“Okay. I have a couple more things to do around here and then I’ll be leaving around three,” he said.
“I’ll be ready.”
He leaned back in his chair and looked at her with his deep, piercing brown eyes. “Something is bothering you, Kenna, I can feel it. And I want to know what it is.”
Kenna swallowed hard. There was no way she was going to come clean and tell him what was really on her mind. It was her problem and not his. And truthfully, it shouldn’t have been her problem either. He wasn’t a fantasy she should be entertaining. She decided to feign nonchalance. “Nothing is wrong with me, Reese, other than I’m anxious about my job. You know how I am about starting something new.”
She saw his body relax a little. “But that was one hell of an offer the HPD made,” he said.
“I know,” she said with a heavy sigh. “But still, change isn’t easy for me, and other than you and your family I don’t know anyone here.”
He nodded slowly. “That’s why Alyson thinks the party is a good idea. Are you sure you want one?”
She shrugged. To be perfectly honest, she didn’t, but she wouldn’t tell him that. He worried about her enough as it was and she didn’t want to come off as ungrateful. “I don’t want to put anyone out by having them throw a party for me. But if that’s a way to meet people, then yes, I’m fine with it. It might be fun.”
“First of all, you aren’t putting anyone out. I should have thought of doing it myself, but I didn’t. So maybe Alyson has the right idea after all.”
She took a sip of her milk. If for one minute he thought Alyson
wanted to throw this party for anything other than her own selfish reasons then he needed to think again. And now that she knew why Alyson and Reese had split, Kenna figured the woman had a good reason for wanting her to meet other people.
Fortunately for Alyson, her little plan just might work. In order for Kenna to rid herself of all these crazy, far-out fantasies she’d been having about Reese, she needed to meet someone, and the sooner the better.
She glanced up at him. “Yes, maybe she does have the right idea.”
Reese bit into his cookie. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise that Kenna was having second thoughts about moving to Houston, even though, like he’d said, the offer had been a good one.
He of all people knew how Kenna felt about change. When she’d told him about the offer, he had all but talked her into taking the job, mainly for his own purely selfish reasons. She was his best friend and he wanted to have her close by. Why? So he could look after her, of course. Without him around, she would work fifteen-hour days and not take care of herself. Being only a few miles away and in the same city was a lot better than being a hundred-fifty-plus miles away in another city. He’d never regretted the times he’d made the drive or took a flight to Austin to see her. But still…
“Want some more milk?”
He glanced over at her. “Yes. Thanks.”
He watched as she lifted the pitcher and poured the milk into his glass. “So what about that guy you were seeing, Curtis Purcell?” he asked. “The two of you didn’t want to do the long-distance romance thing?”
He wondered why he was asking her about it when he hadn’t asked about him for months. She hadn’t brought up Purcell either, which had been just fine with Reese, since he didn’t care for him. Come to think of it, he’d stopped liking him the night when he had shown up at Kenna’s house to surprise her, only to discover
she was out on a date with Purcell. Reese had let himself in, made himself at home and had been there when Purcell had brought her home.
The man had kissed Kenna good-night when she got out of the car, but hadn’t bothered walking her to the door. How tacky was that? As far as Reese was concerned, a gentleman not walking a woman to the door after a date was downright disrespectful.
She glanced over at him. “No. Why do you ask?”
“Just wondering.” It was on the tip of his tongue to ask why, but he decided he would ask another time. He finally realized that for the first time in eleven years, neither of them was involved with anyone else.
He glanced at his watch as he stood. “I’ve got a few things I need to take care of before we leave for town.”
“All right. I see you’ve got a new guy working for you. I looked out the window and saw him earlier.”
“Yes, his name is Clark Lovell and he started today,” Reese said. “Already I can tell he’s one that keeps to himself. He doesn’t have much to say, but he can handle a horse and can rope a cow and that’s what Joe needs.”
He paused a moment. “And just so you know, Joe is going to ask you about fixing Sunday dinner.”
She smiled. “I don’t have a problem with that.”
He chuckled. “I figured you wouldn’t. You’re such a soft touch when it comes to the ranch hands. I’ll be back to pick you up at three.”
