“Oh, I see. What you don’t understand, son, is that I worked on all these old cars when they was new. I know them like I know my own children. I worked on these, here, Corvettes back when a mechanic ‘repaired’ a car. Nowadays all we do is replace parts. Why, I remember once, a fellow …”
Callie left Matt listening in fascination as John Henry talked of bearings and gears and custom body work. She went back in the cabin, knowing that Matt would be occupied for some time. Once John Henry got wound up, he could go on about mechanics for hours. She wondered if Matt would be able to stay awake during John Henry’s long-playing reminiscences.
He did. Every time she looked out the window she saw Matt and John Henry talking and smiling. She soon became convinced that Matt was genuinely interested in what he was hearing. He even seemed to be telling John Henry bits of information that the old man obviously found fascinating. Callie noticed that John Henry’s ever-present toothpick had ceased to migrate from one corner of his mouth to the other. She knew that anytime his toothpick grew still, John Henry was concentrating.
Callie picked English peas from her garden, then shelled them and put them on the stove to cook. Drying her hands on a cotton dish cloth, she glanced out the window and saw that Matt had donned a pair of greasy, well-used coveralls. Shocked, she dropped the towel on the floor.
“The city slicker’s bewitched,” she said out loud and grinned.
He towered over John Henry’s six feet by another six inches, and the coveralls fit enticingly well, so she knew they were Matt’s own. They were worn in all the right places, like in the rear and across the thighs. When Matt squatted down to help John Henry unbolt the battered headlight, Callie was so preoccupied with watching him that she dropped the dish towel again, this time into the pot of peas.
Some time later they pushed the Corvette out of William’s domain, to the other side of the pasture fence that ran along her driveway. The last she saw of Matt and John Henry was a cloud of red dust as they sped down the driveway in John Henry’s ancient truck.
They took a fork in the road that went to a neighbor’s house. Callie leaned on a window ledge and watched the truck bounce over the rutted road and out of sight toward Tom Hicks’s farm. Why did she get the feeling that Matt Holland was completely at home with John Henry? More surprises from her yuppie. Her yuppie? Frowning, Callie went back to the kitchen.
When suppertime arrived Callie went looking for the two men. She found them under Tom Hicks’s rusty tractor, arguing the merits of trying to fix it, not the Corvette. Tom sat beside the tractor, looking woeful.
“Are you two planning to eat tonight?” Callie asked. She leaned on the fender of John Henry’s truck as the two men crawled out from under the tractor. They both looked sheepish.
“Say,” Matt told her, “John Henry really knows his equipment. This tractor was built in 1929, and it’s still running. At least, it was running until yesterday. People really knew how to build things back then.”
There was a smear of grease across his cheek, and his hair fell across his forehead in a little-boy fashion that made Callie want to reach out and brush it back.
“Yep, and it’s held together with bailing wire and safety pins and takes more time to crank than it’s worth,” Tom Hicks noted. A short, bespectacled man in jeans and a T-shirt, he sat cross-legged with a hound dog puppy in his lap. Callie smiled at him.
“When are you going to trade this old bolt bucket in, Tom, and get something modern?”
“Well,” he drawled, “I hate to admit that I need a new machine. Owning the oldest tractor on God’s green earth is a point of pride with me.” Everyone laughed. “But if I could talk the tractor dealer over in Dahlonega into extending me credit on my flock of spring broiling hens, I’d be plowing this ground instead of sitting on it.”
Matt and John Henry began simultaneously.
“Tom, I could—” Matt said.
“Tom, I’d be glad to—”
Tom stopped them with raised hands. “Thanks, but no thanks. A tractor on the showroom floor already has my name on it. All I have to do is get my crop of baby chicks raised and sold, and I’ll have a down payment. I just need to get one more month of work out of this old relic and I’ll make it.”
Callie looked at Matt in mock rebuke. “I get the impression you’ve been tinkering with Tom’s tractor all this time, instead of trying to find parts for the Corvette. Are you always so irresponsible?”
He blushed. Just as I suspected, Callie thought. You haven’t had many irresponsible moments in your life, have you, Matt?
