by Claire Adams
Pete was standing in front of the house, waiting for me. I took a deep breath as I climbed out of my car. He was already walking over.
“Morning,” he said, sounding cheerful as usual. Wasn’t his gut full of twisting nerves? Or was that just me?
“Morning,” I replied. I was glad for the dark. I could feel the weight of his eyes moving over me, but I couldn’t see the heat in them, that need that matched what I felt inside.
“You ready to eat?”
I nodded once, though I couldn’t imagine my belly playing nice with anything I tried to put inside of it this morning. We climbed into his truck and drove into town. He tried to get conversation going a few times, but I kept my answers short. I hated this, wanting to talk to him but not really knowing what to say. I’d felt so comfortable at the ranch before all this. That was the worst part about it. Now I couldn’t do a damned thing without feeling self-conscious about how it looked or what kind of message it was sending.
There were only a few cars in the lot at the Texan. We parked and went inside, Pete holding the door so I could go in ahead of him. The place was empty besides the table in the far corner where the regular group of four old men were talking as they nursed cups of coffee. The one Pete had called Big Tom called out to us as soon as we walked in.
“Come on over, son! We’re not letting you keep that pretty girl all to yourself this morning!”
Pete grinned at me, his eyebrows high. “Want to have a cup of coffee with the old timers?”
I nodded, the flood of relief washing away the worst of my nerves. “Sure.” Anything that kept us from an awkward conversation by ourselves sounded good to me. Pete went around, shaking hands. When he got to Big Tom, he leaned in to give the man a hug. We pulled up chairs and sat down next to each other, the men eyeing me closely, each one smiling. Pete went around, pointing to each man as he introduced them to me again.
“That’s Tex, Big Tom, Laraby, and Winston.”
I had to smile at the way each man tipped his hat to me when his name was called. “Pleased to meet y’all again.”
Big Tom grinned as he looked over at Pete. “Have you taught the little lady how to play the game?”
Pete laughed and shook his head. “She’s only been to the Texan once. But she’s smart as a whip. You teach her once, and she’ll be beating you before you need a refill on that coffee.”
The men laughed as my cheeks tingled red at the high praise.
Tex motioned for the waitress, who came over with fresh mugs of coffee for Pete and me.
“What’s the tab on that coffee, darlin’?” Laraby asked, grinning up at her.
“Just over six dollars, darlin’,” the waitress said, returning his grin when she gave back his darlin’. The men had a good long laugh at that. She drifted off to help a few customers who’d just walked in, chuckling herself.
“Now you know what’s at stake,” Big Tom said. “Just over six dollars. Tell her the game, Petey.”
I had to turn to look into Pete’s big, blue eyes. There was no urgent need in them right now, just a warm contentment I hadn’t seen before. He felt comfortable here, with these men.
“It’s the game I told you about before. The oldest man picks a number between one and a hundred and keeps it to himself. The rest of the players pick numbers one by one, trying not to pick the one the oldest man chose. We get told higher or lower as clues. It always comes down to the final two players, each one trying not to guess the right number. Whoever says that number gets stuck with the bill.”
“Seems simple enough,” I said.
“Are you ready for that kind of a challenge?” Pete asked, his eyes getting even wider, the cheer in them contagious. So much so that I plum forgot how nervous I was supposed to be around him. I just wanted to play.
I nodded once, grinning myself.
Big Tom must have been the oldest, because he picked the number, nodding to all of us once he’d decided on a good one. We went around the table, starting with me. These men were all raised to be proper gentlemen, so, naturally, a lady would always go first.
“Twenty-three,” I said.
Big Tom smiled. “Higher.”
“Fifty-five,” Pete said, jumping in before Laraby, who was sitting to my right, could get the chance.
“Lower.”
Each man took his turn, the pool of possible numbers finally narrowing to just two. Somehow Pete had messed with the order, and it was his turn and then mine. He watched me closely, the look in his eyes drawing a small smile from me over how competitive this could get. He hadn’t been kidding when he mentioned this game the last time we ate here. Things could get serious over a tab of a few dollars.
