He needed to get a grip.
Chapter 34
Shane had almost finished saddling Silver when a grinding, clanking sound caught his attention. Glancing out the barn door, he spotted a dust cloud at the bottom of the drive.
Squinting, he shaded his eyes with one hand and saw an old green station wagon bouncing up the drive. The driver pulled to a stop in front of the barn, shutting off the engine. The car gasped and clanked a few more times in the automotive version of a death rattle.
A heavyset woman with sparse gray hair done up in old-fashioned pink curlers stepped out, panting as if driving had plumb tired her out. Without a word, she waddled back and opened the car’s back door. A harsh squawk followed, and a few white feathers drifted from the car’s grubby interior.
“This here’s for Dr. Ward.”
She pulled out a homemade chicken-wire cage that contained one dirty and very angry leghorn hen. “I know it’s not cash money, but Sally’s a good layer, and she’s all organic.”
Shane eyed the chicken, and the chicken eyed Shane. He could tell this critter was trouble, and he had a feeling he’d better resist any attempts to diversify the ranch if Lindsey was taking payment in trade. Next thing he knew, Ozzie would be paying for Little Oz’s care in snakes or something.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “We don’t have a chicken coop. Lindsey—Dr. Ward—was just telling me she could probably forgive bills if folks can’t afford to pay. It’s all about the animals for her.”
“Don’t I know it.” The woman raised herself to her full height, which was amplified by the mound of pink curlers and a few wild spikes of hair that poked out in between them. She was wearing a housedress that was so thin over her ample bosom that Shane didn’t quite know where to look. He tried looking down, but her feet, clad only in flip-flops, were dirty and her legs were so beset by spider veins it looked like a nervous child had taken a Sharpie to her graying flesh.
“That woman is a saint,” the woman declared. “She treated my old Dollie as if she was a Kennel Club champion when I know good and well she’s just a regular old poodle dog. But Rosa Mayhew does not take charity.” She took a step closer to Shane, wagging an admonishing finger. “You give Sally to Dr. Ward. She’ll be pleased. I’m sure of it.” She pointed to the chicken, which had cocked its head sideways to give Shane the evil eye. “That’s a very fine laying hen, there.”
Huffing and puffing, she climbed back into the car and cranked the engine. It rattled and banged back to coughing, gasping, miraculous life, and she peeled out, leaving both Shane and the chicken to eat her dust.
Shane looked at the chicken.
The chicken looked at Shane.
It had a glint in its eyes that just dared him to let it out of that cage, but he wasn’t about to do it. He’d put it in the barn though. It wouldn’t do to let the bird bake in the sun.
He set the cage, chicken and all, in a shady spot just inside the barn door, and returned to his work.
He had one foot in the stirrup when he realized the chicken might be hungry. The woman didn’t look like the type to buy the fancy feed RaeLynn and her daddy sold, so it was probably used to scratching for grubs. Since it was caged, it would need something else to eat.
Detouring toward the tack and feed room, he cupped a handful of grain from the horse’s supply and returned to the front of the barn.
Sure enough, the hen got right to work pecking up the grain. He thought they might be friends now, so he poked a cautious finger through the mesh.
“Hey, chick,” he said. “Hey, chick, chick.”
The chicken drew its head back and jammed its beak into his finger.
“Shoot.” He examined his finger. No blood, so he probably wouldn’t catch whatever it was this chicken had. Maybe it was just disagreeable, but most animals liked him. He thought it might have some sort of chicken headache, or maybe some belly trouble.
He watched the chicken awhile, and the chicken watched him. It looked uncomfortable, standing in that little cage. Maybe it needed some bedding.
Heading back into the barn, he grabbed a couple flakes of straw and returned to the chicken. Unfortunately, he’d have to open the cage to get the bedding in. It was hinged at the top, so the critter wouldn’t get loose unless it flew up into his face. He was pretty sure chickens didn’t fly, but the way the thing was looking at him and squatting down as he removed the twisted wire that held the cage top closed, he thought it might have a pretty decent high jump.
