“Good evening, Mr. Walker. Ms. Endsley,” the waiter greeted them.
Kennedy’s eyes snapped up to meet the handsome young man who was looking back at them as though they were the only people in the restaurant and he was there to serve their every need.
“Evenin’, Ted,” Sawyer replied.
Kennedy watched in awe as Sawyer rattled off his wine selection, as well as an appetizer. She was grateful he had decided to order because she wasn’t sure she could’ve come up with a single suggestion. She was starving, but since the moment she opened her front door to find Sawyer standing there, her tummy had been a jumble of nerves.
Seeing him on her front porch in a black button-down, dark blue Wranglers, his black Stetson, and that silver belt buckle had been enough to make her mouth water. Not that she hadn’t always been attracted to Sawyer. No, her attraction to the guy was never the issue. After all, he was a Walker and there was no doubt about it, they were a handsome bunch. The issue was that she had no interest in being the target of one of his pranks. Or a fleeting guest in his bed. Not now, not ever.
Which really didn’t explain why she was sitting there, having an intimate, romantic dinner with the guy. He’d worn her down and surprisingly, the time they’d been apart hadn’t helped her to regain any of her common sense. She was still attracted to him. Maybe more so now. Then again, he had mentioned that they’d been doing this “song and dance,” as he referred to it, for quite some time. And that was very true. Longer than she cared to admit, that was for sure.
Their conversation remained light until they ordered their food, and then Sawyer looked at her. She could see a million questions burning in his hypnotic blue-gray gaze.
“What?” she asked, when he didn’t speak immediately.
“I was just thinkin’,” he said casually.
“I can see the wheels turnin’,” she told him, smiling as she lifted her wineglass and took a sip. Wow. Impressive. “What’s on your mind?”
“So, I know quite a bit about you, but there’s one thing I’ve never asked.”
“There are a million things you’ve never asked,” she told him with a smile.
“True,” he replied, glancing down at the table briefly. He looked almost . . . shy.
That couldn’t be. Sawyer didn’t have a single shy bone in his entire body.
“Where’s your mother?” he asked after a second of silence.
It was Kennedy’s turn to look down at the table. Truth was, not many people ever asked her that question. Maybe because they were worried they’d offend her, knowing that her mother wasn’t around.
Meeting Sawyer’s gaze after taking a deep breath, Kennedy said, “I’m adopted.”
“Really?”
She could see the surprise on Sawyer’s handsome face. She admired him for a moment, taking in the smooth, chiseled lines of his jaw, his sexy lips, and those hooded bedroom eyes. Even his nose was sexy and it was just a little crooked—thanks to having been broken a time or two when he was younger.
“How is it I’ve known you damn near my whole life and I never knew that?” he asked, not giving her a chance to explain.
“We aren’t exactly friends,” she reminded him.
“You mean ‘weren’t.’ ”
Did she? Could they be considered friends now? Rather than dwell on the answer to that question, Kennedy moved back to the original topic. “Well, it isn’t somethin’ I usually tell people. My father adopted me when I was a little over a year old. I don’t remember my mother. She was the daughter of Jeff’s next-door neighbor, before he moved to Coyote Ridge. She got pregnant with me when she was fifteen and decided she couldn’t take care of me. She tried. For a little while. Based on what my father told me, she decided to give me up for adoption, but didn’t want me to go to someone she didn’t know.”
“So Jeff adopted you?”
“Yeah,” she said, thinking about her father. “He wanted kids, but he knew he’d never have any of his own.”
Sawyer’s penetrating gaze encouraged her to keep talking, so she did.
“As you’re well aware, my father’s gay.” Kennedy wasn’t sure why she was so comfortable telling him something so personal, something her father didn’t want people to know. Even though Sawyer already knew, thanks to the incident that happened a few weeks back, Kennedy still would’ve told him if he hadn’t. Maybe it was because Sawyer’s brothers—both Travis and Ethan—were gay—or bisexual, in Travis’s case. She’d seen how defensive Sawyer got about his brothers, and despite her father’s insistence that Sawyer was a guy she needed to stay far away from, Kennedy didn’t truly believe he’d ever do something as heinous as out someone.