The Hog-Tied Groom (The Brides of Grazer's Corners #3)

by Charlotte Maclay

  As they worked around the pigpens, Garrett’s admiration for Charity’s strength and determination intensified. This was hard work, particularly for a woman. Even his shoulders were beginning to feel the strain, and except for his knee, he was in top shape. Meanwhile the pigs were happily smacking and munching and grunting, opening and slamming the lids to their feeders, and generally making a whole lot of noise. He’d always thought it was supposed to be quiet in the country.

  “You’d better take a rest,” she said. “I’ll finish up.”

  “I’m fine. What’s next?” With his forearm, he wiped the sweat away from his forehead.

  “Your knee is beginning to bother you.”

  He scowled at her. “What makes you think that?”

  “You’ve started to limp. Sit down and rest it.”

  “It’s better if I keep moving.”

  Shaking her head, she muttered something about men having to be so darn macho.

  Evidently she’d never heard the expression “No pain, no gain.” Or had a coach who didn’t know the meaning of the word quit.

  Garrett followed her into an area where two sows huge with pregnancy were waiting in separate stalls for their labor to start.

  “I thought every pig farm was required to have its own border collie,” he commented.

  She turned and smiled, a warm smile filled with humor. “I’ll bet you saw Babe,” she teased.

  “I’ve been waiting for the pigs to start talking to me.”

  “You’re just not listening. They talk all the time.” Reaching into a pen, Charity petted the snout of one of the sows. The pig responded with a couple of friendly oinks. “Donnie’s allergic to dog and cat hair. That’s why he turned Rambo into his pet. In fact, if we aren’t careful, Rambo begins thinking he’s a dog and comes right on in the house.”

  “I’m allergic, too.”

  She straightened and shot him a look. “I didn’t know that”

  He shrugged. “Lots of people are. It’s no big deal. Except when I was a kid I used to drive my parents crazy asking for a dog. The best I ever did was get a guinea pig for my sixth birthday.” He remembered thinking he’d rather have had a dog and gotten rid of his asthmatic reaction, but his parents had assured him that wasn’t a choice. Maybe he should have asked his folks for a real pig instead.

  “Hey, Garrett!” Donnie came running into the pig shed. “Aren’t you done yet? I was gonna teach you how to dribble.”

  “I’ll be right with you, kid.”

  “Go ahead,” Charity said.

  “If you’re sure...”

  She waved him off. “Try not to twist your knee. I don’t want to be responsible if you damage yourself again.”

  Unreasonably he felt a little piqued at her comment. He wasn’t a child. Getting back to his career was the most important thing he could think of. He wouldn’t risk that. So what if he got a few twinges now and then? No pain, no gain.

  He and Donnie played around for a while, the youngster doing most of the work and all of the showing off. After about a half hour, a station wagon appeared, pulling off the road into the Ardens’ driveway.

  Wondering if the time had come for him to move on, Garrett asked Donnie, “Who’s that?”

  “Huh?” The boy looked up after he drove the ball between two fence posts he had designated as the goal. “Oh, that’s Homer. He’s the butcher at Grazer’s Groceries.”

  “You get your meat delivered?”

  “Sometimes he brings stuff. Mostly he’s my mom’s boyfriend.”

  The shock of that announcement sent adrenaline surging through Garrett’s body with such power he could have kicked Donnie’s soccer ball clear into the next county.

  Chapter Four

  Charity felt the animosity all the way from the far side of the pig parlor. Garrett had taken on a widelegged, aggressive stance, his fists clenched at his side, and looked a lot like Rambo did when he was being protective of his sows.

  Poor Homer looked like he was about to cut and run. Or pass out.

  She hurried across the yard to intervene before any serious damage was done.

  “Hi, Homer,” she said, intentionally stepping between the two men. Donnie appeared oblivious to what was going on, his mind occupied with practicing his left-footed dribble. “What brings you out this way?”

  “I, ah, tried to call.” His gaze darted past her to Garrett. “I didn’t mean to interrupt anything.”

