by Nora Roberts
"That's a good one. They're in the barn. I'll show you."
"No." To stop him, Savannah put a hand on his arm. There was a glint in her eyes that told him she knew exactly where his thoughts were heading. "We won't interrupt your work. Your pigs are waiting, and I'm sure Bryan knows exactly where to find the kittens."
"Sure I do. Come on, Mom." He had her by the hand, tugging. "They're really cool. Shane's got all kinds of neat animals," Bryan told her.
"Mm-hmm..." With a last amused glance, she let herself be hauled away. "Magnificent animals." And, she thought as she watched Jared stride out of the barn with a bale over his shoulder, here was another one now.
His eyes met hers, held, as he stopped, tossed the bale down. The suit had been deceiving, she realized. Though he hadn't looked soft in it, he'd looked elegant. There was nothing elegant about the man now.
He was all muscle.
. If she'd been a lesser woman, her mouth might have watered.
Instead, she inclined her head and spoke coolly. "Mr. MacKade."
"Ms. Morningstar." His tone was just as cool. But it took a focused effort to unknot the tension in his stomach. "Hi, Bryan."
"I didn't know you worked here," Bryan began. "I've never seen you working here."
"Now and again."
"How come you were wearing a suit?" he asked. "Shane never wears a suit."
"Not unless you knock him unconscious first." When the boy grinned, Jared noticed a gap in his teeth that hadn't been there the day before. "Lose something?"
Proudly Bryan pressed his tongue in the gap. "It came out this morning. It's good for spitting."
"I used to hold the record around here. Nine feet, three inches. Without the wind."
Impressed, and challenged, Bryan worked up saliva in his mouth, concentrated and let it fly. Jared pursed his lips, nodded. "Not bad."
"I can do better than that."
"You're one of the tops in your division, Bry," Savannah said dryly. "But Mr. MacKade has work to do, and we're supposed to be looking at kittens."
"Yeah, they're right in here." He took off into the barn at a run. Savannah followed more slowly.
"Nine feet?" she murmured, with a glance over her shoulder.
"And three inches."
"You surprise me, Mr. MacKade."
She had a way of sauntering on those long legs, he thought, that gave a man's eyes a mind of their own. After a quick internal debate, he gave up and went in after her.
"Aren't they great?" Bryan plopped right down in the hay beside the litter of sleeping kittens and their very bored-looking mama. "They have to stay with her for weeks and weeks." Very gently, he stroked a fingertip over the downy head of a smoke-gray kitten. "But then we can take one."
She couldn't help it. Savannah went soft all over. "Oh, they're so tiny." Crouching down, she gave in to the need and lifted one carefully into her hand. "Look, Bry, it fits right in my palm. Oh, aren't you sweet?" Murmuring, she nuzzled her face against the fur. "Aren't you pretty?"
"I like this one best." Bryan continued to stroke the tiny gray bundle. "I'm going to call him Cal. Like for Cal Ripkin."
"Oh." The soft orange ball in her hand stirred and mewed thinly. Her heart was lost. "All right. The gray one."
"You could take two." Jared stepped into the stall. Her face, he thought, was an open book. "It's nice for them to have company."
"Two?" The idea burst like a thousand watts in Bryan's brain. "Yeah, Mom, we'll take two. One would be lonely!"
"Bry-"
"And it wouldn't be any more trouble. We've got lots of room now. Cal's going to want somebody to play with, to hang around with."
"Thanks, MacKade."
"My pleasure."
"And anyway," Bryan went on, because he'd come out of his own excitement long enough to see the way his mother was cuddling the orange kitten, "this way we could each pick one. That's the fair way, right?"
Smiling, Bryan reached out to brush his finger over the orange kitten. "He likes you. See, he's trying to lick your hand."
"He's hungry," Savannah told him, but she knew there was no possible way she was going to be able to resist the little bundle rooting in her hand. "I suppose they would be company for each other."
"All right, Mom!" Bryan sprang up, kissed her without any of the embarrassment many nine-year-old boys might feel. "I'm going to tell Shane which ones are ours."
