Dogwood Hollow surprised J.D. by being quite a bit larger than Dancer. It actually had traffic lights, a small shopping mall and several office and apartment buildings.
They had been six hours together in his truck, and J.D. was pleased to see he was having a positive effect on her already. Tally Smith was looking quite rumpled. Her blouse was wrinkled, her slacks had dog hair on them, her hair was falling messily from the bun and her lipstick had worn off. Already she was a different woman than the pressed, perfectly turned out Miss Priss she had been yesterday.
And he’d had her in his power less than a full day! In no time he would be able to show her what a woman should know in order to raise his son.
“You look good,” he told her gruffly, the opening maneuver of the mission. He needed to encourage this hair-let-down look and attitude.
She had found a book somewhere in that gigantic bag of hers, and though she had folded the cover over so he couldn’t see it, she hadn’t been quite fast enough. Just as he’d suspected a woman in a period costume that showed a great deal of breast had been running from a dark and sinister-looking castle. Tally looked up from her book reluctantly, and focused on him with a frown.
“What?”
Here she was in the cab of the truck with a real live man, and she had her attention riveted on the fictional item? He was slightly offended by that, though of course he had browbeaten her. There was also the possibility he smelled like a real live man at the moment.
As gallantly as he could, he said, “You look nice right now.”
She gaped at him, then turned away, pressed her face to the window and caught a glimpse of her reflection in the side view mirror. She grimaced then looked down at herself, tried to straighten her blouse, and picked a few stray hairs off her slacks.
“I suppose you think you’re funny,” she said in a tone that went much better with her old self.
“Not at all. You do look better. More real. Relaxed. You know?”
“I do not,” she said and returned her interest to the book.
His gallantry had been rejected! The opening maneuver abandoned, he snapped, “I feel sorry for the kids you teach. You’re as uptight and tense as a hen in a coyote den. One frog in the desk drawer and they’re probably writing lines for life.”
“My students would not dare put a frog in my desk drawer,” she said, not looking up from the book, and then, “At least I’m a good-looking hen in the coyote den, according to you.”
It wasn’t good enough to reject his gallantry. Oh, no, she had to throw it back in his face. “You make me wish to be in grade five again.”
“You mean you aren’t?” she said with artificial sweetness.
“See what I mean? Uptight.”
He watched out of the corner of his eye as her lips pursed up in a precise underscore of what he had just said about her being uptight. At least he was getting to her!
Her voice very measured, she said, “I have been forced from my bed in the middle of the night, had a stinky dog drooling on my lap for six hours, been subjected to your driving, which is borderline reckless, and I’m uptight? I think I should be nominated for sainthood.”
“Same thing,” he said, “as uptight. So, you’re nominated. Saint Tally of Dogwood Hollow. And I do not drive recklessly. I drive fast because I know exactly the capabilities of my vehicles and myself. Besides, with a bona fide saint on board, what do I have to worry about?”
“You were incorrigible in school, weren’t you?”
“That’s right,” he said happily. “Incorrigible. Incorrigible and the Saint. It would make a good title for a book, wouldn’t it?”
“And that tells me everything I need to know about your reading material.”
“You’re commenting on my reading material? What are you reading? The Duchess and the Duke Do It at Dorchester?”
“As it happens this is an excellent study of life in the Victorian era. The research is impeccable.”
“Well, if people really wore dresses like that one on the cover, I envy the duke. There must have been surprises falling out all over the place.”
She sniffed regally, arched a snobby eyebrow at him, and returned to her book. The attitude was in contrast to her appearance. He decided he liked how she looked because she looked amazingly as if she’d just tumbled out of bed after a wild romp. He decided not to share that with her.
His urge to stop the truck and kiss her until she went crazy was strong. He told himself, not without righteousness, kissing her was probably going to be par for the course, part of what the woman who was going to be raising his son needed to know.
That you didn’t settle in life. You didn’t settle for stainless steel appliances instead of wild, hungry nights of endless passion.
But even as he had that thought, it occurred to him, uncomfortably, that maybe he had settled himself. Hadn’t he chosen a life that was safe and predictable instead of spontaneous and daring? Where was the passion in his life? Clyde Walters’s ‘72 Mustang hardly counted.