“You bring out the worst in me,” he told her.
“Hmmm. The best, maybe.” Callie tilted her chin up proudly, and they smiled at each other.
John Henry put a fresh toothpick in his mouth. “Well,” he muttered, “don’t matter whether we work on the Corvette today or not. Can’t be fixed till I get the parts, and that won’t be till tomorrow, at least.” He pulled something out of the tractor’s inner workings and directed his next words to Tom. “I’ll fix this carburetor for you tonight.” Tom nodded. Callie noted the extremely innocent expression on John Henry’s face as he turned his gaze on her. “Got any ideas about where we can put Matt up for the night, Callie?”
Callie was startled. She hadn’t thought past supper. She glanced at Matt, and he made a great show of looking benignly unconcerned about where he spent the night.
“Don’t go to any trouble on my account,” he said quaintly.
She arched one brow at him and “hmmmphed.” John Henry’s voice interrupted her errant thoughts concerning where she’d like Matt to sleep.
“What about the smokehouse, where all those freaky friends of yours stay when they come to visit?” he asked. “Haven’t you got at least one decent bed in there?” John Henry took a disreputable-looking cotton handkerchief from his back pocket and wiped his face. Callie was sure he was hiding a smile.
She turned to Matt. “I’ve seen mice in the smokehouse,” she intoned solemnly. “Giant mice. With fangs. Would you be scared?”
“After William, even vampire mice would seem sweet.” He paused, gauging the troubled look she gave him. “I can find a motel room until I can get the hole in the Corvette radiator plugged. I wouldn’t want your neighbors to think you were keeping me for illicit purposes.” He wiggled his brows in a devilish way. “Immoral, tawdry purposes.” He paused again for effect. “I’d be safe from you, wouldn’t I?”
She gave him a wry smile. “Without a doubt.”
Liar, she chided herself silently. He’ll never be completely safe from me. I know that already.
“Don’t worry, Matt,” John Henry interjected. “ ’Twas William who made the hole, so I’m sure Callie wouldn’t allow you to stay anywhere but her place. It’s only common courtesy for her to put you up for the night. Just don’t be surprised if you wind up sharing the place with some weirdly dressed, hippiefied stranger.”
Callie shot a look of exasperation at John Henry. “My friends are lovely, free-spirited people.” She turned to Matt. “Tyler and I met a lot of wonderful folks in our travels. From time to time they drop by here to spend the night.”
“Are they … homeless?” Matt asked. She shook her head.
“They consider the whole world their home. They work when they need to, they travel, they enjoy life. They don’t ask for handouts, if that’s what you mean. They pay their way.”
“They don’t take baths,” John Henry added. “They smell worse than William.”
“Nothing could smell worse than William,” Matt said emphatically. He looked at Callie. “I’ll stay, and take my chances.”
She nodded. “John Henry, you drop us back at my cabin,” she told him. “Want to stay for dinner?”
“No, thanks,” he drawled. “You’ve probably spent all afternoon making some more of those lovely alfalfa sprouts.” He gestured toward the truck. “Let’s go. I’ll order the parts for the Corvette and come back tomorrow.”
“Thanks, John Henry,” Matt told him. They shared a firm handshake. “It’s been a pleasure. Are you sure that prune juice will work on my problem?”
“Prune juice?” Callie asked a few minutes later, when she and Matt were alone outside the old smokehouse. “What did you say about prune juice?”
“Damnedest thing,” he answered. “John Henry swears he uses it as a lubricator when he’s tuning up a car. I can’t imagine its loosening a stuck bolt.”
“Neither can I,” she observed wryly. “Matt, you can’t take everything John Henry says seriously.”
“Oh? Then I should overlook his observation that you’re glad to see me?”
“He told you that?”
“Yes.” Matt looked down at her, his dark eyes gleaming. “After I’m gone tomorrow, when he tells you that I’m crazy about you and this weird mountain life of yours, believe him.” He let her absorb that blunt comment for a moment. Then he smiled. “Having a man stay here alone with you won’t tarnish your reputation with the locals, will it?”
