The Rancher's Baby
“I’ll cook,” he said, breaking that arc and moving to the stove, getting out pans and bowls, cracking eggs with an efficiency she admired.
“Do you have an assignment list for me?” he asked, picking up the bowl and whisking the eggs inside.
Why was that sexy? What was happening? His broad shoulders and chest, those intensely muscled forearms, somehow seeming all the more masculine when he was scrambling eggs, of all things.
There was something about the very domestic action, and she couldn’t figure out what it was. Maybe it was the contrast between masculinity and domesticity. Or maybe it was just because there had never been a man in her kitchen making breakfast.
She tried to look blasé, as though men made her breakfast every other weekend. After debauchery. Lots and lots of debauchery. She had a feeling she wasn’t quite managing blasé, so she just took a sip of her coffee and stared at the white star that hung on her back wall, her homage to the Lone Star State. And currently, her salvation.
“Assignment list,” she said, slamming her hands down on the countertop, breaking her reverie. She owed that star a thank-you for restoring her sanity. She’d just needed a moment of not looking at Knox. “Well, I want new hardware on those cabinets. The people who lived here before me had a few things that weren’t really to my taste. That is one of them. Also, there are some things in an outbuilding the previous inhabitants left, and I want them moved out. Oh, and I want to get rid of the ceiling fan in the living room.”
“I hope you’re planning on paying me for this,” he said, dumping the eggs into the pan, a sizzling sound filling the room.
“Nope,” she said, lifting her coffee mug to her lips.
Knox finished cooking, and somehow Selena managed not to swoon. So, that was good.
They didn’t bother to go into her dining room. Instead they sat at the tall chairs around the island, and Selena looked down at her breakfast resolutely.
“Are you okay?”
“What?” She looked up, her eyes clashing with Knox’s. “You keep asking me that.”
“Because you keep acting like you might not be.”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m alive,” he responded. “As to being okay...that’s not really part of my five-year plan.”
“What’s your five-year plan?”
“Not drink myself into a stupor. Keep my business running, because at some point I probably will be glad I still have it. That’s about it.”
“Well,” she said softly, “you can add replacing my kitchen hardware to your five-year plan. But I would prefer it be on this side of it, rather than the back end.”
He laughed, and she found that incredibly gratifying. Without thinking, she reached out and brushed her fingertips against his cheek, against his beard. She drew back quickly, wishing the impression of that touch would fade away. It didn’t.
“Yes?” he asked.
“Are you keeping the beard?”
“It’s not really a fashion statement. It’s more evidence of personal neglect.”
“Well, you haven’t neglected your whole body,” she said, thinking of that earlier flash of muscle. She immediately regretted her words. She regretted them more than she did touching his beard. And beard-touching was pretty damned inappropriate between friends. At least, she was pretty certain it was.
He lifted a brow and took a bite of bacon. “Elaborate.”
“I’m just saying. You’re in good shape, Knox. I noticed.”
“Okay,” he said slowly, setting the bacon down. His gray eyes were cool as they assessed her, but for some reason she felt heat pooling in her stomach.
Settle down.
Her body did not listen. It kept on being hot. And that heat bled into her cheeks. So she knew she was blushing brilliant rose for Knox’s amusement.
“I’m just used to complimenting the men who make me breakfast,” she said, doing her best to keep her voice deadpan.
“I see.”
“So.”
“So,” he responded. “There’s nothing to do other than work,” he said. “Lifting hay bales, fixing fences, basically throwing heavy things around on the ranch. Then going back into the house and working out in the gym. It’s all I do.”
Well, that explained a few things. “I imagine you could carve out about five minutes to shave.”
“Would you prefer that I did?”
“I don’t have an opinion on your facial hair.”
“You seem to have an opinion on my facial hair.”
“I really don’t. I had observations about your facial hair, but that’s an entirely different thing.”
“Somehow, I don’t think it is.”
“Well, you’re entitled to your opinion. About my opinion on your facial hair. Or my lack of one. But that doesn’t make it fact.”
He shook his head. “You know, if I had you visiting in Jackson Hole I probably wouldn’t work out so excessively. Your chatter would keep me busy.”
“Hey,” she said. “I don’t chatter. I’m making conversation.” Except, it sounded a whole lot like chatter, even to herself.
“Okay.”
She made a coughing sound and stood up, taking her mostly empty plate to the sink and then making her way back toward the living room, stepping over her discarded high heels from yesterday. She heard the sound of Knox’s bare feet on the floor behind her. And suddenly, the fact that he had bare feet seemed intimate.
You really have been a virgin for too long.
She grimaced, even as she chastised herself. She hated that word. She hated even thinking it. It implied a kind of innocence she didn’t possess. Also, it felt young. She was not particularly young. She had just been busy. Busy, and resolutely opposed to relationships.
