by Karen Rigley
“I am now.” Leisurely, he sat up in his sleeping bag, his broad shoulders wider than the bag, making Jami wonder how he had comfortably fit inside. The waves of his dark burnished blond hair tumbled over his bronzed forehead, but the way he grinned at her revealed he had indeed been playing possum.
“How long have you been watching me?” she demanded, thoroughly embarrassed at the thought that he’d pretended to be asleep while witnessing her struggle to light the fire. “You could have offered to help instead of spying on me!”
“I wasn’t spying.” He shed his sleeping bag as neatly as a snake sheds its skin.
“What do you call it?”
“Observing.” Grant stood and stretched, rumpled and gorgeous in his gray sweatpants, topped by a blue and silver sweatshirt. The shadow of a beard fuzzed his square jaw and a teasing glint lit his dark blue eyes. “I’ve been admiring your technique.”
“That’s a Texas tale if I ever heard one,” Jami countered, her cheeks hot as the fire.
“I am a Texan,” Grant drawled unrepentantly as he wandered over to poke at her campfire. Using a long, forked stick, he reached for the foil-wrapped grated potatoes, but she knocked his hand away as he smugly asked, “Where’s the coffee?”
“Coffee?” Jami blinked up at Grant. How had she forgotten such a morning staple? “Ah, I thought we’d just drink the orange juice you stored in the cooler.”
“Sure.”
“Is that a Dallas Cowboys shirt?” Jami asked, her eyes narrowing as she registered his attire.
“I like football,” he casually defended, reaching for the frying pan. “Besides, this shirt was a gift.”
“Hey, I’m cooking breakfast.” Jami reclaimed the pan and tapped the Dallas Cowboy emblem on his chest, not daring to ask who gave him the shirt. Probably a woman. Maybe the same one who’d given him the lighter. Or was it a different woman? Jami shook her head, wishing she could stop imagining the worst. Why couldn’t she believe that one of his brothers gave it to him? It didn’t have to be a woman. What did it matter, anyway?
In fact, Jami seemed to remember Sierra saying that Ty was a Cowboys fan. Ty probably gave Grant the sweatshirt, she repeated to herself. Twice. Still not totally convinced, Jami watched Grant circle around the campfire, prodding flames with a stick. “So, how do Dallas fans like their eggs?”
“Any way at all.” Grant chuckled at his own answer. He dropped the stick, gave Jami a quick kiss on the cheek, then disappeared into the dome tent.
Later, when Grant emerged from the tent with Toby by his side, Jami withdrew the heavy frying pan from the flames, announcing, “Breakfast is ready.”
Toby crinkled up his nose. “Something’s burnt.”
“I think that’s our breakfast,” Grant replied, sounding cautious as he accepted the food Jami enthusiastically shoveled onto his paper plate.
“Here’s yours, Toby.” Jami dished up two eggs and four sausage links for her son.
The child peered intently at his food. “What’s this brown plastic stuff?”
“Those are your eggs,” Jami replied, offended that he couldn’t recognize them. The eggs were tinted brown and strangely shiny, but she was certain she hadn’t broken the egg yolks. “Sunny-side-up, just the way you like them.”
Toby eyed his mom skeptically. “Then where’s the sunny side? I don’t see any yellow. I don’t see any white either.”
“Eat it, tiger. Oh, I almost forgot our potatoes,” Jami exclaimed, trying to retrieve the foil from the campfire.
“Here. Let me. You’ll burn yourself.” Grant extracted it, unfolding the aluminum to reveal a coagulated lump of fused potato, blackened at the edges.
“Yuck. I’m not eating that, Mom.”
“Me, either,” Grant confirmed, trying to separate the once-shredded potatoes with a fork, but the masterpiece had formed into a gummy clump, raw in the middle and crusty and burnt outside.
“How’s your sausage?” Jami asked hopefully, not anxious to taste the potatoes herself. The vegetables Grant had cooked in foil last night had turned out so differently. She couldn’t understand what had happened to hers.
Grant tried to stab one of his sausage links. His fork failed to pierce the tough, wrinkled brown-black skin. The sausage jettisoned off his plate and nearly hit Jami. The startled expression on his face mirrored her surprise.
