her purse, extended them across the seat like a peace offering.
Jolene slowed the truck and looked down at the strong hand that held the snack out to her. It was a simple gesture, purely practical. Still, a yearning—something unexpectedly needy and all too feminine—surfaced inside her, disrupting her protest. What would it be like to have someone looking out for her and her baby? Especially someone with the considerable caretaking skills Nate Kellison possessed?
What would it be like to put her faith and her future into someone else’s hands and know she wouldn’t be left alone again?
She slid her gaze up along the sturdy arm and ample shoulder. Even the tanned column of his throat and prominent outline of his jaw indicated strength.
But when she looked into his eyes, she saw no warmth, no emotion whatsoever. They were as unsmiling and serious as ever.
“Eat,” he ordered.
Poof. So much for that wayward fantasy. It was probably just hunger, or hormones out of whack, that had allowed her to consider liking—perhaps temporarily lusting after—California Kellison for even one crazed moment.
He sat back, peeled open the package and removed a cracker, handing it off to Cindy, who held it out to Jolene. “Go on,” he urged. “Junior needs it.”
Practicality won out over wounded pride. Jolene took the cracker from Cindy’s fingers and stuffed it into her mouth, chewing around her reluctant thanks. “This should tide me over.”
She was just another rescue project to him, another call. Maybe, if she put a positive spin on things, she was a temporary partner he felt obligated to protect.
But she was nothing special.
Too skinny, too annoying, too small town—she would never be anyone special. Especially to a cocky California dude who had no clue how to lighten up.
So she went back to taking care of herself. “I’ll eat the rest when we get to Lily’s. We’re almost there.”
Cindy pointed over the dashboard into the rain. “Look out!”
Jolene saw the man a second later. He was stumbling along in his cowboy boots, turning into their path to circle around a soupy bog of mud and water.
“Damn crazy…” Nate muttered.
“Idiot!” Jolene slammed on the brakes, pitching them all forward. Fortunately, with seat belts on—Wes and Cindy sharing one—and the road sucking the tires to a stop, no damage was done. “Everyone okay?” Jolene verified.
A chorus of yeah’s and fine’s and what-the-hell’s answered her as she set the gear into Park and honked the horn.
The man in the road slowly turned, shoving his well-creased Stetson back on his thinning gray hair and squinting into the headlights. Jolene shook her head. She didn’t have to be a native Texan to assess the situation. Rail-thin cowboy, decked out in faded bandanna and worn leather chaps, walking the road while a storm brewed around him—and no horse in sight. He’d lost his mount and was hiking back to civilization.
She didn’t have to be the man’s next-door neighbor, either, to recognize the stoop in the old cowboy’s back or the string of colloquial curses rattling off his lips. Standing in front of her was one of Turning Point’s most cantankerous characters.
“Deacon Tate.” Jolene huffed his name out on a sigh that revealed both irritation and affection.
“Why am I not surprised you know this guy?” Nate grumbled. “Don’t any of you Texans have enough sense to stay in out of the rain?”
Jolene ignored the rhetorical question. “Lily said she’d lost contact with him early this morning. His radio’s probably with his saddle. Wherever that is.”
Deacon, a Rock-a-Bye employee for more years than she’d been alive, had obviously been thrown from his horse. And judging by the way he’d cinched his left arm beneath his belt, at least one of his old bones had been damaged in the fall. Jolene unhooked her seat belt.
“Stay put,” Jolene and Nate ordered in unison, each sliding out their respective door and hurrying around the hood of the truck.
Nate was shaking his head and blocking her path by the time they met in the middle of the road. “I can handle this.”
She tipped her chin up, squinting against the rain that pelted her face and chilled her skin. “So can I.”
“Go finish your snack. Feed your baby.”
“When we get to the house.” She pointed to the ten-foot-high brick pillars only a few yards away, marking the main entrance to the Rock-a-Bye. She quickly scooted around Nate as he turned to look. Hooking her hand through the crook of Deacon’s good arm, she led him toward the relative shelter of the