Forever Promised (49 page)

Parry smiled at her brightly. “Are you like Auntie Kimmy or Auntie Amy? Are you going to sneak me cookies and take me shopping?”

Benny’s face heated. “How often has Kimmy taken you shopping?” she asked, totally surprised.

“She and Crick and Mickey took me last week. I got lots of clothes for Easter, but you aren’t supposed to know that.” Benny’s daughter said this with a knowing smirk, the kind that showed off her dimples on her chubby little cheeks, and Benny flailed for an answer. Next to her, Missy made a choke-snort sort of sound, and Benny shot her a glare.

“Little shit is just like me,” Missy said only a little apologetically, and Benny blinked.

“Yeah, I wondered where she got that,” she said. Somehow it was less irritating in her kid than it had been in her know-it-all kid sister. She sighed, and some of her attitude leached out. “Parry, honey,” she said, bending down enough to kiss her daughter on the top of her fuzzy little head, “do you want to go help Drew cover the casket?”

“What’s a casket?”

“It’s that wooden box that has Sweetie’s ashes in it.” Oh hells.
This
was the worst part of parenting. Benny would rather change a thousand diapers than have one conversation about death.

“’Cause Sweetie isn’t here anymore,” Parry said soberly, and they’d talked about this.

“No, honey, she’s not. If we bury her ashes here, we can hope that the part of her that lives forever will be free and happy here.”

“’Cause we love this place, and she was nice,” Parry filled in. She was good at lessons, and Benny hoped wretchedly that she and Drew and Deacon and Crick had taught this one right.

“Exactly.”

“Do you think there will be worms?” Parry asked hopefully. “Because that would be
gross
! Maybe I could touch one!”

“Yeah, sure, kid. Go find worms!”

Parry loped off across the green grass and mustard flowers, shouting, “Drew! Mama says I can touch worms!” and Benny clapped her hand across her mouth to mask the laughter. She looked up and met Missy’s eyes and caught that little closed-mouth smirk, complete with dimples, and she felt an entirely new ache in a morning that already ached enough.

“I was hurt,” she said quietly. “Crick and I busted our asses trying to see you and Crystal, and you didn’t want to see us. I mean, I get it—Step-Bob and Melanie would put anyone off of parents, but—”

“You called him Step-Bob?”

“Well…
yeah.
Did
you
want to be related to him?”

Missy’s face went through an odd series of contortions—expressions as wide and as varied as laughter to despair. Finally she just clapped a hand over her mouth and said, “
No!
Oh my
God
,
no! Who
would
want to be related to him!
Or
Melanie? Are you shitting me?”

Benny laughed and watched her daughter help Drew with the big pile of dirt. “Nope,” she said seriously. “See? So, you know. Step-Bob. And I just pretend you
can
pick your family.”

Missy looked at them too. “So, uhm….”

Benny felt her heart melt. She knew where this question was going. “Do you want me to pick you?”

“We… we don’t know each other that well. Maybe… you know.”

Benny tucked her hand under Missy’s arm and started walking toward the shade of the oak trees. “Here, walk me to my car while we talk, ’kay? My back is
killing
me.”

“Okay. Yeah. Okay. So, why are you pregnant again?”

“So Crick could say his sister’s having his husband’s baby,” Benny replied with a straight face. If this didn’t make her little sister break up, they’d have nothing to base a relationship on.

Missy did a spit-take and started to laugh. Not a giggle but a chortle, down from the depths of her slender body. “That
asshole—
does he really?”

“Wouldn’t you?” Because, seriously—who
wouldn’t
want to tell people that?

Missy laughed some more, and Benny had the feeling that maybe Missy would want to visit the next time Crick tried.

S
HOOTING
S
TAR
was going to end up as glue. Not only had the fucker practically maimed him while Deacon was feeding her carrots, but the goddamned horse kept nipping at Even Star’s flanks when they were out in the field. His best stallion
ever
,
and the horse was starting to look like hamburger. The stables were full, the fields were full, and Shooting Star was angling for her own goddamned pen and her own goddamned stall. Deacon had about
had it
with a horse that tried to throw him, crush him, or kill him dead with every breath that fucker took.

