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For a split second she was too dumbfounded to react. In the next breath it seemed, his face was inches from hers, the incredible blue of his eyes briefly mesmerizing her. He hooked a finger under her chin and tilted it up. Then his mouth came down and she felt the warm, lightly exploring pressure of it on her lips, more curious than demanding.
If he had been a bit more forceful, she would have been quicker to object. As it was, he was lifting his head and stepping back before she had a chance to end it. Eyes sparkling, he thrust out his chin and turned it slightly to one side.
“Go ahead,” he said.
She deliberately pretended not to understand. “Go ahead and what?”
“I thought you might want to hit me.”
“If I did, my target would be much lower. And I wouldn’t be using my hand,” Jessy replied, angry without being sure why. “Which proves you don’t know me as well as you think.”
“I guess you didn’t notice that I was careful to keep my legs together when I kissed you. I wasn’t about to give your knee easy access to its target. I guess that means you were a bit distracted by my kiss.” His smile widened a little. “Now do you want to hit me?”
“Believe me, it’s a tempting thought—for no other reason than just to find out how you would go about explaining a black eye to Chase.”
“You’re right. That could prove awkward, couldn’t it?”
“You are really a cocky bastard, aren’t you?”
“Look on the bright side, Jessy. At least I took your mind off your problems for a while.
“You certainly did that,” she agreed in an ultra-dry voice. “Pardon me if I don’t thank you for it.” She straightened away from the stall and made no effort to avoid bumping against his shoulder as she pushed her way past him into the alleyway.
“You’re thinking this is a complication you don’t need right now,” Laredo said to her back, making no attempt to follow her.
“You are wrong. It doesn’t complicate anything for me,” Jessy retorted.
“You are getting awfully good at this lying business, Jessy,” he remarked. “Maybe you don’t see this as a problem, but it complicates things for me. When I came here, I didn’t figure on being attracted to the widow Calder.”
“You’ll get over it,” she replied over her shoulder and struggled to dismiss an unexpected sense of depression.
“Maybe,” Laredo conceded, his voice following her as Jessy made her way to the door. “I only know I always figured I would spend my declining years alone, the same way I have always lived. And now that prospect doesn’t appeal to me at all.”
She stopped at the door and turned back to look at him. He stood in the stall opening, arms raised, a hand braced on each side of the entrance. “Go have a few beers. Maybe things will look a little brighter.”
“That idea is sounding better and better all the time. I think I may just do that. Don’t forget about that note in your pocket.”
The reminder jolted her thoughts back to her current troubles with Cat. She touched her pocket as if to verify the folded slip of paper was still there. “I won’t.” She turned and walked out the door, hitting the light switch o
n her way out.
Laredo stood in the barn’s pitch-darkness and cursed himself for being fifty kinds of fool. When he looked back, all he saw behind him was one mistake after another. He had made the first one when he rescued Chase, and the second one when he hadn’t made tracks for Mexico and left Chase in Hattie’s care. The third one came when he volunteered to bring Chase to Montana. And the fourth one had been a jim-dandy one when he had given in to the attraction he felt toward Jessy. He was a fool to even think in that direction. He was a man without a future, with nothing to offer her or any woman, not even his name.
Trouble, that’s all he knew. Very likely it was all he would ever know.
In the past, darkness had always been a friend. Tonight it pressed in on him, intensifying that empty, lonely feeling that gripped him. Made restless by it, he pushed away from the stall’s opening.
He left the barn the way he had entered it, through the stall’s rear door that opened into the corral. After the blackness of the closed-up barn, the night held the illusion of brightness for him. Pausing, he closed the stall door without allowing so much as a click of the latch to betray his presence.
Keeping to the shadows, he moved along the barn wall to the corral fence, ducked between the rails, and followed it away from the barn, letting it lead him to the pickup he had left parked behind the ranch commissary. As he slid behind the wheel, he decided to take Jessy’s advice, head into Blue Moon and have himself a beer.
The blare of the television greeted Jessy when she walked into The Homestead. After pausing a moment, she headed for the living room to let Sally know she was back. She found Sally still ensconced in Chase’s old chair, sound asleep, her snow-white head lolling to one side, her mouth open and her eyes closed.
A faint smile of empathy curved Jessy’s mouth at the picture of exhaustion the woman made. Knowing the difficulty Sally had had sleeping lately, Jessy hated to wake her. At the same time, she didn’t want Sally to wake up later and start worrying whether she had returned or not.
“I’m back, Sally,” she called, but the woman didn’t stir. Jessy walked over and shut off the television so she wouldn’t have to compete with it. “Sally,” she repeated her name. When the woman still didn’t respond, Jessy gave her shoulder a gentle shake. But with the first push of her hand, Sally slumped sideways. Alarmed now, Jessy felt for a pulse and found none.
“Sally. Dear God, no.”
