Almost Perfect

by Marilyn Tracy

“You said we could later. Is it ‘later’ yet?”

  “It’s really hot outside, Aunt Carolyn, can we go swimming in the stock tank?”

  “Whoa,” Taylor said, coming to Carolyn’s rescue. “No, you can’t go swimming. It may be seventy degrees now, but it was below freezing this morning and will be again tonight. But,” she added, forestalling the five groans of disappointment, “if Carolyn says it’s okay, you guys can wear out old Bratwurst.”

  Carolyn gave her permission and all five kids scooted upstairs for alternate jeans and shirts and were back down and shod in less than ten minutes.

  “Why can’t they move that fast on school mornings?” Taylor asked.

  Carolyn realized that her daughters had been up with the dawn every morning since Pete arrived. She hadn’t once had to nag them about getting dressed or collecting homework or the myriad little chores they performed on a daily basis. Why? Was it just the novelty of having someone else around the place?

  Or was it deeper than that? Was it some of the same underlying reasons that she’d been getting up just a mite earlier herself, had been making a whit more elaborate breakfasts, setting prettier tables and taking the time to wash her face and comb her hair, even daub on a little lipstick before putting on the coffee?

  “Whatever you’re thinking about, I’d like to have some,” Taylor said with a sly grin.

  Chapter 7

  Pete withheld an urge to jump in Carolyn’s Ranger and head for the nearest hills when five Leary-related children, ranging in age from eight to ten years, came barreling out of the house and headed in his direction.

  What he knew about saddling a horse could be summed up in a single word: nothing. What he learned in the ensuing fifteen minutes served as apotheosis of the Biblical notion that “a little child shall lead them.” Five voices, pitched at varying soprano high-decibel levels, took him through each stage of accomplishing the monumental task.

  By the time Carolyn and the Aunt Taylor he hadn’t met made their way to the corral, Pete knew how—despite sudden attacks of giggles by assorted members of the cousin quintet—to sling a two-ton saddle over a totally placid but quirky-humored mount. And he knew how to reach beneath the beast and grab hold of the strap and to choose a seemingly endless selection of notches in which to place the buckle’s tongue.

  And then, he learned, ignoring the two women who had come outside and were now leaning against the corral’s top rail, that he was supposed to shove his knee into the horse’s ribs two or three really rough times in order to expel the horse’s excess gas and air. This, it was explained to him by at least four of the five cousins, would ensure that the rider wouldn’t find him or herself upside down beneath the horse’s belly still clinging to the saddle horn.

  “You wouldn’t want that to happen to me, would you, Pete?” Jenny asked, unable to stifle all her giggles.

  Pete had been conned a few times in his life and generally knew a con when he saw one. And this had all the high-water marks of a world-class scam. He shifted his gaze to Shawna, the shy one, the more sensitive of the two girls, and met her blue, guileless eyes with what he hoped was desperate faith.

  “You’re telling me that if I lift my knee and start slamming the side of this horse, old Bratwurst won’t suddenly turn into Grizzly, the Wild Desert Pony?”

  All five kids laughed out loud. And he heard two contralto chuckles chime in.

  From her position of safety behind the corral fence, Carolyn leaned against her sister-in-law, convulsed with laughter. Pete decided there was something in the Almost water, for Taylor Smithton was damn near as gorgeous as Carolyn.

  “I’ve been had, right?” he asked Carolyn with a lopsided grin. He could drop a man with a look, but he’d broken into a sweat just thinking about kneeing a horse.

  “No,” Carolyn chuffed. “It’s true.” She put a foot on the lowest rail of the fence and vaulted over. The graceful motion did something odd to Pete’s insides.

  Still chuckling, she crossed in front of him and took hold of the girth strap. “Watch.”

  She stood back a pace and let fly her knee into Bratwurst’s midsection. Pete winced in sympathy as the horse gave a seemingly startled “oof” and Carolyn tightened the cinch a couple of notches. She repeated the process, achieving the same results, then locked the girth strap through the cinch and deftly wrapped the excess strap length around the exposed cinch buckle into something resembling a Windsor knot.

