Sweet Return (19 page)

The names meant nothing to Dalton. “Bad place to be. But most of those folks believe in what they’re doing. They’re more worried about getting screwed over by the politicians over here than about getting killed over there. I want to honor all of them with my book.”

“How many wars have you taken pictures of?”

“More than I care to recall. There’s a war going on somewhere all the time. Being an objective witness to just how fu—how savage human beings can be is an onerous task for one small man.”

He was proud of himself for catching himself on the
F
word. He didn’t want to see her ears bleed.

“I can’t imagine the kind of life you have,” she said, “going all over the world to take pictures. I couldn’t even get along living in Lubbock. That’s why I’m here.”

“I’ve never regretted the path I took. I’m never bored.”

“Then I guess that makes you one of the lucky ones.”

Once he had thought that. Lately, he wondered. After his last trip, he felt weary, worn and not enthusiastic to return. “Why? Do
you
have regrets?”

“No. I’m happy where I am. But I know a lot of people who aren’t.”

They reached the ranch and he brought the work truck to a stop behind the dually.

“Are you going to see your mom?” she asked.

“After I get cleaned up and get something to eat.” He slid out of the truck with every joint and muscle protesting. Back in LA, besides swimming every day, he sometimes worked out in a health club, but he couldn’t remember the last time he had done so much strenuous work for a sustained period. Just one more reminder that he was getting old and he hadn’t taken very good care of himself. Just one more fact that made him wonder if it was time to change directions.

He limped around the front end of the truck and opened the door for Joanna to climb out, but she just sat there. “I don’t think I can move,” she said.

He offered her his hand. “Come on, Red. You’re not gonna quit on me now, are you?”

“Red? Oh, my gosh, am I that sunburned?”

He found the energy to chuckle. “I was talking about your hair.”

She looked at him with a thousand-kilowatt smile. He smiled back and took a few seconds and let his eyes feast on her face. She was hot and sweaty and sunburned indeed, and her makeup, whatever she had worn, was gone. She didn’t seem to care, and it was just as well. She was pretty without it.

“No one’s ever called me Red,” she said, then laughed. “Is that better than
babe
?”

Damn, he liked her.

Chapter 13

Dalton stood with his hand extended. She took it and climbed out slowly, letting out a groan when her feet hit the ground. “I’ve got to gather the eggs.” She looked spent, but her face held an expression of resolve as she clapped her cap on her head.

“I’ll help you,” he said. “It won’t take long with the two of us.” After she had worked so hard helping him, he could stoop to help her gather eggs one more time.

She nodded. “Thanks. I never turn down help. I’ll go get the baskets.”

She came out of her little room and led the way to the chicken yard and let them through the gate. They approached the first coop together. “Look,” she said, “let’s do this like we did this morning. I’ll take these on the left and you—”

An ominous sizzle and hiss stopped them.

An adrenaline burst shot through his gut.
Fuck!

She stopped dead still. “Oh, my God,” she whispered and swung a wild-eyed look of horror at him.

There was no mistaking the sound. He scanned a 180 degrees but saw nothing. “Be still.” He kept his voice low, not wanting to excite her any more. “I can’t see it. Can you?”

“No. I—I think it’s on my left. Maybe behind the coop.” Her voice held a quaver.

Fuck!
He had no weapon of any kind. He knew there was a good chance the varmint would slither away if left alone and unthreatened. Then again, to be hissing and rattling, it
already
felt threatened. It had probably come for eggs. And if it found food successfully, it would return. He didn’t like the idea of either Joanna or his mother facing a rattlesnake. His eyes darted everywhere until he spotted a three-foot-long piece of two-by-four securing the coop’s door flap. “That two-by-four on top of the chicken house. Is it nailed down?”

“N-no.”

“Don’t move a muscle.” He stepped gingerly to the right and lifted the two-by-four from the roof. He eased around the back of the coop, coming up on the opposite side. There he saw the snake coiled like a rope at the corner of the shack, its triangular head risen to strike. The damn thing was thick, and it had to be four feet long. He knew two things: It could strike quicker than the blink of an eye and he had to move fast.