“I wouldn’t put it past you to attack me,” he grumbled.
Opening the top, he shoved the hay inside. As he shook out the flakes and did his best to arrange it in a sort of nest, the chicken pecked viciously at his arm.
“You’re looking a lot like Sunday dinner.”
He refastened the lid while the chicken settled down onto the straw, making a pretty little purring noise. For a minute there, he almost liked it, but then it shot him an evil look, one that told him it would sure like another taste of his forearm, or a nice bite of finger.
By the time Lindsey returned home, the sun was setting, the chicken had laid an egg, and two more of her patients had stopped by with payment. One, a sorry-looking man with a little barefoot girl perched in the back of his pickup, actually delivered a check. The other, an elderly woman, dropped off a mason jar full of coins she swore contained at least twenty dollars cash money.
But Lindsey only had eyes for the chicken.
“Oh, she brought me Sally.” Her eyes misted over and Shane thought, for a moment, that she was going to cry. “That’s her best layer.” She opened the cage, and before Shane could warn her, she had the chicken in her arms. It preened, giving Shane as smug a look as anything with a beak for lips could manage.
“We don’t have any place to keep her,” he said. “You could maybe give Sally back.”
“No way. Rosa would be insulted.” Lindsey smiled up at him, kissing the top of the chicken’s homely, spiky head. “But you can’t keep just one chicken. I think I’ll stop by her place tomorrow and pick up a friend for Sally.”
Shane rolled his eyes. “Great,” he said. “Now we’re a chicken farm.”
Lindsey laughed, nudging him with one elbow. The chicken took the chance to slyly peck his arm again. “Not hardly. We’d need at least twenty chickens to be a chicken farm.” Her eyes lit with excitement. “Do you want to do it? I’ve never had chickens, but I’ve always wanted to.”
Shane took off his hat and ran his fingers through his hair, doing his best to hide the panic rising in his chest at the thought of twenty Sallies running amok through the barnyard.
“No,” he said. “Not right now.” He saw the disappointment in her eyes and rushed to bring back her smile. “Let’s just see how it goes with two.”
She still wasn’t smiling.
“Or three.”
And there, there it was. She beamed at him, and he felt like her hero.
It felt way too good to last.
* * *
Wynott, Wyoming, wasn’t much of a town, but like most small towns, it had a few unique claims to fame that saved it from utter obscurity. There was Sierra’s Phoenix House, which was getting a name for its success in turning around young lives, and there was a quilt shop next to the jail that had been featured on some craft show on TV. There was also an old-fashioned hardware store that drew customers from all over Wyoming, and that’s what had lured Lindsey to town on a fine morning in August. That, and a call from her lawyer.
Lindsey doubted Adriana had good news, so she took her time getting to Adie’s office. Just when things were going right—with Shane, with her work, even with Ashley back in Charleston—something was about to go wrong. She could feel it.
She decided to hit the hardware store first. She’d loved Boone’s Hardware as a kid, but when she reached the door, she paused, wondering if the store still held its magic. The scent of sawdust always took her there in her memory, along with the taste of butterscotch. Bud had always
bought her a candy stick from a jar on the counter.
Best of all, Ed and Alma Boone had always fussed over her. Childless, they doted on her like surrogate grandparents, and she prayed nothing had happened to them.
Taking a deep breath, she opened the door and gratefully inhaled the familiar scents. Tears sprang to her eyes as she took in the old wooden shelves, the wooden bins of nails and screws, and the dangling lightbulbs that lit the narrow aisles. It hadn’t changed a bit.
“Can I help you?”
She turned and nearly knocked over a keg of floating pickles as she stepped back in alarm. The person at her elbow was definitely not Ed, and certainly not Alma. It was a slender, almost skinny young woman with long, nearly white hair tied back in a ponytail, and studs in her left eyebrow. She had tattoos running up both arms—a complicated vine pattern interspersed with bloodred roses and evil, elfin faces—and there was a scar on the side of her right nostril that had obviously held a stud. A varied collection of closely set hoops bound her ear from top to bottom. A tiny silver skull dangled, grinning, from the lobe.
