by Anna Jeffrey
But before she could do any of that, she had to return to the Parker ranch for this evening’s egg gathering, risking another confrontation with Dalton. It was crazy how she had hoped so avidly for him to show up. Now she could hardly wait for him to leave.
But she had an insane side that sometimes raised its irrational head, and it seemed to have more fantastical ideas.
She made her way to the bathroom. There the vanity mirror confirmed her worst fear. A dark bruise the size of a half dollar showed between her eyebrows and on up her forehead. A small red line where the skin had been broken by the blow from the screen door’s edge looked like an inch-long stripe. “Shit,” she muttered.
She washed her face, wincing and frowning as her washcloth touched the injured area. Afterward, she dabbed antibiotic cream onto the broken skin. Following that, she smoothed a cream she sold in her retail store under her eyes. Formulated by a company with a French name, it claimed to reduce puffiness and dark circles, and it cost more than she would ever have paid if she hadn’t been able to buy it at wholesale. Being single and with myriad skincare products available to her, she had no intention of looking any older than she had to.
Back in her bedroom, remembering Dalton Parker’s eyes, which looked as if they could penetrate cement and how they had scanned her body, she rummaged through her dresser for a shirt. The right shirt. She found it at the bottom of a drawer, testimony to how much time had passed since she had been inspired to try to impress some guy. The shirt was a bright blue cotton and Spandex tank she usually wore with her tightest Cruel Girl jeans and her crystal-studded belt when she went dancing in the cowboy nightclubs over at the state line. Free of adornment, the top was cut low enough to be fun, and it hugged her torso like a glove. She always received compliments, even wolf whistles, when she wore it.
She slid it over her head, then stood in front of the mirror, assessing herself. Though Dalton Parker was a couple of years older than she, a man as sexy as he was probably had his choice of women a lot younger than thirty-five.
Thirty-five. A landmark age. So what? Her body didn’t look so bad. She turned in front of the mirror, happy to note she still had a firm, flat tummy. At least she was getting some benefit from heaving all those sacks of feed for the hens. Her boobs weren’t huge, but they didn’t sag and she had cleavage, facts that made Shari envious. Of course, Shari had nursed all four of her kids, so it really wasn’t a fair contest.
She pulled on jeans and made another appraisal in the mirror. Then she stopped herself. “What are you doing?” she whispered to her reflection. Dalton Parker was a rude jerk. And he had already shown his dislike for her. But even if he liked her, it wouldn’t matter. He probably had a parade of Valley Girls chasing him, not to mention the woman who answered his phone as if she lived at his house. He would definitely go for the tanned and blond type. Joanna yanked off the tank top and replaced it with a work shirt, grumbling and cussing.
Once at the Parker ranch, she saw that the ranch’s work truck hadn’t returned, so Clova and Dalton must still be working on the fence. Thank God for that, a part of her said, but the wicked part that had been dancing with glee since his arrival this morning was disappointed. “Face it, Joanna,” she mumbled. “You just want another opportunity to try to get his attention. And why would you want that from a bastard?”
She went about her business, gathering eggs and listening to Dulce cluck and scratch along beside her. As she started for the egg-processing room to wash and refrigerate the eggs, she lifted Dulce out of the fenced area to come with her. Forcing herself to not even look at the ranch house, she made her way to her own little space.
She was taking the last batch of eggs from the washer and laying them out on clean towels to drain when she heard a motor she recognized. The ranch’s work truck. She concentrated on the task at hand as first one door, then the other slammed with a metallic clap. Soon she heard footsteps on the gravel driveway, and she was sure they weren’t Clova’s. Her whole body stiffened.
Dalton stepped up on the small concrete slab just outside the door, almost trampling Dulce. The hen squawked and flapped and flew off in a commotion of noise and feathers. “Oh, shit,” Joanna cried. She dropped everything and shoved past Dalton to the outside, where Dulce was squawking and hopping around a few feet away. She threw a glare at Dalton over her shoulder. “Dammit, you scared her!”
