A Dark & Stormy Knight: A McKnight Romance (McKnight Romances) (24 page)

Georgia
couldn’t stifle her laughter. She went and got his hat while he brought two
horses to the barn to be saddled.

Sol loaded saddlebags with heavy leather
gloves and the tools he’d need for minor fence repairs. Georgia stopped him before he could put them on his mount. The leather flaps had the silhouette of
cowboy hat and boots stamped into them.

“Did Striker do these?” Georgia asked. Striker, the local saddle maker, did everyone’s custom leatherwork, but this seemed
too ornate and fanciful for him.

“His apprentice.” Sol winked as if to cue
her that there was more to the story.

“And who’s his apprentice?”

“Unofficially, Leah is.”

“Geez, your siblings grow up fast.” Leah
hadn’t been much more than a toddler when they’d been married. “How old is she
now?”

“Let’s see. She’s three years younger
than Daisy, so that would make her . . . fifteen? Yeah, fifteen.
Which is why her apprenticeship is unofficial.”

Georgia
shook her head. They were going to have their own self-sufficient little
village someday.

After they finished saddling the horses,
Sol handed her a long-sleeved cotton shirt. “Here. You’ll burn in that tank
top. This, too.” He tossed a slightly battered, straw cowboy hat her way.

They rode out through the paddock into
the pasture beyond. At the far end, they passed through a gate and onto the
dirt track lined on both sides by a barbed-wire fence. They rode along in
surprisingly companionable silence. Whatever it was Sol wanted to talk about,
he seemed to be in no rush to get to it, and Georgia was happy to let it sit.

In spite of how long it had been since
she’d been in a saddle, it was a skill her muscles remembered, like riding a
bike. She adjusted to the rhythm of the horse’s unhurried gait without
conscious thought. Out in the open, she felt the intensity of the sun and the Texas humidity. A light breeze kept it from being too uncomfortable for the first mile or
so.

“How far to this fence you need to check?”
Georgia finally asked.

One corner of Sol’s lips quirked up. “We’ve
been riding it for the last ten minutes.”

“Oh.” Of course they had. “Did you bring
any water?”

Sol handed her his canteen.

The water was warm, but she welcomed the
moisture all the same. When she started to cap the canteen, Sol said, “Drink
more than that. You don’t wanna get dehydrated out here.”

This time when she was done, she offered
it to him. He took it and turned his face up as he put the canteen to his lips.
The picture he made with his lashes feathered across his cheekbones, his Adam’s
apple rising and falling as he swallowed, was a study in masculinity. In that
moment, he looked so male, he seemed almost alien, but in a way that made her
pleasantly aware of their differences. She caught herself enjoying the view. “Damn,”
she said softly. This ride-along was a bad idea.

Sol’s eyes opened. He fixed his gaze on
her as he lowered the canteen. “How come I gotta give up cussing but you don’t?”

“Have you?”

“Given up cussing? Mostly.”

“What does that mean, ‘mostly’?”

Sol’s lips twitched as he capped the
canteen. “Guess you’ll have to stick around and find out.” He hung the canteen
on his saddle and urged his horse forward.

He was impossible. Not that this was
news. She nudged her horse into motion to keep up with him. “What did you want
to talk about?”

“How’s your mama doing?”

That wasn’t what she expected, and it
certainly wasn’t a topic that justified a “need” to talk. Georgia’s nerves kicked back in. He wouldn’t be that shy about Eden riding, so what else
was on his mind that was serious enough he had to work up to it with
trivialities?

“Mama’s coming along. If we’re patient,
she does pretty well, but she still gets frustrated when she can’t put what she’s
thinking into words. Then it seems to spiral. The words refuse to come because
she’s frustrated, so she gets that much more frustrated.” She was nervous
enough to babble on. “It takes a while for her to calm down. By then, she’s
usually forgotten what was so important, but she is getting better.”

“What’s the doctor say?”

Georgia
shrugged, pretending an indifference she sure as hell didn’t feel. “That it’s
up to her how quickly she recovers.”

He was silent, as though chewing on that.
What there was to chew on, she didn’t know. Her mama would get better at
whatever pace she decided to. Georgia started counting fence posts as a way to
measure his silences. She was up to four when he said, “What are you going to
do when the school year starts up if she ain’t able to manage on her own?”

