Amanda couldn’t bear the pain that flared in those beautiful blue eyes. “I don’t want to hear ‘I shouldn’t have,’” she interrupted, grabbing hold of his restive hand before he could pull away. “I want to hear, ‘Wow, Amanda, was that a surprise. Later we might talk about it in light of what’s happening between us.’”
She almost begged out loud for a smile. Even an argument. Something that told her he’d fight for them.
But he shook his head. “I wasn’t fair to you.”
Amanda did laugh, then, a sharp report of surprise. “You were a gift to me last night. Don’t ever think different.” She squeezed his hands between hers, intent. “Please, Jake.”
She saw the torment he was trying to hide, saw the impulse rise to cut her off. Saw it die. “This isn’t the place to talk about it,” he finally decided.
Amanda nodded. “I’ll sure agree to that. How ‘bout later over wine? By the fireplace?” She leaned very close, so close that she could almost smell his discomfort. “Naked?”
The barrier shut with an almost audible clang. Jake pulled away and straightened. “You want to help, see Clovis about feed. I have to check on the stock we left out in the pasture.”
“It’s still horrible outside,” Amanda protested.
Jake didn’t even smile. “Not much choice, is there? We’re not in Boston now, Amanda.”
She watched him go and fought new tears. Bitter tears born of hard experience and the flush of newness. Angry tears at having to be falling in love with the last man who’d let her.
Well, at least she knew one thing. He was acting like that new foal in there, skittish and shy. Amanda had a lot more bonding to do before she dropped any kind of rope over that neck. Because the rope she suspected she’d have to drop would hurt, and it would hurt bad. She just had to show him how much she could help ease the pain before she did it.
Jake worked himself back into a state of exhaustion and still it didn’t help to get Amanda off his mind. She’d been a revelation last night, a miracle. She’d been light and fire in his hands, her skin so soft he’d wanted to lay his head against it and dream, her eyes so deep and sweet that he’d drunk from them like a well.
As he pitched bales of hay to the pastured horses, he thought of the dance of her body in the shadows. As he broke through the ice to get the horses water, he remembered the song of passion on her lips. As he trudged through snow and ice and wind, the temperature cold enough to take off the tips of his ears, he was warmed by the memories of her candor, her spirit, her hunger. Nobody had ever argued Clovis down over a foaling mare. No one had ever brought Jake Kendall to his knees with just her memory.
He plodded back up to the house, wishing she’d be gone, terrified she would go, wondering what he was going to do about it. When he threw open the back door, the wind swirling in behind him, it was to smell the bouquet of cooking food and hear the narcotic of laughter. Her laughter.
For a minute he could do no more than stand there, his eyes closed, his hands clenched against the pain. He’d have to get her to leave before she found out. Before she shamed him with her pity.
“There you are,” she greeted him brightly from the kitchen door. “We were just about to send out the Saint Bernards.”
Jake opened his eyes and damn near walked back out the door. She was in Lee’s jeans, and they were too tight. Too delectably tight. She wore a soft cream angora sweater, and had her hair piled up on her head, so that damp curls clung to her neck, just where the most tender skin was. His body reacted so swiftly, so fiercely, that he almost had to turn away again.
“Had a lot of work to do,” was all he could say, pulling off his hat and knocking the snow off against his leg. “Clovis in here?”
She nodded, her eyes a little darker, her hands on her hips as if she was going to challenge him again. “And José. And Willy and James. We’ve been waiting dinner on you.”
He shrugged out of his coat and hung it up, his ribs grating and his arms sore. “You didn’t have to.”
“I knew that,” she said with a saucy grin. “But it’s always so much nicer at dinner when you’re there scowling at me.”
Jake looked up at her, surprised. She just flashed him some teeth and spun on her heel.
“Ten minutes,” she announced. “The you-know-what is still on your nightstand.”
“I don’t—”
But she was already gone.
Jake heard the men greet her, heard Clovis’s awed respect, Willy’s shy attraction, Jose’s amusement. She’d won them over with nothing more than a ladle and a sense of humor. She’d won him over with less. With more. With everything and nothing, no more than the way she stood when he challenged her, the way she lit up when she was able to learn something new. The way she made no excuses for her passion.
God, he was falling in love with her. He rubbed at his face, tired of the aching, of the loneliness, and walked on into the bedroom to get ready for dinner, wishing he knew what he was going to do about her.
Dinner lasted forever. Jake imagined that the food was good, but he had no taste for it. Amanda had cooked up ham casserole and corn bread tonight. She’d evidently spent the majority of time he hadn’t been with her helping Clovis and José in the barn and then cleaning up and cooking in the house. And she looked like she’d just stepped off the pages of a magazine as she sat at the other end of the table, flickering candles the only light on her hair and in her eyes, her laughter cascading around the room like bright water.
“By the way,” she said over the coffee and cookies that José was putting away like hardtack in the desert, “your sisters called. Both of them. And Zeke. And Betty and Maria and Doc McPherson. I told them all that you were just fine, that the horses were fine, and that we had a beautiful new baby on the ranch.”
“We have five so far,” Clovis argued instinctively.
