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boys who sat farther away from me. If those boys hadn’t been staring bug-eyed at me, I would have jumped on Justin, pulled his hair out and then killed him. For him to say something like that in front of Noah—I was too angry to say anything, fearing I’d probably cuss Justin out, and that was the last thing those boys needed to hear.
The only sounds were the puppy noises and Sam clearing his throat when he finally recovered from his hysterics. What he said next surprised me and made me suddenly love him. “Oh, Justin, Rose has done a good job taking care of us since Mom died.” Sam said it quietly. The mention of Mom made Justin lower his eyes and stare at the puppies in his lap.
“How long ago did your mom die?” Noah asked Sam in a surprised voice. He turned his head and was watching me when Sam answered him.
“I guess it’s been about nine…or ten months now,” Sam murmured thoughtfully, glancing in my direction. Actually, it had been exactly ten months and one week. I didn’t want to keep track of it, but somehow my mind would add on the days subconsciously.
“I’m sorry about that,” he told Sam, but his eyes seemed to change to a deeper brown, like chocolate, and they were looking into mine with compassion. The trance was broken by the sound of a loud ringing bell. The three boys jumped up, placing their puppies next to the mama’s nipples and hurrying out of the stalls. Peter lingered, pressing his face against the black bars on the stall—watching.
“Dinner bell,” Noah confirmed with amusement, twitching his lips. The boys’ actions worked perfectly to lighten the mood, and I reached over to put my puppy back with her mother.
Before I had a chance to stand, Noah was already up, offering his hand to me, which I immediately took. He was strong and pulled me up easily. There was an electric current flowing between us, and I didn’t want to let go, but I felt him start to release, so I followed suit. When we broke contact, the feeling vanished, to be replaced by a strange emptiness in me.
What was even stranger was when I caught the way Peter glanced from me back to Noah, with brown eyes wide with alarm. The look sent a prickling down the back of my neck, and abruptly I understood that my infatuation with Noah would probably not be welcomed by his family. Noah didn’t seem to notice his brother staring, and when Sam and Justin went through the doorway, I shot a quick smile of thanks up at him and followed them out.
Inwardly, my mind shook the tickling sensation of foreboding away as we made our way out of the barnyard. Before we even reached the steps to the house, the delicious fragrance of food was coming out the open windows, settling into the summertime air. Trying to be subtle, I sniffed in the wonderful smells and picked up my pace a bit, discovering how hungry I was. Noah jumped in front of me right as I reached the door, grabbing it before it swung shut in my face after Justin let it go.
“Thanks,” I said softly, dropping my eyes.
Noah shrugged and averted his eyes as if he was shy again. Or maybe he was just embarrassed by how rude my brother was.
I stopped a few feet inside the doorway, right next to Sam. Noah continued by us, walking over to stand beside Jacob. As I scanned the room, I first saw that the dining room and kitchen were combined into a gigantic space with an equally giant-size rectangular wooden table in the center of it. Okay, I’ve seen big tables before, but this one was ridiculous, with long benches on each side of it and chairs on the ends. It would have been the right scale for the giant’s castle in “Jack and the Beanstalk.”
The next thing I noticed was the long beige countertop running down one side of the room, flanked by a refrigerator and a stove on each side. There was a large ceramic sink in the center of the wall, with an open window directly above it. Momma could definitely serve a crowd in this kitchen.
Then I became aware of something really crazy,