Danger, Sweetheart Page 7

  I should probably sleep soon. I am having irrational thoughts and am feeling protective of an infant pig.

  Roger, meanwhile, stood his ground and continued. “I just don’t like to see your mama under a bunch of grief, is all. Because of her name, the town never really gave her a chance, but that was never her fault.”

  Because of her name? Because she birthed the spawn of Tarbell? Before he could ponder further, Roger finished his thought: “She should be able to enjoy herself these days.”

  “You and I are of one mind in this, Roger.”

  “Yeah?” Dark eyes brightened and the man tried a tentative smile. “So … you’re staying in town then? For a while?”

  Hmmm. “Yes. She told you her plan, obviously.”

  “Toldja we go back awhile. Sure, she told me her idea. But you don’t look banged up or anything.”

  “No, all the brickbats were verbal.”

  A puzzled blink at that, but Roger remained on point. “I’m kinda glad to see you agreed to stick around. Your mom’ll really like it. I didn’t think—it didn’t sound like the kind of thing you’d go for. No offense to you personally. I don’t think hardly anyone would go for it.”

  “Behold, the exception to the sensible rule.” The White Rose of York was squirming, and when he put the small fuzzy black-and-white bundle down, she trotted around the corner, out of sight, and then he heard the unmistakable sound of litter being shuffled about in a litter box. “She’s house-trained?” he asked, incredulous, all thoughts of his six-month sentence momentarily banished from his brain. “That’s amazing! She’s an infant!”

  “Not a litter box. Too tall—look at those short legs; she’d never make it over.” The thought made Blake burst into laughter and Roger grinned in response. “Yup, never woulda worked. A cookie sheet with litter in it. Don’t worry,” he confided, as if Blake had been about to roar in horrified protest. “That cookie sheet is only for the White Rose of York.”

  “I am relieved, as will be the other guests.” Refuse all offers of cookies, just to be safe. “And I stand by my statement; that’s amazing. My brother wasn’t house-trained until he was four, because Rake is terrible. I, however, was trained before my second birthday.” I must stop bragging about this, if Roger’s expression is anything to go by. It’s an odd thing to take pride in. “Speaking of terrible, did my mother mention the dire fate in store for my brother?”

  “Some things are best left alone,” was the solemn reply, ruined by Roger’s shrill giggle. It was such an incongruous sound from the pig farmer that Blake laughed, too. The White Rose of York had finished excreting and trotted back to them, wiggling her curly tail until Blake relented (after less than two seconds) and picked her up again.

  It had been an unpleasant week and an odd day, so it was ridiculous how happy he was at that moment. Perhaps he was coming down with something. And there was always the comforting thought that he could be bleeding out in a canyon somewhere, trapped under a pile of train cars.

  Blake had no idea whether he was rooting for illness, a train-car pileup, or spending six months in Sweetheart.

  Need more data.

  Ten

  Natalie Lane watched the rented truck cover the last half mile to Heartbreak and was not impressed. This would be the first of what promised to be weeks of awful days, and not for the first time she wondered why she didn’t give up, give in, and get lost. Follow half the town out of town. Let Sweetheart die.

  Not even if he stuck a gun in my ear. Because it wasn’t the town, it was never the town, it was always the people. Well. Most of the people. Garrett Hobbes, for example, could fuck right off. The world needed more golf courses like a diabetic needed a glucose drip.

  The truck passed the last gate and pulled up between the farmhouse and Barn Main. The engine quit and she could see him in the driver’s seat, moving his hands, and was he…? Was he patting the steering wheel? In a well done, mighty steed way? Yes. Yes he was.

  Self-congratulation must run in that family, she mused. Oh, and look at this. He remembered to kick out the ladder this time. Too bad. She’d have loved to see him on his ass in the dirt. Again.

  “It’s you!” he said as he hopped down, having the balls-out nerve to sound excited. Except where did she get off? Before she knew who he was, she’d have been happy to see him, too. If anything, she was more pissed because she had liked him on short acquaintance. What if he’d never seen her in her other life? When would she have found out his terrible truth? Their first date? Their first month–aversary? Their wedding night?

