Swept Away

by Karen Templeton

  Of course, whether or not she actually made a go of this, she couldn’t predict. Sure, everybody was enthusiastic now, but she hadn’t fallen off the turnip truck in the last ten minutes. People got busy, got bored, got tired. Except she knew all too well how much dancing fed something basic inside most human beings. So maybe, just maybe, this would take. Even here.

  And if she found even one jewel, one child with the potential to go all the way…well. That would be the icing on the cake.

  “My grandma used to call what you’re doing woolgathering,” Sam said behind her, startling her.

  She turned, smiling. “You know, if anybody’d told me three months ago I was going to open a dance school in a tiny town in Oklahoma, I would have said they were off their nut.”

  He squatted to check out something with the heating gizmo. “Yep. Funny how often things work out in ways we could never have dreamed of.”

  Her gaze lingered on his back, muscled and lean underneath layers of cotton and flannel. He liked to wear plaid or denim shirts over T-shirts or Henleys, and they always smelled like a combination of smoke and the outdoors and animal and some scent that was uniquely Sam.

  And she was getting more and more desperate to smell the uniquely Sam part without all the rest.

  But he’d been true to his word, about not pushing, not crowding, giving her time and space to absorb his feelings for her with no pressure to return them. Still, simply knowing how he felt should have sent her shrieking in the other direction, should have annoyed her, or terrified her. Something. But somehow, as long as he left things in her control—that nothing would happen unless and until she wanted it to—she was okay. Borderline, some days, but still…okay.

  That they would eventually sleep together wasn’t even a question, she doubted in Sam’s mind any more than it was in hers. What was in question was an indefinable something that went to the core of who she’d always thought she was. The old Carly would have been content enough to wait it out, to play along, letting him think he was in charge of the hows and whens. The old Carly wouldn’t have thought twice about manipulating the situation, maybe even conning him into thinking her feelings had changed, just so he’d take her to bed.

  Unfortunately this new pain-in-the-butt Carly apparently had a conscience. The new Carly couldn’t deny that, even if she wasn’t sure how strong her feelings were for the man, she still cared for him, and about him, and respected him far much too much to ever deceive him. However, she could tell this arm’s length business was killing Sam as much as it was her. All the scruples and good intentions in the world couldn’t disguise the heat in his eyes when he looked at her. Especially considering this was a man whose entire life was defined by a palpable, physical connection to his environment. So from where she stood, the issue wasn’t “if”—the issue was who would crack first.

  And Carly’s money—all buck-fifty of it—was on Sam.

  He could feel her eyes on his back, could pretty much figure what she was thinking. And boy, it would be so easy to give in to the clawing, brutal hunger that had more or less poleaxed him these past few days, a hunger intensified tenfold every time she looked at him with those crystal-clear eyes of hers, eyes that all but begged him to take her.

  Sam got to his feet, nodding in approval at his own handiwork. “Long as you keep the overhead fans on, you should be able to keep the heat from settling up in the rafters. At least the guy insulated before he put on the new roof.”

  “Just in time,” she said. “The moms are coming for their first class tomorrow.”

  By some sort of unspoken understanding, there’d been no more talk about his feelings for her, or what anybody was going to do about them, since Sean’s visit the other day. Sam knew his confession had rattled Carly—which had been his intention—but he’d kept his promise about not pestering her. Anybody listening in to their conversations over the past week would have thought they were simply neighbors, nothing more.

  If they weren’t listening real closely, that is.

  “Well, I better get going. Polls close in an hour.”

  “Oh, that’s right! Since Dad and I aren’t residents yet, I can’t vote.” Sam wondered if she even realized she’d said “yet”—a pretty strong word for somebody who still held to the notion that she might not stick around. “You think Ivy’ll get the job?”

  “Oh, I’d say she’s got a pretty good shot, but there’s lots of folks, older ones, mostly, who still haven’t gotten over her having the nerve to raise an out-of-wedlock child right under their noses.”

