“Purty.”
She was that. Small and rounded, with a spill of glittery blond hair and big blue eyes. A Kewpie doll, he thought with a scowl, one of those bubble-headed women who were just hoping for a man to come along and take care of them. He was still scowling when he approached the car. She was taking out a big pan, which she handed to one of the fireman who was only too willing to help. “I know her,” the fireman beside him said. “She works the day shift at Mel’s Diner. Sweet thing. Young, and that baby. Don’t young men got any sense these days?”
“Hi,” she said, and it was slightly shy, not the burbly Kewpie voice he expected. “I saw everybody down here and thought maybe you could use something to eat. If that’s okay?”
With an effort, he cleared the frown off his face. Hell, what kind of a jerk glared at any woman who brought food for weary men who’d been battling to save his ass all day long? “We’re about ready to eat what’s left of the grass, lady. Let me help you—let’s bring it in the kitchen.”
She gave him a big cold bowl. “Nothing fancy, just fried chicken and potato salad and iced tea.” She gave a short laugh. “I didn’t have a lot of ice, so it’s actually lukewarm, but it always quenches my thirst better than water.”
He noticed her hands were rough and dry, the hands of a woman who had her hands in water all the time. No ring. “Mine, too.”
“I’ll just get the baby and the last platter and be right in.”
The men were already slumped around the table in mute exhaustion, politely waiting to dig into the platters somebody had already uncovered. His stomach growled at the smell, and he sat down beside the big bowl and ripped off the foil to show mounds of creamy potato salad. “Dig in, guys,” he said, tossing down paper napkins and distributing a stack of plates he’d taken out of the cupboard. One of the men opened a drawer Michael indicated and put out some forks.
“Damn,” said one, biting into a piece of chicken. “This is good.”
“Sweetheart,” said another, a grizzled sixty-year-old, as Sunny came into the kitchen. “I’m too old to marry you, but I’m gonna nominate you as an angel.”
She laughed lightly. “Glad you like it.”
The baby, a blond miniature on her mama’s hip, leaned around and said to Michael, “Wow!”
The men laughed. “Guess you have that effect on women!”
“This is my neighbor,” Michael said, and then could not remember her name. He started to shake his head, held out a hand and she caught the situation.
“I’m Sunny Kendricks. We just met for the first time this afternoon.” Baby still on her hip, she bent and picked up the two-gallon cooler. Her hair was swept up in a loose knot, showing the back of her neck. It was smooth and white and he found himself admiring the soft look of the way the hair flowed upward from the spot.
“Michael,” she said quietly, “do you have glasses and ice? Let’s get you all something to drink.”
“Right,” he said, and was glad of the task.
“Why don’t you let me take that girl for you,” one of the younger guys said, “so you don’t have to ruin your back?”
“Thank you.” Sunny lifted Jessica and deposited her in the man’s lap. For a minute, Jessica stared at the young man with wariness, her hands—why, Michael wondered, were babies’ hands so sweet?—folded on her lap.
He seemed to meet some internal barometer after a moment. She put her hands on her knees and said, “Hi!”
“Oh, I only get a hi, huh? Michael got a wow.”
The baby looked at Michael and pointed. “Wow.”
They all laughed, Michael along with them. “She’s a charmer,” he said, handing Sunny a glass.
“She is that.” Sunny kept her head ducked, and because he’d noticed her nape before, he saw there was a tinge of red to the skin now.
An almost forgotten sense of pleasure touched him, and he smiled. She thought he was a “wow.” “Thanks, Sunny,” he said seriously, taking another glass from her and placing it on the table. “This was a great thing to do.”
“No problem. I saw you all out there and knew you’d be starving.”
“I owe you one.”
“Not at all.” She raised her head and gave him a smile. A very sunny sort of smile. “That’s what neighbors do, isn’t it?”
Looking at the fine whiteness of her poreless skin, skin that would burn, never tan, under this harsh sun, looking at the guilelessness of a face as yet untouched by the truly harsh aspects of life, he wondered what the hell she was doing out here in this brutal land. She was like a tender gardenia.
