Kelton's Rules (Harlequin Super Romance)

by Nicholson, Peggy

  “Oh,” Kat murmured, bringing her back to the present.

  She glanced around. Don’t think about Jack. Think about this child, who needed something she could give. “In fact, we should be thinking about buying you a sun hat, kiddo.” She’d yet to take Kat shopping, as she’d originally promised her father. “When you have a treasure, you ought to guard it.”

  Kat shrugged and looked down at her pile of vegetables, resumed her chopping. But an odd little smile came and went.

  And possibly this was the best bit of art she’d created all day—all week—Abby told herself, turning back to her stenciling. Better than the best design of flowers and bees. She’d sketched a new self-image for Kat, which she could now try on and parade in front of her soul’s mirror. Like a child trying on a velvet gown from the dress-up trunk.

  Here’s an alternative to combat fatigues, Kat. What do you think?

  AFTER ABBY HAD FINISHED painting, she suggested they complete tonight’s meal at Kat’s house. “I’m afraid if we make the dough here, it might end up smelling of latex.”

  “Dough?” Kat cocked her head. “What are we cooking?”

  “Oh, didn’t I tell you? Home-made pizza.”

  Right then and there Kat decided. It wasn’t just a good idea—it was a stupendous one. Her dad needed to marry Abby.

  But how to make it happen?

  Especially when Abby didn’t seem to want to hang around with them as much as she had the week before. “There,” she said when they’d finished two identical pizzas, each as big as the cookie sheet it rested on. “That’s a complete meal in itself—bread, vegetables and cheese. You can always have fruit for dessert, but I don’t think you’ll want it.”

  “Aren’t you and Sky going to eat with us tonight?” Kat pleaded as Abby lifted one pan. “It’s Saturday night.”

  “I know, kiddo, but after all this painting, I’m pretty tired. And I imagine your dad would like to relax tonight and not have to entertain. So…set your oven to three-fifty degrees.” Abby glanced at the wall clock. “They ought to be home any time now, so go ahead and turn it on. Then the minute your dad walks in the door, stick the pizza in the oven. That’ll give him just time to take a shower…” Abby stared off into the distance, as if she’d spotted a bug on the wall or something.

  “And then?” Kat prompted finally.

  “Oh! Leave it in for twenty minutes. That should be long enough. Be sure to set your timer. When the timer rings, pull it out—carefully, because it’ll be very hot—slice it and enjoy.” Abby moved toward the exit.

  Don’t go! Kat begged with her eyes, but Abby gave her an odd, sad sort of smile and shouldered her way out the door, saying gently, “G’night, sweetie.”

  As her steps faded away, Kat stood, fists clenched, heart pounding with frustration. So close! They’d been so close to another really happy evening together. She stamped her foot hard enough to rock the cookie sheet on the table. She swung to glare at her masterpiece. Your fault! If they’d made one gigantic pizza instead of two, Abby and Sky would’ve had no choice but to eat with them.

  Kat blinked. Did she dare? It would be almost a sin.

  Most certainly a shame.

  On the other hand… “Soldiers have to make sacrifices to win wars,” she reminded herself. Think of the men in the Alamo.

  With a resolute nod, she turned to the oven. Spun its knob to five hundred degrees—then past that to Broil. She listened carefully for the flame to come on, then shoved the pizza onto the lower rack, shut the door and glanced at the clock.

  Six o’clock. With any luck, her dad would be late.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  “THAT WAS A GOOD day’s work,” Jack said as he parked the Jeep in front of his cottage. They’d framed the west side of the house, then its first jog to the north. Sky had worked like a surly demon; what could be eating the boy? Instead of mending with time, the kids’ quarrel seemed to have expanded. Jack had the uncomfortable feeling that he was now included in Sky’s grudge, although he hadn’t a clue why or what to do about it. Just maintain a steady, smiling course and gut it out, he supposed.

  “Hang on,” he said as Sky started to climb out of the Jeep. “I owe you.” He was a firm believer in immediate gratification, wherever possible. “Let’s see, you put in eight hours today, so that’s forty bucks.” He peeled off two twenties from the bills in his wallet.

  “Er, thanks.” Sky pocketed the cash, then turned toward the house. “Hey, do you—?”

  The distant crack! of the back door banging open—then Kat’s piercing shrieks—spun them both around. “Abby, Abby, fire, fire, fire! Help!”

