Jake shook his head and turned back to her with the first betrayal of friendliness in his eyes. “Clovis should have warned you. The blue plate here is leftovers from at least two dinners and three school lunches, but Clovis never notices. He can’t taste food. Never get the blue plate.”
Amanda swallowed the pie in a gulp. “I take it the steak is a pretty safe bet?”
His sudden grin was almost wolfish as he speared a piece of meat into his mouth and promptly dispatched it. “Haven’t been disappointed yet.”
By the time Jake made it back out of Stilwell’s, the sky was deepening to night and the air was cold. He shouldn’t have stayed that long. He never had before, preferring to eat his meal quickly and take quick care of the type of business he tended to find among the crowded tables at the diner, so he could head home before the sun set.
Tonight he’d arranged an extra load of hay from Wilbur Potts and set a date for Steve Bennett’s wife to come out and look over the herd for a speed horse for her daughter’s first foray into barrel racing. He’d evened accounts with Doc Marks for the time he’d spent wrestling with Sidewinder, and promised Bill Evans a first look at the new crop of foals. But he’d also wasted too much time sitting with Amanda Marlow.
Jake stopped out on the sidewalk and settled his hat back onto his head. He could smell wood smoke from somebody’s house and the yeasty fragrance of baking bread from the back of the diner. The feed store was open, and there was a card game going on over at the volunteer fire station. The movie showing at the Halcyon was about four weeks old and too boring even for an excuse to neck. Life walked along at its normal Saturday night pace in Lost Ridge.
LastSaturday when Jake had walked out of the diner, he hadn’t even noticed how routine it all was. He’d slipped a toothpick between his teeth, just like he always did, waved a greeting to the people he knew on the streets, climbed behind the wheel of his truck and turned back for home. Tonight his gut ached with a hard frustration he hadn’t allowed in years.
He strolled along the sidewalk, hands in back pockets, head down. Pacing familiar territory, giving motion to unfamiliar feelings.
Resentment. Who was she to come into his life and set him on his ear? Who was she to set foot in his town and remind him just how small and provincial it was? How predictable and dull?
Hadn’t she noticed how she stood out in that little diner, like a star among streetlights? Hadn’t she felt the least bit uncomfortable with her sophistication and style among people who shopped at the local thrift store and yearned for nothing more than a Sunday go-to-meeting outfit?
The room had been full of Stetsons and feed hats, and she’d strolled in there with her wool slacks and cashmere turtleneck, a swan sitting in a pond of ducks. And then she’d made him sit with her. She’d made him smell the soft hint of summer that hovered over her hair, and look into the pine forest of her eyes. She’d smiled at him and turned his gut into a brush fire.
Betty had been telling him for years that he needed a woman. He couldn’t argue with her. But he sure as hell didn’t needthisone. He could still feel the silk of her hair in his hands, could see the smoke of surprising desire in her eyes. He could hear the sharp intake of her breath as he’d held her still, inches from kissing her, from giving in to the clamorings of his body over the warnings from his head.
He knew better. Uncomfortable jeans were never enough of an excuse to lose your sense of direction. And Jake had never had a doubt about the direction his life would take from the moment his daddy had dropped dead in front of him. He’d never veered the slightest from the course he’d set himself that day, knowing that his mother was too sick to take over the ranch and knowing that the ranch, such as it was, was all that kept all five of them off welfare. It was only now, with both his parents long since in their graves and Zeke, Gen and Lee safely out in the world, that the life he’d built for himself seemed empty.
It was only Amanda Marlow, with her hot eyes and her soft mouth, with her gut-wrenching fire of enthusiasm that could break a man’s heart if he let it, who could make him feel so bad. He’d seen the way her face had lit up when she’d held Hattie Kendall’s diary. He’d seen the hunger in her, and it had twisted in him like barbed wire until he’d wanted to hurt her. Until he’d wanted to hold her.
“Jake Kendall? That you?”
Startled, Jake looked up to see Millie Eberhart walking his way with an armful of books from the library she’d probably just closed up for the day.
“Miss Eberhart,” he nodded, forefinger to his hat, just like he always did to the tiny old woman.
She stopped to smile up at him. “Haven’t seen you in a while. How’s little Lee doing out in the big world?”
“Just fine. She’s coming back for the spring holidays in a couple of weeks.”
The fragile-looking white head bobbed decidedly in the soft light of the street lamp and dying sun. “You tell her to come see me when she does. I miss having her pester me.”
Jake smiled, even though he didn’t feel like it. “I’ll do that.”
He was about to walk on, as if he had someplace to go, when she leaned forward in confidence. “Somebody said you have Amanda Marlow stayin’ at your place. That right?”
Jake fought back a sigh of frustration. “Up at the old cabin.”
Miss Eberhart's eyes got big, and she shook her head with awe. “Imagine that. You must be thrilled to death to have someone so special up there. Why, I was just readingSimple Giftsagain the other day. It reminded me so much of my own family back in Virginia, don’t you know. The purity of her language, her descriptive power. It’s no wonder they gave her those awards. Mark my words, she’s going to be one of the country’s leading writers. Another Twain, in her own way. And to think, you’re there to see those magnificent words born.”
Jake couldn’t manage much more than a vague nod of the head to the little woman’s exuberance. He fought the rage her unknowing enthusiasm kindled in him. Blind, dark rage born of shame and fed with frustration. The kind of rage that Bill Nelson’s palomino put into those flying kicks of his. Sometimes Jake Kendall wished he could kick out like that, too, blindly destroying everything in sight.
Instead, he stood stock still, his head down toward the little librarian, his mind filled not with marvelous words, but images of soft lips and hungry, questing eyes.
“How were you ever so lucky?”
Jake all but shook his head. “Pardon?”
“To get her at the Diamond K.”
Jake straightened, fought the urge to wipe at his forehead. “Oh. She taught Lee a course, and you know Lee. She gave her a key to the cabin. I don’t care, long as she doesn’t spook the horses.”
