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“You don’t have to—”
“Of course I don’t. But I do feel like I owe you.” He hesitated, then lifted a shoulder as they stepped into the hallway where the door to Katie’s room was half open, almost inviting. Inside, a Tiffany lamp burned at a low wattage, reflecting on the windows and spreading a warm pool of light over the lacy duvet and the pink and rose-colored pillows that were piled loosely against the headboard of her bed. The decor was outrageously feminine, with antiques, scatter rugs and frills. Oddly, she was embarrassed that he was looking into her private sanctuary where she worked on her columns, worried over Josh and dreamed about her career; a room where no man had ever dared sleep. She felt her heart pound a little, and when Luke’s eyes found hers again, she realized she was blushing.
“So, how about ham and turkey on white bread?” she asked blithely, as if men looked into her bedroom every day of the week.
“Sounds great.”
“Good.” She walked briskly away from her room, and, once she and Luke were in the kitchen, she let out her breath again. Why seeing him so close to her most private spot in the world disquieted her, she didn’t know, didn’t want to know. But there was no doubt about it—this easygoing Texan put her on edge.
He looked awkward and big and out of place in her kitchen. “I’ll make the ice bag the doctor ordered,” he offered, as if he, too, needed something to do. “Just point me in the right direction.”
“Good idea.” She handed him the tools he needed, then spread mayonnaise on slices of white bread. He found ice in the freezer, cracked the cubes from a tray and smashed them into smaller chunks with the small hammer she’d dug out for him. Once the ice was crushed, he rustled up a couple of plastic bags, put one inside the other and brushed the ice shavings inside.
“You’ve done this before,” she observed, slapping ham, turkey, lettuce and tomatoes on the bread.
“Too many times to count.”
“Do you have kids?” she asked automatically, and he hesitated long enough to catch her attention. She’d never thought of him as being married or having children, but then she didn’t know much about him. Not much at all.
“Nope. No kids of my own. But I’ve spent enough time with teenagers to get in this kind of practice. I’ve worked on crews with kids where we bucked hay, strung fence, roped calves—the whole nine yards. Someone was always getting kicked, or falling off a rig, or being bucked from a horse or whatever.” He glanced up at her, and she felt her breath stop at the intensity in his eyes. So blue. So deep. So…observant. She felt compelled to look away to break the silly notion that there was some kind of intimacy in his gaze. What was it about him that made her nervous? She was used to men and boys, had grown up with three brothers, yet this man, this stranger, had a way of making her uncomfortable. She pretended interest in slicing the sandwiches into halves. “So you’ve done a lot of ranching.”
“Yep.”
“In Texas?”
“All over. Wyoming and Montana for a spell, but mainly Texas.”
“And that’s where you met Ralph Sorenson?”
He nodded, and his eyes fixed on her with laser-sharp acuity. “Years ago.” He handed her the bag of ice, and though there were dozens of questions she wanted to ask him about Ralph and Dave and his life, she carried the ice pack, along with a platter of sandwiches, down to Josh’s room.
She couldn’t help wondering what Luke thought of her and her cramped little home. Filled to the gills with memorabilia from her youth, antiques and enough books to make her own library, her house had a tight, packed-in feel that bordered on cramped but felt right to her. A string of Christmas lights was forever burning over an old desk she’d shoved into a corner of the living room, and her walls were covered with pictures and doodads she’d collected over the years.
To her it was home, and, if she moved to Tiffany’s house, she’d take every bit of her life—the mementos from her past—with her.
She didn’t know but guessed that Luke Gates lived a more austere existence. She imagined he’d be as content to sleep under the stars with a buffalo robe for warmth and a saddle for a pillow as he would in a feather-soft bed with eiderdown pillows and thick blankets.
Josh had inherited his mother’s need for keepsakes. Posters covered the walls of his room, and model planes hung from the ceiling. His desk was littered with baseball cards, trophies, books and CDs, and his floor space was crowded with toys he’d just about outgrown. “You okay?” she asked, seeing that her son was channel surfing, flipping from a docudrama about the police to the baseball game.
“Fine, Mom. Don’t worry.”
“I’m your mother. It’s my job.”
“Oh, right.” Josh rolled his eyes.
While Blue lifted his head in the hopes of snatching a dropped morsel, Katie handed Josh the plate. “Better than Papa Luigi’s,” she said. “You’ve got my personal guarantee.”
“Sure.”
“Ask anyone in town.” She tucked the ice bag around his ankle.
He sucked in his breath and stiffened, tipping his plate and nearly losing a sandwich to the floor and the ever-watchful Blue. “Jeez, Mom, that’s cold.”
“It’s supposed to be.”
“I know, but, Mom, it’s freezing cold.”
“That’s the general idea,” she deadpanned. “It’s ice.”
