Love Is All Around

by Rae Davies

  Dwayne lowered his rifle to the ground. “Hell, Patsalee, she caught the scent. We’d been weaving through these woods for an hour and nothing. Then that pug of yours comes snorting out of nowhere and nails a trail. She led us right here.” He swung the light on his helmet up the tree. “But damn if it isn’t a den tree. It’d be a bad break if we was hunting for real.”

  Dwayne’s light revealed a hole about fourteen feet off the ground rotted into the tree trunk. Sharp barking yells came from inside.

  “Good for the coon.” Patsy shoved Randy’s dog out of her path and grabbed Pugnacious. The pug was not grateful for the rescue.

  “You can’t take her now. I told you this was her trail. Beau and Piedmont have been acting like they got corks stuck in their noses all night. Besides, look at her. She wants to stay.”

  Pugnacious wriggled in agreement.

  “Too bad. I’m taking her home.” Patsy wrapped both arms around the pug while struggling to maintain a grip on her flashlight. She stomped away from the ticked-off coon and past a grinning Will. She made it another twenty feet before her light went out. Great. Now what?

  “Pugnacious, settle down. I’m going to drop you if you don’t.”

  “I think that’s her plan,” Will spoke beside her.

  Patsy jumped, barely maintaining her hold on the dog but losing her struggle with the flashlight. It fell into the leaves, where it immediately switched back on. “A lot of good it does me down there,” Patsy grumbled.

  “Do you want some help?” Will asked.

  Patsy was not getting into another argument about who needed help. “Just hand me my light, please. I don’t want to spoil your fun.”

  “Certainly.” Will retrieved her lantern, which again flickered out. “I don’t think you’ve got much hope of getting her back by yourself though.” He flicked his Maglite on. “In case you haven’t noticed, she doesn’t want to leave.”

  “She doesn’t know what’s good for her. In case you haven’t noticed, she’s a pug, not a coonhound.”

  “Oh, I see.”

  Patsy didn’t like his tone. She couldn’t make out his expression in the dark, but she suspected he was making fun of her. “What do you see?”

  “Oh, just what you said. She’s a pug, not a coonhound. It makes perfect sense. She was bred for what, sitting on a silk cushion? I guess that’s all you can expect from her.”

  “First of all, that isn’t what pugs were bred for.” Patsy paused. Actually, he wasn’t far from wrong. Pugs had been owned by royalty throughout their history, but the way he said it was insulting. “And second, she can certainly do anything a dumb coonhound can.”

  “Oh, so it’s just that you don’t want her to do what she enjoys.”

  This was exasperating, and Patsy’s nerves were stretched past their limit. She turned on him. “Of course, I want her to do what she enjoys, but she doesn’t enjoy coon hunting.”

  Pugnacious took advantage of Patsy’s lack of attention and broke free. She landed on the ground, legs fully extended. Without a backward glance, she bolted back to the den tree.

  “See what you made me do?” Patsy started after her dog.

  Will stopped her with a warm hand on her arm. She struggled to ignore the tingle that seemed to be the standard accompaniment to every contact between them.

  “What are you afraid of? Do you really think she’ll get hurt?” he asked with no hint of a taunt.

  Patsy paused. “She could. Coons are bigger than she is, and heaven knows Beau and Piedmont won’t watch out for her.” She could feel each of his fingers as they pressed into her arm. His hold was gentle, but she couldn’t step away. There was that pull again, the need to lean against him, bury her face in his neck.

  “You don’t believe that. What’s the real issue?” His voice was low, almost hoarse.

  She wavered, getting so close his breath moved her hair. The clean smell of his soap mingled with the earthiness of the woods and the other scent she’d begun to accept as just—him. Patsy inhaled deeply. “Nothing. I just don’t want....”

  “What don’t you want?”

  There was that voice again, low and comforting. Saying trust me, confide in me. She fidgeted with the lantern.

  “What don’t you want, Patsy?”

  She filled her lungs with air and unsettling masculine pheromones. She gave up. “A coon dog. Okay? I don’t want a coon dog. I bought a pug because I wanted something different. Something no one here had, something not from around here, something no one here understands. Then what happens? They turn her into a coon hound. It isn’t right. It isn’t what I wanted.”

