by Laura Drake
Blake quickly wrapped his big arms around her and pulled her to his chest. Her heart pounded against his as he tightened his arms around her and her arms snaked up around his neck.
“I am so sorry,” she gasped, but she didn’t push away from him.
“It’s all right. I’ve got you,” he whispered. “Sorry about Shooter. I’ve never seen him act like that and I’ve had him since the day he was born.”
Her arms fell to her sides and her face turned scarlet. “I had visions of a broken arm and not being able to work.”
Blake didn’t know that women blushed in today’s world, especially those who were tough enough to put a roof on a house and run a construction business.
Without thinking of anything other than comforting her, Blake kissed her on the forehead. “So did I, and all I could think was that the roof wasn’t nearly finished.”
She stiffened and took a step back. “I should be going. Thanks for not letting me fall.”
In seconds she was outside and Blake wondered what in the hell just happened. It was a simple kiss, nothing passionate or demanding, and yet there was no denying that fear in her eyes. Was it just him or was she afraid of all men? And why?
With a racing pulse and feeling more than a little like a teenage girl who’d just gotten her first kiss, Allie crawled into the driver’s seat of the van. She touched her forehead and was surprised to find that it was cold as ice and not on fire.
Granny had crossed her arms over her chest, which wasn’t a good sign.
Allie started the engine and turned to face her grandmother. “Granny, you could have hurt yourself crawling out the window like that. Promise me right now that you won’t do that again.” She backed the van around to her left so she could straighten it up and drive down the lane. “You are going to fall and hurt yourself one of these days and then the doctor will make us put you in a nursing home.”
“I did not crawl out a window. I drove over here to get you. Don’t you be making me out to be the one who did wrong. It was you and I’m tellin’ your mother what you’ve done. I told you to stay away from this place and I’m getting tired of having to get out in the cold and come get you,” Irene said.
“Okay.” Allie reached the end of the lane and turned left. “Who is Walter?”
Irene stuck her lip out in a pout. “I don’t know why you keep asking me that. I don’t know anyone by that name, but your mama fell in love with a boy from over there and he was bad news. The apple never falls far from the tree and you are going to fall for that sexy cowboy who wants to get into your pants.”
“Was Walter the man Mama fell in love with?” Allie asked.
Irene stomped her foot against the floorboard. “Hell, no! And we’re not talking about Walter. We’re talking about you and that cowboy. You need to stay away from him. Nobody ever stays long on this place and you’ll get your heart broken like lots of women have in this part of the state.”
Allie parked in front of the house, but before she could get her seat belt unfastened, Irene was out of the van and marching toward the porch with purpose. When Allie reached the foyer and shut the door, her grandmother was tattling, pointing at Allie and her old eyes were flashing anger.
Dementia was a demon disease and nothing could explain the way it worked other than what the doctor told them about the jigsaw puzzles. It must have been frightening to grab a piece from this part of her past and a piece from that one, and try to create a world that made sense when she was losing control of everything.
Allie could not imagine living in such a constant state of turmoil and hoped that someday only one puzzle remained and her grandmother would have a few days of lucid peace before everything was completely gone.
“Alora Raine won’t do what I say and she’s got a boyfriend and you know those men at the Lucky Penny are drifters who never stay in one place. I’m going to get a cookie and go to my room,” Irene said tersely.
Katy winked at Allie. “I’ll see to it that she’s punished real good. You get your cookie and go on to bed.”
Allie hung her coat on the hall tree and kicked off her boots. “Mama, who is Walter? She keeps going over there and flirting with Blake because she thinks he’s Walter. And tonight she talked about you being in love with a boy from the Lucky Penny.”
Katy looped her arm through Allie’s and led her to the kitchen. “I’ve got a pot of hot spiced tea made.”
Allie poured two cups of tea. “Granny said that you got mixed up with some no-good man from the Lucky Penny, too. Is that true, or just another one of her crazy stories?”
“She’s remembering Ray Jones. He was about eighteen when his mama and daddy bought the ranch. I was seventeen that year and we rode the school bus together.” Katy busied herself cleaning an already spotless countertop.
“And did you love him?” Allie asked.
“It was a long time ago.” Katy disappeared into the utility room and returned with half a basket of kitchen towels and washcloths. She set it on the counter and started folding them. “And yes, I loved him very much, but Mama threw a hissy fit because he was wild. He was damn good lookin’ with that hair combed back in a duck’s tail and those pretty blue eyes and Lord, have mercy, but he could kiss good. But trouble followed him around like a little puppy and he liked taking risks.”
“What kinds of risks?”
Katy’s mouth twisted up in a grin. “Like throwing stones at my window at midnight and talking me into sitting on the front porch and making out with him. Mama caught us one night and she almost sent me to a convent over it.”
“We’re not Catholic,” Allie said.
“She would have kissed the pope’s ring if it kept me away from that wild boy, and he was really pressuring me to do things I didn’t want to do and that I’m not talking about now so I listened to her.”
“So you broke up with him?”
