A Certain Kind of Hero (43 page)

“Lambing is my job.”

With a glance he questioned her good sense.

“Your hands are too big, Tate.” To emphasize the contrast, she put her hand over the back of his just as Karen laid claim to his thumb.

“Hey, that looks like Papa Bear, Mama Bear and Baby Bear,” Jody managed to announce despite a mouth full of milk.

The look in Tate's eyes softened as one dilemma crowded out another. Amy nodded, smiling wistfully. “Mine are just the right size, you see. I have to help my mamas get their babies born. That much I owe them.”

 

Tate had been party to many a calving, but delivering Karen had changed his outlook on the miracle of birth. Amy was right about the lambs. Those little wobbly-legged woollies were irresistible. Her skill and patience as a midwife were remarkable. Tate was content to observe the process while he tended the children. Some of the ewes required Amy's help
in delivery, which often meant slipping a deft hand into the birth canal to assist a lamb in making its debut.

Most of the ewes produced twins, and one even had healthy triplets. Amy determined that the runt of the three would have to be bottle-fed. The death of three young ewes left orphans, two of which were successfully “grafted” onto ewes that had lost their lambs. Amy wrapped the pelts of the dead lambs around the orphans so that the adoptive mothers would accept them as their own. She graciously accepted Tate's offer to do the skinning.

That left two lambs to become “bottle babies,” which pleased Jody immensely. Amy confided that raising orphans on the bottle was never profitable, and most sheep men didn't bother. “Sheep
women,
” she said, “are different. When we sell the herd, we'll be keeping those bottle babies.”

They were different, all right, Tate thought. She tried to talk offhandedly about selling her sheep, and she probably could have fooled almost anybody else. But Tate saw the pain in her eyes. Once lambing was over, she would use up what feed she had, and then she would put the herd on the market. Before the fields were lush with grass, she would sell out. She wouldn't have to worry about predators this year, she declared with artificial cheer. And shearing would be someone else's problem.

Leaving Amy and the kids would be Tate's problem. The more she mused about making her own preparations, the less he had to say about anything at all. The ground had thawed, and the first pale blooms of camas and sego lilies were beginning to dot the hillsides among the first green spikes of new grass. If he were planning to graze the livestock, he would take note of the poisonous camas and keep the animals away from them. He would be looking for coyotes, and he would be thinking about replacing a couple of sections of fence with
the lamb creeps he'd been building. He'd modeled them after a picture he'd found in one of Amy's sheep-raising books. Not that he'd
read
it; he'd just sort of flipped through the pages. And not that he was thinking seriously about
any
of this stuff. A grazing plan had just sort of crossed his mind.

When he ran into Marianne and Patsy at the bar one night, he quietly took exception to a comment Marianne made about his “cozy little arrangement with Amy.” But he wasn't about to tell the women that Amy was talking about selling out. Marianne would have been on the phone with her lawyer in a New York minute, trying to find out how soon she could get her damn core samples taken. Not that he cared about a few holes punched in the pasture, but Marianne's claim that there was money lurking below ground didn't impress him much, either. If they found anything, it was likely to be coal. And he had to agree with Amy about strip mining. It wasn't a pretty sight.

Faced with Amy's quandary, he'd forgotten all about his own plans to sell his land. When Marianne brought that issue up, he paid for his drink and called it a night. He wasn't sure why he was grinding his back teeth as he left the bar. Probably had something to do with the smell of Patsy's perfume.

It was almost midnight, but the kitchen light was still on, and Amy was still up. She was sitting at the table paging through a magazine, a steaming cup of tea close at hand. If he didn't know any better, he would think she wasn't planning to be up at her usual predawn hour.

“Waiting up for me?” He was trying for a touch of sarcasm, but it just wasn't there. He liked the idea too damn much to make light of it.

“The baby's been fussy.”

“Seems pretty quiet to me.” Little Karen had been sleeping through the night for weeks now.

