by Maren Smith
She waved once to show that she’d heard, although whether he could see that or not over the short hill she had no idea, but she didn’t stop her angry march until she’d reached Maybelle’s car. She was panting by then, and still jaw-clenchingly mad, but she threw herself into the front passenger seat and was instantly proud of herself for not breaking into a wild blue-streak of curses.
“That mean, ornery, cantankerous, old—” she glanced once over her shoulder at the kids who stared back at her wide-eyed, “—goat,” she finished lamely.
“I don’t see any holes,” Maybelle said, looking her over. “That must have been some fast talking.”
“He didn’t shoot at me. He even eventually agreed to the blackberries, but only after first making me work for them!”
“But he agreed.” Maybelle looked surprised. “And he didn’t pepper you with bullets.” Starting the car, she pulled gently back onto the road. “Honey, he let you off easy.”
* * * * *
Robert had beat them home. He was just stepping out onto the porch to meet them when Maybelle dropped her off in the driveway.
“See you next week,” Kylie called, waving goodbye as Maybelle pulled back out onto the highway. As she headed up the stairs, he reached out to pull her into a one-armed embrace, his kiss welcoming her back. “Mm,” she sighed as their mouths drifted apart again. “Thanks. I needed that. Where’s Braden?”
“Mowing the orchard, of all places,” he said, smiling. “I guess it makes him feel like he’s at home.” His hand roved slowly up and down her back, fingers playing lightly along her spine. “Billy sold out of pies while Braden and I were still unloading the truck.”
Her sigh turned into a groan. “I’m out of eggs. I’ll have to wait until the chickens lay more tomorrow.”
“I said as much to Billy, so he sold us some.” Leading her inside, Robert gestured to the dining table where a bowl of roughly a dozen or so eggs stood waiting for her.
Kylie groaned all over again, this time adding a whine to the end of it. “Can I still do it tomorrow? All I want to do is sit down. My feet are killing me.”
“I told him not to expect us before Sunday,” he soothed, and stroked her back again. “So, where’d you go?”
“To see that jerk, Granger.” Kylie headed straight for the couch and flopped down at one end, kicking off her shoes to wiggle her toes in stark relief. “I asked him about letting us buy some of his blackberries.”
“You went to Granger’s?” he echoed. It was the look on his face more than his tone that stopped her. Shock and dismay, both of which became quickly overridden by the budding blackness of anger.
“He talked me up to twenty-five cents a bucket,” Kylie said, a little startled by his reaction. “He wanted a dollar per, but I told him no way. I only hope I haven’t screwed up by agreeing to a quarter a bucket. Why are you staring at me like that? We were going to talk to him, you said so yourself. On Friday.”
“That’s right. I said I was going to do that.” Now anger was creeping into his tone as well, and his eyes were fairly flashing with it as he took his first step toward her.
Kylie drew her legs up to her chest. “You were busy; I had the time. You, me: what’s the difference?”
“He shoots at people!” Robert snapped, and she could all but see the sizzle of electric energy that shot through him, amplifying his anger until it felt almost physically solid between them. “I told you he was dangerous! Woman, you went behind my back!” Now he not only looked angry, shocked and dismayed, but also vaguely hurt as he repeated, “You went behind my back!”
Aching feet or not, Kylie abandoned the couch, vaulting upright as she confronted him. “No, I didn’t! And I didn’t get hurt. Look! No holes!” She spread her arms to show him. To Maybelle, that seemed to have made a difference; to Robert, it was the wrong thing entirely to say.
His face darkened even further. “This is that ‘capable thing’ all over again, isn’t it?”
“That capable ‘thing’?” Kylie’s jaw dropped slightly, and her own temper began to rear. “Yeah, okay, I am not some wilting flower in need of your erstwhile protection just to live! I can take care of myself, and that includes my being perfectly capable of making business arrangements on behalf of our business!”
“You are one hundred percent capable!” he shot right back, bellowing, “Just not with him! He’s dangerous. I told you he’s dangerous. He’s shot eight people!”
