They weren’t kids anymore. Life had changed them both but he could still give her those moments of joy.
“Are you coming?” she yelled from the front door.
He rolled onto his hands and knees and made sure he had his feet under him before he stood. Pond water sheeted down his body, leaving muddy rivulets all across his legs. “Hell, yeah,” he called back.
Because she wasn’t going anywhere without him.
Eight
“These aren’t bad,” Oliver said around his sixth attempt to eat one of Renee’s cookies.
“Really?” Renee ducked her head, a delicate blush pinking her cheeks. “That was the last batch. That survived anyway.”
He wanted to cup her blushing cheek in his palm and kiss her again and again. But then again, earlier he’d wanted to pull her back upstairs and try out a few other positions with her, but he couldn’t.
Just like always, Oliver had bowed to the demands of reality. Stupid reality.
Frankly, he was lucky he hadn’t mooned half of Mineola. Because that’s about how many people had suddenly appeared on his property.
While Oliver had been splashing in the pond and doing everything in his power to make Renee laugh and fight back, his housekeeper, Lucille, had called three times to see if the house was on fire or not. When she couldn’t get ahold of anyone at the house, she’d called the fire department. The fire trucks had shown up about five minutes after he’d got his naked butt back inside the house, with Lucille hot on their tail. And then she’d scolded Oliver like he was a schoolboy and demanded to know why he’d installed a houseguest without telling her because she could have brought over some more food.
“Or at least some better desserts,” Lucille had grumbled when she’d got a good look at the kitchen.
But Oliver had introduced Lucille to Renee and, after her initial shock, Lucille seemed to be warming up. She picked up a cookie from a different batch and took a small nibble. “Good heavens, you’re not supposed to use that much salt!”
“Well, I figured that out,” Renee said defensively—but at least she said it with a smile. “Eventually. Why would anyone label teaspoon and tablespoon so similarly?”
Lucille gave Renee a look that made it clear the older woman didn’t know if Renee was joking or not.
Oliver snagged another edible cookie and handed it over to Lucille. “The important thing is she figured it out.”
Lucille was not one for effusive praise, but even she nodded and said, “That’s not half bad,” which made Renee bust out another one of those luminous smiles. “Honey, I can teach you to bake, if you’d like.” She eyed the mess again. “Might be easier. Or at least safer. When are you due, honey?”
“Oh.” Renee turned a pretty pink and stared down at her belly. Oliver couldn’t figure out if she was embarrassed by this question or not. “September 27.”
Because of course she knew the exact date of conception. The day her husband took his own life. Oliver didn’t like the way Renee seemed to pull back into herself. He shot Lucille a look that he hoped communicated say something nice.
And Lucille, bless her heart, did. She wasn’t a grandmother of six for nothing. “Pregnancy suits you,” she announced a tad too loudly.
“It does?” Clearly, Renee didn’t believe her.
“You’ve got that glow, honey. Some women look tired or drained, but you?” She waved her hand near Renee’s belly. “Some women were born to this. You’re one of them, you lucky duck.”
Renee looked doubtfully down at her stomach. “But I’m fat.”
Lucille looked truly insulted by this. She patted Renee on the arm. “Oh, honey—who told you that? They were nothing but jealous. You’re gorgeous.” She turned a hard stare to Oliver. “Isn’t she?” It was not a question.
“I already told her that. Multiple times—because it’s true,” he replied, watching Renee’s cheeks color even more. Which meant he almost missed the look Lucille gave him, one that had him realizing that he might have overplayed his hand.
Thus far, he and Renee had attempted to stick with their original story—they were childhood friends and he’d given Renee free use of his ranch while she was hiding and he was working in Dallas.
But that story wasn’t holding water, so to speak, and Oliver knew it. It was the middle of the workweek and yet he was at Red Oak Hill. And not only was he at Red Oak Hill, he’d also barely got out of the shower and got pants on before the place had been crawling with firefighters. At least Renee had located her leggings. They’d told the fire crew that he’d fallen into the pond trying to deal with the carbonized cookies—which, again, was true.
But it wasn’t a huge leap to get from him naked in the shower to him naked with Renee. He’d even caught two firefighters nudging each other with their elbows and winking at Oliver’s story.
Yeah, no one was buying that half-truth here. Worse, he’d screwed up and used Renee’s real name when he’d introduced her to Lucille within earshot of at least three firefighters and now there was no going back.
For all intents and purposes, Renee’s presence at Red Oak Hill was now common knowledge.
Especially because Lucille was no idiot and it was clear Oliver had screwed up again. Damn it. This was all going wrong. Lucille, he trusted, but the firefighters? And now Lucille was giving him The Look?
To avoid Lucille’s sharp gaze, Oliver snatched up another cookie and immediately regretted it. Coughing, he spit the too-salty one into the trash. “I think we can get rid of these,” he sputtered, scraping the whole batch off the cooling rack and directly into the trash. “We’re lucky no one else tried these.”
“You were lucky you weren’t caught with your britches
