The only thing keeping her in her seat was knowing Matty’s real situation was flying under the radar.
Oh, she knew the busybodies in Providence all assumed that when a baby turned up at the James farm, it was hers. Only Sam and Ginny knew the truth. And since Deb rarely if ever ventured into town and Kelly had long ago driven fifty miles in the other direction to take care of business, what the hell did anyone know?
It was a great thing, a really, really, really great thing that the asshole responsible for spawning her and Matty didn’t know the truth. And she planned to keep it that way.
She eyed the man across from her. The arrogance rolling off him hit her like a tsunami wave. Who the hell did he think he was? She rescued him from a storm. Made him a meal for fuck’s sake. And what had he done? Almost killed her and then showed off his interrogation skills. Asshole.
Oh! And the son-of-a-bitch didn’t have the balls to answer her last question. Seriously? She might be young, a measly female, short, and vastly inexperienced in real world situations, but cheese and crackers! She wasn’t a potted plant with no clue.
What. A. Dick.
“I believe the question you left hanging in mid-air was who the hell do you work for, Mr. Bishop?” Fuck him if he thought she was too young and silly to hit back and not back down.
“How do you know I work for anybody?”
Oh for heaven’s sake. This guy was unreal.
“I’m here in Providence to check out some property for sale. That’s all,” he said with a dismissive shrug.
“Points for quick thinking but give it a rest would you?”
Score one for the home team, she sniggered when he did a double take and his eyes widened from her overly stern tone.
A good five to eight minutes of intense eyeball combat ensued. She finished her chili and brushed crumbs from her placemat while never looking away. He was crazy nuts for challenging her, something she was sure he came to understand by the time she stood up. Stomping her feet so her jeans would relax she shoved both hands in the hoodie pouch.
Canting her head in the direction of the door she spoke in a calm firm voice. “Have animals to tend. You’re on clean-up duty.”
The way he leaped from his seat and his vehement, “Let me help,” didn’t get the reaction he expected when she put up her hand to stop him.
“Look. I would suggest that you fuck off and die but since that’s just wishful thinking and I’m stuck with you—for now,” she snarled heavily, “make yourself useful and stay out of my way.”
His hurt little boy expression reminded her of Matty. “But I can help. With the animals.”
She sighed heavily. “Is that so? When was the last time you fed chickens and goats?”
“Well, never,” he mumbled. “But you can’t do that by yourself, and I’m…”
She cut him off with a ferocious hoot of laughing outrage. “News flash. I do everything by myself. Shall we revisit the do not patronize me part of our fascinating conversation or can you just accept that’s what you’re doing and get the hell out of my way.”
“Wow.” He was smirking. She wanted to wipe the masculine leer off his face. “I get that there’s a lot you have to do. By yourself. But there are some things that most definitely require two people.”
Oh no he didn’t!
Did he?
Shit. She didn’t know, wasn’t sure. Innuendo and flirty talk wasn’t her thing.
“Shut up.”
He smirked some more.
Stomping away like Matty did when he didn’t get his way, Kelly grabbed a knit scarf and hat off the pegs by the door and fished some gloves from the pocket of a hanging jacket.
She wanted to fire back at him with all she had but bit her tongue. Holding her own against someone so much older and more knowledgeable was difficult enough. It would be suicide to give him more ammunition.
On her way to the back door, she turned suddenly and caught him staring at her ass. Whatever she thought to say melted on her tongue.
“Um, tea would be nice when I get back.”
And then she bolted, grabbing the snow shovel stowed outside so she could clear a path across the backyard to the animal pens. The snow was coming down so fast she could barely see. The dim bulb above the back door lent an odd glow to the scenery.
With a final look at the house, she pushed Roman Bishop and his murky reasons for invading her life into the background. Life in these hills had a way of being unforgiving, and she didn’t have the luxury of time or opportunity to do anything other than survive.
