Sweet Return (17 page)

She had just put the hay in the donkeys’ manger and returned to the gate to pick up her baskets and bucket when Dalton approached. He had on work clothes—faded jeans, a chambray shirt and suede vest and a faded cap. He wore the typical ranch garb so easily, he looked at home in it. The only item that conflicted with his cowboy appearance was his mirrored aviator sunglasses. He came to the fence.

“Watch the hot wire,” she warned him and pointed to the low electric fence wires.

He looked down at his feet, and she did, too. He had on well-worn Ropers. She wouldn’t have guessed he even owned a pair of Ropers. But of course he was a cowboy. He might no longer be directly involved with ranching, but he had grown up a cowboy.

He looked up. “What, this place is wired?”

“The two bottom wires are hot. To keep out the predators.”

“Huh.” His sunglasses hid his eyes, but the usually cocky smirk had left his mouth. “I think Mom’s got a fever,” he said solemnly. “She’s feeling pretty bad. Says she can’t get her breath. I’m gonna take her into town to the doc. I thought you might go with her.”

Joanna had been the one to admit Clova to the hospital back in the spring. Without a word, she set her egg baskets on the ground, peeled off her gloves and stuffed them into her pocket. Then she hurriedly walked to the house and on into Clova’s bedroom. She found Clova still in bed, her eyes bright from fever. Her skin had a pasty pallor. “Hey,” Joanna said softly. “Dalton says you’ve got a fever.”

“A little bit,” Clova replied. “He called up Russell’s answering service and left a message to meet me in his office. I feel like I got the same thing again.” She threw back the covers and turned to sit on the edge of the mattress.

Joanna rushed to her. “Let me help you get dressed. You should go on in to the emergency room now and see whatever doctor is there. It’s Sunday. Dr. Jones might not get the message for hours. Just stay right there. Let me find you some clothes.”

She pulled clean clothing from Clova’s closet, glancing toward the doorway, where Dalton stood with his hands on his hips. His sunglasses dangled from one hand and Joanna could see an expression of helplessness and concern on his face. “I think I told you she had pneumonia in the spring,” she said. “It’s better to be safe than sorry and take her on in to the ER.”

A small frown tented his brow and he nodded.

“You could go heat up the pickup while I help her get dressed. It’s cool out.”

He nodded again and turned away without comment. As Joanna helped Clova to her feet, she heard the front door close.

An hour and a half later, she and Dalton departed acker County Hospital in the dually, having left Clova behind as a patient with respiratory therapy prescribed and tests pending.

He had remained stoic and silent all through the visit to the ER and the doctor’s decision to admit Clova to the hospital. Joanna had done most of the talking. When they checked her into the hospital, rather than argue over Clova’s lack of insurance, Dalton had signed some kind of document, guaranteeing payment of the bill. Now Joanna wondered just how well-off he was. The cocky arrogance she had seen in him so often had been replaced by a glum face and worry lines.

“Mom never used to get sick,” he said, now looking straight ahead, both hands on the steering wheel as he herded the big dually through the town’s narrow streets toward the highway.

Joanna stared straight ahead, too, puzzled by his apparent obtuseness. But then, how could he be expected to know what had been going on in Texas? Even if Clova had been in touch with him, Joanna knew she wouldn’t have told him the truth of things. Clova was a private person. Joanna knew of her problems herself only because she spent so much time at the ranch.

Joanna had been around Clova daily for more than two years. She had seen the weakening of her health and spirit with every juvenile and dangerous episode Lane brought home and laid on the doorstep like some damn tomcat wagging home a trophy, every new unexpected demand for cash the ranch didn’t have. Clova’s decline had happened so gradually, Joanna had come to terms with it the same way.

Dalton appeared to be so flummoxed, she felt a need to explain more about his mother. “She’s older now, Dalton. And run-down. She’s had the ranch to take care of all on her own and doing a man’s work the last few years. Not only has Lane not been much help, his shenanigans have kept her in a state of constant worry. His DUIs, his fines, his child-support payments. It’s all cost—”

“
What
child support?”

