Tempting as Sin

by Rosalind James

  She found the boy watering around the seedlings. Carefully.

  She headed over to the bed next to the one he was working on so she wasn’t too close, sat on the rough, triangular seat at the corner of the raised bed and said, “That looks just about right. Go turn off the hose, will you? Then come hang out with me a second. I need a break.”

  More hesitation, then he did it, and she felt like she’d tamed a squirrel. No, a fawn. That was what he reminded her of, with his long, thin arms and legs and the wariness in his brown eyes. She poured him a glass, and he looked at it dubiously and asked, “Is it lemonade?” Not convinced at all.

  “Nope,” she said. “Just cold water with a lemon sliced up into it, and a little mint. It’s my favorite. Check it out.” She took a long drink, and after some more hesitation, he did the same. Chuck, who’d taken a detour to check out the goats, touching noses with them through the fence and wagging his tail in a friendly fashion, came over, too, and flopped onto the ground beside the boy.

  “School’s just out, huh,” Lily said after a minute. “The beginning of freedom.”

  “Yeah, I guess. Your goats are cool. They’re really small.”

  “They’re Nigerian dwarf goats. They give a lot of milk, though. You’d be surprised. It’s a good thing I live out of town, because they can be noisy. It’s a long ride up this road, though, especially without your buddies. Here.” She held out half the sandwich. “I can’t eat the whole thing.”

  The boy took it, tore it carefully down the center, and gave half to the dog, who wolfed it down in one bite. “I’m going to ride down fast afterwards, is why. Nigeria is in Africa. Are the goats from Africa?”

  She wanted to ask where his helmet was, but she knew the answer. Nowhere. Instead, she said, “No, that’s just the breed. But good job knowing that. That’s a nice bike you’ve got.”

  The boy said, “Yeah, it’s pretty cool. I got it for free, too. Somebody left it when they moved out of their trailer. I didn’t steal it or nothing—anything. They were gone. The tires were kind of flat, but Ms. Swan showed me how to fix them with duct tape.”

  Lily reached a hand out and gave Chuck a scratch behind his ears, the floppy one and the sticking-up one. His fur felt dusty, and up close, she could see the mats in the hair in his ruff. She patted his side, but couldn’t tell how hefty he was under the hair. She said, “Very cool. I didn’t know you could do that. Who’s Ms. Swan?”

  “My teacher. I mean, she was. Not anymore, because she’s only for third grade.”

  “She sounds nice.”

  “Yeah. She has black hair. It’s really shiny. Black swans are rare. If she was a princess, she’d be a swan who was in disguise. Or a princess in disguise as a swan. Except it wouldn’t really be a disguise, because it would be an enchantment. She rides her bike to school, too, even though none of the other teachers do that, and she wears shorts sometimes. Brady Hall told her that his mom said she shouldn’t wear shorts, but she just laughed and said, ‘Fashion is my life,’ like she didn’t care. And she does cool projects, like science. We did sprouting seeds one time, and then you got to take your bean home when it was a plant.”

  “How did your bean do?”

  The boy shrugged. “My grandma threw it away. She said it was a weed, but it wasn’t. It was a bean.”

  “I’ve got beans coming up. Come check them out.” She led him over to the third of her beds, the one with the forest of crossed poles, and Chuck jumped to his feet and followed them. “The plants will climb up the stakes,” she explained. “But look.” She crouched down and poked gently at the soil. “Here’s one just starting to come up. I love it when they do that, poke their heads out of the ground. It always seems so brave. Does it look like your bean?”

  “Kind of.” The boy was doing some poking around himself, but carefully. His fingers were of the same long, thin, nearly delicate variety as the rest of him, although surely he was tall for eight. And he reeked of cigarette smoke.

  “Different variety, maybe,” Lily said. She gave Chuck another pat and asked, “How long have you had this big boy?” She hardened her heart against the answer. If any dog’s condition had ever telegraphed, “Call the Humane Society,” it was Chuck’s.

  The boy shrugged again. “I don’t know. He’s just been coming around for a while.”

  “Oh. So he’s not yours?”

  “Well, kind of. But he doesn’t live in the house or anything. My grandma doesn’t like dogs.”

