by Lisa Wingate
Leaning against a stall door, his long legs crossed, Zach rubbed the dog’s ear, and Mr. Grits relaxed into his hand. “Well, this guy wouldn’t make much of an apartment dweller. He’s meant to be a sheepdog. This kind needs room to roam.”
“Oh, I wasn’t thinking about keeping him.” I punctuated the sentence with a quick shake of my head. “I hope I can find a place for him before I have to leave, though.”
Zach was watching me through soft, dusty green eyes with boyishly long lashes. Interested eyes. Interesting eyes. “How long have we got?” I watched his lips move, but barely heard the words.
“What?”
“How long”—he seemed to forget what he was saying, and for just an instant, we stood gazing at each other before he finished with—“are you in town?”
“Oh.” The word was a breathy whisper. I looked away, trying to clear the heady fog from my mind. “I’m not sure.”
Pushing off the stall door, he cleared his throat. “Well, we’ll see what we can do … for the dog, I mean. For now, why don’t we get him a drink and put him in the dog kennel so he doesn’t cause any more trouble?” He patted the top of the watering trough, saying, “Here ya go, fella. Jump up.”
Mr. Grits responded by cocking his head, one ear flipping upward as if he were trying to hear better.
Zach’s eyebrows drew together. “Well, I can see how, with that fancy hairdo, you’d be expecting Perrier, but this’ll have to do.” Bending over, he lifted the dog’s front end, hooking the paws over the edge of the trough. “There you go, hotshot.” He frowned at me. “Poor thing doesn’t even know how to drink out of a horse trough. Wonder where in the world he’s been.”
“Don’t know.” I stepped closer to look into the stone tank, which was about two feet deep and filled with clusters of slimy-looking green stuff. “Yuck. I wouldn’t drink that, either.” I was teasing, of course. The water did smell bad, but not as bad as the dog. “There’s something swimming down there.”
Zach turned his attention to the water. “Those are goldfish. They eat the algae and keep the water tanks clean.”
“I think you need more goldfish,” I observed, watching a small orange fish swoop to the top of the water, give Mr. Grits the once-over, then dart beneath a clump of algae. Intrigued by the movement, the dog leaned closer, his head tracking the herky-jerky movements of the fish.
Shrugging, Zach sat on the edge of the trough, seeming in no hurry to go anywhere. I stared into the water, feeling his gaze on me. I could imagine what he saw. A ragged-out, tired woman in washed-out jeans, a nondescript white T-shirt with a fading Abercrombie logo, no makeup, hair in a degenerating ponytail with a pink hair band that, now that I thought about it, matched the dog’s, and old Birkenstock sandals, worn so many years that my feet had made shiny black imprints in the suede insoles.
Why, I wondered, would he even look twice? Why was he looking now?
I glanced up and he turned his attention to the water trough. “The ranch hands used to put algaecide in them every so often, but Josie went to some farm seminar in Austin, and now she’s got them trying to be more organic.” He bracketed organic, making little quotes with his fingers, then rolling his eyes. “The goldfish were her idea.”
“Oh.” My mind cataloged the information. Who was Josie? Daughter? Girlfriend? Wife? I caught myself checking for a ring. Nothing. But, then, men didn’t always wear rings. Geoff never would, even though I bought him one when we married. A few weeks after the wedding, he put it in a box on the dresser, and it stayed there. He said it got in the way. Got in the way of what? I wondered.
I blushed, embarrassed by the pointless train of thought. “Well, the fish are pretty, anyway, although, to tell you the truth, I think they’re eating bugs down there, not algae.” I’d been absently watching the goldfish dart to the surface, grab little squirmy things, and race for cover while Mr. Grits tracked their maneuvers. “I think you have meat-eating goldfish.”
Zach leaned closer to study the activity in the tank. “Well, Josie won’t like that. Meat-eating goldfish probably aren’t politically correct.”
“I don’t think goldfish follow politics.”
Zach chuckled low in his throat, a warm, appreciative sound that sent a tingle down my spine. “No. Probably not.”
I looked up, and he looked up, and we hovered there above the water, just … looking. My heart lurched and my stomach fluttered into my throat, and Romance Lindsey jumped all the way out of her dusty box, saying, Wow! Let’s flirt a little and see what happens… .