  Carly’s gaze tangled with his for a moment before she walked back to her little kitchen, twisting on the burner to stare at the dancing blue flame. “Wow. I can cook and everything. If I cooked, that is.”

  “Okay, what’s eatin’ at you now?”

  She flicked off the burner, then faced him, her arms crossed over a sweater big enough for a cow. “Good Lord, Sam—Dawn’s, what, in her early thirties? And you’re telling me people are still bent out of shape about Ivy not being married when she had her?”

  “Some people. Not everybody. Not anywhere near everybody.”

  “Yeah, well, what’s gonna happen if some people find out about the new dance teacher’s past, huh? How do you think they’re going to react if they discover I was in rehab at twenty?” Her mouth thinned. “And again at twenty-three?”

  He flashed back to their first conversation at his kitchen table, all those weeks ago. How uneasy she’d seemed when she’d talked about her career, like she’d been leaving out certain parts that at the time she’d clearly felt were none of his business. And no wonder, he thought as an unseen fist reached inside his chest and squeezed his heart near to breaking.

  “First off,” he said softly, “unless you go around tellin’ ’em, I’m not sure how they’d find out. And secondly, it’s really beginning to tick me off, the way you keeping putting yourself down all the time.”

  “I’m not putting myself down! I had to overcome a helluva lot to kick that monkey off my back, and I’m damn proud that it’s been fifteen years since I’ve even been tempted to look down that road, let alone go down it. But I also know that the past has a nasty way of coming back to bite a person in the butt. All I’m saying is…” She pushed out a sigh. “Some people might have a problem with sending their children to somebody like me.”

  “What? You think this town is some Utopia, where nobody ever does anything bad, or stupid, or has a secret they don’t want gettin’ out?”

  “No, of course not. But—”

  “But nothing. There’s girls around here who don’t know the fathers of their babies, folks who think nobody knows there’s alcoholism in their families, guys who’ve done time for things they should’ve known better than to do to begin with. I swear, sometimes I think you carry your past around like it’s some kind of damn crown or something, as if nobody’s ever done anything wrong except you.”

  “What the hell would you know about it, Sam? For crying out loud, you’re like the most perfect human being on the freakin’ planet! What have you ever done to be sorry for?”

  “Believe me, I could give you a list that’d make your eyeballs fall out of your head. But for starters, how about takin’ up with another woman less than a week after my wife’s death? Would that do it for you?”

  His words hung between them like thick, acrid smoke.

  “You’re making that up.”

  Sam’s laugh, if you could call it that, scraped his throat on the way out. “Oh, believe me, I’m not making it up.”

  For several seconds, the only sounds were the fans’ soft whirr, the periodic hum of the heater cycling on and off. Then she closed the few feet between them to thread her arms around his waist, laying her head against his chest. Eventually Sam returned the favor, enveloping her. Wishing he could somehow absorb her. “What’s this for?” he asked.

  “For being human,” she said, then tilted her face up to his, her eyes reflecting his old pain. “What happened
?”

  So he told her the whole sad story, a story he’d never told another living soul, about how, after Jeannie’s funeral, he’d been so overcome with grief and confusion he was afraid to be around the kids, that he couldn’t be the pillar they needed him to be.

  “So I got Didi and Chuck Meyerhauser—Faith’s parents—to stay with them after they’d gone to bed, and I took the truck and just…drove. Ended up in Vinita, ran into some gal Jeannie and I went to school with. Katrina Nichols. She hadn’t heard about Jeannie, and when I told her, she was real…sympathetic.” He leaned back to meet Carly’s eyes. “Can you tell where this is goin’, or are you gonna make me go into the gory details?”

  “No, I think I’ve got the general idea. Except…why?”

  “Because the only way I could think to make the hurt go away was by making myself hurt even more.”

  On a soft moan, Carly nestled against him again. “Was it just the one time?”

