by Cara Colter
Was four too old for thumb-sucking? For the first time it occurred to J.D. this fatherhood stuff might be a little more complicated than setting Tally on the right track. How did he know what the right track was? No wonder she read books!
“Jed, this is J.D. He’s a friend of mine,” Tally said, just as they had agreed.
Jed scrutinized him carefully, and popped his thumb out of his mouth. He smiled tentatively. “Hawo.”
His son liked him! J.D. could feel his heart swelling inside his chest. His son—
The reunion was cut short when Jed suddenly spotted the dog. With a cry of surprised delight he wriggled down out of Tally’s arms and squatted in front of Beauford.
“Puppy,” he said reverently.
Beauford and Jed regarded each other with grave interest, and then they both sighed, the very same happy, contented soul-deep sound.
“A dog lover,” J.D. breathed with satisfaction.
“It must be genetic,” Tally said woefully.
Jed threw his arms around Beauford’s solid neck and kissed him as thoroughly as he had his aunt.
Beauford’s stumpy tail thumped happily. He drooled with delight.
“Jed,” Tally said. “Don’t kiss his mouth. Dirty. Germs.”
Lesson three, J.D. thought. Germs are rarely deadly. Dog kisses are one of life’s delights. But maybe, now that he thought about it, only in a life that had become devoid of other kinds of kisses. He would have to give some more thought to lesson three, obviously.
Jed, thankfully, gave his aunt a look of injured disbelief. Beauford, insulted, shook loose the child, and ambled uninvited into the apartment with the little boy hard on his heels.
The apartment reminded J.D. of how crucial his mission was. It was just no place for a child.
Though it was a nice enough apartment, it was tiny and distinctly feminine. There was a disconcerting amount of pink in the decorating, and there were all kinds of little breakable trinkets around that would not be conducive to roughhousing.
The balcony, visible through a large sliding window, had a tricycle on it. The thought of his son riding his trike around that limited space made J.D. think, painfully, of a baby tiger prowling a cage.
Toys, instead of being in a happy heap in the middle of the floor, were neatly organized in a stacking wall unit. A single large yellow truck toy was out on the floor.
It looked like a desperate place for a little kid to try and grow up, though at least the toy wasn’t a doll.
“I’m going to be evicted,” Tally said sorrowfully when the dog and the boy romped noisily out of the room, down the hall and back again. It confirmed J.D.’s worst suspicion that good, healthy, wholesome noise would be frowned upon in a place like this.
J.D. refrained from saying he could think of worse things than her being evicted only because he couldn’t help but notice her eyes were soft as she watched the boy tumble across the living room floor with the dog.
He sat down carefully on the couch. It looked brand-new and like it might be easily damaged by the weight of a real man. It was light beige, which he thought was a dumb color to pick if you were raising a small boy. He could see two bedrooms off the living room, the doors to both ajar.
Jed’s room was obvious, a cheerful space, decorated in bright primary colors.
Hers, next door, was done in virginal whites.
Virginal.
He was way, way too tired because he actually entertained the notion of asking her. He almost laughed out loud picturing how she would react to that question. Hey, Tally, you a virgin? Thankfully, the dog raced by, barking, Jed hot on his heels, squealing with childish laughter. J.D. had to remember not to shake her up too badly. If he managed to alienate her completely his mission would fail.
As he watched his son and Beauford, J.D. could feel a smile inside himself that was entirely different from any smile he had ever smiled before.
His son was a delight in every way. Jed was lively and intense, one hundred per cent boy. Tally had wanted a father for her nephew, and she had found one. Of course, she had to be dissuaded from the nuclear family nonsense she had attached to the title “daddy”. J.D. knew he could be a very effective parent on a long-distance basis. He would phone. He would send cards and letters and gifts. They would travel back and forth. He would come here to visit, and Jed could come see him. J.D. could picture summer afternoons, hand in hand with his son, heading to the fishing hole, the dog trailing behind them. J.D.’s future suddenly glowed with the shining promise of snowball fights and snow forts, building go-carts, breaking in the leather of brand-new ball gloves, the crack of the bat hitting the ball.
