Sweet Nothings

  The sharp pull shattered Molly, the sensations making her muscles quiver and jerk as though she were a marionette on strings. She tightened her fists in his hair and felt as if she were melting in the rush. “Jake?”

  He moved up to kiss her eyes closed, his deep voice pitched to a soothing whisper, his silken lips tracing the arch of her brows. “Dear God, you are so beautiful, Molly. If you ask me to stop, I will. But please don’t. Please don’t.”

  She felt his clever hands unfastening the buttons of her top, felt his work-roughened fingertips separating the placket.

  Dapples of sunshine played warmly over her face and upper chest, a sharp contrast to the cool caress of the morning air. She stiffened, feeling suddenly self-conscious because she knew he was about to bare her breasts and would be able to see every flaw in the unforgiving brightness.

  “Cow teats,” Rodney had called them.

  Even now, the memory made Molly cringe. Her eyes snapped open, her blood running cold as she stared at Jake. Sunlight glanced off his thick, sable hair and played over his strong jaw. He was so handsome, far better looking than Rodney in every way. Oh, God. What was she thinking? If she wasn’t good enough for Rodney, how could she hope to measure up to Jake’s expectations?

  She imagined the look that would come over his dark face when he saw her saggy breasts and white, flabby thighs. An awful, chilling shame swept through her, and she knew she couldn’t go through with this.

  Couldn’t, absolutely couldn’t.

  Just as he was about to tug her breasts free from the cups of the bra, she grabbed the front plackets of her top and jerked them together. Startled by her sudden resistance, he flicked a passion-hot gaze to hers, his features taut.

  “What is it?” he whispered.

  Holding tightly to her blouse, Molly let her head fall back. “I—I don’t—want to do this. I don’t know what came over me. I really don’t want to do this.”

  She could feel his gaze on her face and knew he expected more of an explanation. What was she supposed to say, that she was embarrassed for him to see her, afraid he would turn away in disgust as Rodney had countless times?

  Scalding tears burned at the backs of her eyes. “I’m sorry, Jake. So sorry. If you think I’m a tease and hate me, I won’t blame you. But I—just can’t do this. I’m sorry.”

  She felt the tension go out of him. She half expected him to step back from the tree and let her fall. If he had, she wouldn’t have blamed him. A mature woman didn’t lead a man on and then, for no apparent reason, turn him off cold. It was cruel and inexcusable.

  Instead of jerking away and letting her fall, Jake continued to hold her against the tree trunk with the press of his hips. She heard him grab a deep, ragged breath, then whoosh like a blowing whale.

  “I’m sorry,” she repeated shakily.

  He took several more breaths. Then he cupped her face in his hands and forced her to look at him. His eyes were the color of molten steel, their usual clear blue now cloudy with turbulence. He looked furiously angry, but Molly knew by the gentle press of his fingers on her skin that, for reasons beyond her, his rage wasn’t directed at her.

  “Don’t apologize,” he whispered, his voice gravelly. “What have you done to be sorry for?”

  “I shouldn’t have let things go this far.”

  He chuckled and pressed his forehead against hers, his eyes and dark features blurring in her vision. “I don’t think you were entirely responsible for that.” He straightened to let her slide down the tree. When her feet connected with the ground, the heels of her canvas sneakers were angled up onto the gnarl of a root, giving her added height and putting her face closer to his. “As I recall,” he went on, “I was the one who jumped you, not the other way around.”

  Molly tried to return his smile, but her trembling mouth refused to cooperate. He murmured something unintelligible and dipped his head to nibble lightly at her bottom lip, his thumbs tracing her cheekbones. With the first brush of his firm, silken lips over hers, she lost her ability to think clearly again and abandoned her hold on her blouse to make tight fists on his shirt.

  “Dear God,” he whispered. “I’ve never felt like this. What’s going on here?”

  Molly didn’t know what was going on with him, but she felt fairly sure she had lost her mind. When he drew away, the smoldering heat in his eyes left her in no doubt that he felt the same way, which struck her as being even more incredible. He wanted her? She was so tempted to ask him why. What could a man as handsome as Jake Coulter possibly see in someone like her?