But he nodded. “I reckon they do.”
The men, wanting to get home to families and showers and a good, soft bed, didn’t linger. Sunny collected their plates from the table, scraping bones into the trash. Michael made a move to help, and she shook her head with a smile. “I can do this in my sleep. Just sit.”
His voice was ragged with exhaustion and a thin coat of grayish ash lay over his clothes and boots. Jessie sat on his lap, perfectly comfortable, gnawing on a piece of bread. “I can’t let you do all that.”
“Truly, my arms get tired holding her all the time. If you would just help me that much, it’s a lot.”
His face showed a softness. One finger moved on the baby’s forearm. “That’s easy.”
Collecting used silverware, Sunny commented, “You seem very comfortable around kids. You must have been around them a lot.”
A shrug. “It’s natural in a small community like this. All my friends have kids. They always seem to like me.”
“That’s because you like them.”
He raised his eyes. “Think so?”
For one single second, she let herself admire the cut of his cheekbones, the bear-fur dark of his eyes, let herself feel that old, tamped-down longing to be held by arms as strong as these, her weary shoulders rubbed by hands so plainly reliable. Then she whisked the dishes to the counter, putting her back to him, and put the thoughts out of her mind. “Absolutely.”
“So,” he said. “Where you from?”
“Denver.”
“The big city. What in the world brings you out here?”
Sunny bent to slide plates into the dishwasher. “Necessity. My daughter was pretty sick when she was born, and I lost my house, so a friend loaned me that one until I can get on my feet.”
“Is she okay now?” Alarm and surprise threaded his voice. “She looks healthy as a rodent.”
“She is. It was a hole in her heart. They fixed it, and she’s fine.”
He was silent for a minute. Then, “No husband to help?” He raised his eyes, almost in…what? Challenge?
Sunny straightened. “No. He deserted me, actually, even before he knew that Jessie would be born with a problem. Just ran away in the middle of the day and I got divorce papers in the mail six months later. Just like that.” She snapped her fingers, pretending it didn’t matter.
But it had mattered. She’d wept bitterly that day, for all that she needed to take care of herself and her daughter—their daughter—and how badly she’d chosen a husband. “He’s pretty worthless. I’m better off without him.”
“How does a man leave a child?” Michael asked in a quiet voice.
“How does anyone? But they do it all the time.”
He nodded, soberly.
Finished loading the dishes, Sunny wiped down the table. “How about you? Ever been married?”
“Almost ten years.” He said it gruffly, but as if to offer something in return for her story, he continued, “She ran off with a cowboy from the local honky-tonk one night.” A self-mocking smile. “Maybe it was your husband.”
Sunny laughed. “Good riddance, then.”
“Yeah.” But she could tell the wound was not healed.
“You loved her.”
A nod. “But I guess I love the land more.”
“It’s more reliable,” Sunny said, “in the long run.”
That startled a laugh from him, and
she couldn’t help but notice the way it lightened his features, how it opened his throat and chest. “Some seasons, anyway. This one’s been a little rough.”
She folded the dishcloth neatly and punched the button to start the dishwasher. “You want to help me carry this stuff back out? Then I’ll leave you alone and you can get your shower and a good night’s sleep.”
“Sure.” He followed her with a load of Tupper-ware and the tea jug. Sunny settled Jessica in her car seat, and turned to take the dishes. “I really, really appreciate you doing this,” Michael said. “It’s an honor to meet you.”
“You, too,” she said, and just then she caught a whiff of rain on the air. “Do you smell that? The rain?”
He inhaled, closing his eyes. “Maybe it’ll finally drip a little this far to the earth.”
“You know,” she said, “even this season is natural in the cycle of things, isn’t it? Some times are wet, some are dry.”
He was standing right in front of her, and she could see the underside of his jaw, the edge of his ear, before he looked down, right into her eyes. She suddenly realized he was close enough that he could bend in and kiss her if he was so inclined. If she was.
