Sloan’s hand fit lightly against the small of her back as he strolled up to her, guiding her into the kitchen. Her skin tingled in the wake of this unexpected contact. Even more, Dev felt a sense of being his woman. She wondered if she was really picking up on his feelings or, because she wanted a closer relationship with Sloan, she’d made them up.
Lifting her hand, she saw Val holding her eight-month-old daughter, Sophia, in her arms. Griff was nearby, talking with Talon and Sandy Holt-Reynolds. Her husband, Cass, was standing with them. Cat Holt was at the kitchen counter doing the food prep.
“I’m going to go help Cat,” she told Sloan.
“Want another set of hands?” he asked.
“No. I think two of us can handle it.” She drowned in the liquid look in his blue eyes. Yes, Sloan wanted her. There was no doubt about it. A soaring feeling of being desired flowed like warm, sweet honey through Dev. She felt her breasts tightening and was glad to be wearing a cotton bra beneath the colorful top that lovingly outlined every curve of her upper body.
In no time after donning bright green aprons, Dev and Cat had a huge ham that was drizzled with a thick red cranberry glaze set on the table. Talon went to work slicing it and Griff McPherson held out a huge platter to place the slices upon. Dev had been right about the fancy sweet potatoes. She inhaled the aroma of the huge casserole as she brought it to the table and placed it on a bright blue metal trivet. It had been made with orange juice, and sprinkled with coconut and pecans, which had browned just right in the oven.
Cat brought over three huge baskets of freshly baked yeast-risen rolls and placed them at three different points along the twelve-foot trestle table. Val had put her red-haired daughter into a chair, then brought over two jars of honey for the rolls and sat down next to her child.
Dev found a large bowl of cranberry-grape salad and pulled it out of the fridge. The European greens were mixed with pineapple and crushed walnuts, as well. It was a pretty salad and Dev took it to Miss Gus first, who had sat down at one end of the table. Talon had sat at the other end. Untying her green apron, Dev smiled over at Cat, who looked beautiful in a short-sleeved purple tunic that draped down over her hips and her white linen trousers.
“Let’s go sit down before there’s nothing left,” Cat said with a laugh, slipping her arm around Dev’s shoulder for a moment, giving her a big thank-you hug for helping her. Cass seated his wife, Sandy, next to Miss Gus and then took the chair next to her.
Sloan hadn’t sat down yet, and seemed to be waiting for her. Dev had never had a man be so gentlemanly toward her. He pulled out her chair, smiled down at her and she sat. Sloan eased his bulk into a chair to her left. Opposite them were Val, Griff and their daughter. On Dev’s right, Cat sat down next to her husband, Talon.
“Okay,” Gus called, “let’s hold hands.”
The table immediately quieted and every one created a circle of hands around the table. Gus said a short prayer of thanks and then said, “I don’t want to see any leftovers!” She eyed Sandy’s six-month-old golden retriever puppy, Daisy. Bella and Zeke sat near the opening to the kitchen, watching them. Daisy romped around them, never still, happy for the company. “Well,” Gus amended, “maybe a few leftovers for the doggies?”
Talon groaned. “Gus…”
Cat laughed. “Oh, come on, Talon! Zeke’s been doing well with a few scraps of real food every now and again. He started out on marshmallows from my cup of hot chocolate, if you remember?”
Talon rolled his eyes and held up his hands. “Okay, okay. I surrender. But don’t feed him too much. He’s been on a dry dog food forever.”
“Yes,” Gus said, stabbing at a thick piece of ham as Sloan held the platter toward her, “but he’s a civilian like you are now. And if he survived Cat’s marshmallows, I don’t think that a teeny, tiny piece of leftover ham is gonna make him go belly-up. Do you?” She waggled her silver eyebrows in Talon’s direction.
Everyone laughed as the food was passed around the table.
“Busted,” Cat told her husband, grinning.
Talon eyed her. “You’re enjoying this way too much.”
“Miss Gus is the only one who can get you to loosen up on Zeke and feed him real food,” Cass noted with a grin toward Talon.
