The Pride of Jared MacKade (8 page)

“Sorry.” Wisely Jared cleared his throat, then looked up at her. “Why would Regan intimidate you?”

“Because she’s…she’s classy and lovely and smart and successful. She’s everything I’m not. I’m comfortable with who I am, what I am, but when you come up against someone like that, it’s a kick-in-the-butt reminder of what you’re never going to be, never going to have. I don’t like feeling inadequate or stupid.”

Disgusted with herself, Savannah jammed her hands in her pockets. “And I didn’t expect to like her so much. She came by to see me a little while ago.”

“I thought she might. Regan likes to confront things head-on.” Thoughtful, he studied the tip of his cigar.
“Ask her sometime about the night she waltzed into Duff’s Tavern in a tight red miniskirt and had Rafe gnawing his pool cue into toothpicks.”

Fascinated by the image, Savannah nearly smiled. “I’ll have to do that. I’d like to handle the art for your office, Jared, if you’re still interested.”

“I’m interested.” He turned the cigar around, offering it. When she shook her head, he took a last puff and carefully tamped it out on the rock.

“I wasn’t completely truthful about a couple of other things.” The situation was a first, and she wasn’t quite sure how to phrase things, so she decided to keep it simple. “I have feelings for you, Jared. They just sort of popped up. They worried me.”

He was watching her now, his wonderful eyes very focused, very cool. She wondered how many witnesses had broken apart on the stand under that strong gaze.

“Men are a lot easier to deal with when feelings aren’t involved,” she continued. “I could be reading this wrong, but I got the idea you were aiming for a relationship kind of deal, and I’ve had lousy luck with relationships. So I started thinking about that, and some other things, and figured it was best all around to bail.”

When he said nothing—absolutely nothing—she gave in and kicked at the dirt on the path. “Are you just going to sit there?”

“I’m listening,” he said mildly.

“Okay, look, I’ve got a kid to worry about. I can’t afford to get involved with someone who might start to mean something to him that’s not realistic. I know how to be careful about that, how to keep things in line.”

He stood now, his eyes never leaving hers. “You’re going to keep me in line, Savannah?”

If he touched her, she was very much afraid she’d go off like a rocket. “I don’t think so. That’s the thing. I’ve got these feelings for you.”

“That’s interesting.” He hadn’t known she could look so vulnerable. “Because I have these feelings for you.”

“You do?” Her hands stayed balled in her pockets. “Well.”

“Well,” he repeated, and stepped forward. He put his hand on her cheek, and his mouth on hers.

She wasn’t used to being kissed this way. As if that were all—as if she were all—that mattered. It made her weak and woozy. Those tensed fingers went limp. And her heart surrendered.

“Are we straight now?” he murmured.

She nodded and found that feeling of pleasure could be huge, just having a man’s shoulder ready to cradle your head. “I hate feeling stupid.”

“So you said.”

“I don’t want to feel stupid about this.”

His lips curved as he brushed them over her hair. “Neither do I.”

“So we’ll make a pact. Whatever happens, neither of us will make the other feel stupid.”

“I can agree to that.” He lifted her chin for another kiss. “Why don’t I walk home with you?”

“All right.”

She couldn’t help it. She felt stupid and sentimental walking hand in hand with him through the woods, aware of every beam of sunlight, every scent, every
sound. She would have sworn that she could hear the leaves growing overhead and the wildflowers struggling toward the sun.

Love, she mused, honed the senses.

“I have to pick up Bryan in a little while.” She glanced over. “I can call Cassie and rearrange things.”

He knew what she was offering, and could feel the blood humming under his skin. When he brought their joined hands to his lips, he saw the flash of surprised pleasure in her eyes. Not yet, he told himself. Not quite yet.

“We’ll both pick him up. What do you say to an early movie, and pizza after?”

She couldn’t look at him now, not the way her throat was aching. She knew what he was offering. “I’d say great,” she managed. “Thanks.”

“Jared’s cool.” Bryan bounced into the top bunk of his bed, his mind full of scenes from the action flick, his belly stuffed with pepperoni pizza. “I mean, man, he knows everything about baseball, and stuff about the farm and the battlefield. He’s even smarter than Connor.”

“You’re no slouch, Ace.” She tousled his hair.

“Jared says everybody’s got a special talent.”

Interested, Savannah leaned on the edge of the bed so that her face was level with her son’s. “He did?”

“Yeah, when we went to get popcorn. He said how everybody’s got something inside that makes him different. He knows on account of he has three brothers and they’re a lot alike, but they’re different, too. He said I’m a natural.”

She grinned. “A natural what?”

“Mom.” Rolling his eyes, Bryan sat up in bed. “At baseball. And you know what else he said?”

“No. What else did he say?”

