Page 41 of Snow in Texas

“Not judging,” Candy assured, grinning.

Jenny snorted. “Uh-huh.” She slapped a plate down in front of Colin and said, “I need to leave in about ten minutes.” When both men stared at her, she said, “Work.”

Colin looked at her, then at the steaming potato cakes. “Do I have time to eat real quick?”

“You don’t have to come,” she assured. “If Candy’s still insisting on guard dogs” – she rolled her eyes – “I’m sure Fox could–”

Colin scowled and forked several cakes onto his plate. “I’mcoming with you.” And a man’s tone didn’t get much more final than that.

~*~

She was leaving the sanctuary, tugging the door shut behind her, purse hiked up on one shoulder, when she ran into something. A wall that hadn’t been there before. A very solid wall, that grabbed her by the arms.

Okay, not a wall. She smelled him, recognized him with that post-sex sixth sense there was no denying, before she tipped her head back and saw that it was Colin she’d crashed into.

“Shit. Sorry.” Why was she nervous? She smiled to prove that she wasn’t, but knew it was a strained expression. “You ready to go?”

“Yeah. I was coming to get you.” His gaze was trained not on her face, but a little lower, and to the side.

There was something she wanted to say, so she took a deep breath. “Colin, I don’t know what all my brother said to you this morning, but if he was an ass, I’m sorry, I…what are you looking at?” It was distracting, his off-center stare.

“Trying to see something.” His large, golden hand lifted and pushed back her hair. She knew what he had exposed, and imagined the skin beneath the bruise rippled in response to being examined. She shivered.

He grinned, though. “Damn. That’s pretty dark.”

“Yeah.” Her voice grew faint as remembered sensation stirred in her bloodstream. “Darla saw it.”

“Yeah?” He seemed pleased. “Never hurt anybody to see something like that.”

“Colin–”

“Probably some people you know – a certain ATF agent and his brother, maybe – who ought to see it.”

Jenny sucked in a breath. “Can we go?”

His eyes came to her face, finally, dark and intense. “Yeah.” He released her.

But as she walked forward, he hooked a strand of her hair with a finger, let it slide through his grip as she moved away from him.

It was going to be an interesting day.

Nineteen

Colin

It was different now. He’d be the first one to say that sex was just sex, but in this case, it had shifted the balance between Jenny and him. It hadn’t given him more power – nothing could make that possible – but it had given them a whole new axis. What had passed during the night now lay hot and unquestionable between them; the boundaries were slipperier, the personal defenses transparent at best. Before, Colin had watched her move around the restaurant and seen the rigid lines of tension down her back, the shields in her eyes when she happened to look at him – which hadn’t been often, because she’d made a point of avoiding his gaze.

Now, she shot him frequent glances, where he was reclined back against the wall, nursing tea at a table with a view of the entire small building. The tension he’d come to expect had vanished. At ease with her customers, comfortable in the same old routine of her job, he saw her smile more, saw her blow out a deep breath and massage a kink from her lower back, a show of weakness she hadn’t allowed herself previously.

He also saw, when she pushed her hair back, the dark shadow of the bite he’d left on the side of her throat, and that made him grin.

She took her lunch break at eleven-thirty; he watched her untie her apron, stow it and walk toward him with a basket of onion rings. That was when he saw it – not tension, he couldn’t call it that. But a little under-the-skin shiver that reached her eyes as she slid in across from him and met his gaze.

The onion rings had just come out of the fryer, glistening with grease and pulsing ribbons of steam up into the sunlight.

“I needed something fatty,” Jenny said. She picked one up, grimaced, and blew on it as it burned her fingers. “Figured you might too.”

“I’ll never say no to onion rings.” But he didn’t reach for any right away, instead studied her. She had smudges beneath her eyes from physical exhaustion, but she seemed energetic.

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