The pickup lurched to a jolting halt. She grabbed the dash to keep her forehead from banging the windshield. She shot a look of outrage at Dalton, but like a black, violent storm, his dark eyes bore down on her. A few seconds passed before she found words. “For—for his daughter.”

“
What
daughter?”

She sat there stupefied, absorbing the fact that he didn’t know his brother had a child or that he himself was an uncle. Uncomfortable in the heat of his glare, she turned to stare out the windshield. “He and Mandy Ferguson have a little girl. She’s almost two. I—I can’t believe you didn’t know.”

“How the hell would I know? Why the fuck didn’t they get married?”

Stunned at his reaction, Joanna turned back to him. She had already said too much to stop now. “Because she doesn’t want to live with a drunk,” she barked. “And her family doesn’t want her to, either. And no one blames her or them.”

“Jee-zus Christ,” he growled, yanking the dually into gear. “How much are the fuckin’ child-support payments?”

“I think it’s eight hundred dollars a month.”

“Jesus Christ. That’s nearly ten thousand dollars a year. Who is this woman? Does she work?”

“Of course she works,” Joanna snapped. “Her folks own the Dairy Queen. She works behind the counter.”

“Goddammit,” he growled.

“She’s a nice girl. She and her mother used to be customers in my shop. She really cared about Lane, but the way he’s been, no one can care about him for long. He’s got this wild streak about him. He’s just too—too…well, unpredictable.”

“How many DUIs has he got?”

“Why are you grilling
me
?” she said, almost shouting now. “Why don’t you ask your mother or your brother about these things?”

“Because I’m asking the person who seems to know every fuckin’ thing that goes on around here,” he almost shouted back.

She drew a calming breath and lifted her chin. “I would really appreciate it if you would spare me the profanity. You’re not a marine any longer.”

“Just goes to show how much you don’t know,” he snarled. “Once you’re a marine, you’re always a marine.”

She sent him a fierce glare. “Look, I’m not a prude, but your language is starting to make my ears bleed. I hate the
F
word.”

He glared back at her just as fiercely, as if he were stunned that she would dare criticize him.

“I don’t know how many DUIs he’s got,” she said, moving on. “But I won’t be surprised if he loses his driver’s license this time. I think it only takes three. I think it’s possible he could even go to jail. I don’t know what Clova will do then.”

Dalton’s shoulders seemed to sag. He let out a deep breath, like a deflating balloon. Still hanging on to the steering wheel with both hands, he stared straight ahead, slowly shaking his head. “I never thought…I don’t know what I thought.”

Joanna heard a little break in his voice. She couldn’t guess what it meant. Nor could she guess Dalton’s true feelings for his mother and brother. Or, now, for his niece. She had pegged him for a libertine. A traditional attitude, such as outrage that a man hadn’t married the woman with whom he had fathered a child, was the last thing she would have expected. Every encounter with him brought a surprise.

Chapter 12

At the ranch, Dalton parked the dually beside the ranch pickup. “I’ve got to get these fence posts loaded into the work truck,” he said grimly, more to himself than to her. “Got to get started on that fence.”

He appeared to be so upset and worried that Joanna’s proclivity for worrying about other people rushed to the surface. She felt sorry for him. Last night’s sparring match in the kitchen and today’s in the dually faded into the background of reality and now seemed silly. “Did you find someone to help you?” she asked.

He shook his head. “I’ll manage.”

She hesitated a few seconds, suspecting that “manage” was what he had always done. Managed whatever life handed him. Though she hadn’t been around him much, she somehow knew he was a man who made the best of the worst circumstances. She knew exactly how he felt. On a different scale and under less calamitous events, she lived her life much the same.

She wondered if he would accept her help. Finally, she knew she had to offer. She would do it for anyone. She looked up at him, shielding her eyes from the morning sun with her hand. “Look, it’s not very smart to take on that fence alone. I’ll make a deal with you. If you’ll help me get my eggs gathered, I’ll help you with the fence. I wasn’t going to do anything special today, anyway.”

He stared down at her, a tic jumping in his square jaw. “Why would you do that? What do you know about building a fence? Besides, you can get cut up by barbed wire.”

“I know teenagers who build fence. If they can do it, I can.”

Looking off into the distance, he inflated his cheeks and blew out a loud breath. “Okay. Show me what to do.”

