Immortal Mine (10 page)

“You seem better this morning. You were a
little freaked out yesterday.”

“Oh, yeah, that.” He looks uncomfortable.
“That was….” He trails off then looks at me. “I can’t really
explain that.”

He waits for my response, but I don’t know
what to say. It was definitely weird, but I guess everyone is
entitled to their strange quirks. Instead of answering, I walk over
to Sheila’s stall. She comes to greet me, knowing I’ll have an
apple for her.

“Let’s go for a ride,” Sam says behind me,
“on the horses.”

I look at Sheila longingly for a moment,
before turning back to Sam.

“I wish I could, but there’s work to be
done. If I don’t do it, who will?”

He glances toward the open door that my
father just exited from, but doesn’t say anything. Good thing; I
don’t deal well with criticism of my parents.

“You can’t take a break for a couple hours,
have some fun?” he asks, instead.

“It’s not like I
never
have fun,” I
defend. “It’s just that there’re things that need to be done.”

“I’ll help you, as soon as we get back.”

“You don’t understand, Sam. After I clean
Sheila’s stall—”

“Done,” he interrupts.

“What?”

“That’s what your dad was doing when I got
here.”

I glance toward Sheila’s stall, surprised I
missed that when I looked in before.

“Huh,” I say. Brilliant, right? “Well, I’ve
gotta milk Bessie and—”

“Wait, your cows name is
Bessie
?” Sam
scoffs.

I narrow my eyes at him. “So?”

He bites back a laugh, “So nothing.”

I shoot him my best dirty look, and
continue. “I’ve gotta clean out the chicken coop, change the litter
boxes, check my ducks and make sure they’re doing okay, tend the
garden, and start the apple picking—”

“Is that a normal Saturday for you?” Sam’s
stunned.

I shrug. “A little hard work never hurt
anyone.”

“Niahm, you’re
seventeen
. A child.
You should hardly be expected to run an entire
ranch
by
yourself.”

Of course, my anger rises.

“I’m not a child!” I explode, sounding very
much like a petulant child, completing the illusion with my hands
on hips. “And I’ve been running my
farm
since I was thirteen
years old.”

“Why don’t you hire some help?” Sam
questions, remaining calm in the face of my temper. I refuse to
admit that my parents have tried to hire help multiple times, but
it’s become a matter of pride to run the place myself. I keep my
lips clamped, not wanting to admit my stubbornness.

“Look, just come for an hour. We can run the
fence lines, check them over.” I’m about to argue; we don’t really
have any animals to be kept penned in, but then he makes an offer.
“When we get back, I’ll help you with whatever you need.”

I glance at him. “
Any
thing?”

“Anything,” he confirms, “for the rest of
the day.”

I narrow my eyes at him, “Why would you do
that?”

“Because I’d really like to go for a ride,
and I don’t want to go alone.” When I continue to look at him
suspiciously, he grins. “And I have nothing better to do all day.
What do you do for fun around here?” His city-slicker-ness is
definitely showing. People who haven’t been raised in small towns
don’t understand small towns.

“You can go to the movie,” I say.

“It’s been out on DVD for, like, six
months,” he counters.

“Bowling,” I offer.

“There’re only four lanes, and they have
their league play today.”

I’m impressed by his knowledge of that so
quickly.

“Ma & Pa’s Diner,” I offer, starting to
smile at him.

“All day in a diner?”

“You could hang out with old man Jones in
front of the store.” He grimaces at the suggestion, and I relent
with a laugh. “Or you could go for a horseback ride.”

“Ah-ha!” He grins. “That sounds like a
fantastic idea. Now, if I only had someone to come along…”

I shake my head at him. “Fine, I’ll come,
but you’re going to be sorry when you see how much work I manage to
put you to.”

He rocks forward onto the balls of his feet.
“Do your worst,” he teases.

Niahm leads Sheila from a trot into a
canter, taking the gait in her hips as any experienced rider would.
Her upper body remains still, elegant in the saddle. With a gentle
nudge of her calves, she urges Sheila into a run. Leaning slightly
forward, she relaxes, a small smile playing across her mouth as we
gallop across the fields, the cool air flooding her cheeks and nose
with a charming shade of pink. I can’t take my eyes off the grace
with which she rides. She seems to understand instinctively when
Sheila begins to tire, and brings her back down to a canter. She
pulls up and stops after twenty minutes, near a stand of trees and
the creek which runs across their property. We swing down off our
horses and lead them to the cool, clear water.

“Having fun?” I ask.

She grins at me as she loops Sheila’s reins
over a low tree branch.

“A little,” she says, walking back to the
stream where she drops to the green, grassy ground with a sigh of
pleasure. I hurriedly tie Autumn Star off as well and join her.
“There isn’t anything quite like it, is there?” she asks. “It’s so
peaceful, almost quiet with the power of a horse beneath you. For a
few minutes, anyway, you can forget about the world.” The contented
expression on her face speaks volumes, and not for the first time I
wonder why a girl of seventeen needs an activity to take away
worldly cares.

“How often do you take the time to do
something just for you?” I expect her to bristle at the question as
she does anytime someone questions her vision of her perfect
life.

“Probably not often enough,” she surprises
me by admitting. “But I can’t really complain, can I?”

“Why not?” I ask, genuinely curious why she
would think that.

