Finn

by Chris Keniston

  Natalie came up beside her. "Did you say something to that guy in the red shirt?"

  "Told him I was with Finn."

  "Did you tell anyone else that?"

  "No, why?"

  "Because he asked me if you were attached. I saw you over here with Finn and put two and two together, but he doesn't look like the type to give up easy."

  By the huge grin on Finn's face, Joanna knew he'd once again beaten Chase.

  "You might as well accept it. I'm the superior player," Finn teased his friend and back at Joanna's side, his gaze once again on the crowd, he slid his arm around her waist. "I think it's time we move on."

  Joanna spotted the guy in the red shirt talking to Calli. "Crap."

  "What?" Finn asked.

  "Nothing. I think you're right. I'll go tell Nat." At that moment Calli's face scrunched in a look of total confusion as she shook her head and Joanna knew she's been busted. "Better yet, let's get the car and I'll text Nat to meet us outside."

  Finn's expression clearly said you're-up-to-something, but like the good sport he was, he escorted her outside and she frantically texted Nat to round everyone up.

  "That was the night you were avoiding some drunk with glasses?"

  "Right," Joanna confirmed. "I guess no one ever told you what happened as we were leaving?"

  "What happened?"

  "The guy in the red shirt made the rounds asking if you and I were an item. When he got to Calli, who never was good at thinking fast on her feet, she told him we were just friends. He'd come looking for us, but we'd already slipped out. Unfortunately, Chase and Pierce were still making their way to the door when the guy in the red shirt, backed up with his party, shoved Chase looking for you."

  "Shit. How did I not find out about this?"

  Joanna shrugged. She would have thought for sure someone would have told him the same way Nat had told her. "I don't know, but Chase of course shoved back—"

  "Sounds like Chase."

  "And just as some of our friends got up to even the odds, Nat, Calli and some of the Kappa girls slid between the lines, separating them. Men being men…"

  "They went after the girls and Chase and Pierce—"

  "Got dragged out by Calli and Nat," she finished for him. "We wound up going for something to eat and they went on to the next bar."

  "And the whole almost brawl got forgotten." Finn shrugged. "Guy was a jerk anyhow."

  "Yeah." She'd met a lot of those through the years. Guys seemed to be taking longer to grow up these days. "Oh look." Her arm pointed straight ahead. Sitting cockeyed to face Finn as she retold the story, she hadn't noticed how close they'd gotten to town.

  "Welcome to Three Corners," Finn said.

  ***

  Joanna looked ready to leap out of the moving truck. He'd forgotten how enthusiastic she could get over just about anything. Even when she'd drag him into one of her performances for the suckers drooling over her, she put her all into it. Truth was, he'd enjoyed those little charades.

  Most of the pretty blondes got all the attention on the college bar strip, but Joanna was striking even with her chestnut brown hair. Big blue eyes that changed shades from clear to brazen depending on the color clothes she wore could draw a man in with the bat of an eyelash. And Joanna batted those lashes well when she needed to. Sometimes just to make him laugh. He missed that. By the time they'd graduated, they'd gotten so good at the routine that half the campus thought they really were an item.

  Slowing to a stop, Finn slid the truck into park in the middle of what should have been the main drag, and turned to Joanna. "Ready?"

  "You bet." She'd already had her belt unbuckled and one foot out the door.

  "It's not a race." He called to her as she scurried to the dirty window of the nearest building.

  "Oh my, it's all still in there." She rubbed the window and cupped her hands around her eyes. "It's the general store."

  Finn peered inside. "Sure looks like it." Though the shelves were far from fully stocked, it was easy to get an idea of what the place must have been like once upon a time.

  "I can picture all the people." Joanna straightened and looked down the empty street. "A whole town." She sighed. "Here one day and gone the next."

  "Funny how some towns in the middle of nowhere sprang to life while others withered away." Finn hadn't given any of it much thought through the years.

  From storefront to storefront, they walked side by side, peering into windows, testing doors. Wandering inside when able.

  "I wish I had a better camera." Joanna snapped a photo of a rusty old dressmaker's mannequin. "I wonder what the story was here?"

