“Momma! This is the perfect tree!”
Emma turned as the smaller of the two boys grabbed his brother’s shoulders and began to climb up him as though he were a ladder.
“Boys! Get down here this instant and come meet Miss Emma,” Janeen said.
“Now!” Earl’s voice got a reaction that Janeen’s hadn’t. The larger boy shrugged his brother off his back. He rolled on the ground and howled.
“Get over here!”
Grudgingly, the older boy—Earl Jr.?—reached down and pulled his brother to his feet. “Aw, hush, Carl, you’re not hurt.”
Both boys raced over and jammed on their brakes one stride from their mother, who still held the potato salad over their heads. Emma almost reached for it, then dropped her hands. Grappling for possession would probably cause the whole thing to wind up on the ground.
“Hey, Miss Emma, I’m Earl Jr.,” the taller boy said. “This here’s Carl, squalling like a stuck hog. Shut up, Carl.”
Amazingly, he did. In an instant his particular weather had morphed from storms to sunshine. Standing shoulder to shoulder, the boys each gave Emma a smile that was as glorious as her brother, Patrick’s. They had wheat-blond hair like their father’s, and blue eyes that came from both parents, although Janeen’s hair was a suspicious strawberry blond, cut short and falling in waves around her heart-shaped face. The boys probably looked angelic asleep at night. The rest of the time—Emma remembered the cartoon character that moved so fast it was a blur.
“That’s the right tree, isn’t it, Daddy? Come on, let’s put the rope up.”
“Earl Jr., Miss Emma hasn’t heard about the plan yet. She may not want you climbing her tree.”
“But it’s the right one, Dad! I can do it. I don’t need Carl.”
“Janeen, come on in the house, and let’s get that potato salad in the refrigerator.” Emma led the way while the discussion about the rightness or wrongness of the tree went on in the background. Why the argument, she had no idea.
“This is charming!” Janeen said as she walked into the great room, which gave a whole new meaning to shabby chic. “Just right for one person.”
“It will be charming if I stay here long enough, which I probably won’t. In any case I have to get it ready to rent when I leave. This is just a stopgap between jobs. Here, let me have that bowl. It’ll fit in the refrigerator, but I may need to do some rearranging.” She moved around a couple of platters, slid in the bowl and closed the fridge door. “What’s all this about my tree? They’re not considering cutting it down, are they, because…”
Janeen laughed and sat on one of the stools at the counter. “Lord, no. It’s supposed to be a surprise for you, but actually, it’s more to keep the boys occupied and out of the way until the kennel’s finished. As you can see, they tend to get above their raisin’ when they’re out in public. Entirely too much energy. That comes from Earl’s side of the family.”
“So the tree?”
“Earl and the boys brought all the stuff to put a bag swing on that tree. Only takes one rope, and a big burlap bag stuffed tight. You hang the rope…”
“Oh, I know! I had a bag swing on that very tree when I spent my summers here! I loved it. I wanted a swing made from an old tire, but Aunt Martha said I’d get filthy every time I swung on it, so we ended up using the bag instead.”
“Well, I’m sure they’ll have it up and swinging before everybody else gets here to work.”
Emma started for the front door, but Janeen laid a hand on her arm. “I suggest we hide in here until the preliminaries are complete. I’ve heard that going to a rock concert can ruin your hearing, but probably not as much as Earl and my boys hashing out how to do anything. Besides, we wanted to give those two something that was far enough from the kennel that they wouldn’t try to use the chain saw.”
“Even I wouldn’t use the chain saw,” Emma said.
“You’re not a boy,” Janeen said. “Earl Jr. will try anything, and what he tries, Carl demands to try, as well. We’ve told them they are not to pick up a tool, power or otherwise, and to stay out from under everyone’s feet. That doesn’t mean they’ll do it.” She cocked her head. “It’s too quiet. Come on.”
They were just in time to see Earl Jr. shimmy up the trunk of the old water oak farthest from the kennel and slide out on the big branch that stretched straight and strong ten feet above the ground.
