Second Hope

by J. B. McDonald

  “Still, I’d rather not annoy my hostess. Beer’s just not worth it.”

  Nat contemplated him for a moment, the tips of her mouth still curled up. “But I’m not annoyed—”

  “And yet you’re sitting out here, when the majority of the people are inside.”

  She stopped. Then, slowly, she inclined her head. He had a point, though it hadn’t been a conscious decision on her part. As people had drifted toward the bar, she’d simply stayed put. She’d assumed that his lack of alcohol had been because he was manning the grill.

  It seemed like just when she thought she could predict what Cole would do—which was basically what she assumed any man would do—he did the opposite. And she really wasn’t sure she liked his ability to read her so well.

  “All right, guys,” he shouted inside, “anyone who wants anything else to be barbequed better bring it out.”

  “Now you’ve done it,” Nat murmured, hiding a smile.

  He had time to give her a quizzical look before the sliding glass door was shoved farther open and the nearest rancher, Bob Pasley, came crashing out, a big cooler in his bear-sized arms. “Boy, do we have barbeque!” he bellowed. Nat was of the opinion that he didn’t know how to speak in anything other than a shout, though his wife had informed her that she was wrong. He knew how to yell, too. “We’ve got steak and chops and ribs! Got vegetable things for the ladies. You know how they’re always trying to watch their weight.” He pushed past Cole as if the man wasn’t even standing there, bustling over to the grill. His cooler dropped with a bang on the cobblestone, and he eyed what progress had been made.

  Nat knew enough about barbequing to know that Cole hadn’t scorched the meat, nor had he given anyone food poisoning. But Bob looked everything over with a sad shake of his head, tut-tutting about the state of the chicken. “Here, now, boy—”

  The look on Cole’s face at being called “boy” was priceless. Nat nearly ruptured something trying not to laugh.

  “—give me that spatula and those tongs, and I’ll show you how a real man handles a grill.”

  Cole did as he was told, though the tongs were sitting on the plate with the finished chicken. Then he backpedaled quickly until he stood next to Nat, his body shading the sun from her eyes. “I think I’ve just been fired from backyard barbeque duty,” he said with a faint note of wonder.

  “Don’t feel bad.” Nat’s grin widened, amusement seeping into her words. “For a while we had a real cook here, and Bob always fired him from barbeque duty, too.”

  Cole laughed, looking down at her. Shadowed, his eyes were dark, a deep mahogany, while the sun behind him turned his hair into the color of brown sugar spun with wheat. Nat still hadn’t decided what color it was, really. Every time she thought she knew, light hit it at a different angle and it seemed to change. He smiled crookedly, showing off imperfect teeth. “Well, that’s good. I’d always thought I was pretty decent at grilling.”

  He was laughing, but she could hear the wounded male pride beneath the humor. She reached out, fingers wrapping around the muscle of his forearm in wordless reassurance. “Everyone seemed to like what you were doing. There’s just no pleasing Bob.”

  Bob was talking, probably thinking he was informing everyone nearby of the right way to flip a steak, though no one listened.

  Cole turned to smile down at her, moving his arm away from her touch only to catch her fingers in his. Almost thoughtlessly he lifted her hand, brushing a kiss across her knuckles.

  The party seemed to pause, time caught on Nat’s inhalation. Cole froze for a long moment, lips a millimeter from her skin, as if only just aware of what he’d done. Of how she’d reacted. The breeze slid over sensitized flesh, his eyes catching hers and holding.

  Molten gold, flecked with bits of amber and jade, watching her so steadily she might have been the only person alive. Slowly, his mouth lowered again, as gentle as a dove’s feathers. She shivered, skin tightening. His eyes grew dark, pupils expanding until there was only a ring of bright color around inky darkness. His mouth moved, gentle against her. Strong fingers tightened fractionally, as if he were afraid she’d pull away. His lips parted, and the wet heat of his tongue touched her, so brief it was gone before she even knew what it had been. The wind played with her hair, slipped around under its heavy weight and across the nape of her neck, drawing another shiver.

