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“Relief.”
“Good.” He held her close, in strong arms that made her feel safe and secure, and she closed her eyes, knowing that the moment would soon end, but making it last for as long as she could. He sighed across her hair, and she snuggled close. She wouldn’t believe that making love to Luke Gates was anything but wonderful.
* * *
A few days later Katie was still thinking about making love to Luke, wondering if it would ever happen again as she carried a box of pots and pans on to the back porch. She stacked the box on top of the growing pile of assorted crates and cartons that waited for Jarrod, Nathan and Trevor on the back porch of her little cottage. Sweat drizzled down her nape and forehead. She mopped her brow, then swiped at a cobweb that dangled from the rafters of the roof. The rainstorm of a few nights before was long gone, and the temperature had soared into the nineties again, proof that summer wasn’t ready to give up its searing hold on the Rogue River Valley.
The yard was patchy and yellow, the leaves on the trees just starting to turn gold with the promise of autumn. She’d miss this place, she thought, as she squinted against the sun and watched Blue sniff in the shrubbery for a squirrel or bird hidden deep in the foliage. The old dog moved his head to look at her, wagged his tail, then turned back to smelling the underbrush.
But it was time to move, she decided. Things were changing. Josh, on the threshold of adolescence, was dealing with the new changes in his life—about his father’s death and accepting a grandfather he hadn’t known. Brynnie had gotten through to him. Within a few more years he’d slowly be pulling away from his mother.
Katie had already run an advertisement in the “For Rent” column of the Review’s Classified section. It was time to move on in many ways.
She went inside her sweltering kitchen, turned on the tap and, holding her hair away from her face, drank from the faucet. She swiped the back of her hand over her mouth, then walked to Josh’s room. With a rap of her fingers, she called through the door. “Need any help in there?”
There was a pause. Her hand was on the doorknob when he answered. “Nope.”
“Jarrod and the twins will be here soon.”
“I know.”
She wanted to reprimand him, to tell him to try and stop punishing her; but she bit her tongue and decided to give him some space. For the past few days—ever since Katie had told him about his father—Josh had been upset and sullen, offering her the juvenile equivalent to the cold shoulder.
Katie had tried to broach the subject of Dave several times since she’d first told her son about his father, but Josh had retreated into disgusted silence and had spent his time either at school or with his friends. When he was at home, he kept to his room, watching the small television, playing video games and generally indulging his bad mood. But, the good news was that he was off crutches for good; the doctor had called the Monday after Bliss’s wedding with a report that the specialists who had read his X-ray had found no indication of fracture in his ankle and physically he was solid again.
And today was different. They were moving, and she’d forced Josh into a halfway-decent mood. He’d even offered to help her pack up her desk. A small olive branch, but one that she’d quickly accepted.
Their lives were changing in other ways. As of this day, Katie would live next door to Luke.
Which was another problem.
She’d seen Luke several times since the late afternoon when they’d made love. Each time, he’d been cordial and warm, a sexy, affectionate smile creasing his jaw whenever they’d run into each other. But he hadn’t called and hadn’t so much as touched her again.
It was almost as if something had come between them, an invisible barrier she didn’t understand. She filled another cardboard box with memorabilia from her kitchen, piling in knickknacks and pictures, cookbooks and a few pot holders.
She heard the truck before she saw its rear end back into the drive. As it slowed and parked several feet away from the garage, she heard her half brothers’ shouts.
“Start with the big things—washer and dryer,” Jarrod ordered as he climbed out of the cab. “And don’t forget the refrigerator.”
“As if I’d let them forget anything.” Katie stepped onto the back porch as her twin brothers leaped past the two steps and barreled into the kitchen. “But don’t worry about the refrigerator. It stays with the place.”
“Good. Just point us in the right direction,” Nathan told her. His hair was a dark brown, stick straight and flopped over a high forehead beneath which intense hazel eyes bored into her.
She followed her brothers inside and, from the archway in the kitchen, looked down the hallway to where Trevor was already unhooking the hoses to the washing machine that was wedged into what was euphemistically called a “laundry closet.”
Jarrod pushed open the screen door and frowned at the torn, jagged mesh. “I think I made some wild promise about fixing this,” he said, sticking a finger through the hole.
“That you did.” She winked at him. “And just because I’m moving doesn’t let you off the hook, you know. This is still my house, and you made a promise.”
“Consider it done.”
“Oh, sure. Promises, promises,” she quipped blithely.
“Hey, are we gonna get some help in here?” Trevor, the more hotheaded of the twins, yelled.
“Duty calls.” Jarrod was already halfway there. “Hey, kid. How about giving your uncles a hand?”
Josh, hearing the commotion, had poked his head out of his room. Upon spying Katie’s half brothers, he joined in and forgot to cast his mother a disparaging glance before he helped unhook the dryer. Katie mentally crossed her fingers that he’d forgive her.
