The repairs on the backup generator were nearly complete. Ty left the two mechanics to finish up while he went by the calving shed to inform Arch Goodman of the work’s status. At least, that was the excuse he used for going there.
Goodman was working right alongside the others, busy birthing a calf. “Help yourself to some coffee from the thermos,” he invited. “Be with you directly.”
A rickety cardboard table served as a coffee bar, stationed in a sheltered corner of the shed. Halfway to it, Ty spotted Jessy leaning upright against a roughed-out interior wall with her legs braced in front of her. He felt a small kick of pleasure.
Her long, slim body looked more rounded and firmly packed with its layer of insulated underwear and two layers of clothes beneath the winter jacket. A gold wool scarf was tied around her head, a dirty brown hat jammed on top of it. She saw him and, despite the tiredness in her expression, gave him the ghosting warmth of a smile. Ty had to stop himself from walking right to her and paused at the coffee urn instead, filling a paper cup.
“You should be sitting down,” he observed over the rim of the cup he lifted to his mouth.
“No.” There was a smile in her voice. “I wouldn’t be able to get up again.”
With the weather and the naturally busy time of year, the demands of work had gone too wild for Ty to see her more than twice since the last time they’d been together, and each of the subsequent times had been during the course of work. The heaviness seemed to leave his mind. There was something about her company that produced a warm ease in him, something solid that gave its own kind of heady glow. So different than anything he’d felt with Tara.
Ty wasn’t conscious of how hard he’d been staring at her until she looked down. “I guess I’m a dirty, smelly sight, aren’t I?” It was admitted with self-deprecating candor that had a rebellious ring to it. It showed clear when her eyes flashed upward at him. “You don’t have to smile like that and make me feel even scroungier,” she said in protest.
“Now I know you’re a woman,” Ty said and wandered closer, a humorous gleam in his eyes. “You’re dead tired and dragging, but you’re still worrying about how you look.”
“I guess it shouldn’t matter. You’ve seen me looking worse than this.” There was a watchful expectancy in her expression, a waiting that always pulled at him like some powerful undertow.
“You look good to me,” he said simply and discovered it was true.
With the scarf wrapped around her head and throttling her throat there was nothing to distract his gaze from the strong, pure lines of her face. Sun wrinkles made smiles at the corners of her clear almond-brown eyes, and the rounded ridges of her cheekbones stood out cleanly. Her wide lips lay comfortably together, warmly drawn and generous. His glance dropped much lower, to the bulky front of her jacket. A sudden wry smile pulled at one corner of his mouth.
“Why is it that every time I look at your mouth, I automatically glance at your breasts?” he mused aloud in a familiarly intimate tone.
“I never caught you looking at them.” She gazed at him anew.
“All men look. They just try not to be seen looking,” Ty murmured, a lazy caress coming into his tone. “You have such little ones—little and so very sensitive.”
As he braced a leather-gloved hand on a rough board near her head, her breath quickened. He began leaning closer, his glance running more and more often to her mouth. She remained poised and motionless, under a spell and afraid to break it.
Someone shouted, and the voice sounded nearby. There was the scuffle and thud of boots climbing a pen fence. In that instant, Ty became conscious of their surroundings and straightened away from her, lifting his coffee cup to take a quick drink.
A heaviness settled onto her as grim knowledge entered her eyes. “Now that begins, doesn’t it?” she said and didn’t wait for him to ask what she meant. She’d seen his darted glance, that over-the-shoulder caution. “The wondering if we’re being seen together? Who might be watching? When you come to my place, you’ll probably have the urge to park behind the cabin where your truck can’t be seen. And I’ll start pulling the window shades. Still, we’ll jump at every sound.”
His tight-pressed mouth told its own story of agreement. “Are you sorry, Jessy?”
She thought about it a moment before she slowly shook her head. “No. Maybe it’s wrong. But I never had even this much before. I’m not complaining, Ty.”
But he was having regrets and misgivings. She could see it. His half-narrowed gaze was skimming the calving shed and its workers. Jessy looked out over the pens, and a small smile touched her mouth. Since Ty had joined her, none of the men had taken a break for coffee and a smoke.
“They all know, Ty,” she said as she continued to look out. “You can’t hide anything that goes on at this ranch from them . . . not for long.”
“Have they said anything to you?”
“No, and they won’t.” Jessy faced him, calm and vaguely tolerant. “You should know that’s not the way of things here. No, they’ll just stand back and let me sort out my own problems. They don’t make judgments as quickly as you might think. They wait and see.”
“Is that why you look at me that way? To wait and see?”
“I know you’re going to make a decision, or you’re not the man I think you are.” Part of her even knew what it was going to be. Tara’s hold on him was strong; and a Calder lived with his mistakes, he didn’t shuck them. Put those two facts together and the outcome was almost a foregone conclusion.
There were some on the ranch who questioned Ty’s ability. He had been raised differently and educated differently. Some said he was too quick to discard the old way things were done in favor of a new one—too willing to accept change. The way he let his wife go off alone on trips had raised many an eyebrow at this example of a modern marriage.
But a lot of people overlooked the two qualities Jessy saw—his aggressiveness and his determination to succeed. They spurred him hard, harder than a lot of people realized. Jessy had glimpsed them beneath that mask of patience. She had yet to see whether these two powerful traits would overshadow his consideration of other people and things.
“It’s time I was getting back to work.” She pushed away from the wall and downed the rest of the now-tepid coffee in her paper cup before tossing it into a five-gallon pail.
“Jessy.” There was a troubled urgency in his voice as a step carried her near to him.