Swept Away

by Karen Templeton

  Then, like a turbocharged beetle from a fifties sci-fi flick, a metallic green Mitsubishi Eclipse roared past, kicking up a cloud of peach-colored dust and provoking the older boys’ taunts of “Libby’s got a boyfriend, Libby’s got a boyfriend!” Carly caught a glimpse of long dark hair, sucked out of the window along with some remark or other, which turned the taunt into “Oooh, I’m gonna tell!”

  They were close enough to the house by now to have alerted the dogs, who streaked down the road to greet the dusty, noisy little group with blurred tails and sharp barks, one or two dashing back and forth from house to boys to house to boys, as if not trusting the boys to find their own way home. The seen-better-days Eclipse screeched to a stop in the yard; a teenage girl got out, her gaze longingly following the car as it did a three-point turn and zoomed back up the road, past Carly and Lane again. The boy inside spared them a brief, curious glance, just long enough to understand the reason behind the girl’s pining look.

  Then Sam came out onto the porch, and Carly was defenseless against her stomach’s little whoomp at seeing him again, this unassuming, unremarkable farmer who moved with the unconscious ease of a person who has far more pressing things to think about than his own body. Or the crazy woman gawking at him, Carly thought with a sigh as a sharp whistle knifed through the air, bringing all shenanigans to an immediate halt. She couldn’t hear what he said, but five heads swiveled in her and Dad’s direction. When she and her father got closer, the boys all said, “Hello,” with various degrees of interest and enthusiasm as Sam introduced each one in turn. As if she’d remember all their names.

  “And this is Elizabeth, my only girl. But everybody calls her Libby.” He put an arm around the pretty girl’s shoulders and gave her a squeeze. “I told Carly she could bunk with you for a couple of days, since you’ve got an extra bed and all. Didn’t think you’d mind.”

  With a smile, Carly turned to Libby…and nearly lost her breath.

  Never mind that she and Libby Frazier looked nothing alike, not in body type or coloring or stature. And yet, a single glimpse into those warm brown eyes, and Carly felt as though she’d been slammed back more than twenty years…

  …to meet her fifteen-year-old self.

  Somehow, Carly doubted it would be a joyous reunion.

  Chapter 4

  As if they weren’t crowded enough already, jeez.

  Libby stormed around the house and up the back steps, dumping her backpack with a thud on the royal-blue carpet remnant she’d picked out when they moved her in back here. She’d thought the color had been so cool in the store, but now she knew it attracted every piece of dirt and lint in the county, which was a real pain because who the heck had time to vacuum every five minutes?

  She caught sight of what she guessed was Carly’s stuff—an oversize backpack and a bright red duffel bag—and irritation sucked the breath out of her. Where’d Dad get off telling some stranger she could stay in Libby’s room? And for a week? Okay, yeah, so maybe Carly did look kind of cool—certainly not like most of the women around here, that’s for sure—but that was beside the point. It was like everything else these days—Dad simply didn’t get it. Get her.

  Not that she got herself much these days, either. Sometimes she felt as if somebody else had taken over her body, because she kept getting pissed off about stuff that never used to bother her before. Like there was a constant storm going on inside her head, only occasionally interrupted by blue skies and sunshine.

  Libby yanked off her “good” jeans and top and struggled into an old pair of jeans and a sweatshirt, her bedroom doorknob bouncing off the wall as she tromped back out through the mudroom to haul on her boots. It hadn’t rained for a couple of days, but Jasmine, one of the sows, had recently figured out how to push down the float to her water tank to flood the pen, much to the delight of her penmates. Sure enough, when Libby got there, the sow—blissfully stretched out in a mud puddle—grinned up at her.

  “Nobody can accuse you of being a priss, that’s for sure.” The sow grunted contentedly and flopped back into the ooze, and Libby’s bad mood backed off a little.

  Until she saw Dad headed her way.

