“No, thanks,” she demurred. “I’d make you go to computers, and then you’d have to just fire me, too.”
“Did you get your new one?”
She nodded, soaking in the steady cadence of his heart against her cheek. Burrowing more deeply into the soft comfort of his shoulder. “The other one was a computerpop. So I got a fancier one, and it does everything but cook my breakfast.”
He stretched a little. “Not a bad idea.”
“Breakfast? It’s almost noon. Haven’t you eaten yet?”
“Probably before you were awake. But it’s time for lunch now. What do you have stashed away for a hungry rancher?”
She couldn’t help another giggle. Jake tousled her hair. “Besides that.”
Amanda managed to crawl out of bed and even locate her old robe while Jake pulled on his jeans. The two of them padded together over to the kitchen, sated and lazy and smiling.
“I’m really glad you thought to keep this cabin here,” she admitted with a shy smile, the surprise of their passion still hot in her chest.
Jake’s grin was much more rakish. “It does come in handy sometimes.”
Amanda abruptly straightened from where she’d been bent over the refrigerator checking contents. “Have you used this place before? To, uh...”
“Tryst?” he teased, sidling up behind her and slipping his hands around her waist. “What do you think?”
Amanda bent back to her perusal in just such a way that her backside came in correct contact to elicit a delighted moan from Jake. “I think that you were probably the kind of teenager who never made it further than the seat of your daddy’s pickup truck. And that as a man you were too all-fired responsible to ever bring a woman around with young kids in the house.”
Sneaking a quick glance around behind her, she was delighted to see Jake’s chagrin.
“Bingo,” she crowed.
“You think you’re so smart,” he taunted, running his hands down the robe where it draped over her thighs.
She immediately hit her head on the refrigerator. “Stop that. I’m cooking.”
“I’ll say.”
Straightening, she shoved eggs, butter, cream and ham into Jake’s hands. “I’ve had a craving for eggs Benedict,” she announced, walking on by.
Jake stared at her. “Here?”
Amanda made it a point to look around. “Well, I prefer them over the open fire, but I guess this’ll have to do.”
They bantered like an old couple, teasing and laughing, the ranch and the world a great high meadow away. For at least now, the two of them were caught in a bubble of contentment, pretending that they were the only two who existed, for just this moment in time when nothing could touch them.
Amanda left Jake baby-sitting the poaching eggs as she cleaned off her mess from the little kitchen table. She was gathering together the ranch material when she noticed a square of paper she’d been using as a bookmark. It made her laugh.
Jake looked up. “What’s so funny?”
Amanda picked up the little paper, bright with scrawled flowers and letters, a crudely made card Lee had drawn for Jake on his birthday years ago. “To the best, best, best, best big brother in the world,’’ it read. Then, after some consideration, evidently, she’d scratched out one of the bests. Amanda handed it over without thinking.
“I found this in with the papers Betty gave me,” she said, already piling more books together. “You really must have done something to make her mad.”
She hadn’t thought. She’d been so lulled by the surprise of Jake’s arrival, the whirlwind of their lovemaking, the soft laughter of companionship. She’d given him the card instinctively. When she lifted her attention back to him for an answer, she saw him consider it.
“I don’t remember what,” was all he said, his voice suddenly lifeless. But Amanda saw the way he looked at the card. Flat, unseeing. And when she turned away to carry the books to the couch, to give him room for the privacy suddenly she knew he needed, she saw the way he rubbed that card, like a talisman in his hands. She saw the bittersweet longing in his eyes which she could never salve for him, and her heart stumbled with terrible comprehension.
Because at that moment Amanda knew. She had her answer. Jake didn’t know how to respond to her. He didn’t know, because he didn’t know what the card said. Jake couldn’t read it.
