He wore his authority with ease. It was so different from the way her father was. James blustered about, ordering employees around. All Jackson had to do was walk into a room. She had seen him helping with setup at different community parties on more than one occasion. He was a man who led by example. He was a man, she had always thought, to be admired.
And she had. She admired him greatly.
Wherever Jackson was, her eyes seemed to find him.
It was hard to explain how it had felt to find out there was a high probability he was her half brother.
It had been the death of a dream she’d told herself had never been real.
But it had felt like a real, actual death. Before, she might have pretended she knew he was off limits, but apparently part of her had always secretly hoped…
That connection was so powerful. That sense of need she felt when she saw him.
And the connection had only grown and intensified as she had gotten older.
As she began to realize just how much of a misfit she was with her family.
So really, finding out about her mother and his father…it made sense. And she shouldn’t be sad.
“I’ll help clean up,” he said.
“You don’t have to do that.”
“You said yourself you don’t know how to clean. Anyway, there’s no dishwasher here.”
He took her plate, which was empty, went over to the sink and started running water. She could only stare at his broad back, at the way he worked, smoothly and capably.
And then she realized she was staring at the back of him while he washed dishes with her mouth dropped open. Like he was performing some kind of Herculean effort, rather than just scrubbing a couple of dinner plates and a pan.
She scrambled to her feet and looked around the tidy kitchen. There wasn’t really much to do. Not after the spiders had already been chased away and the cobwebs had been dealt with. She grabbed the broom again and began to sweep the floor, even though there was no dirt on it.
But she needed to do something, and she wasn’t going to go stand over by the sink.
“Cricket,” he said. “Why don’t you dry?”
Well, apparently, she was going to go stand by him.
She moved over to the sink, and he thrust a dish towel in her direction. She grabbed it, her fingertips brushing his. His hands were rough.
She’d never touched him before.
She’d dreamed about it.
About his hands.
She hadn’t known just how rough they would be.
She felt the lingering echo of that touch and she did her best to try and ignore it. He was warm too. She could feel heat radiating from his body as she stood beside him. Her shoulder vibrating with it as they stood with just an inch between them while she dried the dishes that he set on the side of the sink.
She looked over at him, and he turned his head. Then she immediately looked back down at the dish in her hand. She was acting weird. And he must realize that. He must know that things were weird. But she imagined he had no idea why.
She could tell him. She could tell him right now.
You don’t even know why. Do you get what you’re doing?
This wasn’t the reaction a woman should have to her half brother.
A pit of despair grew in her stomach.
She was supposed to know better. She was supposed to have fixed this.
No. She couldn’t tell him her suspicions yet. It would only cause problems. It would only… It would ruin things. Everything. She couldn’t take a chance on springing all this on him too soon.
So instead, she cleared her throat, mirroring the same gesture he’d done only a moment before, and carried the plates to their rightful spot in the kitchen.
“Well, I’m going to head to bed,” he said, turning and gripping the edge of the counter. The muscles in his forearms flexed, and she made a study of the red paint on the tabletop. Of all the places that it was chipping and wrinkling.
“It’s early,” she said.
“Not really.”
Then he brushed past her and left her standing in the kitchen. The room suddenly felt much larger without him standing in it. And that left her with a whole lot of questions she couldn’t quite form. And even if she could, she wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answers.
CHAPTER THREE
This was Jackson’s favorite part of the day. When the sun hadn’t risen yet, and he put the coffee on. As strong as he could make it. When the world outside was quiet, and still. When the whole day had a wealth of possibilities in it.
Once upon a time, he’d spent mornings like this with his mother at the kitchen table. His father wasn’t one to enjoy mornings. A rancher he was, but he also was always half stumbling out the door after the first rays of light had begun to filter over the mountains, his coffee in a to-go cup, his eyes bleary.
Not Jackson. And not his mom. Four o’clock had been his wake-up time for as long as he could remember. Plenty of time to get a jump on the day. To plan everything that needed to be done. To do it without all the damn people cluttering up the world. Let them sleep.
Those times had become especially precious when his mother had been ill.
He had lived in his own place at that point. But he still worked the family ranch. He got up, he drove over, he sat with his mother and had coffee. And then he went out to work the ranch.
In the years since, he had begun to exclusively work his own place. His father had enough hands on deck to handle the family place without Jackson. And anyway, once his mother had been gone, there had been no real reason to stay. There had been no one to have coffee with in the