He gave Cass a grudging look. Cass had at one time been an Army Special Forces operator, but she said nothing. And with Talon having been a SEAL, they got along just fine because they’d both been in black ops.
“Every Sunday when you come over for dinner, he gets good vittles,” Gus agreed, pleased. “Why, I think Zeke’s even gained a little weight, Talon.”
Talon filled his plate with a little of everything. “Yes, about five pounds.”
“See?” Gus said, pleased, stabbing her fork in Talon’s direction. “It’s good to bring Zeke here for Sunday dinners, too.”
“Do you think Bella might like a few bites of ham?” Sloan asked Dev. “Or do you have her on a real strict diet, too?”
Bella lifted her head, eyes bright with expectation, ears up.
Everyone laughed, watching the dog’s reaction.
“Bella’s a foodie,” Dev informed everyone with a chuckle. “She was trained with food because that’s the most important thing in her life.”
“That’s a dog I can like,” Gus said. “She’s a pretty yellow Lab, Dev. And it looks like Zeke and Daisy are real pleased with her company, too.”
Dev nodded. “Bella gets along with everyone. She’s easygoing.”
Cat pointed her chin toward the two dogs. “Good thing she’s spayed. Zeke looks at Bella like he wants to have a batch of puppies with her.”
Gus burst out laughing, slapping her knee. “Zeke’s an alpha male. He thinks he owns every female who waltzes into this ranch house whether she has two legs or four legs.”
Cat slid her husband a wicked look. “Somewhat like his owner, huh?”
More titters riffled up and down the table. Sly looks and grins were exchanged.
“What is this?” Talon demanded, laughing. “Pick on Talon time?”
“Ohhhhh,” Val crooned, “a SEAL can’t take a little ribbing? Give me a break! SEALs invented the most gruesome teasing I’ve ever seen.”
“Well,” Talon said, shrugging, “we are a little cruel at times with one another.”
Val snorted and fed her daughter some of the yummy sweet potato casserole after blowing on it to make sure it was cool enough for her. Sophia’s blue eyes shone with pleasure over the food Val gently spooned into her bow-shaped mouth. “Listen, I worked with SEALs when I was an intelligence officer in the Air Force. You guys were just plain brutal with one another.”
Talon had the good grace to remain silent and pay attention to his food. Cat was snickering while she ate. She reached over and patted Talon’s broad shoulder through the dark blue cowboy shirt he wore.
“You’ll live, darling,” she soothed.
Gus chuckled. “Maybe this will make him ease up on poor ole Zeke. The dog’s nose is in the air and he can smell everything on this table. You gotta give him a little of everything, Talon. So the dogs can have their Sunday dinner, too.”
Talon grimaced.
Cat smiled widely and nodded her head.
Dev got the feeling that Miss Gus was leading the charge to continue to socialize Zeke, to take him out of his world of combat-assault and make him more a house dog. She knew that Zeke, like Mouse, had had two to three years of training starting at birth and both had seen a lot of combat. It was hard to get a dog to leave what he knew behind and embrace something new. And yellow Labs were a lot easier to retrain than the intense, competitive Belgian Malinois breed. She turned to Sloan.
“Did you have a hard time retraining Mouse?” she asked.
“Some,” Sloan admitted. “Part of the equation of retraining is the man who partnered with him. We were trained, too.”
Gus gave Sloan a narrow-eyed look. “Well, seems to me you’re real retrainable. Dev’s already got you picking
out special flowers for me.”
Dev felt sorry for Sloan as Gus aimed her gun sights at him. Gus enjoyed putting the guys on the spot, she was discovering. Sloan’s cheeks went ruddy as he tried to take her teasing with good grace.
“Well,” Sloan began awkwardly, “I just suggested the daisies was all, Miss Gus.”
“Horse feathers!” She jabbed her index finger into Sloan’s upper arm. “I think you’re kinda sweet on Dev. Not that I think that’s bad. She’s a beautiful young woman. Maybe you ought to think about buying her some flowers in the future? Hmmmmm?”
The whole table snickered and exchanged knowing glances with one another, all glad that Sloan was the center of Miss Gus’s attention and not them.
“Thank God she’s picking on you now, Sloan,” Talon muttered with mock relief, grinning like a fool.