  “Holy Mother of—!” Jack flew around the side of the house thinking, hose, if he couldn’t reach the fire extinguisher… Send Sky to phone the volunteer brigade from Abby’s place… And Kat… Well, she simply had to be all right. Nothing else was allowable. Smoke billowed out the open door as he took the back steps in a bound. “God!” He paused, inhaled a heated wave of charred cheese and burning bread, coughed it out and bellowed, “Kat!”

  “She’s here! I have her! She’s fine, Jack!” Abby patted his back, then thrust a fire extinguisher into his hands.

  “All of you, out of here!” The fire seemed confined to the stove. He yanked open its door—a cloud of greasy black rolled forth. He spun the temperature knob to Off, foamed the oven to kingdom come, then retreated gasping toward the door, where Abby and the kids stood goggle-eyed. “Out! Outta here. It’s under control.” He herded them into the dark. Paused to catch a cool breath. “Holy smoke! What was all that?”

  “Supper,” Kat said mournfully. “That was the very best pizza in the world.”

  “‘Was’ being the operative word,” Jack noted. “What happened?”

  Kat shrugged and widened her eyes. “Dunno. You were so late, I started cooking it. I was watching TV on the couch.” Another broad shrug and a too innocent smile. “I guess maybe I fell asleep? Then I smelled smoke and woke up.”

  Jack cocked his head. Something was ringing a little funny here. She’d been up to some sort of no good. Maybe smoking cigarettes in the kitchen, then blasted their supper to cover her tracks? Nah, given her appetite for pizza, not likely. Welding again, but then where was her torch?

  Kat continued the note of tragedy. “What are we gonna do now? We can’t eat it, can we?”

  “Of course you can’t.” Abby smoothed the bangs across her forehead. “You’re going to come over to our house and help us eat our pizza, sweetie, while your place airs out. And maybe we’ll make a salad to fill in the chinks?”

  “Okay.” Kat brightened immediately.

  Well, whatever she’d been up to, Jack had no complaints. He’d feared Abby meant to ostracize them again this evening, as she had the night before. “Excellent,” he said, seconding the notion before she could retract it. “And for dessert, I’ll take us to Mo’s. Apple pie à la mode.” The evening was looking up.

  In the end, they ate a superb pizza alfresco, out on a blanket under the stars, since Abby’s kitchen still smelled of paint. Nothing like a common disaster to pull a group together. Kat’s chagrin had given way with suspicious speed to smug satisfaction. Sky had actually smiled once or twice. Abby avoided Jack’s gaze, but at least she laughed at his jokes.

  Got to get you alone, he told her silently. If she thought she could go back to before—pretend that she’d never come in his arms—she’d better think again.

  But with two watchful preteens as chaperones, that would have to wait. Tomorrow, he promised himself. Somehow he’d get her alone tomorrow. “So who’s ready for ice cream and pie?” he inquired, trusting the kids to overwhelm any opposition from Abby.

  “Me!” Kat bounced to her feet and kept on bouncing.

  AT THE TRUCK STOP, their luck continued. They arrived just in time to seize Kat’s favorite booth, the big round one, and Mo hadn’t yet run out of pie. After a forkful of cinnamon apples and flaky crust, even Abby melted. “Oh, my!”


  Remembering her moans in the bus, Jack stirred, surreptitiously caught the side seam of his jeans and pulled toward his knee. His squirming caught her attention and their eyes met for the first time that night. He gave her a wry grin. “Oh, my, indeed, ma’am. Sweeter than wine.” Your kisses are.

  Her gaze shot away, her cheeks rosy.

  “You’re going to have to come see what your son’s been up to,” Jack added, shamelessly exploiting the proud mom card. “We’re about a third of the way finished with the framing, and I couldn’t have done it without him.”

  “Oh?” Abby smiled at her son. “Hope you’re taking notes, kiddo. When we get to Sedona, it’s bound to come in handy for our house.”

  No, we don’t want to hear that. Jack opened his mouth to change the subject.

  Kat beat him to it. “This is fun!”

  “Yeah,” he agreed. Great minds think alike.

  “Almost like being a family,” she added, with studied casualness.

  Sky’s spoon clattered to the table. “Is not!”

  “Is, too!” Kat raised her chin.