“Well, maybe we’re both going to learn a little something,” he muttered.
“Pardon?”
“Can’t you say ‘what?’ like normal people?”
“Are you a normal person?”
“Yep.”
“Then, no I can’t.”
Having successfully diverted her so he didn’t have to share the life lesson he was learning, he tried to return his attention just to the road. But the question had been asked now. Wasn’t he settling, too?
“No!” he said out loud.
She cast him an apprehensive look.
“I’m tired,” he snapped. And that explained everything, really. He decided the all-night drive was warping his thinking. His life was not safe and predictable. He had fun. He took apart old cars and put his feet up on the coffee table. He sang in the shower. He was the rarest of things. A free man. He was the charter member of the A.G.M.N.W.N. Club. What more could he ask for?
Her scent—warm and lemony—chose that moment to fill up the whole truck and wrap itself around his overly tired senses.
He pulled himself up short. He told himself he was a soldier, with a mission. Save his son from her uptight world.
Period. Emotional involvement was unnecessary. No, downright dangerous. Lemon scent should be outlawed.
“This is where we live.”
He pulled over and eyed her home critically, still a soldier, sizing up his mission. It was a nice apartment building—two stories high, freshly painted, big balconies, nice landscaping. J.D. was aware he couldn’t stand it that his son lived here.
“Come on, Beau, out.”
“Oh, he can’t come in.”
J.D. narrowed his eyes at her. She really couldn’t get it through her head that she was not calling the shots.
“What? Someone will call the dog squad if he enters the apartment?”
“It’s just not allowed.”
There was lesson number two. Right after he convinced her you didn’t settle in life, he was going to have to teach her too many rules were damaging to a small boy’s spirit. Actually, to anyone with any spirit. Imagine a world with so many rules that a perfectly well-mannered, one hundred percent housebroken animal would be banned from a building!
“Tell you what,” he said, calling Beau to his side, “Let’s live dangerously.”
She glared at him, and muttered, “What do you think we’ve been doing for the last six hours with you at the wheel?”
But he ignored her and took her suitcase out of the back of the truck. “Lead on,” he said.
Her jaw locked stubbornly, her fists clenched at her sides, she marched toward the front door. Tut-tut. The tension!
There were neat flower beds lining the sidewalk, which J.D. hated because a small child probably got in trouble for trampling them. It looked like that kind of place. He spotted a hand-printed Keep Off The Grass sign on the manicured lawn, and sighed.
The door was locked. She had to punch a code to get in.
“Crime rate high here?” he asked conversationally, but he didn’t feel conversational. If his son was living in a high crime area, that was it. Mission revised immediately. Both of them, Tally and Jed, stuffed in his truck and taken to Dancer never to be returned.
Which is about the scariest thought J. D. Turner had ever had. Tally Smith in Dancer? Permanently?
A man could run a mission when it had a time limit on it. He couldn’t resist the temptations of lemon scent forever.
“Of course it’s not a high crime area,” she said, “but there are places in the world where people lock their doors.”
He knew that. He just didn’t think his son should live in one of them.
She led him into a nice foyer. It had a light-colored leather couch that looked like it marked easily, a carpet that looked like it had come from the bazaar in Istanbul and a four foot glass vase sprouting peacock feathers. The vase, aside from looking impractical and plain silly, looked highly breakable. J.D. bet a kid would probably get chewed out for throwing a ball or running or having muddy feet.
Beauford sniffed a large potted tree and instantly forgot he was perfectly trained and one hundred percent housebroken.
“No,” J.D. cried as Beauford lifted his leg. The dog dropped his leg and gave him a hurt look. “Well, who can blame him,” J.D. defended against Tally’s I-told-you-so-look. “It confused him to find a tree inside.”
The tree was big enough for a small boy to climb, but J.D. bet that wasn’t allowed either.
Beauford gave him another hurt look and shuffled along with them to the elevator. He whined when they got inside and the door slid closed.
“I don’t like them much myself,” he muttered.
“Don’t like what?” she asked.
At the risk of appearing like a complete hick, he said tightly, “Elevators. Too confined. Don’t like the way they make my stomach feel.”
