“I can take care of it later this afternoon.”
“I’m out of clean socks.”
“Oh.” If that was what he needed to be on his way, she would have run a load with a solitary pair of socks—because she needed him to be on his way, at least for a while. She needed time to think. “All right. We can start the machine now.”
While he went to the living room for his bag, she crossed the kitchen. That morning, she had deposited a half-filled basket of the kids’ clothes on the floor near the closet. After she finished loading detergent into the machine, she turned back for the basket—and nearly collided with Jason.
He stood bare-chested in front of her, the shirt he had been wearing dangling from his hand, a pile of other clothes held in one arm. A scattering of dark hair covered his chest. Below, hard abs and a narrow waist drew her gaze downward to the worn-soft waistband of his jeans. The sight left her heart pounding. A jolt of memory stole her breath.
“I just saw I’m out of T-shirts, too,” he said.
Mouth dry, she nodded, snatching the shirt from his hand and taking the pile of clothing from him. After tossing everything into the washer, she closed the lid and tried for a steadying breath. Then she edged a half step away from him. “I’ll get you one of my sleep shirts. They’re just plain T’s, extra-large.”
“Thanks.”
She nodded again and left the room, trying not to look as if she were on the run. But she hurried down the hall at double-speed, one hand flapping near her face to cool herself. No worries about chills now. No way.
The only thought in her mind at this moment centered on what else the man had in his duffel bag.
If he discovered he was out of clean underwear, she was in big trouble.
* * *
JASON KILLED A couple of hours and a half tank of gas roaming the outlying roads around Cowboy Creek.
He passed ranches where he’d once thought he might settle in as a wrangler, and eventually he slowed the pickup to a crawl when he neared the gates of Garland Ranch.
He didn’t want to go chasing Jed down so soon when he’d just seen the man the day before. And he sure didn’t want to barge in on the man’s family and friends, all of them hanging around to visit after the wedding...and one of them, at least, sleeping in the room meant to be his.
No matter. Layne’s couch had suited him just fine.
Last night, he’d have taken the armchair again without a word of protest, if need be. He tried not to think what that meant.
He didn’t want to go back to Layne’s at the moment, either. He checked the dashboard clock. Eleven fifteen. It had been a while since breakfast and was close enough to lunchtime to look for something to eat. The snack bar inside the Bowl-a-Rama opened early.
Back in town, he pulled into the parking lot of the bowling alley and slammed the driver’s door shut as if he could slam a lid on his memories of what had happened in Layne’s kitchen.
The sedan he had parked near sported the bumper sticker: My Grandchild’s an A+ Student at Cowboy Creek Elementary.
He laughed derisively. No one would catch his grandmother with that sticker, or his mother, for that matter—even if he’d gotten the grades to earn it.
Lack of interest more than lack of brainpower had made him slack off in classes when he should’ve been applying himself. He and Layne had already been a couple long before high school, but it wasn’t till then that he’d started walking that fine line between pass and fail. She had tried to help, and he’d eagerly signed on for their study sessions. But his enthusiasm had nothing to do with the homework assignments. Still, he’d left school with a diploma in his hand.
Scott was a bright kid. With luck, he’d take after Layne with her interest in learning and do well in school.
Inside the Bowl-a-Rama, he went directly to the Lucky Strike. The snack bar was overlaid with the familiar scents of frying grease, coffee left on the burner too long and bowling shoes that had been worn by too many feet. Behind the counter stood a man wrapped in a once-white bibbed apron already streaked with grease and ketchup.
“You still slinging burgers here, Mel?” He rested his crossed arms on the edge of the counter.
The older man squinted at him, then shook his head. “Jason McAndry. Jed told me you were back in town.”
What else had the man said? Was everyone in Cowboy Creek now aware he’d come back? Were they talking about his shortcomings and blaming him for the way he’d left Layne? “And I don’t just sling burgers,” Melvin was saying. “I own the place now. So, what are you up to these days, chasing the girls or the bulls?”
He laughed. “Both. Every chance I get.”
“Then what the hell you doing in Cowboy Creek?”
The smile slid from his face. “What are you talking about?”
“Layne. That’s who I’m talking about. She’s the only girl in town you ever chased. She brings her boy in once in a while on half-price days, if she’s got time off from SugarPie’s. That’s more than anybody sees you doing.”
Damn. He gritted his teeth. Sugar Conway and Shay O’Neill and now good old Mel. What kind of story had Layne told the folks in this town?
Then again, the true story was bad enough. And after four years of skating on his responsibilities, he should have expected everyone to rally around Layne.
“You want something from the grill?” Melvin asked.
“Burger. With fries. And a large sweet tea.” He’d already been condemned. He ought to be entitled to a last meal.
Melvin turned away. Jason took a deep breath.
Earlier that morning, he had made a quick stop at the sandwich shop for a fresh doughnut and a coffee to go. At that hour, he’d known Sugar would be tied up with the bakery half of the business and unlikely to step foot in the adjoining shop. Not that he would have run from a confrontation with the woman, if it had come to one.