Still, the whole virginity thing had the terrible side effect of making rusty morning voices and bare feet seem intimate.
She looked up and out the window and saw her car in the driveway. “Hey,” she said. “How did that happen?”
“I told you I was going to take care of it. Ye of little faith.”
“Apparently, Knox, you can’t even take care of your beard, so why would I think you would take care of my car so efficiently?”
“Correction,” he said. “I don’t bother to make time to shave my beard. Why? Because I don’t have to. Because I’m not beholden to anyone anymore.”
Those words were hollow, even though he spoke them in a light tone. And no matter how he would try and spin it, he didn’t feel it was a positive thing. It seemed desperately sad that nobody in his life cared whether or not he had a beard.
“I like it,” she said finally.
She did. He was hot without one, too. He had one of those square Hollywood jaws and a perfectly proportioned chin. And if asked prior to seeing him with the beard, she would have said facial hair would have been like hiding his light under a bushel.
But in reality, the beard just made him look...more masculine. Untamed. Rugged. Sexy.
Yes. Sexy.
She cleared her throat. “Anyway,” she said. “I won’t talk about it anymore.”
Suddenly, she realized Knox was standing much closer to her than she’d been aware of until a moment ago. She could smell some kind of masculine body wash and clean, male skin. And she could feel the heat radiating from his body. If she reached out, she wouldn’t even have to stretch her arm out to press her palm against his chest. Or to touch his beard again, which she had already established was completely inappropriate, but she was thinking about it anyway.
“You like it?” he asked, his voice getting rougher, even more than it had been this morning when he had first woken up.
“I... Yes?”
“You’re not sure?”
“No,” she said, taking a step toward him, her feet acting entirely on their own and without permission from her brain. “No, I’m sure. I like it.”
She felt weightless, breathless. She felt a little bit like leaning toward him and seeing what might happen if she closed that space between them. Seeing how that beard might feel if it was pressed against her cheek, what it might feel like if his mouth was pressed against hers...
She was insane. She was officially insane. She was checking out her friend. Her grieving friend who needed her to be supportive and not lecherous.
She shook her head and took a step back. “Thank you,” she said. Instead of kissing him. Instead of doing anything crazy. “For making sure the car got back to me. Really, thank you for catching me when I passed out yesterday. I think I’m still...you know.”
“No,” he said, crossing his muscular arms over his broad chest. “I’m not sure that I do know.”
Freaking Knox. Not helping her out at all. “I think I’m still a little bit spacey,” she said.
“Understandable. Hey, direct me to your hardware, and I’ll get started on that.”
Okay, maybe he was going to help her out. She was going to take that lifeline with both hands. “I can do that,” she said, and she rushed to oblige him.
Four
Knox was almost completely finished replacing the hardware in Selena’s kitchen when the phone in his pocket vibrated. He frowned, the number coming up one he didn’t recognize.
He answered it and lifted it to his ear. “Knox McCoy,” he said.
“Hi there, Knox” came the sound of an older woman’s voice on the other end of the line. She had a thick East Texas drawl and a steel thread winding through the greeting that indicated she wasn’t one to waste a word or spare a feeling. “I’m Cora Lee. Will’s stepmother. I’m not sure if he’s ever mentioned me.”
“Will and I haven’t been close for the past decade or so,” he said honestly. Really, the falling-out between Will and Selena had profoundly affected his friendship with the other man.
In divorces, friends chose sides. And his side had always clearly been Selena’s.
“Still,” Cora Lee said, “there’s nothing like coming back from the dead to patch up old relationships. And, on that subject, I would like to have a small get-together to celebrate Will’s return, just for those of us who were at the service. You can imagine that we’re all thrilled.”
If she was thrilled, Knox wouldn’t have been able to tell by her tone of voice. She was more resolute. Determined. And he had a feeling that refusing her would be a lot like saying no to a drill sergeant.
“It will be kind of like a funeral, only celebrating that he’s not dead. And you’ll be invited. He said he wanted you to come.”
“He did?”
“Not in so many words, but I feel like it is what he wants.” And Knox had a feeling it wouldn’t matter if Will did want it or not. Cora Lee was going to do exactly what she thought was best. “And he wants that ex-wife of his to come, too. He says you two are close.”
“Which ex-wife?” He had gotten the distinct impression that there was more than one former Mrs. Sanders floating around.
“The one you’re close to,” Cora Lee responded, her voice deadpan.
Reluctantly, Knox decided he liked Will’s stepmother. “Well, I’ll let her know. She went to the funeral, so I imagine she’ll want to go to this.” He wasn’t sure he particularly wanted to, but if Selena was going, then he would accompany her. He was honestly concerned that the other women who had been named beneficiaries, or whoever was responsible for sending the letter, might take advantage of a situation like this.
