by Home Fires
“Is that goat milk?” Linette asked.
“You bet your extraordinary brainpower,” Emily said. Bending, she retrieved a hotdish from the oven. It steamed into the relatively cool kitchen air. “It’ll make you brilliant, stalwart, and more bodacious.”
Linette raised her glass toward the milk pitcher. “I’d give my spleen to be more bodacious.”
“Amen,” Emily said and began dishing up the casserole. The kitchen smelled of melted cheese and contentment.
“You know that it hasn’t been pasteurized, right?” Sophie asked.
Casie was already handing over the full glass. The milk looked thick enough to walk on. Linette stared at it a second, then shrugged. “Here’s to living dangerously,” she said and raised her beverage in an impromptu toast.
Dickenson clicked it with his own ceramic rooster.
“Speaking of dangerous,” Emily said, sucking gooey cheddar off her thumb. She seemed in good spirits today, though her latest environmentally conscious T-shirt looked stretched to its limits over her belly. “How was your riding lesson?”
“Well …” Linette tasted the milk, made a “not bad” face, and continued on. “I rode over four cavaletti at a trot and still made it onto the porch under my own steam.”
Casie settled into a chair and raised her own glass to the older woman’s. “Going over ground poles already. Congratulations.” Her voice was soft, exuding comfort.
“I’ve never been more proud,” Linette said.
“Or more lucky,” Emily said.
Linette glanced at her.
“Horses,” the little mother-to-be explained, shoving her spatula under another helping of the still-steaming entrée. “You might as well strap a jar of nitro to your a …” She paused. They all stared. Emily had been outspoken since the day she’d first come to Ty’s rescue in a temporary foster home in Buffalo Gap. Her looming pregnancy wasn’t lessening that characteristic. “Ankle,” she finished and delivered another plate to the table.
“Nice save,” Dickenson murmured and took the plate.
Linette laughed. Sophie stared down at the pan. “What’s the mystery meal of the day?” she asked, but she didn’t waste any time lifting her plate for a helping.
Emily canted her head. “I call it Hotdish Bodacious.”
Sophie scowled at it as she settled a piece onto her plate. “It looks like …”
Casie cleared her throat.
“… good,” Sophie finished, and Dickenson grinned.
“It tastes like … good, too,” he said, having just tasted his first bite. Mrs. Dickenson was a pretty good cook. Which made the number of meals her son ate at the Lazy seem kinda suspicious. But then, Ty supposed the same could be said of him.
“Wow,” Linette said, sampling a bite. “That’s better than good. Where’d you get the recipe, Em?”
Emily shrugged and settled her belly beneath the table. “I just try stuff.”
Linette tasted another bite, closed her eyes for a second, and smiled around her fork. “What’s in it?”
“Bodacious milk, three kinds of cheese, a bushel basket of fresh herbs, and Magenta eggs.”
“Don’t ask,” Sophie warned. Ty glanced at her for a second, then skimmed his gaze away, stomach already unsettled.
Linette glanced at her, but asked anyway. “Magenta eggs?”
“I have a theory,” Emily said.
“God save us,” Sophie said, but Emily continued unperturbed.
“Magenta is our little purple chicken.”
“You have a purple chicken?”
“No,” Sophie said. “We don’t.”
“Well, she looks purple in the proper light,” Emily said. “Anyway, she’s the littlest chicken we have. We lock them all up in the coop in the evening, you know, to keep them safe from …” She waved her fork, indicating the world at large. “… everything. But one night I couldn’t find her.”
“Here we go,” Sophie said, taking her first bite of a biscuit.
“The next morning she was limping and missing half her tail feathers.”
Linette waited in expectant silence.
“There were coyote tracks around the coop.”
“Or they could have been Jack’s,” Sophie said, mentioning the ranch dog.
“They were indubitably coyotes,” Emily declared with finality and started in on the hotdish. Linette stared at her, waiting. But when Emily ate, not much else happened. Linette shifted her gaze to the others around the table, encouraging someone else to fill in the blanks.
