Cool green eyes watched her with amusement. Phantoms rarely looked so real.
Her courage was giving way and she barely managed to cover the last bit of ground that led to the steps. To steady herself, she sagged against the wooden pillar of the veranda, never lifting her own eyes from that man lest he disappear like a mirage of cool, fresh water under a steaming summer desert sun.
He was grinning now and, in that easy, smooth way of his, the one she knew so well, he crossed one ankle over the other.
Alice swallowed hard, unable to say another word. Could one have conversations with ghosts?
“It’s about the room,” he drawled. No ghostly voice, that. It sounded real enough. A real sound from a real flesh-and-blood man. “The room you have to let.”
“The room?” Slowly her brain started to function. He really was here. Yes, he was. Jace. On her settee — or was it on his settee? Because it looked to her as though that was the only right place for him to be.
“Room? What room?” She took a deep, shuddering breath and tried to calm the crazy hammering of her heart. “No card on the wall, mister.”
“Not mister. Jace Constant. Just call me Jace. Easy to remember, as far as names go.”
“Impossible to forget, more like.” She raised one eyebrow in an actress-y attempt to look suspicious. “I suppose you’ve come to claim your dog, huh?”
“Guess I have, at that. Finally. And I want to take the room too. Long term. If the snakes will have me, that is.”
They were yards apart, still the heat of him reached her and she ached to curve into it. Into that strong, supple body of his. The warm fragrance of the man. That strange, tingling excitation she always felt in his presence began to flow through her, like sparkling, heady champagne.
“You see,” he continued, “right here it feels like it just might be home. The right home with the right woman. A woman with gold eyes and a lanky frame, high cheekbones and those damned sexy, long thin lips.”
“You ask my opinion,” said Alice softly, “and I’d say you spell big trouble.”
“Glad to hear that.”
“You don’t mind me asking what you’re doing in these parts?” Her voice was so shaky she sounded as though she were warbling.
“Not at all. You see, I’m an historian. I’ll be poking around the area for quite a while.”
“Is that so?” She nodded.
She was bursting with questions, dying to know all, but still she forced herself to keep her head, continue with the game. “Blake’s Folly’s a great place for history. Aunt Mae’s Glorious White won the rat race once. That was back in twenty-eight, I think.”
He shook his head slightly. “Twenty-three. The twelfth of July. A hot month for sweaty work like that.” He gave a short laugh. “Nothing important like that gets past us researchers at the University of Nevada.”
“The University of Nevada … ” she began. Then stopped. Gaped. “Nevada? Why Nevada?” She couldn’t be hearing right. Or he’d made a mistake. “Not Nevada … you’re … ”
“Nevada, all right. It was just this crazy idea I had around a month ago. To offer my services out there. My advice, my expertise in publishing. But I knew my decision all depended on something — or someone — temporarily out of my hands.”
His eyes searched hers, less confidently now. As if something might go terribly wrong at the last moment. As if he were afraid that her words to him on the phone had meant less than he wanted them to. “You did say that, didn’t you, Alice? About us living together?”
“Oh yes!” she breathed. “Oh yes, I said that. I meant it. Most definitely.”
He grinned with relief. “Thank goodness for that. This morning, after we spoke, I called the University. Told them I’d be flying out here to discuss the details.”
“Flying?” she said vaguely. It was still hard for her to take in the reality of this conversation, of this whole situation.
“Well, it’s only an expression we folks use up there in the big city. Technically speaking, the airplane did the flying. I just sat in it.” His green eyes mocked her.
“Oh, Jace.” She blinked, took a deep breath.
“You feel like coming over here to the settee? Talking about this at closer range?”
“I reckon I do.” Her throat was so tight she could barely squeeze out the words. She wasn’t sure that her ankles and knees would support her all that distance. They didn’t have to. In one swoop, he was beside her. Sweeping her into his arms. Sending her thoughts into a slow spin.
“It feels like years since I’ve been here,” she said softly.
“I know,” he whispered, his lips warm in the softness of her hair. “It was hell being away from you. We’re going to make this work, aren’t we?”
She pulled back slightly in order to look into his eyes, wanting desperately to find all the answers there. “I’d like that.”