“Would you like some coffee?”

“No, thanks. I'm awake enough.” He tossed his denim jacket over a hook, thinking that if he couldn't work up any sarcasm, maybe he could bait her just a little. “You've got no business waiting up for me, Amy. What I do is my business.”

“I wasn't waiting up for you. But you're early.”

“Compared to what?” He pulled out the chair across from her, spun it around and straddled it, folding his arms over the back. “Compared to last week? Last month?” She glanced up from her magazine. “Compared to when Kenny used to come home?”

“Kenny always came home.” She gave him a pointed look—though what her point was, he wasn't sure—then turned a page and found something that seemed to interest her more than he did. She tore into a corner of the page as she rattled on. “Ken had his faults and his weaknesses, but he gave us a home, and he was part of it. Always.”

“Good for him.” She glanced up, and he nodded. “I mean that. He inherited this place. Big deal. The truth is,
you
were good for
him.
How good was
he,
Amy?” Her eyes betrayed nothing as she carefully laid the coupon aside. “How good was he for
you?
” Tate demanded quietly.

“I don't see how his best friend could ask a question like that.” She turned another page. “He gave me two children.”

“
I
was here the night Karen was born,” Tate reminded her. Her hand went still, the page stalled at an angle. “I was with you that night. She came—” Amy looked into his eyes as he gestured poignantly “—from your body into my hands. I've never felt so…”

“So…what?” she asked, as mesmerized by the memory as he was.

“Yeah, so what.” He stood abruptly and jammed his hands into his front pockets, bursting the bubble with a shrug. “I
shouldn't have said ‘big deal.' I didn't mean to knock Kenny or anything the two of you…had. Okay?”

“I think you misunderstood, Tate. I meant…” But he was done. He was getting his jacket back off the hook. “Where are you going?” she asked.

Back to the Jackalope, he should have said, but her question had sounded sufficiently meek to warrant an honest response. “Out to the barn.” Downstairs first, for something to keep him warm. Maybe blankets would be enough. “I need to take care of some things before I turn in.”

 

She should just leave him alone, she told herself as she headed across the yard. He hadn't been out there very long, and he was probably having a cigarette. It was a clear, crisp night. Nice night to be outside. She visited Daisy and Duke in their kennel, then told herself to go back into the house. But herself wasn't listening very well. The light was still on in the barn. She pushed the side door open.

“Tate?”

“Up here.” She saw his black cowboy hat first, then his face, then his denim collar turned up to his jawline. He peered down from the loft. “What's up? Kids okay?”

“They're fine. They're sound asleep.” As she closed the door behind her, she noticed a pair of green feline eyes peeking down from the loft, too. “What are you doing?”

“I had a crazy yen to sleep out here tonight.”

“In the barn?”

“Ol' Cinnamon Toast has been up here cleaning out the mice, and I just mucked out the pens today. Put down fresh straw.” He flipped open a green wool blanket. “It's aboveground, which is a real plus. I feel like campin' out tonight.” The hat disappeared, and there was some rustling of hay. “Could you hit the light on your way out?”

When the light went out, it was pitch-dark for a moment, but then her eyes adjusted to the dimmer light emitted through the clerestory windows directly across from the loft. The moonlight would be nice, she thought. It would flood across his makeshift bed like stardust. She climbed the steps quietly, although she knew he heard her coming.

“Tate? You'll get cold out here.”

“If I do, I know where the house is.”

She climbed over the top of the ladder and stood at the foot of the pallet he'd made. He'd pulled the blanket up to his chest, pillowed his neck in his hands and covered his face with his cowboy hat. His boots stuck out at the end of the blanket. He looked incredibly long. And he was ignoring her.

Amy cleared her throat. “As long as you've declared a truce, maybe we could…”

“Have ourselves a roll in the hay?”

