“And who’s this?” demanded an old lady’s voice, sounding like Maudie Harris, except she was out in the yard.
“I’m Kat Kelton. Who’s this?”
“Abby Lake’s mother, dear, calling from Maryland. Is she around?”
“She’s helping Mrs. Harris with her elk head.”
“Oh.” There came a pause while this was digested, then, “Would your father be the lawyer who lives next door?”
Kat giggled as she wandered over to the mantel. “He would be.”
“Ah. Well, in that case, perhaps you could tell me about him. Abby never tells me anything.”
“Like what?”
“Well, let’s see. For starters, is he handsome?”
Abby’s mom had all kinds of questions and she was easy to talk to. And Kat had been dying to discuss her plans with somebody, but this was the one subject she couldn’t share with Sky. “I think Daddy and Abby love each other, but they don’t know it yet,” she confided. “Every time I look at Daddy, he’s staring all funny at Abby, and she’s staring back.”
“That is a good sign,” Abby’s mom agreed. “What else do they do?”
“Oh, I dunno. Weird stuff. Last night Dad taped a picture of a washing machine to our refrigerator, and when Abby came over to supper, she turned red, ripped it off the door and chased him out of our house. Dad couldn’t stop laughing.”
“That does sound promising! And how would you feel, dear, if they did marry? Would you like that?”
“Absolutely. I’m going to be leaving soon… Well, pretty soon.” Somehow her leaving Trueheart hadn’t seemed quite so urgent this past week or two. “To be a captain on a tall ship. I was going to be a SEAL in the navy, but I don’t think they can wear camisoles, can they?”
“Probably not.”
“And they definitely can’t wear earrings and I’m thinking about getting my ears pierced so I can buy more fish lures. But a ship’s captain could wear earrings, even pirates do, so that would be okay. But when I leave, Daddy’s going to need somebody to take care of him and Abby’s perfect.” Kat had been pacing around the living room as she talked. Something crashed to the floor behind her and she spun around.
Sky stood in the kitchen doorway, glaring at her, a pile of library books scattered around his feet.
“I think she’s perfect, too, if I say so myself,” chuckled Abby’s mom in Kat’s ear. “And how do you think Sky would feel if they married?”
“Um…well, actually, he just came back from the library. Maybe you should ask him—er, well…”
“Skyler’s there? Oh, yes, dear, please do put him on.”
“Well, actually…he’s gone again.” She winced as the back door banged, so loud it shook the house.
“THE PARTY that you’ve called is not available at this time. Please leave a message at the tone.”
“Dad, I’ve got to talk to you! I know you said you were busy this month, but this is important! You’ve gotta come out here! Will you please, please, please call me? Oh, it’s…uh, Friday. Friday night. I’ll stay up late, so it’s okay to call me late if you need to. Bye-I-love-you. And call me.”
Sky shut the phone and flopped back on his pillow. “Darn, darn, oh darn.” He’d phoned twice, earlier in the day, and gotten the same stupid recording and hung up each time without leaving a message. But now he was getting desperate.
The mattress bounced as something heavy landed on it, then jiggled under deliberate padding steps. Eyes black in the dusk, DC-3 stared down at him, then sniffed his hair. “Why doesn’t he call?” Sky rolled to his side, grabbed the cat and rolled back.
DC settled onto his chest, and a deep, satisfying rumble, like a big old plane warming up, shook them both. Sky filled his hands with thick fur. “Maybe he’s flying and he shut it off? Or his battery’s low.”
The cat kneaded his shirt and settled into an even deeper drone, a DC-3 climbing through night-time clouds.
“He’s gotta come out here!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
AT LUNCHTIME Jack remembered something he needed back at the house. “Why don’t you guys go down to Hansen’s and grab a sandwich, my treat?”
Kat looked up from where she sat cross-legged, doodling on the plywood flooring with a carpenter’s pencil. “Abby packed us tuna fish sandwiches, remember? You put them in the cooler.”
“Oh…right. Well, here, take some money anyway and don’t wait lunch for me. If I’m late coming back, go get ice-cream cones and cool off in the park. It’s hot as blazes today.”
