I grab my namesake, his wings flapping, his beady eye glaring.
“I’m putting you back where you belong.” He gives my hand a sharp peck and I curse. “Hold still, will you?”
I’m walking across the yard, toward the chicken run, when I hear the sound of a car rumbling up the drive. By the groaning and backfiring, I’d say it’s the station wagon. I smile. My wife’s home.
I shove Billy back in the chicken run, closing the gate. Sure enough, it’s Jamie. She pulls under the carport, then climbs out of the wagon.
The kids are running around the yard. I walk past them, my eyes on my wife. She looks tired, her eyes have bags under them and her shoulders are slumped. She leans against the car door and gives a slight smile at the kids, but when she sees me coming her smile fades.
I pause a few feet from her, taking her in, breathing in her beeswax smell, watching her eyes shift from want to determined resistance.
“You’re here,” she says, and I huff, because every time she sees me here, she seems surprised that I’m still around.
“Where else would I be?” I watch her face flush.
She shrugs. “Thank you for being here when the kids got home.”
I reach forward and wipe a streak of dust from her cheek.
“Of course.” She called Big Tom’s cell at three, saying she still had another house to clean, and could I make it back in time. I could. I did. “It’s my job, isn’t it?”
“Hmm.”
Dang. I can’t take it anymore. I lean forward, cup her cheek, I want to kiss her again. She shakes her head, my lips an inch from hers.
“What?”
She clears her throat and looks up at me with wavering eyes. “I don’t think we should…kiss.”
I frown. Her saying that makes a queasy feeling start in my stomach. “Why not?”
She turns her face to the side, and I drop my hand from her warm skin.
“I think…I think we should wait to do things until you have your memory back.”
I frown. What she’s saying makes sense, except, “What if I never get my memory back?”
She jerks back toward me, her cheeks flushing.
“Well.” She clears her throat. “Gran always says, weddin’ without courtin’ is like vittles without salt.”
I let out a shocked laugh. I’ll bet she does. I decide to point out the obvious.
“But we’re already wed.”
Jamie drops her chin, acknowledging my point. “Except we don’t know each other. We should take the time to learn each other before doing…that.”
That right there is worse than sitting shut in a dark, locked room. Which, apparently, is my worst nightmare. Touching her is like touching starlight. She lights up the dark. And no kisses…
I’d like to see how serious she is about this rule. I shake my head and give a grumpy frown. “No deal.”
She coughs and then lifts her eyebrows angrily.
“No deal?” She sounds like she’s about to unleash a whole world of hurt on me.
I grin. There’s that stubborn, intractable woman I thought she was when she came for me at the hospital.
I lift an eyebrow and plow on. “I like kissing you. When we kiss, it feels like I’m getting to know you better. Don’t you feel that too? Doesn’t kissing count toward learning each other?”