“Have a talk about…the best way to go about selling the livestock.” She knelt on the corner of the pallet. “I'll need your help, but I don't want you to think you have to—”

“I don't think I
have
to. Go back to the house, Amy. Give me some peace.”

“It's too cold out here,” she insisted. “I won't have you sleeping in the barn.”

“What're you gonna do about it?”

“Well…” Good question. “I'm just going to sit here.”

He shoved his hat back as he braced himself on his elbows and gave her a cool stare. “You can't control me the way you did Kenny. That's what scares you about me, isn't it?”

“Control? I couldn't control Ken. He puttered around with his horses and talked about all the things he was going to do around here, but I couldn't get him to make a
real
decision about anything important to—” her hands flopped against her knees in frustration “—to save his life.”

“Kenny was my friend. He was a good-hearted guy, and we had some good times together. But he never took charge of anything.” He sat up, leaned across his own knees and reached for her hand. “A woman wants a man to take charge once in a while, doesn't she?”

“Yes, but not—”

“Not to push her around.” He tugged on her hand, cautiously reeling her into his bed. “Not to take her security away, but just to say, ‘Lean on me for a while.'”

“That would be nice.”

“Damn right.” He lifted the edge of the top blanket and drew her underneath it. “So I'm gonna show you just how a man takes charge.”

There was no more talk of selling anything. There was very little talk at all, and when they spoke, it was only of what was happening between them at the moment. They didn't undress completely. Instead they delighted in undoing buttons, one at a time, and finding places that needed kissing. Each piece of clothing became an envelope to be expertly unsealed, the contents to be secretly investigated without being removed. They were like first lovers, exploring one another, sharing secrets in a secret place. They teased one another about wanting to get into each other's pants, tortured each other by dragging zippers down and touching warm skin with cool hands. Inevitably the torture became exquisitely sensuous as hands and lips sought the deeper secrets nestled in the wedge-shaped envelopes of open zippers.

He had not hoped to love her this way again. Reckless as he was, he had never been the right man, but he would do for now. And for now, he would do well.

She had not expected to be held and touched this way again. Sensible as she was, she always sought moderation, but not
tonight. Tonight she abandoned caution and demanded no compromise. Tonight his way was better.

Tonight she whispered love words while she suckled him. Tonight she made him moan as relentlessly as he did her. They kissed and touched with feverish abandon. He called her
honey,
because, he said, she tasted like honey. “And I've never said that to anyone before.”

He was, she told him, a man for all seasons and all times of the day, but especially beautiful in the moonlight. Her hands cherished his every contour. “Like polished marble all over, all over, all over.”

“We're going to shoot the moon,” he promised as he eased himself inside her. It took some ardent stroking, some rhythmic pumping and some zealous writhing, but they did. They not only shot the moon, they made a whole new crater.

“Don't go yet,” he said when she'd recovered strength enough to move. “Stay with me a little longer.”

“We should go inside. We could…” She wanted to take him to her bed, but Jody might find him there. His room was right across the hall. Amy's good judgment put her wanting in its place.

And Tate didn't need any diagrams. “We'd have to get dressed,” he lamented as he cradled her against his chest. “I'd have to fasten this.” He couldn't locate a bra cup without brushing the back of his hand across her nipple. “And then I couldn't do this anymore.” He smiled when he'd coaxed her nipple into a bead.

“You're a tricky one, Tate Harrison,” she whispered contentedly.

He tongued her nipple gently, just one more time. Just for good measure. “How long will you nurse Karen?”

She answered with a soft groan.

He tightened his arms around her hips, holding her to him
as he pressed his face between her breasts. “Who gets weaned first, her or me?”

Like his lovemaking, his teasing hurt sometimes, but she could hide the hurt as long as he couldn't see her face. She tunneled her fingers into his hair and held him, his ear a scant inch from her thrumming heart. “Whoever grows up first, I guess.”

