Clay and Gord had Tasha between them, which suited all three of them just fine. No one seemed to notice overmuch—well, except for the sweet smiles from his grandmother and his aunts Bernice and Abby. Clay examined his feelings, knowing that most everyone who saw the three of them together knew they were “involved.” Surprisingly, he realized that he was fine with that.
If things went according to plan, he and Gord would marry Tasha before the end of the year. In Lusty that would just be a case of situation normal.
“Is that fair?” Tasha asked. “Isn’t baseball supposed to be fair? No gimmes, no cheating?”
“Hell, no, it’s not fair,” Henry’s brother, Morgan, said. Sitting beside his mother, he spoke without taking his gaze from the playing field. “As I recall, the reverse is also true. If you’re older and bigger and tag one of the runts out, they’re safe. Every damn time.”
Tasha turned and met Clay’s gaze. Then she looked at Gord, who only shrugged. “It’s true, darlin’,” Gord said. “And every chief umpire since Northrop Kendall has reinforced that rule. Think of it as baseball, Lusty style.”
Tasha laughed and shook her head. “Only in Lusty,” she said.
Clay agreed with that assessment. And as he watched the game progress, he had to admit he agreed with the rule, too.
Life came with enough things stacked against kids. Why shouldn’t the smallest and youngest ones experience a guaranteed victory once in a while?
The other consequence to that rule, as far as Clay could see, was that the little ones were coveted players, instead of being the players picked last. The older players clearly understood—and maybe that was the entire point of Northrop Kendall’s rule—that a team only benefited from having smaller, less “accomplished” athletes on its roster.
Tasha must have come to the same conclusion. “I bet even the smallest player never gets left out of the game.”
“That’s what I just realized,” Clay said. “And, none of the kids seem to mind, overmuch. Even the bigger ones who get called ‘out’ only seem to give token protests.”
Samantha Kendall laughed. “The kids don’t mind at all. It’s mostly these ‘middle ones’ who still gripe about it.” She pointed toward her sons. “There were so many of them born around the same time, and most of them boys. The testosterone flowed and the competitiveness at that time was legendary.”
“Hey, I still remember being tagged as ‘out’ when I hit a homer, once. Uncle Northrop would not listen to reason!” Morgan groused. “I could have been psychologically damaged for life by that!”
Ginny Kendall laughed. “Boy howdy, you and your brothers, Morgan Kendall!” She shook her head. “It’s been more than a year or two since that happened. Don’t y’all think you should get over yourselves?”
“I’m over myself. Just sayin’, is all.” Then, “Hey, look, Benny’s up to bat!”
The Kendalls to a one quieted down, and all eyes were on the youngest—and smallest—member of their family on the field.
Benny got five strikes before he finally hit a line drive, and despite the fact that one of the Parker boys got to first base with the ball before he did, he was, of course, safe.
“Yeah! That’s what I’m talking about!” Morgan stood, whistling and clapping—along with most everyone in the stands. The women just looked at each other and shook their heads.
Clay felt for the man. Sometimes it was tough to put away childhood wounds. He pulled his mind back to the present. There was no need for him to visit his own younger, darker days. He’d dealt with them. End of story.
The sounds of children and baseball proved the perfect antidote to not only the February doldrums. They also helped him set aside his worry about that crazy e-mail.
Gord had told him that Connor Talbot and Mel Richardson were very, very good at what they did. They’d get to the bottom of that letter.
When the game was over, Clay herded his group toward the car. The end of February dictated a light jacket against the occasional breeze, but lawns were awakening and in some of the fields around Lusty, wildflowers were beginning to poke their pretty little heads up. It was also good weather to grill hamburgers—Clay found he was actually thinking the word “grill” now instead of the Canadian “barbeque.” They’d planned to do just that this afternoon—have burgers and hotdogs and potato salad for supper.
Casual and easy, Clay thought it would be an excellent first get-together for the six of them. The wedding they’d attended hadn’t really counted, since it had been a large, family event.
Of course, the fact that it was Saturday and his kids were really quite sociable meant it wasn’t just the six of them for supper.
