by Cait London
“’Morning, Roman,” they replied in chorus.
Just then Kallista came from the back room, a smile on her face, and Roman’s heart flipped over at the sight of her black sweater, shorts and boots. Her legs were smooth and fine and tanned and long and... He took one look at Jasmine’s ladies and summoned his courage.
“I’m out of dog bowls,” Kallista whispered as Roman walked slowly to her.
She was so fresh and pretty and sweet. Roman bent to kiss her parted lips lightly. “I’m wanting more than dog bowls, honey,” he said as her eyes widened.
His next words shocked her. “Do you like kissing me?”
Only as much as she liked breathing.... “Kissing is an activity that I—”
He smiled slightly, wistfully. “Uh-huh. You kiss every man as though you want to suck his soul from him.”
“I do not! How dare you come into my shop and call me a tramp!” Her mother had been a tramp and all her life Kallista had fought the mold. The hand she had just shot out, knocked over a mug, resting on a shelf. Roman caught the mug, and replaced it.
“Oh, I’d be the man to know you’re not, wouldn’t I?” he said, reminding her of how well he knew her body’s innocence. His hard mouth shifted as though pushing back a smile, the skin beside his eyes crinkling with humor. “It seems to me that I might be special to you.”
She strained to be calm and lied, “No, not at all.”
Roman took her hand, pressed a kiss into her palm, and tried not to spit out the taste of clay. Then he pressed the box with his mother’s cameo and the tatting shuttle into her hand. “These were my mother’s. I want you to have them.”
Maizie Murdock’s cheerful voice sliced through the silence. “You Blaylock men can purely make a woman’s heart race.”
“How’s Else’s husband, Joe? I heard he had a brush with pneumonia,” called Wanda Hightower.
“Joe is just fine.” Roman almost faltered, but he focused on Kallista and spoke quietly. “I never courted Debbie, but I’m courting you. You’re the first woman in my life and you’ll be the last. I’m not happy that we’ve got the events backward, but in my heart, you’re already my bride.”
She’d probably had men give her mountains of flowers, and fine jewelry, and they’d probably have taken her to some exclusive Caribbean hideaway to say the same thing, but he had to take care of Boone’s land and meet his promise.
“Oh, Roman...” Tears shimmered in her eyes, and Roman tumbled into their meadow green depths.
“I’d tell you about the promise I made to Boone, if I could. But I can’t. I’m sorry. Else wants to bake the wedding cake, so I’d appreciate it if you’d let her.”
The single teardrop glittering on Kallista’s lashes ripped through Roman’s heart. “I thought it would be a good start if I took you to dinner tonight. If you like, I’ll pick you up after work and—”
Kallista’s fingers brushing lightly over his bruised eye stopped him. She looked at him with clear emerald bright eyes, searching his face. “I like,” she whispered softly.
Shaken with emotion, Roman gripped her wrist, pressed a quick kiss onto the fine skin, and managed to walk out of the shop without a backward glance at the woman opening the small box. If he’d stayed, he’d have dragged her into his arms for a kiss that would have shocked the good ladies of Jasmine.
He sat in his pickup, gripped the steering wheel until he heard it creak. He couldn’t tell Boone’s secrets to the woman he wanted, and yet he’d asked her to trust him in the most basic of ways. Would she?
Well, fine, Roman thought with disgust hours later. He gripped the steering wheel of his pickup and veered around the buck deer sashaying across the highway. Luka, pressed by Igor, leaned against Roman’s shoulder and he reached to pat the greyhounds reassuringly.
The telephone call concerning the girl came just an hour before he was to pick up Kallista. Breaking their first date wouldn’t help her trust him. There had been deadly silence at the end of the telephone line when he’d called. “I have to go somewhere” wasn’t exactly a good excuse to a woman he wanted to claim, but it was as good as he could offer.
