OPENED the gate and the “wagon train,” as one of the kids called it, began its journey. Hayes went out first, with Henry sitting on the horse in front of him. Kate moved to his left side, wanting him close in case her horse decided to act up.
“Don’t go too fast,” he warned as the other children passed them and took off at breakneck speed.
The road wound through pastures where round bales of freshly cut hay dotted the ground, and more hay, waiting to be cut, rippled in the wind. Henry, Kate quickly discovered, could be counted on to fill the brief moments of silence. His fascination with the scenery exceeded his vocabulary. He entertained them by periodically calling out the names of things he saw.
“Burrrd,” he said when a colorful bird flew past and landed on the barbed-wire fence.
“Eastern bluebird,” Hayes said. “And what sound does a bird make?”
“Tweee,” Henry answered.
Farther down the road Hayes motioned to the right. “We lease the hay fields to a cattle farm nearby, and, over that rise, is a pecan orchard that produces a good crop and income for the ranch each year.”
“I’m impressed,” she told him, a major understatement. From everything she’d seen, the ranch ran efficiently and utilized its natural resources. The administrator, Jane Logan, had given Kate a tour, and she appeared competent and genuinely enthusiastic about her job. The children seemed well cared for. “Do you spend much time out here? The children all seem to know you.”
“I’m out a couple of times a week, sometimes more.”
“Why kids?”
“Why kids what?”
“Why did you choose to support a charity for kids? A guy like you. Seems out of character.”
“Maybe you don’t know my character as well as you think.”
“I admit I find it hard to believe that you’re the same surly guy who yelled at me last night.”
“I apologize for that. I was out of line for losing my temper.”
“And I apologize for following you. I was wrong to take it to such lengths. Do you think we might call a truce? I really don’t want to fight with you, and despite the crack I made about your character, you don’t seem like a bad guy.”
“If we call a truce, does that mean you’ll leave me alone?”
“Yes, if I can solicit two promises from you.”
“Which are?”
“First, that you’ll reconsider my request for help with my book.”
“Don’t—”
“Wait a minute, now. Let me finish. If you’ll seriously think about my request for…oh…three days, I’ll stay at the motel and won’t bother you. But you have to put aside your dislike for me and not make a decision based on that.”
“And if I still say no at the end of three days?”
“I’ll go away.”
“Forever?”
“Forever.”
He thought about it for all of two seconds. “That’s too good to pass up. What’s the second promise?”
“That sometime today you give me ten minutes to at least try to convince you to cooperate on the book, without your getting all surly and wanting to strangle me.”
He flashed a quick grin, gone as quickly as it came. “How did you know I wanted to strangle you?”
“Believe me, I’ve seen that look before on the faces of at least a hundred different men, my father and brothers included.”
“Morgan, sometimes you’re too much.” This time he didn’t bother to hide his smile. “Okay, you’ve got a deal. Ten minutes, and I’ll try my best to stay calm.”
“How about now?”
“Not while we’re with the kids.”
“Okay, I can wait. Where are we headed, by the way?”
“The pond first and then the orchard. I want to show you the different ways we’re making money and moving toward being self-sufficient. We keep bees and sell the honey. We grow muscadines and scuppernongs and we sell them to a small outfit locally that makes jelly. The pond is stocked with catfish and we open it for public fishing every Saturday during the warm months.”
“For a fee?”
“No, not for fishing, but we charge per pound for the fish caught.”
“Pish,” Henry said.
“Catfish,” Hayes corrected. “And what sound does a catfish make?”
“Gur-ak,” Henry said proudly.
Kate decided, after hearing Henry imitate various animals at Hayes’s prompting, that this had to be a game they’d played many times before.
As they continued to the pond, the child ran through the rest of his imitations—sheep, cows, horses, bees and something called a ruby-throated brew guzzler that Hayes swore was a real bird native to the South, but whose call sounded suspiciously like a belch to Kate.
“Oh, let me guess,” she said, laughing despite her efforts not to. “It guzzles beer and is identified by its red neck.”
Hayes grinned impishly.
She groaned. “You should be ashamed of yourself for trying to corrupt this child.”
“Wasn’t me,” he said innocently.
“I believe that about as much as I believe…ruby-throated brew guzzlers really fly.”
He had anticipated her answer. With a mischievous gleam in his eye he bent his head and said, “Henry, let a brew guzzler fly.”
Henry swallowed air. “Bu-rp,” he said, belching loudly.
BRET LIKED her laugh. He found it soothing. He knew in the last several years he hadn’t been the kind of man who inspired women to laughter. He was too somber. Depressing, was the word one woman had used. But today he seemed to amuse this woman a great deal, even when he wasn’t trying.
She laughed often. Loudly. Wonderfully. She made him laugh, something he hadn’t felt like doing in a long time.
He was having trouble remembering she was the enemy. And even more disturbing, he was having no trouble remembering she was a woman.
They sat on the pond’s wooden pier, Bret with his back against a piling, Morgan uncomfortably close, so close he could smell the light flowery fragrance that seemed to be a natural part of her. Unable to resist the lure of the water, she had slipped off her shoes and now dangled her feet in it.
It
