for another look, she opened her eyes, but he was already turning away. Stifling the moan of disappointment that rose, the sense of loss, she slowly caught up the hoe and began to chop half-heartedly at the weeds again, her movements sluggish now, her strength drained by the attraction that churned low in her belly.
Her thoughts were so scattered, her senses so dulled, it took a moment for her to become aware of the rumble of the school bus. Straightening, she drew the hoe up, propped her hands on its handle and inhaled a deep, steadying breath, pushing back her lustful thoughts of Jase as she watched the bus near.
It stopped in front of the house and the door folded back. Rachel, always seated at the front of the bus, came tumbling down the steps, dragging her book bag behind her, and headed straight for the house.
“Hey, Rachel!” she called, lifting a hand in greeting. “Over here. How was school?”
A grin spreading from ear to ear, Rachel raced toward the garden, waving a paper above her head. “Annie! Look! I made a hundred on my spelling test!”
“Why, that’s wonderful, sweetheart!” Annie stepped from the garden and leaned the hoe against the low fence, then knelt and wrapped an arm around the girl’s waist, drawing her to her side. “And look,” she said pointing, “your teacher gave you a gold star, too.”
“That’s ’cause my penmanship was so good.”
“And it is,” Annie agreed, hugging the girl to her.
“What’s for dinner?”
Annie glanced up at the question and saw Tara headed her way, followed closely by Clay. She widened her smile to include the twins. “Dinner isn’t for a couple of hours, yet, but there are fresh vegetables in the refrigerator and some dip, if you’d like a snack.”
Tara rolled her eyes and did a neat U-turn, heading for the house. “Rabbit food,” she muttered under her breath.
Surprised by the teenager’s sour expression, Annie rose, staring after her.
“Ignore her,” Clay said. “She’s in one of her moods.”
“It certainly appears that way,” Annie replied, wondering if the mood was a carryover from the teenager’s brief but heated confrontation with her father that morning. “And how was your day?” she asked, turning to smile at Clay.
“Okay.”
“Kiss any girls?” she teased.
He ducked his head, blushing, and chipped the toe of a boot against the ground. “Nah.”
Annie laughed. “Well, there’s always tomorrow.”
He glanced up at her, then quickly away, his blush deepening, then shifted his gaze to the garden. “What are you doing out here?”
“Getting the soil ready to plant.” She glanced at the garden and sighed wearily, disappointed by the small amount of progress she’d made. “But it’s turning out to be a much bigger chore than I anticipated.”
“Does Dad know you’re working in here?”
“Well, yes,” Annie replied, puzzled by his question. “Why do you ask?”
He shrugged and hitched his backpack higher on his shoulder. “No reason. It’s just that…well, nobody’s planted a garden since Mom died.”
“Oh,” she murmured, understanding now why Jase had seemed so upset when she’d asked his permission to plant a garden. “I didn’t know.”
Clay shrugged again. “No big deal. It’s just dirt.”
Annie stared at the weed-clogged clods she’d managed to overturn, suspecting that, though the garden might be nothing more than dirt to Clay, it represented a great deal more to the boy’s father.
Feeling the guilt nudging at her for the painful memories her request must have drawn for Jase, she shrugged it off and forced a smile as she turned to Clay. “Are you hungry?”
He reared back and patted his stomach, grinning. “Starving.”
Annie caught Rachel’s hand, then slung an arm over Clay’s shoulders, heading both children toward the house. “How about some rabbit food?” she teased.
“Just call me Thumper,” he replied, grinning.
“Clay!”
Clay spun, his grin fading when he saw his father standing in the barn’s doorway, scowling, his arms folded across his chest. “Yeah, Dad?” he called.
“You’ve got chores waiting.”
“But couldn’t I eat something first?”
When his father merely angled his head and arched a brow in warning, Clay heaved a sigh. “Yes, sir,” he mumbled, then turned to Annie. “Sorry. Guess I’ll have to grab something later.”
Offering him a sympathetic smile, Annie slipped the backpack from his shoulder and lifted it to her own. “I’ll save some dip for you,” she promised.
As she watched Clay trudge toward the barn, she glanced Jase’s way and saw that he waited in the doorway still wearing the now-familiar scowl…and wondered how much of the man’s gruffness was direct fallout from the loss of his wife.
“Could I crank up the rototiller and plow up the garden for Annie?”
Hunkered down beside the engine he was working on, Jase glanced up at Clay’s question, then frowned and turned his attention back to the spark plug he was adjusting. “You’ve got chores to do.”
“But afterwards?” Clay persisted. “It wouldn’t take me long and it’ll take her forever to clean out all those weeds using just a hoe.”
“There’s more important work that needs to be done than tilling a garden.”
“Like what?”
At the frustration he heard in his son’s voice, Jase dropped the wrench to his knee and glanced up, his frown deepening. “Like the fence that needs mending down in the bottom. The new calves I hauled in last night that need feeding and watering. The well house that needs painting.”
Ducking his head, Clay scuffed the toe of his boot at the loose hay in the alleyway. “There’s always work that needs doing around here,” he mumbled.
Jase pushed his hands against his knees and rose. “And there always will be,” he said, tossing the wrench to the workbench, “so long as you complain about your chores instead of just doing them.”
“I’m not complaining,” Clay argued. “I just wanted to help Annie out.”
“If the new nanny wants a garden, then she’ll have to do the work herself.”
“You won’t let me help her because you don’t like her.”
Jase dug through the tools, reluctant to admit there might be some truth in his son’s
