Hearth Stone

by Lois Greiman

  “A financial bind.” He was watching her again, like a backwoods grizzly with nothing better to do than torment a sophisticated city mouse. “In Indian terms does that mean you’re broke?”

  “No. Not broke.”

  “Bent?”

  She scowled.

  He shrugged as if comfortable with the fact that she found him less than amusing. “What do you do?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “What line of work?” he asked. “Or are you spending your daddy’s money?”

  There was a moment’s hesitation during which he was quite sure he had hit uncomfortably close to the mark.

  “Do I look incapable of making my own income?”

  “Yes.”

  She added a little more chill to her tone. Some would have thought such a feat impossible. “If I buy the necessary supplies, are you skilled enough to make the house livable?”

  “My people are skilled at many things.”

  Clearly, those skills did not include conversation, she thought. “What about carpentry?”

  The shadow of a smile lifted his lips. “Ai.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It’s an affirmative in my ancient tongue.”

  “I’m not familiar with Old Norse.”

  She ignored his snort. “How much will it cost to make the house waterproof?”

  “The whole house?”

  “I don’t want to seem uppity,” she said. “But yes, that is my hope.”

  His lips twitched, but whether with humor or irritation, she was unsure. “I shall ponder that.”

  “Very well.” She rose, stifling a wince at the twang in her thigh. “If you are still able to function after that Herculean effort, we shall purchase supplies.”

  Chapter 10

  The lumberyard outside of Buffalo Gap was a large open building that smelled of fresh-cut pine and testosterone.

  “Hey.” The man who thrust his hand toward Redhawk was somewhere between thirty and seventy years of age. He wore two mismatched flannel shirts and jeans slung low under a belly trying hard to impersonate a rain barrel. “How you doing, Hunt?”

  Redhawk met his handshake. “Milt,” he said simply.

  “We heard you was back. You going to be racing this year?”

  Sydney raised her brows, but Redhawk seemed to see no reason to enlighten her. “Don’t think so.”

  “Your little brother says he’s got some horses could win the Derby if given the chance.”

  A light shone in Redhawk’s eyes. “Tonk’s deluded about many things.”

  Milt shoved his hands into the front pockets of his jeans, threatening their already shaky position on his nonexistent hips. “Listen, I was sure sorry to hear about Nicole.”

  Hunter nodded simply. Silence stretched uncomfortably between them.

  They turned away in unison.

  “How’s business been going?” Hunter asked.

  “Decent. Owen Crandell’s building a house for his new bride out by the river. You remember Owen.”

  “Gabby’s boy?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “He’s married al—”

  Sydney followed at a distance, mind churning, but the discussion had turned toward tools and hardwood. Neither of which she could afford. All of which she knew nothing about and had no interest in. But who was Nicole? And Tonk? And what was that about the Derby? Not that she cared. She had troubles of her own. How was she going to afford renovations? Or should she just hope she had enough funds for an airline ticket and—

  “Which would you prefer?” Redhawk asked.

  “What?” Sydney turned toward him with a jolt. He was already frowning at her inattention.

  “Perhaps when my finances are back in order I shall buy you a new expression,” she said.

  He raised a brow a fraction of a hair.

  “You’re scowling again,” she said.

  “I hope I’m not boring you.”

  “Not at all,” Sydney said. She might have been bored if she wasn’t scared out of her mind. But she was miles out of her comfort level, light-years out of her element. Then again, what was her element exactly? “Talk of insulation and galvanized nails makes me practically giddy.”

  He continued to stare at her, as if he could see through her skin into the well of fear beneath. “Wait until you see the shingles,” he said.

  “I simply cannot.”

  He exhaled a quiet snort. “Like I asked before, do you want to pay the lumberyard extra to deliver the supplies or pay me extra to come pick them up?”

  “How much will it cost?” She tried to keep the stinging worry out of her voice and thought she might actually have succeeded.

  His shrug was halfhearted. “Couple hundred, maybe.”