Darting left and right, she finally caught up with the hen, scooped her up with both hands and looked back at the egg-washing room. Dalton was standing in the doorway, watching her, his shoulder leaning against the doorjamb, his hands stuffed into his jeans pockets. His T-shirt was covered with dirt and his cap had been shoved to the back of his head.
Careless, thoughtless jerk. He could have hurt her favorite hen.
Sending him another withering glare, she marched across the driveway to the pasture where Dulce lived, turned her loose inside the fence and returned to the processing room.
“Hey, I’m sorry,” he said, turning sideways as she squeezed past him through the doorway. “I’m not used to dodging chickens when I walk.”
Mentally swearing, she stripped off her latex gloves and her coveralls and dug clean ones out of the closet, resisting the urge to slam the closet door. She still had to pack the washed eggs into cartons, so she shook a clean jumpsuit free of its folds.
“You’re changing clothes?” His gaze leveled on her face.
She was sure he was looking at the bruise between her eyes. “I don’t handle the eggs with the same gloves and clothes after I’ve handled the chickens,” she groused, looking up at him as she stepped into fresh blue coveralls.
She saw amusement in his expression. She also felt his gaze roaming over her, head to toe. What she interpreted in that was less easily defined.
“I don’t blame you,” he said. “Chickens are filthy fuckers.”
Inside, she winced. This was Hatlow. She rarely heard men use the F word in female company. She glared at him again as she zipped up her coveralls. “Do you eat eggs, Mr. Parker?”
“Yep. Over easy. Preferably with bacon. Preferably served up by a hot woman who knows how to cook.”
“Do tell. Well, that wouldn’t be me.” She snapped on a new pair of purple latex gloves.
He braced a shoulder against the doorjamb again, watching her unhook the egg washer from the faucet. “Oh, I don’t know. Before you put that sack on, what I saw looked pretty hot.”
Hot? She didn’t often hear men in Hatlow openly and unabashedly call a woman “hot,” either. She wished to God she could feel insulted, but that insane part of her she had already debated in front of her bathroom mirror at home felt a tiny thrill at his words. “The cooking part was what I referred to. I raise hens and sell eggs. I do not cook eggs.”
He tilted his head back and laughed, and she wondered whether she saw a teasing glint in his eyes. He craned his neck, poking his head inside her room and looking around, but he didn’t come in. “When I was a young buck, this was a workshop. Mom told me you fixed it up.”
Joanna would have loved being a fly on the wall during the talk between him and Clova. She couldn’t keep from worrying over the consequences if Clova told him she had offered to give Joanna land. “It was covered with dirt and grease. I almost never got it cleaned up.”
“Must have cost you a bundle.”
Oh, not much. Just my house and practically every spare dime I could get my hands on. “Did you get the fence fixed?”
“Temporarily. Doing it right is more than a day’s work. It’s been neglected too long. That whole south line needs to be rebuilt.”
“There are a couple of fence-building crews around here. I’m sure Clova has their names and phone numbers.”
“I’m gonna do it myself. Save Mom some money. I think I still remember how to fix a fence.”
“That would be nice. Where’s Clova now?”
“She went in to do laundry. I tried to get her to rest, but she wouldn’t.”
/> “Well, that’s your mom. She works all the time. I don’t know how she does it.”
“She sent me over here to tell you to come over to the house for supper when you finish. She’s frying steak.”
“I’m going to the football game with friends.”
“Oh, yeah. Friday night football. I remember those days.”
“I should think you would. When you lived here, you were the Friday night hero.”
“Hero’s a relative term, babe.” He came inside, walked to her drain counter and picked up a blue egg. “Do you dye these or what?”
Her egg-washing room was barely large enough for herself and a person as small as Clova or Alicia. Dalton Parker filled the room. His chest was only inches from her shoulder, and his manly scent surrounded her. Pheromones. She had read about that weird chemical in perfume ads. Her jaw tightened, but she schooled her face into what she hoped was a normal, unruffled expression and looked up at him. “The Ameraucana hens lay them that way.”
