High Plains Hearts (51 page)

Jeannie’s chatter covered the sadness of the moment with a layer of cheer as the three headed over to the guesthouse.

The garage door had been removed and the wall replaced so expertly that Livvy, even with her expertise in the housing world, couldn’t tell that this had once been a garage. The faint fumes of gasoline that might have lingered had been erased by new flooring and paint.

It was basically a single room with a counter divider and built-in shelves and cabinets, and a stove and half-sized refrigerator tucked into the corner by a glistening white sink.

The furniture was new, and it was expertly coordinated in gentle tones of honey and ivory, creating a calming, restful atmosphere.

“I think it might work for what you need,” Jeannie said. “The furnace and water heater are behind this divider, and the kitchen and bathroom are pretty small but functional. Upstairs is the loft, where you can sleep if you want. This is a futon though, so you could sleep down here, too.”

“It’s awfully small,” Hayden said.

Livvy laughed. “I used to have an apartment in the city that was about two-thirds the size of this, and it didn’t have a loft either. I suspect you’re just used to the dimensions of Sunshine, which seem to be endless.”

“Well, speaking of small, I think you need to meet Leonard.” Jeannie beamed proudly. “I believe that Hayden told you about him? He’s my puppy.”

Hayden snorted. “Puppy? Hardly!”

“You hush,” Jeannie said, taking Livvy by the elbow and leading her out of the guesthouse. As they got close to the house, a series of deep woofs greeted them.

“Careful now,” she warned as she opened the door. “Leonard loves people.”

“For lunch,” Hayden muttered, but Livvy knew he was kidding. At least she hoped he was kidding.

A gigantic dog launched himself at Jeannie, and she grabbed him by his collar. “Leonard, best behavior now! We have company.”

The dog stopped and turned to look at Livvy. With a look of absolute glee on his furry face, he ran toward her, stood up, put his paws on her shoulders, and slurped his gigantic tongue across her cheeks.

She tried not to shudder. Dog slobber.

“Down, Leonard. Down!” Jeannie laughed as the dog obeyed. “See? He’s a good boy. I can’t take him with me to Africa, obviously, so he’s part of the deal. You’d have to take care of him until I get back.”

“I can do this,” Livvy said, more to convince herself of it than to tell Jeannie. “I take him for a walk, I feed him. I can do this.”

“He has to stay with you at night. He gets very nervous at night.”

“He gets nervous at night,” she repeated. “Excellent.”

“That creature can’t fit in there with her,” Hayden objected.

Leonard looked up at Livvy adoringly, his head tilted to one side. She could have sworn the dog was smiling at her.

He really was quite cute, in a big dog sort of way. There was evidence of a terrier in his lineage, as evidenced by his short curly gray and brown hair and his long straight legs. A bit of Labrador retriever showed in his thick torso. The rest of him was bits and pieces of different breeds. All together, the dog was a mutt.

She didn’t like dogs, not particularly. And certainly the thought of having one this size live with her inside the tiny little guesthouse was unappealing.

Then Leonard lifted one paw and placed it on her hand, very gently, very carefully, and her heart turned to mush.

“Okay,” she said.

“Good!” Jeannie said, beaming at her. “Oh, look at you two. You’re going to be best friends.”

“Hayden and me?” Livvy asked, a bit taken aback.

“No. You and Leonard.”

“He is a wonderful dog.” Leonard gazed at her with liquid brown eyes, and she rubbed the soft spot behind his ears. “But my only worry is that I’ll be out at Sunshine soon, that is, assuming that the moving is done and the renovations are complete.”

Hayden cleared his throat. “Livvy, how long are you expecting all of this to take?”

She stood up, and Leonard came closer and leaned against her, nearly throwing her off-balance.

“I figure three weeks to get the place fixed up. I’ll work on the outer buildings and the grounds and probably the swimming hole while you and your grandfather get resettled.”

“Three weeks?” Hayden looked as if he had swallowed a toad. “Three weeks?”

