“Hello, Gwen.” He settled into a rocking chair next to her. “Hi, Brian,” he said to the little boy. “Are you having a good summer?”
Brian nodded gravely. “I’m on a baseball team. We’ve won six games.”
“And he hit a home run last week, didn’t you, dear?” Gwen ruffled the boy’s hair fondly. He ducked away from her hand, making Sam grin.
“Once a feller gets to be a big baseball star,” he said, “it’s a lot harder for the womenfolk to fuss over him.”
Gwen sighed. “I guess that’s true. I have to keep reminding myself he’s not a baby anymore.”
Brian scrambled to his feet. “I have to go, Gram,” he said. “I’m supposed to be over at Brody’s house for batting practise.”
Gwen looked at her watch. “All right,” she said. “But dinner’s at six o’clock. Don’t be late, or your mother will worry.”
The little boy took a baseball glove from a bin near the door and paused at the top of the steps, poised for flight. “I might eat at Brody’s,” he said. “They’re having barbecue tonight.”
“Only if you’re invited,” Gwen told him. “And if you are, be sure to call.”
Brian clattered down the steps. At the bottom he paused, then ran back to hug his grandmother and kiss her cheek. He gave Sam a shy smile and headed off toward a group of houses down the road, arms swinging and bare legs pumping as he ran.
Sam smiled, watching the boy disappear. “They have so much energy at that age,” he said wistfully. “Never walk when they can run.”
“And never work when they can play,” Gwen commented dryly, reaching into the basket and taking out another handful of pods.
Sam tucked his wrapped package under the chair and took some peas as well, glad to have something to do with his hands. For a while they worked together in a silence that was oddly companionable. Pods opened with a gentle popping sound and peas rattled into the two plastic buckets.
He felt his nervousness begin to evaporate, replaced by a placid feeling of contentment. It was nice, sitting here with this woman at his side. Her company was pleasant and undemanding, and Sam didn’t feel as awkward as he normally did around women.
“Are Rob and Twyla home?” he asked after a while, glancing at the silent house.
“No, they’re both at work. But Rob should be home in an hour or so,” she added, “if you’d care to wait that long.”
Sam looked at her in surprise, but she was bending over to gather more peas from the basket. Her movements were quick and graceful. He liked the way she looked in her jeans and pink shirt, and the quiet, competent way she handled this small household task.
In fact, he liked everything about her.
“I didn’t come to see Rob,” he said, lifting another handful of peas. Their fingers brushed and he felt a sudden thrill of excitement, as if he were as young and foolish as those boys back at the ranch.
She was looking at him curiously. “You didn’t?”
“I got your note today.” Sam squinted at the climbing rosebush along the trellis, heavy with blooms. “It was nice of you to send it, but you didn’t need to apologize.”
Her face turned as pink as the roses in their tracery of leaves. “I behaved like such an idiot,” she muttered. “It was practically unforgivable. And you were so kind to me.”
Sam hesitated, then reached under the chair and lifted his package, holding it out shyly. “I brought you something.”
She looked at the package, then at him. “For me?”
“I picked it up in Casper yesterday when I had to take a horse to the vet.”
She opened the plastic sack and peered inside. “It’s a book,” she announced.
“I know,” Sam said gravely. “I bought it.”
This small joke earned him another warm smile. His heart lifted with sudden happiness.
Gwen took the book from its wrapping, opened it and drew a quick breath. “It’s about owls,” she said, leafing through the pages. “Oh, my goodness. Look at these lovely pictures.”
“I thought...” He moved awkwardly in the rocking chair and picked up another handful of peas, shelling them busily to hide his nervousness. “I thought if you could read about them and see how they make their nests and feed their babies, you might not be scared of them anymore.”
Gwen touched his arm with a quick, shy gesture. “Thank you, Sam. That was a lovely thought. I’m really going to enjoy reading this.”
Again she smiled at the book and began leafing through the glossy pages, looking as thrilled as if this were the finest volume ever published. Sam felt himself expand and glow, all his uneasiness banished by her warm reception of his gift.
He leaned over, brushing against her arm as he turned a few pages of the book on her lap. “The owl that scared you,” he murmured, “I’m thinking it was probably a great gray owl. People call them the ghosts of the forest because they fly overhead so quietly. You see this big feller?”
He indicated a picture of a large bird with staring yellow eyes and a flat, circular face. She gazed at the page, and he could see how her hands tensed.
“They’re rare out here,” he continued, trying to set her at ease again. “You hardly ever see a great gray this far east of the Rockies. They have ears under that facial disk, you know,” he went on, tapping the picture, “and they can turn their heads all the way around, as if they’re on a swivel.”
She smoothed the page, then flipped it over to study another picture of a gray owl on a nest, feeding its young.
“I was so horribly frightened.” Gwen took a deep, shuddering breath. “You’re right, it felt like a ghost. And it kept moving closer and closer to me.”
Sam began to shell peas again. “I reckon,” he said, “we’re probably all a little scared of things that aren’t familiar.”