Katy sighed. “Yes, I did and then I fell in love with your father and figured out what real, mature love was.” Her hands shook as she folded the last towel in the basket.
Allie picked up a towel and folded it neatly. “Do I hear a but?”
Katy finished the last tea towel and sat down at the table. “There are always buts with every story, but that’s all I’m saying tonight about Ray.”
“Then who is Walter?” Allie sipped her lukewarm tea.
Katy opened the cookie jar in the middle of the table and removed a chocolate one with a chocolate cream center. “He and his mother moved in after Ray’s family moved out west. They were only there a year and it was when I was all tied up with my engagement to your dad and planning my wedding. I was eighteen, but I do remember that Walter was a tall man with dark hair. But Daddy was still alive so I can’t imagine Mama being in love with him. Want a cookie?”
Allie shook her head. “I think she was in love with Walter, and Blake has brought that memory to surface.”
“Surely not! She’d been married to Daddy nineteen or twenty years that summer when I got married. I remember because she said that she could easily be a grandmother by the time she was forty, but we waited to have you and she was forty-one not long before you were born. I can’t imagine her having an affair.”
“Maybe they were only flirting.” Allie laid a hand on her mother’s arm. “And you don’t have to worry, Mama. I’m not so sure there’s a man out there that I could even learn to trust. I loved Riley with my whole heart and look what happened. If it hadn’t been for hard work, I would have lost my mind that first year. I couldn’t eat or sleep and my brain kept running in circles trying to figure out what I could have done to prevent it. I don’t think I can ever take a chance on hurting like that again. It might never be all put back together enough to trust someone else.”
Katy stood up and carried a stack of tea towels to the cabinet. “You deserve something better than a pocketful of bad luck if you ever do fall in love again. And like you’ve already heard dozens of times, no one stays on the Lucky Penny very long.”
Katy sighed. “It’s late and we’ve got a full day ahead of us tomorrow. When you finish your day’s work at the ranch, you need to figure out a way to lock those windows. It’s a wonder Mama didn’t break a hip or an arm crawling out. And that first love business. You’ll know or you won’t. No need to talk it to death.”
“I’ll get new locks put on the windows tomorrow and be sure they’re the kind she can’t work.” She dropped a kiss on Katy’s head as she passed by her and went straight to her room.
She eased down into an overstuffed rocking chair in the corner and looked up at the moon hanging in the top half of her bedroom window. Only a quarter of a mile across the pasture, Blake could be looking at that same moon.
Shaking her head did not erase the picture of him in those pajama pants and that tight knit shirt. And that kiss! His soft lips on her forehead, the heat it had fired up in her heart, the way it had made her knees go so weak that she had to stiffen her whole body—all of it combined to awaken emotions she thought she’d finally buried.
She’d known Riley her whole life. He’d loved her and they’d had a marriage and still he’d broken her heart. Besides, according to what she’d learned, Blake Dawson was as wild as a class-five tornado and Allie did not need that in her life.
But need and want are often two different things altogether, and Allie’s heart was daring her to test the waters in a river that she had no business putting her toes into.
Blake was amazed at how much work Deke and Allie had gotten done in only half a day. The front part of the roof was without shingles and covered with black tar paper. Deke had said that tomorrow, they’d put on the new gray shingles and on Thursday they would repeat the process on the back side of the roof. With that in mind, they’d be done Friday, so Blake only had three more days to enjoy having someone to talk to at noon.
Suddenly, the loneliness of living so far from his family and friends hit him. He’d thought it would be easy because he’d work hard all day and be ready for bed come nightfall, but he hadn’t figured in the fact that dark came so early in January. It wasn’t even eight o’clock and he was bored out of his mind. It was five months until Toby would move to Dry Creek. That meant lots of lonely nights on his own if he didn’t make friends.
Make friends, the voice in his head said loudly. Go to church. Drop in the feed store and make friends with the lady who answered the phone. Go to the convenience store to buy a coke. Talk to Allie. You can ask about her grandmother.
He started to poke the telephone numbers into the phone and made it to the last number before he stopped. That was the lamest excuse to call a woman that he’d ever used and besides after that impromptu kiss on her forehead, she might not even finish the roof. He could be up there trying to figure out how to get the final half of the roof done by himself come daylight.
He tried to watch a movie but it couldn’t hold his attention. Then he picked up a book and read ten pages without knowing a single thing he’d read. He could call Toby but he’d only get a hat full of sarcasm out of him.
Yes, Blake had volunteered to live on the ranch alone for the first stretch, to get enough land cleared, to get enough fences repaired or built to hold a small herd by summertime. Then Toby would join him and then the house wouldn’t seem so empty. Then in the fall, Jud would move in with them and he’d be wishing to hell he had some peace and quiet.
He paced the floor, went to the kitchen, and opened the refrigerator. Nothing looked good. He took a cookie from the jar but it didn’t have any taste and he gave the last half to Shooter. He went to the window and pulled up the ratty blinds. The moon hung out there with a whole sky full of stars around it. They looked cold up there in the sky, as if they were aware that in a few days they’d be blotted out from sight.