With a clatter of feet, Bryan dashed out of the barn.
"You know you wanted it," Jared said.
"I'm old enough to know I can't have everything I want." But she sighed and set the kitten down so that it could join its siblings in a morning snack. "But two cats can't be that much more trouble than one."
She started to rise, flicking a glance upward when Jared put a hand under her arm and helped her up. "Thanks." She stepped around him and headed for the light. "So, are you a farm boy moonlighting as a lawyer, or a lawyer moonlighting as a farm boy?"
"It feels like both these days. I spent the last few years living in Hagerstown." He matched his pace to her long, lazy one. "When I moved back a couple of months ago, I had a lot of things to deal with in the city, so I haven't been able to give Shane and Devin much of a hand."
"Devin?" She paused outside, where the sun was strong and warming quickly. "Oh, the sheriff. Yes, Bryan's mentioned him. He lives here, too."
"He sleeps here now and again," Jared said. "He lives in the sheriff's office."
"Fighting crime, in a town with two stoplights?"
"Devin takes things seriously." He looked over to where Bryan was dancing around Shane as Shane herded the cows back to pasture. "Have you given any more thought to your father's estate?"
"Estate. Now, that's a very serious word. Yes, I've thought about it. I have to talk to Bryan." At Jared's cocked brow, she spoke quietly. "We're a team, Mr. MacKade. He gets a vote in this. We have a Little League game this afternoon, and I don't want to distract him from that. I'll have an answer for you by Monday."
"Fine." Jared's eyes shifted from hers again, narrowed. The warning glint in them had Savannah's lips curving.
"Let me guess. Your brother's looking at my butt again."
Intrigued, Jared looked back at her. "You can tell?"
Her laugh was quick and rich. "Honey, women can always tell. Sometimes we let you get away with it, that's all." She cast a lightning grin over her shoulder, winked at Shane. "Come on, Bryan. You've got chores to finish up before the game."
She walked back through the woods with Bryan, listening to him chatter endlessly about the kittens, the ball game, the animals at the MacKade farm.
He was happy, was all she could think. He was safe. She'd done a good job. On her own. She caught herself before she could sigh and alert her son to the troubles in her mind. It was often so hard to know what was right.
"Why don't you run ahead, Bry? Get those chores done and change into your uniform. I think I'll sit here awhile."
He stopped, kicked at a pebble. "How come you sit here so much?"
"Because I like it here."
He studied her face, looked for signs. "We're really going to stay in this place?"
Her heart broke a little as she bent down and kissed him. "Yes, we're really going to stay."
His grin was quick and bright. "Cool."
He raced off, leaving her standing alone in the path. She sat on a fallen log, closed her eyes and emptied her mind.
So much tried to intrude—memories, mistakes, doubts. She willed them away, concentrating on the quiet and that place in her own head that was safe from worry.
It was a trick she'd learned as a child, when the confusion of life had been too overwhelming to face. There had been long rides in a rattling pickup, endless hours in smelly paddocks, loud voices, the gnaw of real hunger, the cries of fretful babies, the chill of underheated rooms. They could all be faced, again and again, if she could just escape into herself for a few minutes.
Decisions became clearer
, confidence could be rebuilt.
As fascinated as if he'd come across some mythical creature in the woods, Jared watched her. That exotic face was utterly peaceful, her body utterly still. He wouldn't have been surprised to see a butterfly or a bright bird land on her shoulder.
These woods had always been his. His personal place. His intimate place. Yet seeing her here didn't feel like an intrusion. It seemed expected, as if in some part of his mind he'd known he'd find her here if he just knew when to look.
He realized he was afraid to blink, as if in that fraction of a second she might vanish, never to be found again.
She opened her eyes slowly and looked directly into his.
For a moment, neither of them could speak. Savannah felt the breath rush into her throat and stick there. She was used to men staring at her. They had done so even when she was a child. It annoyed, amused or interested her by turns. But it had never left her speechless, as this one long, unblinking stare out of eyes the color of summer grass did.
He moved first, stepping closer. And the world started again.
