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“Fwint has cowboy boots like me!” Adam announced, obviously taking in every inch of Flint. Much the way his mother just had, although she’d missed the boots. “Mine are home. I wanna go get ‘em!”
“Not right now you won’t,” Jessie intervened.
“But I wanna wear ‘em!”
“You can’t wear cowboy boots with your shorts. You can wear them another day, when it’s cooler,” Jessie said, eliciting a frown from her youngest before he bent over to study Flint’s feet more closely.
“Will my feets get big as Fwint’s feets?”
For no reason Jessie could fathom that made her wonder what Flint’s naked feet looked like. Which was not only totally bizarre, but seemed like something too personal for her to be thinking about at all and she curbed her wandering thoughts.
She also decided to curb her overzealous son who had risen from his close scrutiny to stand with one arm wrapped around the big man’s left leg and the side of his tennis shoe-clad foot against Flint’s to compare them.
“I’m sorry,” Jessie muttered, dragging Adam away from the grip that was more familiar than he should have been having with any stranger and firmly holding him against the front of her own thighs. “This must be some kind of new phase. He’s never been so …” She wasn’t sure how to say that her son seemed enthralled with this man. She settled on “… so taken with anyone before.”
“I like ‘im,” Adam announced matter-of-factly. “I wanna do what he doos.”
“Seems like Adam has decided you’re his role model, Flint,” Kelsey contributed with a pointed glance at Jessie, inspiring another eye roll from Jessie.
But undaunted, Kelsey said, “Coop is working in the basement. Jess, why don’t you and Adam take Flint up and show him the room that’ll be his while he’s here so I can go get my other favorite Fortune man and tell him his brother is finally back?”
Jessie shot her sister an I’ll-get-you-for-this glance. But she couldn’t refuse the request without appearing rude, so she had to concede.
Refocusing on Flint’s cover-model face, she said, “What will eventually be the actual guest room is down here. But right now it’s full of paint cans and supplies, so Kelsey was thinking you could take the extra bedroom upstairs.”
“I’ll show you,” Adam offered, breaking free of his mother’s grip to run for the stairs in the entryway.
“I guess we should follow our leader,” Flint said with a sexy half smile, apparently amused by her son.
“If we don’t he’s liable to drag you upstairs himself,” Jessie said.
“There’s not much to him, that could do him some damage,” Flint joked. Then he leaned over and picked up the suitcase he must have brought in with him, and said, “After you.”
Had her sister not pointed out the fact that she wasn’t wearing her most flattering jeans, Jessie was convinced that the way her rear end looked in them wouldn’t have crossed her mind. Or the fact that she had Flint Fortune directly behind her on the stairs.
Now she was far more conscious of where his eyes might be as they climbed the steps. And of what he might be thinking if he was at all interested in checking her out—which he probably wasn’t. But if he was, could he tell her butt wasn’t bad despite the baggy jeans?
But those were not thoughts she wanted to be having. And trying to elude them, she finished the second half of the stairs at a quicker pace.
Adam was waiting for them at the landing, his father’s brown eyes watching eagerly for Flint.
The moment Flint reached the top, Adam said, “Iss over here,” and made a dash for the bedroom beside the nursery where Anthony was napping.
Jessie and Flint again trailed her son into the small bedroom that had yet to be decorated but contained the necessities—a double bed, a nightstand complete with a lamp and a dresser upon which was an old television set.
“We live there!” Adam announced excitedly. He was standing at one of the bedroom’s two windows and pointing to the house next door.
“Ah, right. Coop mentioned that.”
Jessie appreciated that Flint indulged the little boy by setting his suitcase down and joining Adam at the window.
“See?” Adam said when Flint got there. “Tha’s my mom’s window. You can see ‘er when she puts on her ‘jamas and stuff.”
Out of the mouths of babes …
It was an innocent-enough comment, so there wasn’t anything to actually be embarrassed by. And yet Jessie felt some heat rise in her cheeks. Possibly because she was picturing the kind of scene Adam was unwittingly portraying.
Or possibly because it seemed as if Flint might be, too, because he turned a disarmingly devilish smile to her.
“That’s why we pull our shades when we undress, Adam,” Jessie lectured. “So no one can see us when we put on our pajamas.”
“But you could wave to each other,” Adam persisted. “Cuz wookit, tha’s yur room, Mama, I kin see it!”
“Yes, that’s my room,” Jessie acknowledged.
“And we’ll be sure to wave to each other. Every night,” Flint assured, barely suppressing a grin.
“Oh, definitely,” Jessie agreed as if she, too, could joke about it when the truth was that she was having a silly schoolgirl image of peering at the handsome man just across the way.
