Leave Tomorrow Behind (Stella Crown Series) (5 page)

Chapter Eight

I found Nick in the kitchen, his laptop open, papers all over the table. He was staring at something on the screen so intently I figured it must be something really important. I wasn’t sure if I should interrupt, or not.

“Nick?”

He glanced up, then gestured me over. “I’m glad you’re here. I need your help understanding this.”

“Nick, you know numbers aren’t my strong suit.” Little did he know just how weak I was feeling at the moment when it came to those pesky digits, especially the ones with dollar signs—or negatives—in front of them. But I went to stand behind him, anyway, and set my hands on his shoulders, expecting to get an instant headache from the spreadsheet. But instead of columns and numbers I saw a picture of a cat. Or, sort of a cat. It was a weird black one, standing in an awkward position, but it was definitely a cat.

“What is that?” he said.

I leaned closer. “I was going to say a cat, but—”

“You see a cat?”

“Of course. It’s right there. Can’t you see it?” I felt his forehead. “Are you having an episode?”

He pulled my hand away, keeping hold of it. “I’m fine. But I can’t see the cat. All I can see is the silhouette of a dancer.”

“A woman or man?”

“Woman. Standing with her back to us, her toes pointed, her face tipped our way.”

I squinted, and tilted my head. “Nope. Can’t see it. Just the cat.”

He sighed. “Oh, well. I guess between the two of us we see them both. That’s good enough for me.”

I laughed. “Me, too.”

He turned toward me. “Were you looking for me?”

“Yeah. You have a minute?”

“For you? Always.” He scooted his chair away from the table and held out his arms.

I sat on his lap and looked down at his face. “You know how I’ve wanted to run the farm on my own? How I haven’t wanted to take anything from you?”

“Sure.”

“And you believe me? That I’ve never been after your money?”

He laughed. “Of course.”

“Good. Because it’s true. It’s always been true.” I hesitated.

He wasn’t running away screaming yet, and he had to know what was coming. My stomach churned. I’d always forced away any thoughts of accepting his money, and now I expected myself to just ask? Like it was nothing? I scooted off his lap and leaned against the counter, gripping it so hard my fingers hurt.

“Stella.” His voice was kind. “If you need money, you know you only have to ask.”

I took a shaky breath. “Nick, I…I was wondering how you would feel about maybe contributing something to the running of the place. Since…since it is your home now, too.”

He blinked. And he stared. And then a smile broke out on his face, like the sun coming up after the Apocalypse. He came over, resting his hands on the counter on either side of me. So close I could hardly breathe.

He brushed a finger over my eyebrow. “You just said this was my home.”

“Well, it is, isn’t it?”

“Any place with you is my home. But, yes. This lovely, drafty old place, and the barns, and the cows, and the yard that needs mowing every other day. They’re all my home now. And I can’t believe you’re going to let me help take care of it. How much money do we need?”

Happiness radiated off of him. Out of him. And I could feel myself smiling right back. He leaned in to kiss me.

“I knew it!”

Nick’s nose crashed into my forehead. He spun around to stare at Miranda, his hand over his face. I wondered just how much blood was spurting out of his nostrils.

“I knew she was after your money!” Miranda screeched. “I told you! I said it at the very beginning!”

“Miranda.” Nick used his free hand to pat the air, like it would calm her, even though she was in her raging crazed woman mode. “You’re eavesdropping.”

“Am not.”

“And you didn’t hear the whole conversation.” He took his hand off his nose and looked at it. There wasn’t any red.

“I heard enough.” She glared at me. “I heard you ask her how much money she needs. Like you’re going to say no to anything when she’s got her hands all over you.”

I took a breath to say some not very nice things, but Nick glanced back at me, his eyes pleading. I looked at the floor, clamping my lips together.

“Miranda.” He was using his calm-but-mad-big-brother voice. He’d had lots of practice with that. “You were listening to a private conversation.”

“About our family’s money!”

“No. This conversation was about my family’s money.”

