He couldn’t answer both those questions at once. Besides, the temptation to touch this merry whirlwind was so powerful that Carter caught her by the waist and hoisted her up the top two steps.
The oversize coveralls she must have found in a closet hung clownlike from her slender frame. Far from being humorous, the effect reminded him of how easily she could step out of it. And out of a few other things, while she was at it.
She smiled at him, inches away. A smudge of dirt on one cheek and her shiny nose failed to distract him from the shapely pink lips and inquisitive gaze. What she needed, he decided, was to be kissed decisively.
But not with an audience. And not by him.
Carter set her down. “I have to take supplies out to my father. He doesn’t drive anymore.”
“Good plan.” Buffy untied her apron. “Allie loves car rides. Let’s all go.”
“I refuse to visit old Murdock,” said Zeppa from the porch. “He’s too crabby. You can leave the baby with me.”
“No, she won’t,” Carter was surprised to hear himself protest. “You heard what she said. Allie loves car rides.”
It wasn’t that he didn’t trust the old lady. She’d baby-sat Billy and Willie’s kids often enough. For some reason, he simply enjoyed being close to the little girl.
“Also, she’s likely to get hungry soon,” Buffy added. Carter was admiring her devotion when he remembered that feeding the baby involved partially undressing.
Well, who would see anything out in the country? As for Carter, he’d keep his attention right smack on the road.
He refused to start thinking about Buffy’s breasts, round and soft as they might be. Or the rest of her, either. He already had enough shameful indiscretions—two, anyway— stuffed into the closets of his memory.
It didn’t relieve his mind a single bit that one of those indiscretions might possibly involve her.
Zeppa released the baby. “You keep her out of the sun.”
“Absolutely.” Buffy kissed the older woman on the cheek. “The place is ready for you to move in. Be careful on the stairs.”
It was the first affection Carter had seen anyone in Nowhere show toward Mazeppa. She opened her mouth twice, but no words came out, and she closed it again without speaking.
If people realized it would render her silent, he thought, they’d be hugging and kissing Mazeppa all day long.
*
She ought to blurt out the truth right now, Buffy reflected as the tow truck bounced along Cross Street, past the square brick courthouse. The longer she withheld it, the madder Carter was likely to get.
Perhaps she should break it to him gently, she decided as they turned onto Main Street. “You may not remember this,” she began, “but we met before.”
His back stiffened. “I thought I recognized you. You’re the lady from the, the, the donation bank.” Since she’d never before heard him stutter, this must be a sensitive topic.
“It was a dumb job for me,” Buffy admitted. “I was supposed to be the clinic’s spokeswoman, kind of like a model and a public relations representative rolled into one. As if I knew anything about medical clinics! They should have sent a nurse to sign up donors.”
Carter showed no reaction. In profile, he reminded her of a Roman sculpture—pale, icy cold and probably equipped with a massive sword. No, you don’t mean that.
Buffy plunged ahead, chattering to clear her mental cobwebs. “My husband Roger didn’t think it was prestigious enough for me to open a dress shop, which is what I always wanted to do. See, when I met him I was working as a buyer for a department store. I was a big fan of his fashion designs, which blinded me to what sort of man he was underneath all that flash and talent.”
“A buyer?” Carter repeated. “They paid you to buy clothes?”
She laughed. “In a way. I would review the designers’ new lines, go to the fashion shows, all that fun stuff, and pick out what I thought suited the store’s clientele. That’s how I met Roger.”
“Your ex?”
“Right.” They were approaching Gigi’s Grocery Store when she noticed a small boarded-up shop. “What’s that place?”
“Used to be a pet store,” he said. “Until everybody in town got as many pets as they had room for.”
A former pet shop would require a lot of renovating and sanitizing, Buffy thought. The last thing she needed were changing rooms that smelled like wet dog. If she intended to open a consignment dress shop, which was the only way she could think of to make money, she’d have to find somewhere else.
Still, she couldn’t help imagining a sign dominating the storefront. What would she name her store? A Touch of L.A.? Lovely to Look At?
