LITMIR.BIZ

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“But you leave those kids of hers alone, you hear? I’d hate to haul you in on kidnapping charges.”

      He strode off laughing, leaving Harley standing on the sidewalk in front of the feed store looking as sick as a dog who’d just lost a fight with a skunk.

      

      “You did the right thing, Jimmy,” Mary Claire said as she leaned across the console to give her son a comforting pat on the knee. “You were just trying to protect your little sister. And you did a good job of it, I might add.”

      At the praise, Jimmy’s chest swelled with pride. He cut a teasing grin at his mother. “You didn’t do so bad yourself.”

      Mary Claire shuddered, remembering the weight and strength of the man who’d held her pinned to the ground. “He was big, wasn’t he?” she asked weakly.

      “Bigger than a grizzly bear and twice as mean,” Jimmy confirmed, unaware of the shiver that chased down his mother’s spine,

      “I thought he was nice,” Stephie piped in from the back seat.

      Mary Claire glanced at her daughter in the rearview mirror. Nice? Not so that Mary Claire had noticed. She was sure she’d be sporting a bruise where her backside had hit the sidewalk when he’d tossed her over his head. But it wouldn’t do to frighten her daughter. She wanted her to feel safe in their new home in Temptation. She smiled weakly at Stephie’s refleetion while she struggled to think of something favorable to say about the man. “It was kind of him to take the sticker out of your foot,” she finally said.

      “Wouldn’t have had the darn thing if she’d kept her shoes on like I told her,” Jimmy muttered.

      Stephie swelled up in a pout. “Mama said she always ran barefoot when she played here in the summers and that it felt good to feel grass under her feet. I just wanted to see what it felt like.”

      “Key word is grass,” Jimmy returned dryly. “There wasn’t nothin’ but weeds and stickers on that playground.”

      When Stephie would have continued the argument, Mary Claire interceded. “That’s enough, you two.” She strained to peer through the windshield against the glare of the sun. “Why don’t y’all help me watch for Aunt Harriet’s house?”

      “What’s it look like?” Jimmy asked, already scanning ahead.

      “A big two-story white house set back from the road with a little white picket fence running around it.”

      “Is that it?” Jimmy asked, pointing ahead.

      Mary Claire slowed and pulled to the shoulder. From the road, the house her son pointed to was barely visible through the snarl of twisted oaks and thick cedars that grew wild around it. If Jimmy hadn’t spotted it, Mary Claire knew she would have driven right past without even noticing.

      But there it was, her aunt Harriet’s house, sitting behind the huge live oak with a trunk so thick that as a child she hadn’t been able to wrap her arms around it. She’d spent summers climbing that tree, playing hide-and-seek with her cousins and chasing fireflies at night around the two-story frame farmhouse shadowed by the tree’s massive branches.

      “I believe it is,” she said, her voice almost a whisper as her mind slowly registered the changes. When Aunt Harriet and Uncle Bert had been alive, the trees had been carefully pruned and the lawn carpeted with green saint augustine grass. The beds surrounding the wraparound front porch had been filled with a profusion of flowers and shrubs, her aunt Harriet’s pride and joy. The place was nothing at all like it looked now.

      Mary Claire made the turn onto the drive, emotion clotting in her throat, wondering what Aunt Harriet would say if she saw her home now and feeling guilty that she hadn’t taken a more active role in managing her inheritance—the inheritance that had enabled her to make the move from Houston.

      “You’ve got to be kidding,” Jimmy said, his wrinkled nose pressed against the side window as the house came into full view.

      Mary Claire forced a smile, pushing back her guilt and her own uncertainties as she parked the minivan beside the sagging gate of the white picket fence. “Yep! This is it. Our new home. Isn’t it wonderful?”

      Jimmy twisted his head around to look at her, his lip curling in disgust. “If you say so,” he muttered and kicked open his door.

      A shy finger from the back seat tapped Mary Claire on the shoulder. “I think it’s pretty, Mama,” Stephie murmured encouragingly.

      Tears burning in her eyes, Mary Claire patted the tiny hand on her shoulder as she stared at peeling paint, broken windows and five years’ worth of weeds. “Thanks, Stephie.” She sniffed and lifted her chin. “It’ll be even prettier when we get it cleaned up. You’ll see.” She took a fortifying breath, “Well, let’s check out the inside.”

      The key she carried in her purse wasn’t needed, as the front door stood partially open. Hesitantly Mary Claire stepped across the threshold with her children pressed at her back. If possible, the inside of the house was worse than the outside. Trash littered the entry-hall floor, wallpaper sagged in faded strips from the wall running along the staircase, and the smell of mildew and weeks-old garbage nearly stole her breath. Silently cursing J. C. Vickers, her former tenant, for not taking better care of the place, she slowly wove her way to the kitchen.

      With each step, her spirits sagged lower and her excitement in moving her children to Temptation and the house her aunt Harriet had left her grew a little dimmer.

      It just needs a good cleaning, she told herself, and started rolling up her sleeves.

      “Okay, you two,” she told her wary-eyed children. “Go out to the van and start hauling in all the cleaning supplies we bought in town.” When they’d turned to do her bidding, she started throwing windows open. Once she had fresh air circulating, she twisted on the faucet at the kitchen sink and murmured a silent prayer of thanks when a spray of clean tap water hit the bottom of the chipped porcelain sink.

      At least the well hadn’t run dry.

      

      Harley stood with his arms draped across the top of a fence post on the back side of his land, staring off across the acreage that separated his ranch from the Beacham homestead while his horse grazed a few steps away. Mentally, he assessed the repairs that would need to be made before he could move his livestock onto the neighboring pastures. The fence was down in a couple of places, the barbed wire dragged low by choking vines and overgrown vegetation. He’d need to add a gate between his land and theirs, he decided, for ease in rotating the cattle from his place to theirs. Plus, he’d need to hook up his brush hog to his tractor to clear out the cedars that had sprung up here and there. Maybe he’d even run a new line of fence, he thought, cutting the large acreage into two pastures. He’d need it if cattle prices didn’t go up soon. Either way, though, he needed that land.

      Which brought to mind the new owner.

      He shifted his gaze to the two-story house in the distance where sunlight glinted off the old tin roof. On the drive beside the house, a minivan sat parked, its doors gaping wide. Looking like ants from this distance, the two kids who’d caused him so much grief in town scurried back and forth from the vehicle to the house, loaded down with boxes.

      As he watched, the kitchen door swung open, and the Reynolds woman herself stepped out onto the narrow porch, stooped by the weight of the five-gallon bucket she carried. Straining, she lifted and swung, sending a spray of murky water to wet the weeds growing beyond the porch steps. She took a step back, hooking the handle of the empty bucket over one arm and paused to wipe the back of her hand across her brow. With her arm raised high like that, the knot she’d tied in her white shirt lifted and snagged against her breasts while her baggy jeans dipped below her navel to ride low on her hips.

      And Harley couldn’t make the muscles in his throat move enough to swallow.

      He was too far away to get the full effect, but he remembered well the feel and shape of the woman he’d held prisoner

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