Disgusted with herself, Savannah jammed her hands in her pockets. 'And I didn't expect to like her so much. She came by to see me a little while ago.'
'I thought she might. Regan likes to confront things head-on.' Thoughtful, he studied the tip of his cigar. 'Ask her sometime about the night she waltzed into Duff's Tavern in a tight red miniskirt and had Rafe gnawing his pool cue into toothpicks.'
Fascinated by the image, Savannah nearly smiled. 'I'll have to do that. I'd like to handle the art for your office, Jared, if you're still interested.'
'I'm interested.' He turned the cigar around, offering it. When she shook her head, he took a last puff and carefully tamped it out on the rock.
'I wasn't completely truthful about a couple of other things.' The situation was a first, and she wasn't quite sure how to phrase things, so she decided to keep it simple. 'I have feelings for you, Jared. They just sort of popped up. They worried me.'
He was watching her now, his wonderful eyes very focused, very cool. She wondered how many witnesses had broken apart on the stand under that strong gaze.
'Men are a lot easier to deal with when feelings aren't involved,' she continued. 'I could be reading this wrong, but I got the idea you were aiming for a relationship kind of deal, and I've had lousy luck with relationships. So I started thinking about that, and some other things, and figured it was best all around to bail.'
When he said nothing—absolutely nothing—she gave in and kicked at the dirt on the path. 'Are you just going to sit there?'
'I'm listening,' he said mildly.
'Okay, look, I've got a kid to worry about. I can't afford to get involved with someone who might start to mean something to him that's not realistic. I know how to be careful about that, how to keep things in line.'
He stood now, his eyes never leaving his. 'You're going to keep me in line, Savannah?'
If he touched her, she was very much afraid she'd go off like a rocket. 'I don't think so. That's the thing. I've got these feelings for you.'
'That's interesting.' He hadn't known she could look so vulnerable. 'Because I have these feelings for you.'
'You do?' Her hands stayed balled in her pockets. 'Well.'
'Well,' he repeated, and stepped forward. He put his hand on her cheek, and his mouth on hers.
She wasn't used to being kissed this way. As if that were all—as if she were all—that mattered. It made her weak and woozy. Those tensed fingers went limp. And her heart surrendered.
'Are we straight now?' he murmured.
She nodded and found that feeling of pleasure could be huge, just having a man's shoulder ready to cradle your head. 'I hate feeling stupid.'
'So you said.'
'I don't want to feel stupid about this.'
His lips curved as he brushed them over her hair. 'Neither do I.'
'So we'll make a pact. Whatever happens, neither of us will make the other feel stupid.'
'I can agree to that.' He lifted her chin for another kiss. 'Why don't I walk home with you?'
'All right.'
She couldn't help it. She felt stupid and sentimental walking hand in hand with him through the woods, aware of every beam of sunlight, every scent, every sound. She would have sworn that she could hear the leaves growing overhead and the wildflowers struggling toward the sun.
Love, she mused, honed the senses.
'I have to pick up Bryan in a little while.' She glanced over. 'I can call Cassie and rearrange things.'
He knew what she was offering, and could feel the blood humming under his skin. When he brought their joined hands to his lips, he saw the flash of surprised pleasure in her eyes. Not yet, he told himself. Not quite yet.
'We'll both pick him up. What do you say to an early movie, and pizza after?'
She couldn't look at him now, not the way her throat was aching. She knew what he was offering. 'I'd say great,' she managed. 'Thanks.'
'Jared's cool.' Bryan bounced into the top bunk of his bed, his mind full of scenes from the action flick, his belly stuffed with pepperoni pizza. 'I mean, man, he knows everything about baseball, and stuff about the farm and the battlefield. He's even smarter than Connor.'
'You're no slouch, Ace.' She tousled his hair.
'Jared says everybody's got a special talent.'
Interested, Savannah leaned on the edge of the bed so that her face was level with her son's. 'He did?'
'Yeah, when we went to get popcorn. He said how everybody's got something inside than makes them different. He knows on account of he has three brothers and they're a lot alike, but they're different, too. He said I'm a natural.'
She grinned. 'A natural what?'
'Mom.' Rolling his eyes, Bryan sat up in bed. 'At baseball. And you know what else he said?'
'No. What else did he say?'
'He said how even if I decided not to be a major-leaguer I could use the stuff I know in other things. Of course, I'm going to be a major-leaguer, but maybe I'd be like a lawyer, too.'
'A lawyer?' She felt a little flutter of panic. Her son was falling in love as quickly as she was.
'Yeah, 'cause you get to go to court and argue with people and put criminals in jail. But you have to go to school forever, I mean until you're old. Jared went to college and to law school and everything.'
'So can you, if that's what you want.'
'Well, I'm going to think about it.'
He flopped back down, curled into his pillow in a way that comforted her as much as him. It was the gesture of a child. He was still her little boy.
'Night.'
'Good night, Bry.' She pressed her lips to his temple and lingered over it a moment or two longer than usual. Long enough to make him squirm sleepily.
She rose, turned off his light, then closed his door, because he liked his privacy.
Her son the lawyer, she thought, and rubbed her hands over her face. With a mother who'd never finished high school.
Then, as the panic gave way to a warm glow of pride for what her son might one day achieve, she smiled.
She walked quietly to her own room and moved to the window to look out at the woods. Through them, she could see the lights of the MacKade farm. And there, she thought, was the man she'd fallen in love with.
She smiled again and laid a hand on the cool glass of the window. All in all, she decided, it had been pretty smart of her to wait to fall until she'd found Jared MacKade.
Chapter Seven
He sent her yellow tulips, and she was dreamy-eyed for an hour after she slipped them, stem by stem, into numerous old bottles.
He took her and Bryan to a minor-league ball game in the neighboring county, where the stands were hard as iron and the crowd was rowdy, and won her son's heart absolutely by snagging a foul.
They had pizza at a place with worn wooden booths, a loud jukebox and a pinball machine. The three of them ate sloppily, shouted over the music and competed like fiends over the speeding silver balls.
He took her to dinner at a restaurant where there was candlelight and champagne fizzing in crystal flutes and held her hand on the snowy-white tablecloth.
He brought her a truckload of mulch for her garden, and she was lost.
'You're being courted,' Cassie told her over lemonade and paint samples at Savannah's kitchen table.
'What?'
'Courted.' Cassie sighed over it. The misery of her years with Joe Dolin hadn't quashed her romantic nature. Not when it concerned someone else. 'Isn't she, Regan?'
'Big-time. Yellow tulips,' Regan added, glancing up from her samples to the flowers that marched down the