  “But you do.”

  “Yeah. Plus, she doesn’t know, but he sleeps under the trailer. There’s wood around it, but it has a hole. He goes in there. My grandma doesn’t see, because she doesn’t go outside very much. She has to have an oxygen tank all the time. She has a disease.”

  Which made the cigarettes a wonderful choice. Yikes. “I’ll bet you’ve been sharing your food with the dog, though.” That seemed safe to say.

  “Yeah,” the boy said. “He likes sandwiches best. And beans, you know, in the can. But I can’t carry those out.”

  “Hmm. I’m Lily, by the way. Lily Hollander.” She held out a hand, and after a moment, the boy shook it. Then she reached for Chuck’s paw, and he offered it up and grinned at her. She wished she had a couple more sandwiches. If she went inside to make them, though, she was afraid they’d both run away. “What’s your name?” she asked the boy.

  “Bailey. Bailey Blue Johnson.”

  “Which would make this Chuck Johnson.”

  The boy’s features were almost elfin under his mop of dark hair, his smile shy. Two adult teeth in front, another clue that he was eight now, rather than seven. “I guess.”

  “That’s a good name. Hey, Chuck Johnson.” She crouched down beside the dog and did some more patting, and he flopped over onto his side, then raised a paw and waved it in a languid fashion, which made her laugh. “It’s like he’s waving from a float during the parade like an elegant lady. Do you go to that? Fourth of July? It’s pretty good, huh?”

  The boy picked at the peeling white rubber on his toe caps. “No. I only came this year. To stay with my grandma.”

  There went her heart. And her plans.

  She’d planned for a dog. After careful research, consideration of her lifestyle and needs, and the needs of the dog, she’d settled on a standard poodle, and had already set out to acquire one. That was how her life went now. She didn’t get blown around by it anymore. She made plans that fit into her newly repurposed…personhood. Her organized life, in which everything she owned was meaningful, functional, and/or beautiful, and in which she managed her business and her home, helped her community where she could, and reminded herself that fear and loneliness didn’t kill you, they pushed you onward.

  Just last week, in fact, she’d driven all the way to Missoula to meet a dog who was being fostered by a poodle rescue group. The gorgeous black female had been sweet but nervous, Lily had hesitated, somebody else had adopted her, and Lily had wondered if she’d been too picky.

  She wanted a dog she could take into the shop, though, so “nervous” wouldn’t be the best for the shop or the dog. Never mind, she’d thought. She’d keep looking. Poodles didn’t shed, and they were elegant, bright, and friendly. A poodle—the right poodle—was the perfect choice.

  She eyed Chuck some more. He was on his back now, rubbing himself happily on a patch of grass and grunting. If he had a breed, it wasn’t obvious, she’d bet he would shed like a cheap sweater, and not one molecule of him was elegant. He also wasn’t meaningful or functional, unless you needed a traveling flea carrier, and he sure wasn’t beautiful. But he definitely had needs. And then there was the vulnerable back of Bailey’s thin neck.

  No rash decisions. Logic, not emotion. Create your own reality. Her new life, and her new mantra. A little bit of help wasn’t a permanent diversion, though, and she didn’t know that the dog wasn’t getting fed somewhere. She’d just…help. A little. Which was why she said, “You know—I was just wishing I had some company toda
y. Maybe we could make a trade. I’ll go make us a few more sandwiches, because I’m still starved. You and Chuck could help me finish planting and watering my seedlings, and then we could get him cleaned up and see what he looks like under the hair. I’m kind of a beauty expert, and Chuck looks like a good project for a hot day. Fortunately, I happen to be prepared for this, grooming wise. I’ve been making dog plans, you see.”

  “How do you be a beauty expert about dogs?” Bailey asked.

  “Two words. College tuition. I used to wear this pink smock that said Diva Dog. I drove a pink van, too. It was pretty silly. I do something a little different these days, but I still know how to give a dog a haircut. And Chuck looks awfully hot.”

