9
ON THURSDAY, TRACY was determined to give the living room the thorough cleaning it deserved. No more twenty-five-watt bulbs to hide dust balls. Slipping the Cherry Poppin’ Daddies cassette in her portable player, she adjusted the compact headphones and set to work.
First she had to shove the furniture out of the way. It took some elbow grease, but she managed to get the couch and chairs against the walls so that she could vacuum the carpeting without obstacles.
The swing music just made it too tempting to dance while vacuuming. Her right hand may have been on the cleaning upright, but her left hand and foot were jiving. Every so often, she’d pause and make a crazy leg move before circling the vacuum as if it were her partner.
When the twins suddenly appeared in front of her, she yelped in surprise and tugged the headphones off her head.
“What are you doing?” Lucky asked.
“I was vacuuming...and swing dancing.” Something about the intrigued look in Lucky’s eyes made her add, “Here, I’ll show you.”
Tracy took the Cherry Poppin’ Daddies cassette from her portable player, popped it into the stereo system in the living room, cued it to music of the hit opening number “Zoot Suit Riot” and then hit the repeat button.
Turning back to Lucky, she said, “Give me your hand.”
A minute later, Lucky and Tracy were swinging around the room—the little girl mimicking Tracy’s moves with enthusiasm. When Tracy completed a crazy leg move, kicking her left leg as high as she could to the side of Lucky, the little girl did the same. Meanwhile, Rusty had taken the turned-off vacuum as his partner.
When Lucky went into energetic moves of her own, Tracy took Rusty’s hand and swung him.
“What the Sam Hill is going on here?” Buck demanded as he joined them in the living room. He’d been in the den working on ranch paperwork.
“We’s dancin’!” Lucky breathlessly shouted back.
“Swing dancin’,” Rusty added.
“Then let me show you youngsters how it’s done.” Buck took to the makeshift dance floor like a pro, grabbing Tracy as his partner. With one arm around her back and the other holding her hand, he showed her jitterbug moves she’d only seen in the movies. He ended by rolling her over his back so that she went head over heels before landing on her feet.
“Me next!” Lucky squealed.
“No, me!” Rusty shouted.
With the twins Buck improvised by swinging them to each side of him, their feet off the floor as they giggled with delight to the blaring music.
“Enough,” Buck finally gasped before collapsing in his duct-taped recliner.
Tracy barely had enough energy left to turn off the cassette player before it replayed “Zoot Suit Riot” for the twentieth time. She made it to the couch before she, too, collapsed in breathless laughter.
“Where’d you learn to dance like that, Grandpa?” Lucky said.
“And how come you never taught us before?” Rusty asked.
“Didn’t know you young’uns would be interested.” Leaning forward, Buck propped his elbows on his knees and shook his head. “Whew! I haven’t jitterbugged since your grandmother and I were newlyweds. Appears to me that’s about how old this carpet is, too.” He squinted down at it. “Am I going blind or is the light getting bad in here?”
Feeling guilty, Tracy confessed. “I changed the bulbs to a lower wattage.”
“I can see why, looking at this rug. It’s in bad shape.”
This was her chance, and Tracy grabbed it. “Is the hardwood floor beneath it in good shape?”
“As far as I know.”
“I was thinking we could take up this rug and let the hardwood floor shine. I think it would make this room look great. Open it up.”
“Fine. Let’s get to it.”
His response took her by surprise. “You mean now?”
“You had some other time in mind?”
She did some rapid mental calculations. She could use the cold leftover pork roast from last night’s dinner to make hearty sandwiches for the men at lunch. A store-bought peach pie would finish off the meal. All in all, pretty much a self-serve meal, which gave her time to work on tearing up the carpeting before Buck changed his mind. “Let’s do it now.”
“Might as well put that music back on the tape player while we work.”
And so it was that they tore up the carpet to the swinging sound of the Cherry Poppin’ Daddies.
When Zane came in for lunch, he passed by the living room on his way to get something from the den. Standing in the doorway and staring at them in astonishment, he said, “Anyone care to explain why the living room carpet is all torn up?”
“Pa, Tracy taught us how to swing dance today!” Lucky said.
“And for that you had to tear up the carpet?”
Putting her hands on her hips, Tracy just stood there and grinned at him. “Darn right we did.”
“Was this your idea?” Zane asked Buck.
