“Maybe Pete’s just being on the place has stopped them. We haven’t seen hide nor hair of them since Pete got there,” Carolyn said doubtfully. “Besides, a little spray paint hasn’t really hurt anyone.”
She didn’t have to lie to Sammie Jo. The older woman knew full well the effect a “little spray paint” could have on a woman and two small girls.
“And what if they don’t stop at spray-painting, sugar? What are you going do then?”
Carolyn shook her head. “That’s why Pete’s on the place.”
Sammie Jo’s graying eyebrows raised and lowered as she hefted the hammer and bag of nails. “And he’s just fixing up a few things to wile away the hours between Wannamacher visits?”
Carolyn shrugged again.
“You know, sugar, Cactus and I didn’t want to pry into your affairs, but we’ve talked about it plenty. Craig’s being a lawyer and all should have set you and the girls up pretty well, but Taylor doesn’t think that’s true. Neither do Cactus and I.” She held up her hand. “Now let me finish!”
“We’re fine, Sammie Jo,” Carolyn said repressively, and was unable to meet her aunt-in-law’s eyes as she told the lie. Craig had been one of those people who believed that death would never come his way. And he’d trusted far too many people with what little resources they had, which as a prosecuting attorney hadn’t been much to start with. And then she’d been too trusting herself.
The bottom line, after his funeral, was that she and the girls had the aging ranch and enough to live on for another six months if she was very, very careful. That they’d also apparently inherited the Wannamacher brothers was a complication she hadn’t counted on.
“We don’t have a whole lot, you know, but what we’ve got you’re welcome to,” Sammie Jo said gruffly, setting the hammer and nails into the box.
Unexpected tears stung Carolyn’s eyes. Sammie Jo and Cactus were in their late sixties and relied on the small gas station and minimart as their sole means of support. Since both operations seemed to run more as a kindness to family and friends than as a going concern, Carolyn knew she’d never take them up on the offer. About all she had left was her pride, and she wasn’t going to turn her back on that now. “Thanks, Sammie Jo, but really, we’re doing just fine.”
“I mean it, now.” The older woman held up the container of half-and-half. “This how you’re paying your fellow?”
“He’s not my fellow,” Carolyn protested. He was only a stranger out of a desert night, a quiet man who for some inexplicable reason had decided to take pity on a helpless widow and her two little girls. She felt like squirming at the damning truth.
As if reading part of her niece’s thoughts, Sammie Jo asked, “Why is he doing this, Carolyn? Why would a man agree to work on a falling-to-bits ranch for nothing more than a little girl’s birthday money, three squares and some half-and-half for his coffee? Oh, don’t deny it. The girls told Taylor’s three all about it and they told me. So, what’s he doing out here? What’s he want with you and the girls?”
Carolyn could only shake her head. She didn’t have any answers and her aunt-in-law knew it.
Sammie Jo dusted her hands on the back of her jeans as she abruptly changed the subject. “Don’t forget that Saturday the Almost Over-Sixty Club’s having their annual shindig over at the Catholic Church. We use a different one of the churches every year so God won’t think we’re trying to play favorites. And of course, seeing as how I’m the head honcho this year, I’m putting out the word for mandatory attendance. It’s five bucks and all you can eat. The girls’ll love it. It’ll rain, of course. Does every year, but we just eat as fast as we can then all move inside or go home to nap. Besides, we could stand some rain. It’s as dry as the Sahara this year. Farmers would probably pay us to hold our picnic.”
At her next words, Carolyn realized she hadn’t shifted the topic one iota. “You bring your Pete with you when you come. No sense pretending everybody around here doesn’t know he’s out at your place. Wannamachers included. And, it’ll give everybody a chance to look him over. Outside opinions never hurt anyone. Besides, there’s a few folk around here you haven’t met yet yourself.”
Carolyn took her box of groceries and turned to leave.
“And bring your deviled eggs, sugar. Nobody makes ’em like you do. Swear I put on two pounds just looking at them.”
Carolyn pushed the screen door open with the box.
“And Carolyn?”
“Mmm?”
“Just remember that there are some things that are far worse than loneliness.”
Carolyn wasn’t entirely certain what Sammie Jo’s warning implied, but she knew it sent a shiver of reaction down her spine.
And the warning made her think of Pete’s rare but warm smile.
Pete was waiting for them when they pulled onto the ranch. He’d set up a target range on the far side of the barn.
“Do you know how to shoot, or just point?” he asked her, a lopsided grin on his face.
She blushed as he held out Craig’s old .38 pistol to her.
“Point,” she answered truthfully. She’d been city raised and the gun only meant worrying about the girls possibly getting hold of it.
His grin broadened. “I’m teasing you. One look inside the chamber and I knew it hadn’t been fired in years.”
She couldn’t help but smile back at him and it gave her a strange feeling of familiarity and brought on a wistful sensation. She realized that it simply felt good to smile at a man and have him smile back. Too good, perhaps.
“Can we learn, too, Pete?” Jenny asked.
“Please, Pete, can we?” Shawna begged, subconsciously adding a feminine entreaty to her request by leaning against him, gazing up at him with wide, innocent eyes.
