A True-Blue Texas Twosome

by Kim Mckade

  “Toby Haskell, you could charm the skirt off a Sunday school teacher.”

  “Yeah?” He arched his brow cockily. “How about an English teacher?”

  She just rolled her eyes and leaned back against the Jeep, her hands lightly rubbing her arms. She looked out over the cotton fields on the other side of the track. “I remember looking out at these fields and thinking it was the ughest sight in the world. I couldn’t wait to get away from all this cotton.”

  “It can get pretty ugly, looking at it from the business end of a hoe.”

  She shook her head. “I was such a snob,” she said softly, almost to herself. “I still think hoeing cotton was the hardest work I’ve ever done.”

  They both knew that wasn’t true, but he wasn’t going to talk about it unless she insisted. “I’ll bet teaching will be harder”

  She shrugged “Maybe. At least I won’t get blisters. I hope.”

  “You glad to be back?” The question blurted out of his mouth before he knew he was even thinking about asking it.

  She looked at him, then back at the cotton. She didn’t answer for a long time

  “Glad?” She shook her head and furrowed her brow, as if this were the first time she’d thought about it. “I don’t know, Toby. I’m here, at any rate.”

  “Nothing better to do, huh?” Even to his own ears, his laugh sounded fake.

  She shrugged. “I had no good reason not to come. The school needed help. Aunt Muriel said Mr. Sammons was desperate to find a substitute. And Aunt Muriel was getting tired of watching me mope around and feel sorry for myself. I figured I could coast along here as easily as in Dallas.”

  Toby had a hard time believing she felt sorry for herself. Corinne wasn’t the type for self-pity, no matter what had happened to her.

  But her attitude irked him “Coast along, huh?”

  “I know it sounds temble. I’ve got a job to do, and I’m going to do it. I think I’ll be a good teacher, for as long as it lasts. But as far as being glad or happy or hopeful or anything else...I Just don’t know.”

  “Times have changed. You used to know everything.”

  He more than half expected her to get mad again, but she didn’t. She returned his smile ruefully and nodded. “Life was a simpler thing then.”

  “I guess it was.”

  “Maybe that’s what I needed. Coming back to a simpler way of life.”

  “But things aren’t the same as they were back when we were in school.” He wanted to say that he’d changed, but instead he said, “The town’s changed.”

  “How?”

  “Well...” He racked his brain. It always burned him up how little respect she had for Aloma. Not part of the real world, she’d always said. As if Aloma didn’t matter as much as the rest of the world. As if the people who lived there didn’t measure up.

  “Well,” he said finally “We put in a new traffic light.”

  “Oh, well then...” She laughed. He realized how silly it sounded, and laughed himself. Maybe Aloma was a little like Mayberry, after all. What the hell.

  “And we got a new video store. Did you notice?”

  “So, there is something to do here after all.”

  “There are still the old standbys. Dominoes every afternoon at four, at the Senior Citizens Center—not necessarily restricted to senior citizens. And, of course, the hotbed of activity that can always be found at the Dairy Queen.”

  She laughed again, and he found that the sound did pretty much the same thing to his stomach that it did in the sixth grade.

  He stuffed his hands in his pockets and leaned back against the Jeep. “You want to go to The Corral for dinner? Sort of a welcome home thing?” Again, the words took on a life of their own and leapt out of his mouth. He was going to have to find a rock or something and put himself out of his misery.

  “Toby.” Her expression grew distant again and she looked out at the track field. The sun was setting, red and amber shafts of light cutting through the trees and reflecting highlights in her hair.

  “Never mind.” He bit the words out, pulled his Stetson back on his head and moved to get back into the Jeep. How many times did a guy have to get his head chopped off before he quit putting it on the block?

  “Wait.” She laid a hand on his arm and stepped into his path. “Could you just—I mean—just wait. I need—” She stopped, sighing deeply. “Don’t be mad.”