  “We do that so the rider’s leg won’t get scratched by the cinch or possibly undo it,” she said, giving the strap a last tug. Pete assumed it was the awed look on his face that made her chuckle again when she finally turned to face him.

  A strong gust of wind swept through the corral, lifting her hair and making it dance on the air. Pete’s fingers actually twitched with the urge to tame that mane of wheaten silk. He didn’t know what showed on his face, but the smile on hers froze for a moment, then slowly slipped away.

  “Me first,” one of the triplets said.

  “No, me.”

  “All of us,” the third said.

  Taylor spoke for the first time. “Jenny and Shawna first. It’s their horse.”

  Pete felt a pang of some hitherto unknown emotion as Jenny positioned herself in front of him and raised both arms straight above her head and said, “Please?”

  The eight-year-old girl, an infant delivered some thirty-six years after he’d arrived on the earth, seemed to weigh less than a bag of Bratwurst’s oats. Like an elf in a fairy story, the child seemed to spring into his hands, a thistle-weight, a feather. The second his fingers touched her waist Jenny knelt and sprang from the ground, a graceful, seemingly choreographed leap of faith into his arms. Up, over and into the saddle.

  “Now me,” Shawna said, holding up her arms.

  The same strange transmutation occurred as Shawna lifted her arms to him, flew up into the air at his touch and landed perfectly and neatly on the saddle—right behind Jenny—on Bratwurst’s back.

  “Now...Mom!” the girls called.

  Pete suddenly felt as if the day were far too warm and the company far too close.

  “I don’t want to ride today,” Carolyn said. But Pete knew what she didn’t want to do was have his hands around her waist.

  “Please...Mom...please?”

  Carolyn flicked a coltish glance his way and cocked her head as if asking his permission. He stretched his arms toward her and his fingertips seemed to tingle with anticipation. Like her daughters, she would raise her arms and leap into his hands, faith and trust absolute in their purest forms.

  “Would you give me a leg?” she asked.

  He’d give her every functioning part of his body, he thought. “A leg?” he asked, perplexed.

  Carolyn half smiled, but she felt disconcerted. Her daughters were waiting atop the horse, her sister-in-law was leaning against the corral and Pete was looking at her legs.

  “You have to kneel and I’ll step on your leg,” she said, and, for some unknown reason, blushed.

  He looked from her to the horse and back again. “What’s wrong with the way Shawna and Jenny got on?”

  “Nothing,” she rasped. Nothing at all. “B-but they’re little and I’m—”

  “Raise your arms,” he said. A little, strangely wistful smile tugged at his lips.

  “I’ll have to put my hands on your shoulders,” she said, as if warning him against a dire fate.

  He couldn’t even smile. His hands encircled her slender waist as she lifted her hands to his shoulders. “Ready?” he asked softly.

  “Yes,” she said, and it seemed to Pete that she agreed to things unrelated to his lifting her to the horse’s back.

  She felt like pixie dust in his hands, magical and ephemeral, ready to fly at his touch. Like the girls had done, she gave a little spring into his hands. For a moment, a split second of time, she poised above him in the air, a dancer, beauty taking flight, and then in a fluid motion she swung her leg over the horse and shook ba
ck her hair as she drew her fingers from Pete’s shoulders.

  And still he held her waist. For a long, seemingly endless breath, he ached to pull her back down from the horse, down and into his arms.

  He was conscious of dark clouds building in the sky miles behind her, providing a backdrop for her pale hair and accenting her blue eyes. If he could paint, he would immortalize her thus on canvas. If he could compose music, he would capture the way her hair danced on the wind in a melodic and haunting phrase.

  But he was only a man, confused by the violence in his past and lured beyond rational thought to the woman he half held in his hands. It seemed to him then that if he let go of her he would be letting her go altogether.

  She started to lean down to him and her hand brushed his forearm, a light, almost affectionate, caress. “Thanks,” she said finally, releasing him from the unusual spell.

  “You’re welcome,” he said hoarsely, forcing his fingers to release their hold. He reluctantly stepped back from the horse.

