was nearly nine o’clock now, however, and much the way the rest of the day and evening had gone, Kelsey had orchestrated things so that she and Coop took Anthony home at the same time that Jack and Jeannie Hunt were dispatched to put Ella, Braden, Bethany and Adam to bed, leaving Jessie and Flint sitting directly across from each other at the picnic table. Alone.
“They’re all great kids,” Flint added. “And every one of them looks like you. Especially Ella—she’s a miniature version of you.”
“I can see their father in each of the kids in small ways,” Jessie answered Flint’s observation, trying to hide her embarrassment at her sister’s less-than-subtle manipulations to put them together. “She’s also taller than I was at her age, and lanky, the way Pete was. And when she frowns—”
“Which she seems to do a lot,” Flint remarked. “Especially when she sees me.”
“I’m sorry about that. I know she’s sort of treating you like the enemy. There was something about your catching me when I nearly fell off the drier yesterday …” Something that had also imprinted every tiny nuance on Jessie’s brain to relive over and over again. “Well, whatever it was, Ella didn’t like the look of it and you seem to be getting the full blame. I think she’ll get over it in a day or two, but for now—”
“I’m not the guy who just kept you from falling, I’m the guy who got too up close and personal with her mom.”
Up close and personal enough for Jessie to smell the clean, woodsy scent of his cologne. To see even more clearly the flecks of gold that illuminated his dark eyes. To have felt those steely shoulders in the grip of her own hands …
She swallowed hard, feeling as breathless as she had in the moment.
“Anyway, give her a day or two, and Ella will probably come around,” Jessie finally managed to say when she’d dragged herself out of her split-second reverie.
Flint didn’t respond to that, instead he went on with what they’d been talking about before. “And the twins, they seem like the spitting image of you, too. How do they look like their dad?”
“Their coloring is all Pete—the lighter hair and eyes. And Adam has Pete’s smile and his turned-up nose.”
Flint nodded, but his eyes were on her intently the whole time, as if he were gauging his words before he said, “Do you mind if I ask how he died?”
Not when it was asked so gently, so compassionately, so mindful of it being difficult for her to talk about.
She sighed. “It was an accident at a building site. A faulty crane, a dropped girder …” But she couldn’t bring herself to go into the details, so she said, “We were both working for the same construction company—I ran the office, Pete was the electrical foreman, so he was in the field most of the time. Sometimes I had paperwork that would take me into the on-site office—that was always set up in a trailer that stayed on a big job—”
“Were you there when it happened?” Flint asked, his frown lines deep with horror on her behalf.
“I was,” she said, her voice cracking even though it was barely above a whisper. “Thankfully I didn’t see it, but I heard workman shouting, running, yelling for someone to call for an ambulance, which I did before I ever left the trailer or knew it was Pete I was calling for …”
“I’m so sorry,” Flint said with heartfelt sympathy.
“He literally never knew what hit him, which was a blessing, I think. And I didn’t have to see him—the owner of the company kept me away until they had Pete in the ambulance. I rode to the hospital holding his hand …”
Okay, she couldn’t talk about that without breaking down, and she didn’t want to break down. She’d done more than her share of crying. So she swallowed hard and said, “Things are pretty much a blur for me from there.”
“That’s probably a blessing, too, in this case.”
“I know my folks were at the hospital by the time I got there. Kelsey wasn’t living in Red Rock then, but she wasn’t far away and she was at home with the kids by the time my folks brought me back. Telling them was the hardest thing I’d ever done.”
“This was how long ago?”
“A little over two years.”
“Were the kids even old enough to understand?”
“Adam was only a baby, so no. He doesn’t even remember Pete except through pictures and stories I’ve told him. Braden and Bethany were two and a half, so they didn’t really get it either. For a long time they just kept asking where Daddy was, when he was coming home, and we’d have to tell them all over again, try to help them understand—”
“But Ella, she was five, right?”
“Right. She knew exactly what was going on, poor thing.” And that, too, brought the sting of tears to Jessie’s eyes. But in two years she’d learned well how to hold them at bay. “Ella went back and forth between her own grief and putting up a strong front. Half the time she played parent—helping with the other kids, making an attempt to look after me …”
“Ross.”
Jessie raised her eyebrows at Flint in question to his oldest brother’s name.
“Ross did that in my family,” Flint explained. “We all took care of each other, but it was Ross who led the way, who played parent.”
Again Jessie wasn’t sure exactly why that had been necessary, but not knowing the details, she assumed that it had something to do with his mother’s overall less-than-stellar reputation.
“I suppose,” Jessie said then, “that that’s what’s going on now, too—Ella is feeling protective. And maybe a little territorial.”
“So we’re being pushed and pulled,” Flint said then with a knowing smile.
Jessie thought she knew what he meant, but she didn’t want to assume too much so she merely repeated, “Pushed and pulled?”
“Ella wants to pull you away, to keep you to herself. But there’s a lot of pushing going on with Kelsey, and now Coop and tonight your parents, too …”
“I know, I’m sorry,” she apologized for the second time. “I was hoping maybe you hadn’t noticed the not-so-veiled attempts at matchmaking.”
Flint laughed again and Jessie wished she didn’t like the sound of it as much as she did.
“You thought I hadn’t noticed that we’re being dispatched to paint rooms together, to go to the store together, to do everything they can possibly get us to do together? That seating arrangements always put us side by side—”
“And now this—” Jessie interjected, raising both hands in the air and glancing around “—getting everybody out of here so we’re alone.”
Flint grinned that great grin that drew such sexy lines on his handsome face. “Yep, I noticed. Impossible not to. It seems to be a conspiracy.”
“But
