Landon busily scribbled a thought on a legal pad before him. Help her find something to do from home. Buy her cranberries. “Focusing on Halifax now.”
A snort from his brother. “Nothing stirs a woman’s libido like talking about an ex.”
Landon ignored the bait and waved them off. “Whatever. Just get out of here.”
He had things to do.
A business to run, a man to destroy, a child to recover and a woman to woo….
“See my dear? Now, after holding a gun and firing that haystack clean off the line, don’t you realize we can do anything?”
Two weeks later, Beth found herself in the shooting range again.
Squinting her eyes under the glowing sun as a shock of adrenaline rushed through her veins, she lowered her rifle and drew in a calming breath. She’d started to adore her mother-in-law and their weekly visits to the shooting range. “Well, I didn’t quite hit it just yet, Eleanor.”
“Oh, but twenty or thirty more tries, we both know that haystack is dead.”
Within three seconds, Eleanor aimed her rifle, shot and reloaded.
“Landon’s my eldest.”
She shot and reloaded.
“He’s been alone too long.”
She shot and reloaded.
“I hope that doesn’t impair his ability to interact with a woman.”
She shot. Then lowered her rifle to give Beth a turn.
Beth aimed, lips pursed with effort, her hands weighed by the long, sleek weapon. “He’s very nice, Mrs. Gage.”
“Nice.” She humphed. “I don’t think he’d like to be called that by you.”
“Well, we’re not staying married forever,” Beth said, peering through the hole as she sighted one fat haystack. “This was a mutual understanding. Spurred by our mutual hate for the same man.”
“Yes yes yes. But I saw the way my son looked at you. And I saw no hate in those eyes.” Even through a set of thick goggles, Beth felt Eleanor’s dark eyes scrutinize her profile, as though all the answers to the woman’s questions were written on Beth’s cheek. “And when you look at him, I see no hate in yours, either. Nor indifference, for that matter. I’m an old goat, and I know a couple of things when I see them.”
Beth blushed, gritted her teeth and pressed her finger into the trigger. Pop! The bullet flew—Lord knows where it landed. It did not hit a single target.
“Your mother and I chatted yesterday.” Eleanor winked at Beth before she aimed once more, rendered positively feral by those goggles and with that secretive smile she wore. “We’re playing canasta today. And…other games. Games like matchmaking my son with her daughter. Isn’t that fun?”
Beth’s eyebrows furrowed as she watched the woman take a perfect shot. Bam! “If your matchmaking is as good as your shooting,” Beth grumbled, “then no, it’s not going to be fun at all.”
This would not do.
Matchmaking among mothers, the last thing Beth needed at this point. Specifically, because her husband seemed to be the sexiest thing walking the planet. And because apparently Beth wasn’t as frigid as her ex-husband had led her to believe.
The frustration of waiting for a hearing had been riding on her nerves. Every day when Landon arrived from work Beth asked the same question over dinner: Do we have a hearing yet?
I’m on it, he’d say.
She was beginning to wonder if they would ever reach that day. And in the meantime she was suffering, totally, wretchedly suffering. True, Kate’s website launch so far had been a moderate success. A few inquiries in the form of emails had already trickled in, and on a burst of inspiration, Kate and Beth had decided to add a “Share your Recipe” section to the website. But even those fun plans and little satisfactions failed to quell the internal turmoil in her.
Landon Gage had her sleeping in her bed alone at night for the past two weeks imagining things like sliding into his bed and smoothing her hands up his chest and into his hair and…
Shaking off the thoughts, Beth stormed into his room when she heard him come into the house. “Landon, our mothers are playing canasta.”