“Y’all are leaving and yet trying to talk me into staying,” Jayden said.
“Honey, you belong right here,” Novalene said. “You’ll wake up and see what we’re seeing pretty soon. We’re ready to move on, but you should move in.”
“Got any proof to back that up?” Jayden asked.
“Just that we can see the chemistry between you and Elijah,” Diana said.
“I’m changing the subject.” Jayden smiled. “Before y’all throw in the towel, will you tell me if we celebrate July Fourth here?”
“We always have,” Diana answered. “We spend the day as usual, but at dark, Elijah will put on a fantastic fireworks display for the girls, and then he brings out the watermelons and slices them into wedges. The girls eat them without forks and have a seed-spitting contest. He’ll tell them all about it after breakfast so they can look forward to it, but if even one of them gets a demerit today, all the fun is off. You can bet they’ll be on their very best behavior.”
“Speak for your own girls,” Novalene said. “Keelan and Bailey just might do something stupid so none of them get to have fun.”
“Rita will kill them both if they do,” Diana said.
The girls filed in and most of them headed straight to the end of the line and got a bottle of water, guzzled it down, and then came back for food. That three-mile hike must have gotten to them. Ashlyn tossed her empty bottle into the trash, slung an apron over her head, and tied it in the back, then put on a pair of gloves. “I’ll help dish it up so we can get through the line faster. It’s our day to clean the stalls, and we’re worried about Dynamite, so we want to hurry up and go see about him.”
“What’s wrong with Dynamite?” Jayden asked.
“He’s been off his feed for a couple of days, and when we walk him, he goes real slow.” Ashlyn slipped a hash brown onto Keelan’s plate and got one ready for the next girl in line.
“I want two of those,” Keelan said. “I’m starving this morning. There’s nothing wrong with that horse. I cleaned his stall yesterday and he was fine.”
“I walk him every day, and I know more about horses than you do.” Ashlyn put another hash brown on her plate and turned to Tiffany, who was in line behind her. “One or two?”
“Two,” Tiffany answered.
Keelan shot them both a dirty look and moved her tray on down the line.
“Don’t start anything,” Jayden whispered to Ashlyn. “This isn’t the day for it, believe me. You’ll understand when Elijah makes his announcement after breakfast.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Ashlyn said and then lowered her voice. “There’s always tomorrow. I’m savin’ my demerits up until the last week, and then I’m going to use two of them on Bailey and Keelan.”
“Good mornin’.” Elijah caught Jayden’s eye and smiled when he started through the line.
“Mornin’ to you.” She smiled back at him. “Happy Independence Day.”
“Is it July Fourth?” Ashlyn asked as she put food on her tray. “Do we get to go to town and watch fireworks?”
“Do you want to do that?” Elijah asked.
“Of course I do,” Ashlyn answered. “Can we leave the Moonbeam girls at home?”
“Nope, it’s all or none,” Elijah answered.
“Well, crap!” Ashlyn carried her tray to her table and sat down.
Jayden was the last one to dish up food onto her tray and take it to the adult table. Elijah waited until she was seated and then tapped a spoon on the edge of his coffee mug. As usual, when he did that, all the noise in the whole dining hall ceased in a split second.
“In the past we have celebrated Independence Day right here at Piney Wood. If not one single girl got a demerit all day, we always had fireworks and then watermelon and a couple of freezers of homemade ice cream. Since all of you have been pretty good kids through the first half of this session, I’m going to change things up a little bit this year. After supper, we are going to make homemade ice cream and then let it set while we take all y’all into town to the football field and let you watch the show that the fire department puts on each year. Then we’ll come home to have our watermelon and ice cream. The rule about the demerits stands, though. If one of you gets out of line today, then we all stay home. I haven’t bought fireworks, so there will be none and we won’t churn ice cream or cut watermelons, either. So, I recommend that y’all all be on good behavior today.”
