“Got a pen?” he snapped, flipping on the interior lights so he could see what he was putting his John Hancock to. He wasn’t about to sign off on his half of Whisper Creek until he’d done a lot more thinking, considered his options from every angle.
It was just the way he did things. The kind of man he was.
Maggie handed him a fancy ballpoint pen and the wad of papers. He scanned them, signed in several places and handed back the documents.
Maggie looked at them, then back up at him. “What about Hutch’s offer? Aren’t you even going to look at it?”
That particular packet of papers was still in his hand. “I’ll look at it, all right,” Slade said tautly. “Later.”
Maggie stepped right up onto the running board and peered past Slade to Callie. “Will you talk some sense into this lunkhead?” she asked her old friend. “There’s a lot at stake here.”
“It’s Slade’s decision, Maggie,” Callie replied easily. “And he’s perfectly capable of making it on his own. In fact, I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
“But—”
Slade cleared his throat. The last of the other vehicles was pulling away, leaving the street quiet and dark. He could even hear the grasshoppers rubbing their hind legs together. “Do me a favor, Maggie,” he said gruffly. “Will you, please?”
“Sure,” Maggie said, getting down off the running board with considerable grace, for someone in the kind of shoes she generally wore. “What?”
“Tell Hutch to back off,” Slade answered. He was direct but not rude, because he liked Maggie, knew she was just doing her job. “The more pressure he puts on me to sell out, the less likely I am to do it.”
Maggie sighed. “Get back to me whenever you’re ready,” she said with a little nod of glum acquiescence.
With that, she walked away.
Slade watched in the side mirror until he saw that Maggie was safely back inside her car.
“You’re pretty testy,” Callie told him, “for somebody who’s set for life, financially, at least.”
Maggie zipped past, and then Slade pulled the truck away from the curb. He’d drop his mother off at her place and then get back to the duplex, where he’d left Jasper amid piles of boxes and other detritus of moving.
Tomorrow afternoon sometime, Shea would arrive. She’d be staying at the Best Western hotel with Layne for a few days—long enough, he hoped, for him to get the rented place ready to live in. He needed to buy some real furniture, and some groceries, and some decent towels, among other things.
“I have a lot on my mind,” he said.
“Yes,” Callie said. He’d told her, of course, about Shea’s impending visit and that Layne would be coming with her, so he figured she was referring to that. She surprised him, though, as she so often did. “I saw you dancing with Joslyn Kirk.”
He sighed and shoved a hand through his hair. Before getting into the truck, he’d tossed his hat into the backseat. He wasn’t usually careless with his hat.
He felt hurried, prodded. And he hated that. “It was just that, Mom,” he said. “A dance.”
Mischief chimed in Callie’s voice. “Did I say it was anything more?” she countered. Then, holding out a hand, “Let me have a look at those papers.”
He handed them to her without looking away from the road.
The interior light had gone off by then, but there was still enough of a glow from the moon and the streetlamps to read by. She flipped a few pages, then let out a long, slow whistle of exclamation.
“Hutch really wants to own every square inch of Whisper Creek Ranch,” she said.
“Ya think?” Slade asked. He wasn’t proud of his tone of voice, but it was too late now. He’d already cut loose with it.
“Slade.” That was all Callie said, just his name. But the word was rife with meaning. You’re not fooling me, it said. There’s a lot more going on here than you’re willing to admit to.
He didn’t offer a reply, and they traveled in silence all the way to the Curly-Burly. There, he got out of the truck, walked around to Callie’s side and opened her door.
No matter how anxious he was to get out of there, he couldn’t leave until he knew she was inside with the lights turned on and everything okay.
So Slade walked with his mom to the door of the add-on, waited while she unlocked it, juggling her purse from one arm to the other in the process. He reached in around her to flip the switch, and the lamps came on, glowing.
“Come in for a minute?” Callie said softly. She was obviously expecting a refusal.