  “Hey, Nat!”

  She jumped, noise smashing in past the bubble of stillness, and yanked her hand away. Cole didn’t fight her. He let go, turning to glare at the intrusion.

  Beth’s eyes flickered between them for a moment. Behind her, Shumway braced one arm across his chest, the other elbow on it, and covered his smile with his hand. Beth’s smirk was less friendly and more bratty-younger-sister—or at least how Nat imagined bratty-younger-sister smirk would look.

  “Nothing,” Nat said, and then realized there had been no question. She ducked her head, annoyed with herself. “I mean, what?”

  “Uh huh.” Beth’s smirk didn’t diminish. If anything, it got more pronounced.

  “Did you want something?” Cole’s voice was cool but not cold, calm and expectant. It got results.

  “We just thought maybe we could shove some things aside? Dancing might be fun. And don’t you have tiki torches?”

  “And wood for the fire pit?” Shumway added.

  Nat glanced around, surprised to find that the sun was setting. Shadows lengthened across her carefully planned courtyard, the house itself becoming a sunblock. “The tiki torches are in the walk-in closets across from the guest bedroom, and fuel for the pit…” She turned to look at it, tucked in a corner of the courtyard. “I think there’s wood in the barn. In the empty tack room.” It had become a storage shed for all those things they didn’t quite know what to do with.

  “Awesome! And we were thinking we could dance, y’know, here, so…”

  “I need to move?” Nat guessed wryly.

  Beth’s nod was excited, her face flushed from drinking.

  Nat stood, picking up her warm Pepsi that had been sitting on the stone wall. She kept her head ducked as she brushed past Cole, not sure what to say to him.

  When he followed her to the side of the tree, she paused and looked back. “You could go dance.” It was a not-so-subtle hint, and she hoped he got it. She wasn’t interested in a relationship. Not now, not ever.

  He crooked a smile, eyebrows rising in question. “Is that your way of saying you don’t want me around?”

  She hadn’t expected him to spell her hint out for her. Now that he had, she wasn’t sure what to say. Was that what she meant? She liked him; she had been enjoying their conversation, spoken between his meandering back and forth from the grill.

  The hesitation stretched into a pause, then lengthened slowly into silence. Nat looked everywhere but at him, at his face, creased with laugh lines. At broad shoulders and strong arms, rough hands that were capable of such care.

  Cole finally broke the quiet, his voice no more than a murmur on the night air. “If I promise not to touch you again?”

  It said something, that he thought that would make a difference. Something about her, and something about fear. She wasn’t afraid. Not of anything. Not of men, certainly. And yet hearing it implied out loud like that made something cold and hard knot in her stomach. Her thumbnail scratched over the aluminum Pepsi can, eliciting a tiny metal-based cry.

  “It’s not the touching that’s the problem,” she said at last, truthfully. Touching wasn’t a problem: trusting a man as anything other than a friend was. She glared at the tab on her drink, listening to the music and laughter behind them. “I’m just…very busy right now, and I don’t have time for…” Her words faltered. It had never felt like a lie before, but suddenly, standing in the shadow of an old oak, Cole so close she could feel him if she just reached out, her words seemed like nothing more than an excuse.

  “All right,” he said, as if she hadn’t trailed off, as if she had completed her s
entence. As if she wasn’t spinning tales to push him away. “I’d thought—well, it doesn’t matter. I’m sorry. I won’t do that again. Can we still have a conversation? Beauty looked good this afternoon. I saw her sleeping, sprawled out in her stall like lying down was the best thing in the world.”

  If he was angry, she couldn’t tell. She found herself leaning away from him, and forced her spine ramrod straight. She wasn’t afraid. Not of anyone. Certainly not of a soft-spoken man who hadn’t given her the slightest inkling that he might turn to force as a way to assert his authority.

  And when, she wondered, had her basis for judging men swayed from assuming they were all capable of violence, to thinking that a violent nature had to be proven before it was true? She looked sidelong at Cole, as he waited quietly for her to either pick up where they’d left off, to take the topic he’d thrown into space, or to tell him she wasn’t interested even in that. She had no doubt that whatever she chose, he’d accept it.

