by Lori Wilde
When Reece returned, minus the cat, Lanie set Winnie on the floor. She smoothed her skirt, avoiding the fury in Reece’s eyes. Even so, she was conscious of the muscle that twitched in his jaw.
“That horse can’t stay here.”
Heat rose from Lanie’s neck to her ears, then closed around her cheeks. Certain her pale skin now burned a brilliant red, she looked up to respond that she would take Winnie home during her lunch hour.
But his scowl was fixed on Dot! Good grief—now she and Winnie were coming between mother and son. She opened her mouth to speak, but Dot beat her to it.
“Of course she can! I couldn’t let the poor little darling stay at home all by herself. You could hear her crying all over the neighborhood.”
Lanie blushed hotter. She hadn’t realized her pet would disturb the neighbors.
Winnie reached up and lipped the leather strap dangling from a bridle tacked to the pegboard display. Lanie lurched forward to rescue the merchandise from her animal’s inquisitive mouth.
Remembering Dot’s advice, she tapped the black nose, perhaps too lightly but enough to surprise the filly. “No!”
Unfazed, Winnie walked away and lay down among a pile of bags marked Fescue.
“See, she’ll be fine,” Dot told her son. “Now, how have you and Elaine been getting along this morning?”
Fine, until five minutes ago, thought Lanie.
“You have been nice to her, haven’t you?” Dot shook the newspaper under his nose.
Reece darted a glance at Lanie and nodded curtly.
“Good! Try to make it a habit.” Dot grasped Lanie by the crook of her arm and started past Reece. “If you’ll excuse us, we have work to do.”
Reece glanced at his watch. “Ten o’clock. I’d say it’s about time.”
“Don’t sass me, young man.” Their backs were turned to Reece as they walked to the office, and Dot smiled at Lanie’s startled expression. “Men. You gotta keep ’em in their place.”
For the rest of the morning, Dot kept Lanie busy. She explained about order forms, inventory, billing, accounts payable, and payroll procedures.
“Maurice insists we keep the profit margin on sales to farmers as low as possible,” said Dot. “When a farmer buys in bulk, a price difference of just a few pennies can determine whether his kids get new school shoes.” She handed Lanie the receipt book.
Though she barely knew Dot’s son, Lanie felt a warmth of emotion at the thought of his charitable attitude. “It’s very kind of Reece to do that for the farmers.”
Dot leaned back in her chair and stretched. “No,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s the farmers who were kind to us, especially during Albert’s last year with us.”
She closed her eyes and stayed that way for a long moment. So long that Lanie wondered if she had drifted off to sleep, but she didn’t want to ask and risk waking her.
When Dot’s eyes opened again, Lanie saw that they were full of pain. “My husband died of a massive brain hemorrhage.”
Instinctively, Lanie touched Dot’s hand. “I’m so sorry.”
Dot squeezed her hand in response. “About three years ago, Albert started forgetting things, making mistakes. He’d mix up orders and deliver stuff to the wrong farm, and then he’d get mad and curse the farmers for correcting him.
They all knew he wasn’t acting like the sweet Albert Masardi they’d always known. When he got worse, they watched out for him, bringing him back here when he took off in the truck and got lost. They even paid their full bills when Albert forgot to give me the sales slips so I could charge ’em.”
Lanie thought of her own father who, just a month before he died of a quick-spreading cancer, had impulsively bought her the orphaned filly. Preoccupied with hand-feeding the fragile foal, she hadn’t considered the strangeness of her normally thrifty father giving her the unusual gift, buying her brothers a used car, and providing a down payment on a small house.
“It must have been hard for you to see him so ill. What did the doctors say?”
“Albert wouldn’t go. We didn’t know until after he passed that his behavior was caused by a series of small strokes.”
Reece stuck his head in the door. “There’s a chef salad in the fridge whenever you two decide to break for lunch.” He started to leave, then nodded his head at the newspaper, still folded on top of the other desk. “Is that today’s paper?”
Dot nodded.