About the only human being on earth that horse had liked had been Sweetie.

Deacon and Sweetie had rarely spoken to each other, but then, they hadn’t needed to. Brushing, feeding, picking feet—it was all quiet, instinctive, most of the work talking to the horses. Drew liked to keep a running monologue to Deacon, and Deacon didn’t mind—he sometimes chatted back.

Sweetie just wanted to be with the horses, and her presence in the barn had been… quiet. Compassionate—for the horses, at least. Powerful.

He’d missed her when she’d run away. Her death almost undid him.

And the fucking horse was never going to be the same.

Deacon pulled on the halter to try to get the horse to the field next door. It would mean tripling up with three of the yearling mares, but they were all sweethearts—Even’s foals usually were—so he thought they might manage better together than Even would spending one more day with Shooting Star.

Shooter yanked back against the halter
hard
,
and Deacon had about enough.

“You wanna
get
shot
,
ya fucker?” Deacon shouted, thumping the horse on the side of the neck. “I’m the only asshole on the planet who wants you alive
maybe
, and you’re gonna go and pull that shit with me?”

He gave the halter an unfriendly yank, and the horse snorted but
did
haul her slow fat ass in through the gate. Deacon closed it behind him and tried to release the halter so Shooter could run to her heart’s content and not be accountable to another soul for a couple of days. The horse tried to kick him—twice—and one of those times she succeeded in grazing Deacon’s bandage, and Deacon swore again, seeing stars. Fuck it. Horse was keeping the halter on for a day. Deacon would spend tomorrow working the damned thing out until she whinnied for mercy, and maybe after that, she’d show the guy who gave her carrots some fucking respect.

He turned around to the gate and was surprised to see a tall girl with messy red hair bundled up on her head leaning against the gate to the pasture.

She wore worn jeans with flared legs and a T-shirt—tight around the boobs but not overly so—in a bright, neon green, and a surprisingly patient expression.

It took him a minute to remember that the girl was Crick and Benny’s sister. “Missy?”

“Hi,” she said quietly, and she smiled against the sun and wrinkled her nose. “That horse is a real motherfucker, ain’t he?”

Deacon nodded, feeling the ache in his shin all the way to the pit of his groin. “It’s a she, but yeah. Motherfucker is right. You have no idea. Here, let me through. I don’t put it past her not to charge the gate.”

“Why do you put up with her?” she asked earnestly.

He looked at her, remembering how Benny said they’d talked at the funeral, and she’d been tolerable. The softness in Benny’s eyes, though, said a little more about hope.

“Because sometimes she’s not such a vicious bitch, and she’s worth saving.”

Missy colored and looked down. “I’m cleaning houses now. They don’t hate me.”

Deacon nodded. “That’s good to hear.”

“I, uhm. I mean, I don’t age out of Promise House for a couple of years, but, well. You know. If I have family, they think it’s better if I can stay there.” She looked up at him, the hope naked on her face. “I really loved this place when I was a kid,” she confessed.

“We loved having you,” he told her soberly. It was true. He, Parrish, Crick—they’d all gone out of their way to make sure Crick’s little sisters were safe, were fed, had fun. Seeing Missy so hostile—that had hurt.

“Well, Shane says you have a tack room—you used to let kids stay there when they needed to.”

Deacon nodded. “If they did their share,” he said carefully. “Usually, they had to prove themselves first.”

Missy smiled hopefully. “I don’t run… well, not as fast, anyway… I try not to dodge out on hard work. I’d….” She let out a breath, like she was trying to remember how to do this without being needy. “I know you’ve got kids working here from Promise House already. I’d like a chance to join them and prove myself.”

Deacon nodded, thinking Crick hadn’t gotten around to painting the guest bedroom yet. He wouldn’t scare her with that, he thought painfully. Too much hope was a scary thing.

“I think we can do that,” he said. The sun was neatly dissected by the horizon, and even this close to April, that meant it got a little chilly. A breeze picked up across the fields, still smelling like wildflowers and a little like water at twilight. “You want to come in for dinner and discuss it? What time is Shane coming to pick you up?”

Missy’s cheeks colored. “It’s sort of my day off. I told Kimmy I was coming and I walked here.”

