Just Right

by Jessie Gussman

  He took the porch steps two at a time and pounded on the door with his elbow. It opened as he shifted to try to reach the knob.

  “Gator?” Ellie Finkenbinder, in bright purple pants and a tee shirt, her hair in wild tangles around her head, blinked up at him like she expected him to disappear with the morning fog. Then her eyes widened. “Avery?”

  The woman in his arms nodded weakly. Gator’s jaw dropped. Was this his mother’s Avery?

  “She was in the pond.” He couldn’t quite bring himself to say that she walked into it of her own accord. Ellie seemed to know her. If Avery was certified crazy then Ellie wouldn’t be surprised, but if Avery was truly that petrified of his elderly hunting dogs, then he didn’t have enough time to explain it.

  Ellie bustled him through the kitchen and into the living room where she directed him to lay Avery on the couch. “Go to the laundry room off the kitchen and start the dryer. There’s a load of towels in there that I haven’t gotten out and folded yet. We’ll get them warm. Put some hot water on the stove.”

  Gator headed out of the room.

  “I’m taking her wet clothes off, so don’t come back in until I say, and be sure to stop Fink and the boys if they come down the stairs.”

  “Got it,” Gator said.

  The laundry room off the kitchen was easy to find. He started the dryer, then kept an ear out for footsteps while he put water on the stove to boil. The heat of the kitchen felt good on his wet clothes and stocking feet.

  Ellie appeared in the doorway.

  “Bring me two towels, then start the dryer again.”

  He obeyed.

  As he handed the towels over she said, “She’s awake, but still slurring her words. I know she doesn’t think she can afford to go to the hospital…” Ellie bit her lip and gazed off into the distance.

  Because of his job as a forest ranger out in Montana, this wasn’t the first case of hypothermia he’d seen. He’d actually suffered from a few mild cases himself. Ellie was doing all the right things. “I’ve dealt with hypothermia before. I think she’ll be okay. As long as she’s breathing and her heartrate is steady.”

  “I’d feel more comfortable if you’d check her. She’s covered.”

  Gator glanced into the room where Fancy Lady Avery lay on the couch. Something tugged at his heart and his feet started moving before he’d even decided to go. “Make her a cup of tea and you can make sure she gets a few swallows.” Warming from the inside out. He’d feel better if she were in the hospital, but he could respect her desire to not go. He’d rather die than rack up a bill he couldn’t pay. He also would have bet a boatload of cash that Fancy Lady Avery could have paid for an ER visit. Appears he’d have been wrong.

  “I’ll do it.” Ellie grabbed the towels and hustled back into the living room. “I’ll also get more warm towels.”

  “Great,” Gator said, as his feet took him to Avery’s side. Her teeth chattered together, her small body shaking under the blankets, and immediately his anxiety dissipated. For a hypothermia victim, shivering was good.

  He stopped beside the couch, somehow wary of touching her. Maybe because of her sharp tongue, but more because he found himself wanting to touch her. To run his finger down her cheek, curve his hand around the angle of her chin, and bury it in her hair. Which was crazy. But he couldn’t tell that to his heavily thumping heart.

  Shaking the feeling off, he reached deep for a mask of clinical dispassion as he touched two fingers to her neck, searching for a heartbeat, praying it was strong and even.

  Her eyes snapped open. He almost yanked his hand back, like he’d been taking advantage of her. Their eyes met and the thumping in his heart became painful. He pushed his fingers forward, murmuring, “Just want to make sure your heartbeat is strong and steady.”

  “Really?” she asked weakly. “Are you sure you weren’t planning on strangling me and feeding me to your dogs?”

  Her pulse was steady, and even a little fast under his fingers. “They prefer to kill their own victims.”

  Her hand slipped up and out of the blankets, grabbing his wrist. Her fingers didn’t quite make it the whole way around. He broke eye contact to stare at the contrast of the pink shine of her nails against his dark skin.

  “So, you’re saving me so you have dogfood tomorrow?” she asked, with a little more of the familiar sass back in her voice.

