Chapter Three
There he stood, Walker James McGrath.
Seeing him now was as much a shock as it had been hours earlier.
Her heartbeat kicked up and her breath came in gulps and she prayed
to dear god he wouldn’t notice. She’d hoped time and disinterest on
his part was the formula needed to destroy any remnants of what had
been her juvenile first love. Apparently, that hope was futile.
Having a physical reaction to Walker irritated the hell out of her
and had her scowling, though she assured herself her response was
due to surprise rather than any echo of lingering
feelings.
She studied him more thoroughly than
she’d done earlier. He’d lost the lankiness of his early twenties.
Now thirty-three, the muscular build he’d developed warned of
latent power barely held in check. He’d pushed goggles to the top
of his head, pulling back the thick dark hair that’d always fallen
over his forehead when he’d been a boy.
His hair was long, well past the
collar of his shirt. Coupled with the raw strength of his build, it
gave him a wild, untamed look. He’d inherited his dark hair from
his grandmother, who’d been partly of Mexican heritage, while eyes
of deep forest green came straight from James.
Delaney thought her appearance must’ve
caught Walker by surprise too. For a fraction of a second his gaze
had flared over her, bringing heat wherever it touched.
Then the shutters slammed down over
his eyes, erasing any trace of emotion.
“Take a wrong turn,
sweetheart? Or were you looking for me?” The goading tone annoyed
her, but it was countered by the effect it had on her. His voice
had grown deeper with time and washed over her like rippling water
smoothing over a sandy beach. She suppressed a shiver and decided
his questions didn’t deserve a response.
“Hello to you too,
Walker.”
He bent to stroke Callie’s head and
scoop up the brown and white dog at his feet. “A little late for
pleasantries, but at least you remember my name.”
She reached out a hand and the little
dog sniffed with an energetically twitching nose. “I’m not the one
with the memory problem who conveniently forgets the past.” She bit
her lip. As always, words escaped before she could think them
through. The dog gave her fingers a swipe with a pink tongue and
she latched on to the distraction.
“Hey, you’re a sweetie,”
she crooned. “What’s his name?” She glanced up to find Walker’s
gaze fixed firmly on her.
“Bud.”
“That’s not very
imaginative.”
“Says the woman who named
her pet rabbit Princess Dandelion. Imaginative is overrated.” He
paused. “See. I do remember.”
“You remember stupid
stuff. Besides, I was nine, and you called her PD for Plenty Dumb,
which was just mean.”
He cradled the little dog to his chest
and leaned against the door frame. His gaze seemed glued to her
face. Despite the cold temperature, he wore only the flannel shirt
he’d arrived in.
“What’s that supposed to
mean, what you said, that you’re not the one with a memory
problem?”
She clamped her mouth shut. So many
words wanted to tumble out, if she let them loose, it’d be morning
before she was done telling him what she really wanted to say. She
went with safe. “Nothing. What are you doing?” The scent of freshly
sawn wood brought a cascade of memories. The workshop was where
she’d always felt closest to James, which was probably why her
grief had led her there.
“What I need to do.” It
was no surprise he didn’t challenge her diversion. They each seemed
to be picking their way around the other, careful where they
stepped.
With a last narrow-eyed look at her,
he deposited the dog in a wood crate lined with a folded towel.
Walker left her at the door and crossed the room to where the table
saw stood ready. Callie immediately went to settle in the dog bed
James had placed for her in a corner.
A freshly ripped pine board leaned
against a wall next to the workbench. Ignoring Delaney, Walker
reached under the guard to flip a switch and the table saw hummed
to life. The blade whirred and made conversation impossible, which
was probably exactly what he intended.
He slowly fed another board through,
the blade screeching as wood shavings spewed. He’d pulled his thick
hair back from his face with a band, and the goggles were down,
protecting his eyes.
She steeled herself against his pull.
Why hadn’t he developed a beer belly and thinning hair? If there
was any fairness in the world, James would’ve been working that saw
and Walker would be someplace far away where he couldn’t disrupt
her life by simply occupying the same space.
She closed the door to keep out the
cold and looked around the shop, telling herself to get a grip. Her
heartrate had yet to settle, and being in an enclosed space with
Walker made her skin feel prickly in a weird kind of subliminal
response.
The thought made her uneasy. She
didn’t want that. She was too smart to risk falling in love with
him all over again.