He felt trapped. By his own weakness, because that’s the only way he could explain his getting messier by the second feelings for a girl he was supposed to be handling in a professional capacity.
Unfortunately, handling her drool worthy ass was neither professional nor something that should even remotely exist in a realm of possibility.
But, that’s exactly where his thoughts dragged him.
Clearing their dishes from the table, he took them to the kitchen and stared blindly out the window above the sink. The snow was insane. It bothered the crap out of him that she was out there doing fuck knows what while he sat on the sidelines.
Part of him, a big part, had a hard time accepting that this was Kelly’s life. His assumptions hadn’t adequately prepared him for the reality. Especially not when he thought of Liam’s life of privilege. Sure, the luxury came from a shit ton of hard work, but still. His friend wasn’t going to like learning the blunt truth about his sister’s existence.
He could imagine Liam’s outrage. ‘And what did you do while she battled the snow to feed chickens?’
Roman grimaced. “What did I do? Well, hell. I did the dishes and made tea.”
Ugh. Is this what being a pussy feels like?
Wiping off his hands, he tossed the dishtowel on the counter and reached into his pocket. It took less than five seconds to realize he had zero signal and no chance of making a call from his current location. Dammit. He wanted Liam’s input. Conditions here were much different from anything they imagined. The sooner they got her away from here—her and the kid—the better.
When she asked who he worked for, he considered playing all his cards in one hand. Telling her the truth seemed the best way forward, but that wasn’t his call to make.
Frustrated, he shoved the phone back in his pocket, crossed his arms and leaned against the counter. Not sure what to do next, he ran some options in his head but came up empty.
He had questions, lots of them. Like how the hell she stayed off radar. If Cam hadn’t stumbled on the name change courtesy of Kelly’s mother he’d still be spinning his wheels searching for a person who no longer existed. Kelly James was very real, but from a digital footprint standpoint? She was a ghost. No school records. No social security. No driver’s license. How the fuck was that even possible? Shit. Not even witness protection was so shrouded in secrecy.
Matthew James. That’s the kid’s name, right? He nodded and glanced around. This time he saw plenty of evidence that there was a child in the house. Shoes by the door. A handful of crayon drawings hung with magnets on the refrigerator. A plastic shoebox overflowing with chunky building blocks sat on the kitchen counter.
Frankly, the visual stimulation was off the charts in this house. There was stuff everywhere. On the walls, every flat surface, you name it. He thought of his well-ordered life. Shit, man. He was so anal at times that lining up pens on his desk was something he did on the regular.
No need to instigate a psychological profile why. The military might be in the past, but the habits he picked up during that time continued to inform his life. Order was his baseline. His old Justice comrades at their compound in the Arizona desert understood this mindset. They called it the control switch. It grew out of some very fucked up times when enemy kills and shit-stomp-kicking the hell out of every day was their norm. Throwing the switch was part of what saved his life when the dark times came. Not being able to flip the switch put
him at a disadvantage. Without control and order, he was flying blind.
Maybe that explained why his dick was hard.
Dude, his conscience scolded. This girl is a babe in the woods. Having a kid as a teenager doesn’t make her experienced. Back down. She’s too damn young and you? You’re one of those shades of fucked up people, only in your case it’s more like a thousand shades. And some fresh-faced kid, no matter how hot a piece of ass, wouldn’t survive ten minutes in the face of your particular brand of fucking.
Ouch.
Making a valiant effort to hold his confusion and unease at bay, he turned his attention to the task of making tea. She would continue to bristle and snarl unless he gave her something to think about. He didn’t want to lie but without the all clear from Liam, he didn’t have much choice.
But what if he went with a half truth? Debbie Jenkins, aka Debbie James, was the connector piece. Kelly’s lack of an Oklahoma twang, the references to a completely different area of the country, and especially the off radar factoid. That certainly wasn’t something a little kid could start. Her mother was the author of their invisible footprint.
