The sight of her sitting on the sofa, lit only by the moonlight flowing through a window, stopped him at the door. She held a ragtag daisy in her hand and carefully laid it in a bowl of water on the coffee table. Shiny tears dripped from her chin and ribboned down to her jawbone. She looked so fragile, with her chin quivering and her shoulders hunched over the cereal bowl, that his heart ached. He swallowed hard, but the lump didn’t disappear. He wanted to take her in his arms and make the pain go away, but his feet were glued to the floor.

“I ruined it, Sawyer. Just to show off to those fools who don’t matter, I ruined one of my precious daisies. It looks pitiful,” she said. “And you are mad at me. A part of me wants to tell you to go to hell, but the other part wants to kiss you, because my heart is hurting, and I’m still mad at you, so don’t try to talk me out of it. You are clamming up and being all holier-than-thou, like you are better than me.”

He switched on the light and joined her on the sofa, leaving a foot of space between them. “Evidently, I’m the dumb old cowboy who gives you daisies so you can flaunt them before the rich cowboys to make them jealous. Or maybe you were showing me that all I had was daisies when you could have been wearing an expensive rose in your hair.”

Her shoulders squared up, and the tears dried. She glared at him with flashing green eyes. “I’m not guilty of such shit! Dammit, Sawyer. I wore the flower in my hair because of what you said.”

“What I said?” he asked through clenched teeth.

“Yes, you said something about us not being together in public for the whole world to see. I can’t quote it word for word, but the idea is there. I was so damned proud of those daisies, I wanted to take a jar full of them to the bar and tell everyone that finally a cowboy gave me what I wanted. But I decided to wear one. I thought you’d be tickled that I was telling the world that we were together, but instead you got all pissy and mad and won’t even talk to me.”

“Miscommunication,” he said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked.

“I let my past get in the way, and you did the same.”

The kittens bounded out of the bedroom, two energized bundles of fur after their romp with the purple petal, now ready to dive into their food bowl. Piggy growled at Chick, but the yellow kitten was a scrapper, pulling a portion of the dry kitten nuggets her way with her claws.

“You have to talk to me, Sawyer. From now on, you have to tell me outright if something upsets you,” Jill said. “It’s not miscommunication. It’s flat-out no communication. If I’d known the flower in my hair was going to set you off, I wouldn’t have worn it.”

“I do not have the right to tell you to take a flower out of your hair, Jill.”

“Well, I damn sure can’t read your mind, Sawyer, so you are going to have to use words.”

“Would you have taken it out of your hair if I’d asked?”

“We’ll never know now, will we?” Piggy finished eating and scampered over to Jill’s foot. “Do you think we are worth trying again?” Jill reached down with one hand and drew the kitten up to her lap.

“We’ve come a long way to start from scratch,” he said.

“This isn’t a trust issue. It’s a communication problem. We don’t start from the beginning. We start from about”—she looked at the clock on the wall above the stove—“six hours ago. Are we worth six hours?”

“Hell, yes,” he said. “I’ll make an effort to talk more.”

“I’ll try to speak before I act on impulse,” she said.

He offered his hand. “Shake on it?”

She put hers inside his. “Now can we please go to bed? I’m so sleepy and worn out emotionally that I can’t even think straight,” she said.

He picked up Piggy and laid her on the rug in front of the stove with Chick, then he returned to the sofa, picked Jill up like a bride, and carried her to the bedroom. He gently laid her on her side of the bed and pulled the covers up over her body.

“Hold me, Sawyer. I need your arms around me to reassure me that everything is fine between us,” she said.

He realized he’d forgotten to switch off the light, but it didn’t matter right then. He needed to feel Jill’s body next to his, to smell her hair and to kiss that soft spot below her ear. Tonight he didn’t need wild kisses, makeup sex, or even any more words. That things were settled between them before he shut his eyes was enough.

She slipped her hand into his. “Are we good, Sawyer?”

“Yes, Jill, we definitely are.”

Chapter 24

Verdie turned around in the church pew and winked at Sawyer. “I didn’t think Gladys would miss another Sunday or let y’all stay home, either,” she said.

Gladys smiled. “That would set the rumor wheel on fire.”

“Why?” Jill asked.

“They’d say that y’all were laid up in bed together,” Gladys whispered so the children sitting beside Verdie couldn’t hear.

Jill’s face burned, but she took several deep breaths and hoped to hell that her aunt didn’t notice.

“You. Are. Blushing,” Sawyer whispered softly in her ear. “Would you go to dinner with me after church?”

“As in a date?”

He nodded. “As in a normal, plain old date.”

“Are we telling Finn and Callie that we have a date and can’t take them up on another invitation to their place?” she asked.

“We will if they ask. Is that a yes?”

“It is a definite yes,” she said.

The preacher took the podium, and the whole congregation settled in for a sermon. Jill could almost hear the old men behind her getting comfortable for their Sunday morning nap.

“Good morning. It is less than two weeks until Valentine’s Day, a day of love and romance. I’ve been asked”—the preacher shuffled his notes—“to announce that there will be a Valentine’s party right here at the church on Friday, the thirteenth.”

A few people chuckled.

The preacher held up a palm. “I know it’s considered an unlucky day, but we’re going to put that wives’ tale to the side for our party and think of it as a wonderful day of romance. There will be a dinner, and Kinsey Brennan has said that she and Quaid are having a speed-dating evening for the young single folks, so get ready for lots of fun.”

He went on to announce that the nursing-home visitation had been postponed that week due to a conflict of schedule and that there would be a baby shower on Wednesday. Jill hadn’t heard the names of the prospective new parents before, but they weren’t Gallaghers or Brennans, so they were most likely sitting in the middle section of pews.

“I’ll expect everyone to respect the church and be civil to each other during our Valentine’s party,” he said seriously.

The tension level rose from a solid five all the way to a ten in seconds. The Brennans shot dirty looks across the heads of those folks in the middle section, looks which no doubt meant to tell the folks on the other side that, by golly, they would be civil only if they wanted to and not because the preacher told them to.

“And now I’d like to introduce you to Ruth and her mother-in-law, beginning with the Book of Ruth in the Old Testament,” the preacher said.

Evidently, he was going to preach on love that morning, which was a wonderful topic for the first of February in any other church at any other time. But he’d already lost his crowd when he made that statement about being nice. Still, he plowed on, raising his voice to wake up the dozing folks at the right time, lowering it to get the attention of those who were drifting away to think of something else.

Jill blocked all of it out of her mind and let herself get giddy thinking about a real date with Sawyer. It was crazy, but she couldn’t help it. They’d been through so much together, including some damn fine hot sex, but this was a date. It wasn’t friends with benefits; it was the real thing.