  Her lantern flickered back on, revealing an inscrutable glint in Will’s eyes. He reached out and stroked her cheek. “Do you even know what you want, really?”

  Chapter 8

  Patsy stared up at Will. What a question. Of course she knew what she wanted. She wanted a career, something she could be proud of, not just a paycheck from waving canned goods in front of a scanner. She wanted money, not win-the-lottery kind of money, just enough that she didn’t have to use generic eyeliner and eat store-brand corn. She wanted a house or an apartment that was hers, a place that said “Welcome home, Patsy” when she walked in the door, instead of “Welcome to the WWE.” She wanted relationships, not just with people who’d known her since she came squalling into this world, but with people who liked her and respected her for who she was, people who didn’t know her daddy and judge her because she was “Irv Clark’s girl.”

  And she wanted love, from someone who wouldn’t run off to the nearest bar because it was Saturday night or cheat on her with the latest divorcee to file papers at the courthouse. Boiled down in one tidy little sack, she wanted out of Daisy Creek. And damn it all, she didn’t want a coon dog.

  Patsy jerked away from Will and turned to trudge back to the house. In two quick strides, he caught her.

  “Where are you going?” There was an edge to his voice; annoyance? Fine, let him be annoyed. Patsy was darn near fed up.

  “Wherever I please. Now let go of my arm.” She pointed the beam of her lantern at the hand that gripped her upper arm. He loosened his hold but didn’t release her completely.

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  She looked from his hand to his face. “And I don’t intend to. I know what I want. I don’t need to share any more with you.”

  Running both his hands up her arms, he replied, “Are you sure? Maybe you just think you know what you want. Maybe if you share a little with someone else, you’ll discover you want something entirely different.”

  Exactly what she was afraid of.

  His hands stopped their upward climb at her shoulders. He began massaging her there, his thumbs rubbing a spot that made her breath catch in her throat. She couldn’t share with him. He wouldn’t understand. He came from money, always had everything handed to him, never had someone he trusted betray him. Never been made a fool of in front of the whole town, a town that never forgot.

  “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “Try me. Trust me.”

  Trust me. She’d heard that before, believed it before. Not again, not this time. She jerked away from his lulling touch. The motion caused her lantern to blink back out. Not waiting for her eyes to adjust to the sudden darkness, she strode noisily through the leaves back toward the house. This time he let her go.

  Back at her parents’, Patsy pulled the picnic bench up against the house. The house was quiet. Her daddy’d already driven Granny home, and her parents were in bed.

  Patsy curled her legs under her and waited. Pugnacious better come back soon. If there was one hair on her flat face out of place, someone was going to pay. She just wasn’t sure who she’d light into first. Dwayne for tempting her dog into something she had no business in, or Will for…

  Who did he think he was anyway, questioning her like that? Touching her like that? Okay, so she hadn’t exactly fought him off when he’d kissed her by the river, but that d
idn’t give him the right to ask her personal questions and caress her cheek and rub her shoulders. She wasn’t sure which was more disturbing.

  Both were intimate. Something you shared with a good friend or a lover, and Will was neither of those—not to her. To her, he was nothing.

  Okay, he was tempting, but that was just some kind of twisted joke God was playing on her, giving Will the power to stir up her hormones. She could overcome that.

  She stared out into the darkness. She would overcome that.

  o0o

  Will listened to Patsy stomp off through the leaves. She was louder than her dog, even without the snorting. She was good and ticked. Probably had steam rolling out her nostrils. What was the big deal? So her dog enjoyed coon hunting. A little irregular for a pug maybe, but nothing to get in a snit over, and it wasn’t like anything bad could happen. They weren’t even hunting for real.

  He couldn’t figure her out. He’d felt the electricity between them, felt her leaning toward him. Just as he was getting geared up for some quality time under the oaks, she started ranting about wanting a dog no one else had or understood. What’s to understand? It’s a dog, not a calculus problem. You feed them and love them, and in return, they let you. Fair deal all around. He didn’t know why he even tried to talk to her. It was obvious she was too stubborn to be reasonable.

