“Shit!” The one nearest him jumped.
“Pretty girl, huh?” Zach said.
The answering grins agreed with him. Zach wondered if any one of them could have picked Daisy’s face out of a lineup, but he held onto his temper. In as calm and friendly a voice as he could manage, he said, “You see, the thing is, that’s my little sister, and if anyone was to treat her with anything but the kinda respect you’d want someone to give your own sister, why, I’d have to hunt him down and turn him into strips of jerky.” The boys on either end noticeably paled. Zach met the middle boy’s eyes and held them. “We understand each other?”
The two boys he wasn’t worried about swallowed and nodded. The third sat looking back at him for several long seconds before he, too, gave a single nod of his head. Zach was suddenly afraid he’d just done more damage than good. The kid’s reaction was more like someone acknowledging a challenge than an agreement.
“Good. Y’all have a nice day now.” Zach said, as though he wasn’t worried at all. He retreated to the booth, claiming Daisy’s side for himself, before she could come out and catch him meddling.
When she passed the boys on her way back, two of them hunched their shoulders and refused to even look at her. The taller boy boldly watched her reflection in the windows.
Damn Ezra, Zach thought. As the brother just older than Daisy, he’d have been in the best position to keep an eye on that boy. But he’d made Mamma ship him off to Aunt Esther’s because of his own wild streak.
Worry lines appeared on Daisy’s face as she sat opposite Zach. The lack of attention on her return trip obviously confused her. “You switched on me,” she complained.
“Live with it,” Zach said, his mood darker than when she left.
She shot him a surprised look but seemed to know better than to ask.
He ached to have the heart-to-heart with her he’d intended, but it would fall on deaf ears if he started before the boys left. Daisy was too aware of them behind her. She sat like their eyes were on her, though Zach could have told her they weren’t. He got more glances from them than she did.
Zach thought he might be to blame when the boys didn’t stay for another soda. Daisy didn’t turn around when she heard them trooping out, but her face fell with disappointment. At the last moment, she turned her head to watch the door fall closed behind them.
“He’s the tall one, ain’t he?”
“How did you know?”
“Your big brother’s not a complete dumbass.”
“You don’t like him,” she accused.
“Daisy, it’s not that I don’t like him. I just know him too well.”
“You don’t know him at all!”
“He’s a seventeen year old boy, honey. It ain’t been that long ago I
was
him. Do you want to know what he’s thinking when he sees a girl dressed like you are?”
Daisy sucked on her malted, refusing to answer, refusing even to meet his eyes.
“He’s thinking, ‘Boy, I’d like some of what she’s got.’ What he’s
not
thinking is how he’d like to get to know that girl.”
She still wouldn’t meet his eyes.
“So let’s say the way you’re dressed gets his attention. He looks at you, and he sees a girl who just might put out. He knows he might have to work some for it, but he’ll tell you whatever he thinks you want to hear just so’s you’ll let him dip his wick.” Desperate to get her attention, Zach intentionally got crude.
It worked. She gasped audibly as her eyes leaped to meet his.
“Not very romantic, is it?”
She shook her head in denial. “You don’t know him. He’s not like that.”
“You don’t know him either. You’re obviously still at the gotta-get-his-attention stage.”
Daisy sulked fairly often when their mother laid down the law with her, but she’d never sulked at Zach before.
“Look, Daisy,” he used her nickname to let her know he was on her side. “In five years, he might be a great guy, but at seventeen, he’s at the mercy of his hormones. Four out of five seconds of the day, he’s thinking about sex.”
“So I oughta look for someone older,” Daisy challenged. “Coz according to you, all the boys my age are gonna go through this.”
“They’re already going through it, and no, I don’t want you dating someone older. I just want you to be careful. When you dress like that, the boys are all gonna think you put out. If you do, you might be able to keep the guy around for a while, but he’ll think you’re easy, and eventually, you’ll lose him to a girl he can respect. If you don’t, he’ll think you’re a tease and he’ll dump you for someone more honest. Either way you lose.”
“That’s not fair!” Her eyes flashed her indignation.
“Good God, Daisy! Whoever it was told you life was fair lied to you.”
Daisy’s lower lip stuck out again, but this time, Zach thought she was on the edge of tears. He looked around, saw that none of her peers were around, and switched sides, so he could put his arm around her.
“I know. It’s tough. Guys are assholes.”
She let him hold her for a minute, then she sat up and dried her wet cheeks with her knuckles.
“Go change into your jeans and we’ll head home,” Zach said, glad he hadn’t waited to come home. If his sister listened to his advice, he might have just saved her from a worse fate than a switching from their mamma.