“Let’s talk about something else?” Sloan suggested politely to Miss Gus.
“Phooey, I might be in my mideighties, young man, but I still have a set of eyes in my head that work! You’re sweet on Dev. You got moon-dog eyes for her.”
“Uh-oh,” Val whispered dramatically to everyone, “Sloan’s got that awful male disease called moon-dog eyes.”
Dev gave the elder a confused look. “I’ve never heard the term. What does it mean, Miss Gus?”
Gus smiled gently over at Dev. “It’s a Western term from my day, when I was as young and pretty as you are. Moon-dog eyes mean a man is yearning and pining away for the woman he loves. He’s got that dazed, faraway look of dreaming in his eyes for his lady.”
Instantly, Dev felt a flush of heat fly up her throat and into her face.
“I don’t know which of you,” Griff said, pointing in their direction, “is redder at the moment.”
Val raised her brows. “I’d say Dev is.”
Cat turned and twisted a playful look at her. “Dev, you really blush well.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE WARM SUMMER BREEZE lifted strands of Dev’s hair as she walked at Sloan’s side. She touched her stomach. “I feel like a stuffed turkey. How about you?”
Sloan cut his gait to remain in step with Dev. The western sun was hanging low over the Tetons and robins were singing their melodic songs around the main ranch area. “About the same,” he said, smiling over at her. “Miss Gus doesn’t take any prisoners at Sunday dinners, does she? I think she thinks it’s open season.”
Their hands sometimes brushed against one another as they strolled around the large ranch house. Sloan had suggested a walk down the dirt road that led to Long Lake, about a half a mile north of them. Dev was more than willing to walk off some of the delicious food. She’d eaten far more than usual and maybe that was because of the love that reigned at the table. “Her teasing isn’t mean, though. She’s sharp and she calls it as she sees it. Val is in the kitchen making each of us a nice to-go box from the leftovers. I’ll get at least two meals out of mine.”
“I’ll get one.”
She grinned. The warmth of the breeze felt good and she absorbed Sloan’s nearness, cherishing the time she spent with him. “That was such a wonderful dinner. All the dogs got a little ham, too. I think Zeke was smiling from ear to ear. The food was great, but the people, well, that really was dessert for me.”
Nodding, Sloan looked along the road, at the evergreens to the right. “The Holt and McPherson family has a good Western tradition.”
“Did your family do this, too?” she wondered, looking up into his pensive features.
“They do,” he said. “To this day. We have families like that all over Black Mountain. Poppy Thorn usually, about once a month, invites everyone over for Sunday dinner. My ma will invite everyone over the next week. And the other families will do it, too. That way, no one family takes the burden of cooking all the food all the time. It’s a great way to catch up with everyone’s lives, see if they need help of some kind, share the good and the bad together.” He smiled a little. “That way, if bad comes, you have a lot of loving support from the people on the mountain who know you. It helps a lot.”
“That sounds so wonderful.” Dev sighed. When Sloan’s hand brushed hers, this time he wrapped his fingers lightly around hers. And then, he looked down at her, as if making sure it was all right. Her heart took off and she drowned in his darkening blue eyes. Mouth dry, Dev shyly curved her fingers around his. It was such a huge step for her. But nothing had ever felt so right to her, either, despite her past experiences. A molten cobalt look from Sloan and she could feel an incredible sensation of warmth and care wrapping around her. As if he were physically embracing her. But he was not. They continued to walk at a slow pace down the center of the dirt road.
“I think,” Sloan said, “that allowing yourself to be drawn into Iris’s and Gus’s families will do you a lot of good. Maybe make up for all those missing years when you didn’t have a loving family around you?”
Dev absorbed their hands fitting together. Hers were a little damp from excitement and giddiness. Dev could feel the thick, rough calluses on Sloan’s hand, feel the latent power in his grip, which he did not bring to bear on her. “I sat at the table thinking about how much I missed.”
“But you won’t miss it from now on. I’m sure Miss Gus will always ask you to come to Sunday dinner with me.”