"I hate stating the obvious." Because he wanted to—and because his knees were just a little weak—he sat on the log beside her. "But you are staggering."
Steadier now, she inclined her head. "Aren't you supposed to be plowing a field or something?"
"Shane's gotten proprietary about his tractor over the years. Aren't you supposed to be going to a ball game?"
"It's not for a couple hours." Savannah took a deep breath, relieved that it went smoothly in and out. "So, who's trespassing, you or me?"
"Technically, both of us." Jared took out a slim cigar and found a match. "This is my brother's property."
"I assumed the farm belonged to all of you."
"It does." He took a drag, watched the smoke drift into the sunlight. "This strip here is Rafe's land."
"Rafe?" Her brows shot up. "Don't tell me there are more of you."
"Four altogether." He tried to smother his surprise when she plucked the cigar out of his fingers and helped herself to a casual drag.
"Four MacKades," she mused. "It's a wonder the town survived. And none of the women managed to rope you in?"
"Rafe's married. I was."
"Oh." She handed him back the cigar. "And now you're back on the farm."
"That right. Actually, if I hadn't waffled, I'd be living in your cabin."
"Is that so?"
"Yep. My place in town's on the market and I'm looking for something around here. But you already had a contract on your place by the time I started looking." He picked up a stick and drew in the dirt. "The farm," he said, sketching lines. "Rafe's. The cabin."
Savannah pursed her lips at the triangle. "Hmm... And the MacKades would have owned a nice chunk of the mountain. You missed your shot, Lawyer Mac-Kade."
"So it seems, Ms. Morningstar."
"I suppose you can call me Savannah, since we're neighbors." Taking the stick from him, she tapped the point of the triangle. "This place. It's the stone house you can see on the hill from the road into town?"
"That's right. The old Barlow place."
"It's haunted."
"You've heard the stories?"
"No." Interested, she looked over at him. "Are there stories?"
It only took him a moment to see she wasn't playing games. "Why did you say it was haunted?"
"You can feel it," she said simply. "Just like these woods. They're restless." When he continued to stare at her, she smiled. "Indian blood. I'm part Apache. My father liked to claim he was full-blooded, but..." She let words trail off, looked away.
"But?"
"There's Italian, Mexican, even a little French mixed in."
"Your mother?"
"Anglo and Mex. She was a barrel racer. Rodeo champion. She was in a car accident when I was five. I don't remember her very clearly."
"Both of mine are gone, too." Companionably he offered her the cigar. "It's tough."
She drew in smoke. "This one shouldn't have been, for me. I lost my father ten years ago, when he booted me out. I was sixteen, and pregnant with Bryan."
"I'm sorry, Savannah."
"Hey, I got by." She passed back the cigar. She didn't know why she'd told him, except that it was quiet here, and he listened well. "The thing is, Jared, I've been thinking more about my father in the last day or so than I have in years. You can't imagine what eight thousand dollars would have meant to me ten years ago. Five." With a shrug, she pushed back her hair. "Hell, there was a time eight dollars would have made the difference between— Well, it doesn't matter."
Without thinking, he laid a hand over hers. "Sure it does."
She frowned down at their hands, then slowly, casually, slipped hers away and stood. "The thing is, I have Bryan to think of. So I'll talk this over with him."
"Let me state the obvious again. You've done a terrific job raising your son."
She smiled. "We've raised each other. But thanks. I'll be in touch."
"Savannah." He rose, faced her on the path. "This is a good town, mostly a kind one. No one has to be alone here unless they want to."
"That's something else I have to think about. I'll see you around, Lawyer MacKade."
Jared hadn't been to a Little League game in years. When he pulled up at the park just outside of town and absorbed the scents and sounds, he wondered why. The single swatch of wooden stands was crowded and noisy. And kids who weren't on the field were running and racing behind the low chain-link fence or wrestling under the shade of the stands.
The concession hut drew others, with the smell of steaming hot dogs and sloppy joes.
He pulled his car behind the long line of others along the bumpy shoulder of the narrow road and walked across the uneven grass. He had an eye peeled for Savannah, but it was little Connor Dolin who caught his gaze.
