Soul Food (7 page)

At first he wondered why, then he knew for certain when her face turned pink. She didn’t want to have to field awkward questions from her friends about her business, or downright lie to them about it. Well, he’d be by her side. He could help out with her moral dilemma. His dad sure had a way of making wrong things sound right. Jason had learned from a master.

“No, I’d like to go. Really.”

“You sure? I don’t mean to sound…well, I don’t know the word. Maybe it’s surprised. I gathered you aren’t a regular at Mountainview Church.”

Jason shook his head, almost feeling heat rise. “That’s right. I’m not. Never been a regular church goer anyplace. Thing is, I liked it.” He paused while she got them coffee. “I’ve visited other edifices. I was in a tourist line during an ordination of a priest at Chartres once. My mom dragged us to a retreat at a Buddhist monastery when I was little. Did the vortex thing in Sedona. But I was always an onlooker with big eyes. I felt no disrespect, but I had no interest in what was going on. Today…” He cleared his throat. It almost sounded bogus, even corny, in his own head. “…today I honestly felt something.”

“Really?” Kelley’s eyes, dried now, widened like summer moons.

Must be nice, he thought she muttered but he couldn’t be sure. “I’d also like to meet more people.”

Kelly laughed out loud. “Come now. You’ve been here three months, and Mountain Cove isn’t all that big. Suffice it to say I bet you’re already met everybody here. But okay, let’s go. Could you get some doughnuts, too?” Her voice turned grumbly again. Maybe it was worry about the Colemans, too.

Inside the Fireside Room, greetings for Kelley rang out, and Jason did recognize quite a few people. Several lucky folks lounged on a comfortable couch, but most sat in a circle of folding chairs. When Kelley sat, he moved in next to her balancing coffee and a maple bar on his knees.

“Jason Easterday,” Kelley announced in a group intro for those few who may not know him. “He’s our geneticist while Nick’s deployed.”

“I also consult for my parent company BeauVine.” Jason threw out for a bit of PR.

“What does that mean?” A voice asked.

“I advise ranchers, including Hearts Crossing, how genetic testing can improve the tenderness and quality grades of their beef.” He said, knowing full well most of his words were boring hogwash.

“Good to see you here, Jason.” Pastor Hale’s warm voice filled the room as he took a overstuffed armchair that had been left empty for him. “I sure hope you’ll be sticking around after Nick returns.”

Jason felt another rush of heat. Since yesterday, meeting Kelley, he kind of liked the idea. But there were always places to go and people to meet. That was his nature, his blood. His lips curved wryly. His genetics.

His friend-with-burger-benefits, Bobbi Doering, a pretty but inconsequential blonde, sat in the circle across from him and kept looking Kelley up and down.

“Awesome dress,” she said, then gave Jason a very significant glare, eyes all over him. Heart falling, he realized his growing fear that she’d considered him more than a friend had been correct, and bursts of shame flamed over him. Likely he’d made an enemy last night by breaking what he’d honestly considered a
faux
date. Carefully, he moved away from Kelley so not even their clothing touched.

“Thanks, Bobbi,” Kelley replied almost as if she swallowed something. “You home visiting your folks for the weekend?”

Bobbi turned her eyes to Kelley again and smoothed her slim black jeans from hip to knee. “Yes. I’ve been coming home weekends for the last three months or so.” Her eyelids flickered once at Jason, and he read that he was the reason.

Kelley’s eyes clouded a bit when she continued. “So how is …pediatrics?”

Jason felt a surge of admiration for Bobbi’s career as a pediatric oncology nurse. That had to be heartrending work to which a deformed dead calf couldn’t begin to compare.

Bobbi hung her head, her giant earrings wobbling. “Too busy, unfortunately. Sometimes I just need to get back here and put my head on straight. You know.” She shot him a glare. “So how about you, Kelley? How’s that restaurant of yours?” Fluttering eyelashes and wide eyes, she seemed to hold her breath, waiting for Kelley to answer.

Just as Kelley’s cheekbones purpled, Jason found words to step in. He had to help her out like that Bible verse said, and he all but laid his hand on her knee. “Vegeterra is quite the place. You haven’t tasted anything until her Sloppy Josephines. And graham flatbread.”

Bobbi’s nose crinkled.

“And I hear Saturday tea rocks.” Jason finished, so proud of his support that he freaked at Kelley’s angry expression. Her jaw clamped so tight he thought he’d hear teeth crack any second, and she pulled away from him as far as her chair would allow.

