Finding Home

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Finding Home Page 7

by Lois Greiman


  “I know, and that’s fine. I mean, it’s not like I expect to stay here forever. I’m not a mooch. I just need a couple days to get on my feet.”

  Casie could feel weakness easing over her and bolstered herself with good sense and maturity. “I’m sorry, but—”

  “I made tuna casserole.”

  “What?”

  “Well, there wasn’t any tuna. And not much of anything else, but I thought you’d be hungry.” Worry flickered behind her dark eyes. Entirely bare of any kind of enhancement, they looked young and hopelessly earnest. “I didn’t mean to make you mad.”

  “I’m not mad. I just—”

  “Good.” Her tone was almost breathless. “I’ll get it for you.”

  “No, Emily, I can—”

  “You just sit there. I’ll bring it right in,” she said and hurried toward the kitchen.

  “How long have you been here?” Casie asked, raising her voice, but there was no need; the girl was already returning with a steaming mug in her left hand.

  “Do you drink coffee?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Cuz I made some. I thought you might be cold so it was kind of altruistic, but I can hardly last three hours without a hit of caffeine myself, so I had a couple cups, too. I hope you don’t mind. Here you go,” she said and handed it over.

  “Thank you.”

  “It might be kind of strong,” she said and squeezed her hands together in front of her oversized shirt.

  It looked like it might also be lethal, Casie thought. She took a sip. Yup, it had the jolt of a well-grounded electric fence, but the soothing heat of it went straight to her bones.

  The sound of the microwave buzzer seemed to zap the girl like a cattle prod.

  “Be right back,” she said and rushed into the kitchen.

  In a matter of moments, Casie had a fork in her hand and a plate of gooey noodles resting on her lap.

  “Taste it,” Emily insisted.

  For lack of another viable course, Casie stabbed three fat noodles. Steaming cheese squished from the center of the little pasta tubes as she transported them to her mouth. They were hot and buttery with a touch of some intriguing flavor she couldn’t quite identify. Still, she mustn’t let herself be seduced by noodles. She should at least hold out for chocolate chip cookies or something, she thought, and paused the flight of her fork.

  “Listen … Emily,” she began, “I understand—”

  “How do you like it?”

  “What?”

  “The hotdish … how is it?”

  “It’s excellent.”

  “You didn’t have a lot in the cupboard. No mushrooms, and the vegetables looked kind of dehydrated. Couldn’t even find any garlic, so I just used what you had.”

  “And I appreciate it, but—”

  “And I cleaned the bathroom.”

  “You …” She paused. “Really?”

  “There were a lot of magazines.”

  Casie was almost too tired to be embarrassed by the condition of the bathroom. “Clayton liked to have a little reading material on hand.”

  “Seventy-three volumes of Successful Farming.”

  From the basement, a tiny noise could be heard. So the lambs were waking up. Casie refrained from letting her eyes fall closed.

  “He let things slip a little after Mom died. I meant to—”

  “Mine set fire to the house on my fifth birthday.”

  “… to …” Casie stared at the girl for several moments, then shook her head. “He … what?”

  “I guess he liked his meth.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t—” Casie began, but Emily stopped her.

  “He was a crazy old ass but that’s okay. See … I’m not judging or anything.”

  There seemed to be so few things to say. “Thank you?” was the best she could come up with.

  Emily nodded. And now her expression was naked, stripped of all subterfuge. “Let me stay,” she said. “Just for a few days. I’ll feed the lambs.”

  “You know about the lambs?” Casie asked, but just then the babies burst into ravenous bleats.

  “I didn’t know they were supposed to be a secret,” Emily said.

  The girl’s sober expression made Casie grin despite herself. Maybe she was overly fatigued. Maybe she was concussed. Hell, maybe she was crazy. “Emily …”

  “Ty showed me how to care for them,” she said. “We cleaned the pen and put down new wood shavings.”

  “I—”

  “One night,” she said. “One night and I’ll cook you breakfast like you never had before.”

  Casie scowled, but the tuna-less tuna casserole was calling.

