Debrah Morris - A Girl, A Guy And A Lullaby

“What? You’re just a good-ol’-boy Samaritan? Have spitty hanky, will travel. Is that it?”

“Something like that.”

“Okay, then. Watch my stuff while I go to the bushes. And it better be here when I get back or I will track you down and sit on that silly hat.”

“But I—”

“Just watch it, buster.” Although what he had to guard it against, she had no idea. A marauding coyote perhaps?

“Yes, ma’am.”

Ryanne picked her way into the darkness, muttering to herself. She threw a parting comment over her shoulder. “And stop calling me ma’am.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She thought of bugs and snakes only in passing. She was more worried about the man in black, a gifted quipster who communicated only in short sentences. There was something unnervingly familiar about him. Or maybe the unnerving part was knowing he waited, politely, on the other side of the shrubbery while she conducted business of a very personal nature.

And she thought the world had run out of ways to humiliate her.

Tom Hunnicutt wasn’t interested in the woman’s pile of battered, mismatched suitcases. But like a man who couldn’t tear his gaze away from a train wreck, he was fascinated by the woman. Despite the bad attitude, the lopsided ponytail, and the gummy bare feet, she was just about the cutest little egg-shaped female he’d ever seen. Even if she did waddle like a Christmas goose.

Who was she? What was she doing here? And why had she been put off the bus in the middle of the night? Those were all legitimate questions, but what he really wanted to know was, how did such a tiny girl carry around a belly like that? She had to be expecting a medium-size third-grader.

“Do you have a phone, cowboy?” Miss Congeniality was back and she had a way of making even simple questions sound like stamp-her-foot demands.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Didn’t I tell you to stop ma’aming me?” She thrust out her hand.

Not knowing what else to do, Tom shook it. “Nice to meet you. I’m—”

She snatched it back and propped it on her hip. “May I use your phone?”

“I don’t have it on me. It’s attached to the house.”

Using an I-must-be-speaking-to-the-impaired voice, she drew a vague circle in the air. “Is…there…a…phone…any…where…around…here?”

Tom didn’t much appreciate the implied slur on his intellect. He was only trying to assist someone who obviously needed all the help she could get. However, even good-old-boy Samaritans had limits. He wasn’t a robber or a mugger. And he was no clabberheaded fool. But if the little mama wanted dumb, he could give her dumb.

He shuffled his feet. “Ah, shucks, ma’am. Nearly ever’ body in Brushy Creek’s gotta telly-phone nowadays. They got the e-lectric, too.” He doffed his hat and scratched his head in broad hayseed fashion. “’Cept ol’ Possum Corn back in the hills. He don’t hold for nothin’ fancy as all that.”

Her pretty face wrinkled in a pained grimace. “Oh, no. I’ve gone and offended you. I am so sorry.”

Such total lack of sincerity. “You run around loaded for bear like that, a fella’s bound to get grizzly.”

She took a deep breath. “I really am sorry. It’s just been—”

“Let me guess. A rough day?”

“Actually it’s been a rough year, but why nitpick over the details? Can we start over? I’m Ryanne Rieger.”

He stepped forward for a closer look. “I don’t believe it. You’re little Ryanne?”

She patted the small mountain that was her belly. “Not so little these days, but, yep, that’s me.”

“Birdie said Short Stack was coming home.” Her foster daughter’s fall from grace had been a hot topic with the coffee and pie crowd at Mrs. Hedgepath’s diner.

“No one’s called me Short Stack since I waited tables at the Perch. You know Birdie?”

“Place like this, everybody knows everybody.”

“And everybody’s business, I suppose?”

“Pretty much.”

She made another face. “So what else do you know?”

“Birdie might have mentioned your, uh, difficulties. In passing.”

She threw up her hands. “Oh, great. Please tell me the whole dang populace doesn’t know that my marriage and my career have been sucked down the toilet.”

Tom fought a smile. She sure had a way of turning a phrase. “Possum Corn, back in the hills, might not have heard. He doesn’t have a telly-phone.”

“Very funny.”

“There was one thing Birdie left out.”

“My shoe size?”

He looked pointedly at her expanding middle. “She didn’t say a word about you being in the family way. That was a big surprise.”

“Big being the operative word.”

Tom frowned at the unmistakable waver in her voice. One minute she was fit to be tied and the next she was teetering on the brink of tears. Her mood swings might not make her dizzy, but they sure did him.

“Do you remember me?” he asked. “I’m Tom Hunnicutt.”

She stood on tiptoe and pushed his hat back with her finger. A cowboy didn’t tolerate many people messing with his headgear, but he’d overlook it this time.

Her eyes widened. “Omigosh! Tom Hunnicutt? No wonder you looked familiar. I used to have such a crush on you.”

“You did?” The unexpected confession should not have surprised him. Ryanne seemed to blurt out whatever thought her brain sent tongue-ward.

“Please. Me and every other girl in town. I was so stuck on you, I wanted to propose when your team won the college rodeo championship.”

“Why didn’t you?” The dog-bitten scrap of ego he had left was duly flattered.

“I was grounded because of my math grade. Birdie said anybody who couldn’t do decimals, couldn’t get married. Even to a hotshot saddle bronc rider.”

He laughed. Maybe Ryanne wasn’t unstable after all. Her flightiness could be a temporary condition brought on by stress. “It’s just as well. What were you, ten?”

“Twelve. And you were already engaged. A fact that caused no end of bitter disappointment among the adolescent female population, as I recall.”

“I don’t know about that.” He was unaware of mass adulation, adolescent or otherwise. As long as he could remember, there had been only one love in his life.

“You had a childhood sweetheart. What was her name?”

“Mariclare Turner.” He couldn’t say her name without tasting the regret. He’d lost the woman he loved because he’d assumed his dreams were enough for her. It never occurred to him she might have dreams of her own.

“Oh, yeah. Mariclare-with-the-Perfect-Hair. That’s what we jealous teens called her. You’re still rodeoing, right?”

“No. I’m not.” Realizing how harsh that sounded, he added, “I got hurt last summer and had to give it up.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

It was bad manners to stare, but Tom had never been this close to anyone so busting-out pregnant and didn’t quite know where to look. He chose down. Bare feet seemed a safe alternative to protruding belly button and excessive cleavage. Ryanne was shaped like a primitive fertility totem he’d once seen in a museum, and that made him nervous.

“Does your daddy still own the store?” She stood with one foot propped on the instep of the other. Her feet were far from humongous. They were tiny. Fragile. The bones in the one he’d held had felt as insubstantial as a child’s. Hardly strong enough to support her weight.

“Yeah. Pap had a quadruple bypass last winter and it slowed him down some, but he’s hanging in there.” He held up the key to Hunnicutt Farm and Ranch Supply. “I could have let you in to use the rest room.”

She rolled her eyes. “Now you tell me.”

“I tried. You wouldn’t give me a chance. That was some kind of roll you were on.”