Page 13 of Jameson’s Salvation

I’d never met anyone like Jameson. He was forward to the point of being abrupt. One could even call him bad-mannered. But I felt oddly comfortable around him. I’d spent very little time with him, yet I knew exactly where I stood and I liked that. I knew he liked me enough to offer me his time. I knew he didn’t like to be lied to—which no one did—but he didn’t even like the smallest of omissions, he preferred straight out honesty. I knew he didn’t like most people. I knew he was loyal, probably to a fault, just like me. But mostly I knew he was a good man.

To sum it up, Jameson was a strange bird. One I wanted to get to know. And that scared me to death. A man like him had the power to squish me like a bug under his boot. Not that I thought he’d do it intentionally. But I knew myself—no matter how many times I’d been hurt, I still wore my heart on my sleeve.

I just hoped I was as resilient as my dad always said I was. I had a feeling I was going to need to be.

5

Jameson

“No complaints, huh?” Jameson looked down at his now-empty plate and wondered if he had room for thirds.

“What was that?” Kennedy asked.

Her head tipped to the side and her hair fell over her shoulder. It was pulled up in a ponytail but the ends brushed her left breast, drawing Jameson’s attention to her chest, and once there he couldn’t help but take his fill. She had perfect-sized breasts for her small frame. Not too big, not too small.

Jameson knew it was rude how he was checking her out, so he forced his gaze to her face and took a moment longer to enjoy how pretty she was. No makeup, no subterfuge, no charade. Kennedy was who she was, she didn’t try to hide the fact she worked hard and that work included manual labor. There was no girly polish on her short nails, and he’d bet she didn’t even own a bottle. Her hands were work-roughed, her clothes were worn for comfort, and her hair was messy.

Jameson liked that, all of it.

“You’re a damn good cook,” he finally answered.

“Kinda hard to screw up a roast. I just threw it in the crockpot this morning.”

“Right. And the stewed tomatoes? Did you make those?”

“Of course I did.” Jameson smiled at her disgruntled response. “I picked them fresh from the garden this morning. The bell peppers and zucchini, too.”

By the time they’d gotten to Kennedy’s house, the sun had set and Jameson couldn’t see much. Nixon had been right though; her house was secluded. She’d mentioned her property line ended at the county road but her house was not street side. Much like where Jameson lived, you had to drive down a dirt lane lined with trees to get back to the old farmhouse.

His headlights had provided enough illumination to see the barn behind the house, and beyond that her neatly planted garden. But he hadn’t been able to appreciate the extent of her crops.

“Hard work taking care of all of this by yourself,” Jameson noted.

Kennedy sat up straight and held herself tight. “Nothing I can’t handle.”

“Didn’t say you couldn’t. Just stating the obvious.”

She nodded but didn’t say anything and Jameson knew he’d struck a nerve. And for some inexplicable reason he wanted to know more.

“Someone tell you you couldn’t handle it?”

Kennedy sighed and slumped back in her seat, and for a moment he thought she was going to lie to him. His jaw clenched in preparation. He hated liars. If he asked a question he expected honesty, even if that honesty was as simple as telling him it was none of his business.

“Lots of people have told me I was stupid for wanting to keep my dad’s farm. After he died, some people pitched in to help me, but there’s only so long they can help before they have to get back to their lives. When my mom ended up having to sell off some land, I felt like a failure. Like I was what everyone was saying, a silly girl trying to do a man’s job farming.

“It took me a long time to realize even though we couldn’t keep it, I didn’t fail. I tried my best with the tools I had. Unfortunately, there’s not a lot of money farming, and tractors and other equipment are expensive. My dad didn’t believe in carrying debt, so everything we had was old. He knew how to fix just about anything. But when stuff started breaking down on me, I didn’t have the knowledge he had. We had no choice but to sell. It was that or go into debt, and that wasn’t right to put my mom into financial hardship just because I had a point to prove.”

Jameson was damn impressed and more than a little pissed-off on her behalf. He’d never bought into the notion there was a distinction between a man’s job and a woman’s. Of course there were things that men were more prone to excel at than women, but that didn’t mean a woman couldn’t do it. It simply meant that the woman who took on the task would have to be determined.

And by all accounts, Kennedy was determined.

“Glad to hear you know you didn’t fail. Too many people think that when something doesn’t work it’s a failure, instead of realizing the experience was a lesson. The only failure is when you don’t do anything. When you sit on your ass and expect the world to hand you what you want. And I have a feeling you’ve never sat around a day in your life. You impress me.”

Kennedy’s head tipped down and her cheeks pinked. Jameson’s fingers itched to reach out and touch her. Lift her chin and make her look at him. But he refrained. It was not his place to touch her anywhere, no matter how badly he wanted to.

“Yeah, well, I don’t have time to sit and do nothing. There’s always something to do. I might not have all two hundred and fifty acres we once had but I still have fifty, my bees to tend to, and not to mention, this old house would fall down around me if I didn’t keep on top of it.”

Jameson looked around the dining room and wondered if she’d restored the woodwork all by herself. There was crown molding at the ceiling, a bullnose chair rail that went around the room on three sides, and by the look of it someone had removed a wall, opening the dining room up to the kitchen.