After he’d driven away, Sky fetched some more studs from the stack in the basement, then looked around. Kat was gone.
Gone over the ridge to search for hawks? He turned slowly—and spotted her coming out of the metal shed where they locked up the tools during the week.
He caught up with her at the picnic table, where she was laying out some copper tubing and Jack’s butane torch. He hadn’t spoken to her since yesterday; he’d been too angry.
His dad had finally phoned this morning, so Sky was feeling better, but there were still things she had to understand. Things he couldn’t say in front of Jack. “My mom is not gonna marry your dad,” he said, standing over her.
Kat cocked her head the same way her dad did, her eyes gleaming from the shadow of her jungle hat. “How do you know?”
“I just know. Mom doesn’t love him.”
“Did you ask her?”
“No, but I don’t have to. And you shouldn’t have said that to my grandmom. That was really stupid.”
Kat’s chin rose as she scowled. “What’s stupid is you thinking they’ll get back together. If they loved each other, then why’d they ever get a divorce?”
“Because—” That she could put her finger precisely where it hurt, on the one question he’d asked himself again and again and again—he wanted to smack her. “Because stupid Chelsea liked my dad, but how could he help that? Then Mom got mad. It was all a mistake.” A terrible, terrible mistake, but it could be taken back. All Mom has to do is forgive him. She always says that people should forgive each other. So why won’t she?
Kat shook her head pityingly. “How long does it take to make a puppy?”
What was she changing the subject for? “I dunno.”
“Eight weeks. And how long does a kitten take?”
“Seven?”
“Nine weeks.” She took off her hat and frowned down at its brim, then hooked it on a finger and spun it around and around. “Sooo…how long does a baby take?”
He shrugged, and she said, “Nine months.”
As if that meant something. Something to him. Sometimes she was such a prissy know-it-all. Such a girl. “Yeah, like you’d know.”
“I do know. I looked it up in a really icky book with yucky pictures at the library. Mrs. Wimbly said I was too young and she grabbed it away, but that’s exactly what it said. Nine months.”
“So?”
“So…think about it.”
The way she said that made him decide he shouldn’t. He shrugged, kicked the dirt. “Anyway, you’re wrong about my parents. I told Dad he needed to come to Trueheart and he’s coming. Thursday. He’s gonna fly in to the airport and take me with him. He said maybe we’d fly to Disneyland and stay overnight, then he’s gonna come back and visit Mom.”
“Oh,” Kat said in a very small voice. She gazed down at her hands, twiddled her thumbs, then said in an even tinier voice, “Disneyland?”
He felt half good for winning, and half bad for the same reason. “Yup,” he said loftily, looking away over the orchard. Bet you’ve never been there.
“Well, big deal.” Kat scrounged in one sagging pocket of her shorts and pulled out several objects that made a clunk as they hit the table.
Now that he’d won, Sky was happy to help her change the subject. He picked up a cube of metal, roughly an inch on a side. “What’s this?” It had a backward R carved on one face.
“Something.”
“Come on,
what?” he wheedled. She was like DC when he got mad and sat there lashing his tail. You had to tickle his throat just so before he’d calm down. “Tell me.”
She pouted for a minute, then said in a rush, “It’s a letter, like they used in the old days to make newspaper headlines. I bought ’em in Durango, in the antique clothes store, when your mom and I went shopping.”
It had the pleasing heft and polish of a fine tool. He picked up another, turned it over, found a backward E. “Cool. What are you doing with ’em?”
She pulled a box of matches out of her other pocket and turned the knob on the torch. Struck a match and held it to the hissing gas. “I’m making a brand.”
She looked at him over the blue flame, daring him to say what they both knew; that her dad would skin her for messing with his torch. “Of your name?” Sky said instead.
“Nope. They didn’t have a K or an A. But this’ll be almost as good.”
JACK COULDN’T WORK, couldn’t sleep, was almost walking into doors with wanting her. Not since he’d turned fourteen and lost an entire year, thinking about nothing but sex with wild, wicked, wanton fifteen-year-old women had he had it so bad.