The girl was Boone’s grandchild, the same as Kallista, and Roman had a promise to meet. He forced himself to think about the girl, and what to say to her.... To tell Kallista that Hyacinth Walker was her half sister would necessitate unraveling Boone’s secret, his disgrace that his bigamist sons had taken women under other names and irresponsibly produced innocent children. Margaret Walker wanted Boone’s monthly checks, but did not want Hyacinth. The girl had been abandoned at a sleazy motel with Boone’s telephone number and enough money to buy a hamburger. Though terror trembled in her ten-year-old voice, she didn’t cry and it would be midnight before Roman could reach the trucker’s roadside motel.
“I can read, you know. I know exactly what my mother wrote on those papers. I’ve known how to steam envelopes open since I was five,” Hyacinth stated as haughtily as she could. “Don’t call me Hyacinth. That’s a sweet flower name and I ain’t no posy.”
In the afternoon light, the man who had slept on the room’s other bed was even more tough-looking than she first thought. The only good thing about Roman Blaylock was Big Boone’s Luka and Igor. Hyacinth remembered the greyhounds and when they curled up on the bed beside her, she released her tight grip on terror...but she hadn’t cried, not one drop, not since she read the papers her mother had sealed in the envelope... before dropping her off at the motel. All she had was her small Barbie suitcase and the pride that Big Boone had given her on her last visit. She held tight to the two greyhounds on either side of her, the only part of Big Boone she could hold. “Mister, if you didn’t have Big Boone’s dogs, you’d be road dust on my boots right now.”
She eyed the man with the black eye and the burned throat. He wasn’t no pretty-perfume smelling man, his hair black and shaggy, and his skin tanned by sun—like Boone’s. There were calluses on his hands, and Boone had said calluses showed a man worked hard, and most working men were good, because they didn’t have time to be anything else. “My mother signed papers that said she didn’t want me. I saw Boone’s name on them. So you hauled me into some judge-friend of yours and adopted me right after breakfast—I liked that bacon and egg breakfast, by the way. I purely hate dry cereal and water. I got a Blaylock name stuck on my butt now, and one wrong move on me, buddy, and I’ll make you sorry...Dad,” she added sarcastically, just to dig at him. “I said I’d go with you, but it’s only ’cause you got Big Boone’s dogs and he’s dead and someone needs to take care of them—boy, you sure don’t talk much, do you?”
“It seems to me that you’re doing fine all by yourself.”
“Just laying down the rules, mister.”
“While you’re working hard at that, think about what you want me to call you.”
Hyacinth stared at him, her mouth open. No one ever gave her a choice. “Man. You mean I get to pick a name?”
“You ought to have a name you like. Just make it simple and something to go with Blaylock.”
Then because too many promises had been made to her and broken, she tried not to get excited. He was even tougher looking than he’d been last night, his dark stubble had thickened, and the lines cut into his face. His black hair was coarser than hers, and one spear shot over his forehead. “Are you an Indian?” she asked.
“Part. Part Spanish. Part homesteader.”
“Mmm. A mongrel. I won’t hold that against you. But we’d better be driving to Boone’s house. Are Dusty and Titus still there?” They were kind old men with faces like aged leather, and she loved them—until her mother tore her away.
Hyacinth studied the man who had collected her, fed her, and bought her new clothes. “I’ll think about that checkup with the doctor. Boone took me to him when I was little, so if Boone did it, I guess it’s okay.”
Roman Blaylock reminded her of Boone—kind to animals, quiet, steady as a rock and a man who kept his promises... like when he said
he’d wait outside the bathroom when she showered. He’d gently used a brush on her tangled black straight hair, and fastened two new bright blue barrettes in it—he said he’d picked them and the new toothbrush and toothpaste up on his way to get her. Boone used to come after her, now and again, and when he did, he was mad—not at her, but at her mother. And like Roman, Big Boone had always brought a large bag of just perfect girl things.
The man knew she liked blue, and his voice was soft when he apologized for her new pink jacket; he hadn’t been able to find a warm blue one. No one but Boone had ever cared about her love of blue, a reminder of clear Wyoming skies.
Hyacinth scrubbed her hands over her face and dried the suspicious dampness on her new bib overalls. She sank into her new hot pink jacket and looked out at the rugged Wyoming mountains flying by the pickup window. When a girl’s mother didn’t love her, it hurt awful bad. She hadn’t known her father. This man didn’t look like a father; he looked like a cowboy and he kept a flat, old dried-up daisy in his wallet.
