Swept Away

“Don’t call me that!” she shrieked, then clomped out of the room.

Letting Travis slide back down to the floor, Sam turned to the boys and said, “It’s gettin’ late. Time to get a move on. Wade, is it my imagination, or is that the same shirt you had on yesterday?” He frowned. “And the day before that?” At the kid’s sheepish shrug, Sam swallowed back a smile. “Go change before your teacher makes you sit outside, okay?”

The eight-year-old trooped off as, with a time-honed precision that was truly a thing of beauty, breakfast dishes were cleared, lunches distributed, assorted arms shoved into jacket or sweatshirt sleeves, and Sam felt a little of his hard-won peace return. Farming was a challenge, no doubt about it; raising six kids by himself even more so. But it was amazing how smoothly things could run—or at least, had run up until the Attack of the Killer Hormones—by simply establishing, and enforcing, some basic parameters, making sure everybody did their fair share.

As all the boys except Travis filed out to catch the school bus, Sam shifted his weight off his complaining leg, deciding there was no reason at all why the method that had stood him in good stead since Jeannie’s passing shouldn’t continue to do so. Not that it hadn’t been hard at first. Lord, he’d missed her so much those first few months he’d thought he’d go crazy, both with grief and unfulfilled longing. But the pain had passed, or at least dulled, as had the collective ineptitude. Jeannie hadn’t meant to make them all dependent on her, Sam knew that, but it had simply been in her nature to do for them. She hadn’t wanted anyone else messing in her kitchen; there was no reason for the kids, or Sam, for that matter, to remember where anything was because Jeannie had a photographic memory. But when she died, of a freak aneurism that nobody could’ve predicted, let alone prevented, and it became clear exactly how useless they all were in the house….

Well. Never again, was all Sam had to say. And now that everything was running more or less smoothly, he saw no need to go mucking it all up by introducing another human being into the mix. He’d had his one true love. Maybe it hadn’t lasted as long as he’d hoped, but there’d be no replacing Jeannie, and he had no intention of trying. No matter how much Libby thought otherwise.

No matter how bad the loneliness tried to suffocate him from time to time.

His daughter clomped past again, her midriff now covered, her makeup more in keeping with what Sam considered appropriate for a girl who didn’t turn fifteen for another month. He grabbed her again, this time to inflict a one-armed hug, which she patiently suffered for a moment or two before grabbing her backpack and sailing out the back door. Now alone in the kitchen, except for a dog or two and a cat who must’ve slipped inside when everybody left, he silently reassured his wits it was okay to come out of hiding.

Like his mother used to say, it was a great life if you didn’t weaken.

He found Travis in the living room, on his stomach in front of the TV, watching a faded Grover through a scrim of wiggly lines. One of these days he was gonna have to break down and get a satellite dish, he supposed, except he couldn’t work up a whole lot of enthusiasm for making TV even more appealing to a houseful of kids.

“Hey, big stuff—you make your bed?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Then go pee and get your jacket, we’ve got supplies to buy, fences to fix.”

A half minute later, the little boy returned to the living room, trying to walk and straighten out his elastic-waisted jeans at the same time and not having a whole lot of success. Underneath a pale blond buzz cut, big blue eyes the exact color of his mother’s met Sam’s as he squatted to fix the boy’s twisted waistband. “C’n Radar come, too?”

Sam glanced over at their most recent acquisition, who looked to be part Heeler, part jackrabbit. Biggest damn ears he’d ever seen on a dog. Mutt had shown up during a thunderstorm a month or so back and didn’t seem much interested in leaving. Despite Sam’s regular declarations of “No more animals,” every homeless cat or dog in Mayes County seemed destined to land on their doorstep, although Sam told himself this was not because he was a pushover.

“Don’t see why not,” Sam said, and boy and dog practically tripped over each other on their way out the door. Seconds later, they were all in the pickup, headed into Haven and Sutter’s Hardware. Granted, you could find bigger, fancier, and probably cheaper home improvement centers in Claremore and Tulsa. But what with gas prices being what they were these days, and the fact that Abe Sutter carried only what the local farmers needed and not a whole lot of stuff they didn’t, thus drastically reducing the temptation to spend money they didn’t have to begin with, most folks found Abe’s more of a bargain than you might think.

