A Fair to Remember (13 page)

“Olivia Canaday? That
is
you, isn’t it?” The brunette asked.

Olivia’s blush deepened. “Yes.”

“See, Patty? I told you it was her,” the first one said. “Remember me, Olivia? Jeanne Marie Loquent… well, it used to be Baker. I’m married now. We both are, aren’t we, Patty? Our husbands are off at the cattle barn with the kids. Always looking for new stock, you know. Olivia, you and I were lab partners. Biology? Junior year?”

Recognition dawned. “Oh, yes—”

“Gosh, I heard you were back in town after your adventures in the big city,” she said, finally taking a breath.

“Nice to see you again, Jeanne, Patty,” Olivia said. “You remember Jake Lassen.”

The two women turned their gazes on him and nodded. “Hi, Jake,” they said in unison.

He touched the brim of his cowboy hat. “Ladies?”

“You know,” Jeanne Marie said, turning her attention back to Olivia, “you’re gonna think this is funny, but I always secretly wanted to
be
you when I was in high school. You were so… so talented and pretty and… such a rising star here in Marietta.”

Olivia blushed and took a step backward. “No, no, I—”

“And I was always kind of in the background of stuff. Getting teased, you know. I never was the prettiest flower in the bouquet. But you were real nice to me in that lab. You didn’t treat me like some of the others did. You treated me like a regular girl. And I was surprised, you know? ‘Cause you were such a star already. I mean, you could’ve been one of the mean girls. But, no. And I just wanted to tell you, I always appreciated that and that I’m real sorry it didn’t work out for you back East. I mean, the riding and… well… everything.
The divorce
,” she added, like a whispered footnote. “And no matter what people say, I’ll always remember that about you.”

Olivia opened her mouth and closed it again, going pale. “I… I appreciate that—” she began, but Jeanne Marie interrupted her again.

“You stay strong, girl,” she said, holding up a fist to bump, which Olivia tentatively did.

“That’s right,” Patty seconded with a wink. “Stay proud.”

The two women turned to go and disappeared off into the crowd. Olivia, still looking as if someone had just cocked her world a little to the left, stared after them.

“I’m having a little trouble reading what just happened,” Jake said.

“I think I should either feel flattered or deeply disturbed. But I can’t decide which. What did she mean by
stay strong
?”

“Not worth pondering, probably.”

Disconcerted, she turned back to him. “I suppose. At any rate, I think it’s time to go.”

He put his arm around her shoulders. “Good call. Where to?”

She inhaled and smiled up at him.

T
wenty minutes later,
Jake pulled the truck to a stop at the end of the Livingston Airport runway and parked so the bed was facing backward. Livingston was only ten miles down the road, but it seemed a million miles from Marietta and the crushing crowds at the fair.

Like their other favorite spot, ‘The Rocks’, they’d spent many a Friday night parked right here, waiting for small planes to take off over their heads, watching the stars, and talking about their futures.

Here, Jake had dreamed about the day he’d fly one of those planes. He’d dreamed of glory and battle and imagined what war would be like. He’d imagine the day when a kid like him, born to working-class parents with a modest little burger joint, could ever deserve a girl like Olivia, whose family had money to burn on things like stables and Warmblood horses and Mercedes Benzes.

The flying part, he’d accomplished. In fact, he’d mastered it. Flying didn’t get any more down and dirty than landing a rescue chopper in a blinding rotor wash of desert sand at night. But the war? Not what he’d expected. Not the soul rending terribleness of it in the faces of the children who played near their compound, who seemed to accept their turn to die would come soon. Or in the terror of the soldiers whose clocks were ticking in the bay of his chopper. Or the bone-rattling horror when they went down in a hail of gunfire.

“I haven’t been back here in years.” Olivia said, dragging him back from the desert and into the present.

He pulled a couple of blankets from behind the seat, where they always were, and tossed them onto the oak rails on the truck bed. He lowered the tailgate and jumped in himself before offering Olivia a hand up.