And something in her yearned toward it, just as the leaves stirred in hunger for the rain. But all that happened was that he said, “Good night, Sunny.”
“’Night.”
Chapter 3
The winds blew all night, buffeting Sunny’s house on the hill, rattling the windows. It stopped and started, gusted and stopped, gathered itself up again and flung itself against the house like a rabid animal looking for a way in. Sunny woke up several times when it grew particularly noisy, but the house was cozy enough. Safe.
When she awakened at her usual time, 5:00 a.m., she discovered a fine layer of dust on the bathroom vanity, and wiped it down, swept the floors in both kitchen and living room. It came in through every little crack, the dust blown off the prairie, maybe even from as far away as the mountains. A trial, but she’d grown used to it. Maybe, if funds allowed it, she could see about sealing the windows a little better with some glazing compound. It wouldn’t keep all the dirt out, but it might help a little.
She dressed herself in her uniform, a simple pair of slacks and a green polo shirt with Mel’s written in script over the left breast, pinned up her hair, and got Jessica up and bathed and settled in her high chair for their breakfast of scrambled eggs. The morning was oddly still after all the winds through the night, and overcast, which meant the sun wouldn’t cook them both all the way home this afternoon. A blessing.
It wasn’t until she was on her way out the door that she smelled the smoke, realized that the sun trying to peek through the clouds was the color of a blood orange. “Dang,” she said aloud, searching the Plains from her high perch to see if she could tell where the fire was this time. She didn’t see anything, just the smoke lying in the air like a miasma. It stung her eyes. Jessie coughed a little.
“Yeah, let’s get you into town, baby girl.” The day care was air-conditioned, which kept some of the smoke particles out of the air.
She kept her eyes open for the fire as she drove, first down the gravel road that led past Michael’s house, then onto the main road leading into town. About halfway to the bridge that crossed the Arkansas, she spied a horse and rider on the trail that ran between the river and the road, and her heart gave a little flip when she recognized her neighbor, sitting easily atop a tan-colored horse with a blond mane. A straight-brimmed hat with a silver band was on his head, and she couldn’t help thinking, again, that he was very appealing. There was something so still or quiet or calming about him. She thought of the way Jessie had sat on his lap last night, and a little voice in her heart said, maybe he’s different.
Just to be with someone who loved her and loved her daughter, might love future children—! In generations past, it had been an attainable goal for most women. Why was it so hard to find good men now? Or had she just been unlucky?
With a shake of her head, she brushed the questions away. They led nowhere. They were unanswerable, and her life had shown her that men did not stay. Better to make peace with that and keep her daughter—and her heart—safe. As long as she never longed too much for anything, she could keep a happy attitude.
He raised his hand in greeting as she passed, and Sunny waved back, but she forced herself not to look in the rearview mirror as she passed.
In the back seat, Jessie said, “Horsey!” and then made a raspberry noise, the snuffling sound of a horse. Sunny smiled and thought of his name again: Chasing Horse. He loved his horses—that much was obvious just from passing by.
And what would it be like to have a name like that? Aloud she said to Jessica, “What if we had names like that? That expressed something about us. I could be Sunny Loves her Daughter. You could be Jessica Sweet as Morning. And maybe I’d be Sunny Morning.” She laughed at the silliness.
Jessie laughed, too. “Morning!”
Her tires clopped over the wooden bridge spanning the tiny trickle of water in the river below, and as she came around the turn just a few short miles outside of town, she saw the fire. Her smile faded. It was burning hard, fed by a thicket of scrub oak on one side of the highway, and a line of poplar trees planted as a windbreak alongside a farm on the other. A green volunteer fire truck was parked across the road, and a man in a dirty white T-shirt with a grimy face stood in front of it, drinking from a tall thermos. He held up a hand and Sunny slowed, rolling down her window.
It was one of the men from the night before, and Sunny said, “You have to be exhausted, Joe!”
