The Foster Girls

by Lin Stepp

  “Thanks for walking me back,” Vivian said quietly, as she started up the steps.

  “I thought for a minute tonight that I might be falling in love with you, Vivian,” Scott said softly to her back.

  Vivian whirled around to face him, anger slicing over her mind.

  “I won’t let that little remark go by, Scott Jamison.” She straightened her shoulders, irritation flooding her. “And you will not make me feel guilty throwing that remark out at my back here at the last. I can assure you that you weren’t even getting close to falling in love tonight. People who are falling in love don’t push others to give more than they are ready to give physically. They don’t ask for more than someone is ready to share. And they don’t make fun of someone they think they care for just because they have different moral beliefs about sex before marriage or because they might be inexperienced. In addition, they don’t make that person feel stupid or call them a liar when they try to tell them the truth about it. Maybe you should think about all that a little, Scott Jamison. You’ve spent a lot of time questioning my ethics here lately; maybe you should spend some time examining yours. You’re not such a perfect knight in shining armor yourself.”

  With that, Vivian let herself in the farmhouse door behind Fritzi and Dearie and slammed the door shut soundly.

  When she heard Scott start away from the house, she leaned against the wall and started to cry. How could he have gone from being so sweet to being so hurtful? It was just another reason to avoid men altogether, she thought.

  “Let’s go in the kitchen and make a snack,” she told the animals, still sniffling. “And then let’s all go to bed.”

  At the word snack, both the animals headed for the kitchen.

  Suddenly, Vivian felt exhausted. It had been an emotionally tiring day and who knew what the next would bring. She remembered suddenly that Scott had never said if he was satisfied with her story. And he’d never promised either that he wouldn’t look further into her background. This brought on a new rush of frustrated tears. She didn’t know if she could take much more pressure from Scott Jamison. He could be so difficult at times and so arrogant and insufferable.

  Chapter 13

  Scott stalked off through the darkness to take a long walk around the lake before he went back to his place. It was two miles at least, but he needed to walk off some of his frustrations. This woman, Vivian Delaney or Vivian Mero, or whoever else she was, was driving him crazy.

  First she lied to him, then she told him all about herself so sweetly that it made his heart melt. Then she drew the line and wouldn’t tell him anything more about herself. Who the heck was she? Someone famous, she said. Was she making that up? Was all this mess a game just to intrigue him? Was she even telling him the truth now after all her lies?

  And, now this new whopper. That she’s an inexperienced virgin at her age. That just wasn’t realistic in this day and age. Girls didn’t save themselves anymore. He wasn’t stupid. He knew his statistics. It was a rare thing for a girl not to have had sex by the time she graduated from high school these days. Why couldn’t she have been her usual outspoken self and simply told him she didn’t like him enough?

  He tripped over a tree root, and said a curse word before he thought. Scott didn’t believe in using profanity. He’d not been raised that way. But this woman took him to the point of forgetting all his morals and good manners.

  He walked fast and hard around the lake road in his anger. He wasn’t used to having girls and women turn him down. In anything. He didn’t understand this woman, who he could tell enjoyed him, but drew the line at further intimacies. It frustrated him.

  He heard his mother’s voice in the back of his mind suddenly. She ripped him up royally not long ago for dumping the little daughter of one of her good friends. “You’re so spoiled to getting your way with the girls, Scott. What are you going to do one day when you run across a girl with real spirit, with someone who can just say ‘no thank you’ to your handsome looks and charm? Well, you’re going to get a taste of your own then, that’s what,” she’d said. “And I hope I’ll be around to see it.”

  “Well, come check out the great downfall of your son,” Scott announced to the dark bitterly. “Here’s one who seems to have no trouble saying no to me at all.”

  He walked about another mile fuming before his anger began to cool. As he came around the lake, he let the moon on the water draw him back down to the dock beside the lake. To the same place where he’d sat with Vivian, watching the sun on her hair, watching her swing her feet and look out over the lake with such delight. He threw a rock in the water in irritation.

