A Small Town Thanksgiving

by Marie Ferrarella

  Sam turned around and looked at him with eyes that seemed just a little too wide, a little too blue—and, Mike was beginning to discover, just a little too disturbing for him to take in stride.

  So he did what he always did when confronted with a situation he didn’t care for or want to deal with. He withdrew.

  “If you won’t be needing me anymore,” he said to his father, already backing out of the room, “I’ve got things I need to take care—”

  He didn’t get a chance to finish his sentence. “Actually,” Miguel said as he held up his hand, stopping his oldest son in his tracks as well as midsentence, “I do need you, Miguel.” The patriarch’s warm dark eyes shifted appreciatively to his houseguest. “I think that if Samantha is going to be staying with us for a while, she should be shown around Forever so that she can come and go comfortably without feeling like a stranger.” Miguel turned back to Mike. “I’d like you to take her to town, show her where the general store is, the diner, the post office, any place you think she might need to see. You can also introduce her to the sheriff, to the doctor, and of course, to Miss Joan,” the older rancher specified.

  “Miss Joan?” Sam asked. She’d heard the slight inflection when Miguel had said the woman’s name and she couldn’t help wondering just where the woman fit into the whole scheme of this town.

  Ray was quick to come through with an explanation for her. “Miss Joan runs the diner and she kind of runs the town, too. Nothing happens in Forever that she don’t know about.”

  “Does not know about,” Miguel corrected his son softly.

  Though English hadn’t been his first language, since it was the language of his adopted country, Miguel took great pains to speak it correctly. This dedication included not allowing any of his children to become lazy when it came to things like grammar.

  “My son could have stated it better, but the general thought is true. Nothing happens in this town without Miss Joan knowing about it. I am sure she would appreciate meeting you. You will find her to be a great source of the history of this region,” Miguel told her.

  Sam didn’t need to hear anything further. She was hooked.

  “I can take her into town,” Ray volunteered, then tagged on with emphasis, “Since Mike’s busy and everything.”

  But Miguel wasn’t comfortable about turning over this chore to his youngest. “He is not busy, are you, Miguel?” the older man asked, his dark eyes pinning his oldest the way no one else could.

  Mike sighed and shoved his hands into his back pockets. Whatever plans he had he merely adjusted. Life had taught him how to be exceedingly flexible when it came to things like schedules.

  “Guess not.”

  Since Mike’s response was less than enthusiastic, Sam turned to her client, ready to beg off. “Mr. Rodriguez, I appreciate the thought, really, but I don’t want to put anyone out on my account. I can certainly go on a tour of your town some other time.”

  “Hey, I just volunteered to take her,” Ray pointed out, reminding the others. “There’s no need to postpone anything.”

  “He’s right,” Mike spoke up, his deep voice rumbling through the momentary stillness. “No need to postpone anything.” But instead of reinforcing his brother’s offer, Mike said, “I’ll take her.”

  Looking to avoid being the object of a verbal tug of war between the two brothers, Sam announced in no uncertain terms, “I’m perfectly capable of going into town by myself.”

  “Nobody is disputing that,” Miguel told her kindly, “but I have something I need Ramon to do so Miguel will be your guide. When you return, Rosa will have dinner ready,” he promised her.

  Mike could see that she looked a little confused by the introduction of another name. Probably wondering if that was another member of the family he’d failed to mention, Mike guessed. “Rosa’s Dad’s housekeeper,” he explained.

  “Oh, and she does not keep your house as well and you do not eat what she cooks?” Miguel asked, amused by his son’s choice of words.

  “Our housekeeper,” Mike amended, stifling a sigh.

  It bothered him to refer to the woman as his housekeeper since the woman received both her salary and her instructions from his father. He made sure he took care of his own things. Had this been his ranch to run exclusively, he would have been making his own meals, as well. Granted he was nowhere the cook that Rosa was, but on the other hand, he had never poisoned anyone either.

  Mike looked at Sam and said, “If you want that tour, we’d better get going.”

  Not waiting for her to respond one way or another, Mike headed toward the front door and out of the house.

  Sam found herself having to hurry in his wake.

  “You setting her up?” Ray asked his father the minute the door was shut.

  In the past couple of years, he’d seen four of his siblings become engaged, then married and only one union had occurred without some sort of secretive prodding by his father. Eli had needed no prodding to give in to the inevitable and marry Kasey. But then, Eli had been in love with her since elementary school.

  “I am not setting up anyone,” Miguel protested innocently. “I am simply not entrusting a lamb to a coyote,” his father responded, looking at his youngest significantly.

  “You really think that she’s any safer being sent off with a lone wolf for company?” Ray asked.

  Mike might have been a loner, but an exceptionally honorable one, Miguel thought. And yet he wasn’t about to argue the point with Ramon. His youngest saw the world in a completely different way than his oldest did.

  “You have horses to work with,” Miguel reminded him.

  “And they’ll probably give me straighter answers than I’m getting here,” Ray mumbled.