  “How would you know? You never had a mother, not so’s you’d remember!” Sky leaped to his feet.

  Abby cried, “Skyler! Don’t be rude.”

  “Well, it’s the truth! Two isn’t a family!” He scrambled out of the booth. “Can I use the phone?” He shoved his hand under her nose.

  “That, hotshot, is over the top.” Jack put some gravel in his voice. “Sit down till your mother excuses you.”

  “May I have the phone?” Sky jiggled his hand in front of her face.

  Not my kid, not my kid, not my kid, Jack warned himself, biting his tongue. If he came down hard on the boy, as he would have on Kat, Abby would fly to his defense. Whether Sky knew it or not, he was playing “divide and conquer.” So sit tight and let her handle it.

  “You call your father on Tuesdays,” Abby said steadily. “Saturday night, I doubt he’ll—”

  “I need to talk to him!”

  “Fine! Take it.” She dug in her purse for her cell phone, then thrust it at her son. “Go sit over there where I can see you.”

  Instead he stomped off toward the Jeep.

  “Oo-oh.” Abby pushed her plate away and started to rise.

  Jack laid a hand over hers. “He’ll be okay out there. And it is more private. You.” He turned to his daughter. Miss Troublemaker. “Go hang out by the cash register and keep an eye on him, but don’t go outside. Come get me if you need to.”

  “Yup.” She scooted out of the booth and darted away.

  Jack sighed. “He’ll be okay.” He was still holding Abby’s hand across the table. “I’m sorry about that.”

  “Oh, no—I am!” Abby wiped her eyes. “And it was a lovely evening. If only he’d…”

  “Takes time. You’ll just have to wait him out.”

  “I keep asking myself what I could do—should’ve done—but…” Abby shook her head helplessly. Tears beaded in her long lashes. “But I…”

  Jack stood, moved around to her side of the table, hooked an arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. “You didn’t leave, Abby. You got left.” By a fool who hadn’t known what he had while he had it, but Jack wasted no pity on fools. Gently he stroked the side of her face. “Seems to me you’re making the best of the bad situation you were handed. Doing a darned fine job of it.”

  She shook her head miserably.

  “He’s well fed, he’s well loved, he’s safe and secure,” Jack insisted. “You’ve brought him to a place that most boys would think was heaven on earth. I’d say that’s a good start.”

  “But you heard him. There’s not two of me.”

  “There’re all kinds of families, all kinds of ways to be happy, even if Sky doesn’t see it yet. Look at Kat and me. We’ve never lacked for anything.” Or at least he’d have said so till Abby moved in next door.

  Abby who meant to move on, build a house in Sedona.

  But not yet, he told himself fiercely. Not till I—

  Till something was completed between them. He didn’t know what, only knew that this minute—

  Swooping down, he claimed her trembling mouth. Salty with tears, sweet as apple pie. What more did he need to know?

  “YOU’VE GOTTA COME out here!” Sky yelled. His dad was using his cell phone someplace noisy, people laughing and talking in the background. Sky could barely hear him.

  “Hey, buddy, you’re going to have to talk louder!” his dad hollered back. “It’s happy hour around here and we’re mighty damn cheerful. What’s up?”

  “You need to come out! Now!” Things are falling apart.

  “Come out to Colorado? Well, Sky-boy, that’d be sort of difficult. Chelsea’s not feeling too spry. She’s into her seventh month, you know, and ’tween you and me, if you crossed the Goodyear Blimp with a pit bull… But what can a guy do? Hey, I’ll be flying right over you on my way to Phoenix next week. What if I call you from the cockpit? I can’t hear you worth beans in here. You okay, son?”

  “No,” he half whispered. I’m not.

  “Sure you are, spaceshot. And you know I’m proud of you. So catch you next week, all right? Hey, crap, watch what you—!” His phone clattered against something hard. A woman let out a raucous shriek of laughter.

  Sky sat with a dial tone ringing in his ear.

  Big Colorado sky with stars bright as tears above.

  You gotta come out here.

  SUNDAY, the building crew started early. Jack set up the frame for the next western jog—that side of the house was irregular—then realized he’d forgotten something. “Can you handle these three studs alone?” he asked Sky. “I ought to run back to your place and pay Whitey.”

  “Sure.” The kid was coolly withdrawn, but last night’s explosive resentment had blown itself out, at least for the present.

