For Love and Family (5 page)

“Hi, I'm back,” she called as she did, not hesitating to go from the mudroom into the kitchen.

As she expected, Johnny and Hunter were there. Hunter was sitting on one of the chairs at the table pulling on a cowboy boot and Johnny was kneeling on the seat of another chair.

“You want to, don't you, T'rese?” Johnny said, rather than answering her greeting.

He was apparently trying to convince his father of something and enlisting her in the process.

“I don't know if I want to or not since I don't know what we're talking about,” she told her nephew.

“I'm not sure how the subject came up,” Hunter said before his son had explained, “but I hear you've never roasted marshmallows over a fire.”

That only compounded her confusion. “I'm not sure how most of the subjects came up today,” she confessed, “but no, I've never roasted marshmallows over a fire.”

“So that's why…” Johnny said with precise emphasis on each word as if to make his argument clearer “…we should have a nighttime picnic with a fire so we can do the marshmallows and T'rese can taste 'em.”

“Not to mention that then Johnny can have them, too,” Hunter said to Terese.

A nighttime picnic. So that was what the little boy was angling for.

Terese didn't have any feelings about it one way or another, though. Because yet again her attention was wandering to Hunter.

He'd showered and shaved since they'd gone their separate ways half an hour earlier, and changed into a pair of darker jeans and a blue Henley shirt. He'd washed his hair, too, because it was slightly damp yet and combed straight back to dry.

It struck Terese that she'd seen him in a variety of
clothes, and that it didn't matter how he was dressed, he was appealing in everything. The realization offered her no aid in getting her fill of the sight of him.

“You want to, don't you, T'rese?” Johnny repeated the question he'd greeted her with, saving her from herself as he had on several occasions throughout the day by forcing her to concentrate on him rather than his father.

“That's completely up to your dad,” she said, hesitant to support Johnny's side if it was going to cause a problem.

“It'll be fu-un. Like campin'…” Johnny cajoled in a singsong that was obviously designed to be irresistibly tempting. “We can just go to the pond—that's not far—and we can have a fire and make hot dogs and beans and marshmallows.”

“You have this all worked out, do you?” Hunter asked.

Johnny just gave him a too-innocent shrug.

Hunter shifted his gold-speckled gaze to Terese. “Well, T'rese,” he said, mimicking his son's version of her name. “What do you say? Does that sound like dinner to you?”

“Sure, why not?” Terese conceded, liking it every bit as much when the father said her name that way.

“Then I guess that's what we'll do. Did you bring a warm jacket?” he asked then.

Even though it was late October, the weather had been unseasonably warm and the forecast for the entire week was for more of the same. The evenings
cooled down considerably, but Terese hadn't expected to be outside for any length of time after dark so she'd only packed a very light jacket. Which was what she told her host.

“I don't think that'll be enough,” he said. “I'll give you something of mine to wear.”

“So we're goin'?” Johnny demanded, his excitement on the verge of erupting.

“We're goin',” Hunter confirmed. “But you'll need warmer clothes, too. I want you in your sweatshirt and your field coat.”

That was all Johnny needed to hear. He leaped off the chair and ran out of the kitchen, hollering, “I'll be right back!”

“How are you at makin' hot chocolate?” Hunter asked her then with a note of challenge in his voice that was similar to the one last night when he'd let her know he doubted she could cook.

“I think I can handle it,” she said.

“You'll have to pour it into a thermos, too.”

He was teasing her. The crooked half smile that played around the corner of one side of his mouth gave him away.

“A thermos?” she repeated as if she'd never heard of such a thing.

“It's like a carafe, only with insulation and a screw-on top to keep things inside warm.”

“Ah, a carafe. That I understand,” she joked. “All I can promise is that I'll picture how our cook would do it and try to master the skill.”

Hunter laughed and she liked the sound much too much. “That'll be your job, then. I'll pack up everything else we'll need and get you a coat.”

His
coat.

Why did the thought of wearing something of Hunter's make her feel as excited as Johnny was by this impromptu picnic?

Terese was beginning to think that breathing manure fumes all day had done something to her sanity.

But all she said was, “I'll get the milk,” putting herself into motion before she went any crazier than she already had.

 

Less than an hour later they were on their way in Hunter's big black pickup.

Hunter was driving and Johnny was safely belted into the center of the bench seat, while Terese sat on the passenger side, snuggled inside the big flannel-lined jean jacket that Hunter had loaned her. That Hunter had held out for her to slip into.

It still smelled faintly of his aftershave, reminding her that he'd worn it himself. That his broad shoulders and strong back and mighty pectorals and powerful biceps had all been encased in that coat just the way she was at that moment.

But she kept telling herself not to think about it. And especially not to think about the secret little rush it was giving her.

The pond was on Coltrane property and they took
a dirt road that began behind the barn and headed out into the open countryside.

Terese was glad Hunter seemed to know where he was going because without any illumination except a full moon and the truck's headlights, she could barely tell where the road actually was. But he didn't seem to have any trouble and within minutes they were pulling up to a small pond beneath a stand of old oak trees that formed a semicircle around the far side of it.

“We can swim here in the summer but not tonight,” Johnny informed Terese as they got out of the truck.

Hunter had brought several split logs with them for firewood but he dispatched Johnny to collect some kindling, leaving the truck lights on long enough for that to be accomplished and for the fire to be lit.

Once it was blazing, the truck lights were turned off and they were left to the warm, golden glow of the bonfire. They sat down on logs that acted as benches along the bank of the pond.

“What about cooking hot dogs on the end of a stick over a campfire? Have you ever done that?” Hunter asked Terese as Johnny hunted for just the right sticks for the job and his dad began to unload the picnic basket he'd packed.

“Never,” Terese said.