“You can, of course, take as long as you need. My stuff is still on its way here, and it won’t arrive for about a month, they told me at We Really Move You, since they have to pack everything up, too, so I don’t have much to move in yet. You don’t have to get everything moved out right away. I know there are many years of memories stored there, and I understand that.”

It was amazing how well it was all working out. She congratulated herself on how quickly she had put it together in her head.

“How long are you giving yourself to fix up Sunshine, seriously?” he asked, his voice slow and even.

“Three weeks ought to be plenty.”

He shook his head. “I think you need to back up on this. You haven’t even seen the house except for the living room and the kitchen. For all you know, the rest of it could be a wreck.”

“But it isn’t, is it?” she asked stubbornly. She did not want to let go of this dream.

“I’m just saying—” He clapped his hand on his forehead and walked off.

“Honey,” Jeannie said, her voice low enough that only Livvy could hear it, “this is a lot of money to invest. You need to be careful.”

Livvy let her fingers trail across Leonard’s ears and was rewarded with him rubbing his snout against her new black jersey slacks. She was sure that she now sported a line of dog goo across the fabric but she didn’t care.

“I can trust them, can’t I?” she asked, holding on as tightly as she could to the new life that Sunshine offered.

“Of course you can. But Gramps is old, and Hayden is a math teacher. Neither one is a carpenter or an electrician or a roofer. All they can do is chase after problems. You probably want to start over, tear out the plumbing, look at the wiring, investigate the heating system.”

“I can do that.”

“You can?” Jeannie’s surprise was clear.

“Sure.” Livvy watched Hayden pacing by the clothesline pole, clearly conflicted about something, and felt her resolution ebbing as totally as if someone had pulled the plug on it. Maybe hours of watching renovation shows on television hadn’t prepared her after all. Her precious book,
The Complete Guide to Home Construction and Repair
, would help, but she knew it wasn’t as complete as it proclaimed itself to be.

He pulled his Cooter’s Hardware cap off, ran his fingers through his hair, and jammed the hat back on. And then he stalked over to Livvy and Jeannie.

“I never represented Sunshine as anything but an old run-down resort that has seen its time come and go, did I?”

“No,” Livvy said in a little voice.

“And I never said it was in good shape, did I?”

“Well,” she said, “you’re living there with your grandfather, so I assumed it was livable.”

“How are you going to get back and forth between Sunshine and Obsidian?”

“Trevor said—”

“Trevor wants an iPod more than anything. Keep that in mind whenever he’s offering you a deal. That truck is held together with duct tape, putty, bubble gum, and a hot glue gun. Not to mention a whole lot of prayer—on the driver’s part.”

“I left my car at a lot to be sold before I left, but I can buy another one.”

Jeannie coughed beside her as Hayden tore off his cap, ruffled his hair, and pulled it on again, this time with more vigor.

“When are you planning to do that?”

“Soon, I guess.” She knew how bad this sounded, how unprepared she came across, but it was the truth.

“I don’t know if I’d wait. That truck isn’t going to make the trip between Sunshine and Obsidian too many more times before it becomes a permanent resident of the junkyard. That’s where Trevor got the parts for it, I’m sure, so it’ll be a homecoming of sorts.”

She knew it was true. The truck made some pretty dire clacks and bangs, and she didn’t even want to find out what shape the tires were in. She didn’t have to wait—Hayden told her.

“And those tires—they’re no better than balloons at this stage. Unsafe.” He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Gramps has an old pickup out at Sunshine. It’s not pretty but it’s got four-wheel drive and it’s a sight safer than Trevor’s bucket of bolts. Let me make sure it’s got good plates and registration. I think he kept it up but I want to be sure. If it’s still good, we’ll throw it in as part of the deal. I know Gramps doesn’t drive it anymore, and I sure don’t need it.”

Four-wheel drive. She hadn’t given much thought to the fact that she would probably be driving in winter.

As if reading her mind, Hayden continued, “You usually don’t need four-wheel drive, but when you do, you’re mighty glad you have it.”

