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“Me, too,” Jake added eagerly.
After she handed them out, they bowed their heads and prayed.
“What else can you do?” Jake scooped a large forkful of mashed potatoes and shoved it into his mouth, then put a slab of butter on his biscuit.
“The same stuff everyone else does, I reckon.”
“No, not everyone. I don’t know anyone other than Doc who can sew cuts like you. And this food is delicious. As delicious as the meal you cooked for me. That was the best meal I’d had in a long time.” He looked at Michael. “Your wife is one fine cook.”
“She sure is.” That is, if a person didn’t count the fried snake and crawdad tails, but Michael kept that thought to himself.
“Thank you for your kind words about my vittles. How’s the head doing?”
Jake smiled. “I’m doing well, thanks to you.”
Hey, I was there, too. If it weren’t for me taking her over to get a puppy, she wouldn’t have even seen you to help you. Just where did that come from? It wasn’t like him to be jealous. Especially over Selina.
“Iffen you want me to, I can check it and change your bandage before you go.”
“That’d be great. Thanks.” Jake drank half a glass of milk and wiped his mouth. “I was wondering something. Out here, you need to be a strong woman to survive. You got any friends back home just like you?”
Michael sucked in a piece of quail, completely blocking off his air supply. He grabbed his throat. Selina jumped up and shoved his head to his knees. Air whooshed from his lungs and a piece of quail flew from his throat and landed on the floor.
He rasped and wheezed, “Thank you, Selina.”
“You’re welcome.” Her eyes raked over him with fear. “You all right now?”
He took a generous drink of his milk. “Yes. Thanks to you.” Hadn’t he just heard those same words from Jake?
Michael couldn’t believe that the man, whose main goal in life was to taunt people, actually wanted someone just like Selina.
They went back to eating and Jake and Selina talked the whole time, leaving Michael to wonder why he and Selina didn’t have conversations like that.
Jake hung on Selina’s every word as she talked about Kentucky and the Appalachian Mountains.
Michael watched her eyes light up, heard the sweetness in her melodic voice. His gaze fell to her lips as she talked.
Those same lips he had enjoyed kissing earlier.
Seeing how easily she and Jake carried on a conversation, he wondered if he could ever enjoy talking to her like that. If he could ever love her.
Jesse said love was a choice. Michael had willingly made that choice once and look where it had gotten him. He had married a woman he thought he knew extremely well. A woman he loved and had given his heart to. Yet, here he was married to a complete stranger he did not love. Just like Haydon had done.
Thoughts of the horror of his older brother’s first marriage stormed over him. The image of Haydon carrying Melanie back to the ranch that last, fateful day when she had fallen to her death, memories of his brother—silent, sorrowful, angry, inconsolable.
There were rumors afterward. Michael had heard Melanie was unfaithful, that Haydon blamed himself for not being attentive enough, for keeping her here when she so wanted to leave. And now she was dead.
But those were only ghosts in his memory now, the bits and pieces a young man gathers as his family struggles to live through a crisis. Try as he may, he couldn’t shake any of them as he listened to Selina talk to Jake. Was he stepping right into the trap he had sworn he would never go near?
All he knew was his heart was in his throat and his mind was spinning around so fast he couldn’t catch it. Everywhere he looked was the possibility of ending up just like his brother, and he had no idea how to avoid the fate that seemed to lie in wait to swallow him whole.
Selina dried the dishes and put them away. Over and over she pondered Michael’s kiss. She wanted more. But until she was certain it was her he was thinking of and not Aimee or some woman who didn’t exist, she wouldn’t share his bed no matter how much she wanted to. It was a good thing Jake showed up when he did. She wasn’t sure what would’ve happened if he hadn’t. And that would not have been good.
Tomorrow she’d get busy and make herself a few more dresses and she’d wear her hair down more often, just because Michael liked it that way.
She still couldn’t believe she was wearing a dress just to please a man. But Michael was worth it, so she would do whatever it took to win his heart and to hold on to him. She wasn’t going to let Aimee steal her man.
Finished with cleaning up the kitchen, she wiped her hands on the towel and hung it on the peg above the sink, then headed over to where Michael was sitting in the living room with his Bible.