The pale-haired boy was waiting quietly in line for food, staring at his feet as a couple of burly older kids harassed him.
"Hey, it's nerd brain Dolin. How's your old man like his cell?"
Connor stood stoically as they bumped and shoved him. The woman ahead of him in line turned and clucked her tongue at them, which had no effect at all.
"Why don't you bake him a cake with a file in it, butthead? Bet a wussy like you bakes a real good cake."
"Hey, Connor." Jared stepped up, aimed one look that had the two bullies scrambling away. "How's it going?"
"Okay." Humiliation had stained his cheeks, fear of abuse had dampened his palms around the money he clutched. "I'm supposed to get hot dogs and stuff."
"Mm-hmm." In the way of males, Jared knew better than to mention what he'd just seen. "How come you're not playing ball?"
"I'm not any good." It was said matter-of-factly. He was much too used to being told he wasn't any good to question it. "But Bryan's playing. Bryan Morningstar. He's the best on the team."
"Is he?" Touched by the sudden light in those shy gray eyes, Jared reached out to flip up the visor of Connor's ball cap. The boy jerked instinctively, went still, and reminded Jared that life had not been all ball games and hot dogs for this nine-year-old. "I'm looking forward to watching him," Jared continued, as if the moment had never happened. "What position does he play?"
Ashamed of his own cowardice, Connor studied the ground again. "Shortstop."
"Yeah? I used to play short."
"You did?" Astonished by the idea, Connor just stared.
"That's right. Devin played third, and—"
"Sheriff MacKade played baseball?" Now the astonishment was mixed with a pure case of hero worship. "I bet he was real good."
"He was okay." It pricked the pride, just a little, to remember he'd never been able to outhit, or outfield, Devin. "How many dogs you want, Connor?"
"I've got money. Mom gave me money. And Ms. Morningstar." He fumbled with the bills. "I'm supposed to get one for her, too. With mustard."
"It's my treat." Jared held up three fingers at the vendor as Bryan worried his lip a
nd stared at his money. "This way I get to hang out with you and Ms. Morningstar."
Jared handed the boy the first hot dog, watched him carefully, deliberately squeeze on a line of bright yellow mustard. "Are your mother and sister here?"
"No, sir. Mom's working, and Emma's with her down at the diner. She said it was okay for me to come down and watch, though."
Jared added drinks to the order, and packed the whole business up in a flimsy cardboard box. "Can you handle this?"
"Yes, sir. Sure." Pleased to have been given the job, Connor walked toward the stands, holding the box as if the hot dogs were explosives and the soft drinks a lit match. "We're way up at the top, 'cause Ms. Morningstar says you can see everything better from up high."
And he could see her, Jared mused, as they approached the stands. She sat with her elbows on her knees, her chin cupped in her hands. And her eyes— though he had to imagine, as they were shielded with dark glasses—focused on the field.
He was wrong about that. She was watching him, walking beside the boy, flashing that killer smile or giving a quick salute whenever someone hailed him. And noticing several women—of varying ages—who put their shoulders back or patted at their hair as he passed.
That was what a man who looked like that did to a woman, Savannah supposed. Made her instinctively aware of herself on a purely physical level. It was like pheromones, she decided. The scent of sex.
Those long legs of his carried him up the stands behind the small boy. Now and again his hand touched a shoulder or shook a hand. Savannah picked up the jacket she'd set in Connor's place and squeezed over toward the rail.
"Nice day for a ball game," Jared said as he sat beside her. He took the box from Connor and, to make room for the boy, shifted closer to the woman. "Crowded."
"It is now. Thanks, Con."
"Mr. MacKade bought them," Connor told her, and solemnly handed her back her money.
She started to tell him to keep it, but she understood pride. "Thanks, Mr. MacKade."
"What's the score?"
"We're down one, bottom of the third." She took a healthy bite of her hot dog. "But the top of our batting order's coming up."
"Bryan bats third." Connor chewed and swallowed politely before he spoke. "He has the most RBIs."