting expression of sadness in the girl’s pale violet eyes. “My last name might have been ‘Barlow,’ if Dad had ever gotten around to adopting me while he and Mom were still married. It’s Tarrington, by default.”
Slade’s mouth quirked at that statement, but he didn’t comment.
“But I’d like you to call me ‘Shea,’” the teenager finished, smiling at Opal.
“Then we’re agreed,” Opal answered, with gentle humor. Joslyn knew that, behind those dark, wise eyes, Opal’s sharp brain was sifting and sorting through all the nuances of the dynamics between Shea and Slade. “You call me Opal, and I’ll call you Shea.”
Shea nodded. “Come inside and see the house,” she said, including Joslyn in the invitation by catching her gaze and holding it for a moment.
Joslyn found herself liking the girl even more than she had on their first meeting. Sure, Shea was probably on her best behavior, but Joslyn sensed her good heart, her intelligence and her love for her stepfather, the man she called “Dad.”
Shea and Opal led the way, with Jasper behind them and Joslyn and Slade bringing up the rear.
His hand rested lightly on the small of Joslyn’s back with a sort of easy solicitude that made her feel safe even as her senses rioted behind what she hoped was a cool exterior.
“Don’t mind the mess,” Shea sang cheerfully as they entered the kitchen. It looked cleaner than it had on Joslyn’s first visit but much more cluttered, with boxes and various grocery items stacked everywhere.
“Never met the mess I couldn’t clean up,” Opal said, looking around.
It was easy enough to picture the woman presiding over this kitchen and the rest of the house, too. She’d have every inch of the place in spit-shined order before the end of the fir
st week, if she accepted Slade’s job offer.
“Wait till you see the rest of it before you say that,” Shea teased, her tone sunny, musical, as she and Opal and the dog continued the tour.
Slade and Joslyn wound up standing in the kitchen, just the two of them. Alone.
Joslyn backed up and found herself pressing against the edge of one of the counters.
Slade stood practically toe-to-toe with her; she was aware of his hardness and his heat, his strength and his scent, in every cell of her body, every nook and crevice in her mind and her soul. A primitive yearning thrummed through her, a reverberation like the striking of a bass chord.
Never in this lifetime or, she suspected, any other, had she wanted a man the way she wanted Slade Barlow.
“Sooner or later,” he drawled, the sound of his voice coming to her as if through a pounding void, his mouth still quirked at one side but his eyes quizzical and wary, “we’re going to have to do something about this.”
“About—what?” Joslyn practically choked. She was terrified, but at the same time she knew for certain that if he started to move away, she would bunch both fists in the fabric of his sexy T-shirt and try to keep him right where he was.
His chuckle was a rasp, and there was a touch of irony in his tone when he replied, “About this.”
And then he kissed her.
Tentatively at first, then with a commanding hunger that made her breath catch and her knees go weak. His hands, first resting on the sides of her face, calloused and warm, moved to her waist, as if he’d sensed she needed help to stand.
Still, the kiss went on. Their tongues touched, sparred. Slade’s erection, pressed against her, felt fiery and demanding and huge. She wanted him inside her.
Overhead, Joslyn heard Opal and Shea’s footsteps on the second floor, the tone of their chatter, the rhythmic click of Jasper’s nails against the wooden planks.
Joslyn’s arms slipped around Slade’s neck, and he raised his mouth from hers just long enough to allow them each a breath and then kissed her again, even more deeply this time.
He drew back just as they heard Jasper start down the stairway that led from the kitchen to the upper hallway.
Slade was breathing hard, and Joslyn felt dazed, downright drunk. And more in need of this man’s intimate attentions than ever.
“Now what?” she whispered, as Jasper appeared in the kitchen, with Opal and Shea following close behind him.
Slade grinned, though he looked almost as rattled as Joslyn felt. “I have a few suggestions,” he told her, and his gaze lingered on her breasts for just a moment, clearly enjoying the sight of her nipples trying to press through the fabric of her top and the bra beneath it.
There was, of course, no time to ask what those suggestions might be, because Opal and Shea were back in the kitchen.
Slade had moved to stand behind a chair, and though his stance was casual, Joslyn knew what he was hiding. She could still feel the weight of it against her upper abdomen and her stomach.
Flushed, she scurried to the sink, turned on the faucet and began splashing her face with cold water. It was that or let Opal and the girl see everything—everything—in her burning cheeks and hot eyes.
“Are you feeling all right, Jossie?” Opal asked, managing to sound concerned and amused, both at once.
Joslyn remained with her back to the room, her face dripping cold well water, and turned off the faucet. “No,” she said, though it wasn’t an entirely truthful answer, because, overheated as she was, there was also a strange and very powerful sense of jubilant anticipation building inside her. “I think I might be coming down with something.”
She forced herself to turn around, swabbing at her face with a wad of paper towels plucked from the roll on the counter, just in time to lock gazes with Slade.
Still standing behind the kitchen chair over by the table, he looked back at her over one broad shoulder, his eyes twinkling. “Maybe you ought to go right to bed,” he said easily.
If Joslyn had been closer, and if she’d been inclined toward physical violence, which she wasn’t, thank you very much, she’d have slapped Sheriff Slade Barlow across the face. Hard.
“Well,” Opal said, mercifully ebullient, “I like what I see. Shea’s a fine girl, and this house needs me. If that job offer is still open, I accept.”