“An’ wookit down there,” Adam said then, oblivious of the exchange between the adults. “Tha’s my gramma and grampa cookin’ on the barber-cue, and tha’s Ella an’ Braden an’ Beth’ny playin’ wis the hose—you kin see them all, too.”
“I can,” Flint said.
“And if Gramma and Grampa are cooking that means we’d better get home for dinner,” Jessie said, using the information to make her escape.
“Can Fwint come?”
“Aunt Kelsey has other plans for Flint’s dinner tonight.”
“Can I come back after dinner?” the tiny child asked hopefully.
“After dinner you need a bath, so no. You’ll see Flint again soon.”
“As I understand it, we’re all going to be working on the house this week, buddy, so we’ll probably see a lot of each other.”
Jessie recognized the expressions that crossed her son’s face as he decided whether to throw a tantrum or be appeased. In the end he drew an exaggerated breath, sighed it out with great effect and said a very reluctant, “Okay.”
“Come on, let’s get going,” Jessie said, seizing the moment before he changed his mind and threw the tantrum anyway.
“And Adam?” Flint added as the little boy trudged from the window to his mother. “I’ll be wearing tennis shoes like yours tomorrow, so don’t worry about the boots.”
Jessie laughed lightly at that and said, “Thanks, that saves me a fight tomorrow morning.”
“I thought it might,” Flint said with yet another smile, this one understanding and yet still so engaging.
Engaging enough that a split-second elapsed while Jessie stared into that smile, into those unique eyes of his and forgot everything.
Then Adam yanked her back to reality by taking her hand and tugging her downward while he stood on his tip-toes to whisper, “He called me buddy. Tha’ means we’re frien’s.”
“That is what it means,” Jessie confirmed, appreciating that Flint had taken some care with her son’s feelings. Telling herself that that was all she was appreciating about the man.
And all she intended to appreciate about him.
Chapter Two
Flint woke Monday morning to the sound of children’s voices outside, a baby fussing in the next room, water running somewhere nearby and a sprinkler whoosh-whoosh-whooshing in the distance.
Definitely not the quiet of his apartment on the outskirts of Denver.
Then his brother Cooper’s voice drifted to him from somewhere close by, reminding him that he was in Texas. In Red Rock.
Where his mother was born and raised. Where a chunk of his extended family lived. Where his mother had brought him, his two brothers and his sister to visit growing up—usually because she’d wanted to get rid of her kids while she went on yet another honeymoon, or because she needed to finagle money out of some of that extended family between husbands or jobs or cities or any of the other flights of fancy that were always in play with Cindy Fortune.
Flint opened his eyes and recognized the tidy spare bedroom of the house his brother had just moved into. Where he was taking a slight hiatus from his own work to help fix up the place and spend some time with Coop, his newly discovered son, Anthony, and new fiancée, Kelsey, and with he and Coop’s other brother Ross and their sister, Frannie, who also lived in Red Rock.
He’d be spending time with some of the other extended family, too, but for a change that didn’t strike him as such a bad thing.
In the last five months the Fortune family had seen a lot of turmoil that was hopefully beginning to settle down. Turmoil that still came with a whole lot of questions that had yet to be answered because the current head of the family—his Uncle William—had suffered a head injury in a car accident and remained in the throes of amnesia, unable to answer those questions.
But surprisingly to Flint, in the course of all the madness, he and his siblings had learned that they really weren’t considered the black sheep of the Fortune family the way they’d always thought they were. That they were actually thought of as valued members of the group in spite of their mother and the haphazard way she’d raised them. In spite of the fact that none of them had been quite as brilliantly successful as their cousins.
So for once Flint was happy to be in Red Rock, even if all the noise had cost him his last half hour of sleep.
Because it was impossible for him to doze off with the racket outside, he conceded to it, sat up and swung his feet to the floor.
Which left him facing the window aimed at the house next door. The house young Adam had pointed out to him yesterday when he’d first gotten here. Jessie’s house.
That had to be where all the voices were coming from.
For the sake of decency, Flint dragged on his jeans from the day before and a white undershirt. Then he stood and went to the window. The drapes left a gap that gave him a view of the other house even from bed. Now he used a single index finger to nudge them open a few inches more so he could better see out.
Yep, a whole passel of kids were running around in the backyard, where it looked like parts for a swing set or a jungle gym were being delivered.
Flint couldn’t have cared less about that. But he stayed at the window, his gaze drifting up to the one directly across from his.
Jessie’s curtains were open this morning. They hadn’t been when he’d checked last night before he’d gone to bed before closing his own drapes as far as they would go. But there was no sign of Kelsey’s sister, then or now.