  Oh, yeah. She was going to be fine. He was actually more worried about himself.

  “I have a whole basement full of people chained to the wall. You’re safe for at least a month.”

  “I’m Christmas dinner, then?”

  “You’re too small for Christmas dinner. Maybe an appetizer.”

  “You’re one of those people who discriminate against people because of their size. Like you did one thing to be as tall as you are. There’s nothing wrong with being short. Short people have feelings too.”

  Avery took a breath to continue, but before she could, Ellie spoke from over his shoulder. “You’re feeling better. I have to admit, I was a little concerned when you came in and didn’t have much to say.”

  Gator stretched to his feet, hoping Ellie hadn’t noticed he’d had his hand on Avery’s neck way longer than it took to grab a pulse. His wrist tingled with a funny feeling of awareness, and he fought the urge to hide his hand behind his back. He hadn’t been doing anything wrong.

  Avery’s cheeks reddened. “Sorry. Some people seem to have this ability to raise the heat level in others. But I guess that’s what I needed.” She narrowed her eyes at Gator.

  “Fink’s in the kitchen,” Ellie said to Gator with a smile. “Maybe you can help him finish the tea.”

  He could recognize a dismissal when he heard one. Without looking at the frustrating Fancy Woman again, he grabbed the pile of cooled towels, and headed out of the room. Fink sat at the kitchen table.

  “Gator. I thought I heard a deep voice in there.” Fink looked askance at the cool towels in Gator’s hand.

  He explained about Avery while walking the towels back to the wash room. “She’s on the couch warming up. I’m on tea duty.”

  “I see. Wow.” Fink rubbed the back of his neck. “Avery has been so considerate about practicing her tuba where she won’t wake or bother us. It never occurred to me that it’s getting cold outside. I thought she stayed in the barn with it.”

  “Maybe she usually does.”

  “Is the tuba still outside?”

  “Yeah. I’ll run out and get it once the tea is done.”

  “I’m sure her case is in the barn,” Fink said.

  “Okay.”

  Fink rubbed his head. “That old barn is liable to fall down any day. I’ve been looking for someone to either re-side it or tear it down.”

  “I wanted to talk to you about that.”

  Fink, with his straight carriage and serious expression, looked every bit the high school principal, even in the matching striped pajamas. He rubbed his chin. “You used to do construction work.”

  “Yeah. In high school, during summer break, I worked with my grandpa. Old barn boards are bringing top dollar right now. In fact, I have a buyer in mind, but I wanted to talk to you first. If you’re serious about tearing it down, I’ll give you a competitive estimate. You can even price match it.” After trying two cupboard doors, Gator found the mugs and grabbed one.

  Fink walked to a canister and pulled out a teabag. “I actually have three estimates on my desk. Ellie wanted me to get a price on re-siding it too. She’s attached to the old thing and thinks it would be romantic to keep it.”

  Gator sniffed. “Probably would be. I’m guessing the re-siding estimate might have debased her on the romanticism of keeping it.”

  “Large sums of money have a way of shooting holes in the best-laid dreams. She did say that Avery and she had a few ideas of how the barn could make money and could be an asset to our business. But the cash out up front is considerable.”

  “If you decide to tear it down, I’d
love to be able to submit an estimate.” Gator took the tea bag and dropped it in the mug. Steam rolled from the water on the stove.

  “I’ll show you what the other guys offered; you let me know if you can match it. You’re my neighbor. Even if you can’t match them, if you’re in the ballpark, I’m hiring you. I know Ellie will feel the same.” He paused with his hand on the refrigerator door. “If we decide to re-side, would you be interested in that?”

  Gator hated to turn down the work, but on his limited leave of absence from his job, he only had time to do one barn. He needed the extra money he’d make from selling the old boards. There were two or three other barns in the area he could make an offer on. “I can only do one job before the New Year’s when I have to be back in Montana. Mom has some bills, and I wanted to make enough to take care of them before I leave. To do that, I need the extra from selling the boards.”