Abby, Abby, his green-eyed Abby. Slipping away from him day by day. His hands clenched on the steering wheel as he bucketed up Magpie Street, then left on Haley’s Comet. What am I going to do about you, Abby? They’d crossed over some river—at least he had—and burned the boats on the far shore. There was no going back. No way to stop wanting her now.
Yet she was leaving. Whitey would finish the bus any day now.
I could steal the lug nuts off all its tires.
Nah, too obvious.
Disconnect the timing chain? Because that was the problem here, timing. Timing was everything. The difference between heartbreak and bliss was always measured in minutes, days, weeks. You caught the train—and sat down next to a woman who’d change your life.
Or you missed it by ten seconds and stood panting on the platform, watching an unforgettable face in a window sliding past you and gone forever.
Timing. You met her too soon—and she wasn’t ready.
Or you weren’t.
Or you both were, but then some idiot declared a war and you were drafted. Or—
Why the heck does this have to be so hard? If she’d only let me kiss her… A nonstop, no interruptions, meltdown cosmic kiss—then everything else would become instantly simple and clear. They needed to fall into bed and be nice to each other. Exceedingly nice for a very long time. That was as far as he’d figured things, but at least this was the start of a plan.
Bounding up her front steps—Whitey would spot him if he went around to the back—Jack found the door propped open, paint fumes drifting out. He stepped through, glanced around—and jumped violently as Abby, standing on a ladder not a foot to his right, let out a startled shriek. “Jack, oh, look what you—”
A slash of bold yellow-orange marred the snowy ceiling. “Oops,” he muttered as she dropped her edging brush into the roller pan and glared at him. “Sorry.”
“Oh, that’s all I needed, you popping up like jack-in-the-box!”
Timing again; God was a joker. “Sorry.” He scanned the dropcloth that covered the floor. “Is there a rag?”
“Never mind.” She backed down the ladder, practically into his arms, planted a hand on his chest and moved him aside. “I’ll do it.” She snatched up a cloth and a bucket of water, turned back and tried to smile. “It’s latex, not the end of the world. I just…”
She wasn’t far from tears, he saw, as she climbed up to the ceiling to dab at his mistake. “Hey…” He curled a hand around her ankle. “Are you okay?”
“Yes…” The streak widened to a smear. “No.” She gave a harried sigh. “I’ve had better days… Months… Years.”
She was wearing raggedy blue jeans cutoffs, which made her look like a teenager. He slid his hand up the back of her calf, warm and silky and wonderfully slender. “I’m sorry. Let me do it?” Do everything—anything—to make you smile again. He thumbed the velvety skin at the back of her knee and felt her tremble. Oh, Abby. She could pretend, but he wasn’t alone; she was feeling this, too.
“Fine,” she snapped as the paint smeared further. “Here, take it.” She stomped down to the floor, then shoved the bucket and cloth into his hands.
And smiling down at her, Jack noticed her T-shirt for the first time. A Woman Needs A Man Like A Fish Needs A Bicycle. He wanted to rip it off her and use it for his paint rag. Every time she wore that thing, it felt like a slap in the face. Why was that?
Because needing was what he craved from her. I’d rather be needed than loved, he realized, turning away. Needed by Abby. Somehow that felt safer than love.
Than loving her.
Needed, you were in control.
Loving, you were lost, just one more poor sucker blundering through life with a sign taped to his back, reading Kick Me, I’ve Got Something To Lose.
He stepped up onto the ladder and scrubbed grimly at the stain, which gradually lightened, but it sure didn’t whiten. “I’ll have to repaint this for you.”
“Don’t worry about it.” She touched the back of his calf with a fingertip, so lightly she probably thought he didn’t feel it—and he sucked in his breath.
Felt himself stir and harden. Tell me you don’t want me, too! Looking over his shoulder, he opened his mouth to say something, anything like, “How about a date?” or “Want to roll around on the dropcloth?”
