Kitabı oku: «Sky's Pride And Joy»

Chapter One

Skyler Buchanan hoisted the last fifty-pound sack of feed onto his shoulder and headed for his truck. Neil Anderson, manager of the J.P. Feed and Ranch Supply Store, wrestled the sack from Sky’s shoulder, adding it to the top of the stack on the bed of the truck before climbing morosely to the ground. “Gonna be another scorcher, that’s for sure.”

Sky cast a cursory glance at the horizon. The sky was clear, the midmorning sun hot, the day promising to be hotter. Sky didn’t mind the heat.

“Jake expectin’ you back right away?” Norbert, the oldest Anderson brother, asked from the shade of the old building. The J.P. Feed & Ranch Supply Store sat around the corner from the village main street. The old-timers said it had been painted once, but nobody could agree on the year, or the color. Whatever color it had once been, time had dulled it to the same faded, weathered gray of all three of the Anderson brothers’ cowboy hats.

At Sky’s shrug, Norbert grimaced. “Oh, yeah. You come and go as you please. I knew that. Must be this heat.”

“Either that,” Ned, the middle brother added, “or boredom.”

“God, yes,” Neil declared. “Boredom. Not a dang thing ever changes in this dusty corner of South Dakota.”

Sky swiped his brown Stetson off his head, but again, he only shrugged. Unlike the other bachelors in the area, he wasn’t looking for things to change around here. What was wrong with life just the way it was? Besides, no matter what the local boys said, not everything stayed the same in Jasper Gulch. Babies were born, kids grew up, girls left town, old folks died. There’d been other changes, too. New stores had opened, a couple of businesses had changed hands. In fact, one of those changes involved Neil, who’d left the family ranch to manage the feed store a couple of months back. Neil did a good job, but he still wasn’t happy. None of the Anderson brothers were. According to the Jasper Gulch grapevine, Ned and Norbert spent so much time here that folks had taken to wondering who was minding the ranch.

“Grab yourself a root beer out of the cooler in the office and sit a spell with us in the shade,” Neil insisted.

Sky glanced at the other two men who were already popping the tops of their soda cans. He could have taken the time to join them, but he just wasn’t in the mood to listen to complaints about the weather and taxes and the sorry price of beef and how nothing ever happened in Jasper Gulch. Cramming his hat back on his head, he said, “Maybe next time, boys.”

Without a backward glance, he climbed into his truck and turned the key. The air streaming in his open window was hot and dry. He considered stopping at the diner, settling at a quiet table, and ordering up a tall glass of lemonade or iced tea. He had plenty of time to make up his mind, because when he turned onto Main Street, he had to crawl to a stop in order to let the clucking hens otherwise known as the staunchest members of the Ladies Aid Society cross the street in front of him. He’d gotten on their good side a couple of years back when he’d sided with them instead of with the local boys who’d decided to advertise for women to come to their fair town. The leaders of the Society had insisted that such an ad would draw riffraff and worse, women of ill repute. Sky’s reasons had been a lot less political.

As far as Sky was concerned, new women meant new problems. After all, the local gals knew better than to try to cage him in. He hadn’t been so sure new women would be as easy to dissuade. As it turned out, only a handful of women had answered the ad. Much to the Society’s relief, none of them had been ladies of the night. Much to his relief, it hadn’t been all that difficult to convince most of the new gals that he wasn’t the marrying kind. Once, he’d overheard DoraLee Brown talking to the Southern gal who hadn’t figured it out on her own.

“Sugar,” DoraLee had said, “Sky Buchanan is one of those men who can be civilized, but never tamed. He’s easy on the eyes, but hard on the heart.”

Keeping a safe distance from one of the local women and her young daughter who were crossing the street in front of him, Sky couldn’t argue with DoraLee’s logic. He didn’t take credit for his looks or blame for his attitude. According to his mother, both had come straight from his old man, along with every shortcoming and flaw he possessed. Not that his mother had been any better. Which was why Skyler Buchanan was footloose and fancy-free, and planned to stay that way.