  “You’re not, Homer.” By way of introduction, she gestured vaguely toward the man standing behind her. “Garrett is an acquaintance of Bud’s.”

  “An acquaintance your brother kidnapped,” Garrett muttered under his breath.

  Nervously Homer shifted his weight from one foot to the other. His clean white T-shirt hung straight down on his slim frame and was neatly tucked into khaki work slacks. “Your phone’s out of order.”

  “Really?” she said with feigned innocence, knowing full well Bud had cut the line. “I’ll have to let the phone company know. Would you like to, ah, come in for a cup of coffee or ice tea?”

  “He would not,” Garrett said from behind her.

  Unable to hear the remark, Homer shot Garrett another cautious look. “No, no, that’s all right. I was just going to ask if you wanted to go into Modesto with me Saturday night. If you’re not busy, I mean. The summer theater group is putting on Arsenic and Old Lace. I thought you might like...”

  “I’d love to, Homer.”

  Garrett snarled a derisive comment, which Charity ignored.

  “Thank you for asking me,” she said.

  “Great.” Homer backed up a step or two. “Really great. Maybe we could all have dinner first. The girls could baby-sit Donnie while we’re—”

  “I don’t need any dam ol’ girls baby-sitting me!” Donnie complained, suddenly interjecting himself in the conversation.

  “Smart kid,” Garrett muttered.

  “We’ll talk about it later,” she told her son.

  “Well, I don’t,” the boy insisted, sailing the ball toward the flower beds.

  Charity winced as her snapdragons took a beating.

  Homer retreated another step. “Want me to call the phone company for you?”

  “That’s very thoughtful of you, Homer. Yes, I’d appreciate you letting them know there’s trouble with the line.” She also wondered what the repairman would do when he found the line had been cut. Maybe she could tell him she’d nicked it with her pruning shears. Damn, but she wished Bud would get home. And he wasn’t likely to be back before tomorrow night, at the earliest. That conjured up a whole bushel of possibilities with Garrett spending another night in her home—possibilities she didn’t want to consider. Thank goodness they’d done away with the chain that had bound them.

  “Well, ah... Talk to you later.” With an anxious wave Homer opened his car door. A moment later, he was in full retreat, backing down the driveway and out onto the highway in a cloud of dust.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you had a boyfriend?”

  At Garnett’s angry tone, she turned. His eyes were narrow slits, his lips a grim, censorious line. If she didn’t know better, she would have thought... But that wasn’t possible.

  “I’ve been out with Homer a couple of—”

  “We slept together,” he hissed. “You and me! I had a right to know.”

  She blanched and looked quickly around to see where Donnie was and to make sure he couldn’t hear their conversation. “We didn’t sleep the way you mean it. Nothing happened.”

  He caught her chin between his thumb and forefinger. “We came damn close. Trust me on that, cinnamon girl.” His voice was rough and raspy, unfairly intimate.

  “Cinnamon?” she gasped in a whisper.

  “That’s how you smell. Spicy and sexy and as domestic as warm sugared toast in the morning.”

  She trembled, her insides churning, and shook her head. “No.”

  “Besides he’s too old for you. He’s gotta be at least forty.
”

  “Thirty-nine.”

  “He’s so old, he’s going bald, for God’s sake. The man could practically be your father.”

  Angry, frightened by the emotions that roiled through her, she jerked her head away from his grasp. “I’ll have you know, Mr. High-and-Mighty, Homer Smith is a very fine man. He’s a widower with two lovely young girls—twelve and fourteen—”

  “They’re probably driving him crazy and he wants some sucker to help him survive their teenage years.”

  “He has a steady job,” she countered.

  “Terrific. Give the man a balloon.”

  “Not everyone can get a million-dollar contract for throwing some silly ball back and forth and nearly getting himself killed by three-hundred-pound bullies landing on him every week.” Unaccountably tears burned in her eyes. Anger, she told herself, did that to a woman. Not wanting. Not any other emotion she refused to acknowledge even to herself. “I’d take a nice steady, hardworking family man over a playboy jock any day of the week, Sundays included.”