“He said how even if I decided not to be a major-leaguer I could use the stuff I know in other things. Of course, I’m going to be a major-leaguer, but maybe I’d be like a lawyer, too.”

“A lawyer?” She felt a little flutter of panic. Her son was falling in love as quickly as she was.

“Yeah, ’cause you get to go to court and argue with people and put criminals in jail. But you have to go to school forever, I mean until you’re old. Jared went to college and to law school and everything.”

“So can you, if that’s what you want.”

“Well, I’m going to think about it.”

He flopped back down, curled into his pillow in a way that comforted her as much as him. It was the gesture of a child. He was still her little boy.

“Night.”

“Good night, Bry.” She pressed her lips to his temple and lingered over it a moment or two longer than usual. Long enough to make him squirm sleepily.

She rose, turned off his light, then closed his door, because he liked his privacy.

Her son the lawyer, she thought, and rubbed her hands over her face. With a mother who’d never finished high school.

Then, as the panic gave way to a warm glow of pride for what her son might one day achieve, she smiled.

She walked quietly to her own room and moved to
the window to look out at the woods. Through them, she could see the lights of the MacKade farm. And there, she thought, was the man she’d fallen in love with.

She smiled again and laid a hand on the cool glass of the window. All in all, she decided, it had been pretty smart of her to wait to fall until she’d found Jared MacKade.

H
e sent her yellow tulips, and she was dreamy-eyed for an hour after she slipped them, stem by stem, into numerous old bottles.

He took her and Bryan to a minor-league ball game in the neighboring county, where the stands were hard as iron and the crowd was rowdy, and won her son’s heart absolutely by snagging a foul.

They had pizza at a place with worn wooden booths, a loud jukebox and a pinball machine. The three of them ate sloppily, shouted over the music and competed like fiends over the speeding silver balls.

He took her to dinner at a restaurant where there was candlelight and champagne fizzing in crystal flutes and held her hand on the snowy-white tablecloth.

He brought her a truckload of mulch for her garden, and she was lost.

“You’re being courted,” Cassie told her over lemonade and paint samples at Savannah’s kitchen table.

“What?”

“Courted.” Cassie sighed over it. The misery of her years with Joe Dolin hadn’t quashed her romantic nature. Not when it concerned someone else. “Isn’t she, Regan?”

“Big-time. Yellow tulips,” Regan added, glancing up from her samples to the flowers that marched down the center of the table. “It’s a dead giveaway.”

“We’re developing a relationship.” Voice casual, Savannah rubbed her suddenly damp palms on her jeans. “That’s all.”

“He brought you mulch and helped you spread it, didn’t he?” Cassie pointed out reasonably.

“Yeah.” It made Savannah smile foolishly to remember it. And to remember the way he’d kissed her senseless when the two of them were grimy with dirt and sweat and chipped bark.

“She’s got it bad,” Regan commented.

“Maybe I do.” Damping the smile, Savannah snatched up her lemonade. “So what?”

“So nothing. What do you think of this shade?”

“Too yellow.”

Regan blew out a breath. “You’re right.”

Filled with admiration, Cassie watched the way her two friends chose and discarded colors. She hoped when she had just a little more put aside, Regan would help her pick out new paint for her living room. She’d washed
those white walls so often, scrubbed till her shoulders sang, but she couldn’t make them bright again.

Then, if Savannah could help her pick the right material, she could make new curtains for Emma’s room. Something cheerful, something special for a little girl.

It was hard, harder than she could admit to anyone, to take on these little challenges. To accomplish things that she imagined were just everyday things to some women. How could she explain that for the first time in her life—her entire life—there was no one to tell her yes or no? No one to complain or criticize or humiliate her?

Constantly she had to remind herself that she was in charge, and that if she tried, if she kept at it step by step, she could change the tiny rented house into a home. A real home, where her kids wouldn’t remember the shouting and the beatings and the smell of soured beer.

Wistfully she looked around Savannah’s cabin. It was no larger than the house where Cassie lived with her children, but it was so much more. Bright colors, carelessly tossed cushions. Dust.

She still attacked dust like a maniac, afraid Joe would walk in the door and pounce on her for forgetting. No matter how often she told herself he wouldn’t, couldn’t, because he was locked up, she still lay awake at night, shuddering at every creak.

And woke up every morning relieved. And ashamed.

Her ears pricked. “The kids are coming back,” she announced, and pushed all those old fears aside. “Is it all right if I make more lemonade?”

Savannah merely grunted and studied the colors Regan had selected for Jared’s law library.

Then the kids burst in like rockets.

“Only three more weeks,” Bryan shouted, and waved both fists in triumph. “The kittens can come in three more weeks.”

“Happy days,” Savannah murmured, but she smiled when Emma darted over to wrap an arm around Cassie’s leg. “Hi, angel face.”

