Mission accomplished, then.

I was about to check the pancakes when the back door swung open and a string of cowboys wandered in. They were all a little bleary-eyed, but one was especially so. Tired as he looked, Jesse had an I-just-got-laid grin on his face.

He hung his hat up and headed my way, making no qualms about it.

I’m pretty sure I flushed again as a few of the high, high points of last night ran through my mind. Our second time, I’d introduced Jesse to the cowgirl position—I thought he could especially appreciate it—and we’d taken our time. Well, we’d taken a bit more time. Not much.

“Good morning,” I said with a bit of inflection as he stopped in front of me. He was close, a little too close for being in a kitchen of people who thought we were just friends.

Jesse snatched an apple from the copper bowl on the counter. “Why, yes. Yes, it is,” he said, crunching into the apple. He managed to keep that grin on his face the whole time.

“How did you sleep?” I teased, smiling into the griddle.

He leaned in closer and whispered, “I didn’t.”

A shiver ran down my spine in the middle of a hot kitchen on a summer morning. The man had the art of inflection down.

“How do you feel this morning?” I asked, trying to sound like we were having the most ordinary of conversations.

He sunk his teeth into the apple again, his eyes gleaming. “Like I lost something,” he said before chewing the chunk of apple in his mouth.

I snickered quietly.

“Oh, no, hun,” Rose said, appearing out of nowhere. “What did you lose?”

Jesse’s mouth stopped crunching as he did that whole deer-in-the-headlights thing again. He’d done a lot of that in the past twenty-four hours. “Uhhh . . . I don’t know . . . what I lost?” He glanced at me like he was looking for some help.

I was still too frozen to talk.

Rose gave him an amused face. “Then what were you just saying you lost?”

Jesse gulped down what was left of the apple in his mouth. “I don’t know. I won’t remember what I lost until I find it.”

I joined Rose in giving him an amused look. She lifted her hand to his forehead and ran it over his face. “Are you coming down with something, Jesse?”

“Nope,” he said, sliding me a quick look. “I’ve never felt better. But I want to tell you and Dad something.”

My mouth dropped open. He wouldn’t do that yet. When he said he’d tell his parents, I thought I’d at least have a few days to get used to the idea. Apparently not. I mouthed What? at him.

His response? A wink and an I’ve got this mouthed back.

“Well?” Neil said, coming up behind Rose and resting his hands on her shoulders. “Tell away.”

I was wincing before Jesse said one word.

“Rowen and I are dating,” he said, all matter-of-fact. “We’re together. We like each other. She rocks my world. I rock hers.” He shot me a sideways look and tried to keep his smile contained.

My mouth fell open a bit more.

Jesse lifted a shoulder. “We just wanted you both to know so it didn’t seem like we were sneaking around behind your backs.”

If climbing up a chimney to get to his room so I could seduce their virginal son wasn’t considered “sneaking,” perhaps I needed to look that one up in the dictionary again.

Jesse wrapped his arm around me and pulled me close. He’d said it, so he was showing it.

Ground? Please open up and shallow me right now.

I chanced a look at Rose and Neil, certain they’d scowl at me like I was the wolf they’d let into their precious little flock of sheep. Instead, I found the opposite. Neil had a small smile on his face, and Rose’s smile was tipped a little higher on one side.

“We appreciate you telling us, Jesse.” Rose patted her son’s cheek. “We kind of figured that out on our own.” Neil and she exchanged a look. “But it was nice of you two to finally figure it out, too.”

My mouth could only drop open. It certainly wasn’t up to forming actual words.

“Yeah, well, Rowen kind of made me work hard for it,” Jesse said, back to working on his apple. Neil just shook his head and smiled his way over to the table.

Rose glanced purposefully at me, standing beside Jesse, protected under his arm, and she winked. “As she should have.” Then, like nothing especially profound had just been announced, Rose headed back to the stove and her eggs.

“See?” he said, kissing the top of my head. “Easy as that.”

I rolled my eyes and smacked his butt as he wandered toward the table. A few of the guys who’d noticed gave him a thumbs up or lifted their cups of coffee my way. The embarrassment wouldn’t end that morning.

“Yeah, that was the epitome of smooth,” I said after him.

He spun around, his dimples on full display, and lifted his hands at his sides. “It was as smooth as I’m capable of,” he said before sniffing the air. My shoulders went rigid before the next words came from his mouth. “The pancakes are burning.”

Chapter Seventeen

My days at Willow Springs were spent working, and my nights were spent with Jesse in some room, or field, or barn, or . . . whatever we could find. The summer flew by. July was ending before I knew the month had begun.

It had been the best month of my life.

