The Texas Way

Breaking into a relieved smile, Grant moved forward and began rummaging for ingredients. Scott gave him a look of affectionate exasperation, then slowly turned his head.

Margaret tensed.

Their eyes met.

She felt his contempt like a physical blow. It simmered in his tawny eyes, along with something else, a sexual charisma that was as genetically inherent as his square jaw, as unconscious for him as breathing.

Her gaze faltered and dropped. He wore a white, Western-style shirt like his father’s. But where the material swallowed Grant’s gaunt torso, it strained against Scott’s muscular frame. She focused on a pearl snap button near his tooled leather belt, refusing to look lower, unable to look higher as he walked to stand in front of her.

“Hold out your arm, Maggie.”

He was too close, and he hated her. She tilted her head back. “I can take care of myself. I’m not an invalid any more than your father is.”

One minute he was towering over her, the next he was sitting in a chair with her hand on his thigh, his fingers clamping her wrist.

“Hold still now, this might get a little uncomfortable,” he said soothingly, his glittering eyes and viselike grip hidden from Grant.

Scott raised the dripping ice cube and pressed it against her burn. She yanked her arm and gasped, more stunned at his immovable strength than the shock of cold. Jerk. He knew she couldn’t do anything with his father mixing batter not fifteen feet away. She pressed her bare knees primly together and pretended they weren’t sandwiched between denim-covered muscles.

He looked different without a hat, she realized, staring. Up close, his hair was a thick, swirling mixture of chocolate browns and caramel highlights. It begged a woman’s fingers to plunge right in. As if sensing her thoughts, he looked up through sun-tipped lashes and smiled, a lazy curl of lips that did funny things to her stomach. Returning his focus to her burn, he rubbed the ice in small circles.

Her hands flexed, the one on his thigh noting muscles gone suddenly concrete. The ice cube released a fat drip. It rolled down the curve of her skin and joined the spreading wet spot on his jeans.

He gentled his hold on her wrist. “Feel better?”

The skin on her forearm felt frozen, the skin underneath on fire where he massaged her wild pulse with his thumb. She felt flustered, aroused and very, very confused. But better?

“I’ll be fine now, thanks.” She pulled back her arm, freeing her wrist and dislodging the ice. It slithered over her thigh and fell to the floor.

“How many pancakes can you eat, Margaret?” Grant called from the stove.

She tried to answer. She tried to do anything but shiver from the combined impact of frigid ice and a predatory gold stare.

“One,” she managed breathlessly.

“What was that?”

She dragged her gaze to Grant. “One.”

“Lost your appetite, princess?” Scott asked softly, his eyes slitted with knowing amusement.

He was insufferable. He’d been insufferable from the time they’d first met. But she wasn’t a painfully shy teenager anymore. She was her own person, a woman strong enough to stand alone.

She scraped back her chair and stood.

“I changed my mind, Grant, I’ll have a short stack…with bacon.” She sent Scott a scathing look. “Suddenly I could eat a pig.”

LATE THAT AFTERNOON, Ada Butler cut the engine of her pickup and resisted the urge to check her face in the rearview mirror. Silly fool. Powder and a dab of lipstick wouldn’t disguise forty-nine years of hard living. Besides, Grant wouldn’t notice if she dyed her salt-and-pepper hair green and danced naked on his bed.

She smoothed her jeans, anyway, and wished briefly she hadn’t changed from her Sunday dress. The minister’d said the blue silk matched her eyes. Then again, it was his Christian duty to say something charitable about everyone—especially aging spinsters.

With a huff of self-disgust, she slid out of the truck and scanned the dirt yard. Her squinted eyes widened on a flashy red Porsche by the barn. Who on earth was here? She spun toward the house and shaded her eyes with one hand.

The yellow clapboards shimmered in the midday sun, every curl of paint glaringly exposed. Missing shingles pockmarked the roof. The long front porch sagged in the middle, surely more so than the last time she’d stopped by? Dropping her hand, she frowned and moved toward the house.

Scott had assured her that after the surgery his father was fine, that there was no reason for her to visit the hospital or drop off a casserole when Grant came home. Yet Ellen Gates had done both. Every congregation member sitting within five pews of the new widow heard how she’d read scripture by Grant’s bed—no doubt wishing she was in it, the hypocrite—and taken him her famous Chicken Delight the next week. Baiting the trap for a husband, that’s what she was doing.

A series of grunts from the back of Ada’s pickup gave her pause. It was true Ellen had boobs the size of Canada. But Ada had fifty times more brains. Surely that gave the widow only a moderate edge.

She was halfway up the porch steps when Grant opened the door.

“Ada, what a nice surprise.”

Hand pressed to pounding heart, she allowed herself one devouring look. He was so thin! Yet the rakish smile and lively green eyes were as irresistible as ever.

“Hello, Grant. How’re you feeling?”

His eyes lost some of their sparkle. “Oh, good as an old man with one foot in the grave can feel.”

She arched a brow. “Glad I came by in time. Dead men are so boring.”

When he chuckled, her pleasure pulsed bone deep.

“Come on in out of the sun, Ada. I think I can manage a little conversation before the funeral.”

“You’re sure I’m not intruding? Looks like you’ve already got company.” She glanced pointedly at the Porsche.

“That’ll take some explaining. Come in.”

She climbed the remaining steps while he held open the door. His fingertips branded the small of her back as she swept into the oak-planked parlor. He made her feel protected and utterly feminine when she didn’t need the first and certainly wasn’t the second.

And that, she supposed, was why she’d loved Grant Hayes most of her adult life.

He settled her on the camelback sofa and squeezed into the room’s only chair, a wooden rocker far too delicate for his large frame.

“The car belongs to Margaret Winston. You remember, Donald Winston’s daughter?”

“I’m not likely to forget.”

No single family in the county had provided as much juicy gossip as the Winstons. People still wondered what really happened the day young Matt Collins died. One thing was clear—a body never mentioned Margaret’s name around Scott unless she wanted her head snapped off. And Ada was rather fond of hers.

“I thought Margaret lived in Dallas now. What brings her here?” she asked, listening enthralled to Grant’s account of the past three days. When he finished, she slowly shook her head.

“If that doesn’t beat all. To hear Doc Chalmers tell it, Twister was spawned from the bowels of hell. Do you really think a little thing like Margaret can handle that devil?”

“She saddled him up not twenty minutes ago and took off on their first ride. Damnedest thing I ever saw. You’d have thought he was a Shetland pony at the kiddie park. Margaret’ll handle Twister just fine. But handling Scott…now, that’s a whole different ball of wax.”

Did he know his eyes were as green as fresh mint? Did he know how masculine he looked in that dainty chair or what happened to her stomach when he smiled?