Authors: Candace Schuler
“Would that be Jo Beth Jensen?” Roxanne said with an arch look.
He grinned. “No, that’d be her mama. She’s the one who always gets called when someone here ’bouts needs a neighborly hand. I need to call and let her know I’m here so’s she doesn’t have to be inconvenienced any more than necessary. Then we’ll get you settled in and—”
There was a young woman standing at the old-fashioned white enamel sink with a plastic ice cube tray in her hands. She was curvy and petite with long, soft brown hair clipped back at the nape of her neck, and big soft brown eyes. She was wearing an apron over her jeans and nice sensible brown leather cowboy boots with modestly high heels. Her blouse was pale pink, with a narrow row of twining leaves and flowers outlining the Western-cut yoke. There was a pot of something savory simmering on the big six-burner stove, and three fruit pies cooling on trivets on the long wooden kitchen table.
Roxanne suddenly felt like something the cat had dragged in off the street. She’d managed to slip into a bathroom at the hospital and take a few minutes to freshen up, finger-combing her hair into some kind of order and applying a fresh coat of cherry-red lipstick, but she was still wearing the same clothes she’d been wearing all night—the snug red tank top and tight jeans, the high-heeled red boots. Tom’s jacket was still slung over her shoulders. She resisted the urge to pull it together in front so she could hide behind it.
“I thought that must be you when I heard the truck pull up outside,” the other woman said, smiling at Tom. “I would have been right out, but I had to take my pies out of the oven before they burned. And then I thought I might as well just take a minute and make some more iced tea.” She dumped the ice cubes into a glass pitcher as she spoke. “The boys drank the last of it with their dinner and I know how you like your iced tea when you’ve been outside in the heat.” She set the empty ice cube tray in the sink and dried her hands on her apron. “Hello,” she said, extending her hand to Roxanne as she crossed the width of the kitchen. “I’m Jo Beth. Jo Beth Jensen. And you are…?”
11
T
OM INTRODUCED HER
to Jo Beth as his friend. Not his girlfriend, which they’d both just agreed was as good a designation as any, but simply as his
friend.
He removed his hand from the small of her back and got all distant and formal and tongue-tied—which she knew damn well he wasn’t!—and acted as if they were nothing more to each other than mere acquaintances. Casual ones, at that.
Jo Beth was no dummy, of course; Tom wouldn’t have considered marrying a stupid woman. She knew something was up, that there was more to their relationship than he was letting on, but she was too polite—or too crafty—to make an issue of it. Instead, she delivered a few instructions about last-minute touches to the pot of chili that was simmering on the stove—“Should I write this down or do you think you can remember it?” she said sweetly to Roxanne—and removed her apron.
“Will you look at the time,” she said, as she headed toward the door. “I told Dad I’d be home by three and it’s nearly that already. He wants me to go with him to take a look at some breeding stock Matt Thomas—you know, the T Bar ranch just this side of Vashti?—has for sale. He’s probably pacing up and down the front porch by now, cussing me out something fierce.” She laughed lightly, as if the threat of being cussed out by her father was more amusing than anything else, and went up on tiptoe to plant a quick, friendly kiss on Tom’s cheek.
He stood, stiff and uncomfortable and indisputably guilty, his hands at his sides, and didn’t kiss her back.
She didn’t seem to notice his lack of response.
“Tell the Padre that Mom and I will be over to see him in the next couple of days, hear? We’ll sneak him in a piece of cherry pie.” She held her hand out to Roxanne again. “It was very nice to meet you,” she said pleasantly, although it was patently clear—to Roxanne, at least—that it was nothing of the kind. “Do you think you’ll be able to stay long enough for the party?”
“Party?”
“Oh, nothing like you’re probably used to,” she trilled, somehow making it seem as if the parties Roxanne was probably used to were along the line of drunken orgies. “Nothing fancy. It’ll just be a quiet, neighborly little get-together to celebrate when the Padre comes home from the hospital. Like the one we had for Dad—remember?” she looked up at Tom “—after he had
his
by-pass two years ago. And don’t worry—” she patted him on the shoulder “—you don’t have to do a thing. Mom and I have already got everything all planned except for the date.” The screen door squeaked in protest as she opened it. “You ought to squirt a little WD-40 on that before it gets worse,” she said, and then the door closed gently behind her—she didn’t slam it the way Roxanne wanted to—and she was gone.
Tom and Roxanne stood silently, not looking at each other, listening as Jo Beth started up the engine of the shiny green truck—not revving it the way Roxanne would have—made a Y-turn in the graveled yard, and drove sedately away.
“So. That’s little miss Texas A&M with the degree in animal science. Rooster was right. She’s very pretty.” Roxanne picked up the spoon sitting neatly in the spoon rest on the kitchen counter and dipped it into the pot on the stove. “And she makes great chili, too. I can certainly see why you’re thinking of marrying her.”
