by Leslie North
Heather groaned as they piled out of his truck, making him chuckle. He and Heather tag-teamed the task of getting Amelia and Andy out of their car seats, not nearly as simple a job as he might have thought. By the time they were all headed for the sidewalk, he had almost forgotten the gaggle of women waiting to descend.
“Randy McCall!” Mrs. Adams, the retired vet’s wife, cried happily. She threw up her arms and advanced quickly, so determined that she reminded Randy of a bull in one of his brother’s rodeos.
“Hi, there, Mrs. Adams,” Randy said, sounding rather more sheepish than he meant to. Something about this particular demographic of women in his hometown always made him feel like a kid again, and Mrs. Adams was the ringleader of the group. He was still trying to figure out how to assert his “adultness” when she pulled him in for a rib-cracking hug.
"Now, that's just nonsense, is what that is," Mrs. Adams admonished, holding him at arm’s length to get a better look at him. "You call me Lucy like everyone else. After all, you're not a little boy anymore."
“Nope,” he said, putting on a grin to cover his discomfiture and feeling Heather’s eyes on the back of his neck. “Or at least, I wasn’t the last time I checked. Sometimes it’s hard for me to tell in this town.”
“Well, now,” Lucy Adams said, this time to Heather. “You know you’re being escorted around town by one of our finest, right? You’ve got a genuine horse whisperer here!”
“Sure, I guess I’ve noticed that.” He could hear the hesitation in Heather’s reply. He obligingly angled his body so that she could join the conversation, but she shook her head. This was one conversation she obviously had no interest in taking part in. Come to think of it, Randy wasn’t all that into it, either.
“And who are these little darlings?” Lucy asked, exchanging a meaningful look with the others in her posse behind her before turning her attention to the twins. “Aren’t you two just the most precious little dears I’ve ever seen?”
"Yup!" Andy said happily, while Amelia nodded vigorously beside him.
Randy laughed out loud at the brutal honesty of the reply, but Heather blanched and shook her head. “No way, little man,” she admonished, giving the matrons of Winding Creek an apologetic look. “That’s not how we talk to people we don’t know. Or people in general, actually.”
"Please," Lucy said, waving one hand in dismissal. "Nothing to worry yourself over. Believe me, I've heard a lot more sass from half the young people in this town, including your escort here."
“Is that so?” Heather asked with a sudden smirk. Randy was grateful that at least she wasn’t arguing that he wasn’t her escort. This self-appointed welcoming committee of Winding Creek was made up of the kind of women who seemed to see any protest as a green light to press on with their agenda.
“It certainly is,” Lucy said, nodding in evident self-satisfaction. “Now, what do you say you let us take your sweet babies here and show them some of the sights?”
"What?" Heather asked, her voice sharpening. Randy thought she sounded alarmed at the idea. "No, really, there's no need for you to do that. We're only stopping in for some plant covers for my strawberries, and then we'll be on our way."
“A task that will surely be easier without two young’uns in tow,” Bernice, a white-haired grandmotherly type with a twinkle in her eye, said kindly. “We’ll show them the treasures at the antique store, and then maybe we’ll end with a little treat from my ice cream shop. What do you two say to that? I, for one, would appreciate you allowing them to escort us. They remind me of my grandbabies, who I don’t get to see nearly enough of.”
Amelia and Andy cheered, and Randy felt Heather hesitating beside him. He had a feeling he knew why. From what little he’d experienced of her, she was an intensely private, stubbornly independent woman. She was nervous, too, more so than he could see any reason for her to be. She was constantly checking her phone, often turning pale when she saw what waited there for her. The nerves extended to her children, too, with her always wanting to keep them right by her side.
“Might not be the worst idea,” he said, shrugging when he saw her roll her eyes. “Make it easier for us to find what we need, anyway.”
“Exactly!” Lucy chirped. “And it’ll give the two of you some time to get to know each other a little better, too.” Randy couldn’t help wincing, and she hastily added, “I know I always welcomed a little adult conversation when mine were little. Lord knows you probably don’t get enough of that these days, Ms. Browning.”
“Heather,” Heather cut in quickly. “Just Heather, please. And thank you for the offer to watch the kids, although I would think twice about the antique store. They’re likely to leave something in pieces.”
“Maybe go right to the ice cream parlor, then,” Bernice said with a kind smile, giving her friend Lucy a warning look. Andy and Amelia beamed up at her with the angelic smiles of children who knew they were about to get what they wanted.
"Fine," Heather sighed, her shoulders slumping in the gesture Randy had already begun to associate with her giving in. "We'll come and get them as soon as we have what we need."
The group of older women nodded happily and, chatting excitedly, ushered Heather’s children down the street. For a moment, Heather and Randy stood under the awning of the hardware store. She looked as awkward as Randy felt, winding her hair compulsively around one finger while he busied himself picking imaginary lint off of the front of his shirt. At last, he cleared his throat and said, "I guess we should go on in before those candy monsters of yours eat Bernice out of house and home."
“Right,” Heather said, looking past Randy at the rapidly retreating backs of her children and their unlikely escorts. “Hey, look, before we go inside, I want to make sure we’re on the same page about something.”
