Sweet Return (12 page)

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 feel 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.”

Joanna had missed the first half of the game and the band performance of the opposing team. She craned to see the scoreboard. “Sorry. Who’s winning?”

“Our boys are ahead. Cody’s doing good.”

Cody was Shari and Jay Huddleston’s seventeen-year-old son, the oldest of their four boys. He was a hard-bodied high school jock glaringly suffering from testosterone overload. Joanna had been present the day he was born.

Shari finally looked Joanna’s way. “Oh, my God. What happened to your head?”

Joanna had tried to cover the bruise between her eyes with concealer, then foundation. Apparently that hadn’t worked. She gave an audible sigh. “I ran into Clova’s screen door.”

“Ouch. Is that what kept you so long?”

Jay, sitting to Shari’s left, peered around his wife. “Yeah, Joanna, where you been? A fox get in the henhouse?” He yuck-yucked at his own joke.

Jay had been a high school hunk himself. He had grown into a man who still made women go silly and giggly when he was around. His brown hair had turned silver at the temples, but his blue eyes continued to twinkle with mischief, as they always had.

Shari had thickened around the middle, but Jay was still lean and trim, with broad shoulders that filled out a subdued button-down and a cute butt that filled out a pair of tight Wranglers. Though he and Shari needled each other incessantly, everyone knew they were as much in love today as they had been at eighteen. In the early years of their marriage, Shari had seemingly been pregnant constantly. Back then, the common joke in Hatlow was that with Shari sharing a bed every night with a stud like Jay, no wonder she was pregnant all the time.

In many ways, Joanna envied Shari and her rowdy family of males, envied the way Jay looked at his wife as if there were no other woman in the world and the possessive posturing he sometimes displayed. If a man had ever looked or felt the same way about Joanna, she didn’t know it.

Now she leaned forward and replied to Jay across Shari. “I’ll have you know, Jay Huddleston, if I stopped bringing you eggs, you’d miss them.”

He laughed again. “How is that possible? Do I look like a man that can tell the difference between a forty-cent egg and one that costs a nickel? So who took a swing at you?”

“She ran into a door,” Shari told him.

He guffawed. “What were you drinking?”

“I got delayed,” Joanna said to Shari, ignoring the teasing. “Clova’s son showed up.”

Shari drew a quick breath. “Dalton? You are shitting me.”

Jay peered around his wife again. “Dalton Parker’s back in town?”

“He drove up in a rental car this morning.”

“Wow,” Shari said. “That is amazing. Listen, what does he look like?”

“Like a guy. What else?”

“Is he still good-looking? He was so hot when we were in high school.”

Joanna’s thoughts rushed to her first reaction upon renewing acquaintance with Dalton Parker.
Yep, he’s hot
.

“And you’re an expert on hot,” Jay said, veering a sidelong glance at his wife.

“I married you, didn’t I?” She slugged his shoulder with her small fist and let her hand rest there. Joanna had figured out long ago that with Shari and Jay, this sarcastic back-and-forth was nothing more—or less—than foreplay. More than once she had wondered if they jumped into bed the minute they reached home.