knew what she was going to do about her bills, but she would use the money she’d just received to pick up a few groceries and prepare her daughter a nutritious meal.
That sense of calm had started to wane by seven-thirty. Now, an hour later, it was completely gone. Josie took a deep breath, trying to blame the queazy sensation in her stomach on the peanut butter sandwich she’d eaten when Kelsey hadn’t been looking. Josie strode to the refrigerator and peered inside. Even the sight of the half gallon of milk and the leftover spaghetti and meatballs Kelsey would eat tomorrow didn’t chase her unease away. This unease had nothing to do with money. It had to do with...
Josie gulped.
It had to do with the knowledge that Jake McKenna was due to arrive any minute. At the sound of footsteps on the stairs, her nerves clamored even more. Make that any second.
She knew the knock on her door was forthcoming. She still jumped when it sounded. She didn’t understand it. She was never this high-strung. Lifting her eyes to the ceiling, she whispered, “If this is your idea of a joke, Thomas Callahan, it isn’t funny.”
Waiting until the old clock that had belonged to her parents had finished chiming the half hour, she took a deep breath for courage and opened the door just in time to see Rory O’Grady stepping off the bottom step and Jake McKenna standing on the top one.
“Mr. McKen—”
“What the bell was he doing here?”
The anger glittering in Jake’s eyes sent her heart to her throat and her stomach into a tailspin. This time there was no stopping her backward step.
Pushing the door all the way open, he marched inside, turning the inch her tiny retreat had given him into a mile.
Chapter Two
Jake stormed past Josie so quickly the hem of her dress ruffled in his wake.
“Won’t you come in, Mr. McKenna?”
He got as far as the middle of her living room before he swung around and glared at her. At least her sarcasm hadn’t been wasted on him. She reached for the doorknob to close the door, glancing down the stairs at the last minute. Rory was looking up at her, a big old smile on his friendly face. Josie couldn’t help smiling right back. That smile slipped a full two notches when she turned her attention back to the angry man in her living room.
She didn’t have a lot of experience dealing with angry men. Her father had died when she was small, and Tom had had an easygoing, pleasant disposition. She folded her arms and stood as tall as her five-foot, three-inch frame would allow. “Would you like to sit down, Mr. McKenna?”
“I asked you to call me Jake.”
Josie met his stare head-on. “You told me to call you Jake.”
His eyebrows rose slightly, then lowered, a muscle working in his jaw. There was inherent determination in the set of his chin, and more than a hint of impatience everywhere else. As one second followed another, his expression changed in the subtlest of ways. He didn’t smile, exactly, but he unclenched his teeth and removed his hat.
“A friend of mine keeps telling me that my people skills need a little work.”
Josie tried to square her shoulders against his allure. It worked, for about five seconds, and then she had the most amazing urge to grin. She didn’t, of course. She’d read somewhere that loss and pain and suffering built character. At least it had been good for something.
“Would you mind telling me what Rory O’Grady was doing here, Josephine?”
His use of her given name was nearly her undoing. “I might, if you can show me what it has to do with you.”
Jake considered several replies, discarding them one after the other. For the first time since setting foot inside the apartment, he took note of his surroundings. Green curtains, the kind that never wore out, hung at the windows. The couch was threadbare, the pictures on the wall were cheap prints. Even the afghan folded over the back of the couch looked as if it had seen better days. The same could have been said for Josie’s dress. Shy, plain Josie Callahan. That was how people described her. She was quiet, he decided, not shy. And it was amazing how that little flare of temper transformed her common face into something so uncommon.
He placed his hat on the table and settled his hands on his hips. If his plan had a snowball’s chance in hell, he was going to have to make amends. It was something the McKennas had never been very good at. “Maybe it isn’t any of my business, but Rory O’Grady is a noted wonanizer, and you wouldn’t be the first woman he took for a ride.”
“I’m a grown-up,” she said, head held high. “Besides, something tells me I’m the first woman he’s asked to marry him.”
Jake blinked as if she’d flung ice water in his face. Outwardly he remained calm. Inside, his stomach roiled. Suddenly the noise he’d thought he’d heard Friday night and the fact that the drifter he’d hired last week hadn’t shown up for work on Saturday and was now working for O‘Grady made sense. The cowhand must have been eavesdropping and had run straight to O’Grady with his information. Damn. Jake had intended to ease into this, maybe take Josie out a few times, get to know her and vice versa before springing his marriage proposal on her. Leave it to that stinking O’Grady to beat him to it.
He hadn’t been aware that he’d paced to the window until he caught sight of his reflection in the glass. “Did you say yes?”
“I don’t even know him.”
He drew in a deep breath and forbade himself to appear too relieved. There wasn’t much he could do about the smug feeling of satisfaction settling in where his agitation had been. He turned slowly and said, “Of course you don’t.”
Josie regarded Jake quizzically for a moment. His voice had been calm, his gaze steady, but his smile made her suspicious. He wasn’t a man prone to smiling. In a strange way, she felt honored to be on the receiving end of such a rare occurrence. It forced her to take a closer look at him. On the outside he was all planes and angles and five o’clock shadow, but there was more to him than appearances. Underneath, he was a man. Not just any man, but a lonely one.
That got to her, because Josie Callahan was on a first-name basis with loneliness. However, it wasn’t loneliness that had her eyelids lowering, her breath catching in the back of her throat, and something she barely recognized shifting low in her belly. She bit her lip and tried to avert her gaze. Strangely, she couldn’t move.
“Would you have dinner with me tomorrow, Josephine?”
Nobody, but nobody, called her Josephine. She’d always hated her full name. And yet when he said it, it sounded sensual, feminine, alluring. “Dinner?” she heard herself asking.
“Yes. You do like to eat, don’t you?”
Her gaze caught on his mouth, and she found it wasn’t easy to speak. “I’ve already made plans to have dinner with Rory tomorrow night.”
The room, all at once, was very quiet.
Jake took a very large, very deliberate step toward her. “I thought you said you didn’t agree to marry him.”
“I said I don’t even know him. I didn’t say I wouldn’t have dinner with him.”
Jake’s face hardened, and suddenly Josie was glad she’d made other plans. Oh, she had a feeling he was right about Rory O’Grady. The man was smooth and attractive and just cocky enough to be a bit of a rogue. She wasn’t worried about handling him. Handling Jake McKenna would have been another story.
“You’re seeing O’Grady now, is that it?”
“Does that bother you?”
Bother him? He’d passed bothered the instant he’d met O’Grady on the stairs. Hell, Jake was well on his way to full-scale frustration.
“Now