  She sat just behind the rear lip of the saddle, holding on to Shawna, who held on to Jenny. They walked, then trotted and eventually cantered around the corral, then, amid clamoring from the triplets, slipped down from the horse’s back to allow the boys a turn.

  Carolyn adjusted the stirrups for the boys’ legs and helped them up on the horse. “They’ll be fine,” she said, dusting her hands off on her jeans and joining Pete and Taylor by the gate. “If one of them gets hurt, we’ll be able to hear it from the house. Let’s go get some coffee.”

  She stepped through the gate, flashing Pete a smile that seemed half-shy. He thought his own answering nod might be rueful. Longing. Hopeful. He didn’t know. He wasn’t sure what he was feeling; he’d never felt anything remotely like it before.

  He knew he should dream up yet another task around the place, was fully aware that any proximity to Carolyn was tantamount to encouraging his desire to linger at her Almost ranch. But he could no more have resisted the chance for more of her company than he could have lifted his knee into old Bratwurst’s ribs.

  She solemnly introduced him to her sister-in-law, and Pete was disconcerted by the direct, seemingly probing, stare Taylor gave him. He could read a warning and a message. The warning was clear: don’t you hurt her, buster, or you’ll be sorry. The message seemed less formed, a rather global plea to stay, to take care of her extended family.

  He released her hand after a small pump. She nodded as if he’d agreed to something, and smiled. Pete smiled, too, not so much in response to Taylor’s grin, but to the look of relief on Carolyn’s face. What had she thought he would do?

  Pete felt that stab of uneasy peace as the three of them walked together to the main house. Walking beside Carolyn, his stride matching hers, her head at his shoulder’s height, he was conscious of a rightness in being there.

  The relief of getting in where it was silent and wind free made all three of them groan in unison.

  “I hate spring in West Texas,” Taylor said.

  “How long does the wind blow?” Pete asked, pulling out a chair for her.

  “Until all the topsoil’s in Arkansas,” she answered, flashing him a smile for the courtesy and trying—and failing—to surreptitiously shoot Carolyn a raised-eyebrow look.

  “Those dark clouds in the Northeast—?” Pete asked.

  “A much promised rain. I’ll believe it when I see it,” Taylor said. “It hasn’t rained since last September. Although the weatherman is really excited about this storm. He’s already issuing flash-flood watches and the whole bit.”

  Pete saw Carolyn’s quick, concerned glance out at the corral. Apparently Taylor saw it, too, for she added, “Oh, it won’t be here for hours. But if those clouds hold and the wind doesn’t blow them on south of us, we could really have one of our famous Panhandle storms.”

  “What are they like?” Pete asked, smiling.

  “Everything from drizzle to tornadoes.”

  “Tornadoes?” Carolyn asked.

  “Oh, sure. But don’t worry, this house has been standing a hundred years. I don’t think it’s going anywhere. About the most we’ll have is that on-and-off storm—high winds, a little rain, more winds, and if we’re lucky, more rain. Wild temperature changes. And lots of lightning and thunder. You have candles, don’t you?” At Carolyn’s nod, Taylor continued, “And your cell phone is juiced up, isn’t it? Because we usually lose phone service during a storm.”

  Carolyn nodded again and Taylor patted her hand realssuringly. “Nothing to worry about.”

  Pete couldn’t have said why he instantly liked Taylor. Perhaps it had something to do with the way that she appeared to accept him even as she openly regarded him with a measure of suspicion. Carolyn’s doubts about him lay on the surface, but he knew she fought them, making her a target for hurt.

  God knows he didn’t want to hurt Carolyn, but just staying near her would do the trick.

  Carolyn turned her back on them and poured out three mugs of coffee as Pete retrieved his half-and-half from the icebox. He didn’t say anything as he reached around Carolyn to take a mug and add a dollop of the cream to the hot brew. She glanced at him and flashed him a brief, somehow knowing, smile. He couldn’t help but smile back in response. It was as if they kissed. He turned to find Taylor eyeing him with curiosity. She’d taken in the intimacy that they had inadvertently, oh so accidentally, settled into in such a short time together.