He would have to ask that. “I’ve been
hoping it won’t be an issue. I guess I’ll have to wait and see how far she’s
come.”

“You really telling me you ain’t thought
about it?”

“Well, of course I’ve thought about it.” Georgia sighed. “If I have to, I can take a leave of absence. I’d want to let the school
know by early August, so they don’t have to scramble for a replacement at the
last minute.”

“What about your apartment?”

“That depends on how long I think I’ll be
gone. If it’s too long, I may need to let it go and put everything in storage.”

“We’ve got space here if you want to save
the storage fees.”

Did he think if he got all her stuff here,
he could get her to stay? “Let’s wait and see, okay?”

He nodded and lapsed into silence again.

His easy agreement surprised her. “Was
that what we needed to talk about?”

“Nope. I just thought we needed to talk.”

Oh, good Lord, he was still dancing
around whatever it was. “About what, Sol?”

“Nothin’ in particular. We just . . .
We don’t talk anymore.”

Whose fault was that? Georgia wanted to ask, but that would only start a fight. If he really did just want to talk—no
agenda, no manipulation—it would be an interesting change. And if he didn’t, he’d
bring up whatever it was eventually. She needed to be patient. She could do
that. This summer was about nothing but relearning patience. “That’s really it?
You want to . . . chat?”

His brow furrowed for a few seconds.
Chatting did sound kind of girly. Georgia almost giggled. Sol was so not the
paint-his-toenails-and-gossip type.

“We just need to get along better. For Eden’s sake.”

“For Eden’s sake?” She hadn’t intended to
sound skeptical.

“Well, yeah. You want me to make more
decisions. And I want that, too.” He said the last quickly, as though he feared
she’d take back her request that he get more involved. “I think if we
understand each other better, it’ll maybe go easier.”

They understood each other too well, Georgia sometimes thought. Then again, she hadn’t seen the barrel racing coming, so maybe
he was right. What could it hurt? “Okay.”

“Okay?” He sounded surprised she’d
agreed.

“What do you want to chat about?” she
asked, knowing that, whether he gave it away or not, her choice of words would
make him cringe. Her question met silence. She’d bet that he had an entire
spiel planned to convince her that he was now fast-forwarding through.

“Okay,” he said a couple of fence posts
later. “Tell me about teaching third grade. What do you like about it?”

That was easy. “Well, I like—”

“No. Wait,” Sol blurted. He lifted a hand
with one finger extended as though making a point. “Tell me what you like
best
about it.”

That was a harder. Teaching had so many
rewards. Sol waited patiently as she mulled it over. “The best part,” she
finally said, “is that moment when you see the light go on over a kid’s head.
Especially when it’s a kid who’s been struggling. They get so frustrated, and
you can see how hard they’re trying, but they can’t seem to wrap their heads
around whatever it is, and then . . .” Georgia took a deep breath. “Then their eyes get big as your mama’s Thanksgiving platter, and they
get this awed look on their face that takes your breath away, and you know you’ve
made a difference in their lives. That whatever else happens to them, they’re
going to be ready for the next grade when you turn them loose. Maybe I take too
much credit for that, but it feels good all the same.”

“Yeah, I can see that. That’s one of the
cool things about being a big brother. I get to help my younger siblings, to
teach them stuff.”

To boss them, Georgia thought. Or was she
being unfair? He’d been supportive of Aaron without undermining the lesson he
was learning in that corner stall, and the swearing notwithstanding, he tried
to set a good example for Eden.

“Of course, being an older brother has
more leeway that a teacher does.” He gave her a sideways look with a teasing
smile. “I can cuff them when they fu— er, screw up.” His self-satisfied smirk
disappeared with his near gaffe. “That’s not cussing, is it? I mean, screw
doesn’t
have
to have sexual connotations. If it did, how would anyone
ever ask for a screwdriver?”

He was right, of course, but the tips of
his ears turned red anyway. Georgia put on her best quasi-serious expression
and nodded as if his question had gravitas. “Of course. And you’d have to rename
vodka and orange juice or the bars would all go out of business.”