“If we’re willing to take a chance.” His hand crept up her back under her blouse. “Or perhaps I’m just excited by herpetologists. A kinky sort of thing, I admit. What do you think?” His lips found the lobe of her ear and began teasing it.
“Jace!” She tried desperately to stifle the sparks of excitement that had begun coursing through her belly. “Jace, please. Wait. We have to discuss … ”
“What is it you want to discuss?”
She swallowed hard. “You’ll hate it here eventually. You know you will. No concerts, no awful art exhibitions with chicken wire sculpture, no pollution, no traffic jams. Dinner parties with Ma and Pa Handy. Protests against snake shows.”
Shaking his head, he touched her lips with the tips of his fingers. Silenced her. “What I want is you. Just you and me, right now. Doing things together. Okay. So maybe one day I’ll want a broader horizon. Maybe. Who knows? But if I do, we’re going to work out the right way to manage it for both of us. Together.” He paused, searching her face for answers. “So what do you say now?”
Wordlessly, she stared up at him for a few seconds, her mind buzzing. He was right. Of course he was. If he’d been willing to dream up this latest crazy scheme so it could work for the two of them, then why fight? “No objection. No argument.”
Not now.
“Good woman.” He laughed softly. “Now we can move on to things that matter.” He brushed his lips over hers longingly, lingeringly. “Things like living for the moment. God, I’ve missed you.”
“Have you?” She laughed up at him, her pale gold eyes meltingly soft.
Like his were. Meltingly soft, and sweet, and filled with love.
Jace smiled down at her. Then looked over her head. Took in the broad, endless plain rolling its bumpy way out to an evening sky scratched by pink cloud. The air was soft, tangy with the scent of dust and new buds out there in the scrub.
Good. Everything was going to be all right now.
“I guess I really have found home, after all.”
J. Arlene Culiner, born in New York, raised in Toronto, has spent most of her life in England, Germany, Turkey, Greece, France, Hungary, and the Sahara. She now resides in a 300-year-old former inn in a French village of no real interest. Much to everyone’s dismay, she protects all living creatures — especially spiders — and her wild (or wildlife) garden is a classified butterfly and bird reserve.
She can be found at:
www.j-arleneculiner.com
That damned rooster was crowing again.
Brandt Conner pulled the pillow over his head and tried, in vain, to catch another five minutes’ worth of winks. When the rooster sang again, he cursed, slid the pillow aside, and glanced at the clock. Day was breaking outside, and his father would already be at the kitchen table poring over the newspaper and sipping his morning coffee. Brandt struggled from the warm blankets and, naked save for his underwear, plodded toward the closet. He pulled on the first pair of jeans he found — they were neatly folded so he figured they were clean — and quickly buttoned a flannel shirt across his chest. Socks and Western work boots completed the ensemble. In the bathroom, he did his business, finger-combed his hair, and yawned all the way down the stairs.
It was never quiet in the old ranch house. The stairs squeaked, the ancient nails shifting in and out of the risers with each footstep. The walls settled and groaned at all hours of the day. The place was well-insulated behind the lath and plaster — it’d been blown in just two years earlier — but nothing could stop the march of time, the floors sloping here and there as the stone foundation settled beneath antique floor joists. Brandt knew it’d take a gut job to fix all that was wrong with the place, but his father insisted the house had great bones and would outlast them all. A noncommittal “maybe” was the only answer Brandt could ever muster in most situations.
Mitchell Conner sat in his regular chair at the kitchen table, the one he’d repaired with nails and wood glue more than a few times. It squeaked and groaned like everything else in the house. He shared his son’s brown hair, though it’d gone grey at the temples a long time ago, matching his weathered face. He sipped from his coffee cup — he drank it black, stout enough to walk on its own, never adding milk or sugar. Brandt had tried that once, and found out quickly that he’d rather drink tar or crude oil than to ever again try coffee without milk.
