Stuck With You

by Vicki Lewis Thompson

  He finished with the buttons, leaving the top two undone. “Must not be an antique, then.” He walked toward her.

  “I’m afraid it is.”

  His eyebrows lifted. “And you sacrificed it for our coffee? I’m impressed.”

  “I’ll clean the pot before Nora comes back. And I should warn you, I have no idea how the coffee will taste. I’ve never done this before in my life.”

  “Just so it’s hot and strong.”

  She wished he hadn’t phrased it quite that way. Hot and strong was exactly how she’d describe him. She looked away from his dark gaze and walked past him. “I’ll get a couple of mugs and we can find out. I think there are some muffins in the bread box.”

  “I’ll come with you. We’d better check the refrigerator to find out if we should put any of the food into a snowbank outside. And plan what we’re going to eat today besides muffins.”

  Her heart raced just having him walk behind her into the kitchen. She’d have to get a grip. “I thought you wanted a complete turkey dinner?”

  “You didn’t seem to think that was an option.”

  She went to the cupboard to get the mugs. “Maybe we could put the covered roaster on the coals just like I did the coffeepot and keep the fire going around it.” She took two mugs from the shelf and turned. “What do you think?”

  He closed the refrigerator door. “That’s a twenty-pound turkey in there. It would be damn near impossible to get the roaster in and out of the fire.”

  She’d wanted praise for her idea and instead he was throwing up obstacles. “Then I guess we’ll have peanut butter sandwiches, won’t we?”

  “Now, don’t get like that. I didn’t say it couldn’t be done.”

  She couldn’t seem to erase the peevish tone from her voice. “Yes, you did. You—”

  “Hey.”

  The soft syllable cut through her irritation. She stared at him for a long moment.

  “Can I see what the turkey roaster looks like?” he asked.

  She set the mugs on the counter and crouched to open a lower cupboard. While pulling the roaster out, she had time to think about her behavior, and concluded she’d overreacted. She stood and turned back to him, the roaster in her arms. “I’m sorry. This such a crazy situation, and I—”

  “Yeah, I know,” he said gently. He stepped forward and took the roaster from her unresisting grip.

  She found herself staring at the open neck of his shirt and wondering how the swirl of chest hair she glimpsed there would feel beneath her fingertips. She looked up, and for one heart-stopping moment she thought he might kiss her again.

  Instead he smiled and started out of the kitchen. “Let’s go have some of that coffee while I think about the turkey roaster problem.”

  “D-do you want muffins?” she stammered.

  “You bet,” he called back to her. “I’m starving.”

  She put the muffins into a basket and grabbed an oven mitt, mugs and napkins before returning to the living room.

  Wyatt sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the fire. With Mac stationed nearby, head cocked, Wyatt considered the turkey roaster on his lap. His duffel bag lay open beside him, which reminded her of his remark about chaps and a rope for making love. She’d hated that remark, yet perversely, just thinking of it made her weak with desire.

  He glanced up, a smile of triumph on his face. “I reckon I’ve got it figured out.”

  “Really?” Her heart gave a little jump at the brilliance of that smile.

  He pulled a coil of wire out of the duffel. “I’ll twist strands of baling wire together, loop them through the handles and make the roaster into a basket with a lid. The wire handle will be high enough above the flames that I can reach in and grab hold of it without getting burned.”

  “You carry wire around with you? Whatever for?”

  “Everything. Fixing tack, wiring a bumper back on my truck, making a turkey roaster handle. Most cowboys would be lost without a length of baling wire handy.”

  “Amazing.” If she’d unconsciously classified him as a dumb cowboy, she’d been dead wrong. She recognized a creative mind at work.

  He glanced at her. “Thanks.” Then he set the roaster on the floor beside him and got to his feet. “Let’s get that coffee poured.”

  “It’s going to take two of us.” She put down the basket of muffins and the mugs. “One to use the fireplace tongs and the other to grab the handle with the oven mitt.”

  “I’ll handle the tongs.”