  As Ray left the house again, Miguel smiled to himself. Looking through the front window, he caught a glimpse of Miguel and Samantha in the distance. He had high hopes for that pair, he mused. It was a definite bonus on top of what he’d initially bargained for—someone good to turn his ancestor’s diaries into a coherent book.

  Miguel Rodriguez felt very fortunate indeed.

  * * *

  REACHING MIKE’S TRUCK, Sam paused by the passenger door. There was no sense in making the man feel as if she was an albatross around his neck.

  “If you drive me into town and drop me off at the car rental agency, you’re free to go back home or do whatever you want instead of being stuck as my tour guide. I can take it from there.”

  Mike slanted a look in her direction. “I really doubt that.”

  Opening the door on his side, he waited for her to get in on her side. Instead, she continued standing there. For some reason, he saw that she looked annoyed, as well. Now what?

  “Look, I don’t know what the women around here are like, but I’ve been finding my own way around now for a long time,” she informed him, taking offense at his dismissive attitude.

  And then he took the wind out of her sails by saying, “I’m sure you have.”

  She hadn’t a clue what to make of this man. “But you just said that you ‘doubted that.’” If that wasn’t derogatory, she didn’t know what was. “I don’t get it.”

  “What I said was,” he repeated, pointing out the difference, “that I doubted you could rent a car.”

  Was he saying that she didn’t look trustworthy? Or that whoever was in charge of car rentals wouldn’t accept a credit card? She should have taken more cash out of her account, she thought, upbraiding herself.

  “And just why can’t I rent a car?” Sam asked.

  There was just a hint of amusement in his answer. “Because Forever doesn’t have car rental agency.”

  “Oh.”

  Just how small a town was this? No car rental agency, no hotel; it sounded as if this town was stuck in the beginning of the last century. Fragmen
ts of thoughts went through her head, only to be discarded. And then she thought of something.

  “Do you have a car mechanic?” she asked Mike suddenly.

  “We have one of those,” he answered in an easy cadence. Giving up waiting for her to get in, he got in on his side and began to buckle up, then spared her an expectant look.

  With a sigh, Sam got in.

  “Mick,” Mike told her, picking up the thread of the conversation after several beats. “His name is Mick. Why?” he asked.

  “Well, sometimes mechanics have a loaner car that they can let a customer have while they’re working on their car.” It was a long shot, but at the moment, it seemed to be the only way she could think of to get her own mode of transportation.

  Mike drove toward the main road, the one that took him straight into Forever. “The key words here are ‘their car,’” he pointed out.

  He didn’t have to sound like he was lecturing her. She was only trying to help him.

  The next moment, she was saying as much to him since subtlety was apparently wasted on a man like that. “I’m just trying to get you out of having to act as my personal tourist guide.” Although she had to admit, if only to herself, that she wouldn’t have minded spending time with him—if only she didn’t feel as if he thought it was some sort of penance on his part.

  She rolled another idea over in her head. “I guess you could just drop me off in town, then pick me up later and you can just tell your father you took care of the introductions.”

  He spared her a look that she couldn’t begin to fathom. “Are you telling me to lie?”

  No good deed went unpunished, she thought grudgingly. “No. I’m not telling you to lie, I’m trying to get you out of having to do something you don’t want to do.”

  “Number one, I didn’t say whether I wanted to do ‘it’ or not, so don’t assume anything and number two—more importantly than number one—I don’t lie. I told my father I would take you on a tour of Forever, so I’ll take you on a tour of Forever.”

  Sam was still chewing on what he’d told her—or claimed. “You don’t lie,” she repeated.

  Why was that so hard for her to accept? he wondered. “No,” he replied stoically.

  “Ever?” she prodded, leaning forward in her seat to get a better look at his face.

  “What part of ‘I don’t lie’ is unclear to you?” he asked. It was apparent that his supply of patience was seriously running low.

  Sam blew out a breath. “No part,” she freely admitted. It wasn’t that she didn’t understand what he was claiming, she just didn’t know whether she actually believed him. “I just never met anyone who didn’t, let’s say, ‘bend the truth’ once in a while when it was to their advantage.”

  “Well, now you have.” He gave her a penetrating look that was meant to intimidate her. That it failed both annoyed him and evoked in him a grudging respect for her feistiness. “Are you going to argue with me all the way into town, or are you finally going to stop looking a gift horse in the mouth and just accept the fact that you lucked out?” he asked.

  A few choice, hot words rose to her lips, but she managed to keep them under wraps. Someday, though, she promised herself, she and this man were going to have it out—and she would put him in his place the way no one else apparently ever did.

  “Did anyone ever tell you that you have a winning personality?” she asked him.

  He kept his eyes on the road. “No, I don’t believe anyone ever did.”

  She would have easily bet money on that outcome. “Well, I don’t think I’d hold my breath, waiting, if I were you.”

  “I don’t foresee anyone running up alongside the truck in the next couple of minutes, so I won’t.”

  It took effort not to stare at him with her mouth hanging open. “Do you take everything literally?” she asked.

