Tina Leonard - Navarro or Not

“I shouldn’t be playing around with you, probably,” he said. “You broke your bed. You might be dangerous.” He pulled a huge jackknife from his pocket and began marking off sections on the wood.

“Oh, yeah.” Nina sank onto a chair. “You’re in big danger from me.”

“Well, there’s danger. And then there’s danger. That’s what I always say.”

“Profound.”

He glanced up at her. “Yeah. Maybe not by a librarian’s standards. But it works for me.”

She sighed. “So, I guess you wouldn’t be brandishing a knife that big if you didn’t want it commented on.”

He gave her a devilish wink. “I’m not packing small anything, peachy.”

She rolled her eyes. “Of course not.”

“So, tell me about your sister.”

“No.”

He marked some notches. “Okay.”

“Tell me about your brother who wears the hat on his face.”

“Why? You dig him?”

She laughed. “Dig? How can I dig a guy whose face I haven’t seen?”

He looked at her, his eyes full of mischief. She wondered about that face and those eyes. What would she read in those eyes if she and he were alone together on a moonlit night—

“Maybe a face isn’t what’s important about a man.”

She raised her brows. “Then what is?”

He stuck his knife in the floor and lifted a handsaw to the wood. “The size of his…knife.” The look on her face made him laugh. “Fooled ya. You thought I was going to say something else.”

“I did not!”

“Whatever.”

“I won’t bother to return fire. But I could, with everything I’ve heard about cowboys since I’ve been here.”

“Hardworking, sincere, interested, capable—”

“That’s not what my sister would say,” Nina said. “She would probably say loose, loser, dishonest and wish-I’d-never-met-him.”

“Hey, that’s my bro—”

She stared at him. “Yes? Your what?”

He shook his head. “This is all wrong.”

“Why?”

“Because.” He stood, looking at her thoughtfully. “My name is Navarro Jefferson.”

Her heart started a slow thud. “Jefferson?”

“Jefferson. I’m Last’s older brother.”

“I see.” She backed away from him, turning her face. “Thank you for carrying up the lumber,” she said pointedly. “You can go now.”

“I could, but I think you’ve marked this wrong,” he said, kneeling to look at the pencil markings on the slat. “What happened to this bed, anyway? You got splinters in the drapes.”

She didn’t want to think about what had happened to her charmed bed, especially since she suspected its shattered slats might have been Last Jefferson’s doing. Her stomach churned. And now she had one of the infamous Jefferson brothers alone in the room with her and her broken bed.

He had been deceiving her by not telling her immediately that he was a Jefferson. For a minute she had nearly been taken in by that not-so-suave, good-ol-cowboy facade.

Whew. Close call.

“Hey,” Navarro said. “I am sorry about your sister. We’ll get to the bottom of matters. I promise.”

Still not facing him, and blinking away tears, Nina shook her head. It didn’t matter now. Not really. All her sister’s dreams for the new life she’d hoped to find in Texas were as shattered as the bed. By a Jefferson cowboy. Now, Nina’s goal was to put the bed back together and to recapture the charm.

One day she was going to need that charm for herself.

So much for the peach being a possibility. Navarro glanced over at Nina, who was studiously ignoring him. That was his invitation to leave, but perversely, he wanted to stay.

It was her roundness, he decided, that he found so delicious. He wanted to take a bite of her—bad. “So, maybe we’ll have to agree to work together.”

She turned to face him. “What do you mean?”

He shrugged. “You’re not happy. We’re not happy. No one’s exactly thrilled about the situation. Valentine’s suing us, you know.”

“She has a right to financial assistance from the father of her child.”

“Maybe. If Last is the father.”

Nina gasped. “How dare you?”

“Hold on there, sparky. We have a right to wonder. Last only saw her one night.”

“Okay.” Nina crossed her arms. “How is saying something like that helping us to work together?”

He scratched his head for a minute, thinking hard. Crockett would handle this moment so much better; he’d just sweep Nina into bed and somehow the problem would solve itself.

No, that thought didn’t make Navarro feel better.

Well, if he was their oldest brother, he’d find some anal-retentive solution to talking Nina down out of her tree.

Or maybe not. Mason had never figured out their next-door neighbor and family friend, Mimi, so it was no use looking to his brother’s example for inspiration.

Nor Last’s. The brother with the lollipop-colored memories of the way their family used to be had kept the brothers hewn to hearth and home to make him happy. Until this latest escapade.

Crockett maybe? Archer? Bandera?

No, no and no.

It was up to him to sort out this huge problem. He could wind up a hero, if he figured out a way to fix it. The family could get back to its version of normal, if he played his cards right.

“Hey,” he said, his voice calm, the way it would sound if he was soothing a skittish mare. “Let’s get back to fixing this bed. Then we’ll talk about the other.”

That would give him time to think.

“Actually, I feel very awkward having you help me,” Nina said. “It feels wrong.”

“You don’t owe me anything—”

“I’m not suggesting that I do,” she snapped. “More like you owe us.”

Navarro cautioned himself to keep his cool. He upgraded her from snippy little peach to fiery. Gently he began sawing at a piece of lumber, keeping straight to the line he’d marked with his knife. “So, this bed means a lot to you.”

“Yes. I’m going to get pregnant in it one day.”

He miscued the saw and went into the hardwood floor. “Damn!” Checking the damage, he said, “We’ll pull the rug over that when I’m finished.”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said, sitting on the floor. “We’re already being charged damages for the room.”

“Really? By whom?”

“Marvella. When the bed broke, it scratched up the floor.”

He glanced under what remained of the frame. “Does seem as if she has a point. So, are…you planning on getting pregnant soon?”

“First, I’d have to find the man, wouldn’t I?” She gave him a pointed look. “And I haven’t met the right one yet.”

“Every day brings a new opportunity,” he said cheerfully.

“Thank you for your opinion, which was unsolicited, I believe.”

He grinned, relieved that there was no boyfriend hanging around her. “So, what if your husband of choice doesn’t want kids? I, myself, for example, do not want children. Nor marriage, but that sort of goes with the territory.”

“Then he wouldn’t be the right man, would he?”

“Now that was a very sensible, librarian-style answer,” Navarro said approvingly. “No messing about. No worrying about broken hearts. Just, when I meet the right man, it will all happen the way I imagine it.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Are you making fun of me?”

“No.” He returned to sawing, waiting for her to comment further, since he’d obviously given her something to yammer back at him about.

But she sat quietly, watching him.

He kind of liked her watching him. To be honest, he liked having her full attention. “I would have thought a cute librarian like you would have already been dragged down to the secret labyrinth of the book stacks by now.”