“Good. I’ll put you both down on the guest list, and I’ll send details along shortly. You have to come, because I wrote your names down and there will be too much brisket if you don’t.”
And with that, she hung up the phone. He looked down at the screen for a moment, and then Selena came in, her footsteps soft on the hardwood floor.
He looked up and his stomach tightened. Her long black hair was wet, as though she’d gotten out of the shower, and he suddenly became very aware of the fact that her gray T-shirt was clinging to her curves a little bit more than it might if her skin wasn’t damp. Which put him in mind to think about the fact that her skin was damp, which meant it had been uncovered only a few moments before.
What the hell was wrong with him? He was thinking like a horny teenager. Yeah, it had been a few years since he’d had sex, but frankly, he hadn’t wanted to. His libido had been hibernating, along with his desire to do basic things like shave his beard.
But somehow it seemed to be stirring to life again, and it was happening at a very inappropriate time, with an inappropriate person.
The good thing was that it must be happening around Selena because she was the only woman in proximity, and it was about time he started to feel again. The bad thing was...Selena was the only woman in proximity.
“Who was that on the phone?” she asked, running her fingers through her hair.
“Will’s stepmother. She wants us to go to a non-funeral for him in a few days.”
“Oh.”
She was frowning, a small crinkle appearing on her otherwise smooth forehead.
“Something wrong?”
“No. It’s a good thing. I’m glad to be asked. I mean, I was thinking, when I assumed he was dead, that it was so sad he and I had never...that we had never found a way to fix our friendship.”
“You want to do that?” He was surprised.
“It seems silly to stay mad at somebody over something that happened so long ago. Something I know neither of us would change.”
“The marriage?”
She laughed. “The divorce. I don’t regret the divorce, so there’s really no point in being upset about it. Or avoiding him forever because of it. I mean, obviously there was conflict surrounding it.” She looked away, a strange, tight expression on her face. “But if neither of us would go back and change the outcome, I don’t see why we can’t let it go. I would like to let it go. It was terrible, thinking he was dead and knowing we had never reconciled.”
Knox pressed his hand to his chest and rubbed the spot over his heart. It twinged a little. But that was nothing new. It did that sometimes. At first, he had thought he was having a heart attack. But then, in the beginning, it had been much worse. Suffocating, deep, sharp pain.
Something that took his breath away.
No one had ever told him that grief hurt. That it was a physical pain. That the depression that lingered on after would hurt all the way down to your bones. That sometimes you would wake up in the middle of the night and not be able to breathe.
Those were the kinds of things people didn’t tell you. But then, there was no guidebook for loss like he had experienced. Actually, there was. There were tons of books about it. But there had been no reason in hell for him to go out and buy one. Not before it had happened, and then when Eleanor had gotten sick, he hadn’t wanted to do doomsday preparation for the loss he still didn’t want to believe was inevitable.
Afterward...
He was in the shit whether he wanted to be or not. So he didn’t see the point of trying to figure out a way to navigate more elegantly through it. Shit was shit. There was no dressing it up.
There was just doing your best to put one foot in front of the other and walk on through.
But he had walked through it alone, and in the end that had been too much for him and Cassandra. But he hadn’t known how to do it with another person. Hadn’t really wanted to.
Hadn’t known how he was supposed to look at the mother of his dead child and offer her comfort, tell her that everything was going to be okay, that anything was going to be okay.
But now they had disentangled themselves from each other, and still this thing Selena was talking about, this desire for reconciliation, just didn’t resonate with him. He didn’t want to talk to Cassandra. It was why they were divorced.
“It’s not the same thing,” she said, her voice suddenly taking on that soft, careful quality that appeared in people’s tones when they were dancing around the subject of his loss. “Mine and Will’s relationship. It’s not the same as yours and Cassandra’s. It’s not the same as your divorce. Will and I were married for a year. We were young, we were selfish and we were stupid. The two of you... You built a life together. And then you lost it. You went through hell. It’s just not the same thing. So don’t think I’m lecturing you subtly on how you should call her or something.”
“I didn’t think that.”
“You did a little. Or you were making yourself feel guilty about it, and that isn’t fair. You don’t deserve that.”
She was looking at him with a sweet, freshly scrubbed openness that made his stomach go tight. Made him want to lift up his coffee mug and throw it down onto the tile, just to make the feeling stop. Made him want to grab hold of her face, hold her steady and kiss her mouth. So she would shut up. So she would stop being so understanding. So she would stop looking at him and seeing him. Seeing inside of him.
That thought, hot and destructive, made his veins feel full of fire rather than blood. And he wasn’t sure anymore what his motivation actually was. To get her to stop, or to just exorcise the strange demon that seemed to have possessed him at some point between the moment he had held her in his arms on the floor of the funeral home and when they had come back here.
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