“Yes, sir!” the girls all chorused.
“What’s the chances we’ll actually do this tonight?” Diana whispered.
“Good, I hope,” Elijah said. “I talked to Henry and Mary on the phone last night, and they thought it might be smart to reward good behavior now. We’ve only had to send one girl away and it’s been a couple of weeks since anyone got a demerit.”
“I just hope they all behave today,” Novalene said. “If one of them gets out of line and we have to stay here, the others will get even, and I don’t imagine that it will be a pretty sight.”
Jayden thought about Ashlyn’s comments and shivered.
“Cold?” Elijah asked.
“Nope, just a little worried,” Jayden admitted.
“It pays to be concerned. Listen to them, buzzing like a bunch of bees at the idea of getting to go somewhere other than church on Sunday.” Novalene nodded toward the tables where the girls sat. “I plan on spending the rest of this day staying right with my two. It’s their day to do laundry and then clean bathrooms. I won’t let them out of my sight. Y’all would do well to do the same with your girls.”
Jayden wasn’t sure how she could do that and cook, too, but at least it was their day to clean the stalls, which would keep them away from the other girls. After they walked the horses, she would make them come to the kitchen and help her with supper even if she would rather have the kitchen to herself.
Elijah nudged her on the shoulder. “What are you thinking about?”
“Sorry, did you say something to me?” she asked.
“No, but you looked like you were a million miles away,” he said.
“Ashlyn says that Dynamite isn’t doing well. Keelan disagreed with her,” Jayden replied.
“It’s normal for them to get antsy about this time,” Novalene said. “If there’s going to be a multiple-girl problem, it usually happens about the halfway mark. I’m glad we’re taking them into town tonight. That might help.”
“Dynamite is almost forty years old, which is well past the expected life span of a horse,” Elijah said. “He’s been steadily slowing down this past year, and he has been off his feed lately.”
“Lord have mercy!” Jayden gasped. “I hope he doesn’t die while we’re here. Ashlyn would be devastated.”
“So would Keelan,” Novalene said. “She’s taken quite a fancy to the old boy.”
“He’s Rita’s favorite on the days when my girls clean the stalls, and Quinley has really taken a liking to him, also,” Diana said. “We’ll have a bunch of weeping girls to deal with if he goes over the Rainbow Bridge while we’re here.”
“Guess we’ve all got something to pray about in church,” Elijah said.
“Better not wait until then, since today is pretty important, too.” Diana’s tone was dead serious.
“Amen!” Jayden agreed and then called out to her girls, “Hey, Daydream Cabin girls, if you have time after you do the stalls this morning, you should check on our flower beds and then pull weeds from the garden behind the dining hall and then come help me in the kitchen.”
Ashlyn chuckled. “Yes, ma’am.”
“What’s so funny?” Tiffany asked.
“There’s always tomorrow,” Ashlyn answered.
“What does that mean?” Carmella asked.
“I’ll tell you later,” Ashlyn promised.
Elijah always moved around among the three groups during the day, but that Saturday he kept special watch on the whole bunch of them. Bailey and Keelan spent most of their time in the laundry and then went over to clean the
bathrooms. The Sunshine girls helped Elijah move the cattle from one pasture to another. At noon, they were all ready to eat and get after whatever they had on their lists for that afternoon.
“Things are going smoothly,” Elijah told Jayden when the dining hall had cleared out. “They’re all wound up about the fireworks show tonight and getting to leave the camp for a little while.”
“Have they realized that they’ll be going in the same uniforms they’ve worn to shovel crap, weed a garden, milk cows, and walk horses?” She carried a pot to the deep sink and rinsed it.
Elijah followed her with a chuckle and pointed out the window. “On that first day they were here, did you ever think you’d see them doing that?” He was so close to Jayden that his heart threw in an extra beat. He wanted to do more than flirt or nudge her with his shoulder at the dinner table. He visualized taking her in his arms and kissing her full lips until they looked bee stung, then scooping her up like a bride and . . .