He raised the board and struck.
Thwack!

The rattler twisted and writhed on the ground, its neck broken. He finished it off with the two-by-four and his boot heel.

He glanced in Joanna’s direction. She had sunk to her knees, her face covered with her hands. He threw the two-by-four back onto the roof, went to her and squatted beside her. She was shaking all over. “You okay?”

She began to sob in great gulps. “N-no…. I’m n-not okay.”

He rubbed her back with one hand. “I got him. He can’t hurt you now. Everything’s all right.”

She braced a hand on his knee and stood up, wiping her nose with the heel of her hand. “I have to go home. Right now. I have to go home.” She turned and stumbled toward the gate.

“Wait a minute….”

But she didn’t stop. She fumbled the gate open and stumbled through but didn’t close it. “When you go see your mom, don’t tell her about the snake.”

He got to his feet and followed her, pausing long enough to latch the gate. He sure didn’t want to risk all those friggin’ chickens getting out of their pen at sundown.

She was headed on a crooked path toward her truck. He quickstepped behind her. When he reached her she was trying to dig her keys from her jeans pocket, but the tail of his oversize shirt and her trembling prevented it.

“Here,” he said, starting to be concerned about her, “let me do that.” He shoved his fingers into her jeans pocket, pulled out her keys and handed them to her. “You sure you’re okay to drive?” She reached for the door, but he held it closed. “I’m not sure you should be driving—”

“I can drive,” she snapped, yanking on the door latch.

“Okay.” He lifted his hands in surrender, then pulled the door all the way open and held it for her. She climbed onto the driver’s seat and fumbled the keys into the ignition with a shaking hand.

“Don’t worry about the eggs,” he said, stunned at hearing himself say it. “I’ll get ’em for you.”

“You don’t have to. They can wait.” She fired the engine, giving it too much gas. It came to life with a loud roar.

“I said I’ll get ’em. And I will.” He raised his voice to be heard over the engine noise. “I don’t know how to wash ’em, but I’ll put ’em in the refrigerator for you.”

“Fine. Please. I have to go.”

He closed the door and she drove away, leaving him to worry. About her.

Snake!…Rattle
snake!…
Shit
.

What the hell was a snake doing slinking around in September? Weren’t they all supposed to be asleep by now?

Joanna lay in a bathtub of warm bubbles up to her neck, waiting for the shakes to go away. Her stomach had roiled all the way home, and she had barely made it into the house before it rebelled and she hurled what little she had eaten all day. Her heart continued to pound, and she still felt a buzz all over her body.

She hadn’t seen a snake in the chicken yard in a long while. So long, in fact, that she had become complacent about looking out for one. And she had
never
seen a rattlesnake there. In fact, in spite of living in the middle of a rattlesnake haven, she had never seen one up close and personal,
ever
. A rat snake or an ordinary old bullsnake that came to steal eggs didn’t scare her. But a rattlesnake terrified her.
Shit
. Reimagining the rattle sent another shiver up her spine.

She couldn’t make herself stop thinking about two years ago when Toby Patterson, a local teenager, had been bitten on the hand while picnicking. He didn’t die from it, but he came close. Now, more than twenty surgeries in three major hospitals later, he had lost 20 percent of the use of his hand and arm. Gossip said his medical bills had come to a million dollars. Hatlow’s churches and citizens still held bake sales, raising money to help his family pay them.

What would she have done if Dalton hadn’t been there? No answer to that question came, but the thought of him as her knight in shining armor brought on new and different distress. How illogical was that? One was just as hard to put out of her mind as the other.

Instead of doing any more heavy cogitating, she concentrated on Alan Jackson’s mellow voice crooning from the CD player in the bedroom and the haunting lyrics of “Red on a Rose.” That endeavor turned out to be a mistake because the song was a haunting ballad about a man’s deep love for a woman, something Joanna had never known. How nice would it be to have someone who cared about her all the way to his soul, someone who was strong and would always look out for her, someone who would hold her and tell her she was safe?

