“How about iced tea? And perhaps some cheese and crackers? They’re not too heavy. Maybe they’ll stay down.”
He hadn’t had cheese and crackers in years, not unless it was goat cheese on fancy rye crackers of some sort at one of those parties Jimmy had insisted he attend. Somehow, JD knew Tinkerbelle didn’t mean goat cheese on rye. Soda crackers and Velveeta would suit him nicely right now. He nodded.
He kept his eyes closed and pretended the breeze from the fan was cool as she drifted away again. He didn’t hear her coming or going, but he could catch her flowery scent as she passed. The kitchen must be nearby. He could hear her talking to Jackie. She talked with the kid much more easily than she did with him. Of course, Jackie probably didn’t swear at her.
Jackie returned with the tray, and JD almost felt disappointment. He didn’t waste time puzzling on that. He glanced at the boy’s pale, wary face and decided he’d better sit up and pretend he wasn’t dying. Learning the responsibilities of fatherhood at his age and in this condition seemed pretty ludicrous, especially after thirty-two years of doing what he damned well pleased.
Just throwing his foot over the edge of the couch warned he would die sooner than later if he tried that again. Gritting his teeth, JD propped the bandaged foot on a convenient coffee table and sat up against the back of the couch. It had a good high back, one a man could feel comfortable with. The seat sank down deep so he could sprawl, and he sighed with relief once his foot settled. He sipped the iced tea and decided Miss Toon was right. He definitely preferred this over water.
“What are we going to do about the sheriff?” the boy whispered.
“Why does she think you’re my brother?” JD whispered back.
The kid shrugged. “Heck if I know. You don’t look much like a father, I guess.”
If his head didn’t hurt so damned much, that thought might make him laugh. Ever since he’d discovered he had a fifteen- year-old son, he’d felt like Methuselah. “All right, we’ll just let her think that. You’re my brother, Jackie Smith. A hick sheriff doesn’t need to know more.”
Jackie nodded uncertainly. “I guess. She’s kind of nice. She teaches at the high school here and knows all about Monster House.”
And probably disapproved of the video game thoroughly, but JD didn’t add that. “Well, we wouldn’t want her mixed up in all this then. We’ll talk to the sheriff in the morning and be on our way. She won’t ever know.”
The boy squirmed uncomfortably. “I don’t know about that. The engine died before the truck got hit. The whole thing’s in pretty bad shape now. And the doctor said you should stay off that foot. That’s your gas-pedal foot. I don’t see how we can go anywhere.”
“What about the Harley?” JD demanded.
“What about the computers?” Jackie asked.
Stalemate. They couldn’t haul computers on a Harley. He couldn’t hold the blamed bike up with one foot either. Not for long, anyway. “All right. Send Miss Toon back in here. I’ll see what we can do.”
He was too tired to think. If it hadn’t been for Uncle Harry and Nancy, he could just catch a ride to the nearest dealership and buy a new truck. But he couldn’t let either of those two connivers know where he and Jackie were yet. Maybe this impulsive jaunt across middle America hadn’t been such an intelligent idea, but it was all he’d thought of when the walls started crumbling around him. It was what he’d always done when things turned bad, and he could trust only himself. In his eagerness to escape, he’d promised Jackie the ocean, but maybe the kid would settle for those lakes. Maybe.
The pixie drifted in again. Jackie had turned a light on, and this time JD could see trim, suntanned legs running up into hideous wide-legged denim shorts that carried up past her hips into a bib over her breasts. If she had breasts, that is. A man couldn’t tell beneath all those denim pockets. Bib overalls, for crying out loud. He really had landed in the outback of nowhere.
But then JD’s gaze reached her face, and he figured the blow to his head had smacked him into another dimension. Wide green eyes filled the area above sharp, high cheekbones. If it weren’t for the pouty pink lips, he’d vote her as best model for one of those velvet paintings of wide-eyed waifs. Of course, those paintings didn’t have spiky white-blond hair. Tinkerbelle did. And she was a schoolteacher? They didn’t make schoolteachers like that when he was kid, or he’d have gone to school a little more often.