“Are you?” she asked curiously. “You seem like a man who wouldn’t be afraid of anything.”
Sam glanced up at her, startled. “I do?”
“You seem so calm and competent,” Gwen said. “I’d guess there’s nothing that could make you behave as foolishly as I did.”
“Well, you’d be wrong,” he said. “Some things scare me half to death.”
“Like what?”
“Well, like coming here today,” he said, not looking at her. “I was so scared, it was all I could do to drive my truck.”
She laughed, a warm peal of amusement that made him smile, too, in spite of his embarrassment at having made such a confession.
“Well, I’m glad you managed to conquer your fear,” she said at last, setting the book aside regretfully. “Because now I’m having some nice company and getting my peas shelled at the same time.”
Sam grinned and went on working, amazed at how well this visit was going. He and Gwen were working together and having a conversation just like old friends. It was wonderful.
They kept shelling peas, chatting about the weather, Rob and Twyla and events around Lightning Creek. He was sorry when the bushel basket emptied and she got to her feet, lifting the two plastic buckets of peas. “Could I make you a cup of coffee?” she asked. “I’ve got some fresh carrot cake in the kitchen.”
Sam got up as well and shook his head in regret. “I’d love to,” he told her, “but I have to be back at the ranch by five o’clock. That horse I took to the vet is due for another dose of antibiotics.”
“Well, maybe another time,” she said.
Sam nodded and walked with her to the door of the house, then paused tensely at the top of the porch steps.
This was the moment he’d been dreading. But he had to speak now, because in a second she’d be gone inside the house and his opportunity would be lost. And she’d been so nice, so friendly and warm. He might just have a chance.
“Gwen,” he said.
“Yes?” She paused, her hand on the doorknob.
“I was wondering...” He shifted his boots awkwardly on the floorboards and cleared his throat. “I wondered if you might like to go out with me sometime. We could drive to Casper and have dinner, maybe see a movie. It’s been a long time since I...”
His voice trailed off when he saw the look on her face. Her expression had frozen, turned stiff and cold.
“I just thought...” Sam tried again, floundering miserably.
She gripped the plastic buckets and didn’t answer.
“Look, it’s okay if you don’t want to,” he said, drowning in embarrassment. “I understand.”
What had possessed him to think this pretty woman might actually want to go out on a date with him? He was just a pure fool.
“Sam,” she whispered, her face pale with concern. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s all right.” He turned away hastily and walked down the steps toward his truck.
“Really, Sam,” she called in a strained voice. “I’d love to go with you, but I just...I can’t.”
“I understand.” He climbed into his truck, anxious to be gone. “Don’t give it a second thought.”
He waved and put the truck into gear, backing up and heading away from the house. The last thing he saw of Gwen was her small figure standing unhappily in the doorway.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THAT EVENING, Lindsay and little Danny sat on the banks of the creek in the dying sunlight, with the snake resting between them in its jar.
She’d just finished telling him how snakes mated to produce babies, and confirmed the child’s suspicion that these events happened much the same way in the human population.
Like most of the boys she had this discussion with, Lindsay realized that Danny already knew more than she’d expected him to, and that his ideas about human reproduction were basically accurate, though they were also clouded by a lot of misinformation and teasing from the older boys.
“Jason says...” His face turned red as he dug his toe into the dusty bank of the creek.
“What does he say?” Lindsay patted the little boy’s mass of gingery curls, then smiled at a family of ducks gliding along the surface of the water. A mother and almost a dozen fluffy babies moved past them in stately procession and vanished into the reeds.
Danny looked up at Lindsay, his freckled face pale with alarm.
“Jason said when a baby gets born from a lady’s stomach, it pops right out through her belly button and rips it wide open.”
“Well, that’s just nonsense,” Lindsay said firmly. “There’s a special place inside the mother for her baby to live while it’s growing, and another special place for it to come out.”
“Where are they?”
Lindsay told him, in a calm, matter-of-fact way.
The little boy stared at the water. “Does every lady have one of those baby places?”
“Yes,” Lindsay said.
“Do you?”
“Of course.”
“Then why don’t you have a baby?” Danny asked.
“Because a lady needs a man to be the father of her baby, and I never...”
Lindsay had a sharp memory of sickening fear, of cruel hands and a harsh, jeering face. She closed her eyes briefly.
“I never found a man I liked quite enough to be the daddy, so that’s why I don’t have a baby.”
Danny snuggled against her. “But would you like to have one?”
“Oh, yes, I certainly would.” Lindsay hugged him with a fierce pang of yearning. “But in the meantime, I guess you’ll have to be my baby, Danny. So do you think that’s okay?”
“Sure,” he said placidly, then paused. “But my snake...”
“Yes?”
“We don’t know if it’s a boy or a girl.” He twisted to look up at Lindsay.
“That’s right,” she agreed. “I think you’d need to be an expert on snakes to figure that out.”
“And if it’s a girl,” he said, his brow furrowed, “then she needs a boy snake to put the seeds inside her and make her babies grow.”
