with a solemn nod.
When Nina’s face flushed, Jake stepped in. Crouching down, he wrapped an arm around each boy’s shoulder. “Ricky, Ryan, this pretty lady is Ms. Phillips. Your mom and I knew her a long time ago.”
“When you were a kid?” Ryan asked innocently.
Jake chuckled. “Not quite that long ago. Now, why don’t we go out back and get out of everybody’s hair?” Without another look at Tori, Jake stood and ushered the boys to the back door.
Without Jake’s presence in the room, Tori felt a definite decrease in tension. She offered the box of candy to Nina. “Here’s something for everybody’s sweet tooth.”
“You didn’t have to do that.”
Charlie accepted the box and said with a grin, “I’d better put this out of sight. At least until the boys have had their dinner.”
Nina gave him a grateful smile.
As Charlie moved into the kitchen, Rita pushed herself up from the recliner. “I’d better check on the soup.”
Nina winked at Tori. “Tomato and rice with lots of green chilies. She smothered the chicken in roasted hot peppers, too. I hope you’re up for it.”
“It sounds delicious.” Tori placed her purse on a small pine table just inside the door. “Nina, thanks for inviting me today. But…Jake acted as if he didn’t know I was coming.”
“He didn’t.”
An uncomfortable silence stretched between the two women until Tori broke it. “Do you think that’s fair to him? He might not have wanted a stranger—”
“You’re no stranger. He probably thinks of Charlie as more of a stranger than you. If I had told him you were coming, he might not have come himself. There’s something in his voice when he talks about you that makes me think…” She grinned. “Maybe there are a few sparks?”
Tori wasn’t going to admit to anything. “Maybe your imagination is working overtime.”
Nina studied Tori for a moment, then shook her head. “Nope. I know what I see. The truth is, Tori, I asked you here because Jake needs help.”
Tori couldn’t imagine Jake Galeno needing anything from anyone. He’d always seemed so confident and self-contained. “What kind of help?”
“I don’t know. That’s the problem. He doesn’t, either. Something happened in Albuquerque that he can’t get over. It had to do with his work. He needs to talk about it, but he won’t. He needs to get past it, but he can’t. He needs to get on with his life, and he says he’s doing that, but he’s not. I just thought inviting you tonight might get him to open up a bit. He’s only his old self when he’s with the boys. Maybe you can remind him who he used to be.”
“Maybe I’ll only make things worse.”
“That won’t happen. C’mon. You can watch while I make the salad.”
While Nina worked and talked, Tori couldn’t help but glance out the window often. Jake didn’t look like a man who needed help. He was roughhousing with the twins, laughing with them, playing catch. Even when he was young, she’d sensed a deep control about him, an integrity that told everybody he knew who he was and what he could do. That was still the essence of his appearance. But what was going on inside? What had happened in Albuquerque?
She shouldn’t care. She wouldn’t care.
She’d learned when she was very young that men didn’t stay. She’d been nine when her father had walked out on her mother because he’d fallen in love with someone else. She’d seen her mother’s tears, pain and depression. She’d seen her father’s second marriage break apart, until she’d lost track of him and his second, third and fourth wives. When Tori had married after college, she decided her marriage would be different. It might have been if fate hadn’t intervened and changed the course of her life. Dave had walked out on her because she could no longer bear his children.
So much for vows. So much for putting faith and trust in a man. She would never do it again.
As Tori, Nina and her mother discussed their favorite recipes, Charlie went to the carport to check the pressure of Nina’s tires. He told her he thought one of them looked low.
Soon after, Nina went to the door and called for the boys to come in and wash up. As they bounded toward the bathroom, Jake entered the kitchen, heading for the sink.
Tori was standing right beside it, boxed in by the counter. The working area of the kitchen was small, and there really wasn’t anywhere she could move without looking obvious.
When Jake turned on the spigot, he was close enough to her that she could see the gleam of sweat on his brow and inhale his scent, which seemed to be sunshine and sage and all man. For a moment her senses reeled and she told herself she was being silly. But she couldn’t seem to take her gaze from the black hair on his forearms, from the soapy suds slipping over his large hands.
“Catching up?” he asked as he flipped off the spigot.
It took her a moment to find her voice. “Sharing favorite recipes.”
“I should have known,” he said with a smile. “What else would three women do in a kitchen?”
With a slight shift of his body, he turned toward her. He was so close she could feel his body heat…feel a current of electricity between them immobilize her as she became fascinated by the whorl of hair nestled in the V of his green T-shirt.
He reached behind her, brushing her back. “I need the towel,” he explained, his voice husky.
Their gazes locked, and she vividly remembered the moment on her front porch twelve years ago when his arms had encircled her and his head had lowered to kiss her. The smoldering look in his eyes now convinced her he was remembering, too, maybe thinking about what it would be like to kiss her again.
As he lifted the towel from the counter and took a few steps back, she chided herself for being ridiculous.
Finished with the towel, he hung it over the oven door handle. “Where’s Charlie?” he asked Nina.
“Checking my tire pressure.”
He frowned. “I was going to do that. In fact—”
Jake never got to finish because the twins ran back into the kitchen. Nina directed them to set the table in the dining area, where she had stacked dishes, silverware and napkins.
Both boys grumbled and groaned.
Ryan protested the loudest. “I want to go outside and watch Charlie.”
Jake crooked his finger at them, and they scampered to him, looking up expectantly. “If you help your mom get ready for dinner without complaining, I’ll take you for ice cream afterward.”
“Carlo’s Place?” Ricky asked, wanting to put terms to the deal. “Two scoops?”
“You got it,” Jake said with a nod.
As the boys ran to the table, Nina scolded her brother. “That was a bribe.”
“Yes, it was. But I figured it was a small price to pay so they didn’t argue with you for the next ten minutes.”
“Sometimes you have to stand on principle,” Nina grumbled.
“Getting things done is better than principle,” Rita insisted. “After all, your brother’s the expert at negotiation.”
At Rita’s remark, a smothering hush fell over the kitchen.
Tori glanced from sister to brother to mother, not understanding the sudden tension and the somberness that seemed to have taken over Jake’s whole demeanor.
“Jake, I’m sorry,” his mother said, looking upset. “I didn’t mean—”
“I