“If you’re tired, I thought Jackie might help you into Aunt Hattie’s room. It’s on this floor, so you won’t have to climb stairs.”
She spoke with such soft diffidence that he scarcely heard her. How could a schoolteacher keep a roomful of teenagers in order when she talked like that? JD ran his fingers through his hair and winced as they came in contact with his throbbing head. A bed sounded incredibly good right about now.
“I don’t mean to impose,” he answered stiffly. “I don’t want to put your aunt out of her bed.” Miss Toon might look like an alien, but he felt like one. He’d never lived in the country, never had an aunt of any sort, had never relied on the kindness of strangers. He’d been insane to cross the country in that old pickup, but he hadn’t wanted Harry and Nancy tracing airplane tickets. Damn. He still couldn’t believe Harry.
The pouty lips smiled shyly. “I don’t think she’d mind. She’s over in Hopkinsville.”
JD didn’t know where or what Hopkinsville was and didn’t bother asking. “If you’re sure she won’t mind,” he agreed wearily.
“I’m sure she won’t,” she answered with a hint of amusement. “Shall I call Jackie? I thought he might like a cot in the room with you, but I can make a place for him upstairs, if you’d prefer.”
“I don’t want to trouble you. You’d best leave him with me.” Tilting his head, JD looked at her long and hard, drinking her in as if she were the tall, cool beer he needed. He couldn’t fit all the pieces together. The hick clothes, the punk hair, the shy voice.
She retreated from him even as he stared. “It’s no trouble at all. I have plenty of room.” She slipped away before he could say anything else.
As she left, JD contemplated with bemusement the new ache she’d aroused, the one forming a hard lump behind his zipper. He didn’t think this was a particularly appropriate time to end his jinx with women. But his rebellious body had never had a lick of sense.
Great. Just great. He groaned, leaning his pounding head against the pillow as he considered his new predicament. He’d stolen his own program and computers, practically kidnapped a kid he didn’t know to keep the kid’s stepfather from killing him, and now his only means of transportation lay in a cornfield—while he sat here with a broken foot and a hard-on for a woman who looked like Tinkerbelle.
Wasn’t life just a bowl of cherries?
Chapter 4
“Miss Toon.”
“Nina,” she responded absently, beating the eggs.
“Nina Toon?”
She thought she heard laughter in her guest’s tone and watched him warily. More stocky than tall, with narrow hips that emphasized his muscular shoulders, John Smith permeated her kitchen, making her pretty wicker stools seem small and unstable in comparison. She couldn’t remember ever seeing a man in Hattie’s kitchen. Maybe that’s why he seemed to dominate the butcher-block counter.
She glared at his smirk. Nina couldn’t call her unexpected guest a handsome man by any standard she knew. Pierce Brosnan was her ideal. Or Sean Connery. Polished, sophisticated men with charm and wit and spectacular smiles. This man had broad cheekbones, a long jaw and powerful nose, a chin that stuck out entirely too far, and a smirk she’d like to wipe off his face. And he needed a haircut.
“That’s right. Nina Toon. Do you have a problem with it?” she asked warily.
“Kind of like Looney Tunes? Cartoons? Ninatoons. It fits. Where’d you get a name like that?”
She suspected she should whop him upside the head with her frying pan, but she didn’t have much experience at entertaining strange me
n as houseguests. “Most of the Toons around here live across the lakes,” she replied stiffly. “They and a few other families formed a Catholic community back in the 1800s. We just kind of proliferated, I guess. I think it was my grandfather came over this way, but I have about ten zillion relatives back at Fancy Farm. I go over to the picnic every once in a while.”
“The picnic?”
Well, she knew he wasn’t from around here. She poured the eggs in the pan. “The Fancy Farm picnic. It’s the oldest picnic in the world. It’s in the Guinness book. They’ve been holding a kind of homecoming picnic over there the first weekend of August since 1880. All the politicians come. It’s kind of a kickoff for the fall political campaigns.”