A blur of movement flashed past the corner of my vision, and I came to my senses just in time to see Mr. Grits slip headfirst into the trough. Jumping back, I hollered, “Watch out!” But it was too late. The leading edge of the tidal wave hit the side of the trough and drenched us both.
Holding my arms out to my sides, I looked down at the wet, slimy mess as Zach fished the dog from the water like a hundred-pound mackerel and set him on the ground, grinding out the words, “If I never see this dog again, it’ll be too soon. How in the hel—pardon me—world can one animal cause so much trouble?” Throwing up his hands, he turned to Mr. Grits, who looked chagrined by the incident. He was only half as much dog with his hair wet. “Answer that for me, will you?”
Mr. Grits sighed and turned his face away, seeming that much more pathetic.
“I think you hurt his feelings.” I started to giggle, peeling the front of my soggy Abercrombie T-shirt off my skin and fanning it in the air. “After all day with the dog, I didn’t think I could possibly look or smell any worse, but this is worse.”
Zach’s expression could have melted ice. “I think you look great. Smell … well, that’s another matter.”
“Look who’s talking.” I motioned to his shirt and jeans, now molded to his body with water, slime, and dog hair.
“Yeah, but I’m used to smelling bad. You … well, you’re an uptown girl.”
I braced my hands on my hips. “Who says?”
“You said.”
“Well, I’ll have you know that you are looking at a former hardcore tomboy, thank you very much.” I hadn’t thought of myself that way in years, but suddenly I felt as bold as that ten-year-old girl who loved sports and firmly refused to wear dresses. “I am not afraid of a little slime.”
“That so?” Pulling a little piece of slime off his jeans, he pitched it at me.
“So,” I confirmed, dodging the throw, then dipping a little slime from the water trough and tossing it at him.
He caught it, winged it back, and hit me on the leg. “Oh, that’s it!” I warned, pointing a finger. For my next throw, I made a slimeball, used a windup, and hit him square in the chest. My high school softball coach would have been proud. “Take that, buddy.”
“Oh, a ballplayer, huh?” he observed.
“You bet.”
He moved around me toward the tank, and suddenly I had a sense of things degenerating completely out of control.
“All right, that’s enough,” I said, but ten-year-old Tomboy Lindsey raised a hand above the water and added, “Don’t come any closer.”
“Oh-ho.” Zach coughed. “Is that a threat?”
“Absolutely.”
The next thing I knew, we were having a water fight, Mr. Grits was running around the tank barking, and the goldfish were swimming for their lives.
“What in the world is happening here?” I heard someone say. “Zach, what’s—”
“Lindsey?”
I recognized that voice. It was Collie’s. She and some woman I didn’t know were gaping at us from the end of the barn. The expressions on their faces said it all, and suddenly I got the total picture of what this must look like.
No … actually, I couldn’t imagine how it looked. Lindsey has lost her mind—that was what Collie’s expression said. Her blue eyes were bugging out beneath a shock of curly red hair.
The other woman, who was probably about our age, slightly shorter than Collie, with dark hair
and green eyes, twisted her head to one side, her face saying, Who is this strange woman?
Zach cleared his throat, motioning to Mr. Grits. “The dog fell in the water trough,” he said lamely.
“And then I thought I lost my earring in there,” I added, trying to make things more convincing. “But we found it. See?” I smiled and pointed to my ears, then hurried forward, putting distance between myself and Zach. “Hi, Coll. I’d hug you but”—I motioned to my clothes, now even wetter than before—“well, I’m a little bit of a mess right now. It’s been a really crazy day.”
Collie grinned, the light dusting of freckles over her nose crinkling up. “I can’t wait to hear about it.”
SIX
IDIDN’T TELL COLLIE ABOUT MY DAY, OF COURSE—AT LEAST NOT the part about my flirting with the cowboy and acting like a crazy woman. I stuck with the story about having lost my earring in the water trough while rescuing the dog. I even made a show of thanking Zach for his help.
He gave me a lopsided grin and said, “My pleasure. Glad you got your … uhhh … earring back.” He wasn’t much of an actor.