  Back at his own place later, Scott’s anger finally cooled down and he began to think a little more rationally. Could Vivian actually have been telling the truth about her inexperience? As he sat on the couch in the dark, he remembered that Vivian didn’t even know how to respond when he tried to French kiss her.

  “I actually had to ask her to touch me,” he grumbled to himself. “And when she did, she just put her hands tentatively on acceptable areas. In fact, even though she acted eager, she was really awkward in intimacy. She didn’t seem to know very well what to do.” He frowned then, remembering that she’d never aggressively tried to flirt with him or seduce him with her actions before.

  “I always assumed she was just playing it cool, keeping her professional distance.” He punched a sofa pillow hard with his fist. Surely this woman couldn’t really be an innocent at her age?

  Scott flopped back on the couch, trying to think logically.

  “What if she was telling me the truth?” he said to the dark. “If she wasn’t lying, then I was an abominable heel.”

  He groaned. She had been so sweet. And whenever he was with her and got close to her, he went sort of crazy. He just wasn’t his usual self.

  “Every playboy has his day,” his older brother Raley had teased him once. “Even the great fox will have his.”

  Scott got up and paced the floor. He usually knew how to handle women. He always had. But he didn’t know what to do with Vivian. He really didn’t. He alternated between never wanting to see her again and wanting to go over to see her again right now. She was like a disease that had gotten under his skin, like poison ivy or something. And he was miserable with the itch.

  Scott slept fitfully through the rest of the night, and by morning he wasn’t in a much better mood.

  His brother Kyle came over to work with him on a cabin that needed repair at the camp. And he found himself almost unsociable.

  “What’s ticking you off today?” Kyle asked, marking off some pieces of lumber they were going to cut and use to replace some shelving.

  “Nothing,” Scott snapped, hitting his finger with a hammer at about the same time, and letting out a string of unacceptable words.

  Kyle grinned at him. “Better not let mother hear you say that.”

  “Mother can go to the devil,” Scott mumbled. “If it hadn’t been for her letting that renter in to Gramma’s I wouldn’t be in this mess.”

  Kyle, never known to be slow, picked up on that mumbled bit of news and smiled to himself. He’d heard from his Uncle Leo, and from his mother, that Scott had been having a bit of trouble with the new renter at their grandmother’s place. Obviously, there was a little more trouble afoot than most everyone knew about.

  “I hear we’ve got a new renter over at Gramma Jamison’s place,” Kyle said conversationally, throwing out his baited line on the water.

  Scott slammed some boards around in answer, and Kyle couldn’t help grinning. The one most consistent hallmark of Scott’s personality was his good nature. That he was cross and out of sorts probably just meant one thing. Kyle remembered it well. He had been miserable himself when he had been falling in love with Staci Graham.

  He stopped measuring board to look over at Scott with a smile. “You want to talk about this, Fox?

  “Talk about what?” Scott shot back.

  “The renter. Girls.
Whatever’s bothering you.” He raised an eyebrow.

  “No thanks,” Scott replied curtly. “And don’t be making something out of this that isn’t there, Bear. Nothing’s really bothering me. I just didn’t get much sleep last night, that’s all.”

  “All right.” Kyle turned to measure off another board, hiding a smirk.

  “Where’s Fritzi?” he asked, changing the subject. “She’s usually following us around like a shadow while we work?”

  “Hanging out over at Gramma’s, smitten with the new renter, the little traitor.”

  He slapped a board down in front of his skill saw, banging a few more boards around in the process.

  Kyle smiled to himself again. And Fritzi’s not the only one smitten, he thought.

  Raley stopped by later, and the three of them went up to the Blackbear for lunch. They liked to get together whenever they could fit it into their schedules, and several weeks ago they had planned to meet at the Blackbear when they knew Kyle would be over at the camp working.

