by Lori Wilde
“We like it.” The sheriff handed the license back. “You have a nice day and make sure you get that light fixed before you cause an accident.”
“Yes, sir.” Bundy used the same tone he offered his parole officer. If there was one thing he gave his old man credit for, it was teaching him to kiss ass.
As Bundy watched the cruiser pull out around him, he swallowed the gulp of panic. Then he smiled. See, that proved just what kind of man he was. He hadn’t killed the sheriff just to kill him. He hadn’t overreacted, either. Any other hit man would have taken him out immediately. And they probably would’ve enjoyed it.
A frown pulled at his lips. But it did prove he needed to be more careful. He needed to lay low, go back to the hotel, wait a while. Maybe get the car’s brake lights fixed. The thought hit that he could leave. Most hit men, if the first attempt went bad, didn’t stay around to do the job.
That’s what made him the best. He was a man of his word.
And he had the junkyard asshole to teach a lesson.
He put the car in gear and started driving. He might be calling it a day, but Ted Bundy wasn’t a quitter.
“I don’t think I can do it!” Pete said, setting down the knife. “Even if I managed to cut a piece off, I might break my choppers. If I could cut off a few chucks of the pie we could suck on them.”
Clay bit the inside of his mouth to keep from laughing.
“I’m sorry, Pete,” Jennifer said, sounding earnest and making Clay feel bad for almost laughing. “How about after dinner I bake another one.”
“You don’t need to do that,” Clay jumped in.
“If she wants to, she can,” Pete jumped. Clay almost kicked him again under the table. But remembering the man had no qualms about kicking back, he restrained himself.
“I want to.” She offered the old man a smile that could have melted petrified wood.
Clay picked up his sweet tea and took a sip. Fine, he’d let her deal with Pete. She was a big girl.
Well, not really. He recalled with clarity how small, feminine, and soft she’d felt beneath him.
“Ain’t she sweet as sugar?” Pete said.
Yeah, she was. That quick taste he’d had of her mouth had him wanting more.
“Sorry I missed meeting your friends. I found out a friend of mine was feeling ill. He lives by himself, so I offered to help out a while.”
Standing from the table, Clay collected the paper plates.
“I can do that,” Jennifer said.
They’d barely spoken since the kiss. And for good damn reason. The woman was husband hunting, and he didn’t want to appear a willing candidate.
“You cooked,” Clay said.
After Jake and the crowd left, Clay had grabbed his computer, sat at the kitchen table, and researched everything he could find on Ted Bundy, Junior. The hundreds of articles on the real Bundy made the search difficult. But not impossible.
He didn’t like what he’d read. The man should still be in jail. But from what Clay surmised, it seemed the system had gone easy on Bundy due to the evidence of his being an abused kid.
Clay sometimes hated how cold his outlook was when dealing with sad backgrounds on criminals. Unfortunately, the correlation between abused and abusive was too strong to deny, and too few got rehabilitated.
“I’m not sure grilled cheese and ham sandwiches qualifies as cooking,” Jennifer said.
“They were good,” Clay offered and walked to drop the plates into the garbage.
“That they were,” Pete said, giving up on the pie and settling back into a kitchen chair. “Did your mama teach you to cook?”
Jennifer didn’t answer right away. Glancing back, Clay recalled the hurt in her voice when she’d mentioned her mom’s death.
She stared at her tea as if debating her answer. “She . . . only taught me to cook a pie. And then only because I begged her. My mom was half Hispanic. My grandma was a cook and a maid. Mom followed in her footsteps because . . . because she didn’t have the means to go to school. So, she was determined that my sister and I wouldn’t work in the domestic field. She ran us out of the kitchen if we went in there. Told us to go study to make something better out of ourselves. She passed when I was sixteen.”
Clay took in the details adding them to his everything-I-know-about-Jennifer list that he felt compelled to keep.
