The camisole fell open, and he ran his fingers over her ribs and back over her breasts, making her laugh more. “Stop that! I mean it. I have to change and go help Evie.”
“Evie is a great cook. And Lord knows Clara Donavan is too. They don’t need your help.”
“Really, Jake, please stop.” She tried to be serious, but she couldn’t help more laughter. Jake moved his hands to her shoulders and gently massaged them. “I just thought, since those things were getting so big, as you claim, I’d help you out.”
Randy laughed more as she situated herself into the camisole and began tying it again. “Honestly, I don’t know who is the child in this house, Little Jake—or you. You’re fifty-six going on sixteen.”
Jake grinned, walking over to sit down on the bed. “If I was sixteen, I wouldn’t give you the chance to dress at all. You’d be naked and in this bed.”
Randy finished lacing the camisole. “By sixteen, you’d probably slept with heaven knows how many women.”
He stretched out on the bed. “Yeah, well, there is nothing like the woman who truly loves me, although I still can’t figure out why she does.” He drank in the sight of her as she started to put on her corset again. “You’re still a beautiful, beautiful woman, Randy Harkner. Leave that thing off. Why in hell does a woman small as you need to wear a corset?”
“It’s just proper, that’s all.”
“Leave the damn thing off.”
“People will know.”
“No one will know but me, and if you leave it off, it means a lot less work for me getting you out of it later.”
She smiled and tossed the corset aside, glancing at Jake. Just the way he looked at her sometimes made her feel beautiful and loved. She noticed the sly grin on his face. “You’re in a mood today.”
He sat up again. “I’m just happy for Lloyd.”
She smiled. “I am too.”
“Do you really need to go right back out there?”
She gave him a warning look. “You know I do.” She hurriedly took a more comfortable cotton dress from her wardrobe and pulled it over her head, letting it fall down over her petticoats. “And you really were rude to Peter Brown today. Don’t think I missed the fact that you wanted to break his hand.”
He sobered. “I wanted to do a lot more than that.”
Randy sighed, putting her hands on her hips. “He’s every bit a gentleman, Jake, and he was genuinely glad you made it back all right. He’s a good man.”
“I figured that out by the look in his eyes. I want to not like the man, but I think he’s sincere—sincere in how he feels about you, but also sincere in never trying to move in where he doesn’t belong. I guess part of me wants him to stick around so he’ll be here for you when the day comes that I don’t make it back.”
“I hate it when you talk that way. You could at least say if, not when.”
He shrugged. “It’s a fact of life.”
“And you tried to hand me off to Jess York a few years ago, if you will remember. You practically ordered me to settle for Jess and abandon you when you were in prison. I didn’t forsake you then, and I didn’t forsake you before that, when you disappeared for two years after the Kennedy shoot-out in California. God knows what you were up to all that time hiding out with outlaws and no-goods and painted women.” She smoothed the skirt of the dress.
“Randy.”
She met his eyes.
“This thing with that reporter, it’s bringing up old memories, isn’t it?”
Randy shrugged. “I guess.”
Jake rubbed at his eyes as though weary. “All I did was try to protect you and the kids,” he told her. “You know that’s why I left. I wanted to forget you, which is the only reason I…pretended you didn’t exist, but I couldn’t go on without you, and now you’re stuck with me.”
She smiled. “And you’re stuck with me, Jake Harkner, like it or not. Now get over here and button the back of this dress.”
She turned around, and Jake got up from the bed.
“And no funny stuff,” Randy warned, laughing again.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I mean it, Jake.”
“I know.” He leaned down and kissed her neck as he buttoned the dress.
“Jake?”
“Just a kiss because I love you.”
“What did you do with your guns? I don’t want either of the grandsons to find them.”
“Everything is locked in the gun cabinet in the dining room, and all the ammo is in the lockbox on top of the icebox, and even you don’t know where I keep the key.”