First Time, Forever

“Yes, you are.” That was his voice, all right. His horse breakin’ voice. Calm. Steady. Sure. A voice that did not brook defiance, from animal, nor man. Nor child.

“Make me.”

“All right.”

The boy’s aunt finally spoke. Evan hazarded a look at her and saw, to his relief, her bottom lip had stopped quivering. Hopefully she wasn’t going to cry. Her voice was soft, like velvet, the kind of voice that could bring a weak man to his knees.

Something he had learned his lesson from already, thank God, being weakened by feminine wiles.

“Moving manure?” she said uncertainly. “But we don’t even know you.”

He stuck out his hand. “Evan Atkins,” he said.

“Kathleen Miles,” she returned, accepting his hand with some reluctance.

Her hand in his was about the softest thing he’d ever felt, and he snatched his out of her grasp after one brief pump.

“Now we know each other,” he said. He heard the cold note in his voice, turning it to ice, and recognized it was a defense against the sudden racing of his heart. Wouldn’t do for her to know about that, no sir. She looked as if she was going to protest, but he cut her off. “Where’s the boy’s folks?”

“I’m his folks,” she said stiffly.

“And you’ll be working at the Outpost, for the Watsons?”

“Yes.”

“You can ask them if it’s safe for your boy to come work for me. They’ll tell you.”

“Oh.”

He turned again to the boy. “And your name?”

“None of your business!”

“Okay, none-of-your-business, I’ll pick you up right here at five-thirty tomorrow morning. If you make me come looking, you’ll be sorry, you hear?”

He noted the boy’s aunt looked astounded when he offered a sullen “I hear.” Apparently thinking he’d given in too easily, the boy then added the word he had nearly succeeded in printing on the side of the truck.

She gasped again, but Evan just smiled and leaned close to the little delinquent. “If I ever hear you say that word again, I’ll wash out your mouth with Ma Watson’s homemade lye soap. You can’t believe how bad it tastes.”

Ma Watson, five foot one, in a man’s shirt, with her gray hair neatly braided down her back, had appeared on the sidewalk. She chortled now, and said, “And if anyone would know it would be you, Evan Atkins. Seems to me we went through a little stage where I felt it was my personal obligation to this town to have you spitting suds every ten minutes or so.”

Her comment broke the tension, and a ripple of laughter went through the assembled crowd, or as close as Hopkins Gulch ever came to a “crowd.” They began to disperse.

“Evan,” Ma said, sweetly, “can you show Kathleen over to her house? I just had a customer come in.”

Evan glanced at the store, pretty sure the door had not swung inward in the last ten minutes or so. Still, he couldn’t very well call Ma a liar in front of her new employee, and besides, for all she sounded sweet, she had just given an order, drill sergeant to buck private.

The old gal had really done more than anyone else in this town to try to show a boy going wild the difference between right and wrong, and enough of her tough caring had penetrated his thick skull to keep him out of jail over the years.

Once, when he was sixteen, she had said to him, “Evan, each man has two knights within him, a knight of lightness and a knight of darkness. The one you feed the most will become the strongest.”

At sixteen, he had found the words laughable, thought they had gone in one ear and out the other. But in actual fact, those words had stopped somewhere between those two ears, and for some reason now, ten years later, he found himself contemplating them, embarrassed almost by his longing to choose the right one.

“Evan?” Ma said.

Besides, Medicine Hat was a long haul for groceries. “Yes, ma’am,” he said, “I’ll show her the house.” He assumed that meant have a quick look around inside and make sure a rattlesnake hadn’t cozied up in some dark corner for the winter. He also assumed Ma wouldn’t want him to share that little fact of life in Hopkins Gulch with her new employee just yet.

“Kathleen, dear, you take your time getting settled. Let Evan and the boy bring the heavy stuff in. I’ll see you here at the store tomorrow.”

Evan took a deep breath, intending to point out that showing Miss Miles the little empty house Ma owned, three blocks from here, and moving her into it were really two separate tasks. One look at Ma and he bit his tongue.

Why was it that woman could turn him into a twelve-year-old with his hand caught in her candy jar in a single glance? Why was it she made him want to be the white knight? A joke, really. He was just a farmer, and part-time cowboy, in muddy boots and torn jeans. He turned on the heel of one of those boots, got in his truck and watched in the rearview mirror as the beautiful Miss Miles herded the boy into her car and pulled in behind him.

She had a beautiful figure, full and lush, a figure that could make a man like himself, sworn off women, reconsider, start to think thoughts of soft curves and warm places.

Evan, he told himself, it only leads one place. It starts with an innocent thought: I wonder what it would be like to kiss her. The next thing you know, Potty-Training for the Hopelessly Confused. He realized he left his damned book in the café, and hoped that Millie possessed enough mercy to hide it for him until he had a chance to get back in there and pick it up.

He was angry, Kathleen thought, as she pulled to a stop behind him, and watched him hop out of his truck.

Well, who could blame him? The most noticeable thing about his vehicle now was the two-foot high S H I printed on the side of it.

Still, she didn’t have much experience dealing with angry men. And certainly not ones who looked like this. Even with that menacing scowl on his face as he waited on the sidewalk outside the gate of a yard, Evan Atkins was gorgeous.

He looked like a young Redford, with his corn silk and wheat colored hair, though his grayish-blue eyes held none of Redford’s boyish charm, only a hard and intimidating hint of ice and iron. His features were chiseled masculine perfection—high cheekbones, straight nose, wide mouth, firm lips, a strong chin.

He was average height, maybe five-eleven, but the breadth of his chest and shoulders had left her with the impression of strength and leashed power. He was narrow at his stomach and hip, and his long, blue jean-encased legs looked as if they’d wrapped themselves around a lot of horses. And probably quite a few other things, too.

Kathleen decided Evan Atkins was not a safe man for her to be around. Lately she had noticed that her mind wandered off in distinctly naughty directions with barely the slightest provocation. Part of being old, she was sure. Not just old, but an old spinster.

She was kidding herself. It was because of Howard announcing his intention to marry someone else. Hope quashed.

“Thank you,” she called to him, half in and half out of her car. “Is that the house? I can manage now.”

He didn’t budge.

The house was hidden behind a tall hedge. Throughout the long drive here she had been so eager to see the accommodations that came with her new job. Now she had to get past the guard at the gate. Now she wasn’t nearly as interested in that house as she had been a thousand miles ago. He had a kind of energy about him that made everything else seem to fade into the distance, uninteresting and unimportant.

“Three days is too long to drive,” she muttered to herself.

“Auntie Kathy, you’re getting old,” Mac informed her, an unfortunate confirmation of her own thoughts. “You’re talking to yourself.” He glanced at the man standing at the gate, wriggled deeper into his seat in the car and turned a page of his comic book.

She made herself get all the way out of the car, and walk toward Evan.

“Really,” she said, “Thank you. You don’t have to—”

He held open the gate for her. The opening was far too narrow to get by him. She practically touched him. She caught a whiff of something headier than the lilacs blooming in wild profusion around the yard.

“I’m sorry about your truck,” she said, nervously. “Mac decided he was going to hate it here the minute I told him we were moving. I think he can get himself run out of town on a rail.”