He nodded, wiped a hand across his forehead. “Sorry, but you’re gonna have to turn back. Town’s been evacuated until we can be sure this is under control.”
Her heart sank at the thought of the lost tips, but she took a breath and nodded. “Thanks. How can I find out when it’s open again?”
“Keep your television on Channel 42.”
She didn’t have a television, much less the cable hook-up that would let her tune in to Channel 42. “What about radio or some place to call?”
The man frowned. “Don’t know about that. Why don’t you ask Chasing Horse? He’ll know.”
“Thanks. I hope you get a chance to rest soon.”
“Me, too.” He patted the hood, as if her car were an animal, a trusty steed ready to carry her home. It was the kind of thing that endeared this place to her, a sense of thoughtfulness, continuity, kindness. A reliable car was as valuable as a good horse in some ways, she supposed, turning back up the highway.
When she saw Michael, close to the turnoff to their road, she rolled the window down again and called out, “They told me town is evacuated, and I need to know what radio station to tune to so I can stay alert.”
He shook his head, put a hand to his ear and pointed to the gravel road. Sunny turned in and put the car in Park, waited as he crossed the road toward her.
And again that soft yearning touched her. His shoulders were square and straight under his denim shirt, his hands sure as they handled the reins. He rode over to her. “Sorry! I couldn’t hear you.”
“I’m really sorry to bother you again,” she said, “but the firemen told me to ask you what radio station I should tune to for information about the evacuation.”
“Town’s been evacuated?”
“The fire crossed the road, I guess, and they wanted to get everyone out, just in case.”
He shook his head, took a breath. One hand rested against his thigh as he stared to the west, toward town. “Damn.”
From the back seat, Jessie said, “Horse?” And then again, more insistently. “Horse!”
She waited, and he turned back. “Tune to 107. It’s a Spanish station, but they give weather reports in English, too.”
“Will do. Thanks!”
“Horse!” cried Jessie.
Michael smiled. “Is she saying horse?”
“Yeah. She’s obsessed with animals of all kin
ds all of a sudden. She seems to have a real love for them.”
“Do you have time to let her out and see him up close?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t want to inconvenience you or anything.”
He shook his head, very slowly. “Pull into my driveway and you can show her all the horses.”
“Are you sure you don’t mind?”
“Yep.” He pulled the reins, and the horse turned to walk down the drive beneath the cottonwoods.
“Horse! Horse!” Jessie cried, pointing frantically.
“Yes, darlin’, we’re going as fast as I can.” Sunny turned in behind horse and rider, and parked, then took Jessie out of her car seat. “Want to see the horses?”
The baby kicked at Sunny’s side like a rider nudging that very same animal, and made a snorting noise again. Michael, dismounting, laughed. “That’s pretty good. Where’d she pick that up? Do you ride?”
Sunny laughed lightly. “Never been this close to a horse in my whole life.”
His dark eyes flattened the slightest bit. “You really are a city girl.”
“Nobody chooses where they’re born, Mr. Chasing Horse.” She raised her chin. “I’m willing to learn.”
Jessie grunted and strained toward Michael. “Horse!”
To Sunny’s surprise, he took the baby easily, settling her on his hip as naturally as a mama. “You mind?”
She shook her head and tucked her hands in her pockets, following as Michael rounded the beast and settled his hand on his glossy sand-colored neck. “This is Two Moon,” he said, ducking his head to speak quietly to Jessie, who stared up at him solemnly, her chubby little hands clasped together. “He was born on a day with a moon in the morning and a moon at night.” He stroked the long hair of the gelding’s mane, his fingers long and dark and graceful against the wheaten tendrils. “He’s a palomino.”
“Horse?” Jessie asked, pointing.
“Right. Want to touch him?”
Jessie nodded, her hand outstretched, and Sunny was pierced with that wild sense of furious love as her daughter leaned forward and kissed the horse, too. Jessie straightened and pointed again. “Who’s that?”
Lakota Legacy: Wolf DreamerCowboy Days and Indian NightsSeven Days Page 17
