Page 118 of Clara Knows Best

“Yeah, okay,” she mocked him, going back onto the court.

The third and final set was very exciting. Harry and Heidi were hustling now, no longer confident of their win, and Clara felt that she and Jesse had hit their stride as partners.

“Get it, Clara!” he called urgently, as Harry sent the ball sailing over the net. It bounced several yards away from her, and she dove after it, just managing to whack it before her momentum sent her sprawling on the clay.

Only, she didn’t wipe out—at the last second, her partner, who had been racing towards her, grabbed her arm and yanked herupright, andhecrashed to the ground instead. Then she tripped on his legs and fell on top of him.

Jesse groaned painfully.

She stared down at him in surprise for a millisecond, and then she heard Heidi hit the ball, and she launched herself up off Jesse’s chest (eliciting an “Oof!”), grabbed his racket because hers had slid out of reach, and ran to meet the ball again. She hit it with all her remaining energy, at such an angle that Harry could not get to it, and that was the match point.

“Game, set, match,” Heidi said cheerfully. “Nice work, y’all!”

Clara was making her way back to her partner, and she laughed ruefully as she looked down at him. “Knocked the wind out of you, huh?”

“Yeah,” he gasped, gripping his sore rib and rolling onto his side.

“You keep shoving me around, and I’m getting really tired of it,” she scolded. “First at the Love Fest, and now this! You need to learn to mind your own business.” She dropped to her knees beside him, rolled him onto his back again and kissed him all over his face.

“Stop,” he protested weakly.

“I will, when you stop saving my life, you big jerk.”

“Well, congrats,” Harry said, reaching them. “You saved the damsel, and the damsel saved the game.”

“Was that the match?” Jesse asked breathlessly.

“That was the match. Hit your head?”

“No,” he managed. “Just—winded. Need a minute.”

Harry and Heidi smiled at them and went to get water, and Clara gave Jesse several more noisy kisses on his cheeks and forehead, more than a little conscious of his hand resting on her hip. Then their eyes met, and she knew they were both thinking of the time on the moonlit porch. If they weren’t lying on a tenniscourt in broad daylight, she would have been tempted to lay one right on his mouth as a sort of homage to the original.

Instead she smoothed his hair back from his face. “Thanks for catching me.”

“You’re welcome,” he sighed.

“I think I was about to break my whole face.”

“Probably just your arms and legs,” he said humbly.

“You’re a prince among men,” she informed him, and kissed his cheek one last time. She looked up in surprise when she heard a shutter sound, and saw that he was holding his phone above them, front camera on. “The selfie! That’s right, we won the match.”

“Deal’s a deal. Now, help me up, Serena.”

She laughed as she stood and grabbed his outstretched hand. “Do you have time to get lunch?”

“No, I gotta get to work,” he gritted out, as he made it to his feet.

“Rain check?” she asked hopefully.

“Yeah,” he said, giving her ponytail a little tug. “Rain check.”

49

“So then he took me back to Hart’s, and backed away when I would have hugged him, and said he was in a huge hurry to get to work on time. And he never sent me the selfie.”

The Colonel was mucking out stalls in his barn, and hadn’t said a word through her entire account of her weekend in Austin.

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