“Um, yeah,” Lindsey said. She wouldn’t have looked twice at the girl in Charleston, but she was stunned to find someone so outlandishly tricked out in Wynott. And in the hardware store, of all places. “I wondered if you sell chicken coops?”
The girl smiled, and her face was transformed. Beneath all the hardware—which Lindsey had to admit was kind of appropriate to the setting—she was beautiful.
“Over here.”
The girl walked rapidly over to the far side of the room, where various lengths of lumber jutted from metal shelves.
“Just pick the lengths you need. We’ve got chicken wire in Aisle B, and—do you have a staple gun?”
Lindsey shook her head.
“Well, you’ll want one of those too. Aisle D.”
The bell on the door jangled, and the girl walked away to greet her next customer.
Lindsey pulled out a few one-by-fours, then shoved them back in and looked doubtfully at the two-by-fours. She had no idea how to build a chicken coop. She’d hoped to buy something all made up, something pretty. She’d thought maybe she would find one shaped like a little house for Sally and her friends.
A thumping sound behind her made her turn away from the wood, hoping for help. An elderly woman in orthopedic shoes, faded Levi’s, and a cowboy hat was stumping up the aisle toward her with the assistance of a four-legged cane.
Lindsey smiled. The new arrival looked like she might know something about chicken coops. She started to speak, but the lady took one look at her and gasped, clutching her chest. If Lindsey hadn’t moved fast, she might have tumbled into a carefully constructed pyramid of paint cans and redecorated the whole store.
Squinting through thick glasses, the old woman eyed Lindsey’s face, then jerked her arm away.
“Land sakes, it’s you, come back to torment that poor cowboy.” For a moment Lindsey thought the old lady was going to spit in her face. “I always knew you would.”
Chapter 35
Lindsey didn’t know what to say. For one thing, she was surprised the woman recognized her. Second, what made her think she was tormenting Shane? They were actually getting along pretty well.
And was the woman a psychic or what? How had she known that Lindsey, who had been gone for years, would have anything to do with Shane Lockhart when she finally returned to the Lazy Q?
Maybe that happened to all the girls. Lindsey could believe it.
“You ought to blush.” The woman punctuated her words by stamping her cane perilously close to Lindsey’s toes. “There’s no excuse for the way you treated your granddaddy. He suffered in his last illness, you know. Suffered something terrible, but could you come by and hold his hand for twenty minutes? No, not you.”
Lindsey hung her head. She’d had no idea her grandfather had suffered. In fact, she’d been told Bud had died instantly from hitting his head on a rock. This was terrible.
“I’m sorry,” she stammered out. “I didn’t know.”
“You didn’t know.” The woman scowled. “You didn’t know. That’s what women like you always say. Well, don’t be thinking you can take that boy home with you. You can go on back to whatever rock you crawled under all by your lonesome. He’s happy at the Lazy Q, and he’s staying there. You just see if he doesn’t.”
Lindsey didn’t know how things would turn out between her and Shane, but she knew one thing for sure: he had to stay here, in cow country. There was no way he’d be happy in North Carolina, and how would he make a living?
“Don’t worry,” she said. “One way or another, I’m not taking him anywhere. He can stay on the Lazy Q where he belongs.”
The woman nearly fell backward into the paint cans again, but she righted herself with her cane and stood, trembling with rage, in the center of the aisle.
“I always did say you were the most unnatural creature ever to grace God’s green earth.” Her voice quavered with emotion. “How that nice boy ever got mixed up with the likes of you, I’ll never know.” Hunching her shoulders, she took two steps toward Lindsey and shook an arthritic finger in her face. “But I can tell you this. You can’t come back here. Not after you stole that boy’s son and disappeared the way you did. Now that you’ve shown your true colors and dumped your own child like a she cat deserting her kittens, this town will rise up against you if you try to settle here again. Your own mama probably won’t let you past her door.”