“The what?”
“Ameraucana. They’re descended from a South American breed called Araucanas. Most of the time they lay blue and green eggs. I think Dulce, the hen you almost stomped, is a purer strain of Ameraucana. Most of her eggs are turquoise. They’re pretty.”
“Huh,” he said, holding the egg with his fingertips as he turned it over and studied it. He carefully placed it back on the towel. “Does being blue make some kind of difference?”
“Some people think the colored eggs are more nutritious, but I don’t know if there’s any science to back that up.”
“Tell me something.” He cocked his head and gave her a squint-eyed look. “How’d you con my mother into letting you do this?”
Chapter 8
Anger swept through Joanna like a range fire. She gasped. “Do what?”
He made a broad gesture around the room with his arm. “My mom’s a cowman. Has been since the day she was born. So was her pa, her grandpa, her great-grandpa and her great-great. No fuckin’ way would she turn this place over to a bunch of nasty goddamn chickens. I nearly wrecked that piece-of-shit rental when I drove up and saw them this morning.”
“I beg your pardon,” she said firmly, working not to snarl. “I didn’t con her into anything. She volunteered. The egg business was her idea. And the chickens are hens. Premium hybrid egg layers that have cost me a lot of money.”
He didn’t say anything, just continued to glare at her with heated eyes and a scowling mouth. No doubt he thought she was lying about the egg business being Clova’s idea. “Not that you’d know, Mr. Parker, but your mother is a lonely woman. She—”
“What I know, Miz Walsh”—he came closer, invading her space and leaning into her, his face no farther than a foot from hers—“is that no self-respecting cattle grower willingly turns a working cattle ranch into a goddamn chicken yard without a little outside persuasion.”
She could stand his arrogance no longer. She stepped back, looking him in the eye and stabbing the air with her finger. “Since you seem to know everything about something you haven’t been near in years, I guess you’d be shocked to hear that your mother wanted me and my hens out here because she likes our company.”
“Is that a fact.”
“It sure is. Lane isn’t here half the time, and she doesn’t hear from you.” Joanna stopped herself. Good grief, I am almost yelling. She dropped her hand to her hip and lowered her voice. “If you were so concerned about what she might be doing in your lengthy absence, perhaps you should have come home. Or at the very least, made a phone call and pretended you cared what happens to her and to this place.”
Tears burned her eyes. Anger did that to her, but she willed them away. “What’s it been since you were last here, three or four years?” She paused, shooting daggers at him with her eyes, then turned back to her eggs. “Now. If you’ll excuse me, sir, I’d like to finish up so I can leave.”
His brow arched and he tucked back his chin. “Sir, huh? Very good, Miz Walsh. Damn few people call me sir.”
“I don’t wonder,” she snapped, scowling up at him.
As they held each other’s hot glares, a cell phone warbled. He looked down, picked the device off his belt and glanced at it. He flipped it open, checked the screen and stuck it to his ear, his demeanor changing. He smiled into the phone. “Hey, babe. It’s me.”
Betty Boop, Joanna thought.
“Flight was fine, darlin’…. No, but I’ve been helping Mom with some fencing. I’m sore all over. I need one of your, ah, rubdowns.” He gave a low, lascivious chuckle, then waited. “That’s okay. I’ll call him Monday…. Aww, you’re a sweetheart, honey. I miss you, too, baby.”
Joanna rolled her eyes.
The phone still plastered against his ear, he stepped out of the room and out of earshot.
“Good riddance,” she grumbled. Maybe Betty Boop wanted him to come home so she could give him that rubdown. And maybe he would go.
Joanna put away her equipment, then packed the eggs into cartons. She slid them into the refrigerator, tossed her latex gloves into the trash and peeled off her cap and jumpsuit. She gathered up the two used jumpsuits to take home with her so she could send them out to be laundered with the towels from the beauty salon.