He’d never been dumb enough to miss when
she made fun of his serious side. The look he shot her seemed to say, “Keep it
up, and you’ll be sorry,” but she’d never been afraid of him. His sense of
humor was sometimes warped, and he’d been known to joyfully embarrass the hell
out of her, but threats of making her “sorry” were mostly empty.

“And if you wanted to screw something
down, you’d have to rename the screws. What would you call them? Pointy bolts?
Then when you said, ‘screw’“—she drew out the word, trying for lascivious—”everyone
would know that you meant it sexually.”

It didn’t seem to matter that, as a word,
screw
didn’t lend itself well to lasciviousness because the red of his
ears spread to his face and neck. Georgia grinned, wondering how she could have
forgotten that, while Sol was more than capable of initiating sexual
situations, when a woman caught him off guard with the same tactics, it made
him uncomfortable.

He stared ahead at the fence as he
cleared his throat. “Okay. I guess I can use ‘screwed up’ in front of Eden.”

If he hadn’t been making such an effort
to be agreeable, she would have kept the pressure on. Instead she said, “Race
you to the corner post,” and kicked her horse into a run.

The day had grown progressively warmer,
and the fast pace created a wind that wicked the sweat from Georgia’s face. Even though his taller horse could have easily outpaced hers, Sol let her
beat him to the fence post by a length.

He opened the gate near the corner, and
they moved into another pasture to follow its fence. Sol’s daddy had recently
swapped a more distant field for this land. At the far end stood a medium-sized
frame house.

“What’s your daddy going to do with that?”
Georgia asked, pointing at the house as they stopped for Sol to make a repair
to the fence.

He shrugged. “Ain’t decided yet.
Gunderson’s hired man and his family lived here, but his boys are old enough to
take on the chores, so they didn’t need him any longer. We may rent it out ‘til
Jake gets his veterinary degree then give it over to him.”

“How many bedrooms does it have?”

“Three.”

“That’s a little big for a bachelor, don’t
you think?”

“I imagine some little filly’ll snag Jake’s
attention long enough for her to hogtie him one of these days. Then they’ll
fill it up.”

They rode on, leaving the house behind,
talking some but often in surprisingly companionable silence. Sol stopped a
couple of times to fix sagging barbed wire. By late afternoon, Georgia was shifting uncomfortably, her behind reminding her that she wasn’t used to
spending so much time in the saddle.

She was about to ask him how much longer
they’d be when she recognized the copse of trees ahead and realized the fence
they were riding led to the swimming hole that sat on the border of the
McKnights’ land. The spot was practically legendary around Hero Creek, but she
hadn’t been there since those long-ago days when she was married to Sol. As
they neared, whoops and hollers carried to them on the breeze. She shot a
raised eyebrow at him.

“When it’s hot like this, the kids take
an afternoon break up here to cool down.”

That made sense. She couldn’t deny that
the idea of jumping into a pool of cool water sounded better than the trip to Alaska she’d started imagining. It also had the advantage of being right there. She wished
he had mentioned the possibility. She could have borrowed something to paddle
around in before they’d ridden out.

They rode into the trees in time to see
one of his younger brothers swing out from the far bank on a rope. When he got
out over the middle, he let go and plummeted, slicing into the deep blue water
with hardly a splash.

Sol leaned on his saddle horn, a smile on
his face. “I swear, Levi’s part fish.”

Then she saw Eden—no, it couldn’t be. But
it was. Eden had caught the rope Levi had dropped from. Before Georgia could do more than tense up, Eden swung out over the water like Tarzan and let go to dropped,
creating a much larger splash than Levi.

Eden
surfaced and Georgia breathed freely again. With narrowed
eyes, she shot a sideways look at Sol to find him watching her intently.

“You said you wanted me to make
decisions,” he said as he dismounted.

He was right. And she’d already
vacillated too long about this one.

“I don’t know why you didn’t want her up
here. ‘Specially since you got her all them swim lessons.”

Georgia
barely heard him. She was watching Eden as she struck out for the bank. Their
daughter swam with strong, confident strokes. “Would you look at her?” Georgia’s pride busted out in her voice.

