From Here to There (25 page)

 "Phillip!"

 He stepped back grinning. "Just a thought." Kissing her lightly on the forehead, he headed out the door leaving behind a perplexed woman. She couldn't understand him, didn't know what he wanted, but she was beginning to realize something. She was falling in love with her own husband. A man who at least in the beginning had not wanted a wife but rather a decoration to his life. The question was, what did he want now? Who was Phillip Drummond and would she find out before he broke her heart?

Entering Nancy's fragrant smelling kitchen, Helene asked, "What can I do?"

 Nancy smiled and pointed to the salad greens. Helene sat at a stool and began tearing apart lettuce.

 "I think your husband seems like a nice guy," Nancy said.

 "You barely met him."

 "I know, but I make quick judgments about people. I don't think Wes likes him though."

 "I could have told you that--
if
you'd told me Wes would be here." Helene grabbed a paring knife and sliced up radishes, tossing them here and there in the salad bowl.

 "He came home with Emile and had already been invited to dinner." Nancy shrugged. "Wes and Phil aren't comfortable with each other, but maybe it's just as well they learn to get along."

 "I don't see why."

 "It's a tight community out here. I mean there's the new people, but they usually don't care much to socialize with us. A lot of the time they're flying in for holidays and only have a caretaker on their place the rest of the time. People who've been here a long time need each other."

 "It suppose so."

 "It seems to be mutual dislike, I mean Phil and Wes." She scrunched up her pert little nose thoughtfully. "I'm not sure what Emile thinks of Phil either. Men are so... competitive with each other. It might take a little time for the whole thing to shake out."

 "As if women aren't competitive!" Helene raised her eyebrows and laughed. "Something is coming back to me."

 "Don't bring that up," Nancy demanded.

 "Ah, but it's so--appropriate. It was a blonde, whatever her name was, and she came onto Emile at a dance." She left a pointed silence before she added in a sorrowful voice, "Poor little--whatever her name was--she'll probably never be the same again. I mean did you have to yank off her hair piece right there in front of everyone?"

 "It was an accident," Nancy defended, throwing up her hands innocently. "Besides, I didn't actually hurt her."

 Helene raised her brows even higher.

 "Well, she was all over him. Imagine unbuttoning his shirt in a public place. I mean what did you expect me to do. It was different anyway."

 "Sure, you're a woman and women don't get competitive."

 "Right," Nancy agreed with a laugh. "Tonight would have been easier though if I'd thought to un-invite Wes. I'd like to have Emile and Phillip get to know each other and with Wes acting like a territorial bulldog, I'm not sure it's going to be possible. Who knows if those two will make it through the evening without a blow-up."

 "Honestly, I think you're worrying for nothing. Wes isn't that crazy about me and even Phillip isn't sure if he wants me or not. They're hardly apt to come to blows over me. Quit worrying."

 "I don't know about that." Nancy shook her head skeptically." You know how bulls are after a heifer in heat."

 "I'm not a heifer in heat," Helene retorted insulted even as she knew it was a more appropriate description than it’d have been a month earlier.

 "Oh, all right. I'll drop that subject. There's something more interesting to talk about anyway." She peeled a carrot and handed it to Helene to grate. "There's something different about you tonight," she said, lowering her voice. "A glow. What's changed since we last talked?"

 Helene flushed. "Don't be silly."

 "I'm not being silly. I know you. Something's changed. Are you sure you aren't in love with that husband of yours?"

 "You have got too much
imagination
." Helene turned the word into an accusation. "I can hardly wait for that baby of yours to be born. You'll be busy enough then that you won't have time to create fantasies for me."

 Nancy laughed, rubbing her stomach almost absentmindedly. "You're not the only anxious one. Emile must have asked three times if I really felt up to fixing a big dinner for everybody."

 "Phillip wondered about that too."

 "Men! You'd think a pregnancy was a disease. My husband births enough cows he ought to know better."

 "It's different when it's the heifer he loves."

 Nancy bent over, then let out a yelp.

 "What's the matter."

 "I hate not being able to reach down for anything without this--whoever it is--kicking me. Can you take the chicken out of the oven?"

 As Helene carried a bowl of mashed potatoes into the dining room, setting it on the round oak table, she cast a nervous eye toward the living room to see how Phillip and Wes were managing. They seemed to have achieved an uneasy truce, but Emile and his father were carrying the brunt of the conversation.

 Nancy pushed open the swinging door with a plate of fried chicken. "Dad, will you say grace for us?" she asked. Helene smiled as the four men got to their feet, obviously either hungry or eager to escape the uneasy social situation. How did a soon-to-be ex-husband and a want-to-be boyfriend usually get along?

 At the table, Amos gave a simple blessing before everyone began to pass and serve themselves from the bowls and plates. For the moment it was enough to say, could I have... Try this... There was no need for more complex conversation. But then all the plates were filled.

 "So, you vaccinated cattle today," Emile said, looking at Phillip.

 "Got 'em all done too," Amos answered. "Thanks to Phil here."