  When Rafe pulled into the garage and closed the door behind his anonymous, dust-coated SUV, he knew he’d done the right thing coming up here early. And when he climbed the three steps to the front porch that looked out onto the valley, smelled the sharp, clean scent of cedar and pine, and heard a faint murmur that was surely creek water tumbling over rocks, it was even better. He opened the door with the key Martin had collected from Jace, typed the code into the alarm keypad and got a reassuring cheep in response, dragged the bags inside, and locked the door behind him. No sense pushing his luck.

  In here, the smell was more dust and wood; the stale scent of a barely furnished house that had been shut up for months. At least the checked curtains pulled across the windows had kept it fairly cool.

  He’d take care of the dust later, but first, he’d work out. He’d been driving for three days straight on an inefficient route that featured more country and less concrete, listening to audiobooks about a Western sheriff and letting the spare writing and laconic dialogue seep into the folds of his brain. He’d stayed at anonymous chain motels, the details of which had been arranged beforehand by Martin, and had eaten in cafes where men wore feed caps and people greeted each other by name, where the menus were laminated, the tables were Formica, and the booths were vinyl. The kind of place where a hard-working waitress in sensible shoes slapped your check on the table and you paid her up at the cash register, next to the glistening slices of lemon meringue pie rotating behind glass.

  The atmosphere had been helpful. The vegetable selection had been meager. And the whole thing had been long. Last night, feeling stiff and sluggish, he’d run on the treadmill in a featureless Coeur D’Alene hotel gym, turned the speed up higher and higher for over an hour, turned up his music too loud, and not turned on the TV. And still hadn’t slept well.

  Yeah, he was glad to be here.

  He thought about opening the windows, then rethought it. Instead, he carried his bags up the log staircase to the bedroom that took up most of the second floor and opened all the windows up here instead. That would do for now.

  The truth was, he was still jumpy and overstimulated despite the driving that had been meant to put him into something approaching a meditative, receptive state. That tended to happen when your picture was splashed over every entertainment magazine Hollywood had ever spawned, the paparazzi were waiting every time you left the house and outside your gym when you came out, and a million devices were broadcasting your furious offscreen voice shouting at a weeping, frail blonde, and your hands around her upper arms, holding her down. When you’d never been the bad guy, and now you were, and there wasn’t anything you could do about it.

  Never mind. He was here now, and the one person who could link him to all of that wanted nothing to do with him. And, no, she wasn’t the reason he was jumpy. He could see the road that led to her house from the window, but he couldn’t see her house, and he certainly wasn’t going to bother her. Daniel Boone had said that his father had moved the family every time he could see the smoke from the neighbor’s chimney, and that sounded just about right. For the next few weeks, he was Clay Austin, and Clay Austin wasn’t in Sinful, Montana, to make anybody’s life harder. He wasn’t here to be in anybody’s life, period. Rafe hadn’t been making great decisions around that lately. He was here to learn to ride a horse without looking like a fool, practice his accent and his economy of motion, do some hard, fast running on steep mountain trails, lose some weight the hard way, and stay in his own damn lane.

  Martin wasn’t going to love it in Sinful, even though he’d insisted he should come, which had bloody well better not be because he was worried about Rafe. If it was, Rafe would have his revenge. The stores on Main Street had false fronts and sidewalk overhangs held up by wooden posts, as if they should be shot in black and white, most of the vehicles featured four-wheel drive, the busiest spot in town was the ice-cream store, and the only neon was a beer sign in a bar window. Martin was not going to have a good time.

  Oh, well. Martin had been through worse. There’d been those camels, for one thing. And Sinful had a lake. With a swimming area bordered by floating logs, full of kids splashing in the shallows, but still. A water feature.

  Rafe would take Clay Austin out for a cautious spin later today and explore. Right now, though, he was going to run these stairs of Jace’s over and over until the sweat started to pour, lift the heaviest weights he owned until his muscles burned and his legs shook, then use his own body weight in every possible way a person could torture himself. Clay Austin was cut and lean. No protein powder in the nineteenth century. Rafe had no doubt at all that at some point, Clay would be taking off his shirt for a wash in the river. Probably in slow motion.

  He grabbed his Bluetooth headphones and went out to the garage again. He’d bring those weights inside, and then he’d start doing it. Whilst thinking cowboy thoughts.

  Two hours after he’d arrived, Bailey was sitting on the lowest step of the porch beside Lily and saying, “That’s really gross.”

