“She’s actually very…” Landon paused. He didn’t want to give away too much, “…competent and hardworking. We should do our best to make her feel at home.”
Mrs. Perry blinked at him in surprise. Mrs. Bassencherry put her hand to her chest. “You’re such a generous soul, Landon. I’ve always thought so.”
“Well, it’s like the Good Book says. We need to love our neighbors.” He intended to work on that very seriously. Some commandments were easier to keep than others.
Chapter Thirteen
Over the next month,Landon found himself going over to Coyote Glen a couple times a week to help Kitty with one thing or another. After all, he had to make sure the ranch ran smoothly. It might be his property someday. And he had to make sure Kitty got her money’s worth for the remodel she was doing at his house.
He’d given her a free hand in choosing the colors and style because he didn’t know what he wanted, except that he was very sure he didn’t want to look at fabric swatches, color pallets, or light fixtures. Trying to do interior design seemed like doing a jigsaw puzzle that you built along the way with lots of wrong pieces. It was better to leave the decisions to the expert.
Landon’s brothers were less than thrilled by the renovations. A team of workers ripped up all the tile on the bottom floor of the house and the family had to stay off of it for two days while new wood-like tile was laid.
“Couldn’t you have dated a woman with a normal job?” Preston complained while tiptoeing across the floor to go to school. “A chef would’ve been good. I wouldn’t have minded someone who wanted to cook for us.”
“Or a landscaper,” Jaxon added, steering Audrey toward the front door. “The palo verdes by the barn need pruning.”
Landon didn’t mind any of the mess because Kitty came over every day to check on the project. And besides, once the workers finished the floor, it looked downright classy. Kitty began adding furniture, rugs, and lamps to complete the rooms.
After Dewayne had turned in for the day, Kitty would frequently head over to the Wyle Away. She and Landon rode horses through winding desert trails and watched the sun set behind the mountains. They cooked s’mores at his barbeque pit and let the embers float up until they joined the star-studded sky. Once when Dewayne was gone, Landon came over to Coyote Glen, and they ate a candlelit dinner in the gazebo in her backyard. Cal had always said his wife’s roses that surrounded the gazebo were a mass of thorny nonsense, but he’d tended them with silent devotion after she was gone.
One day while Kitty was over at the Wyle Away, they stood on his veranda, talking. She motioned to the wooden porch swing behind them. “That could use new cushions. Do you want me to order some?”
The red checkered cushions had grown faded and threadbare, but they stayed there year after year as a reminder of the past. His father made the porch swing for his mother when they first were married. Landon had grown up seeing his parents sitting there, hand in hand, discussing their day while the sun went down.
Kitty wandered over to the swing for a better look. “Blue would match the color scheme inside.”
“Nah.” Landon didn’t move from his spot, leaning against the railing. “Those have sentimental value. They were my mother’s.”
“Trust me, as a woman I can tell you it would bother your mom to know that the first thing people see when they come to the house is threadbare cushions. But…” Kitty pressed a hand against a cushion, testing it, “we could reupholster them and leave the original fabric inside. That way you’d know it’s there and the new fabric would protect them from more damage.” She ran her hand over the back of the swing. “This is in good condition.”
Landon had refinished it a couple years ago. “Solid oak. My dad built it to last.”
She sat down and gave it a tentative swing. The chain didn’t even squeak. “How come you never use this?”
He sat in it all the time, just not with the women he dated. Doing that would have seemed like he was ready to step into his parents’ shoes, into that sort of relationship. And he wasn’t.
Man, maybe Dillon was right and Landon actually did have commitment issues.
Kitty swayed gently back and forth, waiting to hear why he didn’t ever sit on the swing. He couldn’t explain, so he shrugged. “I do sometimes.”
She patted the cushion next to her, an invitation to join her.
He stayed where he was.
Now that he was thinking about it—intensely and a little desperately—he couldn’t be entirely blamed for having commitment issues. He’d loved his parents and they’d died. He’d depended on Ethan, and his older brother had gone off to school in California and left the ranch for Landon to run. Ethan rarely ever came back. Landon had cared about Kitty’s grandparents, and they were both gone now too. Landon’s life had been a succession of people leaving him. If that hadn’t been enough to make him shy away from commitment, Jaxon’s disastrous relationship with Audrey’s mother had shown Landon just how badly things could turn out.
No wonder he hadn’t gotten serious with any of the women he dated.
Despite all that, he was letting his heart get tangled with a woman who wanted nothing to do with Arizona. If she’d been any other woman, he would’ve already started distancing himself from her. And really, if he had any sense of self-preservation, he’d start putting up some emotional barriers now.
He ought to tell Kitty he had some things he needed to do tonight and put an end to this visit. Instead, he noted how her hair lay across her shoulders in soft waves. In the shade of the patio, her green eyes looked darker, like the green of a pasture at dusk when everything was relaxing. Her lips appeared darker too and the curve of them was soft and inviting.
She added an element of softness to everything she touched: the decorations, her ranch, and him. He’d even begun to admit that the pigeons and mourning doves were beautiful in flight and not just annoyances that got into the feed and made a mess everywhere.
Maybe it was time for him to get over his commitment issues. And yet he still didn’t move. He just stood there watching her and weighed the probability of pain later against the benefits of tasting those lips now.
Kitty suddenly stopped swinging, her eyes widened, and she shot to her feet. For one irrational moment, he thought she’d somehow realized that the swing symbolized commitment and wanted nothing to do with it. A sting like a splinter lodged itself in his chest.