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“I guess it’s a good thing the floors go in last.”
“I guess,” he chuckled, unable to tear his gaze away from the sweet eyes staring up at him.
“Everything okay in here?” The coordinator popped her head into the room.
Still holding Eve in his arms, Jared spun around to face the woman.
“Just fine,” the two muttered in chorus, breaking into a new fit of giggles. Clearly, they both found remodeling homes pure entertainment. Or maybe it was the company.
The lady nodded her head, smiled, and walked away. Apparently laughing volunteers carrying other volunteers was nothing new or surprising to her. But the most interesting part of the whole thing…he really was fine. More fine than he’d been in a very long time.
Chapter Six
“Yes.” Eve knew she shouldn’t agree to adding anything new to her calendar. The last couple of months, work had been keeping her at the lab later and later, and her charity work took up what little time she had left. No way she had time to do one more lick of volunteer, charity, or any other work. Yet, here she was saying yes. Again. “My pleasure, Mrs. Kessler.”
Eve slid her phone into her pocket and wondered if maybe it didn’t make more sense to just throw the dang thing under a sofa cushion with the ringer turned off.
From the head of the massive family dining table, her grandfather looked up. “Bad news?”
She shook her head. “No. I’m just going to be helping stuff and sort backpacks for the beginning of school.”
The Governor smiled. “If you need more help, I’m sure your grandmother would love a task like that.”
“Too late. Grams is already on the volunteer list.” At least her grandfather was right. Anything that benefited children, whether it was signing a check or getting her hands dirty, her grandmother was always on board. That particular tendency was just one of many about her grandmother that always brought a smile to Eve’s face.
“You do seem to be burning the candle at both ends.” Her cousin Devlin glanced up from the table and waggled one brow at her. “Late nights. Early mornings.”
“And how would you know that?” Eve loved that her family cared for each other, but it irked her to think her business was everyone else’s business.
Dev waved a fork in Chase’s direction.
“Hey,” Chase blurted, staring down his cousin, “I can get into trouble with my sister all by myself. I don’t need you throwing me under the bus.”
Tossing his hands up in the air, Dev shook his head and smiled. “You said it, not me.”
“All right, children.” Eve had too much on her mind now, including one very tall, handsome, and interesting rancher, to deal with squabbling relatives. “Y’all can duke it out after lunch.”
“Yeah,” Eve’s half sister Paige waved at her brother and cousin. “I want to hear more about you and the gorgeous neighbor.”
Paige was a few years younger than Eve, and having inherited the Baron business sense, she had turned the family vineyard from a floundering concept into an award-winning winery, but some days the inner teen reared its curious head. Under normal circumstances, when Paige was interrogating one of their brothers, Eve didn’t mind so much, but she didn’t like her love life, or in this case lack of one, to be the center of attention. She was all set to tell Paige there was nothing to say, when it struck her that the word gorgeous was thrown around. “You’ve met Jared?”
“I don’t know that met is the right word, but I’ve spotted him a time or two chatting with the Governor. Let me tell you, that man knows how to wear a pair of jeans.”
That he did, but Eve wasn’t going to go there with her kid sister. “I wouldn’t know.”
She and Paige were the only two women at the table and right about now the conversation had the men’s full attention. Not even the puppies waddling from person to person hoping to catch food droppings could snare the men’s attention. Not that they cared how Jared looked in worn blue jeans, but she knew they were reading her every reaction. Ever since she was old enough to shed her braces, her brothers and cousins watched over her like a hawk. Especially when a member of the opposite sex with a history of carousing with Kyle was flittering around her.
Craig in particular had that left eyebrow cranked higher than the right. He wasn’t buying a word she said and she knew it. The other day he was simply having fun teasing her, but now he seemed to have a different take on the situation. Maybe it came from years of producing shows and movies, but the guy had a malarkey radar like no one else in the family. “So, when are you seeing Jared next?”
“I’m not.”
That eyebrow shot impossibly higher. “You don’t say?”
Paige’s eye’s sparked with interest. “So thereissomething going on?” Her shoulders hitched in a moment of enthusiastic delight. “This calls for a girls’ night. I want to hear it all. Things have been too quiet on the romantic front.”
“There is no romantic front.” Eve did her best to slip on a relaxed smile, even though she felt like a witness on the stand about to be pelted by opposing council. “He simply volunteered his time for a worthy cause the same way the rest of us do. Often.”
“Wait.” Mitch hadn’t been at breakfast yesterday. “You mean there’s more going on than the two of you playing Fred and Ginger the other night?”