  He went very still. So still, Charity thought he might be about to explode. She’d hurt his pride, slammed the career he’d chosen, the one that had made him famous—the one that caused her to worry incessantly that he’d be seriously hurt with more than a knee injury. Desperately she wanted to yank her words back, but once spoken there was no way to retrieve them.

  “Good decision, cinnamon girl.” He spoke so softly, so tautly she could barely hear him. “I always suspected you were smarter than most of the women I’ve met.”

  With that he turned and walked away.

  Her knees were so rubbery, it was all Charity could do not to sink to the ground. But she wouldn’t show weakness. Not to Garrett. Not to anyone. Her mother had been weak, particularly when it came to men. Charity had vowed never to make that same mistake.

  She’d only slipped once.

  GARRETT’S KNEE ACHED like hell, throbbing with each step he took across the fallow ground east of the pig barn. The doctor had warned him not to put too much stress on the joint or the damage might become irreparable. Hefting those bags of feed had not been a smart idea.

  Coming to a halt, he jammed his hands into his pockets. If he didn’t think it would totally ruin his chances of returning to the NFL, he’d damn well walk all the way into town.

  But that would be a stupid move. Almost as dumb as the way he’d acted with Charity.

  He had no claim on her, no exclusive rights. If she wanted to hang around with a butcher, so be it. He should have kept his mouth shut.

  His lips quirked into a wry grin. She sure knew how to put a man in his place. She’d cut him off at the knees as neatly as a cut-back block on a charging lineman. And he’d deserved it.

  He exhaled a long breath. The Arden property wasn’t big—no more than a dozen acres, he supposed, half planted in com. But it was a long way to the next farmhouse.

  That’s when he spotted Donnie sitting under an old oak tree, its branches gnarled and spreading outward in all directions. The kid looked as glum as Garrett felt. He limped in that direction.

  “What’s going down, sport?”

  The kid lifted narrow shoulders. “I dunno.”

  Garrett kept his distance, not wanting to spook the boy, choosing a jagged outcropping of rock to sit on a few feet away from Donnie. They sat there in silence for a while, Garrett making a big deal about studying a fist-size rock he’d picked up.

  “I don’t want Mom to marry that wuss,” Donnie said.

  That news hit Garrett in the midsection like a body blow. “Homer, you mean?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Your mom told you she was going to marry him?”

  “Naw. But Uncle Bud didn’t say nothing about gettin’ married, neither.”

  Garrett relaxed ever so slightly. Maybe it wasn’t a done deal. Not that it was any of his business. Except he’d slept with her. For real. Eight years ago and he still remembered. “Your mother told you about Bud getting married, huh?”

  “This morning. While you was shaving.”

  “Ah.” Garrett nodded. He admired Charity for broaching the subject before Bud got home. Better to prepare the boy than to be faced with an awkward moment

  “Mom said some lady would probably come live with us and be my new aunt.”

  “Her name’s Hailey. She’s very nice. Pretty, too. You’ll like her.” Funny how Garrett couldn’t dredge up any emotions, sad or otherwise, over his runaway bride coming back here to live with another man. He had thought he was in love with Hailey. Evidently he’d either been wrong—or incredibly blind to her real feelings and his own.

  “I don’t like girls.”

  “Yeah, well, maybe you ought to give her a chance. Homer, too, if that’s who your mom wants.” God, he nearly choked on the thought.

  “I’m not gonna go live with Homer and those dorky girls,” Donnie insisted, jutting out his lower lip. In spite of his show of bravado, his chin trembled. “I’ll run away first.”

  The boy’s threat propelled Garrett to his feet. He crossed the distance to the boy and sat down beside him. “No, you won’t.”

  “I will so.”

  “Your mom needs you. Even if she marries Homer—” Involuntarily Garrett’s teeth clenched, and his stomach knotted. Charity couldn’t be that stupid. Besides, Garrett would kill the guy first. “—you’re still her number-one man.”

  Donnie looked up at him with big brown eyes, stubborn replicas of Charity’s softer eyes. “I am?”

