Chapter Eight #2
Recognizing the need to tread lightly, lest she scared her Enigma back into his shell, she laughed.
“I haven’t been on a playground since third grade, so I think you’re safe.
Meanwhile, you still haven’t answered my question.
” When he glanced at her askance, she elbowed him.
“About how long you’ve been out of the Army.
Unless you’d rather talk about kissing. Then this is going to be a whole other kind of conversation. ”
Oops. She hadn’t meant to veer back into that territory, but to be fair, he’d started it. And now that it hung there, caught up in the blanket of awareness, she let it lay, curious what he’d do with it.
“You’re my employee,” he muttered, killing the vibe that had sprung up almost effortlessly. “It would be inappropriate to talk about kissing.”
Which wasn’t the same as saying he wasn’t interested in kissing. Just that he had a rule about these sorts of things. Another point in his favor. He wasn’t the type to take advantage of his position. Geez. Was there anything that wasn’t solid and upstanding about this man?
Humming to herself, she nodded. “You’re absolutely right, of course. It would be unseemly. Now maybe if I wasn’t your employee and this was a date—”
“This is not a date.”
Boy, that had gotten him riled. Transfixed, she let her gaze rove over his face, which was much more animated than she’d ever seen before and beat the flat Texas scenery rushing by the truck by a country mile, in terms of intriguing.
“What if it was?” she couldn’t help but ask, despite the sketchy wisdom of poking at that.
After all, he was her boss, and she did need this job.
But dang, did she want to know more about him.
“What do you normally do for fun? With a woman, I mean, not with Tag, since I already know going to Dairy Queen is exactly what you do with him.”
His knuckles went a little white on the steering wheel. “You talk a lot.”
“Not the first time I’ve heard that,” she said agreeably and opted to choose his response for him. “Rodeo? No, I can’t honestly imagine you sitting still while other people do things, let alone for fun. So that eliminates movies, too. I know. Miniature golf.”
“Miniature golf? I don’t look like a rodeo type, but I do look like a golfer?”
He’d lost the hard edge around his mouth, so she’d consider that a win.
As well as a sign he wasn’t the type to fire her for being a tad forward.
She grinned. “You strike me as someone who’d excel at anything you try, and also someone who knows his way around precision and skill.
Not to mention that it’s fairly obvious you work out.
So I imagine it wouldn’t be a stretch to assume you could get a ball into a little hole and look fabulous doing it. ”
“I do like to win.”
Hah, that figured. “I won’t pretend to be shocked by that admission. Now you have to tell me that you’ve regularly taken dates to the miniature golf course and that I’m as lovely as I am intelligent for figuring that out.”
That was the thing that broke the dam, and he actually laughed.
Which delighted her to pieces, since it was no easy feat to get Zero Renshaw talking, let alone laughing.
The sound trilled down her spine deliciously.
And that marked the first time in her life that a man’s laugh gave her a physical response.
She wanted to repeat that experience as much as humanly possible.
“I hope you’re laughing in admiration,” she said loftily. “Not everyone gets to experience my awesomeness firsthand like this.”
He shot her another one of those impossible-to-decipher glances, the kind she wished she could interpret in an instant, because she’d spent a lot of time with him, studying him, talking to him, relaxing into a mode where they could be easy with each other.
Of course, that wasn’t too far removed from what was happening now.
Minus the ease of interpretation. That, she still hadn’t mastered.
“Almost a year,” he said and jerked his head. “Since I got out of the service. It wasn’t a cause for celebration.”
“I’m sorry,” she told him sincerely. “I didn’t know it was a sensitive subject.”
But of course that made sense. He’d left the Army when Sheridan’s husband had died so he could take care of his family, not because he’d been counting down the days until retirement.
The fact he’d shared even that much with her felt like a hard-won victory, though.
She hugged her midsection in an effort to keep her hands to herself, because now she wanted to reach out and lay a sympathetic hand on his arm, which would probably freak him out.
“It’s not sensitive,” he growled and then rolled his eyes. “Well, I mean it’s not my favorite subject, but I’m not sitting around crying about it.”
No, nor would he. He moved forward, always. Something they had in common. “I’m not much of a crier over spilled milk, either, so I get it.”
Zero signaled and turned right, rolling into the Dairy Queen parking lot well before Delilah would have preferred. Dang. Those nineteen miles had gone by in a flash.
As she climbed down out of the truck, she made a mental note to start helping Hunter with his spelling words the next time he came to the barn.
There was no reason he couldn’t get a perfect score on every single spelling test for the next bajillion weeks, right?
And then there might be a lot more Dairy Queen in her future, which doubled as a secret way to get Zero all to herself.
The car parked in the next spot beeped as the owner came out of Dairy Queen and disengaged the locks. Delilah glanced up to see Carol Miller smiling at Zero and her.
“Fancy meeting you here,” Carol called with a laugh. “How are you?”
“Hey, Carol,” Zero called and glanced at Delilah. “You’ve already met?”
“When I went to buy dog treats,” Delilah confirmed and waved at the woman who owned the feed store. “I didn’t realize this was where everyone hung out.”
Carol shrugged. “If you don’t want to cook, this is pretty much your only choice. Come by tomorrow if you have a chance. I got a new brand of dog food that I think the crew will like.”
“I will,” Delilah promised, mystified why the woman would have taken an interest in the Flying Pig’s dogs.
Zero answered that question as he watched Carol get into her car and drive away.
“Carol is Rob’s cousin. She spent a lot of time at the ranch after he died, helping Sheridan go through his things.
She’s one of those people who never met a stranger, especially if she considers you family, which she probably already does. Be careful or she’ll adopt you.”
That sounded wonderful, honestly. “I’ve never heard of a limit on the number of friends a person can have.”
The conversation with Zero in the truck on the way over and learning Carol expected Delilah to frequent her feed store, plus having been included in Dairy Queen night in the first place, sat like warm honey in her chest. How had she become a part of this family so easily when the one who shared her DNA had done the exact opposite?
If she’d known this came with the paycheck, she’d have negotiated for a longer term.
Only this wasn’t long term, she reminded herself. She needed to get back into art in the worst way. Her doctorate was so close she could taste it. And she couldn’t wait to tell her father that she’d become a professor at a prestigious university, a feat even he hadn’t accomplished.
When she got back to her room later that night, she made a point of dragging out one of her heavier text books, one a professor had insisted the students buy in print because he’d written the forward.
But she fell asleep halfway through the first chapter.