“But I am your—” She choked off her sentence, then pointed a shaking finger my way. “She is not your family until you sign on the dotted line. And if she has her way, that’s never going to happen!”

I jerked my head up. “What?”

“She won’t even talk about the wedding.” Still not addressing me. “I gave her a way toned-down budget today, and she wouldn’t even look at it! I don’t think she wants this wedding to happen at all! She just wants…” She shot daggers at me with her eyes—or maybe the pitchfork she’d saved me from a month before. “She just wants you to save her precious cows.”

I pushed myself off the counter. “Now look here, Miranda—”

“Stella.” Nick swiveled, putting himself between me and his sister. He laid his hands on my shoulders, and looked down into my eyes. “Do you trust me?” he whispered.

I couldn’t speak.

“Do you trust me?”

“Of course I do.”

“Then, please. Let me handle this. Okay? Why don’t you go back outside? Go hammer something. Or break something. Or kick something—but not with your sore foot.” He smiled, but it wasn’t his usual carefree one. Nothing like the one he’d had just moments before when I’d asked him for money. Go figure.

“Okay.”

He kissed me lightly and let me go. I slipped out of the kitchen, not looking back at Miranda. I wondered just how long she was going to be staying in our house.

Chapter Nine

Miranda screamed out of the drive, slinging gravel as far as the next county. She’d only been in there with Nick for maybe ten minutes, but apparently that was enough.

“She going home?” I tried not to sound too eager.

Nick rested on the gate, next to where I was taking his advice and hammering a new fence post into the ground.

“She said she was.”

My breath caught.

“But she didn’t take any of her stuff.”

Crap.

“So I expect she’ll be back sometime after supper, when she’s had her fill of Doylestown, or wherever she’s going to go to shop and eat.”

“We’ll just plan on being gone by then.”

“Where are we going?”

“To that Rikki Raines concert, remember? If you want.”

“Sure. But speaking of food, I’m hungry. Want me to make something?”

“Unless you want to eat at the fair again.”

He made a face. “I think I’d rather have something not deep fried this time.”

“I’ll be in soon.”

Lucy pulled in the drive, back from picking up her daughter, as Nick walked toward the house. Tess bounded out of the car, yelling hi to Nick and doing a cartwheel. She was nine, and every bit as energetic as you’d think.

“No Lenny?” I asked Lucy when she came over. Lenny was Lucy’s husband, also my friend and biker buddy.

“Working late. People want their bikes all fixed before the fair’s poker run later this week.” She looked after Tess, who was running around the house, Queenie on her heels. “Plus, Tess went over to work with him today, after lunch, so he wasn’t as productive as he would’ve liked.”

“You know she’s always welcome here.”

“Of course, but when she gets it in her head to be with her new daddy, I don’t want to get in the way. And he won’t say no.” Her voice caught, and I looked away to give her some privacy. She loved Lenny, and he was a great dad type, but he would never replace the dad Tess had had before. Or the husband Lucy had lost. But then, Lenny wasn’t trying to replace him. He was just trying to pick up where the other guy had left off. A long road for all of them.

“Talked with Nick,” I said. “He’s game.”

Lucy smiled. “I’m not surprised. Are you? But something’s wrong.”

I recounted the whole Miranda experience.

“I wondered why she was driving like a teenager. She almost blew us off the road on our way in.” She shrugged. “She’ll get over it, and come back.”

“I don’t know, she was pretty pissed off. She’s probably off telling her mom and sister all about how I’m going to drain the gold from the kingdom, and next thing you know the entire clan will be here trying to drag Nick away.”

“You said his mom and older sister are different from Miranda.”

“I guess. But who knows what Miranda will tell them, and what they’ll believe?”

“Nick is levelheaded. Someone had to teach him that. Maybe his mother.”

“I hope so. With my luck the only sane one was his dad, since he’s the only one not around anymore.” Nick’s father had died a year and a half earlier, prompting Nick’s travels to Pennsylvania, when he’d shown up at the farm disguised as a barn painter.

