by Nora Roberts
He bent his head and went back to Tetris so his grandmother would leave him alone. She looked sort of like his mother. If his mother had been old and didn’t get her hair done blond and wavy, and didn’t wear makeup. But he could see his mother in this strange old woman with the lines around her blue eyes.
It was a little spooky.
Her name was Lucy, and he was supposed to call her Grandma.
She cooked and baked. A lot. And hung sheets and stuff out on a line in back of the farmhouse. She sewed and scrubbed, and sang while she did so. Her voice was pretty, if you liked that sort of thing.
She helped with the horses, and, Coop could admit, he’d been surprised and impressed when he’d seen her jump right on one without a saddle or anything.
She was old—probably at least fifty, for God sakes. But she wasn’t creaky.
Mostly she wore boots and jeans and plaid shirts. Except for today. She’d put a dress on and left the brown hair she usually braided loose.
He didn’t notice when they turned off the endless stretch of road, not until the ride turned bumpier. When he glanced out he saw more trees, less flat land, and the mountains roughed up behind them. Mostly it looked like a lot of bumpy green hills topped with bare rock.
He knew his grandparents raised horses and rented them at trailheads to tourists who wanted to ride them. He didn’t get it. He just didn’t get why anybody would want to sit on a horse and ride around rocks and trees.
His grandfather drove along the more dirt than gravel road, and Coop saw cattle grazing on either side. He hoped it meant the drive was nearly over. He didn’t care about having dinner at the Chase farm or meeting dumb Lil.
But he had to pee.
His grandfather had to stop so his grandmother could hop out to open a cattle gate, then close it again when they’d gone through. As they bumped along his bladder began to protest.
He saw sheds and barns and stables, whatever they were, didn’t matter. It was, as far as it went out here, a sign of civilization.
Something was growing in some fields, and horses were running around in others like they didn’t have anything better to do.
The house, when it came into view, didn’t look that different from the one his grandparents lived in. Two floors, windows, a big porch. Except the house was blue and his grandparents’ was white.
There were a lot of flowers around the house, which somebody who hadn’t had to learn to weed the ones around his grandparents’ house might think were okay to look at.
A woman came out on the porch and waved. She wore a dress, too. A long one that made him think of the pictures of hippies he’d seen. Her hair was really dark and pulled back in a ponytail. Outside the house sat two trucks and an old car.
His grandfather, who hardly said anything, stepped out of the car. “ ’Lo, Jenna.”
“It’s good to see you, Sam.” The woman gave his grandfather a kiss on the cheek, then turned to give his grandmother a big hug. “Lucy! Didn’t I say don’t bring a thing but yourselves?” she added when Lucy turned and took a basket from the car.
“I couldn’t help it. It’s cherry pie.”
“We sure won’t turn that down. And this is Cooper.” Jenna held out a hand as she would to an adult. “Welcome.”
“Thank you.”
She dropped a hand on his shoulder. “Let’s go on in. Lil’s been looking forward to meeting you, Cooper. She’s finishing up some chores with her dad, but they’ll be right along. How about some lemonade? I bet you’re thirsty after the drive.”
“Um. I guess. May I use the bathroom?”
“Sure. We have one right in the house.” She laughed when she said it, with a teasing look in her dark eyes that made the back of his neck hot.
It was like she knew he’d been thinking how old and dumpy everything looked.
She led him through, past a big living room, then a smaller one, and into a kitchen that smelled a lot like his grandmother’s.
Home cooking.
“There’s a washroom right through there.” She gave his shoulder a careless pat, which added to the heat on the back of his neck. “Why don’t we have that lemonade out on the back porch and visit awhile?” she said to his grandparents.
His mother would have called it a powder room. He relieved himself with some gratitude then washed his hands at the tiny sink fixed in the corner. Beside it, pale blue towels with a little pink rose hung on a rod.
At home, he mused, the powder room was twice as big, and fancy soaps sat in a crystal dish from Tiffany’s. The towels were a lot softer, too, and monogrammed.
Stalling, he poked a finger at the petals of some white daisies standing in a skinny wood pot thing on the sink. At home there would’ve been roses probably. He hadn’t really noticed that kind of thing until now.
He was thirsty. He wished he could take a gallon of lemonade, and maybe a bag of Cheetos, and stretch out in the back of the car with his Game Boy. Anything would be better than being forced to sit with a bunch of strange people on the porch of some old farmhouse for probably hours.