  She nodded and pulled on the oven mitt. The system worked like a charm. Wyatt snagged the pot from the front so the handle faced Charity. When she took hold of it, he put the tongs down and picked up the mugs. In moments she’d poured the coffee and they sat in front the fire. Charity sipped the coffee and sighed with pleasure.

  “I second that,” Wyatt said. “You brew a fine pot of coffee, lady.”

  She smiled at him. “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.” His gaze was warm and compelling.

  An uneasy trembling began deep inside her. She could marshal arguments against the idea all day, but the truth was, she wanted to make love to him. And judging from the slow smile touching his lips, he knew it. Looking away from that knowing smile, she took a quick gulp of coffee and scalded her tongue.

  8

  THE COFFEE and muffins took the edge off Wyatt’s hunger, but he was used to eating more hearty food. After a second cup of coffee, he set his mug on the hearth and glanced at Charity. “Let’s get that bird in the roaster.”

  “Good idea.” She dusted crumbs from her hands into the muffin basket.

  He took note of the gesture, a nicety he hadn’t bothered with. No question that she was more civilized than he was, which only added to the attraction…and the challenge. Her dusting motion also confirmed something he’d suspected when he’d held her during the blue bathrobe incident—she wasn’t wearing a bra. It could be a feminist statement, of course, but then again, it could be intended as a more provocative kind of message. He sincerely hoped so. His fantasies of making love to her were becoming almost unmanageable.

  Charity stood. “If you’ll get the roaster ready, I’ll go do…whatever needs to be done with the bird.”

  He chuckled as he reached for his duffel bag. “Okay. You know you have to take the guts out, right?”

  “They’re not already out?”

  She sounded so distressed he took pity on her. “Yeah, but I’m pretty sure they wrap them in butcher paper or something and shove them back in.”

  “Now why would anyone do such a crazy thing?”

  “Some people make gravy with them. I think my mom does.” He glanced up. “Haven’t you ever hung around the kitchen when your mom made Thanksgiving dinner?”

  “When I was little I watched my brothers while she did it. And then—she quit.” The change in her expression was subtle, a tightening around her mouth and a slight flare to her nostrils.

  He kept his tone light, not wanting to frighten her away from the source of her anger. “How come?”

  She gazed down at him and seemed to consider whether or not to answer. Finally she did. “My father left us for another woman the day after Thanksgiving.”

  Ah. He understood a lot more about her now. “That’s terrible. I’m sorry, Charity.”

  “I’m not.” Her chin lifted. “We were all better off without him, including my mother. What a jerk, stuffing himself on the food she’d worked so hard to prepare, when all along he planned to abandon us the next day.”

  “That’s pretty cold.”

  She blinked and brought her glance back to his. “It taught me young what a trap marriage is for women.”

  “Sometimes it’s a trap for men, too,” he said quietly. He didn’t condone what her father had done, but there were always two sides to any story.

  “A trap for men, you say? Have you heard the latest statistics about high blood pressure? Married women’s is higher than single women’s. And for m
en, there’s no difference whatsoever between husbands and bachelors. How about that?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t put much faith in statistics.”

  “Especially when they dispute your theories, right?”

  He opened his mouth to fire another retort but stopped himself and lowered his head to stare at the baling wire in his hands. He didn’t have the heart for this fight. After all, she’d been hurt at a young age by the one guy she’d trusted above all others. On the surface he could understand, but he didn’t really know what that kind of betrayal was like. Right now he just wanted a way to douse the angry sparks they always seemed to strike off each other.

  He glanced up and reached a hand toward her, palm up. “Please come back down here a minute.”

  Apprehension flickered in her eyes. “Why?”

  “Because I have something I’d like to say to you and it’d be a whole lot easier if I didn’t have to crane my neck like this.”

  Slowly she put her hand in his. Her touch stirred him more than he would have thought possible, but he kept control of himself. He guided her down until she knelt across from him.

