Midnight Faith. Gena Dalton

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      Jackson turned his hands—his bare hands—palms up.

      “What can I say? I’m all hers. I live to please her.”

      “Hey, hey, get a grip,” Clint said, grabbing his arm in mock panic. “Be sure not to tell her that!”

      Jackson just grinned at him and Clint grinned back. Then he got serious and searched his face.

      “No foolin’, Jackson,” he said. “You think she loves you as much as you love her?”

      Still smiling, Jackson nodded.

      “I know she does.”

      “How do you know?”

      “I can tell. By the way she acts. By what she says.”

      When Clint just stared at him without saying any more, Jackson nailed him with a sharp look.

      “How come you wanna know? You fallin’ for somebody?”

      He thought for a minute, then snapped his fingers as best he could.

      “Lorrie Nolan! I heard you took her to Hugo’s for breakfast the other day!”

      Clint snorted.

      “Are you and Lorrie…”

      “No!”

      “She’d be a good match for you—she’s got a mind of her own.”

      “Yeah. A mind to be a McMahan.”

      Clint turned and started past the last half of the stalls.

      “Check ’em on that side for me, will ya?” he said.

      “Yeah. And you tell me what you’re talkin’ about, then, if it’s not you and Lorrie.”

      Clint shrugged.

      “Women in general, I guess,” he said. “When they act like a different person than they ever did before, how d’you know which one’s real?”

      Then he snapped his jaw shut. He wasn’t saying any more, no matter what, because this whole conversation was nothing but a stupid waste of breath. Jackson couldn’t be a bit of help, anyhow, blindly in love with Darcy as he was.

      But Jackson was silent, thinking about it.

      “Well,” he drawled at last, “I’d say, Clint, ol’ bro, if she’s actin’ like she never did before, she might have changed her mind. She may be trying to tell you somethin’.”

      By the time he and Jackson got to the house, only the immediate family, which included various relatives of Bobbie Ann’s, was left. At least the evening was passing.

      Everybody was standing around talking in the dining room or going in and out of it, bringing in food and lighting candles, and Aunt Faylene was at the sideboard taking the cover off one of her famous cakes. She turned and smiled at them as they walked in.

      “My favorite nephews,” she proclaimed. “I want a hug.”

      They gave her hugs and listened to her chatter for a minute, then she said, very low, “Any word from Monte?”

      “Not that I know of,” Clint said.

      “You’d know,” she said, her lips tightening. “Poor Bobbie Ann’d be walking on air if he’d called.”

      Her gaze went to her sister, just coming in from the kitchen with a huge crock of chili. Clint went to help her with it.

      “Places, everyone,” she called. “Time for dinner.”

      Clint set the crock in the middle of the long table and glanced around.

      “Where’s Cait?” he said.

      No one knew.

      “I’ll get her,” he said, and left the room.

      First she wouldn’t dance, then she wouldn’t mingle and now she wouldn’t come to dinner. What was she doing, anyhow? Bobbie Ann didn’t need another worry, nor another absentee right now. He would say something to Cait. If she was going to accept an invitation, then she had an obligation…

      The sight of her stopped him in his tracks.

      She sat beside the Christmas tree with her knees drawn up and her arms wrapped around them, staring at it as if she were a little girl. Lost in its magic.

      As he watched, she lifted one hand and fingered the glass bead on the simple necklace at her throat. She was gone someplace else, that was for sure. Dinner at the Rocking M was the furthest thing from her mind right now.

      A thought came, unbidden. Was she thinking about John? Remembering times with him? Had they shared a mighty love like Darcy and Jackson’s seemed to be?

      His gut told him no. Darcy and Jackson were a matched pair. Anybody could spend five minutes with them and know that. John and Cait had been a whole different story.

      She laid her head against her knees for a long moment, then lifted it and looked up at the angel at the top of the tree. The white profile of her face and throat was so pure and beautiful it made him swallow hard.

      Slowly he walked across the room. She didn’t even hear his boot heels on the tiled floor. He reached the circle of light made by the tree and looked down at her sitting in its shadow.

      “Cait?”

      She started as if he’d waked her from sleep. A quick flash of fear crossed her face, then surprise. Was that a sheen of tears in her eyes?

      It moved him. Against his will.

      It made him want to protect her, somehow. Which was a laughable thought, for sure.

      What was she afraid of? The Caitlin he knew wasn’t scared of anything.

      “Dinner’s ready.”

      Cait wanted to get up. She really did. But Clint was so close she could smell his aftershave.

      His gray eyes were so intense they seared her skin.

      The heat rose up in her neck and her entire body tilted to feverish.

      Just like early this morning when she’d walked in on him riding that colt.

      Just like the moment, dear Lord help her, that she’d looked at him across the back of the black horse and told him, “Christmas Eve gift.”

      “Time for dinner,” he said, as if she spoke a foreign language and he should try another phrase to convey the same information.

      But she was frozen there, despite the blood pulsing through her veins hot enough to melt her.

      He took a step closer, as if to see what was wrong, and for one instant she thought he was going to hold out his СКАЧАТЬ