What in the hell was wrong with him? He had called many women with less reason than to ask about her grandmother. Had this place robbed him of all his wild ways? No, sir! Nothing could tame a wild Dawson cowboy! And if Allie didn’t want to talk, he could call Sharlene or Mary Jo.
He poked in the numbers again without pausing.
“Hi, Blake. Please don’t tell me Granny is back over there,” Allie answered.
He paced the floor again as he talked, moving from living room to the kitchen, around the table and back to the living room. “No, I wanted to be sure you got her home all right, though.”
“She’s fine,” Allie said.
“You got time to talk?”
“About what?”
He hesitated, looking for something, anything, to keep her on the phone other than the job. “Did you figure out who Walter is or was?”
“Mama says he moved in over there more than thirty years ago.”
“I wonder what it is that she remembers in bits and pieces.” He could listen to her read the dictionary with that soft southern twang in her voice.
“Mama said it was the year she was planning her wedding and she got married when she was eighteen. I think Granny had her when she was about nineteen because Mama is fifty-one.”
Shooter looked up from the end of the sofa and Blake stopped to scratch his ears. “And you are how old?”
“Twenty-nine in the spring, and you do know it’s not polite to ask a woman how old she is or how much she weighs?” Allie said.
“One hundred twenty-five pounds but that’s with your boots on.” Did that slight lilt in her voice mean that she was enjoying talking to him?
A long pause made him check the phone to see if she was still there. Then Shooter went to the door and looked up at the doorknob.
“Just a minute, old boy,” he whispered. The dog could cross his legs for a few minutes. Blake was just starting to get Allie to open up and he wasn’t about to lose the opportunity to talk to her some more.
“What did you call me? Did you really say old boy to me? And I’m going to shoot Deke for telling you my weight,” Allie said.
“Deke didn’t tell me. I caught you when you fell and I’m a pretty good judge of how much dead weight I can hold.” Blake started for the door to let Shooter out, but the dog changed his mind and returned to his rug by the fire.
“So how old are you?” she asked.
“Twenty-nine last November and I weigh two hundred pounds without my boots.” He searched his mind for something else to talk about so she wouldn’t make an excuse to end the call. Church! He planned to go on Sunday to get to know more people in the area. That was a safe topic. “Do you go to that church down the road from the feed store?”
“It’s the only church left in Dry Creek, so yes, that’s where my family goes on Sunday.”
She surely must not be nervous because she wasn’t talking too fast or spitting out too many details like Deke said. Was she only being nice to him because for the next few days he was her employer?
Shooter went back to the door and he headed in that direction. “Do they make newcomers walk through hot coals?”
“Not last time a stranger attended. We tend to welcome them, not punish them. But we might kill a chicken and use the blood for war paint on your cheeks.” She giggled.
He shivered at the visual that reply produced. “Is that initiation, or do you get your cheeks painted, too, since you invited me?”
“I didn’t invite you. I just said that we have church and we welcome newcomers,” she argued.
He opened the door but Shooter barely stuck his nose out. “So if I showed up in my best jeans and polished boots, they might not tar and feather me?”
“No, but they might make you eat the raw chicken, feathers and all, to prove you are tough enough to live in our part of Texas.” She laughed.
Her laughter was like tinkling bells on a belly dancer’s costume. Matter of fact, the only time he saw a real belly dancer she had dark brown hair and brown eyes. Could Allie have secrets hiding somewhere in the pockets of those cargo pants?
“Sounds like I’d better s
neak in late and sit on the back pew so I can make an escape if I hear clucking.”
“You might as well sit on the front pew. Where’s the fun in not taking risks?” she answered.
She was warming up. He could hear it in her voice. He closed his eyes and imagined her doing a seductive dance for him in a flowing costume with little bells sewn into the fabric around the hips. His breath caught in his chest and he gasped.
“So you don’t take risks?” she asked.
“Shooter can’t make up his mind whether to go out or stay in. Cold wind about took my breath away. And, honey, I do take risks. I bought the Lucky Penny, remember?” He closed the door but Shooter didn’t go back to the rug.
“Point taken,” she said. “Don’t bother polishing your boots or they might take you for a city boy. We’re pretty casual here in Dry Creek.”
“Do you polish your boots?” he asked.
“Mama says that on Sunday I have to wear shoes and a dress. It’s painful but I do it for her.”
Blake sat down in his recliner. “Where do the strangers sit?”
“Anywhere there’s an empty pew.”
He would have liked it a lot more if she’d said that he could sit with her family, but then that could prove disastrous if Granny decided he was Walter halfway through the service.
“So are you thinkin’ about coming to services on Sunday morning, then?” she asked.
Shooter came over to his side and he scratched the top of the dog’s head. “Thought I might. You want to drive over to Olney and get a hamburger with me afterward?”
“Already got plans for Sunday dinner but thank you all the same,” she said.
“Another time?”
“We’ll see,” she said. “I hear Shooter whining. Sounds like he’s ready to brave the cold. Thanks for checking on Granny.”