“Because I chose this life. I chose to stay
home rather than globetrot with my parents. I chose to run things
alone.” She pauses. “I chose to not ask my parents to stay home
with me.”

I can hear the pain that laces her voice at
the last admission. “Would they?” She glances at me. “I mean, if
you asked, would they stay?”

She’s silent for long moments, staring at
the water that meanders by. “Of course they would,” she mumbles.
The doubt is clear in her tone.

“You do have
some
fun,” I offer,
changing the subject. She glances up at me, and I’m struck once
again by her eyes. “You have been known to take a ride on your ATV
and eat a mouthful of dirt.”

She narrows her eyes at me, then bursts out
laughing. “I can’t believe you still speak to me after I nearly
spit on you.”

“Well, it wasn’t so much the spit as the
cookie grenades that were the low point of that day.”

She looked chagrinned. “I’m sorry about
that. It was a bit of an overreaction.”

“And a waste of some really good cookies,” I
add.

“I’ll make it up to you,” she offers. “I’ll
bake you some cookies. They won’t be as good, but….”

“How about a pie?” I venture, looking at her
slantwise.

She narrows her eyes at me again, and her
mouth tightens slightly.

“Kidding,” I laugh, holding my hands up in
surrender.

“Not funny,” she mutters.

“No? Not even a little?” I bump her shoulder
with mine; see the corner of her mouth lift. She pushes my shoulder
with her hand, and I tumble away, as if she’d really pushed
hard.

She laughs one quick laugh, then smothers it
with her hand, though her shining eyes give her humor away. “You’re
so
not cute,” she laughs behind her hand.

I sigh dramatically. “I know. It’s this dang
red hair, everyone hates it—”

“Who?” she demands, almost angrily. “Has
someone said something? They’re wrong, Sam. Your hair is beautifu—”
she stops abruptly, turning back toward the stream.

I crawl back over next to her. “I knew you
thought I was cute,” I tease and she smiles, cheeks pink. “I’ll
make a deal with you,” I say, and she turns to me with curiosity,
her embarrassment forgotten. “If I work really hard with you today,
and don’t make you angry once, you come with me next weekend, to
dinner and a movie.”

One corner of her mouth lifts wryly. “You
mean the movie that’s been on DVD for six months and the
diner?”

“Nope,” I say, pulling a blade of grass near
my feet, splitting it with my thumbnail. “A
real
movie, and
dinner at a
real
restaurant, in the city.”

I look up to see her staring at me, stunned.
“You mean, like, a
date
?”

I huff out a laugh. “You make it sound like
I’m offering a disease.”

“No, it’s not… it’s just… uh…”

“The correct answer,” I tease, picking up
her hand, ignoring the spark of energy that arcs toward me, placing
the flimsy bracelet I’ve weaved from the blades of grass around her
wrist, “is, ‘Yes, Sam, I would love to go with you to the city to
see a movie that no one else has seen, and to eat a dinner cooked
by someone besides myself. Thanks for asking.’”

She looks down at the bracelet, pulling her
hand away from mine before I can get a read on anything more than a
jumble of confusion, fingering it lightly. “
This
is your
idea of a bribe?” she asks, then looks up and I see the teasing
glint in her eyes.

“There’s more where that came from,” I say,
sweeping my hands around, indicating the field peppered with grass
and weeds. “And the color looks great on you.”

“Flattery will get you nowhere,” she says, a
small smile playing across her lips.

“Will it get me a date for next weekend, at
least?”

“No,” she says firmly, hopping up onto her
feet. “But it will get you a
friend
to go with
you—dutch.”

I grin as I stand and follow her back to the
horses.

Of course, I regretted telling Sam I’d go
with him as soon as we arrived back at the house. No matter how
much crappy work I gave him, no matter how hard I pushed him, he
worked without complaining, without doing anything I could get mad
at him for, making it that much harder to come up with an excuse to
get out of it. He even talked to my parents, making sure it was
okay if he took me, since it’s an hour ride each way.

This is how I find myself sitting next to
Sam in his truck, one week later, as we make the hour long drive. I
guess there are worse things than a night in the city, seeing a
real movie, sitting next to a tall, red-headed Adonis.

We stop at an Italian restaurant, which is
not the nicest restaurant I’ve ever eaten at—that would be when we
were the guests of a Sheik in Saudi Arabia when I was about ten or
so—but it is leaps and bounds above Goshen’s diner. The cloth
napkins and Italian décor—complete with Italian opera playing—give
the place a nice ambiance, a feel of luxury. They seat us smack in
the middle of the room, as if on display. I look around at the
other tables, mostly occupied by couples but with a few groups or
families here and there.

“See that couple over there?” I ask him,
pointing. The couple looks to be in their mid-forties, overweight
and frazzled, and not speaking, let alone looking at one another.
“They have eight kids, and this is their first night out without
them. They’re so exhausted they can’t even muster the energy for a
conversation.”

It’s a game I used to play with my parents
when we traveled, making up stories about the people we saw. It
doesn’t really work in Goshen as I know pretty much everything
about everyone.

Sam chuckles and says, “Not just exhausted,
but it’s been so long since they’ve spoken adult talk, they no
longer know how.” I laugh, glad that he caught on so quickly. “And
there,” he continues, pointing to a young couple, she texting madly
on her phone while he appears utterly bored. “First date, she won’t
get off her phone, he’s ticked that he has to pay for her
dinner.”