Dixie Browning - The Quiet Seduction

He had told her countless times that she was just like her mother, then gone on to recount her mother’s shortcomings. Celinda Summerlin was vain—but then, Celinda Summerlin had been beautiful. Ellen had never had anything to be vain about. According to her father, Celinda hadn’t a clue when it came to managing money, but even as a child Ellen had understood that her mother had never had enough money to manage before marrying Leonard Summerlin.

When it came to managing, Ellen had been no better, no worse than most of her friends at staying within her allowance. In later years she had discovered somewhat surprisingly that the less there was to manage, the better a manager she became. The bank in Mission Creek that held the mortgage on the ranch had advised her to lease out most of her acreage, keeping back only enough for pasturage and to grow feed for the horses. That way, the banker had explained, she could be certain of meeting the mortgage payments with a bit left over without the risk of losing an entire crop to flood, drought or a sudden freeze. The weather everywhere, he’d reminded her, had been increasingly erratic over the past few years.

It had seemed sensible to her. She had kept the stock although she hadn’t known the first thing about horses, much less about breeding them. But the horses had been Jake’s dream, and she was determined to hang on to as much of that dream as she could for their son. She might have come from a privileged background, but from someone—her mother, most likely—she had inherited a backbone. Dust-bowl-survivor genes, Jake had called it, teasing her about the way her jaw squared off when she got what he’d called her I-shall-not-be-moved look on her face.

Whatever it was, grit or survivor genes, it had enabled her to get through another day and then another one when she couldn’t see her way through the coming night, much less the years ahead.

“No way,” the man called Storm said adamantly. “Look, I’ll get out of your hair if my being here is a problem, but I’m not going to any damned hospital for a simple sprain and a headache.”

“Oh, hush up and let me think,” Ellen grumbled. They’d been arguing about how long it had been. She’d said this made three days. The man had said he could only remember one, and not too much of that.

Pete grinned. He’d come in to bring the morning paper just as his mother was fussing at him again. Boy, it sure was cool to hear her fussing at a grown man the same way she did him when he wouldn’t finish his macaroni and cheese or forgot to put his dirty clothes in the hamper.

“All right,” his mama said finally, laying down the law. He knew that tone. Man, did he ever! “You can get out of bed and come in the living room. I know you’re dying to watch the storm coverage on TV, but you’re going to keep that foot up and if I hear one more peep out of you about leaving, I’m going to—”

Pete watched, grinning broadly.

The man watched. He was scowling.

“—to call the paramedics to come haul you off and you can argue with them for a change. I just don’t see what’s so awful about having a doctor look you over. For all you know, you might have some broken bones. There are hundreds of bones in your feet, and your foot’s not all that far from your ankle.”

Storm looked at Pete and lifted a brow. “She go on like this a lot?”

Solemnly the boy nodded. “Yessir, that she does, but she means well. That’s what my daddy always said.”

Ellen’s hands flew up in a gesture of surrender. “All right, be one, then!”

“That’s what she always says,” Pete confided. “Daddy used to tell her B1 was a bomber, and she’d just walk off the way she’s doing now, all huffy and puffy. She’s not really mad, though.”

Storm didn’t think she was, either. Somewhere among the jumbled miscellaneous impressions he’d dredged up was the knowledge that women acted that way when they cared about someone who refused to bow to their superior wisdom.

How the hell do I know that? Do I have a wife? Daughters?

Irritated, frustrated and amused, he said, “Your mother says you’re a checkers champ. Lay out the board, son. Best two out of three, okay?”

“You bet! But first I’d better go feed up and fill the trough. Booker and Clyde, they’re pro’ly drunk again. Don’t tell Ma, though. She threatened to fire ’em next time she caught ’em drinking.”

“Sounds like a pretty good idea to me.”

They continued the conversation after the boy completed his chores. While Pete got out the checkerboard, Storm reiterated his suggestion. From what he’d heard about the two hired hands, they weren’t the type any decent man would want around his wife and child.

“Know what? They smoke, too. My mom said if she ever caught ’em smoking in the barn around all that hay and stuff, she’d run ’em off with a pitchfork.”

“Smart woman, your mama.”

Pete shrugged his skinny shoulders. Emptying out the worn drawstring bag, he began setting up the board. Without looking up, he said, “Know what? Booker’s cigarettes don’t smell much like Mr. Ludlum’s. They smell more like a chicken house. They look kind of funny, too.”

Very carefully, Storm centered a black checker in a red square. He was going on sheer instinct. “They ever offer you a smoke?”

“Nope. I wouldn’t take it if they did. I promised Mom.”

Storm made a tentative move, which Pete promptly countered. He had an idea there was more being handed around in that barn than a bottle of hooch and a filter tip. Frowning, he made another move.

Pete promptly jumped his man and glanced up, a triumphant grin lighting his bony little face. “Gotcha!”

“Fair and square. I’d better concentrate on what I’m doing here. I didn’t figure you to be this good.”

“I’m pretty good, all right. I beat Mom almost every game, but that’s pro’ly ’cause she lets me.”

“I wouldn’t be too sure.”

Storm hadn’t even been sure when he’d offered to play whether he knew how. Evidently, he did. They played in silence for a few more minutes. Then, without looking up, the boy said, “Trouble is, if Mom gets rid of Clyde and Booker, we’ll have to do everything ourselves again, and she’s no good at pulling wire. Last time we tried to fix a section of fence she couldn’t hardly get out of bed the next day. She’s even worse with a post-hole digger than she is with a wire puller, but I’m not tall enough yet. We had us an auger for the tractor, but the P.T.O. got broke.”

“The what?”

Frowning, Pete tried to describe, using his hands, how the power take-off worked with different attachments. “I get the idea,” Storm said. And he did—sort of. “What about your neighbors? Can’t one of them lend you a couple of hands for certain jobs?”

“Nobody wants to work for a woman.” It was a simple declarative statement. Pete looked up from the checkerboard, disgust clear on his tanned face. “’Sides, we’re already scraping the bottom of the barrel. Least, that’s what my friend Joey’s pa says. Mr. Ludlum says men don’t like taking orders from a woman, even when she’s the boss.” He shrugged his bony shoulders and clapped a crown on one of the reds. “My mom’s real smart, but Booker, he calls her stuff behind her back.” The boy’s face turned a dusky red as he concentrated on the worn checkers.

Storm felt something inside him tighten like a fist. One thing he would do before he left—have a talk with this Booker fellow, whoever and whatever he was. Anger crammed in on the frustration he felt at being laid up, both mentally and physically. He had a strong feeling he wasn’t used to inaction. Restlessness didn’t begin to describe his reaction. Wariness came closer.