They were so close to being ready to go home to the woods. The only step left in their development was their ability to spray real scent. Not a step Emma was looking forward to. At this point they poofed when they were annoyed, but with no more than the faintest of odors. Still, they couldn’t be released until they could protect themselves from predators like coyotes and bobcats. Their spray was their only defense.
She’d have to ask Barbara how to make that transition as painless as possible for the human beings. She’d always heard that the way to get the scent off was to scrub with tomato juice, but there must be something newer and more effective than gallons of tomato juice. There must be a test that didn’t actually involve annoying three skunks enough to spray.
From outside their enclosure she watched them munch and stomp. The human momma had to cut her ties—not to mention her heartstrings.
She left them to clean up the few remaining bits of fruit and hot dog. She could scrub and depoop the kennel after lunch.
When she heard Seth’s SUV, she’d already finished straightening the house and putting away everything she’d used for the party. She had taken Seth’s advice about dressing casually, but she wore her best designer jeans and an elegant spring sweater in a soft peach that complemented her hair and gave her skin a glow. Since the morning was surprisingly chilly for May, she tossed a light jacket over her shoulders. The peach sweater reflected against her skin enough to impart a healthy tone it didn’t deserve after the last few days.
* * *
“YOU CAN’T HAVE been comfortable sleeping on the couch last night,” Emma said as she buckled her seat belt.
“Not bad, although I’m taller than the couch is long. A couple of places got prodded by loose springs, but it was more comfortable than traipsing across the road at two in the morning to check on the skunks.”
Would’ve been a boost for his ego if she’d asked him to join her, he thought. She’d managed to shoehorn a king-size bed into that little bedroom.
But if she’d invited her to join him just to sleep, he would not have been trustworthy. He also wouldn’t have gotten any sleep.
She glowed as though she hadn’t missed a moment’s rest. Her sweater wasn’t tight, but it did fit what Earl would call a rack. With the exception of his mother, Seth didn’t know any other woman—no matter her age—who wore elegance as casually as Emma did.
She was so far out of his league they weren’t even in the same country.
She chattered on about the skunks and the party, while he wondered if she was still talking to Trip or her former boss. She hadn’t mentioned setting up job interviews. The part-time gig with Barbara was only a stopgap. She obviously wasn’t concentrating on finding a career-track job in the Williamston area. She still planned to leave, and soon.
“Here we are,” he said as he pulled the SUV into the parking lot in front of the restaurant. “Prepare for your cultural experience of the day.”
“What a wonderful building,” Emma said as she climbed out onto the gravel parking lot. There were already half a dozen pickup trucks and SUVs, so they weren’t too early.
“I’m starving,” Emma said. “No dinner last night and no breakfast this morning.”
“These folks will fill you up.”
“This place is obviously old. What’s its history? How did it become a restaurant?”
“It was built as a general store and to supply the railroad back in 1850 or so. Before the Civil War. After the railroad stopped running passenger trains along this line, the store closed about 1950 and stayed closed until ten years ago. It’s a wonder it didn’t fall down, but they built to last in those days. Then the McCabes bought the place and restored it. Serves breakfast and lunch all week and brunch on Sundays. It’s too far from Williamston for Earl and me to drive over here every day. Besides, we’d wind up as fat as Tweedledum and Tweedledee if we did.”
He held the front door for Emma and followed her through.
“Oh, this is wonderful!” Emma exclaimed. “All the trains!” A dozen feet up the brick wall, a balcony ran around the perimeter. On the balustrade an antique model train set chugged around and around.
The walls were hung with daguerreotypes in ornate frames, interspersed with antique plowshares and saws as well as antique arms. Several modern skylights had been set into the roof to give the building natural lighting. The whole room had been stripped to the original handmade brick and turned into a time warp for country antiques.
At the far end, a broad table at least fifteen feet long was covered with hot and cold dishes. Another table set at right angles held desserts and drinks. Round tables of various sizes sat around the room.
People were already lining up for their first go-around of the buffet.
“Never know what they’re going to serve,” Seth said. He and Emma took possession of one of the two-seater tables. Emma left her handbag behind to hold the table without a moment’s concern. A waitress who might be Velma’s clone set mason jars of ice water at their places.
“What y’all want to drink, Seth?” she asked. Of course she knew him.
“Unsweet tea, lots of lemon,” he said. Without a glance at Emma, she left.
“This is a tiny town,” Emma whispered as they waited for the line to move forward so they could reach the food. “Where do their customers come from?”
“Folks drive forty, fifty miles sometimes,” a lady in front of them with big hair dyed a suspicious shade of red volunteered. “We’re from Memphis. It’s a marvelous day for a drive. And look what you get at the end of it.”
Emma gave up attempting to try even a small bite of all the dishes, from okra to chicken livers to pecan pie to oysters on the half shell to fried dill pickles to barbecued ribs. She couldn’t begin to take it all in. She whispered to Seth, “I’m going to fill a giant syringe with cholesterol, open a vein and shoot all the fat straight to my heart.”
