Bess slammed the kitchen cabinet shut and whirled to slam the coffee cup on the counter. It made a loud clack and skidded sideways before she caught it between her shaking fingers. On the other side of the kitchen, Judd made his own noises as he scraped his knife through the steak in front of him so that it crunched against the plate. They were both breathing heavily as if they had just been in the ring for ten rounds.
It had begun simply enough. Bess, who had awakened from another dream where Daniel’s kind face stared back at her from eyes that would never blink again, got up, put on her most comfortable lounging dress, and shuffled into the kitchen with the distinct purpose of cleaning out and defrosting the refrigerator for Agnes, who had mentioned needing to do the task the day before.
She was on her knees, reaching deep into the back of the bottom shelf of the refrigerator with her cleaning cloth in hand, when a familiar grip wrapped around her arms and pulled, not exactly gently. She was twirled and yanked into Judd’s wall of a body.
On instinct, Bess stiffened and reached her hands to his chest, pushing against him to free herself. Because the only real gentleman Bess had known was Daniel, her shove had all the force of her muscles and ingrained fear. Unfortunately, Judd had already begun to relax his grip on her, so that her push sent him off balance, and he stumbled back, only catching himself against the red stool with its pull-out steps that Agnes used to reach the high cabinets.
“Don’t ever do that again,” Bess said through tight jaws, feeling her body shake with remembered encounters that had been such a part of her growing up that they were now ingrained in her DNA.
Judd crossed his arms in front of his chest and glared at her. “Stop trying to do more than you should be doing, and I won’t have to keep trying to save you from yourself.”
Bess had taken a bold step forward then, poking her finger into the middle of his chest. “Nobody said you were in charge of me,” she told him. “Just leave me alone.”
His nostrils flared with the force of his breath. “If you live under this roof taking advantage of my mother’s hospitality, then I am going to be in charge of you. House rules.”
He was angering her out of all proportion so that all she could see was red. She grabbed the nearest thing at hand behind her, which turned out to be a large soup spoon, and jabbed it just at the base of his throat. “If I weren’t very pregnant,” she hissed, “you wouldn’t sleep so well at night. Nobody touches me, understand?”
Judd stood stock still, but a series of emotions, from rage to something almost tender, flashed across his black glare before he stepped back away from her reach. “Stay out of my way, then,” he ordered gruffly. “I came in here to fix my breakfast.” He turned away from her, paused, then looked at her across his shoulder. “No one’s going to touch you without your permission anymore.”
It was an apology after a fashion, but not nearly enough. So, instead of offering to cook for him as she might have done in the past, Bess had returned to the very task he had pulled her from to start the argument in the first place, ignoring him entirely. That stalemate raged on when Agnes entered the kitchen some time later.
She took one look at Judd brooding over a cup of coffee and Bess straining on tiptoe to reach the back of the freezer and whistled so loudly that all the dogs around the house set to with a mighty roar of accompanying howls. Judd placed one hand over an ear and glared at her. Bess yelped and leaned against the counter for support.
“Well,” Agnes told them, “now that I have your attention, can somebody please tell me why the two of you can’t seem to get along?”
Judd picked up his breakfast dishes and sauntered over to the sink, right beside Bess, as if he hadn’t a care in the world. He laid the dishes on the sparkling porcelain and leaned against the sink with his arms crossed in front of his chest. “Ask her,” he had the audacity to reply, nodding his head in Bess’ direction.
She didn’t take time to think, just slammed her foot as hard as she could on Judd’s instep, then stalked over to Agnes. The fact that the infuriating man didn’t even wince further fueled her temper. “Your son doesn’t want me here,” she told her mother-in-law. “He can’t seem to get it through his thick skull that I don’t exactly want to be here either. I can take care of myself. I have been taking care of myself since I was old enough to tie my shoes and fry eggs. The only reason I am even here is because I thought I owed it to Daniel. I’m not so sure anymore.”
“If I didn’t want her here, why would I be trying to get her to take better care of herself, for goodness’ sake?” Judd exclaimed to his mother, ignoring Bess completely.