The dark hair and slightly olive skin hinted at her heritage. He was more surprised at her having a sister. For some reason, he got the sense that other than her friends, she was alone in the world. Hopefully, he was wrong.
“Well, I hate to differ with your mom, but there is no shame in knowing your way around a kitchen.”
“I agree,” Jennifer said. “I regret I didn’t fight her on it.”
“It’s never too late to learn,” Pete said. “For a while there, I watched those cooking shows. I tried cooking bananas foster, the fancy kind you put fire to. You can still see the burnt spot on the ceiling.”
Pete and Jennifer laughed.
Jennifer just put her hand on top of Pete’s. “I’ve actually been thinking of taking a few cooking lessons.”
“Well, if you need someone to practice on, I’m your guy.”
“I’ll take you up on that,” she said with true affection. Truer than Clay had heard from a woman in a month of Sundays.
Pete got up and fed Devil who had rested at Jennifer’s feet for the entire dinner. Then he left the kitchen to go watch reruns of Family Feud. Jennifer started rummaging around the fridge as if preparing to cook her pie.
“You do know you could tell him no,” Clay said, missing the easy camaraderie they’d found earlier.
“I know. But I like him. He’s kind of cute.” The face she made was cute, too.
Clay grinned. “You can still say that after what we saw last night?”
She chuckled. “Yes.” Their eyes met, held, then she stuck her head back into the fridge. If that wasn’t a chilly brush off, he didn’t know what was.
He turned to start the dishes.
“You know,” she said. “I’m just going to make a mess fixing the pie. Why don’t you go watch TV and let me do this?”
“Sure,” he said, feeling run out, let go, unwanted.
Perhaps he’d been worried over nothing. He wasn’t even on Jennifer Peterson’s candidate list for husbands.
Which was a good thing.
He could relax.
Not worry.
So why did he suddenly feel excluded? As if they’d just announced the guys who’d made the football team and his name wasn’t called.
He sure as hell didn’t want to be a contender.
Frowning, he grabbed his laptop off the counter and went into the living room. The sound of dishing clinking, water running filled the small house. Sitting on the edge of the sofa, he googled “divorce rates by career.”
Chapter 11
Sunday morning Jennifer rolled over in bed, feeling rested for the first time. She’d slept well, with the exception of her one pee break. Upon stepping out of the bathroom, she had found Clay standing beside the sofa.
“You want some milk?” His voice had been sleepy-husky, his hair mussed, his jeans unbuckled and his chest bare. He’d looked warm, cozy and middle-of-the-night sexy.
Did she want…? The tiny three-letter word, “yes,” did cartwheels on the tip of her tongue, but she realized his offer had been milk. She wanted his company. She wanted him.
That was dangerous. She only had five more days to be in his company, and it was best not to romanticize it. He was playing bodyguard. She was supposed to be playing interior decorator to his house and business. And tomorrow, she would start on that. So, she ducked her head and said, “No, I’m fine. But thank you.”
She’d left him, and it had taken her a good hour to go back to sleep, but she’d managed.
Now, with the sun spilling through the window, she stood up, stretched and then smiled remembering both Clay and Pete eating her pie last night. Sh
e wondered over the feminine satisfaction of seeing a man enjoy something she’d made. There had only been one piece of pie left when she went to bed. Pete had called dibs on it. Seeing the two men argue over it had made her feel needed and—her mother would hate it—but good in a domestically-feminine kind of way.
Then Pete had hugged her when she went to bed and thanked her for making him a pie. She wasn’t even sure why she’d taken a liking to him so much. Maybe because she’d never had a grandfather, and that’s what he reminded her of. Somebody’s pawpaw.
As she got dressed, she smelled dark-roasted coffee.
When she walked out, Clay sat at the kitchen table working on his computer. Almost startled, he looked up and closed the lid.
“Good morning.” He smiled, his bright eyes looked playful, and he appeared well rested.
Maybe that’s what they’d both needed. Just a good night’s sleep, so they could battle the awkwardness the kiss had brought on.