“Thirty-three,” he said. That left thirty-two for me. We both looked at Big Tom.
The hefty old man slammed a big hand on the table, making our half-empty coffee mugs jump. “You got it, son! Which means you also got the bill to pay!”
“Damn it!” Pete said, but he was grinning, too. I could tell that was how he’d wanted things to work out.
I laughed when the rest of the old timers did, so deep it hurt my belly, but in a good way. The twisting knots were long gone. When the waitress wandered back to warm up our mugs of coffee, Pete and I ordered the same dishes we’d had the other day and ate them at the old timers’ table, joking and chuckling in between bites. Near the end of the meal, the conversation turned to Pete’s daddy.
“Charlie Gains was my best friend growing up,” Laraby began. “I never had sons of my own-”
“You never had daughters neither,” Tex grumbled, his old face breaking into a sly smile, but Laraby flat out ignored him and just kept on with what he was saying.
“So I took on Pete as soon as I could.” Laraby gave Pete a sweet, genuine smile, the way I’d sometimes caught Daddy smiling at me when he thought I wasn’t paying close attention. “Charlie and me used to get up to some real trouble when we were coming up.” He whistled, shaking his head as he thought about some of that trouble, his old eyes gleaming.
“Didn’t we all?” Winston chimed in. It was the most he’d said besides numbers since we’d sat down to join them.
“As much trouble as he used to get into — and he used to get into a lot,” Big Tom said, to a chorus of whistling and nodding heads, each man with something different to say about Pete’s daddy, the words mixing together, “He sure did straighten up when he married Linda.”
I snuck a glance over at Pete, who was looking across the table at the old man with a small smile on his lips. He’d left his hat in the truck, and his dark hair lay wild and windblown on the top of his head. Now that I knew how soft it was, the urge to smooth it nearly overwhelmed me. But what would the old timers say?
“A woman can break a man, or she can make a man,” Tex said, sounding wise, his weather-beaten face pinched into a thoughtful expression. “Linda made old Charlie.” His light, watery eyes fixed on mine all of a sudden; the intensity in them set me back in my chair. “Have you decided which you’ll do to Pete here, Missy?”
My cheeks colored, but I didn’t avert my eyes. “Not yet,” I said with a straight face.
He watched me for a minute before his lips split into a wide grin. He looked at Pete as the rest of the table chuckled low in their throats. “I like this one, Petey. Best keep her around.”
Pete’s cheeks were red, too, but he didn’t look away or swallow his grin. “I aim to.”
After finishing our meals and taking care of the coffee tab, Pete drove us back to the farm, the conversation light and easy in the truck, like it’d been after our date on Friday night. We came to a stop in the driveway back at the ranch, but neither of us seemed quite ready to get out. We turned to look at each other at the same time, a bashful grin curling the ends of Pete’s mouth.
“Are things okay between us?” he asked. “I don’t want you to be uncomfortable on the farm.” He paused a moment before adding, “Or around me.”
I smiled, too. All the nerves
had left me at the restaurant. It’d been the game. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d laughed so hard at something so simple.
“Yeah, we’re okay,” I said.
His smile cranked up a little, but not all the way. He was still being hesitant. “I was thinking of doing a cookout tomorrow night. Nothing big, just some burgers and beers. I’d love it if you came. We could get to know each other a little more.”
“Okay,” I said, agreeing before I could think better of it. I’d enjoyed myself at breakfast too much to say no. And, I didn’t want to say no. I was tired of being careful. Right now, I just wanted to be happy.
“Alright then,” he replied, his grin widening even more. “Let’s get to work then.”
I climbed out of the truck with a smile and went to the barn to start the horses on their day.
