Fearless Love

by Meg Benjamin

  “Okay.” Now at least he felt a little more on balance. “Good girl.”

  “I think I want to go home now. You going to follow me?”

  He nodded. “Count on it.”

  Once they were back at the house, Joe set about making her a sandwich with some smoked chicken he’d brought with him. He was the only boyfriend she’d ever had who cooked for her. On the other hand, most of her previous boyfriends could have registered saucepans as weapons of mass destruction.

  Joe cooked for people he liked. And that included her, fortunately.

  “Is this from the Rose?” she asked, savoring her first bite.

  He nodded. “Had some leftover from breakfast. Figured it shouldn’t go to waste.”

  She frowned. “Does that count as a loss for the restaurant—taking food, I mean?”

  “Yeah.” He shrugged. “It’s a loss either way, though. We couldn’t use this anymore. Better that somebody eats it than that it goes into the garbage.”

  She licked her lips, taking a sip of her beer. “I’ve seen…other people take things from the kitchen too. Food, I mean.”

  “Sure. Everybody does it. But we’re talking about a few slices of ham here or some leftover salad there. And people are taking it home to eat or serve to somebody else.” He gave her a quick smile. “What Dietz was doing was major theft. And he wasn’t going to cook it for anybody.”

  “And Fairley?”

  His smile darkened. “God only knows what all the Beav was up to. Probably selling whatever Dietz managed to steal. He was smart enough to cover his tracks, anyway.” He sat down across from her, pushing his plate away from him. “Now I’ve got some questions for you about this place.”

  “Ask away.” She leaned back in her chair, her shoulders suddenly tense again.

  “How much is your mortgage payment?”

  She took a breath. “Around a thousand a month, give or take.”

  He glanced around the farmhouse, his brow furrowing, and she could almost read his mind. For this dump?

  “What’s the acreage?” he asked.

  “Not much. About four or five acres. Grandpa sold off a lot of his land to pay for my grandmother’s cancer treatment.”

  Joe was still frowning. “Why the mortgage?”

  “Same thing.” She shrugged. “He had to pay the bills. Nobody would give him a loan, so he went to Great-Aunt Nedda. She holds the note on the place.”

  “Sounds like she didn’t give him much of a break.”

  She shrugged again. “She wouldn’t. I don’t think she thought of him as her brother. He was just another…client. You don’t know Aunt Nedda.”

  “I’m not sure I want to.” He leaned forward. “Are you behind in your payments?”

  She shook her head. “So far, I’ve kept up. Grandpa missed a payment while he was in the hospital, but left me a little money and I’m using that to pay her. Plus whatever I earn singing and working at the Rose.” She paused, feeling the usual ache around her heart that happened whenever she thought about her grandfather. “It’s what he wanted.”

  “That you pay it off?”

  She sighed. “That I have the farm. I don’t know what was up between him and Aunt Nedda exactly, but he didn’t want her to have it. And I wanted him to rest easy. I promised him I’d keep the farm going.”

  Joe frowned. “So this is your family farm? The Carmody family farm?”

  She nodded. “Yeah. I think it was my great-great-grandfather who settled it, but it’s been in the family for a while.” Of course, if Great-Aunt Nedda took the farm it would still sort of be in the family. But it wasn’t what Grandpa had in mind.

  The silence stretched between them for a moment, then he shook his head. “Look, about the idea of my paying rent…”

  Her lips quirked up. “I’m not there yet. I may be soon, but right now I want to do it on my own. I owe it to him.”

  And a lot more. After all, he’d been the one who’d taken her in when her confidence was in tatters. Even if she’d been the one who was supposed to take care of him.

  “Let me know when you get there, okay?” His own smile turned dry. “I’d hate to have this place sold out from under me. I’m sort of used to old Robespierre by now.”

  “Believe me,” she said slowly, “you’ll be among the first to know.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  It was the noise that woke MG. By now she’d gotten used to Robespierre crowing at some ungodly hour and then repeating it regularly for a while thereafter. She could sleep through that. But this was the chickens, clucking frantically, almost screaming.

