“You’re not behaving. Why should I?”
“I don’t feel like behaving. I feel like…”
She got the message. The look in his eyes was X-rated. The next kiss was delicious. Zach kissed dry; she’d never liked wet lips. She liked smooth, warm, dry lips pressed directly on hers, followed by that sudden wet warmth when tongue touched tongue. “You’ve been in the honey,” he murmured, and went down to kiss her again.
When he surfaced for air, Bett was trembling and no longer smiling. It was ridiculous, really, after all this time to still feel the same wild reaction to the touch of him. The shudders didn’t actually touch her skin; it was all inside. A weak-kneed feeling that it was better to lie down, that it was really an ideal time to lie down and feel the warm, welcome weight of Zach on top of her. His devilish eyes were communicating the same message.
She drew back an inch. He drew back an inch.
“We could always meet on the floor of the barn about two hours from now,” he said vibrantly, releasing her.
She chuckled. “You want help loading the truck?”
“What I want is for you to visit China immediately so that I don’t have to be embarrassed when the truck driver gets here.”
She glanced down at his pants. “You’re blaming me for that?”
“A hundred percent.”
“Most unreasonable. All I did was innocently walk in here, and…Zach?” As she was about to go out the door, she turned to him, and hesitated suddenly. She hadn’t really come out here to tell him about the truck. She’d come out here just to…talk to him, but now the words seemed to jumble in her throat. “Everything’s…all right, isn’t it?”
He frowned slightly, cocking his head. “Like what?”
“Like…things.” Bett hooked her fingertips in her pockets, staring at a spot just past his shoulders. “Look, I know I haven’t been pulling my weight since Mom’s been here…”
Haven’t you missed me working next to you? Haven’t you needed me next to you?
“And the house, everything’s so different. I know you must be bothered by certain changes, and I…” Maybe it wasn’t driving him crazy to the extent that it was her, but surely he was annoyed by the starched shirts and the salmon? “We’ve barely had time together.” She bit her lip. “And my mother…”
Zach was beside her in three long strides, pressing a kiss on her forehead. “Don’t be foolish,” he said roughly. “None of that matters. I’m not complaining, two bits. Have you heard me say one word?”
“No,” she admitted with a little laugh.
The laugh was hollow, not what he was expecting, and Zach frowned as she turned away. He knew she was making a massive effort to keep her mother’s mind off Chet; she was doing a terrific job of it. Bett had a priority in her life that for a time had to partially exclude him; he understood that. He’d wanted very much to reassure her…but the smile he’d expected to light up her face wasn’t there. That instant before she’d turned away, Bett had suddenly looked terribly unhappy. It didn’t make sense.
***
Zach banged three times on Grady’s dilapidated screen door, then let himself in, taking the three steps up into the old farm kitchen.
“Who is it?” called Grady’s gruff voice.
“Zach.”
“Be with you in a minute.”
Zach tossed his cap onto the old oak table and dropped into a chair, stretching out his legs. His eyes scanned the room, from the mound of unwashed dishes in the sink to the row of hats piled on the far counter. The place was far from spotless, and very comfortable. A place where a man didn’t feel like he’d committed a mortal sin for having dusty work boots.
“What’s new?” Grady loped through the doorway, hitching up his trousers as he glanced around for his pipe.
“Nothing.”
“Want some coffee?”
“Have you got a beer?”
Grady’s bushy eyebrows lifted just a little, but he opened the refrigerator and brought out a can of beer. He set it in front of Zach, who picked it up but left it unopened.
“I’ve spent the entire lunch hour,” Zach remarked, “listening to the story of Mildred Riley’s life.”
“Who the hell is Mildred Riley?”
“Damned if I know.” Zach rolled his eyes in exasperation.
Grady slid into the chair across from him and raised both legs to prop his feet on an empty chair. “You’re not having a little trouble, having two women in the same house, are you?” he asked wryly, and peered out the window. “Where’s the truck?”
“Hiding behind your barn.”
Grady nodded, as if that were a perfectly logical answer. After a minute or two of silence, he rose and got himself a beer, popping the top noisily as he settled back down.
“She’s driving me
nuts,
”
Zach said finally. “Plastic flowers all over the place. Salmon. Every time I try to start a conversation with Bett, she jumps in. You ever worked up a sweat in a starched shirt?”
Grady smothered a grin. “Can’t say I have.”
“Don’t.”
“I won’t.”
“I walk in and she’s got a drink waiting for me, ice-cold. She chases me down when I’m out in the field with homemade cookies and lemonade. She’s so damned
nice.
”
Grady took a long slug of beer and wiped his mouth with the side of his wrist. “You told Bett how you feel?”