“That high?” Emma whispered while visions of her homeowner’s liability insurance danced in her head. “Earl? Do they have to go so far up?”
“Hey, Emma. Don’t you worry. We won’t hang the bag more than four feet above the ground.”
He tossed the end of a heavy rope up into the tree.
A skinny arm snaked out between the leaves and grabbed it. “Yes, sir, I got it. Want me to tie a bowline?”
“Now, what else would I want! Take a good bite around that limb.”
“He’s a Scout. He knows every knot in the seaman’s instruction book,” Janeen whispered.
Janeen seemed both calm and proud that her eleven-year-old son was ten feet in the air tying a bowline around a limb.
“That’s good, son, now send the rabbit down the hole,” Earl said. “Take your time. Make sure it’s secure. Good. Come on down now.”
Instead of repeating his shimmying, Earl Jr. flipped his feet loose and hung full-length. Emma gasped.
Earl Sr. grabbed his son around the legs and lowered him to the ground.
“Can I go up, Daddy? I can do it!” Carl danced around his father.
“Not today, son.”
“Aw, how come Earl gets to do everything? I never get to do anything fun.” He stomped away with his hands in the pockets of his shorts.
“Hey, shrimp, you can test the swing first,” Earl said. “Break your neck instead of mine.”
At that moment Barbara Carew’s truck rolled in. She climbed out holding a giant cooler of iced tea floating with lemons and clinking with ice. “This is glass, I’m afraid. I’ll go put it on the kitchen counter before we break it.”
Within the next thirty minutes, four more of Seth’s colleagues arrived—all big men, tanned and fit. Earl introduced Emma, and enlisted two of them to help hang the bag and test it.
“Shoot, if it’ll take their weight, it’ll sure as shooting hold a normal-size adult,” Earl said.
Immediately everyone began to take turns swinging. Everyone except Emma. She smiled and applauded, but stayed on the porch. She didn’t tell them that the last time she’d swung from this very limb in the final summer she’d spent here at Aunt Martha’s, she’d lost her grip and fallen off.
She had that same old feeling of falling and not being able to save herself. This time she intended to avoid being the party klutz.
Thirty minutes later, Earl stopped waiting for Seth’s SUV and organized the crews to stretch the wire and tack it up inside the kennel.
Where was Seth? He’d sworn he was coming. Surely he wouldn’t stay away because they’d argued over his father?
On one hand, she wanted to ask Earl to call him. On the other, if he had decided not to show up, she had no intention of trying to trace him. That was one of Andrea’s lessons that had taken root. You do not call boys. You wait for them to call you.
All right, that was old-fashioned. But there was something about being here, where she was the outsider, the newcomer. These people must all know that Seth was supposed to be heading up the crew. He’d asked them to come.
So where was he?
Stretching the wire went faster than anyone believed it would with all the adults working on it. They’d all be ready for Seth to cook the hamburgers and hot dogs before he showed up—if he showed up. Earl was already putting the final screws into the upright to hang the screen door. Then, all that needed doing was to fill the kiddie pool and put a couple of branches inside
for the skunks to practice foraging for insects.
Fine. She’d dealt with catering disasters before. Even she could grill hamburgers. The rest of the food simply needed to be set out, so everyone could fix his or her own. She had to heat the grill. That would take some time.
Seth had already put the charcoal briquettes in the bed of the grill. The can of fire starter was sitting on the ground right beside it.
She could ask Earl to do it.
No, she couldn’t. This was her party. Earl had done enough. Once he finished hanging the door to the kennel and helped straighten up, he could go play with his sons.
Barbara and Janeen seemed comfortable in the porch swing. She wouldn’t bother them either.
As she turned toward the grill, which sat in the shade under the pin oak on the left side of the house, Earl tapped her on the shoulder. Behind him she could see Earl Jr. and Carl happily taking turns on the bag swing. They’d progressed from merely swinging to climbing onto a lower branch, standing on the bag, then swinging off in a broad arc. With accompanying yells and intermittent squabbles.