What on earth had he done?

“Sounds wonderful.” Bobbi nodded with what might have been a real smile if Jason hadn’t broken the date and hadn’t sat next to Kelley Martin. “I remember those Josephines of yours. I’ll try to get to your place one of these days.”

A few others in the group nodded and mumbled about visiting Vegeterra someday, but Pastor Hale brought the assembly back to attention by distributing a handout. Kelley’s smile bore a tweak of sourness. Likely she knew none of the folks would make the effort either. Suddenly Jason felt a new round of heat for not tasting some of her fare yesterday since he’d just gone and yelped about how good it was.

Feeling something burn his cheek where the butterfly kiss had been, Jason peeked up from his handout and saw Kelley’s gaze trying to drill a hole into his face. He smiled but she just shook her head ever so slightly, eyes closing as if she couldn’t bear to look at him. Pastor Hale led a fine discussion after that on the “fragrance of beauty,” on digging deeper into relationships after the bloom of initial attraction had faded. However, Jason only took the pastor’s words to half-heart because Kelley mad at him was a bad thing. A very bad thing that was all that mattered to him right now. For sure he’d never meant to hurt her or set her off.

By now, she sat so stiff, so bent away from him he reckoned her muscles hurt. Had there been any empty seats close by, Jason knew she’d have scooted into one faster than an angry hornet.

The discussion droned around him, and from the lively banter, Jason regretted his distraction. These were good people and Pastor Hale a wise man. At least Jason tried to participate in the closing prayer this time with both head and heart, but at the last amen, Kelley was up and bounding out the door of the meeting room.

Truth to tell, she was practically galloping across the parking lot and not heading for his truck, either.

But he was faster, reached her side and took her hand. “Kelley, hold up. What on earth’s the cold shoulder for?”

She opened her mouth but nothing but a sputter came out. “You. I am perfectly capable of taking care of myself, Jason.”

“I thought you could use some support.”

“And why is that?”

“Well, the pastor’s words. About encouraging one another and building up one another.”

“What?” Astonishment blazed across her face. “Oh, I get it. You go to church to butter up my mother and that instantly makes you a do-good missionary.”

“I just thought…”

“Don’t think. You’ve known me one day. Those people in there, I grew up with them.”

“I figured as such. So I wanted to help.”

“Help?”

“Well, what
did
you want?” His temper usually didn’t run away from him, but there was always a first time, and unfortunately it was today. “You want to tell everybody your business isn’t doing well? That your hopes and dreams might be crashing to dust?” He grimaced in instant, terrible regret. “Kelley, I’m sorry. Please, you know I am.”

She shrugged, but her hot gaze was so unfriendly he ached. “You’re right. Of course you’re right.” Kelley’s jaw clenched as she hesitated. “But just so you know. From now on, I can take care of myself. And if you don’t mind, I think I’ll hitch a ride back to the ranch with Scott.”

Of course. He deserved that and nodded, but a big lump of regret lodged in his stomach. “So I’ll just pass on Sunday dinner.”

At that, she faced him, taller than ever, and for a ridiculous moment he thought she was offering a kiss. “No, you will not.” Anger tinged her words. “Unless it’s just easier to break this date, too.”

Date? He shut his eyes. Somehow she’d picked up on him and Bobbi.

“I for one,” Kelley fumed, “don’t go back on my word.”

5

Later that afternoon, chatting with her mule team in their corral, Kelley groaned as Jason caught up with her. He hadn’t moved a single muscle to go after her when she climbed into Scott’s truck at church, so she reckoned he didn’t care much after all.

As for her, what did she care? Truth was, she cared a lot. Another groan grumbled in her throat. She’d almost let her anger get substituted for a longing for a kiss.

“Hey,” he called, and her heart jumped.

He had that quiet walk—even the animals paid him no never mind, so she hadn’t heard his approach. And, well, Jason’s intangible scent that was somehow pine, clouds, and rainwater combined drifted through the air. Without her wanting it too, her heart jumped into her throat and stayed there, throbbing. Most of her wanted to smack him, but some part of her wanted to hold him close.

Make that, have him hold
her
close. She’d already realized that, even if she couldn’t accept it, she liked being around him. It had been a long time since a man had wanted to support her. Other than those related to her, of course, who had no choice.

