As the member of the Kittredge family most likely to dish it out on any and all occasions, a title Jensen wore with pride, he knew full well it was his turn to take it. And therefore, take it he would. Because when things went his way again, as they usually did, he would remember this moment. And give no mercy to any of them.
That was what kept his smile bland and his body language downright lazy no matter what kind of speculation he saw heading his way.
And there was a whole lot of it.
“This is Harriet Barnett,” Zack was saying with overdone joviality, in Jensen’s opinion, given his older brother’s usual seriousness in all things. “She’s the new librarian down at the high school.”
“I’ve actually been here for three years,” Harriet corrected him immediately.
And Jensen did not have to see her face to know that she was frowning in that way of hers. It turned out he could hear her frown in her voice. Prissy and ferocious and adorable—
Adorable?
“Three years is still brand-new,” Zack was assuring her in his hearty public servant tone. “In Longhorn Valley terms, anyway.”
That was another way of saying she was considered brand-new according to the laws of this land laid down by one Janet Lowe Kittredge. Otherwise known as their grandmother, who took the history of Colorado in general and the Longhorn Valley in particular very, very seriously. And personally.
Jensen continued to prop up the wall beside him, looking around the overcrowded family room. It was just his luck that this week’s Sunday dinner was a full house when often there were only a few people around. But not today. His grandparents had walked across the meadow that separated the little house they’d built from the ranch house and were already sitting in their usual chairs. Jensen’s father was looking gloomy in the recliner he’d had to treat as a second home since the cardiac situation he still refused to knowledge directly had laid him low.
The baby of the family, Amanda, was there with her husband, Brady Everett, who’d been underfoot as long as Jensen could remember. The Everetts were another old-time Longhorn Valley family who’d been here so long that they’d once had a blood feud with the Kittredges, according to local lore. A feud Jensen had been inclined to renew when he’d found out Brady was dating the much-younger Amanda. But he was over that now. Mostly.
Connor, the next youngest, was there with his Missy, the two of them sitting next to each other on the couch without even a hint of any PDA. This was a surprise indeed given that their decision to move in with each other, without benefit of marriage, had by their grandmother’s reckoning scandalized the country from one end of the Rocky Mountains to the other.
Opposite them were Riley and Rae, who had gotten married right out of high school, then broken up—or pretended they were broken up—for years. They’d worked it out last fall, and now Rae was so hugely pregnant Jensen was half-afraid she might go into labor at any moment. Something he knew better than to say to a hormonal woman.
From the kitchen down the hall, he could hear the usual sounds of his mother clattering around with her pots and pans, something she always did without accepting any help, no matter how much help was offered. And unlike his siblings, Jensen did not feel the need to perform. Ellie Kittredge knew how to ask for help, or so he assumed, even if he couldn’t recall her ever actually making use of that knowledge. She certainly knew her entire family could be summoned easily enough, but she didn’t do it. He supposed she liked to be a martyr. Jensen, on the other hand, liked to refrain from continually offering help he knew would be refused.
Though he had never wanted to disappear off into the kitchen more than he did just then.
He resisted the urge.
“How exciting,” Rae said, smiling with entirely too much satisfaction. She had her hands on the sides of her belly and her gaze on Harriet. “Maybe I missed something over the years, but has Jensen ever brought a woman home before?”
“He has not,” Amanda replied at once as if she and Rae were joined at the hip. The way they’d been a long time ago, and only again recently. Because Kittredges could hold a grudge. “Not once.”
The pair of them looked entirely too delighted.
“I think I liked it better when you hated her,” Jensen said to Amanda.
Amanda rolled her eyes. “I never hated her.”
“You wanted to hate me,” Rae amended, grinning. “I can’t say I blame you.”
Riley, always the grumpiest of the Kittredges, took a lot longer these days to work himself up into a full scowl. But when he got there, he aimed it at his sister. “Yeah, but I do.”
Next to him, Harriet looked from Rae to Amanda to Riley, then back again. As if she were cataloging them. Then she turned a bit so she could look at him, too, with a flash of all that direct, bright blue.
“Amanda is very protective of her older brothers,” Jensen told her, deadpan. “A word to the wise.”
Harriet shoved her glasses back up her nose, frowning slightly while she did it, then turned back to the room. “I don’t want to give anyone the wrong impression,” she said, seemingly unconcerned with the scrutiny she was receiving. It was almost like she didn’t notice it. “Jensen didn’t ask me here today. I’m certainly not with him. I was hoping that I might convince him—”
“Where are my manners?” Jensen interjected before she could say anything further, while Zack’s shoulders shook from laughter. “Let’s get you a drink.”
He didn’t wait for her to obey, somehow sensing that obedience was likely not high on Miss Harriet Barnett’s list of priorities. He slid an arm around her shoulders and steered her away from the living room, heading for the kitchen, after all. Sure, his mother might be in the kitchen, but that was the good thing about Ellie’s frosty reticence in pretty much all things. She was unlikely to ask obnoxious questions like the rest of them.
Harriet stiffened under his arm, which only called more attention to how nicely shaped her shoulders were beneath the mound of her sweater and all that floral fabric.
He let go. And was taken aback by how little he wanted to.
“I don’t drink,” Harriet told him, glaring up at him, which was a welcome distraction from whatever was happening inside him. “And I don’t like being interrupted, Mr. Kittredge.”
“You can keep calling me Mr. Kittredge, here in a house with five other Mr. Kittredges, but that might be a little bit confusing. And my family might end up thinking you have a weird fetish.”
She gave the distinct impression of sputtering even though she didn’t make a sound. “A weird fetish?”
He shrugged. “I don’t make the rules, darlin’.”
“Why would calling someone Mr. Kittredge have anything to do with—” Harriet stopped abruptly. “Oh.”
Despite himself, Jensen found himself grinning. Not for show this time. And despite the fact he’d been pretty set on staying just as good and ornery as he’d been when he’d woken up that morning. Alone, despite the many opportunities he could have indulged in the night before, and he was a little too aware that was thanks to the blue eyes currently gazing up at him.
“What do you mean you don’t drink?” he asked, when he probably should have run in the other direction.