 "I think you mean in spite of Phil, don't you?" Phillip quipped, taking a sip of water and looking down the table to where Wes had taken the seat next to Helene.

 "No sir, I don't. You're getting the hang of working cattle just fine. By the end of the day, you handled those chutes like a pro."

 "Only caught my fingers three times in the gears and handles," Phillip added wryly bringing forth the hand to show the reddened digits.

 "Everybody gets their fingers caught in the chutes now and then," Emile said, taking a bite of chicken, as he watched Phillip.

 Wes changed the subject. "How long you figure to be around anyway, Phil? I mean, how long can you leave your
important
business back East?"

 Phillip looked at him thoughtfully. "I don't know. I'm getting a phone hooked up down at the bunkhouse to allow me to communicate with my office. Communication is really the key to everything." Phillip looked pointedly at Helene, and she felt herself blush. From the smile on his face--for once--she knew exactly what he was thinking.

 "I can't believe that would be enough to really keep a consulting business going," Wes said. "You aren't thinking of living here year-round, are you?"

 "If I do," Phillip quipped, "I'll be sure and let you know first one, Wes."

 Wes glared at him but subsided back to his food as others asked Phillip polite questions about his business.

 As the conversation drifted around the table between the coming elections, a new forestry proposal that would affect grazing rights, a grizzly that a trapper had shot just outside his cabin at the boundary to Yellowstone Park and the fine with which he'd been threatened, and the murder of a prosperous rancher upstate, it seemed it was little time at all before Helene and Nancy were clearing the table and Nancy was producing an apple pie.

 "Wow," Phillip said appreciatively, his blue eyes gleaming, "did you bake that yourself?"

 "Sure did," Nancy said with a grin as she set it down and began cutting it into pieces. Helene came back from the kitchen with a carton of ice cream.

 Helene remembered Phillip’s reaction to her own pie. Clearly to him, apple pie was the most wonderful dessert he’d ever tasted.

 "How many want ice cream on this?" Helene asked, adding a dollop of vanilla ice cream to each piece of pie as directed. She couldn't help but smile at Phillip's obvious pleasure as she handed him his dessert.

 "Maybe you ought to sample it before you say too much," Nancy said. 'I was a little distracted today. Maybe I put in too much of something."

 "Doesn't look that way to me," Amos said as he reached for his own piece.

 As Helene watched Phillip appreciatively take his first bite of the pie, savoring the taste, she thought about his brief description of his growing up years. He had missed a lot. Even though her parents had often been too busy for her, Uncle Amos and Aunt Rochelle had always been there as surrogate parents. The holidays had meant warm family times. There had been lots of home-baked treats and special family dinners. Phillip hadn't experienced those same things, and it had left a mark on him that she was only slowly beginning to comprehend. He didn't trust family because he had never really experienced it, or his experiences had been negative rather than positive. She wondered if it was too late now.

 Pouring everyone another cup of coffee, Nancy looked over Phillip's shoulder at the empty pie plate. "I think you liked that," she said teasingly.

 "Best pie I ever ate," Phillip stated flatly. Then added, “Other than Helene’s, of course.” He smiled at her.

 "Well, now we know you like our pies. What do you think of our West?"

 Phillip managed to swallow his coffee before he choked. "What could I think?" he asked, hoping he could avoid a straight answer to her direct question.

 "You could hate it, love it or not have made up your mind yet," Nancy suggested, sitting beside Emile and lightly massaging her husband's neck.

 "I see you're not going to let me off the hook," Phillip said with a faint smile.

 "Is it such a complex question?" Nancy asked innocently.

  "I don't think we should put Phillip on the spot this way," Helene said, interrupting protectively. "What he thinks or doesn't think of the West is his business."

 Phillip knew because of Helene's protective intervention, he could avoid the issue, but he chose not to. "I have a question for you all. What is this
West
you talk about?"

 Wes sat up straighter. "You don't know what the West is?" he asked with at least pretend amazement.

 "Sometimes you people talk as though this is a foreign country or something, that people out here have a different set of values than anyplace else. Is that how you see yourselves and this country?

 "Maybe a little," Nancy admitted. With a small smile, she suggested they sit in the living room where it was more comfortable for the rest of this conversation.

 Helene looked at Nancy speculatively, wondering what Nancy's purpose had been in bringing up the issue. Her friend had always been provocative in her comments. It was one of the things Helene liked about her, but she was never snide.

 "Can I help you clean up?" Helene asked, carrying dessert plates into the kitchen and hoping Nancy would agree so she could ask her what had possessed her to put Phillip on the spot that way.

 "Nope. I'll do that later. I want to enjoy the conversation." Nancy smiled benignly at Helene, her face ingenuous--except in the gleam of her blue eyes.

 "I should apologize to you, Phil," Nancy said as soon as everyone was seated again. "It must have sounded like an accusation the way I put my question. I didn't mean it that way." She smiled a gamine grin that Phillip thought would have made it nearly impossible for anyone to take offense at what she'd said.