“What’s that?” She reached out, almost touched the scar, but stopped herself just in time.
Dillon knew what she meant. He touched the scar himself, lifting his dark brows at her in silent question.
She nodded in confirmation.
“A steer hooked me. Back when I was still riding the rodeos.”
“With its horn, you mean?”
“You got it. Ripped my lip in half. But that was fifteen years ago. It’s faded almost to nothing now.” He leaned in closer to her, so she could get a better look.
Cat leaned in, too, though she could see perfectly fine from right where she was. She realized that the gold specks in his eyes seemed to be glittering, like tiny flakes of pyrites in a mountain stream. And she also liked the smell of him. A clean smell, with a hint of something else, a little like cedar, tangy and sharp.
Right then, the door chimes rang.
Cat jerked bolt upright as a hot blush went shooting straight up to the roots of her hair.
“I...um...”
But Dillon seemed totally unconcerned. “Great. That’s probably the equipment for the gym.”
She took her cue from him. After all, if he thought nothing had happened, then nothing really had. Had it? She’d only leaned in close to look at that scar on his lip, that was all.
He smiled ruefully. “Either help me up from here—or answer that, will you?”
“Sure. No problem. I’ll get it.” She leapt to her feet and flew to the door.
It was the gym equipment. Since Dillon had to sign for it and show them where he wanted it, she helped him get up as soon as she let in the two delivery men.
The main living area of the house was upstairs, including the master suite. Downstairs was a central room off of which branched three more large rooms and two baths. One of those rooms had been intended for a gym; its walls were lined with mirrors. The equipment had to go in there.
Once everything was inside, it turned out that the delivery men actually were fully trained in assembly of the equipment. So Cat left Dillon to supervise them and went back to the upper level to tackle all the electronic gadgets that waited there.
By one in the afternoon, the delivery men took their leave and Cat had the chaos upstairs under control. She showed Dillon how to work all his new electronic toys, pointing out that he wouldn’t get anything but a few public stations on his fancy big screen until he either hooked up to cable or brought in that satellite dish he’d mentioned.
He said the dish was due this week. “And let’s have lunch. I’m starving.”
“I have a sandwich in my truck,” she said. “But aren’t we done for the day?”
He shook his head. “Don’t forget the wood. I like a fire, especially in the evenings. And I seem to have used up nearly all of what you split for me Friday.”
That was okay with Cat. As the hours added up, so did the money. “I’ll go eat and—”
“What do you mean, you’ll go eat?”
“I told you. I have a sandwich in my—”
“It’s probably peanut butter and jelly, right?”
She felt defensive. “What’s wrong with peanut butter and jelly?”
“So it is peanut butter and jelly.” He looked ridiculously proud of himself to have guessed. “I knew it. And forget it. You’re not going to sit out there on your tailgate, eating peanut butter and jelly in the freezing cold.”
“This is silly. It’s not that cold. And I like peanut butter and jelly.”
“Fine. Save it for a snack later. I’m making lunch.”
“But I—”
“Forget arguing. I’m the boss. Don’t make a big deal out of this, all right?”
She looked at him measuringly for a moment, feeling one-upped somehow. She was suspicious. But why? He hadn’t been any more than casually friendly with her all morning. Had he?
Oh, what was the matter with her? There was nothing going on here. Wild Dillon McKenna had grown up into a very nice man who was paying her good money for honest work—and who was willing to throw a free lunch into the bargain.
She had to get real here. These misgivings she kept having about his motives were completely in her own mind. She was Cat Beaudine, after all. She knew the things people said about her when they thought she didn’t hear.
That she was tough and strong and someone you could count on. And about as feminine as Paul Bunyan. Men were her friends. Men were her equals. But men never looked at her the way she’d seen them look at her sisters—or even her mother, for that matter.
And there was no reason in the world why Dillon McKenna—who could probably have just about any available woman in the Western Hemisphere—would see her any differently than other men saw her.
She smiled at Dillon. “Well, thanks then. Lunch would be nice.”
After she had washed her hands in the half bath off the kitchen, she went and sat at the table. Dillon was just pulling a cooked, cut-up turkey out of the refrigerator.
“Where did you get that?”
“At the store.”
“All roasted and cut up like that?”
He confessed that he’d done the roasting and cutting up himself. “I like to cook. Especially lately. It’s one of the few things I can do for myself that hardly hurts at all.” He got out a cutting board and a big, gleaming knife and began slicing meat off the breast section. Cat’s stomach rumbled, the meat looked so good. He winked at her. “You should have seen me in my wheelchair, flying around the kitchen. I was impressive.”
“I’ll bet.”
When he had a nice, tall stack of meat sliced, he got out bread, mayonnaise and lettuce and assembled two fat, wonderful-looking sandwiches. With them, he offered pickles and cranberry sauce and tall glasses of milk.
“You were right,” she told him, after the first heavenly bite. “This beats the heck out of peanut butter and jelly.”
When lunch was over, Cat went outside and split wood for two hours, carefully re-covering the pile of logs when she was done. Then she carried what she’d split into the garage and stacked it against a wall, so that it would be protected from the elements as well as reasonably easy for Dillon to bring in.
By then, it was growing dark. She was ready to go home. She stuck her head in the kitchen door, thinking she’d just give a yell and tell Dillon she was leaving.
But he was nowhere in sight. When she called, she got no answer. She was forced to step inside.
“Dillon!” She moved through the big kitchen, into the main room. It was then that she heard music, coming from downstairs.
She followed the sound and found him in his newly set-up gym. He was wearing a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt, standing before one of the walls of floor-to-ceiling mirrors, doing bicep curls with a pair of fat dumbbells. On the floor at his feet was a portable tape player/radio—the kind that kids call a boom box. It was blaring out music by Talking Heads.
As soon as he saw Cat, Dillon put down the dumbbells and switched off the boom box. “Gotta get a stereo in here, too.” He straightened again and came toward her.
He was sweating. There were dark stains on his shirt—at the neck, chest, belly and beneath his arms. Little beads of moisture slid off his damp hair and tracked down his