“Sure,” Randy said, nervously running a hand through his hair. “Which page might that be?”
“Those women,” Heather started, her voice displaying a level of dislike and contempt that Randy found surprising, given the almost-comical circumstances. “They’re trying to set us up.”
“Yeah,” Randy agreed. “I suppose they are, or at least some of them may be.”
“That’s not going to happen,” Heather said forcefully, looking him square in the eye. “You and me, I mean. There’s not going to be anything between us. No kind of relationship. At all.”
“All right, all right,” Randy said, holding his hands up to show he meant no harm. “I hear ya. I’m not trying to insert myself here. Just trying to help.”
"Good," Heather said with obvious relief, finally letting her tortured lock of hair alone. "I'm glad to hear it because that's the last thing I need right now. I've got enough to worry about with the lack of rain without adding that kind of mess to my plate."
"Mess, huh?" Randy echoed. "It's a lucky thing I'm not the kind of man to take offense easily, or you might hurt my feelings with that kind of talk."
"Believe me, it's not just you," Heather said, hugging herself, something he’d noticed her doing all too often. "I'm talking about men in general. I've had enough to last me a lifetime after the way things went with my ex. That's a road I can't go down again."
Randy had no idea what to say to that, and so he said nothing at all, feeling for a moment as if the air was full of electricity. He studied her face—more than pretty, it was heartbreaking in its beauty. For the first time, he thought he had an idea where some of her prickly nature came from. Whatever life she was trying to put behind her, it had certainly left its mark. So much so that she was more interested in struggling along on her own with a farm she didn't know the first thing about how to run than she was in letting somebody new into her life.
Not that it should matter. A relationship was the furthest thing from Randy's mind, and he took the liberty of reminding himself about that now. Still, a part of him didn't like hearing how completely off-limits she was placing herself. Not only was he intrigued by this woman who seemed so hard on the outsid
e but clearly harbored a world of hurt on the inside, but now, and all at once, he realized that he wanted to break through to her. To be the exception to her blanket rejection.
“Come on,” he said, a little more gruffly than he’d intended. “Let’s get this show on the road.”
6
Heather sat staring out the window of Randy’s truck as Randy guided it down the country roads. She'd put up a fight about him driving them into town and had only lost because of her sprained right ankle, bad enough to make working the gas pedal and brake darned near impossible. Secretly, though, she was happy to have an excuse to hand over control to somebody else, if only for a moment.
“You’re a pretty good driver,” she said, glancing over at Randy for a moment before looking out the window again. “You know, for a vet.”
“For a vet, huh?” he said wryly, a half smile playing at the corners of his mouth. “I believe you just paid me a compliment.”
“Who knows?” she shrugged. “Maybe I did.”
He was a good driver, but that wasn’t the point. It was nice to have somebody to banter back and forth with, especially somebody she liked so well. It was...well...different not to feel so completely alone.
That was the part she hadn’t anticipated, not really: how difficult it would be to handle everything on her own. She had to be mother, father, and homesteader, all rolled up into one body that only knew how to do a fraction of those jobs well. While fear had always been part of her life, even when it had appeared that everything was going well, being on her own hadn’t made a difference on that front.
Still, the kind of anxiety she'd known before moving here couldn't hold a candle to what she felt now, and it seemed to be getting worse with each passing day. She was constantly afraid for her children, that her dream of providing them with a better life was nothing more than self-delusion. Add to that the constant, gnawing worry over the persistent lack of rain, and she felt like she was walking through life on eggshells—as if everything was going to crack at any moment. Having somebody else do the driving while her babies slept in the back seat was a small thing, but she was willing to accept small things these days. Besides, the fresh air coming through the vents was making her vaguely sleepy, along with the low thrum of oldies playing over the radio.
“I’m pretty impressed,” Randy said, breaking the car’s comfortable silence once again.
“Hm?” Heather asked, grudgingly turning her attention to him. “With what?”
"With how quickly those little guys zonked out," he said with a smile, glancing at Amelia and Andy in the rearview mirror. "With all that sugar, I'd have thought they'd be bouncing out of their car seats."
“Right,” Heather laughed softly, shifting around to gaze fondly at her dozing twins. “Little kids are funny that way. They tear around, making you think they’ll never sleep again. Next thing you know, they’re out like lights. People always say that kids have more energy than adults. Personally, I think they’re just less economical.”
"Ha!" Randy laughed, then winced and glanced at the twins again before speaking in a lower tone. "Economical. I like that. You know, you can be pretty funny when you want to be."
"When I'm not being such a shrew?" Heather asked softly. She looked out the window again and tried to ignore the part of herself that wanted this man to like her. She hated that part, thought she had done away with it for good after Brad, but apparently it was trickier than that. Because the more time she spent around Randy, the more she felt attracted to him, and for more than his movie-star looks, too. It was Randy, himself. He was a good man, and she was starting to have a hard time denying that fact.
Plus, something about seeing the way those older women in town had greeted him had struck her as sweet. They had all seemed so thrilled to see him—maybe there was more to him than your average love ‘em and leave ‘em kind of guy. Almost against her better judgment, she felt herself being drawn in. The problem was, part of her still wanted him to put his auction-assigned hours in and then leave her be. That would certainly make things easier, and the sooner he went away, the sooner she could get used to being well and truly on her own.