“Of course I haven’t told Bett how I feel,” Zach said irritably. “Bett’s got enough on her plate. A few months ago, Elizabeth couldn’t get through a day without crying; Bett’s turned that around so fast it makes my head spin to think of it. I’m proud of her.” Zach turned the cold can in his hand. “I’ve backed her up as much as I can, being out of the house so much. Tried hard to let her think none of it’s bothering me.”
Grady fixed Zach with an even stare. “Seems to me Bett just might be even more upset than you are.”
Zach shook his head. “Just the opposite. In fact, for the first time since I can remember, they’re actually getting along together.”
“You think so?”
“I know so.”
Grady shrugged. “Maybe. I didn’t get any smile when I drove by the last time. The times I’ve seen your wife without a smile on her face I can count on one hand. As in lately. I think you’ve got just one too many women in that house.”
“Well, there isn’t any question that Bett wants her mother there.” Zach sighed.
“Actually,” Grady said slowly, “I don’t much care what she wants. I’m telling you I expect a smile when I ride by your place, and lately I’m just not getting it. Women,” he added, “are strange.”
Zach gave him a wry look.
“Excepting your Bett. She’s not like most. Now, I wouldn’t go so far as taking all the trouble of trying to understand
any
of them, but it does seem to me…” Grady stood up, hitching up his trousers. “There’s nothing more fragile than a peach. You have to handle them real careful or they bruise. And sometimes a bruise starts on the inside.”
Zach stood up, sighed and frowned at the still unopened beer can in his hand as if he’d never seen it before. Setting it down on the table, he stalked toward the door.
“Want another?” Grady asked blandly. “Seeing as how you’ve taken up drinking in the middle of the day?”
With a faint chuckle, Zach pushed open the screen door and went back out to work.
Bett viewed the tiny hole in the truck’s radiator with a scowl. Radiator holes were high on the list of last-things-she-needed on that particular afternoon. How had the branch managed to poke all the way up there, anyway?”
“Brittany, what on
earth
are you doing?”
“Just take it easy, Mom.” Bett swung back into the driver’s seat and leaned over to open the glove compartment. “I promised you we’d have sweet corn for dinner, and we will.” Sorting through a mélange of screwdrivers and maps, she finally found an unopened package of gum. Popping three sticks in her mouth, she started chewing vigorously. The gum, naturally, was stale.
Elizabeth regarded the wad in her daughter’s cheek with a scandalized expression, and then sighed. An “I have come to the end of my rope and I guess you have, too” sort of sigh. Elizabeth stared out the window, dressed for the corn-picking outing in purple slacks, a ruffled pink blouse and the ubiquitous pink tennis shoes.
After their earlier excursion into town, Bett had changed into a disreputable pair of jeans with a hole in the thigh, old sneaks and a red crinkly cotton blouse that was disgracefully faded, and one of her favorites.
She continued to chew.
This morning, her mother, trying to help, had gotten rid of the patch of weeds growing at the corner of the house. Bett’s prize herbs, those weeds. Later in the morning, Elizabeth had announced her intention of going into town to buy a carpet for the green room. A white carpet was what she had in mind. White carpeting and Bett’s housekeeping formed a combination that was never going to work, nor did Bett want her mother buying anything like that for her. Moreover, a white carpet and children didn’t seem to be a good blend—not the way Bett had in mind to raise children.
The two women had come home from shopping four hours later. Elizabeth was frazzled and visibly upset with her daughter; Bett was keeping a very, very tight rein on her patience.
Finally, the sugar was all out of the gum. Bett popped the wad on her finger, leaped down from the truck again and leaned over the radiator. The thing was cool, or cool enough. They were within a quarter of a mile of the house. She removed the rag that had temporarily slowed the leak and jammed the gum in its place. The leak stopped. Elizabeth was peering at her from the open window.
“I don’t
believe
you just did that.”
“Zach’ll do the permanent fix when we get home, but this will get us there,” Bett promised.
“I never heard of such a thing!”
“Zach will be mad as a hornet,” Bett said glumly.
“He should be. Women in my day and age wouldn’t have anything to do with that sort of mechanics.”
Bett sighed, wiping her hand on the rag as she returned to the truck. “Zach will be mad because I found the only straggly branch in the entire orchard to run over and get stuck in there.”
Elizabeth looked startled. “He shouldn’t be mad about that. It was an accident.”
“But this pickup is accident-prone. I think it’s losing its will to live,” Bett said dryly. “Nasty thing. It
knows
we need it to last one more year before we can replace it.”
“There’d hardly be a worry about replacing it if Zach were working in a law office right now—and you could be at home, not working at all. Having children. I keep waiting for both of you to regain your senses.”