  Wedding night? Jeez, Natalie, get a grip.

  “Hello again.” He stuck out his hand, which she definitely didn’t notice was large and looked strong, especially in contrast to her own teeny paws. Nor did she notice he had big hands and, as a glance at his shoes told her, big feet, and she definitely didn’t form a theory about his dick based solely on his sizeable mitts. She also didn’t notice how his smile took years from his face, or how his pricey clothes beautifully set off those long legs and wide shoulders, that the color of his crisp button-down shirt was the same color as his dark blue eyes, that his tan slacks

  (slacks? Seriously? Slacks?)

  fit like they were made for him

  (of course they were; guy’s probably got a fleet of tailors stashed somewhere)

  and that his swimmer’s shoulders made his waist appreciably narrow in contrast.

  He was still holding out his hand, and she gave it a brief listless shake, the limp kind with the bare tips of her fingers. “You’re late.”

  His smile faded. “It’s nine forty-seven.”

  “Work around here doesn’t start five hours after sunup.”

  “But I had to finishing Skyping with one of the Oxford archivers.”

  God. Worse than she thought.

  He seemed genuinely puzzled, which cranked her state of mind from Pissed Off to Assault a Distinct Possibility.

  “We had to discuss volume six, The Fifteenth Century, by E. F. Jacob.”

  “Had to, huh?”

  “Oh yes!” To her horror he mistook sarcasm for interest, and warmed to the topic. The boring, inappropriate topic she didn’t give a shit about. “Jacobs’ work was invaluable, but he was a misogynist—not rare in early-twentieth-century academia—and likely a plagiarist, which of course calls his entire body of work into question. And he was a terrible driver. Illegally awful. So it’s all quite a mess.”

  Quite a mess. The perfect description.

  “So clearly, leaving it until later doesn’t make sense. Oh, sure, you’re going to suggest Mackie’s The Earlier Tudors—”

  “I really wasn’t.”

  “—but my area of interest is in what came before the Tudors, not the Tudors themselves.”

  “Will you please shut up now? I might— I might have to stab you with something if you don’t.” Ah, yes, Natalie Lane: the first Lane to lose Sweetheart and then go down for federal assault. Her ancestors would be so proud.

  “You want me to shut up?” Dumbfounded incomprehension. “After I explained? I find that puzzling.”

  “You find what I’m doing puzzling?”

  “It’s almost as if you don’t care about what time it is in Oxford,” he huffed.

  “It sure is. That’s exactly right.”

  “I apologize,” he said at once. “I get carried away with my work. You were kind to wait for me. It’s lovely to see you again.” Then he smiled, a slow grin that she felt everywhere. Christ, they must just fall over with their legs open for this guy. The thought pissed her off more, which she hadn’t thought possible.

  “Where’s your stuff?”

  He blinked. “Stuff?”

  “Your things, your clothes and phone and stuff,” she said, impatient. “Let’s get them to your room and then we can get to work.”

  “We?”

  “Do you always repeat random words back to whoever’s talking to you?”

  “No, actually.” He tried another s
mile. God, the man’s whole face should be outlawed. “It’s just, I don’t always understand you. Which is interesting and charming.”

  No. He didn’t call me charming, and I didn’t find that charming. No.

  She sighed. “C’mon. Let’s get your stuff.”

  Still he didn’t move. Well, he didn’t move his legs. He stuck his hand out again. “Blake Tarbell.”

  Oh. Right. Common courtesy. She didn’t have the energy to be embarrassed, for herself or for him. “Sorry, I’m Natalie Lane.”

  “It’s very nice to meet you. I was really hoping to see you again, and that was before I knew I’d be staying for a while.” He endured another limp I don’t care about you and have no interest in making a good impression handshake. “Ms. Lane, have I done something to offend you?”

  Besides getting within five hundred miles of Sweetheart? Besides the knowledge that a guy in tailored clothes who Skypes the UK to talk about dead people is my best option? Besides knowing I need you if only to get some of the heat off me? And the fact that you walk and talk like sex personified just pisses me off more? Nope, not a thing.