Deacon nodded. “Fair enough. Well, come in for dinner and we’ll take you back when it’s time. Crick would love to have you.”

She smiled, looking embarrassed, and said, “Thank you. Thank you a lot. That’s… I… I’m not that nice a person, and—”

“Melissa?”

“Yeah?”

“Second chances, sweetheart. We all believe in second chances.”

She nodded, and her brows drew together, and her lower lip quivered. “I really did love this place when I was a kid. I don’t know how I could have forgotten….”

She was going to cry, and he wasn’t up to that, not now, not so soon after the funeral.

“Really? What part did you like best?” he asked, starting a stride back to the house.

“You used to let us ride the gentle ones,” she said. “Remember? And you or Crick or Parrish would be behind us, but you’d let us pretend we got to steer—I loved that. I haven’t ridden a horse since, but it was am
a
zing!”

Deacon looked at her, horrified. “Haven’t ridden since? That’s criminal,” he said, and he meant it.

She laughed, and yeah. She had the shape of Crick and Benny’s eyes, and Crick’s narrow face, and Benny’s pointed chin.

“Can I ask you a question?” he asked after watching her do that.

“Yeah, sure.”

“What’s your favorite color?”

“Oh, Jesus—green, brown, anything but pink!”

Awesome. Whether they were having a girl or a boy, they could
finally
paint over the flower barf in Benny’s old room.

K
IMMY
was a wise woman. She used the shower as a shameless excuse to engage Missy in almost everything: from the decorations (daisies everywhere) to the games (the one with the diapers full of chocolate bars was really gross) to keeping track of who gave what in a little notebook while the guys (looking embarrassed and uncomfortable) opened the gifts—Missy had a hand in it.

It was even better when Kimmy came by and confided to Crick and Benny that she hadn’t been bitchy once about the family at The Pulpit since the funeral. She walked away looking pleased with herself, and Crick looked at Benny, both of them thinking the same thing.

“Did Kimmy shake the gifts for snakes or spiders?” Crick asked, only half kidding.

Benny shrugged. “You know, maybe she’s just growing up, you ever think of that?”

Crick’s smirk (and Benny was only just now noticing that it was a family trait) started to fade. “Well, it happens to the best of us,” he said softly.

Benny watched Parry make one more trip around the room, offering tiny ham sandwiches on a plate.

“And it happens
really
fast,” she said wistfully. The baby moved, and she put her hand over the squirming thing in her stomach. She wanted another one, wanted another one for
herself
, but she wasn’t out of school yet, and even if she was, she and Drew might want to spend a couple of years without one, just for kicks.

Crick ruffled her hair—in spite of the goop she’d put in it to make it look like that flyaway thing was on purpose. “Jesus, Benny, what are you? Twenty-two? You know, you could wait five years and
still
have time to pop out six of the little goobers. I mean…
look
at everything you’ve done with your life so far!”

Benny did the math in her head and then grinned at her brother. “Six? Hell. I’m going for ten! But I’ll tell you this.” She rubbed her tummy then, thought of the eight and a half months she’d spent with this little person inside. She knew its moods, she knew that it got extra spazzy at the sound of Crick’s voice, and she knew that it calmed down and rocked softly at the sound of Deacon’s. “
This
,” she said passionately, trying hard not to think of saying good-bye, “is the
last
time I’ll share.”

Deacon came up behind her then and put his hands on her shoulders. “No one expects you to, Shorty. I’m pretty sure you’ve done your duty, times about a thousand.”

Oh, he smelled so good, like oak and long grass and horses and even a little bit of aftershave. And he’d worn new jeans and sneakers and a new green henley shirt, and he’d water-combed his freshly cut hair. He still made her heart beat a little faster, and his voice was still the gentlest she’d ever heard.

But….

But his touch on her shoulders was like Crick’s, or Shane’s or Jeff’s or Mikhail’s—it was neutral, and warm and male, and it wasn’t for her.

Deacon moved the hand on her shoulder and put it on Crick’s, squeezing very differently, she’d wager. He bent then and kissed Crick’s cheek, and Crick looked up at him shyly.

“Did you have fun opening all those presents, Carrick James?”