If she laughed, he could commence with the kissing lesson right now, and wipe that look of smug superiority right off her face.
But she didn’t laugh, and in fact the tight look left her face.
Sympathy replaced it!
He glared at her until she looked away. When the elevator door opened Beauford rushed off in a panic, nearly knocking over an elderly woman in a pink jogging suit who was punching the button impatiently.
“Well, I never,” she said indignantly.
A building full of uptight people!
“Ms. Smith, really,” Pink Jogger said, “there are no dogs allowed in the building, as you well know.”
Tally shot him a baleful look, and he took a deep breath, deliberately increasing his chest size. He disliked the old bat on principle. He was willing to bet she used that same tone of voice on his boy. No running. Too much noise. Don’t play. He bet she was responsible for that sign on the grass.
“Undercover,” he snarled, and then gestured at the dog, “K-9.”
“Oh,” she said. “Oh my.” She studied him with wide-eyed and ghoulish curiosity, got on the elevator and reluctantly let the door slide shut.
Tally’s mouth was very tight. “She believed you. How could you do that?” she snarled. “I have to live in this building. I’ll be the talk of the laundry room that I was escorted in by the police and a drug-sniffing dog.”
“After all the rumors you’ve started about my life? We’re not anywhere close to being even,” he said dryly. “Besides, I’m not responsible for what she thinks. I never told her I was a cop. That would be illegal.”
“You did so. You said—”
She stopped and remembered what he had said.
He smiled at her. “Undercover,” he confirmed. “And I was under covers not so long ago. Actually, I’m not so bad under covers.”
She blushed an unbecoming shade of beet-red that he nevertheless found he liked. All part of the plan. Un-uptight her. Shock her a bit. If she pictured him under covers, so much the better.
Unfortunately, the picture that formed seemed to be in his own mind. Of a wild and hungry night of endless passion with her.
Instructive only.
He gulped and said, his voice hoarse, “And, of course, Beauford is a canine. There is absolutely no doubt about that.”
He noticed something very interesting. The tightness around her mouth wasn’t because she was angry. It was because she was trying not to laugh.
God, what a job it was going to be to teach this woman to let go!
She turned quickly away from him and led him down the hall. She knocked on the door and then inserted her key. But before she had turned the bolt completely, he heard wild scrabbling on the other side of the door, and then it was flung open, and her knees were attacked by a pint-size quarterback.
She laughed then.
It was a rich and joyous sound that almost distracted him from the miracle that was his son. Almost.
The boy was beautiful, sturdy and strong. Other fathers had their moment in the delivery room. This was J.D.’s moment and nothing in his life experience had prepared him for the glorious reality of his son. J.D. noticed his own features stamped strongly on the child’s face. He noticed Jed’s coloring, the brilliance of his smile, the light that shone deep and bright in mischievous brown eyes.
J.D. felt astounded by this miracle. His child, his flesh and blood, so real that he could almost sense energy and life exuding from Jed in powerful waves.
Tally hooted, an un-Tally-like sound, and lifted Jed up with surprising strength. She wrapped her arms around the child and hugged hard. After a moment, Jed captured her face between his two chubby hands and smothered her in kisses while she pretended to try and evade him and laughed helplessly.
In that moment, J.D. had a stunning picture of who Tally really was, and it was so bright and so beautiful it nearly blinded him.
For a moment his mission faltered. She did not look like a woman who needed any help from him.
When it felt like he might be sucked into the vortex of her energy, he looked away from her, and noticed another woman, standing in the shadow of the apartment hallway.
His reaction was one of grave sympathy for the male world. There was yet another gorgeous Smith sister, that same blond hair, fine bone structure and amazing eyes.
“I’m Kailey,” she said, coming forward. He knew immediately she was shy…and scared. Tally had called and let her know they were coming, but he suddenly saw that tilting a world on its axis was a very grave undertaking.
He considered himself something of a moron when it came to sensitivity but he knew he had to let Kailey know her world was going to be okay, that he wasn’t going to pull Jed out from under them or anything like that.
That he was just going to retrain her sister.
Since he couldn’t think of the words, he took her hand, and gave it a reassuring squeeze, and looked long and hard right into her eyes. Considering how gorgeous she was, and that she was a Smith, the handshake proved somewhat surprising.