  “Not everything’s about you, city guy.” Lie. This was all kinds of about him. But telling him so resolved nothing. “C’mon,” she said for what she hoped was the last time. “Let’s get your stuff.”

  Eleven

  It was never supposed to be like this. She was supposed to save them. And banking was supposed to be a noble profession, not a punch line. From Renaissance Italy to Sweetheart, North Dakota. From the Medicis to the Lanes. What was the saying? From the sublime to the ridiculous in one step? Yep.

  Once, Sweetheart had been a bustling midwestern town of just under ten thousand souls. Yes, they were off the beaten path a bit, but the land was lush, the hills (the few there were) were rolling, the hills were alive with the sound of music, et cetera, et cetera.

  Then the state highway came, four lanes at 65 mph, set the cruise for 72 if you hadn’t had a recent speeding ticket, and all at once, or so it seemed, all roads did not lead to Sweetheart. Fewer visitors meant the local B and Bs had to work harder for fewer (and fewer) guests. Less money meant … well, less money. Add a few exceptionally bad droughts, and then the farmers—in a town where every third family was in the ag biz—were in a jam. Add a shit economic downturn lasting over a decade, and everyone was in a jam. Too many young people left

  (like Shannah Banaan and call her Shannah Banana once. just one time. see what happens)

  and birthrates weren’t high enough to compensate.

  Any one or two of those things were survivable, but the combination made for a Michael Crichton–type chain of events that led to economic disaster, which in many ways was worse than a plague of knob-turning velociraptors.

  So now this. Now this mess that went on and on. She thought that was the worst part: Sweetheart wasn’t even a ghost town. A ghost town had no one; it had been dead so long it was less than a skeleton, practically dust. Sweetheart was the still-warm corpse, and not all the vermin knew it was time to abandon ship.

  (wow, nice, Nat! you should write children’s books!)

  Now here came Vegas Douche with his Skyping and his awesome dark blond hair and his Italian shoes and his dopey grin, and Natalie truly didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. She was afraid if she indulged in either she wouldn’t be able to stop.

  “Do you work here?” Vegas Douche was asking. “In addition to the bed-and-breakfast?”

  “How’s that important?” she replied, in no way planning to answer the question.

  “Well. Yesterday you were wearing a navy blue double-breasted suit with a cream-colored blouse and nude panty hose, dark-blue-and-white running shoes, no jewelry.”

  There were no words. So she kept feeling perplexed. Yep. Perplexed was working. She was sticking with perplexed.

  “And now you’re in jeans and a red T-shirt lettered with the puzzling warning ‘One by one the penguins slowly steal my sanity.’ The same running shoes as yesterday.”

  “That’s … quite an eye for detail.” Ya big perv. Who memorizes tennis shoe colors? It’s definitely not turning me on. It’s not making me feel special at all. “But farmers and their ilk do occasionally dress like grown-ups. It’s not like the movies. We don’t all wander around barns wearing filthy overalls and chewing straw.”

  “I met one yesterday and he wasn’t filthy. Why,” Blake kept on, clearly bewildered by the turn the conversation had taken, “would anyone chew straw?”

  “I’m one of your foremen here, I’ll be the one showing you what you’ve taken on

  (so welcome to Hell, Vegas Douche);

  that’s all you need to worry about. So this is your room,” she said, deciding to get back to the subject. “I’m sure it’s not what you’re used to.”

  “It’s not.”

  She’d get a headache if she rolled her eyes much harder. “But times are tough, so we all have to—”

  “It’s better.”

  “—make sacrifices and you’ll just have to what did you say?”

  He had been wandering around the attic while she dodged his job questions and suit observations, looking at the furniture, testing the bed for firmness, peering out the windows. “I live in a Residence Inn in Las Vegas. It’s nice. I have no complaints. But it’s a Residence Inn.”

  “Oh, Vegas?” Natalie had to take a second to clear her throat, going for nonchalance. “That’s where you’re from? I hadn’t known that. Before.” Subtle!

  Vegas Douche will never trip me up. Nope. Not this girl, Vegas Douche! No idea where you’re from, Vegas Douche, Chicago, maybe? Pierre? London?