  Relief flooded her. She hid that, too. “Well … that seems reasonable enough.”

  He narrowed his eyes a little as if trying to ascertain whether she was being serious. “For the delivery,” he explained.

  She felt her stomach cramp and tilted her chin, duchess to peasant. “Of course,” she said. “And how much for the merchandise?”

  “Four thousand and change.”

  For a second, she thought the news might actually crush her, as if it were physical weight dropped from above. But her mind scrambled. Too late to pretend the number was expected, she thought, and allowed an offhand question. “For a pile of boards I could fit in my car?”

  “You changing your mind?” he asked.

  She forced a sliver of a smile. The expression actually hurt her face. “About whether or not my house should be waterproof? No, I rather think it should.”

  He watched her a moment longer, then nodded and pressed a slip of paper into her hand. “This is yours then,” he said.

  She raised it to chest level and blinked.

  “It’s the invoice.”

  She couldn’t seem to move. “Obviously.”

  “You pay at the register.”

  “I’m fully aware of what to do with an invoice.”

  He raised one brow, forcing her to clear her throat and goosestep to the front of the store. But the word store was rather a lofty term. Half the size of Steeple Veil’s training barn, it was peopled by men in overalls and muddy rubber boots. People who wouldn’t have been in the periphery of her universe for the first two decades of her life.

  The checkout boy was eighty years old if he was a day. He wore a fake brass name tag pinned to the strap of his work apron. Perhaps Cecil wasn’t proof positive that ears and noses continue to grow after every other body part has begun to atrophy, but he supplied considerable evidence. “Milt didn’t give you no trouble, did he?” he asked.

  Sydney pulled her thoughts out of her quagmire of problems with a jolt. “Excuse me?”

  He grinned at her. Gold glimmered on a corner incisor, mischief in his eyes. “Man thinks he’s Johnny Carson. I keep telling him not to pester the pretty girls, but he don’t listen. If he bothered you, I’ll fire him right here and now,” he said and stabbed a gnarled index finger toward the floor.

  “Hey, Hunt …” He nodded at Redhawk. “Good to see you again.”

  “Cecil.”

  “So what do you say?” the old man asked, returning his attention to Sydney. “Can I give Milt the boot?”

  “Not on my account,” she said and wondered if Hunter had spent his childhood there in Buffalo Gap, a tiny blip of a town that boasted 126 friendly people. It seemed strange suddenly that she knew next to nothing about him.

  “You sure?” The old man tapped a few buttons on the cash register. “Cuz I’ve been looking for a reason to get rid of him since the day he first started hangin’ around.

  “That’ll be four thousand and five dollars and seventy-three cents.”

  “Very well.” Her stomach twisted brutally. But according to her online checking, she should still have a few hundred left after this purchase.

  “Been here since eighty-two,” Cecil said, not clarifying whether h
e was talking about himself or the slandered Milt. “Was a beatnik then and he’s a beatnik today. Told him a thousand times to cut his hair.” The last three words were increased in volume and sent over Sydney’s shoulder, but she barely noticed as she handed over her debit card. He tugged it away with fingernails as thick as turtles’ shells.

  “There haven’t been no beatniks around for fifty years, y’ daft old coot,” Milt said and straightened a man-sized stack of tools proclaiming to be “as advertised on TV.”

  “Don’t you use that language with ladies about,” Cecil warned. “You’ll have to forgive him, Miss …” He beetled his brows at her debit card, slid it through his machine, and gave Sydney a sly wink. “… Wellesley, he thinks being my son-in-law gives him a license to be irritating.”

  She tried a smile. It was almost impossible to make her lips bend in the appropriate direction.

  “Huh …” He scowled, propeller ears prominent beside the frayed antiquity of his John Deere cap, but in a moment he brightened. “Well … I guess it’s a good thing you brought Redhawk here with you.”

  Her throat felt dry. “Why is that?” she said.

  “Looks like there’s a problem with your card.”

