by June Kramin
She poured two cups of coffee and went outside to the deck, sat on one of the wooden chairs, and placed his coffee on the table between them. She put the kitten down so it could explore its new home. It wandered off, eager to investigate its new surroundings and the potted Ficus tree.
Ben came up the steps with a litter pan, a plastic container of litter, and a canvas grocery bag with kitten food, a pooper-scooper and a couple of toys.
“I want to pay you for that stuff.”
He sat down and picked up his coffee. “Nope. My sister made care packages for all the kittens. She wanted to be sure they were given to good homes and started off on the right foot. He’s had his first shots and, as much as it goes against my feelings on the matter, he has an appointment to be neutered at exactly six months. That was a stipulation. Kinda like getting one from the shelter.”
“I would have done it anyway. He’ll be better off.” She grinned and sipped her coffee. “If she’s such a stickler for that, how is it her cat got pregnant?”
“It adopted them, not the other way around, and she was already pregnant. My sister has a soft heart and my brother-in-law can’t tell her no. It helps that he’s a large animal vet. The neuter will be on them. He’s doin’ it.”
“No, I’ll pay for it.”
“That’s not an option. Just accept it.”
She wanted to argue, but knew it was pointless. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” He held up his coffee in a mock cheers.
“Does the little man have a name yet?”
“Sort of,” he said with a chuckle.
“Sort of? How do you ‘sort of’ name a cat?”
“My niece calls him Derf.”
“Derf?”
“It’s Fred backward. She’s a leftie and they used to try to get her to write right-handed. Everything came out perfectly backward. Now she does it for fun.”
Reggie smiled. “I can live with Derf.”
“I’ll let her know.” After taking the last gulp of coffee, he stood back up, leaving the empty cup behind. “I’ve probably worn out my welcome. I should get going.” He looked over at the kitten that was now half-way up the Ficus. “Better you than me. Later neighbor.” He gave her a playful salute. Her eyes gazed over at the gesture, but he didn’t see it.
She stood and called to him. “Ben!”
Midway down the stairs, he turned back around. “What is it?”
After a hesitation she said, “Thanks again for the kitty.”
“You’re welcome, again. See you in an hour or so?”
“See you in an hour.”
~*~
With Ben’s help working the tape measure, Reggie had the whole barn measured in a little over an hour. They went into his house and she began to work some figures on a yellow legal pad. He stared at her sketches in amazement. She could draw a 3D picture more accurately than he could draw a stick man.
“What are you thinking for animals, Ben? Should I count in for a stall or two or maybe a small pen of sorts?”
“I don’t know. What do you think?”
“It would be perfect for a couple of horses. It looks like you have old fence posts up for a pasture from what I could see.”
“There was a section of pasture fenced off that held some cows years ago. I removed all the barbed wire a couple years back.”
“So a pen for some cows then?”
“I don’t think I need to go through the hassle. My sister has more than enough to keep my freezer full.”
She put her pencil down and stared up at him. “Why do you want to fix a barn if you’re not even planning on getting any animals, Ben?”
“I didn’t say I wasn’t planning on it. Eventually, I would. I wanted to do it one step at a time. I told you already; the barn is almost a hundred years old. I’d like to see it restored.” She did some more figures then slammed her pencil down on her pad. “What is it?”
“You little sneak!” She stood up so fast, she sent the chair flying backward.
“What?”
“Nice act, Mr. Woodworker. ‘Gee, lady. I don’t know what heart redwood is.’ You lied to me!”
“I didn’t lie to you, Reggie.”
“Bullshit. ‘I don’t know how many yards I’ll need’?”
“Okay, I lied about that one.”
She huffed toward the door but he stood in front of her and stopped her, gently grabbing her shoulders. “Damn, you sure are pretty when you’re pissed.”
Her shoulders dropped and she stared up at him blankly. “What did you just say?” she said at almost a whisper.
“No offense, Reggie. Look, I wasn’t lying to you, not totally, anyway. I don’t know how to do what you’re doing. I do want to fix up the barn and I was thinking how much fun it would be if me and the pretty neighbor lady could go horseback riding sometime, only first I need a place to keep some horses, then of course…get some horses.” She stared up at him, not making a sound. “Come here.” He led her to his shop out back.
He opened the door and hit the light. The room held a couple different styles of chairs that were put together, one partially stained. He had blueprints of a few different styles of couches pinned up to a corkboard that stretched almost an entire wall. There was a pile of six- to eight-inch round logs with the ends shaved down, not quite to a point. “This is my workshop. I only ever deal in—”
“Pine,” she said, cutting him off. She walked over and looked at a few pieces of wood. She picked up a piece, again closing her eyes, and held it to her nose.
“I really need you. Help me, Reggie. Please.”
She put down the log and picked up a skinny branch from the floor that was still covered in bark. It had obviously been scrap in the bundle he received; it wasn’t for his furniture. She swung it around a few times like you would a sword then she spun around and moved it right up his inner thigh, stopping short of hitting him where it would count most. “Don’t ever lie to me again, Ben.”
He held his hands up as if she were holding a gun to him. “I promise. Not even a small fib. It’s going to be really hard to resist though ’cause you are really pretty when you’re pissed.”