He did not have that sensation of having been shocked that he got when he touched Tally. In fact, shaking hands with Kailey had a rather sisterly feel to it.
Kailey smiled, suddenly, quickly, and the fear dissolved in her eyes.
Jed had nestled into Tally’s shoulder and was now peeking at J.D. Jed’s thumb found its way to his mouth and he took a couple of happy slurps on it.
Was four too old for thumb-sucking? For the first time it occurred to J.D. this fatherhood stuff might be a little more complicated than setting Tally on the right track. How did he know what the right track was? No wonder she read books!
“Jed, this is J.D. He’s a friend of mine,” Tally said, just as they had agreed.
Jed scrutinized him carefully, and popped his thumb out of his mouth. He smiled tentatively. “Hawo.”
His son liked him! J.D. could feel his heart swelling inside his chest. His son—
The reunion was cut short when Jed suddenly spotted the dog. With a cry of surprised delight he wriggled down out of Tally’s arms and squatted in front of Beauford.
“Puppy,” he said reverently.
Beauford and Jed regarded each other with grave interest, and then they both sighed, the very same happy, contented soul-deep sound.
“A dog lover,” J.D. breathed with satisfaction.
“It must be genetic,” Tally said woefully.
Jed threw his arms around Beauford’s solid neck and kissed him as thoroughly as he had his aunt.
Beauford’s stumpy tail thumped happily. He drooled with delight.
“Jed,” Tally said. “Don’t kiss his mouth. Dirty. Germs.”
Lesson three, J.D. thought. Germs are rarely deadly. Dog kisses are one of life’s delights. But maybe, now that he thought about it, only in a life that had become devoid of other kinds of kisses. He would have to give some more thought to lesson three, obviously.
Jed, thankfully, gave his aunt a look of injured disbelief. Beauford, insulted, shook loose the child, and ambled uninvited into the apartment with the little boy hard on his heels.
The apartment reminded J.D. of how crucial his mission was. It was just no place for a child.
Though it was a nice enough apartment, it was tiny and distinctly feminine. There was a disconcerting amount of pink in the decorating, and there were all kinds of little breakable trinkets around that would not be conducive to roughhousing.
The balcony, visible through a large sliding window, had a tricycle on it. The thought of his son riding his trike around that limited space made J.D. think, painfully, of a baby tiger prowling a cage.
Toys, instead of being in a happy heap in the middle of the floor, were neatly organized in a stacking wall unit. A single large yellow truck toy was out on the floor.
It looked like a desperate place for a little kid to try and grow up, though at least the toy wasn’t a doll.
“I’m going to be evicted,” Tally said sorrowfully when the dog and the boy romped noisily out of the room, down the hall and back again. It confirmed J.D.’s worst suspicion that good, healthy, wholesome noise would be frowned upon in a place like this.
J.D. refrained from saying he could think of worse things than her being evicted only because he couldn’t help but notice her eyes were soft as she watched the boy tumble across the living room floor with the dog.
He sat down carefully on the couch. It looked brand-new and like it might be easily damaged by the weight of a real man. It was light beige, which he thought was a dumb color to pick if you were raising a small boy. He could see two bedrooms off the living room, the doors to both ajar.
Jed’s room was obvious, a cheerful space, decorated in bright primary colors.
Hers, next door, was done in virginal whites.
Virginal.
He was way, way too tired because he actually entertained the notion of asking her. He almost laughed out loud picturing how she would react to that question. Hey, Tally, you a virgin? Thankfully, the dog raced by, barking, Jed hot on his heels, squealing with childish laughter. J.D. had to remember not to shake her up too badly. If he managed to alienate her completely his mission would fail.
As he watched his son and Beauford, J.D. could feel a smile inside himself that was entirely different from any smile he had ever smiled before.