  She stepped into the feeder pigs’ pen—there were nearly sixty of them, about half of which would be ready for market in a few weeks—and flipped open the top to the automatic feeder to knock down the finely ground grain packed against the sides and in the corners, as a sea of young pigs swarmed around her calves, nosing open the metal lids to the trough to eat.

  “Thought you just did that yesterday?” Dad asked softly over the bang, bang, bang of the feeder lids dropping. He hardly ever yelled, at least not at Libby or her brothers. He didn’t have to.

  “Did I? I don’t remember.” She shut the lid again; her father chuckled.

  “You remembered that, though.”

  Her cheeks warmed. “Honestly, Dad, it was only the one time. And two years ago at that.”

  “Some things,” he said, grinning, “a father doesn’t forget. Like the disgust on your face when you had to clean out all the moldy feed after it rained and rotted it all.”

  “Not an experience I want to repeat, believe me.”

  “I imagine not.”

  Libby dusted off her hands on her jeans, then came back out of the pen, leaving her snorting, snuffling charges behind, eating their butts off. Or on, in this case. She folded her arms and met her father’s calm, but firm, gaze.

  “What?”

  “You know what. You didn’t exactly give our guests a warm welcome.”

  She blew out a sigh, contemplating the cows in the pasture beyond. For a moment, she wished she was one of them. “It’s not like I was rude or anything.”

  “Exactly.”

  She looked back at her father, noting with a start how much older he suddenly seemed. In the sunlight, the lines around his mouth and eyes were more noticeable, as was the gray in his hair. No matter that for their sake, Daddy had kept his grief over Mama’s passing mostly to himself, Libby still knew how hard it had been on him, dealing with the farm and everything all by himself. How hard it must have been to smile and laugh for Libby and her brothers when there were times when he couldn’t have felt much like it. So she felt bad, she really did, about all this weirdness churning inside her, making her feel like somebody else. And if she knew how to make it go away, she would.

  But she didn’t.

  “It just…irritated me, is all, to come home and find out some stranger was stayin’ in my room with me. Without my even having a say in it.”

  “I know. And I understand. But it was just one of those unforeseen things, you know? And, hey, Carly’ll be somebody for you to talk to. You know, another woman.”

  Libby’s eyes widened a little that Dad had implied that she was a woman, too, but that didn’t change the situation. “I have other ‘women’ to talk to. Like Blair. And April. Who I’d planned on having spend the night on Friday. Now I suppose I can’t.”

  Dad leaned one hand on top of the pen, his other hand fitted halfway into his jeans’ pocket. “And I would’ve thought if you hadn’t learned anything else by now, it was how to roll with the punches. Be flexible. I’m sure we can figure something out.”

  Libby nodded, because it was true, what Dad was saying, and she knew she was just being hardheaded, but it wasn’t her, it was this itchy feeling inside her making her feel like this, act like this.

  “You coming back inside?” he asked.

  “Not yet. Thought maybe I’d check to see what needs to be picked from the garden. The tomatoes are still growing like gangbusters.”

  “I’m seeing a lot of spaghetti sauce in my future.”

  That pulled a smile from Libby. Mostly they had an arrangement with some of the ladies in town to do their canning and freezing for them in exchange for eggs and meat and some of what they’d put by. But spaghetti sauce, from one of Mama’s recipes, was Libby’s specialty.

  “Yeah. I guess so.”

  Daddy gave h
er one of those long, assessing looks that made her nervous, gave her a wink, then walked away. Libby watched him, then crossed to the garden shed for a bushel basket, hoping like hell her nerves would settle down some once she set foot inside the garden.

  But she wasn’t counting on it.

  Carly was waiting for Sam out by the back door, her arms crossed over some lacey little sweater that seemed kinda pointless, if you asked him. Funny the way she managed, even when she was completely covered, to still allude to what was underneath. Not that there was much underneath to allude to, but Sam had long since realized that sexiness had little, if anything, to do with a person’s body. From inside the house he heard the comforting roar of his sons, working out the kinks from being stuck inside a classroom for six hours.