  “I think I’d better walk you back now,” he informed her huskily as he bent to retrieve his hat. “Otherwise I may break my own cardinal rule.”

  “What’s that?”

  He dusted the Stetson on his pant leg, then positioned it just so on his dark head, his eyes twinkling as he regarded her. “Thinking no means maybe.”

  He moved back to her, his gaze dropping to her still unbuttoned blouse. When he reached toward her, Molly pushed his hands away. “I can do it,” she insisted.

  He watched her fumble with the buttons for a moment, then he reached to lend assistance. “I undid them. I guess I can help put you back together.”

  Molly was trembling so badly that she finally gave up and allowed him to finish the job. Her nerves leaped with every brush of his knuckles against her chest, and her breasts ached for him to touch them again. She swallowed, hard, doing her best to avoid looking at him.

  His hands stilled on the last button. “Molly?”

  He said her name softly, but his tone was no less compelling for all that. She glanced up. The instant their gazes met, she knew she couldn’t have looked away if her life depended on it. The tenderness she saw in his eyes nearly brought tears to her own.

  “You’re beautiful,” he told her softly. “From the top of your head, to the tips of your toes, you are absolutely beautiful, and if anyone ever told you differently, he was a damned liar.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Hank was still in the stable when Jake returned from the woods. A quarter horse mare was about to foal, and Hank had volunteered to stay close all day to watch her.

  “How’s White Star doing?” Jake asked.

  “Pretty good.” Hank closed the gate of the foaling stall farther up the aisle, then came to join Jake at the front doors. “She’s dropped a little more. To be on the safe side, I just rewrapped her tail. She hasn’t passed the cervical plug yet, though. My guess is, it’ll be another day or so.”

  “Is she feeling pretty restless?”

  Hank nodded.

  “That’s always a sign. We’d best continue to keep an eye on her. We don’t want her to surprise us.”

  “How’d it go with Molly?” Hank asked.

  “It didn’t.”

  “What do you mean, it didn’t? You talked to her, right?”

  “No.” Jake hooked his arms over the gate of a front stall and gazed somberly at the buckskin mare within the enclosure. “I just couldn’t do it, Hank.”

  Hank came to stand by him. After getting settled, he asked, “What happened?”

  Jake rubbed a hand over his face and blinked. More had happened out there than he’d ever intended. “The minute she saw me, she started trying to guess what I’d come out there to jump her about.” He glanced at his brother. “I think her ex-husband did a four-deck shuffle with her self-esteem. It’s damned near nonexistent. I couldn’t bring myself to deal it another blow.”

  Hank’s mouth tightened.

  “What am I going to do? I know I need to talk to her, but when I try, I think of the paper towels, folded all pretty, and about her chasing Bart around the kitchen with the toothbrush.”

  Hank smiled ruefully. “I was more impressed with the strawberry flowers on my see-through pancakes. Those took time and effort.”

  “You’re a big help.”

  Hank chuckled. “I was just trying to commiserate.” His amusement faded, and he chafed his palms. “I know
what you’re saying, Jake. She may not be hitting the mark, but she’s no slacker. She’s worked her fanny off. Have you found little sacks of perfume stuff in any of your drawers yet?”

  Jake tugged up the neck of his T-shirt to give it a sniff. “No wonder I smell like a French whore. I thought it was the laundry soap or something.”

  “Nope. Bart’s not her only victim. She’s making us all smell pretty.”

  “I don’t guess that’ll kill us.” Jake’s voice went oddly thick and scratchy. “To criticize her performance when she’s trying so hard—I don’t know—when I look into those big brown eyes, I just can’t do it.”

  Hank rotated his shoulders and then resettled his weight against the gate. “Maybe you need to try a totally different tack.”

  “Like what?”

  “Instead of criticizing her cooking, how’s about if we just pitch in and show her how we’d like it done?”

  “That’d be the same as saying she can’t cook for shit.”

