all, where are the men going to get the energy to fight fires if they’re not eating healthy food?”
Scott turned redder than the fire engine Dusty could see through the door. Behind them, the men snickered.
“We sure could use some of that money you’re making in Toledo in the ante,” Martinez said from the table, tapping the edge of his cards against the top. “That is, if you can handle the pressure.”
Dusty grinned. There was no more than seventy-five cents on the table if there was a dollar. “Sorry, guys, but you’re just going to have to squeak by without me. Bets are too rich for me.”
He started for the door, giving up on restraint and intent on tracking Jolie down. He reached the doorway at the same time she popped into it from the other side. Her appearance should have eased the tension from Dusty’s shoulders. Instead, seeing her pulled his muscles tighter.
It was the same reaction he’d always had when faced with Jolie. That stomach-tightening, breath-robbing, mouth-watering sensation that if he didn’t kiss her within ten seconds he’d die. And six months away from her had only made the reaction more acute. Which definitely didn’t bode well for his mission.
“Hey, hey, hey, there she is,” Jones called out. “Now, here’s somebody not afraid of losing a few dollars.”
Dusty noted the way Jolie avoided eye contact with him. For all the attention she’d paid him since she’d returned from her run, he was beginning to feel as if he were invisible. A nonentity unworthy of her attention. Which was no less than he deserved, he supposed. If only her unexplained emotional distance hadn’t been part of his reason for leaving in the first place.
He hadn’t meant to make their…meeting again so public. He’d thought about showing up at the house without letting anyone else know he was in town, then realized that was wishful thinking. The moment his truck rolled over the county line half the population probably already knew he was back, and by the time he parked it, his return was probably old news.
Ah, hell, who was he kidding? He’d come to the station on purpose. Had needed to be surrounded by others in order to make what he had to say go down easier…both for him and her.
Jolie skirted the table. “Sorry, guys, I’m going to pass tonight.”
Exaggerated groans followed her to the refrigerator, where she pulled out salad fixings, then dropped them to the counter next to the stove.
From next to Dusty came an audible swallow. He didn’t kid himself into thinking Jolie had made the giveaway sound. No, Scooter looked like he’d rather be in the skillet with the steaks, rather than watching over them. “Um, Mr. Conrad. I mean Dusty…”
Now that Jolie was where he wanted her, at least for the moment, Dusty accepted the fork from Scott and turned the steaks out onto the plate. “Your instincts were straight on, Scooter. Trust them.”
“Okay.”
The teenager too happily turned cooking duty back over to him, all but scuttling to the chair he’d abandoned at the table. The rest of the men gladly dealt him into their next hand of poker.
But now that Dusty had the opening he’d been looking for, all his rehearsed words drained from his brain like water through a sieve. Taking his cue from Scott, he cleared his throat and slanted a glance toward Jolie. With neat, violent strokes of a knife, she made quick work of the salad. He was afraid if he didn’t say something now, she’d finish and likely up and disappear on him again.
“Um, Jolie?” He winced at the hesitant sound of his voice. Especially when she pretended not to hear him.
A windblown strand of sun-kissed brown hair curved against her cheek. Dusty stopped himself from brushing it back around her ear or tucking it into the French braid neatly fastened at the back of her head.
“Spit it out, Dusty.”
He blinked a couple of times, as if to verify that she’d actually spoken to him. She laid the knife on the counter, then wiped her hands on a towel. She turned cloudy blue eyes on him. “I’ve already accepted that I’m not going to like what you have to say, so just be out with it.”
“Uh…” Grand sakes alive, he felt like a speechless teenager all over again. There was something about the thin black that encircled her irises. The direct way she looked at him and only him. The enticing way she discreetly caught the inner flesh of her bottom lip that shot his best intentions all to hell.
The widening of her pupils told him that the effect was fully mutual. All at once the stiffness around her jaw eased, and he was afraid she was a heartbeat away from bestowing on him one of those all-Jolie smiles that would undoubtedly knock him down for the count.
Before he could question the wisdom, he reached out and gently worked a single white chicken feather from her hair. Her intake of breath was so shallow he was certain he was the only one who heard it. He slowly pulled his hand back, displaying the feather. “Um, a little remnant from your run.”
Her cheeks colored, then her gaze dropped suggestively to his mouth. She blinked. “You shaved off your mustache.”
Dusty lifted a hand to his bare upper lip. “Yeah.”
His own gaze lingered on her just-moistened lips. If she didn’t stop looking at him like that, more would be sizzling than just the steaks.
With incredible self-restraint, Dusty hauled his gaze from Jolie’s mouth. He switched off the burner under the nearly melted potatoes, wondering just how he went about switching off the flame in his gut.
Just be out with it, indeed.
“Jolie…I’ve come to pick up the divorce papers.”
For the life of her, Jolie couldn’t figure out why she felt as if she’d just lopped a finger off with the knife. In the time she’d avoided coming into the kitchen she’d pretty much figured out that the reason Dusty had come back was not a good one. She merely hadn’t taken the assumption to the next step and connected his presence with the unsigned papers she’d stuck into a drawer at home the instant she received them a couple of months back.
Which was stupid, really. And that only agitated her further. She’d spent her life proving that she was the exact opposite of stupid. Up to any task set in front of her, she was. A regular anything-you-can-do-I-can-do-just-as-well kind of girl, with her feet firmly steeped in reality. She’d had to be for her own survival. It hadn’t been easy being raised by a paternal grandfather who didn’t have a clue on how to react to a six-year-old girl, much less raise one. As he’d told her often enough, he’d seen to raising his one son and that should be more than any one man should have to endure. So Jolie had learned at a young age how to not only look after herself, but after him. Seemed she was always trying to keep placated the well-meaning but nosy townsfolk who questioned the old man’s ability to look after her. For they were at the ready to take her away from the only family she had left.
Of course, no one was happier than she was when the time finally came for her to start making her own decisions. And nothing had intrigued her like the beast that had stolen her parents from her: fire.
“Jolie?”
She blinked Dusty’s handsome face back into focus, noting the pity there. She hated that he felt sorry for her. That hadn’t always been the case. Of course, when you were six years old and the older next-door neighbor was paying you attention, you didn’t recognize that same attention as pity. You just took attention any way you could get it.
Now she knew better.
“They’re…um, the papers are back at the house.”
“I see.”
She gathered the salad fixings into a bowl and tossed them. “You didn’t think I kept them here in my locker, did you?”
His half grin made her remember that mischievous boy who used to include her in all the goings-on. “Let’s put it this way—it wouldn’t have surprised me.”