The picture in his mind disappeared when she spoke. “I had my doubts as to whether any one of them would even be here after the first week.”
“Not me,” Elijah said. “I’m a little surprised that we even lost one out of the bunch. They all looked like little scared first-grade girls when I yelled at them to drop their suitcases. On my first session here, one girl hurled her bags at me like they were rockets. That got her the first demerit, even though she didn’t know the rules. She was in the Brewster County Jail before suppertime. This is a pretty calm bunch compared to that first one.”
“Were you a drill sergeant in the service?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Nope, but I used to do a damn good impression of my sergeant. It’s a good thing he never caught me, or I’d have spent some time in the brig for sure. Mostly my team and I did classified work—rescue missions, reconnaissance, that kind of thing.”
“You could tell me the details, but you’d have to kill me, right?” She turned toward him with a smile.
“Something like that.” He grinned. “But enough about me. I’d rather talk about you.”
“You know almost everything there is to know about me. You’ve got my résumé on file. Which reminds me, do you keep a list of potential folks who would like to come here for one of the sessions? Novalene and Diana aren’t coming back,” she said.
“Of course we do,” he answered. “We’ve got lots of counselors who would like a part-time job in the summer, but we don’t have a file for cooks or for folks to help on the grounds when we don’t have girls at the camp.”
“Guess you’d better start one then.” She picked up a tea towel, dried the pot, and put it back where it belonged.
Elijah sure wished Jayden would stay and take the job. Did that mean he was crazy? He couldn’t ever remember having that kind of feeling with any other woman. He headed out toward the barn, thinking about Jayden the whole way. He started to call Henry to talk to him about his feelings, but that seemed silly.
“Remember your training, Elijah Thomas,” he muttered. “Keep business and pleasure separate. Jayden is your employee. Sure, you’ve flirted, and she even said she’d go on a date with you, but be sure you’re not still bad luck when it comes to folks you care about.”
He remembered when Tim teased him about trying to analyze his feelings, but nowadays he realized that just meant he needed time to think. Men, especially guys like him who had done the work he had in the air force, did not worry for hours on end about a woman. They flirted, they either got lucky or they didn’t, and then they went home and had a beer or two and forgot all about it. He didn’t want that kind of relationship with Jayden. He wanted more, and he needed to think about it.
“Just a little time,” he whispered.
I believe that I’m ready to settle down, and that’s why I’m questioning why Jayden is twisting me up in knots to the point that I make up excuses to spend a few minutes with her when I can, he thought.
“You talking to yourself?” Jayden startled him when she spoke from a few feet away. “Have we driven you completely bonkers?”
Not y’all, he thought, just you, Jayden Bennett.
“Just thinking out loud,” he said. “We’ll divide up the girls so that Keelan and Ashlyn are riding in different vehicles.”
“That’s smart thinking,” she agreed.
Elijah’s heart did a couple of flips at just the sound of her voice. Dammit! He shouldn’t let himself get all stirred up over a woman who would be going home to the big city in only three weeks.
The heart wants what the heart wants. Henry’s voice couldn’t have been any clearer if the man had been standing right behind him.
Elijah could feel the energy coming from all the girls as they made their way up into the bleachers at the football field just as the sun dropped below the horizon. The chamber of commerce president stepped up to a microphone just below the goalpost, introduced himself, and welcomed everyone to the fireworks display. “But first, we’ll stand for the Pledge of Allegiance and, in honor of Independence Day, we will remain standing and everyone will sing the national anthem together.”
Tiffany tapped Elijah on the shoulder. “Can we take our caps off for this?”
“Yes, we all should.” He removed his and motioned for the girls to do the same.
“They look different,” Jayden said.
“Yep, and they’ve got farmer’s tans on their foreheads. When they get home, they are going to whine for days about that,” he whispered.
“That’s where their makeup will come into play.” She smiled.
