“I wouldn’t be, honest. Trish even asked me to help.”
“I especially don’t want you getting in Trish’s way. She looks like she’s got more than she can handle as it is.”
“Aw, Mom—”
“I really don’t want to have this argument again.” Ellie closed her eyes for a moment to block out her daughter’s mutinous glare. “I came up to say good night. Will and I are heading out to round up some more stock for the second unit work in the morning.”
Jody tossed the magazines on the nightstand. “Gran made one of your favorites.”
“I know. Lasagna.” Ellie bent down to smack a loud kiss on Jody’s head. “Have seconds for me, okay?”
“All right. Night.”
“Night.” Ellie hesitated in the doorway, knowing she’d mangled another moment and wishing she could start fresh. There was one edict she could reconsider: her ban on movie meddling. Keeping Jody away from the film crew made her a virtual prisoner in her own house. “Tell you what. If you can haul your butt out of bed in time, I’ll take you with me to watch them film.”
“Really?”
“You have to promise to stay close and do exactly what I tell you.”
“I promise.” Jody jumped off the bed and threw her arms around Ellie’s waist. Her scent was powdery cologne and bubble gum, and her head bumped Ellie’s chin. So tall, so soon. So scary. “Thanks, Mom.”
Ellie wrapped her arms around her daughter. “You won’t be thanking me when I wake you up before the crack of dawn.”
“Yes I will.”
“We’ll see.” Ellie squeezed her tight. “Gotta go.”
“Bye, Mom.” Jody squeezed her back. “Love you.”
“Love you, too.” Ellie held her breath and held on tight. She didn’t want to be the first to let go.
JENNA TUCKED THE TEA TOWELS neatly into the proper drawer and sighed with satisfaction as she glanced around the tidy space. Her kitchen, her refuge, done up in cheery yellows and warm, honey-toned woods. She spent her days keeping her little family and her small corner of the world just as tidy, just as cheery. The soothing routines had been her salvation since her husband had died, and she clung to them still.
She moved about the room, pulling supplies out of storage, and then eased into the familiar routine of fixing one of Will’s favorites: roast beef on sourdough with plenty of plain yellow mustard.
She’d tried one of those gourmet condiments once, about a year ago, to spice up his fare. He’d bitten into his sandwich and chewed for a while, his face creasing in that slow smile of his. “Pretty fancy stuff for a fellow like me,” he’d said. “My taste buds don’t quite know what hit ’em.”
“Don’t you like it?” she’d asked, more anxious than a change in mustard merited, her anticipation squeezing her heart tighter than one of Will’s smiles deserved.
“Didn’t say I don’t.” He’d taken another bite, chewed and swallowed. “Didn’t say I do.” And then he’d winked at her, and Jenna had fled into her kitchen to hide a blush and promised herself the fancy mustard would get used in some other way.
It was still sitting there, tucked away in the back of a refrigerator shelf, taunting her. Just like Will’s presence in her life—his slow smiles, his sly winks, his yearning glances. She was a widow three years past the worst of the grieving, a woman twenty years past the peak of her potential, and she had no business being taunted by anything, or anyone, at all.
Especially not by a younger man, a man who had been her son’s best friend. A man young enough to be wanting children, young enough to raise a family of his own. Or so she told herself when those warming, softening, liquid sensations flowed through her body.
Just another form of taunting. Just another set of those cruel tricks nature liked to play on women of a certain age. Well, she was too smart to fall for a menopausal malfunction like temporary insanity. She had plenty of chores and plenty of responsibilities—with a few extra duties tossed in, what with that film crew camped outside her front door. There were too many truly important things crowding into her life these days for her to spare one moment daydreaming over the ranch foreman’s flirting.
She reached into her tin bread box for some extra-wide slices of sourdough. The back door opened and she heard a familiar heavy step behind her. “Jenna.”
He stole her breath with the way he said her name. She glanced over her shoulder at him, at his rangy height and his rugged features, and waited for the tingly pressure in her chest to subside. “Will.”
He removed his hat and dropped it over one of the ladder-back chairs clustered around a scarred oak table, and she turned back to her task. The solid thumps of his boot heels drew near, and his leathery scent competed with the tang of the mustard, and his warm, moist breath washed across the nape of her neck. She bit the inside of her lip against the shock waves that rolled through her and leaned a bit away from him to keep her knees steady against the cabinet.
A big, warm hand settled on her shoulder. “Is that for me?”
“Heard you were going to be out late.”
His hand slid down her arm to rest over hers on the bread knife, and oh, my, that slow stroke cut right through her best intentions, settling in deep and smoldering in hidden places. But her hand was no longer that of a young girl. And she shouldn’t be experiencing the feelings and flushes of a young girl, either. She didn’t understand how she could be, when her body was drying up inside, when she was as emptied out and brittle as an old corn husk. She was a fragile, arid, fifty-five-year-old ghost of herself.
“Jenna,” he whispered.
She closed her eyes to shut it all away. “It’s just a sandwich, Will.”
“If you say so. But you know me and my notions. I like to think some things are more than what they seem. Like that sandwich. It could be so much more. Everything could be so much more.” He turned his head, a fraction of an inch, so his lips brushed at her hair as he spoke. “Just say the word.”
CHAPTER THREE
YES, WHISPERED A GIRLISH corner of Jenna’s heart. It’s too soon, nagged the doubting voice in her mixed-up mind. She froze, afraid to shatter the moment or upend the fragile balance of her ambivalence. The tiniest motion, the merest notion might tip the scales too far to ever get her life on the level again.
She sucked a deep breath into her hollow, brittle core and shoved it out with an empty, stilted cheerfulness. “I made some cookies today. Cinnamon oatmeal. I’ll pack some of those in with the sandwich.”
He laced his fingers through hers and squeezed her hand with the gentleness that was as much a part of him as the bronzed skin that stretched over his prominent cheekbones and the blue-black hair that brushed along his shirt collar. “Thank you, Jenna,” he said and stepped away.
The gap between them yawned wider than mere inches of space. “You’ve nothing to thank me for,” she said.
Nothing. It seemed that was all she ever offered, and yet he took it. He lapped it up, every stingy drop of it, and waited and watched for more of the same. She wanted to curse him for his patience, and curse herself for her cowardice while she left him in limbo.
She busied herself arranging slices of beef on slabs of bread. “How are things going?”
“Ellie’s doing fine,” he said, answering another question Jenna had meant to ask. “Maybe you could talk her into going to town with you sometime next week, to get her out of here and get her mind off her troubles for a few hours.”
“And get her out of your hair?”