“Plenty you can eat here that won’t give you a heart attack,” the woman with the suspicious hair said. From the size of her, she was working on having her heart attack sooner rather than later. “But once every few months won’t hurt you. Much.”
Emma, who watched her carbs and her fats as a general rule, decided to throw caution to the wind. She kept her portions selective and miniscule, but she enjoyed everything from the crab cakes to the hush puppies to the fudge pie.
“Do not ever do this to me again,” she said to Seth. “I mean it. Is it like this every day at lunch?”
He grinned at her. “Lord, no. It’s more like the café in Williamstown. They only put on this spread for Sunday brunch. It’s safe the rest of the time. Except for the biscuits and sausage gravy at breakfast. And the country ham. And the sorghum syrup.”
“You are a demon, Seth Logan,” Emma said. “I’m going to have to run a marathon to counteract this. How do you do it?”
“First of all, I don’t eat like this but once in a blue moon. Second, when you chase poachers you burn off calories. I just thought you needed to see another side of us is all.”
“So yesterday, nobody cared whether there were cloth tablecloths or not,” Emma said.
“Nope, but everybody appreciated the trouble you took.”
“They were too busy noticing my arson trick to see how the napkins were folded.”
He laid his hand over hers on the table. “People noticed that you took the time and effort to make them feel special for coming to help. They won’t forget it. Neither will I.”
Their eyes met. He continued to hold her hand, and she could feel the heat between them. Thank God I’m wearing a good bra, she thought. Otherwise I’d look like I have BBs under my sweater. Maybe this afternoon was the time to finish what they kept starting.
Seth’s phone rang. “Damn, great timing,” he said. “Give me a minute. It’s too noisy in here.”
He left her finishing
her iced tea and walked out under the front portico away from the crowd.
She watched him through the glass doors. If his shoulders were any indication, he was not happy. It was Sunday afternoon, for heaven’s sake. All the poachers must be napping or watching basketball in front of their TV sets. She hoped Seth wouldn’t have to chase anybody after the meal they’d just eaten.
He flicked the phone shut and came back, was glowering. Obviously trouble.
He stopped at the cashier’s desk at the front of the restaurant, gave the woman a credit card and waited until he’d signed.
Emma collected her handbag. Whatever had happened, it signaled the end of their brunch.
As she started to get up, he held her chair for her and bent over to whisper, “Can you ride a horse?”
“Depends on the horse. Generally, yes, although I haven’t for a while.”
“Good. We’ll need all the riders we can get.”
She followed him out and had to trot to keep up with him.
“Riders? For what?”
“Search and rescue. We have a regular team of volunteer searchers, but it’s not that easy to get them together on a Sunday afternoon.”
“Can you drop me at my house on your way? You may have noticed I don’t have a horse.”
“Sonny brings a couple of extras.”
“What about you?”
“I board my two quarter horses over at Earl’s. He’ll bring one of mine along with his. He also trains search-and-rescue dogs. I’m sorry, but your house is twenty miles in the other direction from where we have to start the search. If you can’t ride with us, I’ll try to find you a ride home once we get to the meeting point.”
“Of course I’ll help. Who is it? I’ve heard of dementia patients wandering off, but don’t they usually stay close to home?”
She watched the way his jaw worked. “This is a three-year-old child who’s been missing for hours.” He sounded grim. “It’s already afternoon. We can’t wait any longer to get into the woods.”
He floored the truck. She kept silent and allowed him to concentrate on his driving. She wouldn’t want to be chased by him—he drove like a cop. She held on and prayed the child would be found before they got to the rendezvous spot.
Half an hour later, Seth drove down a dirt road to a group of a dozen horse trailers and trucks parked on the overgrown shoulder. The entire operation looked chaotic, but they seemed to know what they were doing. Both men and women were tacking up horses, mounting and clustering around Earl and a big redbone hound sitting patiently beside one of the trailers.
“Come on, Emma,” Seth said. “Sonny,” he called to the mayor, “you got a horse for Emma?”
“Sure. I brought extra in case we picked up some more riders. I’ve got a bombproof walking horse mare. Already tacked up and ready to go. Come on, sweet thing.” He patted Emma’s arm, “Let’s get you mounted. We about ready to start off. Just waiting for Seth.” He pulled off his broad-brimmed straw hat that looked as though it had been through the last couple of world wars, stuck it on her head and walked toward the largest horse trailer on the road. Emma followed and hoped the horse Sonny rode could carry his bulk. When she saw his broad quarter horse, an equine tank, she decided the horse could probably carry two Sonnys if it had to.
The horse he offered her was a big bay mare with a kind eye. Sonny tightened the girth, shortened the stirrups and gave Emma a boost into the flat walking horse saddle. Then he pulled a small spray can out of his camouflage jacket pocket and sprayed her from her neck to her toes.
“Mosquitoes out here can chew up kittens,” Sonny said. “You ought to have on some boots and some chaps, but the spray will help some in the brush. Try to stay away from the cockleburs. Seth can get the ticks off you when we come back.”
“What am I actually supposed to do?”
