Confusion shadowed her blue eyes momentarily, then cleared. “No. I’m not.”
It was an unimportant detail. She might as well be, for all it mattered. She was still a reporter snooping into his family’s lives. He was still lying to her with every breath he took. He couldn’t summon any respect for her or her job, and at the moment he was fresh out of it for himself, too.
Even so, it seemed harder to break her gaze than it should be. He managed by digging out his keys and turning to unlock the door. “Give me half an hour to clean up, then we’ll eat supper.”
“I can fix something—”
“It’s taken care of.” Leaving her at the foot of the steps, he went inside, closed and locked the door, then drew a deep breath. He needed a date. Soon.
He left his boots by the door, put a pan of Lucinda’s lasagna in the oven, tossed his clothes into the hamper, then stepped into the shower under a stream of cool water. Once his body temperature dropped below steaming, he warmed the water, then scrubbed away layers of grime. He also, for reasons he didn’t look at too closely, shaved before he got out.
With a towel wrapped around his middle, he went into his bedroom…and stopped a fair distance back from the south window. There he had a clear view of the big old blackjack and the Mustang—and Natalie and Jordan. She was removing items from the trunk—Tate recognized a laptop-computer carrying case slung over one shoulder—while Jordan walked in an admiring circle around the car. When she closed the trunk, he picked up a box of the type used to store files, and they started toward the house, talking easily. Of course, she was a reporter, paid for getting people to open up, and Jordan had never met a stranger in his life.
As they disappeared from sight, the phone beside the bed rang. Tate got it on the third ring, bracing it between his ear and shoulder while he started dressing. “Hello.”
It was Josh. “How’s it going?”
“So far, so good. How’s Grandpop?”
“Not feeling too hot. So far, he’s found fault with everything I’ve done—and he’s not even out of the hospital yet.”
Tate chuckled at the aggrieved tone of his brother’s voice. “I’d trade places with you in a heartbeat. I’d rather have Grandpop griping at me than Ms. Alabama following me around with all her questions.”
“I think for once I got the lesser of two evils. What’s the lady reporter like?”
“About what we expected,” Tate replied with a twinge of guilt. She was persistent and stubborn, as they’d known she would be. But she was also so much more.
“What’s the plan?”
His plan was to avoid any slipups, to be as truthful with Natalie as possible while pretending to be someone else, to not tell her too much and to not notice any more than necessary how pretty she was…how good she smelled…how he was a sucker for leggy redheads and Southern drawls.
“I’m not sure,” he hedged. “She’s coming over for dinner in a few minutes. I guess I’ll find out then. Tell Mom I love her, and Gran and Grandpop, too.”
“Sure. Tate…? Thanks.”
“Hey, Rawlinses stick together, right? See you.” Tate hung up, pulled on a T-shirt and combed his fingers through his hair, then headed for the kitchen. He was buttering a loaf of French bread when Jordan came in from the office. Natalie was two steps behind him.
“How was practice?”
“Okay.” Jordan took a carton of milk from the refrigerator, gave it a shake, then drained it straight from the carton.
It was a habit Lucinda had tried to break, but since it was one Tate shared, he let it slide, except for a comment for Natalie’s benefit. “We don’t drink out of the carton unless we know we’re going to finish it, do we, son?”
Too late—when Jordan’s gaze jerked to him—Tate remembered. A glance at Natalie, though, showed no reason to worry. Men called boys son. She obviously thought nothing of it.
“Hey, uh, Uncle J.T., can I get online until supper’s ready?” Jordan asked.
“Yeah, go ahead.”
Once he was gone from the room, Natalie came closer, leaning against the counter a few feet away. “Does he have any chores besides tinkering with old engines?”
“Are you kidding? He could run this place if he had to. There’s not a job here he can’t handle. After all, it’ll belong to him someday.”
“Along with any children you might have. But what if he doesn’t want to be a rancher?”
“He can be whatever he wants…but the land will be here for him.”
“It’s the Rawlins Ranch, right?” She waited for his nod. “Does the elder Rawlins—Tate’s father—mind that you’re a partner in his family’s spread?”
Tate opened a bottle of pop and started filling three glasses. This wasn’t the time to tell her that the only elder Rawlins around was his grandfather, that Rawlins was Lucinda’s family name and not that of her elder son’s father. As long as he could keep things straight in his head, she didn’t need to know all the details of his family’s lives. “T-Tate’s father can’t complain about me being a partner for several reasons. First, he hasn’t been around for a long time.” Truth—his old man had disappeared five months before he had appeared. He hadn’t offered to shoulder any responsibilities or pay any support. He’d kissed Lucinda goodbye and walked out the door. “Second, this place was never in his family. The Rawlinses of Rawlins Ranch are us—my mother, my brother, Jordan and me.”
“He calls you ‘uncle.’”
“Yeah? So?”
She shrugged. “No older than you are, I’d expect him to simply use your name.”
“I’m old enough to be his father.”
“Not quite. Not unless you discovered sex very young. Did you?”
Tate slowly looked at her. No one would guess, just by looking, that she’d asked such a provocative question, or raised his body temperature about twenty degrees, or made his throat clamp down so tightly that he wasn’t sure he could speak. No, she simply stood there, a bright splash of color and texture, cool, calm, unaffected.
“You tell me about your first time, and I’ll tell you about mine,” he said in a low, thick voice.
She moved, revealing an edge of restlessness that hadn’t been present earlier. “I’m not the subject of this book. No one’s interested in my first time.”
“I am.”
“You’d be bored.”
“Try me.”
She shuffled her feet, slid her hands behind her back, then clasped them in front of her. “I was nineteen. He was in too big a hurry. It was painful, messy and thoroughly unpleasant. End of story.”
“And I wasn’t bored at all.”
Her cheeks pink, she gestured. “Your turn.”
When the oven timer went off, he removed the lasagna and slid the bread under the broiler. He took plates from the cabinet, utensils from the drawer and serving utensils from another drawer. Out of diversions, finally he faced her. “I was seventeen, and I wasn’t in a hurry at all. It was better than I expected, not as good as it could be, and I enjoyed it thoroughly.”
She picked up one of the glasses and took a long drink of pop before continuing. “Jordan is only a year younger than you were then. Do you worry about him?”
“We’ve