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“Good” He swung back to the stove “You can put the lantern over there”

“Okay” He heard the soft scuff of her sock-clad feet as she made her way across the Mexican-tile floor “The soup smells wonderful”

“I opened two cans There’s plenty of it”

“Good Anything I can do?”

Yeah, he thought There was

She could stop looking so beautiful

He had to be really desperate, he thought coldly, finding Sienna Cu with her looks; it was just that he didn’t go for her type Independent woht they were on an equal footing with men…

Not that he liked his women stupid

He just liked them to knohen to defer to a man

He wasn’t into this women’s lib nonsense that had taken the country by storm

Linda hadn’t been into it, either She’d kno to ood She’d looked up to hie…

Until he suddenly hadn’t been

I need a man who kno to be a man, Jesse, she’d said, and how could he fault her for that? A woman didn’t want a ht to pull him under, who had no clue as to what he wanted to do with his life, who had believed with all his being in things that no longer made sense…

“… I can do,” Sienna said, and he blinked and focused his eyes on her

“What?”

“I said, you did the cooking I’d like to do so Set the table, maybe?”

“I opened a can,” he said gruffly

“Two”

She smiled It was impossible not to smile back

“Yeah Okay” He jerked his head toward one of the birch cupboards “How about setting the counter? The bowls are in there Silverware’s in that drawer, bread’s in that cabinet You want butter, there’s soer than you have to”