She just wasn’t going to let up, Bett thought wearily. Her mother, to be honest, rarely got into such a relentless mood. Bett knew well that Elizabeth would be perfectly happy right now if a roll of white carpet were sitting up in the spare bedroom, ready to be laid down. It wasn’t just her reaction to Bett trying to put her foot down tactfully but firmly. It was coming home from shopping empty-handed. To Elizabeth there was no greater sacrilege.
Bett turned down the dirt road that separated the pond from the garden, absently noting young Billy Oaks’s bike shoved up against a tree. There was no sign of the boy, but she knew the pond was his favorite haunt in the summertime and after school. It made her a little nervous. Billy could swim well and had his parents’ permission to come here, but she still felt uneasy at the thought of the child alone near the pond.
“I will never understand why you put the garden so far from the house,” Elizabeth said as she got out of the truck and straightened the ruffles on her blouse.
“Irrigation, Mom. It was closer to water here. We could just pipe it in from the pond.”
“I suppose so.” Both of them reached into the back for the bushel baskets Bett had brought, and suddenly, for the first time all day, they were smiling at each other. “There is
nothing
better,” Elizabeth admitted, “than the thought of fresh sweet corn dripping with butter.”
“Nothing,” Bett agreed fervently.
“Your father loved sweet com,” Elizabeth said softly.
Bett gave her mother a hug as they walked along the tall rows of cornstalks. “He and Zach could go through a dozen ears at a sitting, couldn’t they?”
“Ruin the entire rest of my dinner, both of them.”
A slight breeze ruffled the tops of the cornstalks. Just the faintest smell of fall wafted through the air. The late afternoon sun spread a golden glow on the land, but it lacked the heavy heat of a summer day. Bett lifted her head once, certain she had heard a strange, discordant sound in the peaceful landscape, but she heard nothing more and returned to the task at hand. Ears of corn plopped one after another into the basket. What they couldn’t eat for dinner she would freeze.
“Brittany—” Her mother emerged from behind the second row. “Do you think we have enough? I—”
“Do you hear something?” Bett raised her head again. The breeze flowing through the orchards could produce strange whispers at times. But they were not near the orchards now, and she still kept hearing the same faint whimpers.
“Hear what?”
“I don’t know.” Bett stepped around the basket and out of the cornfield. She stopped, listening again.
“Brittany, there is absolutely nothing there. I swear, you were always the most fanciful child—”
Bett saw Billy suddenly, about a hundred yards away. Just a flash of orange T-shirt and jeans and his towhead, a glimpse of his wiry, thin body clambering up into a tree. Nothing unusual, yet she found herself taking a first step toward him, and then another.
“Where are you going?” Elizabeth demanded.
“I’ll be right back, Mom.” She took another quick step, then started running. The old apple tree he was climbing had to be a hundred years old and was mostly hollow. Not that Billy wasn’t as surefooted as a cat, but some instinct kept whispering to her that something was wrong. The towhead suddenly turned his head and saw her.
“Mrs. Monroe! Hurry!” The faintest glisten of tears in his eyes caught the sun. The child was so upset he could barely talk. “I saw her in the road, a mother raccoon. She’d been hit. I saw her when I was on my bike, and then when I put the pole in the water, I kept hearing them.
Listen!
”
he said urgently.
She’d already heard, even if she could barely understand his incoherent speech. She was about to assure him calmly that it was simply too late in the year for newborn wild creatures, but there wasn’t much point in that. She could hear the weak mewlings, apparently coming from a high hollow branch. The creatures making those high-pitched whimpers had no interest in nature’s usual rules. They were clearly frantic for a mother who wasn’t coming back. “Honey, get down,” she ordered the boy.
“We
have
to get them!”
“And of course we will,” she promised, and squeezed his shoulder reassuringly once he was safely on level ground next to her. Helplessly, she stared up at the trunk and branches, aware that the old tree wouldn’t take the weight of a human being. “Billy, Mr. Monroe’s mowing in the orchard just by the house. You think you could take your bike and go flag him down for us?”
“Can’t we just get the babies ourselves?” Billy asked anxiously.
“We’ll try, but I—” She whirled, only to bump into her mother.
“Brittany! Are you completely out of your mind?”
“Mom.” Bett sighed. “Look, I’ll be right back. I’m going to get the truck.” She raced across the field and bolted into the front seat of the pickup, shoved the gear into Reverse, crossed her fingers in prayer for the radiator and slowly backed up to the base of the tree. Then she scrambled out of the cab, vaulted onto the truck bed and stared upward again. She could just reach the limb, but not into it. The whimpers above sounded desperately weak. There was nothing to see. No way to reach them; the tree, only half alive, wasn’t solid enough to climb.
“
Thirteen shots.