  She pushed herself up, grabbing the clock to stare at the time. Three in the morning. Why the hell would her chickens start complaining at three in the morning? Joe muttered something, but she wasn’t sure he was awake.

  After a moment, she found her T-shirt and flip-flops and stumbled toward the kitchen, flipping the switch for the yard lights as she came in. Outside, the noise from the hens increased, moving to something that sounded like squawks of panic. She pulled the curtain back on the windows facing the chicken yard and peered out.

  Something flashed by the light, gray and tan, moving fast. She had an impression of a pointed snout holding something white. It was a moment before she identified the white as one of the hens.

  “Goddamn it!” She searched frantically around the back porch for something—anything—that she could use as a weapon. Her grandpa’s aged shotgun was, of course, no longer in its case, sold like everything else to pay the bills. Finally she grabbed a rusty garden hoe and ran out into the yard.

  The animal, whatever it had been, was long gone. In its wake, it left carnage. A few hens ran frantically around the yard, squawking loudly. From the back steps, she could see a couple of lumps of white in the chicken yard, hens that weren’t running around probably because they’d never run anywhere again.

  There was a step behind her. “What’s happening?”

  She turned to see Joe in his jeans and nothing else. “Something attacked the chickens—I don’t know what exactly. It ran away when I came outside.”

  She started down the steps only to feel his restraining hand on her shoulder. “Hang on a minute. Don’t rush out there until we know what we’re up against. What did it look like?”

  “Gray and tan, long nose, sort of like a dog.”

  “Could have been a dog, more likely a coyote though. Where did it go?”

  “That way.” She pointed toward the trees along the drive. “It’s gone, Joe. I need to see what happened to my hens.” She sprinted across the yard toward the fence.

  “How did it get in?” he called after her.

  MG screeched to a halt, staring. The gate stood wide open. “There,” she croaked. “He got in there. Oh god, I must have left it open.”

  Joe stepped to her side. “Why would you leave it open like that? I mean, the gate’s pulled all the way back. That’s not the way you open it usually.”

  “I don’t know.” She turned to stare at him. “But nobody else comes in here. Except you.”

  “And I can pretty much guarantee I didn’t leave it like that. Come on, let’s see what’s happening.”

  He stepped inside the fence, stooping down beside the first white lump of feathers. “This one’s dead. Throat’s gone.”

  MG forced herself to look down at the raw mess that had been the chicken’s neck. She turned quickly toward the other chicken. “I think this one’s the same.”

  “Yeah.” Joe nodded, turning toward the chicken house. “Let’s see if he got any others.”

  She paused for a moment before following him. The yard looked empty.

  “Robespierre,” she said softly. “He’s not in the yard.”

  “He would have gone for the coyote. Protecting his flock.” Joe gave her a grim look. “Not exactly an even battle.”

  She stepped inside the hen house, surveying the empty perches and nest boxes. “Where are they?”

  “Probably ran
when the coyote came in. That gate was open wide enough that some of them could have gotten away.”

  MG pressed a hand to her mouth. “They’re gone? All my chickens are gone?” Her chest felt suddenly tight. She drew in a gasping breath.

  Joe put his arm around her shoulders, pulling her against him so that she felt the warmth of his skin against her suddenly cold body. “They’re probably around in the trees. Some of them anyway. They’ll probably come back once it gets light. And we can look around for them now if you want.”

  “I want,” she managed to say around the massive lump in her throat. Her skin still felt cold, and she was having some trouble breathing. The two dead hens looked like heaps of white feathers in the yard.

  He squeezed her shoulder quickly. “Come on, then. Let me grab a flashlight and we’ll see if we can find them. If they ran away, they’re probably close by. Maybe nesting in the bushes.” He trotted to the back porch, then re-emerged with the flashlight in his hand. He put his hand on her arm, pulling her back gently from the almost-empty henhouse.