“Me too,” I said, shifting uncomfortably, nervously fanning my shirt. “That was a close one.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Cutting a sideways glance at me, he winked. Fortunately, his back was turned to the other women, who were eyeing us and making a snap analysis of the situation. Zach seemed to suddenly remember that we weren’t alone. Picking up the dog rope, he said, “Guess I’d better get this fella in the kennel before anything else happens. Hi, Collie, how’s the newspaper business?”
“Great,” Collie said, seeming overly cheerful, even for Collie. “I was just down at the camp with Jocelyn, watching one of her group therapy sessions. It’s amazing how she uses the horses to work with the people. I’m going to do a piece on it for Family Circle.”
Zach nodded with a thinly veiled lack of enthusiasm. “Yeah, Josie’s amazing.” He gave Collie’s companion a hooded look, filled with some hidden meaning. “As many things as she’s got going on around here lately, pretty soon none of us will recognize the place.”
Josie, Jocelyn—whatever her name was—crossed her arms and jutted her hips to one side with a patient but slightly irritated smile. Clearly, this was a conversation they’d had before, but she didn’t want to have it in front of us. “Well, you know we always love to have your input, Zach. If you’d come home more often, you’d probably recognize the place a little more easily.”
Zach lowered his lashes, his eyes flinty. “I’m home now, Jocelyn. Not that it does much good. Pop’s down at the Mundy Canyon Trap, straw-bossing the fence crew.”
Jocelyn gasped. “He’s not supposed to be doing that. He said he was going by the Big Lizard to play dominoes.”
“Well, what can I tell you?” Zach massaged the back of his neck like an actor on a tension headache commercial. “The man’s down at the fence line. He’s going to do what he’s going to do. It doesn’t matter what you, or I—”
“But the doctor said—”
“—or the doctor tells him.” Zach finished over Jocelyn’s objections.
Pursing her lips, she exhaled what yoga professionals call a cleansing breath. “He’s going to work his way right into another heart attack.”
Zach frowned, his forehead a worried knot. “I tried to get him to come up here and wait for the windmill salesman, but he wouldn’t. He wanted to be out there with the crew.” He glanced at his watch, then at Mr. Grits, who was leaning on Zach’s leg, gazing upward adoringly. “Apparently your windmill guy isn’t coming. I’ve been here for an hour, and I haven’t seen any sign of him. Who did you say you called?”
Jocelyn studied the doorway contemplatively. “I called B and B Windmills. Pop said he’s had the maintenance contract with them for years. Bo Bales was here a few weeks ago, and we toured the entire place. He was supposed to come back today with a bid for replacing some of the old units that aren’t working anymore and refitting the ones that can be salvaged.”
“Pop’s confused,” Zach replied. “If he’s been using B and B, it’s no wonder the windmills are in such bad shape. Ever since Bo and Benny took over the business from their dad, they’ve let the old mills go downhill on purpose. They’re just taking advantage of Pop, trying to sell him new ones. And you know Pop. If someone says hi to him at the café, he thinks they’re friends.” Zach’s jaw hardened, and then he shrugged it off. “I’ve got some supplies coming by UPS. I can probably get the old ones greased and going while I’m here.”
Jocelyn didn’t seem pleased, and I had a feeling we’d stepped into an ongoing family confrontation. “The new ones are more efficient, and we won’t be repairing them every time we turn around. The old ones have just seen their better days, that’s all.”
“The old ones have charm.” There was a stubborn tilt to Zach’s chin that said he didn’t want shiny new windmills any more than he wanted goldfish in the water troughs. “Some things ought to stay the same.”
Jocelyn delivered a peeved glare. “You know, you could at least talk to Bo Bales, maybe look over the literature before you make up your mind. It seemed to me like he knew what he was talking about, and I didn’t get the impression he was trying to take advantage of anybody, or that he didn’t intend to come back. I probably wrote the appointment time down wrong, or maybe he called to reschedule and you were outside”—pausing, she surveyed Zach, the dog, and me, then finished with—“getting the dog out of the water trough.” Mr. Grits perked his ears at the word dog, and Jocelyn turned her attention from the windmill argument to him. “Is that the mutt who’s been causing all the trouble around town?”
Zach nodded with a rueful shrug. “This is the one.” He waved the rope loosely toward me. “Lindsey caught him.”
