“Well, it’s not me.” Sherona smirked. “I’m going to jump in the shower, too.”
“Okay. I’ll set the table.”
“Are you always this agreeable?” she asked, glancing at him sideways as she left the kitchen. He surprised her by reaching out and grabbing her hand. He pulled her back to him and suddenly she was in his arms, looking up into the amber, brown and green points of color in his eyes.
“I’m making it my mission to be agreeable to you.”
Her eyebrows went up in a wry expression. “Well you’re not doing a bad job, considering what happened in that meadow earlier. I’ve never done anything like that in my life,” she said in an impulsive burst of honesty.
His eyelids narrowed as he studied her. Her pulse began to throb at her throat. “Then I really am the luckiest man around.” She laughed and started to break free of his arms, but he pulled her back against him. His clean, male scent filled her nose. “How come you never think I’m serious?” he asked.
“I don’t want you to be serious. I want you to be honest.”
His expression sobered. She tried to ignore the disappointment that went through her when he dropped his arms, freeing her.
“What if they’re one and the same, Sherona?”
She couldn’t think of how to respond, especially when he seemed so genuine.
“Why did you?” he demanded suddenly.
“Why did I what?”
“Why did you agree to something so risky with a stra
nger?”
She licked at her lower lip nervously. “I don’t know for sure,” she prevaricated.
He stepped toward the counter and leaned his hip against it. “You said you wanted me to be honest. Don’t I deserve the same consideration?”
She glanced away, embarrassed. A few strained, silent seconds passed.
“I’ve been stuck in this forgotten town for my whole life, Chance. I’m not complaining. It’s like you said, it’s beautiful country filled with good, honest people. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t longed for a chance to break away, for something to shake up my life a little bit. I don’t want to grow old and die and know I’ve never stepped off the paved path.”
“That’s what I mean to you? A little rough country? A little risk?”
“A reminder that I’m alive,” she said before she had a chance to censor herself. “That I’m still a vibrant woman, despite the fact that I’ve been stuck in the backwoods for my whole life, and been responsible for another human being since I was eighteen years old, but still haven’t seen my thirtieth birthday. Yeah. Maybe that’s what all this means,” she said. When she realized how raw she’d sounded, she lifted her chin in a subtle defiant gesture. “Given the life you’ve led, that must sound pretty naive and stupid.”
He regarded her soberly. “The last thing it sounds is stupid.”
Again, she looked away, ashamed by her burst of honesty. He stepped away from the counter.
“Plates?” he asked, obviously sensing her vulnerability.
She pointed at a cupboard, wavered on her feet, and turned away.
* * *
“You really are a fantastic cook,” Chance said forty-five minutes later as he enthusiastically made his chicken casserole, salad and homemade seven-grain bread disappear. “You should be the one to publish a book. Nutritious Country Cooking . . . no . . . Bohemian Country Cooking. Get it? All the fresh produce you use from the co-op and hippy ideals blended with old-fashioned recipes,” he said, pausing in his brainstorming to take a huge bite of apple walnut salad. “I’ll do the photography for it, if you’d like.”
“Oh, yes,” Sherona teased fondly as she buttered her bread. “World-famous photographer working on a book that will sell ten copies; nine, if I can’t get my brother to buy a copy.”
“It’d be a great promotional tool for Food for Body and Soul,” Chance told her pointedly.
She set down her knife and just stared at him. His eyes gleamed at her knowingly as he forked a large helping of casserole into his mouth.
“You’re right. It would. Why haven’t I ever thought of that? The proceeds could go to Body and Soul, but more important—”