Chapter Seventeen
Pete
Saturday
I had the grill going, a stack of burgers sitting on the picnic table ready to go, a cooler full of beers on the ground, and some banana pudding inside resting in the fridge that I’d whipped up this morning using my mama’s old family recipe. I had a moment to check I hadn’t forgotten anything before I heard the car coming up the driveway. A few seconds later, the engine cut off, and a car door slammed.
“I’m around back!” I called.
Emma came around the side of the house a little while later, a sweet smile on her face that kicked me hard in the gut to see. She was so damned pretty, wearing a flowered summer dress and sandals, her soft brown hair left loose to flow over her bare shoulders and down her back.
“Howdy,” she said. She lifted the plastic grocery bag dangling from one wrist. “I brought homemade sides. Macaroni salad and baked beans.”
“That was sweet of you. I was just about to put the burgers on.”
While I got the meat going, she busied herself at the table, pulling her plastic Tupperware containers of sides out and arranging them in a way that made some sense to her. She’d brought plastic serving spoons, too. She moved around the bag of hamburger buns and condiments, putting them in order on top of the red checkered tablecloth while I watched, a wide smile on my face.
She came to stand next to me at the grill, bringing that sweet vanilla smell with her, so strong I could smell it over the aroma of grilling burgers. For weeks, I hadn’t been able to smell vanilla without thinking of her. I wanted to bury my face in her neck and just take in as much of that scent as I could, the burgers be damned.
Emma pointed at a shady spot close to the house where Riley was curled up, nose to tail and dead to the world. “Every time I see that dog, he’s asleep. I can’t recall seeing him on his feet once since I started at the ranch.”
I snorted a laugh at that. “He’s one lazy son of a bitch, that’s for sure. But he’s been that way since he was a pup. He ain’t but eight years old.”
She laughed, too, the color high in her cheeks. “We had a few dogs on the farm growing up. But they never sat still. They’d run around the property from morning ‘til night, chasing each other and sticking close to our heels.”
“Riley sure ain’t that way. He sleeps about twenty-three out of every twenty-four hours!”
She laughed again, much deeper this time.
When the burgers were about medium well, I took them off the grill and handed Emma the steaming plate. She took it to the table while I put the cover on the grill and knocked the vents closed with the wooden end of the long metal spatula. I went to join her at the table, taking a paper plate when she handed it to me. I fixed a burger and scooped a few ample spoonfuls of sides onto my plate while she did the same.
“This looks great, Pete,” she said.
“Let’s hope it tastes good, too,” I replied.
She pushed her thick hair back and off her shoulders before digging in. I caught myself watching her too closely and looked down at my own food. I picked up my burger and took a big bite, juices and ketchup dripping down my chin.
“Was it hard at first?” she asked me, after dabbing some ketchup from the corner of her mouth with a napkin. “Running the farm?”
I nodded. “Oh, sure. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing.” It sometimes felt like I still didn’t, but I kept at it anyway, trusting things would turn out the way I needed them to in the end. “I grew up on the farm, so I knew how to do a lot of things. But my daddy handled paying all the bills and worrying over money. He died suddenly and wasn’t that old. I never got the chance to learn from him the way I would’ve liked to.”
“My mother died when I was pretty young,” she said in a soft voice. “I don’t really remember her. I know what she looked like because we have pictures. But I don’t recall the sound of her voice or have any clear memories of the two of us together. My sister swears that she does, but I don’t know how that could be when she’s almost two years younger than I am.”
“Do you miss her?” I asked and cursed myself out for being so thick. Of course, she did. I couldn’t have asked a dumber question. But her answer flat out surprised me.
Emma shrugged, her smile shrinking as her green eyes widened, the sadness making them much darker than usual. “I miss the idea of her. Does that make sense?” She paused, chewing her lip, but more to think, not for me to answer, so I just kept quiet and let her continue in her own time. “Growing up, I was jealous of other kids who had their mothers around. I wanted that so bad, but that’s not really the same thing as missing a person. And, my daddy was there. He made things okay for us.”