Something in him relaxed the way it had not relaxed in a long, long time.
The last thing he remembered hearing was Tally moaning that her downstairs neighbor was going to start pounding on the ceiling in a minute.
He muttered something about dealing with the neighbor if that happened, and then he was gone.
“He’s so nice,” Kailey whispered to Tally as they sat at the kitchen table sipping tea. The dog was asleep under the table, and Jed was asleep right on top of him.
“I hope he doesn’t have fleas,” Tally said.
“J.D.?” Kailey asked with horror.
“Of course not. The beast under the table.” Three males in her house for the first time in history and all of them fast asleep. And all of them snored.
It seemed entirely unfair to her that she knew J. D. Turner snored and she had no idea if Herbert Henley did or not.
“I was talking about J.D., but the dog’s nice, too,” Kailey said.
Kailey thought everyone and everything was nice. How she had ended up with one sister so wild and one so hopelessly naive was one of life’s unexplainable mysteries to Tally.
“You’ve exchanged names and a handshake with J. D. Turner,” Tally reminded her. “That’s hardly a reference from his minister.”
“I’m sure you’ve got all those angles covered,” Kailey said. “He wouldn’t be here right now if you hadn’t liked what you found out about him.”
That wasn’t exactly true but there was no sense Kailey knowing the humiliating truth that he had wrestled the upper hand from Tally with disgusting ease.
“He’s also,” Kailey leaned close across the kitchen table and lowered her voice even further, “very cute.”
Tally didn’t think cute quite said it, but she decided not to argue that point either. That would only tell her sister she’d been paying attention. But J. D. Turner cute? Awesome. Magnificent. Powerful. Intimidating.
Of course, six hours in the cab of a truck, what else was there to notice? Besides Beauford? And a prairie landscape that repeated itself endlessly? And that the hero of the book she was reading seemed disappointingly insipid?
She knew now, how J.D.’s eyelashes were so thick they cast shadows on his cheeks. She knew his whiskers came in fast, dark and vigorous. She knew he drummed the steering wheel with one hand, and that his knuckles had a faint dusting of springy dark hair growing from them. She knew the large muscle of his thigh leapt to life every time he changed gears and looked like steel as they pressed into the faded fabric of his jeans. She knew his biceps flexed and bulged at the least hint of motion, like flipping the tape in his stereo.
He hummed to songs he liked, but he never burst into song the way he had that first night when she had caught him in the shower. He swore at other drivers. He threw his trash on the floor. She knew how J. D. Turner smelled, for God’s sake. Like a real man. Like fresh-turned soil. She imagined his smell was that of the sun on ripening wheat. Clean and strong and pure. It was the faint scent of things brand-new springing from the earth, reaching toward the sun, ripening.
It seemed to her she knew far too much about J. D. Turner, far more than she had ever set out to know. She had set out to know if he was a decent man. Instead she knew his scent and the sweep of his lashes. The hard set of his thigh muscle. The quirk of his mouth. The taste of his lips.
/>
“Are you blushing?” Kailey asked.
“Of course not!” But just in case she was, Tally tried, desperately, to recall if Herbert had a scent. If she conjured hard enough, she could imagine he smelled faintly of his hardware store—of chemicals and boxes and paint and of things gathering dust on back shelves.
“So, you couldn’t say on the phone, but why is he here?”
“As soon as he found out he had a son, he just piled me into the truck. He wants to take Jed and I back to Dancer with him for a week or two. To get to know Jed.”
“He’s not going to try and take him is he?” Kailey asked, sudden fear making her eyes huge.
“Of course not. I have the situation under control.” Okay, J. D. Turner didn’t know that yet, but he soon would.
“You should marry him,” Kailey said dreamily.
“There is more to marriage than a man being cute!” She held up her ring finger, reminding her sister—and maybe herself—that she was taken. That she didn’t even have to entertain the disturbing notion of marrying J. D. Turner, because she was marrying someone else.