  Sam shut his eyes. “No.” Then, on a released breath, he opened them again. “Until I realized what an ass I was being, that I was only putting off the inevitable. So I called it off after a couple weeks. Took a while longer, though, before I stopped hating myself.”

  “And Katrina?”

  “Understood what was going on inside my head a helluva lot better than I did. Last I heard, she moved to Oklahoma City, got married, had a kid. Far as I know, she never told anybody about the time I’d lost my mind.”

  After a moment, Carly slipped out of his arms, linked their hands, then stood on tiptoe to kiss him on the cheek.

  “Go vote,” she said quietly, steering him toward the door.

  By the time Ivy finished up delivering Angel Clearwater’s newest grandson up near Bushyhead, made sure mother and baby were stable and got back to Dawn’s and Cal’s, where everybody was waiting to hear whether she’d won or not, the polls had been closed for a good two hours already. She’d been too busy earlier to think about it much, but now, seeing so many cars and trucks parked every-which-way across the front yard, knowing all these people were here for her, her stomach felt like a herd of buffalo was stampeding through it.

  Which, believe it or not, was better than how she’d been feeling for the past week, ever since she and Lane parted ways.

  She had to park her old Ford pickup a good fifty feet from the house, which gave her ample time to collect herself before facing everybody. Telling Lane she couldn’t see him anymore had ranked right up there with the top five or so hardest things she’d ever had to do in her life. Had she been younger—much younger—she’d probably have let things ride, enjoyed the relationship for whatever she could get out of it. What a kick in the butt to discover, at this point in her life, when pickings were about as pitiful as they could get, malewise, that her tolerance level for men who couldn’t make up their minds was a big, fat zero.

  But, oh, how she missed him, she thought as she trudged up the porch steps, smiling at the laughter spilling from inside, laughter from her family, all those friends who’d stood by her through the years. That wife of his had been one lucky woman, that was for sure. Too bad she cast such a big shadow.

  “There’s our next mayor!” Dawn shouted when Ivy opened the door, and a roar went up from the crowd.

  Ivy clucked, setting down her delivery bag on a table next to the door and unwrapping herself from her poncho. “Aren’t y’all bein’ a little premature?”

  Ruby Kennedy, all decked out in what Ivy assumed was the fanciest dress the woman owned, a brocade number dating back to a time before Ruby’s breasts had reached their current impressive proportions, let out a loud laugh. “You know how I was conducting that exit poll the other day? Askin’ folks who they were gonna vote for as they left the diner? It was runnin’ close, I won’t lie to you, but by the end of the day, you were still ahead.”

  “Right,” Ivy said, laughing. “Like folks were gonna be straight with you, seeings as they know you’re my friend, for one thing. And for another, who’d be fool enough to risk getting cut off from Jordy’s barbecued ribs?”

  “Well, you might have a point at that,” the black woman admitted, which got everyone to laughing. The dining table was loaded with just about every goody imaginable, and as Ivy loaded her plate—birthing gave her almost as much of an appetite as it did her mothers—she could really feel Mary’s and Hank Logan, Sr.’s presence in the ranch house where they’d raised their three sons. Mary had been her first friend when she’d landed in town thirty years ago, and along with her husband had been there for her when she decided to stay, even after discovering she was pregnant by a man who couldn’t have married her, even if she’d wanted him to. So it seemed more than fitting that they should be here, in a way, to see how far she’d come.

  Of course, if she only got—she counted heads—twenty-two votes, then it was all moot, she supposed.

  “Mama!” Dawn hollered. “Your cell’s ringing, but I can’t find it!”

  “Oh, my word…” She shuffled across the floor as quickly as she could, careful not to upend her full plate. “It’s in my purse, honey…you got it?”

  Three people shouted, “There it is,” and Dawn pounced on the bag, tearing the big leather contraption open and fishing out the phone, which she slammed to her ear. “No, Beverly Ann, it’s Dawn. But Mama’s right here, hold on!”