  Shaking his head, he returned to the hunt.

  Three hours later, Will and Ralph were dragging. Pugnacious was as energetic as ever, bouncing from tree to tree. Dwayne had used a sailor’s log of cuss words yelling at the coon dogs, who apparently couldn’t smell a coon if its butt were stapled to their snouts. Dwayne did know how to turn a phrase. And Randy plodded along, acting neither tired nor happy, just thoughtful.

  As they circled back close to the house, Dwayne announced he was calling it a night. Hidden in the darkness, Will sent a prayer of thanks to the gods of mosquito bites, ticks, and maybe even poison ivy. In fact, now that he was thinking about it, there wasn’t a square inch of his body that didn’t itch. He was contemplating if the strange tickling on the inside of his thigh might be a seed tick and how much higher it would climb, when Dwayne shoved the .22 into his hands and took off in a dash back through the woods.

  “She’s caught another scent. If I lose her, Patsy will have my hide on a board.”

  The itch in question crept higher. Not able to resist any longer, Will shoved his hand down his pants and promptly dropped the rifle. He was already off balance; the explosion knocked him onto his ass. Lying in the dirt, he heard the sickening sound of the bullet making contact with metal, followed by a hiss.

  Hell, that couldn’t be good.

  o0o

  The sound of gunfire catapulted Patsy off the bench. What moron was shooting so close to the house? Dwayne knew better. She grabbed her lantern and jogged toward the front.

  A sound like a balloon being relieved of its helium greeted her.

  “I shot it.” Will stood in the dark, a rifle pointing into the ground at his side.

  “A little late in the season for hunting Fords, isn’t it?” She nodded toward her father’s Crown Victoria, which was hissing more than a mother cat guarding her brood from a stray pit bull.

  “You think it’s dead?”

  Patsy flashed the lantern onto the car. A river of fluids poured out the engine. “Don’t know about dead, but it’s seen better days.”

  “You think it might explode?”

  “Have to ask Randy, but I’d say you made a quick kill, right through the headlights.” She bobbed the light along the side until it illuminated a hole near the front. “Yep, looks like a clean shot, straight through and out the other side. Mighty fine shooting for a city boy.”

  “Thanks.”

  He looked miserable. Patsy grinned.

  “Don’t worry. Dad wasn’t that fond of him anyway. He hasn’t waxed Victor for at least two days.”

  “Victor?”

  “The car.”

  “Oh.”

  “He always wanted a Crown Vic, but didn’t have the money till last year. Got an entire estate dropped in his lap, made enough selling that off for the down payment, then with the trade-in, he can’t have more than four years of payments left.”

  Will was silent.

  “But don’t worry about it. I mean, the new car smell’s almost gone. He’d have been tired of ole Vic in a year or so anyway.”

  Granny was right. She did have a mean streak. Patsy grinned again.

  o0o

  He’d shot a car. What kind of moron shoots a car? Will stared in disbelief at the evidence of his ineptitude.

  The flow of fluids had slowed to a steady drip, a welcome change from the river that had poured out seconds earlier, but each plopping drip slammed into him like a two-by-four to the gut.

  “I had an itch,” he admitted for some insane reason.

  “To shoot a Ford? Can’t say I’m much of a fan myself, but don’t you think that’s taking it a bit far?” Patsy replied.

  “Not to shoot a Ford.” God, she could be irritating.

  “What then, a Crown Vic? They’re kind of an old man’s car, but still, taking a gun to them? Seems extreme.”

  How had she survived all these years without someone throttling her? “Not a Crown Vic. An itch, I had an itch.” He imitated scratching his thigh.

  “Hmmm.” Patsy raised an eyebrow. “Ever think of getting a cream or something for that?”

  “I thought I picked up a tick. It felt like he was crawling higher...” Embarrassed, he stopped.

  “Hitting the high road?”

  “Well, yeah. I guess you could put it that way.”

  “Heading for the hills?”

  She was pushing it.

  “Reaching for new heights?”

  Whatever happened to not kicking a man when he’s down?