He wondered what or how much Kelly knew about her mother’s background and made the decision to go down that road of questioning when she returned. If pressed, and he knew she intended to, he’d go so far as to offer up what he knew about Deb Jenkins James and Adam Ward.
A wayward random thought flashed in his head. He wanted to meet the kid. Matty. Kids were kind of cool and this one intrigued him. How old did Lil say he was? Four? That seemed like a good age.
The loud thuds of Kelly stomping her boots by the back door made him swing that way in anticipation. Oh shit. The tea. What the hell was wrong with him that he couldn’t produce a hot cup of tea when that was all she asked for?
He cranked the fire under the pot of water and willed it to heat up in a hurry. The sound of the door opening and closing firmly told him he was an epic fail as a tea master.
The failure zinged his pride.
Watching from the corner of the doorway, she studied her unwanted trespasser with the hard-to-believe name. Were his parents high when they named him? Roman Bishop. Sheesh.
Her head shook, and she bit her lip at the same time because the arrogant name aside, the man was worth looking at. Why was that? Was it because of how he filled whatever space he occupied? Perhaps the way he moved? Whatever it was, she had a hard time ignoring him.
A tiny swirling nugget of anxiety pierced her center. It became increasingly hard to take in enough oxygen, and her legs tingled from the growing need to start running and not look back. Shifting side-to-side, foot-to-foot, she swallowed hard to keep her panic in check. Not being worldly didn’t have anything to do with a person’s intuition, and right now her gut was sending bullet messages in rapid-fire succession, none of them were in any way friendly.
Her eyes darted to the kitchen window. The snow was coming down faster now. At this rate, they’d be lucky if the foot and a half predicted didn’t turn out to be two feet plus.
Fantastic.
Wiggling the fingers on her sore hand, her mind took off like an athlete at the sound of the starting gun on a mad dash through the thousand problems being snowed in caused—all made more difficult because she’d been a clumsy fool and gotten hurt. Just now, tending to the animals had been difficult. It took her three attempts to grasp the bolt slider on the goat enclosure and push it closed.
The only saving grace was Matty being safe and sound with Sam and Ginny. Knowing how much the little boy liked hanging with them eased any worry. The couple, both entirely comfortable with the term ‘old hippies’, were surrogate grandparents to her and Matty. Hands down, no hesitation whatsoever, she trusted Ginny and counted on Sam. They’d been close to her mother; something Kelly suspected meant they knew a lot more about Debbie’s double life than she did. Knew things about Matty’s gene pool, and most likely hers too.
And he talked to them, which was a good thing because in another year he’d be in school, a luxury she’d never experienced, and then he’d have no choice but to talk. And join in. Be social. Make friends. Have peers. All the things absent from her hard-scrabble life. All the things she was working so hard on giving him.
A sound from the stove got her eyes swinging from the unwelcome winter wonderland swirling outside to find Roman Bishop awkwardly juggling a pot. She heard a sharp hiss and sincerely hoped he burned his damn fingers on the hot handle. He might be cultured and polished, but apparently the man knew shit about potholders.
When he finally managed to dump a stream of water into a mug sitting beside him on the counter, she exploded, choking out in strangled outrage, “What the hell are you doing?”
Gesturing at the cup filled with water his attitude suggested the answer was glaringly obvious. “You asked for tea,” he stated flatly.
Kelly felt her brow wrinkle from the sudden urge to tear into him for being a dimwitted kitchen klutz. But instead, she marched forward with a huff, grabbed the water-filled mug with her working hand and upended it into the dishpan of suds.
“Move,” she growled. All but shoving his stupid ass aside, she returned the pot to the stove and turned up the heat, giving him a double shot of side shade in the process.
“I’m sure where you come from there’s some fancy electric tea maker with a digital temperature option, but here we boil water the old fashioned way. In a pot.”
An unfortunate and clumsy whack of her already tender wrist against the edge of the counter sent a sharp zinging lance of pain straight to her neck and stole her breath.