Chapter Ten
Carly called Zach the next day. “The car is registered to Prudence Wells of Medicine Bow, Wyoming.”
Prudence
? Was that her real name? A lump coalesced in the pit of Zach’s stomach. The girl he knew was Maddie; thinking of her as Prudence made her seem like a stranger. “Do you have a street address?”
“ Walnut Street.”
“Thanks, Carly.” Zach hung up before she could ask him to come in and file an accident report.
He could try directory assistance, but then he’d have to decide whether to call or not. Jake had found out a lot through the internet. Maybe that would help again.
He found Daisy mucking out her horse’s stall.
“Hey, Daisy. I need a favor.”
“What?”
“I need you to show me how to look up something on the internet.”
“You mean like Googling?”
“What?”
“Googling. That’s how you look most things up.”
“If you say so.”
“Is that what you want?”
“I have no idea. Suppose you show me how to do it anyway.”
Back in the house, Daisy whipped through screens so fast Zach couldn’t follow what she was doing.
“How did you get through school without learning how to use a computer?”
“I learned how to use a computer,” Zach said. “The internet thing and me didn’t much hit it off. Kept changing on me. I got better things to do than chase my tail.”
Daisy rolled her eyes. “Okay. It’s your story. You can tell it any way you want to.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothin’. ‘Cept I know about the temper tantrum you threw when your senior paper got eaten by a virus.”
“I worked my ass off on that paper,” Zach muttered, still pissed off nearly ten years later.
Daisy settled deeper into her chair, looking to Zach like a woman preparing for a battle. Of course, his perceptions might be colored by his past trauma.
“Okay, what do you wanna look up?”
“Prudence Wells in Medicine Bow, Wyoming.”
“Is that her?” Daisy asked. “The girl you’re looking for?”
“That’s what I’m hoping,” Zach said, though he wasn’t so sure it really was any more.
The search results were disappointing—nothing but a phone listing. “Damn!” Zach said. “That’s pretty skimpy. You sure you done that right?”
Daisy rolled her eyes again. “It’s not that tough, Zach!”
What a difference a social security number made, he thought. “I guess if that’s all there is, that’s all there is.”
“You gonna call her?”
“Not much point. She’s in Texas, not Wyoming.” But he copied the number down anyway.
The number in his wallet felt as hot as a branding iron in his hip pocket all through supper. Was he going to call? If it was a dead end, at least he’d know it. But who should he ask for: Maddie or Prudence?
What he really wanted was a good reason why Maddie was scared and on the run with a child that wasn’t hers.
He hesitated, suspecting that if she ever found out he’d traced her back trail, she’d be furious. She might also be scared enough to disappear on him.
In the end, he decided to wait. He’d be back in Galveston before the week was out. Somehow he was going to get Maddie to confess her sins.
*
“When do they stop thinking about sex four seconds out of five?”
Zach turned to find Daisy in the doorway of the room he shared with Gideon when he was home. She stood there, the toes of one bare foot balanced on the other as she leaned against the doorjamb in her nightgown.
“Depends on the boy.”
“When did you?”
“It’s not that cut and dried, Daisy. If I’m around a woman I like a lot, I’m right back to four out of five. Sometimes even five out of five. If I’m out on an oil rig, it’s more like one or two out of five.”
“Then what am I supposed to be waiting for?”
“You’re waiting ‘til the boys grow up some. You’re waiting until every girl they see don’t make their meter redline. You want a guy who’s meter
breaks
when he looks at you. Not any one else. Just you.”
“Have you ever met anyone like that?”
“Maybe. Once.”
Daisy cocked her head. “Is it this gal from Wyoming? You sure are going to a lot of trouble to find her.”
Did Maddie break his meter? She sure redlined it. Of course, that wasn’t all that hard to do when he’d just come off an oil rig. Still, he hadn’t done anything about the waitress who’d flirted with him in front of Rachel. He’d admired her, but he’d pursued Maddie. “That’s none of your business,” Zach said, not ready to admit more than he already had.
“What are you going to do about her?”
“I’m going back to Galveston Friday.”
“Why, Zachariah, I think she done broke your meter.”
Zach’s scowl didn’t manage to dilute his sister’s grin one whit.
*
Maddie held the disposable phone to her ear, listening to the faint burr of a distant ringing as she tried to keep Jesse from grabbing the spoonful of strained peas out of her hand. In just the last week, he seemed more interested in smearing his food all over himself and everything around him than he was in eating it. Not that she blamed him much. Strained peas weren’t high on her list of delectable foods either.
Jesse’s waving hand swatted the spoon. Maddie tried to keep it from flying across the room. All she succeeded in doing was dropping the phone just as she heard Pru’s hello.