Jeannie nodded in agreement. “It’s going to be a good idea, Livvy, especially if you plan to winter out there. That’s a long, lonely road from Sunshine into Obsidian, and sometimes it drifts over pretty badly.”

Livvy swallowed. Hard. This was more than she’d thought about.

She tried to dismiss it. Winter driving didn’t faze her. She’d managed Boston traffic in snow, and she could certainly make her way just fine on these uncrowded streets during winter. It wouldn’t be that bad, would it?

“You could drive Gramps’s pickup for a while. Whether or not you want to keep what you have, well, that’s up to you and how safe you feel,” Hayden said.

Her car was cute, a bright yellow little import that zipped through the city and was easy on gasoline. She loved it—in Boston. And now it sat at Buster’s AutoWorld on the edge of the city, unless it had been sold to someone else. She’d miss it, but it wasn’t what she needed here.

The fact of the matter was that Hayden was right. She had to do something about transportation, and Trevor’s truck wasn’t the answer.

“Thanks for the offer. Honestly, I’m delighted to return Trevor’s truck to him. At least he’s somewhat closer to his iPod, even if I don’t keep the truck any longer.”

“Good. I’ll check into it. Well, we’d better get on with our errands if we’re going to get a fishing pole in your hands this afternoon,” he said.

“You’re going fishing? That’s lovely,” Jeannie said. “The sun’s burning off most of the rain, and it’ll be pleasant. Use sunscreen, dear,” she added in an aside to Livvy. “You’ll burn worse than one of Alvin’s pizzas if you don’t.”

“Alvin’s pizzas?” she asked blankly.

“Alvin Johannsen owns Pizza World. His pizzas are legendary—for being crispy,” Hayden explained.

She nodded.

The day was heating up, now that the drizzle had stopped. Overhead a lone cloud, wispy and thin, was stalled over the Badlands. Nothing else interrupted the space between the sky and the earth, save for the tops of the elms that brushed the endless blue. The sun touched everything, chasing away the shadows and warming roofs and sidewalks.

Cooter’s Hardware. Alvin’s Pizza. Clara’s Café. It was a different world, and she was loving every light-drenched moment of it.

Hayden caught the door of the real estate office just before it slammed shut. Tom Clark, the agent, had assured him that the sale of Sunshine would be accomplished quite easily, and he’d draw up the papers that afternoon.

His stomach felt as if he’d swallowed a nest of wasps, buzzing and stinging inside him. This was probably the most important decision he’d ever made, encouraging Gramps to sell Sunshine.

It was for the best. He knew that. Gramps wasn’t able to maintain it, and Sunshine deserved a better fate than falling into ruin.

He glanced at Livvy. Sunlight filtered through the leaves of the trees outside the agency, casting dappled pieces of sunlight across her dark hair.

She was so tiny.

He stopped himself. She wasn’t tiny at all. She was sized just right. The top of her head came to his nose, which would put her lips—

He ended the thought before it went any further. Obviously he’d been out in the country too long, if that’s where his mind was going.

She was buying Sunshine and that was it.

And, he reminded himself, once the papers were signed, it was hers. Totally hers. The only thing he and Gramps would own would be some of the glasses etched with the Sunshine name … and their memories.

He’d be off to teach, Gramps would be settled in a retire-ment home, and their lives, now intersecting with Livvy’s, would head off in three different directions.

His mood began to disintegrate.

“You look sad,” she said, her hand on his forearm, and her forehead wrinkled with concern. “This is rough, isn’t it?”

He nodded, not trusting himself to speak for a moment. And then he gathered his emotions together and summoned a smile. “There’s one sure way to chase away the blues,” he said.

“Whistle?” She grinned.

“Actually I was thinking we could go fishing, but we can whistle on the way.”

She looped her arm through his and the two of them began to walk to his car, trying to whistle and not laugh, and failing.

They spent the time traveling to Sunshine in the car, sharing songs they especially liked and those they absolutely hated.