style="font-size:15px;"> “Just because he’s a cowboy doesn’t mean he can’t appreciate flowers,” Sassy muttered after a moment.
Alexa opened her mouth to assure the young woman she didn’t mean anything insulting with her remark. Everyone was treated equally at the Chaparral. But Sassy would hardly believe that now. Dear God, it seemed like everything she said today came out sounding wrong.
“I’d better go get the sheets in the wash,” Sassy said and quickly started toward the door.
Alexa called out to her. “Wait a minute, Sassy. Please.”
Alexa’s heart softened as she watched the young woman walk back to the center of the room. Sassy had been orphaned at age seventeen, when her parents had perished in a house fire. After that, Alexa’s parents had taken her in and given her a job here on the Chaparral. She’d become like family, and Alexa wanted her to understand that.
“You need something else, Alexa?” Sassy asked.
With a regretful smile, Alexa walked over and hugged the younger woman’s shoulders. “Yes, I need to apologize. For sounding like a—well, like a queen wasp.”
Sassy laughed. “Oh, Alexa, that’s a terrible thing to say about yourself. I understand you’ve been under a strain. Moving back home like this…it’s gotta be—well, something you’ll have to get used to all over again.”
Alexa sighed with relief. At least Sassy understood. “Truthfully, Sassy, it’s turning out to be much harder than I ever expected. But I’ll survive. I just wanted to say that bit about Jonas and the flowers—I honestly didn’t want you putting flowers in his room, because I didn’t want him to think I was going out of my way to make things extra pleasant for him.”
Sassy’s brows pulled together in confusion. “Why? He has to be a nice man or Quint wouldn’t have hired him.”
The young woman’s simple reasoning made Alexa feel even smaller. “I’m sure he is. It’s just that—well, it’s kind of awkward for me—having him here in the house. I’ve only just met him and he’s—”
“Darn good-looking,” Sassy finished for her. “And single.”
Alexa’s brows lifted. “How did you know that about him?”
Sassy’s smile was conspiring. “The ranch has a gossip grapevine, Alexa. I hear things from the bunkhouse cook.”
“Gus? He’s getting too old to gossip!”
“Don’t let him hear you say that,” Sassy joked, then looked at Alexa with empathy. “And don’t go worrying about the new manager. Your mother will be back soon and everything will get back to normal.”
Long after dark, Alexa was lounging on the back patio, soaking up the cool breeze and thinking about Sassy’s comment. Would things in her life ever get back to normal? she wondered.
In spite of her blowup with Barry, she was excited about the coming baby. Already she loved it with all her heart. In fact, for the past few months, thoughts of her coming child were the only thing that had kept her focused and going. Yet she wondered if she’d ever have the courage to trust another man or, for that matter, to resume her job in Santa Fe.
When she’d left, she’d done so on a leave of absence, with the option to return to Senator Hutchins’s office whenever she was ready. Which had been an overly generous offer on the senator’s part. Alexa appreciated the fact that her job would be there for her if she decided to return. But she wasn’t sure that life in politics was right for her anymore. Barry would still be hanging around the capital, and though he’d been out of her life for months now, she’d not been able to avoid running into him casually.
The whole situation was awkward. But then, she should have never been attracted to Barry in the first place, she thought with self-disgust. She should have been able to see beneath his polished appearance and glib way with words. Once she’d started dating him, her instincts should have picked up on the fact that he was out for himself and no one else. Damn it, he’d been a lobbyist. What more could she expect?
But he’d helped get great environmental laws passed for the state and the good of the people. She’d believed he was a sincere, dedicated man. And she’d been drawn to him because of their shared interests and goals.
With Barry she’d approached their relationship with logic and common sense rather than passion, and she’d felt proud of herself for not swooning and falling into a pit of sexual heat, as she had with Mitch. They had dated and then moved in with each other about a year later. She’d thought they’d shared goals and ideals.
Eventually, when she’d learned she was pregnant, she’d been happy, envisioning the three of them as a perfect family. But only a few days later she’d learned quite by accident—through a stack of paperwork he’d left lying about in their apartment—that he’d been involved in some unscrupulous dealings. And to make matters worse, when she’d confronted him, he’d clearly felt no shame over his behavior.
When she’d announced to Barry that she was leaving, he’d been shocked that she would turn down such a catch as him. He’d considered himself a rising star in the state political arena, and he’d expected Alexa to want to ride on his coattails all the way to the top. But once she’d discovered his underhanded dealings, she’d had no choice but to end everything between them.
She couldn’t live with an immoral man, much less have her child raised by one. Barry hadn’t seen it that way, and for a few weeks he’d made ugly noises about custody rights and using his political pull to take the child completely away from her. That had been his way of forcing her into coming back to him.
But she and Barry had both known that he’d not really wanted her or the child that much. He simply hadn’t wanted to lose the fight.
Fortunately, he’d eventually come to the conclusion that their relationship could never be salvaged. He’d decided that signing his rights to the baby over to her would be much better than Alexa’s exposing his misdeeds to a pack of hungry newspaper reporters.
It was a relief to know that she was free of Barry now, she thought. She only wished she was free of the damage his betrayal had done to her self-confidence, her ability to judge people on the inside, where it really mattered.
A footfall on the concrete patio pulled Alexa from her glum thoughts, and she turned her head to see Jonas Redman standing a few feet away. A duffel bag was thrown over his shoulder, and he appeared tired and dusty. Foolish excitement hummed along her veins.
“Excuse me for interrupting, Alexa. I only wanted to let you know that I’m finally here. I meant to arrive earlier, but things got busy.”
Her heart thumping, Alexa swung her legs to the ground and rose to her feet. “That’s all right. If you’d like to come in, I’ll show you your room.”
Nodding, he followed her through the back door of a small atrium filled with all types of potted plants and cushioned lawn furniture, then into a dimly lit kitchen.
“Sassy is out for the evening,” she informed him. “But Reena, our cook, saved supper for you.”
“No need for that,” Jonas replied. “I can eat with the boys in the bunkhouse. Gus will have something left over.”
She