“Morning,” she said. “Can I steal a cup of coffee?”
“No, but you can have one.” His smile deepened.
How had she not noticed he had a dimple in the corner of his right cheek?
“You look cheery this morning,” she offered.
“Is that a crime?” he asked.
“No.” But along with the discovery of his dimple, it suddenly felt disarming. When the man smiled—or really smiled—he was even more attractive. She found a cup from the cabinet and filled it.
“Where’s Pete?” She went to the fridge and added milk to her coffee until it became the caramel color that her taste buds preferred.
“I convinced him it was his time to feed the horses and check on the cattle.”
“He works for you, right?” she asked, realizing the relationship between the two wasn’t employer to employee.
“Yeah.” He sipped his cup, and his eyes sparkled at her over the rim.
“Why did you hire him instead of someone . . . younger?”
“I kind of inherited him with the ranch.”
“It was in the will.”
“No,” he said. “But he’d lived with my grandfather for ten years. What was I going to do, throw him out?”
She considered what he’d said. “You are a good man, Clay Connors.” If only you were a funeral director. If only you didn’t come from a broken family. If only . . .
He flashed his dimple at her again. “You should remember that.”
That seemed to mean something, but she wasn’t sure what.
“Speaking of Pete,” Clay said, “I told him we’d fix breakfast. He should be back shortly, and when he’s hungry he gets grumpy.”
She chuckled. “He said the same thing about you.”
“Can’t ever trust an old cowpoke.” He sipped from his cup. His gaze and grin stayed on her.
“What about a young one?” She wrapped her palm around her warm cup and felt a similar warmth curl up in her chest.
“Most of them wouldn’t steer you wrong.”
They stayed right there, her standing, him sitting, both staring. She took a sip of the hot coffee, eyeing him suspiciously over the rim. Something about him was different.
He set his cup down. “How do you feel about biscuits, gravy, eggs and sausage?”
She blew on the steaming brew “You know how to make biscuits and gravy?”
“Piece of cake. And I’ll teach you, and you can count it as one of your cooking lessons.”
She hesitated. “You trying to show up my pie-making abilities?”
He laughed. “Wouldn’t dare. That pie was the best. Pete already finished it off, by the way. Besides, I could really use your help. The one thing I’ve never mastered with cooking breakfast is getting it all done at the same time.”
She sighed. “I’m not much of biscuit maker.”
“You know how to scramble eggs, right?”
“Yes.”
“Good, you take over that job. And set the table.”
He stood and pulled out a can of biscuits from the fridge.
“I thought you were going to make homemade biscuits.”
“I never said homemade. But the gravy is homemade.” His dimple winked at her, and he pointed to cabinet. “Oh, grab the skillet from under there.”
She knelt and stared into the dark cabinet. All she found was a single cast-iron skillet.
“This one?” she asked.
“Yup.”
She stood up, the weight of it surprising. She remembered her mom using one just like this. “My mom used to cook with cast iron.”
“Some people swear by it,” Clay said.
Jennifer smiled. “The last Christmas, Dad bought her a set of non-stick cookware. She made him take it back because she said her cast-iron pans doubled as cookware and a weapon.”
He laughed. “I actually had a murder once where the man was killed with one.” He took the skillet from her.
She got the eggs ready to scramble, set the table and watched him cook the sausage and set it on a plate. Then he moved on to the gravy. He whipped a tablespoon or two of flour into some milk and then slowly poured it into the skillet with sausage drippings. It smelled delicious.
“Here.” He handed her the wooden spoon. “Stir this while I grab the salt and pepper.”
She ran the spoon around the thickening gravy.
“No, like this.” He came up behind her, close, very close, held her wrist and slowly moved it in circles. “You don’t want lumps in it. Keep it moving.”
His body behind her moved in the same direction that he stirred. Her body tingled.
His cheek pressed the side of her face. “That’s good.” His words were a mere whisper, a deep, approving drawl.