Using his fingers, Toby picked up one of his sausage links and tried to bite the charred meat. “It’s too hard to eat, Mom.”
“Great,” Jami grumbled as her dreams for a wonderful meal dissolved.
Toby twirled the sausage link in his fingers, then grinned broadly. “But it’s just the right size. Let’s make a hat for it, then I could use it as the captain for my boat. Okay?”
Grant burst into laughter, his deep resounding chuckle a knife, deflating Jami’s pride as she groaned. So much for trying to impress them with her outdoor culinary skills. “There’s only one fate a breakfast like this deserves,” Grant announced as he popped into the tent. He sauntered back out, waving a white garbage bag.
“Really!” Jami huffed, hands on hips.
Grant grinned and shrugged his shoulders.
“I’m hungry,” Toby complained, dumping his breakfast into the plastic garbage bag Grant held open for him. “What’re we going to eat?”
“Give me the metal bowls from the mess kits, slugger, and I’ll show you an easy trail breakfast.”
Toby gave Grant the bowls and watched him combine oatmeal, water, slivered almonds, and dried fruit, quickly cooking the mixture over the fire. One bowl at a time, he stirred in a dash of cinnamon and brown sugar. “Try this.”
“Oatmeal?” Toby said, his lip curling with distaste. “I don’t eat oatmeal.”
“You do now, partner.”
“But it’s mush.”
“Toby, be polite,” Jami admonished with an ironic inflection. Grant hadn’t been very polite about the breakfast she had prepared.
Expression doubtful, Toby cradled his metal bowl in his hands, now protected from the heat by a folded paper towel. He dug a spoon into the hot cereal and tasted a bite. “It’s okay. I guess I’ll eat it.”
“Eat the oatmeal or try mom’s cooking.” Grant grinned down at Toby as the aroma of cinnamon and apples drifted around them.
“I’ll eat this,” Toby answered quickly, sparing a nervous glance at the garbage bag.
“It’s very good,” Jami admitted, testing a spoonful of the jazzed up oatmeal as hunger tempered her disappointment. She chewed the now moistened bits of fruit—raisins, cranberries, and apple—that blended tastily with the oatmeal. Her first foray into camping hadn’t ended so badly, she decided, her gaze drawn across the fire to study Grant Carrington.
He was like a Hollywood version of a mountain man as he perched on his campstool, unshaven, heart-stoppingly handsome and slightly rumpled, his long lanky, jean-clad legs stretched out as he munched on his own breakfast creation. Jami was a city girl, born and raised in Houston, with no camping experience. Someday, she decided ruefully, she hoped to cook for Grant again. In a kitchen, with a real stove. Then he would see what she could do.
And there were lots of things she’d love to show the man...
A smile played over Jami’s lips as her thoughts wandered into territory more amorous than the kitchen.
Chapter 13
Grant let Jami steer the motorboat on the way back across the lake. She enjoyed the freedom as the craft cut through the water, wind blowing her hair, and lake spray misting her face. Punctuating the clear azure sky, a few wispy white clouds snagged on a neighboring mountain peak. The day was warming quickly, sunshine penetrating the thin alpine air to cast the Rockies in bright golden haze and shoot the lake with endless points of light. Jami circled close to the shore, midway between the docking area and the spot where Grant had carved Toby’s toy boat.
“Not there.” Grant’s large warm hand covered Jami’s hand on the wheel, then he turned the rudder to guide them away
from the swirling deep blue water she had headed toward.
“Why not?”
“There’s a deadly undertow, fed by an underground stream which causes a whirlpool effect. It’s dangerous.”
“The water is choppy and darker. Nearly sapphire.” Jami studied the lake surface, watching the waves and water patterns. “I can see the currents swirl!”
“That’s why I’ve never taken you and Toby to that section of the lake. It’s smarter to skirt the area. We make it a habit to avoid the whirlpool.” He slowed, guiding the boat to the dock. “According to local legend, it’s where a lake monster dwells.”
“A monster?” Toby’s big brown eyes grew rounder as he helped Grant unfurl the rope. “Cool! Can we go see it?”
“Aren’t you scared of monsters?” Grant asked with a cocked brow, as he tied the motorboat securely to the dock.
“Not lake monsters or space monsters. They’re cool.”