  He did and there was a reason for that. “Most people don’t exaggerate around here.”

  She thought tall tales came with the territory. “This is Texas, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, why?”

  Sam shut her eyes as she shook her head. “Never mind,” she murmured, surrendering for the moment. The man probably had no imagination and no sense of humor, two things she’d always thought to be of vital importance in the composition of a human being.

  It was going to be a very long trip into town and back, Sam thought.

  She slanted a look in his direction. “So you and Ray are brothers, huh?” That had just slipped out, caused by her surprise that two brothers could be as different as night and day, the way that these two apparently seemed to be.

  “So they tell me,” Mike responded dryly. He fixed her with a quizzical look. “Why?”

  Sam shrugged, doing her best to sound as disinterested in the conversation as she thought he was. But she couldn’t pull it off. She was always interested in what people felt and had to say. “No reason, you just seem very different from one another.”

  They were and Mike was well aware of it. He and Ray had grown up under different circumstances. “That’s because Ray is the youngest and working hard seems more like a choice to him than a responsibility.”

  She had always been fascinated by people and their stories. Today was no exception—especially not after he’d just said that. “But it doesn’t to you?” she asked.

  “Nope.”

  His answer led her to another question. “Do you ever have fun, Mike?”

  He glanced at her. “You mean that we’re not having fun now?”

  She stared at him, her hand splayed across her chest. “Dear God, was that an actual joke?”

  Mike shrugged carelessly in response. “Far as I know, that was a question.”

  But she could have sworn she saw a glimmer of a smile on his lips. The corners of his mouth had curved just a little.

  There was hope, she thought. The man just might actually have a sense of humor. And that heartened her immensely.

  Chapter Six

  The diner was doing a fair amount of business when she and Mike walked in through the door. Despite that, Sam could feel that she had instantly drawn the attention of the older woman behind the counter. Of average height and somewhat on the thin side, the woman had hair that was slightly too red and hazel eyes that gave the impression that they missed nothing.

  Sam saw that her “guide” was making his way across the diner and directly to the woman. She had no choice but to follow.

  This, Sam assumed, had to be the famous “Miss Joan.”

  The woman finished filling the customer’s coffee cup and set the pot down. A wry smile curved Miss Joan’s thin lips as she slowly looked her over. “You Rodriguez boys just keep attracting pretty women like bees to honey, don’t you?”

  Her words might have been addressed to Mike, but the woman was looking directly at her. Shy by nature though she struggled daily to overcome that tendency, Sam felt a strong urge to shift from foot to foot. She didn’t do well being so closely scrutinized. It wasn’t that she had anything to hide, but being examined so thoroughly, especially by a stranger, always made her feel as if she would come up lacking.

  Since the woman had addressed him, Sam waited for Mike to make some sort of a response. But he merely made a noise that sounded suspiciously more like a grunt than something intelligible.

  “It’s not what you think,” Mike finally told the woman.

  The thin smile spread a little more. “How would you know what I was thinking, boy?”

  Wisely choosing not to get drawn into that conversation, Mike merely told her, “She’s here to work with my father.”

  If anything, that served to pique the older woman’s curiosity rather than satisfy it. “Work with him?” the woman repeated, her eyes shifting from one to the other. “Work with him how?”

 
; She didn’t like being talked about as if she was an inanimate object. And, Sam supposed she wasn’t telling any tales out of school if she answered the woman’s question herself. After all, Miguel Rodriguez was the one who had thought having her orient herself with the town was a good idea. In her experience, people in small towns liked knowing all about anyone who entered their vicinity.

  “Mr. Rodriguez hired me to go through his great-great-great-grandmother’s diaries and journals. He wants to have them transcribed and put in chronological order so that they can be read as a detailed memoir,” she explained. Then, not waiting any longer for an introduction, she offered her hand to the woman behind the counter. “Hi, I’m Samantha Monroe. You can call me Sam,” she added, still struggling to keep from squirming beneath the woman’s unwavering stare.

  A moment passed before the woman made her decision. Sam assumed that she passed muster because the woman took her hand and shook it. “And you can call me Miss Joan,” she told Sam. “Everyone does.”

  Sam forced herself to relax. She had a feeling she’d passed the first inspection. “Miss Joan,” she repeated, doing her best to smile.

  “Sit down, take a load off,” Miss Joan urged, gesturing toward the stools lining the counter. “What’s your pleasure? We’ve got tea to calm you down and coffee to rev you up.” The woman glanced in Mike’s direction. “Although I suspect that Mike can probably do the same thing.”

  Something inside Sam’s stomach tightened in response, even as she told herself she had no idea what the woman was talking about.

  “That’s enough, Miss Joan,” a woman’s voice from behind Sam told the owner of the diner. “Don’t go embarrassing the girl her first few minutes in your establishment.”

  Sam saw Miss Joan look over her head toward the woman who had just spoken. “Just because you’re married to my stepson doesn’t mean you can sass me, girl.” The woman’s voice was stern but it was impossible to know what her mood actually was.