  Somebody took the plate from Ivy’s hands as Dawn handed her the phone. Beverly Ann was about a hundred and fifty and had been tallying votes in Haven since Truman was in office. A hush fell across the room, but Ivy could still barely hear Beverly Ann—who never spoke above a whisper, anyway—for all the rushing in her ears. Something about being really close, they had to do a recount….

  “But you’re sure now?”

  “Oh, yes, honey. We’re just having them post it up on the Git-n-Go sign now. And congratulations—’ bout time we had some fresh ideas around here!”

  Ivy clicked off her phone, then stood there with it clutched to her chest.

  “Well, for pity’s sake, girl,” said Luralene, her magenta lipstick a nice contrast to the orange hair. “Don’t keep us in suspense! Didja win or not?”

  Ivy scanned the room, all those expectant, loving faces…and nodded.

  “I did,” she said, still disbelieving. “You’re lookin’ at your new mayor.”

  There were shouts and screams and hugs and kisses and an off-key chorus of “For she’s a jolly good fellow,” and in the midst of it all, the doorbell rang. Well, she assumed the doorbell rang, because suddenly the crowd parted right down the middle so she had a straight shot at the open door.

  Where Lane stood, with a huge smile on his face and the biggest damn bunch of flowers Ivy’d ever seen.

  Lane could tell, he’d caught Ivy off guard. Well, good. Because even if he couldn’t give her anything else—like his whole heart, undivided—he could at least give her a few minutes of whatever she was feeling right now. Surprise. Delight. The knowledge that he really did care about her, even if not as much as she needed.

  She’d barely had a chance to snag that blanket thing she wore before he dragged her out onto the porch. Then he shut the door on everyone’s bug-eyed staring so he could take her by the shoulders and kiss her, flowers squashed between them and all.

  She blinked those big, brown eyes that drove him crazy. “B-but, how’d you know I won?”

  “I didn’t. Not until I got here and heard the cheer. But I figured you could use the flowers, either way. That if you didn’t win, maybe you could use some cheering up.”

  She didn’t say anything for a long time after that, just stood staring at the bouquet as though she’d never seen flowers before. Then she finally said, “You know, it would make this mess a whole lot easier if you weren’t so damn nice.”

  “Yeah, I know. It’s a curse.”

  She snorted a laugh through her nose, lifted her face to his. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome. And congratulations, Ms. Mayor. Now go back inside and enjoy your
victory party.”

  She waved the flowers toward the door. “You’re welcome to join us….”

  “Let’s not complicate things any more than they already are.” He kissed her again, a short peck on her lips, then went down the porch steps, his head bent against the obnoxious wind.

  “Lane?” she called, and he turned back. “This goes against everything I’ve ever believed in as a woman…but—”

  “No buts, Ivy. And no compromises. That wouldn’t be fair to either one of us, would it?”

  Hugging the flowers, she finally said, “No, you’re right. Still, I don’t mind tellin’ you that you’ve just made my little triumph a whole lot sweeter.”

  He blew her a kiss, then walked away from what he knew had been his only shot at a second chance.

  While rinsing off the dinner dishes before she put them into the dishwasher, Libby could smell Mike and Matt before she saw them.

  “Eww,” she said, shielding her nose with the back of her hand. “Both of you have got to take showers tonight, you stink to high heaven! When was the last time y’all cleaned out the chicken coop anyway?”

  “This afternoon,” Mike said. “Which is why we stink.” He took the dish out of her hand to stack it in the dishwasher, and Libby stared at him. Then at Matt, who was staring at her. Then she noticed Wade and Frankie were sitting at the kitchen table, staring at her, instead of out in the living room, staring at the TV. She did not have a good feeling about this.

  “Okay. Who did what?”

  “Nothin’,” Mike said, holding up his hands when she gave him a “Yeah, right” look. “I swear. It’s just Matt and me think we should have a family conference.”

  “Well, yeah, okay. As soon as Daddy’s finished giving Trav his bath—”

  “Without Daddy,” Matt said, his expression about as serious as she’d ever seen it.