“Then why isn’t he in jail?” she shouted back.
“Because they were trespassing, which is exactly what he’d say you were doing when the sheriff came to collect your body!”
Kylie glared at him. She took a deep breath, struggling to get her temper under control. Arguments like this didn’t do anyone any good, and she could already feel herself on the verge of saying something she’d probably end up regretting. “Look, Robert. You were busy and I had a free moment, so I went. I didn’t get hurt. But you’re right, maybe I should have waited until you went with me.”
She thought making some kind of concession would help defuse his temper, but it didn’t. “You shouldn’t have gone at all! It wasn’t your place!”
“My place?” Her eyebrows arched, and for a moment, all Kylie could feel was that jagged rip of outrage that instantly fanned her temper back into a raging inferno. Every Women’s-Lib-inclined fiber of her body came awake. “My ‘place’ is wherever I decide it is, buster! Not you! You see a ring on this finger?” She thrust her hand into his face and waggled the unadorned digit in emphasis. “Cause I sure as hell don’t! Until I do—if I ever do, and that’s a pretty big flippin’ if after this!—I, as an intelligent, adult woman, will make my own deci—Ack!”
He grabbed the front of her dress and hauled her right up onto her tiptoes against him. She threw out her hands to catch herself against his chest, but he stepped sideways and the next thing she knew, she was falling face-forward, ducking under his swinging arm and landing, none too gently against his hip. He caught her around her waist, preventing her from falling all the way down to the floor, but that became a very small consolation when the flat of his hand began a hard and fast assault all over her upturned flanks.
An intelligent and adult woman, Kylie shrieked like a teakettle from the start. Her arms flailed and her legs kicked. She tried to twist, hoping gravity would loosen his arm enough to let her scramble free, but Robert was stronger than she was heavy. For all her wind-milling struggles, his arm never once faltered or missed its target. All they did do, was wear Kylie out.
“You can’t do this!” she wailed, abruptly switching tactics. Instead of getting away, she tried grabbing onto the arm which held her pinned and attempted to pry her way out of his grasp.
Robert’s response to that was to haul her to the couch. He sat down, dumping her across his lap, scissoring her kicking, scrambling legs between his own and catching her wildly slapping hand, pinning it against her back before she managed to land a successful hit or two back at him.
“I can’t do this?” He yanked the skirt of her dress up over her shoulders and ripping her panties as far down her legs as he could without relaxing his vise-like hold. “We’re back to I can’t spank you, now?” His hand all but flattened the right cheek of her ass he slapped it so hard, arching Kylie into another teakettle shriek. “Sure feels like this is a spanking to me. What’s it feel like to you?”
The clap of his broad, bare hand against her naked ass put a whole new degree of franticness into her fight to escape his lap. But desperate as that fight was, it was also very brief and ended in defeat when the last vestiges of her strength abandoned her completely. She drooped over his thigh, jolting under each punishing impact, her wordless wails turning into braying sobs because it was all so unfair. And he still didn’t stop, not until every inch of her bottom was a deeply burning cherry-red hue.
“Stand up,” he snapped, abruptly letting go of her hand. He caught her arm and the scruff of her dress, not exactly gentle but gi
ving her the stability her wobbly legs lacked. Her knees buckled weakly in and out, but she managed to crawl to her feet, her hands fisting in the folds of her dress with the effort it took not to rub her badly aching bottom. The tears rolled unabashed down her face, but they had no effect on him whatsoever.
“Corner,” he said, and marched her there, not relinquishing his hold on her until her nose was practically against the wall and her hands were laced behind her head. “You move from that spot, and so help me, I will cut a switch!”