  “I’m not mad.” He clenched his hands.

  “Don’t be. I’m just not ready for...for anything.”

  “Maybe you didn’t hear me right. I said The Corral, Corinne. For dinner. Not the wedding chapel.” He managed to mix a little mockery with the bitterness in his voice.

  “Toby, could you just have a little patience? I’m not ready—”

  “For dinner? What, did you give up food?”

  “Toby.” She sighed.

  He moved around her and drew closer to the Jeep.

  “I could use a friend.” She clenched her teeth, and he realized how hard it was for her to admit even that much.

  “You’ve got lots of friends here,” he said, refusing to be swayed by her big brown eyes.

  “I mean...look, Toby, you’re right. When I left here, I knew everything. I knew who I was and what I wanted. I was so sure of everything. I knew what the world was like and what was wrong with it and what I was going to do to fix it. Now...” She shook her head. “Like I said, now I don’t know anything. I don’t even know what’s real and what’s not anymore.”

  He cleared his throat and took his hat back off. He was torn between getting out of there while he still had a little pride left, and taking her in his arms. Which would be the second stupidest thing he’d ever done.

  “I really am sorry, Corinne. For what happened. I called you then.” He didn’t say that he’d actually flown to Dallas and hung around outside the hospital, along with a crowd of reporters and cameramen and thrill-seekers. He didn’t say that he’d called from a pay phone in a coffee shop across the street from the hospital. “I don’t know if your aunt told you. I called to see how you were. If I could do anything. She said you didn’t want to talk to anyone.”

  “I didn’t want to talk to anyone. Anyone, Toby, not just you. There were reporters and cameras and...everything.” She waved a hand dramatically in the air.

  “Pesky reporters,” he said, trying to get her to smile again.

  “Yes.” She did smile, ruefully. “And I just needed some time to sort things out and...I don’t know. Get my bearings.”

  “And somehow, you ended up back here.”

  She shrugged. “I needed a little quiet in my life.”

  “You’ll get that here.”

  Since they’d been talking, not one car had driven by. Still, old Mrs. Thompson across the street had peeked through her curtain more than once since he’d pulled over. Before he got home tonight, half the people in town would know that Toby Haskell had finally talked to Corinne Maxwell.

  “That’s what I need. Quiet. And peace.”

  “And you think teaching high school English is going to give you peace?”

  “It’ll give me something to do besides sit around being afraid.”

  “You still get scared?”

  She folded her arms across her chest and lifted her chin. “This is not the part where I break down and get all weepy, okay? I got shot. It happens. It’s not the only reason I decided to come back.” She looked off, and already he could feel her edging away. Not physically, but tangibly edging away nonetheless.

  “Is that right? Are you going to tell me the other reasons, or let me dangle on that hook for a while?” He waggled his brows at her, teasing. He was suddenly afraid that if he didn’t lighten things up a little, she was going to bolt on him.

  “The reasons are my own, and have nothing to do with anyone except me, okay? You always did read too much into things.”

  “Can’t blame a guy for trying. Okay, I’m out of your business.”

  �
�I didn’t say I wanted you out of my business. I just said...I mean... God, Toby, you can be so difficult sometimes. I mean it. I really could use a friend.”

  “I wasn’t suggesting anything else, Corinne.”

  “Maybe not, but you remember how it was between us”

  He remembered. He remembered it too much. on hot summer nights when his memories of a long-legged girl with fire and passion made it even hotter.

  “Okay,” he conceded. “But friends do occasionally go out to dinner together.”

  “Charming and stubborn. Good qualities in a friend, you think?”

  “The best.”

  “Toby?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I might be glad to be back.”

  “I might be glad you’re back, too. A little.”

  “Say, friends are pretty good about doing favors, aren’t they? Such as repairing things? Like hot-water heaters?”

  “Only in dire emergencies. Why, is yours out?”

  “Not out, exactly. Just not very hot.”