  “That’s better.” He looked into her blue eyes. “First of all, what your father did was rotten. Don’t ever imagine that I approve of that kind of behavior. I believe in honoring commitments.”

  She swallowed. “That makes you an unusual man, then.”

  “You had a bad experience.” He wanted to be gentle, but he wanted to make his point, too. “You’re a smart woman, Charity. You know it’s not logical to blame us all for what your father did.”

  Her gaze darkened. “Let’s just say I have more than one example of the lies men tell women to get what they want.”

  He recognized a pattern he’d seen before—instinct sent her after men who were the spitting image of her father. Charity needed a steady lover, one who would stay. But Wyatt wasn’t a stay-around kind of guy. Maybe that was his big attraction for her. If he cared about Charity at all he’d keep his distance. Somehow.

  He released her hand and looked away from the challenge in her eyes. “Well, you don’t have to worry about broken promises with me. I don’t make them in the first place.”

  What appeared to be disappointment flickered on her face before she composed herself and stood. “At least you’re honest. That’s something.”

  “That’s everything.”

  “Yes.” She gave him a long look. “I guess it is.” Then she turned and walked into the kitchen.

  He had the insane urge to call her back. And beneath that was an even more dangerous compulsion, one that would mean the end of life as he knew it. He wanted to make her happy.

  ALISTAIR WASN’T WILD about heights, but the occasion called for fearless behavior. He lifted the sash of the attic window and adjusted his muffler over the lower part of his face as the cold slapped his cheeks. The aluminum extension ladder clanked as he hoisted it to the sill and pushed it out the window about three feet. He wished Nora could be witness to the courage he was displaying in catching her killers. Perhaps she was watching from on high. Poor Nora.

  Keeping his foot on the bottom rung of the ladder, Alistair extended it as far as it would go. Thank heaven the metal was lightweight, he thought, or he’d never have been able to lift the ladder and position it against Nora’s snowy roof. And thank heaven the houses were close together. Dear, departed Cordelia had complained about that, but the proximity was coming in handy now.

  He settled the ladder firmly, made sure the small tape recorder and sturdy twine were safely in his pocket, and began the climb from the attic window to Nora’s roof. He’d had the idea while stoking up the fire in his fireplace. Charity and the nephew were bound to their fireplace as much as he was to his. All he had to do was climb to their roof, lower the recorder down the chimney and collect that evil pair’s secrets on tape. He would be silent and stealthy as a panther, clever as a fox, lightfingered as a raccoon. They’d never even suspect he was there.

  CHARITY STUDIED the directions on the turkey wrapper before peeling it off and plopping the turkey in the sink. Sure enough, Wyatt had been right about obnoxious-looking turkey parts hidden inside the bird. There was no butcher paper wrapping, however.

  But then, Wyatt was the man who made no promises, not even about butcher paper. That should make anything that happened between them easier, Charity reasoned. She had no intention of tying herself to a man and he had no intention of tying himself to a woman. They could have the sort of uncomplicated sex she’d always thought would be so liberating. So why did she feel as if an elephant’s foot was planted on her chest every time she thought about a one-night stand with Wyatt?

  “This is beginning to look like the set of ‘E.R.,’” he commented from the kitchen doorway. He held the roaster by its baling wire handle.

  She glanced at the drainboard where she’d been flinging whatever she found inside the turkey, and had to admit she’d made a gruesome mess. “Your mother uses this glop in gravy?”

  “Let’s not.”

  “Yeah, let’s not.” She eyed the turkey. “Do you think we should stuff it?”

  “I’ll take a wild guess. No, we shouldn’t stuff it.”

  “Right answer. But the directions say to rinse it, and the water’s off.”

  “I’ll melt snow in the roaster.” He opened the back door just long enough to scoop the snow. As he closed it again, a clank came from somewhere outside.

  “What was that?” Charity asked.

  “Heck if I know. Maybe something settling.” Wyatt headed down the hall, Mac trotting at his heels. “I’ll go heat this on the fire.”