  Finn had wondered the same thing. Nearing the end of the short main street, inset off the dirt road, yellow straw blowing in the wind, the front courtyard of the old church came into view.

  "Oh, Finn." Her eyes grew impossibly wider. "Just like Little House on the Prairie. Come on." Joanna waved him forward and took off at a near gallop down the street.

  Finn took off after her. "Hold up. You've gotta be—" his remaining words strangled by Joanna's ear piercing scream.

  Chapter Ten

  "Full house. Read 'em and weep." Aunt Eileen spread her cards on the table and gathered her chips. The cards had been on her side today.

  Ruth Ann shook her head. "I swear if anyone touched you today they'd get burned. You and those cards are on fire."

  "We are, aren't we?" Aunt Eileen couldn't help grinning. Not playing for real money, the card games were all in fun, more about fellowship than winning. But winning was still nice.

  "So when do we get to meet this new houseguest of yours?" Sally May gathered the cards in front of her. "Word is she's cute as a button."

  Aunt Eileen shrugged. "She's more than cute. She's beautiful. And I'm sure you'll get to meet her soon enough. I'm thinking she'll stick around until she gets to talk to everyone."

  "Sissy says she's real nice too." Ruth Ann folded her hands in front of her while Sally May shuffled. "They're awfully excited about sharing their ancestry with her. They also said she and Finn make an adorable couple. "

  Eileen had thought the same thing. "Hm."

  "You don't look happy about it?" Sally May dealt the first card. "Is she not as nice as everyone says? You think she's got ulterior motives to showing up?"

  "No. I'm sure she's here to write." Eileen sorted her first card in her hand. "I've just never seen Finn quite so…"

  "Chipper?" Ruth Ann filled in.

  "Happy?" Dorothy said next.

  Eileen looked to her two friends. "I was going to say interested."

  "Cause," Sally May dealt the last card, "word on the street is no one has ever seen Finn smiling so much as when he was taking her around town yesterday."

  "Heck," Ruth Ann sorted her cards, "Ned said he wasn't sure he'd ever seen Finn look so spry."

  "Spry?" Eileen tossed out two cards. "What is Finn, an old man?"

  "Of course not." Dorothy looked to her friend. "All he meant is that this girl, Joanna, seems to have an impact on Finn."

  That's what had Eileen feeling unsettled. It was silly of her. For years she would have danced naked to the full moon for her boys to find nice women anywhere they could. Now that five of her six boys had found the perfect matches, she was overjoyed, but worried about Finn.

  "You look like you sucked on a lemon." Dorothy set her cards on the table face down. "What's going on in that little mind of yours?"

  "It's silly."

  "Okay," Ruth Ann said. "What's silly?"

  "Adam, Brooks, Connor, DJ and Ethan are so very happy with the women in their lives."

  Sally May looked up from her cards. "And that's a bad thing?"

  "Of course not. It's just that each and every one of those matches was either orchestrated by, introduced by, or sanctioned by—"

  "Oh, for mercy's sake, you are not going to mention that dog." Dorothy rolled her eyes at Eileen. "It's just a stray mutt. Heck, it's not even the same stray mutt
."

  Sally May shrugged. "Dorothy's right. Ethan saw his dog in California."

  "And Adam and Meg never got a really good look at their dog." Ruth Ann set two cards aside. "You can't seriously tell me you don't want Finn to find happiness if there's no dog involved?"

  "Of course not." Eileen fidgeted with her cards. She wasn't crazy. She just wished that darn dog would show up.

  ***

  Oh, God. Why hadn't she stayed in the truck? What was she thinking running loose in West Texas? Hadn't she learned her lesson the first time? Only now, there was no tree, no fence, and not more than three feet between her and the hissing rattlesnakes. Both of them.

  Joanna had no clue if snakes were like bears or dogs or venomous insects. Did snakes fall under the same concept of bees, ignore them and they would ignore you or more like a bear or mama lion, disturb them and you die.

  "Don't move," Finn called out. She could barely breathe, never mind move. Mere seconds passed before one and then another shot rang out.