  “You bet, sport. She wouldn’t be able to make it without you. Numero uno!” He ruffled the boy’s coffee-brown hair, thick and curly like his mom’s with golden highlights. God, where was the kid’s old man? He had to be a real jerk to desert a boy like Donnie—and a woman like Charity. Or was there more to the story than she was telling?

  Donnie smiled a little. “Yeah, Mom always says I’m a big help to her.”

  “Count on it, sport.”

  They did a high five, and Garrett felt a little better about himself. At least he hadn’t let the kid run off on his own.

  But the fact was, Homer Smith was all that Garrett wasn’t. The butcher was steady and safe, a family man, probably boring, but some women didn’t care. Charity included. Garrett wished that didn’t bother him so much.

  He did know, however, it was time for him to move on. No way could his libido handle another night in such close proximity to Charity even if they weren’t sharing the same bed.

  Leaving Donnie on his own—and in a more upbeat mood than when Garrett had found him—Garrett went in search of a means of transportation to get him away from the farm.

  He found Charity’s car in an old barn, the weather-worn planks warped so badly the sun streamed in through the gaps in the wall. The place smelled of grease and dirt. An old workbench was covered with tools, and an assortment of replacement fan belts hung on the wall. A small tractor was parked at the opposite end of the barn along with plowing discs and harvesting equipment.

  Garrett popped the hood on a compact car that was about four years old.

  One look told him Bud had yanked the coil wire from the distributor cap. No way to crank over the engine without one of those.

  Looking around the bam, he wondered if Bud had taken the damn thing with him on his honeymoon. That would be just his luck.

  Starting with the workbench, he explored the barn in search of a coil wire and came up empty. In a room off to the side of the main building, he discovered a well-equipped darkroom. Standing there, the pungent scent of developer still lingering in the air, he studied the photos on the wall. Clearly Charity had talent. She’d turned pigs of all shapes and sizes into things of beauty; wildflowers and scenes of the Sierra foothills leaped off the wall in such vivid colors Garrett had to resist the urge to reach out and touch them, sure he’d be able to feel the texture of the floral petals and pine needles.

  But it was the photos of her son that truly took his breath away. So much love radiate
d through the camera lens in both directions that the images touched, Garrett’s heart, as well as his eyes. The pictures should have been on display in a gallery, not a made-over tack room.

  Given his background—his stem, rigid, unemotional parents—it was hard to imagine even ten percent of the motherly love Charity managed to communicate in a single photograph.

  Maybe his reaction to Charity wasn’t simply lust, he mused. Maybe it was her powerful aura of love that he could feel even when it wasn’t directed at him that had him wanting to get as close to her as a man could.

  Not that it mattered. She’d made it clear jocks were not high on her list of possible suitors.

  Dammit all! Playing ball was all he knew how to do. All he’d ever wanted to do.

  Hands in his pockets, he wandered back into the barn and stopped in front of the green-and-yellow tractor. On a hunch, he climbed up on the seat and smiled.

  Bud had evidently been in a big hurry to elope with his bride. He hadn’t considered a perfectly good contingency plan for Garrett’s escape. He planned to take advantage of that oversight.

  CHARITY DROPPED a spoonful of pickle relish into the chopped ham, added some mayonnaise and stirred the sandwich mix. There wasn’t much milk left in the refrigerator and less than a full loaf of bread in the bread box. If Bud didn’t get home pretty soon, they’d be on short rations.

  As she looked up, her breath caught at the sight of Garrett coming out of the barn. He was limping a little, his measured steps less swaggering than usual. She pursed her lips. What she’d said to him earlier had not only been mean. It had been a lie. Purely a defensive measure.

  She’d known from the beginning there’d be no place for her in the life of a man like Garrett. Wealthy. Handsome and sexy beyond belief. A celebrity both on and off the football field, he had beautiful women fawning all over him at every opportunity. So she’d tried not to even consider the possibility, had told herself that she wouldn’t want that kind of life even if there’d been a chance.