  “One night,” she said, “then you have to go.”

  CHAPTER 9

  In the three days since Emily’s arrival, the last of the snow had melted. The sun felt like magic on Casie’s back as she pulled the burs from Tangles’s chestnut mane. He seemed calm again, though he’d not been saddled since the last debacle. Casie liked to think she was allowing him time to consider what he’d done wrong.

  “Do you have a cocklebur salad recipe or something?” Emily stood far enough away from the gelding to ensure her safety should the animal unexpectedly erupt. Apparently, seeing him launch his rider into the air like a WMD had made a considerable impression on the girl.

  “What?” Casie turned toward her. It was not an easy task. Ribs might be expected to mend without assistance but they liked to take their own sweet time about it.

  “Cockleburs,” Emily said. She seemed to be staring at the disheveled mess that had once been the birthplace of Kathy Carmichael’s prized tomatoes. “Do you want me to can ’em or burn ’em?”

  “You know how to can?”

  The girl turned toward her, expression wry. “No.”

  “Ahh.” Casie nodded. Perhaps she should be getting accustomed to Emily’s stellar sense of sarcasm. “Is this your way of telling me the garden’s overgrown?”

  “This is my way of telling you I’m not even sure there is a garden under all that—” she began, but at that moment a car turned into the drive, distracting her … a candy-apple-red Cadillac.

  Casie groaned at the sight of it.

  “Who is it?” The girl was scowling. Her grumpy expression made her look like a young curmudgeon.

  “A realtor from Rapid City.”

  “What does he want?”

  “Guess,” Casie said, and sighing, turned to take her medicine.

  In a moment, Philip Jaegar had stepped out of his car and shot them his million-dollar smile.

  “Holy shorts,” Emily breathed, eyes round and entirely focused on the salesmen. “Did you say Rapid City or Mount Olympus?”

  “Geez, Em, he’s old enough to be your father.”

  “So?” she asked, voice breathless.

  Casie gave her a look. “Don’t you have weeds to pull?”

  “None that have bothered you for the last decade or so.”

  “I haven’t been here for the last—” she began, but Jaegar was already striding forward, hand extended.

  “Ms. Carmichael,” he said. “It’s good to see you again.”

  She removed one duct-taped glove and gave a fleeting thought to the crescent of dirt that lined each nail, but their fingers were already meeting. Too late to hide in the barn. “I didn’t expect you back so soon.”

  “Well, I know I took you by surprise last time,” he said. His smile had shifted into a self-effacing grin. “So I wanted to give you a few days to think things through but not so much time that you’d forget how charming I am.”

  He winked disarmingly at Emily, hand still extended.

  “Philip Jaegar,” he said.

  “Emily.” Her voice was soft, bereft of the take-no-prisoners tone she often exuded.

  He nodded a greeting and turned back toward Casie just as a girl stepped from the passenger side of his car. “I hope you don’t mind that I brought my daughter.

  “Sophie …” He
glanced in the girl’s direction. “Come here, honey.”

  She was in her early teens, riding hard toward thirty. Expertly applied highlights colored her long cornsilk hair. Sable liner emphasized vivid emerald eyes.

  “Sophie, this is the lady I told you about, Cassandra Carmichael.”

  “It’s nice to meet you,” Casie said and gave momentary consideration to wiping her fingers on her dubious sweatshirt before finally extending her hand yet again.

  The girl glanced at her palm but only curled her lip slightly as she took it for a fraction of a second in her manicured fingertips. “So …” she began, extracting her hand distastefully. “Do you just do the western thing?”

  Casie glanced at Philip. “I’m sorry?”

  “The dun,” the girl said, nodding toward the animal tied to the fence. “Do you event him or something or just ride stock seat?”

  Casie smiled, already nervous. She’d never been the girlie-girl type, but right now she wasn’t even sure she could be considered a girl of any sort. Extremely feminine women had always made her uncomfortable. In fact, most women made her uncomfortable. Then again, it wasn’t as if she was bosom buddies with a whole host of men. “I’m afraid I don’t ride him at all,” she admitted.