He could still hear them talking and fooling around in the kitchen, and wondered how long he could stall before going back out.
He peeked through the little window, decided it was the same shit. Paddocks and corrals, barns and silos, dumb farm animals, weird-looking equipment.
It wasn’t as if he’d wanted to go to Italy and walk around looking at old stuff, but at least if his parents had taken him there might be pizza.
The girl came out of the barn. She had dark hair like the hippie woman, so he figured it had to be Lil. She wore jeans rolled up at the cuffs, high-top sneakers, and a red baseball cap over the hair done in two long braids.
She looked scruffy and stupid, and he immediately disliked her.
A moment later a man came out behind her. His hair was yellow, and worn in a long tail that reinforced the hippie conclusion. He, too, wore a ball cap. He said something to the girl that made her laugh and shake her head. Whatever it was had her starting to run, but the man caught her.
Coop heard her squeal with laughter as the man tossed her in the air.
Had his father ever chased him? Coop wondered. Ever tossed him in the air, then swung him in giddy circles?
Not that he could remember. He and his father had discussions—when there was time. And time, Cooper knew, was always in short supply.
Country bumpkins had nothing but time, Cooper thought. They weren’t under the demands of business like a corporate headhunter of his father’s repute. They weren’t third-generation Sullivans like his father, with the responsibilities that came with the name.
So they could toss their kids around all day.
Because it made something in his stomach hurt to watch, he turned away from the window. With no other choice, he went out to be tortured for the rest of the day.
LIL GIGGLED as her father gave her another dizzying swing. When she could breathe again, she tried to give him a stern look. “He is not going to be my boyfriend.”
“That’s what you say now.” Josiah Chance gave his girl a quick tickle along the ribs. “But I’m going to keep my eye on that city slicker.”
“I don’t want any boyfriend.” Lil gave a lofty wave of her hand with her expertise as an almost-ten-year-old. “They’re too much trouble.”
Joe pulled her close, rubbed cheeks. “I’m going to remind you of that in a few years. Looks like they’re here. We’d better go say hello and get cleaned up.”
She didn’t have anything against boys, Lil mused. And she knew how to mind her manners with company. But still . . . “If I don’t like him, do I have to play with him?”
“He’s a guest. And he’s a stranger in a strange land. Wouldn’t you want somebody your own age to be nice to you and show you around if you dropped down in New York City?”
She wrinkled her narrow nose. “I don’t want to go to New York City.”
“I bet he didn’t want to come here.”
&n
bsp; She couldn’t understand why. Everything was there. Horses, dogs, cats, the mountains, the trees. But her parents had taught her that people were as different as they were the same.
“I’ll be nice to him.” At first, anyway.
“But you won’t run off and marry him.”
“Dad!”
She rolled her eyes just as the boy came out on the porch. Lil studied him as she might any new specimen.
He was taller than she’d expected, and his hair was the color of pine bark. He looked . . . mad or sad, she couldn’t decide which. But neither was promising. His clothes said city to her, dark jeans that hadn’t been worn or washed enough and a stiff white shirt. He took the glass of lemonade her mother offered and watched Lil as warily as she watched him.
He jolted at the cry of a hawk, and Lil caught herself before she sneered. Her mother wouldn’t like it if she sneered at company.
“Sam.” Grinning broadly, Joe stuck out a hand. “How are things?”
“Can’t complain.”
“And Lucy, don’t you look pretty?”
“We do what we can with what we’ve got. This is our grandson, Cooper.”
“Glad to meet you, Coop. Welcome to the Black Hills. This is my Lil.”
“Hello.” She cocked her head. He had blue eyes—ice-on-the-mountain blue. He didn’t smile, nor did they.
“Joe, you and Lil go clean up. We’re going to eat outside,” Jenna added. “We’ve got a fine day for it. Cooper, sit down here by me and tell me what you like to do in New York. I’ve never been there.”
In Lil’s experience, her mother could get anybody to talk, make anybody smile. But Cooper Sullivan from New York City seemed to be the exception. He spoke when spoken to, minded his manners, but little more. They sat out at the picnic table, one of Lil’s favorite things, and feasted on fried chicken and biscuits, on potato salad and snap beans her mother had put up last harvest.
Conversation ranged from horses and cattle and crops, to weather and books and the status of other neighbors. All the things, in Lil’s world, that mattered.
Though Cooper struck Lil as stiff as his shirt, he managed to eat two helpings of everything, and he barely opened his mouth otherwise.