“That may be,” Kailey said, a stubborn note in her voice, “but there is also more to marriage than a stainless steel stovetop. Which I think is ugly, not that you asked.”
“Good for you,” J. D. said. He stood in the doorway looking rumpled and annoyingly adorable. “Isn’t this stainless steel on the rim of the stove here?”
Tally nodded warily. She could only hope he had not heard the part about her sister marrying her off to him, or the part that he was cute.
J.D. pressed his finger against the burner rim on the stove, studied the spot, then shook his head with disgust. “Just as I thought,” he said. “Fingerprints. Come and see if you don’t believe me.”
“And your discovery would interest me for what reason?”
“Little boys leave fingerprints.”
“Not if they have clean hands,” she said acidly.
“Which, hopefully, is hardly ever. No, I don’t think stainless steel appliances go with children.”
“I don’t think I asked you.”
“Tally,” Kailey said. “He may have a point.”
Oh! Traitor. Her own flesh and blood.
“I see,” Tally said stiffly, “that I confided my enjoyment in those appliances to the wrong people. Can’t either of you see it’s not the appliances? It’s about what they represent?”
Kailey and J.D. exchanged baffled looks.
“Okay,” he finally said. “What do they represent?”
“Family dinners,” Tally said. “Tradition.”
They both still looked blank, so she rushed on, full of feeling, “The appliances represent a man who actually likes domestic things. Who cares about his surroundings. Who is willing to spend his money on unexciting things, but things that matter just the same. He could have had tickets to the Super Bowl—”
“He could have? Really?” J.D. asked.
“But he wanted something permanent. Something that lasted. Something of value.”
“He could have framed the program,” J.D. said with disgust. “Kept his ticket stubs in a jar on the fireplace.”
“You don’t get it,” Tally said.
“Sure I do. You’re planning to marry a man who is unfit to raise my son. Not that I would dream of stopping you. But you need to know a few things. First.”
“What kind of things?” she asked suspiciously.
“I’ll show you when we get back to Dancer. Boy stuff. You need to know some boy stuff. Since Herbie doesn’t.”
“He doesn’t like being called Herbie,” Tally said, her voice tight. “And I’m sure he knows all kinds of boy stuff. He owns a hardware store. That means lawn mowers. Pipe wrenches. Different sized nails. What could be more boy stuff than that?”
J.D. snorted. “He bought a stove instead of a Super Bowl ticket. This is worse than I could have imagined.”
“Well, I think it’s terribly exciting that the three of you are going to Dancer,” Kailey said, confirming her role as a complete traitor. Her sister, Kailey Benedict Arnold.
“You don’t know Dancer,” J.D. corrected her gently. “It’s not exactly exciting.”
Finally, something they could agree on, though Tally didn’t appreciate him one bit more. What was that nice tone of voice he used on his sister, but not on her?
“No, Dancer is not exciting,” J.D. continued, “but it’s spacious and open. You can still set off firecrackers on Main Street, and shoot gophers on the prairie. The general store still gives jawbreakers to little kids, and you can find the rattles off snakes on a lucky day.”
“Oh,” Kailey breathed, with perfect understanding, “boy stuff.”
Tally glared at her, hoping she would pick up the traitor message, but she didn’t. Kailey and J.D. were beaming at each other as if they were members of an exclusive secret society.
“Exactly,” he said.
“Jed is too young to shoot gophers,” Tally said, “not that I would let him if he was old enough. It’s disgusting. Shooting small furry creatures is despicable. I won’t even discuss snakes, except to let you know all parts of them would be crawling with germs. And jawbreakers are a choking hazard to children under five. I read it in a book.”
J.D. was smiling at her, so indulgently it made her see red.
“Your whole problem, Tally—”
How dare he insinuate she have a problem?
“—is that you have done far too much reading, and far too little living.”
She folded her arms over her chest. “And you are going to fix my problem?” she said.
He missed her sarcasm entirely. “Exactly,” he said happily, as if she was a dull child who had just gotten it. “I better work on Herbie’s while I’m here, too. When can I meet him?”
