One Day in Apple Grove(59)
It would break him…and kill her.
Pressing the brew button on the coffeemaker, she asked, “Are you hungry?”
He shrugged but didn’t turn around when he answered, “I can always eat.”
“How about if I scramble up some eggs?”
“You don’t have to feed me, Cait.”
“In my house, if one of us was hungry and going to cook, we were taught to offer to make more.”
He grunted. She thought that might be an affirmative male response, but she’d heard her father grunt when he meant no too. Busying herself gathering the eggs and margarine, she asked, “Where do you keep your pots and pans?”
Instead of telling her, he walked over and opened one of the upper cabinets and pulled out a cast-iron frying pan. “I’d never think to keep a heavy pan like that up high.”
He seemed surprised. “Why?”
She smiled. “Because it’s heavy.” She heard the click of the coffeemaker as it shut off and got another mug out, filling it with coffee. “Why does that first cup always smell so good?”
Jamie lifted his head at that comment and thumped his tail on the floor. “I’d forgotten you’d followed me downstairs. Are you hungry, sweetie?” Looking around for his chow and not finding it, she finally had to ask, “Where do you keep the dog food?”
He grumbled something about people who talk too much in the middle of the night and went to a door she assumed went to the cellar. It was a walk-in pantry.
She walked over to get a good look. “Nice.”
He didn’t answer her as he scooped up chow and dumped it in the bowl he also stored in the pantry. Jamie was doing his little feed me now dance waiting for Jack to set the bowl on the floor.
She picked up his water dish and filled that too before going back to the cabinets and opening and closing them searching for a bowl.
“What now?” he grumbled.
She looked over her shoulder and kept her tone cheerful. “I’ve got it,” she said, finding a cereal bowl to whisk the eggs in. Next she rummaged in the drawers until she found a fork. Heating the pan on the gas stove top, she was about to add a good-sized pat of margarine when he set his cup back down—from the sound of it, empty this time—and joined her at the stove. “As long as you’re making eggs, why not fry up some bacon or sausage first?”
The warmth of his body so close to her back had a shiver working its way up her spine.
“Cold?”
She wasn’t sure if telling him that every time he got close to her she had the uncontrollable urge to shiver would add to the tension still evident in the way he held his shoulders, or if it would ease it. “I just get the shivers sometimes…Pop always said it’s like someone walking over your grave.”
Damn. Probably the wrong thing to say too. “Got that bacon ready for me?” she asked, hoping to get him moving. He finally stepped back and walked over to the fridge. The Gannon kitchen was bigger than her family’s, but it didn’t feel as cozy. She’d noticed the lack of homey touches the night they’d rescued Jamie. Was it a guy thing or because he’d only recently moved back home, or was something deeper, tied to his nightmares of Iraq?
Keeping her thoughts positive, she reasoned that not everyone liked the same things. She took the package of bacon from Jack and laid thick slices of it in the pan and made a face. She hated thick-sliced meat. Oh well…all the more for Jack.
Once Jamie finished his bowl of chow, he started to tease Jack, poking him in the knees, nipping his bare feet until Jack got down on the floor with him. With the dog in his arms, she realized they shared more than a love of Mr. McCormack’s fields in the spring—they had Jamie and were sliding toward love themselves.
“I’ve asked Pop for a dog every Christmas since as far back as I can remember.” Flipping the bacon, she looked over her shoulder at the two now wrestling on the floor, the auburn hair of the man a stark contrast against the black puppy fur.
“It’s hard for a kid to understand what allergic means.”
“And when you did?” Jack asked, pausing with the pup in a half nelson.
She laughed at the two of them and pulled out the first slices of bacon to drain on the paper towel–lined plate. “I’m sorry to say I wasn’t always a nice kid. I asked him if Gracie could move in with our grandparents.”
His deep chuckle was music to her ears. Feeling that they were back on track and he was acting like the man she’d come to know, she transferred more bacon to the plate, humming a song that popped into her head, one that took her back to her childhood.
Jack slowly got to his feet and she wondered if it hurt his leg to sit on the floor like that. She was about to ask when he pulled her back against him, swept the hair off her neck, and pressed his warm, firm lips against the pulse beating there.