He lifted his hand to the old men shooting the breeze in front of the barbershop, and at Cletus McCully who was sitting on the bench in his usual spot in front of the post office. They all waved in return in their usual way, Cletus without unhooking his thumb from his suspenders, Karl Hanson with his customary salute, Roy Everts with his arthritic hands that resembled hams. Unlike most folks in and around Jasper Gulch, Sky hadn’t been born and raised here, but he’d been here so long that people had either forgotten or didn’t care.

Sky never forgot where he’d spent the first seventeen years of his life. Oh, he’d had a roof over his head, and sometimes there had been food on the table. His upbringing pretty much ended there. He’d learned the difference between right and wrong on his own. He didn’t kill, maim, swindle, lie or cheat. He put in an honest day’s work in return for an honest day’s pay, and he came and went as he pleased. He’d learned to deal with loneliness before he could talk. He’d learned to deal with desire years later. Except for a chance encounter with a leggy blonde a month ago, he’s been as celibate as old Cletus McCully.

The image of hair the color of spun gold and a smile warm and soft enough to slice clear through a man’s defenses wafted across Sky’s mind. Damn, he’d been trying not to think about that leggy blonde or her soft smiles and gentle touch and…Clamping his mouth shut, he swore to himself.

He’d had no intention of sleeping with a woman he’d only just met, but something had been in the air that night. He didn’t know what it was, but the same thing had been in Meredith Warner’s gaze, as in his. Later, it had scared the spit right out of him, because it was damned close to need. At the time, he hadn’t taken the time to analyze. Hell, he hadn’t taken the trouble to think. Oh, but he’d taken the time to touch, and whisper, and feel and…

The sudden catch in his breathing, and the telltale hitch elsewhere reminded him of things he preferred not to think about, and made him hotter than the dusty air streaming through his open window. That had been happening a lot lately.

That did it. Forget iced tea. He was going to the Crazy Horse for a beer even if it was a little early in the day. He gave the street a sweeping glance in preparation to make a U-turn in front of the Saloon. A serious mistake. Not the U-turn. He never got around to making that. The serious mistake involved a glance at the women talking in front of an old building across the street from the Five & Dime. One of those women had long legs and shimmering blond hair. She turned her head, her gaze meeting his. A zing went through him, and he couldn’t look away.

A horn blared. Sky swerved, missing Hal Everts’ truck by less than a foot. The close call didn’t alleviate the awareness that was buzzing through him. All because Meredith Warner was back in town.

A month ago, Sky had thought her stay here was temporary. That had made her safe. He’d heard she was coming back for good. Nothing like that could escape the Jasper Gulch grapevine. There she was, standing in front of a building that had been vacant for years, her hair hanging long and straight down her back, skin the color of peaches-and-cream, arms and ankles bare, every movement fluid. He couldn’t see the color of her eyes from here, but he knew they were a deep, dark brown. It was unusual to come across a woman with hair so blond and eyes so dark, but she’d been a natural blonde, all right. He couldn’t seem to forget the moment he’d discovered that particular fact.

Sky swore under his breath again, tore his gaze away from hers, and yelled an apology to Hal. Keeping his foot steady on the gas pedal and his eyes straight ahead, he drove out of town.

Now there’s a man I’d steer clear of if I were you…”

Meredith had to give herself a mental shake in order to drag her gaze away from the dusty pickup truck rounding the corner at the end of Main Street. Bringing her attention back to Jayne Stryker, who had turned out to be a godsend, not to mention a genius when it came to advertising, Meredith wondered why someone couldn’t have warned her a month ago.

It was too late for that. Besides, she’d promised herself there would be no more self-recriminations, no more looking back, no more wishing things could be different. She was still reeling from the reality that her only sister and brother-in-law had died as a result of a horrible car accident. Except for her young niece and nephew, she was completely alone in the world, but in many ways, she had been for years. The opening of the antiques and home furnishings store would mark a new beginning for Meredith. She was getting on with her life, and getting her life in order. It was too late to reconcile with Kate, but it wasn’t too late to have a loving relationship with Kate’s children, Logan and Olivia. Meredith was nearly thirty years old. From now on, she was going to make the right choices, do the right things. She was putting down roots. She would be a true friend to her new friends, and she would be the best aunt her niece and nephew could ask for.

“His name is Skyler Buchanan,” Jayne Stryker added. “Rumor has it he’s broken the hearts of nearly every girl in town. He’s a complicated man. But then, aren’t they all?”