“Hello. Bryan let me pet his kittens. They’re soft.”

“She wants one.” Shyness had never been a problem for Bryan. He scooped a hand into the cookie jar and hauled out a fistful. “Can she have one, Mrs. Dolin?”

“What?”

He stuffed a cookie into his mouth and eyed the lemonade Cassie was making. “Can Emma have one of the kittens? Shane’s got extra.”

“A kitten.” Automatically Cassie put a protective hand on Emma’s head. “We can’t have animals in the house, because—” She broke off, her gaze darting to Connor’s, even as her son dropped his head to stare at his feet.

Because Joe doesn’t like them. She’d nearly said it, so ingrained was the habit. A habit, she realized, that had prevented her from seeing how longingly Connor spoke of Bryan’s expected pets. How much Emma liked to play with the neighbor’s little brown dog.

“I don’t see why we couldn’t.”

Her reward was a brilliant and grateful look from her son. “Really?” The disbelief and hope in his voice almost made her weep. “Can we
really?
”

“Sure we can.” She scooped Emma into her arms and nuzzled. “You want one of Shane’s kittens, Emma?”

“They’re soft,” Emma said again.

“So are you.” It was time she did this, Cassie told herself. Made simple decisions without worrying about what Joe would do. “Tell Shane you’d like one, Connor.”

“Cool.” Unaware of the drama, Bryan chomped down another cookie. “Then you can bring him over sometimes so he can play with his brothers. Let’s go work on your pitching arm, Con.”

“Okay.” Connor darted after his friend, skidded to a halt. “Thanks, Mama.”

“Whoa.” At the door, Rafe barely avoided a head-on collision with Connor. He pretended he didn’t see the way the boy stiffened and paled, and patted his shoulder, very casually. “You guys are quick. Jared and I lost you in the woods.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Next year you’ll have to try running bases with that speed.” He stepped inside, grinned at the ladies. “This was worth a tramp through the woods.”

“We’re nearly done,” Regan told him, and tilted her face up for a kiss.

“No hurry. Hey, gorgeous.”

“Hello, handsome.” Savannah picked up one of her son’s forgotten cookies and offered it.

“Thanks. Cassie—just the woman I want to see.”

“Oh? Is something wrong?”

“I’ve got a problem.” To bribe a smile out of Emma, he held out his cookie. “Would you give me a kiss right here for this?” he asked.

Keeping an eye on the cookie, Emma leaned forward and touched her pursed lips to his nose.

“A problem?” Cassie repeated. Nerves humming, she set Emma down and told her to go out and watch the boys play. “What is it?”

“Well, I’ll tell you.” He leaned back on the counter. “Regan and I found this place a little farther out of town, on the Quarry Road. Needs some work.” He grinned at his wife. “We’re thinking of moving over in a couple months. Probably around June.”

“That’s nice.”

“Well, the thing is, Cassie, we need somebody at the inn. A—what did you call it, darling?”

“Chatelaine.”

“Fancy word for manager, if you ask me. Somebody to look after the place,” Rafe explained. “And the guests, once we’ve got them. Somebody who can cook breakfast, manage the housekeeping. Somebody who wouldn’t mind living in and running things.”

“Oh.” Nerves settled, Cassie smiled. “You want me to ask around. We could put the word out at the diner.”

“No, we’ve already got somebody in mind.” Eagle-eyed, Rafe spotted the cookie jar and helped himself. “We want someone we know, someone we trust.” He paused to chug down the full glass of lemonade Cassie handed him. “So how about it?”

“How about it?” she repeated.

“That’s not the way you offer someone a position, Rafe,” Regan said with a sigh. “Cassie, we’d like you to move in and manage the inn for us. We just can’t do it, between my shop and Rafe’s work.”

“You want me?” If she’d still been holding the glass, it would have been smashed on the floor. “I don’t know
anything about managing an inn. You’d have to have experience, and—”

“You manage a house and two kids,” Rafe pointed out. “You cook almost as well as I do. You know how to handle all the customers at Ed’s, run the kitchen there when you have to. And you have a soothing personality. Those are qualifications in my book.”

“But—”

“You’ll want to think about it.” Regan’s interruption was smooth as silk. “I know it’s a big favor, Cassie, and you’ve worked at Ed’s so long that it would be a big decision to switch jobs. But Rafe’s fixing up a nice apartment on the third floor—with its own kitchen—that would be part of the salary. You’d have privacy. Maybe you and the kids could come by and take a look. We’d really appreciate it.”

An apartment, privacy. No rent payment. That beautiful house on the hill. A manager. It all whirled in Cassie’s head like blurred and colorful dreams.

“I’d like to help, but—”

“Great.” Flashing a grin at his wife, Rafe patted Cassie’s shoulder. “You just come give the place a once-over, and we’ll talk about it some more.”