The sun had pretty much burned off the morning chill, leaving behind one of those nice Indian Summer days that could make a man feel in charge again, even of headstrong teenagers who craved their freedom right when they needed the most watching. Never mind that the thousands of black-eyed Susans bobbing in the breeze on either side of the road seemed to be laughing at him, that the golden fields falling away as they crested each rolling hill stirred up memories of another teenage girl, her face flushed with newly discovered sexual passion during some hot and heavy necking sessions with a certain teenage boy who’d ached to take them both to places they’d never been, even as he knew the time hadn’t been right for either of them, not yet.

Sam had respected Jeannie’s wish to remain a virgin until marriage, but waiting had nearly killed both of them. Especially as “waiting” had meant until after they’d both finished college and Sam was sure he could support a family. Was it any wonder that Jeannie had gotten pregnant on their wedding night? Or that Libby was the way she was, being the product of all that pent-up passion?

Considering how good his and Jeannie’s sex life had been, doing without all this time hadn’t been nearly the struggle he’d thought. The farm, though, was in better shape than it had ever been, leaving Sam to consider, as he crested a hill to find himself trailing a camper-shelled pickup with an Ohio plate, that he probably was the only farmer in existence who actually liked repairing fences.

His musings disintegrated, however, when, with a great deal of squealing, the truck suddenly swerved like a spooked elephant, lurched off the road into the shallow, weed-tangled ditch, then shuddered to a stop as if grateful the ordeal was over. Adrenaline spiked through Sam as he pulled up behind the listing vehicle, squinting in the glare of sun flashing off white metal.

“You stay put while I make sure everybody’s all right,” he said to Travis, unbuckling his belt and climbing out just in time to hear a female voice let loose with a very succinct cussword, followed immediately by a man’s admonition to watch her language. Which in turn resulted in an even more succinct cussword.

The driver’s side door popped open, slammed back shut—which resulted in a loud “Dammit!”—then opened again, this time to stay put long enough for the skinniest woman he’d ever seen to push herself up and out of the truck like a frantic, if emaciated, butterfly emerging from its cocoon. Pinpricks of light flashed from a series of earrings marching up her ear.

“You okay?” Sam asked, not realizing she hadn’t seen him. She jumped back with a startled “Oh,” one hand pressed to her flat chest, her long fingers weighted down with so many rings Sam wasn’t sure how she could lift her hand. Especially considering her wrist looked like it would snap in two if a person breathed on it hard.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” she said on a pushed-out breath, swiping one hand over dark hair yanked back from her face to explode into a surprisingly exuberant, curly ponytail on the back of her head. “Just pissed.” Startlingly silver-blue eyes glanced off Sam’s for a split second before, her forehead creased, she returned her attention to the still-open truck door. “Dad? Can you get out?”

Forget the butterfly image. The set to her mouth, the way her nut-colored skin stretched across her bones, brought to mind the kinds of insects that cheerfully devoured their mates after sex.

Sam moved closer to lend a hand, if needed, just as a pair of chinoed legs in lace-up walking shoes emerged from the truck, followed by a white head and wide shoulders. With a grunt, the tall man levered himself out onto his feet.

“Yes, yes, I’m fine,” he said to the gal, then turned back to glare at the listing truck. “Although my state of mind pretty much echoes my daughter’s.”

Reassured that nobody was hurt, Sam chuckled, then extended his hand. “Sam Frazier. I’ve got a farm a couple miles up the road.” The older man’s grasp was firm, his ramrod posture bespeaking a military background. As did his direct, blue gaze, only a degree or two warmer than his daughter’s.

“Lane Stewart,” he said, then nodded toward the woman, his expression a blend of exasperation and amusement with which Sam was all too well acquainted. “My daughter, Carly. To whom a certain squirrel owes its life.”