She moved the stick up the couple inches it needed to make its target and he hit the ground with a groan. “Stop calling me pretty or the deal is off.”
“I surrender.” He half-laughed, half-winced. In either case, he was on the floor holding his crotch in pain, but smiling.
“I’ll be back tomorrow with a list for you.”
“No dinner date?”
“Nope. I’ll be having dinner with my cat.” She closed the shop door and walked away.
~*~
At eight o’clock that night, Ben showed up at her kitchen door. He knocked for several moments, doing Bob Marley’s “Knocking on Heaven’s Door,” before she gave in. She opened it a crack to look. He was holding a bouquet of wild flowers. “Sorry I fibbed a little about the way to measure wood.” She accepted the flowers, but didn’t say anything. “Are you sorry for wrenching my nuts?”
“Not particularly.”
He ran his fingers through his hair with a smirk. When he looked up, she had the same look on her face as she had earlier when he had first said she was pretty when she was pissed. “What is it, Reggie?”
“Huh? Nothing.” She gently shook her head as if trying to clear her mind. Ben was about to ask to come in when Derf came running out of the house. “Derf, no!” Reggie pushed past Ben to chase after him. He followed them down the steps, but he had lost sight of the cat.
“Dammit!” she cried. “He’ll get lost!”
“He’ll be fine. Cats are good about knowing where home is.”
“But it only just became his home. He’ll run away.” Her bottom lip quivered. She’d only had the kitten for a few hours, but he sensed she was horribly attached to him already.
“I’ll start lookin’. You run and grab some flashlights.” She ran back up the stairs and into the kitchen to get them. Ben cont
inued to walk around the house making a pssstt pssst sound, trying to get the kitten to respond to him. Reggie came running back out.
“Do you see him?”
“Not yet, but I’m sure his eyes will show up sure enough when a flashlight hits them.” She handed him one and he turned it on. The second flashlight she brought didn’t work so she stayed at his side.
She called his name and said, “Kitty, kitty,” in a high voice. Within a few seconds there was a meow. She called him again. “Derf. Kitty, kitty.” There was another meow, but they still couldn’t see him. Ben moved the flashlight back and forth, but there were no eyes shining back at them. The meow was louder this time. They thought it was coming from the crawl space under the porch and squatted down to look. Reggie shook her flashlight again and it finally flickered on. She continued to search the crawl space while Ben stood up. He thought the meow come from above this time. He let out a chuckle and reached up.
~*~
When Reggie heard his laugh, she turned around and stood up. Ben was reaching up to grab Derf, who was up on the railing of the porch. Facing Ben, she hadn’t seen the kitty. While Ben’s arm came up, she wrapped her hands over her head and dropped to the ground, hollering, “No!”
Ben dropped his flashlight and fell to his knees. “Reggie? What is it?” She sat motionless until he pulled her to him. “What happened?” She finally began to relax in his arms then pulled herself out of them just as fast. “Um, nothing. Sorry. Did you see him?” She tried to stand up, but he pulled her back down.
“You thought I was going to hit you.”
“That’s silly. I know you wouldn’t hit me, not that I haven’t given you plenty of reason to.” She forced a laugh.
“You were ducking a blow. Who hit you, Reggie?”
“I told you, Van. Nobody hit me.”
“The name is Ben, doll-face. Who’s Van?”
“What? I did not say Van.”
“Yes, you did. Was he who hit you?”
“Nobody hit me, Beeennn.”
“Are you here hiding from someone who was beating you?”
“Don’t be silly.”
“You’re always alone in your house; like you’re afraid to be seen. Is that what this is, Reggie?”
“A bee buzzed my ear. I hate bees.” She stood up.
“You little fibber.”
The kitty meowed and Reggie looked up. “Derf!” She ran up the stairs, picked him off the railing and held him close. “Thanks for helping me look for him.” She ran into the house and closed the door without another word.
Ben stood, wondering what the hell happened. She was ducking a blow; there was no mistaking that. She didn’t want to talk about it and he wasn’t going to push her, but there was no way he wasn’t going to keep an even better eye on her now.
Chapter 20
THE NEXT MORNING, Reggie showed up with a material list like she promised. Ben was sure not to mention anything about what happened the night before. He vowed not to push so hard and to try to be a great friend. He’d never forgive himself if she withdrew herself even further because he pried too much.
He was no fool. If she had a husband who abused her, she’d be dumb enough to forgive the bastard and eventually go crawling back. Setting himself up only to have his heart broken wasn’t on his agenda. “Suck it up and find a woman, Bentley,” he had chastised himself last night. “You can try going farther than a quarter of a mile away to your neighbor’s house.”
He could tell she was shy at first, waiting for him to ask about last night. When he didn’t, she loosened up. The enthusiasm and knowledge she had impressed him. They talked about making a minor change to the inside for a tack room, since he had decided on a couple of horses, so she recalculated the measurements.
“You know,” he said, “I was thinking about that fence I tore down.”
“You wishing you didn’t now?”
“No. I hate barbed wire. I was thinking though about rebuilding it in wood.”
“That will cost a small fortune.”
