So just how did the word Okay, escape her lips instead?
But it did. She heard it, as did Miguel and his two sons.
She’d obviously betrayed herself. There was no hope for her, not if she couldn’t even rely on herself.
She was just doing it to prove to herself that it was ridiculous to allow a dream—a completely baseless, harmless dream—to intimidate her. People had strange dreams all the time, they didn’t spend their lives cowering in closets or under beds after they’ve had them. After all, life went on.
* * *
SAM CLUNG TO her silence for the first few minutes into the trip to Forever. But the quiet in the cab of the truck made her edgy and she knew Mike was not about to just break into conversation—at least not unless she gave him something to work with. The man in the driver’s seat beside her was many things, she’d come to realize, but when it came to talking, he really wasn’t a self-starter.
Knotting her fingers together in her lap, Sam took the plunge and asked, “Does your father always take such an active interest in people’s social lives?” When Mike gave her a look, she added, “Most of the other people I’ve worked with didn’t really express any kind of concern about whether I was eating enough or getting in enough ‘night air’ and they definitely didn’t care one way or the other about whether I was socializing enough while I was engaged in collaborating on their autobiographies. The project was the main thing—the only thing,” she emphasized, “not whether or not I got out and mingled with people.”
Mike’s broad shoulders rose and fell in a careless shrug. “Dad’s different—or at least he is now,” he qualified. He was looking straight ahead at the road, but his mind had taken a brief detour and slipped back into the past. “When Mom was alive, all he cared about was providing for her and for us. It seemed like he was always working back then, training the horses, doing the work of three men and eating like half the person he was. His health suffered, but he didn’t pay attention. He just plowed ahead.
“He missed a lot of family milestones because he was always so busy,” Mike recalled. Recalled, too, resenting his father for that on more than one occasion. “It took Mom getting sick for him to suddenly take stock of things and realize what was really important in life. Realize how much he’d missed.”
The memories Mike was summoning hurt, but he couldn’t turn his back on them and stop talking.
“I heard him tell Mom that he would have given ten years of his life just to gain back a little of what he’d lost. Instead, he lost Mom,” he said quietly, still staring at the road. “That really drove the message home to him. He’s been a changed man ever since then. It’s kind of like he’s not just living for himself but for Mom, as well,” Mike theorized. “And it’s also made him extra sensitive to other people’s omissions and faults.” Getting his emotions under control again, Mike finally spared her a glance. “Like you working too much.”
Except, the way she saw it, there was a difference here. “He’s paying me to work.”
Mike inclined his head, not quite conceding the point to her. “It’s his money, which means he can pay for what he wants and if he wants you to go to town instead of spend that time working, well, I’m guessing he’s entitled to feel he should have you go to town because he’s willing to pay for that, too.”
She rolled the argument over in her head. She supposed, in a strange sort of way, Mike was right. Which made this the most unusual work situation she had ever been in.
“Your father is a very strange man,” she told Mike.
“You’ll get no argument from me,” Mike told her with a dry laugh. “But at the same time, he’s also a very unique man.”
Now she was the one who couldn’t argue with the point that was being made.
Sam nodded. “That, too.”
She couldn’t help thinking that it seemed to her that the “unique man” was also throwing Mike and her together a great deal.
Was that just by accident, or was he doing it deliberately?
The next minute, Sam chided herself for allowing her imagination, its flames fanned high by last night’s dream, to get the better of her. Miguel Rodriguez was not setting her up with his son, he was just making sure she was looked after, that was all, Sam thought as the diner came into view.
She felt the truck begin to slow down. “We’re stopping here first?”
“Might as well. If Miss Joan hears that I brought you to town and she wasn’t first on my list—well, it wouldn’t be a pretty sight, trust me,” Mike assured her with a perfectly somber expression. She had no idea if he was putting her on.
Pulling in at an angle in order to claim a bit of space for his truck, Mike parked the vehicle then climbed out. He waited a moment for Sam to emerge, then led the way up the diner’s front steps.
As expected, Miss Joan was behind the counter, talking to someone as she poured another one of the diner’s regulars his second cup of coffee.
The woman raised her eyes from the cup when she heard the front door open. She finished topping off the man’s coffee without spilling a drop.
If she was surprised to see Sam, she gave no indication. From all signs, this was just a typical weekday morning for the woman.
“Sit yourselves down,” she called out, promising Sam and Mike, “I’ll be with you in a minute.”
“You want a table or the counter?” Mike asked.
Sam was undecided for a moment, clearly favoring selecting a table because it afforded privacy, something she knew they both desired. But then she decided that in this case, privacy wasn’t why they had come here to begin with.
“The counter,” Sam told him. “If we sit at the counter, Miss Joan won’t have that far to go.”
Since he’d stopped here first because his father had asked him to, due to Miss Joan’s inquiries after Sam, sitting at the counter was fine with him. But he decided to bait Sam a little.
“What does distance have to do with it?” he asked.
