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She knew he continued to watch her, but she kept ignoring him. After a moment, he said, “Them pregnancy hormones are really messing with you, ain’t they?”
When she glanced his way, he actually looked concerned, like there might really be something medically wrong with his sister.
“Shut up,” she muttered and flipped him the bird.
His face cleared, and his shoulders slumped in relief, but he sent his own dirty hand-signal back in return. Then he turned and strode off. She could’ve sworn she heard him say, “Thank God,” as he walked away.
B.J. stared after him for a moment, absolutely stunned. Her butt-headed brother had actually been worried about her. The sudden softness she felt for him shocked her even more.
Hell, maybe there was something wrong with her. If there was, she knew exactly what the source was. One Grady Jace Rawlings. If she’d acted a little too feminine today, it was purely his fault. The guy made her emotions go haywire.
She was in love with him, and that scared the piss out of her. Suddenly, she wanted to make this marriage thing work. . .not just work. She wanted to make it succeed. She wanted it to be permanent, and she wanted to be as important to him as. . .well, hell, as important as Amy had been.
Sobering, she straightened.
There was no way she’d find equal footing with Amy. No freaking way. But her heart still wished it. . .and B.J. couldn’t ignore the yearning. Thinking up ways to get him to feel at least half as much for her as he’d felt for his first wife, B.J. put in a discreet call to her new girl buddy, Jo Ellen.
If anyone knew how to be feminine and win over a man’s heart, it would be Grady’s utterly feminine sister.
****
By five o’clock, B.J. had started taking steps to finding her inner female. She’d stopped by Jo Ellen’s, and they’d talked for hours, discussing all the changes she could make to be less masculine.
Now, she knelt in the flower garden, muttering under her breath about all the freaking weeds. After visiting with Jo Ellen and then stopping by a boutique on the way home for a new nighty, she’d called Rudy for gardening advice.
Rudy gave her very strict instructions on weeding, what to pull and what not to pull. So there she kneeled, down on her hands and knees, sweating in the dirt. As she worked relentlessly, a very small, very green grass snake slithered across her hand. B.J. screamed and jumped to her feet, immediately scrambling from the flowerbed. In her mind’s eye, the reptile was ten feet long. She could almost hear the twitching rattle of its tail and feel the white-hot venom from its fangs as it bit her right under the arm.
Grady flew out the front door. “What’s wrong?” he said, bounding off the porch, his eyes wide with concern.
B.J. didn’t think. She just leapt, landing in his surprised arms and nearly crawling up his leg she clung to him so tight.
“B.J.?” Grady took her shoulders in his hands and pulled her back so he could look her up and down, probably for blood. “What’s wrong?”
Reality finally returned, and she could only shake her head and move out of his concerned grasp. “Nothing. I’m fine.” Yet she scanned the grass frantically as she spoke.
“You screamed,” he insisted.
“I did not.” But as soon as she spoke, she bit her lip, realizing screaming was a girly thing, and that was exactly what she’d been trying to accomplish.
Grady looked at her strangely. “I heard you scream.”
“I do not. . .scream,” she stated firmly. Okay, so, in some ways she’d always be a tomboy, because no way on God’s green earth would she admit to screaming. “I might’ve let out a sound of surprise. But your goddamn wrong if you think I screamed.”
Grady gaped a moment. Then he sputtered out a laugh and shook his head. “All right then,” he revised. “I heard your sound of surprise. So, what surprised you?”
B.J. mumbled about the snake, and Grady moved closer.
“I’m sorry, what?”
“I said I saw a damn snake, okay?” she practically shouted. It was humiliating. She, B.J. Gilmore—Rawlings—hated snakes.
Grady fell back a startled step. “You’re afraid of snakes?”
“Hell, no,” she growled and then snorted, appalled he would even suggest the idea, even though her hand had already raised to cover the spot under her arm where her snakebite scar remained. “I just don’t like them.”
He grinned, clearly amused, and she ground her molars. But damn it, she didn’t want to be feminine weak; she wanted to be feminine strong.
“It’s okay to be afraid of snakes, you know.”