She barely vocalized her “dammit” as she unintentionally juggled the phone on its way to the floor.
“Hello!” Pru sounded mad when Maddie finally got the phone in position.
“Sorry,” Maddie said. “I dropped the phone.”
“Thank God it’s you.” The relief in Pru’s voice was palpable.
“What do you mean ‘Thank God it’s me’?” Her heart beat double time with suppressed panic.
“Oh, nothing, I guess. Derek’s been calling. Checking up on me. Says he worries about me out here, but I know he’s just hoping I’ll slip and say something about you. I think he’s trying to make me nervous.”
“Sounds like it’s working.” Maddie hated that she couldn’t do anything to keep Derek away.
“Maybe a little. When it doesn’t make me mad.”
“Listen to me. I want you to call the phone company tomorrow and get caller ID on your phone. Better yet, you call Sammy Donavan.” Maddie rattled off the phone number from memory. “He’s a friend of mine, and he works for the phone company. Tell him who you are. Ask him to make this a priority. He’ll do that for me. I want you to be able to see who’s calling. If it’s him, just don’t pick up.”
“That’ll probably just bring him over here.”
“I don’t think so. He’s not going to want to drive from Laramie to Medicine Bow that often. If he does show up, don’t let him in the house. Stay outside where the neighbors can see.”
“All right. His calls are starting to make me not want to answer the phone, and I just can’t do that. Not when it might be you.” They both knew Maddie would never leave a message on her aunt’s answering machine. “How’s the little one?”
“Growing like a thistle. And I’ve got a job.”
They talked for a while longer, Maddie keeping the details of her life vague while assuring her aunt that everything was fine, her aunt filling in with trivia about her neighbors, just to keep the conversation going a few minutes longer. Maddie let her run on, knowing Pru needed the reassurance of her voice just as much as she needed to hear her aunt’s.
Before they hung up, she got a promise that Pru would get the caller ID installed without delay. She wished she could do more to ease both their minds.
*
“Sure glad you’re back,” Zach’s brother Sol said as he grabbed the breeding book from the shelf. They were in the office their father had built over the barn when the house had started getting overrun with his offspring.
Zach flopped down on the old couch that stood against the inside wall.
“Hey! No. You get your ass offa that there couch, and you haul it on over here.” Sol patted the cracked leather back of the chair behind the desk.
“I’m sure you done a good job,” Zach protested, but he heaved himself to his feet anyway.
“I done recorded all the calves that got born this spring.”
The chair canted to the left as Zach sat down. Used to its peculiarities, he shifted his weight without even thinking.
“What we need now,” Sol said as he took Zach’s abandoned spot on the couch, “is to figure which bulls are gonna cover which cows. You do the bloodlines and breeding for traits better’n me, so you’re gonna do it.”
Zach noticed how gently Sol lowered his lanky frame onto the couch. “How’s your hip?” A particularly rank bull had tossed Sol on his head early in the season and then tap danced on his hip for good measure. The head trauma hadn’t resulted in any noticeable damage, but the hip had benched Sol, keeping him off the rodeo circuit and on the ranch while it healed. His brother’s enforced presence was the only reason Zach had been able to roughneck so late in the year.
“Healing.”
“Don’t you think it’s maybe time to quit rodeoing?”
“Adriano Moraes rode bulls ‘til he was nearly forty.”
“Yeah, and look what a wreck he is.”
“Daddy rodeoed ‘til I was ten.”
“But he quit the bulls when Ezra was born.”
“Coz Mamma made him.” Sol’s tone was sulky.
“And why the hell do you think she did?” Zach asked. “Could it be coz she didn’t want him getting crippled up or killed and leaving her to bring up six kids alone? I think she was damned patient to wait so long.”
“Yeah, well, I ain’t got six kids.” An undercurrent of bitterness crept into Sol’s voice.
“You keep it up ‘til you bust your balls, and you won’t either.”
“You’re a fine one to talk,” Sol derided. “How much you got saved up for that there family you’re gonna have someday? I know how much. Nothin’.”
Stunned by the vehemence of Sol’s attack, Zach sat back in the chair. It screeched in protest.
“Daddy can’t stand to see a plot of ground go up for sale that he ain’t itching to buy it,” Sol continued, his anger starting to sound like rage. “We’re always cash poor, and you keep plowing your oil money into the operations side.”
“Just maybe that’ll change.”
“Well, don’t you go fallin’ in love. That’ll just get you dead.”
The bitterness in Sol’s words and voice shocked Zach. In the silence that followed, he could hear horses knocking the boards of the stalls below them.
“What are you talking about?” Zach kept his voice soft, afraid of antagonizing Sol further, but he couldn’t leave it alone until he understood.