  “A problem?” She raised her brows at him. Felt the heat rise up her neck. “That can’t be. Run it again please.”

  He did so, stared at the small screen, and shook his head. “Looks like it just don’t like us today.”

  “There must be some mistake,” she said, but her stomach felt queasy, suggesting the mistake was hers. That her life as she knew it had ended. Fear collided with embarrassment. But she took a steadying breath and assured herself that everything would be okay. Her father could be vengeful. She knew that. But he was loyal. He had loved her mother with undying devotion even after her death. Surely, he loved Sydney, too.

  “Sometimes this machine can be crotchety.”

  “Like its owner,” Milt said, glancing over a nearby stack of raw lumber.

  The old man sent his son-in-law a snort before turning back to Sydney. “You got another card you want to try?”

  She could feel Redhawk’s attention on the back of her neck. Was there anger in his perusal? Or worse … pity?

  “Miss?”

  “Yes?” She jerked at the sound of his voice.

  “You got another card?” the old man asked.

  “Oh, of course,” she said and handed him her platinum. Maybe there had been some mistake at the moldering motel. Or maybe her father had only wanted to send her a message and had restored her line of credit.

  Cecil tugged the card from fingers that had gone cold with dread.

  “So where you from, Miss Wellesley?”

  It was almost impossible to follow the conversation as he swiped her second card, but she focused. “I just purchased a farm a few miles from here.”

  “Schneidermans’?”

  She tried to read the electronic screen, but it was too small. “I’m sorry.” She pulled her gaze back to the old man’s lived-in face. “What did you say?”

  “You didn’t buy Lizzy Schneiderman’s place, did you?”

  “Oh. Yes. I believe I did.”

  “Well, for crying out loud.” He shook his head, expression distant. “A slim little drink of water like you bought the Schneidermans’.”

  She didn’t bother to respond. Couldn’t. Her credit card was still being held hostage.

  “It’s a sight, ain’t it?” he asked and shook his head. “But you should have seen it in its heyday. During the holidays that place was lit up like a Christmas tree. Candles in every window. That was before your time, I suppose, Hunt. But we used to go sledding behind the house there when I was a boy. Folks around here call it Gray Horse Hill. No saying why. Had hot chocolate and macaroons in that big old kitchen. Later I sparked little Margie for a spell.” He grinned, showing a modicum of the charm to which young Margie had probably succumbed. “Prettiest girl in Custer County. Looked a little like you,” he said and winked before lowering his gaze to the machine again. “Hmmmf.” The sound made her intestines twist painfully.

  “What is it?” She could barely force out the words.

  “We’re just not having no luck today.”

  “There must be something wrong with your machine.” Her lips felt numb when she said the words.

  “Likely as not,” he said and handed her back the piece of plastic that weighed nothing and meant everything.

  Panic sizzled through her, but Redhawk nudged her aside.

  “I got it.”

  She felt her body stiffen. “I assure you there’s no need for that.”

  “I assure you I’m going to charge you a boatload of interest,” he said, and pulling out a beaded leather wallet, handed over a card.

  “I’m good for a paltry four thousand dollars,” Sydney said and kept her attention riveted on the road ahead. Redhawk’s truck rumbled like a tank despite whatever improvements he had made while in town. It was, without exception, the ugliest vehicle she had ever seen.

  “So you said.” His voice sounded a little like his truck.

  “Are you suggesting that I’m being less than honest?”

  “My people …” He shook his head once. “They are brave, but they are not foolish.” His expression was as impassive as ever, but something shone in his eyes. Humor maybe.

  She pursed her lips. “I didn’t imagine old Leif was too timid to speak his mind.”

  He snorted. “I got you something.”

  “What?” Her tone was immediately jittery. She had never really known the proper way to accept gifts. When David had presented her with a two-karat square-cut diamond, she had declared it to be of fine quality. Perhaps it wasn’t all that surprising that he thought her cold. “Why?”