  “You left your dad alone with them?” he asked, and a slight smile touched her lips.

  “Are you kidding? You’re talking about a man who coached Little League, soccer, football. He can’t get enough of kids. Especially boys.”

  “And let me guess.” Sam hooked one foot on the porch’s bottom step. “You’re an only child.”

  “Yep. And then I had to go and be a ballerina at that.”

  “And he didn’t approve?”

  “It was more that he didn’t understand. Who I was, what made me tick…” Under the holey sweater, her shoulders bumped. “That sort of thing.” Her eyes shifted toward the barn, then back to him. “Did you just talk to Libby?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Worry—and understanding, Sam thought—crumpled her features. “You know, I don’t have to stay with her, if it really makes her uncomfortable. I’ve got my sleeping bag, I don’t have a problem with crashing in the living room with Dad. Or even the barn, for that matter—”

  “Like I’d let a guest sleep in my barn.”

  “I’ve slept in a lot worse places.”

  Sam thought maybe he heard a touch of regret mixed in there with the defiance, but he hadn’t had enough practice to be sure. “By choice?”

  After a moment she said quietly, “Most of the time.”

  “Well, it’s my choice where you’re sleeping now,” he said, even as he thought whatever this woman had done in her past, it was none of his business. “And sure as hell it’s not in my barn.”

  “But if Libby feels I’m encroaching on her space…”

  “You’re not. And Libby will just have to deal with it.”

  To his surprise, she laughed. “Because you say so?”

  “Because she’s normally the most laid-back kid I’ve ever known. And the friendliest. Why she’s suddenly acting like this, I have no idea.”

  Pure pity sparkled in her eyes. “She’s acting like this because she’s fourteen and her hormones have jammed her brain cells and somebody she’s never met is about to violate her private space. Right now, she’s probably out there wondering if her dad’s totally lost his marbles. I mean, I sure am, so I imagine she must be.”

  It took a second. Sam lowered his foot and crossed his arms over his chest. “And what’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Not many people would offer their home to two complete strangers. For all you know, we could be on the lam from the law. Or out to steal you blind.”

  “You’re not serious.”

  His certainty—that Carly and her father were neither—seemed to catch her off guard, her expression making Sam speculate on how long it had been since she’d felt able to really trust another human being. He supposed she figured that made her tough. Emotionally impenetrable. Sam—despite more than a nodding acquaintance with emotional defenses—didn’t see it that way. An inability to trust might make you safe—in some ways—but as far as Sam could tell, it didn’t make you strong.

  So he smiled and said, “Well, seems to me that deliberately breaking your axle so you’d get stuck in one place for a week isn’t the kind of thing someone on the run would do. And as you’ve probably noticed by now, there’s not a whole lot to steal, so no worries there. Although if you decided to take an extra cat or dog when you leave, I wouldn’t have a problem with that.” That got a little laugh, enough to make Sam feel it was okay to add, “So why don’t you relax and not worry about anything more pressing than if the hot water heater can handle an extra two showers every day?”

  “Deal,” she said, but something in those damn eyes of hers told him she was lying through her teeth.

  “Don’t let me disturb you,” Carly said to Libby as she quickly crossed the dark blue carpet to get to her duffel bag, lying expectantly on the floor by the extra twin bed. The girl sat at her computer, her dark hair shimmering down a back which stiffened at Carly’s entrance. “I’m just getting a few things so I can change in the bathroom, so I won’t bother you when I come to bed.”

  “Fine, whatever.” Libby resumed typing. In a chat room, Carly noticed when she glanced over. She hauled the bag up onto the bed, unzipping it to get to a sleep tee and her toothbrush, Libby’s annoyance humming between them like a pissed off bumblebee.

  “Dinner was great, by the way,” she said, moving to the door, the shirt and brush clutched in her hand.

  Libby’s hair shuddered from her shrug. “Just chicken and corn, no big deal.”

