At breakfast that morning Mrs. Rodriguez nonchalantly asked where the two of them had been the day before. “We went to look at the mustangs,” Jessie replied.

“Ah…the wild ones. You used to go there with your father when you where just little.” She turned to Henry. “All the time, she was with the horses, this one. All the time. Still, all the time, she is with the horses.”

Henry smiled. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Now she is with you all the time, too.” Mrs. Rodriguez smiled knowingly at Henry.

Mrs. Rodriguez had seen the way Jessie looked at him. She instinctively knew Jessie was interested in him, and she also knew after the Chad debacle that Jessie would be in no hurry to jump into another relationship. But unlike Chad, Mrs. Rodriguez liked Henry. She sensed he’d had some trouble in his life, bad trouble from what she could tell. She could also tell Henry was somehow working his way out of that trouble, and she liked the character of a man who could move himself forward even after going through some hardship. Henry was a good man, and if Jessie decided to make some time for him, Mrs. Rodriguez wouldn’t be opposed. “And was that all you did?” Mrs. Rodriguez asked slyly, offering a Jessie a slight prod.

“Of course, that’s all we did,” Jessie said with a look on her face that said, What else would we be doing? Henry saw that look, and figured he had spent a sleepless night for nothing. The look on Jessie’s face gave him the distinct impression that she wasn’t interested in him in any way other than an employee, and that was that.

Henry didn’t know it, but Jessie didn’t sleep very well the night before, either. She had been tossing and turning with the same thoughts and feelings for Henry that he had for her. In the end, she came to the conclusion that because it appeared so hard for him to talk about his past he still had a very strong attachment to his deceased wife. Any relationship other than the one they currently had with each other was, no doubt, out of the question.

“Too bad,” Mrs. Rodriguez shrugged.

“What?” Jessie asked, her cheeks flushing red.

“Nothing, mija,” she smiled. “Huevos Rancheros for breakfast today. I get the tortillas.” Mrs. Rodriguez headed for the pantry.

Jessie nervously put her napkin on her lap and forced an embarrassed smile in Henry’s direction. “I don’t know what’s gotten into her today.” She glanced toward the pantry.

Henry shrugged as if to say, I didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary, although both of them knew he had. There was an uneasy quiet through the rest of breakfast, with the only sound that of eggs frying and Mrs. Rodriguez humming the way she always did when she was trying to fill a room with something other than silence. Both Henry and Jessie seemed to eat a little faster than normal, as if trying to get ahead of any more uncomfortable conversation. Foregoing the second cup of coffee that usually followed the meal, both of them thanked Mrs. Rodriguez almost simultaneously for breakfast, and like a couple of kids late for the school bus, hurried out the door.