“Okay.”
He headed for the door and then turned back after grabbing his Stetson off the rack. “I know you’re still wondering if you did the right thing moving to Houston, Kenna. If you ask me, I think it was the right decision.”
He walked toward the door, hoping that on that particular subject she believed him.
Chapter 4
“I
’m ready, Reese.”
Reese turned around, and Kenna’s knees nearly buckled from the force of his gaze. Why was he looking at her like that, she wondered, as his eyes roamed over her from head to toe. “Is anything wrong, Reese?”
His gaze returned to her face. “No, nothing’s wrong. Is that a new dress?”
“No.”
He inclined his head. “I’ve never seen it before.”
Kenna chuckled as she reached for her purse off the table. “Probably not. You don’t go shopping with me, so you’ve never seen my entire wardrobe. Is something wrong with it?”
“No. It looks nice on you.”
Her heart thumped in her chest at his compliment. “Thanks.”
Her heart kept right on thumping as she followed Reese to his SUV parked out front. She breathed deeply, trying to get a
grip. It wasn’t her that had attracted Reese’s attention, but the dress itself. Usually she wore slacks, and that was probably the reason he’d been taken aback by the dress.
He opened the door and she eased inside. When he hesitated, she glanced up at him. “Okay, Reese, what’s wrong now?”
“Nothing.”
Kenna frowned slightly when he closed the door and then walked around the front of the SUV to get inside. He backed up and pulled out of the driveway without saying a word.
“I’ll introduce you to the new guy when we get back,” he said, interrupting her thoughts.
She glanced over at him. He had changed his shirt and was wearing another pair of jeans. As always, he looked good. “Okay,” she said. “I went out to the bunkhouse earlier and got a chance to talk to Joe a little, but he wasn’t there.”
“Who?”
“Your new guy.”
“Oh. I guess he was out tending the herd or something.”
Usually when Reese wasn’t attentive it meant his thoughts were elsewhere. She decided to give him time to sort out whatever was bothering him. There was probably something going on at the ranch that needed his undivided attention.
While he was quiet, she would use the time to think about the phone call she’d gotten from Leon, one of the police officers she’d worked with in Austin. According to him, Curtis Purcell had shown up at the station looking for her. He claimed he had dropped by her house and found it empty and wanted to know if she’d left a forwarding address. She had, but Leon wouldn’t give it to him, not until he checked with her first. She instructed Leon not to give Curtis her new address or her new cell phone number if he returned. How long had it been? Three months? He hadn’t tried contacting her in all that time. Why did he suddenly want to see her now?
“You okay? You keep sighing over there.”
Kenna glanced over at Reese. “Yes, I’m fine. But a friend of mine, a police officer back in Austin, called to let me know someone was looking for me today. He went by my place and saw that I’d moved out.”
Reese’s brow lifted as he glanced over at her. “Who?”
“Curtis.”
Reese trained his eyes on the road ahead, but not before Kenna saw his expression tighten. “What did he want?”
“Not sure” was her response.
“Let me guess. He wants to be the comeback kid.”
Just like Alyson.
She bit down on her lower lip. “I’m not sure what he wants, Reese, and I don’t plan to find out. I told Leon not to tell him anything. Besides, if he really wants to find me you’ll be the next person on his list. He knows how close we are and that you’ll know where I am.”
“I would just love for him to contact me about you.”
Kenna frowned slightly, tilted her head and looked over at him. “What did Curtis ever do to you?”
“Nothing. But he treated you like crap.”
“He did not! He didn’t walk me to the door that one time and you were ready to hang him up by his toes for it.”
“Damn right. And you never said why the two of you called it quits,” he continued, bringing the SUV to a stop at a traffic light.
“You never asked,” she said, giving him the same response he’d given her about Alyson earlier that day.
He glanced over at her. “Okay, now I’m asking.”
She looked straight ahead out the windshield for a few moments while nibbling on her bottom lip. She turned back toward Reese. “He pulled a Terrence Fairchild on me.” She hated bringing up the guy who’d been her boyfriend in college. The one she’d assumed she would marry one day.
