in your real life you do a nightclub act as a psychic,” Matt said with a slight, stunned laugh. “Are you having visions of this stuff or what?”
Jenn shrugged. “I don’t know. The information is just there. Nothing else is, but these thoughts keep popping into my head from out of nowhere.”
“Does the place seem familiar? Maybe you were here before for some reason?”
“Sorry,” she said as if another negative answer would disappoint him.
“Well, you’re right about it, anyway,” he confirmed, being a good sport.
“Buzz moved away with his wife for a while—if I’m not mistaken—and that was when he gave the ranch up to his grandchildren.”
Matt nodded. “My grandmother was sick and they moved to Denver to be nearer the hospital where she was being treated.”
“And after she died he stayed on in Denver,” Jenn continued, “until he broke his leg and couldn’t care for himself anymore.”
“He broke his knee. His right knee.”
“And he’s been back here ever since. Doing well.”
“Amazing,” Matt said, more to himself than to her.
“And weird,” Jenn added, wondering at herself as much as he obviously was.
She’d been looking at the house the whole time but now she turned her head to find Matt studying her through the darkness that was only broken by the Christmas lights on the house.
His expression made it evident he was curious but he didn’t appear to be suspicious. Although she wouldn’t have blamed him if he had been. It suddenly occurred to her that if she kept it up she might cause him to be.
“Maybe I shouldn’t say these things out loud,” she said, thinking the minute the words were spoken that maybe she shouldn’t have said that, either.
“I figure you shouldn’t stifle whatever comes into your mind. You never know when one thing might spark memory of another or give us an idea of what’s going on with you and why you’re here.”
She was grateful for that. Not because it seemed important that she be able to go on with these bouts of trivia but because he didn’t think she was some kind of lunatic or con artist pulling a scam—what he could well have thought if he were another sort of person.
But as it was, those dark green eyes of his merely scanned her face as if she were a riddle he was trying to figure out and a clue might be there for him to read.
And as the intensity of that gaze washed over her, Jenn felt a tingling response sluice along her nerve endings. A response she didn’t understand any more than she understood what was going on with her memory.
But the one thing she did know was that this was no time to be basking in a man’s glance. Or voice. Or company.
“Shouldn’t we go in?” she asked then in an attempt to escape the close confines of the truck cab and the enticing scent of a citrusy, clean-smelling aftershave that was only making it more difficult for her to think straight.
“Sure,” Matt agreed.
He turned off the truck’s engine and got out without a moment’s hesitation, coming to the passenger side from around the rear to open her door.
When he had, he offered her a hand to help her down, and before she’d considered whether or not it was wise to take it, Jenn did.
But that physical contact didn’t help her already jumbled thoughts because the moment her hand connected with his much larger, callused one, more of that odd tingling sensation began, shooting all the way up her arm this time.
The reaction didn’t make any more sense to her now than it had when she’d experienced it as a result of nothing more than his gaze. The only conclusion she could come to to explain it was that something purely elemental, something perfectly primitive, was afoot.
But why now and not when he’d placed a steadying hand to her shoulder at his brother’s office when she’d tried to sit up and felt faint?
In the office there hadn’t been bare skin against bare skin the way there was now…?.
Jenn was tempted to indulge in the feeling, to let her hand stay nestled within his, to go on letting the heat of that naked flesh seep into every pore.
But the temptation—along with the pleasure that was skittering all through her—was also very alarming. After all, this man was a stranger to her and certainly the circumstances they were currently in—or at least the circumstances she was currently in—were not conducive to any kind of attraction between them.
So the moment her feet were firmly planted on the ground she pulled her hand out of his as if she’d just been singed by hot coals. For surely it seemed as if she was just as likely to get burned.
If Matt noticed anything amiss in her withdrawal, he didn’t show it. He just stepped around her and grabbed her suitcase and purse from the truck’s bench seat.
Then he closed the door, turned to face the house and said, “Ladies first,” in a friendly way that held no hint that he’d had the same response to her that she’d had to him.
But then, why would something as innocuous as their hands touching affect him the way it had affected her? It was only things in her head that were haywire.
Accepting that as a fact she couldn’t do anything about at the moment, Jenn opted for ignoring it and took the lead to the house, being careful not to slip on the walkway that had been shoveled at some point but was once again covered in snow.
When they reached the double front doors with their elaborate ovals of stained glass in the top halves, Matt went ahead of her to open one for her.
“There you go,” he said to urge her inside.
Jenn stepped into a big brightly lit foyer and felt a blast of heat that chased the chill back outside before Matt closed the door.
“We’ve missed supper by now,” he said then. “So how about I show you to your room and give you half an hour to settle in? Then we can meet in the kitchen and I’ll rustle us up something to eat.”
There were voices coming from somewhere toward the rear of the house and what sounded like post-meal cleanup. No one was in sight but Jenn was having another of those informational blips about who those voices likely belonged to.
Not that they seemed familiar, but for some reason she had a pretty good idea of who lived in this house.
She opted for keeping it to herself though and merely said, “That sounds good.”
Matt pointed his dimpled chin to the left where Jenn was reasonably certain a hallway that matched the one on the right would take her to the left wing she’d seen from outside. “I’ll put you up in the room next to mine. It’s straight down there, the third door.”
Again he waited for her to precede him.
Old-fashioned cowboy courtesy, Jenn