But she had to make it clear. She could be a big girl all by herself despite those starlight sparkles that could flicker whenever she let them. So she didn’t let them, especially for a man who made no bones about moving on.

“Kelley…” He started, but she held up her hand, snug in her perch between the fence rails. For some reason, her bucket, empty now of carrots, caught her interest. It was either that or drown in his magazine looks and endless hazelnut eyes where she’d already seen herself mirrored once or twice.

“I don’t want to hear it, Jason. I know you did what you had to do. And maybe someday I’ll think it was kind of sweet.” She didn’t even know quite what she was criticizing, his cheerleading on her behalf at Bible Study, or his ill-treatment of Bobbi.

“Kel…”

She decided to go with Bobbi. “Jason, Bobbi is a nice woman. We’ve been friends since elementary school. You shouldn’t have broken your date with her.”

“It’s not what you think.” Jason stood very tall, very proud, like he’d done no wrong. “I admit we’ve gone out, but it’s a friends-with-benefits kind of thing.”

“Friends with benefits? You mean…” Heat flushed her cheeks and chest, and she stamped her foot in the dusty yard. “Well, I don’t believe you. Bobbi doesn’t go for casual, meaningless sex.”

A deep purple, like dusk falling on the mountains, darkened Jason’s cheekbones. “Ah, heck. It isn’t what you think at all. Not that kind of benefits.
Burger
-benefits.”

“Burger benefits?”

“Yep.” His own boots rustled, restless. “If Bobbi and I don’t have plans of a Saturday night, we go out for burgers. Sometimes the Butterbean. Sometimes Mel’s Stand. Once in a while the Cattleman Club in Promise.”

Kelley felt her brow furrow. The first two made sense, but the Cattleman Club was pricey and definitely romantic.

“So how many other times have you had to cancel when something else came up?” Somehow wounded herself, she wanted to dig deeper into whatever might discomfit him.

His face flushed a deeper burgundy even beneath his outrageously gorgeous tan. “Well, never.”

“All right then.” She sighed and forced her gaze to her mules, the four sweethearts who had pulled her chuck wagon for five summers. At least Sunday dinner hadn’t been awkward, not with the entire family wearing their biggest appetites and her brothers almost spoiling for a food fight. She’d paid one hundred percent attention to Ella completely cattywampus of Jason, who nonetheless had jawed and guffawed through five courses with her brothers like he belonged there.

Except he didn’t. And he’d made it perfectly clear. She ground her teeth, wishing for a stiff breeze to cool her face.

Jason took off his Stetson and slapped it against his well-made thigh as he leaned against the fence. The sudden wind that refreshed her ruffled his wheat-gold hair, tossing the too-long edges against his shoulders. “I should have eaten at Vegeterra, I admit, before I flapped my lips about it.” He was trying his aw-shucks mode, and she wasn’t going to fall for it. “But I still can’t think what I said was a bad thing.”

Kelley hopped off the fence and gathered the strength to look him face to face, to hold back the sparkles. To hold back a kick on the shins. To resist grabbing him close against her heart. Ma might have fallen for Pa at first glance and most of her brothers and their wives too, but as for her, she didn’t believe love at first sight was genetic, not at all.

Although Jason pushed upward beyond six-foot-three and then some, she was tallish herself, tall enough at any rate not to back down, especially with him scrunched down a bit in his lean toward her.

“And maybe I’ll see your point some day. But I have something else to say.” She cleared her throat because the stars had caught there again, and looked away to garner courage. Then she forced her gaze to meet his, despite the cost to her lungs and heart. “If I’m being forward, please forgive me. But I’m not so naïve I can’t read your signals. And I confess I’ve put something out there myself.” Heat raged again even in the cooling breeze. “But I’ve got to be cautious. OK?”

Suddenly she could barely breathe as bad memories surfaced.

“Why?”

“I spent four years with a man who hurt me.”

Jason shrugged. “I’m not like that man.”

“Maybe you are. He had no interest in building a life with me. And I can’t deny that’s what I want at the end of my days. A man holding my hand after making memories with a houseful of kids.”

Jason let out some sort of noncommittal sound that infuriated her all the more. “Despite the sparks, those butterfly kisses, well, you’ve said yourself you aren’t that kind of guy. I guess I’m just too tired and too dispirited to want a friend-with-burger-benefits. All right? So let’s just be plain friends. It’ll work out best for both of us that way. Especially on the wagon train.