“Emily believes that perhaps Magenta fought off the coyotes,” Casie explained.
“Ahh,” Linette said.
“They haven’t been back since.” Emily said the words around enough food to feed a family of pachyderms.
“Of course, Jack has been outside every night since then,” Sophie said. “Can I get some vegetables?”
Casie passed the glazed carrots.
“This is the best egg thing I’ve ever tasted,” Dickenson said, then glanced at Ty. “You tell Mom and you’re responsible for my chores when she tans my hide.”
“I’m still not sure what your theory is,” Linette said.
Emily shrugged as she added a pair of baby dills to her plate. Maggie Janis, their closest neighbor to the west, was an award-winning pickle maker. It was no secret that Em planned to learn everything she could from the old woman, crotchety though she was. “Magenta is unusually courageous, so it naturally follows that her eggs will imbue us with that same bravado.”
Linette remained silent for a moment, perhaps trying to figure out if Emily was serious. Ty could have told her unequivocally that she was.
“Eat up,” Dickenson said, nudging Linette’s elbow with her own. “We’re going to lope tomorrow.”
“I—” Linny began, eyes wide with fear. “I’m going to need a bigger plate.”
Dickenson chuckled.
“He’s just kidding,” Casie said. “You don’t ever have to lope if you don’t want to.”
“Well, I can’t force you,” Dickenson said. “But it’s best to get it over with before you scare yourself out of it.”
“I’ve already scared myself out of it.”
“You can take as long as you want,” Casie added.
“I wish that was true,” Linette said. “But I don’t have a lot of time left.” Her voice was quiet, her gaze distant.
They all glanced at her.
She raised her brows at them, suddenly aware of their attention. “I mean, I’m not getting any younger.”
A knock at the front door broke the ensuing silence.
“Who could that be?” Casie asked. Her tone was steady, but her eyes looked nervous. Why? Ty wondered. Had something else happened to make her skittish?
“I wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn that strangers show up unexpectedly at dinnertime,” Linette said.
“Emily would feed Jack the Ripper,” Sophie said.
“She’s probably hoping he could teach us some table manners,” Colt said. “Hey, Ty, pass me the pickles, will ya?”
Ty did so without thinking, watching as Casie crossed the cracked linoleum.
“You didn’t can those yourself, did you?” Linette asked.
“They’re Maggie’s,” Emily said. “She’s like a kitchen witch or something.”
“Or just a witch,” Sophie amended.
“Give Em half an acre, she’ll feed you for the winter,” Dickenson said.
Ty heard the door open and strained to hear the voices there, but the banter around the table was too loud.
“Give me an alpaca and I’ll clothe Baby Quinton forever,” Em said.
“You’ll have to talk to Mom about that,” Colt said.
“Alpaca?” Linette questioned.
“Warmest fiber in the universe.”
“Where would you possibly find time to care for another animal?”
“Excellent question,” Colt said, spreading rhubapple jam on a biscuit.
“I figure I’ll just be sitting around for a couple months after Baby Ravel’s born anyway, so I might as well have a hobby.”
“Are you serious?” Linette asked.
“Well, you know, I won’t be able to practice canning for a while.”
“Or walk,” Linette said. “After my daughter was born I could barely sit up.”
“What’s it like having a daughter?”
Voices murmured from the entryway.
“It’s … nice,” Linette said, but her tone was distracted.
“Nice like …” Emily shrugged. “Pickled beets? Or nice like your best friend in the world?” Her voice was a little tight, her eyes sharp. “I mean, there’s nothing like family, right?”
“I’m starting to think that it’s the most important thing in the world.”
Emily nodded. “So when will we meet her?”
“Who?”
“Elizabeth. Your daughter. Hey, she should come pick you up. I mean, you don’t have a car here. She could rent one in town, then stay until you have to leave. I bet Case would give her a couple nights free so you two could spend some time together. I’d take care of your granddaughter and …” She finished off her pickle, thinking hard. “What’s her name again?”