New anguish pushed in on her attempt at serenity, and as if it were playing on a movie screen, she saw her future as a lonely old woman who had chosen hard work over the risk of relationships.

Tears welled in her eyes. Her inexplicable attraction to a man as impossible as Dalton Parker and the incident with the rattlesnake only reinforced just how alone she was and the precarious position in which the egg business had put her security. Why couldn’t she have been content with the two businesses she already owned that supported her reasonably well? Now the egg business took so much of her time and energy, her other enterprises suffered. And she hadn’t been able to put away any more toward her retirement in ages.

Out of control, her thoughts hurtled into even scarier territory and left her pondering what character flaw made her feel unfulfilled and had her constantly reaching for a new success. Was it because she had no family, no husband or children on which to spend her energy? Was that why she often found herself involved with the endless crises in Clova’s family? Of course, her history proved that if she hadn’t taken Clova’s troubles upon herself, she would have found someone else’s. When her mother and her friends told her she
had
to stop trying to solve everyone else’s problems, they were right.

The song ended. The bathwater had grown tepid. She forced herself to climb out. A hot bubble bath had not soothed the aches and pains she felt in every cell. Not only had it been dumb for her to volunteer to help a superior physical specimen such as Dalton built a fence, it had been downright stupid to try to keep up with him. She had never seen a human being work so hard and get so much done in so short a time. He was like a damn machine. Helping him had taken all of the physical strength and willpower she possessed.

But no way would she ever let him know it. Her pride wouldn’t allow it.

She dried her body, pulled on her shorts and T-shirt and smoothed another layer of antibiotic cream on the injury between her brows and antiwrinkle cream on her face, readying for bed. Tomorrow would be an early day. She wished she could beg off, but she had already made appointments to deliver her product and had already made arrangements for Alicia to gather the coming morning’s eggs.

As she snuggled into her bed, a glance at the digital clock on the nightstand told her it wasn’t even nine o’clock. Even if she wanted a social life or a relationship with someone, she had no strength for it. On a great sigh, she closed her eyes.

After a fitful night of bad dreams and snarling stomach, she rose even earlier than usual, showered and shampooed her hair and smoothed a strategic layer of concealer on the bruise between her eyes. Then she dressed in khaki Dockers and a royal blue polo and pulled on her new Justin boots. She was starved. Her stomach was in no shape for coffee, so she took an extra few minutes to make a soft scrambled egg. She overcooked it and it felt like Play-Doh in her mouth, but it, a slice of toast and a glass of milk quelled the blistering fire inside her stomach.

Reaching the ranch before daylight, she killed the headlights as she turned into the long driveway, not wanting to wake Dalton and have him to deal with this morning. The hens would be roosting yet, but she gave the chicken yard a cursory look, then let her eyes and thoughts dwell on the coop behind which the snake had been hiding. Reliving the incident for a few seconds in her mind, she felt a shudder pass over her.

But dammit, she had to forget it. If she didn’t, she wouldn’t be able to go forward and function. Making a renewed effort to put the incident behind her, she turned her back on the chicken yard and started toward the egg-washing room.

When she opened the refrigerator, she saw four baskets full of eggs. So Dalton really had gathered them. She just now remembered that he said he would. The surprise made a tiny smile crook her lips.

But alas, she didn’t put unwashed eggs in the refrigerator. Now the whole interior would have to be washed with disinfectant soap, but no way would she look a gift horse in the mouth by criticizing him. She wrote a note to Alicia telling her to wash the fresh eggs left in the refrigerator along with those she would gather this morning and to wash the inside of the refrigerator before putting the clean eggs inside. Poor kid. She would earn her pay today, but the job had to be done. No way would Joanna risk delivering bacteria-contaminated eggs. She decided she would pick up a special gift for Alicia today in Lubbock or Amarillo.

Since Walsh’s Naturals had no refrigeration unit on the pickup and could ill afford to buy one, Joanna used plastic thermal coolers and frozen blue ice blocks to keep the eggs cool during transportation. So far, that method had worked just fine, so long as she wasted no time. She began to load her pickup bed with the coolers filled with cartons of eggs.