Sol put his fingers to his lips and let
loose a shrill whistle. Everyone stopped, looked their way, then waved and
called out greetings.

Eden
changed directions and headed toward them. Georgia dismounted to greet her daughter,
letting Sol take the reins and lead the horses into the shade of a tree.

When Eden got out of the water wearing
the floral-patterned one-piece Georgia had bought her at the beginning of the
summer, she bounced into Georgia’s arms. “Hi, Mama.”

Georgia
hugged her daughter, not minding that Eden was all wet. It was a nice contrast
to the heat. She pulled back and smoothed Eden’s hair from her face. Heavy with
moisture, it hung halfway down her back. “You swim like a mermaid.”

Eden
glowed at her praise. She hugged Sol, jumped back in the water, and swam for
the other bank.

Georgia
turned to Sol, wanting to rake him over the coals for letting Eden come up
here, but when she saw his face, she got sidetracked. Anyone who didn’t know
him as well as she did would say that his face was expressionless, but Georgia knew that unblinking stare and the shallow breathing. Something had blindsided him,
but he was trying to play it cool.

“Sol, what is it?” She touched his arm. “What’s
wrong?”

He swallowed hard then drew a breath in
through his nose. His voice, when he finally spoke, was soft and his lips
barely moved. “She has breasts.”

Georgia
was dumfounded that he’d noticed.

“They’re just . . .
mosquito bites, but . . .” He turned his head and looked into
her eyes with a panicky gaze. “Breasts,” he said again.

Georgia
covered her mouth and tried not to laugh. What the hell had he expected? He
had, after all, married the girl who’d been well out of her training bra by the
eighth grade. If Eden’s barely there breasts floored him this badly, he’d faint
dead away if he knew she was getting pubic hair, too.

The thought pushed her over the edge, and
she couldn’t stifle her laughter. Sol had never liked being laughed at, but he
was too shell shocked to even scowl. Such a tough guy, but realizing his little
girl was on the threshold of womanhood threw him completely off kilter. Georgia laughed until she snorted and had to wipe tears from her eyes.

“It’s not funny,” Sol said softly. “There
are going to be boys. And they’re gonna wanna touch . . .” He
drew a shaky breath. “Oh, hell.”

She was laughing too hard to reprimand
him for his language.

“Still not funny, Georgia. I’m going to have to kill some poor boy for following his urges. They’ll send me to prison,
and then who’s gonna be there to protect Eden?”

Oh, Lord. He had the scenario all worked
out in his head already. She hung on to his arm to keep herself upright while
she laughed.

“She’s not dating until she’s
twenty-five. Maybe thirty. You wanted me to make decisions; that’s my decision.
You can make all the rest. I don’t care. But she’s not dating. Is there an all-girls
school in Dallas? One run by nuns maybe? It’s a big city. There must be. If
there is, we need to send her there. I don’t care what it costs—”

“Stop, Sol! Please, stop!” Georgia’s ribs were starting to hurt.

“But, Georgia—”

She clamped a hand over his mouth, pushed
him back into the trees where they were less visible, and forced herself to
stop laughing. All this worry must have been churning around in his subconscious,
waiting for the moment to arrive when he could no longer deny his daughter was
growing up. True to his nature, Sol was overreacting. In a weird way, that
pleased Georgia because he overreacted like this only when he really cared.

“Sol. Stop it. You’re borrowing trouble.
She’s barely interested in boys.”

“But she will be. And they’re going to be
interested in her. You know, Zach warned some boy’s parents to keep him away
from Daisy last year. I thought he was overreacting some, but holy shit, he wasn’t.”

“Language, Sol,” Georgia warned.

“And damn him.” He didn’t even seem to
hear her. “Zach’s got the luck of the devil. He’s got a boy who’ll help watch
out for Abbie. Why couldn’t we have had a boy?” He scowled at her as though it
were her fault.

“Would you really trade Eden in for a
boy?”

His lips turned down at the corners. “No,
I guess not.” He looked out over the water. “Do you think she might wanna be a
nun?”

Was he starting to get his sense of humor
back? Georgia wasn’t sure. “We’re not Catholic, Sol. And no,” she added before
he could suggest it, “we’re not converting.”