“We’re all going to give it a try,” he said, leading the way past the barn.
“Is this really necessary?” Carolyn asked after he’d shown them the targets he’d apparently designed employing the girls’ crayon collection. Seeing the brightly colored targets had sparked a couple of questions in her mind: one, when had he found the crayons...not to mention the guns, and two, what else had he come across during his obvious search through her house?
But the thought that made her feel the oddest was picturing him sitting at the kitchen table drawing circles with her daughters’ crayons, then slowly, carefully coloring them in. Like a kid would do. Like a dad might.
“I think so,” he said.
“What?” she asked, forgetting she’d asked him a question. His simple acknowledgment had sounded too much like an answer to her inner thoughts.
“I don’t know too many bullies who won’t back off at the sight of a gun. You managed to scare the living hell out of me the other night and the damned thing wasn’t even loaded.”
“I was scared,” she said defensively.
“That’s why you want the gun loaded and want to know how to use it. Even if you just fire in the air, it’ll get the message across,” he said.
She was struck by the realization that Pete Jackson wasn’t any hired hand. He was talking to her as if he were the man of the house, the boss, the head of the family. And he was talking as if he knew very well what a report from a gun could mean.
She risked looking directly at him only to find him staring at her quizzically.
“What?” she asked.
“I thought all Western women learned how to shoot before they could walk.”
“That’s in the movies,” she said tartly. “Besides, I was raised in Dallas. We don’t have many skunks and rattlers in the big city. And I don’t know if I like the idea of Jenny and Shawna being around guns. They’re only eight and ten years old. They might—”
“They might be able to defend themselves,” he said calmly. “And they won’t get hurt if they know how to handle a gun. It’s the inexperienced and experimental, curious-because-they-know-they-shouldn’t-touch-it kids that get hurt just touching a weapon.”
She wasn’t
entirely convinced, but let him lead her toward a line he’d scuffed across the dust.
“Now, the first thing you want to do is plant your legs—like this—right, spaced apart.” He demonstrated what he wanted the three of them to do.
Carolyn had a sudden flash of gym class a thousand years ago. Different clothes, different times. And had Pete been a different man, someone she was close to, she might have shared the memory of the dreadful gym clothes.
“Bend your knees a little. Yeah, that’s right.”
He showed them how heavy the gun really was—and Carolyn wondered if the new weight came from the bullets and withheld a shudder—and gave them tips on using the left hand as a support and extra sight for aiming the weapon.
“Keep your right arm straight. That’s it. That’s good.”
And later, a chuckle as he repositioned Jenny. “No, sweetie, don’t close your eyes. It’s hard to see the target that way.”
Between the noise of the guns, the kick of the shotgun and the dust blowing in from the west, Carolyn could see that the target practice was less than even a qualified success in Pete’s eyes. But after the girls had finished their wild shots and complaints about the way the noise hurt their ears, and their mother had managed to literally and embarrassingly hit the broad side of a barn—some fifteen feet away from the targets—Pete stepped behind her and lifted her arms.
If electricity had jumped from his body to hers, she would have felt no less shocked. “What—?”
“Like this,” he said.
She could feel the heat radiating out from his body and touching hers. She told herself that he was doing nothing more than showing her how to hold a gun. She even tried telling herself that it was Craig’s gun, one he’d insisted on keeping in the closet of their condo in Dallas because his Dad had given it to him as a boy. Why hadn’t she just gotten rid of it when they moved? Then she wouldn’t be standing here in Pete’s arms wondering why her legs were shaking and her insides felt like liquid fire.
She attempted the impossible, scrunching her skin to avoid contact with him. That her efforts were futile was obvious, but she felt the need to shrink into herself, to try not to feel the contact, because then she wouldn’t have to face the simple, stark fact that she was attracted to the man.
If only he weren’t so tall, so broad chested. And if only she weren’t so conscious of the way her hips nestled naturally into his loins. And if only his warm breath didn’t play against her ear, inciting a riot within her. And if only his muscled arms didn’t rest along hers, propping her, his large hands cupping her own.
And if only the dusk wasn’t coming on and the February wind blowing cold and his body didn’t provide such a barrier against the chill then she wouldn’t have leaned into him as if she were welcoming an embrace instead of a simple lesson in firing a weapon.
“That’s it,” he murmured into her hair.
He was lucky she didn’t shoot him.
“If you have clear title to the ranch, those boys can’t really believe they’d have a chance to get it from you,” Pete said over coffee that night.
Carolyn knew he had no idea how alluring it was to share something so simple as a cup of coffee after the children had gone upstairs for the night.
“I don’t know what they’re thinking,” Carolyn said, resting her elbows on the table and cradling her warm mug in both hands. She felt too aware of his presence, too jolted by the feelings she’d had that afternoon in his arms. Nothing personal, ma’am, just target practicing. But it had felt like a prelude to a kiss.
“How long was this place empty before you moved in?” he asked.
Carolyn shrugged. “Fifteen years or so. Since Craig’s parents died.”
“But it was always in your husband’s family?”