  “Been a long time since I had fresh corn, though. Not since I was a kid.” She hesitated, then said, “I take it you knew the main course, um, personally?”

  She could easily have gotten a God-what-a-dork eye roll for that one, but to Carly’s surprise, the girl only said, “Can’t say as how we were on a first name basis, no.” She tapped out a response, then added, “I learned a long time ago not to get attached to anything that would eventually become dinner.”

  “That makes sense.” A beat or two passed, then Carly said, “Look, I’m really sorry about this. I told your Dad I’d be happy to camp out in the living room. Or even the barn…”

  “Don’t worry about it, it’s okay.”

  “You sure?”

  Finally the girl twisted around. “No. But it’s not like I’ve got much of a choice. Dad seems to have this sixth sense or something about running into people who need help. And he’s never been real good at saying ‘no.’”

  Carly took heart that the girl didn’t sound angry as much as resigned. But she said, “Except to you, right?”

  After a long moment, she said, “Only like every five minutes.”

  “Sounds familiar.”

  “Your dad?”

  “You got it.”

  “Yeah, he doesn’t look like somebody who’d let you get away with much.”

  Carly decided not to go down that road. So she said, “Anyway, if it makes you feel better…I promise to be a good little roommate. I don’t play loud music or have wild parties and no one’s ever told me I snore.”

  Libby did something with her mouth that might have passed for a smile. “Well, I do. Not the loud parties, but I definitely play loud music. And my friends say I snore. I always have to sleep in another room when we have sleepovers.”

  “Huh. Maybe I’ll sleep out in the barn after all,” Carly said, and Libby actually laughed, followed immediately by her mouth turning down at the corners.

  “I’m sorry for acting like a snot earlier. It’s just…”

  “You don’t have to explain. I totally understand.”

  “Wish I did,” the girl muttered, then got up from her chair, only to sink onto the edge of her bed, flopping back to rest on her arms. “It’s a real pain in the butt, being the only girl.”

  “I can imagine.” Cautiously Carly reentered the room, lowering herself to the hardback chair Libby had just abandoned. After all, it wasn’t as if she had any pressing engagements. And since she was sharing the girl’s room, it probably wouldn’t hurt if Libby didn’t think of her as the enemy.

  “And what really sucks is that I can’t even talk about how I feel to any of my friends, because they don’t get it, either. Especially my friend Blair, who’s been acting all weird ever since I started hanging out with Sean.�
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  “Sean…that’s the boy who brought you home?”

  “Yeah.”

  “A real hottie.”

  Libby grinned, pleased. “Totally, huh?” Then she sat up, crossing her legs under her, assuming the my-life-totally-sucks pose common to every teenage girl through history. “Sometimes I think maybe she’s, I dunno, jealous, maybe? But then I think it’s more like…she doesn’t approve, or something…” She seemed to catch herself; Carly could practically see her reach out and grab the words back.

  “Hey,” Carly said softly, “I’m just passing through. I have no stake in any of this, so if you’re worried I might say something to your father—”

  “No, that’s not it. Well, maybe a little. But it’s more…” The girl heaved an exasperated sigh. “Sean treats me like…like I’m really special, you know? And for heaven’s sake, I’m not even fifteen yet! It’s not like I’m plannin’ on running away or anything! But if Daddy had his way, he probably wouldn’t want me to have a boyfriend until I was thirty!”

  “That sounds about right.” At the girl’s whose-side-are-you-on? look, she smiled. “All fathers are like that. All the good ones, anyway. And somehow, their daughters all manage to not only live through it, but to go on to have perfectly nice lives.”

  Libby shook her head, not looking at all convinced. “I really wish he’d trust Sean more. Or at least that he’d trust me. I’m not stupid, I’ve known how babies happen since I was four years old. So I’m not about to do anything to make one, not for a long time. And Sean knows how I feel and he said he’d never ask me to do anything I didn’t want to do.”