“It’s not the distance so much as the act of walking,” she told him. “Miss Joan’s probably on her feet for most of the day. The less she has to walk, the less she hurts.”
It took him a moment to digest Sam’s reasoning. When he did, something else became clear to him, as well.
“Your mom was a waitress.” It was an educated guess on his part.
Sam nodded. “In one of her many jobs,” she replied. Her mouth curved a little as she recalled, “I got to massage her feet a lot when I was a kid.”
That was what she remembered most about her mother. Sitting on the sofa, watching some program that made her mother laugh—she couldn’t remember the name—and massaging her mother’s aching feet. It was the closest they’d come to having real conversations. Her mother would tell her that she had gifted hands and often her mother would sigh with contentment after the first half hour had passed. It was around that point that her mother would tell her that her massaging had succeeded in making her feel human again.
But obviously Tony made her feel something more than that because it was Tony her mother took off with, leaving only a note in her wake saying that she was eighteen now and old enough to take care of herself. After all, she went on to write, she’d been sixteen herself when she’d had her and they had made a go of it, hadn’t they? Now it was time for her to either go her own way, or follow in her mother’s footsteps, but either way, she had to do it alone.
She had read that note over and over again in disbelief. She read it until her eyes hurt. The words never changed. The message remained the same.
Lost in momentary thought, she didn’t realize that Mike was now watching her expectantly. He’d said something and was waiting for her to answer.
Did she pretend to think it over and try to wing it, or did she admit to being preoccupied and ask him to repeat what he’d said?
<
br /> She wound up having to do neither because he repeated himself without being prompted.
“Well? Are you going to sit down at the counter, or are you waiting for a personal, engraved invitation?” Mike asked.
She realized that she was still standing beside the stool. “I guess I’ll sit.” She smiled with a little amusement as she glanced at him. “The other way might be too long a wait.”
“So you can answer back,” Miss Joan noted as she moved to their end of the counter, the ever-present pot of coffee in her hand, ready for her to pour at a moment’s notice. “Good for you, girl. Now you’ve just got to work on your sarcasm.”
“She’s doing just fine, Miss Joan,” Mike assured her. “She doesn’t need any more encouragement, especially not from an expert like you.”
Miss Joan snorted, filling up first her cup, then his before retiring the pot to its rightful place in front of the urn.
“Flattery’s not going to get you anywhere, boy,” she told him. “And as for what you just said about her doing just fine, hell, that’s a surefire way to know that she’s not, if you’re praising her for her ‘talent,’” Miss Joan said, her eyes deliberately shifting toward the newest young lady at her counter. “But you look none the worse for wear, sugar, so I guess you’re either holding your own—or Miguel and the boys’re not picking on you much.” Miss Joan closed one eye slightly as she fixed her with a penetrating look. “Which is it?”
“Miguel and Ray have been nothing but gentlemen,” she told Miss Joan.
“A gentleman?” Mike hooted. “Did you see the way Ray looks at you? Like you’re a double-decker sandwich and he hasn’t eaten in a week.”
Both women chose to ignore what Mike was saying at this point. “And him?” Miss Joan asked, nodding at Mike.
Sam trod lightly, not wanting Mike to get the wrong impression and think that she was either giving him a pass or worse, had feelings for him. She wanted him to think that things were just casual between them and that being with him didn’t instantly weaken her kneecaps.
“He’s what we call a work in progress,” Sam finally said.
The response apparently really tickled Miss Joan and she had no qualms about owning up to it by laughing.
Mike looked less than pleased at the woman’s reaction.
Chapter Thirteen
“Okay, what’s next?” Sam asked when she and Mike finally walked out of the diner.
In his estimation, what had begun as a quick pit stop had turned into one long “getting-reacquainted-stop” instead that had eaten away an hour rather than the ten to fifteen minutes he’d initially assumed it would take. He had discovered, much to his embarrassment, that he’d underestimated how far Miss Joan was inclined to delve when she asked questions in an effort to get to know Sam “better.”
While this took the pressure away from him when it came to having to make conversation, it also severely impeded his timetable.
Mike got into the truck before he bit off an answer to her question. “Need to stop at the feed store to get some feed—”
“Novel concept,” she commented brightly. “Feed at a feed store.”
He shot her a dark look as he started up the truck. “And then the emporium.”
“What are we getting there?” Sam asked.
The question was no sooner out of her mouth than she realized how presumptive that sounded. They weren’t getting anything except in the absolute definition of the word since they were both going to the emporium together, But Mike was shopping according to his father’s list and anything he bought was meant for his family and didn’t involve her. She was just incidental in the process, being along for the ride, nothing more.
“I mean what are you getting there?” she corrected herself.
The abrupt rephrasing wasn’t lost on him. Was that her way of saying she was trying to distance herself from him as well as his family? Telling himself that was a good thing, something he wanted, somehow just didn’t seem to quell the odd restlessness he felt now and had been feeling for the better part of the past month.