“Sure,” he said, suppressing another sigh. “I can’t stay long, though. I have to get home and let Jasper out before he disgraces himself.”
Callie smiled at that and Slade closed the door.
She tossed her purse onto the narrow table nearby and kicked off her party boots, leaving them as they landed, at odd angles to each other.
“How about some coffee?” she asked.
“Thanks,” Slade replied, staying where he was, taking in that familiar homey room. The furniture was serviceable, if a mite shabby, and he wondered if the carpet, threadbare but invariably clean, still felt soft under bare feet, the way it had when he was a boy. “But I’d like to get some sleep tonight, so I’ll pass.”
“Decaf, then?” she persisted. Callie Barlow hadn’t gotten as far as she had by giving up easily.
“You have some,” he said, following her into the kitchenette, which was only slightly larger than the one he had over at the duplex. “I’ll sit with you for a few minutes.”
Callie looked back at him over one shoulder of her fringed cowgirl shirt and smiled. “Good,” she said. “I always get a little wistful after a night of kicking up my heels.”
Again, she’d surprised him.
He took one of the chairs at the table, leaned against the red vinyl back and folded his arms while she puttered around getting out a cup, a spoon, a jar of decaf. “What makes you wistful?” he ventured.
“There’s something about parties,” Callie admitted. “They make me forget, for a while, that I’m going home alone.”
Slade felt a pang at that, did his level best to hide it. Callie had her pride, after all, and if she thought he was feeling sorry for her, she’d be hurt. “You don’t have to be alone,” he pointed out quietly. “Even in this one-horse town, there are plenty of men who’d like to put a gold ring on your finger.”
“Or through my nose,” Callie responded archly. Then she giggled. “I could get married again.” She paused thoughtfully. “If I wanted to settle.”
“Did you love John Carmody?” Slade asked after they’d both been quiet for a few moments, given to their separate introspections. He hadn’t planned to put that particular question to her, but there it was, hanging between them.
She paused in the act of setting her coffee cup in the microwave, looked back at him. “Of course I did,” she finally answered in a smaller voice than usual. “I had his baby, didn’t I?”
Slade squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. There was a peculiar burning sensation behind them. “Love and babies don’t necessarily go together,” he said hoarsely. “Not then and not now.”
Callie came to sit across from him, forgetting all about her instant coffee in the microwave. “I loved John, all right,” she said very quietly. “And I believe he loved me, too.”
Slade gave a mirthless little snort, meant to pass as laughter. “He had a hell of a way of showing it,” he scoffed, but gently, because Callie had been over enough rough roads in her life, and he didn’t want to add to her sorrows.
A look of reminiscence settled in Callie’s eyes, and she smiled softly, distantly. “You don’t understand,” she said. “And who can blame you?”
The bell on the microwave rang, and Callie was on her feet in an instant, back in the present and evidently desperate for decaf.
“I’m sorry,” Slade said, and he meant it. “For bringing him up, I mean.”
“You’re thi
nking about your father,” Callie said reasonably, as she returned to her chair with her coffee steaming between her hands, “because you’ve always believed he didn’t care about you, and now, all of a sudden, he’s left you a lot of money and half of Whisper Creek Ranch. It’s natural to feel some confusion—and some other things, too.”
She was getting at something, but he wasn’t sure what.
So he waited, knowing she’d work her way around to the point in her own good time. He might as well just stay put until she did.
“Do you really want to work Whisper Creek Ranch,” she began when she was ready, “or are you just making things tough for Hutch because he’s the legitimate son, the one John favored?”
Slade unclamped his back molars and rotated his lower jaw a couple of times to loosen it up. “I don’t know,” he said, because it was his curse to be honest, even when it would have been easier—even better—to lie.
“Don’t you think you’d better figure it out?” Callie prompted.
It reminded him of old times, the two of them sitting there at that table late at night, talking things through. Discussing everything from after-school jobs to girls. “Give me a little time, Mom,” he said. “It’s only been a few days since I found out the old man had a generous side.”