“Just what do I call you?” she asked, sorry for digging at him throughout the long trip. A man who picked the meat from café hamburgers and fed them to the old greyhounds in pieces couldn’t be that bad.
“You call me what you want. But I’m going to ask you to help me...and Big Boone.”
“Buckoo, I’d do anything for Big Boone,” she said, meaning it, as a spear of pain shot through her. Boone had been her rock, and now he was gone. Roman had that same slow way of speaking, as though he thought all his words out before opening his mouth. And when he said them, he’d abide by every word.
“You remember how Boone asked you not to say anything about how you came to stay at his house...about how he came after you, wherever you were? That’s what I’m going to ask you to do...all anyone needs to know is that from now on you’re my daughter...and you’re a Blaylock.”
“What’s being a Blaylock got to do with anything? My mother had lots of last names.”
Roman’s hard face softened as he smiled at her. “You’ve just picked up a whole lot of relatives, Hyacinth. They’ll be there when you need them. I will be, too. Every day...every night...you’re not going to be alone anymore.”
“And Dusty and Titus?” she asked cautiously, not wanting to give them up in exchange for Blaylocks. In her experience, everything came with strings and trade-offs. “Do I have to put up with some witch called Mrs. Blaylock?”
“Not at the moment. But I’m working on it. And she’s not a witch. She’s got my heart.”
Hyacinth stared at the man, her mouth open again. What kind of a man talked about his heart and a woman as though they were the same thing?
“I could cramp your style, buddy. I’m good at cramping styles. My mother said so.” Hyacinth wasn’t proud of that fact because her mother had been bitter about her “little tagalong.”
That night, Hyacinth settled into the small familiar bedroom and the greyhounds slept on the floor. Fully dressed, she lay very still and gripped her Barbie suitcase. The man was working downstairs, in Boone’s office, and he’d told her to come down if she couldn’t sleep.
The man wasn’t so bad, she thought, easing around Luka to stand. He reminded her of Big Boone and she’d have to trust him, for now. If Big Boone trusted the man enough to let him take care of all the Llewlyn’s fine things, then... She descended the stairway and, holding her suitcase, stood in the office doorway, studying the man.
He turned to her, then glanced back at the computer screen where words were flying across the surface. “That’s from my...someone I like.”
Hyacinth came to study the screen. “She’s a hacker, and a good one. She’s trying to open your security systems.”
“She’s smart,” Roman said in fond, proud tones. “And pretty, too. She looks like you in a way. Black hair, green eyes, pale skin.”
“Have you put the make on her?” It seemed an honest question and one Hyacinth had heard the adults in her life ask.
Roman frowned sternly at her, and Hyacinth began to giggle. “That’s what men do. Women, too. Didn’t you know?”
“Are you hungry?” he asked, and she knew it was an effort to derail her. Because she felt sorry for the poor lonely, beat-up, embarrassed cuss, she said, “Sure. Feed me something. I burned a kitchen once, and I don’t want to do that to Big Boone’s house.”
By the next evening, Hyacinth had discovered that Titus and Dusty and every animal on Boone’s place adored Roman Blaylock. She was soon in love with Rio and Else and all the rest of the Blaylocks who just happened to drop in with clothes and food. Whenever she felt uncertain, she’d feel Roman’s big hand on her shoulder...just like Boone’s. “This is my daughter,” he’d said proudly introducing her as if she were a top prize at a family show.
“You need some games on your computer and your hacker-woman is back,” she said around a mouthful of peanut butter and jelly sandwich. She sat on the sofa in Boone’s office, watching Roman punch in numbers to the computer. “Okay...I’ll stay until things aren’t sweet. But your cooking ain’t much.”
“Isn’t much,” he corrected. “But I’m glad you’re staying,” he said as though she pleased him. “We’ll start you on chores, first thing in the morning.”
“Holy hell,” Hyacinth exploded, remembering all the cleaning work she’d done for her mother. “If you got me here to make a slave of me, think again....”
