face him again. “That way if you are in the doghouse, which wouldn’t surprise me, Kendra might forgive you quicker.”
“Forgive me?” Hutch echoed, pretending to be offended. “I haven’t done anything she needs to forgive me for.”
“Maybe not recently,” Opal conceded, with another sniff and a glance that begrudged him all grace. “But you did enough damage to last a lifetime back in the day. Get the flowers. There were some nice Gerbera daisies at the supermarket when I was there yesterday.”
Hutch executed a deep bow of acquiescence.
Opal gave a scoffing laugh, waved a hand at him and went off to get ready for a wild night of Bingo.
* * *
KENDRA PEERED INTO the yellow glow of the porch light and caught her breath.
She’d been expecting Hutch, of course, but for some reason, every encounter with the man, planned as well as unplanned, made her feel as though she’d just taken hold of the wrong end of a cattle prod.
He wore newish jeans, a crisply pressed and possibly even starched cotton shirt in a pale shade of yellow, polished boots and a good hat instead of the usual one that looked as though it had just been trampled in a stampede or retrieved from the bed of a pickup truck.
And he was holding a colorful bouquet of flowers in his left hand.
He must have misunderstood her phone call, she thought, with a sort of delicious desperation. Her heart hammered against her breastbone, and her breathing was so shallow that she was afraid she might hyperventilate if she didn’t get a grip.
After drawing a very deep breath, Kendra opened the front door; he’d seen her through the frosted oval window, so it was too late to pretend she wasn’t home.
He took off the hat with a deftness that reminded her instantly of other subtle moves he’d made, under much more intimate circumstances, way back in those thrilling days—and nights—of yesteryear.
“The flowers were Opal’s idea,” he said first thing.
Kendra’s mouth twitched with amusement. Hutch was doing a good job of hiding the fact, but he was as nervous as she was, maybe even more so.
“No wine?” she quipped. “You’re slipping, cowboy.”
He let his gaze range over her, just briefly, as she stepped back so he could come inside. “I figured that would be pushing my luck,” he said, and she couldn’t tell if he was kidding or serious.
Kendra led the way through the house to the kitchen and offered him a seat at the table. She’d long since cleared away all evidence of supper, supervised Madison’s bath, read her a story and heard her prayers, and she’d checked on the child a couple of times over the past half hour, as well.
Both Madison and Daisy had been sound asleep each time she looked in.
Kendra accepted the flowers, found a vase and arranged them quickly. The colors, reds and maroons, oranges and deep pinks and purples, thrilled her senses, a riot of beauty.
When she turned around with the bouquet in hand, she nearly collided with Hutch.
Color climbed her cheeks and she stepped around him to set the flowers in the middle of the kitchen table.
“There’s coffee, if you’d like some,” she told him, feeling as shy as if he were a stranger and not a man who’d made love to her in all sorts of scandalous places and positions.
Stop it, she scolded herself.
Hutch’s eyes twinkled as he watched her—he was seeing too much. Although he could be infuriatingly obtuse, he had a perceptive side, too. One that generally worked to his advantage. “Thanks,” he said, “but I’ve had plenty of java already. One more cup and I’ll be up all night putting a new roof on the barn or something.”
Kendra smiled at the image, calming down a little on the inside. “I’ll just look in on Madison once more,” she said, and beat a hasty retreat for the hallway. What was it about Hutch that made all her nerves rise to the surface of her skin and sizzle there, like some kind of invisible fire?
He said nothing as she hurried away, but she would have sworn she felt the heat of his gaze wherever her shorts and tank top left her skin bare—on the backs of her arms and calves, on her nape.
Madison, she soon discovered, was still asleep in her “princess bed,” or doing a darned good job of playing possum. Daisy, curled up by Madison’s feet, raised her downy golden head, yawned and descended back into the realm of doggy dreams.
Since