  Tears pricked at her eyes as she stepped over the chicken bodies. She folded her arms across her stomach. “Do you think it killed the others too?”

  Joe ran the flashlight quickly around the yard. “Doesn’t look like it. I don’t see any more of them in here anyway.” He stepped through the gate, pulling her along behind him. “They should be around here somewhere. They won’t have gone far on their own.”

  He ran the flashlight along the edge of the yard with its hedge of pittosporum. Something flashed white as he did.

  Her chest clenched painfully. Please, please don’t let it be another dead one.

  Joe walked toward the hedge. After a moment, he leaned down and gathered up a hen, glancing back at her as he tucked the bird under his arm. “She’s okay. Just sleepy.”

  MG released a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. “Thank god.”

  She followed Joe across the yard, peering into the shadows. Another dim gray blob appeared under one of the bushes. “There’s one.” She knelt down, gathering the muttering chicken under her arm.

  “Good.” Joe nodded back toward the hen house. “Put her in there, and we can close the gate. Not that I think any of them are likely to wander out again tonight. When you’ve got that one bedded down, we can see who else is out here.”

  In the end, they found sixteen chickens huddled in various spots around the yard. With the two dead chickens in the henhouse, that gave her eighteen out of twenty-five. She figured she’d lost at least one more since she’d seen one chicken in the coyote’s mouth as he’d run off.

  Maybe they’d find the others when it got light. She leaned against the gate, rubbing her forehead. “Robespierre’s still missing. And Hen Nine.”

  “Hen Nine?” Joe raised an eyebrow. “I thought you weren’t going to name them.”

  “I didn’t name them. Nine’s not a name. It’s a number.”

  “But you know which hen she is.”

  MG shrugged. “I know what she looks like. So what?”

  Joe sighed. “So nothing. She’s probably around here somewhere, but I’d suggest we wait until the sun comes up so we can see a little better. Shouldn’t be too long now at that.”

  “Do you think she’s all right?” Her voice trembled slightly.

  He blew out a breath. “The others were. She’s probably just better at hiding out than they were. And you need to get some rest.”

  “So do you.” She sighed. “You’ve got breakfast. I’m sorry…”

  He held up his hand. “Don’t. Just don’t. This isn’t even close to being something you should apologize for.”

  “No, except maybe I should apologize for the open gate.”

  Joe frowned. “Maybe. I’m not so sure about that.”

  “Why not?”

  He shrugged. “Just doesn’t seem like something you’d do. Or me.”

  “But if it wasn’t us, who was it?”

  He shrugged again. “Another interesting question.”

  “Okay, never mind. I’ll think about that later. Why don’t you go on back to bed?”

  His brow furrowed. “What are you going to do?”

  “Bury the hens. Shouldn’t take long.”

  Joe stared at her, his face absolutely expressionless. “You’re going to bury the chickens.”

  She nodded. “I don’t want to wait until tomorrow. I don’t want to see them when I wake up. And it might upset the others.”

  He went on staring for a long moment, and she knew exactly what he was thinking. She swore to herself that if he mentioned the words “stock pot” or “garbage sack,” she’d kick him in the shins. Then he sighed, rubbing a hand across the back of his neck. “Come on. The shovel’s probably in the shed.”

  The omelets Joe cooked were a little ragged the next morning, but he figured few people in the dining room would notice. Most of them looked like they’d had a rougher night than he had and were only interested in coffee anyway. The advantage of working on Saturday morning.

  Darcy came in after they’d finished the cleanup and began on what was left of the lunch prep. She cast a critical eye on Placido’s pile of onions but apparently decided they were acceptable.

  After a moment, she leaned against the counter next to Joe. “Got an idea for a dessert.”

  “Yeah?” He tried to work up some enthusiasm. “What is it?”

  “Panna cotta. With pear-pomegranate compote. And biscotti on the side.”

  He frowned. “We were talking about using pomegranate in the entrée.”

  “Yeah.” She shrugged. “Maybe mango for that after all.”

  Joe gave her a slightly sour smile. “You were selling me on local.”

