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Her voice took on a wistful tone. “I’d like to see that.”
“Daily showings at six a.m. and another spectacular display in the p.m. Set your alarm so you don’t miss it.” He scooted forward and gingerly lifted her feet from the water and then carefully dried them with a towel.
She didn’t say anything, but he heard the soft click of her throat as she swallowed. It seemed simple, washing and caring for another’s injured feet, but it was also an intimate act. He hadn’t stopped to think when he saw the damage, he’d just gone into first-aid mode, but it was different now as his hands held and soothed her skin.
Taking out the tube of aloe, he squeezed a line of ointment on her heels and carefully smoothed it over her skin before wrapping her feet in gauze.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
That soft, breathy whisper told him she realized the intimacy of the act as well. He sat back on his heels, suddenly unable to look her in the eye as he collected the first aid items. Sneaking a glance at her, he saw her head was ducked, and she was avoiding his eyes as well.
He needed to get out of there. Something was happening inside his chest—a stirring in his heart that he hadn’t felt in a long time. The kind of stirring he had shut down and promised he wouldn’t let himself ever feel again.
He cleared his throat as he picked up the basin and stood. “Well, I’ll leave you to finish up what you were doing. Dinner’s in ten. If you’re up for it.”
“I’m starving. Anything I can do to help?”
He shook his head. “I’ve got it.” There wasn’t much to do beyond pouring a can of beans into a pan and chopping up some hot dogs into it.
Ten minutes later, he was considering if he should pour the mixture into a bowl to serve or just set the pan on a trivet on the table like he usually did. Now that she’d been hurt, he felt a little guilty for serving her such a lame supper.
Guilt was only one of the feelings he’d been having the last ten minutes. He was still thinking about that stirring inside him. It had been a long time since he’d let himself feel anything for a woman, yet one afternoon with the quirky romance writer had his chest coiling tight and attraction and desire fluttering around his stomach like fireflies on a warm summer night.
He didn’t usually notice the color of a woman’s eyes or think about the way she smiled, but he knew Kaylee’s eyes were the same greenish-blue as the pond outside and that the sides of her lips did this funny little lift when she found something he said amusing.
And as much as he was trying not to admit it, he liked telling her things that made that little lift of a smile occur.
“Smells good,” the woman he’d been thinking about said as she walked into the kitchen. She’d changed into a pair of flannel pajama pants, pink fuzzy slippers, and a faded t-shirt that read,I’m silently correcting your grammar. Her curly hair had been pulled into a messy knot on top of her head, and he had to tear his gaze away from the wispy tendrils that fell on her neck.
“Nice shirt,” he told her, motioning for her to take a seat at the table.
She looked down at herself and chuckled. “Thanks. Your sister bought it for me.”
“Is it true? Are you silently correcting my grammar?”
There went that little smile. “Sadly, yes. You might not realize it, but having good grammar skills is both a blessing and a curse.”
He laughed. Then, fighting the notion of impressing her, he nixed the serving bowl and plunked the pan down on the trivet between them and dropped into the chair across from her.
It had been a while since he’d set the table, and he hadn’t done much beyond setting out bowls, silverware, and glasses of water. But she didn’t seem to care as she picked up the paper napkin and spread it across her lap.
Even though it had been part of his grand scheme to serve her an unimpressive meal, he now found himself a little embarrassed at the offering of canned baked beans and cheap hot dogs. He could have at least set out bread and butter. “Sorry for the skimpy supper.”
“It’s fine,” she said, scooping a few spoonfuls into her bowl. “I’m kind of excited to try it. It feels like a real cowboy meal. Like maybe something you’d make over the fire out on a cattle drive.”
He marveled at her enthusiasm. “You’re right. A can of beans or two is usually tucked into a rucksack if we have to do an overnight drive.”
“That sounds exciting. An overnight cattle drive, I mean. Not the two cans of beans.”
He chuckled. This woman had made him laugh more in one afternoon than he’d done in the last month. “It isn’t. It’s usually cold and uncomfortable. The ground is hard, and I inevitably always tend to spread my sleeping bag out on a spot with a rock that sticks up somewhere in the middle of my back. Although it doesn’t usually make itself known until halfway through the night.”
“You’re right. That doesn’t sound great. In fact, nothing about that whole scenario, from the beans to the cold ground, sounds appealing to me in any way.” Her shoulders drooped. “I’m afraid I’m not very adventurous.”
“Have you ever been camping before?”
“No. But I did make a fort out of blankets and sleep on the floor once when I was a kid.”
“I’ll admit, it sounds awful, and most of it probably is, but there’s also something pretty great about crawling out of the tent and greeting the mountains in the morning. You’re usually freezing, but that makes that first scalding sip of Cowboy Coffee all the better.”
