in Caleb’s throat. Well, he’d shoved away the memory earlier that afternoon and he wasn’t going to let it surface now. He glanced away from the boy and into the half-apologetic face of his mother.
She had changed clothes, too. Instead of the jeans and T-shirt she’d worn to chase her son across the pasture, she wore a simple, sleeveless blue dress that buttoned up the front and fell in a swirl of skirt to below her knees.
Laney gave an ironic little twist of her lips. “Before you say anything, yes, you made it clear that you don’t want company or trespassers, and I’m not ignoring what you said, but I came to thank you again for keeping Sam from getting hurt.”
Caleb looked at the sincerity in her eyes and the gentle curve of her lips. Her face looked ready to break into a smile with the tiniest encouragement from him. He glanced down at Sam, who returned his regard with a big, innocent grin. The scent of chocolate nearly sent him to his knees.
Caleb wanted to take the cake from Laney and shut the door.
“I know seeing him in danger of being attacked by your mare probably scared you. Whenever he scares the life out of me, I feel snappy, too.” Her smile widened, lighting her eyes, inviting him to share her rueful humor at her son’s actions.
This woman was willing to credit him with an excuse for his rudeness.
Behind him, he could hear Bertie’s nails clicking on the linoleum. “A dog!” Sam shrieked, scooting past Caleb and into the living room, even as his mother tried to call him back. Laney hurried after him, trying to make a grab for her son, but was hampered by the cake she still carried. Focused on the little boy, she shoved the cake at Caleb, who had no choice but to take it.
Before Laney could pull Sam away, her son fell on Bertie like a long-lost best friend. He threw his arms around the animal’s neck and gave him a hug.
Bertie turned his head and gave the boy a lick on the side of the face that sealed their bond. Laughing, Sam wiped his cheek. “He likes me. I want a dog,” he told Caleb with a sigh. “But my mom says I’m not ponsible.”
Puzzled, Caleb looked at Laney, whose cheeks had reddened. “Responsible,” she answered his unspoken question.
“What’s his name?” Sam asked. He sat back on his heels to admire what he certainly considered to be the most beautiful animal on earth.
“Bertie.”
Sam buried his face in the canine’s neck. “I love you, Bertie.”
“I’m sorry about this,” Laney said. “Come on, Sam. We need to go and leave Mr. Ransom alone.” She indicated his big rancher’s hands. “I hope you like chocolate cake.”
He looked down at the thick swirls of frosting. All he wanted was to be left alone, to stop her and her son from trespassing.
If he took this cake, he’d be taking a step forward he wasn’t ready to take.
For the second time that day.
“WE WOULD LOVE to join you,” Laney told him with a warm smile. All right, so he hadn’t exactly invited them in to join him, but he hadn’t kicked them out, either. She was thrilled. This was going much better than she had anticipated given their earlier encounter.
He stood there, staring at her openmouthed for a moment. Then, abruptly, he turned toward the kitchen.
Laney’s gaze followed him. This was the first time she’d seen him walk a few steps and she noticed that he did it with a pronounced limp that favored his right leg. She wondered if he’d had this since birth or if he’d been in an accident. Somehow, the stiffness with which he walked told her he was still getting used to this change in his body and she wondered if it was a fairly recent injury. But she knew she couldn’t ask.
Earlier, she’d been too frantic about her son to really notice the man, and then she’d been furious with him and his rudeness.
Now, as she watched him, she saw that he was a few inches taller than she was, putting him at maybe six feet. His face looked tough, she would even say hard, but she hadn’t really been able to get a good look at him earlier because the sun had been in her eyes and his face had been shaded by his hat. She had thought his eyes were filled with shadows, but maybe she’d been attempting to give him characteristics that would account for his prickly attitude.
Glancing around, she saw that Sam was busy scratching Bertie’s stomach. The dog had rolled over onto his back and hung his paws in the air. His head lolled to the side and his tongue protruded in cartoonish contentment. Sam looked equally ecstatic. Knowing he would be therefore safe for a little while, she followed Caleb from the room.
Laney looked around Caleb’s kitchen without appearing to be examining it as closely as she was. The house was about the same age as hers, but nothing here had been upgraded or freshened up. The wallpaper was a splash of huge flowers in avocado green and harvest gold à la 1970s. The appliances had to be that old, too, as was the worn linoleum. The kitchen was squeaky clean, though.
On the scrubbed top of the wooden table sat a bowl of some dark substance and two beers.
She turned to him in consternation. “Oh, we’ve interrupted your dinner.”
“It wasn’t worth eating.” Caleb set the cake down on the counter, found some small, mismatched plates and opened a drawer. He took out three forks, gazed at his collection of knives and then at her.
“Any one will do,” she said with a smile. “Would you like me to cut it?”
“Sure.” He handed over a knife and while she cut the cake, he removed the bowl from the table.
“What’s wrong with the chili?”
“You could recognize what it was?”
Her eyes twinkled. “The beans gave it away.”
“I guess I’m not much of a cook. It looks weird and it’s way too salty—and too full of cayenne.”
“If you have a potato, you can cut it up and simmer it in the chili. Remove it when it’s soft and it’ll take out some of the salt. If you’ve got more diced tomatoes, you can add those, too. They’ll help the appearance and the taste and water down the saltiness—though probably nothing will tone down the spiciness.” She handed him a plate. “And while it’s simmering, you can enjoy a chocolate cake appetizer.”
For the first time his eyes met hers. She saw that they were dark gray like the sky before a summer rainstorm. Sadness and regret lurked in them. She’d been angry at him because he’d been rude to her and Sam, but the torment she thought she’d seen in his eyes at their first encounter and again now told her his moodiness came from deep pain. His expression was wary and guarded. As she looked at him, really seeing his features for the first time, she noticed the scar that ran down the side of his face and ended at the right corner of his mouth. What had happened to this man? Her heart filled with compassion.
He must have sensed what she was thinking because he glanced away. “I’ll try that,” he said. “Like I said, I’m not much of a cook.”
He set his plate down, grabbed a potato from a bin beneath the sink, scrubbed and sliced it and put it in the chili pot, along with a can of diced tomatoes.
Laney placed small slices of cake on two other plates and called Sam in to join them. He came, bent at an awkward angle, half dragging, half walking with Bertie, his arms still wrapped around the long-suffering animal’s neck. “Can Bertie have cake, too?”
“No, dogs can’t eat chocolate,” Laney said. “It’s bad for them.”
“Can I have his piece?”
“No.”
Sam’s arms fell away from Bertie’s neck and dropped stiffly to his sides. “Why can’t I have