“And if I do?”
She moistened her lips. “Then I’ll know this is just a dream.”
He smiled slightly. He brushed the silky end of her ponytail against her cheek and leaned closer. “Dream, Bella,” he whispered, and slowly pressed his lips to hers.
He felt her quick inhale and his own quick rush. Tasted the brightness of lemonade, the sweetness of strawberry.
He slid his fingers from her ponytail to the back of her neck and urged her closer.
Her fingers splayed against his chest. She murmured something against his lips. He barely heard. His head was full of sound. Full of pulse beats and bells.
She murmured again. This time not against his lips.
He frowned, feeling entirely thwarted. “What?”
She pulled back yet another inch. Her fingertips pushed instead of urged closer. “Do you want to answer that?”
It made sense then. His cell phone was ringing.
He exhaled his annoyance and pulled the offending device from his back pocket. The number showing on the screen wasn’t familiar, but the area code was. He declined the call, the ringing went quiet and he shoved the phone into his pocket again.
“Nobody important?”
He shook his head, but some piece of conscience in him prickled.
Start as you mean to go on.
When had he stopped believing in that?
“Bella. Arabella—”
“I like when you call me Bella.” Her hand had found a place against his chest again, her fingertips grazing his neck.
The urge to pull her out of the potting shed and beyond the peach orchard to his barn was painful.
He closed his hand around hers, moving it away from his chest. “Then you’ll always be Bella to me.” He kissed her fingertips. “But I—” He broke off with a curse when his phone rang insistently again. He didn’t need to look at the screen to know it would be the same caller. Just as he hadn’t needed to recognize the number to know it would be the same caller.
Despite their long alliance, Michael Devane had cut Jay loose the year before without a speck of regret.
Then everything changed and Jay had been dodging Michael ever since. When there was money on the line, the other man was like a bulldog.
He pulled out his phone again, turned it off and left it facedown on the bench.
But even though he wanted to start up right where he’d left off—namely the pouty curve of Arabella’s lower lip—that damn piece of conscience prickled harder than ever. So instead, he raked his fingers through his ruthlessly short hair and refilled his glass of lemonade. “Damn, it’s getting hot out, isn’t it?”
She looked vaguely confused. “The heat isn’t so bad, but the humidity is worse than I’m used to.” She freed her ponytail, only to bundle her hair up into a knot on the top of her head and secure the tie around it again. “I actually ought to be going. I have a thing I have to go to this afternoon.” She closed the binder and stretched up to replace it on the shelf. Her shirt rode up above the waistband of her jeans, briefly revealing a narrow strip of creamy skin.
He looked away and chugged another quarter glass of lemonade. “A thing?”
“Barbecue. My brother’s fiancée is expecting me.” She went back down on her heels and tugged the bottom of her shirt. “You know, if you don’t want me to come tomorrow, you can just tell me.”
His mind had been occupied with fantasies of exploring that soft-looking skin. To see whether the sprinkle of light freckles across her nose were repeated anywhere else. “Why wouldn’t I want you to come?”
“I don’t know.” She tugged at her shirt again, but this time he knew it wasn’t an unconscious act but an indicator of uncertainty. “Just thought I should make sure. She’s your grandmother. Maybe she doesn’t really expect me to take her up—”
“You haven’t spent enough time with her yet,” Jay said wryly. “She doesn’t say things she doesn’t mean.” Which was why he trusted that she wouldn’t tell all to Arabella just because she figured Jay ought to. “You didn’t decline her invitation. She’s going to expect you tomorrow. And she’s going to put you to work, so you might as well come prepared.”
“And you? Is she putting you to work, too?”
“She would if I didn’t have to be on duty at the hotel. Can’t tell you how many hours of weeding she’s gotten out of me since I moved into the barn.”
She looked crestfallen. “You have to work at the hotel tomorrow?”
Her disappointment was ego-boosting to say the least. “Afraid so.” He tucked his finger beneath her chin. “Which means I’ll have to think of some way to make it up to you.”
“Really?” It was practically a squeak and she blushed. “Really?” she repeated in a much lower register and with a lot more aplomb.
Everything about her charmed him. “Really.” He wrapped the remaining cookies in one of the napkins and handed them to her. “Gran’ll figure I screwed up if all of the cookies aren’t gone.”
Their fingers brushed as she took the napkin from him. “Can’t have that.”
He walked her back to her car, going around the house rather than through it. But his attempt at avoiding his grandmother was futile, since she was outside at the front of the house anyway, tending her rosebushes.
She peered from beneath the brim of her ancient straw hat. “Leaving already?”
“Arabella has a family thing to get to,” Jay answered, knowing that was one thing that would quell his grandmother’s well-intentioned nosiness.
“I do,” Arabella confirmed. “Thank you for the cookies and lemonade, Mrs. O’Brien. They were delicious.”
“Pleased to hear it,” his grandmother said. “Nothing more satisfying when everyone’s feeling warm.”
Arabella obviously took the words at face value, but Jay was glad his grandmother’s straw brim shaded her undoubtedly crafty expression.
He opened Arabella’s car door for her and closed it again once she was behind the wheel. When she turned the key, the engine started immediately.
She smiled wryly. “Guess the battery thing must have been