“I’d love to start a new tradition,” Dev admitted, her voice suddenly emotional. The evergreens lined a well-used footpath down to one end of the lake. Half of Long Lake was on McPherson property and the other half, she understood, was on US Forest Service land. When they arrived at the edge of the lake, which reminded her of the shape of a long, fat finger, Dev noticed the six cabins that Gus and her family rented out weekly to tourists. There were a number of cars parked next to each log cabin, with families at picnic tables and children playing along the sandy beach. It was an idyllic scene to Dev.
“Come on, we’ll go the other way,” Sloan urged, tugging a little at her hand. “Talon and Griff built a real nice sturdy swing at the end of the lake.” He gestured toward a group of pine trees standing near the bank.
The path was wide enough for two people and Sloan moved to the left of her, so she could walk close to the grassy, wildflower-strewn bank. Dev could see a great blue heron in the shallows near that swing in the distance. There were long, hairlike strands of clouds high above them. The breeze was off and on, and she enjoyed seeing the otherwise smooth lake surface riffle here and there. It reminded her of the sparks of fire traveling up her fingers and into her hand where Sloan held it. The sensation surrounding her at this moment made her want to kiss him. All Dev could think about was kissing Sloan. She’d seen the desire in his eyes earlier. He had wanted to kiss her, too. Her heart took off a little faster as she felt a sweet anticipation rise within her, like tendrils curling around her heart, which had been dormant for too long.
By the time they reached the end of the lake, the great blue heron took off with graceful flaps of his seven-foot wingspan, skimming the surface of the lake. Dev spotted the huge pine rocker suspended on chains built on a solid pine foundation. The six fragrant evergreens made a semicircle around where it sat so people could sit in it and look out across the lake. The polished pine was smooth and when Sloan sat down at one end, he released her hand, allowing Dev to make the decision whether she wanted to sit close or far away from him. Her heart pounded with anticipation and Dev was feeling inwardly rocky. She wanted to sit right next to Sloan, hoping he’d put his arm around her shoulders. Was that too forward? Didn’t they need to talk? Dev felt utterly inept at this and she chose to sit about midway between the other end of the rocker and Sloan. He’d leaned back and she could see the enjoyment in his expression as he gently pushed the rocker back and forth a little with his boot.
“Do you come out here often?” Dev wondered aloud, calling herself a coward for keeping her gaze on the lake and not Sloan.
“No. I want to, but usually I’ve got five or six animals to shoe and by the time that’s done, I only have time to
get home, get a shower, cook up some grub and then hit the sack.” Sloan slanted her an amused glance. “This is the first time I’ve ever brought someone down here. I’ve got to say, it’s far nicer than sitting alone.”
Dev drowned in the warmth of Sloan’s blue gaze, feeling her heart tug. How desperately she wanted to kiss this man. He’d held her heart so gently from the beginning, never making a move until right now. “I guess,” she began tentatively, giving him a shy glance, “that Miss Gus and everyone else thinks we’re a couple?”
Grimacing, Sloan stretched out his long legs and hooked his arm across the back of the rocker. “Miss Gus has the eyes of an eagle. She misses nothing.” He gave her a wry look. “You were blushing pretty well.”
Laughing unsurely, Dev opened her hands. When she got nervous, they always fluttered. “Is she psychic or something?”
“You’d think.” He chuckled, holding her gaze. “Is she right or wrong, Dev? You tell me.”
His voice was deep and mellow, nothing divisive or challenging in it. Just like the gentle breeze that came and went around them right now. Her eyes fell to her clasped hands in her lap. “No,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper, “I don’t think she’s wrong.” God, Sloan deserved someone who wasn’t so cowardly. Taking a deep breath, Dev held his inquiring gaze. “I feel something between us, Sloan. I did from the beginning. And I couldn’t identify it. I can feel it, though.”
“Did it upset you?”
Shaking her head, Dev took another deep breath and plunged on. “No. In fact, it felt—wonderful.” She cut Sloan a quick glance. “I fell in love with Bill Savona over time. We worked together. I was with him every day. We faced death together in different ways, but we had one another and that helped so much. He was a lot like you, Sloan. He never crowded me, gave me lines or chased me. I guess, well, over time I just fell in love with him.”
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