Kelton's Rules

“Fine, have at her.” As Abby made sounds of imminent farewell, he added quickly, “Besides which, I’m glad you called. I forgot to ask this morning if you could use some groceries—cereal or juice or whatever. I’ll drive you into town for a real stock-up this weekend, but in the meantime?”

“Oh, I couldn’t ask you to…”

“Of course you can.” What had she planned to do, hobble down to Hansen’s on that ankle? “You can ask me for anything you need. You’re out west now, remember? Where the sky is big, the dogies are bold and the neighbors are neighborly, neighbor.”

She had a shy, husky laugh. Funny how a phone freed a man’s imagination, allowed him to draw his own mental pictures. New and improved pictures. He could see her swiping a soft tangle of hair out of her eyes when she laughed like that. Imagine her stretching sleepily beside him so that the covers rustled.

“Okay, neighbor, if you put it like that.” Abby paused, then murmured, “Milk?”

God, but she was sexy. “Skim, one percent or whole? Goat or cow? Quart or gallon?” He reached for a pad and pen. And how do you feel about T-bones? Because he was cooking tonight. Suddenly company seemed like an excellent idea. Best idea he’d had in months. “A gallon of skim—fine—and what else?”

JACK HAD ROLLED blithely over Abby’s protests that he must be tired after a day at work. Also that he shouldn’t feel the least responsibility to entertain the Lakes simply because they’d landed next door to him for a week.

Never once had it occurred to him that she’d really rather eat alone with Sky. That making dinner-table conversation with a stranger—an exuberant, overwhelmingly male stranger and a lawyer, at that!—was an ordeal she’d just as soon skip. A quiet meal, followed by a book and then bed would have suited her better.

But Sky’s face had lit up at the invitation. And she simply didn’t have the force of personality to refuse Jack once he’d gathered momentum. So Abby had smiled and gone along. In the end, she was glad. It hadn’t been such an ordeal, after all.

Abby had whisked Kat off to the Kelton’s upstairs bathroom, where she’d recreated the girl’s eyebrows, then cut her bangs while Jack and Sky prepared the meal.

The first half of the feast had been a rowdy foursome with the kids and Jack doing most of the talking, allowing Abby to sit back and applaud or tease or ask the odd question. And savor steak cooked to medium-rare perfection on a gas grill by the back door, then served in Jack’s kitchen along with deli potato salad, baked beans and coleslaw. Savor, too, the luscious light, since Kat had insisted they put out the overhead bulb and eat by the glow of a kerosene lantern, which she and her father used on camping trips.

“Which means this rates as a special occasion,” Jack had translated as she ran to get it. “We haven’t lit it since my birthday in April.”

Lemonade for the kids. A glass of dry zinfandel each for the adults. As the evening flowed on, Abby felt as if the clock spring inside her that had been wound to the breaking point all winter had loosened half a turn at last. Jack’s kitchen was comfortably messy rather than hopelessly shabby like her own, charming by lamplight. Every which way she gazed, she found scenes that needed sketching. Kat’s delicate profile as she whispered wickedly in Sky’s ear. The powerful lines of Jack’s flame-gilded throat when he threw back his head in laughter. The miracle of Skyler smiling again.

Sky arranged his fork and knife along the top edge of his plate. “Could we be excused, Mom? I’ve gotta go check on DC.”

Throughout the day the tomcat had descended perhaps five perilous feet to a wider limb, but there he’d lost his nerve and stuck. Abby had a nasty suspicion that Trueheart didn’t have a fire department with cat-rescuing firemen, either. “Ask your host, sweetie.”

Jack bent his shaggy head. “Off with you both, but no climbing. Understood?” They vanished with a clatter of chairs and a bang of the screen door.

Sooner or later, she was going to have to do something. If her ankle hadn’t been twisted, she’d have gone after the big softy herself. Abby speared a potato slice and contemplated it with a worried frown.

“If he’s not down by morning, I’ll get him,” Jack assured her as he refilled her glass.

“You’ve done so much already…” Too much. The last thing she wanted was to feel obligated.

He waved a dismissive hand. “For the woman who gave my daughter back her eyebrows? Nothing’s too good.”

She laughed quietly. “They’ll do by lamplight, anyway.” Actually she’d made a pretty good job of it. And somehow the bangs softened Kat’s intensity. Now she looked like a warrior princess, rather than a prince. “I…couldn’t help noticing tonight, Jack, that she doesn’t eat much.” Kat was still in the prepubescent stage—all slender limbs, not an ounce of fat—but still…

“Mmm. She’s gone vegetarian on me, since this spring.” He told her about the branding and Kat’s indignation. “She’s been picking the pepperoni off her pizza ever since. I don’t think it’s occurred to her yet that frozen fish sticks come from fish, but other than that…”

“You’re not, um, worried?” His daughter was at an age when calories and nutrition really mattered. But Abby knew how she hated it when her mother criticized her own parenting decisions with Skyler.