He had to laugh a little, though, when he thought about what young Adam had said the day before and the fact that those curtains had been so steadfastly closed last night to ensure that he hadn’t been able to see Jessie put on her pajamas, or even just smile and wave when she saw him.
Too bad.
He wouldn’t have minded getting a glimpse of that petite body, with the great rear end that had tantalized him all the way up the stairs and the hint of firm breasts hidden beneath that oversize T-shirt.
The weird thing was that he also wouldn’t have minded just seeing her wave to him. And for that he had no explanation.
What was he, some schoolboy hoping for just a look at the girl next door? Just a raise of her hand to acknowledge him?
He hadn’t felt like that since he was thirteen. He’d actually stood there for at least half an hour last night hoping she would appear. And here he was again this morning.
She was something to look at, he told himself as consolation for how dumb it seemed.
Not that he hadn’t seen—up close and personal—plenty of women who were something to look at. But a pretty woman was always something to look at. And Kelsey’s sister? She was more than just pretty. A lot more.
When he’d first seen her yesterday, he’d recalled, instantly, the first moment he’d seen her.
She was the woman from Lily’s party who had caught his eye over and over again, long before he’d finally been introduced to her.
Jessie—he’d barely learned her name and he hadn’t had the chance for more than that at the time.
Then all of a sudden yesterday, there she’d been again, in the living room downstairs.
She was lovely. Downright beautiful, actually. Even in baggy jeans and that World’s Greatest Mom T-shirt. Beautiful, but in an approachable kind of way. Natural and artless. And without any indication that she was even aware of her looks.
She had the silkiest hair he’d ever seen—chestnut brown and so shiny that it glistened as it fell to below her shoulders around a face that no man could ignore. Her skin was fresh and flawless, interrupted by only a small, adorable dot of a beauty mark just below the corner of her left eye.
And those eyes, big, round, cocoa-brown, they had the softest look to them. They glimmered a little—they were almost dewy. He’d had trouble glancing away from them.
Until his own gaze had slid down her straight, thin, well-shaped nose to those lush, exquisite lips. Slightly full but not too full. Petal pink. Just the right shape. Perfect whether she was smiling or talking or doing nothing at all with them. Perfect for kissing …
Not that he’d ever know if that was true, he reprimanded himself, shoving aside the thought by altering his view from her bedroom window to her backyard again.
Four kids.
Four!
A mom—however beautiful—who had been widowed somehow and left to raise them on her own. That was a situation shouting for him to stay away.
He was happy for his own three siblings—all married or engaged. But for himself? Marriage wasn’t in the cards.
He’d tried it once, and once was enough. More than enough to confirm what he’d seen of marriage growing up and watching his mother do it again and again. Complicated and difficult and costly. Something that could too easily deteriorate into a very, very ugly situation—that was what marriage was to him, and as far as he was concerned, it didn’t have anything to recommend it.
And the fact that Jessie had four kids?
Flint wasn’t a kid person. One of the worst pieces of news he’d ever received in his life had come last month when word had gotten to him that Anthony might be his. He hadn’t had the foggiest idea what he was going to do if that was true. And he’d never experienced the kind of relief he’d known when the baby had turned out to be Cooper’s instead.
I’m just not dad material, he thought, remembering Kelsey’s comment about how Adam had chosen him as a role model and not even feeling as if he could be that. He didn’t have any idea how to be either of those things. How could he when his own father had barely had anything to do with him, when none of his mother’s other men—husbands or not—had ever hung around long enough to be either of those to him? When he hadn’t spent enough time with the Fortunes to have found that in Red Rock either?
Plus he liked his freedom. He liked coming and going as he pleased. He was enjoying his life the way it was now and he didn’t want to change anything.
And when it came to women? There was no shortage of them—never had been. Not even when he made it clear that he had a strict no-strings policy. That he liked to keep things light.
Which didn’t mean kids. Or the extra responsibility, the extra burden of worrying about those kids ending up feeling the way he and his sister and brothers had felt every time another man had come into their mother’s—and consequently their—lives. Every time they even began to get accustomed to those same men and then watched them walk out the door.
It was something he never wanted to inflict on any child, let alone four of them.
So Jessie was a no-go for him. However beautiful she was, with four kids who could end up getting hurt in the shuffle he’d learned so well as a child himself, she was strictly, totally, completely, one-hundred-percent off-limits, regardless of how beautiful she was. Or how doe-soft her eyes were. Or how kissable her lips might be, or how much he’d wanted to reach up and run his fingertips over her cheek to find out if her skin was as smooth as it looked …
Then, suddenly, there she was—in the yard with all her kids.
