Jane closed the door to the second bedroom, which looked like the aftermath of an explosion of clothes, jewelry, shoes and makeup. She’d been able to remake the bed in the master bedroom with Sara’s sheets, and she had gotten most of her cousin’s lingerie and pajamas sorted out. Everything that required a hanger was neatly hung in the closets. Tomorrow Jane would unpack everything else, down to Sara’s last toiletry, arranged just so in the bathroom so her cousin wouldn’t have trouble finding anything.
Jane paused in the bedroom, looking at herself in the mirror over the bureau. She took off her glasses and folded them gently, leaving them on the counter next to the sink.
She looked tired and drawn.
Two hours of sleep will do that to you.
Glancing down, she noticed that all of Sara’s travel makeup was in a large fabric pouch, open in front of her.
There were darker-than-usual circles under her eyes, so she opened one of Sara’s concealers and ran a thin strip of beige cream under her eyes. Better.
She took out the mascara and swiped her lashes. Hm.
She rummaged around until she found some bronzer and brushed lightly over her cheekbones and the tip of her nose as she’d seen Ray do for her cousin a million times. There.
She picked up a tube of Burt’s Bees tinted and glided it over her lips. Not bad.
Okay. Okay. She was no Samara Amaya, but it’s not like she was working on a top-drawer canvas either. Anyway, she felt better.
Taking off her omnipresent cap, she looked at the mop of brown waves that framed her face in soft, unfashionable curls. She opened a can of Samara’s mousse and squirted a plump puff of white onto her hand, rubbed her hands together, then drew them through the curls, making them look more styled and manageable, then pushing them off her face and into elegant waves.
Under her sweatshirt, the plain white cotton tank top wasn’t crisp but it was clean, hidden under her sweatshirt all day. She fished around in her leather bag until she found an olive green, cropped, cabled wool cardigan sweater and threw it on over her tank. She liked the way the bottom of the cardigan skimmed the top of her jeans, making her waist look smaller. She took off her socks and loafers and found her favorite brown, leather flip-flops in the bottom of her bag, slipping them onto her pedicured feet. Folding her cap in thirds, she shoved it in her left back pocket, and pushed her phone in the other.
Walking into the living room, she took out her sunglasses and put them on, tossed her backpack on one shoulder, her bag on the other, then went outside to wait for Lars.
***
Before Lars had time to get out of the pickup and help her with her bags, Jane had tossed the duffel into the flatbed of his truck and opened her own door. He looked over to see her pull herself up into the front seat beside him.
She wasn’t wearing that old Red Sox cap, and her hair looked slick and styled, the waves swept off her face and far more sophisticated than earlier. She wasn’t wearing her sweatshirt anymore either, and he could see that the pale skin of her chest was dotted with cheerful freckles as he caught the appealing swell of her small, rounded breasts under a simple white tank top.
Perfect handfuls. Well, well, Jane Mays.
“Heya,” he said, offering her his sexiest smile.
“Heya?” She buckled her seat belt without sparing a glance for him.
“Yeah,” he said. “It’s what we say.”
“Okay. Heya, Just-Lars. Where we headed?” The belt clicked closed and she ran her fingers through her hair from forehead to nape, looking straight ahead, out the windshield.
Huh. Not even a look? Damn it.
“I’m at your service, Miss Mays. Dinner? Sightseeing? Hotel?” He drawled the last word suggestively.
“Sightseeing?” she asked, pulling her purse onto her lap.
He cleared his throat, furrowing his brows. He wasn’t accustomed to his efforts at being sexy and charming going unnoticed. “Beautiful downtown Gardiner is at your disposal.”
She fiddled around in her bag, looking for something, all but ignoring him. “Umm…okay. Whatever.”
He watched as she fished a Nikon D3X out of her bag. Interesting. It was possibly the best handheld professional camera that Lars knew of, and he saw an awful lot of cameras in his line of work. She must be pretty serious about photography to have spent several thousand dollars for a camera like that.
“Some camera,” he said.
“My baby,” she crooned.
My baby.
He hadn’t expected her to say something like that. It made his breath catch. It made him think of kissing her, touching her, feeling her fingers running through his hair as she murmured baby low in his ear. Did she have any idea how sexy her voice was?
When he glanced over, she was caressing the black plastic casing of the expensive camera. Lucky goddamn camera.
“Hey, um…I found this for you,” he said, slipping a CD into the player and choosing his favorite.
“The Kingston Trio!”
She finally turned her face to him, then, beaming at him as she pushed her sunglasses up onto her head.
His eyes slammed into hers and he realized that the sweater she was wearing was the same color as her eyes. He hadn’t noticed the color before—probably because of her glasses and cap—but they were sort of an earthy, olive-y green with gold flecks. He’d seen that color a million times before in the park—in the forest and woods, in the mosses and meadows. Just never in another person.
“Your eyes are green,” he observed softly.
“Yes, they are,” she said. The smile she offered him was guileless. “I love these guys.”
“I guessed. You, um, you asked for them earlier.”
Her eyes twinkled as she nodded at him, bright and pleased, and it made his quick stop at home, to rummage through his CD collection, totally worthwhile.
“‘Chilly Winds’,” she murmured. “Good song.”
“Yeah,” he whispered, anxious not to break the moment.
“Wow, this is dreamy,” she sighed, sitting back against her seat and staring straight ahead at the meadow and mountains beyond the cabins, listening to the soft guitar riffs and gentle harmonies filling the truck.
He leaned back against his seat too, and tried not to turn his head to stare at her, but couldn’t help stealing glances as she mouthed the words, her head tilted away from him at a gentle angle.
She was right; it was a dreamy song, and it felt incredibly dreamlike to be sitting beside her, sharing the mellow love song while the late afternoon sun caught strands of her loose curls and turned them from brown to gold. She looked over at him and his stomach fluttered. He wished he could figure out the deal with her—with how she made him feel.
“Out where them chilly winds don’t blow…” she sang softly, taking a deep breath. “Thanks for this, Just-Lars.”
“I aim to please.”
“You succeed,” she murmured, holding his eyes for an extra moment as her cheeks flushed pink. Her lips twitched into a slight smile and she blinked at him, as though seeing him for the first time.
He stared back at her, unable to look away, lost in those mossy-green eyes, wondering what she was thinking.
“Where’s the case?” she asked softly. “The CD case?”
His breath came out in a rush, like he’d been holding it. “Home.”