When she stepped outside, her tormentor was leaning his backside against her pickup door, arms crossed over his chest, one ankle crossed over the other. “Looks like your truck got scratched going through the brush this morning.”
She glowered at the long marks and scratches on her beautiful burgundy red pickup. “Yeah, it does, doesn’t it?”
“Look, I didn’t come out here to yank your chain.”
“Really? Then why did you do it?” She reached past him for the door latch, her arm brushing his. Startled by the touch, she shot a look at him across her shoulder.
His gaze held hers as he stepped aside. “I don’t know. Must be the chickens. I can’t figure out what’s gone on with my mom. I’m not usually such a horse’s ass. And Mom’s gonna be pissed off if I don’t bring you over to the house for supper.”
She turned her attention to opening the door and shoved her jumpsuits onto the passenger seat. “Clova knows I go to the football game on Friday nights. My best friend’s kid plays.”
She climbed behind the wheel and shut the door. When she turned the key in the ignition, loud country-western music blasted into the pickup cab and she jumped. She turned it down and buzzed down the window. “Just so you’ll know, I come out here twice a day, every day. If I can’t make it, I send my teenage employee, Alicia. She was the one out at the fence today helping your mother. You can rag on me and I can take it, but I really would appreciate it if you don’t attack her. She—”
“I don’t attack people,” he growled.
“What would you call that ambush this morning? And this evening? I’ll be amazed if Dulce doesn’t go into a molt.”
Hot tears flew to her eyes. Not only was she angry, she couldn’t bear the thought of her Dulce losing her feathers and being cannibalized by the other hens.
“What the hell’s that?”
“Never mind.”
“Goddammit, I didn’t mean to make you cry,” he snapped.
Detecting no sincere contrition, she wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “I’m not crying. The hens are harmless and—”
“Lady, chickens aren’t harmless. I was in Israel when they slaughtered thousands of the filthy damn things because of that goddamn bird flu. The same thing in Turkey and in Greece. So they aren’t harmless.”
Bird flu. Crap. Joanna worried about it every day, read every word she could find. “As I started to say, my hens are harmless and so am I. I’m clean and I try to keep a tight rein on my little operation so it isn’t any more intrusive than necessary. But all of that’s beside the point. I’ve got your message.” She revved the engine, pressed the brake and yanked the transmission into reverse. “I don’t know how long you’re planning on being here, but maybe you’ll fe
el better when I come out if you stay away from me and my hens.”
He didn’t answer right away, just stared at her with unreadable eyes hiding behind black eyelashes that most women would kill for. “That’s fair,” he said at last.
“Be sure to tell your mom I’m going to the ball-game. She’ll understand.”
“Okay. Fine.”
Joanna buzzed up her window and backed up in an arc, keeping her eyes trained on him in her side mirror. He continued to stand there on the driveway, watching her. “Asshole,” she muttered.
When she reached the highway, she glanced at the dash clock. By the time she got home and changed clothes, she would be late to the ball game. Nothing new about that. She arrived late everywhere she went, not deliberately, but she never seemed to have enough time to do everything that needed doing.
She worried all the way home. Clova’s offer of a parcel of land now seemed as nonexistent as if it hadn’t been spoken. Now that Dalton had come, she could see there was every possibility that in the very near future, her hens would have nowhere to live.
Headed for a bleacher seat, Joanna squeezed past several football fans decked out in black and gold, Hatlow High School’s colors. Though the daytime temperature had been hot, the night air nipped at her cheeks. She was glad she had changed into a warm pullover sweater—one with black and gold stripes, of course. She dropped to the seat Shari had saved for her, relieved to sit down at last.
Beneath tall banks of brilliant lights, the Hatlow High School band, neatly uniformed in black with white trim, was marching up the field, playing a lively march as it maintained precision formation. The crowd cheered and whistled. Hatlow was as proud of its band as it was of its winning football team.
Shari looked at her watch. “You’re late.”