Oh, heck, in this town, people went straight to the point. She’d call it Buffy’s Boutique. It was truthful and both words started with the same letter, which seemed classy.
Weinbucket Real Estate lay alongside the bank. Someone there might know of a place available with no money up-front, she thought, and decided to consult an agent later.
Carter halted the truck in front of Popsworthy’s Dry Goods Store. “You can stay in the truck if you’d rather.”
“Why would I do that?” Buffy’s penniless state made it all the more fun to watch someone else shop.
“Just cause--you aren’t going to tell anybody, are you?” Carter asked.
“About what?”
“What I did the first time we met.” He avoided her gaze. Apparently he’d been brooding since she mentioned the subject. “I didn’t know the punch was spiked.”
“Neither did I until later,” she said. “The hotel manager called to apologize in case anyone from the conference had interrupted our meeting or behaved badly. But I don’t mind people staggering a little. That’s kind of normal in L.A.”
“I was completely, totally snockered for the second time in my life,” Carter continued. “I’m not proud of it, I can tell you that.”
“You weren’t totally drunk, though, right?” she said. “Just enough to relax you.”
“If you put me in a race with a blind cow on loco-weed, she’d have won.”
A fist clenched inside Buffy’s stomach. She’d assumed that, at some level, Carter must have wanted to create a little boy or girl. Maybe he didn’t expect to meet them in person, but he might be receptive to the idea.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. Her pie in the sky had just fallen smack in her face. “You didn’t have any intention of donating sperm? What did you think you were doing?”
His answer came out strained. “I thought it was a fund-raiser for the school district.”
“We did give a small sum to your designated charity.” Honesty forced her to add, “Like, ten bucks.”
“But the other donation?”
“That was for—well, you know what it was for.”
He smacked his forehead. “How humiliating. If people found out what I’d done, I’d have to keep my face buried under the hood for the rest of my life.”
This discovery threw a monkey wrench into Buffy’s plans, whatever a monkey wrench was. Her insemination with the wrong sperm hadn’t simply been a mistake on the part of the clinic. Carter’s donation in the first place had resulted from his being drunk and confused.
In a way, she herself had helped to lead him astray. She was the one who’d recited, with appropriate emotional inflections and while wearing invitingly low-cut clothing, the clinic’s spiel about loving families and their need for help producing children. She was the one who’d arranged transportation for him and two other men in the clinic’s van.
Things were worse than she’d believed. A less optimistic woman might consider them hopeless.
Carter was a decent man. Even leaving aside the hunky muscles and the appealingly boyish hair, he put Roger in the shade. But every man Buffy had ever met had a limited tolerance for feminine missteps. Lose your balance and you found yourself being booted off the trapeze without a safety net to break the fall.
She had to regroup. Wit
h Carter’s lean body so close and only the baby seat between them, however, she couldn’t begin to formulate a new strategy right now.
“I won’t tell anybody,” she promised, which seemed to reassure him. “Believe me, the clinic’s business is confidential.” Unless you have a good lawyer, she added silently. Thinking of lawyers reminded her of yet another touchy matter. “By the way, I did call Mr. Fringo. I’m afraid we can’t pry any money from my ex right away. I’ll pay you as soon as I can.”
Carter frowned. “How will you do that?”
“I’ll handle your housekeeping and cooking to earn my room and board while I’m here,” she proposed, briskly and firmly so it might not occur to him that he had the right to refuse. “As for the money you spent on the parts, I’m planning to sell dresses on consignment to earn enough for a down payment. Then, when I get to Dallas, I’ll sell the sports car and buy something cheaper, and pay you the difference.”
“You’re moving to Dallas?” He sounded perplexed. Or possibly disappointed, but she didn’t trust her instincts in this situation.
“Or else San Antonio or Austin,” Buffy amended. “Someplace where I might find a job. I mean, there’s no reason I should stay in Nowhere Junction, is there?” She caught her breath.