Slade turned back to face Opal. “When can you start?” he asked.
Shea gave a squeal of delight, and Jasper added a happy yelp.
“Tomorrow,” Opal replied, looking around again, taking in the boxes and the groceries and all the rest. “And that’s none too soon, from the looks of this place.”
Slade laughed. “Fine,” he said, while Joslyn remained behind him, leaning against the counter, trying to recover her composure.
“Tomorrow?” she finally managed. “Opal, you just got to Parable—”
“And I’ll be here, which means you and I will have plenty of chances to get together,” Opal reasoned kindly. With that, she turned to Slade. “I’ll need a car of some kind,” she added. She’d never been shy. “A station wagon or a van will do. It doesn’t have to be new, but I can’t drive anything but an automatic.”
“Done,” Slade said.
“Now,” Opal continued, rubbing her hands together, “where will I sleep?”
Shea and Slade conferred at that point, agreeing that the big bedroom down the hall from the kitchen would probably be best for Opal.
“But there’s only one bathroom in this whole place,” Shea contributed, looking worried, in case that turned out to be a deal breaker.
“I reckon we’ll manage,” Opal replied gently.
Looking at Opal and Shea, the way they interacted even though they’d just met, gave Joslyn a sweet pang in the innermost regions of her heart. She saw her own younger self in the girl, a stepdaughter as she herself had been, never completely sure where she fit into the structure of the family, very much in need of the older woman’s strong, steady affection and quiet attentiveness.
“Can I drive the station wagon, too?” Shea wanted to know. “I have my license, you know.”
“If you’re with Opal or me,” Slade told the child. “Like I said before, I want to see what kind of driver you are before I turn you loose on Parable County.”
Shea waved her stepfather’s words off with a dismissive motion of one hand, but her eyes told a different story. She adored the man.
“I suppose you’re going to be just as stubborn about the horse,” Shea challenged next, setting her hands on her hips.
“Maybe even more so,” Slade said.
Shea gave a put-upon sigh, but the light in her eyes shone as brightly as ever. “I’m getting a horse,” she told Opal and Joslyn excitedly. “Of my own. Dad’s buying one for himself, too. We have to keep them at Whisper Creek, though, because our barn is unsafe.”
By then, Joslyn was ready to flee. She was flushed and achy and anxious, and it surely showed on the outside.
Anyway, Slade was using up all the air in the room, leaving her breathless. Joslyn heard his voice in her head. I have a few suggestions. A hot shiver went through her. “We’d better be getting back to town,” she said.
“I made up a batch of my special spaghetti and meatball casserole this afternoon,” Opal announced to all and sundry. “Slade, why don’t you and Shea come, too, and sit down to supper with us. It’ll give you a chance to sample my cooking.”
Joslyn fastened her gaze to the floor. Slade I-have-a-few-suggestions Barlow, in close proximity? Probably for several hours? Yikes!
“Yes!” Shea chimed in.
“Thanks, Opal,” Slade said thoughtfully. Joslyn knew he was looking at her—she could feel it—but for the life of her she couldn’t raise her eyes to meet his. “If you’re sure it wouldn’t be any trouble—”
“No trouble,” Opal said, beaming.
Give me strength, Joslyn thought. Then she made herself smile in a way that took in both Slade and Shea, and she nodd
ed, said stupidly, “Good—that will be—nice.”
“Okay,” Slade said, more breathing the word than speaking it. “Give us half an hour to get cleaned up, and we’ll be on our way.”
“We’ll eat at Kendra’s,” Opal specified, as Shea hurried off, Jasper clattering after her, probably so she could stake first claim on the bathroom.
“We’ll be there,” Slade confirmed.
Joslyn scurried for the back door and practically ran to the car.
“Girl,” Opal demanded, when she caught up and settled herself into the passenger seat. “What’s gotten into you? You ran out of that kitchen like it was on fire.”
It was, Joslyn thought. We’re talking flash point here.
“You’re imagining things,” she replied, without so much as a glance in Opal’s direction.
Opal gave a low chortle. “Oh, no, I’m not,” she said.
All the way back to town, Joslyn racked her brain.
What was she going to wear?
* * *
THE BATHROOM WAS STILL steamy from Shea’s recent shower when Slade’s turn came. He stood in front of the sink, wiped a circle in the glass door of the medicine cabinet and looked into his own face, five o’clock shadow and all.
“Who are you?” he asked, his tone gruff. “And what have you done with Slade Barlow?”
Damned if he hadn’t practically tackled Joslyn out there in the kitchen earlier, kissing her the way he had. Twice.
Not only that, but he’d talked some trash, too. All but told Joslyn straight out that he meant to bed her at the first viable opportunity. That much was true, but still. He could have been subtler about it.
He turned away from his scowling image, shoving a hand through his gritty, sweat-dampened hair, and leaned into the shower stall to turn the faucets on, full blast. Stripped while he waited for the spray to go from freezing cold to lukewarm—Shea had already emptied the hot water tank, apparently.
The pipes rattled behind the wall, reminding him that this was an old house, and there were thousands of things that could go wrong with it.
Grimly, Slade stepped under the showerhead, reached for a bar of soap and lathered himself from head to foot. Stood still as the chilly water sluiced over him, rinsing away the suds.
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