  “Sounds like an emergency to me. I’ll be over tomorrow evening.” He climbed into the Jeep. He could do it tonight. Hell, he could do it right now. But he had degraded himself enough for one day.

  “No hurry,” she said, backing away from the car.

  “It’s a bad idea to abuse the friendship. Emily Post would probably suggest a small but thoughtful gift of appreciation.”

  “I could fix dinner.”

  He shook his head. “At your house, unchaperoned? I don’t know. Sounds a little intimate, for just-friends. How about a beer and maybe a cheese sandwich? I’ll eat on the back porch.”

  She laughed. “Sounds safe enough.”

  He remembered to put his hat back on, and concentrated on getting out of there before he did anything really stupid—like try to kiss her.

  She was smiling, though, and that made it a lot harder. Maybe he’d made her feel better. Which was really, he told himself, all he was interested in.

  “Tomorrow,” he said casually, determinedly putting the Jeep into reverse. He watched her from the rearview mirror all the way down the street, and he almost ran smack into Billy Myer’s Dodge because he wasn’t watching where he was going.

  He drove the five blocks to the station. When he got there, he took a deep breath outside the door, then entered the outer office.

  Luke Tanner, one of four deputies in Aloma County, sat at his desk, his head bent over paperwork, lines of concentration between his brows. Toby didn’t say anything, just walked quickly and purposefully through the outer office as if he had a lot of important, official business on his mind.

  He made it within three feet of his office door.

  “So. You talked to Corinne, huh?” Luke asked, head still bent over his work. Toby could see the corner of his mouth tipped up.

  “Shut up and get back to work, Barney Fife.”

  Corinne lurched upright in the dark of night and clutched the sheet to her chest, her hand to her throat. Her breath came in harsh gasps, and her heart jerked painfully in her chest. Sheets damp with perspiration tangled around Corinne’s hmbs like vines as she scooted back against the headboard and wrapped her arms around her upraised knees. She rocked back and forth.

  After a few seconds she regained enough presence of mind to follow the instructions the doctor had given her. She clutched one wrist with the other shaking hand and felt for her pulse. It thumped fiercely away under her fingertip, and she began to count.

  Still she rocked, unable to stop the movement if she wanted to, and counted. She heard her own gasps for air, loud and cruel in the silent house, and felt the brutal throb of her heart. But she kept counting. Everything in her screamed to reach for the phone, to get help. This time was really it. This time she really was dying.

  But she didn’t give in. She rocked and counted, and whispered to herself over and over, “This isn’t real. This isn’t real.”

  Finally, her calming techniques started to work. Almost imperceptibly, her pulse slowed, then slowed some more. Her breath came a little easier, deep gulps replacing the ragged gasps. A few minutes later, she knew the attack was over. This time.

  Corinne swallowed against the raw pain in her throat, relief and humiliation flooding her in equal measure. Her weakness shamed her. But for tonight, it was over.

  As her heartbeat slowly eased from its frantic thumping, she breathed deeply through her nose and listened to the whir and click of the ceiling fan, watched the rectangle of yellow streetlamp light that came through the opening of the Priscilla curtains over her bedroom window. She did everything except think about the shooting.

  Knowing she was no longer in danger didn’t help. Knowledge didn’t stop the nightmares, and it didn’t stop the panic attacks.

  She closed her eyes again and took deep breaths, concentrated on letting the tension ebb from her body, but she knew it was no use. She was awake now, and would be for at least a few hours, possibly for the rest of the night. She swung her legs off the bed and padded silently through the dark house that she’d walked through thousands of times. And she felt just as alone in it as she always had.

  At least her mother wasn’t there to be awakened by her screams. She would never have agreed to take this job if her mother hadn’t already moved to east Texas to be with her new boyfriend. It was bad enough waking herself up with her panic attacks. Having her mother witness them, having her mother look at her with mixed pity and contempt, was unthinkable.