  Nat took a deep breath and sat on the stone wall, wrapping both hands around her can and pondering the way light from the house shone against the metal. “She did look good. Happier, certainly. The vet’s due out to check on her tomorrow.” He sat next to her, far enough that she didn’t feel crowded, and she relaxed a bit more. “Did you see Fleet today? Shumway said that it didn’t take nearly as much persuasion to get him in the pool.”

  Cole chuckled, the sound as warm as the flame from the tiki torches Beth was scattering around the flagstone. “Yeah, well, you might check on Shumway’s version of ‘persuasion’. I eventually got him in the water, and I’m glad you have rubber mats everywhere. All the walking we had to do to convince him would have snapped his poor legs for sure if you’d had concrete.”

  She laughed a little ruefully. Behind them, on the other side of the oak, heat flared suddenly as the wood they’d brought out caught fire. “Well, Shumway doesn’t like to say bad things about people’s horses.”

  “Are you implying that my horse is bad?” His voice was filled with mock horror, and he rocked away to look at her.

  She grinned, leaning back on one hand. “Of course not. Heaven forbid.” More comfortable now, she let the subject drift with her thoughts. “I was thinking that tomorrow I might get someone to take Beauty to visit with Emma. Maybe the company of another horse will get her eating.” They had to do something. Putting Emma on pasture to see if fresh grass would tempt her was a possibility, but they couldn’t keep her hooked up to an IV in that case. Those fluids were the only things that kept her going.

  “Sounds like a good idea. If you need someone to stand around and watch them, I’m your man. Since Matt’s leaving.”

  Nat nodded slowly, a frown tugging at her mouth. “I’d appreciate it. You don’t have to, though. We’ll manage. We always do.”

  “I’m more than willing to help until you get someone else in.”

  Music changed, switching from a country-western drawl to the thump-thump of rock. Beth had taken over the stereo then, and the dancing was underway.

  “Who hurt you?” The words were so softly spoken that it took her a moment to register them. Nat glanced sharply toward Cole, her tension snaking back.

  “Nobody hurt me.” She didn’t pretend to misunderstand, though she wished she had. Then they could have laughed it off; instead now she had to answer real questions.

  “Someone did. Maybe not physically. But someone did.” The expression he wore, lit by uncertain firelight and the faint copper of the sunset, was contemplative. As if he didn’t really expect her to answer—or at least not with the truth—but he was trying to figure it out on his own.

  For a moment, a thousand sharp retorts crowded for space in Nat’s mouth, all screaming to get out. She took a breath to speak—and found all those retorts died on her tongue, leaving her with nothing but the taste of ash and an image of a man twice her size, screaming about dirty dishes. Leaving her with the memory of the dull thud of fists on skin, the sobbing of someone too small to defend herself.

  She couldn’t put that into words. And yet, as people laughed and talked and drank in the bright lights from the house and the flickering light outside, she found herself speaking. “My father…” She paused, not sure how to frame what she needed to say. “And my mother didn’t get along.” Her lips twisted bitterly, and all the things she could say—all the beatings, all the screaming—clamored to get out. In the end, she looked up at Cole and explained it as simply as she could. “He never hit me.”

  The sun set. Darkness spilled over their desert valley. The sky turned purple and then black, leaving them with only what light they could make themselves.

  “He drank?”

  She nodded.

  “I’m sorry.”

  If he had sounded patronizing or even horrified, she could have bristled. If he had continued with, “but I…” she could have despised him. Yet against those two words, so plainly spoken and with compassion but without pity, she had no defense. Nat stared out at the plants she could no longer see except as vague shapes in the black, and tried to bury the devastation she’d felt as a child. “It happens.”

  “It shouldn’t.”

  Her laugh held no humor. “No, but it does.” She looked down at her Pepsi, still half full but now flat and warm. “I’m going to get another drink. Do you want something?”

  His chest expanded with his breath, and he exhaled slowly. “Whatever you’re getting would be great. Thank you.”