H
e woke up shivering in his blankets, and Amy was gone. Responsible Amy. She had children to look after—thank God she was responsible. He would have kept her up in that loft, rolling in his arms, halfway into summer. A loft was much better than a pumpkin shell, not that he owned either one. But he had a pickup, a passbook savings account and a piece of Montana ground. He was worth
something,
anyway. If the woman couldn't see that, it was time to point it out to her. The sun would be up soon. He decided that sunrise would be a damn good time.

He showered and shaved, and while he was getting himself dressed in the shirt she'd made for him, he could hear activity overhead. Karen was making those cute little baby noises. She was just naturally an early bird, but it was unusual for Jody to be clomping around the kitchen in his prized cowboy boots at this hour.

They were all outside by the time he got upstairs. He could
see them through the front window, Karen all bundled up in her stroller and Jody standing out there hipshot like a cool cowhand, leaning on his broomstick horse as if it were the gatepost on the approach to a ten-thousand-acre spread. Amy was dragging something out of the back of her pickup, which she'd backed up to the edge of the yard. Early-morning light brightened the sky all around them. The lavender hills sloped in silhouette against the pale yellow dawn.

Tate grabbed his hat and headed out the back, slamming the storm door shut behind him. Amy looked up and smiled. “We were just about to go looking for you. We're planting Karen's tree.”

“You're gonna plant a tree just before you move out?”

“Whether we're moving or not, these things have to be done in their season, and it's the season for tree planting.” She hooked a stray lock of hair behind her ear and pointed across the yard. “Jody's tree is that paper birch. See how nice and tall it's growing?”

Jody trotted across the yard to reacquaint himself with his birch tree. “It's budding, too,” he boasted.

“We thought Karen's should be a Christmas tree.” Tate took over the job of unloading the young nursery-raised blue spruce from the back of the pickup. “I don't want to block the view from the window, though,” Amy mused as she surveyed the yard.

She wore an old yellow sweatshirt and faded blue jeans, and she looked as fresh and naturally pretty as the morning sky. She caught him staring at her, though, so he had to tear his eyes away and give some serious consideration to the problem at hand.

“I've been thinkin' we needed a windbreak over there by your garden.” He quirked her a questioning brow, and she nodded. He carried the tree and pushed the stroller. Jody and
Outlaw, Jr., galloped along behind, while Amy donned her gardening gloves and brought up the rear. She carried the shovel.

Jody cut a wide circle around his sister's stroller. “Remember when we went out and got the Christmas tree, Tate?”

“I remember.” Along with Christmas trees past, he thought. Trees had a way of making nice memories. He set the tree down close to where he wanted to see it take root, then he turned, eyeing the shovel. “You gonna let me do the digging on this project?”

“If you want to.”

He took the shovel from Amy's hands and stabbed the ground with its point. He could feel her watching him with those earth-mother eyes of hers. When she was satisfied that he could handle the job, she dashed into the house and came back with a bucket of water and a plastic sack.

“Does that look big enough?” He knew it was plenty big, but he wanted to make sure she was satisfied with his work. This was one morning he wasn't giving her anything to complain about.

“It looks perfect.” She knelt beside the tree and started tapping the pot to loosen the roots.

“Here, let me help.” Tate hunkered down beside her and took the plastic pot in his big hands, breaking it down the side. Then he took out his jackknife. “The tool-of-all-trades for the jack-of-all-trades.” He was really going to impress her now. He'd had a seasonal job with the Forest Service years ago. He knew that a competent planter of trees always scored the root ball.

The sun appeared in a crotch in the foothills, spilling fruit-basket colors across the sky as Tate lifted Karen from the stroller. They all gathered around Tate's hole in the earth and watched Amy empty the contents of the plastic zipper bag.
There was nothing unbeautiful about the blood from Amy's body, the tissue that had nourished her unborn baby. Tate held the tree steady with one hand. With the other he raked black loam into the hole. Other fingers plunged to his aid—Amy's slender ones, Jody's short ones and Karen's chubby ones. They pounded the first layer down, added water, and dug in again.

