Wed By A Will

“Great, hop in the truck.”

She didn’t unfold her arms from her chest.

“You want to know how to feed him, right?”

She glared at Matt for a moment, and then with ill grace hopped on the tailgate of the truck. Not in the cab. He choked back his desire to tell her he hadn’t bitten anyone recently. To his annoyance, Robbie-turn-coat, jumped on the tailgate with her.

In the rearview mirror he saw her tuck some of that wayward hair behind her ears, adjust her T-shirt, and lick her lips. He ordered himself not to wonder if that meant anything.

Did that mean anything?

“I sure as hell hope not,” he said out loud.

He backed his truck up to the barn, and by the time he went around the back, she was trying her darndest to heft one of the bales out of there.

Seventy pounds. She had both hands inserted between the twine and the hay. She lifted. Nothing happened.

He knew damn well what the twine would do to soft hands, but she didn’t quit. With a mighty grunt she picked the hay up three inches, moved forward one, and dropped it.

“I’ll get it.”

He might as well have saved his breath, because she gave him a look of fierce pride, squatted down and shoved the bale with her shoulder. It moved another millimeter or so. It would be fun to cross his arms and watch, but that wasn’t the kind of boy his mama had raised.

He climbed in the truck bed, moved carefully around her, and tossed down the other two bales, which also earned him a glare. Was he supposed to apologize for the fact he was a man? That some things that came hard to her, came easy to him?

He wondered what would happen if he told her she looked like a Sumo wrestler.

That would be the end of hair-tucking and lip-licking.

Still, he didn’t tell her. Because it wasn’t precisely true. The position yes, but the beauty? She looked more breathtaking than ever with her little pink tongue poking out between her teeth, and her face flushed red, and the sweat beginning to pop out on her brow.

Pretending to ignore her, he moved back around her, hopped off the truck, picked up his two bales, one in each hand, and went into the barn.

Now you’re showing off, an annoying little voice inside his head informed him.

Showing off? What for? He’d already decided she was pure poison.

He glanced over his shoulder. She had managed to tumble her bale off the back of the truck. Now she and Robbie were rolling it laboriously toward the barn.

Panting, with a final grunt, she finally managed to get it in the door.

Pretending she didn’t have his full attention, he slipped his pocket knife from his back pocket and cut the twine.

She came and watched.

Her bosom was heaving nicely under her too large shirt.

“See how the hay breaks apart?” he asked. “That’s called a flake.” He explained to her, carefully, how to feed the donkey, the repercussions if it wasn’t done right.

There. He sounded like a reasonable man. A man whose mind was a million miles away from heaving bosoms. Really, it was one of the rotten parts of being a man. Nature noticing whatever the hell it wanted to notice, even when he’d already told his mind, no way, never, forget it.

He turned swiftly away from her and shook the first two flakes out into the hay crib. The donkey thanked him by flattening his floppy ears to his ugly head and charging the fence. Robbie oohed and aahed as if he was seeing an animal that was both lovable and exotic. She was also smiling indulgently at the donkey’s exceedingly bad manners.

Just above the barn smells, the fresh hay, and the donkey, he could smell her. Her shampoo, and her soap and her deodorant, and something else so sweet and soft it near took his breath away. Matt tried to place the scent and couldn’t.

What he could do was never come back here again. Ever.

Of course, if he chose that, he was going to have a crop of little mules running around next year, after that donkey pushed down the fences and bred all his mares. He could change the name of his pure-breed quarter horse ranch from No Quarter Asked, to No Quarter Assed.

“Auntie,” Robbie announced sleepily, tucking his head against Matt’s belly as they headed for home a few minutes later, “I’m coming to see that donkey again real soon.”

Somehow it didn’t even sound like a question, or a request.

His nephew had just told him how it was going to be.

Life was telling him how it was going to be, but he still fought it.

“Don’t you think your own horse is better?” he suggested subtly. “You can ride her. Pet her. Get close to her.”

“I don’t like Cupie Doll,” Robbie announced firmly. “She has real mean eyes.”

Cupie Doll was a prizewinning brood mare that Matt had reluctantly retired. She wouldn’t take anymore. And Robbie, unfortunately was right. Sweet as shortcake when she was pregnant, she seemed miserable when she was not growing fat with a baby.

As a riding horse she was a gem. Gentle. Predictable. A perfect mount for a child. But the sullen expression hadn’t left her face since her last heat had come and gone without her seeing any action.

Maybe Robbie noticed more about the horses than Matt had given him credit for.

“And that thing back there doesn’t have mean eyes?” Matt sputtered.

“Corrie?” Robbie asked, indignant.

Even Matt couldn’t make himself go that far. For all the bristle of her personality, there was no meanness in her eyes. “The donkey,” he said.

“Oh, no. He doesn’t have mean eyes. Can I go back? Please, Auntie?”

It was the first real enthusiasm he’d seen Robbie show for anything in a long, long time. The pair of them had been walking around in a daze since Marianne died.

Six months ago, already.

What was it about that donkey that so appealed to his nephew? Maybe being attracted to frightened things ran in the family.

Whatever it was, he couldn’t put out the light in his nephew’s eyes. Not even for his own self-preservation.

“We’ll go back in a few days.” He figured he’d left her over a week’s supply of grub for the donkey. He had to go look after those fences, anyway.

“Okay,” Robbie agreed with a yawn. “She’s a pretty lady. I like her eyes. Lots of colors.”

“Really.” He did not say this with anything approaching encouragement. He certainly did not let on that he had already committed the offense of comparing her eyes to crocuses.