Mike forced himself to focus on the bare bones of her question and nothing more as he drove away from Miss Joan’s diner to the next stop on his list.
“Dad asked me to buy the turkey for next week and bring it as well as a few other things home,” he told her. As he said it, he decided that maybe the emporium should be his next stop rather than the feed store. He had a lot more to buy at the former.
Sam looked at him in surprise. “You’re buying a turkey?” she questioned.
“Have to,” he told her dryly. “The sheriff frowns on stealing it and besides, I’m not exactly wearing the right kind of jacket to get away with smuggling it out of the store.”
Sam shook her head. “No, I mean you’re buying it instead of shooting it?”
“Don’t have to,” he told her, turning down the next street. “It’s already dead.”
She rolled her eyes. “What I meant was that I was afraid you were going to hunt your own turkey and bring it down.”
Well, at least there they were in agreement, he thought. “I don’t like killing things,” he told Sam simply.
Sam frowned. “But didn’t you say you went hunting?”
“Yeah, that’s because I do once in a while.” And then it dawned on him. Mike saw her problem. A hint of a smile curved his lips as he cleared up the misunderstanding. “Hunting doesn’t mean killing.”
“What does it mean?” she asked Mike uncertainly.
“Hunting,” he answered. Then, because Sam still looked as confused as she had a minute ago, he elaborated. “I like the challenge of hunting something, of tracking it down. Animals are cunning in their own unique way,” he said with respect. “I like pitting myself against them. That doesn’t mean I like killing them. I don’t have to kill some living creature to be the ‘winner’ or prove something. I don’t like killing,” he told her flatly again.
Mike made the statement with such feeling, she looked up at him. “You sound as if you’ve done it.”
There was no point in denying it. He’d done it and it hadn’t increased his love of the kill. On the contrary, it had made him even more against it. “I did.”
“What did you kill?” she pressed, instinctively aware that if she didn’t press him, Mike wasn’t going to say another word on the subject.
“A mountain lion,” he finally said. “I had to. It was coming right at me and at that point, he left me no choice. I couldn’t outrun him. It was either the mountain lion, or me.”
“I’m glad you picked you.” The words tumbled out of Sam’s mouth before she had a chance to think it through.
Her remark, uttered spontaneously, surprised him. Mike spared her a look. “Mind if I ask why?”
Sam fell back on the family dynamics as an excuse for saying what she had. “I think losing you would have broken your father’s heart.”
Mike shrugged off the suggestion. It wasn’t as if he was his father’s only child, or even his only son. “He’s got spares.”
Her eyes widened as she regarded his rigid profile.
“I’ve met all of you. You’re definitely not interchangeable,” Sam assured him. Because he didn’t like to seek animals out and kill them, she cut him a little slack regarding the philosophy he’d just spouted. “And your dad loves each one of you—that means you, too. It’s not like taking one toy boat out of a bathtub filled with them. The water doesn’t rush in to fill the void, causing the other boats to move in closer. Life’s not like that—nor should it be,” she informed him with feeling.
Mike laughed shortly. “Easy to see you make your living with words.”
“Just part of my living,” she corrected. “The rest I make by observing people—closely,” she emphasized.
Sam had a hunch
that she wasn’t going to convince this man of anything today. For now, he’d made up his mind and getting him to see things her way was like trying to turn a cast-iron stove around using one hand—it just wasn’t possible.
“So, how big a turkey are you looking to get?” she asked him breezily.
He didn’t have to look at the list in his breast pocket to remember his father’s specifications. “Seeing as how it’ll be feeding sixteen people or so, I’d say I’m looking for the biggest one they’ve got. Maybe in the neighborhood of thirty-two pounds,” he estimated. Even Alma ate like she’d been starved for a week when it came to the turkey and stuffing at Thanksgiving. And this year, his sister would be eating for two. He might have to get her a turkey of her own, he mused.
“What if you don’t find one that big?”
That was simple enough. “Then I bring home two,” he told her. “The freezer we have in the storeroom is big enough to hold a full-sized man—it sure as hell can hold a couple of Thanksgiving turkeys for a week,” he assured her.
“And you really don’t bag your own?” she asked, watching his face closely.
“You looking for me to bring back a signed sworn statement from a turkey that I never took a shot at it?” he deadpanned, aware, even though he wasn’t looking at her, that she was studying him very carefully. Sam was watching him so hard, he was surprised her eyes weren’t leaving marks on his skin.
“No, it just seemed like something you’d do around here,” she explained.
“Maybe someone else does it,” he granted, “but not me. Besides, you ever have to clean a bird?” he asked her out of the blue. “I mean really clean a bird?” Sam moved her head from side to side in response to his question. The very thought made her consider giving up meat—at least for a moment. “Those feathers don’t just fall off in surrender once the bird’s drawn his last breath. They go right on clinging to that miserable skin until you pluck them out—one by one. Trust me, that amounts to a hell of a lot of plucking. It’s not exactly something I’d like to spend my time doing.”
A Small Town Thanksgiving Page 13
