The Summerhouse Read online

  He was smiling at her. He was smiling in that infuriating way that men do when they know something that you don’t. All along he’d known that he was the owner’s brother, but she hadn’t. She’d thought he was a blacksmith. But he’d always known who she was.

  There are some advantages to age, Ellie thought. For one thing, you don’t have to worry about reputation. And you don’t have to worry about misconduct getting back to your mother.

  What would her heroine, Jordan Neale, do in this situation? she wondered. That is, if Jordan weren’t happily married to Max?

  A scene from the movie To Catch a Thief came to her mind. Grace Kelly had sexily slipped an arm around Cary Grant’s neck and . . .

  Smiling as sweetly as she could, trying to let no one know that she was affected in any way by this man, Ellie stood up from the chair. Then, with as much poise as she could muster, she stood on tiptoe and slipped her hand around the neck of Woody’s brother and kissed him. It wasn’t a passionate kiss with frantic embracing, but a nice, long kiss that had a great deal of heat in it.

  He kept his arms to his side, and when she pulled away from him, he was looking at her in amusement. And interest. Oh, yes. He was looking at her with lots of interest.

  Stepping back, Ellie turned her head to look at Woody. He was standing there with his mouth open in shock. Behind him, even Valerie was staring with wide eyes. In fact, when Ellie looked around, she saw that the whole room had come to a standstill. Forks were paused on the way to mouths. One man was suspended in midair, his fanny six inches above a chair.

  It was one of the ranch hands who broke the spell cast on the group. He was an older man, with the look that he’d been born in a saddle. He had a belly that hung down over his belt buckle, and when he stepped forward, he had that bowlegged walk of a true cowboy.

  He stopped on the other side of Woody’s brother. “I’m next,” he said, then bent over, puckered up, and closed his eyes.

  It was what was needed to break the tension in the room, and everyone exploded with laughter. Laughing, the people began slapping Woody’s brother on the back—she still didn’t know his name—then they slapped Ellie’s back too. At a couple of hard slaps, her head bent so far forward that she touched the man’s chest.

  As for him, he just stood there, smiling at all the jests that were being made at his expense, saying nothing, just watching Ellie.

  “And here I was feeling sorry for you being out there all alone,” Valerie said so only Ellie heard her. “Heavens! but I thought you were bored.”

  The man put out his hand and said loudly over the ruckus around them, “Jessie Woodward. Nice to meet you.”

  Laughing, Ellie took his hand in hers. All the tension had left the room. The people were no longer tiptoeing about in respect for “the writer,” but were now enjoying a morning of free time, free food, and the companionship of people who’d been together for a long time.

  “Go on,” Woody said to his brother. “You two get out of here.”

  For Ellie, she couldn’t speak because she’d just realized what she’d been told. Heaven help her, but the man’s name was Jessie!

  Twenty-two

  Once they were outside, away from the others, alone, “awkward” didn’t begin to describe how she felt. What was she supposed to say, “So how’s your horse this morning?”?

  A couple of times she glanced up at him and gave him a weak little smile, but she really didn’t know what to say. They had experienced together . . . What? Lust? Something more?

  For all that Ellie had written some sexy little books and in the last couple of days done some—for her—wild things, underneath it all, she was a woman who didn’t fool around.

  As they approached the door to the summerhouse, Ellie could feel her feet becoming heavy. What was he expecting of her now? A wild morning in bed together? Last night, in the moonlight, she could have done that. She would probably have regretted it, but she might have done it. But now it was daylight and she was with a man she’d exchanged but a few words with. She’d had her hands all over his body, but she’d not talked to him.

  But Jessie solved everything.

  He stepped up onto the porch and held the door open for her, ignoring the fact that Ellie stood rooted where she was, still several feet away from the stairs. “I bet you’re hungry,” Jessie said. “I heard that last night Valerie had you pinned to a table autographing, then you spent dinner answering questions, and now this morning all you’ve done is write. How about if I make you an omelet the size of that state Valerie loves so much?”

  Ellie opened her mouth to protest that she wasn’t hungry. For the last three years she’d been fat, and she’d learned that fat girls shouldn’t eat in public. Even in restaurants they can receive looks of disgust from other women. But now she was no longer fat, so it was okay to eat truckloads. When her stomach let out a growl, Ellie looked up at Jessie with wide eyes. Then they both laughed and the tension between them was gone.

  “Come on,” he said, then went inside the house, leaving Ellie to follow on her own.

  When she entered the little kitchen, he was already pulling dishes out of the cabinets and ingredients out of the refrigerator. “You seem familiar with this house,” she said, making an attempt at conversation. Ellie thought he was a good-looking man, with the kind of looks that appealed to her. But Daria wouldn’t like him, though. But then Daria said that Mel Gibson “did nothing” for her.

  Ellie climbed onto a stool on the other side of the bar that separated the kitchen from the living room.

  In what seemed like seconds, Jessie placed a tall glass of tomato juice in front of her. There was a stalk of celery in it and celery seeds floating on top.

  “Alcohol?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” Jessie said as he gave her a one-sided smirk, then wiggled his eyebrows. “To loosen you up for later.”

  Since he was saying what she feared, as though he were reading her mind, she laughed.

  Turning his back to her, he pulled out cookware, then more things from the refrigerator, and began to move about as though he knew what he was doing. “So what do you want to know?” Jessie asked, his back to her.

  The drink was strong, made with Snappy Tom, so it was hot, just the way she liked it. She was so empty of food that just one sip began to relax her.

  “Know about what?” she asked.

  Jessie turned his head just enough to give her a raised-eyebrow look that said she knew very well what he was talking about.

  Ellie took another drink. “Everything about everybody,” she said. “You first.”

  “Not much to tell about me,” Jessie said. “My brother’s the one. He—”

  “No!” Ellie said in warning. “You.”

  She couldn’t see his face but she felt his smile.

  “Okay, I’m forty-two. I’ve been married once, but it didn’t work out. I was gone too much and she got lonesome, so she figured out how to get rid of the blues. Men, mostly. No kids, so we divorced.”

  He put a bowl full of tortilla chips in front of her and some red-hot salsa.

  “What else?” she asked as he put scallions down on a cutting board and began to chop them. Judging from the way he handled the knife, he’d done this before.

  “Not much. I’ve worked for my brother for a number of years now. Ten? Maybe it’s only eight; I don’t remember.”

  “What do you do?”

  “Manage this place, for one thing.”

  She could tell that he didn’t want to talk about himself, and for her, that was a point in his favor. Martin was a nonstop talker. Sometimes Ellie hid inside her clothes closet behind her long skirts so he couldn’t find her, just so she could have a few minutes of silence.

  “Okay,” she said, deciding to let him off the hook. “What about Valerie and Woody?”

  Ellie could see Jessie visibly relax when the questions stopped being about him.

  “Okay,” Jessie said, knife poised above the scallions. “Where do I s