  The two deadly threats wiggled and jerked about and air slowly re-filled Joanna's lungs, but her feet remained rooted to the ground beneath her.

  "JoJo, are you okay?" Finn's steady voice sounded beside her.

  Without hesitation, she spun about and burying her face in his shoulder, cried out the fear.

  "Hey, it's all right. They're gone." His arms folded around her, one hand swirling soothing circles against her back. "You just didn't give them time to slither away before you got close."

  "I don't like snakes," she managed to mutter, her fists clenched between her shaking body and Finn's rock hard chest.

  "I know this is hard to believe, but they were probably more afraid of you."

  "Nuh-uh," she mumbled into his shirt. "Are they everywhere?"

  "No." His hand brushed at her back. "Just in tall grasses. They like to be left alone. Usually the sound of approaching hooves or cars or even steps is enough for them to scurry away, but you bolted in so quickly you just startled them."

  Her head shot up and she leveled her gaze on his. "I startled them?"

  A soft rumble sounded from deep in his throat. "Yes. You did."

  Her phone rang and she slid it out of her back pocket without moving away from the safety of Finn's hold and holding the phone out, clicked speaker. "Hello."

  "How's it going?" Denise, the editor at Texas Travel who had originally tapped her for the article on the ghost towns, sounded pretty chipper.

  Joanna glanced at the dead snakes. "Peachy."

  "Good. Listen, I ran into a problem with my cover piece for the Winter edition. The author is getting a divorce. If you can get me your story sooner than later, the spot is yours."

  "Really?" She straightened just a little. "How much sooner?"

  "Two weeks should do it."

  "I can do that." The cover of Texas Travel would be huge. Now she really needed a hooky angle and with any luck, Three Corners would do it for her.

  "Great. We'll need some better pics than your camera. I'll see who I can round up that's any good on short notice. I'll need your schedule."

  "Just send whoever to Tuckers Bluff. This will be home base till the piece is done."

  "Good. Good. I'll keep you posted. And Joanna?"

  "Yeah?"

  "If this works you'll get more lead spots."

  "Thanks." A few more short words and she slid the phone back into her purse.

  "Sounds like good news." Finn hadn't made any effort to pull away.

  "My first cover spot."

  Finn's smile spread from ear to ear and she couldn't explain why it meant so much more to her that he understood this was a big deal.

  "Then," Finn chucked her chin lightly with his finger, "we'd better get snooping."

  "I think I've had enough for today." Her nerves steadier, Joanna took a step back, even though she really didn't want to leave the comfort or safety of Finn's arms just yet. "I've come. I've seen. Let's just pretend I conquered."

  This time Finn laughed with a little more gusto. "Done."

  On the walk back to the truck, Joanna kept to the middle of the road and ran her options for the story around in her head. When her thoughts circled back to the snakes, she stopped and turned to face Finn at her side. "Do you always carry a gun?"

  He shook his head. "No. This isn't the Wild West. But when I know I'm going to be out walking in prime rattler napping ground. Yeah. I do."

  "You had a rifle on the four by four."

  He nodded. "You never know what you're going to run into on a hundred thousand acres of cow country. It's just smart."

  This time she nodded, took a few steps and stopped again to look up at him. "Can you teach me?"

  "To shoot?" One brow arched high on his forehead. Another thing he did that she'd forgotten how cute it made him look.

  "Yes."

  "Why?"

  "I don't know. Would I be correct if I said your aunt knows how to shoot a gun?"

  His head bobbed up and down. "Every person on a ranch knows how to safely handle a fire arm."

  "So would you say all the women who lived in this town knew how to handle a gun?"

  He hesitated. "Probably not. For these folks this was a city. The women counted on the men and the law to handle the guns."

  "So, what you're saying is it's a need for the rancher way of life not city life?"

  "Yeah, I guess that's what I'm saying."

  "I'd like to learn."

  His gaze lingered over her shoulder in the distance for a few long seconds before he blew out a heavy breath and nodded. "All right. We can do that."

  Joanna smiled. Not that she ever expected to need a gun in Dallas, but the idea of understanding more of Finn's world and fitting in like she had yesterday morning made her want to grin as though she'd won Powerball.