They stretched out beside one another as a Cessna taxied down the runway and headed for the end.

“Look,” she said, pointing to the sky. “What constellation is that again? See? The big ‘W’?”

He followed her finger up to the configuration of stars she was pointing at. “Cassiopeia,” he told her.

“Oh, right. She’s combing her hair. She was the one put there by Poseidon for… vanity?”

“He was a tough bastard.”

She moved her finger. “And the Northern Cross, or… the Swan?”

“Cygnus. Or Zeus, the seducer.”

“Oh, the irony,” she quipped, looking over at him.

“Yep, that’s me,” he replied with a grin.

She looked back at the stars. “Remember when we could name them all?”

“Were we nerds?” he asked, not requiring an answer.

“Yes.” She laughed. “Or studiously avoiding other pastimes.”

“Yeah, like kissing and having sex. I was a nerd
and
an idiot.”

She turned a look on him that stuttered his heart for a moment. “No, you were the coolest boy I knew.”

He rolled toward her, sliding his hand around her waist and propping his head on his left palm. “Yeah?”

“Definitely.”

He bit back a grin. “And now?”

“Oh,” she said, “now you’re just… everything I knew you’d be… someday. You’re still the best man I know.”

He rubbed a thumb across her ribs. “I couldn’t stop thinking about you today. About what happened last night.”

“Ooh, look,” she said, pointing, “Sagittarius!”

He laughed and pulled her finger down from the air.

She looked up at him through her dark sweep of lashes. “Do we have to talk about it?”

“Who said anything about talking?” he said, and dropped his mouth down on hers in a kiss that spoke of the primal urgency born of twelve hours of being without her. God, she tasted sweet. And hot. And delicious. She pulled him toward her, deepening the kiss and twining her legs around the back of his.

Jake had managed to hold it together all day, but now, with her pressed hard up against him and her mouth on his, he forgot about everything but his need to touch her.

His hand slipped under her blouse and he settled his palm against her breast. Her nipple was a hard bead and she arched her back against him, aching for more. If either of them remembered where they were at that moment, he couldn’t say, but he got lost in the kiss and could only think how much he wanted to be inside her again.

Olivia’s hand slid inside the waistband of his jeans on his backside and she curved her fingers around his ass, pulling him closer still. Her touch nearly sent him over the edge.

But a carful of teenagers came rattling down the road just then, and pulled to a stop, practically beside them. Apparently, old traditions never died.

Jake dropped his forehead against hers, breathing hard. “Damn.”

She shook her head with a small, embarrassed smile.

“We could go back to my place. Ben’s there, though.”

She brushed his hair from his eyes. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Yeah,” he reluctantly agreed.

The handful of teenagers next door whooped it up as they piled into the bed of the brand new pickup truck. Jake could hear the clink of illicit beer bottles and the car radio began blasting rap music.

He and Olivia stood, gathered up the blankets and jumped off the tailgate.

Instantly subdued at the sight of the much older pair, the teens refused to make eye contact, as they sucked on their beers. Instead, they nodded self-consciously to the heavy beat of the music.

Jake tossed the blankets in the back of his truck as Olivia climbed in the cab.

“I’ll be right back,” he said, then, he turned and walked back to the truck bed full of teens. Their eyes widened as he approached.

“How old are you?” he asked a girl who looked closer to thirteen than twenty-one.

She lowered her beer. “What’s it to you?”

“And you?” Jake asked another boy. All of them looked just old enough to drive. These kids weren’t from the side of town that had to scratch out a living. They were from the side where parents bought their kids trucks at sixteen and sent them on their merry way, trusting they’d make good decisions.

“Hey, man, just leave us alone. We’re just having a party.”

“Really?” Jake reached in and swiped the sixteen-pack of beers the four of them had planned on splitting.

