Their Wander Canyon Wish

by Allie Pleiter

  He couldn’t stop himself. “Is your spice cabinet in alphabetical order?”

  Now it was her turn to look sheepish. “I know better than to rearrange my mother’s spices. It’s not my kitchen.”

  “But your kitchen? Back in Denver?”

  “Organization is important. And it saves time.”

  Wyatt pointed at her. “So it is...well, was...”

  “Maybe.”

  Wyatt nudged the box containing the too-small carousel pinion. “I’m wasting time I can’t afford to waste with these dumb mistakes. The carousel’s bad enough, but customers are getting peeved that repairs aren’t done when I promised them.”

  “On account of parts orders coming in wrong?”

  He looked over at the Jeep two days overdue because of a dashboard part. “Or not coming in at all. I was sure I ordered the part for that, but the dealer says I didn’t.”

  Marilyn sat down at the desk. “It shouldn’t be that hard to get this under control.” She picked up a file. “An hour’s worth of sorting sounds like a fair trade for free cupcakes.”

  “Those cupcakes were for the carousel. There’s nothing says you have to help me.”

  She got that look again. Where did woman learn to pin you with their eyes like that? “Didn’t your mother ever teach you to say thank you when someone offers to help?”

  He hated the idea of admitting to anyone in Wander that he might need help keeping orders straight. But seeing as she was a newcomer, maybe it wouldn’t be so terrible if he let her help him get things in order. For an hour.

  Wyatt swallowed his pride and gulped out, “Thank you.”

  She smiled. “You’re welcome. Will it be okay if I come back Monday and we get started then?”

  “Sure thing.” He had to admit, for a fancy-pants, hyperorganized city girl, she had one heart-stopper of a smile.

  Chapter Four

  What had he done? Wyatt flipped on the lights in the garage Monday morning with a sense of stunned surprise. He was here half an hour before the garage even formally opened—rather a shocking turn of events for someone with his night-owl tendencies. Even Yvonne at the bakery gave him a look when he came in for some doughnuts. He’d known she would, of course, and almost went to the market on the other side of town, but that felt like treachery. Yvonne had been good to him, even when he hadn’t fully patched things up with Chaz.

  Marilyn’s arrival felt like an invasion, which made no sense. Except for the thrumming sensation that she’d see things. Things he didn’t want her—or anyone, for that matter—to see. He was Wyatt Walker, the smooth guy with all the answers. Unfortunately, the mounting pile of disorganized invoices and receipts on the desk wasn’t interested in keeping up appearances. He’d tried once more over the weekend to make sense of the paperwork and still came up short. The honest truth was that if Marilyn hadn’t offered help, he was going to be forced to find it somewhere, and soon. With her help, he wouldn’t have to turn to Chaz or Dad or Yvonne or even Pauline to sort this out, and that was a good thing.

  Setting the bakery box down beside the coffeemaker, Wyatt told himself the two pink doughnuts were to thank Maddie and Margie for letting him hijack their mom for the morning. Sweeping up the garage floor yesterday afternoon was just plain common courtesy, that’s all.

  At 8:30 a.m. on the dot, Marilyn’s car pulled into one of the parking spaces outside the garage and she pushed open the door. Her punctuality didn’t surprise him one bit. Morning people baffled him. How all that energy and focus were in a man’s brain so soon after waking never made sense to him, and was one of the first clues he wasn’t cut out for up-at-the-crack-of-dawn ranch life. To Wyatt’s way of thinking, a man was meant to ease into the day, and enjoy long nights.

  “Good morning.” Bright eyes welcomed him over a set of large coffees from Yvonne’s. “I brought coffee.”

  She’d been to Yvonne’s? They must have just missed each other. Wyatt could just picture the grin on his sister-in-law’s face—and likely the amused text she was sending Chaz. “We have some here, but Yvonne makes it better.”

  “She said the same thing. She also said you’d picked up doughnuts when I tried to buy some to bring over.”

  Wyatt switched off the coffeemaker. “No sense organizing on an empty stomach.”