  “This is…” He had stopped wandering and was now staring out one of the south-facing windows. “… much much better.”

  She tried to see the attic from his perspective, with a stranger’s eyes, but all she could come up with was, This is the place I went when I couldn’t bear to go home. This isn’t my home and it will forever be my home. It has old parts and new parts, and pretty parts and unlovely parts. It’s on the market for pennies on the dollar and it’s priceless. She couldn’t look at it with stranger’s eyes; she had never been one.

  The original farmhouse had burned to the foundation the year Prohibition was appealed. During a deliriously drunken party to celebrate Americans’ right to again get shit faced, a party guest got too enthusiastic while feeding a bonfire, a situation made worse when the bonfire was inadvertently moved inside. The drunken guests tried to fight the blaze with alcohol. Good-bye, original farmhouse, we barely knew ye.

  The replacement farmhouse had gone up the year Roosevelt put the New Deal into effect. It had been modernized over the years (central air and heat, among other unnecessarily necessary things), but it was still a three-story forest green farmhouse with white trim and a wraparound porch. The attached garage, also green, was large enough for four cars; the farming equipment was kept in another building off Barn Main. Inside the farmhouse were spacious rooms in shades of tan and cream, a series of bedrooms and sunrooms and nooks, a sizeable working kitchen with multiple refrigerators and freezers, three bathrooms, and all of it topped with an attic that ran the length and width of the house.

  The attic, too, had been done in light neutrals and, since heat always insisted on rising (dammit, physics!), was warmer than the rest of the house, but not unbearably so. There were two ceiling fans and the windows were all screened and opened easily. Where the roof slanted so that standing upright was impossible there was a series of deep bookshelves. They were crammed with everything from Good Housekeeping issues from the fifties to the entire Little House on the Prairie series to C. S. Lewis to Mark Twain to how-to tomes to gardening to a Bible to books on Nichiren Buddhism to J. D. Robb to Jane Austen.

  The floor was all blond planking, but several throw rugs were scattered about, cutting down on the splinter potential. At the far end was a double bed made up with pale yellow sheets and a wedding ring quilt, placed just under key, slanted windows
that gave whoever was in bed an unimpeded view of the eastern sky. A rocking glider was placed beside one of the south-facing windows beside a small fridge for snacks. Natalie had made sure it was clean and plugged it in for him last night but drew the line at stocking it with snacks and/or booze. If anyone deserved a fridge full of booze where they slept, it was her, dammit.

  It was comfy and welcoming and she couldn’t help being a little (a little) glad he seemed pleased. Glad, and surprised. No room service here at the farm. No one to launder his delicates or bring him a midnight hot-fudge sundae. And if he wanted a copy of USA Today slipped beneath his door at dawn, he’d first have to hoof it five miles into town and hope the gas station was open, buy yesterday’s paper, then come back and slip it under his own damned door. Maybe Vegas Douche hadn’t thought of those drawbacks yet.

  “This is…” Huh. He was still babbling about his home away from hotel home. “… wonderful.”

  “I … I didn’t think you’d much care for it.” Counting on it, more like, her spiteful side whispered. It was true, she’d been anticipating shrill bitching. And he’d foiled her—again!—by finding the whole thing enchanting. She should be more annoyed than she was. “It’s probably not what you’re used to.”

  “I didn’t think I would care for it, either,” he confessed gleefully, like a boy who’d been caught stealing cookies and, instead of being punished, got more cookies. “Now tell me, what is the piglet situation?”

  “The what?”

  “I don’t see any cookie sheets filled with excretions from an infant pig.”

  “What?”

  “Thus I’ll surmise I’ll be the only one sleeping up here.” He looked around. “No piglets then, very well.”

  “You sound disappointed. Why are you disappointed? Why do you love the attic but are disappointed we don’t keep pigs in it?” Unspoken: What is wrong with you? Las Vegas must be so much weirder than she imagined.

  “And look!” he added, and actually flopped back onto the bed so he was staring up at the slanted window. “You can see the whole sky from here! Not literally, of course. Even if we were outside and had an unobstructed view—”