“Who's going to tend it?” Tate asked after the job was done.

“God takes care of the trees,” Jody reported confidently. “Doesn't He, Mom?”

“The trees and the sparrows.” Amy squinted against the sun's glare as she looked up at Tate. “Who's tending yours?” He looked at her questioningly. “The ones along the driveway that used to lead to your old house. There's a huge clump of daylilies that blooms there every summer. Did your mother plant those?”

“Probably.” He remembered his mother's daylilies and her hollyhocks. He'd had to weed them every damn spring when she was alive. “They're still there?”

“Like Jody said, God takes care of them.” She shifted Karen from one hip to the other and started toward the house. “Besides, you can't even get rid of daylilies with an eight-bottom plow.”

Jody fed his orphan lambs with a huge plastic baby bottle. Amy and Tate sat side by side on the back step and watched them romp around the yard together. From their backyard kennel, Daisy and Duke let it be known that they were ready to romp, too. The lambs ignored the barking. They listened only to Jody, the voice of the milk supply.

“When Jody goes to school, he'll have two lambs on his tail,” Tate said with a bemused smile. “Think that'll make the children laugh and play?”

Amy laughed as she bounced Karen on her knees. “You've been eavesdropping on the bedtime reading again.”

“Karen and me both, right, sweetie?” He chucked the baby under her chin. “One night last week I walked the floor with her a little bit, and Jody's door was open just a crack. We didn't wanna interrupt, but we heard something about little lambs, and we were just curious.”

“Tate, about last night…”

“You let me say something about last night, okay?” He detected an unusual timidity in the look she slid him. “Short and sweet.”

“Yes,” she said quietly. “Short, but very, very sweet.”

He whispered in her ear, “I kept it up as long as I could, boss lady,” and she closed her eyes and smiled. “I meant that my say will be short and sweet.
Maybe.
” She glanced up, and he chuckled. “Why is it we're always explaining what we meant after we say what we say?”

“To each other?” He nodded. She shrugged. “Maybe we don't speak the same language.”

“We did last night,” he recalled. The blush in her cheeks was so pretty, it stung his eyes. He had to look at something else while he said his piece. He chose Jody, tumbling in the new grass with a leggy lamb.

“I've been doin' a lot of thinking lately,” Tate began cautiously. “You know, you can keep horses and sheep together real easy. They complement each other well, the way they graze. Sheep will eat plants that horses don't like, and sheep dung is good fertilizer for horse pasture. They seem like opposites, but each improves the pasture for the other.”

“You have to separate them at lambing time,” Amy pointed out quietly.

“So you make a few allowances.” He turned to her. “You really plannin' to sell this place?”

“You really planning to sell yours?” He was ready to tell her that he wasn't sure, but she had a piece she had to say, too. “If you'd stop running long enough, you'd realize how useless all this running is. You were born to this land, Tate, this life, and it still shows, no matter how far you've tried to put it behind you.”

“You wanted something different from the life you grew up with,” he reminded her. “So do I. I want—”

“What?”

He smiled. “Listen to me, now. I'm trying to draw you this harmony-between-sheep-and-horses comparison.”

“And I want you to tell me straight-out,” she insisted. “What are you looking for, Tate?”

“I want a home and family. I want to feel like I belong, like I'm wanted and needed.” He looked across the yard at Jody again. “Like somebody believes in me, trusts me. I screwed up bad once, but—”

“You were just a boy.”

“I didn't know that. I thought I was supposed to be a man.” He paused for a moment, thinking about that ghost and a few others. Here was an opening for him to try to put their ghosts to rest. “Kenny thought it was still okay for him to be a boy, even after he was married. He let you carry most of the load.” He turned to her. “I wouldn't do that, Amy. I'm just as strong-willed as you are. We'd put it all together—what's mine with what's yours. But you'd have to be willing to share decisions with me, fifty-fifty.”