His son was a delight in every way. Jed was lively and intense, one hundred per cent boy. Tally had wanted a father for her nephew, and she had found one. Of course, she had to be dissuaded from the nuclear family nonsense she had attached to the title “daddy”. J.D. knew he could be a very effective parent on a long-distance basis. He would phone. He would send cards and letters and gifts. They would travel back and forth. He would come here to visit, and Jed could come see him. J.D. could picture summer afternoons, hand in hand with his son, heading to the fishing hole, the dog trailing behind them. J.D.’s future suddenly glowed with the shining promise of snowball fights and snow forts, building go-carts, breaking in the leather of brand-new ball gloves, the crack of the bat hitting the ball.
Something in him relaxed the way it had not relaxed in a long, long time.
The last thing he remembered hearing was Tally moaning that her downstairs neighbor was going to start pounding on the ceiling in a minute.
He muttered something about dealing with the neighbor if that happened, and then he was gone.
“He’s so nice,” Kailey whispered to Tally as they sat at the kitchen table sipping tea. The dog was asleep under the table, and Jed was asleep right on top of him.
“I hope he doesn’t have fleas,” Tally said.
“J.D.?” Kailey asked with horror.
“Of course not. The beast under the table.” Three males in her house for the first time in history and all of them fast asleep. And all of them snored.
It seemed entirely unfair to her that she knew J. D. Turner snored and she had no idea if Herbert Henley did or not.
“I was talking about J.D., but the dog’s nice, too,” Kailey said.
Kailey thought everyone and everything was nice. How she had ended up with one sister so wild and one so hopelessly naive was one of life’s unexplainable mysteries to Tally.
“You’ve exchanged names and a handshake with J. D. Turner,” Tally reminded her. “That’s hardly a reference from his minister.”
“I’m sure you’ve got all those angles covered,” Kailey said. “He wouldn’t be here right now if you hadn’t liked what you found out about him.”
That wasn’t exactly true but there was no sense Kailey knowing the humiliating truth that he had wrestled the upper hand from Tally with disgusting ease.
“He’s also,” Kailey leaned close across the kitchen table and lowered her voice even further, “very cute.”
Tally didn’t think cute quite said it, but she decided not to argue that point either. That would only tell her sister she’d been paying attention. But J. D. Turner cute? Awesome. Magnificent. Powerful. Intimidating.
Of course, six hours in the cab of a truck, what else was there to notice? Besides Beauford? And a prairie landscape that repeated itself endlessly? And that the hero of the book she was reading seemed disappointingly insipid?
She knew now, how J.D.’s eyelashes were so thick they cast shadows on his cheeks. She knew his whiskers came in fast, dark and vigorous. She knew he drummed the steering wheel with one hand, and that his knuckles had a faint dusting of springy dark hair growing from them. She knew the large muscle of his thigh leapt to life every time he changed gears and looked like steel as they pressed into the faded fabric of his jeans. She knew his biceps flexed and bulged at the least hint of motion, like flipping the tape in his stereo.
He hummed to songs he liked, but he never burst into song the way he had that first night when she had caught him in the shower. He swore at other drivers. He threw his trash on the floor. She knew how J. D. Turner smelled, for God’s sake. Like a real man. Like fresh-turned soil. She imagined his smell was that of the sun on ripening wheat. Clean and strong and pure. It was the faint scent of things brand-new springing from the earth, reaching toward the sun, ripening.
It seemed to her she knew far too much about J. D. Turner, far more than she had ever set out to know. She had set out to know if he was a decent man. Instead she knew his scent and the sweep of his lashes. The hard set of his thigh muscle. The quirk of his mouth. The taste of his lips.
“Are you blushing?” Kailey asked.
“Of course not!” But just in case she was, Tally tried, desperately, to recall if Herbert had a scent. If she conjured hard enough, she could imagine he smelled faintly of his hardware store—of chemicals and boxes and paint and of things gathering dust on back shelves.
“So, you couldn’t say on the phone, but why is he here?”
“As soon as he found out he had a son, he just piled me into the truck. He wants to take Jed and I back to Dancer with him for a week or two. To get to know Jed.”
“He’s not going to try and take him is he?” Kailey asked, sudden fear making her eyes huge.
“Of course not. I have the situation under control.” Okay, J. D. Turner didn’t know that yet, but he soon would.
“You should marry him,” Kailey said dreamily.