Chapter Five
Tally stared at J.D., aghast. He was going to fix her problems? She didn’t have any problems. He should look around. There was no engine ripped to bits on her kitchen counter! She did not flaunt herself by answering the door in a bath towel! Or flaunt the rules by marching a dog through a building where animals were specifically prohibited.
And as if insinuating she had problems was not bad enough, J. D. Turner was also going to pick on Herbert? Presumably J.D. had reached the conclusion of Herbert having problems based on Herbert’s extremely mature and sensitive decision to forego a Super Bowl ticket in favor of investing in appliances.
The unadulterated ego of J. D. Turner! Tally had always known this about good-looking men. They were just too sure of themselves, cocky to the point of being offensive. No wonder she had chosen Herbert.
After opening her mouth several times, and no sound coming out, she finally found her voice. “Why you smug, sanctimonious…so-and-so.”
J.D. grinned at her sister, all easygoing charm. “She almost called me an S.O.B., didn’t she?”
Kailey Benedict Arnold nodded in solemn agreement. “I think so.”
“That’s good. I think it would be good for Jed if she relaxed a bit. You know, if she wasn’t so darn perfect, if she realized it was okay to be human. Lost her temper every now and then.”
J.D. was talking to her sister about her as though she wasn’t here!
She inserted herself back into the conversation. “Swearing in front of a child is being human? Then no thank you. And I do not lose my temper.”
“Well, the child is sleeping,” J.D. said. “You could probably let your guard down a wee bit. And you know, I think I detect a small edge in your voice right now.”
“My guard is always up,” she said, carefully modulating her tone.
“That’s what I was afraid of.”
“Quit talking about me as if I’m some big project you’ve undertaken, and get it out of your head that you are interviewing my fiancé. Herbert does not need any advice from you, nor do I!”
“I wouldn’t dream of giving you advice,” he said easily. “I’m just getting the lay of the land.”
He walked over to the phone on the counter, picked up the phone book from underneath it and flipped through to the yellow pages.
“Gee, imagine that. Only one Henley’s Hardware Store in all of Dogwood Hollow.”
“Don’t you dare.”
“What do you know? Henley’s Hardware is Dogwood Hollow’s exclusive dealer in Airbeam stainless steel appliances. Hey, Tally, he got that fridge and stove at cost.”
He was dialing the number. He had the audacity to wink at her.
Tally could not believe this. All those years of dealing with her impossible sister and she had always handled every situation with the three Cs: calm, compassion and composure. Every single one!
And here she was, leaping across the kitchen, trying to tear the phone out of the hands of a man who was holding it out of her reach and laughing at her as if she was an overly enthusiastic puppy.
“Herbert Henley please,” J.D. said, holding Tally at arm’s length with easy strength.
Kailey Benedict Arnold was bent over in her chair, holding her stomach, howling with laughter. If she wasn’t careful she’d wake up Jed, not to mention the dead.
“Hi there, Herbert. My name’s John David Turner. I’m a recent acquaintance of Tally Smith’s. Did she happen to mention me to you? She didn’t?”
Tally gave up trying to get the phone from him, folded her arms over her chest and squinted evilly at him. J. D. Turner was unintimidated by evil squints.
“She didn’t tell you she chased me right down to Dancer, North Dakota?” he said, injecting amazement into his voice. “She told you what? Going away on school business?” J.D. raised his eyebrows at her.
Kailey was on the floor, rolling around, tears spurting out of her eyes. Tally turned her gaze on her, but her sister was suddenly immune to the evil squint, too.
Tally added a foot tap to her pose. It was a stance that had quelled dozens of unruly schoolchildren.
But J.D. just waggled his eyebrows fiendishly at her.
“I’m Jed’s dad. She found a picture of me in an old photograph album of Elana’s and figured it out. Clever girl, huh? You don’t think she’s a girl? Well, now I figure there’s plenty of girl left in her. Anyway, the reason I’m calling is I understand that things are getting pretty serious between the two of you, and since you are going to be a person of consequence in my son’s life, it seems only fair to me we should meet. I won’t be able to be in Dogwood Hollow very long, so tonight would work.