“No, uh...” He let the words trail off. “Guess not.” Disappointment twisted inside her, but what had she expected?
Time to get moving. Buffy unstrapped the baby and, when Carter came around the truck, handed the little girl into her father’s arms. Only he didn’t know he was the father, and she was beginning to wonder if she’d ever figure out how to tell him.
There certainly was no chance for a private chat in the dry goods store, a sort of department store that sold everything from clothes to auto parts to farm tools. Ladders reached up to high shelves, assorted Western-style clothes crammed racks, and cowboy hats hung from pegs. Buffy couldn’t figure out how you sorted through the merchandise; it was nearly impossible with a baby in your arms. But the proprietor, a man with thinning hair and pale, unblinking eyes, easily produced the items on a list that Carter handed him.
After leaving his purchases in the truck bed, Carter led the way to the grocery story. “Aren’t you afraid they’ll get stolen?” Buffy asked, glancing back. “And don’t tell me everybody in town is honest, because you already mentioned there are strangers.”
Inside, he took a cart, ignoring a bent wheel as he pushed it along. “It’d take a hell of a nerve to swipe stuff out of my truck right in front of God and everybody.”
“All the same, you should have a compartment to lock up your stuff.”
“Too much bother.” He strode along the narrow aisles, piling canned goods into the cart. They skirted the produce section as if it sold poison. Buffy peered wistfully at the display of avocados, their Texas-size prices beyond her reach. Then she remembered that right now even the cheap avocados in California would be out of her reach.
“Doesn’t your father eat fresh vegetables?” Buffy asked, grateful that the baby was so fascinated by the surroundings that she wasn’t fussing at all.
“He grows them himself.” Carter piled his selections onto the front counter.
“He butchers his own meat, too?” Buffy hoped the man’s protein intake wasn’t restricted to canned tuna.
“That old coot?” asked the plus-size woman behind the counter. “He buys a side of beef at a time and stores it in the freezer.”
“I suppose he milks his own cow and churns the butter, too,” she said.
“Durn straight,” responded the woman, who’d jumped right into the conversation.
“You must be Gigi.” Adjusting Allie on her hip, Buffy stuck out her hand. “I’m Buffy.”
“Yep, whole town knows who you are.” Gigi gave her hand a firm shake. “How’re you and the cat hitting it off?”
“She changed her name,” Buffy said.
Gigi quirked at eyebrow at Carter. “That true? Without so much as a meow?”
“She’s Toast,” he said.
“You got rid of your cat?” The woman glowered.
“Just her name. It’s Toast now.”
“Because she’s tan,” Buffy explained.
“I see you’re a woman who knows her own mind,” Gigi remarked as she bagged the groceries. “I like that.”
“Thank you.”
Outside, Carter stowed the groceries in the truck cab behind the seat. His other purchases remained undisturbed in the bed, Buffy was relieved to see.
“Oops, nearly forgot the mail.” Carter ducked his head apologetically. “You sit right here. No sense disturbing the baby again.”
“Okay.” Buffy watched his lean, confident body march down the block to the drugstore, which apparently doubled as the post office.
She’d been struck, the first time she saw him, by how real he seemed compared to most of the men at the hotel, with their trendy hairstyles and gym-buffed builds. Now, witnessing him in his natural milieu, she felt almost privileged. This was a vanishing world, small towns and all. Not vanishing anytime soon though, she hoped.
He returned with a sheaf of envelopes and magazines, and they headed out of town. As they left behind the last adobe house, she settled back to watch the countryside unfold.
Fences marked the boundaries of the ranches, although Buffy couldn’t see any ranch houses or outbuildings. Just miles of rolling pastureland, punctuated by the occasional oil well or clump of trees. Male cows—she supposed she should think of them as cattle--stood around in small groups, chewing and daydreaming.
The scope of the land made it hard to remember that it seemed normal, at Roger’s house in Beverly Hills, to have only a green strip bordering the flagstone driveway. Yet that property, with its swimming pool and airy modern architecture, had no doubt cost more than a lot of these ranches.
