Crossing Nevada

by Jeannie Watt

  Darcy considered then said, “Pretty much.”

  “I don’t want to sew that much.”

  “Suit yourself,” the girl said lightly, as if she hadn’t just poured her heart into negotiations. She picked up her tote bag and inside Tess could see purple and orange fabric stitched together in an intricate pattern. A twelve-year-old could do that and she couldn’t sew more than a dozen seams without breaking a needle.

  Darcy headed to the door, the dogs trailing after her. They sat as she opened it. “By the way,” she said, standing with the doorknob in one hand, “my sisters and I don’t need to take the creek path to school...but my dad really does need that pasture.”

  The last words were uttered with surprising intensity before Darcy slipped out the door and shut it behind her without waiting for Tess’s response. As if she had one.

  Well, crap.

  Tess watched Darcy for a moment out the front window, then crossed the room to sink down in her recliner, letting out a long, slow breath as she let her head fall back to stare up at the ceiling.

  Paths and pastures and one persistent kid.

  There were many, many reasons not to get involved with this family, but the truth was that for the few minutes Darcy had been there, Tess had felt almost human again. And now that the girl was gone, the house felt empty. Lonely.

  Because she was lonely.

  * * *

  “YOU WHAT?” ZACH pulled his head out from under the hood of the truck where he’d been refilling the power steering fluid.

  Darcy folded her arms over her middle as she walked around Benny, who was sleeping next to the truck. “I went to ask Tess, or Ms. O’Neil, or whatever you want me to call her, if she’d seen Misty and then she needed some help sewing, so I helped her. I told her that I would tell you that I’d been there.” Darcy shoved her hands into the back pockets of her jeans. “She kind of insisted.”

  Great. “You know I had reason for asking you not to go over there.”

  “I thought that was all about the trespassing,” Darcy said. “But I wasn’t trespassing. I was on my way to quilt club and I wanted to make sure that Misty hadn’t shown up there and Tess—Ms. O’Neil—hadn’t thought she was a stray and adopted her. Remember how that happened to Jessica McKirk’s cat when those new people moved across the field from them?”

  “No, I wasn’t aware of Jessica’s cat problem,” Zach said. “But I do remember telling you to keep off her property.”

  “It’s Misty, Dad, and Em cries at night sometimes. I had to make sure.”

  “Don’t do it again,” he said.

  “Well,” Darcy said slowly, “I kind of want to go back and help her learn to sew. If she’ll let me. I don’t know if she will.”

  Zach set the empty power steering fluid bottle on the work bench, frowning as he faced his daughter. “Why do you want to help her sew?”

  Darcy gave a quick shrug. “She needs the help and since she ticked off the quilting club, she isn’t going to get any help from them.”

  “Maybe she should buy a book.”

  “You can’t learn to sew from a book, Dad,” she said impatiently. “Besides, if I help her, then we can use the creek path again.”

  Now he was getting to the bottom of things. “Whose idea was that?” he asked, even though he was fairly certain of the answer. Darcy was the negotiator of the family.

  “My idea, Dad, even though she said no this time, I think she’ll say yes next time. She was wavering. But she wants a note from you if I go back to her place. Saying you know where I am and it’s all right.”

  “I don’t want you bugging her,” Zach said as he dropped the hood and it shut with a bang that echoed through the barn. “Do you have homework?”

  “Yeah,” Darcy said, obviously sensing it was time to drop the matter—for now, “but I want to wait for Beth Ann. I need some help with my math.”

  “Why don’t I help you?”

  “Beth Ann knows how Ms. Bishop wants it done.”

  “Glad to know I’m useless,” Zach said musingly as he tossed the plastic bottle into the trash and then wiped his hands.

  Darcy laughed. “Good old useless Dad. We just keep you around because you’re good company.” She patted his arm consolingly just as Benny jumped to his feet. They turned in unison to see a woman walking down the driveway, hands shoved deeply into her pockets.

  Tess had come to visit.

  CHAPTER NINE

  ZACH AND DARCY stood side by side in front of the barn as Tess walked toward them. The collie scampered up to welcome her, but neither Zach nor Darcy moved. In fact, Darcy appeared alarmed to see her.

  “Hi.” Tess shoved her hands deeper into her coat pockets. She wore the blue cloche hat and her sunglasses—the armor she needed to get through this mission. “I came to talk about the pasture.”

  Zach shot a quick look at his daughter, who carefully kept her profile to him, and then, when he looked back at Tess, he asked simply, “Why?”

  Why?

  “Because...” Tess’s voice faltered as Darcy caught her eye and gave an almost indiscernible shake of her head. “I’ve rethought the matter.”

  Zach’s mouth twisted sideways as if he were giving the matter careful consideration, which was not the reaction Tess expected when she’d come here to make her offer. Darcy tried to catch her attention again, but Tess ignored her.