  She nodded and stood, relieved when he didn’t follow her. She needed a little space. Just for a moment. Just a breather.

  Stepping around the oak and into the spill of light and laughter was like stepping into another world, painted with a brush her life hadn’t seen until it was much too late.

  No more than half a dozen people danced in the little space Beth had cleared, four of them women taking the opportunity to enjoy themselves, regardless of partners. The glass doors were crowded with more folk, standing around as if dragged there by girls or friends or the smell of barbeque, their drinks in hand.

  Nat eased past them with a few “excuse me’s” and one elbow to hard ribs, finally finding herself expelled into her own house. She walked to the kitchen, the music muted inside. Someone had taken the speakers out.

  “Hey, sweetheart,” Jeannie Pasley called. Her smile stretched quick and bright, gaily painted lips showing slightly yellowed teeth, briefly smoothing away the small wrinkles around her mouth. She puttered around the kitchen, cleaning up spilled liquid and stacking plastic cups.

  “Hi, Jeannie.” Nat poured her flat Pepsi into the sink, then opened the fridge to get two more.

  “Your boy out there sure is cute.”

  Nat’s mouth twisted wryly. “He’s not my boy.” The door closed with a soft whump, and she glanced around for ice.

  “No? Sure seems awfully friendly. Is he attached?”

  “To his horse.” Ice rattled into plastic cups as she stooped to fill them from a cooler. When she straightened, Jeannie was leaning against the counter, a margarita in one manicured hand and a bemused expression on her heavily lined face. Blond hairs wisped around her, too fine to be held back with clips and hair bands.

  “If he’s not attached, and he’s not hard on the eyes, and he seems to fancy you…explain to me why he’s not your boy?”

  Nat shook her head, smiling gently. She wedged her fingernails under the tab of the first can and pulled, feeling carbonation hiss out over her skin. She poured soda into the first cup, watching it slosh out over ice. “I’m not interested in a relationship right now.”

  “Relationship? Who said anything about a relationship? How about a summer fling?”

  A laugh surprised Nat. She glanced pointedly at the other woman’s drink before pouring the second soda into another cup. “How many of those have you had?”

  “Not enough, doll. Now think about it, Nat. He looks like he’s been broke to ride.”

  She stared incredulously at Jeannie for a moment. Then N
at turned and headed out of the kitchen. “Gonna tell your husband you’re talking about summer flings in here,” she joked, and began the process of elbowing her way back outside.

  Broke to ride? She didn’t even want to know what that meant.

  A few more people were dancing now, and the edges of the small cluster were beginning to bob and weave in time to the beat. She made her way carefully around the group, eking past the barbeque—where Bob was shouting suggestions on dance technique to the men nearby—and into the shadows before someone could waylay her.

  Cole stood on the fringes of the light, here and there lit by the glow of the house and the tiki torches, cast into dark again as people moved and flames shifted, flinging shadows. He saw her before she expected him to, head turning ever so slightly to spot her without losing the pulse of the crowd.

  He smiled, and his whole face warmed. Hair blew down across his forehead, tickling above one eyebrow, and he reached up to brush it away before taking his soda from her. Light played over muscle and broad shoulders, flickering across his legs. He looked certain, calm, steady, and ready to take her up on anything. Broke to ride, indeed.

  Nat forced those thoughts away and nodded toward his sling, the white gone dusky in the uncertain glow. “How’s your arm doing?”

  “Oh, it’s doing.” Cole sipped his drink, taking a step away. To give her space, Nat thought, but couldn’t be sure. “It’s not badly torn, anyway. I have to wear the sling for a few weeks, and when I get it off I’ll have to step up the physical therapy. There isn’t much of that, now, mostly just rest. I don’t need surgery, as long as I keep the muscles strong, so that’s helpful.”

  “You’re lucky you didn’t break your leg.” She settled almost under the tree, moving past Cole to the low rock wall. She leaned against it, feeling the bite of the brick edge in her calf, the security of knowing that no matter how crazy people got, they couldn’t get behind her.