by Cara Colter
She realized that it was the price she paid for being in control of her world, for wanting everything a certain way all the time.
And she realized, a little sadly, it was far too high a price to pay.
She glanced back at him, riding atop J.D.’s shoulders, and realized she had never seen him quite so happy. He shouted with joy! He glowed with it, his eyes shone, his teeth flashed small and white in the sun. He was covered in mud from his neck to his toes, and his overalls were ruined, and it didn’t matter one little bit.
She danced a taunting circle, and in a burst of speed J.D. caught her. He caught her wrist and spun her around and she slipped and fell to her knees.
“Finally, got you where I want you,” he said, swinging Jed off his shoulders. He put pressure on her shoulder until she was prone in the mud. And then they buried her, molding it around her until she was a sculpture of herself.
Her cheeks hurt from laughing so hard. She screamed with laughter, undignified, immature, giddy.
And when they were done molding her, they allowed her to come out of the mud with a giant slurp, and J.D. lay down.
To Beau’s distress they buried J.D., too.
Oh, how she loved the excuse to touch him, packing mud around the muscles of his arms and broadness of his chest, piling it up on his legs.
“Hang on,” she said, “let’s make his arms a little bigger. Like Popeye, after he has the spinach.”
“Something wrong with my arms the way they are?” J.D. growled.
“Well, yeah,” she said. “They’re, like, scrawny.”
And then she screamed with laughter—undignified, immature and giddy—all over again.
When they were finished, he freed himself from the mud cake with disgusting ease and then they buried Jed.
Last but not least, they tried to get an unwilling Beauford. They chased the dog around the edges of the bog, slipping and sliding and falling and laughing.
And then, when Beau evaded them, they gave up and sat on the edges of the bog and built huge towers of mud, decorating them with handprints and footprints and drawings of stick men. Beau came back and they persuaded him to lend his paws to the designs on the towers of mud.
In all her life, Tally tried to think if she had ever felt this relaxed, this free, this herself. She tried to think if she had ever given herself so totally to the concept of having fun. And she knew she never had.
Fun had been a dangerous thing, something reserved for Elana. And there had always been a price to pay for it.
Casting a sidelong look at where J.D. sat, his eyebrows furrowed as he carved into the side of a mud castle, she knew it was because of him.
Not just because he had forced her to accompany him to this place.
No, it was not so much about the mud bog as about him. She had the feeling that going to the store for a carton of milk was something he could make fun. The truth was he made her heart want to sing. Just being around him made her feel alive and happy and she just didn’t have the strength to fight it anymore.
She didn’t know what the future held. Herbert, presumably. But she could grasp what today held, and feel the fullness of her heart and the laughter in her belly.
And those things inside her, like nourishment, forever.
Finally, exhausted they lay back in the sun on the bank of the mud bog, side by side with Jed and Beau squeezed between them.
Jed was soon fast asleep, his chest rising and falling contentedly. Beauford’s head rested on his tummy.
As the mud dried on her, J.D. reached across and chipped a little piece off her face. “Penny for your thoughts.”
“Inflation,” she said. “I need a buck.”
He fished in jeans that had become too tight now that they were wet and muddy. “Canadian, okay?” he said, handing her the gold coin that was the Canadian dollar.
She inspected it, pretended to bite it and then put it in her pocket. “I was thinking my clothes are ruined,” she said.
“Liar.”
“And that your truck is going to be a real mess.”
“Still lying.”
“Oh, how do you know? And don’t tell me my ears and nose are glowing, because they are covered under several layers of revolting black slime.”
He touched her brow, moved a dirty strand of hair off her forehead. “When you worry you get these little wrinkles up here. You don’t have them right now. For someone covered in several layers of revolting black slime, you look distinctly happy, Tally Smith.”
She sighed. “I hope that’s worth a buck. Because that’s all there is. I’m happy.”
“And you haven’t been happy enough in your life, have you?”
She glanced at him. Who had ever cared about the happiness in her life before? She didn’t lean on people. They leaned on her. She didn’t tell people her problems, they told her theirs. And so she was slightly amazed to find herself telling him about the challenges that had come from being Elana’s sister.
“I always thought,” she finished sadly, “if I let go—if I was silly, or immature—I’d end up like her. Out of control. Crazy. My life blown apart, the messy debris of what used to be scattered from here to kingdom come.”
“There was a certain beauty to her craziness,” he said softly. “Maybe you could keep the best parts and leave the rest.”
“There was a beauty to it, wasn’t there?” she said.
He nodded.
It was his forgiveness of her sister even though she had hurt him, left him without a goodbye, never told him about his son, that made the tears sting behind Tally’s eyes.
“Well, it’s all over now,” she said, trying to fight back the tears.
“How can it be over when you miss her so? When you have her son. Let it out, Tally. Just let those feelings out.”
Feelings were all to be controlled, good ones and bad ones. But the new Tally allowed herself to sniffle. “I miss her so. There was no one quite like Elana when she was in a good mood.”
