and stretched, rumpled and gorgeous in his gray sweatpants, topped by a blue and silver sweatshirt. The shadow of a beard fuzzed his square jaw and a teasing glint lit his dark blue eyes. “I’ve been admiring your technique.”
“That’s a Texas tale if I ever heard one,” Jami countered, her cheeks hot as the fire.
“I am a Texan,” Grant drawled unrepentantly as he wandered over to poke at her campfire. Using a long, forked stick, he reached for the foil-wrapped grated potatoes, but she knocked his hand away as he smugly asked, “Where’s the coffee?”
“Coffee?” Jami blinked up at Grant. How had she forgotten such a morning staple? “Ah, I thought we’d just drink the orange juice you stored in the cooler.”
“Sure.”
“Is that a Dallas Cowboys shirt?” Jami asked, her eyes narrowing as she registered his attire.
“I like football,” he casually defended, reaching for the frying pan. “Besides, this shirt was a gift.”
“Hey, I’m cooking breakfast.” Jami reclaimed the pan and tapped the Dallas Cowboy emblem on his chest, not daring to ask who gave him the shirt. Probably a woman. Maybe the same one who’d given him the lighter. Or was it a different woman? Jami shook her head, wishing she could stop imagining the worst. Why couldn’t she believe that one of his brothers gave it to him? It didn’t have to be a woman. What did it matter, anyway?
In fact, Jami seemed to remember Sierra saying that Ty was a Cowboys fan. Ty probably gave Grant the sweatshirt, she repeated to herself. Twice. Still not totally convinced, Jami watched Grant circle around the campfire, prodding flames with a stick. “So, how do Dallas fans like their eggs?”
“Any way at all.” Grant chuckled at his own answer. He dropped the stick, gave Jami a quick kiss on the cheek, then disappeared into the dome tent.
Later, when Grant emerged from the tent with Toby by his side, Jami withdrew the heavy frying pan from the flames, announcing, “Breakfast is ready.”
Toby crinkled up his nose. “Something’s burnt.”
“I think that’s our breakfast,” Grant replied, sounding cautious as he accepted the food Jami enthusiastically shoveled onto his paper plate.
“Here’s yours, Toby.” Jami dished up two eggs and four sausage links for her son.
The child peered intently at his food. “What’s this brown plastic stuff?”
“Those are your eggs,” Jami replied, offended that he couldn’t recognize them. The eggs were tinted brown and strangely shiny, but she was certain she hadn’t broken the egg yolks. “Sunny-side-up, just the way you like them.”
Toby eyed his mom skeptically. “Then where’s the sunny side? I don’t see any yellow. I don’t see any white either.”
“Eat it, tiger. Oh, I almost forgot our potatoes,” Jami exclaimed, trying to retrieve the foil from the campfire.
“Here. Let me. You’ll burn yourself.” Grant extracted it, unfolding the aluminum to reveal a coagulated lump of fused potato, blackened at the edges.
“Yuck. I’m not eating that, Mom.”
“Me, either,” Grant confirmed, trying to separate the once-shredded potatoes with a fork, but the masterpiece had formed into a gummy clump, raw in the middle and crusty and burnt outside.
“How’s your sausage?” Jami asked hopefully, not anxious to taste the potatoes herself. The vegetables Grant had cooked in foil last night had turned out so differently. She couldn’t understand what had happened to hers.
Grant tried to stab one of his sausage links. His fork failed to pierce the tough, wrinkled brown-black skin. The sausage jettisoned off his plate and nearly hit Jami. The startled expression on his face mirrored her surprise.
Using his fingers, Toby picked up one of his sausage links and tried to bite the charred meat. “It’s too hard to eat, Mom.”
“Great,” Jami grumbled as her dreams for a wonderful meal dissolved.
Toby twirled the sausage link in his fingers, then grinned broadly. “But it’s just the right size. Let’s make a hat for it, then I could use it as the captain for my boat. Okay?”
Grant burst into laughter, his deep resounding chuckle a knife, deflating Jami’s pride as she groaned. So much for trying to impress them with her outdoor culinary skills. “There’s only one fate a breakfast like this deserves,” Grant announced as he popped into the tent. He sauntered back out, waving a white garbage bag.
“Really!” Jami huffed, hands on hips.
Grant grinned and shrugged his shoulders.
“I’m hungry,” Toby complained, dumping his breakfast into the plastic garbage bag Grant held open for him. “What’re we going to eat?”
“Give me the metal bowls from the mess kits, slugger, and I’ll show you an