“I don’t know. I have a connection, obviously.” He motioned toward his shop. “All the posts are there. It wouldn’t take much work to put up a fence.”
“What are you thinking?”
“What are you thinking?”
“Since you’re going through the trouble of remodeling a hundred year old round-roof barn, and you’re insisting on a wood fence…if money were no object, I’d say to make an X-fence.”
“An X-fence?”
“You know.” She held her arms crossed, making an X. She looked up at him. “You bull-shitting me again?”
He put his hands to his crotch. “Would I dare?”
“I’m still not sorry,” she said, putting the pencil to the paper. Her hand froze again. He had just sat across the table from her and noticed her stop drawing, mid line. He put his hand on hers.
“What’s the matter, Reg?” He placed his hand on hers. She looked up at him, blankly staring into his eyes. “Reggie?”
“No. I am.”
“Am what?”
“Sorry about the nut shot.”
He laughed it off. “Ah hell, I had it coming. But, you know, if you wanted to massage them a little for me…”
She laughed and continued to draw. “Thanks, but no thanks. I’m not that sorry.” She quickly finished the drawing, adding a header and a bottom support to the X then turned the paper to face him.
“Now that, I like. You want to go measure it up with me?”
“We’ll have to do the distance between each pole. My guess is with barbed wire, they weren’t too picky for distance between them. We’ll have to map the whole thing out.”
“I have a fridge full of beer.”
“Then I accept.”
It took them through two o’clock measuring the distance between each fence post. Reggie sketched out the layout, carefully making notes of the different distances. They weren’t too far off from all being eight feet apart, but just enough that each board would require its own measurement and cuts.
“You ever thought about doing this again, Reggie? ’Cause you sure know your stuff,” Ben asked as they were on the last few posts.
“I don’t know. It’s practically all I’ve ever done. It would be nice to do something else, I just don’t know what.”
“I never would have placed you in a lumberyard. You’re too…” He caught himself before he said ‘pretty’ again.
“What do you think I would be, Mr. Bentley?”
Crap. He was in trouble again. When was he going to learn to keep his mouth shut? “Stop taking offense at everything I say, Reggie. You don’t see a lot of women in the lumber field. I didn’t mean anything by it.”
“Why don’t you say it?”
“Say what?”
“Stripper.”
“Come on, Reg.”
“You’d have been right.” She placed the tape measure on his four-wheeler and walked away.
Ben waited until she walked out to the lake at sunset later that evening before he went over to talk to her. If he had learned anything, it was that she needed a few hours on ‘simmer’ before she was done being angry.
“It’s good money,” he said to her back as she stood there staring out at the water.
She never even turned around. “Don’t make excuses for me.”
“I’m not making excuses for you. It’s good money. I know first-hand.”
“Let me guess. You always had a pocketful of ones and were a sucker for anything over a B-cup.” She finally turned around and glared at him.
He whipped his shirt off and flexed his pecks. “They’re not Bs, sweetheart.” Holding her hips, he rolled his stomach up and down almost touching hers, but not quite. He rocked himself back and forth slowly toward the ground, stopping when he was eye level with her stomach then slowly came up until they were touching noses. “All male review, doll-face. Three years in a row straight outta high school. Paid for college. You?”
; Ben thought she was going to faint. She dropped down on the grass and he joined her.
“We do what we gotta do, Reggie. Why do you have to take it as an insult? If you were good at what you did and you made money, so what?”
She leaned into his shoulder. “I’m sorry. I just got tired of being ogled all the time. I know it sounds like I’m a hypocrite because that’s what goes with the job, but I hated it—every minute of it. I guess that why I’m so sensitive about it.”
“Let me lick you up and down.”
Her head whipped around. “What?”
“Jodeci ‘Let Me Lick You Up and Down.’ Drove the girls crazy.”
She snorted a laugh then covered her mouth. “Jodeci?”
“Know it?” He grinned, knowing full well she had to.
“‘Come and Talk to Me’ was mine.”
It was his turn to laugh. It was funny they liked the same band for their performances.
“It was almost the best day of my life the day I walked out of there for the last time.”
“What was the best day of your life?” he asked as he stroked her cheek.
“It doesn’t matter,” she replied, looking away.
He gently held onto her face and turned it to face him. “I’m sorry. I’ll try to keep the sexist pig comments down. Okay? Just give me a chance to be your friend, Reg. Quit running away from me.” He leaned in and gave her a quick gentle kiss on the cheek.
She smiled at the kiss, but changed the subject. “You went to college?”
“Now I should be offended. Am I all bod and no brains because I work with wood instead of wearing a suit and going to an office all day?”
“Of course not. I’m surprised, I guess, to go through all that and not use it.”
“I don’t do office. I went to college for myself. I had to pay my own way, too. It was more for the challenge of it. You know, ‘it isn’t worth doing if it isn’t hard on you’…some kind of mumbo jumbo like that.”
“That which doesn’t kill us only makes us stronger.”
“Yeah, like that.” He helped her to her feet and they walked back to the fence to finish up the last few posts. There was just enough light to finish the job. When they finished, Ben convinced her to go to town for a burger with him.