No, it was thoughts of Layne he was trying to outrun. Thoughts of how she’d taken one look at him with his shirt off and hightailed it out of the kitchen and down the hall. Thoughts of how hard he’d struggled to keep from following her down that hall and into her bedroom.
He needed some time away from her. Some distance from the familiar look in her eyes and the flush in her cheeks and especially from the hitch in her breath that had always revealed what she was thinking.
Things he’d been thinking much too often, lately, too.
But he had to keep his focus on his goal. He needed to earn her trust, not find his way back into her bed—no matter how enticing that idea had become.
Melvin set a tray with the tea he’d ordered on the counter in front of him. “I remember the days you two used to come in here. Other than the fights, you looked like a sure bet to me. I’d’a thought you both coulda worked things out.”
He wasn’t the only one who’d thought that. “Yeah...well, I guess you’d have gotten it wrong.” His first taste of the tea was sweet, cold and unsatisfying.
With a flourish, Melvin slid the paper plate containing his burger and fries onto the tray. “Then I’ll say what else I’m thinking, and I’m not wrong about this. Your mama’s long gone from town and I don’t know why else you’d come back, unless it has to do with Layne. That girl’s got lots of friends here, and they’ll be watching out for her.”
“They already are,” he confirmed. He nodded his goodbye and found a table at the far end of the snack area. The burger was just the way he liked it, hot and loaded with ketchup, and yet as unsatisfying as the tea.
He could blame that more on Melvin’s attitude—and Sugar’s and Shay’s and Layne’s—than on the food and drink. But he had to be honest. His dissatisfaction stemmed from a whole other source.
When he’d woken up that morning, he hadn’t intended to leave Layne’s apartment. He had planned to stick to hi
s guns and spend the time with Scott, regardless of the part-time and supervised arrangement she’d forced him to agree to. Yet, as soon as her dryer had spit out his load of clothes, he had done some hightailing of his own.
He’d put space between them—just what she had looked for all along. She wanted the kids to herself. Or at least, not near him.
It still burned him to know Layne wouldn’t let him see Scott on his own. All right, he hadn’t talked to the boy until this week. But despite what she’d said at the Big Dipper, surely considering the days he’d spent with her and the kids, he ought to have earned some level of her trust.
That looked to be a long shot since even the whole danged town seemed unwilling to give him any benefit of the doubt.
The longer he stayed here, the more he was coming to realize folks had cause for thinking the way they did. Still, he’d hang in there and keep trying. Because he wanted to earn Layne’s trust—and more.
He wanted her to forgive him for what he had done.
* * *
AFTER LUNCH, LAYNE and Scott had just put their jackets on to go for a walk when Jason turned up again. While he’d been gone that morning, Scott had asked about him several times. She had assured him Jason would come back. In a way, she might have been reassuring herself. She couldn’t bear the thought of him treating her son the way he had treated her—walking away and then staying away for years.
Overjoyed to see Jason, Scott demanded he go along with them. In turn, Jason insisted on pushing Jill’s carriage. She knew when she was outnumbered. Besides, their matching stubborn expressions nearly broke her heart.
“We seem to be establishing a routine,” she said to him as they left the apartment. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that.
“Routines are for old folks,” he said. “Isn’t that what we always used to say?”
“Old married folks,” she said, trying to hide her dismay at his offhand reminder of their past. Back then, she had imagined them staying together and becoming that long-married pair. She had always thought he wanted that, too.
“Go to the park?” Scott asked.
“Not today,” Jason said flatly.
Prepared to give that same answer, she had already opened her mouth. She snapped her jaw closed again. His expressionless tone had been more of a giveaway than if he had stressed the words. He was thinking about her unwillingness to let him take Scott to the park on his own.
Maybe the opportunity to be with their son had meant more to Jason than she had thought. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that, either. And yet she couldn’t deny how much it bothered her that he refused to go the park with them as a...as a group.
When they reached the corner, Jason turned in the opposite direction.
The sun was hot on her head and shoulders, making her overly warm in her jacket. Reluctantly she admitted to herself she was glad he’d taken the reins of the carriage...so to speak. She felt stronger than she had the day before, but she certainly wasn’t up to running a marathon. Or even pushing a baby carriage for more than a few hundred yards.
They walked for a while in silence, except for Scott’s occasional questions. Eventually, they turned down a street of A-framed houses with small yards in front.
“You used to live down this street, didn’t you?” she asked. She had never visited Jason at home. He hadn’t come to her house much, either, for that matter. They would hang out at SugarPie’s or the Big Dipper. Less often, they would meet at the library, where she would try to coax him into studying while trying to resist his plans of stealing kisses in the book stacks.
She had met his mother and her boyfriend shortly before she and Jason were married and had only seen the woman a few times after that. Once he left town, their brief connection ended abruptly, too.
“It’s the blue one at the end,” he muttered.
They walked slowly down the block. The house before Jason’s was painted lemon yellow with white woodwork and lacy wooden trim along the edge of the porch roof. It looked like a house from one of Scott’s storybooks. The woman who stood sweeping the porch looked like a storybook character herself, with her wire-rimmed glasses, soft white hair arranged in a bun and a calico apron worn over a pale blue cardigan. She saw them, waved and smiled. “Hello, Layne,” she called. “And Scotty.”