“I’ve called Seth,” Earl whispered. “Just goes to voice mail.” He shook his head. “He said he had to run into the office first thing, but then he was planning to come right on out.”
Forcing her voice to sound cool, she said, “He probably had an emergency. We’ll go ahead without him. I’m starting to heat the grill now.”
Oh, heavens—charcoal and liquid fire starter and the igniter. Three of Emma’s least favorite things. She never had to light the outdoor grill at home. Either her father or Patrick handled that chore. Theirs was state-of-the-art with a fancy built-in fire starter. This one looked as though Noah might have used it after the flood.
In any case, today it was her job.
At least Earl and the others thought it was. They were paying no attention to her. Seth had moved the old grill into the front yard in the shade.
Before her first horse show, her father had told her, “Ride like you know what you’re doing.” Andrea’s corollary to that was, “If you’re wrong, be wrong at the top of your voice.” She agreed with both.
She picked up the gas fire lighter from the serving table, and the can of fire starter stuff she was supposed to spray to get the charcoal burning. She upended the can and sprayed the charcoal in a neat grid from side to side and front to back. Daddy always used a lot.
She checked around her. Everyone was otherwise occupied. So far, so good.
Holding the igniting device at arm’s length, she flicked it on and touched it to the charcoal.
The whoosh of flame erupted two feet above her head.
Just as Seth’s truck turned into his driveway.
She fell back on her bottom. Everyone came running. She’d set the tree afire and probably the entire forest.
Seth ran over, grabbed the hinged grill cover and slammed it shut. Then he took the can of liquid fire starter, closed it and tossed it to Earl, who was ten feet away. He slid his hands under Emma’s shoulders and stood her up. Again. Just like the azaleas.
Over his shoulder, she was surprised to see that the fire under its cover was almost totally out. The immature leaves on the tree had flared and gone out, too. Fires needed air. Seth had shut the air supply off. Bingo, no flame.
“What were you thinking?” he snapped.
“That you weren’t here when you said you’d be, and now I’m going to burn down the house.”
“No, you aren’t,” Earl said quite calmly. “You have to let this kind of fire starter soak in for five or ten minutes before you light it.” He patted her shoulder. “Otherwise you set the fumes on fire and don’t light the charcoal.”
“Great. Now you tell me.” She shook off Seth’s hand and ran for the house. She dived into the bathroom, slammed the door behind her and sank down on the toilet seat, trying to get her breathing under control.
She looked up when someone knocked on the door. “Emma? Emma, it’s Janeen. You okay in there?”
“No, I am not okay.”
“Are you burned?”
“Not even warm.” She felt her face. “Eyebrows all there. Eyelashes all there. Face still there.”
“Open the door.”
“Why? So everybody can laugh when I take my curtain call?”
“Nobody’s going to laugh.”
“Why not? I would. I’m probably the only person out there, including Earl Jr. and Carl, who doesn’t know to let the fire starter set before you try to light it.”
“Come on, Emma. Do I have to get Seth to pop the lock?”
“Lord, no!” She glanced at the lock. One of those childproof things that could be opened from the outside with a hairpin. She couldn’t even hide properly. “Are you alone out there?”
“Yep.”
“Okay, but if everybody’s clustered around the door…”
When she opened the door, she found Janeen sitting on the floor of the hall holding out a diet soda.
“Here. Adrenaline makes you thirsty.”
Emma sat across from her and drained the soda. “Now that Seth’s finally here, he can cook the burgers. I intend to be halfway to Memphis before that grill heats up again.”
“No, you won’t. You have to serve and check out the kennel and move the skunks and clean up afterward. I’ll help, but it’s your house.”
“Janeen, does the word humiliation mean anything to you?”
“Nothing bad actually happened. You’ve set up a beautiful party…”
“I should’ve booked Nero and his fiddle for the entertainment.”
Janeen snickered.