  “The girls told me about your husband,” Pete said after they’d exhausted a second review of the Almost weather, touched on the Almost politics and dismissed the current situation in the Middle East. “I’m sorry.”

  “Thank you,” she said, staring into her coffee mug.

  “Good cops are hard to come by,” he said.

  She smiled a little wistfully as she nodded. “You sound as if you know.”

  “I do,” he said, but didn’t elaborate.

  Her eyes shifted slightly to connect with Carolyn’s in some unspoken message, then returned back to his. “What did you do before Carolyn and the girls dragged you onto the ranch?” she asked point-blank.

  Carolyn felt her breath catch in her throat. She watched as Pete directly met Taylor’s eyes and wondered if her sister-in-law was as aware as she that something in his eyes made it clear that whatever was to come out of his mouth wasn’t going to be the truth.

  “This and that,” Pete said.

  Taylor smiled. “I have a degree in ‘than.’”

  Carolyn smiled in relief as Pete grinned his appreciation. “Minored in ‘this’?” he asked.

  “Yes, but I never went back for my certification.”

  Carolyn shook her head at their nonsense but was aware of Pete’s tension—and her own—and was conscious that Taylor’s mobile eyebrows were expressing her curiosity and her doubts about the taciturn stranger at the table.

  When Taylor offered to take Shawna and Jenny with her back to Almost, Carolyn felt a momentary stab of panic. She’d been on the ranch alone with Pete before; the girls had gone to school without her the first couple of days he’d been there. But that had been before she’d seen him nearly naked in the glow of the hall light. That had been before he kissed her and before she kissed him in return. That had been before his eyes took on that glitter whenever he looked at her, before he’d told her that she was the only reason he’d come to her ranch.

  “We’ll catch up with you at the picnic. Though it will probably be rained out. Just like it is every year,” Taylor said. “You are coming, aren’t you?”

  In all honesty, Carolyn had forgotten about the Almost Over-Sixty Club’s annual picnic. She had agreed to bring something...deviled eggs.

  “I kind of hate to leave the ranch,” she said. “It seems like every time we do, the Wannamachers show up.”

  “Damn those two. If only we could prove it was them.”

  “They’re clever, I’ll give them that,” Pete said. “The other night when they were here—if, indeed, it was them�
��they’d even taken the trouble to hide their license plate number. And Doc tells me they don’t have a Chevy of that make or model.”

  “It doesn’t seem fair that they can get away with the stunts they pull,” Taylor said with some heat. “Just because we don’t have a marshal anymore doesn’t mean we should have to put up with those two’s shenanigans.”

  “What happened to your marshal?” Pete asked.

  Carolyn answered, “Essentially, the state decided having a full-time law enforcement officer in Almost was a waste of money. And except for people like the Wannamachers, I’d probably tend to agree with them. There’s not that much in the way of crime around these parts.”

  “I’ll stay on the ranch. You go to the picnic,” Pete said.

  “No,” Taylor said. “You ought to come. Meet some of the people around here. You’ve already met Doc, so you’ll know at least one person, and, of course, you’ll know me and the kids, so it’ll practically be old-home week.”

  “No,” he said. “I think I’d better stick around.”

  Carolyn felt torn. Pete hadn’t been off the place in nearly a week. Surely he was getting a little cabin-feverish. But at the same time, maybe he had a very good reason not to want to show his face. Call the FBI...don’t tell them where I am.

  She did an abrupt about-face. “I really would feel better if someone was here,” Carolyn said, ignoring the speculative look on her sister-in-law’s face. To Pete she added, “I won’t stay long.”

  “Stay as long as you want,” Pete said, pushing back from the table and taking his mug to the sink. He shook Taylor’s hand and murmured appropriate words of departure, nodded at Carolyn and went out the back door, shutting it quietly. The room suddenly seemed twice the size it had been seconds earlier. And twice as cold.

  “Well, at least he’s house-trained,” Taylor said.

  Carolyn smiled, but her thoughts were on the man who had just left. Did he want her to call the FBI? Was it some kind of a game?

  “He’s polite. He’s well-spoken, even if he doesn’t volunteer much information.”

  “He’s good with the kids,” Carolyn said.