“Hi, Mrs. Browley,” she said.
“I heard you weren’t feeling well, you poor thing. Why don’t you come on in and sit for a while? I’ve got cookies fresh out of the oven. They won’t hold a candle to Sugar’s, I know, but a chocolate chip is a chocolate chip any day, I always say.”
“Cookies, Mommy! Please?”
Smiling, Layne nodded at Scott. “Thanks, Mrs. Browley. We’d love to stop in.”
“I’ll leave the door open and go put the kettle on.” She set her broom against the porch railing and went into the house.
“Mrs. Browley is a regular at SugarPie’s,” Layne said quietly to Jason as he turned the carriage up the front walk. “She’s also very lonely, I think. Her husband died about five years ago. But you would know that, since she was your next-door neighbor.”
“Yeah. Mrs. B and her husband were always good people.” He said the words almost grudgingly.
“She still is.” They followed the sound of the older woman’s voice down the short hallway to the kitchen in the rear of the house.
“I hope you don’t mind if we have our tea party in here. It’ll save us carrying everything out to the parlor. If you’ll just help me shift this table, young man—” She cut herself off and stared. “Why, Jason McAndry, is that really you?”
“Yes, ma’am, it is.” As if he felt uncomfortable under her scrutiny, he turned away to hook his Stetson on one of the kitchen chairs.
“Well, what a nice surprise. Let’s get this table out from against the wall and we can sit down and have a real chat.”
The kettle began to whistle. Without a word, he rearranged her kitchen set to accommodate them all around the small table. Layne removed Jill’s blanket and assisted Scott with his jacket.
After they were seated with steaming mugs of tea in front of them and a heaping platter of cookies in the center of the table, Mrs. Browley said, “This is a treat, having you all here. And you’re saving me from having to eat every one of these cookies myself. I would, too.” She laughed. “It’s lovely having you visiting again, Jason. I’m afraid your mother never did say where you’d gone when you left...”
The half question hung in the air. Layne wondered whether or not he would answer. He still seemed uncomfortable. She couldn’t imagine why, when no one could be less threatening than grandmotherly Mrs. Browley.
“Texas,” he said finally. “I’ve got a job wrangling at a ranch out near Dallas and spend the rest of my time competing in rodeos.”
“Well, that’s just wonderful. My husband used to say rodeo was dangerous work but nice if you can win in it.”
Jason smiled. “That’s true.”
“And do you win?”
He shrugged. “My share.”
He said it so casually, and yet years ago, it was exactly because he didn’t win in it that they had faced their biggest problems. Rodeo was an expensive sport, especially when you didn’t have sponsors or bring home the biggest purses. And when it took you away from the full-time job and you had bills to pay and a baby on the way.
“I haven’t heard a word from your mother since she left, either,” Mrs. Browley said. “She and Lou broke up, and a good thing, too, though of course, that’s not for me to say.” She glanced at Scott, who was busy devouring a cookie, and lowered her voice. “The yelling and carrying on that went on in that house, it was pitiful.” She shook her head. “As sorry as I was to see you move on, Jason, I think in the long run it was better for you than moving back home.”
Maybe that was why Ja
son had never taken her to his house. For the first time, she understood his home life might have been almost as bad as hers. Yet he had shouldered his troubles without saying a word, all the while listening to her, making more of an effort to support her than she had realized.
“But don’t mind me,” Mrs. Browley went on. “I’m just talking out of school. My husband used to say I had so many opinions about people in this town, I should have run for mayor.”
“You’d be a good candidate, I’m sure,” Layne said warmly.
Beside her, Jason reached for a cookie and sat munching it while she and Mrs. Browley—or primarily Mrs. Browley—carried the conversation.
When the platter was cleared off down to the last crumb, the older woman beamed. “I’m just going to go right ahead and send the rest of the cookies home with you. I can bake another batch later. And you’re all welcome to come by again anytime for more.”
“Tomorrow?” Scott said.
At that, even Jason laughed.
“I don’t know about tomorrow,” Layne told Scott. “But we’ll definitely stop by to say hello again sometime.”
“Good enough,” Mrs. Browley said. “Now I know to expect company, I’ll make sure to keep the cookie jar filled.”
As they left Mrs. Browley waving goodbye to them from the porch, Layne glanced toward the blue house next door. But when they reached the sidewalk, Jason turned the carriage resolutely in the other direction as if he didn’t want to walk past his former home. Or didn’t want to revive any more memories.
Chapter Eleven
When they arrived home again, Jason and Scott immediately settled down in the living room.
“I’m taking this little girl in for a change,” Layne told them. But once she lay Jill in the crib, the baby began to squirm, pursing her lips and turning her head toward the mattress. “Uh-oh. Mommy knows those signs. Somebody wants to eat.”
Tired from their walk, Layne curled up on Scott’s bed and held Jill close.
The afternoon with the four of them together had eased some of her tension. To her surprise, she had begun to feel comfortable with having Jason around the kids. Unfortunately, she was also beginning to feel much too comfortable with him herself.
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