“There are no such things as monsters,” Jami intervened, allowing Grant to help her out of the rocking boat and onto the wooden planks of the dock.
“Grizzly bears are sort of monsters,” Toby replied, glancing off into the woods. “We didn’t see any bears when we were camping. How come?”
“Guess the bears were busy,” Grant answered, handing items out of the boat to Toby and Jami, who then piled the camping gear onto the dock.
Between the three of them, they hauled everything back to the lodge with Jami feeling grungy and longing for a shower. Still, one glance at Toby, and she knew her rambunctious dirt devil needed to be cleaned up first. The moment they entered their room, she filled the tub with warm water, adding a squirt of Toby’s Bad Bear Bubble Bath to foam into fun, dirt-cleansing suds. Remembering his bubble mania, she immediately put the bubblebath bottle out of reach. Humming, she scrubbed him with soap and a washcloth, then left him to play with his boat in the tub, the bathroom door open while she rounded up their clean clothes.
Suddenly, Grant bellowed, “Not again!”
Jami dashed into the outer suite to find Grant standing ramrod straight as he scowled down at his open palm. In his hand he cradled the golden Cupid key, but she couldn’t guess why he was swearing at his grandmother’s jewelry.
“Grant? Is something wrong?” she ventured, moving closer.
Startled by Jami’s presence, he swiftly closed his hand over the brooch. As if in protest, Cupid stabbed his palm, shooting a stinging pain into his flesh. “Yow!” He reopened his hand, glaring accusingly at the offending pin.
“You’d think it was alive and bit you on purpose,” Jami teased.
Grant was thankful that he wasn’t afflicted with Jami’s tendency to blush. Or he’d be scarlet at the moment. It was bad enough talking to Cupid—but to be caught in the act—and by Jami! He cleared his throat, tried nonchalantly to replace the Cupid key in the drawer, and slide the drawer shut, before turning to face her. “I, ah, stabbed myself on the pin.”
“Why were you yelling?”
“Yelling?” Grant gazed at her, hoping his face appeared as blank as his mind felt. Just how did he explain Cupid? He couldn’t tell her about the love spell theory his grandmother had sworn to be true. Or that the charm escaped a sealed envelope three times.
“You said not again,” she reminded him, tapping her foot impatiently.
“I did?” Grant saw the conflicting emotions ripple over Jami’s beautiful face and decided he needed a major distraction, before she grilled him. Too bad his brain had stalled. “That’s right I did, but it was nothing important.”
“Then why did you yell?”
Grant thought rapidly. “I, ah, stubbed my toe on the cabinet.”
“That doesn’t explain your grandmother’s brooch.” She folded her arms across her chest, obviously unaware that dirt streaked down her cheek and a twig dangled from her wild copper-red hair. Jami stared hard at him.
“Ah, I bumped into the cabinet and jarred the drawer open and that’s where the Cupid pin was.” She must think he was crazy. “I checked to make sure the brooch hadn’t gotten scratched.”
“Bumped the cabinet? I thought you stubbed your toe?” Jami pressed her lips together, shaking her head, making her tangled copper tresses bob with the attached twig waving in accompaniment.
“Right. I stubbed my toe when I bumped into the cabinet.” He didn’t do this lying thing well. His ran a finger around the collar of his sweatshirt. “We’d better get cleaned up now.”
“I’m waiting for Toby to get out of the tub.”
“You can use my shower,” Grant offered, glad she finally seemed satisfied with his explanation.
“No, thank you.” Jami smiled at him, aglow with breathtaking beauty despite her disheveled state. She pushed a lock of hair off her face, just missing the twig. “Toby should be out any minute now.”
“Jami,” Grant groaned, propelling toward her as if magnetized. He touched her cheek, warm smooth satin under his fingertips. “We have things to discuss.”
“We do?” She gazed up at him with those exotic topaz eyes, her moist, rosy lips slightly parted.
“Definitely.” Moved by a force as old as time itself and just as powerful, Grant took Jami into his arms and kissed her. She belonged in his embrace, held tight against his heart. Without her, he was no longer complete.
“Mom, where are my clothes?” Toby hollered from the doorway.
Jami and Grant sprang apart, but not before Toby witnessed their embrace. Dripping and clad in his cartoon underwear, the boy glared at them, focusing his anger on him. “Leave my mom alone!”