That got an indignant roll of those clear blue eyes, the gesture not unlike Libby’s. Her outfit, too, was straight out of the Young and Reckless catalogue, complete with baggy, low-riding drawstring pants—revealing a small tattoo above her left hip—the filmy overshirt billowing out behind her in the breeze doing little to hide the expanse of midriff visible underneath her cropped tank top. But this gal was no teenager: telltale age lines fanned from the corners of her eyes, had begun to dig in on either side of a full mouth glistening in one of those no-color lipsticks. And whereas most teenagers seemed to think good posture somehow violated their right to free expression, Carly stood as though tied to a ladder, shoulders back, practically nonexistent—and unconfined—breasts thrust forward. Her feet—knobby, used-up looking things in lime-green, ridiculously high-heeled sandals—pointed simultaneously to the north-east and south-east, as if undecided which way to head. And yet, pissed though she was, bony though she was, she moved with an almost hypnotic grace that had Sam thinking things not normally associated with helping out strangers with car problems.

Right. Car problems.

“Think you can move your truck?” he asked Carly’s father, as Travis and Radar hopped out of Sam’s, the dog bounding off into the weeds to chase something or other. That squirrel, most likely.

“Have no idea,” Lane said, which Sam took as an invitation to join the older man in the ditch to check underneath the vehicle. A minute later, having agreed that, yep, the axle was bent, all right, Lane called Triple A on his cell phone as Sam took in Carly and Travis standing four feet apart, sizing each other up. Neither one seemed quite sure what to make of the other.

Since apparently nobody’d yet answered, and to distract himself from staring at the man’s daughter as much as anything, Sam said, “Mostly likely, they’ll send out Darryl Andrews. Since he’s the only mechanic in town.”

“And what town might that be?”

“Haven. Oklahoma,” he added, since you could never be too sure with tourists. Then Lane said “Hello, yeah, I’ve got a broken down vehicle here, I need a tow” into the phone and Sam went back to watching Carly and his son, who appeared to have started up something resembling a conversation.

The kid was kind of cute, Carly supposed, if you were into that sort of thing. Like the way the sun glinted off his hair, fine and white blond like peach fuzz, the pudgy little tummy pooching out his sweatshirt, his scuffed Spiderman sneakers. He was subdued but not shy, which she found nearly as disconcerting in the preschooler—when did kids start losing their baby teeth, anyway?—as she did in grown men.

Like the lanky one with the honeyed gaze currently talking to her father.

“That’s my daddy,” the child said, and Carly forced herself to look away from whatever she found so fascinating. Because other than a slight hitch in his gait which raised the question How? there was nothing remarkable about the man. Just a country guy in jeans and plaid shirt worn open over a T-shirt, sun-baked features shadowed by the brim of a Purina ball cap. Nothing noteworthy at all. But her eyes would keep moseying back over there, wouldn’t they?

Her stomach rumbled, reminding her she hadn’t had breakfast.

“I kind of figured that,” she said to the kid, thinking maybe she should smile or something. “What’s your name?”

“Travis. How come you got so many earrings?”

Carly’s hand lifted to one ear, touching the dangling strand of beads hanging from her lobe. A pair of studs kept it company, while farther up a small gold loop hugged the rim. “’Cause I like ’em,” she said. “And this way, I don’t have to narrow it down to a single choice every morning.”

Travis seemed to consider this for a minute, then said, “My sister, Libby, has holes in her ears, too. But only one set. Does it hurt?”

“No,” Carly said as the dog—a mottled gray and black thing with enormous ears and a toothy grin—exploded out of the weeds in front of them, dancing around the boy for several seconds before realizing he’d been remiss in not acknowledging the other human standing there. The beast plopped his butt down in the dirt, his wagging tail stirring up a dust cloud as he woofed hello.

“His name’s Radar,” the boy said. “He likes everybody. Daddy says he’s nothing but a big ol’ pain in the butt.”

The dog woofed again, and Carly laughed, which the dog took as an invitation to jump up and plant his paws on her thighs.

“Radar! Down!” “Daddy” said, striding over to grab the dog’s collar, even as Carly said, “No, no—it’s okay, really,” and then she looked up into his face and damned if she didn’t forget to breathe for a second or two. Because there was a substance behind those brandy-colored eyes that she hadn’t seen in an extraordinarily long time. If ever. Something that went beyond the surface friendliness, or even the shrewd intelligence that masked—barely—a simmering sensuality that made her slightly dizzy.

It was honesty, she thought with a start. The completely ingenuous openness of a man with no hidden agenda, with nothing to hide.

Or to lose.

“Shouldn’t be more’n ten, fifteen minutes before Darryl gets here with the wrecker. Hey,” he said when she swayed slightly. “You sure you’re okay?”