The Art of Love (The Windswept Saga) (18 page)

“Hot damn,” CJ replied.  “Now that’s what I like to hear.”  The door opened and his kids stumbled in.  He lowered to his haunches and scooped them up, one in each arm.

“Uncle Chandler,” Little Chase said, his eyes bright.  “I rode my horse yesterday.”

Chandler smiled back at him.  “How far?”

“Far!  Like halfway up the pasture,” he reckoned in his six-year-old brain.
 

“I stayed close the whole way,” CJ added with great affection.

Chandler directed his attention to his niece, who was generally more subdued than her brother. “And what about you, Bree?  How is preschool?”

Blonde curls cascaded over her forehead.  “More fun than a barrel of monkeys,” she replied.

Both men laughed.  “And how would you know about a barrel of monkeys?” CJ teased.  She placed her lips to his cheek.

“Monkeys are funny,” she explained quickly.

“That they are, pretty girl,” CJ agreed.  “That they are.”  He looked toward his brother.  “Alison and I are taking the kids out for dinner.  You wanna tag along?”

He shook his head gently.  “Can’t.  Got too
much work to catch up on.  But I appreciate the offer.”  He stared into his brother’s pleading green eyes.  “Taylor and I are going out on Wednesday.”

CJ’s mouth aligned happily and Chandler imagined the gears turning in his head, the unspoken expletives o
f delight clear in every pore of his visage.  “Good,” he finally verbalized.  “And if you’ll excuse us, we’re headed to see Mom.”

“Bye, Uncle Chandler,” the kids said in unison.

“Bye, you two,” he replied with a smile.  “Be good.”

***

He breathed in and out a few times, felt a twinge of déjà vu, and knocked on the door.  Alice answered quickly and beamed up at him.

“Chandler Adams, if you aren’t a sight for sore eyes.  Come on in.”

He removed his hat and knelt down to place a kiss on her cheek.  The plastic crackled in his hand.  “Miss Alice.  These are for you.”

She took the bouquet and laughed.  “You remembered that I love daisies.”

“Yes, ma’am.”  He nodded and strode inside as she closed the door behind him.  He followed her into the living room, where her soap opera was frozen on the screen courtesy the digital recorder.  He smiled as a familiar image of the past worked through his head.

“Would you like to sit down?” she asked, having swiftly retrieved a vase full of water.  She placed the flowers atop a
table and smiled at him expectantly.

“Thank you,” he said, his legs turning to jelly as Taylor appeared in the doorway, “but it looks like I won’t have time.”

She stood there like a vision, wearing the green pullover under a taupe blazer, completing the look with jeans and boots.  Nothing special had been done to her hair—it was brushed out, falling over her shoulders—but he thought it looked great.  Hat in hand, he ambled toward her.

“You look great,” she said, pushing out her lower lip.  “Very handsome.”

His eyes dropped—he was wearing jeans and a Western shirt, just like any other day—but he’d take the compliment.  “You don’t look so bad yourself,” he said, voice cracking with nervousness between a few of the syllables.  She smiled back at him.  “Should
we head out, then?” he asked.

“I’m ready whenever you are.”

Chandler placed a hand against the small of her back but then glanced over his shoulder.  “I’ll try to have her home at a decent hour, Miss Alice.”

She waved his words off with her right hand.  “
Don’t rush,” she implored.  “Take your time.”

Taylor would have rolled her eyes at her mother’s odd directive had she not been thrown off-balance by the electrifying touch of Chandler’s hand along her spine.
  They walked to the truck, he held the door for her, and they climbed in together without uttering a single word.  And neither of them bothered to make conversation until he’d pulled into the restaurant parking lot, turned off the engine, and rotated toward her.

“Is this okay?” he asked softly.  “I
might’ve solicited your opinion earlier, but I was too scared.”

“It’s more than fine,” she replied, hoping to assuage his self-imposed guilt.  “I haven’t been here in years.  I will enjoy seeing what’s changed.”

He grinned crookedly.  “The food is still good.  Same décor, same ambience—but the prices are higher.”

“As expected.”

He laughed quietly, stepped outside and was on her side of the truck, holding open her door, in a flash.  He offered his hand, his eyes gentle and sensitive, and she took it, didn’t let go until they were inside the restaurant and seated on opposite sides of the booth.  As she sank into the cushions of the bench, she noticed that his eyes hadn’t left her, even though the menus were already on the table.

“I’m not going to evaporate if
you blink your eyes, Chandler.  It’s really me.  In the flesh.  On a date with my boss.”

He smiled and dropped his eyes.  He began to scan the menu, the grin hesitant to leave his lips.  “Thing about it is, Taylor,
is you’re my only employee, and there’s no HR department to get in the way.”

“You always were practical, cowboy.”

“And damn proud of it.”  His eyebrows knotted together when he saw the amount they were charging for steak.  “Order whatever you like from the menu.  Cost is not a concern.”

She met
his eyes quizzically.  “I don’t like the way you phrased that.”

His face went slack with remorse.  “I’m sorry, Taylor.  I guess…I didn’t think before I spoke.”

Balancing elbows on the table, she leaned toward him.  “If it’ll set your mind at ease, I’m a little rusty at the dating game.”

“You and me both,” he said glumly.  “But maybe I’ll get back into the swing of things.”

His resulting smile warmed her face, and she rushed to change the subject.  “I meant to ask you about your weekend but it slipped my mind.  Did you stay on the ranch afterward?”

He nodded.  “I came back to the gallery Saturday evening.  I spent most of the day working on my house.”

Her eyes lifted from the menu and studied his face.  “You have a house?”

He nodded again.  “When we added ont
o the ranch last year, a house more or less fell into my lap.  I figured Mark and Christa would move in…anyway, they gave it to me for Christmas with the guarantee they’d help out.  It’s their not-so-subtle way of keeping me around the place.”