Gord brought Tasha in his pickup, as Clay had his three kids and three more besides—Benny Kendall and Tommy Parker, one of Shaun’s friends, as well as Karen Langley, Bonnie’s friend—stuffed in his SUV.
He’d made a large potato salad the night before, using his wife’s recipe, because it was the one potato salad his kids liked. And, since it was meant to be a fun day, he relented and had grabbed a couple bags of potato chips to be an extra “side dish.”
“I wonder if we can get Grandma to send us a case of ketchup potato chips?” Mark asked. Clay pulled his vehicle into the driveway, leaving lots of room for Gord’s pickup.
“Ketchup potato chips? Never heard of them,” Tommy said.
“I know.” No one could nail a tone of disgust the way an eleven-year-old boy could. “You don’t have them down here, anywhere, but they’re my favorites.”
“Sounds good. Maybe if your grandmother from up north sends you some, you’d let me try them,” Tommy said.
“Sure.” Then Mark turned to Clay. “Can you ask her, dad?”
“Why don’t you ask her the next time you talk to her?” Clay said.
“Oh! The next time I talk to Grandma Mart I’m going to ask for Smarties! And Coffee Crisp!” Then Bonnie turned to her young friend. “They are the bestest chocolates, ever!” She was bouncing enough that Clay really didn’t think she needed to be fed her two favorite chocolate treats.
“Better make sure you ask for them before the summertime, squirt,” Shaun said. “It gets hot as hell down here.”
Bonnie gasped at the same time Clay said, “Shaun!”
His son looked him in the eye, his expression defiant, for about two seconds. Then he looked away. “Well, it does.”
Clay couldn’t argue the point, exactly, just the word choice. Out the corner of his eye he saw Gord and Tasha approach, both of them trying very hard not to laugh. They’d obviously heard Shaun’s assessment.
Let them laugh now, until it’s their turn to deal. It would be nice, trading off responsibility for being the disciplinarian from time to time. Too often he had to deny his own laughter in favor of wearing the face of the “father.”
“Yes, it does, but we don’t need that specific comparison,” Clay said. He nodded toward the house. “Why don’t you kids go inside and get yourselves some soda. Then head on out to the backyard.” Clay had made good use of the large backyard that came with the house. Already they had a badminton net set up, some gardens they all worked in, and a small gazebo. Next month, they were having a swimming pool installed. That ought to help ease some of the heat issues.
“Are we going to eat soon?” Shaun asked. “I’m hungry.”
“You’re always hungry. Supper is in a couple of hours. You can haul out the veggie tray that’s in the fridge—and when you’ve made a dent in that, then you may open a bag of chips.”
Clay chuckled at the grumbling sounds coming from the children. The kids pounded up the porch steps, and it became a bit of a race. It seemed to Clay that all six of them wedged themselves through the door at the same time.
“You’re a tough one,” Tasha said. “Veggies before chips.”
He guessed that wasn’t so bad a thing in her eyes, since she was smiling at him. He nodded, accepting the label. “As a dad who tries to stress good health as wel
l as dental hygiene, I have my hard limits.”
“Speaking of limits, I thought Uncle Caleb was going to toss Tasha out of the game earlier.” Gord grinned, and then ran his hand down Tasha’s back. “You’re feisty, darlin’. I like learning these little things about you.”
Clay laughed. “I would have thought so, too, but he was laughing as he pointed that warning finger at her, so I just figured it was all good.”
“Hey, I’ve been almost thrown out of a ballpark before. I wouldn’t have gone without a fight, I can tell you that.” Tasha laughed. Clay reached for her right hand and Gord took her left. Rather than head toward the house, he led them around the house and directly into the backyard.
“I wouldn’t have wanted to be any of the perps Caleb was after when he was on the job as a Texas Ranger,” Gord said. “Benedicts and Kendalls—they tend to take the law pretty damn seriously.”
“I had heard that,” Clay said. He’d already taken the measure of Lusty’s current sheriff. He’d heard enough about the man to know he followed in that tradition.