It was the angriest she had ever seen him, and yet when he sharply snapped around and stormed from the house, slamming the screen door behind him, all Kylie felt was bereft. Her ass was on fire, her legs were shaking and she couldn’t stop crying, but it was the sound of him pacing furiously up and down the length of the porch that upset her the most. She hadn’t meant to make him angry. She honestly hadn’t considered herself to be in much danger, despite his or Maybelle’s warnings, at least not until she’d seen Granger’s rifle. But even then, he hadn’t made any effort to use it. He hadn’t even tried very hard to scare her. He’d just been a grumpy, crotchety, old man with more bark and venom than he had inclination to bite. And she’d gotten what she went there for: more variety for their cooking endeavor. So why was he so angry? And how could sixty short years breed such a world of difference between women of her time and his?
Locket or no locket, maybe she should rethink what she was doing here. Maybe he was already rethinking it. Otherwise why would he walk out on her instead of holding her in his arms like she so badly needed right now, facing this stark, unfeeling wall with tears streaming down her face. More than anything else, in this moment of emotional vulnerability, she needed to know that—despite the burning and throbbing and the transitory pain chewing unabatedly through her buttocks—this misery would pass and they, as a couple, would still be all right.
They would still be all right, wouldn’t they?
Kylie sagged down the wall, collapsing onto her knees as she listened to him pace. She covered her face with her hands and sobbed, wondering if she’d somehow ruined that fragile romance that had only just begun to bud between them.
She covered her ears so she wouldn’t have to hear the angry tromp-tromp-tromp of his marching steps, but missed it when that furious pacing slowed and eventually stopped. The screen door opened and closed, but she didn’t hear that either. Nor did she realize when Robert came to kneel behind her, though she did feel his hands sliding around her shoulders, pulling her away from the corner to lean against him instead. She pressed her cheek to his chest, wilting even as he wrapped her in his arms.
“I’ve always done everything for myself,” she wept, and then hit his shoulder, a mild rebuke, with one balled fist. “I’m not stupid. I don’t need you to treat me like a porcelain doll, and I don’t need you to protect me from everything that’s bad in the world!”
He rocked her gently, the hand that had so soundly spanked her now gently comforting as he stroked her back. “Maybe I need you to let me think you do.”
It was such a small request, and yet it felt so huge. Kylie uncoiled far enough to wrap her arms around his neck. His shirt absorbed her tears, feeling warm and soft against her cheek as she whispered her biggest fear. “Are we still okay, Robert? Because I still have no place else to go.”
“You’re not going anywhere. I don’t want you to.” His embrace tightened, drawing her so close that it verged on uncomfortable.
Closing her eyes, she breathed in the scent of him and deliberately didn’t mind.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“Fingers crossed,” Robert called back to her, and Kylie obligingly crossed all eight of her fingers and hooked her thumbs. If she could have, she’d have crossed her toes because they had been working on the cider press for over a week now. She had cuts and grease-smears on her hands from cleaning, scraping and lubricating every gear from the grinder to the hydraulic lift. The dust from the barn was making her nose itch, so she was pretty sure she also had smudges of dark oil on her face, as well. But at last they were to the point of testing the results of their hard work.
At least, she hoped they’d have results.
Standing in the open barn doorway, she watched Robert retreat back through the tall grass toward the stream, where irrigation ditches and paddle wheels and conveyor belts no longer blended seamless in with the overgrowth of vegetation. The chickens followed him hopefully along the fence of their coop, clustering at the farthest post when he passed them without a glance. It was for the largest paddle wheel, the one attached to the back of the barn that held his attention, and specifically, the small crank wheel that operated it.
Braden was waiting for him there, two large wrenches in his hands. “Now?” he asked, holding one out to Robert.
“Now.”
They each took up a side of the crank wheel, fitting their wrenches one on top of the other over the rusted bolt just beneath it.
“On the count of three,” Robert said, gripping the handle of his wrench with both hands. “One…two…three, push!”
They both pulled.
“Other way!” Robert grunted, as Braden enthusiastically countered out his efforts.
“Oh.” Braden abruptly changed directions, pushing while Robert pulled.