  “Cavorting in the...”

  “Hey, what’s going on?” Dwayne and Randy appeared, saving Patsy from certain death, or at least burning retort—if he could think of one.

  “Will’s been hunting.” Patsy grabbed a wriggling Pugnacious from Dwayne’s arms. “Why’d you give him a gun?”

  “Hey,” Will objected. That was uncalled for; it was an accident, after all. Could have happened to anyone.

  While Dwayne flipped the hood, Randy strolled over to look at the damage. He used Dwayne’s helmet light to illuminate the engine. “Don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like this.”

  Great, an automotive repair first.

  “Can you fix it?” Patsy asked.

  While Randy and Dwayne poked every hose and belt to see what was intact, Will sunk deeper into depression. Two kills in one night; first a plate of pork steaks, now this. Not only couldn’t he do anything on his own, he actually destroyed things other people then had to fix. There was no way he could fix the Crown Vic. He could barely check the oil in his BMW, never mind replacing hoses and God knows what else.

  “The engine can be repaired, but these panels will have to be replaced.” Randy thumped on the side of the car, next to the bullet hole. “I can recommend a good auto body shop for your dad.”

  “He won’t need it,” Will dug in his shorts’ pocket.

  “There’s no good way to repair a hole like that....” Randy began.

  “He won’t need to.” The keys to Will’s BMW glinted silver in the lantern’s light. “How do you think he’d like a BMW? Three months old.”

  Patsy stared at him, mouth open.

  “Or if he wants a Crown Vic, I’ll buy him a new one. He can drive the Beamer until he picks it out.”

  Patsy bent down to release Pugnacious. “Are you crazy? You just busted a few hoses.” The hood slammed shut. “It’s no big deal.”

  “Even if it’s fixed, it won’t be the same. He’ll always know it isn’t right.” Will gripped the Beamer’s keys in his closed fist, enjoying the pain of them cutting into his palm.

  “Right enough. Buying a whole new car is crazy.”

&nbs
p; “I messed it up. I’ll make it right.”

  “It’s a car. He’ll get it fixed and go on. You can pay for the repairs.” She had her hands on her hips now and was shaking her head at him like his fourth-grade teacher had when he’d drawn naked pictures of her on the classroom wall.

  “I’ll make it right.” He walked off, leaving Patsy behind. After securing a ride home with Dwayne, he snuck in the back and left a note with his car keys on the dining room table. He’d call the Clarks tomorrow.

  When he returned to the front, an exasperated-looking Patsy had stowed her dog in the Jeep and was arguing with Dwayne. She purposely ignored Will. Mumbling something about idiocy and Y chromosomes, she started up her car and charged down the drive. He watched her tail lights disappear into the night.

  “You need a beer,” Dwayne said.

  Will wasn’t going to argue with the obvious. He followed Dwayne, Randy and the three dogs to the side of the garage.

  “So, Patsy was annoyed about something,” he said.

  “Being mad comes as easy to Patsy as crowing does a rooster.” Dwayne disappeared into the garage and returned with three lawn chairs, a leather packet, and some scrap lumber. “Mom says she didn’t have first steps. She had stomps.”

  Randy chuckled. Dwayne unrolled the packet, revealing an assortment of knives and chisels. He selected one and returned to his seat with it and the wood.

  “You whittle any?” he asked Will.

  “No.” After killing a car, Will was surprised Dwayne wanted to risk handing him a knife.

  “It’s easy. You should try it.” Dwayne ran the blade down the wood.

  Will watched, fascinated for a moment. Remembering their earlier topic of conversation, he asked, “What’s she mad about all the time?”

  “Who knows? She’s what you might call a rebel in search of cause, or at least a good fight.” Dwayne balanced the wood on his knee while he twisted the lid off a Budweiser. “If she wasn’t my sister and I didn’t know she’d been this way from birth, I might say she needed a good lay.” He took a swig of beer. “‘Course, it still might not hurt.”

  Dwayne looked at Will. “Of course, it goes without saying that anybody who hurt her would wind up a lot like a dead coon. Butt nailed to a board and wishing he’d never left his den.”