Callie laughed. “People in the valley mind their own business, Matt, except for John Henry, who minds everybody’s. I wouldn’t stick around if I couldn’t live my life the way I want to.”
They stepped inside the smokehouse, and she flicked the switch on an old wall plate.
“You’re big on being free, aren’t you?” Matt persisted while he glanced around and took a tentative sniff. This wasn’t so bad. “How do you really support yourself up here?”
“With kudzu and muscadine baskets and wreaths.”
“A lot of people buy those things?”
“Yes. I have a good reputation for craftsmanship.” Callie moved finished baskets off one of the cots.
Matt looked around. This was going to be interesting. An overhead fixture with one bare bulb gave enough light to identify the furniture. There was the daybed, which appeared to be long enough for his frame, a rocking chair, a workbench, and a table.
“Not too bad,” he admitted.
“Lacey gave me the rocking chair. It adds a lot.”
“Who’s Lacey?”
“Lacey is an old friend,” Callie said. She smiled. “And she’s not a ‘hippiefied’ person and she doesn’t smell bad.”
“Tell me more about your ex-husband, Tyler.”
“Nope. Ruins my appetite.” She said the words without malice as she straightened the clutter around Matt’s bed. Callie looked up into his puzzled, brooding eyes. “I’m kidding. Tyler decided to direct his life down a different path from mine, that’s all. He’s still one of the sweetest people I know. Just misguided.” She gave him a defiant, inquisitive look. “Now let me ask a question. Have you ever been married?”
He nodded, his expression solemn. “A long time ago. It only lasted two years.”
Callie’s eyes narrowed, and she asked in a voice that was frank without being nasty, “What went wrong?”
Matt answered just as frankly. “I bored her to tears.” His expression hardened, but Callie sensed the deep defeat he still felt.
“Matthew,” she said gently, “you may be quaint and businesslike, but you couldn’t possibly be classified as ‘boring’ by any female.”
A slight smile edged his mouth. “Flattery will get you everywhere.”
“Go on with your story.” She shifted, uncomfortable under the intense, affectionate gaze he was giving her.
“I came home one day and found a note.” He smiled without warmth. “It was very elegant and very melodramatic. Just the sort of thing you dislike.”
“Please,” Callie said, her voice gentle, “I hear the pain in your voice. Don’t think I’m going to make fun of you. Tell me the rest.”
Matt cast his gaze down. “Glenda said she was bored with my antiques and my love for history and all the time I devoted to the paint company. She’d found a man who ‘embraced life and lived in the present.’ ”
Callie touched his arm, and he looked up, his emotions wrapped in dignity. “I’m sorry,” she told him. He nodded. “Matt, did she find what she wanted when she married someone new? Were they happy?”
“No. I believe he lasted even less time than I did.”
“You must have loved her dearly. I can tell by how hurt you sound, even now.”
He shrugged and tried to joke. “She believes in marriages with ‘built-in obsolescence.’ Two years or your money back, guaranteed.” Callie stood mesmerized under his searching eyes. He looked desperate. “I don’t want to bore any more women to tears.”
A feeling of tenderness dampened her eyes and made her give him a kind smile. He was, in a subtle way, very vulnerable. She liked that.
“Holland,” she murmured, shaking her head, “you exasperate me, surprise me, and worry me. You don’t bore me. So relax.”
He gave her a jaunty smile and chucked her lightly under the chin. “Tell me more about Tyler.” His momentary anguish was gone, replaced by confidence and control.
“Hah,” she answered. “Don’t change the subject.” They shared a benignly challenging look for a moment. “Dinner,” she ordered. “It’s getting late.”
“Right,” he said finally, in a tone that let her know he planned to ask about her ex-husband again later.
Matt filed Tyler away under subjects to be examined at his leisure. For now, he was too intrigued by the smokehouse. Every spare space in the room was taken up with vines, ribbons, and bright bolts of fabric, a kaleidoscope of warm colors. He lifted two very large baskets lined with the bright fabric and carried them outside, depositing them beside a stack Callie obviously had been working on recently.