Even standing as far back she was, Kylie could see the ripple of solid muscle bunching under Robert’s thin t-shirt as he wrestled with the rusted bolt. But finally, with a jerk its corroded hold gave way and the crank began to turn. Kylie ducked around the door, looking beyond the cider press to where those three doors high up on the wall stood open. She was just in time to see the old water wheel begin to move, lowering slowly until it dipped into the stream. The flowing water caught in the grooves and the wheel began to spin. Both Kylie and Robert, at opposites corners of the barn, let out whooping cheers as the conveyor belts too, powered by the water wheel, moved.
“Here it comes!” he yelled, and ran to join her just as the water came tumbling up the troughs and through the barn windows, spilling into the wash bin which had taken the men more than twenty trips to and from the orchard to fill.
“Is it working?” Braden asked, following at his heels.
“Looks good so far.” Robert clapped his hands, rubbing them briskly together before turning his smile onto Kylie. “Okay.” He waved her toward the pomace grinder. “You did all the work,” he acknowledged. “The honor should be yours.”
“Or the massive flop if it doesn’t,” she hedged, wiping her hands on her jeans.
“Hey…”
She sidestepped the mildly-meant corrective pat that he aimed at her rump and headed for the machine instead. The water was rising high enough in the washing bin that the apples had begun to float and bob. She waited until trickles were flowing into the run-off trough that lead back out into the stream before laying her hands on the lever that would start the process. Drawing a bracing breath, she pushed it up and jumped when everything around her suddenly jolted into motion.
“Holy Hannah, it’s working!” she cried, as the conveyors inside the barn jerked twice before evening into a smooth, flowing motion. The wooden paddle blades in the wash bin churned, kicking up great splashes of water before, with one bumpy thump after the other, sparkling wet apples began to drop from the chutes into the grinder.
“Moment of truth,” she said, and reached for the second lever. The instant she shoved it up into place, the grinder came to life as well. It chewed and crushed beautifully, sending both Robert and Braden into ecstatic cheers.
“You did it!” Robert grinned, his big hands clapping enthusiastically. As if he hadn’t been right here with her, sweating and straining, lifting and cursing and welding right along with her. Yet when he opened his arms, Kylie was only too happy to launch herself into them for a well-earned hug and kiss. “This machine hasn’t worked like this in years!”
“It was a group effort,” Kylie said. “I couldn’t have done it without my boys. High five, buddy!�
� She held up her hand, grinning when Braden’s face lit up now that he was being included in the free-flowing praise.
He slapped her hand and promptly dropped his below her. “Down low!” he crowed.
It had taken nearly two days for Braden to get a handle on the whole ‘high five’ thing, and exactly three seconds for him to grasp ‘down low.’ Her smile turning wry, she let him have his fun too, and obligingly made the effort to clap his hand. She missed by a mile when he yanked his arm back.
Laughing uproariously, Braden stomped his feet and danced all over the place as he brayed, “Too slow! Ah hahaha!”
“One more lever,” Robert reminded, slipping his arm around her waist. Leaving Braden to laugh it off, they walked around the machine, ducking the whirring conveyor belts to watch as white chunks of apple—seeds, stems and all, even the occasional twig and leaf—came tumbling from the mouth of the grinder onto the cheesecloth-covered racks. “You know, if this thing works all the way through—”
“We’re going to be drinking apple cider until our eyeballs float,” she finished for him.
The prospect didn’t seem too upsetting. In fact, Robert’s smile deepened. “Mm. Hard apple cider.”
She lightly whapped his stomach with the back of her hand. “That’s a whole different business, and one which we’ll not be getting into.”
“Am I suggesting we run rum?” he asked, feigning offense.
“I like rum,” Braden interjected, just now starting to pull himself back under control enough to rejoin them by the grinder.
Robert deftly changed topics. “Are you going to help us drink all this cider?”
“Probably. Mama says I eat everything that can’t get away fast enough.” Braden reached out to snag a piece of apple from the rapidly filling rack and then popped it into his mouth. As he chewed, the cheerfulness began to fade to sadness.
Robert and Kylie exchanged looks. She smiled and made a small get-out-of-here gesture with her head.