  “It is,” Lily said, tweezing another tick out of Chuck’s neck and dropping it into a once-but-never-again jam jar, now an rubbing-alcohol-filled tick graveyard. “He’ll be happier when these are out, although on second thought, I’m not sure if I can take Chuck getting any happier. Just a few more, though, and then it’s bath time. I think you should call your grandma, because this is taking a while.”

  “I told you,” Bailey said. “It’s her shows.”

  Lily set down the tweezers, pulled her cell phone out of the pocket of her overalls, and slapped it into Bailey’s palm. “Call.”

  Bailey sighed, then punched in the number. “Hi,” he said, as Lily resumed work on Chuck, taking care around the spot on his neck where he’d been tied up. A spot that was obvious now that he was shorn, because it was healing from where it had been rubbed raw, the poor baby. Any part of her plans that had included, “Check whether anybody’s lost their dog” had taken a big old U-turn right there.

  “It’s Bailey,” the boy was saying into the phone. “This lady said I should call you and tell you I’m at her house.” At Lily’s gesticulation with the tweezers and her hissed, “Tell her my name,” he added, “I’m at, um, Lily Hollander’s house. Up on the mountain.” A few seconds later, he said, “No,” then “no” again. Finally, he said, “OK. Bye,” and handed the phone back to Lily.

  She held it to her ear and said, “Hello?” but the line was dead. She asked Bailey, “What did she say?”

  Bailey scratched at a mosquito bite on his ankle. Like the dog, he was less than pristine. Lily wondered how many days he’d been wearing those jeans. “She asked if I was kidnapped. Or if I was bleeding. Then she said why was I calling her right now, then, because it was The Price Is Right. And then she said be home for dinner. I told you.”

  “Ah,” Lily said. “Her shows.”

  “Yeah. That’s her favorite one.” Bailey picked up the tick jar. “My grandma would say this was disgusting, but Ms. Swan would think it was interesting. I think it’s interesting, too. How come Chuck couldn’t scratch them out, if they felt bad? His toenails are really long.”

  Lily had already noticed that. That was going to be the final step after the bath. “That’s not how ticks work,” she said. “They’re very s
neaky about burrowing themselves in and making themselves hard to get out. You could call it their mission in life.”

  Bailey considered that. “How come there are things like ticks and mosquitoes? Ms. Swan says everything in nature has a purpose, but mosquitoes just bite you, plus they carry disease.”

  “Bat food?” Lily suggested. “Bats are very important. And what else would eat mosquitoes, do you think?”

  Bailey thought a minute, then his face brightened. “Some birds eat bugs.”

  “That’s right. Also, where do mosquitoes lay their eggs? Do you know that?”

  “They have eggs?”

  “Everything has eggs, unless it has live young. Do insects have live young?”

  “Oh. I guess not. Like the worker ants carry the ant eggs. I read it in this book at school. It had pictures of it. Where do mosquitoes lay their eggs?”

  “In stagnant water, like ponds. Now what eats them?”

  “Oh. Fish?”

  Lily smiled at him, and Bailey smiled happily back and said, “You have very interesting conversations.”

  Lily laughed, screwed the top on the tick jar, and said, “Why, thank you. Let’s give Chuck that bath. Since he doesn’t have a collar, you’re going to have to hang onto his neck at the critical stages. You ready?”

  Bailey jumped up. “Ready.” Chuck jumped up, too, like he wasn’t sure what was happening next, but whatever it was, he was all in.

  Lily grabbed the homemade dog shampoo she’d concocted with dish soap, vinegar, and glycerin, turned on the water to the hose, dragged it over onto her patch of grass, and said, “Let’s do it. Bring him on.”

  Did Chuck cooperate? In a way. At least, he entered fully into the exercise. There was the point, though, where she and Bailey were sudsing him up and he wriggled right out from between her legs, galloped around the yard shaking bubbles from his coat, rolled ecstatically in the dirt, then jumped up again and ran a circle around the two of them, his tail going like mad, flicking muddy water in every direction, then brushed against them and finished the job. Also probably giving them fleas. Bailey was shrieking and jumping, and Lily had a hand over her face and was unfortunately shrieking herself.