his eyes landed on her bare toes, his eyes widened, then quickly traveled up to her flaming cheeks.
“Huh?” He half turned and lowered his voice.
“Yeah, the one with night vision and motion trigger,” Josh muttered into the phone. “No, not animals.” He pushed back a corner of the curtain and stared out into the deep blackness of the country night. “I’m looking to catch a human.”
A human! Becki tugged her bathrobe together more tightly. Why hadn’t she stayed in bed?
At least there she could have blissfully deluded herself into imagining there was nothing to be afraid of.
* * *
Becki woke early the next morning. She might have let Josh evade her questions last night, but today she intended to get answers. She dressed quickly and tiptoed to the stairs. Halfway down, the aroma of fresh-brewed coffee greeted her, reminding her that early had a whole other meaning in farm country. She should’ve paid more attention to that rooster crowing before the crack of dawn.
“Hey, sleepyhead,” Anne chirped as Becki meandered into the sunbathed kitchen. Anne handed her a mug of coffee. “How’s the head?”
“Good.” If she didn’t count the gazillion questions that had raced around it all night after overhearing Josh’s plan to catch her prowler. “Josh doing chores?”
“They’re long done. He only has chickens to feed these days. He’s changing my oil. Probably almost done with that, too.”
“Will he have to do anything in the fields today?”
“No, he doesn’t farm.” Anne set a covered platter on the table. “The farmer down the road rents the land.”
“But I thought... Josh always talked about running the farm one day.”
“Sometimes childhood dreams don’t look so rosy when you grow up.”
Becki sank into a chair. Her sister had said the same thing. She stiffened her spine. Gran and Gramps’s farm was the only place she’d ever felt truly happy. Sure, it wouldn’t be the same without them, but she couldn’t bear to lose it, too.
“By the time Josh resigned from the military,” Anne continued, “Dad had sold off too much of the farm for Josh to make it profitable again.”
Becki envisioned him wrestling down a burly drug dealer instead of an ornery cow. “So that’s why Josh became a cop?”
“He wanted—”
“To serve and protect,” Josh finished for his sister as he strode into the kitchen and plopped a small cage on the counter.
The “criminal” he’d protected them from emitted a tiny peep, and Becki couldn’t help but giggle.
“What have you rescued this time?” Anne peered around his shoulder.
He stepped aside, allowing them both to see. A tiny sparrow with a broken wing huddled in a corner of the hamster cage.
“Oh, the poor thing.” Becki snagged a piece of toast from the breakfast Anne had spread on the table and sprinkled crumbs into the cage. “Where did you find it?”
Anne rolled her eyes. “The strays always seem to find him.”
“What am I supposed to do? Ignore them?”
His sister tipped onto her toes and planted a kiss on Josh’s cheek. “Nope, you’d never. That’s why I love you.”
Josh pulled Anne into a fierce hug, revealing a depth of feeling that caught at Becki’s heart. His eyes lifted to hers. More brown than green this morning, they held a warm familial affection that Becki could only dream of now that Gran and Gramps were gone.
Anne ducked out of his arms and grabbed her purse from the counter. “If my car’s done, I need to go. Enjoy your breakfast.” Anne shook a finger at Becki. “And no heavy lifting. If you get dizzy or your headache persists, have a doctor check you over.”
“I will. Thank you.”
After seeing his sister out, Josh lifted the lid from a pan of bacon and eggs on the table. “Shall we?”
“Farm-fresh eggs. Mmm. I haven’t had a breakfast like this since the last time I visited Gran and Gramps. Your sister outdid herself.”
Josh spooned out a plateful of scrambled eggs and bacon. “She likes to stay on my good side so I’ll keep her car running.”
“I think you’d do it anyway. You always loved to work on cars.”
“Shh, don’t let her hear you say that.” He raised a jug of OJ. “Juice?”
“Uh, sure.” Suddenly Becki’s insides felt as scrambled as her eggs. To think she was sharing breakfast with Joshua Rayne!
Not only was he more handsome than she remembered; he was as kind as ever. She bet the three-legged dog had been another rescue effort.
She fiddled with her silverware. Obviously the blow to her head had crippled her common sense for her to be thinking up more reasons to still have a crush on the guy. She stabbed at her eggs. It wasn’t as if she would ever be anything more to him than another needy stray.
Her mind flailed about for another topic of conversation. “Funny that I don’t remember you fussing over animals as a teen. That was more my domain.” She struggled to restrain the smile that suddenly tugged at her lips. “Seems to me you were more interested in fussing over my sister.”
He choked on his orange juice.
She batted her eyelashes ever so innocently. “Am I wrong?”
He tipped back his head and laughed. “Nothing got by you.”
Becki shrugged. “If not for you, I doubt Sarah could have stood being away from the malls for two whole months.”
“Not at all like you. You were a farm kid through and through.” Amusement danced in Josh’s green-brown eyes.
The color reminded her of the grassy meadows she’d loved to run through as a child. “No. Not like me.” She shoveled a forkful of eggs into her mouth and then focused on buttering her toast and the non-Joshua reasons she loved being in Serenity. “If Sarah had her way, I wouldn’t stay.”
“These old houses can be a lot of work to upkeep.”
Her butter knife halted midspread. “You don’t think I should stay, either?”
“Not at all. The Becki Graw I remember could do anything she set her mind to.”
“Thank you. That hasn’t changed. So why don’t you tell me about your plan to catch my prowler?”
“Finish up your breakfast, and I’ll show you.”
Becki finished before Josh and started on the dishes.
“Leave those,” he said,