But she beat him to it. “Steven called.”
Steven… Focused on her lips—on that delectable bottom lip—it took him a second. Steve. Ah, the contemptible ex. “He did?” And this is why I find you practically in tears? That rat could still move her?
He’d been right from the start. She was still in the first stage of the Divorce Crazies, or possibly the second. Much too soon for a man to take her seriously, or to take her at all.
Unless he was half crazed himself. Driven mad by lust.
And a longing that cut much deeper than lust. Jack reached down to brush the backs of his knuckles along her cheek—and left a smudge of yellow behind. “What did he want?” And what do you want? Your rat or me?
“He’s renting a plane, flying out here. On Thursday. Wants to take Sky to—” Her mouth quivered, her eyes filled. “To Disneyland.”
That was bad? In fact, with Sky out of the way… “Disneyland,” he repeated, carefully neutral.
“Disneyland! If that isn’t just like him! How am I supposed to match that? Here I’m Ogre Mom who does all the dirty work. Makes Sky brush his teeth, go to bed by ten, do his homework, take out the trash—then once or twice a year, Steve drops out of the heavens in a Cessna and whisks him off to Disneyland.”
“Doesn’t seem quite fair,” Jack agreed, trying not to smile.
“Fair? It stinks! Steve was too busy to take half custody, but when it comes to playtime? Oh, he knows how to do that! Always has time for the fun stuff.”
“But you’re the one who’s there for Sky.”
“There to ground him when he needs it.”
“And hug him when he needs that, too.” All that soft stuff we pretend not to want, and would slowly wither and starve without. Telling our jokes, pretending not to care, growing harder and lonelier by the year.
She tried to smile. “You think?”
“Sweetheart, I know.”
“Well…I sure hope you’re right.” She brushed at a tear trickling down from her lashes, left more streaks of yellow. “And another thing, Steve said he wanted to talk to me. About Sky. I don’t know what he’s up to, he wouldn’t say, but whatever it is, I don’t like it.”
“Well, if you need any legal backing…” Or I could just whomp him for you, which would be much more satisfying.
“Oh, thanks, but…”
“But?”
“I owe you for so much already.”
Jack groaned, shook his head. “I thought we were past that. You dress
ed my daughter in a camisole and taught her to cook. We’re more than even.”
But so much for his fantasy of a quick lunchtime seduction while the kids were safely occupied across town. Timing was everything, and this time Abby wasn’t in the mood.
But soon, soon, it’s got to be soon. If she’d only let him love her, maybe she’d give up her notion of running. Stay in Trueheart through the winter.
By spring, surely these crazy longings would have faded. He’d be sensible and sane. Able to think again, sort out just what he was feeling and what to do about it. He glanced at his watch. “Ouch, look at the time! Guess I’d better run. The kids…”
She gave him a puzzled smile. “What was it you needed?”
“A quick word with Whitey. I was just cutting through to the back.”
SUNDAY Jack tried to get her alone again, late in the day, after he and his crew had raised and braced the fourth wall of his house. Next weekend they could start on the ceiling joists.
Next weekend he’d very likely be working alone, Jack reminded himself with a pang as he turned onto Haley’s Comet Street. He’d miss his cantankerous and conscientious little carpenter’s apprentice almost as much as he’d miss Skyler’s mom.
If he couldn’t persuade her to stay.
Which was why he’d dumped the kids at the park with money for ice cream, and a promise that he and Abby would pick them up in ninety minutes at the library. Then they’d all go for burgers at Mo’s.
That left him a scant hour for some hot and heavy persuasion. It was time to take the gloves off. Make her see. Well, at least, make her feel. How else was he ever going to learn how deep her feelings went? Whether he should simply throw out his rules and risk it all?
Please, he prayed in case God was tuning in as he swung into her driveway. This time, give me a break?
His foot came off the gas and he coasted, blinking, unable to credit his eyes. At the back of the drive, where it had glowed in the shadows beneath the trees for weeks now, there should have stood a crimson bus.
Kelton's Rules (Harlequin Super Romance) Page 21