“You deliver your dad’s stuff every week?” she asked.
“That’s the idea.”
“It’s kind of funny, that I get to meet your father when I’ve only been in town for two days,” she said.
His forehead furrowed. “What’s funny about it?”
“I was married to Roger for five years and I never met his mother. I think her name’s Louise and she lives in Ohio.” Or it might have been Illinois, she amended silently.
“Why not?”
“She never visited, and when I answered his phone, she didn’t even greet me, just asked for her son as if I was the maid.” Buffy shrugged. “I guess she gave up on daughters-in-law after his second divorce.”
“His folks didn’t attend your wedding?” Carter sounded almost angry, as if they’d violated the rules of decent behavior.
“We were married in Las Vegas.” She’d understood why, the third time around, Roger hadn’t been eager for a big wedding. Still, she’d insisted on flowers, a white gown and music, and her mother and sister had cried their eyes out. In retrospect, possibly they’d been less than thrilled about her choice of husbands, but at the time she’d interpreted the reaction as sweet sentimentality. “It was a small ceremony.”
“Seems odd,” Carter said. “My dad’s a bit of a hermit, but he says hello to people.”
“Does he operate a ranch?” she asked.
“He owns one, but he rents most of it to his neighbor, Fordyce Huggins, who’s retiring as town mayor.” Carter rested an elbow in his open window. “Since my mom died ten years ago, Dad’s kept close to the house and shut other people out.”
Buffy tried, and failed, to imagine anyone voluntarily living in such isolation. “He must be lonely.”
“He’s got a couple of dogs named George and Lucas, after his favorite film director,” he said, “and a lot of DVDs and books.”
“We should invite him to dinner while I’m here,” she said.
“Dinner? My dad?” He was so startled, he nearly lost his grip on the wheel.
“Why not?” Buffy asked. “He has to eat, doesn’t he?”
“Inviting someone to dinner, that’s
like a social occasion,” Carter said. “Dad hates socializing.”
“He won’t need to talk. Mazeppa and I do enough of that for everybody,” Buffy pointed out.
“You’re welcome to bring it up,” he said dubiously. “By the way, when we first get there, I’d better approach the house alone.”
“Why?”
“Dad’s suspicious of strangers,” he said. “I’ve learned not to visit after dark, since the occasion when he fired a warning shot over my head. Ever since he stopped having a phone, there’s no way to call ahead, so we’re not expected.”
Maybe bringing Allie hadn’t been such a good idea. “Is he losing his mind?”
“Being paranoid doesn’t make him senile. If any criminals show up, it might save his life, as he’s pointed out more than once,” Carter said. “The only law enforcement in Nowhere Junction is a part-time sheriff. Most ranchers figure they’d best be prepared to stand and deliver for themselves.”
“Seems to me, you’re the one delivering,” she pointed out.
“Gives me an excuse to check on him.”
They turned onto a gravel-strewn private lane that wound through clumps of bushy trees for a considerable distance. “I’ll bet he doesn’t get many door-to-door salesmen,” she said.
“No telemarketers, either,” he noted. “He says reading in the bathtub is one of the great lost joys of modern life.”
“What does he read?”
“Louis L’Amour,” Carter answered in a tone that implied it was almost too obvious to mention.
They rounded one more grove of trees and Buffy spotted a one-story adobe ranch house. Judging by its size and layout, it must have been quite comfortable once. Now, the paint was peeling, cactus lined the front walk and what looked like old sheets hung inside the windows.
The two dogs lazing on the lawn barely glanced at the truck. In one window, a sheet stirred. “I think he’s noticed us.”
“Good. That means he’s less likely to fire.” Carter halted in front.
“If he’s so paranoid, why doesn’t he train his dogs to keep watch?” she asked.
“He says that if they barked at a rustler, the bastard might shoot them. This way, they’re more likely to trip him in the dark.” As he opened his door, he gave her a quick grin. “Don’t worry, Dad’s not so bad.”
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