“Yes, and when Craig’s parents died, he and his siblings all inherited it. But Taylor didn’t want it, and no one could get hold of Allison—who had moved away right after the funeral. So Craig and Taylor went through the process to have it legally transferred to Craig’s name only.”
He gave her an odd look then and his lips quirked in a smile.
“What?” she asked.
“Nothing,” he said, but his grin broadened.
“Okay... what?”
“I just like the way you talk,” he said. “Slow and soft. Like the vowels are all blurred somehow.”
She didn’t know what to say to that. She liked the way he talked, crisp and clean and as if many of the consonants were actually vowels. The only thing she didn’t like about it was the way it made her skin feel tight and tingly. She met his gray eyes with—hopefully—imperturbable composure.
“And Craig had full rights to the land? Water, mineral, the whole gamut?”
“According to the papers we—I—have.”
The smile had faded from his lips and it was obvious he was thinking about something else.
“The Wannamachers could have had access to it all those years?”
“The years we weren’t here?”
He nodded.
“Anyone did, I guess,” she said. “It was here. Empty.”
He lit a cigarette before asking, “How close would you say we are to the Mexican border from here?”
“Two hundred miles?”
He frowned.
“What are you getting at, Pete?”
“I don’t know,” he said. But she knew he was lying. He was thinking something. Something important.
Then she saw what he was after and shook her head. “The Wannamachers wouldn’t be smuggling in illegal aliens through here,” she said. “No profit in it. I’ve read about the border troubles and, for the most part, the people dealing with human flesh get those poor people just inches across the border then ship them directly to where they can be hired. There aren’t many farmers in this area who could even afford extra help, no matter how inexpensive.”
“Maybe they just haven’t met the right man,” Pete said, not meeting her eyes. His lopsided grin lifted his full lips.
Carolyn felt a blush creep up her cheeks. Had she? The question leapt all too neatly into her mind. Like him, she had to look away before he read the thought, caught it in the confusion in her gaze.
Nevertheless, she had to acknowledge his statement. “Men who work as hard as you do, and for nothing, are rare,” she said.
“Oh, it’s not for nothing,” he said slowly.
And when she raised her eyes to his in quick surprise she saw he wasn’t smiling anymore. His eyes were on her, and he looked dead serious.
Her heart jolted once and then seemed to race. She felt a curious pull in the pit of her stomach. She didn’t know what his words meant exactly, but she could guess. And if she’d been unable to accomplish a speculation, the look in his eyes was explicit.
He wanted her. More than that, perhaps. Something about the way he steadily regarded her, without smiling, without shifting his gaze to her lips, simply, straightforwardly letting her know that whatever he felt about her was nothing casual, made her weak with desire so long suppressed she was nearly shocked by feeling it again.
She needed to ask him why he’d been on the MacLaine property, how he knew them, what he’d really been doing out there—how he’d gotten there—and what it was that made him agree to come to her place. But all she could think about was that his gray eyes had darkened to a rough steel blue.
Had, he even needed a job? She didn’t think so. Nor did she believe him an itinerant. And judging by the quality of his clothing and the caliber of his camp equipment, he didn’t appear to be hurting for money. And he was looking at her as if they’d known each other years before and had come back together again.
So, why was he willing to come to her place at nothing more than a request and a five-dollar bill from an eight-year-old? And why wasn’t she breaking the shocking link with his eyes, why wasn’t she frightened, running scared?
Caught in his gaze, she knew he could see her questions. Could he understand that she didn
’t care what his reasons might be for being on her ranch? She needed his help. The Wannamacher brothers hadn’t shown their faces during the entire time he’d been on her place.
But she knew what he was really seeing was the strength of her wanting him, the depth of the longing to be held again, assured that things would be okay. That she could trust him to keep her safe.
“It’s all right,” he said. But his words were oblique. What did he mean by them?
“What is?” she rasped. She had to ask.
He looked away then and drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. He crushed his cigarette out in the ashtray she’d given him that first morning and said, still without looking at her, “That they know I’m here.”
That he’d ducked the electricity between them made her nearly sag with relief. She didn’t know him; didn’t really know anything about him. She was a fool to have been fantasizing about trust and safety. She’d never had that luxury with someone before. Certainly not Craig. She couldn’t pretend this stranger would be any different.
“What do you think they’ll do next?” she asked, but she was wondering what she herself was likely to do if Pete held another shooting lesson.
“If they’re bullies—and believe me, I think that’s all they are—they’ll back off once they realize you’re not alone out here.”
“And if they’re not?”
“If they’re not your garden variety bullies,” he said, “then they want something specific. Not just your land. Let’s get real, this land hasn’t been worked in fifteen years no matter what they’re claiming. And from what you’ve told me about the place, the good land was all sold off to pay debts and taxes.”
“But what?” she asked. “What could they possibly want?”
Pete looked at her pointedly.
She shook her head again. “It’s not me. I mean—maybe now, but this war of theirs started before they ever laid eyes on me. It’s this place they want.”
But when she met Pete’s gaze she could see that he didn’t have the same restrictions—or motivations—the Wannamachers did.
Almost Perfect Page 6
