As she shoved the clothespin over the last corner and dropped her arms in exhaustion, her ears were met with a monster's roar. A threatening form reared up behind the sheet and grabbed her. It enfolded her in its massive arms as it made rapacious devouring noises.
She screamed softly, but her exclamation of fright was muffled by the smothering embrace she had been wrapped in.
"Scared you, didn't I?" the as-yet-unseen attacker growled in her ear as he pulled her close.
"Let me go."
"Say please."
"Please!"
Cage released her and peered around the sheet, laughing at her efforts to extricate herself from its folds. Miraculously it had stayed on the clothesline in spite of their tussle.
"Cage Hendren, you scared the daylights out of me!"
"Aw, come on, you knew it was me."
"Only because you've done that to me before." She made exasperated attempts to push her windblown hair out of her eyes. They were as futile as the efforts she made not to smile. Finally a grin broke through and she laughed with him. "Some day…" She let the threat dwindle, but she shook her finger at him. His hand whipped out and snatched it, entrapping it in his fist.
"What? Some day what, Jenny Fletcher?"
"Some day you're gonna get yours."
He lifted her finger to his mouth and closed his teeth around it in a playful bite, growling cannibalistically. "Don't bet on it."
Just the sight of her flesh imprisoned between his strong white teeth flustered her and she wished she could think of a way to pull her finger away from his mouth without creating an awkward moment. At last he released her hand and she stepped back as though she had moved too close to a fire and hadn't realized it until the flames singed her.
She wondered why he had come to the parsonage today, though his visits weren't nearly as rare as they had been before Hal left. Since then Cage had been dropping by frequently on unimportant errands.
Ostensibly these visits were to ask if they had received news from Hal, but his excuses were so lame that Jenny wondered if he was coming around for the benefit of his parents. If so, she was touched by the gesture.
He had made several trips to the parsonage in order to empty his former bedroom of all the "junk" Sarah had asked him to remove, though it all could have been handled in one load.
Then he had come by bearing a cake he had bought at the FHA fund-raising bake sale and offered it to them, since he knew he couldn't possibly eat it all.
One evening he had stopped by to borrow an electric sander from Bob so he could polish his car with the buffer attachment. All these devices were valid enough, but Jenny still thought there was an ulterior motive behind them.
It wasn't like Cage to show such interest in the goings-on at the parsonage. His evenings were usually spent in local watering holes where he caroused with roughnecks and cowboys and businessmen—when he wasn't in the company of a woman.
And the more time she spent with him, the less Jenny liked to think about Cage and his women. The pangs of jealousy she felt were uncalled for and she couldn't imagine why they should have suddenly sprung up from nowhere.
"Is the clothes dryer broken?" Cage asked now, swinging her empty laundry basket over his shoulder and following her toward the back door.
"No, but I like the way the sheets and pillowcases smell after they've dried outside."
He smiled down at her as he held the door open. "You're a hard case, Jenny."
"I know, hopelessly old-fashioned."
"That's what I like about you."
Again she felt the need to put distance between them. When he was standing this close, looking at her in that peculiar, penetrating way of his, she couldn't breathe properly. "Would you … would you like a Coke?"
"That'd be great." He returned the basket to the laundry room, off the kitchen, while she went to the refrigerator. She plunked ice cubes into the glasses she took down from the cabinet and poured the fizzing soft drink over them.
"Where are Mother and Dad?"
"There were several people in the hospital they needed to visit."