Big Sky Bride, Be Mine!. Victoria Pade
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rolled over. Then it was just up to Mom and Dad.”
“Who weren’t in good health,” Ian added.
“At the time no one knew my mom had anything going on with her heart—no one knew until the attack that killed her. My dad’s emphysema was slowing him down then, but he was still working the farm, so they didn’t really think their health was an issue. I talked about taking Abby, but my own situation was … difficult, so Mom and Dad just kept the status quo—they’d been doing the lion’s share of taking care of Abby, they said they could just go on taking care of her.”
“But then in a snap they were both gone….”
“Right. And then there was just Abby and me. And my situation had changed—” Jenna leaned forward enough to tickle Abby’s rib cage “—and I wanted this little stinker, so I adopted her.”
“Which makes you her aunt and her mom now.”
“Right,” Jenna said in a positive tone to let him know how happy she was to find herself Abby’s mother. “Of course, I’ll let her know about J.J. and her dad, but I’ll really just be Mom—which I’m working on getting her to call me.”
As if to show her willingness to accept Jenna in that role, Abby finally held out her arms for Jenna to take her.
Ian set his nearly empty glass of lemonade on the porch and freed the way for Jenna to reach for the infant.
To do that, Jenna had to slip one of her hands between Abby’s side and Ian’s front. There was no avoiding making contact with him.
What Jenna should have been able to avoid was being as aware as she was of the hard wall of muscles she felt behind his shirt. And liking the way it felt against the back of her hand …
You’re a nurse, for crying out loud! You make physical contact with people for a living! she silently chastised herself to battle the tingling that that particular contact had set off along the surface of her skin.
Gratefully, Ian Kincaid didn’t seem to know she was having that response to him as she lifted Abby from his lap to Jenna’s and became very intent on giving her niece more lemonade.
“I should probably go—I saw what I came to see and I’m figuring from the scrubs that you must have to get to work at some point,” Ian said then—in a voice that seemed slightly lower than it had been and suddenly made Jenna worry that he did know something was happening with her.
But even if that was true, he, too, found refuge in Abby by fiddling with one of her curls when he said, “Bye, Abby.”
“Bye,” Abby answered perfunctorily, waving a chubby hand to go along with it, the way she’d been tutored.
Then, to Jenna, Ian said, “Thanks for the lemonade. This was nice.”
“Sure,” was all she said as she watched him get to his feet.
He paused a moment, and she couldn’t tell what was going through his mind before he said, “Tomorrow night is the grand opening of Mackey and McKendrick Furniture Designs—will you be there?”
“I will be,” she said.
A slow smile spread across his handsome face. “Good … I’m glad….” He answered almost as if he shouldn’t be admitting it.
Then he headed for his car, and Jenna watched him go.
And watched him and watched him, drinking in every last drop of the sight of the best derriere she thought she’d ever seen.
Until he rounded the side of the house, and she couldn’t see him anymore.
And she was a little sorry about that …
So apparently, he hadn’t put a damper on her day.
But as for the rest—the skin-tingling on contact, the ogling of his backside when he’d walked away, the fact that she’d enjoyed spending that brief time with him?
She didn’t know where any of that had come from.
But she did know that there was no place in her life for it.
Not now. Not with him.
In the last eleven months, she’d gone from one disaster to another. The death of J.J. and of Abby’s dad. Her own divorce. Her mother’s death. Her father’s. The tax debacle and the likelihood that she was going to lose the farm. She’d gone from chaos to more chaos to even more chaos.
And it had to end. For both her own sake and for Abby’s. They needed to find a little solace, a little calm, a little peace. To settle down, to settle in. Together. Just the two of them.
Nowhere in any of that was there a place for skin-tingling or ogling or enjoying Ian Kincaid’s company.
In fact, a man—any man—but certainly Ian Kincaid of all men, was the anti-solace, the anti-calm, the anti-peace, the anti-settling down, the anti-settling in.
And Jenna wasn’t having any part of that.
So why was she suddenly looking forward to tomorrow night’s grand opening of Mackey and McKendrick Furniture Designs even more than she had been?
It didn’t matter why.
She just knew she needed to squash it.
And that was what she was determined to do.
Although that little bit of a thrill at the thought that Ian Kincaid would be there was hard to catch and squash when it again took flight at merely the glimpse of him behind the wheel of his car as he drove from the side of her house and waved on his way to the main road.
But still she was determined.
Peace and calm and solace, settling in, settling down—that was what she was going to find, to achieve, for herself and for Abby.
Without the disruption of a guy who made her skin tingle …
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