She’d reached the door to his room to find him standing with his back to her, the bottles of medicine in his hand. She sensed a torment in his rigid posture, felt in him a pain so ferocious that no physical injury could have accounted for it. And then she saw him throw the pills, a harsh groan betraying him, like the moan of a wounded animal as he’d turned toward the bathroom.
Amanda fled for Lee’s room before he caught her. Shaking. Suddenly seeing images she hadn’t even thought about for twenty years. Hurting so deeply inside that nothing would salve her anguish. Suddenly plagued by a suspicion that had its roots in habits she’d observed half a continent away. A suspicion that resurrected an old frustration into new pain.
She’d compared Jake to Uncle Mick. Could he have been more like Uncle Mick than she’d realized? Could that be the burden he carried around in silence, trapped deep where no one would think to look, contained in a carefully controlled world where everyone knew him, where he knew everyone?
Dear God, she thought, squeezing her eyes shut against sudden tears. Could something like that have happened to Jake? Could a man like him have settled for it? All these years, alone in the midst of everyone, shutting himself away where no one would see him. Couldthatbe the secret to Jake Kendall?
She had to be sure. She couldn’t simply walk in on him making rash accusations. She had to spend her time in his house wisely, so that she could know for sure. So that she could help him if he’d let her.
In the meantime, she knew just what to do now. After all, it was what she’d done so long ago for Uncle Mick.
The kitchen echoed with male high glee. Clovis and José introduced Amanda to Willy—a nineteen-year-old, with glossy blue-black hair and the best posture she’d ever seen—who usually drove in from the reservation. She also met James, a grizzled man of indeterminate age who cursed as much as Willy blushed. Amanda ladled stew onto their plates and shared their stories of the blizzard, all the while keeping an ear to the back of the house. She poured generous helpings of steaming coffee, set out the bread, and then filled a glass of water at the sink, which she carried out of the kitchen with her.
She found him buttoning a dry shirt. His fingers shook and his jaw was clenched. Amanda faltered at the door, hurting more for him than he did himself.
“Here,” she said without preamble. “You take this from me, and I’ll do that for you.”
Jake looked up at her, and she died a little. He was too exhausted to maintain that precious control of his, and she saw the frustration and pain he’d carried into that room with him. She saw wariness and fear. And she breezed right by them all.
“You got my hands to work,” she said, handing him the glass, “now if s my turn to return the favor. It looks like if s still a real bitch of a night out there.”
Amanda almost thought she caught a hint of a grin from him.
“It is.”
She nodded and buttoned. “In that case, the stew should help. You’re lucky Maria had the stew meat out thawing already. Without a microwave, I never would have managed otherwise.”
Jake looked down at her progress. “Smells good.”
Amanda kept buttoning, her fingers fumbling almost as badly as his, but for different reasons. Neither of them seemed to notice. “It should. I won awards for that stew. Of course, the apple pan dowdy is even better.”
“You cook, too?”
She could have wept at the harsh edge to his voice, the splinters of frayed control. Instead, she lifted her gaze to his and laughed. “You’d be surprised what I can do, Jake. Of course, I guess since we’re going to be stuck together for the next day or two, you’re going to find out.”
For a moment she was afraid he was going to break, that he was going to allow the truth to escape between them, the raw desire each of them fought, the growing attachment. The ambivalence. But he just gave her back half the smile she gave him.
“If you can cook,” he said, “you don’t have to do anything else.”
Amanda finished buttoning his shirt and stuffed it down the back of his jeans, her hands as quick and competent as his had been. She left the front for him to finish. He handed the glass to her.
“Nope,” she said with a definite shake of her head. His front shirttail was still hanging out, and his jeans were mostly unzipped. Amanda refused to pay any more attention to them. Instead, she reached into her own robe pocket and pulled out what she’d brought in with her. “Here. Take these.”
Jake stared at the two pills in her hand with something like astonishment. It quickly faded into distrust.
“Where did you get those?”
She grabbed his free hand and set the pills firmly in his palm. “I decided,” she told him brightly, “that I’d had just about enough of this macho... stuff. Nothing short of the codeine in these pills is going to suffice tonight, and we both know it.”
“But how...?”
She shrugged. “I came in to tell you dinner was ready and damn near killed myself on all the pills on the floor. Lucky for us it was just the antibiotic. That was only about fifty bucks a bottle, so it’s no great loss. These little babies, on the other hand, can still come in handy.” She looked straight into his eyes, challenging him. “Especially for somebody with broken ribs who’s ridden through a blizzard to save a stupid writer, and then spent the rest of the afternoon saving his herd of horses. I’d think he’d be a little sore.”
He tried to hand them back. “I still have work to do tonight. The horses have to be fed.”
Amanda promptly set her fists on her hips again. “If you can’t trust that bunch of freeloaders in the kitchen, then I wish you’d just stop feeding them and be done with it.”
“They’re not freeloaders!”