“Only if you think it’s a good one,” his father replied with a chortle.
“I’m not sure what I think,” Zane muttered before heading for the den.
“There’s a lot of that going around,” Buck called after him. His meaningful glance in Tracy’s direction had her wondering if Buck had noticed the chemistry between his son and her.
She found out two weeks later. It had taken that long to complete the living-room project. The room was now taking shape just as she’d envisioned it. She’d confiscated a Navajo rug from a storage room upstairs and laid it down on the oak floor, which glowed with a patina only age could produce. A throw featuring horses in browns and blacks hid most of the duct tape on Buck’s recliner.
Today she was checking out the den to see if anything from there could be used in the newly redone living room.
The largest piece of furniture was the desk, which was an L-shaped design. On top of it was a computer with a monitor and printer. Seeing her curious look, Buck said, “That machine sure comes in handy for keeping ranch records, calving, hay production and accounting, that sort of stuff. I told Zane right fast that getting it was one of the smartest things he ever did.”
“Next thing you know, you’ll be cruising the Internet.”
Buck just snorted and went on to proudly point out the stuffed armadillo his great-great grandfather had brought up from Texas.
The stuffed armadillo could stay where it was. Averting her eyes from it, she instead focused on the various items on the wall. There was Zane’s college degree and Reno’s as well. Family photos, both old and new, adorned one wall. And there was a set of lovely framed cross-stitch pieces on the far wall.
Stepping closer, she realized they weren’t the traditional sayings but were instead Cockeyed Curly’s poems.
“Don’t tell me Curly was an accomplished cross-stitcher as well as a poet and thief?” she said.
“My grandmother did those up. The words are from Curly.”
She read one aloud.
“Don’t never confuse me with Robin Hood.
I took from the rich as best I could.
But where it goes is just to me.
The poor can do their own robbery.”
Another was just two lines:
I’m Curly the robbin’ poet.
Now we both know it.
“You never told me how your visit with your son Cord went. Did you have time to look for the treasure map or was that just a ruse to get the twins to go with you?”
“Don’t rightly know what a ruse is,” Buck replied, “but the truth of the matter is that I didn’t have time to do any map searching. The kids got antsy, so I couldn’t look through the old trunks I got stored up there.”
“The twins? Antsy? I find that hard to believe,” she murmured with a bat of her lashes.
Buck chortled just as she knew he would.
“Now that I’ve got you in a good mood, how about letting me move this wrought-iron floor lamp into the living room.”
“Sure you don’t want the armadillo?”
“I wouldn’t dream of moving it,” she demurred. “Not when it’s been providing such good luck right from where it’s at.”
“How about this here sign.” He pointed to the carved western pine.
“Cowboy’s Logic—Be Sure to Taste Your Words Before You Spit Them Out,” she read aloud. “Hmm, your son might have need of it in here. No, I’ll just take this.”
She grabbed hold of the floor lamp and took it to the living room before Buck could offer to do it for her.
“There.” She stepped back to admire the room. “Do you think Zane will like it?”
Buck narrowed his eyes to give her an intense look. “Appears my oldest son of a buck has made quite an impression on you.”
“He’s my boss.”
“He’s more than that.” Seeing her glare, Buck held out his hands in a conciliatory way. “Now don’t go gettin’ all defensive with me. I know how she-folk are. Don’t like admittin’ what’s in their hearts any more than we do. But I ain’t blind, although I thought I was going that way when you changed the bulbs in here. Glad you put them bright ones back in. Now where was I...oh, yes. We were discussing how Zane is a tad slicker shy when it comes to city gals.”
She blinked at him. “Slicker shy?”
“Cowboy term. Some horses shy at the rustle of a slicker.”
She knew from reading Western romances that a slicker was a type of long oilskin raincoat worn out on the range. She didn’t know what that had to do with her.
Buck seemed eager to explain. “See, the same way some horses shy away at certain things or sounds, some people do the same thing.”
“I already know Zane’s opinion of women from the big city,” Tracy said. “He’s made himself very clear on that subject.”
“Seems to me he may be saying one thing and doing another. I’ve seen the way you two look at each other. Like a pair of lovesick calves.”
She laughed at his words. “You’re exaggerating. I just want him to think well of me, that’s all. I don’t like people thinking I’m incompetent.”
