RaeAnne Thayne - Outlaw Hartes

Seconds later—before she could come up with a decent place to hide—he walked out in the hall wearing tan jeans and a forest-green fisherman’s sweater. She was still ordering her heart to start beating again when he turned and caught sight of her standing there like an idiot.

“Doc!” he exclaimed.

“Hi,” she mumbled.

“Why are you just standing out here? Come in.”

She thought about explaining how the girls had abandoned her for their favorite boy band, then decided she would sound even more ridiculous if she tried. She held up the pie instead. “Where’s the best place for this?”

“Probably in the kitchen. I was just heading there myself, I can show you the way. Here. Let me take your coat first.”

She tensed as he came up behind her and pulled her coat from her shoulders while she transferred the pie from hand to hand. Despite her best efforts, she was intensely aware of him, his heat and strength and the leathery smell of his aftershave.

After he hung her coat in a small closet off the entry, he took off down the hall. She followed him, trying fiercely not to notice the snug fit of his jeans or those impossibly broad shoulders under the weave of his sweater. Something was different about him today. It took her a moment to figure out what. He wasn’t wearing the black Stetson that seemed so much a part of him, nor was his hair flattened from it.

The dark waves looked soft and thick. They would probably be like silk under her fingers, she thought. The impulse to reach out and see for herself was so strong, she even lifted a hand a few inches from her side, then dropped it quickly in mortification.

It was much safer to look around her. This part of the house was one she hadn’t seen before, but it had the same warmth of the rest of the house, with family pictures grouped together on one wall and a huge log cabin quilt in dark greens and blues hanging on the other.

As they neared the kitchen, the smells of roasting turkey and vegetables grew stronger, and her stomach gave a loud, long rumble. She pressed a hand to it, hoping no one else could hear but her.

When she looked up, though, she found Matt giving her a lopsided grin, and she flushed.

“Oh, Ellie! You made it!” Matt’s sister looked pretty and flustered as she stirred something on the stove with one hand while she pulled a pan of golden dinner rolls out of the oven with the other. “When it started to snow, I was afraid you’d decide not to make the drive.”

“It’s not bad out there. A few flurries, that’s all. Just enough to make everything look like a magic fairyland.”

“Wait until you’ve lived here for a few years. You won’t describe the snow quite so romantically. Oh, is that your famous pie? Does it need to go in the refrigerator?”

“No. I don’t think so.”

“Good. I’m not sure I could find room for it.” Cassie blew out a breath and tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear just as the timers on the stove and microwave went off at the same time. The frazzled look in her eyes started to border on panic.

“Uh, anything I can do to help?” Matt asked suddenly.

His sister sent him a grateful look. “Actually, there is. Can you finish chopping the raw vegetables to go with that dip you like? Oh, rats,” she exclaimed suddenly. “I forgot to bring up the cranberry sauce from the store room. Ellie, would you mind stirring this gravy for me? I think most of the lumps are out of it—just make sure it doesn’t burn on the bottom.”

“Uh, sure.”

She set her pie on the only bare patch of countertop she could find and took the wooden spoon from Cassie, who rushed from the room, leaving her and Matt alone.

He immediately went to work on the vegetables. The cutting surface was on a work island in the middle of the kitchen with only a few feet separating it from the stove, forcing them to stand side by side but facing opposite directions.

Again she felt that sizzle of awareness but she sternly tried to suppress it. They lapsed into an awkward silence while they did their appointed jobs.

“Everything smells divine,” she finally said.

He seized on the topic. “Yeah, Cassidy’s a great cook. I’ve always thought she should have her own restaurant.”

“I didn’t know Cassie was short for Cassidy.” She paused, remembering something SueAnn had told her about the middle brother, the Salt River chief of police. “Let me get this straight, you have a brother named Jesse James and a sister named Cassidy?”

His low, rueful laugh sent the hairs on the back of her neck prickling. “Our dad was what I guess you’d call a history buff. One of his ancestors, Matt Warner, was a member of Butch Cassidy’s Wild Bunch, and Dad grew up hearing stories about him handed down throughout the years. Dad was always fascinated by outlaws and lawmen of the Old West. The romanticism and the adventure and the history of it, I guess.”

“So you’re named after this scofflaw of an ancestor?”

“Yeah.” His voice sounded rueful again. “Matthew Warner Harte. When the others came along, I guess he just decided to stick with the same theme.”

A Wild West outlaw. Why didn’t it surprise her that he had that blood churning through his veins? “And how did your mother handle having her own little wild bunch?”

His shrug brushed his shoulder into hers, and the subtle movement sent a shiver rippling down her spine. “My parents adored each other,” he answered. “Mom probably wouldn’t have complained even if Dad wanted to name us Larry, Moe and Curly.”

He sent her another lopsided grin, and she was helpless to prevent herself from returning it. They gazed at each other for a moment, side by side across shoulders, both smiling. Suddenly everything seemed louder, more intense—the slurp and burble of the gravy in the pan, the chink of the knife hitting the cutting board, the slow whir of the ceiling fan overhead.

His gaze dropped to her mouth for an instant, just enough for heat to flare there as if he’d touched her, then his eyes flashed to hers once more before he turned abruptly, guiltily, back to the vegetables.

Now that was interesting.

She was still trying to come up with something to say in the midst of the sudden tension—not to mention trying to remind her lungs what they were there for—when their daughters burst into the kitchen in mid-giggle.

They both stopped short in the doorway when they saw their parents working side-by-side. Ellie opened her mouth to greet them but shut it again when two pairs of eyes shifted rapidly between her and Matt, then widened.

The girls looked at each other with small, secretive smiles that sent the fear of God into her. They were definitely up to something. And she was very much afraid she was beginning to suspect what it might be.

“So tell us what brings a pretty California beach girl like yourself to our desolate Wyoming wilderness.”

Matt sat forward so he could hear Ellie’s answer across the table. If he had asked that question, he grumped to himself, she probably would have snapped at him to mind his own business. But it didn’t seem to bother her at all that his brother wanted to nose around through her past.

Instead, she smiled at Jesse, seated to her left. “I’m afraid there weren’t too many beaches around Bakersfield.”

“Bakersfield? Is that where you’re from?” Cassie asked.

If he hadn’t been watching her so intently, Matt would have missed the way her smile slid away and the barest shadow of old pain flickered in her green eyes for just a moment before she shifted her gaze to the full plate in front of her. “Until I was seven. After that, I moved around a lot.”