“I pledge allegiance . . . ,” the man behind the microphone started, and the crowd joined in. Immediately after that, the high school band started to play and everyone in the stands joined in with the singing. When the last note died away, the first burst of fireworks lit up the sky in red, white, and blue.
The girls put their caps back on, and the ones with ponytails pulled them through the back—then they sat down. The night breezes steamed their faces like a sauna, but none of them seemed to mind. Elijah had deliberately lined them up with the Daydream girls right behind him and Jayden, Diana’s three after that, and the Moonbeam ladies on the far end behind Novalene.
If everything went well that evening, he fully planned to do this every year. It saved money, and it came at a good time in the summer program to reward the girls. A buzzing behind him came all the way down the line from one girl to the other.
“Are they playing that old game we used to at parties?” he asked Jayden.
“Which one?”
“The one where one person whispers something, and it goes around the room until the end, and then the first one and the second one . . .”
“Do you mean the telephone game?” Jayden asked.
“Yes, that’s it,” Elijah answered. “I think the girls are playing that. Keelan whispered something to Bailey and now it’s all the way to Tiffany.”
Jayden turned around just in time for Tiffany to lean forward and put one hand on Elijah’s shoulder and the other on Jayden’s. She did not whisper but said right out loud, “See that little posse in short shorts and tank tops behind Keelan? They’re laughing at us and calling us convicts.”
“Ignore them,” Elijah told her.
Tiffany sucked in a lungful of air and let it out in a whoosh. She leaned forward and sent a message down the line to Keelan’s attention to ignore the other girls.
Keelan nodded, and Elijah didn’t give it another thought. He was enjoying watching Jayden’s face as each display lit up the midnight-black sky. She was an extraordinary woman who enjoyed the little things, like lightning bugs and a cold beer after a hard day’s work—the kind of woman that Henry would tell him would be the type to ride the river with.
As was normal with all fireworks shows, the best was saved until last. A loud boom lit up half the sky with the American flag in bright sparkling lights. When the oohs and aahs had died down and the flag had disappeared, folks began to stand up and make their
way to the end of the bleachers. The Piney Wood girls got to their feet and started moving in that direction.
Things went just fine until Keelan took the final step out onto the grass. Elijah and Jayden were ahead of them, waiting beside the entry gate, when he heard one of the girls that had been picking on the Piney Wood girls say, “Y’all convicts don’t belong here.”
Ashlyn got right in the girl’s face. “Bless your heart, darlin’. I’m going to save this nasty uniform just for you. With your attitude, you’ll need it. If you want a piece of any of us, just step right up.”
A second girl took the blonde by the arm. “Come on, Justina. We’ve got a party to go to. We can’t stand around listening to these losers all evening.”
“We can give you a little tour of Piney Wood if you’d like and even let you slop the hogs, or shovel crap from the horse stalls,” Keelan said. “You might change your mind about us being losers if you come out and visit us.”
“Go to hell!” The girl reached out to slap Keelan, but Ashlyn stepped between them.
“You go first, and we’ll send you some ice-cream sandwiches.” Keelan glared at the girl.
The hand was still raised when a police officer stepped up and grabbed it. “That’s enough out of all of you. You girls from Alpine go home, or I’ll lock the bunch of you up. You Piney Wood girls . . .”
Elijah finally made it to the bottom of the steps and got between both sets of girls. “Girls from Piney Wood, go get in the vans.”
“I’d take my demerit and punishment if you’ll let me go back and hit her.” Keelan stomped all the way to the place where the two vehicles were parked.
“Me too,” Ashlyn said.
“I thought you two hated each other.” Elijah opened the door to the first van.
“We do,” Keelan said, “but nobody is going to diss any one of us, especially a girl who takes up for me in a fight. I’ve got all y’all’s backs, Piney Wood girls,” she called out as she got into the van.
The Daydream Cabin Page 23