Meredith eyed her newest and most interesting friend. She’d heard other women claim that men were simple. As far as Meredith was concerned, nothing was simple, least of all men. Evidently, Jayne felt the same way. Jayne Kincaid had come to Jasper Gulch last Christmas to visit her brother, Burke, who’d set up his medical practice here. She’d had no intention of staying. An ex-rodeo champion named Wes Stryker, who had happened to be Kate’s and Dusty’s best friend, had changed her mind, along with her plans for the future. Now, Jayne and Wes were raising Logan and Olivia. From what Meredith could see, they were doing an admirable job, too. Not that Logan and Olivia always made things easy. Which brought her back to the fact that nothing was easy.

“Meredith?”

Ah, yes, Meredith and Jayne were in total agreement when it came to their philosophies on life. Life had a way of getting complicated.

“Meredith?”

Throw in a man, and it usually spiraled out of control. That’s what had happened that night a month ago. She’d been rocked clear to her soul from the news that Kate and Dusty had died. In had walked Skyler Buchanan. Their eyes had met, and a tornado might as well have swept everybody and everything else away, leaving the two of them in its center to ride out the storm. That storm had turned out to be an idyllic interlude unlike anything she’d ever experienced. She’d been foolish enough to believe, for those few brief hours, that it had been the same for him. She’d been wrong, of course. But she’d tried to put it out of her mind.

She’d known she would see Skyler Buchanan again. Which made forgetting the night she’d spent in his arms even more impossible to do.

“Earth to Meredith.”

What? Oh. “Yes, Jayne?”

“Are you sure you want to keep Logan and Olivia with you while I attend this business lunch this afternoon?”

The area surrounding Meredith’s heart swelled with gratitude. Jayne knew how much Meredith loved her only niece and nephew, and this was her way of giving Meredith an opportunity to spend time with the children. “Of course I’m sure. You said yourself it’ll only be for an hour. Besides, I’m looking forward to it.”

Jayne’s careful perusal made Meredith feel like a fly under a microscope. It was a relief when Jayne turned her attention to the lanky cowboy sauntering toward them, a ten-year-old boy on one side, a five-year-old girl on the other. The first time Meredith had seen the children with Wes and Jayne Stryker, instead of with their parents, Kate and Dusty, she’d felt as if a knife had twisted in her heart. But the ache lessened each time she saw them. The kids were happy, and well adjusted. Meredith knew that Wes and Jayne had been worried that she, the children’s closest living relative, might want to take them away. Meredith had put their minds at ease, for she didn’t want to disrupt Logan’s and Olivia’s lives further. She only wanted to be near them, to get to know them, and to love them.

“Hi, Aunt Meredith,” Logan called.

“Aunt Meredith, look!” Olivia held up a bedraggled stuffed goose. “Jaynie asked Kelsey’s mama to give Snuggles new eyes, and she did. Now Snuggles is as good as new.”

“Snuggles isn’t either as good as new,” Logan grumbled.

“Is so.”

“Is not.”

“Is so.”

“Uh-uh.”

“Uh-huh.”

Jayne tucked a strand of short, dark hair behind her ear and glanced from her husband to Meredith. With a wink, she said, “Unless you keep them busy, this could still be going on when I return. Burke and I used to be like that.”

“Kate and I did, too.”

“Then you’ll know exactly how to deal with them,” Jayne said.

“Forget child labor laws,” Wes Stryker said, a twinkle in his blue eyes. “Put them to work. There’s nothing like manual labor to work out a kid’s frustrations.” He turned to the children. “We’ll be back in an hour, so try to be good. And you,” he said, easing closer to his wife.

Meredith thought she heard Jayne whisper, “I’ll be good later.”

And she was pretty sure Wes said, “I’m counting on it,” the moment before his lips brushed his wife’s.

The underlying sensuality went right over the children’s heads. Tucking the stuffed goose under one arm, Olivia skipped into the store ahead of her brother. Knowing what could happen when those two were left unsupervised, Meredith hurried after them.

“Logan,” she said, handing the boy the keys while she flipped on lights. “Unlock the back door, would you? Maybe we can get a breeze blowing through here.”