He harrumphed. “Not willing to make the
sacrifice for your daughter? Where’s your maternal instinct got to?”

“My maternal instinct is fine. It’s your
paternal one that’s in overdrive. You need to get a grip on that. She’s going
to turn into a teenager.”

A shudder ran through his lanky frame.

“You can’t stop that. She’s going to
discover boys, and she’s going to date.” He looked as though he was about to
object, but she held up her hand, warning him to let her finish. “And at some
point—probably in her twenties—she’ll get married. And yes, she will have sex,
but it’s okay because we’ll get grandbabies from it.”

He was still scowling but not as hard. “As
long as it happens in that order.”

She laughed at him again. Now that he was
calming down from his initial panic, she didn’t think he’d go off on a tangent,
issuing insane, unenforceable orders to Eden. At least, she hoped not.

“No wonder your folks hate me,” Sol said.

“What are you talking about?”

“Well, I ain’t gonna like any boy who
looks at Eden the way I looked at you when we were teenagers.”

“Sol, you still look at me the way you
did then.”

He slowly gave himself over to a grin. “Yeah.
And your folks still hate me.”

“Well,” Georgia drew the word out. “That’s
not exactly true.”

“Oh yeah, it is.”

“No, it’s not. Daddy told me the other
day to give you his regards.”

“His regards?” Sol repeated, sounding
confused.

“He also told me I should be nice to you.
No, he said I should be kind to you.”

“
Kind
to me?” Sol shoved his hat
back. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I’m not sure exactly, except he seems to
have rethought his position about you. If he hated you, he wouldn’t have sent
his regards.”

“Hunh. Does seem like an odd thing to say
if you hate someone.”

“Ergo, he doesn’t hate you.”

“Ergo?”
Both eyebrows shot up.

“It means—”

“I know what it means. I just can’t
believe you actually said it.”

Georgia
stuck her tongue out at him. “The point is he doesn’t hate you.”

“If you say so.” He smiled as though
pleased. “I guess that wouldn’t be so bad if your daddy didn’t hate me.”

“Play your cards right, big boy, and he
might even come to like you.”

Sol grinned. “Now wouldn’t that be
something?”

Their break from chores over, Eden came and hugged her mama good-bye as Levi started rounding up the kids and loading
them in the pickup bed. Georgia’s backside protested the idea of getting back
in the saddle, and the rest of her wanted to linger in the shade of the trees.
While Sol said good-bye to Eden, Georgia found a spot on the bank where she
could kick off her boots, roll up her pant legs, and dangle her feet in the
cool water. Now this, she decided, felt like her own little corner of paradise.

“Good idea,” Sol said when he found her
there after the kids had ridden off into the sunset. He sat beside her, took
off his boots and socks, dropped his feet into the water, and released a long,
satisfied sigh.

Georgia
tugged the knot out of his neckerchief then leaned over and swished it around
in the water. After wringing it out, she wiped the dust and sweat from her
face, then held it out so he could do the same.

He gave her a deadpan look. “Like that’s
gonna be enough.” He unbuttoned his shirt and shrugged out of it. “Wanna skinny
dip?”

“Tempting”—she tapped her forefinger
against her lips as though considering—”but no.”

“Ah, c’mon. We haven’t skinny dipped in a
long time.” Sol stood up and popped the button on his jeans.

Georgia
jerked her head around to stare out over the water. “Yeah, I think we were
married back then. We’re not married now.” She heard the zipper go down on his
jeans then the rasp of denim being shoved down.

Sol clucked softly in her ear. “Braaaak,
bak-bak-bak.”

She swatted at him as if he were a
mosquito only to have him laugh. From the corner of her eye, she caught a flash
of bare skin followed by a loud splash and a spray of water as Sol hit the
pool.

He surfaced, shaking his wet hair from
his eyes, bobbed up and down a few times, then dove headfirst, all the parts of
his body rising to the surface in a moving arc that reminded her of the whale-watching
excursion she’d gone on when she and Daniel had taken the girls to Disney World
in Orlando. Of course, whales didn’t flash their pale butts before Georgia could look away.

She’d always envied the way he was
comfortable in his own skin no matter what he did, but there were times—like
now—that his actions made her uncomfortable.