Even so, she was the first to admit she hadn’t become a Martha Stewart clone overnight. While she had finally mastered the intricacies of fabric softeners so that the towels no longer felt like sandpaper, just yesterday she’d forgotten to plug in the Crock-Pot and dinner had been almost two hours late. But at least the roast and vegetables had been edible once they’d finally cooked.
Murph’n’Earl had been the ones to alert her to the advantages of using a slow cooker like a Crock-Pot. It seems that Murph’s first wife had been a good cook, but a little lacking in the faithfulness department.
Not that either cowhand talked about his past much, or anything else for that matter. Mostly they just ate their meals in silence, only resorting to shuffling their feet and bending their hats when called upon to speak.
Not that they wore their hats while eating. They were always careful to remove them in her presence, which is when the hat-bending began in earnest.
More at ease with the art of conversation were both Susan Grey and Annie Benson, who had phoned her after the Fourth of July celebration and offered their own easy recipes for her to try.
She’d even had a breakthrough about her own goals in her career of advertising. And it was linked to, of . all things, Rusty’s dislike of broccoli.
When Rusty told her that he wouldn’t eat the vegetable despite never having tasted it, she considered using blue food coloring to turn broccoli into “a blue life form from the planet Zargot.” She even went so far as to put the blue-dyed broccoli in a bottle with a Planet Zargot label she’d done up on her laptop and portable printer before deciding that she’d be betraying Rusty’s trust by deceiving him.
And that’s when it hit her that she wanted to work on selling only products that she really believed in, like Buck’s Barbecue Sauce. Not products that she had to deceive the consumer into buying.
As for Rusty, Tracy had received a recipe for roasted red pepper soup from Annie that he loved. And he gobbled fresh green beans like there was no tomorrow. So there was no need to sell him on broccoli.
The sound of Buck’s voice interrupted her train of thought. Derailed it actually. “I’m not saying you’re incompetent, I’m saying you may be infatuated. There’s a difference.”
“I am not infatuated!”
Her anger had him backing up a step or two. “Now don’t go getting on your high horse, I’m just trying to help out here.”
“Then help me move this lamp over to the other side of the couch.”
For once Buck did as he was told.
SHE FIRST NOTICED the button missing from Zane’s shirt when he sat down for the midday meal the next day. It was one of the few shirts he owned that didn’t have pearlized snaps. He was probably wearing it because she was a little behind in the washing as a result of revamping the living room.
“You’ve got a loose button,” she told him. “I’ll fix it.”
“I don’t have time,” he began, but she already had a needle and thread in her hand.
“No, don’t take your shirt off,” she said. She certainly didn’t need him standing bare-chested in her kitchen. Okay, so it was his kitchen. Even so, she didn’t want him half-undressed. Okay, so she did want him half-undressed. She wanted him totally undressed.
Stop that! she ordered herself. Just do your job. Sew on his darn button and impress the heck out of him with your stitching skills.
“The button is near the bottom of your shirt. Just tug it out of your jeans and I’ll sew it while it’s on you.” When he did as she requested, she started babbling nervously. “I’m not as good with a needle as your great-grandmother was. I saw her cross-stitching in the den. Pretty impressive.” Head down, she kept her attention focused on the needle and thread—in and out, in and out. The one time she did look up, she almost smacked the top of her head against his chin.
For his part, Zane wasn’t saying much. But she could feel his body heat emanating toward her, beckoning her closer. Her fingers trembled. Must be because she was trying to sew so fast.
“There.” She finished off by wrapping the thread around the button several times. It was only then that she realized what she’d done. “Oops.”
“I don’t like a woman with a needle in her hand saying oops,” Zane said.
“It appears that your shirt has somehow gotten sewn to mine.”
“Somehow?” he repeated. “I know exactly how. You’re driving me plumb loco!”
“Hey,” she shot back, “it was an honest mistake...”
The rest of her words were smothered by his lips as he lowered his head to kiss her. As before in the barn, there was no tentative fumbling, no awkwardness. There was only immediate heat and instant hunger.
He repeated that flick of his tongue across the roof of her mouth in a way she found incredibly seductive. His work-roughened hands cupped her face, holding her in place. She was vaguely aware that she still held a sharp needle in one hand, but that left her other hand free to tug him closer. She did so.
Ah, that was better. A thread wouldn’t fit between them now, so tightly was her body pressed against his.
It took the sound of a booming voice from across the room to send them apart.
“Son of a buck!”