She was doing her damnedest to bank up the coals on a warm smile. “Would you be wanting a few cows, too, cowboy?”

“I might. But if I can live with sheep—”

“I think I could live with cows if I had a real cowboy around,” she said, too quickly, too eagerly. It was as though
she'd caught herself on the verge of being happy, and it scared her, made her feel guilty. The implicit contrast was like a bucket of cold water dumped between them.

Dredging up a somber note, she glanced away. “I did love Ken.”

“I know.” Tate slipped his arm around her. “He was my best friend. Always.”
Even when I wanted his girl for my own. Even when I wanted his wife. Even when I wanted to punch him in the face because he didn't know any better than to take the woman I wanted for granted.
“I loved him, too, Amy, but that doesn't have to come between us. He loved us. And we both did right by him.”

“What you said about why we haven't always gotten along… Why I might have been…afraid of you in a way.” She looked up at him again. “You might have a point.”

“I might have a point.” He claimed the baby, who shrieked with delight as he lifted her toward the sky in a joyful toast. “Ha-ha, I might have a
point!
”

“There's a chance we could become great compromisers,” Amy said tentatively.

“We'd probably butt heads once in a while, but we'd take care of each other, too. You'd lean on me, and I'd lean on you, sort of like a jackleg fence.” He was riding high now, with a pretty girl tucked under each arm. “And the kids, they'd be like the cross pieces, you know? There's a lot I could teach Jody.”

“You've been like a father to him these last few months.”

“I thought it was
brother.
”

“Father,” she amended belatedly. “And there aren't too many fathers who can say they've actually delivered their daughters into the world.”

He bounced Karen in his arm. “You remember that night, little darlin'? You popped your head into the world, and this
was the first face to greet you.” She patted his smooth-shaven cheek with a chubby hand. “It was a little bristly that night, as I recall.”

“She was glad you were there.” Amy put her arm around his waist and smiled up at him. “So was her mom.”

“I know you needed me that night,” he said. “How about now? Not just my help, Amy.
Me.
” He needed to hear her say it. “It's not a weakness to need someone,” he professed, as much for his own benefit as for hers. And suddenly, for better or for worse, he didn't mind saying, “I need you.”

“For what?”

“For a companion,” he offered. She wasn't buying yet. “For my partner, how's that?” Better, he could tell. “For my lover,” he growled in her ear. “How's that?”

“It would be a lovely thought.” She challenged him with a look. “If you loved me.”

“I don't remember when I didn't love you.”

Now she smiled, and the light in her silk chocolate eyes was like sunrise at sea.

“And I always will, Amy. How's
that?
”

“Is it…really true?”

“You know it's true.”

She did. She'd known it for some time. And she'd known there would be heartache if he left her and risks if he stayed.

“I think my father loved my mother, too, in his own way. And we loved him, but…” Oh, God, could she keep a man like Tate happy? If she gave him a place in her heart and her home, would he find it too confining for his long, tall cowboy form and being?

She sighed. “I can be good in all the roles you named, but I'm not a good gypsy. You'd have to—”

“Settle down, I know. I'm feelin' pretty settled. I've been
a pretty good hired hand, haven't I?” She nodded slowly. “Fire me.”

“What?”

“I want to be your husband. I want to be a father to your children.” He searched the depths of her eyes. “If you think you could love me.”

“I've been afraid to love you, but I've been loving you anyway. It couldn't be helped.” She lowered her head and rubbed her cheek against his shoulder. His heart swelled when she finally confessed, “I need you, Tate. If you ever left me now…”

“I would die inside.” She lifted her chin, then lifted her eyes to his. He smiled. “I've been runnin' in circles, endin' up back home every time.”

He dipped his head, and their lips met for a long slow kiss. Karen smacked his cheek once, but it didn't faze him. Not when he heard the catch in Amy's breath over his fancy tongue stroking.

“Oh, mush,” said a voice at his knee.