He sat down and helped himself to the front page. Lanie stood and stretched the kinks from her legs.
“I’ll go get us that salad,” Dot said. To Lanie, she added, “There’s only one place close by for lunch, and the hamburgers at Etta’s Eatery get tiresome real fast.”
When Dot left the room, Lanie noticed that the tiny cubicle seemed more crowded with just her and Reece than it had with the three of them.
Though only six or seven inches taller than Lanie’s five feet five, he appeared too large for the desk. Maybe it was the shorts. His tanned, well-muscled legs looked out of place in an office setting.
They looked better suited to straddling a tractor seat or even a horse. His shirt sleeves were rolled up to where shoulder muscles and biceps began. A pleasing sight, to say the least. But they, too, looked out of place, with his forearms resting against the edge of the desk.
No, those hard arms and big hands should be working on a car engine, or hefting bales of hay, or … wrapped around her.
Lanie gasped. Where had that thought come from?
At the sound, he turned and caught her full attention fixed on him. His eyes, the color of milk chocolate, questioned then studied her. Although his hair glistened from the sun like burnished gold, his eyelashes were enviably dark, almost black.
More than the raw, physical good looks, it was his brooding silence that held her transfixed. She discerned a quiet reliability about this man. It was a trait that she—spontaneous to the hilt —strove for, but which always seemed beyond her grasp.
Acutely aware that she’d been caught staring, Lanie cleared her throat and stammered, “I … uh … does that paper carry the horoscope?”
Reece leaned back in his chair and rested one ankle over his knee. A furrow formed between his brows. “You don’t really believe in that stuff, do you?”
“Only when it’s true. I like to see how close it comes to real life.”
Reece picked up the paper and opened it. “The day’s half over, but let’s see how close it is.” He scanned the page. “Mine says, ‘Take time to smell the roses. Don’t overlook a treasure.’” He half laughed, half snorted. “Right, and roses make me sneeze. What are you?”
Lanie smiled to think how literally he’d read his message. Must be an Aries. “Pisces,” she answered.
“Hmm. Yours might be close. ‘Put on your suit of armor—prepare to do battle.’ If your horse pulls another stunt like it did this morning, you’ll be doing battle with me.” He stared at her for a long moment.
“Your cat was just as guilty.” Lanie squirmed and debated whether she should help Dot with that salad, just to get away from his intense scrutiny. When Reece spoke again, his words filled the small room.
“Why didn’t you get a dog instead of a little horse?”
Lanie stiffened and lifted her chin. “Dogs jump on you and run your panty hose.”
His warm brown eyes swept over her, trailing down to the polka dots decorating her legs. He was doing it again. Making her feel a hunger unrelated to the lunch hour. The sensation was so new to her that she was unsure how to respond to the thoroughness of his gaze.
Dot swooshed into the room with a large salad and several small paper bowls. “I just saw the most darling sight, Elaine. Your horse is sleeping on bags of grass seed, and Maurice’s cat is curled up against her neck. You’d never know they were fighting just a little while ago.”
Lanie stood and moved the newspaper to make room for the food while Reece reached into a drawer for plastic forks.
“Well, darn!�
�Pardon me.” Lanie stopped in midmotion, forgetting for the moment that Dot stood waiting for her to clear the desktop.
“No worries.”
“Isn’t this just typical of my luck?” she said, tapping the newspaper’s front-page headline. “I moved to Bliss County to get away from suburban sprawl, and now it’s following me here!”
“What’s that, dear?” Dot pushed the paper aside and set her burden on the desk.
Reece heaped salad into the bowls. “She’s talking about the proposed highway that would come through the eastern end of the county. They’ve been planning it for months.” He nudged Lanie with his elbow. “Gonna suit up, Don Quixote?”
He was referring to her astrological prediction. “You betcha. I’m prepared to do battle.” She traced a finger along a map of the proposed route. Her timing couldn’t be worse. Merely days after she’d signed the mortgage papers on her house, she’d lost her job. And now this.