“What do people use these for?” he wanted to know.
“Oh, to hold magazines, or wood, or pine cones. They usually put them beside their fireplaces for decoration.”
“Won’t William eat them if we leave them here?”
“What, eat roots and vines, like other goats? Not William. He prefers more tasty morsels.” She ringed her arms with the last of the door wreaths and stood looking around the room. “Your accommodations, sir, are prepared. I’ll give you linen and a pillow later. Let’s go have dinner.”
“You mean William only destroys automobiles and wildflowers?”
“And other things that I won’t mention. Just don’t leave this door open if you want to have a complete set of clothes in the morning.”
Matt whistled as he followed her to the cabin. Maybe he’d lose his clothes some other way tonight.
Four
The rising sun was beginning to turn the sky a soft lavender when Matt finally gave up on the daybed and on any hope of sleep. He pulled on the old gray shorts he’d found behind the bed, obviously left by one of Callie’s friends. The shorts were too snug, but they’d do for a little while.
Wearing his white undershirt and his jogging shoes, he padded outside. There was a cool, crisp freshness in the air, and Matt sat on the smokehouse steps, taking in the tranquility of the valley.
Even though the dawn was lovely, he didn’t want to be out there to see it. He wanted to be inside Callie’s cabin. After the night before, a night of good food and good conversation and laughter, he wanted to be in her oversized bed, under the bright-colored quilt. The woman had all sorts of save-the-something-or-other posters on her bedroom walls, but he didn’t care. It looked like a cozy, cheerful place. He wanted to be cuddling that freckled body with the full breasts.
Matt felt a wave of regret catch at the muscles in his stomach and tighten them into a shivery knot. He had to stop thinking about Callie as if he were some … some love sick goat.
“Arrrgh. I don’t want to think about goats,” he muttered, looking around carefully for William.
Matt tied the laces on his shoes. Groaning at the thought of the upcoming activity, he stood up and jogged, loose-limbed, across the yard to the driveway. He stopped and turned, jogging in place while he took a look back at Callie’s cabin.
He was immediately reminded of a Christmas-card catalog he’d gotten the y
ear before from a company in Oklahoma. The cards carried a western theme of mountains, rustic cabins, and sanctified wilderness.
He was always drawn to the scenes because of the permanence and peacefulness they pictured. Now, here in a little valley at the base of a mountain chain in north Georgia, he prayed that permanence and peace had come to life for him.
Callie was frying thick slices of country ham when she heard footsteps outside the back door. “Come on in the kitchen. Breakfast is almost ready,” she called.
“I assume you’re talking to me, not William,” Matt answered.
“Oh, William doesn’t like ham. He never eats anything he’s known personally, and this ham came from a pig of Tom Hicks’s. You want orange juice or my specialty?”
Getting no answer, she turned around. Matt stood in the doorway, his head cocked at an angle and a humorous look in his eyes that told her he was considering a rakish answer to her question.
“Good morning,” he said slowly.
Her heart skipped a beat and her knees quivered at the sight he presented.
“Good morning,” she finally managed to say.
His light-colored hair was damp and thick. He filled the doorway, and his head barely cleared the top frame. His T-shirt clung to the muscles that rippled in his stomach as he raked his fingers through his hair.
And the shorts. Oh, dear. Callie forced her gaze away from their brevity. They barely covered the essentials, and the slits in the sides hinted at the hollows in his lean haunches. Those shorts were definitely not boring. Definitely not.
“Your specialty?” he asked in a throaty voice that made her feel suddenly warm all over.
“My special apple juice,” she explained hastily. “Red apples grown right here in the valley, canned by Tom Hicks’s wife last fall.”
He peered at the stove. “What, no alfalfa sprouts?”
“Now, look, I fed you pot roast and mashed potatoes and peas with butter last night, so you know I’m not a fanatic about health food. Sit down, city slicker.”
He settled on a rickety stool and watched her as if she’d hypnotized him. Which she had.
Too Hot to Handle: A Loveswept Classic Romance Page 5