“All right.” Dazed, she shifted Emma on her hip. “I’ll come by. I have to get along. I promised Connor and Bryan we’d have hot dogs on the grill.”

“Go on and round them up,” Savannah suggested. “I’ll run and get Bryan’s backpack.”

She waited until Cassie was out the screen door. “You make a very good team,” she murmured, looking at Regan and Rafe. “And very good friends.”

She was nearly at the steps when she saw Devin on her porch, talking to Cassie. Her back snapped straight. “Something I can do for you, Sheriff?”

Only mildly annoyed at the interruption, he looked through the screen. “No. I just walked over with Jared and Rafe. You’ve done a nice job on the bank.”

“Thanks.”

When Emma held out her precious cookie to share, Savannah’s brow furrowed. She watched Devin lean forward, take a small bite.

“You taste better,” he announced, and made Emma giggle by nuzzling the gentle curve of her neck.

“You can hold me,” she told him, tossing out her arms and wrapping them around his neck.

“Thank you, ma’am.” He took her, brushing his cheek over her hair before settling her on his hip. As Cassie hurried away to call the boys, Devin looked back through the screen, Emma in his arms. “Some women like me.”

Eyes cool, Savannah inclined her head. “So it seems.”

“I’m not packing heat, Ms. Morningstar.” That lethal MacKade grin flashed, all power and charm. “Just taking in a spring evening with my best girl.”

“You’re wearing a badge,” Savannah pointed out.

“Habit. I’ve got no problem with you.”

“I’m going to keep it that way.” She looked across her yard to where Jared was hitting pop-ups for the boys.

“I’ve got no problem with that,” Devin said quietly, and drew her gaze back to his.

“All right.” She nodded and headed up to get her son’s overnight bag.

Holding Emma, Devin stepped off the porch. He managed to draw Cassie into a brief conversation and charmed one hesitant smile out of her before he had to pass Emma back and watch her and the kids head for their car.

She wasn’t quite so thin as she’d been those last months before he was finally able to collar Joe, Devin thought. Though she still looked as though one careless shout would topple her. A man had to be careful with her. The shadows had faded from under her eyes, but the eyes were still haunted.

He worried about her, and wondered. When the car was gone, he tucked his thoughts away and strolled over to Jared. “Your lady doesn’t like me.”

Jared gave the bat a last swing. “She doesn’t like your badge.”

“Like I said—she doesn’t like me.”

Jared looked toward the porch, where Savannah stood watching them, and felt his heart beat off-rhythm. “She’s had a rough road.”

“I don’t doubt it.” He’d seen a few miles of it in her eyes. “She what you want, bro?”

“Looks that way.”

“Well, then.” Devin rubbed his chin in his thoughtful way, still holding Savannah’s cool gaze. It would take a hell of a lot more than a shout to topple that one, he mused. “I have to say your taste in women has improved mightily since your timely divorce.”

Surprised, Jared leaned on the bat. “I thought you liked Barbara.”

Devin snorted out a laugh. “Yeah, right.”

“You never said different.”

“You never asked me.” Devin picked up the ball from the grass, tossed it high, made a one-handed catch that would have had Bryan cheering. “I like this one.”

Bemused, Jared shook his head. “You just said you didn’t.”

“I said
she
didn’t like
me.
” Devin’s grin was sly and slow. “I find that very attractive in a woman.”

Jared had him in a headlock in a blink. Experienced in such matters, Devin overbalanced and sent them both tumbling to the ground.

With the faintest of frowns, Savannah watched them wrestle—much as Bryan and Connor were prone to do. Behind her, Rafe and Regan stepped out of the house.

“Well, hell, they got started without me.”

“We’re going.” Regan took a firm grip on Rafe’s arm. “You promised to take me to dinner.”

“But, darling…”

“You can fight with them tomorrow. Bye, Savannah.”

“Mm-hmm…”

At Rafe’s shout, Devin rolled aside and rose, narrowly avoiding the hand that snaked out to trip him. After brushing off his jeans, he jogged down to join Rafe and Regan. He sent one quick salute to Savannah and disappeared into the woods.

“What was that?”

A bit winded, Jared climbed onto the porch. He winced a little and rubbed his ribs. “He got me a couple of good ones.”

“Were you playing or fighting?”

“What’s the difference?”

She had to laugh. “What were you playing and/or fighting about?”

“You. Got anything cold?”

“Me?” She was in the house behind him like a shot. “What do you mean?”

“He said…” Jared let the words trail off, sighed lustily over the icy beer he’d snagged from the refrigerator, popped it open, then drank deeply. “He said he found you attractive, so I had to pound on him a little.”

“Your brother, Sheriff MacKade, finds me attractive.”

“Yeah.” He leaned over the sink to splash cold water on his face. “He likes you.”