The headline said it all: Residents, businesses split over highway issue. She’d been so out of sorts these past few months she hadn’t bothered to keep up with the news. But she would do what she could now to prevent this road from going through.
If the highway were constructed as planned, the county would be irrevocably linked to the city. The shorter travel time would lure a host of commuters, turning her rural home into a suburban bedroom community.
Farmers would sell off their land to greedy developers. Lanie envisioned massive subdivisions littering the beautiful landscape of her new hometown. If the area around her developed as she imagined it might, her neighborhood, now zoned for agricultural use, could become residential. This would mean higher property taxes, a burden Lanie’s tight budget would not cover.
But worst of all, her horse wouldn’t be tolerated in a residential community. Lanie had already been uprooted once because of Winnie. She couldn’t afford to move again. And with her father gone and her brothers scattered around the state, she was ready for some stability in her life.
“It doesn’t much matter one way or the other to me. I’ll be traveling,” said Dot. “I wonder what Graceland is like at this time of year.”
Reece cast a sidelong glance at his mother. He took a bowl, doused his salad with dressing, and settled into a chair. “You can’t stop progress. Anyway, I could use the larger customer base.”
Lanie couldn’t believe her ears. “You’ve lived in this community all your life. How can you just sit back and let them bulldoze a highway through this beautiful county?”
Reece finished munching a forkful of salad and nonchalantly stared up at her as she towered over him, hands on hips. “I don’t plan to sit back. I’m gonna help ’em.”
Lanie looked at Dot, who was now poring over the article, for support. “Dot, you don’t want to see Bliss turn into another Kerbyville, do you?” Their neighboring county’s rapid growth had exceeded its ability to supply water. And traffic regularly congested the main travel arteries.
“No, but if we plan carefully, we can prevent that from happening here.” She handed Lanie a salad and settled down to eat her own lunch. “If you feel so strongly about it, why don’t you go to the Board of Supervisors meeting next week? Tell them what you think.”
“Lots of luck,” Reece said with finality. “The wheels are already in motion.”
“Not if I can help it.”
Dot seemed to enjoy the tension that filled the tiny office. A slow smile spread across her lips. “Elaine might just be the one to chock those wheels, Maurice. You may have met your match.”
His gaze snared hers. Even without his saying so, Lanie knew what he must be thinking. That she was not equal to the challenge before her. That there was no way she could tangle with this country boy—and win. His brown eyes dared her to argue.
“It’ll be a cold day in July,” he said at last.
4
It was almost bedtime when Lanie remembered Reece’s T-shirt. She found her slippers under the sofa and headed outside to the remains of the pool. As usual, Winnie tagged at her heels.
Dressed only in an oversized nightshirt, Lanie hugged herself against the unseasonably cool night air and grinned when she recalled his words from earlier that day. By the time she found the pool in the dark, her slippers were soaked from puddles left by an afternoon thunderstorm.
Lanie freed Reece’s sodden garment from the hole in the pool. She wrung out the water and felt a slight tug. In the next instant, the shirt was gone.
“Winnie, you come back here!” Like a flash, the horse squeezed through a gap in the fence rails. Lanie climbed over and took off after her.
“Come back, you little—”
A light flashed on in Reece’s bedroom. The glare from the window fell in a long rectangle on the grass in front of Lanie. Though safely cloistered at the edge of darkness, she dared not move. Reece already thought of her as a dingbat. She didn’t want to explain why she was traipsing through his yard in her nightshirt at ten o’clock.
While she watched, frozen by indecision, Reece walked to the window and cupped one hand between his eyebrows and the pane. Lord Almighty! The only two things between her eyes and his endowment were a window and a small scrap of towel held up by his free hand. Lanie bit her lip and winced at the tenderness caused by her episode with Winnie earlier in the day.
Reece shifted and appeared to look directly at her. She made like a tree, hoping he was blinded by the light in his room.
He turned and walked away from the window. One thigh peeked enticingly through the gap in his towel, and Lanie’s breath caught in her throat. She quickly averted her gaze. In the next moment, the light flicked off.