  Fink set a carton of orange juice on the table. “I get it. Let me talk to Ellie and make sure we’re on the same page. She, Avery, and Jillian spent a whole afternoon here at the kitchen table last weekend dreaming up ways for the barn to make money.”

  “Jillian?”

  “A relative. Same as Avery. They came to help out this summer when I was laid up, and they’ve both stayed through the busy season.”

  “Hmm.” Another woman just like Avery? He wasn’t sure the world could handle two of her. But he didn’t say anything. Fink seemed fond of her. He rubbed his wrist where her fingers had clasped it. “What are they going to do with the barn? Get a herd of Holsteins and start milking them?”

  Fink laughed as he pulled a glass from the cupboard. “No. They did talk about putting a dog kennel in, which Avery was not overly fond of.” Fink’s voice lowered like he was telling a secret. “She’s not a big dog person.

  “Or turning it into a storage facility for boats or RVs. We’ve used it as a haunted barn in autumns past, but the insurance company is balking at insuring it unless we do some major upgrades. We need to justify the expense with anticipated income.”

  “Yeah, I get it.” Gator poured the boiling water onto the teabag in the mug.

  “I think we decided it wasn’t worth it, but it’s not worth my wife giving me the silent treatment for the next month if I came to the wrong conclusion from our conversation.”

  Gator’s face twitched. Knowing Ellie, Fink was probably joking, but Gator knew all about getting the silent treatment. Kristen had given him that for the majority of their marriage. “That’s fine. I’m going to run down and gather up the oversized trumpet. While I’m down there, I’ll look around, but to do a proper estimate, I’ll need to come back some other time with a tape measure and some other stuff.”

  Fink drained his glass. “That’s fine. By the time you get back, I should have those estimates dug up.”

  “Great.” Gator walked over to the doorway and peeked in. “How’s she doing?”

  Ellie turned from her position on the chair beside the couch. “She wants to get up.”

  Gator glimpsed Avery’s sparkling eyes. Something pulled him toward her, but he resisted. “I’m getting the trumpet thing.”

  Avery’s gaze lifted to meet his. His heart tripped, and that annoying protective instinct caught at his neck again. He couldn’t read her expression. It didn’t matter anyway.

  He turned and strode out of the kitchen.

  Chapter Three

  Gator fingered the long envelope in his hands, waiting for the pole-climbing, frozen-lake-swimming woman to look up from where she stood beside the cash register. A small table directly in front of him held small homey-looking Christmas decorations. Large, beautifully decorated wreathes and other pine-type decorations hung on the walls.

  Because of his size, he often felt boxed in when indoors. The small trailer that served as the tree farm office amplified that feeling.

  She still hadn’t noticed him. He squelched the disdain threatening to pucker his lips. Apparently, Avery was a cat person. Hard to label her as anything else with the long-haired fur ball she had strapped to her chest in one of those carrier things a normal woman would put her baby in. No wonder she panicked so fiercely over his dogs.

  He shifted his feet awkwardly in the small tree farm office. Apparently, she didn’t hear the jingle of bells on the door when he walked in. Or the door opening and closing. It’s not like he had snuck in. He wasn’t duck hunting, after all. Not today.

  She rearranged the photos on the counter next to the cash register and bit her lip. That same oddly protective, tingling feeling bloomed in his chest again. The one he’d felt as he stood at the bottom of the light pole and again when he charged into the pond.

  This woman was way too much his opposite for him to want to have anything more than a passing acquaintance with her. He looked at the cat again. It was ugly enough to be some kind of purebred.

  He cleared his throat. “Excuse me.”

  The woman jumped three feet into the air with a screech that only barely drowned out the cat’s startled meow. Her hand flew out, knocking over the soda can beside her.

  More frenzied flying and screeching occurred as Avery grabbed the can, set it upright and struggled to save the pictures from ruin. It was odd that she even had pictures. Digital had taken over actual hand-held pictures for the rest of the world.