Giving me a speculative look, Jocelyn reached out to shake my hand with a wide, friendly smile, saying, “I’m sorry. I’m Jocelyn Truitt—Zach’s cousin. I feel like I already know you through Laura and Collie.”
“Nice to meet you,” I said. Laura hadn’t mentioned that she knew the horse psychologist. Why would she leave out a detail like that?
Jocelyn turned back to the dog. “He looks harmless enough.”
Zach scoffed. “You know what they say about looks being deceiving. This is not your ordinary, white-bread city dog.” He glanced privately at me, and I blushed, trying not to laugh as he made a production of pulling a strand of slime off his clothes and dropping it. “This dog’s got attitude.”
“Just a little,” I admitted, noticing that Collie was watching me, intently. The last thing I needed was her telling Laura that, on top of obsessing about Sydney, I was now running around the countryside picking up cowboys and stray dogs.
Straightening my posture, I cleared my throat, saying, “Well, he can’t cause any more trouble now.”
“Let’s hope,” Zach agreed. “Guess I’d better haul the prisoner off to jail and get back to the fence line to see if I can keep Pop out of trouble. If Bo Bales does decide to show up, he’ll just have to track me down.” He waved good-bye with the rope in his hand. “Nice meeting you, Lindsey. Collie, tell your husband I’ll be by to talk to him about that three-point cedar grubber sometime while I’m here. Tell him, at that price, I expect the kissin’-cousin discount on the thing.”
Collie chuckled. “Good luck. True’s so attached to the cedar grubber, I don’t think he’ll be able to sell it. He’s on a mission to eradicate cedar from this part of the country. He’s already cleared our whole place and half of the neighbors’. He has this gigantic spreadsheet on the computer, breaking it down into time per tree, size of tree, cost per acre, you name it. The man goes around measuring how much root came up and calculating potential regrowth. He has a spreadsheet for that, too. He’s possessed. Yesterday he stood Bailey out there and took her picture with a pile of cedar and the grubber. He’s going to put it on his desk at the tractor dealership.”
Zach flashed her a charming grin—one that, I now noted, he u
sed fairly often. “Tell him I’ll trade him a three-legged bull, two blind cows, and a slightly used sheepdog.” Turning around, he started down the aisle with Mr. Grits trailing at his side. “I’ve got a dog Bailey will just love. Comes with a pink hair bow and everything.”
“No way,” Collie called after him. “And don’t you dare show that dog to Bailey. That mutt has a reputation, and if Bailey falls in love with him, True will knuckle under and say yes.”
“That’s what I’m counting on.” Zach raised a hand and waved. “See you later, Collie.”
“Zach …” Collie threatened. “Don’t you … Zach …”
He didn’t look back, just waved again and continued on. I watched him and Mr. Grits leave the barn aisle, a tall man and a tall dog, strolling out of view. The dog definitely wasn’t the one with attitude.
Bracing her hands on her hips, Collie turned to Jocelyn. “Do I need to go after him? He wouldn’t really bring that dog to my house, would he?”
Jocelyn pulled her lip between her teeth thoughtfully. “You know Zach—he likes a good joke, and he pretty much owes you one after what you did to him at the Christmas gift exchange.”
“That was last winter,” Collie protested.
Jocelyn’s green eyes twinkled at the memory. “Yes, but you took Mrs. Hawthorne’s pecan pie gift basket away from him and stuck him with the used set of Dr. Phil Relationship Rescue books.”
Pressing a hand over her lips, Collie muttered, “He needed the Dr. Phil books more than he needed the pecan pie.”
Jocelyn shrugged her agreement. “Now, whenever he does come home, everyone in town asks him if he’s read Dr. Phil yet.” She squinted speculatively toward the spot where Zach and Mr. Grits had disappeared. “I’d say he’s going to bring you the dog.”
Collie huffed a sigh. “Well, you’re his cousin. Tell him no.”
Jocelyn rolled her eyes. “He doesn’t listen to me, in case you haven’t noticed. How many times have I asked him not to call me Josie anymore? What does he call me? Josie—in front of clients and everyone else. He does it just to irritate me. He’ll definitely bring you the dog. He—”