“I know that,” he said quietly. “I saw her like that. Vital and full of life and enthusiasm. She walked in a room and it was as if the light turned on.”
“Are you sorry you loved her?” Tally asked.
He gazed thoughtfully at the sky, and then looked over at her. He traced the line of her cheek with his finger.
“For the longest time, I was bitter, and very angry. It really hurt me when she left. We didn’t know each other very long, but I just thought she was going to be the one. Because of the way she made me feel—alive and bold and like anything in the whole world was possible.”
For a lovely moment, Tally felt like her sister, at her best, was right there with them. How she would have loved the mud and the laughter they had just shared.
“She didn’t even say goodbye, she just packed up her stuff and disappeared. I guess that was the moment I decided a life of blissful bachelorhood was for me.”
Tally wanted desperately to tell him that he couldn’t remain a bachelor forever. She had watched him with Jed. She could see the gift he had to give to a family of his own.
But if she said that, it felt like it would be encouraging him to marry anyone. And she didn’t want that. Couldn’t bear it. He was going to be part of Jed’s life forever. So, how would she feel when he came visiting with his girlfriend, his wife?
She would feel sick with jealousy, that’s how she would feel. The old Tally would never have allowed herself such a petty emotion.
But the new Tally knew something the old one didn’t.
She went very still.
He said, slowly, “I don’t feel angry at her anymore, Tally. I feel like I’m part of something bigger than myself, a bigger plan. I have a son. I met you. Because of her. For the first time in my whole life, I’m looking around me with the certainty that everything is exactly as it is meant to be.”
His words, his humble awe in the face of the miracle of forgiveness he had found in himself, only underscored the feeling she was harboring
for him, the secret she had just learned about herself.
Her stillness registered on him, and he turned and looked at her quizzically. He whistled low in his throat.
“I’ll pay more than a buck for that one,” he said, softly.
But this thought she wasn’t sharing. It felt like she couldn’t breathe, let alone speak. The terrifying truth had just come to her.
She loved him. She had fallen totally and hopelessly in love with J. D. Turner. When had that happened? How could that have happened?
Tally Smith could not do something as impetuous as fall for a man she had just met. Or the old Tally couldn’t.
The new one realized from the first time she had looked at his picture, she had felt the irresistible pull of him. Some part of her had known he was the man who could save her from herself, and that part had drawn her in search of him.
In search of her own heart.
“Well,” she said, sitting up, and smiling brightly, “it must be time to go.”
“Don’t do that, Tally,” he said in a low voice.
“What?”
“Don’t go back to being her again.”
“Who?”
“You know. That fake you that you hold out to the world because you’re so damned scared that if you cut loose you won’t survive. You’re not your sister. It’s better for Jed if you can be free and natural and yourself.”
Jed. A reminder that her life was going to be linked with this man’s for a long, long time. A long time to live with humiliation if she told him how she felt, and he laughed. No, he wouldn’t laugh. It would be worse than laughter. He’d be gentle and sympathetic. Their relationship would always have this embarrassing complication in it.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Look at the mess.” She chipped some mud off the sleeve of a blouse that would never be white again.
“Please don’t,” he said.
But what choice did she have? Admit the humiliating truth? That she had given up control to fall hopelessly and helplessly in love?
Was there any possibility he could feel the same way? Of course not. He was the charter member of the Dancer, North Dakota, A.G.M.N.W.N.C. And if he ever gave up his membership, it probably wouldn’t be for a girl like her.
He leaned toward her, and cupped his hand behind her head. She knew she should pull away, that she was already in way over her head. She knew that, and yet she greedily wanted every moment he would give her.
He pulled her toward him. Over the top of the sleeping boy and the dog, their lips met.
All the control she had tried so hard all her life to have, evaporated, just like that. Gone. Because she took the fullness of his lips and gently gnawed it between her teeth. She savored the taste of him, she felt her own lips part at the gentle insistence of his tongue.
His tongue explored the contours of her mouth, and then it stroked her earlobes and the hollow of her throat and then it went back to her mouth.
And then her tongue did some exploring of its own. Until they were both panting with want, both of them unleashing that which had been leashed.
Desire.
Passion.
And the scariest thing of all. Hope.
He was losing himself in her. He wanted her more than he had wanted any woman, ever. Her lips were full and sweet, and right underneath the sweetness sizzled something more; more powerful, more frightening, more everything.
Tally Smith, uptight and prim, was a woman beautiful enough to inspire fantasy. But Tally Smith, with her hair down, with her clothing molded to her, with mud streaking her face, with her amazing eyes sparking with mischief, was simply irresistible.
He told himself whoa. But it was like a horse who’d finally been allowed to run after too much time in a stall. The whoa button was not working.
He knew he needed to think about this.
Long. Hard. Carefully. His life was going to be tangled with hers until his son was an adult.
Could they risk a complication like this?
Could they stop it?
It didn’t seem like either of them could stop it. Thankfully, Jed picked that moment to stir sleepily, to look up at them with puzzled eyes, before he closed them again.