The server c
ame and took their order, and Taylor paused the conversation until they were once again alone.  “Were you thinking about leaving Wyoming?”

“I knocked the idea around in my head for a while.”  He took a sip of ice water and shot her a rueful glance.  “I
didn’t think I belonged here.  Mainly I was just feeling sorry for myself, but at the time I was really confused about my place in the family.”

The concern was evident on her face.  “Were you having problems with your siblings?  With Mark?”

“Not really,” he expounded.  “After Max’s accident I…I did some soul-searching.  I took on Mark’s duties as foreman when it was necessary, and I worked on my art.  It was a strange time for me.  I spent so much energy trying to help everyone else that I forgot to focus on me.  I don’t mean that in a selfish way—if I had it to do over again, I wouldn’t change the things I did to help them.”

“Are you the one who saved their marriage?” she wondered aloud.

“I can’t, in good conscience, take credit for that.  I can tell you, though, that I have never been that scared in my entire life.  I did a good job of hiding it, but I thought, for that sliver of time, that I’d lost my life as I knew it.”

Sensing that the conversation had grown far too heavy for a first date, Taylor nodded
sympathetically and redirected like a skilled attorney.  “How big is this house?”

Chandler was relieved to talk about something besides his feelings.  “Much too big for one person.  It’s not gargantuan but it’s the biggest house on the ranch.  Five bedroom
s upstairs.”

“Wow.  Does it need much work?”

“I think it just needs love more than anything else.  It’s in good shape.  Mark was helping me sand the paint off the front porch.  Little stuff like that.”  The food was delivered and they each thanked the server before returning to the conversation.  “I’m going to order new appliances eventually.  You’ll have to come out and see it.”

She fought the urge to raise an eyebrow at him.  “I did love being on the ranch again.  I know Mark and Christa’s house wasn’t
there back then but it felt like time had stood still.  There’s something eternal about the land, knowing it will be there, unchanged, long after we’re all gone.”

“That’s one of the reasons I stayed,” he said with a shrug.  Afterward they allowed the food
to take precedence over conversation.  When Chandler did speak, he asked her if the steak was cooked to her satisfaction, and she assured him, in a rather serious tone, that it had been.  She didn’t chasten him for lack of words—she, too, was struggling with what to say.  Maybe this was a bad sign—or a good one.  With no common ground, this relationship that she wanted would be doomed before it ever taxied down the runway.

He glanced across the table at her, eyes penetrating through the dim ambience of the
restaurant.  “You look beautiful,” he said softly.  “Did I say something wrong?  You look upset.”

Her resolve melted away instantly.  “No.  You said exactly the right thing.”

He glanced downward but not before she caught the red shading of his neck.  “Would you like dessert?” he asked out of the corner of his mouth.

“I’m not sure,” she replied truthfully.  “Maybe I should watch my calories.”

Chandler raised his eyebrows in an effort to persuade her.  “It’s been a long, long time since you and I shared a sundae.”  His lips formed a small smile. “They just added salted caramel to the menu last year.”

“You twisted my arm,” she answered, feigning reticence.

A few minutes later they were dipping spoons into either side of a large white bowl filled with scoops of ice cream, syrup drizzled from edge to edge, and two cherries plopped in the middle.

“So your mom is still writing, even though she doesn’t have to?”

Chandler nodded, let the ice cream—probably his favorite food in the world—slide down his throat before he answered.  “She can’t give up the blog because she has too many devoted readers.  And so she blogs enough every six months to fill a book, and the publisher seems to have her on speed-dial.”  They both laughed.  “Dad’s position is that she should keep doing it as long as it makes her happy.  Which it does.”

“You ever think about writing a book?” she inquired.  “Even a book of poetry?  I know you have p
lenty just lying around.”

He shrugged.  “You caught me. 
But so much of what I write is too personal.  I don’t think it’d make sense to a reader.”

“You’d be surprised, Chandler.  You have to know that so much of poetry is personal. It’s downright esoteric
sometimes.”

That drew a surprised, purely masculine laugh from deep in his throat.  “Can’t get anything past you, can I?”

“You never could.”  She pulled a cherry from the dish, stuck it in her mouth and sucked the fruit off the stem.  “You were never able to hide one single emotion from me, and I was glad of that fact.  Teenage relationships are usually…”

“Melodramatic,” he said, finishing her thought correctly.

“Exactly.  Ours was generally free of drama until after my father died.”  She laid the stem on the table, his eyes following every movement of her fingers.  “And if I never told you so, allow me to do it now.  I was incredibly grateful for your help then, and remain so to this day.  I don’t know how I would have gotten through it without you.”

He sho
ok his head in dispute.  “You’re giving me too much credit.”  The server left their bill and asked if they needed anything else, but each of them said no.  He returned his gaze to her face, his eyes softening.  “The girl I fell in love with was pretty darn resilient.  She had to be to put up with my…lesser qualities.”

“Some people might have found your short attention span off-putting.  I found it endearing.”  Her spoon scraped the bottom of the bowl.  “Do you want the last of the ice cream?”

Chandler lifted the cherry to his mouth and consumed it in one bite.  “Finish it,” he replied.  “Hard to believe, but I’m full.”

***       

“Want me to walk you inside?”

“You walked me to the door.  I can probably manage from here.”

His smirk was visible in the glare of the porch light.  It was a chilly evening, and she didn’t imagine he’d linger now that their date was coming to an end.  He stood close, near enough that she watched the shallow rise and fall of his chest beneath his shirt.

“I ha
d a great time,” he said tentatively.  He psyched himself up and tried again.  “I loved being around you again, outside of the workplace.  It was a lot of fun.”

“Thank you,” she responded.  “I had a great time, too.”