“Hang in there. Unfortunately, when you marry someone, you get the whole family in the bargain, whether you want it or not.” She should know. Her late husband’s family had tried to get her arrested for killing him, even though it had been an accident. They’d finally relented, and while their relationship with Lucy wasn’t exactly friendly, at least they weren’t siccing the cops on her anymore.

“Well,” she said. “I’m headed in to milk. You guys taking off again soon?”

“That was the plan. Unless you want me to stay and help. I’m not dead set on getting back to the fair. Rikki Raines is okay, but not on my top-ten list, or anything.” That would be hard, since most of my top-ten list were either dead or not performing anymore. Stevie Ray Vaughan, Lynard Skynard, the Eagles.

“No, go ahead. Milking is my Zen time, and Tess is fine with Queenie, or catching up on her TV watching.”

She left, and I packed up my tools. Nick had some spaghetti and salad ready by the time I got in, and before long we were cleaned up and on the road, this time in Nick’s Ford Ranger. The fair was busier this time around, since the public was now allowed in, just for the concert. The exhibition buildings wouldn’t be open to them until the next day. Nick drove around to the 4-H entrance, since my being Zach’s sponsor got us in for free. We found a parking spot and walked into the family area, where all the 4-Her families had set up their campers. A path through the middle would take us to the main fairgrounds.

“Hey,” Nick said, “isn’t that your buddy Gregg, who threatened you this afternoon?”

My “buddy,” the ever-charming Mr. You’re-Going-To-Be-Sorry, hovered under one of the trailer awnings. Hardly anyone else was around in the makeshift campground, so he was easy to spot. And he wasn’t alone. Someone else stood just out of sight, hidden behind a light post, and Gregg was not happy with whoever it was. He was throwing his arms around, and pointing, and doing the whole hunched over thing he’d done when he’d threatened me that afternoon.

I stepped into the shadow of another trailer, and pulled Nick into hiding, too, up against a camper. I peered around the corner. “Who is that with him? That’s not his wife. At least, I don’t think it is. It’s hard to tell with that pole in the way.”

“Not really any of our business, is it?”

“That’s got to be the Greggs’ trailer. If you want to call it that.” It was more like a full-fledged RV, you know, the kind for old folks who travel to Florida every winter.

“Not really any of our—”

“—business. I know. You said that before.”

“But sneaking around behind trailers does have its advantages.” He pressed closer to my back, and ran his hands up my sides.

“Nick…”

“What? You weren’t complaining earlier.” He kissed my neck.

I laughed. “Yeah, when we weren’t surrounded by trailers that might or might not contain teenagers. And their parents.”

“Oh. Right.” He gave me one more kiss, then leaned over my shoulder to look toward Mr. Gregg. “Hey, it’s a woman. She moved, so I can see her.”

“And it’s our business now?”

“If I can’t make out with you, I might as well do something interesting.”

Nick was right. About the person, I mean. The woman was standing directly in our sight lines now, and she definitely wasn’t Mrs. Gregg. This woman was taller, curvier, and just a little…classier. Now, Mrs. Gregg, as you remember, was clean as a dairy cow on show day. Neat and tidy and all done up to appear like a gentlewoman farmer. But this lady, I don’t know, she was simply gorgeous.

“Wow,” Nick said.

“Yeah, I know. What is it about her?”

“She’s perfect.”

“Excuse me?”

“I don’t mean for me. You know you’re the only one who’s perfect for me.”

“Not according to Miranda.”

“Were we talking about Miranda? I don’t think so. Anyway, this woman’s just…look at her. Everything’s how it should be, and it doesn’t seem fake.”

Yeah. Made me want to go over and kick some dirt on her. Or mess up her hair. Just like I’d felt earlier that day about Mrs. Gregg. Except if I did that, I’d have to talk with Mr. Gregg, and we all know he would have a cow about that.

“Who do you think she is?” For not wanting to poke his nose in other people’s business, Nick was sounding awfully…nosy.

