She sent him a sympathetic look and pulled her hair away from her face in one sweeping motion.
“Not that I don’t appreciate...” He grimaced. He wasn’t trying to insult her, either. “I work with cattle. A lot. And ranch hands, of course. I manage pasture rotation, sick cows, bullheaded employees. That kind of thing. I’m not the smoothest guy. I’m a straightforward guy who says what he means.” He cast about, looking for the right words. “You are beautiful, for the record. It’s not like I didn’t notice.”
“It’s okay,” she said. “I know where you stand.”
“Yeah, you know I don’t want to get married, but you should know that I’m not the kind of guy who plays around with romance. So if there is ever any question of whether I was flirting or not, maybe just give me the benefit of the doubt.” Jane smiled and he eyed her uncertainly. “Okay?”
“Okay. I can do that.”
The house was just ahead, and they turned their steps up the hill toward it. The side door was propped open with an old coffee can filled with nails as it normally was when they needed a breeze in there, and Peg looked outside.
“Mommy’s coming,” Peg said, and the two little girls came scampering out after her.
“Mama!” one of them hollered, and they both came squealing down the short hill toward them.
The toddlers were pretty cute in their matching yellow dresses and their bouncing red curls, and as Jane hoisted up the first toddler, the second girl collided with her knees.
Jane kissed the little girl in her arms, then glanced back at Colt.
“They’re getting too big for me to carry together,” she said, and her eyes sparkled with a smile. “You want to grab one for me?”
Colt reached for the toddler in her arms, and then she gathered up the other one. The little girl squirmed in his arms and then looked up at him with wide, serious eyes. There was a freckle in the middle of her forehead, and he grinned.
“Hey, Micha,” he said quietly.
Micha’s face erupted into a smile and she reached for his hat. “Cat!”
He took it off and dropped it onto her head, listening to the sound of her muffled giggles as he matched Jane’s pace, walking up toward the house.
Micha pulled his hat off, her hair standing on end, then dropped it back over her face again with a tinkle of laughter.
“She likes my hat,” he said, glancing over to find Jane watching him.
“You’re good with kids,” she said.
“Nah,” he replied. “I make a half-decent uncle to my cousins’ kids. They call me uncle, at least—it’s simpler. I’m the guy who gives cash once a year to cover everything he missed.”
Jane laughed and Colt caught Peg’s gaze pinned on them, a thoughtful look on her weathered face.
He hadn’t had dinner yet, and he smiled in her direction.
“Peg, I’m starving. What do we have?”
“There’s a tuna casserole in the fridge,” she said. “I thought you would have eaten already at the canteen since Jane was down there.”
“I forgot, quite honestly,” he said. Tuna casserole meant it was a gift from one of the neighbors. That was a relief. “The casserole will be just fine.”
At the steps, he put Micha down so that she could run inside, and Jane passed into the house ahead of him. From the kitchen, he could hear the toddlers babble at their mother. They’d missed her. Well, he wasn’t going to be taking her away from them again. He had a cook starting in the morning, and he’d be back to his own workload. Colt stood there in the lowering summer sunlight for a moment, wishing that walk with Jane hadn’t felt so nice.
“That’s what a family feels like,” Peg said quietly, as if reading his thoughts.
He gave her a cautious look. “I’m not a family man, Peg.”
“Some families are happy,” she said. “It is possible, you know.”
It was also possible for a family’s sins to shadow the next generation. Colt had never seen a functional and happy marriage up close. He’d certainly seen all the ways to break a heart, though. When he hadn’t answered, Peg turned and went into the house, the screen door swinging slowly shut behind her. Peg was right. Some families were happy.
“But not ours,” he murmured.
Chapter Six
The next morning, Jane woke up at five thirty with the sunrise. The day before had tired her right out, but she wasn’t going to be able to sleep any longer. Besides, it felt self-indulgent to sleep in on a ranch that started working at four each morning.
When Jane got up and padded softly to the kitchen, she found Peg at the table with her Bible drinking a cup of coffee in a pool of early morning sunlight that flooded in through an open kitchen window. Some birds twittered outside, and a coffeepot gurgled from the counter, but Peg didn’t seem to have heard her, so Jane slipped back to her bedroom and eased the door shut with a soft click. She propped herself up in bed with her own Bible beside her as she listened to her girls breathe. This was a peaceful time of the morning, and she felt a wave of gratefulness for this ranch in spite of it all.
She picked up her Bible and opened it at random, her gaze flowing over the page.
Whither is thy beloved gone, O thou fairest among women? whither is thy beloved turned aside? that we may seek him with thee.
It was from Song of Solomon, and she sighed and rubbed her hands over her eyes. It seemed that every time she opened her Bible these days, she was opening it to this book. She didn’t want to be reminded of marriage, of her early hopes for the lifelong romance she would enjoy. Life hadn’t turned out that way. Where had her husband gone? First, he’d gone to war, and when he came back his heart still seemed to be out there in the dirt with
