Running Blind (20 page)

It struck Carlin hard, realizing how long it had been since someone had genuinely smiled just because she’d walked in a door.

“Hey, girl. How’s it going?” Kat asked.

“Good.”

“How’s Zeke been treating you?”

Carlin sat at the counter. “Like a chief cook and bottle washer he tolerates because he has no other choice.” That wasn’t completely true, but close enough.

“So, like a wife without the benefits.”

“Benefits?” Carlin kept her tone deadpan. She didn’t want even Kat to see where her mind had taken her. Zeke
was a pain in her ass; he was grouchy and evidently didn’t trust her as far as he could throw her. But he was a real man, tough and hard, and if her mind occasionally—several times a day, maybe—went where it shouldn’t, well, no one needed to know about it.

But Kat’s witch-eyes saw too much, as usual. “Honey, do not—I repeat, do
not
—get suckered in by the way Zeke Decker looks. He’s the kind of man some women dream of taking on and fixing, but he is who he is and he can’t be fixed.”

“Fixed, how?” Carlin asked, because he sure didn’t seem broken. Bullheaded, stubborn, and a lot of other things—sexy as hell among them—but not broken. “He’s your cousin. Shouldn’t you be singing his praises, or something?”

“He’s my cousin, so I know him too well.”

“Well, the last thing I need or want right now is a man, fixable or not.” She needed to be free, free to run, free to start over at any moment. She kept telling herself the same thing over and over: any kind of relationship—even the one she’d developed with Kat—might tempt her to stay in one place too long. She had to be willing to run, to leave everything behind and not look back. The fact that she had to keep reminding herself was downright scary.

“Too bad Spencer is so young and addle-brained,” Kat said. “Well, not addled, but you know what I mean. He has a couple of plusses. He’s cute, and he’s got that hard, young body.”

“Kat!”

“But he’s a cowboy,” Kat blithely continued, “and you know how I feel about cowboys. Besides, I think he’s a virgin who’ll probably feel he has to marry the first woman he sleeps with. It’s a real chore to take on a lover who needs instruction, and I don’t know about you, but I don’t want a man I sleep with to be that grateful. Blown
away and ecstatically happy, yes, but not ‘I can’t live without you’ grateful. That’s such a burden. Even if he does have a nice ass.”

Carlin laughed. “Stop it! I have to work with Spencer every day. I don’t want to know if he’s a virgin or not, and I do not want to hear about his ass. He’s like … a puppy.”

“Sorry, but there’s a dearth of suitable men around here, and a girl’s mind does wander.” Tapping her hand on the counter, Kat stood up. “Your pies are ready. Do you want to go ahead and order for next week?”

Carlin placed her order for the following week, throwing in a request for a piece of apple pie right now simply because it was apple pie day and she wanted one. As Kat poured a cup of coffee to go with that pie it crossed Carlin’s mind that if Spencer was a puppy, Zeke Decker was a wolf. Given a chance he’d eat her alive.

No, thanks.

Wait.
Rewind
. She thought about those words and felt her heartbeat pick up, felt a tingle deep inside. Crap, she needed to concentrate on her pie and stop speculating about Zeke’s oral skills.

“So.” Kat leaned on the counter and watched Carlin dig into her dessert. “You’re going to stay, right?”

“Until spring.” Unless something went wrong.

“In that case, you’re going to need a warmer coat.” Kat grimaced at the TEC jacket. “And boots.”

“I know.” It had been getting colder with every passing day, and Carlin had given some thought to those things she’d need before winter arrived. Zeke had a ton of heavy coats; she could borrow one of them when she needed it. All she’d have to do was roll up the sleeves. She’d look like a homeless woman, but she didn’t see the sense in spending good money on a coat when she didn’t know if she’d need it next year.

Next winter she might be in Florida, or some other
warm place, and she wanted to save every dime she could. She had the money, she’d been squirreling away every dime she was paid, but she was hoarding it like a miser.

The coat situation she could handle, but she couldn’t very well borrow Zeke’s boots. “Where’s the best place around here to find what I’ll need?”

“Tillman’s, right down the street. They’ll have everything you need to get through the winter.”