“Yes, she does.”
“So maybe...” He stared into the jar regretfully. Behind the glass, his garter snake stared back at him with desperate yellow eyes.
“Yes, Danny?” Lindsay prompted gently. “What were you going to say?”
“Maybe I better let her go so she can find a boy snake to give her the seeds.”
“I think that would be wonderful,” Lindsay said gravely. “We could release her right here near the creek, because snakes love water. And someday when we’re out for a walk, maybe we’ll see her crawling by with a whole lot of babies.”
“Just like that duck?” Danny was clearly trying to talk himself into letting his treasure go free.
“Just like the duck,” Lindsay agreed.
Reluctantly, he unscrewed the lid on his jar, tipped it up and watched in sorrow as the snake tumbled out onto the ground in a mass of bright coils.
The animal stretched and writhed sluggishly, then gathered itself together and slithered off, vanishing into the tall grass along the creek.
Danny watched somberly, rubbing his nose to hide a sniffle. “That snake was my pet,” he said. “I always wanted a pet.”
Lindsay hugged him. “Well, soon you’ll have a horse to look after,” she said. “In fact, why don’t you go down to the stable right now and ask Clint which horse is going to be yours for the trail ride? Then you can start looking after it and maybe even feeding your horse sometimes, so the two of you will be good friends before we leave next Monday.”
As she’d expected, this suggestion was an immediate hit. Danny leaped to his feet, all his sorrow over the snake vanishing. He grabbed the empty jar and raced off in the direction of the stables.
Lindsay watched him go, smiling. Then she settled back on the creek bank to watch the sunset colors reflected in the slow-moving water. The evening air had begun to cool and freshen. A breeze tugged at her hair and caressed her face.
She thought about her talk with Danny, and wondered how much of the sexual information she’d just given him would actually be retained.
Little boys were always such a mystery. Danny had absorbed her talk mostly in silence, then moved the conversation back to snakes. But Lindsay suspected he’d grasped what she was trying to tell him, and was relieved to know the truth.
In another few years it would be time to have the talk with him that she gave all the boys when they reached puberty. She told them the importance of respecting their own bodies and those of girls, as well; of being sexually responsible and not using their physical drives and urges to hurt other people in any way.
In any way...
She shivered and hugged her arms, tortured by harrowing memories and the knowledge of her own shameful, cowardly guilt.
But those things were far too painful to dwell on, and she’d had four years to practise shutting them out of her mind.
Instead her thoughts turned to Danny’s question about why she didn’t have babies, and her response that she’d never found the right man to father her children. Somehow the conversation had made Lindsay think of Rex’s odd behavior in recent weeks, and the memory disturbed her.
She honestly didn’t know what to make of the man these days.
Lindsay had always known there were two Rex Trowbridges in her life...the tough, streetwise teenager who’d been her friend and playmate so many years ago, and then the urbane lawyer whose life had moved off in a direction she could barely understand, let alone share.
But this new, troubling Rex was a bizarre combination of both, and she had no idea how to react to him.
Worse, she honestly didn’t know what was motivating the man. Lindsay had been only half
joking that afternoon when she’d asked if he was merely idling away the boring summer days by trying to seduce the last woman in Wyoming who seemed able to resist him.
If so, it was pretty shabby behavior on his part. Definitely a betrayal of their long friendship.
Lindsay’s face hardened with resolve. She got to her feet, took the cardigan from over her shoulders and put it on, shivering as the sun dropped below the darkening line of trees.
Over at the stables, their figures etched with gold by the setting sun, she could see Clint Kraft talking to Danny, who had already shed his empty jar somewhere along the way.
Lindsay tensed, a little nervous about how the sullen older boy might react when he thought himself alone with the youngest child at the ranch.
But Clint appeared to be talking pleasantly with Danny. The two of them went out into the circular corral next to the stable, and Clint showed the little boy a buckskin mare standing near the fence.
Even at this distance, Lindsay could see the excitement in Danny’s small body as he approached the horse. He glanced up at Clint, then reached out shyly to touch the mare’s shoulder.
Clint lifted Danny with surprising gentleness and held him on the buckskin’s back. Lindsay smiled at the proud lift of the little boy’s chin as he sat astride the horse, supported by Clint’s hands, and the look of wondering joy on his face.
This camping trip, she decided, heading back toward the ranch house, was going to be a good experience for all of them.
Maybe it would even be good for Rex, she thought, remembering the surprising sight of the lawyer in blue jeans and boots, and his mysterious exchanges with Sam back in the office.
As long as Rex would just stop this ridiculous flirtation of his and go back to being an old school friend.
Maybe she’d talk seriously with him again tomorrow when he came out, and make him understand how upsetting his teasing was. Then they wouldn’t have to deal with any such awkwardness on the trail ride while they had all those boys and horses to look after.
With sudden decision she quickened her steps and started back to the house, pausing on the way to tell Danny it was almost his bedtime.
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