Sweet Return (11 page)

He didn’t say much, just looked all around, sometimes sticking his head out the window as if that allowed him to see more clearly. As they passed a cluster of grazing cattle, every one of them looked up and stared at them with curiosity, which, Joanna had learned since spending so much time with the Lazy P herd, was the nature of cattle.

“Cows don’t look too bad,” he said, more to himself than to her. “I assume they’re all pregnant. Looks like Mom’s still got the same crosses.”

Joanna wasn’t an expert on cattle and didn’t know if they were pregnant. She didn’t comment, though she did know that most of the Lazy P cattle were a crossbreed of Hereford and Black Angus. At this time of year, with sleek black or russet bodies and snow-white faces, they looked fat and round and healthy. Maybe they
were
pregnant.

After long minutes of a dearth of conversation, he finally said, “Pasture’s in piss-poor shape.”

No arguing that point. Joanna wasn’t an expert on rangeland, either, but she didn’t have to be to see the wide patches of bare sandy dirt where grass had once grown, and talk of the lengthy drought was common all over the county. “We’ve had a drought for several years running. And Clova thinks the pasture’s been overgrazed.”

“If it’s overgrazed, why didn’t she sell off some stock or move ’em to another pasture?”

Inside, Joanna winced. Any answer she gave to his question could be classified only as tattling. She couldn’t remember when she had ever been so uptight. Having not eaten since early morning, her stomach began to cramp. “It wasn’t…uh, well, it wasn’t totally under her control.”

“Why the hell not? She still owns the place, doesn’t she?”

“Well, yes, but…” Joanna stopped herself. How Clova ran the Parker ranch
really
was none of her business.

“What’s the ‘but’?”

She drew in a breath. “Lane’s supposed to be taking care of the cows, but he’s gone a lot and he’s—”

“Forget it. I know what he’s been doing. Or not doing. He’s too much like his old man.”

“Mr. Parker, I’m not anxious to criticize Lane. You need to discuss this with your mother.” Aggravation spiked within her again, and she found the nerve to say, “
You
haven’t been around here, either, you know.”

“Touché,” he said, drilling her with those penetrating eyes, his irritation so sentient it almost had a life of its own. “What’s your name again?” he asked.

Damn him.
She refused to believe he didn’t remember her name. She had left it on his voice mail and she had just told him again in the front yard. “Joanna.”

He returned to staring out the window and said nothing else. She would give an arm to know what was stewing inside his head. Soon they drove up on the old blue ranch truck. A few yards away, they saw Alicia and Clova surrounded by curious cattle and struggling with a wire stretcher. They had succeeded in closing the hole in the fence.

Clova must have recognized her son immediately because she dropped her tools. She started toward them in a walk that soon became a run. Dalton opened the door and slid to the ground just in time to wrap his arms around his mother. Clova broke into sobs of joy against his chest and they stood there in an embrace inside the shade of the pickup door.

“It’s okay, Mom,” he said softly against her hair, patting her back. “I’m here now.”

“You should o’ tol’ somebody you’s comin’,” Clova said on a hitch of breath. “I ain’t got nothin’ cooked or anything.”

“Shh-shh,” he told her softly.

The obvious affection between them didn’t mesh with the gossip Joanna had heard from her mother and sister last Sunday or with the impression he had made on her in the last hour and a half. He might be an overbearing bastard, but something about him made her know that somehow he would fix everything. And he might even save the Parker ranch. From what she could see, Clova felt that way, too. Joanna looked away and wiped a tear of her own.

With Clova’s love for her oldest son so obviously desperate and long-suffering, Joanna found their reunion painful to watch. It touched her in an unexpected way. If Clova loved him so much, why and how had she gone so long without contact with him?

Taking Alicia into her pickup, Joanna left mother and son at the broken fence. Once on the road back to town, fatigue that had been accumulating for a week fell on her like a boulder. The energy she had left to devote to Clova’s dysfunctional family waned. All she could think of was a long, peaceful nap.

“You’ve done a good job this week, kiddo,” she told Alicia. “Above and beyond the call, I’d say.”

“You have the sore head,” Alicia said, pointing to her own forehead.

Joanna didn’t have the will to discuss it or explain it in detail. She gingerly touched the injury between her eyes and chuckled. “Would you believe I ran into a door?”

“Oh,” the teenager said, her eyes wide with puzzlement.

“Listen, Alicia, don’t come to the store tomorrow, okay? Stay home and rest.”

“But who will do the work?”

Responsible Alicia. Seventeen going on thirty. Joanna dreaded the day she would have to do without her. “I’ll ask Mom to fill in,” Joanna answered.

“Poor Clova,” the teenager said, her eyes downcast. “She such a nice lady. I don’ mind helping her.”

“I know. Listen, when you do come in on Monday, pick out a bottle of your favorite fragrance, okay? I’m delivering the eggs, so I won’t be there. Just leave me a note which one you chose. So I can take it off of inventory.”

Alicia’s face broke into a big grin. “Okay.
Sí
. I will take Angel. Pablo will be so happy. He like for me to smell good.”

Joanna drove home thinking about Alicia and her boyfriend. Opposite from Alicia, Pablo Sanchez was a worthless kid who was probably in Alicia’s pants, which didn’t bode well for Joanna’s favorite teenager’s future. For an instant she wondered if she should say something to Alicia, but she quickly put that thought out of her mind. She simply had to stop involving herself in other people’s lives.

At home, she shoved a Lean Cuisine frozen dinner in the microwave without even looking to see what she would be eating, then sorted her laundry and stuffed a few items into the washer. Dinner turned out to be low-fat lasagna. She ate, then changed into her sleeping clothes and crawled into bed. She didn’t intend to merely nap. She intended to sink into unconsciousness. Mom and the three girls who worked in the beauty salon had done without her all week. They could do without her one more day.

She snuggled into her pillow with Clova’s son on her mind. Meeting him might have left her baser urges unsettled, but that didn’t keep her from drifting into a deep sleep.

She awoke a few hours later remembering all that she had to do. She had told Shari and Jay she would meet them at the football game tonight. Their oldest son was a player.

With Dalton now present to help Clova, Joanna could use tomorrow and Sunday to pack the cartons of eggs she had accumulated into cases and prepare them for delivery to her customers in Lubbock and Amarillo on Monday. Then she could wallow in a payday. She could eat lunch at Tia Maria’s or Pasta House, and she might even drop into a mall and shop.

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.”