“All that hot August air and politicians, too. I imagine it’s delightful. Is it time for me to pop the bread in the toaster yet?”
She knew he poked fun at her, but she couldn’t think of any way of politely telling him where to jump off. If Jackie had made those snide remarks, she would have clipped his hair to the scalp. But John Smith wasn’t a teenager. John Smith. He really did think she was a fool.
“By all means, Mr. Smith. Where did you leave Pocahontas?” She didn’t know where that had come from or what perverse quirk of her tongue let it slip. She didn’t dare turn around to see how he took it.
“Back in Arizona with her other Native American friends.”
The toaster clicked as he pushed the bread down, and she dared a quick peek at him. He didn’t seem put out by her sarcastic question. In fact, he was watching her with a Cheshire-cat grin on his face. Nina hurriedly returned to scrambling the eggs. “Pocahontas was an easterner, Mr. Smith. I’d think she would find herself a trifle out of place in Arizona.”
“That’s okay. I’m a trifle out of place here. What is this place called?”
“Kentucky,” she answered dryly.
“I knew that, Miss Toon. My geography may be poor, but I can read a map. I just don’t know where in Kentucky I got knocked off that map.”
She reminded herself he was a guest and not one of her students. She really didn’t need this complication in her life right now. “Madrid,” she answered with a sigh.
“Muh-drid,” he repeated, pronouncing it like the city in Spain.
“Mad-rid,” she corrected, accenting and flattening the first syllable. “Like the New Madrid fault. You know, where the huge earthquake fault is. It’s just across the Mississippi from here. They keep telling us we’re ripe for a big one any day.”
“Oh, swell. I’ve come all the way across the country to go from one earthquake fault to another. With my luck, the big one will hit while I’m here. I don’t suppose you see a big black cloud hanging over my head with lightning bolts shooting out of it, do you?”
She laughed. A large man with long hair sitting at her counter popping toast from her toaster was surreal enough for one morning. The thought of a black cloud floating around her kitchen with lightning bolts shooting out of it was just too close to how she felt right now. “Every cloud has a silver lining, Mr. Smith,” she chirped.
She could feel his glare clear through her new cotton chemise dress. Ignoring him, she scooped the eggs into a blue willow bowl.
“JD,” he answered, without any seeming relevance.
She turned and squinted at him. “JD?”
“John David. People call me JD.”
She grinned. “As in, juvenile delinquent?”
“Juris doctorate,” he threw back at her, carefully spreading a thick hunk of butter on the soft toast.
“James Dean.” She took the rest of the toast slices and cut thin slivers of butter to melt on them while he struggled with his hunk.
“James Dean was a stupid punk with no ambition. He liked making an ass out of himself. I do not and will never resemble James Dean.” He took a hungry bite out of the toast.
“You look more like a victim of war this morning.” She amazed herself. She talked with this stranger as if she’d known him all her life. Better. The boys she’d grown up with had been tongue-tied most of the time.
She’d grown up here on the farm with Great-aunt Hattie, a confirmed spinster, and she’d seldom had an opportunity for bantering with any man. The boys she’d gone to school with didn’t count. She still thought of them as boys. She’d never had a man in the kitchen or any other room in the house, except when the preacher came calling, and he scarcely counted. She’d never related well to strange men. She’d hoped college would change that, but not many men attended teaching classes, and she’d commuted, so she hadn’t had time for hanging around afterward in the pizza parlor or wherever men hung around. Anyway, according to her aunt, all men were predatory. And she distinctly felt like prey when this one looked at her the way he did now.
He didn’t seem to notice her ignorance. Rather than hobble around on his good foot, he continued sitting at the counter as he hollered “Jackie!” at the ceiling. The sound of the shower had stopped some minutes ago.
“I can keep his eggs warm. Teenagers like to make sure their faces haven’t been rearranged overnight. I suppose I must have spent inordinate amounts of time in front of a mirror when I was that age, too.”
“When was that, last year?” He sat back so she could ladle a generous helping of eggs on his plate.