  He shrugged, then reached under the seat to retrieve a paperback novel. Sydney felt her brows wing into her hairline at the sight of the couple on the cover. They were physically perfect, half naked, and apparently being buffeted by the sort of wind gusts that sent their mutually glorious hair sweeping back in opposing directions. “What’s this?”

  “I was under the impression that it was a book.”

  “I know it’s a book, but why …” She shook her head at the Easter egg colors. “I don’t read this kind of …” She motioned toward the novel with a jittery hand. “Nonsense.”

  “Ever?”

  Her cheeks felt warm just from holding the thing. “No.”

  “Then how have you determined that it is nonsense?”

  “I just …” She shook her head.

  “Think it wise to judge a book by its cover?”

  “I like to improve my mind when I have the opportunity to read, not … not rot my brain with scenes about thrusting and heaving and—”

  “There is thrusting and heaving?”

  “I don’t know what’s in it!”

  He didn’t laugh, but his dark-magic eyes looked ungodly bright. “I just thought it might help you sleep if you had something to read that wasn’t so … mind-improving. You look tired.”

  “Oh.” She ran her fingers over the raised title. Surrender My Heart. God help her. “Well …” She cleared her throat. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  She tightened her fingers on the book and glanced out the passenger window. In for a penny, in for a pound. “I’m sorry to make you pay for the lumber.”

  She could feel him turn toward her. Silence echoed in the cab. Tension jabbed her with nasty spurs.

  “Stings like a wasp, doesn’t it?” he asked.

  She glanced at him with raised brows. “I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.”

  His eyes glinted again. “It wasn’t too bad for your first apology.”

  “I’ve apologized before.”

  “Did you want to kick the crap out of that guy, too?”

  “I don’t want to …” she began, then stopped and let her shoulders drop a sparse half inch. “Yes, I believe I did.”

 
; He was silent for a second before chuckling. The sound rolled in like a warm cloud, enveloping her, relaxing her.

  She felt her lips twitch.

  Their gazes met for a second before he turned back toward the road.

  “Horses,” he said.

  “What?”

  He nodded toward the south, where five mares and two geldings lazed in the afternoon sunlight. Shaggy, with hips cocked and bottom lips drooping, they looked like nothing so much as overworked mules.

  “Are you sure?” she asked.

  He glanced at her. “You a horse snob, too?”

  “Not at all. I just didn’t recognize them as equine immediately.”

  “The mustang is a noble creature,” he said. “As misunderstood as my own people.”

  “Really? I didn’t know the Neanderthal were so unappreciated.”

  He chuckled again. “Nearly as much as the inbred aristocracy,” he said, and though she had no idea why, she felt the last twist of tension slip from her shoulders.

  Chapter 11

  “Have you run away with any hot cowboys yet?” Victoria asked.

  “Three or four,” Sydney said. “I am, even now, trying to decide which one to keep.”

  “Waste not, want not,” her cousin suggested.

  “I’ll take that under advisement,” Sydney said and glanced at her bedroom door. Or what would be her bedroom door, once she had a bed, and a door. It was a mystery to her why this particular room was missing such essential pieces. She took a deep breath, bracing herself. “Tori?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I need a favor.”

  The line went quiet.

  “Victoria?”

  “Yeah, excuse me, there must be something wrong with our connection.” She tapped briskly on the phone. “I thought you said you needed a favor.”

  Sydney smiled a little. Cousin Tori was the closest thing she’d ever had to a sister.

  “That is what I said.”

  “Really. Well, I’m all ears. And boobs.” She sounded distracted for a moment as if watching herself in the gilt mirror that graced the sitting room of her New York condo. “Did I tell you I got enormous implants?”

  “You’re not serious!”

  “Not as of today. But Howard’s weakening.” She and Howard Frances III had been married for nearly ten years. Most of that time she had spent trying to shock him out of his wealth-induced stupor. Apparently, the addition of big boobs was her latest ploy. “What do you need?”