Now is not a good time to fall in love, she screamed silently at herself inside of her head. Now was so, so not the time.
“No way,” he said, breaking into her scattered thoughts as if agreeing with her unspoken thought. He pulled in alongside her house, put the truck in park, and turned to look at her far too closely for her comfort. She was brought back to their conversation as he continued, “Nobody said anything about a shrew. You just play it close to the vest, that’s all.”
“I guess you could say that,” she said with a shrug that was more casual than she felt. “Come on, let’s get them out of their car seats. Maybe, if we’re lucky, we can—”
Her hopes were interrupted by a clap of thunder so loud, she stopped mid-sentence to clamp her hands over her ears. She looked first up at the sky and then at Randy with an expression that must have looked pretty comical, from the grin he gave her in response. “What?” she asked with a disbelieving little laugh. “But it wasn’t even cloudy a minute ago!”
“That’s the way things are here,” he said with a shrug, although his voice was full of pure pleasure. “You know what they say about the weather in Montana—Don’t like it? Wait five minutes, and it’ll change. Come on, help me get them out of the truck. I think we’re well past being able to get them out still asleep.”
Heather turned her attention from the sky to his truck’s back seat, where her little monsters were sitting wide-eyed and at attention, roused by the sudden noise of the thunder, probably, along with the frenetic energy of the coming storm itself. From watching her children’s reactions over the past three years, Heather would have been willing to bet a lot of money that the barometric pressure of a storm had a direct correlation with a child’s behavior, and now was no exception.
“Mommy!” Andy shouted, banging on the inside of the window with a chocolate-stained hand, apparently more than happy to prove her point. “Mommy, I want out to play!”
“I know, goober,” Heather said, helpless to keep some of her little boy’s giddiness from rubbing off onto her. “Just hold your horses. We’ll have you guys out in a jiffy, won’t we, Randy?”
“That we will, little miss,” Randy nodded at Amelia, who had joined her brother in window-pounding.
Soon, the twins were free and running wild, no trace of their car-ride comas remaining. Heather leaned on the crutches Randy had brought her, heart swelling with the first genuine surge of happiness she could remember feeling in a long, long time. She turned her face up to the thickening clouds, closed her eyes, and allowed the suddenly chilly wind and refreshing ozone smell to sweep over her face.
“Oh!” she exclaimed, blinking rapidly and searching for Randy’s face. “Was that—?”
Before she could finish, another raindrop hit the top of her head, followed by another, and another, and then the sky opened up in earnest. The four of them were caught in a genuine gulley washer, and Heather didn’t mind a bit.
“I can’t believe it!” she shouted, practically shaking with giddy excitement. “It’s raining, Randy, it’s actually raining!”
Thinking about it later, she would never be able to decide exactly how it happened. One minute, she was hurrying toward Randy, no clear reason why in her head. The next minute, she had let the crutches fall to the ground and plastered her hands on the sides of his face, her lips landing firmly on his.
It was only a brief contact, hardly enough to qualify as a kiss. Still, it was enough for Heather to feel a jolt of electricity, the kind she had long since determined was dead to her. Every nerve ending in her body suddenly came alive all at once, and before she pulled away, balancing on her good foot, she had time to notice that he tasted like spearmint. She wanted to keep tasting him, too. In that brief moment of what must have been temporary insanity, she wanted to throw away all the hurt and fear she had built up and...and
...give this man a chance. Something told her that he might really be worth it.
“I—I’m sorry,” she gasped, her cheeks burning despite the now-driving rain. “I don’t know why I did that.”
“D-don’t worry about it,” Randy stammered, looking much younger than his years. He bent down to retrieve her crutches and held them out to her. “Rain makes people do crazy things. I—”
“Come play!” Andy cried, splashing around in a quickly forming puddle with a child’s giddy pleasure. “Come play, Randy!”
“Dance with us!” Amelia giggled, spinning in wild circles and turning her face up to the sky, tongue extended to catch the drops of rain.
"Well, now, how can I turn down an offer like that?" Randy asked, tipping Heather a wink before joining the children. He took them by the hands, and the three started showcasing some truly questionable dance moves.
Heather stood back and watched, at a loss for how she should feel. It was finally raining, one less thing for her to worry about from a seemingly endless list. Her babies were happy. For the moment, things actually felt okay.
On the other hand, she had gone and kissed Randy, which was just about the last thing on the planet she needed to be doing right now. Especially after the fuss she had made about them never being in a relationship. While a kiss was not a commitment, it was definitely the kind of mixed signal that could complicate things. She certainly didn’t need that.
The kiss itself, though? She couldn’t dismiss it, even if she should have. Brief or not, it had been one of the best kisses ever. The kind of kiss, even, that made a girl want to imagine an entire future.
“Better to pretend,” she whispered to herself, nodding at her private decision. “Pretend it never happened, and let it be.”
That seemed to be the wisest move. In the end, Randy might well be a good, decent man. That would make him the kind of man she could be friends with, and friends were something she could use.