“For the last time, I am
not
thinking of marrying her,” he said. And it was the absolute truth. He wasn’t thinking of marrying her. Not seriously. Not anymore.
“Really?” The spoon still clutched in her hand, Roxanne turned around to face him. “Well—” She leaned back against the counter, folded her arms over her chest, and crossed one booted ankle over the other. “You’d better start running, then, because she’s certainly thinking of marrying you, sugar.”
R
OXANNE TOLD HERSELF
that if she had any pride or self-respect, she’d have left the Second Chance right after Jo Beth did. She’d have demanded the keys to that rattletrap old pickup parked out in the yard, driven herself to the municipal airport and gotten on a plane for Dallas. Instead, there she was, tucked up in one of a narrow pair of twin beds in an attic room with steeply slanted ceilings and a single dormer window overlooking what appeared to be the north forty. The walls were painted pale green, the floors were hardwood, the bedspreads were patchwork quilts, the furniture was rich golden oak, and the bedsteads were painted white iron.
And she was lying in one of them, dressed in nothing but her leopard-print underwear and a dab of Passion behind each knee, waiting for all the kids to go to sleep so Tom could sneak up and join her. She’d obviously become a slave to her hormones. Or a slave to his, she wasn’t sure which.
She’d been about to throw the chili spoon at his head—she’d had her hand cocked back, ready to let fly—when he’d started across the room in that slow deliberate way he had, moving with that loose-kneed, hip-rolling, purposeful cowboy swagger of his that always made her mouth water, and curled his fingers around her wrist.
“I swear to God, Slim. There’s nothing between Jo Beth and me. I’ve never given her
any
reason to think there was,” he said earnestly.
And then he kissed her. He didn’t lean into her, or grind his pelvis against hers. He didn’t let his hands wander to her breasts or her butt or between her legs. He just kissed her.
Completely.
Thoroughly.
At length.
Lips and tongue and teeth, all nibbling and licking and nipping at hers, making hot, sweet love to her mouth with nothing but his mouth, the way he had that last night in Cheyenne. She gave in to it without a murmur of protest, coiling her arms around him like a lariat when he let go of her wrist to cup her head and tilt it to a better angle. They didn’t break apart until the screen door screeched on its hinges and half a dozen boys of various sizes and shapes trampled into the kitchen like a herd of rambunctious young cattle.
“Tom has a girlfriend. Tom has a girlfriend,” little Petie singsonged, making Roxanne wonder if he’d been chanting the words ever since Tom sent him chasing off after the other boys.
Jared hooked an arm around the smaller boy’s neck. “Give it a rest, kid,” he said, and slapped his hand over Petie’s mouth.
A brief tussle ensued, ending with Petie giggling delightedly as he dangled upside down over his new best friend’s shoulder. His new best friend, Roxanne noted, who was wearing a battered black cowboy hat in place of his baseball cap. She glanced at Tom to see if he’d noticed. His secret smile of satisfaction told her he had.
“I brought your gear in,” said Augie, the responsible one, as he hefted the two bags up on the end of the table. “Where do you want me to put hers?”
“Please don’t bother putting it anywhere,” Roxanne said, mindful that the boy still regarded her with suspicion. “I can take it myself, if you’ll just tell me where.”
“We use the dormer room for guests,” Augie said. “It’s all the way at the top of the stairs. In the attic.”
“It’s small, but it’s private,” Tom added, “and you’ve got your own bathroom up there.”
“We came in to get something to eat,” one of the smaller boys said, tired of all the adult chitchat.
All eyes turned to the three pies cooling on the table.
“After dinner,” Tom said, before they could ask. “If you’re hungry now, have an apple.” He grabbed one out of the big wooden bowl sitting on the tiled kitchen counter and led by example, biting into the crisp green Granny Smith. “We’ll be out in the barn.” He dropped a quick kiss on Roxanne’s lips. “Holler if you need any help figuring out Jo Beth’s instructions about the chili,” he said, and pushed open the creaky screen door.
Roxanne
would
have thrown the spoon at him then, except that there were children present and she didn’t want to set a bad example. Instead, she stirred the chili and contented herself with a hidden smirk over the smear of chili sauce he wore across the back of his shirt.
She carried her bag upstairs to the dormer room tucked up under the eaves and unpacked, shaking out her clothing and hanging it up in the lovely old-fashioned armoire that graced nearly the whole of one wall. She tidied up in the tiny but nicely appointed connecting bathroom, then headed back downstairs to the kitchen.
Since she didn’t have anything else to do, anyway, and nothing else to occupy her time, she prepared a large tray of crudités and rolled out a mammoth batch of fluffy made-from-scratch biscuits just to prove that little miss Texas A&M wasn’t the only one who could cook. Not that she hadn’t proved it already—and quite well, too, she thought—but grilled chicken breasts and salads were a far cry from chili and cherry pies, especially with a bunch of boys. She considered dropping the pies on the floor and calling it an accident, but good sense prevailed when she realized she had neither the time nor the ingredients necessary to whip up one of her famous chocolate-fudge cheesecakes to replace them.