That’s what you get, thirteen shots in the stomach if a wild animal bites you,” Elizabeth warned.
“Now, take it easy, Mom,” she said absently. The tiny mewling cries were tearing at her heart. Grabbing a reasonably sturdy branch, she swung up one leg. The bark crumbled beneath her sneaker and suddenly she was swinging free.
Dumb, Bett.
She bit her lip, while her tennis shoe sought a foothold.
“You’re going to kill yourself. You’re going to
kill
yourself. Raccoons are
rodents,
for heaven’s sake—
Zach!
”
“I got him, Mrs. Monroe! Listen, I’ll take care of them, you know. My mom won’t mind. If you’ll just get them down, I promise you won’t have to do anything else. I’ll take them home and—”
“Zach, will you talk some sense into her? I swear, I can’t. I’ve never heard of anything so ridiculous—”
Zach was over the side of the truck in one swift leap, his hands roughly snatching at Bett’s waist. She let go of the branch, sinking down to the stable truck bed again. Drawing a long, deep breath, she turned to face him, relieved he was there—at least until she saw the cold blue fury in his eyes. “You knew damn well that tree wouldn’t hold you,” he growled.
His tone stung like betrayal, as if he and her mother had formed an alliance against her. Bett went rigid. “Fine,” she said stiffly. “You are absolutely right. So is Mom. You two just go right back home and be
sensible
and
reasonable
—”
“Hold it, two bits.” For just an instant, his eyes pinned hers, a sky-blue, hypnotizing hold.
Since when do you jump to conclusions where you and I are concerned?
“Now, let’s just see,” he said quietly. He reached up, too, but could only get to the tip of the branch, not inside.
“Lift me onto your shoulders, then,” Bett suggested.
Zach shook his head. “Even baby raccoons can bite. And I’d rather put a hand in there myself than let you do it.”
“Don’t be silly, Zach. What’s the difference who gets bit, for heaven’s sake?”
“I wouldn’t mind,” Billy chimed in from the ground.
“Except you,” Zach and Bett chorused simultaneously.
“I don’t believe this,” Elizabeth moaned distractedly. “You two cannot possibly be serious.” Her tone was lethal with disapproval. “You will both get down from there this instant and come in to dinner. I’ve never heard of such a thing! There must be thousands of raccoons in this country, all of them filthy rodents.” She turned to Billy. “Young man, you just go on home. Brittany and Zach…”
She sounded as if she were scolding a pair of teenagers. Zach glanced down at her in surprise. “Keep quiet for just a minute, would you, Liz?”
Elizabeth’s jaw dropped.
Zach turned back to Bett and rapidly tugged off his shirt. “You will be
careful.
”
He knotted the shirt ends, making a kind of sling.
She grinned, moved behind him and shimmied up as far as his waist. Zach’s hands reached behind and cupped her buttocks. “Ready?”
“For
heaven’s
sake,” Elizabeth snapped.
Zach pushed Bett up the rest of the distance to his shoulders. From there she could peer into the hollow limb, and though she could see nothing, there was a sudden silence within. She smiled, humming unconsciously, very low, the same French refrain that won over her bees. The same seductive song that had wooed a fawn into their yard the winter before.
Zach kept a tight grip on her ankles as she leaned forward, her stomach pressing against the back of his head. Slowly, she reached in. Inside the darkened hollow, fur suddenly flew in frantic motion, but she captured a handful of hair and pulled the creature out.
The baby blinked in blind fury at the sun. It was so tiny it fit in the cradle of her palm, all black-rimmed eyes and more tail than body. Clutching it by the nape, Bett wasted only a second to glance at Zach. They exchanged identical smiles before she gently dropped the tiny weak bundle in his makeshift shirt sack.
Another one followed. The third tried to nip her; he got the chorus of the French love song. The fourth…for an instant, Bett paused, suspended, with her arm in the hollow of the tree, unable to move. The fourth baby was very soft, very furry…and totally cold and still.
“Are there any more?” Billy demanded anxiously from below.
She couldn’t seem to answer, any more than she could force her hand away from the tiny creature. So cold… Helplessly, she blinked back tears. Zach, being Zach, picked up on her feelings before she had to say a word. “Leave it, babe,” he whispered roughly. “Think of the ones with life.”
She took a breath, and pulled her arm free from the hollow. A moment later, she had shimmied back down to the truck bed, cradling the sack of squirming bodies to her breast. Zach jumped down from the back of the pickup, and then reached back to help her.
“Now, I
know
you’re not going to take them back to the house,” Elizabeth said frantically.
Zach supervised the loading of one bike, one boy, two women and three raccoons into the truck, but his eyes rested thoughtfully on his mother-in-law.
***