“Not yet. I find, generally speaking, that the less I push her, the more yardage I gain. And so far she seems to be thriving on ice cream and peanut butter. Plus I convinced her that all Olympic athletes and navy SEALs take two scoops of protein powder in their fruit smoothies every day.”

“Do they?” He had a wonderfully whimsical smile by lamplight.

“Cross my heart and hope to choke.” He raised one big hand over an imaginary Bible. “Besides, this strike’s only been going on since May. Kat tends to practice her passions pretty fiercely, then drop them when new ones come along. With any luck, by Christmas she’ll be shooting elk and dragging them home for me to roast.”

Meal finished, Abby offered to do the dishes, but Jack shook his head. “Don’t worry so much about the quid for the quo,” he teased her, collecting their wineglasses. “Who’s keeping count?” He nudged the screen door open with a shoulder. “Let’s see if the moon’s risen yet.”

It had.

Hard to believe this was the same cold, pinched and saddened sphere that had pursued her every night of the drive from the east coast. This was a big, boisterous jack-o’-lantern moon, dancing over the trees to their east. She and Jack settled on the top step of the back porch to watch it climb.

“So what did you decide about the bus?” Jack asked after a while.

She sighed. “No choice, really. We’ll still need someplace to live once we get to Sedona. Lark doesn’t have enough room for us in her own adobe.” She ran the cool rim of her wineglass along her bottom lip. “I had it all perfectly figured out. The bus would save us the cost of a moving van across country, then rent when we got there. Once we’d built our own place, I could sell it—recoup our money. Seemed like it would work.” She shrugged her mood aside and sipped. “I’ll still make it work.” She had to.

“Sure you will,” Jack said comfortably. “And I suppose you’ll get a job. Do you have any particular, uh, something you do?”

“I’ve been a teacher—high school art—these past two years.” It had taken her forever to finish her degree and gain a teaching certificate. First she’d become pregnant with Sky, and she’d let her own education lapse while she found her feet as a mother. When Sky reached kindergarten age, she’d begun again. Still, with all their moves from base to base, she’d needed years to complete her degree.

“Oh, well, that’s all right then,” Jack said. He seemed relieved. “Teachers can always get jobs.”

She hunched her shoulders. “Except I don’t want to teach anymore.”

“Burned out already?” He’d used a light, humorous tone—but the wrong words. Steve had taunted her with those same words on more than one occasion.

She stiffened. “Not that, precisely, but I’m afraid teaching was a mistake from the start. I loved the kids but not the discipline—forcing them to work when they weren’t in the mood, and at that age, they’re never in the mood. I’m not much good at forcing anybody.” Plus the endless paperwork: the grading, the testing, taking attendance.

And—oh, Lord—the lectures! Steeling herself day after day to face a roomful of squirming bodies, tapping feet, twenty-five bored or sympathetic or even hostile teenage faces. Shy as she was, she’d always been better dealing with people one-on-one rather than in groups.

“It just wasn’t what—” Why she’d ever dreamed she could… Angrily, Abby brushed her hair back from her brow. She didn’t have the words to explain her dismay. All those years I wasted—what a dope I was! “It just wasn’t what…I’d imagined. Teaching art isn’t the same as making art.” She didn’t want to watch others create, she’d quickly realized; she needed to do it herself.

“Ah,” Jack said, sounding more disapproving than enlightened. “Okay, so what will you do instead?”

She felt a flicker of irritation. Since when was she required to give him a report? She edged away from him on the step, stared up at the moon and muttered, “I’m going to write a book and illustrate it. A children’s picture book.”

“Ah.” His voice was blank, carefully neutral.

“Then I’ll do another…and another.” And another. She had ideas to burn.

“And you plan to sell them?” he inquired.

“Well, of course I do!” She got restlessly to her feet. “I know it sounds crazy, but don’t you see? This is my chance—maybe my last chance to get my life right. To find what works for me and commit myself to it.” To meet nobody’s expectations, this time, but my own. Not Steve’s, not her mother’s, not her principal’s. “To become the artist I’ve always wanted to be.” Even when I was too scared to admit that’s what I wanted.

Last chance to shape a happy life. It’s now or never.

Steve might have kicked her off his magical airplane, but she was darned if she’d fall.

She meant to fly. No wings, no man, just…sheer determination. And terror.

“Hmm.” Jack rubbed a knuckle across his mouth. He might have been erasing a skeptical smile.

At least that was what she thought—and she bristled. Think I can’t do it? Well, who cares what you think?