That knowledge made him feel good about the security of the town he and his children were now living in.
The two flower beds and one vegetable patch had already been planted, and recently worked up. To say it had been surreal planting so early would be an understatement. In Ontario, the rule of “green-thumb” had been one didn’t put in one’s garden until after the twenty-fourth of May long weekend.
But Clay had learned that here in Central Texas, there were crops that could be grown year round. They’d decided to start simple, with just a few veggies that they all—more or less—liked.
Gord looked down at their small vegetable patch. “Looking good. Carrots, spinach, broccoli, and onions.”
“I thought about planting lettuce, but I’ve never grown that before.”
“Mom always had something growing, year round,” Gord said. “She loved being able to just go out to the garden and pick something for supper.”
“When I first settled down in one place, I planted a garden as a kind of symbol,” Clay told them.
“Putting down roots literally as well as figuratively?” Tasha asked.
“Yeah.” Clay sighed and looked around. His teenaged self had defiantly claimed he would never leave Toronto, never wander anyplace else, not ever again.
His adult self had made the move from Toronto to Lusty on faith. This garden was as much of a symbol as that first one had been, all those years ago.
The back patio door opened and six kids stampeded out, sounding more like a dozen. The girls, predictably, headed for the swing set while the younger boys walked to the shed to take out the badminton rackets. Shaun and Tommy, armed with Shaun’s iPod, aimed for the gazebo. It didn’t surprise him that they’d spread out, though he did notice the little looks that Benny kept sending toward Bonnie.
“Come on inside. We can grab something to drink ourselves.” He’d cleaned ruthlessly between the time he’d got home from Gord’s that morning and leaving for the ballpark. For once, his place didn’t look like the movie set for a disaster flick.
“What’ll it be? Beer? Wine? Soda?”
“Beer’s good for me,” Tasha said. “I’m just going to freshen up a little first.” He directed her to the downstairs washroom, mentally patting himself on the back for having scrubbed and scoured in there first thing when he got home.
“I’ll grab the beer,” Gord said. “I know you want to take a minute and check your e-mail.”
Clay nearly blushed. “Thanks. I can’t get that damn thing off my mind. I just want to make sure there aren’t any more of them.”
“I don’t blame you one bit. If I got something like that, it would freak the hell out of me.”
“Maybe it was a one-off, and when I didn’t respond, whoever sent it moved on to another mark.”
“We can only hope.”
Clay left the refreshments to Gord and made his way to his office. He’d turned his computer off when they’d left the house earlier. It didn’t take long to power the device up. Anxious to get back to his guests, he made quick work of checking his business e-mail account—and sighed with relief. No new e-mail from his mystery correspondent. Thank God.
Mark’s having mentioned speaking to his grandmother spurred Clay on to check his personal e-mail. His mother-in-law, Doris, may very well have sent him a note. She did from time to time, and he hadn’t checked this account for a couple of days.
The perils of owning my own business. He tended to stay only on business-related sites when he was online, then wanted little to do with the computer when his workday was done. He signed out and then back in to his personal account.
He scanned the list of new mail and felt his heart hammer heavily in his chest. There was no threatening subject line, and yet still, somehow he knew.
He opened the e-mail, swearing as he read.
“What’s wrong?” Tasha must have heard him as she’d been walking past. He looked over his shoulder and met her gaze. She seemed to understand the look on his face. “Did you get another e-mail?”
“Yeah, damn it. And this chick, whoever the fuck she is, is just plain bat-shit crazy.”
Chapter 14
Tasha noticed that at some point before dinner, Shaun had become quiet. She hadn’t spent much time with the young man, but she knew his withdrawal meant something was bothering him. She didn’t want to poke her nose in, but she was concerned. When she saw that Clay noticed, she relaxed. He was a good father, and would take care of whatever the situation might be.
At the moment, Tasha was sandwiched between Bonnie and her friend, Karen Layton, at the table in the dining room. Karen was just a year younger than Bonnie, and also a relative newcomer to Lusty. The two girls had become fast friends, and kept up a happy chatter the way only young girls could.