  Marilyn hung her coat neatly over the back of the desk chair and checked her watch. “Mom is going to drop the girls off on her way to a committee meeting at ten thirty, so I’ve got two hours to make a serious dent in this.” She sat down, looking unnervingly eager to tackle what he’d dreaded. Paperwork and pleasant didn’t come in the same breath in his world, but she looked as if this was fun. “Where do you want to start?”

  He gaped at the pile, not wanting to admit that he’d already tried to start—and failed. “I have no idea.”

  “Is there any order to what’s on this desk?” The words could have been judgmental, but they didn’t have any bite to them. Curiosity, maybe, as if she couldn’t quite comprehend how messiness happened, but not the disappointed edge his father had down to an art form.

  “Chronological, I suppose. Oldest on the bottom, newer on top.”

  She peered under one of the larger piles. “Like an archaeological dig?”

  He had to laugh at that. “Yeah. Only no treasure at the bottom.”

  She leaned down, reaching under one of Manny’s notebooks. “You’re wrong there.” With a triumphant grin, she held up a twenty-dollar bill and waved it at him.

  “You’re not going to say finders keepers, are you?”

  “I promised to help, didn’t I?” After a beat, she added, “Just how much do you think is in here?”

  “I hope that’s the last of it.” He did, actually. Even though the ancient cash register made more sense to him than the evil torture device that passed for Manny’s credit card machine. That thing had it out for him, he was sure of it.

  She stared at the desk for a long moment, eyes narrowing as she tucked her hair behind her ears. Hatching, he realized, a plan of attack. “Sort first, then assess.”

  She had a system. With stages. Wyatt swallowed hard. Out of nowhere his brain concocted a vision of Maggie and Margie dancing in a circle singing “Sort first, then assess” like it was the best game ever. “Um...meaning?”

  “I make piles, then we sort each pile into smaller piles based on what needs doing first.”

  That didn’t sound too painful. He was worried she would take one look and say she’d have to come back tomorrow with a truckload of office supplies. After all, she looked like the kind of woman who owned a label maker. Or three.

  He ventured the question that worried him most. “So what do you need me to do?” Sitting opposite her on the desk having to fess up to multiple layers of disorganization ranked right up there with oral surgery or cleaning out the cattle barn.

  “Oh, I don’t need your help just yet. You can go ahead and do whatever work you have to while I...excavate. Once I get the piles made, though, we’ll need to go through them together.”

  How did she not make it sound awful at all? “Okay.” The gush of relief that went through him was downright invigorating, although he took pains to hide it. If “sort first, then assess” got him to the spot where Manny walked back into a smoothly functioning garage without overdue orders or lost paperwork, then he’d welcome those four words as his new favorite phrase. “I can get behind that plan.”

  With no hesitation or concern, Marilyn picked up the first two pieces of paper, stared at them and started making piles.

  And piles. And more piles after that. In fact, after twenty minutes or so, Wyatt looked up from a tune-up to find her humming. As if she was enjoying watching the mountain of mess transform into a dozen or so stacks of papers. Half hiding behind the tires of the car up on the lift, Wyatt watched her consider an idea, reach down into her handbag and produce
a little leather wallet thing. With a satisfied smile, Marilyn pulled out a pack of those sticky notes Chaz was forever using. She planted a note on the top layer of each pile, labeling it. For him? For her own amusement? Who knew?

  Since he found himself at a good stopping point, Wyatt made a show of stretching his back. “Is it time for a coffee break yet?” He wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to examine the piles she’d created, but a surprisingly large part of him wanted to let her show him. Mostly because she looked like she’d get such a kick out of it.

  She pushed the chair back from the desk. “Perfect timing—I’ve just gotten everything sorted out.”

  He walked toward the desk. “You don’t say.” She really had done it. You could see the actual wood of the desk—something he hadn’t seen in weeks—underneath the collection of tidy piles. Each with its own colored sticky note. It didn’t surprise him that her handwriting was curvy and precise. What did it say about him that his own handwriting was spiky and nearly impossible to read?