Linette blinked. Her face seemed a little pale. Sometimes Ty wondered if she had been sick. If she had come here to recover. “Lila,” she said.
“After her grandmother?” Dickenson asked.
Linette shook her head, then shifted her attention to Emily. “These biscuits are amazing, Em. You must have had a recipe for these. An old family secret maybe?”
“No, but my mother …” Emily began, then paused and glanced at Colt. He caught her gaze with a steady eye. “Probably didn’t even know what homemade meant.” She shrugged. Em was never real comfortable with the truth. “Like I said, I just experiment.”
Dickenson smiled a little. There was something in his expression. Pride maybe. It made Ty’s stomach feel odd. Dickenson gave Emily a nod before returning his attention to his meal. “We’re like happy little guinea pigs,” he said.
“Well, I’m going to be a potbellied pig if I stay here much longer,” Linette said.
“I’ve gained ten pounds since last spring,” Sophie said with a scowl.
Ty glanced at her. Maybe she had put on some weight since they’d first met, but it only made her more … He couldn’t think of the word.
“If I pack on any more, my mother will disown me,” she added.
Linette stared at her. “Sometimes mothers make mistakes.”
Sophie shrugged. “I didn’t say it would be a bad thing if she—”
“Hey,” Casie said, returning to the kitchen. Another woman stepped up beside her. She was slightly shorter than Casie and somewhat heavier, but every ounce of that excess seemed to be packed into her chest, which was barely confined by a narrow-strapped, candy-apple-red tank top. Her hair was long, black, and shiny. It curled in a wavy mass around her shoulders. Her lips were plump, glossy, and just as red as her shirt. “This is Samantha Shepherd.” She paused and smiled, but a tic jumped in her jaw. “Colt’s farrier friend.”
CHAPTER 16
“What a grand old mare,” Sam said, and straightening, stroked the gray’s speckled neck.
Casie refrained from gritting her teeth. She had no reason to dislike Samantha Shepherd. Especially since the woman had just spent the past hour and a half shaping therapeutic shoes over an acetylene torch. Sweat beaded her brow. It glimmered on her chest and arms. All of the above were extremely well defined. “Good thing you caught this early on, Ty, or her chances of a full recovery wouldn’t have been nearly so good.”
Ty shuffled his feet. “Casie’s the one that took her in,” he said.
The blacksmith turned toward Casie, who shrugged. This woman wasn’t the enemy, she reminded herself. “I just supply the feed,” she said. “Ty looks after her.”
“Well …” Sam glanced at Colt. She had a crooked smile that could light up a cave. “Colt always could find himself people with soft hearts.” She laughed, seeming to remember something the others weren’t privy to. Casie felt her stomach tighten. “The world needs more of that kind. God knows them PMU horses could use some help. Right?” Sam said, and pulling her gaze from Colt’s with an obvious effort, turned her smile on Casie.
Casie tried to smile back. “What horses?” she asked. Thunder rumbled off to the west. A storm was rolling in.
“The ones on that urine line.”
“What?” Casie asked. Sophie scowled.
“You know,” Sam said, and shifting Angel’s left foreleg carefully onto the heavily bedded floor, straightened her back. The movement shifted her tank top a little higher, almost allowing it to hide half her boobs. “The mares that are kept for the urine that’s used for hormonal imbalances and stuff. There’s a farm around here somewhere, I guess. I mean, they didn’t report any abuse on that particular property, but I’ve got a feeling the conditions might not be real cozy. They showed footage from other farms …” She shook her head and patted Angel’s shoulder. “Well, I think we’re done here.”
“Thanks,” Colt said. “I really appreciate your help.”
“Yes,” Casie added, trying to sound grateful. “Thanks so much for all your time. What do I owe you?”
“You?” She laughed. “Nothing at all. But Colt here owes me a roping lesson and a pair of red—”
“So you think she’ll come along okay?” Colt asked.