“Have no idea. I’ve never seen her before.” But something about her looked familiar. I couldn’t tell what it was. Her hair was reddish, but I couldn’t tell if that was from the light, or because of its actual color. Her skin was ivory, and that
smile
. It was a surprise when it came out, since its brightness was almost blinding, but also because it was aimed at Mr. Gregg. Not somebody I would imagine received a lot of those smiles.

Nick cleared his throat. “Um, what they’re doing right now reminds me of us about a minute ago.”

Yeah. Not exactly how a married man and another woman should be standing. Except it wasn’t really her. It was him. She was backing up, her hands out. Pushing him away. She wasn’t smiling anymore. I could see even from this distance that she was pissed off now, backing away. But he wasn’t giving up. He grabbed her upper arms and pulled her closer, bending his face toward hers.

Nick moved, like he was going to run around me and go after Gregg, but I held him back. “Wait. She’s going to—”

She kneed Gregg in the crotch, and he bent over double, letting out a grunt we heard all the way at our spot. The woman said something else I was sure he deserved, then spun around and marched off.

Awesome.

Nick looked down at me. “You knew she was going to do that?”

“I could see it in her face. And the way she was preparing her knee.” I took his arm, loving that he had been ready to go defend her. I would have done the same if she’d needed it, of course, but I could tell she was up for the task.

Gregg stood up gingerly, his fists on his hips.

“Let’s get out of here,” I said.

“Agreed. Seeing that made me feel…”

“Like you were going to heave?”

“I was going to put it a bit more delicately, but yes.”

I was not a delicate lass.

Just as we were pulling back, Gregg looked our direction. I stumbled, stepping on Nick’s foot. He gasped and hopped backward, crashing into a trash can and knocking it over. He leaned down to pick it up.

“Hey!” It was Gregg. He’d seen us. Or heard us, more like.

I grabbed Nick’s hand, and we ran. We ducked around the last row of trailers and sprinted to the far side of the concrete bathrooms, dodging wayward parents and jumping over a cooler and several teens who sat on the ground playing a card game. I pressed my back against the building and peeked around the corner, but I couldn’t see Gregg anywhere. It seemed we were safe.

I let out my breath, giving a little laugh. “Well. That was interesting.”

Nick took several deep breaths. “Why do I feel like an idiot?”

“Don’t worry. You’re still cute.”

He made a face, then grabbed my hand, and we headed toward the calf barn, which is where we’d been going in the first place, before that little excursion into the dark side. “So.” Nick sounded a bit awkward, because coming across a scene like that was weird, and if he was feeling anything like I was, he was just a little creeped out. He looked up at the cloudless sky. “Nice evening.”

“Too hot.”

“Whiner.”

“Am not.”

“Are too.”

I turned to argue just as we went through the calf barn entrance, and ran right into Mrs. Gregg. She bounced off of me into a burly teenager, who barely stopped on his rush past, screaming, “Don’t let her go there! Don’t let her—oh, shit.” His shoulders slumped, and he stopped running to plod forward toward the mess his cow had just made.

“Hey!” Mrs. Gregg said, just as her husband had a couple minutes earlier, only her version sounded afraid, rather than angry.

I held up my hands. “Didn’t see you. Sorry.”

Her lips trembled, and she glanced around, as if she was worried someone was watching. “Have you seen…my husband?”

Oh, boy. I glanced at Nick, but he was no help, avoiding my eyes. “You lose him?”

“He’s somewhere around here.”

“Maybe the dairy barn?”

“I was just there. I didn’t see him.”

Of course she hadn’t, because he hadn’t been there. He was busy assaulting some unknown woman.

From Mrs. Gregg’s appearance, it seemed she’d been searching for him everywhere, including the manure pile. Her clothes, which had been pristine earlier that day, bore signs of actual work, which, if it were true, made me feel a little bit better about her. Not great, mind you, but it was something. And it made me feel even more dirty about what I’d just witnessed her husband doing. Her knees were smudged, she had a small rip in her shirt sleeve, and there was a piece of something—a wood chip?—lodged in her hair. If I didn’t know better, I would say Mrs. Gregg had been for a roll in the hay. Without her husband. What was going on with them?