That taken care of, Kat asked Carlin if she’d tried to make the accursed Never Fail White Cake. Carlin told her no, and again Kat listed all the things she might’ve done wrong. The wrong kind of flour, old ingredients, and her favorite—overmixing. Carlin wasn’t a big fan of “might’ve.” She wanted to know exactly what had gone wrong so she wouldn’t make the same mistakes over and over.

Maybe it was time to try again, though. She’d add cake flour to her grocery list and pick up one bag. Just one. She didn’t see what the difference could be. Flour was flour, right? But she didn’t share that thought with Kat, because as a baker she assumed Kat would think differently.

A couple of customers came in. Kat tried to refuse Carlin’s payment, but she insisted. She said good-bye, took the pies, and headed for the truck, where she put the pies on the narrow floorboard of the tiny backseat.

Spencer wasn’t back yet, so Carlin walked down the sidewalk to Tillman’s. Her TEC jacket was sufficient for weather that was simply chilly, but the nip in the air was a warning. If it was this cold in October, what would December and January be like in Wyoming?

When she entered Tillman’s store, a bell overhead rang, announcing her presence to the older woman behind the counter. There were no other customers, not at that moment, and Carlin wondered how a business like this one survived in a shrinking town. She smiled, said
she was just looking, and then a coat caught her eye. Oh, that would look so much better than an oversized throwaway! She picked up the coat, checked the price … and immediately returned it to the rack.

So
that’s
how this place stayed in business. One sale, and they’d be set for the month! There were other, less expensive coats on the rack, but none of them were what she’d call cheap. Good thing she’d decided to make do with Zeke’s old coats, because no way was she paying that much for a coat, no matter how luxurious the shearling felt. She headed for the shoe section, wondering if she should even bother to look. Maybe the general store would have something. Or Goodwill. Did Battle Ridge have a Goodwill?

There was a small “sale” section, and in it she found a pair of boots in her size. They weren’t all that expensive to begin with, and they were marked down to half price. It didn’t matter than she didn’t like the color—who’d thought it was a good idea to manufacture boots in that particular shade of green?—or that the material didn’t look all that sturdy. She just needed a pair of boots to get her through one winter. They’d be okay, as long as she had nice, thick socks.

She paid for the boots, but as she left the store, she eyed the overpriced coat. Man, it was gorgeous. And it looked so wonderfully warm.

But if she had to run, the price of that coat would cover a month in a cheap hotel. Make that two months. She wanted the money in her pocket, not in a coat.

Her stomach turned at the thought. She didn’t want to run again; didn’t want to face the uncertainty of another off-the-books job. Maybe something would happen and she could stay—

No. She didn’t dare let herself hope, not for that. She had to stay aware, stay ready, and go on the assumption that in a few months she’d be on the road again.

When she got back to the truck with her new boots, Spencer was there, waiting, with a smile and a small brown paper bag from the hardware store. The only errand remaining was the grocery store and a honking huge list.

“What did you buy?” Spencer asked as he stepped into the passenger seat.

“Boots.” Carlin placed the green boots in the backseat, making sure they were secure so they wouldn’t migrate onto the pies.

“Oh yeah, you’ll need plenty of warm clothes before the end of the month.” He started to list all the things she’d need. In addition to the boots, a heavy coat—or two; hats, gloves, scarves to cover her nose and mouth because otherwise her lungs could freeze. Carlin didn’t tell him that she planned to glom onto Zeke’s leftover coats; if she did, he might wonder why she was being so chintzy with her money—or, even worse, he might feel sorry for her and start taking up a collection to buy her clothes. She could so see Spencer doing that.

And she could see people giving, out of the goodness of their hearts.

She was so lucky to have found Battle Ridge, Kat … even Zeke. By the time spring arrived she’d have a good amount of cash to get her to wherever—a good amount of cash, some warm memories, and an ugly-ass pair of cheap green boots.

Z
EKE AND SOME
of the men were just pulling up to the house for lunch when the back door crashed open with a force that sent it slamming against the wall, and Carlin burst out at a dead run, carrying a flaming pan and screaming,
“Gaaaaa!”
at the top of her lungs. Zeke slammed on the brakes and shoved the gear into park as he leaped out of the truck. He rounded the hood and raced toward her, his heart in his mouth. Those flames could blow back into her face—

“Drop it!” he roared.