  While Scott took a phone call, Kyle filled Raley in on why Scott was in such a foul mood. The two had a good laugh over it.

  At the Blackbear later, the three brothers settled down at a long table where all the locals usually ate when they stopped in for a meal. The brothers waved a greeting and said a few hellos to Reverend James and to Charles Hart, who were already sitting at one end of the table. Then they pulled out chairs at the other end.

  “You know, Scott,” said Raley, digging into the Blackbear’s meat loaf special. “One of these days your turn is going to come to meet someone you can’t seem to get off your mind. I remember Daddy always telling me that when the Jamison men fall, they fall hard.”

  “Lucky women that get us to fall.” Kyle looked up with a grin. “Aunt Mary says we’re all a bunch of sexy devils.”

  “Or a bunch of over-sexed devils,” Raley countered back, laughing.

  Scott looked up with a cross scowl. “Can’t we talk about something else besides the prowess of the Jamison men today?”

  Raley shrugged. “Sorry. It’s usually your favorite subject, Foxer. And you’re usually razzing the two of us about all that we’re missing since we settled down and got married.”

  “Well, you make us sound like a bunch of immoral animals,” Scott groused. “We’re good men, you know. We went to Sunday school and we were raised right.”

  Raley and Kyle raised their eyebrows at each other.

  “We don’t push women to do anything they don’t want to do,” he continued, seeming to almost forget they were there. “And we don’t disrespect morals, either.”

  Raley and Kyle tried not to smirk now.

  “You know the toughest thing for an old playboy like me,” Raley put in. “Was when I met a really nice girl like Beth for the first time. Boy, that really put me in my place. Remember that, Scott?”

  Scott looked up at him. “All I remember was that you weren’t fit to be around for months when you were dating her. We couldn’t figure out why you kept going out with her. You seemed to be mad at her about half the time.”

  “Love hits some people funny.” Raley forked up some meatloaf off his plate. “And I fought the idea real hard.”

  “Do you trust Beth?” Scott asked, unexpectedly, out of the blue.

  Surprised, Raley answered honestly and without any jest. “With my whole heart and life, Scott. Why?”

  “Well, I just think that’s important in a relationship, don’t you?”

  “Well, sure,” Raley said tentatively.

  “But trust is a big leap,” added Kyle intuitively. “Like loving. I don’t think most men want to go there willingly. Life just sort of drags us there.”

  “I sure to gosh had to drag you there with Staci.” Scott looked up and smiled at Kyle in remembrance. “It was obvious to everyone that she was perfect for you, but you couldn’t seem to see it at all.”

  Raley reached for another roll. “Well, we Jamison men are a little slow on the count sometimes to things that are really important, even though we’re quick about the rest of things in life.”

  Hershel Fields came in the restaurant door then and called out to them as he walked across the room.

  “Well, hey,” he said congenially. “Haven’t seen you Jamison boys together for a long time like this.” He shook hands all around, while putting in some nice catch up remarks to Raley and Kyle, whom he saw less often than Scott.

  “Did you ever get things straightened out with that red-headed renter of yours, Scott?” Hershel asked at last, slapping Scott on the back.

  “To some small degree and with no thanks to you.” Scott’s reply was grumpy. “And her hair is chestnut, not red.”

  Hershel grinned widely. “And here I was thinking you weren’t very observant about that girl. Looks like I was wrong, you havin’ noticed just the exact shade of her hair by now. Bet you could tell me the exact color of her eyes, too, couldn’t you?” he teased.

  “Stuff it, Sheriff,” Scott shot back. “I’ve got enough trouble without any crap off of you today.” He got up, pushed his chair back with a crash, and stomped out of the restaurant.

  “Whoo-ee!” Sheriff Fields said, pushing back his hat, and looking after Scott. “Looks like that boy’s got it bad.” He shook his head. “I reckon I feel sorry for him for it, too. That’s one hell of a woman he’s tangling up with.”