Callie looked disappointed. “It’s wrong to hate your father, Slade,” she said.
Slade leaned forward slightly in his chair and narrowed his eyes. “I don’t hate John Carmody,” he replied. “I’d have to care about him to do that.”
“After all this time, you’re still bitter,” Callie replied, and moisture gleamed in her eyes.
“Yep,” he agreed. “You could say that.”
“I tried so hard to be both mother and father to you,” Callie told him, blinking back the tears. “But I should have known—no matter how much I loved you, you still needed a dad.”
He reached across the table, took her hand briefly and gave it a light squeeze. “Plenty of people grow up without one parent or the other,” he said. “I turned out fine, and as a mom, you went above and beyond the call of duty. Anyhow, it’s no use wishing things had been different.”
“Suppose we change the subject?” Callie suggested, with weary brightness. “Are you excited about Shea coming to spend the summer?”
“I’m happy about it,” Slade said, grateful to his mom for turning the conversation in another direction. “But I’ll admit, I’m a little worried, too. What do I know about teenagers? Especially the female kind?”
Callie smiled. “You know plenty about teenagers,” she said. “Just last month, you talked three of them down off the water tower before they could fall and break their fool necks.”
“It’s a rite of passage, climbing the water tower,” he said. “I did it, and so did almost everybody I grew up with.”
“What did you say to them, Slade?” Callie pressed, though she already knew. The incident had been a big deal at the time; half the town had gathered, holding their collective breath, to watch the drama unfold.
Drama was fairly rare in Parable, thank God, so when the opportunity arose, people got right on it.
“I said they wouldn’t be in any trouble if they came down the ladder, slow and careful, but if I had to climb up there and get them, one by one, there would be hell to pay when I got them back to my office.”
“See? You knew just how to handle them.”
“My heart was in my throat the whole time,” Slade admitted. “I might have looked and sounded calm, but I was scared as hell. Fifty feet is a long way to fall.”
“Sure you were scared,” Callie affirmed. “We all were—especially their parents. The important thing is, you didn’t let it show. You gave those kids an out, a choice, and they took it. That was smart, Slade.” She paused, swallowed, and her eyes widened a little. “You really climbed that water tower when you were young? Even after I told you not to at least a thousand times?”
Slade grinned. “I had to,” he said. “Hutch Carmody dared me.”
Callie threw out her hands in mock disgust. “Well, then,” she said, “of course you had to do it!”
“I dared him back,” Slade recalled. “And the damnedest thing happened when we got up there.”
“What?” Callie asked after a moment.
“I never knew Hutch to be afraid of anything, but it turns out that he doesn’t like heights. He froze up there—it was just the two of us—and I had to call him a two-bit, yellow-bellied coward to get him to come down.”
Callie’s eyes went even wider still. “And he never forgave you for calling him a two-bit, yellow-bellied coward?”
“He never forgave me for knowing he was scared,” Slade clarified. “It was bad enough that he froze. To have me be the one to be there and see it was adding insult to injury. Once we got to the ground, we had a hell of a fight.”
“Why did he go up there in the first place if he was afraid?” Callie asked. She was looking for logic in a situation that had been awash in teenage testosterone, not reason.
“Because I dared him,” Slade said simply.
“Slade Barlow,” Callie scolded with a wave of one hand. “You could have gotten both of you killed.”
“Didn’t happen,” Slade pointed out. He straightened. “Now, is this conversation over yet? Because if it is, I’d like to go home and let my dog out for a few minutes, take a shower and fall face-first into bed.”
Callie smiled. “Bring Shea by to see me?” she asked. Slade was on his feet by then, so she stood up, too. “After Layne leaves, I mean?”
Slade pretended to be shocked, even horrified. “You don’t want to see Layne?”
“Hell, no,” Callie said, punching him lightly in the chest.
He laughed and kissed her forehead. “Good night, cowgirl,” he said.