It was then, when she caught herself wondering if chocolate-fudge cheesecake would tip the balance in her favor and make him fall in love with her, that she realized there was no
probably
about getting her heart broken. It was going to happen. It was only a matter of timing. Now, or six weeks from now, it was going to happen.
And
that’s
when she should have headed out to the truck and taken off for the airport.
Instead, she was lying in a strange bed under the eaves, listening for the telltale creak of the attic stairs and wondering just how long it took a dozen young boys to fall asleep.
T
OM WAS BEGINNING
to think the boys would
never
get to sleep. Lord knew, they should all be dead tired. He certainly was. Or would be, if he weren’t looking forward to creeping upstairs to the attic bedroom. After supper, he’d taken Petie and two of the other boys to the hospital with him to see the Padre. It had been an emotionally charged experience, with Petie starting in to cry as soon as he saw the Padre in the hospital bed, hooked up to all the various drains and IVs, looking frail and bruised and sick. The other two boys, being nine and eleven respectively, had struggled manfully against their own tears and managed to keep them to a few discreet sniffles, wiped off on their shirtsleeves when they thought no one was looking. Tom wished he’d been blessed with Petie’s lack of inhibitions; he would have liked to howl, too, and let the nurse carry him off to get a soda pop out of the vending machine at the end of the hallway.
Instead, he waited until the other two boys trailed Petie and the nurse out into the hall and put his hand over the frail veined one laying so quietly against the sheets and squeezed gently. “How you feeling, Padre?”
“I feel like I’ve been kicked in the chest by a bad-tempered bronc,” the old man grumbled. “How the hell else would I feel?”
Tom felt the tight knot of tension inside him give way. Despite the hospital bed and the tubes and the monitoring machines, the Padre was the same irascible, indomitable, straight-from-the-cuff kind of man he had always been. “You gave everybody quite a scare,” Tom said.
“I gave myself quite a scare,” the Padre admitted. “Thought for sure I was a goner. If it hadn’t been for Jared, yelling for somebody to call 9-1-1, I would have been. You be sure to let the rest of them know I said that, you hear? They’ve been riding him pretty hard these past few months. Testing the new kid out, just like they always do. Not that he doesn’t give it back to them, just as hard as they dish it out, but I’ve thought for sure, a couple of times, that he was going to rabbit on us. I wouldn’t like to lose him.”
“I don’t think you have to worry about that anymore. Before supper tonight, he was ridin’ Petie on his shoulder and wearing Augie’s old black hat.”
“Oh, that’s good. That’s real good. He’s a good kid, deep down. He’s got real potential.”
“You think they’ve all got potential.”
“And they all do,” he said, with utter conviction. “You’ve just got to help them find it.”
Petie came back into the room then, trailed by the other two boys. He seemed to have regained his equilibrium, and came right up to the edge of the bed, more curious than scared now. “Tom’s got a girlfriend,” he said, wanting to be the first to impart the news.
“Does he now?” The Padre slanted a glance at Tom. “What’s her name?” he asked Petie.
“Roxy.”
“Roxy, huh? Is that a new one?”
“Well, I ain’t never seen her around before.”
“Haven’t ever,” Tom corrected automatically.
“I haven’t ever seen her around before,” Petie repeated obediently. “She’s kinda skinny, but I like her hair. It’s the same color as Goldie’s tail.” Goldie was a gentle old palomino mare all the Second Chance kids learned to ride on. “And she makes real good biscuits. I had about ten of ’em.” He took a sip of his soda pop. “Tom was kissin’ her in the kitchen before supper.”
The Padre uttered a bark of delighted laughter. It ended in a wheezing cough that had him grasping his chest. “I’m all right,” he said, waving Tom back down when he jumped up to summon the nurse. “I’m all right, damn it. It just hurts when I laugh, is all.”
Tom summoned the nurse, anyway.
“I think you’ve had just about enough visiting for tonight, Padre,” she said severely. “Say good-night to your guests and we’ll get you ready for bed.”
“I’ll say good-night when I’m damned good and ready to say good-night,” he groused, “and not a damned minute sooner.” He motioned for Tom to lean closer. “This new girl of yours with the palomino hair, she wouldn’t happen to be the little firecracker Rooster told me about, would she?”
“I don’t know,” Tom hedged. “What did Rooster tell you?”
“Only that you were so smitten you couldn’t see straight,” he said, and began to wheeze again at the expression on Tom’s face. “You bring her to see me, you hear?” he ordered, clutching his chest with one hand and waving the nurse off with the other. “I want to get a look at her.”
The nurse stood firm and shooed them all out into the hall.
And now Tom had a word for his feelings about Roxanne. He was smitten, that was all. Besotted. Infatuated. Perhaps even a little bit obsessed. But he was not, thank God, in love. Not love with a capital L, anyway.