He must have shaved. She could feel the smoothness of his cheek. She could smell the coffee on his breath. She could feel his chest expand when he took in air. Something she couldn’t seem to do with him standing this close.
Butterflies hit her stomach. Her knees got weak. Then he pulled back and added a couple of dashes of salt and pepper.
He grabbed a pot holder and pulled the skillet of gravy off the stove. “All we need is the scrambled eggs, and the biscuits to finish baking.”
He poured the gravy into a bowl, then swiped the edge of the dish to catch a drop. Smiling, he held out his finger to her lips.
She hesitated, but his finger remained in taste-ready position. Feeling silly, she opened her mouth, and he gently pushed his finger between her lips.
“Good?” he asked, his finger still lingering in her mouth. His gaze, filled with heat, stayed on her.
She nodded the lie. In truth, she’d swallowed without tasting.
“Really good.” He pulled his finger away and curled his lips around his fingertip. “Or is that you I’m tasting.”
She stood there feeling tingles in places that didn’t usually wake up until around noon. What was this? Cooking foreplay? Or was she misreading him?
He rinsed the pan and held it out to her.
“What?” she asked taking the skillet but in some kind of turned-on and tuned-out state of mind.
“To cook the eggs.” He smiled and winked at her.
Was he doing this on purpose? She preferred the grumpy, mostly silent Clay. He wasn’t nearly as hard to resist. She put the skillet on the stove and went to the fridge for some butter.
“Here it is.” He’d followed her. Reaching over her shoulder, placing one hand on her waist, he pulled the butter off a shelf.
She swung around. Behind her was the cold fridge, in front of her was hot Clay, a smiling and happy Clay. The you-just-sucked-on-my-finger Clay. He stood so close, she had to lift her chin to see his face.
His warm green eyes met hers. He lifted his hand and touched her chin.
“I thought we said it was a mistake and wouldn’t happen again,” she blurted out, and at the same time wishing she’d kept her mouth shut.
“What?” he asked, sounding completely innocent.
“What are
you doing?” she asked and put her hand on his chest.
Bad move because he felt so good. Hard and real and masculine and … yup, it was official. She was tingling all over.
He pulled back an inch.
“Me? I was . . . you just had some gravy on your mouth.” He wiped the finger under her bottom lip, took a step back, then dropped the butter in her hand.
Leaning down, he peered into the oven at the biscuits, then stood up. “You are pretty this morning. Did you sleep well?”
All she could do was nod.
“What are you doing?” she repeated.
He pointed to the stove. “You’d better cook those eggs. The biscuits will be done in two minutes.”
What are you doing?
Jennifer’s question bounced around in Clay’s head as they ate breakfast.
Truth be told, he didn’t have a freaking clue what he was doing.
He just knew he didn’t like to be discounted. Especially because of some stupid divorce-rate list. Admittedly, he didn’t look so good on that list. She probably considered the “collection of resalable merchandize entrepreneur” as a junkyard owner. Then there was his stint as roofer that looked bad, and equally incriminating was his short-lived bartending job. But that was a bunch of crap.
Hell, he’d been married for seven years, hadn’t cheated once, and he hadn’t been the one to file for divorce.
Frankly, he wasn’t signing up to be a contender for her catch-a-husband campaign. He just wanted . . .
He wanted to go back to how it felt when he’d taken off her ring, when they’d had a water fight and kissed in the yard. He wanted to feel young. To feel alive. To feel like a man who liked a woman and was going for it.
Not that he’d push. He wasn’t even going to make a pass. Not overtly. So what if he tempted her a little? Let her see the best side of him. The side without the damage the last few years had brought on. The side of him that being around her brought out more and more.
Yup, he used to be fun. He used to laugh all the time. He used to tease and flirt. His ex had said he had seduction down to a fine art.
And he was ready to re-hone those skills.
He’d bet after first being in the hospital and then here, she was getting cabin fever. Maybe he should plan an outing.