“Well, no.” Lindsey drew herself up, ready for a fight. This woman was just plain rude. “For your information, my mother’s been dead for years. I don’t expect to be knocking on that door anytime soon.”
“Dead to you, maybe.” It was a clenched fist the woman shook in Lindsey’s face now. “Don’t you pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about. You haven’t changed a bit. Matter of fact, I’ll bet you’ve had some of that fancy-pants Hollywood surgery, haven’t you? You don’t have near enough wrinkles for your age.”
Lindsey stammered, wondering if she should say thank you for the unexpected compliment. But it was starting to dawn on her that this was a case of mistaken identity.
“Who do you think I am?” she asked.
“You’re a snake in the streets of Wynott, that’s who you are, Tara O’Dell.” The woman raised her cane menacingly. “A she devil without the conscience of a cat in heat who tried to ruin that boy’s life.” She swung the cane viciously. “Who do you think you are, strolling in here like a decent citizen? You should crawl on your belly like a reptile.”
Lindsey was curious to see what other imaginative insults might spring from this unlikely source, but she was afraid the woman would have some sort of attack. Already the tattooed girl, alerted by the ruckus, had come rushing from the front of the store as Lindsey held up her hands to ward off the old woman’s cane.
“I’m not Tara O’Dell. I don’t even know who that is.” She ducked to avoid a feeble but well-aimed swipe of the stick.
“You expect me to believe that? What did you do, change your name to escape your shameful past?” The woman waved the cane wildly, knocking a box of screws off a nearby shelf. The box burst open and tiny screws tumbled merrily across the floor, making their escape by rolling under shelving units and pallets.
The woman ignored the mess, skating precariously over the rolling bits of metal.
“What do you call yourself now?” she asked. “Jezebel?”
The tattooed girl burst into giggles, and Lindsey nearly joined her. She’d certainly never been called Jezebel before. But the old woman was clearly confused, and it wasn’t kind to laugh.
The tattooed girl placed her hand gently on the old lady’s arm and hollered into her ear.
“Eleanor, that’s not Tara.” She turned to Lindsey. “You’re Lindsey Ward, aren’t you?”
When Lindsey nodded, the salesgirl shouted at the old lady again.
“She’s Lindsey Ward.”
The old lady only looked ba
ffled, so the young girl raised her voice even more.
“Bud and Grace’s granddaughter. Remember, we heard she was coming?”
The old lady’s jaw dropped so fast her dentures took a tumble. After re-situating her errant teeth, she squinted at Lindsey, who hunched so she stood eye-to-eye with the old woman, staring through thick glasses into eyes that seemed somehow blurry and undefined.
“Oh. You’re not Tara, are you?” The woman straightened with great dignity and put out her hand. “I do beg your pardon.”
“It’s all right.” Lindsey shook her hand gently while she struggled to remember why the name Tara sounded familiar.
“Lindsey Ward.” The woman looked up at the ceiling, searching her memory, and her newly polite demeanor began to crumble. “You went off and married that doctor fellow, didn’t you? Broke your granddaddy’s heart.” She shook her head. “You’re not as bad as Tara, but you’ve got your own fences to mend, don’t you?”
“I do,” Lindsey said. “I regret that decision every day, and I regret even more that I didn’t come back and talk it out with Grandpa. But Grace says he forgave me, and I’m forever grateful for that.”
The thundercloud looming in the old woman’s rheumy eyes cleared and she patted Lindsey’s hand. “That’s all right, dear. We all make mistakes. Some of us just make bigger ones, and more of ’em. I imagine you can’t help yourself.”
Lindsey wondered if she should thank the woman for her forgiveness or take offense at the insult.
The old lady turned to the white-haired store clerk. “Riley, honey, what did I come in here for? I’ve plumb forgotten.”
Lindsey was surprised to hear her attacker speak so kindly to the tattooed girl. She was open-minded, at least. Maybe Lindsey should follow her example, especially since the white-haired girl set a kind hand on the old lady’s shoulder.
How to Wrangle a Cowboy Page 22