  “Soph loves horses, don’t you, honey?” Philip said, but there was a tightness to his voice that even a super salesman like himself couldn’t completely hide.

  She ignored him. “He’s too skinny,” she said, still eyeing Tangles.

  “Well”—Casie managed to stifle an inappropriate apology with some difficulty, but she silently admitted she was immensely grateful the even skinnier grullo was well out of sight—“I’m trying to fatten him up.”

  “He needs better feed.” Sophie’s tone was sharp with disapproval, light-years from apologetic. “What kind of supplements do you have him on?”

  Casie opened her mouth, but Emily was already speaking. “We just adopted him a couple days ago.”

  The word we struck Casie with a confusing meld of appreciation and surprise as the girl turned toward Emily. Their gazes clashed like lightning, bottle brown on emerald green.

  “So are you and Cassandra sisters, Emily?” Jaegar asked.

  “No. I’m Ms. Carmichael’s apprentice,” Emily said, not missing a beat as she pulled her gaze from Sophie’s with languid sophistication. Apparently, the initial awe caused by the sight of Philip Jaegar had disappeared.

  “Apprentice?” he asked, glancing from one to the other.

  “Yes.” She stood very straight in her weathered army boots, looking comfortable and confident as she lied through her teeth. “She’s teaching me organic gardening and animal husbandry.”

  He nodded, apparently failing to recognize a sarcasm maestro when he met one.

  “Well …” he said, turning back toward Casie. “I hope you’re not wearing yourself out for no reason. I know you want to get back to Saint Paul, and like I told you before I can find you a buyer with legitimate money.”

  “I know you did,” she said and felt that ungodly uncertainty squeeze into her soul again. “I just …” She glanced at the horses that dozed in the sunshine, then past them to the pastures where a white-faced calf dashed a mad circle around his sleepy mother. “I’ve got to get the heifers calved out before I can even think of selling.”

  “Well, I can wait a couple weeks,” he said and trimmed his smile.

  “Then there’s the lambing,” she added.

  “How many head do you have?”

  “Two hundred, give or take a few.”

  He emitted a low whistle. “You’re sure you don’t just want to sell them now and save yourself—”

  “What about the horses?” his daughter asked.

  They turned toward the girl in tandem.

  “They look like crap,” she said. “Don’t you—”

  “Sophie!” Jaegar scolded. His face was flushed, his body taut with nerves. “Apologize to Miss Carmichael immediately.”

  The girl stood very still, very straight. There was not an ounce of apology in either her stance or her expression. “I’m sorry you don’t know how to care for horses,” she said, and turning on her high-priced heel, marched back to the car. In a moment she had sunk back into its dark oblivion.

  “I’m sorry.” Jaegar pulled his gaze from the Cadillac with a rare scowl. “The divorce has been hard on all of us. I just can’t seem to get through to her. We were so close when she was a little girl. We’d play … Well …” He inhaled deeply, looking embarrassed. “I’ll get out of your hair if you promise to give me a call as soon as you’re ready to put the farm on the market.”

  “All right,” Casie said.

  He nodded. Then with one tortured glance at the girl in the passenger seat, he marched toward his intimidating car. In a minute they were gone.

  “My apprentice?” Casie said as the Cadillac rolled quietly out of the yard.

  Emily scowled as she watched the Jaegars turn onto the gravel road. “I could have told him I was your belt buckle and he wouldn’t have noticed.”

  “What are you talking about?” Casie glanced at the girl, trying to decipher the expression on her gamine face.

  “He’s so hot for you he didn’t even recognize me as a sentient being.”

  Casie snorted. “I think you’ve been in the sun too long. You look flushed.” She reached out as if to test the temperature of the girl’s forehead, though truth to tell, she wouldn’t be able to identify a fever until nothing remained but a pile of ashes. “Maybe you’d better go in and lie down until the delusions pass.”

  “Oh, please,” Emily scoffed, swatting Casie’s hand aside, “don’t pretend you didn’t notice. He was so gone on you his eyeballs were beginning to melt.”