Agnes looked as if she were trying her best not to laugh and failing. She tucked her chin into her chest and studied the linoleum for several moments before finally looking Bess and Judd in the eye again. “Well,” she said in a voice that was calm as if she were discussing the weather, “the two of you are just going to have to learn to get along. My grandchild is going to bind the three of us together for better or for worse for the rest of our lives. It might as well be for the better.”
“She purposely misunderstands everything I say,” Judd complained.
“He’s a bully,” Bess said at the same time.
Agnes looked at the two of them and did burst out laughing then. “I’m going to treat you like I would a couple of strays who can’t seem to behave. Judd, I want you to take Bess into the city today and do some shopping for my grand-baby. We don’t have a thing left in this house for newborns. I gave it all away years ago. And I know Bess could use some more maternity outfits for the remainder of her pregnancy.”
Bess would have laughed at the image of Judd standing in the middle of a department store looking for baby things except she realized with dead certainty that Agnes was not joking.
“What do you do with the strays, Agnes?” she asked. “Throw them in one of your pens together until they either come out friends or kill each other?”
The older woman smiled. “Oh, I’m usually right outside the fence with the hose, dear, just in case,” she said. “But, I can trust you two not to kill each other, can’t I? After all, Judd won’t want to have to arrest himself.”
Bess glanced at Judd then. His face was ruddy, his black eyes glaring at his mother. But, he slowly pushed himself off the counter and shoved his hands in his pockets. “I need to take care of a few things at the office. I can be back here in an hour to pick you up, Bess, if that will work for you?”
Bess nodded her assent, too stunned to speak. Without waiting for anymore words, she turned on her heel and exited the kitchen, wondering how she was going to survive an entire day in the company of Judd Taylor without either pummeling him or giving in to her curiosity and kissing him until she wiped that perpetual smug look from his knowing face.
—
The closest city to their small town was an hour’s drive up a highway lined with cotton gins, gnarly mesquite trees, and tilled-dirt fields with the promise of fruitful crops come spring. Bess studied the blue sky on the horizon, listening to the clop, clop of the tires on the pavement.
“Where are we headed exactly?” she asked.
Judd ignored the question. “I never mean to antagonize you,” he said, his eyes glued to the road ahead of him. “I just can’t shake the feeling that there’s something you’re not telling us that might hurt you eventually.”
“Hurt me or hurt you, Judd Taylor? Sure you aren’t just bringing work home with you?”
“No more than you trudge around with the weight of your past reflecting on everything you do.”
Bess clenched the door handle with knuckles gone white. “Just what is it you think you know about my past?”
Judd pulled over on the side of the road, where there was a rest area, a copse of trees with a couple of concrete tables and benches. He turned in his seat and faced her, draping one strong arm over the steering wheel. “I know you’ve been hurt. I know Daniel is just the latest in a long line of men who’ve abandoned you. I know it’s almost impossible for you to trust anyone.”
It bothered her that he could read her so well. Her skin literally crawled with the knowledge. “Maybe it isn’t important that we trust each other,” she said, not bothering to deny his speculations.
His eyebrow jerked up. “What do you plan to do, Bess, once the baby is born?”
“Do you think I’ll just run off and never let you see the baby again? Do you think I would have even let you know about my situation if that were the case?”
He reached across the span of the car and took a curly strand of Bess’ hair, twirling it around his finger. “We’ve lost Daniel, Bess. I don’t think we can lose you and the baby, too. Not now.”
She pulled back from the tentative contact. “You just admitted you barely know me. How do you know what it would feel like to lose me?”
His hands were back on the steering wheel. “You’re right, of course. How could I know?” He put the car back into drive and pulled back out on the highway.
They didn’t say another word to each other for the rest of the long drive, which gave Bess ample opportunity to stew on the secrets she kept and to ponder what would happen if just for once in her life she opened up to another living soul, maybe to a taciturn sheriff with his craggy face and searing, black eyes.
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