heard Jace’s deep voice come from just inside as she stood to follow Willy. By the time she was on her feet again Jace was out the door, one big hand on Willy’s head to urge him in the same direction.
“’Mornin’,” Jace said, ignoring Willy’s obvious lack of desire to rejoin her.
“Good morning.”
Willy tugged on Jace’s pant leg—apparently a signal that he wanted to be picked up, because the tall man bent over and did just that, settling the child on one hip.
When he was situated, Willy whispered something in Jace’s ear and in response to it, Jace said, “Her name is Clair. She’s your aunt—that’s someone like Josh and Beau and Ethan and Scott and Devon. They’re your uncles, and ladies like them are called aunts.”
Willy shook his head, vigorously, solemnly and muttered, “Ants’re bugs.”
Clair felt her heart clench at the continuing rejection, but she laughed at his reasoning, anyway.
“Some ants are bugs and other kinds of aunts are people. Clair is not a bug,” Jace tutored. Then, in a confidential voice directed into the boy’s ear, he added, “Why don’t you say good morning to her?”
“No,” Willy responded without hesitation and with as much force as his earlier nos to her.
“Come on. She’s a nice lady. Pretty, too. And if I’m rememberin’ right, she’s come a long way to see you.”
Willy shook his head once more, a stern refusal. Then he stuck his index finger in his mouth and glared at Clair.
“Okay,” Jace conceded as if it were Willy’s loss. “But me, I like pretty ladies.”
Willy shook his head again and remained mute.
Jace ignored that, too, and focused his denim-blue eyes entirely on Clair. “He’s had a lot of upheaval in the past few months,” he said. “And he’s two.”
Clair nodded as if she understood, but she couldn’t keep her spirits from deflating slightly at this second, less-than-enthusiastic beginning.
Then, in a cheerier tone, Jace said, “Shall we get goin’?”
“Sure,” Clair agreed, putting some effort into hiding her disappointment that Willy wouldn’t have anything to do with her.
To Willy, Jace said, “I see you found your tool belt. So we should be all set.”
This time the small, bur-cut head bobbed up and down, and Willy held aloft the toy tool belt he’d located a few minutes earlier by the side of the porch.
Jace turned back to the house to close and lock the door. As he did, Clair’s gaze went with a will of its own to the man himself.
He was dressed much like Willy was—cowboy boots instead of work boots, blue jeans, and a jean jacket over a faded red Henley shirt over a white crew-neck T-shirt that showed beneath the Henley’s open placket.
But it wasn’t merely the clothes that Clair took notice of. It was also the way the clothes fit the man.
The T-shirt molded to impressive pectorals. The waist-length jean jacket was stretched to its limits by the breadth of his shoulders and the expanse of his muscular arms. And the jeans…oh, the jeans! They were just snug enough to cup a derriere to die for.
Clair’s mouth went dry, her heart started thrumming all over again, and she felt as if her temperature had gone up.
Maybe she’d caught some kind of country fever, she thought. Some kind of country fever that was making her body react to things she shouldn’t even be aware of.
Or maybe it was cowboy fever, she amended, none too patient with herself.
But country fever or cowboy fever, she forced her eyes off Jace’s rear end in the nick of time as he spun back around on his heels with a sexy bit of grace and agility that made her think he was probably a good dancer.
He pointed his chin toward the black truck in the driveway and said, “Hope you don’t mind sittin’ in the middle. Willy’s car seat has to be on the passenger’s side because of the seat belt.”
It wasn’t sitting in the middle that she minded. The problem was the effect it would have on her to be that close to Jace.
“Maybe I should follow behind in my car,” she suggested when it occurred to her, trying not to think about his behind….
“You can if you want but it seems silly. Unless you aren’t plannin’ to spend the whole day with us.”
“No, it isn’t that,” she answered in a hurry, concerned that he’d gotten the impression she didn’t want to be with Willy that long. “I just thought that if I was crowding you—”
“There’s plenty of room,” he assured her before she could finish her attempt to cover her tracks.
“Okay, then,” she said much too happily, when the truth was that just the thought of being that near to Jace on the truck’s bench seat raised her temperature another notch. Cowboy fever. If there was such a thing, she really thought she had it.
But since there was no rectifying the situation, she went along with Jace and Willy to the truck, arriving on the driver’s side at the same moment Jace did.
He reached in front of her and opened the door for her, then rounded the cab to deposit Willy in the car seat and buckle him in.
That was accomplished by the time Clair slid in next to the child. But her welcome there was cold as Willy frowned at her as if she were intruding, then presented her with the back of his head, looking through the side window in yet another rejection of her.
She really didn’t know what to do about him. But before she could come up with anything, Jace was behind the wheel and she was left torn between the child who didn’t want anything to do with her and the man whose very presence did too much to her.
And all she could do was hope that the trip they were about to embark on was short.
For a while, as Jace drove through town, neither of them said anything, and Clair was every bit as hyper-sensitive to his proximity as she’d feared she would be.
The scent of his woodsy, clean-smelling aftershave didn’t help. In fact it almost seemed to intoxicate her and make her even more aware of every little detail about him. Even more vulnerable to what she thought had to be just plain animal magnetism.
He seemed to be trying to give her as much space as he could, because he was hugging the driver’s side door, bracing his left elbow on the armrest and leaning his jawbone on his fist.
It was actually a pretty relaxed way to drive since he was using his right wrist to control the steering wheel on the straightaways, leaving his hand to dangle on the other side of the wheel.
But nothing could put more than an inch of distance between his thigh and hers, and Clair was excruciatingly aware of it. It left her with the inexplicable sense that she could feel the heat of that thigh seeping into her in a very sensual way….
“How