  Not that her mother would actually say that Corinne was a disappointment and a failure, that this scene was inevitable—not to her face. She at least tried to wait until she thought Corinne was out of earshot before she said things like that.

  In the kitchen Corinne ran water into the old teakettle and set it on the stove. Hot chocolate wouldn’t help her get back to sleep any faster, but it was something to hold in her hands until that time came.

  Her doctor had warned her that the panic attacks could return, but Corinne had been sure she was past them. Being back in this house had added stress, though. And so had seeing Toby today.

  Idly, she traced the line of the scar that ran from below her ear, along the side of her jaw. All things considered, it wasn’t a bad scar. If the gunman had cocked his wrist an inch to the right, she wouldn’t have been hit at all.

  An inch to the left, and she would be dead.

  Toby hadn’t said anything about the scar, but he’d noticed. Just as he’d noticed the other changes in her.

  She tried not to think too much about Toby. About him being here, in her mother’s house, tomorrow. She looked at the clock on the stove as she poured the steaming water into her mug. Today.

  She’d known, of course, that she would see Toby again. Aloma was too small to avoid anyone. But she hadn’t given much thought to how seeing him would make her feel.

  She sighed and sat back down at the table, stretching her legs out in front of her. She’d carried a sense of numbness around for months, thinking only of the next moment, the next task to get through. Refusing to let her mind probe any deeper than surface thoughts. The entire reason for coming back to Aloma was to get away from the world, to avoid stimulation of any kind. Not because the doctors wanted it that way Because she wanted it that way.

  She wanted to be invisible again. The feeling that she’d railed against while she was growing up—the sense that, at best, nothing she did or said mattered, or at worst was all wrong—was what she yearned for now. And what better place to find that blessed sense of nonexistence than here, in her mother’s house, where she’d grown up with the certainty that she was just an unfortunate mistake? The fact that her mother wasn’t here to reinforce that feeling, she was relieved to discover, did nothing to diminish her own sense of nothingness. That awareness was in the house, waiting for her to wrap it around herself like a familiar, comfortably shabby blanket.

  Already, she was afraid, Toby was tugging at the edges of that protective blanket. It had been more of a
shock than it should have been, seeing him. The pounding in her heart hadn’t been simply because of the run. He’d looked so devilishly handsome, so soothingly familiar leaning against the Jeep in his tan sheriff’s uniform, with that same casual cockiness that had always made her heart stammer. He was bigger now, though, his chest wide and his shoulders filling out the tan sleeves of his shirt. He looked so solid now. Sturdy and dependable.

  His face was bronzed by the sun, his square jaw tense, even though she’d thought he was glad to see her. His lips were full; she’d had a hard time not staring at them as they talked. But his eyes were the biggest change. There had been a time when she was confident around Toby, could read his mind by looking into his eyes. But today, with those gray eyes studying her intently and not missing a thing, she’d almost shied away.

  At once he was so comfortably familiar, but frighteningly foreign. She’d felt the urge to touch him as she’d once done, as easy with his body as she was with her own. And yet there was a wall between them that couldn’t be removed. Shouldn’t be removed.

  Emotions she didn’t want to feel again floated through her, and she smiled to herself, the small movement feeling foreign on her face. The thrill she’d had when she was twelve, and she knew Toby had gone out of his way to pass by her. How her heart had stopped when they were fourteen and he flashed those dimples at her. How important he’d made her feel, how smart and beautiful and worthy to be around.

  How she’d panicked, the day after high school graduation when she fled Aloma in the gray hour before dawn, afraid to tell him goodbye.

  How heavy with guilt she’d been when he called, four days before her wedding to Don Reinert, not believing she would actually marry someone else when they both knew they belonged together.

  Why should she feel guilty, then or now? She was never less than honest with him From the time she was nine years old, she couldn’t wait to get out of Aloma. And he wasn’t willing to disappoint his father by leaving. There was no way for them, really.