  “Do you want the pasture?” she asked Zach. She’d spent almost an hour mentally gearing up for this trip after making her decision and now this guy was screwing with her?

  Zach looked down at Darcy and gestured toward the house with a jerk of his head. Darcy sighed deeply and then headed across the driveway, but not before giving Tess one more quick warning glance over her shoulder. When she was almost to the front door Zach turned back to Tess, who didn’t think it was possible to shove her hands any deeper into her pockets, but she tried anyway.

  “I’d really like to know what made you change your mind,” he said.

  “Does it matter?”

  “Yeah. It does.”

  Her shoulders stiffened. If he was going to make this difficult, then he could just go to hell. She’d thought she’d come here to do a good thing and in return she was getting grilled. What about “we’re a decent bunch,” as he’d told her in the field?

  “Never mind,” she said. “Sorry to bother you.”

  She turned on her heel and started stalking down the driveway, totally pissed off.

  “I want the pasture.”

  The words barely slowed her down.

  “The offer is rescinded,” she said without looking back.

  “Wait.” She heard the sound of his boots on gravel and felt the urge to run, but instead forced herself to stop and turn back.

  He continued toward her, stopping a few feet away, somehow knowing the point where she would start backing up if he got any closer. Damn, those eyes.

  “Look,” he said, hooking a thumb in his front pocket as one corner of his mouth tightened briefly, “Darcy didn’t happen to say anything when she was at your place today, did she?”

  It wasn’t hard to read the self-consciousness of his stance, or to figure that he would not appreciate his kid being so blunt about his economic situation. She knew about being in economic straits—knew more about it than she cared to—and how embarrassing it could be. But she couldn’t flat-out lie to him, so she sidestepped the question.

  “It finally occurred
to me, after Darcy’s visit, that you probably wouldn’t have asked to rent the pasture if you didn’t need it.” She sounded like she was reciting lines, which was what she got for role-playing the encounter—which had gone nothing like any of her mental scenarios—before she got there. “I really don’t have any reason to keep you from it.”

  Then why did you?

  Tess could easily read the question in the way he raised his dark eyebrows at her. The lines of this guy’s face were incredible. Jonas, her favorite photographer, would have had a heyday with Zach.

  And she needed to get back home.

  Tess summed up by saying, “Look...you can have the pasture if you want it.”

  “Deal’s back on the table?” he asked with such an offhand tone that she almost missed the relief in his eyes.

  “It is,” she said, keeping her tone formal, businesslike, not wanting to be drawn to this man—physically or otherwise—especially now that she knew he wasn’t married. “And I need to get home. I left the dogs in the house.” So much for not lying.

  “Do you want to have someone draw up a contract for us or go with the standard contract I used with Jim?”

  “I’m good with a handshake deal,” she said. The fewer people involved the better.

  Zach shook his head. “I’ll jot down a few terms and we can go over them together. Just to make sure we’re on the same page.”

  “That makes sense,” Tess agreed, already taking a few slow backward steps toward home.

  “I’ll stop by when I get it written up. Tomorrow probably.”

  “Fine.” Tess turned and started back down the driveway, feeling an overwhelming need to return to the safety of her house.

  “Tess?” She glanced over her shoulder. He hadn’t moved, but he was smiling. A little. “Thanks.”

  “No problem,” she called as she started to walk. “See you later.”

  But still probably sooner than she was comfortable with.

  * * *

  ZACH COULDN’T BELIEVE he’d almost lost the pasture out of sheer pride and stubbornness. But the thought of Darcy negotiating a deal with Tess bothered him.

  “So what happened?” Darcy asked a little too innocently as soon as he walked in the door.

  “You heard most of what there was to hear.”

  “Then why’d you send me back inside?”

  “In case there was more,” Zach said as he headed for his office, where he had a copy of the contract he and Anderson had used on the computer. He’d update it, take it to Tess tomorrow. If all went well, he’d have some of his cattle on pasture by the weekend.

  “What more could there have been?” Darcy asked from the doorway.

  “I wonder?” Zach asked, giving his daughter a long look that had telltale color rising in her cheeks. If Darcy had brokered a deal on his behalf, did he really want to know?

  Not especially, but he also didn’t want her to do it again.

  “Look, Darcy, I don’t know exactly what went on with you and Ms. O’Neil, but in the future, don’t make any deals with anyone without involving me.”

  “I didn’t exactly make a deal. I just mentioned that we’d always used the pasture.”

  “And that’s all.”

  “And that economically we were better off with the pasture than without.”

  Zach opened his mouth to tell Darcy that he didn’t want her discussing their finances with anyone, but the wounded look on her face stopped him. She’d been trying to help.