He made her feel giddy. Nina wanted to laugh like a teenager. Instead, she placed Jackie’s eggs in the warming oven and scraped out the pan. “Not unless I was a child prodigy, which I assure you, I was not.”
“I was, but no one knew it.” He gestured at the stool beside him. “Sit down and eat before your breakfast gets cold.”
“I’m not much of a breakfast eater.” She remained standing by the sink as she sipped her tea. Looking for a different direction for her thoughts, she glanced out the window. The roses needed watering. This early heat wave would shatter the blooms before the bake sale Saturday.
The buzz of the hair dryer filled the awkward silence. Then the doorbell rang, and the hair dryer shut off. Jackie must be listening from upstairs.
Jackie had said they would put his dad in jail if she called the sheriff. She wondered where their father was and how this man felt about that. Nina watched her guest at the counter, but he had casually returned to eating his eggs and sipping his coffee, as if the ringing bell had no significance for him. Maybe he wanted their father put in jail. She couldn’t quite understand cause and effect here, but she’d had to call the sheriff. If she hadn’t, Gary would have. Or Bob, when he towed the truck out.
Without a word, she swept past Mr. JD Smith into the front room. At this hour, it could only be Sheriff Hoyt.
He stood on the front porch, hat in hand, revealing his crew cut. She’d known Hoyt forever. He’d been a short, fat little boy in grade school, but he’d begun growing in junior high. He’d started working out in the gym after he made the football team. Now his shoulders stretched considerably broader than his stomach, but she still saw him as that boy who couldn’t bend over to tie his own shoes. She gestured for him to come in. His size didn’t make her feel uncomfortably aware of his physical presence as the man’s in the kitchen did.
“We’re having breakfast in the kitchen, Hoyt. Come on back.”
As he followed her, Nina contemplated the overabundance of males cluttering her hitherto all-feminine domain. The stranger gave the sheriff a short nod. Hoyt took the mug she handed him but didn’t add cream or sugar. Neither spoke. She’d seen two male dogs size each other up in much the same way. She wondered when they would begin circling and growling.
“Sheriff Hoyt Stone, JD Smith. Have a seat, Hoyt. I don’t like people towering over me.”
Hoyt gave her a vaguely surprised look, as very well he might. She’d just said more to him than she’d probably ever said in her life. She hadn’t thought she got chatty when she was nervous, but there was a first time for everything.
“We ran a check on that license plate you gave us, Nina,” Hoyt said as he took a stool on the other side of the
counter. “It was stolen a few days ago.”
“That’s why the van didn’t stop then,” she said with satisfaction, glad to have the mystery explained. “It must have been stolen, too.”
“License plate?” JD raised his rugged eyebrows. “You got the license plate?”
She shrugged diffidently. “It was either that or chase after the van like on TV. I didn’t think the Toyota would catch up though. Four cylinders have definite drawbacks.”
Nina gazed in astonishment at the warm look of approval in his dark eyes. She couldn’t remember any man, anywhere, anytime, looking at her like that. She had an instant understanding of all the love stories she’d ever read. A look like that could lay a woman flat and roll right over her.
“Chasing after the van would have been dangerous, Nina,” the sheriff said with disapproval before turning back to JD.
“Mr. Smith, I’ll need a look at your driver’s license for the report.”
JD shrugged and reached for the coffeepot Nina had left on the counter. “My wallet wasn’t in my pocket when I went to bed last night. It must have fallen out in the truck. Has anyone towed it in yet?”
Nina opened her mouth to protest that Jackie had the wallet when he paid the clinic last night, but for some reason, she closed it again. Maybe she was protecting Jackie.
“Bob was out there working on it this morning. I’ll have him look for your billfold.” Hoyt gave JD a suspicious look. “We ran a make on your tags, too. They’re registered to a James Robert MacTavish in California.”
JD shrugged again. “He loaned me the truck to transport the Harley. I hope you haven’t called him yet. I’ve got to figure out some polite way of telling him I’ve wrecked his baby. He was in the process of completely restoring it.”
“I’ll need to call and confirm the story. I’ve been waiting for a decent hour out there.”
Garden of Dreams Page 4