  Marilyn gave him a sideways glance. “You might have avoided half of this by staying on top of things in Manny’s notebook. His system is simple, but pretty effective.”

  He knew Manny’s system was simple—to Manny. The man explained it as if it were child’s play, which only made Wyatt feel worse about not catching on. He simply shrugged, not wanting to admit to any kind of struggle in something she seemed to find so easy.

  “It’s like housework,” she explained. “If you just keep up with it, everything is far easier.”

  Reaching for the doughnut box, Wyatt gave her a look he hoped translated to “housework comparisons don’t help one bit.”

  “Remind me never to show you upstairs,” he laughed, and then instantly regretted how inappropriate that sounded. “I live upstairs,” he tried to clarify, but it only made it worse. “It’s not at all neat.” Finally, unable to dig himself out of that particular hole, he flipped open the box and said, “Doughnut?”

  * * *

  This was a different Wyatt Walker. He was missing the glint and the swagger, and was more softly spoken without the continual persuasive edge his voice had carried years earlier. She’d noticed the new bag of upscale flavored coffee next to the work-a-day tin of grounds next to the coffee machine. Was it there for her benefit?

  Marilyn could far more easily imagine Wyatt peeling bills out of his wallet and whispering in some woman’s ear “Get us a couple of coffees, baby” than she could see him picking out a bag of French Vanilla Hazelnut from the roasters up the street.

  Even more telling was the pair of pink-frosted doughnuts doused in sprinkles. She couldn’t resist. “Partial to sprinkles, are you?”

  Wyatt shifted his weight and coughed. “I thought I ought to get something for the girls.”

  The small kindness tucked itself in her chest where the emptiness usually dwelled. “You don’t have to buy froufrou coffee for me, you know.”

  He seemed relieved to hear it. “Yeah, I got a couple of weird looks buying it.”

  She’d have thought the valentine-hued doughnuts would have brought more stares. “Not used to stares?”

  “Not the French vanilla kind.” He winced as he drained the enormous mug he’d kept on the workbench. “Like drinking a candy bar. Don’t get me wrong—I love candy. But not hot in a mug before lunch.”

  She wasn’t sure what made her ask. “It doesn’t bother you? The way people talked?” It felt kinder to put the verb in the past tense, even though Mom had made it rather clear that people still talked about him.

  “Depends on who’s doing the talking.” He picked up a heavily frosted chocolate doughnut. “I can tune out my dad easy.” After a moment he added, “Or your mom and her friends.”

  It shouldn’t have surprised Marilyn that Mom’s judgmental words eventually found their way to Wyatt’s ears. Like most small towns, there were precious few places to hide from the glare of gossips. The bite of criticism is one of the things she worried about when coming home, why she’d held out in Denver until the girls were finished with kindergarten. Reputations were easier to keep up from a distance, and everyone still believed Landon to be the upstanding man her husband made sure everyone saw.

  Wyatt mistook the silence of her thoughts for regret. “It don’t bother me none. Your mom and those types. I knew by seventh grade that I’d never change in their eyes. So I made it a game, I suppose.”

  Marilyn found a napkin and plucked a sticky glazed cruller from the box. “A game?”

  “A competition. How far down the spectrum of annoying and disrespectful can I get without crossing the line into illegal. I’m a master.” He took a big bite of doughnut as if that proved his point.

  There was the glint and swagger she’d come to associate with Wyatt. “Really?”

  Wyatt pointed to his car where it sat in the parking lot, an enormous bold and brash pickup truck looming over her well-heeled SUV. “Did you know the legal limit for a truck exhaust is eighty-two decibels?”

  She could guess where this was going. “I did not.”

  He nodded at the vehicle. “Eighty is just enough under to get away with it and still pull a few nasty looks if I gun it right.”

  “But not enough to get you a ticket.”

  “I carried a decibel meter and a copy of the ordinance in my glove box for the first month. They stopped pulling me over after that.” He grinned. “But it still bugs ’em.”