“Good afternoon,” Mitchell joked. Brandt considered a rancorous comeback for a moment before he reconsidered. It was just his father’s way, he knew — he’d been trying for twenty-five years to turn his only child into an upright man, and maybe he’d succeeded. Brandt still lived at home and helped take care of the ranch, despite his college degree. The degree was superfluous, however, because Brandt had never wanted to be anything but a cattle rancher. Being a cowboy was as easy as breathing; being a dutiful son was more difficult. Brandt took a seat at the table, and kept his thoughts to himself. His mother, Laura, was a tad gentler, a more sympathetic counterpoint to her gruff husband.
“Good morning, sweetheart,” she said, her back turned to him. She stood over the range, the newest appliance in the house, and plated breakfast for him. She rested a hand lightly on his shoulder as she set eggs, toast, and bacon before him, joining it a moment later with a glass of milk.
“Thanks, Mom,” Brandt said before he picked up his fork and dug in. This was usually the calmest, most serene part of his day: dishes clinking together, the rustling of the newsprint as his father flipped through it. His father read the paper deliberately, quietly, and Brandt could never remember him voicing an opinion over its contents. He and Laura made small talk as she ate her own breakfast, and that was that.
“Brandt.” Mitchell folded the paper closed and father and son locked eyes.
“Yeah, Dad?”
“Don’t forget I need you to head into town this morning and pick up that new roll of fence at the farm store.”
Brandt chewed for half a minute before he answered. “You don’t need me to check the herd this morning?”
Mitchell shook his head quickly. “I’ll get Rawlings to help me with that. Besides, you need a better rapport with people. Most everyone finds you a little … ” Brandt’s mouth dropped in a frown at one corner. “Broody.”
Brandt lifted an eyebrow. “Okay. As soon as I’m done eating, I’ll head into Layton.” He cleared his throat. “Is it on your tab or … ”
Mitchell pulled a wad of cash from his pocket and passed it across the table — five twenty-dollar bills. “That oughta cover it.” He shoved his chair back, its legs scraping the pine boards, and stood. “Drive safe, son.” He pulled his hat from a hook near the back door and left without another word.
“He’s not trying to be harsh,” Laura insisted, and Brandt knew it was to his benefit to listen. “He’s just from a different generation. Warmth is not his strong suit.”
Brandt nodded and finished his breakfast. “I know,” he replied, shoving the bills in his jeans. He stood, grabbed his cowboy hat, and nearly had it slung atop his head before he remembered to give his mother a kiss on the cheek. “Later, Mom. Don’t work too hard today.”
She smiled up at him warmly, both hands locked around her own cup of coffee. “I’ll try not to, sweetie.”
The Conner ranch covered not quite forty-five acres on the outskirts of Layton, a town where everyone was a farmer, a future farmer, or a farmer’s daughter. This was the section of Kentucky that featured gently rolling meadows, a safe respite from the rocky foothills and limestone canyons that dotted points north and east, the verdant pastures and meadows providing ample land for cattle grazing. Other farms featured a passel of hogs, goats, even sheep, but the Conners never cottoned to anything but beef cattle and poultry. And that was just fine with Brandt — cattle were enough work, and he’d been dragging pails of milk and baskets of eggs in the house since he was big enough to walk. It was a lifestyle that both his parents were born into, and complaining about it wouldn’t have done much good — he had an advantage on both of them, having been indoctrinated in the importance of a college education by his parents from an early age. He’d read Shakespeare, researched in that big library until his eyes had gone crossed, learned all about the difference between the philosophies of Aristotle and Plato, and earned that four-year degree. There were times, when he was alone with his thoughts, that he couldn’t understand why all of it was so important — it wasn’t like he’d ever had to recite a sonnet down at the farm store. You asked for feed, or fence wire, or iodine. You paid the clerk or had it put on your father’s tab. Not exactly rocket science.
There was some advantage to being an only child, and primary beneficiary of his parents’ affections. If Mitchell was somewhat gruff and distant, Brandt had never wanted for anything. His closet was full of flannels and jeans, and he had plenty of nice boots and warm coats. Good gloves that kept his hands from getting raw and chapped in the winter. A few nice Stetson hats. A black truck that was in his name and still under warranty. His dad paid only the insurance, and upkeep otherwise fell on his shoulders. As hard as ranch life could be from time to time, Brandt figured he was luckier than most — how many kids got to live out a childhood dream every day of their adult lives?