Something cold and wet grazed her ankle, and Winnie’s whiskers tickled Lanie’s knee. “Gotcha!” She tried to pry the shirt from the animal’s mouth, but Winnie clamped down harder for a game of tug-of-war. “Okay, if that’s the way you want it…” She lifted the little beast and shimmied over the fence.
While Reece’s shirt soaked in the bathroom sink, Lanie tweezed splinters from the back of her thighs. That horse was getting too big to be hauled over fences. Lanie removed another sliver and winced. Her neck ached from craning to see the elusive specks. Maybe they’d eventually work their way out.
She abandoned her futile efforts and turned her attention to Reece’s shirt. If You’re Not Hungry, Thank a Farmer. She sudsed and rinsed the garment, all the while thinking of what Dot had said about Reece insisting on discounted prices for farmers. He was obviously a caring and sensitive man.
Why, then, did he want this highway splitting through the county? Surely he knew some of his farmer friends would be displaced to make way for the road.
Lanie hung the shirt over her shower rod to dry and went to the living room to find the phone book. Winnie lay curled in the recliner, watching the images on television.
“Five months old, and you’re already a couch potato.” Lanie flopped on the sofa with the thin local phone directory she had picked up at the local Dine and Drive last week. “Let’s see. County Administration Office.” She jotted down the number and flipped the pages. The state highway department and several other numbers joined her list. “Tomorrow,” she told Winnie, “we take action.”
In the morning, Lanie ironed Reece’s T-shirt, hoping to counter the effects of last night’s tug-of-war. There, she thought. That looks much fresher. She eased a pair of slacks over her splinter-punctured thighs, shoved her phone list into her purse, and rounded up Winnie.
After her pet’s initial run-in with the gray cat, the animal had behaved admirably at the store. Lanie felt certain Winnie would easily settle into the work routine. And this way, Lanie wouldn’t have to leave her at home alone.
But Winnie had other ideas. The moment the door at Masardi’s opened, the horse caught sight of the feline fluffball purring around a customer’s legs. The woman’s young son squatted on the floor to pet the cat. Winnie fired after the cat like a bullet out of a gun.
“Look out!” cried Lani
e.
The woman grabbed up her child and tried to step out of the horse’s path. Winnie, taking the straightest course to her target, darted between the customer’s legs. The child giggled in glee. “Doggy! Doggy!”
Winnie rounded the corner in hot pursuit, her hooves spinning like snowbound tires. The cat, now perched atop a display shelf, watched the fun from his vantage point. Winnie ran past him and circled back around to the mother and child.
Lanie dashed to intercept her, but before she could grab the horse, a rope lariat snaked out and circled Winnie’s neck. The horse’s frantic flight abruptly halted, and she hung her head and snorted twice.
“Heh, heh. I’ve still got the touch.” Reece handed Lanie his end of the lasso, and his manner abruptly changed. “Keep your horse under control, okay?”
After the excitement had died down, Lanie approached Reece at the loading dock out back. He’d just helped unload a shipment of mulch. The morning sun beat down on his golden-brown skin, raising a bead of perspiration on his brow.
He signed the bill of lading and handed the clipboard back to the driver. Then he retrieved a handkerchief from his hip pocket and wiped his face before acknowledging Lanie’s presence.
“What’d your midget mule do now?”
“N-nothing.” Why did she get so flustered when he looked at her that way? Squinting in the late-morning sunshine, his eyes appeared hooded, like a hawk’s. That must be it. When his eyes turned fierce like that, she felt like the prey. “She’s an Arabian,” she said inanely.
“What?”
“Winnie’s not a mule. She’s a miniaturized Arabian horse.”
“Oh.” Reece folded his arms across his chest, waiting for her to get to the point.
Lanie decided to forgo the battle armor and try for a gentler approach. “I’m sorry about the commotion my horse caused. I’ll hold her tighter next time.” She rubbed at a mosquito bite on her wrist.