“I can’t do this,” Emma continued and fought to keep the tears out of her voice. “No matter what I try to do to fit in, I blow it. I don’t belong here. I belong where I can order takeout and use valet parking.”
“The boys loved today. They’ll talk about it for weeks.”
“Janeen, you’re not taking this seriously.”
“Because it’s not serious. If anything, Seth is the one who should be embarrassed. I’m used to guys not showing up on time. You’re not. Come on. I’m starving, and those look like Angus burgers in the fridge.” Janeen unfolded herself and reached her hand down to Emma. “Seth can probably relight the fire by now and start cooking in twenty minutes. Just enough time to set everything out.”
“I can’t.”
“Sure you can. I promise you nobody will even mention it. Let’s go.”
Hand in hand, the two women walked into the living room. Earl sat in the club chair. Seth stood by the fireplace as though poised to flee.
“Emma, I thought you’d wait until I got here to start cooking,” he said.
“I do not wait on people who break their promises,” she said. “So where the hell were you that you couldn’t call to say you’d be late?”
“I was chasing a four-hundred-pound Duroc sow and seven piglets down the middle of Highway 14 before somebody hit her and killed her—and themselves.” He shrugged. “I didn’t think it would take nearly as long as it did to get her corralled. She’s done this before. She gets smarter every time. I planned to call you the minute we had them back in their pen. Before that, I had my phone on vibrate, so I wouldn’t spook her any worse than she already was if it rang.”
“Earl?” Janeen said. “Is he telling the truth?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Took Marquette sheriff’s deputies and the highway patrol before we finally got her and the piglets back in their pen.”
“How long before she gets out again?” Earl asked.
“This time I gave Jim a citation for dangerous livestock on the road and told him to fix his damned fence this afternoon, or I’d be having barbecued ribs for lunch tomorrow.”
“Why you?” Emma asked. “Weren’t you off duty?”
“I got t
he call while I was in the office, so I went. She’s a humongous pig. They grow until they die, and she’s had half a dozen litters. Hitting her in a car would’ve been like hitting an office building. I couldn’t take the chance, either on that or squashing one of the piglets. Emma, I’m sorry. I should have stopped and called, but I didn’t want to lose sight of the piglets in somebody’s field. They’d have disappeared in a heartbeat.”
“Yeah, you should’ve stopped and called,” Janeen said. “You both know better. Now, if they’ve finished putting the dawn-till-dark lights around the kennel after Mrs. O’Leary, here, tried to burn Chicago down, would you please go grill some hamburgers and hot dogs?”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
EMMA HAD TO admit nobody so much as mentioned the fire at lunch. Not even Earl Jr. and Carl. Earl must’ve warned his sons to keep their mouths shut. Their eyes were wide, and they circled Emma as if to be certain she wasn’t a cinder, but they waited quietly—well, quietly for them—for their hot dogs, then went over by the tree with the swing, hunkered down in the shade and ate. And ate.
Emma was glad she’d bought as much food as she had. After they washed the dirt off from building the kennel, the crew consumed massive amounts of hot dogs, hamburgers and iced tea while they congratulated themselves on the brilliance of their construction.
Emma sat on the porch steps with Barbara, and left the porch swing to Janeen.
Even the boys were winding down. The mid-May temperature was in the eighties, and everyone was ready for a nap. Emma certainly was.
She wasn’t used to parties dividing themselves by sex. Maybe it was a country thing. The men were talking baseball, while the women automatically removed the remains of lunch, filled the tiny dishwasher for the first load and rinsed and stacked everything else for the next. They didn’t ask whether they could help clean up; they simply organized themselves and did it.
They worked smoothly together as women almost always did when they handled logistics. They were trying to include her, but Emma felt she was on the edge of the group, not quite part of them. They moved around each other casually, never getting in one another’s way, even in the tiny kitchen, while Emma found herself relegated to refolding the tablecloths and loading the dirty napkins in the washing machine.
Harlequin Superromance May 2018 Box Set Page 41