Sam raised her brows at the change in course, but followed along easily enough. “Yeah,” she said, and still smiling, turned toward Ty. “You keep taking care of her like you have been and she should come around just fine. I’ll plan on stopping back in a few days to take a look at her. But you gotta promise to call me right away if she takes a turn for the worse, or if you have any questions. Call me … night or day.”
Ty nodded.
Sam smiled. “You got my number?” she asked.
Ty shook his head and looked sheepish. Laughing a little, Sam slapped a hand to the pocket on the seat of her jeans. The fabric across her boobs stretched as tight as an overtaxed water balloon. She wiggled a little as she searched her pocket, but her hand came up empty.
“Sorry,” she said finally. “I’m damn good with horses, but I’m not so hot with people. Looks like I forgot my business cards again.” She made a face. “But Colt here’s got my number if you need it.” She smiled again, eye contact strong. “You’ll call, right?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Ty said, and she nodded before bending to pick up the half dozen metal tools that were strewn around Angel’s stall.
Colt hunched down to assist, and when she tried to take them from him, he declined. “Least I can do is carry your stuff,” he said.
“You’re right,” she said and laughed. “That is the least you can do.”
Casie forced herself to look away as Colt walked Sam to her truck. It was a brand-new Chevy with all the fixings, as red as her tank top, as shiny as her hair. She cocked a hip against her open tailgate and faced the barn. When she laughed her boobs jiggled like just-set Jell-O.
“I’m going to take Angel out to graze,” Sophie said.
“What?” Ty asked, pulling his attention from the pair by the truck.
Sophie scowled. Her cheeks looked a little pink, her eyes narrowed. “Angel …” she said. “Remember her?”
“Yeah.” He scowled back, looking confused. “ ’Course I remember her,” he said and stroked the mare’s neck.
“She needs grass.”
“What are you talking about?” he asked and glanced toward the corner of the stall where they had piled her hay, two flakes of grass and one of alfalfa. The bedding was deep enough to swim in. “She’s got plenty to eat.”
Sophie pursed her lips. “It doesn’t have the same nutritional value that fresh forage does. It’s not as easy on her digestive system, and she doesn’t like it as well. She wants to graze.”
But
he shook his head. “Sam said she needs stall rest for at least another week.”
“Well, Sam is a …” She said the woman’s name with a good deal of force and no small degree of distain. Casie raised her brows a little at the tone, making Sophie lower her voice and her shoulders. “… person who doesn’t know everything.”
Ty’s scowl deepened a little. Casie watched the exchange with some confusion. But her thoughts about Samantha Shepherd were equally confusing. Who the hell was she to Colt? And what did she hope to be? And why would Casie possibly care? True, maybe for a while she’d been intrigued by Colt Dickenson. Maybe she had even thought he had changed. But her conversation with Hedley had proved otherwise.
“Such as how to wear a shirt, apparently.” Sophie’s voice had dropped an octave, effectively dragging Casie’s attention back to her.
“Well …” Ty shifted his attention between the two women standing closest to him. His ears were a little red. “The weather has been mighty hot and …” He shrugged. The movement was stiff. It looked as if it was taking a good deal of discipline to keep his gaze off the object of their discussion. “Blacksmithing is hard work.”
Sophie gritted her teeth. Casie swung into the conversation before it unraveled completely. “I think Ty’s right, Soph,” she said. “Doctor Sarah thought Angel should be kept as quiet as possible, too.”
Sophie’s scowl deepened at the sound of the veterinarian’s name, making Casie wonder if Sophie disliked her, too. Holy Hannah, if she was going to hate every woman in the equine industry, she was going to be mighty lonely. Ninety percent of the equestrian world was female.
“Yes,” Sophie agreed, her tone suspiciously saccharine. “But that advice came before Sam’s brilliant scheme. Had the good doctor known our illustrious farrier was going to come up with something as earthshaking as egg bar shoes, she would probably be allowing us to run Angel in the Derby by now.”
“I think them shoes looked pretty good,” Ty said.
If Sophie’s scowl got any deeper, it would swallow her whole face. “You sure that’s what you thought looked good?” she asked.