  “Well you’re already doing the seared fois gras from the Hudson Valley. So what else have we got in season?”

  He rubbed his chin. “Apple might work.” He pushed himself up from the counter where he’d been leaning. “Let me look around and see what occurs to me. If we’re not going local, we might as well go all the way and use apple in brown sugar on the fois gras. Maybe with a little maple cream on top.” He nodded, his smile broadening. “Hot damn. We got us a menu.”

  “When do you want to start testing the new stuff?”

  He rubbed his hands together. “This afternoon. The quail’s already here. Beets can roast during lunch. Yeah.” Except, of course, that he had to go by MG’s place to make sure she was okay. He’d given her the day off so that she could deal with the chicken emergency. “I have to take off for a half hour or so after lunch, but I can get back in time to put it all together.”

  “Sure. No problem. Oh, what the hell is he doing?” She stared fixedly at Ezra, currently macerating a sea scallop as he tried to remove the muscle.

  Joe sighed as Darcy marched across the kitchen. “Go to it.”

  After the lunch rush was done, he dragged off his apron and his chef’s coat, pulling on a T-shirt in his office, and headed down the road to MG’s place. He wasn’t really worried for her personal safety, but she seemed fragile in other ways. Witness burying the damn chickens.

  He sighed. She could tell her hens apart. She buried the chickens even though they both would have made superlative soup stock or could have been dumped in the garbage can. While he didn’t believe in judging other people’s obsessions, he’d spent enough time on working farms in his life to know that smart farmers didn’t decide chickens made great house pets.

  Of course, burying the chickens didn’t mean she wanted to move them into the parlor. But he swore if she decided to put up headstones, they’d have a little talk.

  MG was in the backyard with her guitar. He sat down beside her, sliding an arm around her shoulders. “How are you doing?”

  “I’m okay. A couple more hens came back after breakfast. And I made a quick sweep around the woods close in. I didn’t see any other bodies.”

  “Good.” He glanced around the yard. The chickens were clipping the grass cont
entedly enough. Either they didn’t notice some of their fellow birds were gone or they didn’t much care one way or the other. “Everything okay with the hens that came back?”

  She shrugged. “Pretty much. Not many eggs but that could be as much about the molting as their little walk on the wild side last night.”

  “Yeah.” He checked over the chickens. Some of them still looked a little seedy, but most seemed to be holding up okay. “You ever find your missing hen? The one with the number?”

  “Hen Nine? Yeah.” She slid her fingers across the strings lightly as she stared across the yard.

  Crap. “Is she okay?”

  “Yeah. Pretty much.”

  “Did you put her back in the hen house?”

  She blew out a breath. “No, actually.”

  “Why not?”

  “Come on, I’ll show you.” She put her guitar carefully back into the case, then pushed herself up.

  He followed her across to the hedge at the side of the yard. She paused near the shed. “She’s there.”

  “In the shed?”

  She shook her head. “No. There. Under the bush.”

  Joe stepped around her, staring down at the hen sitting plump and remarkably content under one of the pittosporum bushes. “She looks okay.”

  “She is okay.” MG shrugged. “She’s got a couple of eggs.”

  Joe checked the hen again. The bird gave him a distinctly defiant look. “You want me to carry her back to the henhouse for you?”

  MG shook her head again. “I want to just leave her here. Until her chicks hatch—then we can move them all back inside the fence. I mean assuming the chicks hatch and all. I don’t know if Robespierre…” She licked her lips. “And he’s still missing.”

  “I thought you didn’t want any chicks?” Joe asked hurriedly.

  “Things change.” She blew out a breath. “She’s okay here, I guess, unless we get another hungry coyote or something.”

  He put a hand on her shoulder, turning her so that she looked up at him. “Tell me you’re not doing this as a tribute to that freakin’ rooster.”

  “No.” She licked her lips. “Well, not exactly. I mean since it looks like I don’t have a rooster anymore, it might work out. One of her chicks might be male.”