  Charity wiped her hands on a paper towel and found a plastic bag for the turkey parts. She dumped the bag in the garbage pail just as Wyatt returned with the melted snow.

  “Snow settling doesn’t sound like metal clanking,” she said to him as she lifted the turkey into the water.

  “I wouldn’t know. I’m an Arizona boy.”

  Charity glanced up at him. “It was a distinctive clank, sort of hollow, like one of those extension ladders banging against something.”

  “A ladder? In this weather?”

  “You don’t suppose that Alistair…”

  “After the snowshoe incident?” Wyatt grinned. “He’s probably so embarrassed he’ll go into hiding until spring.”

  The snowshoe incident. When Wyatt had first kissed her. She looked away from the temptation of his smile. “You don’t know Alistair or you wouldn’t say that.” She tried to get her hands under the slippery turkey to turn it over but she kept losing her grip.

  Wyatt stepped closer. “Here, let me help with that.” He shoved his hands under the turkey. “On three. One, two—”

  Charity remembered that the last time they’d counted to three they’d ended up in each other’s arms. “Wait, I—”

  “Three.”

  He lifted, but she didn’t. Twenty pounds of unbalanced turkey flipped over toward them, tipping the roaster and sending water splashing down the front of her sweat suit and Wyatt’s shirt.

  The turkey tumbled out of the roaster and would have hit the floor if Wyatt hadn’t made a dive and caught it in both arms.

  They stared at each other for a moment in shock.

  Charity recovered first. “Good catch.”

  “Star receiver in high school.” With a nonchalance that impressed her, considering he must be as cold and wet as she was, he deposited the turkey back in the roaster. “Bird’s rinsed.”

  “I do believe it is.”

  He gave her a crooked grin. “Let’s put the heat to this baby.”

  Her heart somersaulted. Oh, he had a way about him, this Wyatt Logan. “Anything you say.” She followed him into the living room and wondered if he guessed how literally she’d meant that last statement.

  Wyatt put the lid on the roaster and lifted the whole thing by the baling wire. “Take the poker and adjust the wood underneath as I let it down so it’ll lie easy.”

&nb
sp; “Sure thing.” She picked up the brass poker, once polished and pristine but now blackened with soot, and began rearranging the wood chunks to make a hotbed for the roaster. “You know, I think this is going to work.”

  “Of course it is. We’re a good team.” Wyatt hunkered down beside her and lifted the roaster over the low flames. His shoulder muscles bunched beneath the damp shirt as he slowly lowered the roaster.

  “If you don’t count a few minor disasters.”

  Wyatt let the weight of the roaster settle into the wood, made one more adjustment and pulled back from the fire. “Can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs.” He glanced at her. “By the way, how’d you dispose of the guts?”

  “Plastic bag in the garbage.”

  “We should probably put them out in the snow before they start to stink.”

  Charity shuddered. “I definitely didn’t like that part. It reminded me that we have a victim here.”

  “Well, I was raised on a ranch, so I’ll put the guts out in the snow.”

  “I’ll do it. I need to toughen up. No use being a hypocrite about it. After all, I’m going to enjoy—” She was cut off by Mac’s furious barking, followed by something landing with a clank on top of the roaster lid.

  “What in hell?” Wyatt grabbed the tongs and dragged out a slightly melted tape recorder attached to a piece of twine that was still smoking.

  Mac kept barking.

  “Hush!” Charity ordered, grabbing the little dog as she strained to hear above his frantic yapping. “Wyatt, listen! Someone’s up there!”

  Still holding the tape recorder with the tongs, Wyatt peered at it, then gazed toward the fireplace where hollow scraping sounds, coughing and what might have been muffled curses echoed down the chimney. Wyatt spoke in a low voice. “And it’s too early for Santa Claus. This neighbor is getting weird, Charity.”

  “Tell me about it,” she murmured.

  “I wonder how in hell he got up there.”

  “I can’t imagine.”

  “Maybe he’s totally flipped out. People can do amazing things when they’re crazy.”