  “No, it wouldn’t. We like most of what she fixes. There’s just not enough of it. The trick here is to be subtle. Just go in before mealtimes and say you want to show her how to fix some ranch-style dishes that all of us particularly like. She’s a quick study. She’ll notice how much more you cook. One problem solved. And she’ll learn how to fix a few new things, like pan gravy and country biscuits.” Hank warmed to his subject. “I can catch her before she fixes lunches a couple of mornings. Say I’ve got some slack time and want to help.”

  “Slack time at five in the morning?”

  “She may be a little suspicious, but that’s better than openly criticizing her.”

  “Do you really think helping her in the kitchen is the way to go?”

  Hank nodded. “She hasn’t been packing us nearly enough lunch. I’ll just grab the real mayonnaise and make each of us four sandwiches instead of two. She’ll notice the increase, and when the coolers come back empty, she’ll realize we need more food. It’d also help if you could take her grocery shopping at least once. If I have to eat another health-food corn chip, I’m going to barf.”

  Jake considered the suggestion for a moment. “You know, it just might work.”

  “It will work if you handle it right,” Hank assured him.

  Jake passed a hand over his eyes. Then he nodded. “All right. I’ll try it. It’ll mean taking time out of my day to work in the kitchen with her, though.”

  “Like anybody will bitch? We can all take on some extra chores for a few days and cover for you. Anything to get more food.”

  Jake felt as if a thousand pounds had been lifted off his shoulders. At least one of his problems with Molly was on its way to being solved.

  Hank shifted his stance to look Jake full in the face. “Something else is worrying you. You going to tell me what?”

  Jake tensed. “What makes you think something else is wrong?”

  Hank searched Jake’s eyes. “Come on, Jake. We’re brothers. You can’t bullshit me.”

  Jake glanced away. “It’s personal.”

  “You’re downright sick about something. If you can’t talk to me, who the hell can you talk to?”

  “No one,” Jake replied gruffly.

  “Ah, so it’s about Molly. Never let it be said that you’re a man to kiss and tell. Is that it?”

  Jake shot his brother a warning glare and straightened away from the gate. Without another word, he turned and left the stable. There were some things he simply couldn’t share, not even with his brother. Secrets of the heart were personal things, and Molly’s belief that she was ugly was exactly that, a secret of the heart.

  Jake decided to put the problem with Molly on a back burner and just let it simmer for a few days. He needed time to think. She needed time to get over their encounter in the woods. It seemed best, all the way around, to back off and see how things cooked up when he wasn’t stirring the pot.

  Good plan, bad situation. The minute he stepped into the kitchen that evening, Jake knew it wouldn’t work. Molly took one look at him and turned an alarming shade of vermilion.

  Jake hoped it was a passing thing. He sat down to eat, doing what he thought was a credible job of pretending nothing was wrong. Molly took her usual place at the opposite end of the table and proceeded to ignore him in a very loud way.

  “So, boss, how’d it go today?” someone asked to dispel the tension.

  “Pretty good. How’d it go for you?”

  Silence. Expecting a reply, Jake glanced up to find every head at the table turned toward Molly. Following the gazes of his men, he saw that his cook-cum-housekeeper was dishing a veritable mountain of rice onto her plate.

  She suddenly froze, staring at the spoon in her hand as if she wasn’t quite sure how it had gotten there. Then she shifted her gaze to the amount of rice she’d served herself, and her cheeks went pink again. She glanced up and saw everyone staring at her. The flush spread over her whole face, deepening by degrees to a brighter pink.

  “I’m sorry. I was woolgathering,” she explained in a taut, hushed voice. She started scooping rice off her plate back into the serving bowl. “My goodness. What on earth was I thinking?”

  Jake knew exactly what she’d been thinking. Evidently his men realized something untoward had happened between him and Molly as well. Nine pairs of accusing eyes turned toward him. Despite the fact that they complained loudly behind Molly’s back about the amount of food she prepared, they had all clearly come to care about her and were almost as protective of her as Jake was.