“Just wait here. I’ll be right back.”

She walked over to her egg-washing room, picked up two baskets and two blue plastic buckets and returned with them. She handed him one of each. “Gathering eggs isn’t rocket science. You just pick them up and put them in the basket. If you find a cracked or broken one, put it in the blue bucket so I can trash it. If you throw it on the ground or leave it in the nest, the hens will eat it, and that trains them to eat eggs. I don’t want them to get into that habit.”

“Stupid birds,” he muttered, taking the basket and the bucket and looking from one to the other as if each were tainted.

“You don’t have to like the hens to gather the eggs, okay?”

They worked in silence. Dulce scratched and clucked along behind them. Every time Dalton turned around, she was underfoot. “Chicken, you pushing your luck,” he told the hen after he had almost stepped on her several times and sent her squawking and flapping away. Joanna suppressed a smile. Something told her Dulce was in no danger. Dalton might be arrogant and gruff, but he wasn’t mean natured.

When they finished, he handed over his basket filled with eggs and the bucket holding four cracked ones. He walked beside her as she carried them toward her room, his size and close presence making her feel small. “How are you going to get that bundle of fence posts into the ranch truck?” she asked him.

“Well, babe, I’m gonna break it up and load ’em a few at a time. I’m not Superman, you know.”

She held back a grin, remembering the thought she’d had yesterday in the kitchen. “I have to wash these eggs. I can do it while you load the posts. I’ll hurry so I can help you.”

She scrambled into her coveralls, cap and gloves, washed the eight dozen eggs and laid them out to dry. When she went outside, she saw the fence posts already loaded, along with all of the tools and supplies. Dalton was nowhere to be seen. Just then, he came from inside the house carrying a brown paper grocery sack, a denim shirt and a pair of gloves. “I brought some cheese and bread and water for lunch,” he said.

“Ugh.”

“Hey, don’t bitch. I crawled all over a fu—a jungle in Thailand once with little more than that in my pack.”

If anyone else had made that statement, she would have been so curious she would have asked for more information, but he wasn’t just anyone. Besides, as contentious as he was, if she asked, he might tell her it was none of her damn business. “Whatever,” she said. “I don’t eat much anyway.”

He handed her the shirt and a new pair of leather work gloves. “Maybe these will keep your arms and hands from getting cut up.”

He had a point. She was wearing a T-shirt.

Soon they were in the work pickup, creeping across the pasture toward the broken fence, saying little. Finally he said, “Mom told me it was her idea about the chickens. So I guess you weren’t lying.”

“And of course you thought I was. Of course you thought I befriended a lonely older woman so I could steal your inheritance.”

His eyes were hidden by his sunglasses, but a hint of a smile played over his lips. “I’m not worried about a fu—about a damned inheritance. This place doesn’t mean shit to me.”

At hearing him stop himself at the
F
word a second time, she shot him a quick glance, feeling as if she had won a battle. And at the same time she wondered if it were true that the Lazy P meant nothing to him.

“But it was a helluva shock,” he said, “seeing all those goddamn chickens inhabiting the pasture we used to reserve for our prime cows.”

She didn’t like hearing “goddamn,” either, but she satisfied herself with a small victory.

A few more seconds later, he said, “Mom told me you don’t pay any rent.”

Joanna winced inside, though she had known all along that sooner or later her free use of the land would come up. “Clova gets something out of this,” she said, feeling the need for a defense. “The chicken droppings make great fertilizer. She uses it in her garden and—”

“So you’re telling me you’re paying my mom off in chicken shit?”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Tell me something else. All that home-canned food in Mom’s pantry. All of that grew in chicken shit?”

“Manure is manure. What’s the difference if it comes from horses or cows or chickens? It’s all organic.”

“You know, in the old days, the cowmen fought wars with the sheepmen who brought in their herds of sheep and squatted on the land. If there had been chicken herds back then, what do you suppose a cowman would’ve done about that?”

Joanna thought she heard teasing in his tone. She gave him an impish grin. “Probably would have been hard-nosed and narrow-minded. Like you.”

He cocked his head and looked at her. “You know, you’re pretty when you smile.”