  “You’re crazy,” Casie said, but the idea gave her a nice little tingle in her solar plexus. When was the last time she’d felt that?

  “I’m also right,” Emily said. Her tone was tinged with humor and maybe … maybe just a touch of envy as she turned to face Casie. “He wants to pleasure you until you’re flush with passion.”

  “What’s wrong with you?” Casie asked.

  “He wants to take you in a manly fashion.”

  “You’re disturbed.”

  “He wants to make tall, blond babies with you and—”

  “You’re crazy. Just …” Casie knew she was far more flustered than a woman of twenty-eight had any right to be. “Just shut up and see to your organic garden,” she ordered.

  It was well past dark by the time Casie trudged back to the house that evening. She’d hoped to make it an early night, but two of the bulls confined to the bachelor pen had become engaged in a friendly fight and nonchalantly backed through a wooden gate. Casie had found them moaning and drooling over the heifer fence. It had taken her and Jack twenty minutes to urge them back into confinement, much longer to mend the gate. And those had been the easiest jobs of the day. She toed off her boots and headed toward the kitchen, but Emily apprehended her before she’d reached the hallway.

  “Holy crap!” Emily said, eyeing her up and down. Her arms were akimbo. Her left fist was wrapped around a wooden mixing spoon. “And I mean that literally. How do you even get that dirty?”

  Casie sighed. “Number twenty-six was having trouble calving. Three Horns was stuck in the mud by the stock pond. Neither of those two bovine seemed to care a lot about my hygiene.”

  “Three Horns?”

  “It’s a long story,” Casie said. “I can regale you with it over supper if—” she began, made hopeful by the sight of the mixing spoon, but her words were interrupted by the sound of an engine. She sighed and glanced out the window. “What now?”

  “Yeah, it’s like Grand Central Station around here,” Emily said. “I believe this is the second car I’ve seen in the past three days and … hey. Isn’t that the realtor guy?”

  Casie looked down at the muck dried on her pants, then sent a panicked glance at her houseguest. “Let’s pretend we’re not h
ome,” she whispered.

  “What are you talking about? The guy’s probably loaded and he’s definitely got the hots for you. Besides, he can see us through the window,” she said and waved.

  “I don’t want to—” Casie began, but the girl was already opening the door.

  In fewer than thirty seconds, Philip Jaegar was stepping inside. “I’m sorry to bother you again so soon,” he said.

  “No problem.” All evidence of Emily’s saucy demeanor had disappeared once again. “Won’t you come in?”

  “What can I do for you, Mr. Jaegar?” Casie asked.

  “Well … as a matter of fact, I think there might be something I can do for you.”

  Casie refrained from glancing at Emily and tried to ignore the mental images of being taken in a manly fashion. Bradley did just fine in that department … when he wasn’t too distracted. “Oh?” she said.

  “Listen, I don’t know your financial situation, and I don’t need to,” Jaegar said. “But I got the impression that maybe you’re not as flush as you could be.”

  Casie felt pretty flushed but ignored the heat in her cheeks. “Times are hard, Mr. Jaegar.”

  “Phil, please,” he corrected. “And that’s why I came.”

  She raised her brows at him.

  “To make things easier.”

  “Like I said before, I can’t make a decision until the calves are on the ground and that—”

  “I know, and I don’t want to rush you. Really, I don’t.”

  “Then—”

  He held up a placating hand, opened his mouth, then paused and canted his head a little. “Do I smell fresh bread?” he asked, eyes narrowed slightly.

  “I don’t …” Casie began, but Emily was already speaking.

  “I’m trying a new recipe. Oatmeal rosemary rolls.”

  “Really?” He couldn’t have looked more thrilled if he’d just discovered that they would be dining with the Queen Mum. “Homemade bread? My mother used to make the best tea rolls in the tristate area.”

  “Why don’t you stay for dinner?” Emily asked, and sounded absurdly as if she actually hoped he would.

  Casie gritted her teeth at the idea, then smiled wanly when Jaegar turned toward her.

 

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