“There is more to marriage than a man being cute!” She held up her ring finger, reminding her sister—and maybe herself—that she was taken. That she didn’t even have to entertain the disturbing notion of marrying J. D. Turner, because she was marrying someone else.
“That may be,” Kailey said, a stubborn note in her voice, “but there is also more to marriage than a stainless steel stovetop. Which I think is ugly, not that you asked.”
“Good for you,” J. D. said. He stood in the doorway looking rumpled and annoyingly adorable. “Isn’t this stainless steel on the rim of the stove here?”
Tally nodded warily. She could only hope he had not heard the part about her sister marrying her off to him, or the part that he was cute.
J.D. pressed his finger against the burner rim on the stove, studied the spot, then shook his head with disgust. “Just as I thought,” he said. “Fingerprints. Come and see if you don’t believe me.”
“And your discovery would interest me for what reason?”
“Little boys leave fingerprints.”
“Not if they have clean hands,” she said acidly.
“Which, hopefully, is hardly ever. No, I don’t think stainless steel appliances go with children.”
“I don’t think I asked you.”
“Tally,” Kailey said. “He may have a point.”
Oh! Traitor. Her own flesh and blood.
“I see,” Tally said stiffly, “that I confided my enjoyment in those appliances to the wrong people. Can’t either of you see it’s not the appliances? It’s about what they represent?”
Kailey and J.D. exchanged baffled looks.
“Okay,” he finally said. “What do they represent?”
“Family dinners,” Tally said. “Tradition.”
They both still looked blank, so she rushed on, full of feeling, “The appliances represent a man who actually likes domestic things. Who cares about his surroundings. Who is willing to spend his money on unexciting things, but things that matter just the same. He could have had tickets to the Super Bowl—”
“He could have? Really?” J.D. asked.
“But he wanted something permanent. Something that lasted. Something of value.”
“He could have framed the program,” J.D. said with disgust. “Kept his ticket stubs in a jar on the fireplace.”
“You don’t get it,” Tally said.
“Sure I do. You’re planning to marry a man who is unfit to raise my son. Not that I would dream of stopping you. But you need to know a few things. First.”
“What kind of things?” she asked suspiciously.
“I’ll show you when we get back to Dancer. Boy stuff. You need to know some boy stuff. Since Herbie doesn’t.”
“He doesn’t like being called Herbie,” Tally said, her voice tight. “And I’m sure he knows all kinds of boy stuff. He owns a hardware store. That means lawn mowers. Pipe wrenches. Different sized nails. What could be more boy stuff than that?”
J.D. snorted. “He bought a stove instead of a Super Bowl ticket. This is worse than I could have imagined.”
“Well, I think it’s terribly exciting that the three of you are going to Dancer,” Kailey said, confirming her role as a complete traitor. Her sister, Kailey Benedict Arnold.
“You don’t know Dancer,” J.D. corrected her gently. “It’s not exactly exciting.”
Finally, something they could agree on, though Tally didn’t appreciate him one bit more. What was that nice tone of voice he used on his sister, but not on her?
“No, Dancer is not exciting,” J.D. continued, “but it’s spacious and open. You can still set off firecrackers on Main Street, and shoot gophers on the prairie. The general store still gives jawbreakers to little kids, and you can find the rattles off snakes on a lucky day.”
“Oh,” Kailey breathed, with perfect understanding, “boy stuff.”
Tally glared at her, hoping she would pick up the traitor message, but she didn’t. Kailey and J.D. were beaming at each other as if they were members of an exclusive secret society.
“Exactly,” he said.
“Jed is too young to shoot gophers,” Tally said, “not that I would let him if he was old enough. It’s disgusting. Shooting small furry creatures is despicable. I won’t even discuss snakes, except to let you know all parts of them would be crawling with germs. And jawbreakers are a choking hazard to children under five. I read it in a book.”
J.D. was smiling at her, so indulgently it made her see red.
“Your whole problem, Tally—”
How dare he insinuate she have a problem?
“—is that you have done far too much reading, and far too little living.”
She folded her arms over her chest. “And you are going to fix my problem?” she said.
He missed her sarcasm entirely. “Exactly,” he said happily, as if she was a dull child who had just gotten it. “I better work on Herbie’s while I’m here, too. When can I meet him?”