“And that’s where Ramsey went after he left me.”
“He usually does,” Luke said. He held up the cord to the chocolate pot. “You wouldn’t mind plugging this in, would you?”
She looked for an outlet, but when she couldn’t find one, he got an extension cord out of a drawer and plugged it into the overhead light. The dangling cord was ugly, but it worked.
“Join me?” he asked as he dipped a strawberry into the chocolate, but she shook her head no. She wondered what Ramsey was doing next door.
“Thinking about ol’ Rams?” Luke asked. When she didn’t answer, he said, “So what’s the deal with you and my cousin? Are you one of those women who’s set her cap for him and you plan to be Mrs. McDowell by the end of the year?”
“No, I haven’t ‘set my cap’ for him. What an old-fashioned phrase. Have you finished those strawberries yet? It’s late, and I’d like to go to bed. I’m going to church tomorrow.”
“Rams picking you up?”
Suddenly, Jocelyn didn’t like what was going on. She didn’t want to walk into church tomorrow and have people looking at her as though they knew she’d had visits from two men in one night. More important, she didn’t want to become embroiled in whatever was going on between these two cousins. It was obvious that Luke’s only interest in her was Ramsey’s attention.
“You know, I think I’ve said more than enough about my personal life. I think that if you continue to work here, you and I should get some things straight. From now on, I’ll check my own locks, so you don’t have to skulk around my house late at night.”
“This is late to you?”
She ignored his question. “Second, I’d like you to keep your nose out of my life. This is a small town and if you and I start…” She waved her hand to the whole scene of the two of them in her almost-dark kitchen. “I just don’t think it’s good for this to happen again.”
“Sure,” he said as he swung his long legs out of the chair. “Sorry to have bothered you.”
Jocelyn hadn’t meant to be so cold, and she certainly didn’t want to alienate someone who worked for her, someone she was going to see daily, but at the same time she thought it was better to not start any gossip.
She followed him to the back door, ready to lock it after he left. He paused on the doorstep.
“Tell me, Miss Minton,” he said formally, “you had a date with my cousin tonight, but I wonder what you would say if I asked you out.”
She took a step farther back into the house. “Luke, you seem like a nice man, and from what little I saw of the garden, you do good work, but I don’t think that you and I…Well, I mean…We’re not…”
“I understand,” he said, then tugged on the front lock of his hair and bent his head to her in an old-fashioned, subservient way. “Good night, Miss Minton,” he said, then went down the stairs and disappeared into the night.
Jocelyn shut the door, locked it, then leaned against it. What a day! she thought. Too much, too fast.
She went up the stairs to her bedroom and once again smiled at the clean bed. Tomorrow at church she’d have to find out who’d made this welcome for her and thank them.
She tried to keep herself from doing it, but she looked out the window to the driveway below. Ramsey’s car was still there, so he was still with Tess. The drop-dead gorgeous Tess.
Jocelyn washed her face, slathered on moisturizer, put on her nightgown, and climbed into bed. Her first thought was of Luke. She wasn’t naive enough not to know that everything he’d done tonight was one of those male competitions over a female. Luke made her feel like a female deer, with two rutting stags fighting over her. From what she could piece together, Ramsey and Luke had been competing over everything their entire lives.
So now she was the new trophy. Brand-new in town, knew nothing and no one, new owner of the “big house.” Yes sirree Bob, she was the prize to beat all prizes.
She knew Luke was part of the contest, but the question was whether Ramsey was or not. Of the two men, she certainly liked Ramsey better. He’d gone to a great deal of trouble to prepare a meal for her and create a romantic setting in her barren, lonely house.
On the other hand, Luke had lied about locks needing to be checked so he could gain entry into her house late at night. Then he’d pretty much helped himself to the meal Ramsey had prepared.
As far as she could tell, Ramsey was a giver and Luke a taker.
All in all, as she started to go to sleep, she thought about what Luke had said as he was leaving. Not that Luke had seriously asked her out. She had a vision of him in a bar, laughing with his fifty or so other cousins about how he’d taken Ramsey’s girl away from him. “Ol’ Rams didn’t even see me coming,” she could almost hear him say. “I just swooped in an
d stole her right from under Rams’s nose.”
The vision was so unsettling that she hit the pillows with her fist and stared up at the ceiling. If Ramsey “won” her, would he do the same thing at a cocktail party? She could see Ramsey at a country club, raising his glass of single malt as he said to a group of men, “And here’s to yet again trumping my cousin.”
When Joce heard Ramsey’s car start, then drive away, she thought, And there’s another problem. This Tess sounded much too close to Ramsey for her liking. Tonight when Luke showed her Tess’s photo Jocelyn had felt downright jealous. Jealous! What a truly absurd emotion. Jealous of what? A man she’d met just that night? A man who may or may not have been using her in some stupid contest with his cousin?
When the car was gone, Joce felt her body relax—and that made her even more angry. She’d been tense because a man she’d just met had been in the apartment of another woman?