  Kyle and Raley cracked up then, unable to hold their laughs and guffaws in any longer. The Sheriff joined them, and then he pulled up a chair and told them all about Scott and Vivian’s first meeting. He also gave them the lowdown on what he knew of Vivian from all the local gossips around the valley.

  Scott peeled his truck out of the parking lot of the Blackbear, and then started to feel like an idiot after a few miles down the highway.

  What was he thinking of to snap off at the sheriff like that? To walk out on his own brothers in a fit of anger? And right in front of the minister and his neighbors and friends in a public place? Whatever was wrong with him anyway? He turned around and headed back, trying to come up with a plausible excuse to explain his behavior.

  “That woman’s driving me crazy,” he told himself again.

  As much as he hated doing it, he offered them all an apology when he got back to the Blackbear.

  “I don’t know what got into me. I haven’t been myself lately,” he tried to tell them when he sat down at the table again a short time later. “And last night I had some problems that kept me up.” Their smirks of understanding made Scott want to belt them, but he managed to get on through the rest of the meal somehow.

  It helped the occasion when Kyle announced that he and Staci were going to have a baby. This news brought back slaps and congratulations all around and, thankfully, took the focus off Scott for a while.

  After finishing lunch with his brothers, Scott worked for the rest of the day at the camp, trying to sort out his feelings.

  At about four in the afternoon, he remembered suddenly that he was supposed to pick up Vivian and take her over to dinner at the Greene’s later.

  “Great,” he told himself sarcastically. “Just great. This is just what I need.”

  He had at least wanted to sit on all of this for a few days before he saw Vivian again. Now he would have to confront her and smooth over this situation before they went over to Quint and Ellen’s. He didn’t want the Greenes picking up on his emotions like his brothers had and razzing him around the dinner table in front of Vivian.

  No, he wanted back in the catbird seat. Hadn’t he said that was the way it was going to be with Vivian? That he’d show her what it was like to be around a strong person with authority and confidence of their own? That he wouldn’t act like one of her little college students?

  Scott listened to some of his best motivational tapes while he got dressed later in the day. He worked hard on getting himself pumped up and reminding himself of who he was, what his goals were, what he wanted in life. Goals and aspirations beyond getting
Vivian underneath him. That’s all that was going on with her, he told himself. Pure lust. He’d experienced that before, and he would undoubtedly experience it again.

  He’d have a few practical words with Vivian when he went to pick her up. Be calm and adult. Put their relationship on a new friendship level. It seemed like she had enough problems without him going after her like a conquest right now. Plus, she’d made it clear she didn’t want that with him, anyway. Scott scowled over that remembrance. He admitted to himself that this irked his ego. But he could pull back and play it cool, too.

  Vivian wasn’t a bad sort in general and she was actually good company. There wasn’t any reason to avoid her and make this situation more awkward. He was a grown man; he could deal with this. Scott even acknowledged to himself that he actually liked Vivian most of the time. So maybe they could just have some good times together. Be friends. After all, she was only going to be here for a year. Maybe he’d take her around and show her some sights. They’d keep it light. Yeah, that was the way to play it.

  Scott looked in the mirror. He looked good, and he felt more like himself now. He was pumped up; he could handle this little situation with Vivian. He was the fox.

  Chapter 14

  Vivian spent a bad night and a bad day after her encounter with Scott. Looking back, she knew her impressions of him had been accurate ones. He was an impulsive and reactive individual, and she didn’t like impulsive, reactive individuals. She preferred more thoughtful people, people more in control of their minds and emotions. Vivian hated how Scott had caused her to react in anger at the end of their evening. But he had truly deserved it. The very idea of him trying to manipulate her emotions by posing the idea that if she slept with him their relationship might go further.

  What had he said there at the end? She let his words play again in her mind: ‘I thought for a minute tonight that I might be falling in love with you.’ Hmmmph. As though love only existed after a fulfilled sexual act. She had begun to think better of him. And now she was disappointed in him.