  He was damned embarrassed at how broke he was, had thought he’d done a pretty good job of hiding it from the girls, but Darcy was old enough to understand the reality of the situation. To see the medical bills still rolling in. Plus she had excellent hearing and had probably heard him discuss matters with various people over the phone. He let out a long breath and pulled her into a quick hug. “You aren’t the ranch manager yet. Please include me in your plans.”

  He could feel Darcy smile against his sleeve. “All right.”

  “Beth Ann isn’t home yet?”

  Darcy stepped back out of his embrace and smiled up at him. “Nope. Must have gotten hung up in town.”

  “Better start your math.”

  “Already on it,” Darcy said as she started toward the door. Before she disappeared into the hall he saw her blow out a quick breath of relief. He felt like doing the same.

  No, he didn’t like the way he’d gotten the pasture, didn’t like Tess knowing his circumstances, but in spite of that, he kind of felt like smiling. He had his pasture back.

  * * *

  WAS THERE NO end to this black crud that showed up in Tess’s house, her yard, on her dogs, her shoes, everywhere?

  Probably not as long as there was a huge source on the other side of her inadequately propped-up cedar fence.

  Tess pulled a lawn rake through the grass in her backyard, trying to collect the windblown cinders and ash into a pile before she shoveled them into a garbage bag. The only reason she had a rake was that it had been leaning against the side of the house when the barn had burned. The shovel was the folding emergency kind from her car trunk. Realistically there was no way she was going to be able to keep cleaning up this never-ending lawn mess with a rake and an emergency shovel—although at the moment it was a better use of her time than trying to figure out that Very Easy sewing pattern.

  Very easy her ass. It seemed that one either needed an engineering degree or deep familiarity with garment construction to understand those very easy directions. But she wasn’t giving up. She wanted to make a dress. And then another. Fill her hours.

  When she was finally done raking and stuffing, Tess wiped the hair off her forehead with the back of her hand and regarded the sad remains of the barn, wondering what she was going to do. Was she destined to months and months of the dogs tracking greasy, black stuff into the house? Would grass ever grow over the blackened material? She didn’t see how.

  The dogs, who’d been sleeping on the small back porch while Tess worked off her sewing frustrations, perked up at the sound of an engine then sprang into action. Cautiously Tess propped the rake against the porch and went where she could see the county road.

  Zach. On an all-terrain vehicle. The engine noise grew louder as he crossed the road and started up her driveway.

  “House!” she shouted, calling the dogs back and then opening the back door to put them inside. They were not yet aware that they could knock the propped-up parts of the fence down if they so desired, and she didn’t want them to figure it out.

  Once the dogs were inside, she walked around the house to the front yard, where she waited near the gate, trying to ignore the fact that her heart beat faster and for once it wasn’t because of fear. Well, not the kind of fear she’d been dealing with for the past few months.

  So what was she going to get paid for renting her pasture? She had no idea if it was five dollars or five hundred, monthly or yearly. She was going to lease the pasture to Zach regardless—mainly because she believed Darcy—the family needed the pasture for economic reasons. Kids didn’t make up stuff like that; they parroted what their parents said. Also, she sensed that a guy like Zach was going to be fair...or did she just want to believe that because she found him so very attractive?

  Tess shook off the thought as Zach pulled to a stop and she realized that since it was cloudy outside she didn’t have sunglasses, a hat or a door between herself and Zach this time. How ugly was she?

  Apparently not too ugl
y, because Zach didn’t recoil or anything. Instead he said, “No glasses.” But when his gaze traveled over her face, he didn’t look as if he was put off or that he was trying to place her, the two things that sent her into defensive mode.

  “I left them in the house,” she said as casually as possible.

  He held up the papers again. “This is the standard contract I used with Jim Anderson,” he said. “It’s year to year and everything is spelled out very plainly. You still might want to have your lawyer take a look.”

  She nodded as if that was a good idea, but she had every intention of simply reading it over and signing it, unless it had something that appeared suspicious. Right now, though, looking directly into Zach Nolan’s blue eyes, she didn’t think there’d be anything shady in this contract. The guy seemed like too much of a straight shooter. There’d been times in the past when Tess had been wrong about people, but for the most part, she was excellent at reading them. It’d been a survival skill honed by years of practice while living first with her mother and Eddie and Jared and all their whacked-out acquaintances, and then at the halfway house after she’d run away.

  “It needs a notary,” she said after a brief glance at the signature page.

  “Irv’s wife, Mary, at the café, is a notary, and so is Ann McKirk.”

  “How handy.” Tess creased the contract back into thirds with quick movements of her fingers. She couldn’t wait to go see Ann again.

  Zach smiled a little, making her wonder if he knew what she was thinking. “I’m going to check the fence line,” he said, tilting his ball cap back a bit to see her better. His eyes didn’t settle on her scars and hold, but he didn’t avoid looking at them, either. Instead his gaze kind of passed over her face like it was a normal face. Not beautiful, as it’d once been, or ugly, but just...regular. And she liked that.