Arabella had followed Jay in her car and when they walked in without even knocking, she could read his surprise when they found the place empty.
“Did she leave a note?” Her mother always left a note for her dad whenever she went out.
He glanced around, presumably at the obvious places. “Not that I can see.” He dropped the fat envelope filled with the cash they’d taken in at the market into a kitchen drawer and pushed it shut again before opening the refrigerator door.
“Jay!” She couldn’t help a protesting laugh. “We’re not really going to raid her fridge when she’s not even here, are we?”
He gave her a look as if she’d grown a second head. “You think she makes all of this because she wants to eat all of it herself?” He removed a platter wrapped in plastic wrap and set it on the counter. “Cold fried chicken.” He followed it up with another covered bowl. “Potato salad.” Then a tall glass pitcher. “Fresh lemonade.” He added it to the collection on the counter and then leaned over to open a lower cupboard. “She’s been trying to put meat on my skinny ass my entire life.”
“Please. You’re perfect.” The words escaped without thought and she flushed when he shot her a look over his shoulder, catching her right in the act of ogling his butt.
His smile turned wicked as he straightened with the wicker picnic basket he’d pulled out of the cupboard. “We could always compare yours and mine.”
She flushed even more and injected some bravado into her eye roll. “How suave you are.”
He chuckled soundlessly as he stacked the food inside the basket. Then he grabbed the lemonade pitcher and headed toward the rear door. “Come on.”
She hurried around him to open the door since his hands were full and they went outside. She half expected him to stop and set everything on the patio table that overlooked the garden, but he kept walking. Around the beds of strawberries, past the shed and around through the peach orchard.
She saw the big tub of his grandmother’s, nestled in a shaft of sunlight beaming through the trees, and her heart began skittering around inside her chest as they neared his stone barn and her feet dragged a little.
He noticed and gave her a curious look. “Something wrong?”
“Not...uh, not at all. I just, I just didn’t realize you had a water wheel,” she said quickly. Not entirely untruthfully. Because she hadn’t realized it until now. Hadn’t seen it, because she hadn’t gotten so close to the barn the last time she’d been there.
But there it was. Positioned closely against the far side of the stone barn, dipping into the stream and producing a soothing, distinctly rhythmic creak as it turned.
But her sudden shot of nerves was caused only because it had dawned on her that she was finally seeing his place. That they were alone.
That anything could happen.
She wasn’t a virgin. Before Tammy Jo had landed Ham, Arabella had been involved with him first. But that had still been a while ago. Was she really ready to take that step with Jay?
He was still waiting for her to catch up to him. “Barn used to be a flour mill.”
She blinked. “Seriously? I was only joking when I asked if your grandmother milled her own flour for her chocolate chip cookies.”
“She’s probably capable, but she couldn’t do it here. Not anymore. The mill was dismantled a long time ago. My grandfather was a farrier. He did a lot of his work here.” He aimed toward a rough-looking door positioned closer to the short side of the barn and she was surprised that he stopped to pull a key out of his pocket to unlock it.
“Get a lot of break-ins out here in the middle of nowhere?”
He pocketed the key again. “You’d be surprised.” He pushed open the door and waited for her to enter first.
She did, and what she saw inside made her jaw drop.
Whatever the stone building’s previous uses had been, the interior now was plainly meant as living quarters for humans. The stone walls on the outside were the same on the inside, but the floors were gleaming wood. A galley-style kitchen was located on one narrow end. At the other side of the room, a couple of rough-hewn posts anchored a staircase leading to a loft area that filled only a limited portion of the magnificent space soaring up to the crisscrossing barn rafters.
She assumed the bedroom was upstairs, because between kitchen and stairs, it was all living space downstairs. A small dining table that looked like it was made of the same kind of wood as the posts sat behind a long leather couch that anchored one end of a large rectangular rug woven in mottled shades of gray. Opposite the couch were a wooden trunk serving as a coffee table and two chairs. Most surprising of all, though, was a gleaming black grand piano that stood near the stairs. It ought to have looked out of place, but it didn’t.
In fact, everything looked magazine perfect in one of those modern-yet-rustic ways. Perfect, yet totally impersonal. There wasn’t a single personal item in sight.
She turned in a circle, taking it all in. “Your grandmother must have spent a fortune doing all of this.”
He set the pitcher and the picnic basket on the concrete kitchen island.
“Was she hoping to rent it out or something?” Arabella wandered nearer, stepping around the buttery-soft-looking couch. There were only a few narrow windows, but they spanned nearly the entire length of the space. Hung horizontally as they were, one above the other, they afforded a view of the horses and the pasture from every position within the barn.
“Or something.” Jay opened a cupboard and pulled out a sleeve of red cups that he tossed onto the island. He followed it up with a package of paper plates. “Nothing but the finest china here. Makes doing the dishes a breeze.”
She laughed as