Logan ran to the back of the store, keys jangling, shoes thudding, anything not anchored down rattling as if during an earthquake. Within seconds, the netting hanging from the rafters ruffled, a dozen sets of wind chimes purled, and Meredith sighed. Turning in a circle, she took it all in. She’d put everything she had into this store, all her energy and her life savings. She’d looked at several buildings, but had decided on the store that sat by itself between the Jasper Gulch Clothing Store and Bonnie’s Clip & Curl. It had been nothing but a deserted building then, so full of cobwebs that she’d had the place fumigated before she’d done anything else. Some of the other structures she’d looked at had more history, but none of them had as much personality or potential.

The front portion of the store had a tin ceiling. The rest had an open ceiling, high rafters, and wood floors. A long time ago, it had been a furniture store, which made it the perfect place to house the antiques and fine furnishings Meredith planned to sell here. The work was nearly completed. Track lighting had been installed below the rafters, the entire place scrubbed and painted. She’d made the curtains at the windows herself, and with the help of several local teenagers, the antiques were arranged at one end, the few pieces of new furniture she could afford to stock at the other. The paint she would sell was due to arrive later in the week. Every day she worked from dawn until late into the night down here before retiring to the tiny apartment upstairs. It was all coming together, the kids, her store, her life.

She spread her arms wide and tipped her head back. Whoa. Woozy, she closed her eyes.

“Aunt Meredith, ’Livia,” Logan called. “That alley cat’s gone and had kittens in an old barrel that tipped over back here.”

Olivia ran to see. Meredith blinked, focused, then followed. Logan was on his knees just inside the back door. Olivia was bent at the waist a foot away.

“She must’a just had ’em,” he said. “They’re still ugly and their eyes aren’t open yet.”

“They’re not either ugly,” Olivia exclaimed. “They’re beautiful.”

Meredith braced herself for the argument that was sure to break out, but Logan shrugged good-naturedly and simply said, “You know what I mean.”

“How many are there?” Olivia asked her big brother.

“Six.”

“Six?” Meredith exclaimed. What on earth was she going to do with an alley cat and six kittens?

“Wait. I was wrong.”

Oh, good.

“There are seven,” Logan amended.

“Seven?” Meredith asked. “Are you sure?” The scraggly orange-and-white mother cat stared up at her, blinking tiredly, as if sharing Meredith’s dismay.

“Yup. There are seven all right. Uncle Wes says seven’s lucky.”

“We’re lucky!” Olivia exclaimed. “Aren’t we Aunt Meredith?”

Meredith took a closer look at that cat and her seven kittens, and then at the brown-haired children whose blue eyes, so like their mother’s, were wide with wonder. A lump came and went in her throat, but she managed a small nod and a genuine smile.

“Seven kitties,” Olivia declared. “Plus the mama. We’re gonna need a lot of names.”

Since Meredith knew that a named cat was a claimed cat, she had to think fast. “Those kittens need to take a nap right now. If you two want to think of names, why don’t you help me decide what to call the store?”

“You want us to name a building?” Logan asked in that preadolescent, know-it-all attitude universal to males.

Meredith swiped a finger along his nose and said, “Not the building, silly. It’s going to be my business, a way of life, an entity with its own unique personality.”

The kids looked up at her blankly for a full five seconds before turning their gazes on each other. “I think we should name the white-and-yellow one Fluffy,” Olivia said.

“And the one with the two white paws is…”

“Paws?” Olivia asked.

“No, silly. Boots.”

Meredith knew when she’d been beaten. Retracing her footsteps to the front of the store, she began arranging throw pillows and lamps and candles on shelves lining one wall. The kids spent the next hour pondering names for kittens Meredith couldn’t possibly keep. Logan made a bed for them in an old drawer he found in the back alley, and he and Olivia coaxed the mother to let him help her move the kittens to what they considered a better lodging place. As far as Meredith was concerned, those two voices were more musical than the resonant purl of the wind chimes swaying overhead in the gentle breeze.

By the time Jayne was due back to pick up the children an hour later, all the kittens had been duly petted and examined for any unusual, interesting or identifying markings, three of them had names, and Logan and Olivia were arguing over a fourth. Mercy, those kids could argue over nothing.