The younger boys—Mark and Benny Kendall—had been playing hard until supper. She didn’t wonder that the two boys could be such good friends with four years between them. Benny lived two doors down, and had a passion for “critters,” camping, and sports—three things she knew Mark also liked. They’d been chatting up a storm, too, but now were focused on eating as they dug in to burgers and dogs—grilled to perfection by the two men who’d worked together like a well-practiced team. The kids even seemed to love the potato salad. Tasha had never eaten anything quite like it. It had a perfect balance in taste between tangy and sweet.
Tommy Parker looked uncomfortable in his seat, sending furtive looks toward Shaun. She thought he looked a bit guilty, too, as if he had done something….Tasha tilted her head to the side and then stepped back, mentally, and simply looked.
Tommy seemed to know what was bothering his friend. For his part, Shaun was mostly looking grumpily at the plate of food he wasn’t eating—except when he shot angry looks at his father, Gord, and her.
Ah, so that’s it!
Tommy was a child of Lusty, and Tasha would bet that he’d said something to Shaun about the three adults present.
That could be a sticky situation. The look on Shaun’s face sent a wave of caution through her. This relationship the three of them had begun to enjoy really wasn’t just about the three of them. It certainly wasn’t casual, what she had and felt with and for these men—but there was no guarantee that what they had was a forever kind of thing, either.
Dicey, dicey. She tried to put herself in Clay’s position. How would she feel, being the single parent of three children, and embarking on a relationship? Seriously, she didn’t know if she would risk dating—unless the person she was dating was someone she felt very sure of.
“Something wrong with your supper, there, Shaun?” Clay asked.
The boy looked up, defiance and anger written all over his face. He shot a blatantly angry look at her, and Gord, and then faced his father.
“No. I just don’t like the company today.”
Tommy looked as if he wished the floor would open up and swallow him. The other children rea
cted as one, mouths snapping closed and eyes widening in shock.
Clay didn’t look particularly surprised by his son’s acerbic statement. He didn’t appear to be particularly angered by it, either. “Well, I certainly wouldn’t expect you to break bread with people you don’t like. You’re excused. Please take your dishes to the sink, rinse them, and put them in the dishwasher. And then you may go to your room for the rest of the day.”
Shaun didn’t bitch, and he didn’t throw his dishes into the appliance, either. He kept silent as he did as he was told, and then left the kitchen.
Clay said, to the table at large, “I apologize for Shaun’s bad manners.”
“It’s okay, Mr. Dorchester,” Benny said. “I think he’s sad. Momma told me that some folks can’t show sad, so they show mad instead.”
“Your mother is a wise woman, Benny,” Clay said. “Okay, people, let’s eat up. We have Big Red cake for dessert. My aunt Bernice brought it by early this morning. I’ve never had it before, but I’m told it’s really good.”
Karen grinned. “I love Big Red cake, Mr. Dorchester!” Then she giggled. “I love Big Red, too.”
“So do I!” Bonnie grinned. “I think it’s even better than cream soda!”
The only one of the children who didn’t seem enthusiastic for dessert was Tommy Parker. Tasha figured that was only natural, since his pal had been banished to time-out hell. The cake was good, with the younger boys having seconds. Tasha got up to clear the table, and wouldn’t listen to Clay who insisted she was a guest. The younger kids headed into the family room for a Wii tournament.
Tommy stayed at his seat at the table, and when the younger ones had left the room looked over at Clay.
“Mr. Dorchester? I think it’s my fault that Shaun was mad.”
“How so, Tommy?”
“Well, sir, I didn’t really mean anything by it. I just told him that I thought that you and Miss Tasha and Mr. Gord would make a good family for him.” Tommy shrugged. “Y’all are new to Lusty and I keep forgetting that, because y’all are family. Anyway, Shaun was none too pleased with the idea. I guess he didn’t realize the way things are, sometimes.”
Love Under Two Introverts [The Lusty, Texas Collection] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) Page 14