Startled, she did, right there at her feet. It was sheer luck, but the pan landed upside down. A few little flames licked out from under the edges, then died away.

She stood there staring down at the pan, breathing hard. Warily, the men were climbing out of the other trucks, wondering if it was their lunch they had watched crash and burn—well, burn and die. Zeke reached her and whirled her around. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” she said, still breathing hard. She glared down at the pan. And then she kicked it. The first kick sent it tumbling a couple of feet; something black and gooey came out. The second kick got better distance, maybe because it wasn’t as heavy now. Evidently unsatisfied,
she advanced on one of the pickups and grabbed a hammer from the back. Going down on one knee, she swung the hammer for all she was worth and beat the hell out of that pan, then she got up and kicked it one more time for good measure.

“Damn,” Walt muttered. “I’m not ever going to say a single bad thing about her cooking.”

“Yeah,” Eli muttered in return. “No matter what it is, I’ll eat it or die. Even that cake.”

“More like, eat it
and
die,” Patrick put in.

Zeke would have laughed, if his heart wasn’t still pounding with fear. “Damn it,” he yelled at her, “you don’t run with a flaming pan—”

“You do when you can’t get the damn fire extinguisher to work,” she snapped back. She was evidently finished taking out her frustration on the pan, because she returned the hammer to the truck and grimly surveyed the men standing around eyeing her with more than a little trepidation.

Spencer knew her better, so he gathered his courage first. “Uh … what was that, Miss Carly?”

“An experiment,” she said, and her tone told them all not to ask another question. “Don’t worry, it wasn’t lunch. Y’all get inside and eat. Now.”

One and all, even Zeke, they turned and filed into the house.

Lunch was sometimes served in shifts; the men came in and ate when they could. It wasn’t ideal, but Carlin could see the reasoning behind it so she’d learned to go with the flow. After the incident with the flaming pan, she was glad she had to deal with men coming and going today, because it gave her time to settle down. Damn biscuits. Not that they’d looked like biscuits; they’d resembled flaming hockey pucks more than anything, but she’d figure out what she’d done wrong. She was fairly sure biscuits weren’t supposed to flame up like that.

Finally the last two hands, Darby and Patrick, were finishing up while she took a break in the kitchen, sipping on a glass of tea. Once they were out of the way she’d clean up and get to the laundry that never seemed to get completely finished. At least there was no longer a quarter mile of dirty clothes piled in front of the washer and dryer; the chore was much more manageable these days. She had a laundry basket devoted to her clothes, and so did Zeke, as well as a separate one for towels. None of the baskets ever overflowed. There were times when it might’ve made sense for her to wash his clothes and hers together, but she never did; shared laundry would indicate an intimacy they didn’t have.

Patrick made his way through the kitchen, thanking her for lunch—he was always so polite—and heading out and back to work. That left only Darby, finishing up in the dining room. Great. She wondered what he’d find to complain about when he left. With him, there was always something. If he’d been one of Snow White’s dwarfs, his name would have been “Bitcher.”

A few minutes later Darby came out and said, “That casserole was damn good.”

Carlin almost dropped her glass of tea. A compliment? From Darby? He was the one who’d complained that he wanted to know exactly what he was eating, and in a casserole he couldn’t always be sure. Something was up. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up in warning when he stopped by the small kitchen table and just looked at her for a long, uncomfortable moment.

“I won’t be here much longer, you know,” he said.

How was she supposed to respond to that? It would be an out and out lie to say she’d be sorry to see him go, and rude to say “good riddance.” So she managed a noncommittal hum, and got up from the table to put a little more space between them, just in case. She didn’t like him, and she didn’t trust him.

He didn’t take the hint and move on. Instead he said with a hint of cockiness, “After October market, I’m going down to Texas to rodeo. I’m a bull rider in the winter rodeo, and I’ve done some bronc riding as well. Want to see the buckles I’ve won?”

God, was this his version of “want to see my etchings”? If she’d been sipping her tea right then, she’d have snorted it out her nose.

“No, thanks,” Carlin responded, wishing he’d just move on. “But, uh, good luck.” She could hardly say she hoped he’d get gored in the ’nads, now could she? For a split second she felt bad that she’d even had the mean thought.