“She go'd to boarding school,” Johnny offered from not far away. “But I still don't understand. Don't all schools have boards? In the walls or something?”

It hadn't occurred to Terese that this was how Johnny would take her statement about her schooling.

“Boarding school means that you live at the school,” she explained.

“Do you sleep in your desk?” Johnny asked, baffled.

“No, you have school in a school building and you live in a separate building,” she said.

“With your family?”

“No, with your classmates. Your family stays at home.”

“You don't live home with your mom or dad or anybody?” the little boy said, sounding slightly horrified. “No.”

“And you never got to go campin' or cook on a fire or nothin'?”

Terese smiled. “No, there was no camping or cooking on a fire. We ate all our meals in the dining hall.”

“I wouldn't like that,” Johnny decided.

“It wasn't a lot of fun,” Terese assured him, thinking back on the stuffy, regimented environment where camping or cooking anything over an open fire would have been considered barbaric or unbearably pedestrian.

“What about in the summer?” Johnny persisted when he'd shown her the fine art of poking the sticks through their hot dogs and they were all holding their dinner over the fire. “If you didn't go campin' in the summers, what did you do?”

“I went to Europe most summers. Do you know anything about Europe?”

“Yep,” the little boy said authoritatively, surprising her. “My dad's goin' there in how many days now?”

He'd begun that statement answering Terese's question but ended it with a query for his father.

“I don't know that I'm going at all now,” Hunter said as if he didn't want to talk about it.

Johnny didn't take note of his father's reply; he simply filled Terese in on the details. “It's a trip to look at some bulls so we can get our herd bigger and tougher. It's 'portant.”

“Looks like we're about ready to eat these hot dogs,” Hunter said then, giving Terese the impression that he was trying to change the subject.

But hot dogs and beans were a good distraction for Johnny. He took Terese under his wing and taught her how to pull the hot dog off the stick by using the bun, what condiments were best, and how to eat the beans they'd warmed by placing the opened can just above the flames.

Beans weren't Terese's favorite food but she genuinely enjoyed the hot dog and she let her fellow diners know it.

“I think this was a really good idea,” she told them, surprised that Hunter's smile seemed as pleased as his son's.

“Now we get marshmallows!” Johnny announced when they'd finished the main course. “And I can cook everybody's on one stick!”

“Go to it,” Hunter allowed.

Johnny stabbed three of the fluffy confections on a single stick, while Terese and Hunter sat back and watched. When the marshmallows were toasty brown, her nephew offered Terese the first one.

Before she could take it, it fell to the ground.

“Oh, no!” Johnny lamented as if it were the end of the world.

Not wanting him to be disappointed, Terese said, “That's okay,” picked the marshmallow up, blew it off and popped it into her mouth.

It wasn't the smartest move she'd ever made. There were still grains of soil stuck to it and she couldn't help grimacing slightly when she felt and tasted the residual grit.

Hunter must have caught her expression because she heard him laugh. But Johnny didn't seem to notice.

“Isn't it good?” he asked eagerly.

“It is,” Terese assured him after she'd choked it down.

Hunter was sitting on the log that was at a ninety-degree angle to hers and he handed her the bottle of water she'd been drinking, leaning close enough to say, “You could have let that one go and had one of the others.”

“I wanted the full experience of what nature has to offer,” she lied.

But he knew better and merely laughed again. Not in a way that made fun of her, though. It was more a laugh that said he was enjoying himself. And so was she. In spite of the gritty marshmallow.

Her second taste of Johnny's cooking was an improvement over the first, but after that she'd had enough. Two marshmallows were Hunter's limit as well, but Johnny was a bottomless pit when it came to the sweets. He would have gone on toasting and eating marshmallows until the bag was empty except that his father stopped him at six.

Even so, between the hot chocolate and the marshmallows, the little boy was full of sugar-induced energy that left him unable to sit still once his marshmallow roasting was over, and he turned to jumping off the logs his father and Terese were using as seats.

“How about skipping some rocks in the pond?” Hunter suggested to divert him. “It looks different in the moonlight than it does in the day.”

Throwing rocks apparently had an allure all its own because Johnny didn't need more than that to inspire him. He set about collecting rocks until he had all his pockets filled with them. Then he went to the edge of the pond.

“Come and watch, T'rese!” he called to her.

“We can see you from here,” Hunter called back before Terese could comply.

She didn't mind that he'd gotten her out of it, though. She liked sitting there by the fire.

With him.

She didn't want to think too much about that.

Besides, he was right; they could see Johnny from where they were.

After watching and complimenting a few of
Johnny's tosses, Terese thought she could also take the opportunity to satisfy a bit of curiosity about what her nephew had said earlier in regard to Hunter going to Europe.

“So you have a trip planned?” she asked, glancing from son back to father.

Hunter slid from his log to sit on the ground and lean his back against it instead, bracing his elbows there, too, and stretching his legs out in front of her to avoid the fire.

“I did have,” he said. “I was all set to go this coming Saturday, as a matter of fact.”

“But now you aren't going?”

“I'm thinkin' no,” he said quietly, watching his son and frowning slightly.

“Because of Johnny's health condition?” Terese guessed.

Hunter nodded slowly. “I was going to leave him with Willy and Carla. They think of him as their own and I've never worried about him when he's with them. But now… Well, what if he falls or something—the way he did last week—and starts bleeding and I'm halfway around the world?”

Terese could tell he hadn't been joking when he'd said the discovery of Johnny's hemophilia had shaken him.

“Was Johnny right about the trip being important?” she asked.

“Not as important as Johnny. Nothing is that important.”

“No, of course not,” she agreed. “But even if the trip isn't as important as Johnny is, if it was important enough to make before, isn't is still important now?”