True Love at Silver Creek Ranch(26)

“I wasn’t clinging,” she said patiently, then looked at Adam with a twinkle in her eye. “I was riding bareback, and my brothers still can’t acknowledge my talent.”

There was a collective groan from those same brothers, and though she grinned at them, she reached past Adam and smacked Josh on the shoulder. That pressed her up against Adam’s arm, and she quickly pulled back, feeling suddenly flustered.

“Can you just let this stuff go?” she asked. “Now pass me the cake.”

That evening, Adam fell sound asleep at the dinner table and awoke with a crick in his neck as his grandma was clearing the dishes.

He surged to his feet, feeling a dull ache settle in his lower back. “Let me help, Grandma.”

She tsked. “I told you you wouldn’t need to run for exercise.”

“And I didn’t listen to your warning. But it’s a habit that’s hard to break.”

The other widows must have gone while he’d drifted off, and it was just the two of them at the kitchen sink. He wanted to lead her to a chair but already knew how badly that worked. She’d rather stand and tremble occasionally than admit to any weakness.

“So Brooke worked you hard,” Grandma Palmer said, smiling.

“The ranch chores worked me hard,” he amended. “They took it easy on me in the afternoon. I rode fence for several hours, looking for damage. A bull tried to escape, and I had to chase it back into the pasture.”

“What happened?” she asked, staring up at him.

“I radioed Brooke, who brought the barbed wire for repairs. That was a challenge, considering the wind picked up.”

“She wasn’t with you?”

“She had me ride one way along the fence, and she went the other.”

“She couldn’t be avoiding you,” Grandma teased.

Adam shrugged as he continued to wash and dry the dishes. There were moments during the day when they’d looked into each other’s eyes, and it was as if things had shifted between them. She’d turned away faster than he did, so he was never sure. She was determined to be impartially in charge, and she was in charge. He wasn’t about to forget that. She ordered him around a lot—which was what he expected of the girl he remembered—yet she still did her own half of the work with equal parts stubbornness and independence. She was obviously used to working alongside her brothers. Some of their quiet ways must have rubbed off on her, for she seemed to have lost the nervous need to chatter, which was a relief.

She was good at what she did, had all the knowledge and the skill to teach him anything he needed to know. Yet every time he glimpsed that strange softening in her eyes, he saw a mix of fierce cowgirl and vulnerable woman that was more appealing than he’d ever imagined.

But it was an appeal he had to resist. It was strange to have lunch with the Thalbergs and be so very conscious of not looking at their daughter more than he had to. And then she’d plopped herself down beside him, their shoulders occasionally brushing. He caught a tropical scent, like a Caribbean night, and wondered if it was perfume or shampoo. Just watching her peel off her winter clothes in the mudroom until she was down to tight jeans and an even tighter long-sleeve t-shirt was incredibly sexy. And then he’d noticed her earrings again, smaller for the workday, when he’d never cared about a woman’s jewelry before. Was it because she was forbidden to him that he had to notice so much?

“Was it good to be back on a horse again?” Grandma asked.

Adam shook away thoughts of Brooke. “It’s been a long time.”

“You were good with your father’s horse,” she said quietly.

He nodded. “I know he sold it while I was gone. He had to, I’m sure,” he added dryly.

She said nothing, and a look of such sadness crossed her face. She didn’t often let him see those emotions.

“He’d lost his job,” she began.

“Wait,” he interrupted. “Grandma, I really don’t want to talk about him. They’re in my past.”

“But don’t you think—”

“No. I’ve spent ten years not thinking about them. And it was good.”

She nodded and let it go. They worked silently, easy companions in the kitchen, and he tried not to imagine how it must feel to know the only daughter you raised had failed as a mother herself. He usually thought Grandma was too sensible to blame herself, but as she grew older, maybe it was more difficult. He had to make sure she knew how much he loved her, how much she’d been a mother to him more than his own. He told himself this wasn’t because time was winding down for them—he couldn’t face that, not after everything that had happened this year. He didn’t want to be haunted by another ghost. Grandma would get better.