The Cowboy's Gift-Wrapped Bride. Victoria Pade
seems so,” she confirmed, going farther into the kitchen herself until they met at the counter where Matt was taking dishes down from a cupboard after tossing her a welcoming smile that seemed to draw her to him.
“How are you feelin’?” Matt asked, giving her the once-over with those forest-green eyes.
“The headache is better than it was. Still there, but better. The dizziness comes and goes. An ache seems to be settling into my neck and shoulders but I’m not so cold anymore.” Although being near him seemed to be what chased away the chills. Not that she’d ever say that, or even acknowledge it to herself.
“The neck and shoulder ache is prob’ly stress,” Buzz offered. “A good night’s sleep’ll get rid of that for you. Always helps me when I get it.”
“I’m sure you’re right. Your grandson the doctor checked out my neck and said he didn’t see any indication of whiplash,” Jenn told him.
Buzz was staring at her openly. Studying her. Maybe sizing her up.
It made Jenn uncomfortable.
“What can I do to help?” she asked Matt, thinking she’d rather be moving around than merely standing there being looked at like a specimen in a petri dish.
“Take what you can carry over to the table and sit down. I’ll do the rest,” Matt answered.
The table was a huge rectangle nestled within the arms of a breakfast nook at one end of the kitchen. It took up a full six feet of corner space in a U that would surely seat a dozen or more people comfortably.
Jenn set out the two plates, silverware and napkins she’d brought with her, placing one on the end and the other just around the corner. Then she slid in to sit behind it.
Buzz joined her, sitting at the other end of the U, but sideways so he could stretch his leg out along the bench seat as if that eased an ache of his own.
He was still studying her. Scrutinizing her, really.
“You look a little familiar,” he finally decreed. “I’m bettin’ you were headed for Elk Creek, not just passin’ through. Prob’ly to see family.”
Matt made three trips bringing fried chicken, coleslaw, biscuits, mashed potatoes and gravy, honey and two glasses of water to the table before he slipped into the breakfast nook, too.
“Who’s she look like, then?” he asked as the old man continued to study Jenn.
“Don’t know. But she looks familiar. Name doesn’t ring a bell, though. No Johnsons ’round here. Maybe you lived in Elk Creek as a girl and Johnson’s yer married name.”
“Married?” Matt repeated as if he didn’t like the idea.
But then, for some reason, neither did Jenn.
“I don’t think I’m married,” she said with more forcefulness than was warranted. “I mean, I don’t feel married and there’s no wedding ring or mark on my wedding finger left by a ring. And there’s also no pictures in my wallet of a husband or kids.”
“And a husband would have missed her by now,” Matt added as he filled both his plate and hers with food. “Either she’d have been meeting him or he would have wanted her to call when she got where she was going to make sure she’d made it through this storm. And I just checked in with the sheriff a few minutes ago—nobody’s contacted him lookin’ for her. Granted, the phone lines are still down.”
“Could be a husband she left and he ain’t lookin’ fer her.”
“I don’t feel married,” Jenn repeated, thinking that if she were married, surely she wouldn’t be so attracted to Matt McDermot.
“How’s ’bout signs of childbirth? Got any of them stretch marks?”
“Buzz!” Matt chided his grandfather.
“Well, that’d be a clue, wouldn’t it?” the old man defended.
Jenn knew her face was coloring but she answered Buzz’s question anyway. “No, no stretch marks.” And she would have seen them if any existed because when she’d changed her clothes she’d checked out her body thoroughly to familiarize herself with it, finding not only no stretch marks but a narrow waist and a taut, flat stomach.
“Prob’ly no kids, then,” Buzz concluded from what she’d said about having no stretch marks. “How’s ’bout any birthmarks or scars?”
“None of those, either.”
“Got any tattoos?”
“Jeez, Buzz,” Matt groaned, rolling his eyes.
But Jenn only laughed at that one. “No, no tattoos, either.”
“How many toes you got? Knew a family moved on a long time ago—everyone of ’em had six toes on each foot.”
Jenn laughed again, enjoying the elderly man despite his bluntness. “Sorry. Only five per foot.”
“And you ain’t got that rosy hook-nosed beak of the Masseys from way back, so you prob’ly don’t belong to them neither.”
Buzz continued in that vein all the while Jenn and Matt ate, quizzing her, staring at her, trying to figure out who she was.
But he never did.
“Nope, can’t place you,” he finally concluded when both Matt and Jenn had finished eating. “There’s somethin’ ’bout you tickles my brain, though. I just can’t put my finger on it.”
“Maybe it’ll come to you,” Matt suggested.
“Sooner or later,” Buzz agreed. “I’ll keep workin’ on it.” The elderly man craned around to look at the clock on the back wall of the breakfast nook and then pushed himself to the end of the seat and used his cane to help himself get to his feet. “But now it’s time for my program. Think I’ll watch it under my heat blanket in bed.”
“Good idea,” Matt said, although he watched the old man with fondness and didn’t seem eager for him to go. “’Night, Buzz.”
“’Night. See you in the mornin’.” Then to Jenn he said, “And don’t worry ’bout nothin’, girl. You’re welcome to stay here long as you need to.”
“Thank you,” she said, telling the older man good-night as he limped out of the kitchen.
“Sorry about that stretch-mark business earlier,” Matt said when his grandfather was out of earshot.
“That’s okay. He was right. It would have been a sign of having kids. But there aren’t any,” she reiterated. “And even though I know it isn’t really a basis for anything, I honestly don’t have any sense of being married, either, so I really don’t think I am.”
Matt just nodded his head, accepting her conclusion but not necessarily committing to it. “Buzz will likely come up with something. He may not be young but he’s still sharp as a tack.”
“Do you always call him by his first name?” Jenn asked then, curious about it.
“I guess we all do.”
“Is that a remnant of not having known him when you were growing up?”
Once again Matt looked baffled. “You know about that, too?”
“I know he didn’t like the man your mother wanted to marry—your father—so she eloped and didn’t have anything to do with Buzz or her mother for years and years. That when they finally healed the rift she had a whole family of grown sons and a daughter that Buzz had never met before. But that you’ve all become close now.”
“Sometimes this is a little eerie,” was Matt’s only comment, referring to the facts about his family.
But his remark again gave Jenn second thoughts about the wisdom of spewing this