I took a bite of her macaroni salad. It was really good. I lifted an eyebrow. A girl who knew her way around a ranch — maybe even better than I did — was pretty as a picture, and could cook? I couldn’t believe how lucky I was all of a sudden.
And, more importantly, she was letting the door to that safe creep open again, a little at a time. I didn’t want to do anything to make it slam shut on me again. That had been terrible. I wanted to know everything about her. And, I wanted to tell her whatever I could about myself before she begged me to shut my mouth already and give her poor ears some rest.
“I miss my daddy every day,” I said. We had a nice rhythm going that I didn’t want to lose. She shared something, then I did. “We did so much together on this farm. I see him every place I look.” I glanced at the barn, expecting, as always, to see Daddy out there, still working in the hazy dark.
“Growing up, all my teachers and adults in town told me I wasn’t living up to how smart I was. I goofed around too much. I wasn’t even using half of the potential I had. But this farm is what my daddy cared about most. It’s where he lived with my mama, where they came home to after my mama had me at the hospital in town, where I learned just about everything I know today. I can’t imagine being anywhere else. This land is all that’s left of my family.”
Emma wasn’t smiling, but she was looking at me with such warmth in her lovely eyes, elbows on the table, her curled hands resting against the side of her head. “I want just what you have,” she whispered, and I leaned closer, putting my own elbows on the table, to keep hearing whatever it was she wanted to tell me. I couldn’t look away from her if I tried. “My own self-sustaining farm. I want to grow things and take care of horses, cows, and chickens. I just need to save the money to buy the land.”
“Can’t you work on your daddy’s farm?”
She’d taken the last bite of her burger. Smiling, she covered her mouth and finished chewing before she answered. “He sold off a bunch of land after my mama passed, to put me and Kasey through college and give us some seed money after. He still grows his own vegetables and stables our horses on the property, but I want more animals and land than that. I want to sell what I grow and stable other people’s horses, too. I want a full-service ranch.”
“Well, you’re welcome to stay here as long as you like,” I said, stopping well short of blurting out that I was willing to share whatever I had with her. But it was the truth. My heart was wide open for her to take or le
ave. “You fit in just fine. Lacey and I were worried about hiring someone new. We had our own rhythm going that took us years to settle into. But you picked it up without even trying. I can’t imagine the ranch without you on it.”
A pretty blush colored her cheeks, and she put her eyes on her empty plate, but she was grinning. “I really like it here. I was worried about finding a place back in Round Rock after being in Austin for so long. Most farms don’t need the kind of help I wanted to give.”
I took the last few bites of beans and macaroni salad, not wanting to waste a bite. The sun had set over our heads as we were talking and eating. Most of the light had just about drained out of the sky. Once my plate was almost licked clean, I looked up at her, my own cheeks turning red at finding her staring at me.
“I have something to show you,” I said. “It’s not part of the official tour.” I rose from the picnic table and managed to pull my long legs free of the bench without ending up on my ass.
“What is it?” she asked. She stood up and got free of the picnic table much more gracefully than I had. Riley was still asleep next to the house. No amount of movement would wake him. He’d follow me into the house later, but only after I called him four or five times. I’d swear he was going deaf, except he’d never listened to a damned thing I had to say when he was a puppy, either.
“It’s a surprise.” We walked past the stables, the horses silent inside — I saw Emma cock her head to listen to what was going on in there — and to the large equipment barn where I kept my tractor and stored the hay I baled for my horses.
I opened the doors and led her inside. It was dark in here, but I knew the place back to front and could find my way around with my eyes closed. I reached back for her hand. She curled her fingers around my own, and a thrill moved through me.
“This way,” I said and plunged into the dark, going straight to the back of the barn, moving in between the tractor and the baler. It smelled like oil and sweet fresh hay in here. I’d left the hatch open, so some of the light was drifting down onto our upturned faces once we reached the ladder. “Can you climb in those shoes?”