The Valentine Two-Step

Before Ellie could say anything else, both girls rushed up the stairs, leaving her standing in the two-story entry alone, holding her pecan pie and feeling extremely foolish.

Okay. Now what did she do? She’d been in the huge, rambling ranch house a few times before to pick up Lucy or drop off Dylan for some activity or other, but she had always entered through the back door leading straight into the kitchen. She had no idea how to get there from the front door, and it seemed extremely rude to go wandering through a strange house on her own.

She could always go back and ring the doorbell again, she supposed. But that would probably lead to awkward questions about why her daughter was already upstairs while she lingered by the door as if ready to bolt any moment.

She was still standing there, paralyzed by indecision, when she heard loud male groans at something from a room down the hall, then the game shifted to a commercial—somebody hawking razor blades.

“You want another beer?” she heard Matt’s deep voice ask someone else—his brother, she presumed, or perhaps one of the ranch hands. The deep timbre of it sent those knots in her stomach unraveling to quiver like plucked fiddle strings.

Seconds later—before she could come up with a decent place to hide—he walked out in the hall wearing tan jeans and a forest-green fisherman’s sweater. She was still ordering her heart to start beating again when he turned and caught sight of her standing there like an idiot.

“Doc!” he exclaimed.

“Hi,” she mumbled.

“Why are you just standing out here? Come in.”

She thought about explaining how the girls had abandoned her for their favorite boy band, then decided she would sound even more ridiculous if she tried. She held up the pie instead. “Where’s the best place for this?”

“Probably in the kitchen. I was just heading there myself, I can show you the way. Here. Let me take your coat first.”

She tensed as he came up behind her and pulled her coat from her shoulders while she transferred the pie from hand to hand. Despite her best efforts, she was intensely aware of him, his heat and strength and the leathery smell of his aftershave.

After he hung her coat in a small closet off the entry, he took off down the hall. She followed him, trying fiercely not to notice the snug fit of his jeans or those impossibly broad shoulders under the weave of his sweater. Something was different about him today. It took her a moment to figure out what. He wasn’t wearing the black Stetson that seemed so much a part of him, nor was his hair flattened from it.