Until her father brought up baseball.
“Boston’s going to break the curse this year.”
Cooper snorted, then immediately hunched his shoulders.
In his easy way, Joe picked up the basket of biscuits, offered it to the boy. “Oh yeah, Mister New York. Yankees or Mets?”
“Yankees.”
“Not a prayer.” As if in sympathy, Joe shook his head. “Not this year, kid.”
“We’ve got a strong infield, good bats. Sir,” he added as if he’d just remembered to.
“Baltimore’s already killing you.”
“It’s a fluke. They died last year, and they’ll fade this one.”
“When they do, the Red Sox will pounce.”
“Crawl, maybe.”
“Oh, a smartass.”
Cooper paled a little, but Joe continued as if he hadn’t noticed the reaction. “Let me just say, Wade Boggs, and toss in Nick Esasky. Then—”
“Don Mattingly, Steve Sax.”
“George Steinbrenner.”
For the first time, Coop grinned. “Well, you can’t have everything.”
“Let me consult my expert. Sox or Yankees, Lil?”
“Neither. It’s Baltimore. They’ve got the youth, the momentum. They’ve got Frank Robinson. Boston’s got a play, but they won’t pull it off. The Yankees? Not a chance, not this year.”
“My only child, and she wounds me.” Joe put a hand on his heart. “Do you play back home, Coop?”
“Yes, sir. Second base.”
“Lil, take Coop on around back of the barn. You can work off the meal with a little batting practice.”
“Okay.”
Coop slid off the bench. “Thank you for dinner, Mrs. Chance. It was very good.”
“You’re welcome.”
As the children walked away, Jenna looked over at Lucy. “Poor little boy,” she murmured.
The dogs raced ahead, and across the field. “I play third base,” Lil told Coop.
“Where? There’s nothing around here.”
“Right outside Deadwood. We have a field, and a league. I’m going to be the first woman to play Major League ball.”
Coop snorted again. “Women can’t play the bigs. That’s just the way it is.”
“The way it is isn’t the way it has to be. That’s what my mother says. And when I’m finished playing, I’m going to manage.”
He sneered, and though it brought her hackles up, she liked him better for it. At least he didn’t seem as stiff as his shirt anymore. “You don’t know dick.”
“Dick who?”
He laughed, and even though she knew he was laughing at her, she decided to give him one more chance before she clobbered him.
He was company. A stranger in a strange land.
“How do you play in New York? I thought there were buildings everywhere.”
“We play in Central Park, and sometimes in Queens.”
“What’s Queens?”
“It’s one of the boroughs.”
“It’s a mule?”
“No, Jesus. It’s a city, a place. Not a donkey.”
She stopped, set her fists on her hips, and fired at him out of dark, dark eyes. “When you try to make somebody feel stupid when they ask a question, you’re the stupid one.”
He shrugged, and rounded the side of the big red barn with her.
It smelled like animal, dusty and poopy at the same time. Coop couldn’t figure out why anybody would want to live with that smell, or the sounds of clucking, snuffling, and moo ing all the damn time. He started to make a sneering remark about just that—she was only a kid, after all, and a girl at that—but then he saw the batting cage.
It wasn’t what he was used to, but it looked pretty sweet to him. Somebody, he supposed Lil’s father, had built the three-sided cage out of fencing. It stood with its back to a jumbled line of brush and bramble that gave way to a field where cattle stood around doing nothing. Beside the barn, under the shelter of one of the eaves, sat a weather-worn box. Lil opened it, pulled out gloves, bats, balls.
“My dad and I practice most nights after dinner. Mom pitches to me sometimes, but she’s got a rag arm. You can bat first if you want, ’cause you’re company, but you have to wear a batting helmet. It’s the rule.”
Coop put on the helmet she offered, then checked the weight of a couple of bats. Holding one was almost as good as the Game Boy. “Your dad practices with you?”
“Sure. He played minor league for a couple seasons back East, so he’s pretty good.”
“Really?” All derision fled. “He played professional ball?”
“For a couple seasons. He did something to his rotator cuff, and that was that. He decided to see the country, and he ended up out here. He worked for my grandparents—this used to be their farm—and met my mother. That was that, too. You wanna bat?”
“Yeah.” Coop walked back to the cage, took a couple of practice swings. Set. She pitched one straight and slow, so he got the meat on it and slapped it into the field.
“Nice one. We’ve got six balls. So we’ll field them after you