  ***

  Today was not turning out to be anything like Finn had expected. For starters, he actually had been enjoying bopping down the sidewalk of Three Corners, peeking in windows and poking around inside the abandoned shops and offices. Joanna had been overly silly with the camera on her phone. For Finn, his phone was all about answer and hang up. A way to communicate. The word selfie was not part of his vocabulary.

  And yet, he'd been a party to what had to be a hundred crazy shots of him and Joanna at the dress shop, the general store, the restaurant, even the saloon. She'd stood on one foot, leaned forward, leaned back, kissed him on the cheek, stuck her fingers in her ears and made ridiculous faces, and he hadn't laughed so hard in years.

  But the sight of Joanna paralyzed in fear with a pair of rattlers practically at her feet had his blood pumping hard. Though not nearly as hard as it had flowed when she'd collapsed into his arms. He couldn't count all the times they'd danced together, hugged hello, goodbye, or held each other to ward off an unwanted suitor, but he knew for sure not once had having her body mold to his sent his mind running free with thoughts he had no right to dwell on.

  Now she wanted to learn to shoot a gun. To do what his aunt did and just about every woman within a few hundred miles of Tuckers Bluff could do. A small part of him thought putting a gun with live ammo in Joanna's hands was not the brightest move he'd ever make, but another side was damn pleased that she wanted to ride horses, mend fences, and shoot guns. It made no bloody sense. None of it did. But it was what it was, and he had no idea what to do about any of it.

  Chapter Eleven

  Bringing the knife down on the tail end of the celery, Joanna scraped the last bits into the bowl. "Celery minced. Now what?"

  Aunt Eileen waved her own knife at Joanna. "Pour them into the pan with the mushrooms and give them a good stir."

  "Got it." Joanna did as she was told, mixing in the diced veggies and sautéing them in the butter. "This smells wonderful."

  "On the days I play cards in town, I always make something fast and easy. If I'm back too late there are a gazillion frozen casseroles in the utility room freezer."

  "My mom used to do
that. Save casseroles for a rainy day. Never failed when she ran out of room in the freezer, she'd invite the neighbors and we'd have a smorgasbord for dinner."

  "Sounds nice." Aunt Eileen continued mashing the potatoes.

  "It was." Joanna lifted the lid on the back pot and noticing the sauce boiling too hard, lowered the flame and replaced the lid.

  "So you like to cook?" Aunt Eileen watched Joanna out of the corner of her eye.

  Joanna shrugged. "Don't know that I'd say I like to cook, but I don't dislike cooking."

  "But you know how to cook. I have two nieces-in-law who wouldn't have had a clue to check on the sauce."

  "Let me guess, Catherine?"

  Aunt Eileen nodded. "Not much time in law school for cooking classes."

  "And," Joanna had to think a second, "Becky and DJ aren't married yet, and every New England Italian I ever met knows at least a little something about cooking so I'd guess it's not Toni."

  "Nope. Not Toni."

  "That leaves Meg the innkeeper and … wait, is Ethan married?"

  "Not yet."

  "Then you can't be referring to Allison, so it must be Meg. But she runs a bed and breakfast?"

  Aunt Eileen laughed. "Yep. She can scramble eggs and fry bacon and Toni supplies all the baked goods. Toni's blueberry muffins are popular. If the place were a bed and supper, Meg would be screwed."

  Joanna almost choked on her own spit. She hadn't expected sweet Aunt Eileen to say that. "Uh, I guess."

  "Oh, that smells good." Catherine, the niece-in-law who wasn't much of a cook, came in the front door. "Are you making that creamy shepherd pie thing?"

  Aunt Eileen nodded. "I am, and there's plenty if your crew wants to join us."

  "Thanks, but Connor's up to his eyeballs in some new designs for the corrals and Stacey is on a cream cheese and jelly sandwich kick."

  "Oh." Aunt Eileen beamed. "I made that for our lunch the other day."

  "Well, it's safe to say, like everything else the two of you do, it was a big hit." Catherine turned to Joanna. "The reason I popped over is to invite you to join some of us girls' tonight."