She tried to take a step back, and ended up faltering. Then she tried to walk over to him again, steeling herself to do the job she’d offered to do and no more. She’d taken exactly one step when her bare foot came down on something soft.
A towel. Amanda looked down, as if it would explain how it got from the bathroom to the floor halfway to the bed. Then she looked up and realized that sometime in the last two hours Jake had carried himself into the bathroom and back again. Maybe he’d actually taken some of his medicine. Obeying well-honed instincts, she bent over to retrieve the towel and return it to its proper place.
The bathroom was early functional, and all male. Amanda was sure that no cleaning lady saw the inside of any part of Jake’s private inner sanctum, but especially the bathroom. It was clean, and fairly neat, with white tile and basic fixtures. But no professional hand arranged its contents. No one had bothered to dilute the male setting with frilly touches or silk flowers. There was toothpaste and a razor on the sink, and a pair of jeans thrown over the towel rack. Shampoo in the shower and a full bottle of cologne that she bet one of his family had given him for Christmas and remained as unopened as those antibiotics. It made her smile. Jake Kendall didn’t wear artificial scent. He didn’t need it.
Brushing the jeans aside with hands that strayed just a little over the soft denim, Amanda folded the towel and rehung it. She was turning back to leave when she saw the trash can. More importantly, she saw what was in the trash can.
Most trash cans have trash. This little wicker basket that sat next to the door to the bedroom was stuffed with magazines. Old magazines, well-thumbed and tattered like well-loved stuffed animals. Amanda took a guilty look out to where Jake still slept undisturbed, and bent to satisfy her curiosity.
She frowned and then crouched down and fingered more slowly through them.
Travel magazines. Every one of them, with bright, evocative pictures of exotic cities and countries: Venice, Paris, Hong Kong, Thailand, the moors of Scotland and the Great Barrier Reef of Australia.
Amanda couldn’t understand. Wasn’t Jake the one who Clovis said didn’t like to go anywhere? The man who considered all life to exist within twenty miles of the Diamond K? What had that trip to Chicago been all about?
Amanda’s father had never had a desire to leave West Virginia, but he’d never even bothered to open the cover of theNational Geographic.He’d never hidden in his room where he thought no one else could see and pored over old magazines with stories of the places he never wanted to see, anyway.
Amanda caught herself looking out into the darkened bedroom again, theTravel and Leisuremagazine still in her hands where it had fallen open by itself to a spread on New York.
New York. Even bigger and noisier and more impersonal than Chicago. And Jake had obviously been reading about it all alone, for a long time.
It didn’t make sense.
Carefully she replaced the magazines back where they belonged and straightened. She took a second more to compose herself, because suddenly she hurt in a whole new way for Jake Kendall. She hurt for someone who kept his dreams in a wastepaper basket.
Did he, though? Could Clovis have been mistaken? Could this man who was so successful, so self-contained and well respected, have hidden dreams that he thought he wouldn’t be able to fulfill? Had he wanted the ranch, or simply been handed it without chance of refusal?
She’d seen what he was like up on his horses. There was a compelling life to him, a magnificent power that infected her in a way no other human had. He couldn’t possibly hate the animals he trained.
But could he want something more and know he couldn’t have it? Was this what he’d given up for his sisters and brother?
Was this, then, part of the pain that licked at the edges of those crystal-blue eyes? Part of the reason he resented Amanda so much?
And if so, why? She had to find out, somehow. But she knew she wasn’t going to do it now. Carefully stepping out of the bathroom, Amanda walked around to the foot of Jake’s bed so it looked as if she’d just entered from the hallway.
“Jake?” she called, a little louder this time.
He started at the sound of her voice, and Amanda regretted waking him. Grunting, he rubbed at his chest with his hand. Amanda fought the urge to take that hand in hers, to smooth her other hand over his injuries.Allhis injuries.
Jake Kendall didn’t need her compassion. He had a family, he had friends, he had people work for him.
But who was here with him now? Who did he let close enough to be compassionate for him? Who did he tell his dreams to? He had friends who had paced outside the house until they’d known he was all right, who badgered him into taking care of himself, and carried his reputation far and wide simply for the privilege of working with him. And yet there were things Jake hid from those people.
“Wake up, Jake,” she almost begged, her gaze on the twin prescription bottles by the bed she could see hadn’t yet been breached, after all. “I need to go through the routine.”
He never opened his eyes. “My name is Bonaparte,” he growled. “I live in France, and if you don’t leave me alone, I’m going to have a field marshal blow you to hell.”
She chuckled. “Oh, good,” she allowed. “You’re feeling better.”
“I’m feeling like hell,” he corrected her, finally getting his eyes open. “But nothing you can do can change that.”
Somehow the hall light managed to reach the blue of his eyes and Amanda could have sworn she read something totally different there. Something that looked an awful lot like that challenge out by the barn.
For a minute, she was afraid he’d really been awake all along, had seen her sneaking around in his bathroom. She clamped her hands to her legs and prayed for insight.
“I imagine that means that the pain prescription’s still out of the question.”
“It does.”