  “Kat’s over the ridge if you need her.” Setting up her hawk trap, he supposed. She’d brought along a package of frozen wieners this morning, which Jack trusted would be ignored.

  Sky’s shrug said it all, so Jack sighed and walked away. Trying to jolly him out of it would only backfire, something told him. “See you shortly.”

  Parking in Abby’s drive behind Whitey’s truck, he ambled back to the bus. With his Pekinese looking on, the old man was hoisting the leaky radiator out of the engine compartment, using a block and tackle hooked to the branch overhead. Jack helped him guide it to one side, bring it down on the bumper, then lift it to the ground. “Making progress, I see.”

  “Yep, and we picked up a good-lookin’ transmission Saturday, but I lost the whole dang day. Johnnie Tso’d messed up his thumb in a lathe. Had a rush job, switchin’ engines on a Chevy truck, so I stuck around. We trade chores from way back.” The old man unhooked the radiator and swung the tackle over to its replacement. “Hope Abby didn’t fret too much when we didn’t show. Now that I’ve got the parts, we’ll start movin’.”

  “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.” Jack glanced toward the kitchen door. “Uh, where is she?”

  “Said she had some errands.”

  Good enough. Jack pulled out his wallet. “What do I owe you so far?”

  Whitey shifted his chaw from one grizzled cheek to the other. “Thought I was workin’ fer Abby.”

  “We’re bartering. She baby-sits Kat for me. I pay you. It evens out.”

  “Can’t see no objections t’that. Can you, Chang?”

  Apparently the dog’s snort and backward kicking of his stubby hind legs meant no. Whitey named a ridiculously low figure and Jack paid it, making a mental note to give the old hand a bonus at the end. “One thing,” he said casually as he put away his wallet. “There’s no hurry on this job. In fact, quite the opposite. Take all the time you need.”

  “Huh.” Whitey scratched his chin. “I kinda thought she was itchin’ t’lay tracks out of Trueheart. Said something about gettin’ to Sedona to build an adobe.”

  “Things have changed.” Don’
t make me say what, old man.

  “What?”

  Great. Jack rubbed the back of his neck. “Well, between you and me, Abby could use some cheering up. So I need a little time.”

  “To cheer her up?”

  “Yup,” Jack said stoically.

  Whitey turned to consult the Pekinese, then turned back, frowning. “She’s a nice lady. A real peach. Just how far was you plannin’ to cheer her?”

  “As far as makes her wake up smiling,” Jack admitted, throwing discretion to the winds. “She’s had a tough year. What’s wrong with reminding her that all men aren’t rats? Teaching her how to giggle again?”

  “Huh.” Whitey leaned over and spat in the grass.

  “Besides, she’d be smart to settle here for the winter.” Jack forged on, feeling as if he were trudging head-down into a dust storm. “She’s never built anything before and she thinks she’ll build an adobe by the fall? Ain’t gonna happen.”

  “Gal’s pretty spunky.”

  “Yep, but take it from a divorce lawyer, she’s smack dab in the middle of the Divorce Crazies. She shouldn’t be making commitments till she knows where she’s going. She’ll change her mind ten times in the next ten months. Meanwhile, till she’s over this phase, Trueheart’s a better, saner, safer town in which to raise a boy than Sedona’ll ever be. Last thing Abby needs this summer is to get lost in a power vortex.”

  “Hmm,” Whitey chewed, thought, finally said, “Sure you know which end of the brandin’ iron you’re grabbing?”

  Jack cocked his head. “Meaning?”

  “Meanin’ if anybody gets burned ’round here, it might not be Abby. Womenfolk are always tougher than you figure. The softest woman can ride a hard man into the ground and come back fresh as a daisy. But you, Kelton, you might want to take a piece of advice from an old hand at makin’ the ladies smile.”

  Want it or not, he was going to get it.

  “Look at me.” As Whitelaw straightened, Jack took another look. The old man was lean, tough as rawhide, with plenty of humor and wisdom in those faded blue eyes. In his pre-Pekinese days Whitey must have sat tall in the saddle. Roped his share of hearts. “Had a wife of my own forty years ago, but turned out she wanted a town man, not a cowboy. Since Betsy, I’ve smacked a few rumps, but I never tried to tie the knot twice. And now what’ve I got?”