  Not that he blamed them. She fussed over everyone like a little mother hen, a fact that was driven home to him as he glanced around the table. The sleeve of Shorty’s shirt sported a neat line of stitches where she’d mended a rip. At her insistence, Levi wore a Band-Aid over one eyebrow to cover a small scratch he’d gotten while working with barbed wire. Tex smelled strongly of the wintergreen she rubbed on his shoulder each evening to ease the pain of his bursitis. Bill, who could rarely afford a barber because he paid so much in child support, had a tidy new haircut. In short, there wasn’t a man in the group who hadn’t been a recipient of her kindness in some way. Even the dog’s life had improved since her arrival.

  His mouth full of gooey rice, Jake struggled to swallow. After a moment, he chanced another glance at Molly. Head bowed over her plate again, she was hacking at a piece of chicken. Since she seldom ate meat, that was, in and of itself, an indication of how upset she was.

  So much for putting the problem on a back burner.

  He knew he had to talk to her. Some things could be let go, some things couldn’t, and this obviously fell into the latter category.

  Avoiding Jake’s gaze, Molly flitted busily around him as they cleared the table and rinsed the dishes to put them in the machine. When addressed, she murmured a clipped reply, but no unnecessary exchanges took place.

  “I can see myself home tonight,” she informed him when the kitchen was in order. She stepped over to grab a flashlight lying on top of the side-by-side. Then, without so much as a backward glance, she left the kitchen, pausing just beyond the archway to fetch her parka. “It’s really not that far, and I’m not worried about cougars anymore.”

  Jake guessed cougars had taken second seat to a greater danger, namely him. Following her to the coat rack, he got his Wrangler jacket. He left his Stetson hanging there. Some maneuvers were best executed while a man wasn’t wearing a hat.

  Molly gave him a startled look when she saw him donning his jacket. “I said I can see myself home.”

  “I heard you.” Jake stepped over to help her with her parka. He felt her flinch when he ran his fingers under the collar to tug out her braid. “What you can do and what you’re going to do are two different things.”

  Before Jake could say more, she was off, making a bee-line through the great room for the front door. Once on the porch with the door closed behind them, she turned to confront him. Lifting her small chin to a defiant angle, she fixed him with big eyes th
at shimmered in the moonlight that slanted in under the porch overhang.

  “Molly, I know you’re very upset with me,” he tried. “Can we talk?”

  “I’m not upset with you,” she said, her voice quivering. “I’m upset with myself. There’s a big difference.”

  “Why are you upset with yourself?”

  She flipped on the flashlight. “I really don’t want to discuss it, Jake. I’d like to pretend this morning never happened.”

  He thought he glimpsed tears in her eyes just before she whirled away to descend the steps. Jake gazed after her for a moment. If the erratic bob of her flashlight beam was any indication, this was going to get worse before it got better. He sighed, shoved his hands into his pockets, and went down the steps three at a time. When he hit level ground, he kicked into high gear, lengthening his strides to catch up with her.

  When she heard his footsteps coming up behind her, she spun around. This time, when she spoke, her voice went from quivery to downright tremulous, every intonation shrill. Jake knew by the sound that she was trying to hold back tears and going to lose the battle.

  “Would you leave me alone?” she cried.

  “I think we need to talk.”

  “We do not need to talk. To what end? So you can try to convince me I’m beautiful and make me feel less ridiculous?”

  “Ridiculous? Why? I’m the one who started it, not you. If anyone should feel ridiculous, it’s me.”

  The flashlight beam cut a wide arc around her feet as she swung her arm back and forth against her leg. “I don’t want to talk about this. Right now, I don’t even want you near me. Can’t you see that?”

  He could see it, all right. The question was, why? The panic in her eyes told him that flight might be her next course of action. They had to get this settled between them. If he left it until morning, she might be gone.

  “Why don’t you want me near you?” he asked. “Can you tell me that?”

  “It’s obvious, isn’t it?”

  “Ah, Molly,” he said hoarsely, “what in God’s name has he done to you?”

  Her chin came back up, only a slight quiver of her lower lip giving her away. Her eyes were huge splotches of moon-touched amber in her face, and all Jake could see in their depths now was pain. Pain that ran so deep, it went beyond tears.