Sonny swung himself into his saddle with the agility of a teenager—impressive for a man of his age and bulk. “Stick close to Seth. Main thing is to have as many eyes as we can get scouring the ground and hope that toddler is somewhere close to here and screaming his head off. So far, nobody’s heard anything that sounds like a child.”
There were only eight riders in the group. No wonder Seth had enlisted her. “This is all we could find to ride on Sunday afternoon,” Sonny said. He led her and her mare over to Seth, then swung back to join another group.
Seth hadn’t been fooling when he said he needed her along. In all these woods and underbrush, a small child could disappear under a lettuce leaf. She thought of the snakes and bugs and poisonous plants and shuddered.
“Don’t you get lost,” Seth told her as she came up to his horse’s flank. “Last thing we need is two lost people to hunt.”
“Why on earth would that child be way out in the woods?” Emma asked. “Where’s his house?”
“Double-wide trailer a mile or so from here. The problem is he’s been gone since before his mother got out of bed this morning—maybe before dawn. She looked for him, but she didn’t call it in until noon. Apparently, he opened the door by himself and went out into the yard naked and barefoot. She found his pj’s by the door.”
Emma visualized the mother—stunned, hysterical, angry, terrified. Wanting to go out looking, but knowing she had to remain at home in case her son showed up on his own. “How old did you say he was?”
“Three, almost four.”
“That small?” Boy, did that sound familiar. And terrifying. Little older than a baby. “I remember my half brother, Patrick, at that age. He’d take off into the neighborhood stark naked if he could get away with it. But we lived on a cul-de-sac with sidewalks and no traffic. My parents finally installed dead bolts on all the doors, as well as chains too high for him to reach. My sister never ran off like that, but Patrick could eel out and be gone in an instant.”
“You ever lose him? Like when you were babysitting? I assume you did from time to time.”
Emma chuckled. “I caught him halfway down the driveway once. We lived on a quiet street, but still. I’ve never hit a child, but I swear, I wanted to blister his behind after I hugged him half to death. The phase didn’t last more than six months or so, but he’s never lost the wanderlust. Now that he’s seventeen and driving, my father has a tracker on his phone and on his car. Patrick knows about them and agreed to them. If he doesn’t report in and make it home for his curfew, he loses his texting privileges. And if he ever gets caught talking or texting while he’s driving, his entire world falls in on him from a great height. So far, that seems to work.” She knew she was running off at the mouth, but anything seemed better than silence and imagination.
The riders came to a wide place on the dirt road, where four smaller roads spoked off in different directions. Seth held up a hand. Instant quiet. The big hound Earl had brought sat down beside his horse and waited, too. So far he hadn’t alerted on the boy’s smell, but they might have to quarter the area and go deep into the woods before the dog picked up a scent.
“Split up,” Seth said. “Two to a spoke. Everybody got a gun?”
Nods and assents.
“Uh, Seth, I don’t have a gun,” Emma whispered. “Why do I need one?”
“Find any sign of the boy, one shot. Find the boy alive—two shots.” He didn’t say anything about how many shots to fire if the child was not alive. No one was admitting that possibility. “Stay close behind me, Emma. Keep your eyes peeled for anything that looks unnatural. Usually we find fabric caught on branches. We won’t this time, since he’s naked. If you see anything, yell your head off. The rest of you, divide up, but stick close to one another. Sonny, you head one team. Earl, can you take the other? Pay attention. Don’t want to walk over the kid without seeing him. He could be two feet away. He may well be hiding.”
“Why would he be hiding?” one of the female riders asked.
“Shoot,” Sonny said,
“I can tell you that. He knows he’s in trouble. He wants to go home, but he’s scared his momma is going to blister his behind.”
“And we might spank him, too,” Earl added. “Besides, we’re adults and we’re strangers.”
Oh, great, Emma thought. She was obviously as incompetent at this as she was at picnics. Ten yards up the little dirt road, Seth turned his horse into the brush that edged the road. Emma had no idea where he was going, but when she came to the spot where he’d turned, she realized there was some kind of animal trail—probably deer. A child would likely take the easy path, rather than climbing over bushes and fallen timber. If he was even in the vicinity…
“I’ll check the right side, you take the left,” he said. “Look at everything—broken branches, flattened grass—anything that looks the least bit unnatural. And don’t worry that what you find isn’t important. Just sing out. One of us will check what you find.”
If she overlooked that child, she’d never forgive herself. She wished she had a stick to sweep the underbrush, but she’d probably spook her horse. She brushed a cloud of mosquitoes away from her face and spat out a fly that had attempted to climb into her mouth. By the time she got home, she’d be covered in chigger bites. That poor little child! No bug spray, no clothes. “Can we call out?” she asked Seth.
He nodded. “You call. Better for him to hear a woman’s voice than mine. His father’s been out of the picture for a while. I would guess his mother’s brought home substitutes from time to time. Not surprising, but his mother says he’s scared of men.”
She heard the anger in his voice. Another unreliable father like his own. Another child at risk because of it. How many strange men did the mother bring into her house? How had they interacted with the boy? Was that why he’d run away? She prayed silently that the child would be found safe. “What’s his name?”
Harlequin Superromance May 2018 Box Set Page 43
