striper I caught this winter out near…”
Robin’s smile faded as she finally noticed Mariah, who was studying the girl—and him.
Jeb put an arm around Robin’s shoulders. “Miss Duncan, this is my niece, Robin. Robbie, uh, Miss Duncan. She’s here to…for…a visit.” He gave both Wiley and Mariah a covert lowering of his brows that said Let’s not get into explanations.
He should have known that Wiley would be oblivious to any message not spelled out on butcher paper in foot-high red letters. “Mariah’s here to see about doing business with your uncle Jeb,” the older man provided meaningfully.
This earned him an exasperated look from Jeb, even as Mariah smoothed the moment over with a warm “I’m pleased to meet you, Robin.”
Jeb glanced down and noticed his niece’s face had lost its earlier animation. She rested her weight on the outside edge of one cowboy boot, a thumb snared in her belt loop. Hooking an untidy lock of dark gold hair behind her ear, she solemnly regarded Mariah from under her lashes in a bout of shyness.
Then Jeb saw that Robin wasn’t shy, but watchful. And he knew she’d come to the same conclusion about Mariah. he had. It wasn’t so farfetched. After all, the last time a woman dressed in professional clothes had shown up here, she’d been from the Department of Human Services and had given them the news that had triggered today’s episode.
Damn. Jeb knew his niece had detected his worry these past few weeks, hard as he’d tried to hide it. Not that he hadn’t kept her informed, in a simplified fashion. After all, she had a right to know about the situation, since it concerned her. But it was inevitable that she would look past his explanations and assurances and realize the real threat that hung like a thunderhead over them all.
A child shouldn’t have to be afraid of such basic securities as home and family being taken away from her, Jeb thought, and he vowed not for the first time that somehow he’d think of a solution—a practical one, and not some harebrained idea that the answer to their woes could be found on the shopping channel!
At that thought, he lifted his gaze to find Mariah once again—or was it still?—studying his niece. And him.
“It sounds as if you’re quite an angler, Robin,” Mariah commented as though the girl had answered her greeting in kind, turning on that Southern charm that really was hard to dismiss as insincere. Hard to resist, too.
Robin’s lashes flicked up for a quick look at Mariah, then down again. “I’m just learnin’ still.”
“Well, isn’t that the way any one of us becomes an expert at what we do, by learning and practicing?”
This time Robin’s gaze remained pinned on the ground as she confessed in a low voice, “Yeah, but…but I’m a girl.”
Jeb’s heart wrenched within him, a sensation of defeat before he’d barely started. Blast it, he was doing the best he could to make her feel she belonged!
Hoping the right words of reassurance would somehow magically spring to his lips, he opened his mouth. But Mariah again defused the awkward moment by asking, “Women can become practiced anglers, can’t they? I mean, say I set my mind to it, I could succeed relatively well at it eventually, couldn’t I?”
Robin blinked. “Well, sure, I guess…”
Jeb frowned, wondering the reason for such speculation by Mariah. He couldn’t imagine she was serious about learning to fish, and he was positive his niece was having the same trouble as him in envisioning Mariah, with her refined demeanor and pearl necklace, hauling back on a fishing rig and whooping it up as she pulled a twenty-pound striped bass out of the water. Still, he saw the girl considering Mariah’s remark.
Then Mariah added, “And just like any person finding themselves needing to learn how to do something outside their normal abilities, wouldn’t it be shrewd to explore as many avenues of assistance as possible?”
Puzzlement suffused Robin’s features, but even if she didn’t, Jeb definitely caught Mariah’s drift—and her implicit criticism of him. Which made his irritation bristle up again. Where did she get off judging him? She didn’t know a blamed thing about the situation!
Yet before he could voice his vexation, Robin said shyly, “I guess I might could show you a few things I learned from Uncle Jeb, if that’s what you’re gettin’ at. But he’s the expert on fishin’. And he can teach anybody. He’s real patient and would never make you feel backward just ‘cause a certain skill didn’t come natural to you.”
Jeb felt his chest swell at Robin’s praise. Then when he saw Mariah smile approvingly and so very warmly at his niece, an even greater swell pulsed through him, nearly making him forget his annoyance with this woman.
Damn again.
And damn, too, if he’d let her make dewy-eyed fools out of any of them.
“It’s true that when it comes to Texoma striper fishing, I’m your man.” He met Mariah’s gaze squarely. “But I doubt you really ‘need’ to learn to fish.”
“Call it professional curiosity, then,” she said. “Even if we eventually decide that I can’t…do business with you, I’d like to hear the facts. As your uncle pointed out, the situation merits a deeper look, doesn’t it?”
Jeb was on the verge of putting an end to the pretense that they were actually discussing fishing with a blunt disagreement when Mariah’s eyes made him pause. He’d previously noted that they were golden brown and almond shaped, like a doe’s. But what struck him now was the true interest in their depths.
Don’t be a fool, he warned himself. There was no way this society silk stocking could even begin to comprehend their world—which hadn’t even existed for her fifteen minutes ago—or a way of life so different from hers. How on earth could she help them?
“Go on inside, Rob. You too, Wiley.” Jeb gave his niece’s shoulder a squeeze, a silent reassurance to counter his sternness, which attempted to circumvent any protest Wiley might be inclined to make. He furnished his uncle with a glance, anyway, that brooked no argument. “I’ll be along as soon as I’ve seen Miss Duncan to her car.”
Yet his uncle seemed content enough—or disgusted enough—to depart without offering more of his opinions, thank God. No, it was Robin who hesitated, her large blue eyes darting from Mariah to him and back.
“I like your hair, Mariah,” she blurted, as if she’d had to force the statement out. Or perhaps couldn’t prevent herself from expressing it. “Maybe…may be if you do decide to take fishin’ lessons from Uncle Jeb, you could teach me how to braid my hair like that.”
“I’d like nothing more, Robin,” Mariah answered gently. “But that’s up to your uncle.”
His niece nodded, then did something he’d never seen her do before: she gave her hair a girlish flip off her shoulder with the back of one hand before running off in her tomboy clothes. And it became clear to him that she hadn’t been debating earlier what threat this woman might pose. No, his niece had been wondering how she could get her hair to look like Mariah’s did!
Was Robin so starved for a feminine touch in her life that a practical stranger could bring that longing surging to the surface?
Wiley