She smiled up at him. “Get out of here,” she replied. “It’s late and I’m tired of looking at you.”
Slade laughed again and took his leave.
When he got home, Jasper was waiting eagerly beside the sliding doors, with his muzzle pressed into the crack.
Slade opened the way, and the dog shot out into the yard.
“Don’t go over the wall,” Slade warned him. He didn’t want to deal with Joslyn Kirk—unless you counted sleeping with her.
He’d like to do that, all right.
Jasper behaved himself, though. Did his business and trotted back into the kitchen, tags jingling.
Slade refilled the dog’s water bowl and gave him a little extra kibble, just for the heck of it.
“We’re getting company tomorrow,” Slade said, looking around at the boxes that contained all his worldly goods.
Except, of course, for the millions that would be transferred into his bank account Monday morning, and half of one of the finest ranches in the state of Montana.
He shook his head. Unreal, he thought. I’m just the sheriff of a pissant county, and I don’t have a clue how to run a place like Whisper Creek.
“But half of that ranch is mine,” he said, right out loud.
And that was as good as having half a father. How pitiful was that?
He locked up, checked his landline voice mail for messages—there weren’t any—and meandered into his bedroom.
He tried to picture Joslyn in that room, in her sandals and her sundress and her damnable attitude. But he couldn’t. Any way he looked at it, she wasn’t the air-mattress type. If—when, for he knew it was certain to happen, for good or ill—he made love to Joslyn Kirk, it would be on clean, scented sheets, in a room with real furniture and a breeze blowing in through an open window. There might even be flowers around. Maybe some candlelight and soft music.
Hell, a man could dream, couldn’t he?
* * *
JOSLYN SLEPT IN LATE on Sunday morning; awakened to the sound of church bells pealing all over town and the weight of a cat standing on her chest.
“Meow,” Lucy-Maude said, and her meaning was clear. It’s about time you woke up,
you lazy human. I’m starving here.
Joslyn laughed and stroked the cat’s fuzzy head. The bells kept ringing, the separate sounds tumbling over each other in chaotic jubilation. The digital clock on her bedside table clicked over to eleven.
Lucy-Maude leaped off her chest and onto the floor, tail switching impatiently from side to side. A vivid image of a dish filled with kitty kibble sprang full-blown into Joslyn’s mind, and she laughed again.
“Message received,” she told the critter. “But could you give me a second? I’m still half-asleep.”
A few minutes later, they convened in the kitchen, woman and cat, and Joslyn dished up the kibble before she even started the coffee brewing.
While Lucy-Maude was busy forestalling the threat of famine, Joslyn opened the back door, breathing in the fresh morning air. The sun was shining, the sky was blue, and the flowers were a feast to her soul. She took a while to absorb all that brilliant color, the blues and reds, yellows and golds, pinks and purples.
Except for the Chinese lanterns hanging dark and damp from the branches of the maple trees and a flat place in the grass where the dance floor had been, all evidence of the barbecue and subsequent festivities had vanished.
Lucy-Maude finished the kibble, moved to the threshold and began grooming herself in the warmth of the morning sunlight.
Some moments, Joslyn thought, were just plain perfect.
When the coffee was ready, she poured a cup and walked out into the backyard in her cotton pajama bottoms and long T-shirt, taking a seat in a nearby lawn chair. Lucy-Maude approached and wound herself around Joslyn’s ankles a few times, then rolled in the grass, as happy as a kitten.
The screen door on Kendra’s sunporch creaked open, and Kendra came through it, wearing cutoff jeans and a tank top but no shoes. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail that made her look about fourteen years old.
“Is there any more of that coffee?” she called.
“Help yourself,” Joslyn responded, smiling.
Kendra passed her, looking wan, entered Joslyn’s kitchen and came out with a cup of steaming coffee in her hand. Joslyn had brought over a second lawn chair during the interim, and Kendra sagged into it. Her toenails were painted a bright shade of coral. “I drank too much wine last night,” she confessed.
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