No way did she want to deal with the
devastation when he left yet again. Maybe she should leave the farm
for a few days, let Walker have his visit, and she’d return when he
was gone. That would be smart, and certainly better than losing
control of her emotions, especially since anger was mixed up with
the remnants of her first love and she was discovering that with
him home, it was taking increasing effort to hold back long banked
unwanted feelings.
Even smarter would be to find out what
he planned, see how long he intended to stay, then she could adjust
her own schedule to avoid him.
Keeley Montaigne, Delaney’s best
friend since fifth grade, lived forty-five miles away in
Sacramento, and when Delaney told her of Walker’s imminent arrival,
she’d immediately offered an escape by inviting Delaney for a visit
of undetermined duration.
But there was the funeral and summer
season starting at the farm in a matter of weeks, so she couldn’t
bail. But she’d keep Keeley’s invitation in her back pocket in case
of emergency.
Walker leaned the long board against
the wall, then lifted another from a stack, his flannel shirt
straining over flexing muscles. She skirted the table saw, staying
out of range of the sawdust but keeping Walker in her peripheral
vision.
The stool stood in the corner in the
same spot where she’d sat a hundred times while watching James
work.
She’d never had any interest in
learning woodworking herself and had been content to sit and watch,
sometimes talking in the stretches of time when the power tools
were quiet. She couldn’t sit on that stool now. Her emotions were
simply too raw.
Instead, she wandered to the
workbench, picking up a woodworking tool and examining it before
setting it down and moving to the next one. Some of the tools
looked older than she was, meticulously clean, their grips well
worn.
James had been a stickler for taking
care of his tools and keeping the shop tidy. Memories of him
holding these tools in his hands had her lifting her shoulder to
wipe the dampness from her cheek.
A knife with a bone handle in a
leather sheath rested on the bench. She unsnapped the handle,
pulling the long blade free. It looked wicked sharp and she tested
its edge. A snarled oath had her jerking and a tiny pearl of blood
welled from her thumb. She gave a startled yelp when the knife was
snatched from her grip.
“What the hell are you
doing, preparing for a blood sacrifice?” Walker grasped her wrist
with one hand, stashing the knife on a high shelf while reaching
for the blue and white first aid kit with the other.
“I didn’t expect it to be
so sharp. And I wouldn’t have cut myself if you hadn’t made me
jump. Is that your knife? I don’t remember James having a knife
like that.”
He grabbed the knife again and showed
her his name carved into the handle. “Of course, it’s my knife, and
of course it’s sharp. That was a fucking stupid thing to do. I’d
have put it up out of reach first thing if I’d known a toddler
would come wandering in.”
“You’re overreacting.”
Pulling her arm to get away from him was like trying to break steel
shackles.
They were standing close, the
glittering fire in those green eyes enough to scorch her skin. She
swallowed convulsively, holding back a sigh over the lost hope that
whatever it was about him that’d made her act so foolishly all
those years ago had faded away.
It hadn’t.
She still felt stupidly attuned to him
in a way that made her want to bite that spot on his neck just
above his collarbone. Not that she would dare, but even the idea of
it made her feel uncomfortably hot.
He snatched a Band-Aid from the kit,
tearing the wrapper with his white teeth. In quick, efficient moves
he wrapped the bandage around her thumb before releasing her. She
stepped back, rubbing her wrist against her jacket to erase the
feeling of him touching her skin.
She hoped he hadn’t noticed the pulse
hammering just under her skin. “Why are you here? I saw you leaving
earlier.”
“I’m here. Get used to
it.” He paused and jammed his hands in his pockets like it was
either that or throttle her.
She felt marginally better knowing her
presence unnerved him at least a little. He sighed, then continued
speaking.
“I went to Sawyer’s place
to pick up these boards. You must not’ve been watching out for me
close enough if you missed me driving back.”
She rolled her eyes. “Right. All I’m
doing is sitting by the window, waiting for you to come
home.”
Green eyes narrowed and she silently
cursed herself for saying something he could read more into than
she’d intended. Seeing no other option, she forged ahead. “What are
you making?”
“First tell me why you’re
here. Were you secretly hoping to find me?” He raised one brow.
“Here I am, sweetheart.”
Warmth flooded her cheeks. He was
baiting her and doing a damn good job of it. “Don’t mock me. I
needed to get out of the house so I took a walk. If I’d known you