style="font-size:15px;"> A silence fell, slightly awkward, as they finished their soup, which tasted every bit as good as it smelled. Gray wolfed down three bowls of it, along with substantial hunks of corn bread. He spoke just once more, to ask, “Grandpa’s not coming back for lunch?”
“He took sandwiches and coffee,” Louise answered. “Wants to get those cows moved down today.”
“He shouldn’t be doing it on his own.”
Louise snorted. “You tell him that!”
Gray nodded and shrugged. “Guess I already did.” As soon as he was done eating, he announced, “I’m going to get on over to the shed and look at that truck, or I won’t get anywhere with it today.”
“Can I help?” Jill blurted out. “Sam will sleep for hours now. He always does when he’s feverish, so it doesn’t make sense for me to sit around. You told him you’d be here at the house all afternoon, didn’t you, Louise?”
Gray looked at her, as wary as before, and she could see the way he was assessing her words.
“Sure,” he finally answered, much too slowly. “Can always use an extra pair of hands.”
They set out ten minutes later. Jill was bundled up in an old scarlet sweater of Louise’s. Louise had said that the shed was cold, and Jill’s jacket and pink top “too pretty” to get covered in motor oil.
“You know anything about cars?” Gray asked her as they drove in his mom’s late-model white station wagon back the same way Jill had come with Ron Thurrell.
“Not a whole lot,” she admitted, “but I’m willing to learn.”
“Not in one afternoon.”
“No, okay, well, something else, then.”
“You don’t have to.”
“You said you could use an extra pair of hands.”
“I figured you wanted to come along so Mom didn’t have a chance to ask you any more awkward questions.”
“That was part of it,” Jill admitted. “But I said I’d help, and I will.”
The sound he made might have been, “Thanks.”
Or it might have been a snort.
She lifted her chin and didn’t push the point. Feeling the tension along her jaw, she glanced sideways and recognized much the same expression on Gray’s face.
We’re both stubborn, I guess, she thought.
Stubborn and honorable in his case. Stubborn and impulsive, in hers. Was that what had gotten them into trouble in Las Vegas?
Please get well quick, Sam. I’m here to dissolve the magic not make it stronger.
“Where are we headed?” she asked quickly.
“Machine shed,” he answered. “We have a heavy-duty pickup we need to take cross-country to fix some fence. We’ve had cattle showing up where they don’t belong.”
“Like me.”
“Really, Jill, you can quit apologizing.” Impatience colored his tone. “I got us both into this as much as you did.”
“Your mom would like to know what it’s all about.”
“Mom’s pretty good, but she’s only human.”
“I know. It’s not that I would have resented questions, I just didn’t feel ready to answer them yet.”
“Makes sense. Can I ask a couple?”
“Probably a little easier, coming from you,” she agreed.
“You want to get married again, is that right? That’s the only reason I could think of for the urgency.”
“Uh, yeah.” She listened to her own words, and realized that she had begun to adopt his own cautious, almost reluctant way of talking.
“I mean married for real.”
“I know what you meant,” she said. “Yes, married for real. I mean, we’re not in love with each other, Alan and I. But when you have kids, that stuff’s more trouble than it’s worth. He knows that, and so do I.”
“Yeah, I guess it could be that way,” Grayson growled. “This guy has kids, too?”
“Teenage daughters, Anna and Sarah. And they come first. Them, and Sam. For both of us.”
“Makes sense.”
“Does it? I keep thinking you should be angry, Gray. Angry that this is happening at all. That I got you into it. In fact, on some level, you are angry.”
“No, I’m not,” he insisted. “Or, not with you. It’s not your fault. Neither of us realized, when it was happening, that it was real….”
Real. Real as in legal. A very different kind of “real” from what she hoped to build with Alan.
The word echoed in Jill’s mind, and she suddenly wondered if she had the slightest idea what “real” actually meant. She thought back…
Las Vegas. The show. “Cinderella on Ice.” A dream come true. A dream made real. Only, from the very beginning, it hadn’t been.
Jill had skated since she could remember, pushed into it at first by her selfish and demanding mother, then loving it for its own sake. She had found a home away from home at the rink, when life with her mother, Rose Chaloner Brown, had been like a minefield that all beloved stepfather David Brown’s care and sense couldn’t make safe, and all of her sisters’ companionship couldn’t distract from.
Rose had kicked her out the door when she was pregnant and alone at just eighteen, along with her stepsister, Catrina, who was almost Jill’s twin in age. Jill’s older sister, Suzanne, had refused to stay under a roof where her sisters weren’t welcome, so she’d left at that time, also.
“Ungrateful,” Rose had called all three of them. She’d used much harsher labels, as well.
After this, the expense of Jill’s competitive amateur career had been way too much for the sisters’ stretched finances. So she had concentrated on teaching as a fallback, while dreaming of the chance to skate in professional shows.
She had had Sam to raise, also. He was still the best thing that had ever happened to her, despite the disaster of her naive infatuation for his father. None of it had been easy, though. Ivy League boyfriend Curtis Harrington hadn’t wanted to know about the coming baby. Jill didn’t know how she would have managed if she hadn’t had Suzanne’s and Catrina’s help, as well as that of Catrina’s eccentric Cousin Pixie, for the past couple of years.
Back in March, just after Sam’s fourth birthday, she’d gotten her big break at last. Andrea, a close friend during their teens at the ice rink in Philadelphia, had been forced to pull out of her role