J.D. reared back from her, looked at her astonished and disoriented. Every kiss seemed to deepen his desire to kiss her, rather than slake it.
He came face-to-face with his own arrogance. All this time he’d been so certain what a woman should know.
But how could he know what a woman should know? He suddenly wasn’t even certain what a man should know!
He ran a hand through his hair. “You know what? We should get out of these clothes before they’re glued to us.”
And then he blushed. He could feel it moving up his neck like a brick-red tide, and he couldn’t believe it. Under his picture in the old high school annual didn’t it say “Boy least likely to ever blush”?
“I didn’t mean it like that,” he said.
“Like what?” she asked, innocently.
“I just meant we should head over to my place. We’ll shower. I mean not together or anything.” He could feel the blush deepening.
She was smiling at him, a smile that said she already knew every damn thing she needed to. But he didn’t have his list with him. If he consulted his list maybe he could get back on track, remember what the hell came after the lesson on germs and getting dirty.
Both of which she had mastered. She was an “A” student. They could be crossed off the list, no more practice needed. Thank God. Anymore practicing getting dirty with her and there was really no telling what would happen.
He started talking again, way too fast.
“You can throw on some of my clothes and we’ll put our stuff in the washer and barbecue some steaks for dinner or something. We could rent a movie if you wanted.”
It sounded like he was asking her for a date. Well, okay, that’s what he was doing. He was asking her for a date.
He was going to cook her dinner and watch a movie with her. And maybe hold her hand, and maybe kiss her again.
It depended. Maybe once he found his list, he could get back on track, bring this mission back under control, complete it successfully.
Though J. D. Turner was no longer nearly as certain as he once had been what that meant.
Chapter Nine
They arrived at his house, and J.D. ushered them in, taking a surreptitious look on the kitchen table for his list. He frowned. It wasn’t there. Maybe on the counter. He frowned at the counter, too. The list wasn’t there, but the engine was.
“You two have the bathroom first,” he said, gallantly. That would give him a chance to find his list, and get the engine off the counter.
“Have you got something I can wear?”
He looked at her and smiled. Tally looked like she had been carved in mud. Her clothes, black now, were molded to her body. And an exquisite body it was.
The thought of her wearing his clothes chased the thought of the list and the engine right out of his head.
“I’m sure I can find something for you to throw on.” He went into his bedroom, which looked like disaster had struck. A few days of clothes were on the floor, the sheets were a rumpled tangle, and the comforter was on the floor where he left it in the summer because Beau liked to sleep on it.
He momentarily forgot the clothes and started making the bed. Then he drew himself up short. What was he making the bed for? She wasn’t coming in here! He whirled from the bed, aware of little clumps of mud flying off of him every time he moved. Clothes, he reminded himself.
Presumably clean would be better.
He opened his closet, and found her his newest pair of jeans on a hanger. He always hung his jeans up fresh out of the dryer because then they didn’t need to be ironed. The jeans were nearly new and clean and obviously were going to swim on her.
And he was probably going to have to give them to the thrift store after she’d worn them because the thought of her skin bein
g inside the same fabric as his skin was going to create constant problems. Especially since there was the distinct possibility she would not be wearing underwear inside that fabric. Not that he wanted his mind to go there.
But since it had, he should be practical. If he was getting rid of the jeans after, maybe he should give her an older pair. He threw the newer pair on the floor, and picked out an older pair, which was a few threads short in the rear.
Considering the conclusion he had reached about her underwearless state, the threadbare jeans would not do. His whole collection of jeans ended up on the floor, and he finally opted for the new pair.
“Is everything okay?” she called. “It doesn’t have to fit. I’ll just tie up the pants with a string or something.”
“Everything’s fine.” She was going to tie the pants up with a string, like one of those hillbilly girls in Lil’ Abner. The intense heat of that thought made him realize he had to renew his search for the list.
He took a quick look for it while he was searching for something she could tie the pants up with. The list was not on top of his bureau, under his bed or underneath his pillow, and neither was anything to hold up the pants.
“J.D.,” she called, “if you don’t have anything, we can go back to the motel. It will just take a few minutes.”
But he didn’t want her to go back to the motel. Once she was back there, she might come to her senses, or he might come to his. But wasn’t that why he was trying to find the list? So that he could review his goals? Stick with the game plan? Come to his senses? It was not on that list to kiss her until they were both giddy from it, he knew that. But on the other hand, he was committed to a course of not allowing her to become a dried-up prune.
“J.D.?”
“No, no, I have lots of clothes.”
He reminded himself he was being gallant, so he grabbed the new pair of jeans, and his best belt, which would need additional holes punched in it.
Then he opened his bureau and scowled at his T-shirts, sort of hoping the list would materialize among them, and sort of glad when it didn’t. He not only had lots of T-shirts, he had way too many.
For instance, did you give her the T-shirt that said Snow Removal by Chris, and in brackets We Blow Big Time. No, absolutely not. He tossed that one on the floor.