That was no exaggeration, no form of the melodrama Jesse still liked to say I was partial to. It was the truth. I had found an adoptive family by most definitions of the word; I was in love with the kind of man who seemed too good to be true; I had found a handful of girlfriends with the Walker sisters and Josie; I’d managed to steer clear of Garth and he of me; and mom had thankfully delayed her grand scheme of flying herself and her new boyfriend out for a little get-together. My dreams, for the first time in years, were back to color. I’d even squeezed in enough drawing time to fill an entire sketchbook.

If months got better than that July did, I couldn’t imagine it.

Plus, other than one night when Jesse had to camp out with the herd because one of the calves had gotten sick, we’d spent every night together. Some nights we did nothing more than talk until we fell asleep. Most nights we talked, then made love until we fell asleep. For being a virgin a month before, Jesse had meant it when he said he was committed to fine-tuning his sex skills. I’d be under-exaggerating if I said Jesse had mad skills in that department.

Neil and Rose might have given us the thumbs up in the dating department, but even Jesse hadn’t worked up the courage to tell them about us sleeping together every night. Thanks to a lock on my door and the unspoken rule that no one ever went into his attic room, no one had walked in on us unexpectedly.

I didn’t like omitting the truth with Neil and Rose, but I left that to Jesse. He knew his parents better than I did, and if he thought keeping our sleeping arrangements to ourselves for the time being was best, I was good with that.

After he’d described his parents as old-fashioned modernists, I couldn’t look at Rose and Neil the same way. Jesse said they might realize we were sleeping together and they would support us because we were both consenting adults, but they didn’t want to know it was happening a room or two above their bedrooms.

So July was legendary. The best on record.

And then August 1st rolled around.

I was busy in the garden picking early tomatoes when Rose came up to me with a stoic expression. Rose didn’t do stoic, so my heart was already thumping before she’d said a word. My mom had called her, probably because I’d been ignoring her calls all summer, to tell Rose that she and boy-toy had a rare three-day-weekend coming up and would fly in that Friday night.

She didn’t ask. Didn’t wait for Rose to run it by me. She dictated. She steam-rolled. Like she’d been doing all eighteen years of my life.

From Rose’s expression, I’d thought she’d come bearing the news of a loved one’s death, so I was relieved for all of one second when I realized no one had died. My mom was just coming to dinner with her boyfriend. My moment of relief shifted to panic.

I knew it was silly, but Willow Springs felt like my something special. It was my world free of her and her toxicity. I didn’t want to ruin things.

My mom wasn’t the issue as much as the storm we created when we were together. We might have both been a bit unstable on our own, but together? Things got downright volatile. I didn’t want Neil and Rose to witness that. I didn’t want Jesse to witness that.

I didn’t want to experience that either. Not anymore.

The summer had given me a new perspective. The lenses I’d been viewing life through for so long had been exchanged for a different set. A new lens that showed people as basically good and life as pretty damn great when I opened myself up to it.

I’d changed. Not entirely, but enough. A lot.

From Rose’s description of Mom’s call, I knew she hadn’t changed. So I had and she hadn’t. Would our relationship change? That was the question I couldn’t answer and one I really didn’t want to get to the bottom of over a steak dinner with the Walkers.

Too bad it was six o’clock on Friday night, minutes away from when Mom and Mr. Boyfriend would be pulling up. It was too late to call a time-out and cordon Mom and I off on our own little island so we could work out some serious shit I wasn’t sure could be worked out.

Jesse snuck up behind me where I fretted over the fruit salad. “For the millionth time, relax.” His hands lifted to my shoulders and his fingers pinched and rolled the muscles running down my neck and shoulders.

“For the millionth time,” I replied, closing my eyes. Jesse’s hands could work magic of all different kinds. “It’s easy for you to say, but you’ve never met my mom. I don’t think I’ve ever been relaxed around her.”

“Yeah, but are you relaxed around me?”

I gave up trying to layer the blueberries on top of the kiwi just right, dropped my head, and let Jesse’s fingers work. “Sometimes.” I pressed back into him to further explain.

He chuckled. “Right now are you relaxed around me?”

It was impossible not to be when he was massaging my neck. “Yes.”

“Good news then, Rowen. I’m going to be with you all night. I won’t leave your side, so anytime your mom starts making you feel all panicky, just take a hit of my ultra-relaxing aura.”

I smiled. “Ultra-relaxing aura, eh? And here I thought my boyfriend was a cowboy, not a hippie.”

“Cowboy’s in my blood, but my heart’s all hippie.” He kissed the back of my neck, right at my hairline, and wrapped his arms around me. “I love you. I’m here for you tonight. We’re all here for you tonight. Everything will be all right. And if it isn’t, I’ll fix it. Okay?”

I nodded and tilted my head toward his. “Okay.”

“Whatever happens tonight, it won’t change us, Rowen. It won’t change the way I feel about you.” He planted a soft kiss on my mouth. I was already more relaxed. Then he moved in for another one; that one wasn’t as soft or short.