“You can’t name the mother cat Haley!” Logan exclaimed.

“I can name her Haley if I want to!” Olivia declared with equal exuberance.

“Can not.”

“Can so.”

“You can’t either name her Haley. That’s a real person’s name. Tell her Aunt Meredith.”

Before Meredith could open her mouth, Olivia said, “We named the barn cats Carolyn, Sherilyn and Tom, and those are real people names. You just don’t wanna name this one Haley on accounta you kissed Haley Carson and she gave you a black eye.”

All at once, the store was absolutely quiet. Logan was the quietest of all. Wanting to help but not sure how, Meredith said, “Olivia, you don’t know that’s the reason Logan doesn’t want to name this cat Haley. I don’t really think she looks like a Haley, do you? Besides, kissing is private.”

“Kissing’s icky,” Olivia said. “Do you think kissing’s icky, Aunt Meredith?”

Two pairs of trusting blue eyes turned to her. Kissing? “Well, er, um. That is…”

The bell over the front door jangled, signaling Jayne’s return. Meredith was saved from having to try to come up with an answer that wasn’t mostly a sigh. Icky? Oh, that depended upon who a woman kissed. And the last man, the only man she’d kissed in a long, long time, hadn’t been icky at all.

Jayne dashed in long enough to pay due respect to the mother cat and her kittens, recount the high points of the meeting she’d attended, and say, “I’ll see you at the town council meeting tonight!” before bustling the kids away.

Ugh, Meredith thought when she was alone again in the store. Tonight, at the town council meeting, she would have to stand in front of the women of the Ladies Aid Society and several of the bachelors in town. She prayed she passed everyone’s scrutiny so that she might be accepted in this small town.

That was what she wanted. To be accepted, to be near Logan and Olivia, and for her store to be a success. In order for her store to be a success, she couldn’t afford to make any enemies or hurt any feelings, which meant she had to let the overeager bachelors down gently, which wasn’t easy to do when she received requests for dates every day. She could hardly blame them. There simply weren’t enough women to go around out here. An old copy of the advertisement the local boys had put in the local papers to lure women to Jasper Gulch still hung in the post office and in the diner. Not a lot had changed since then. As far as Meredith could tell, in the three years since the ad had appeared, there wasn’t a single man in town who wasn’t still shy but willing. She paused for a moment.

That wasn’t true. There was one. Oh, Skyler Buchanan had been more than willing a month ago, and she doubted he’d ever been shy.

Giving herself a mental shake, Meredith got back to work. It was amazing how many times her thoughts strayed to Sky, and a kiss, that had led to a touch, that had led to a frenzy of hands reaching, and buttons popping and clothes being peeled away like layers until so much more than two bodies were bared. For those few brief hours, Meredith had believed she’d been able to see into Sky’s soul, and he into hers. Of course, when it was all over, they’d both known it had been a mistake. Skyler Buchanan was a free spirit, and Meredith Warner had an old soul. They’d both been lonely, that was all. Loneliness could be a powerful motivation, but not a basis for anything deep and abiding. Sky had been the first to put it into words, saying it would be best to end it then and there.

She’d nodded, mumbling her agreement, her clothes clutched in her arms, covering her nakedness as she’d assured him that there was nothing to end. In order for something to have an ending, it had to have a beginning. And all she and Sky had had were a few brief hours in each other’s arms, a few brief hours during which two people had taken a respite from their real lives and had lived a fantasy.

She hadn’t seen Sky since that night. Until today. She’d thought about him a thousand times. Which was just about how often she’d told herself to forget him, because surely, he hadn’t given her another thought.

She’d been sure of that, until earlier, when their gazes had locked from a distance. Something powerful had passed between them. She wasn’t sure what it was, but she found herself wondering if perhaps he was having a difficult time forgetting her, too.

She straightened fast, and got light-headed and woozy again. She eyed the sofas waiting for someone to buy them, wishing she could curl up on one of them, and close her eyes if only for a few minutes. Shaking her head slightly to clear it, she reminded herself that she didn’t have time for the luxury of a nap. She had a business to launch, and a life to turn around. Placing a hand to the flat of her stomach, she hoped she wasn’t coming down with the flu.