“I thought maybe taking care of the pigeons, to start. It’s planting time, and I’d like you on the tractor with me to see if the rows are straight. Then that barn cat had kittens and we can’t find them. I don’t want to sink a pitchfork into hay and find—”
“Okay, okay.” Hyacinth tried for a bored tone when she couldn’t wait for morning.
By the end of the week, in which Roman spent every day with her, Hyacinth was in love with her new dad. She slept in his worn, soft shirt, just as she’d done when Boone kept her safe.
Eight
Roman glanced in his rearview mirror. He was a pitiful specimen of a man courting his intended bride. His hair was too long, past his collar, and in Cindi’s, formerly Hyacinth, enthusiasm to show him how useful she could be—and to make up for the sow and piglets she’d released intc the new sweet corn—she’d scorched his only good shirt His jeans had bleach spots on them and his emotions about facing Kallista were just as unstable as the denim cloth.
He’d ached for her, embarrassed himself by calling out her name in a morning dream—his body bearing a constant sensual ache that hard work didn’t diminish. He dreamed of Kallista’s warm drowsy look as she lay beneath him—all that soft sweet skin rosy from lovemaking.
He’d plundered her body and given her pain; she hadn’t an idea of the full measure of pleasure. Roman rubbed his forehead; what did he know about lovemaking? A teenage experiment in the back seat of a car, and the shattering one with Kallista beside the mountain trail, did not make him an expert of any kind.
He didn’t have time to study what women wanted during lovemaking; he just knew how he wanted to love Kallista—long and slow and sweet, taking care to treasure every inch, every memory of every touch. However, keeping Cindi occupied, clean and dressed was a full-time job—and making her feel as though she belonged. The girl’s rage and guilt, her emotions concerning her mother, led to the mortification of bedwetting. Dusty and Titus wouldn’t purchase underclothes for her, and Cindi didn’t want anyone in town to know she wasn’t in control.
Roman had taken her driving through several towns, and when she was cried out and tired and curled against him, he’d asked her if he could purchase more underwear for her. Since they were away from Jasmine, he’d said, no one would know. She’d agreed on the condition that he purchase some for himself, some spiffy new silk boxer shorts, because she figured that was fair. Wearing silk, which was not righteous on a man bred to the West, was a small price to pay to make her feel more comfortable. Though she changed into Roman’s shirt at night now, she still slept with her gif
t from Boone, a tiny suitcase close at hand.
Who was the man who had called earlier that week? The call haunted Kallista—he’d said he was her uncle. Though she had hunted for years, she hadn’t been able to find any record of her father or his relatives. It was as if everything having to do with them had been erased.
Then she saw Roman through the shop’s front window and stopping thinking about anything but him. From the shop’s workroom, Kallista watched him open the door. In the week since she’d seen him, Roman’s bruised eye had healed; dressed in a shirt with a scorch mark on his flat stomach, jeans with white blotches and wearing a wary look, he looked delicious. The thin, black-haired girl with him was dressed in a T-shirt, big overalls, and running shoes. The little girl carried a big white box and she looked up at him as though she adored him. Kallista sucked in her breath. With her hair in “puppy dog tails” on either side of her head, tied with colorful bands, and the spray of fleckles across her nose, the girl was the exact image of herself
Kallista placed her hand over her stomach, the familia sight stunning her. Boone had once stood with her, like Roman did now, bending low to whisper that she was as good as everyone else, and precious, and there was nothing to be frightened of as he introduced her as his “little friend.” There’s nothing to be frightened of, Kallie-girl Just hold your head up high. These are my friends and yours, too. You’re wearing new clothes and you’re prettiei than that new filly.
Roman’s big hand on the girl’s shoulder said she be longed to him, proving true the rumors that he’d brough his long-lost daughter to Boone’s home. Mort Raznik known as the fastest mouth in the territory, and Wilma Nigel gossiped that Roman’s times away from Jasmine were spent with another family—a high-nosed society woman who’d had his child. Roman had said that making a baby was the most important thing a man could do, and when he gave his body, he gave his bond. A searing pair shot through Kallista, tore down her stomach and ripped i open—Roman had a daughter he’d never mentioned and i bond to another woman....