Even though he’d guessed that the woman was deliberately baiting him, his blood had simmered and his temper had bordered on exploding. It was an interesting turn of events. He hadn’t expected to react so strongly to a woman ever again.
Oh, he’d been attracted to Janet Runningbear the moment he’d set eyes on her. He’d been convinced, though, that he’d deliberately set out to settle her into a corner of his life just to relieve the boredom with an occasional feisty exchange. She was doing that, all right, and more. In spades.
She was stirring up emotions he’d thought had died the day he’d buried his wife just over a year ago. He wasn’t so sure he wanted that kind of turmoil.
Unfortunately, he was equally uncertain whether he had any choice in the matter. It had been his observation that when a man was hit by a bolt of lightning—literally or in the lovestruck sense of the phrase—there was no point in trying to get out of the way after the fact.
Given all that, he was almost relieved when Cody announced that the car’s air conditioner was working. Janet declined a halfhearted invitation to stay for supper, insisting that she and Jenny had to get home. Harlan waved them off with no more than a distracted reminder to be there at dawn again.
“Well, well, well,” Cody muttered beside him.
Harlan frowned at his son’s knowing expression. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Just that it’s downright interesting to watch a woman twist you this way and that without even trying.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Cody grinned. “Then you’re in an even more pitiful state of denial than I imagined. Want me to call in Jordan and Luke? Among us we probably have enough experience with women to give you any advice you need. Goodness knows we denied our feelings long enough to drive just about everyone around us to distraction. No sense in you doing the same thing, when we can save you all that time.”
“Go away.”
“Not till I’m through watching the entertainment,” Cody shot back as he sauntered over to his pickup. “‘Night, Daddy. Sweet dreams.”
Sweet? Harlan could think of a dozen or more words to describe the kind of dreams Janet Runningbear inspired and “sweet” would be very low on the list. Provocative. Seductive. Steamy. Erotic. He had to go inside the air-conditioned house just to cool off from the images.
He consoled himself with the possibility that their first two meetings might have been aberrations. Boredom could play funny tricks on a man. The first thing that came along to relieve it might get exaggerated in importance.
Yes, indeed, that had to be it, he decided as he settled into a chair in his office with a book he’d been wanting to read for some time. A good, page-turning thriller was exactly what he needed tonight. That ought to get his juices flowing better than a leggy, sassy woman.
But the words swam in front of his eyes. His thoughts kept drifting to the enigmatic woman who presented such a placid, reserved facade. He’d enjoyed sparking confusion in those dark, mysterious eyes. He’d relished making a little color climb into her cheeks. Janet Runningbear wasn’t nearly as serene around him as she wanted desperately for him to believe.
He also had the feeling, virtually confirmed by her earlier, that there were secrets to be discovered, hidden reasons behind her decision to relocate to Texas.
As a kid he’d been fascinated by stories of buried treasure. He’d spent endless hours searching for arrowheads left behind by Native Americans who’d roamed over the very land on which White Pines had been built. Somewhere in the house, probably in Cody’s old room, there was a cigar box filled with such treasures.
If Janet Runningbear had secrets, he would discover them eventually. He’d make a point of it.
And then what? He wasn’t the kind of man who courted a woman just for sport. He never had been. He’d tried to instill the same set of values in his sons, tried to teach them never to play games with women who didn’t fully understand the rules.
Everything about Janet that he’d seen so far shouted that she was a woman deserving of respect, a single parent struggling to put a new life together for herself and her daughter. If he was only looking for diversion, would it be fair to accomplish it at the expense of a woman like that? It was the one question for which he had an unequivocal answer: no!
So, he resolved, he would tame his natural impatience and take his time with her, measuring his feelings as well as hers. It was the only just way to go.
But even as he reached that carefully thought-out decision, the part of him that leapt to impetuous, self-confident conclusions told him he was just delaying the inevitable. He’d made up his mind the minute he’d walked into her office that he wanted her and nothing—not his common sense, not her resistance—was going to stand in his way for long. “Where the devil have you been?” Mule asked in his raspy, cranky voice when Harlan finally got back into town on Saturday after four whole days of trying to keep Jenny Runningbear in line. “Ain’t seen you since that gal stole your truck.”
Mule’s expression turned sly. “Word around town is that you’ve got her working out at White Pines.”
Harlan tilted his chair back on two legs and sipped on the icy mug of beer Rosa had set in front of him the minute he sat down. “Is that what you’re doing with your time these days, sitting around gossiping like an old woman?” he asked Mule.
“It’s about all there is to do since you dropped out of our regular poker game to play nursemaid to that brat.”
Harlan accepted the criticism without comment. Mule grumbled about everything from the weather to politics. His tart remarks about Harlan’s perceived defection were pretty much in character and harmless.
Mule’s watery hazel eyes narrowed. “I don’t hear you arguing none.”
“What would be the point? You think you know everything there is to know about the situation.”
“Meaning, you think I don’t, I suppose. Okay, so fill me in. Why’d you hire her?”
“Because she owes me a lot of money for repairs to my pickup,” he said simply. “You ought to know. I had it towed to your garage.”
“Ain’t had time to take a look at it,” Mule said.
“When are you planning to end this so-called vacation of yours?”
“Who says I am? I’m getting so I enjoy having nothing to do. Maybe I’ll just retire for good.”
Harlan nodded. “You’re old enough, that’s for sure. What are you now, eighty?”
Mule regarded him with obvious indignation. “Sixty-seven, which you know danged well.”
“Of course,” he said. “Must be that boredom ages a person, lets his mind go weak.”
“There ain’t a thing wrong with my mind.”
“Then I’d think you’d be itching to tackle a job like that truck of mine.”
“I’ll get to it one of these days,” Mule said. “When I’m of a mind to.”
“If you don’t plan on going back to work, maybe you ought to sell the garage. The town needs a good mechanic. Cody had to fix Janet Runningbear’s air-conditioning the other night, because you’re on this so-called extended vacation of yours.”
“Bet he ruined it,” Mule commented with derision. “Air-conditioning’s tricky.”
“It’s been working ever since,” Harlan said, deliberately setting out to goad the old coot into going back to the job he’d loved. “You know Cody has a way with mechanical things. He’s probably better than you ever were and he’s not even in the business. Maybe I’ll have my truck towed out to White Pines