“Kelly?”
“Drop it for now, Jordan.” Still holding the screen door open, she glanced back at him. There was an oddly forlorn expression on his face she didn’t know how to interpret. “Stay for Sunday dinner, if you like. We’ll work afterward.”
He brightened at once. “Fried chicken?”
She grinned at his enthusiasm. The way to this man’s heart had always been through his stomach, no doubt about it. “Always,” she assured him.
“You know something?”
“What?”
“It’s really good to know that some things never change. Fried chicken on Sundays is one.” He paused, his gaze fixed on her. “You’re another. Please don’t ever go and change on me, Kelly.”
She thought about that remark the whole time she was changing clothes. A few minutes later she met Jordan in the kitchen. He was already setting the table for her, just as he had whenever her mother had invited him to stay for Sunday dinner years ago. He’d even taken out the good china, just as he’d been instructed to do back then.
“Another old habit?” she teased.
“Exactly.” His gaze settled on her. “It feels right being here, Kelly.”
She nodded, unable to say anything. Having him here felt too darned right to her, too. It was a dangerous sensation, a trap she didn’t dare fall into. Nostalgia was no reason to get married.
Getting a grip on her emotions, she put him to work peeling potatoes next. As she prepared the chicken, she watched him closely. Despite his expressed contentment at being there, there was something quiet and distant about him that was out of character.
“Jordan, what’s going on with you?” she asked eventually.
He glanced up from the mound of potatoes forming in front of him. “It’s Cody.”
Kelly’s heart thumped unsteadily as she imagined the youngest of the brothers injured or worse. She’d been gone when Erik was killed in an accident on Luke’s ranch, but she’d spent time with Jordan after that and seen how devastating it had been for him. It hadn’t been easy for her, either. She’d felt as if she’d lost her own brother. If something had happened to sweet, irrepressible Cody... She didn’t even want to think about it.
“Has something happened to Cody?”
Apparently he heard the alarm in her voice, because he reached out and touched her hand.
“Nothing like that,” he reassured her hurriedly. He went on to tell her about Cody’s abrupt departure the night before. “Daddy’s fit to be tied, not just at Cody, but at me for not stopping him.”
Kelly could just imagine the guilt trip Harlan was capable of laying on Jordan. “Cody’s a grown man. He has to handle his problems whatever way works for him. I could shake Melissa, though, for doing something like that. It doesn’t make any sense. She’s adored Cody forever.”
“That’s what I thought, but Cody swears he saw what he saw. He couldn’t wait to take off. Now Daddy’s threatening to cut him out of the will. Whatever he feels right now, it would kill Cody to lose White Pines.”
“Would Harlan really disinherit him?”
“I suppose that depends on how long Cody stays away. You know how stubborn Daddy is.”
Kelly surveyed him pointedly. “I certainly do. It’s a trait he passed along to all of you.”
“I’m not stubborn,” Jordan denied.
“Oh, please.”
“Determined, maybe. Dedicated.”
“Bullheaded,” she corrected.
He grinned, that lopsided, boyish grin that was so at odds with the sophisticated image he’d projected in recent years. “If you know that, then you should know you haven’t got a chance in fighting me on this proposal.”
“You’re forgetting one thing.”
“Which is?”
“I am every bit as bullheaded as you are, Jordan Adams.”
“Admittedly a frightening thought,” he teased. “But you don’t scare me, Kelly Flint. You’re weakening already. I can tell.”
Kelly swallowed hard against the tide of pure panic that his observation sent through her. “How can you tell a thing like that?”
“Oh, no, you don’t. I’m not telling you my secret way of figuring out what’s really going on in that head of yours. It’s the only advantage I’ve got.”
It wasn’t, Kelly thought with a sigh. The real advantage he had was that she was still head over heels in love with him.
7
Kelly spent the rest of the day watching as the bond between her daughter and Jordan miraculously strengthened. It was as if some barrier inside Jordan had fallen and allowed him to open his heart to the child. Always stiff, formal and a little aloof in the past, today he had finally relaxed, reminding her why she had wanted him as Dani’s godfather in the first place. Well, one of the reasons, anyway.
To her initial surprise Paul had been delighted with the choice. An ambitious man, she finally realized that he relished the tie to the powerful Jordan Adams. Kelly could hardly criticize his motives, when her own were less than pure. She had asked Jordan to be Dani’s godfather, not only because he was the sort of stable, bright, fun-loving influence she wanted for her child, but because it would forever link them all together.
Jordan had balked at first, swearing that what he knew about children would fit on the head of a pin. Kelly had had to use every persuasive skill at her command to talk him into it.
Now, observing the two of them, she was glad she had. Just seeing their heads close together as Jordan tried to teach Dani how to make homemade peach ice cream after they’d worked on the fence for a while made Kelly’s resolve slip another notch. Soon she wouldn’t have any reserves of willpower left for resisting him. Dani wanted a father desperately and Jordan was slowly but surely slipping into that role. It was far more natural to him than he had once insisted or she had once imagined.
She closed her eyes against the sight of man and child, but she couldn’t stop her thoughts from dashing headlong back to a time when she’d dreamed of seeing Jordan with their child in just such a scene. She’d envisioned a pint-size boy,