“Hey!” The boy with longish, brown hair complained, standing in the truck bed as if he was actually planning to take him on. “Those are—”

“Sit down,” he said in a deathly quiet voice.

The kid sat.

“Not one of you is old enough to drink, much less understand the consequences of driving while you’re doing it.” Jake pinned each one of them with a look meant to intimidate. “Some little punk-ass just like you killed my parents on the road a few years back, just because he thought it was a good idea to party and drive at the same time. They died slow, painful deaths, alone, on a dark road because he couldn’t be bothered with the rules. So, yeah. I’m taking your damned beers.” He turned and dropped the beer into his truck bed. “And you should get your asses home before the sheriff, who I’m about to call, comes looking for the rest of those bottles you’re hugging. And the next time you think about driving drunk, you remember that you’re not the only ones on the goddamn road. You hear me?”

They were all silent, but not one made a sound of dissent. The young girl tossed her beer out into the darkness.

Jake, got into his truck and shut the door. It took him a moment to calm down and turn the key, but Orca hummed to life and Jake pulled off down the field, his knuckles white on the steering wheel.

“You go, Jake,” Olivia said, eyeing him. “You really gonna call the sheriff?”

“Nah. They’ll be long gone by the time he could get here. I just wanted to scare ‘em.”

She smiled. “Oh, I definitely think you did.”

“Kind of a mood-breaker, huh?”

She brushed the bicep on his arm, coiled like a spring. “It’s okay. Blowing up their little party was the right thing to do. There’ll be other nights.”

“Promise?”

She just smiled at him as they bounced down the dirt road toward home.

*

“Hashtag Olivia
?” her
student, Lucy Jacobs, called from atop her horse, Jinx, the next afternoon.

They’d been working on her dressage drills in preparation for the fair demonstration on Friday for the past hour, and now the seventeen-year-old who might possibly be Emma Watson’s doppelganger, was grinning at her, waiting for an answer to some question she had obviously missed.

“I’m sorry, Lucy, I was… thinking about… something else.” In particular, about Jake and the way he’d kissed her last night and what he’d done for that truck full of kids.

Lucy tilted her head with an
obviously
look and dismounted. Olivia ducked under the corral rail. Her boots sank into the soft earth as she walked toward the middle of the ring where Lucy was fiddling with Jinx’s left rear hoof.

“He’s about to lose a shoe,” Lucy said, straightening.

Olivia inspected it herself then glanced at her watch. “I don’t think we’ll get anyone over here this afternoon. I’d rather not pull it myself. It can wait ‘til morning if we put a shoe boot on it. I’ll call a farrier I know, Ry Barrios, to come and re-shoe him tomorrow morning. Let’s put him up for the night. You’re doing great work, Lucy. You’re more than ready for the demonstration on Friday.”

“I hope so. I’m a little nervous. Did you get nauseous when you rode?”

“Sometimes.”

Lucy put a hand on her stomach as she walked beside Olivia toward the stable, leading Jinx. The comforting sound of the horse’s clip-clop against the hard packed dirt, the smell of horse sweat and leather centered Olivia.

“You’ll be great. And I’ll be there with you. Nothing to worry about. It’s just about introducing dressage to the locals. English tack and precision dressage is such a mystery to most of the cowboys in this area. And there’ll be no judges, so it’s a win, win.”

“So,” Lucy asked, “is everything okay with you? I mean… back there in the ring, you were totally on
pause
.”

Olivia blushed. As it had been doing all morning, Jake’s smile swirled into her mind, driving sane thoughts sideways and curling need at her core. “Oh, I don’t really remember what I was—”

“Was it helicopter guy?”

Olivia’s face went tellingly blank.

“I heard about your helicopter date,” Lucy said.

Of course she had
. Olivia’s mom told Lucy’s mom when she’d cancelled the session the other day. “It… it wasn’t a date. He’s just an old friend,” she lied, but her insides spun, remembering the slow, hot slide of his mouth on her skin.