  Troublemaker. He relished the role, even now. “You like to stir things up.”

  “The way I see it, some things need stirring.”

  And some things are better left to settle. As long as they don’t fester. Or stagnate.

  She’d been wondering most of the morning as she saw the pile of parts receipts and operations drawings for the merry-go-round. “So why the carousel?”

  He sat on the edge of the desk. “I’m not even sure I know myself. Impulse, I suppose. Manny’s idea, actually.”

  “Manny’s?” Wyatt didn’t strike her as the kind of man to do something just because someone told him to. Quite the opposite, in fact.

  Wyatt shrugged his shoulders. “His idea of reforming me. Using my powers for good, and all.” His gaze fell to the dark depths of his coffee. “Only it hasn’t worked out that way, has it? The carousel’s still broke and people are ticked at me on account of it.” He gave the piles of paper a look as dark as his brew. “Wrong parts and misorders.”

  It really bothered him, this pile of messy papers. Oh, he’d never say it out loud, but she could see the annoyance—the frustration—in his eyes. He wanted to do a good job at this, and it was eating at him that it loomed beyond his reach. He cared far more than he ever wanted to let on. “Let’s fix that. Or at least get a start on it.” Marilyn sat back down in the desk chair and motioned for him to pull the second chair up beside her. She pointed to each of the piles in turn. “Receipts, completed orders, waiting orders, invoices, general mail, insurance, checks and miscellaneous.”

  “What? No pile for fan mail?”

  She merely rolled her eyes. A career in public relations was nothing if not an exercise in wrangling egos. “Which one bugs you the least?”

  He sat back in his chair. “They all bug me.”

  Resistance often showed itself disguised as defiance. Margie had given her plenty of experience in that realm. “Which is why I asked you which one bugs you the least.”

  He thought about it for a moment, then pointed to the stack of checks. “Those. Money coming in, after all.”

  She picked up the stack. “Not if you leave it sitting on a desk.” She picked up one and waved it at him. “This one is three weeks old.”

  “I’ve been busy.”

  “You haven’t been paying attention. Open those two binders over there and grab a pencil.”

  He looked shocked. “I’m gonna do this?”

 
“You won’t learn if I do it for you.”

  “I’m okay with that.”

  She squared off at him. “I am the mother of two small girls. You can’t get away with that kind of stuff with me.”

  He managed to look penitent. “Evidently not.”

  With careful patience, Marilyn showed him how Manny logged each check against the insurance claim or invoice listed in a set of binders. She watched his laborious handwriting as he recorded each check. She gently corrected him when he transposed numbers or letters, which he did several times. Each logged check then took its place in a bank pouch. Twenty minutes later, they’d reached the bottom of their coffee cups and the bottom of the stack of checks. A nice, orderly deposit slip sat filled out in the pouch with the checks, ready to take to the bank.

  “Look at that,” she said with a smile. “A nice fat deposit and one pile gone. Not so hard, right?”

  “Sez you,” he mumbled in mock displeasure. Mock, because there was no hiding his sense of accomplishment, or hers.

  She took the sticky note that had said “checks” and planted it victoriously on the wall beside the desk. “Our wall of fame. All these sticky notes will be up there before you know it.”

  Now it was his turn to roll his eyes. At least until Marilyn’s cell phone went off in her handbag.

  “I’m out front with the girls,” came her mother’s voice. “Come get them.” Because I’m not coming in there came through loud and clear.

  “I’ll be right there.” Mom could be such a stick-in-the-mud when she chose to. “The girls are here,” she said to Wyatt, ending the call. “I’ll be right back.”

  She stepped outside and opened the car door. “You could have brought them in,” she said to her mother as if it were no big deal—because it wasn’t.

  Mom’s look spoke all the jabs she didn’t say.

  “Mr. Walker bought you doughnuts from the bakery.” Marilyn made sure to catch her mother’s eyes as she informed the girls. “Pink frosting and sprinkles.”