Starstruck

Chapter Thirteen

Dinner would live on forever in her memory as one of the most surreal experiences of Ashley’s life. She was having dinner with Jason Williams — and not just any dinner, but one he prepared with his own hands. The fourteen–year–old girl who — she was ashamed to say — still sometimes popped up in her psyche, wanted to swoon.

She found the whole experience disorienting. It was extraordinarily difficult to reconcile her different images of him — sexy, country singer in thoise tight Wrangler jeans, then disinterested father — with the man who cut his daughter’s hot dog and did really lousy impersonations.

Somehow they managed to put aside their discomfort over that awkward scene before dinner as they talked and laughed and listened to Kendyl’s apparently endless repertoire of bad knock–knock jokes.

She was charmed by both of them. This Kendyl  was a far different girl at home than she had been the last three weeks. Here was the girl she had met those first few days at school and Ashley wanted to know why she had disappeared.

And Jason every once in a while she would find him watching her with a baffled kind of heat in his eyes and her insides would flutter and sigh.

She was doing her best to ignore it, but she had never been so fiercely aware of a man.

Her heart was in serious danger here. She realized it sometime before they finished eating and he brought out her cheesecake. The man across the table was exactly the kind she dreamed of now, and that scared the heck out of her.

"I’m all done eating," Kendyl said after she had all but licked her dessert plate clean. "Can I go change into my party dress to show Miss Barnes, Daddy? Can I?"

He looked reluctant but he nodded. "Go ahead. Hurry, though."

Without the buffer of Kendyl and her chatter, Ashley’s awareness of him became almost unbearable. She couldn’t shake the disbelief that she was actually sitting on a starlit deck with Jason Williams  a man she was finding increasingly attractive.

Without thinking, needing only to move suddenly, she stood up and started to clear away the dinner dishes.

"You don’t have to do that," he said. "We usually don’t make our guests clean up."

She felt her face heat. "Habit. Sorry. With five kids in my family, we all had to pitch in to help. I don’t mind, though. Really I don’t. This way you don’t have to clear them yourself later."

He rose and started helping her, and they worked in a silence that would have been companionable except for the vibes zinging between them like the kids on the zipline at the school playground.

"The sheriff is really your brother?" he asked after a moment.

She nodded. "He’s always been good at telling people what to do. I guess that’s because he’s the oldest."

"I’ve met him a few times. He’s a good man. Does that mean you grew up around here?"

She searched his rugged features for any clue that he might be patronizing her, but all she saw was genuine interest. "I’ve lived here all my life, except for the years I spent in college in Tennessee I suppose that must seem pretty provincial to someone like you."

"Not at all." He gave an almost bittersweet smile. "I envy you."