Free Hawk's Way Grooms by Joan Johnston Page B

waiting for you when you get back to the house.”
    Mac groaned. “I forgot. He’s going to throw me some passes.”
    â€œI can always send him away.”
    â€œI suppose I can catch a few passes and keep him happy.”
    â€œAnd keep who happy?”
    Mac grinned. “So I’m looking forward to it. Think what that’ll mean to you.”
    She gave him a quizzical look. If Mac was up to catching passes, it meant he was getting well. If he was getting well, it meant he would be leaving soon. She wanted to hear him say it. Maybe then she could stop fantasizing about him. “What will it mean to me?” she asked.
    Twin dimples appeared in his cheeks. “You get the shower first.”
    Jewel laughed. It beat the heck out of crying.

CHAPTER FIVE
    I F THERE WAS ONE THING C OLT W HITELAW wanted more than he wanted to fly jets someday, it was to have Jennifer Wright look at him the way she looked at his best friend, Huckleberry Duncan. Jenny didn’t even care that Huck had a stupid name. When Huck was around, Jenny wouldn’t have noticed if Colt dropped dead at her feet. She only had eyes for Huck.
    Which meant Colt got to spend a lot of time watching her when she wasn’t looking. Jenny wasn’t what most guys would have called pretty. She was short and skinny, her nose was too long and her teeth were slightly crooked. But she had the prettiest eyes he’d ever seen. Jenny’s eyes were about the bluest blue eyes could get.
    It wasn’t just the color of them that he found attractive. When he looked into Jenny’s eyes he saw the pledge of warmth, the promise of humor and depths of wisdom far beyond what a fourteen-year-old girl ought to possess.
    Jenny might be the same age as him and Huck, but it seemed she had grown up faster—in more ways than one. For a couple of years she’d been taller than Huck. This past year Huck had caught up and passed her. Colt had always been taller than Jenny. Not that she’d noticed.
    This past year something else had happened to Jenny. She had started becoming a woman. Colt felt like walloping Huck when Huck kidded her about the bumps she was sprouting up front, but when she bent over laughing and her shirt fell away, he had sneaked a peek at them. They were pure white and pink-tipped. He had turned away pretty quick because the whole time he was looking, he couldn’t seem to breathe.
    His body did strange things these days whenever she was around. His stomach turned upside down and his heart started to race and his body embarrassed him by doing other things that were still pretty new and felt amazingly good and grown-up. He had it bad for Jenny Wright. Not that he’d ever let her or Huck know about it. Because Huck felt about Jenny the way Jenny felt about Huck. It was true love both ways. When they got old enough, Colt figured they’d marry for sure.
    He kept his feelings to himself. He liked Huck too much to give him up as a friend. And it would have killed him to stop seeing Jenny. Even if she was always going to be Huck’s girl.
    â€œHey, Colt. I thought you were going to throw me some passes,” Huck said, giving him a friendly chuck on the shoulder.
    Colt watched as Jenny climbed up onto the top rail of the corral near the new counselors’ cottages and shoved her long blond ponytail back over her shoulder. “You gonna be all right up there?” he asked.
    She laughed. “I’m not one of your mom’s campers, Colt. I’m healthy as a horse. I’ll be fine.”
    Colt couldn’t help it if he worried about her. He didn’t want her to fall and get hurt. Not that she appreciated his concern. He turned the football in his hands, finding the laces and placing his hands where he knew they needed to be.
    â€œGo long!” he shouted to Huck, who had already started to run over the uneven terrain, which was dotted with clumps of buffalo grass and an occasional prickly