“And you don’t like coffee,” he noted.
She furrowed her brow. “I like coffee.”
“You don’t.”
Clara narrowed her eyes. “You don’t know my life.”
“You don’t like coffee, you don’t like onions. You do like SpaghettiOs and apparently prefer Coke to beer.”
“Beer is gross,” she countered.
“Right, but SpaghettiOs are fine dining.” He shook his head. “Okay. You don’t like beer. What else don’t you like?”
“The list of what I like is shorter and takes less time,” she said.
“Okay. What do you like? Because if I’m going to bring you food sometimes, it would be nice if you didn’t have to tiptoe through your dinner like it was full of land mines.”
She sniffed. “Nobody said you had to bring me food. But if you must know, I like pasta as long as there are no onions. Or excess greens.”
“Hamburgers?”
She nodded. “Without lettuce.”
“What are your thoughts on kale?”
She frowned. “What are your thoughts on evil?”
“Chard?”
“Satan’s preferred salad fixing.”
“Do you like any kind of lettuce?”
She scowled. Then she realized that she was doing a very good impression of a cranky child. But, oh well, she didn’t like feeling she had to give an account of the things she enjoyed eating. No one had cared if she ate her vegetables for a long damn time.
“A salad with iceberg lettuce is fine,” she explained. “As long as it has cheese. And a lot of dressing. Good dressing, though. And not blue cheese.”
“I think I’m getting the picture. Pretty sure I can work with these instructions.”
“Pizza is good,” she said.
“Obviously. But pizza without beer?” She stared back at him blankly and he sighed heavily. “I’m going to have to stock my own, aren’t I?”
“Alternately, you could let me handle feeding myself, which I have done pretty successfully for the past ten years.”
“I think you and I might have different definitions of the word successful.”
She rolled her eyes and took an ostentatious sip of her Coke. “I didn’t ask for your definition of anything.”
“I’m going to get you eating less canned pasta.”
She squinted at him. “You’ll have to pry it from my cold dead hands.”
A smile shifted his handsome features, the expression as affecting as it was infuriating. “Lasagna?”
She narrowed her eyes. “Acceptable.”
“As long as there are no onions.”
“Obviously.”
“Save your canned food for an emergency. I’ll bring dinner tomorrow too.”
She rolled her eyes but continued eating in silence, putting her focus on making sure she didn’t get an undesirable bite again.
“What time do you get off tomorrow?” he asked.
The question jarred her focus away from her stew. “I’m off tomorrow. I’ll be here all day.”
“Okay. Then I’ll come in the morning, and maybe you can show me around the ranch. Show me the bee suit.”
She sighed grumpily. “I have a feeling the bee suit is only going to underwhelm you at this point.”
He lifted a shoulder, pushing himself into a standing position and bringing his Coke can to his lips. He knocked it back, finishing off the drink. “I think I can deal with it. See you tomorrow?”
“Yeah. Okay. Tomorrow.”
She stayed sitting at the table while Alex walked out the door. And she tried to ignore the inexplicable feeling of pressure in her chest.
It was nice to have somebody take care of her like this. But it wasn’t something she intended to get used to.
If there was one thing that life had taught her at this point, it was that people didn’t stay forever. And the increased attention you got after you lost someone didn’t last.
Heck, there was a stipulation in the will that made it clear it wouldn’t last.
She swallowed around the prickly feeling in her throat, then picked up her bowl of stew. She wrinkled her nose and dumped the remaining contents back into the Crock-Pot. Then she took a can of SpaghettiOs out of one of the cabinets and set about fixing herself some dinner.
WHEN ALEX PULLED UP to Clara’s farmhouse—his farmhouse, technically—the next morning, he did not expect to see Clara standing on the front porch.
But there she was, blond hair fashioned into a long braid that was slung over her shoulder, a blue speckled mug in her hand. She was wearing a flannel shirt and a pair of jeans that he thought might be too tight for doing effective outdoor work in. But they did a damn fine job of showing off her long, shapely legs.
Who knew that Clara Campbell had the kind of thighs a man wanted to lick? Get his face between. Get his body between.
You can stop that right now. She’s Jason’s sister, not some woman you want to pick up at a bar.
That thought shamed him, because the real issue was he was too used to thinking of women as a collection of beautiful body parts he might want to touch. Not that he didn’t care about the woman herself, he did. It was just that he didn’t have relationships.
Which meant that the shape of a woman’s thighs and the size of her breasts became essentially the sum total of his requirements. It made it too easy to look at a body first, and think about who she was second.
Which was why he had thought of Clara’s thighs that way. Not because he was attracted to her specifically. Because he was attracted to women.
He had seen Clara a handful of times when she’d been a kid, but not much since. And that meant it was difficult to reconcile the woman he was dealing with in the present with the child he remembered from the past.
The woman she was now...
He found her way too attractive, and that was just wrong.
He gritted his teeth and put the truck in Park, killing the engine and getting out. He might have slammed the door shut with a bit more force than was strictly necessary. It rattled the whole truck, and he hoped it would rattle some damn sense into his brain.
“Good morning,” he said, finding that smile of his easily.
Never let them see you sweat. Not when they were pointing a gun at your face. Not when they were saying you should’ve never been born. Never.
It was something Liam had always told him. In fact, it was the last thing his older brother had told him before he’d left home at eighteen.
Keep your smile, Alex. Even if it’s just to say screw ’em. Keep your smile.
She made a huffing sound. “Is it?”
He looked around, looked up at the unseasonably clear sky, the brilliant green of the pine trees that closed in around them, then he took a deep breath. “The sun is shining and we’re still standing. Constitutes a good morning as far as I’m concerned.”
“Well,