  “I’m so sorry. I didn’t hear you come in.” She finished gathering her pictures up. One hand stroked the ugly cat strapped to her chest. Its face looked like it smashed into a wall at some point in its life, but then Gator thought of his mother and the snowman. He still didn’t like cats, but he allowed that a dreadful face didn’t necessarily equate to a nasty disposition. Although, the thing was a cat.

  “You should have said something,” Avery exclaimed. “I was working on this and I get so focused on things that I lose all track of everything else that’s going on around me. And, oh, I forgot to thank you for rescuing me from the pond.” Her lips turned down. “Although, it was your nasty, mean dogs that chased me into it.”

  Gator opened his mouth to inform her that his dogs were not nasty or mean. They were actually elderly and quite nice, having never bitten a single person in all their long years. But she had continued on. And on. Confirming his suspicion that in that area, at least, she wasn’t like most women who excelled at the silent treatment. He tilted his head as words continued to flow out of her mouth. A woman like her might drive a man to appreciate the silent treatment.

  Avery put her fingers to her mouth. “Oh, I’m sorry. I’m doing it again.”

  She stopped talking and looked at him. Quiet. So, it must be his turn to speak. He stared at her as the seconds ticked by, suddenly and inexplicably at a loss for words. Her cheeks grew pink and she reached a hand up and stroked the cat again.

  The sight broke his stare and he turned his head, tapping the envelope he carried against his palm. Right. He’d forgotten why he was even there. Probably stunned by the ugliness of that stupid cat.

  “I’m looking for Fink.”

  She tilted her head and looked up at him. Something about her eyes, which were clear blue like a bottomless glacial lake, gave her an arura of sincerity that he couldn’t shake. It didn’t matter what her eyes looked like. This woman wasn’t any less mercenary than the rest of her species.

  But today his mouth wasn’t taking orders from the thinking side of his brain apparently. Because it opened and said, “I’m sorry my dogs scared you. Twice now. They’re really not mean or ferocious.”

  “They just want to eat me.” The lady shrugged fatalistically.

  “Actually, scientists say that if a human dies in their apartment, their cats will eat them. But a dog would starve to death first.”

  “And they’ve proved that how?” she asked, with a wave of her hand and a flash of her shiny pink nails.

  How had she climbed the light pole with nails like that? “By killing a cat and studying the microscopic clump of cells that passes for a brain in that animal.” He lifted a shoul
der to indicate it didn’t matter. “I don’t know. The article I read didn’t say.” And he hadn’t needed any further proof since the article simply put into words what he had known as fact forever: a cat couldn’t be trusted any farther than a woman. Except if he died in his apartment, a woman would pick his body clean of anything that might have any monetary value before skipping town with his credit cards, money, and bank account information. He didn’t think a woman would actually eat him, although with women, one could never be completely sure.

  “You can’t believe everything you read on the internet. In fact, most of it is fiction. Why I read the other day that string musicians have bigger frontal lobes than brass musicians, but everyone and their step sister know that brass musicians are the most intelligent people in the orchestra.” Avery’s perfectly bobbed hair swung around her head as she spoke, giving even more life to her personality than the ruffled blouse and saucy skirt. The only thing that was a downer on her whole body was the sour-looking cat that glared at him through half-closed eyes.

  “If you value that sort of thing.”

  Her hands stilled over the pictures she seemed to be sorting. “And that means?”

  “Uh, playing an instrument has nothing to do with how smart you are?”

  “Oh.” She brightened. “Exactly right. Do you play?”

  “No.”

  The hopeful expression melted off of Avery’s face. “I’m marching in the Christmas parade next week with Love’s professional musicians, and we could use some new talent.”

  “Can’t help you out.” And wouldn’t want to. Funny that the idea of marching in a parade gave him the stomach heaves, but he’d always done the lumberjack competition without a second thought. “Does the farm still donate the trees for the tree trimming contest?”

  “Yep.” She gave a decisive nod that set her hair to swinging again. “They’ll be cutting those next week.”

  “Well, if Fink needs help getting them cut and into town, I’ll give him a hand.”