The regular guy walked around her toward the table.
“Then your troubles for the evening will be over,” Mrs. Hargrove said kindly as she put a hand on Jenny’s arm. “We’re so grateful for all the work you’ve done, dear.”
Robert frowned as he set the saucepan on the table. If dinner was coming soon, he had work to do fast. He suspected people were always more easily shocked on an empty stomach. Plus, after dinner, the sounds of those records playing would mask his attempts at being outrageous.
He’d given some thought to his dilemma while outside and he’d decided age could go two ways. Instead of focusing on someone young like Bambi, he could try someone old enough to be his grandmother.
“Ah, there you are.” Robert turned back to Mrs. Hargrove. He understood she was the Sunday school teacher for most of the little people in Dry Creek. She should be thoroughly offended by a kiss from a strange man. Everyone else should be shocked, too.
He looked around for Bambi and called her over. There’d be no point in rattling the people of Dry Creek if he couldn’t shake up the rest of the country, too.
“Yes?” Mrs. Hargrove looked up at him. Her eyes were bright with curiosity. Her cheeks were pink. She must be seventy years old. She looked like every cookie-lover’s picture of Grandma.
Robert dove right in. “I love you.”
“Why, I love you, too.” She beamed back.
“What?” Robert stalled. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to go.
“I love all of God’s children,” Mrs. Hargrove continued. “They say that’s how Christians will know each other. By the love they have for others. I John 4:7. Does this mean you’re a Christian?”
“Well, no, I—I mean I’m not opposed to Christianity.” Robert started to sweat in earnest. How had God gotten into this? “Don’t really even know much about it—”
“Well, I’d be happy to tell you.”
“Great, maybe later. It’s just that’s not what I meant when I said I love you.”
“Well, then, what did you mean?”
Robert was desperate. He looked over and nodded at Bambi. She was in position. Then he started to bend down.
Unfortunately, Mrs. Hargrove bent, too. “My beads.”
Robert heard the scattered dropping of pearls as his kiss landed smack on the top of Mrs. Hargrove’s gray head. His lips met the scalp where her hair was parted.
“Oh, dear,” Mrs. Hargrove said as she bent down farther.
Now Robert couldn’t even kiss the top of her head unless he squatted down to where his kneecaps should be.
“Here, let me help you,” Jenny said as she stepped closer to both of them.
Robert wasn’t about to give up. It wasn’t ideal. But the camera was in place and he was determined to kiss someone. Even if it was Jenny.
He heard her first soft shocked breath as he drew Jenny to him. He was close enough to feel her second indignant breath as he bent his head.
The camera flashed. The talking stopped. A bead rolled.
Robert was triumphant. His big moment was recorded. He could end the kiss. But he didn’t. Something was happening.
The kiss blossomed. Jenny tasted of home. The minute Robert felt her lips tremble beneath his, he was lost. He didn’t want the kiss to end. He felt like he had caught a fragile thread of something precious he didn’t even understand.
“Mmmm, sweet. I like that—I mean you—I like you,” he whispered when he finally drew away.
“Not love?” Bright red dots stood out on both of Jenny’s cheeks. “I thought ‘I love you’ came easy enough to your type.”
Robert felt like he was coming out of a cozy cave and facing the frost of winter.
“My type?” he asked cautiously.
Jenny’s brown eyes had deepened to a snapping black. She bristled.
“The type of man who kisses his employees—whom he likes —even when he says he loves Mrs. Hargrove.”
“I don’t kiss my employ—” Robert stopped. That was no longer true. “I mean, I don’t. Well, I didn’t—”
There was an incessant ringing somewhere and a gnarled old hand reached from behind Robert. Mr. Gossett had pulled the ringing phone out of the coat pocket. “This yours?”
“You want it?” Robert asked Jenny.
Jenny’s cheeks were red still and her breathing quick. She was adorable.
Robert suspected she reached for the phone more for something to do than because she wanted to talk.
“Yes.” Jenny turned her back to him and walked a few feet away.
“You talked to him!” She looked over her shoulder in a betraying move. It was the sister. “So he knows.”
Robert knew he should pick up on the accusation Jenny had left dangling and make some strong sexual harassment statements. Publicly threaten to fire her unless she kissed him again. That would certainly knock him off the bachelor list. Women didn’t tolerate sexual harassment anymore and they shouldn’t.
But Robert didn’t open his mouth. Suddenly the list was not all that important.
He had met the woman the Bob inside him wanted to marry and she was looking at him this very minute like he was some hair ball a very unwelcome stray cat had coughed up.
Considering the set of her jaw as she talked to her sister, Robert figured he had as much chance of ever kissing her again as he had of teaching that stray cat to dance a tango.
Chapter Three
“H e kissed you! You’re telling me he kissed you! Robert Buckwalter the Third kissed you!”
Jenny’s sister was screeching so loudly Jenny had to hold the cell phone away from her ear. She’d slipped outside so that she could finish the phone conversation in private. She shivered from the cold.
“After he kissed Mrs. Hargrove,” Jenny said as she wiped one hand on her chef’s apron. The coarse bleached muslin steadied her. She was a chef. An employee. “He’s my boss. He can’t kiss me. He didn’t even say he loved me.”
“Love! He loves you!” her sister screeched even louder.
“No, he didn’t say that—that’s what I’m saying. He didn’t even attempt to be sincere.”
“But he kissed you.”
The Montana night was lit by some stars and a perfectly round