“Toby!” Jami gasped, her face blanching.
“Slugger, I promise everything will be okay,” Grant soothed, trying to defuse the situation.
“Don’t call me slugger.” Tears rolled down Toby’s flushed, freckled face as he spun around to run back into the bedroom, hollering over his shoulder, “You don’t keep promises. You never made me a captain for my boat!”
Jami lunged away to chase after her son, but Grant grabbed her arm. “He’ll be okay. Toby will get used to us being together.”
“Are we together?” she asked softly.
“We ought to be,” Grant replied, planting a quick, hard kiss on her lips before releasing her.
“Some place private?” Jami whispered, her fringe-lashed, sparkling amber eyes searching Grant’s face.
“Very private,” he replied, stealing one more kiss.
Jami disappeared into the bedroom, closing the door behind her.
Waiting a moment, Grant slipped open the drawer and picked up Cupid. If a magic spell brought Jami into his arms, then he owed Cupid a great debt. Smiling down at the golden cherub held in his palm, he murmured, “Thanks, buddy.”
His smile broadened. He fantasized about making love to the bewitching redhead who had stolen his heart far more efficiently than he’d stolen her sweet kisses. Cupid couldn’t blame him for wanting to romance the lady. Right?
After her bath, Jami was just coming out of the bathroom wrapped in her pink robe, when she heard her son open their bedroom door to grumpily holler, “Grant, telephone. It’s a lady.”
Toby left the door partially open, hopping back up onto the quilt-topped double bed with a comic book. Curious about Grant’s phone call, Jami also left the door ajar, listening, despite herself.
“Well, hello!” Grant greeted the anonymous woman, the warmth in his voice a kick to Jami’s gut. “How’s my favorite girl?”
Unable to prevent the tension knotting through her, Jami was assailed by flashbacks of midnight phone calls her ex-husband had claimed to be business and wordless hang-ups when she had answered before Doug could. She hated the old feelings of hurt and betrayal resurfacing within her, but she couldn’t stop them.
“Have you been behaving yourself?” she heard Grant drawl.
Just when she’d allowed herself to trust Grant, Jami thought, shaking her head as she monitored his conversation through the open doorway.
He chu
ckled into the phone. “It doesn’t sound like you’ve had time to miss me or anyone else.”
Lips pursed, Jami crossed to the massive pine dresser and pretended to brush her still damp hair, aware of every word as Grant barked, “What are you talking about? I did not promise you a wedding!”
It was worse than she’d feared! Jami felt sick, color draining from her face as she stared at her hollow-eyed reflection. Not only was Grant Carrington a womanizer—he’d practically dumped some poor girl at the altar! Jami squeezed her eyes shut in despair, the rest of his telephone conversation blurring as her head whirled with the realization of her folly. She pushed the door shut in desperation.
She knew better than to trust her heart to such a man. How could she be so foolish a second time?
Grant slammed the phone down, thoroughly annoyed at his mother. He didn’t mind her tracking him down here at the lodge. That hadn’t surprised him. Shirley Carrington kept close tabs on all of her sons, no matter that they were long grown to adulthood. She always knew where Grant and his brothers were and what they were doing, though they couldn’t say the same about their mother’s constant round of activity. Normally he adored Shirley and treated her flighty ways with amused indulgence. But this!
The moment he heard that lilting cultured voice, he’d steeled himself for one of Mother’s famous off-the-wall requests. He hadn’t been prepared for her question. Grant raked his fingers through his hair and paced through the suite to stare out the window at the mountains peaks beyond. His mother had chirpily explained that Ty had told her they’d sent him Cupid and promised her immediate results. She said Ty had assured her that Grant and Jami had probably already set a wedding date.
Shirley actually asked Grant when the wedding was! Of course, his mother didn’t have a shy bone in her body and felt her son’s business was her own.
Grant wasted no time informing his mother that he had never promised her a wedding. Thinking of marrying anyone rocked Grant right down through his Houston veneer to his West Texas roots.
It was just like his mother to plan his wedding when Grant had no intention of marrying. He shook his head in frustration, rubbing his jaw with one hand and raking his hair with the other. He felt pretty sure Jami didn’t want to marry again, anyway. Certainly, she had no desire to marry him.