For Love and Family by Victoria Pade Page A

almost a swagger.
    Even the sight of him wiping grease off his hands engrossed her and caused her to stare almost trancelike until Johnny’s voice pulled her out of it.
    Okay, so the man was something to behold, she kept telling herself. That didn’t mean she had to behold him.
    But then, before she knew it, her gaze would snag on something about him, and she’d realize only after several minutes that she was staring again.
    By the end of the day, she was very frustrated with herself and her lack of self-control. Frustrated and disgusted.
    â€œYou’d think you’d never seen a good-lookingman before,” she said angrily to her reflection in the bathroom mirror of the cabin when she made a stop there to freshen up before dinner.
    But even once she’d brushed out her hair and twisted it into a roll at the back of her head that left a spray of wavy ends at her crown, and reapplied a little mascara and lipgloss, she wasn’t convinced that she could practice any more self-control through the evening to come than she had all day long.
    The best she could hope for as she went from the cabin to the house in the dusk was that she would eventually get her fill of this man who seemed to attract her attention like metal attracted a magnet and then this phenomena would pass.
    And she did hope it would pass. Never in her life had she been so distracted by a man—by any man—and it made her uncomfortable. Not to mention that it just seemed so strange…
    When she reached the house Terese did as Hunter had urged her that morning—she walked in without knocking.
    â€œHi, I’m back,” she called as she did, not hesitating to go from the mudroom into the kitchen.
    As she expected, Johnny and Hunter were there. Hunter was sitting on one of the chairs at the table pulling on a cowboy boot and Johnny was kneeling on the seat of another chair.
    â€œYou want to, don’t you, T’rese?” Johnny said, rather than answering her greeting.
    He was apparently trying to convince his father of something and enlisting her in the process.
    â€œI don’t know if I want to or not since I don’t know what we’re talking about,” she told her nephew.
    â€œI’m not sure how the subject came up,” Hunter said before his son had explained, “but I hear you’ve never roasted marshmallows over a fire.”
    That only compounded her confusion. “I’m not sure how most of the subjects came up today,” she confessed, “but no, I’ve never roasted marshmallows over a fire.”
    â€œSo that’s why…” Johnny said with precise emphasis on each word as if to make his argument clearer “…we should have a nighttime picnic with a fire so we can do the marshmallows and T’rese can taste ’em.”
    â€œNot to mention that then Johnny can have them, too,” Hunter said to Terese.
    A nighttime picnic. So that was what the little boy was angling for.
    Terese didn’t have any feelings about it one way or another, though. Because yet again her attention was wandering to Hunter.
    He’d showered and shaved since they’d gone their separate ways half an hour earlier, and changed into a pair of darker jeans and a blue Henley shirt. He’d washed his hair, too, because it was slightly damp yet and combed straight back to dry.
    It struck Terese that she’d seen him in a variety ofclothes, and that it didn’t matter how he was dressed, he was appealing in everything. The realization offered her no aid in getting her fill of the sight of him.
    â€œYou want to, don’t you, T’rese?” Johnny repeated the question he’d greeted her with, saving her from herself as he had on several occasions throughout the day by forcing her to concentrate on him rather than his father.
    â€œThat’s completely up to your dad,” she said, hesitant to support Johnny’s side if it was going to cause