A deep frown settled on Reese’s face. She knew he was
remembering the incident. He had been there for her. “You caught Curtis in bed with another woman.”
She shrugged. “Not exactly.”
His frown deepened. “Then what exactly?”
She paused a second. “I caught him in bed with another man.”
Reese’s hands gripped the steering wheel so tight he felt it might crumble in his hands. When he suddenly hit the brakes to avoid hitting the car in front of them, he pulled off to the side of the road and killed the ignition. At that moment he wished he could kill someone else instead—namely Curtis Purcell.
Furious, he unbuckled his seat belt and twisted around in his seat to face Kenna. “Why in the hell didn’t you tell me? And don’t you dare hand me that crap about me not asking.”
He figured his tone along with the anger etched in his face painted a real good picture of just how mad he was, and that now was not the time to get cutesy on him. He was definitely not in the mood.
She nervously licked her lips and his gaze was automatically drawn to her mouth. Why was his gut clenching and why did he suddenly feel this hard lump in his throat?
“I didn’t want to bother you about it. It was around the time you got your promotion to foreman and I didn’t want to say anything that would rain on your parade, Reese,” she said in a soft voice that pleaded for understanding.
His anger subsided somewhat. “So you went through all that alone?”
She shrugged. “Once the shock wore off, I could have kicked myself for not picking up on it earlier. I ignored all the signs that he was on the down-low. He was a former pro football player, for Christ’s sake. He acted really macho and he had dated lots of women before. I was mad with myself as much as with him for
falling for his line. In the end, I asked myself the same question I’d asked myself a number of times before.
Why me?
”
Reese took in a deep breath.
Yes, why her?
He could only shake his head as he recalled the men who, over the years, hadn’t appreciated what an incredible woman she was. He would hate to think that more than a few of them had a screw loose, but seeing was believing. He couldn’t understand why any man didn’t appreciate Kenna. She was a good woman—the best. And he wasn’t just saying that because she was his best friend. He knew it was true.
“So you want to give me any dating advice?” she asked.
He snorted. “Dating advice? Hell, I’m not totally together either, when you consider the number of girlfriends I’ve had over the years myself. But then you wear your heart on your sleeve.”
She frowned. “I wasn’t in love with Curtis, nor was I in love with Lamont. I believed I was in love with Terrence during the two years we dated. But the older I got, the more I realized I wasn’t really in love with him. I liked the idea of being in love, if that makes any sense.”
No, it didn’t really,
he thought. But he’d talked to enough women in his family to know that they sometimes looked at things differently than men. “What about Lamont? The two of you dated for more than a year. I didn’t ask before, but I’m asking now. Why did the two of you split?”
She did that lip thing again with her tongue and the same as before, seeing her lick her lips did something to him.
Crap! What was wrong with him?
Granted he hadn’t been with a woman since his breakup with Alyson five months ago, but still, this was Kenna for crying out loud. He’d seen that nervous habit plenty of times over the years, so why was he suddenly lusting over the one woman he shouldn’t have the hots for?
“He was jealous of you. Like Alyson, he didn’t believe the ‘we’re just friends’ line either. The first time he brought it up
I gave him the benefit of the doubt, since I’d be the first to admit our relationship is a bit unorthodox. But I warned him that if he accused me again that things were over between us. Unfortunately, he didn’t take me at my word.”
Reese slowly shook his head as he buckled his seat belt again and started the car. He really didn’t know what to say. When he glanced over at Kenna, he immediately knew what she was thinking. He cut off the ignition again.
“Look, Kenna, don’t even think it. We agreed years ago that if we met someone and it got serious, if that person couldn’t deal with our friendship it would be their loss and not ours. Are you having second thoughts about that?”
“No, but a part of me can’t help but sympathize with Alyson. The two of you would still be together if she hadn’t gotten it into her head that I was a threat.”
“Maybe and maybe not. It’s a bad idea for any woman to get it into her head that she can decide who my friends are. And as far as Lamont thinking we had something going on, then he was a fool. I never liked him anyway.”