She caught him narrowing his eyes and felt a warm tingle as he assessed her with a sweeping gaze. The way his lips thinned made him seem grim and a little dangerous.
Instantly straightening, she snapped to attention and challenged him with her eyes. He had another thing coming if he thought for one second she couldn’t take care of herself. Thank you very much. End of story. She didn’t need his damn help. Didn’t need anyone’s help.
Refusing to give him an opening, she hectored on with a dismissive brusqueness that was all an act.
“The operative word, Mr. Bishop, is boil. We boil the water.”
“But I did…boil the water,” he drawled with air quotes and a chuckle.
Her eyes narrowed, and she stared a hole through his thick skull. Was he stupid or just messing with her?
“Um, no,” she grated irritably. “To boil means bubbles roll on the surface. Did you see rolling bubbles?” When he didn’t answer right away, she stubbornly persisted. “I didn’t think so. A bit of steam and some bubbling snaps on the sides of the pot do not constitute a boil.”
“So what you’re saying is, the water should be molten lava hot. Not hot tub hot.”
“I have no idea what hot tub hot means,” she snapped, and then caught herself from launching into a high and mighty tirade when she realized he was teasing—trying to get a rise out of her.
She was raising a preschooler for heaven’s sake and had first-hand experience with falling for shit like this. He wanted to play dumb? Fine. She’d give him a lesson in tea basics to prove she had a practical point.
“Unless the water boils, what you’ll end up with is a cup of flavored water. Not tea. Tea leaves are delicate but to get the best from them, they require firm handling. Wishy washy makes for bland and boring.”
Something moved in his expression. The flash fire burning in his eyes singed her thoughts and made her tremble.
“Understood,” he half-growled. His voice was husky. The words deliberate. “You prefer strength to wishy-washy.”
“Because the tea is delicate,” she persisted in a nonsensical murmur, immediately regretting how lame she sounded.
“Yeah. Got it,” he replied.
The weird conversation had an undercurrent that she found confusing. And disturbing. Male-female interactions were not where she did her best work. The guys she knew from taking their money at Shorty’s didn’t c
ount. Her rep as a pool shark gave her an act to hide behind. The fuzzy eight-ball hanging from Bandit’s rear view was a useful prop. Those unremarkable specimens of American manhood didn’t see her as a female. They regarded her as a competitor.
So what did that mean as far as how Roman Bishop looked at her?
Rubbing the back of her neck, she tried to ignore the big man sucking all the oxygen out of the small kitchen and set about making the tea. A proper cup of tea. Not whatever the hell he was making.
Reaching into a large ceramic canister adorned with tacky Italian motifs, she pulled out a bag by the tag and dangled it above the mug before draping the thin string over the side.
Angling slightly away from the big man’s watchful gaze, she picked up her supply of beverage sugar.
“What’s that?” he asked when she turned around holding the enormous glass jar of sugar rocks.
“Rock sugar. From the farmers’ market. It’s made from beets and molasses. Sweetens but doesn’t overpower. Want to try some?”
Carefully putting the breakable container safely on the counter, she motioned with her head for him to uncap the heavy jar and stood aside to give him room.
He laid the cap aside and leaned in for a sniff. “Reminds me of the rock candy we got at the state fair as kids.”
“Pop one of the nugs in your mouth and let it dissolve. Better than any candy you’ll ever buy.”
The pot of water started gently rolling, so she turned off the gas, lifted it with a potholder and deftly poured the steaming fluid into her mug without spilling a drop.
“That’s how we do… ” she murmured with a short, dismissive shrug. “Boiling water,” she drily emphasized, “and rock sugar. Cream when we have some.”
“Do you have a favorite tea?”
Scoffing at the absurd question she made a face to punctuate her reply. “Yeah. Whatever’s on the shelf at the dollar store.”
That certainly shut him up. Wearing a sheepish expression, he backed away so she could maneuver around the small space. When she finished and was satisfied, he grumpily took the steaming mug and moved it onto the kitchen table.
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