Hawk's Way Grooms (13 page)

The hour Mac spent with Timothy Douglas had been well worth the time and trouble to get there. As he paced his agent's office, Mac worked through the various suggestions Douglas had made for how he could help Jewel.

“Patience is essential,” Douglas said. “Thoughtfulness. Consideration. All the things you would normally expect in a loving relationship. Only, each step of the way, you need to check with Jewel to make sure she's still with you. Understand?”

Mac understood all right. The man was supposed to control himself while he attended to the woman first. “What if I can't wait?” he blurted, his face crimson with embarrassment.

“Do you care for this woman?” Douglas asked.

“Why the hell do you think I'm so worried?” Mac shot back. “What if I lose control and make things worse?”

“Be sure you're thinking of her at the crucial moment, instead of yourself, and everything will turn out fine.”

“That's all there is to it?” Mac asked skeptically.

“Sex is a natural bodily function,” Douglas said. “We're supposed to procreate. Your body will know what to do, even if you don't.”

Mac took comfort in that last word of advice. But as he was very well aware, knowing technically what to do, and actually doing it, sometimes turned out to be two entirely different things.

On Mac's next lap across his agent's office, the door opened and Andy Dennison stepped inside.

“Hi there, Mac. What's new?”

“I can walk. And I can run.”

Andy smiled and crossed to shake Mac's hand. “Congratulations. I should have known you would do what you promised. How about a cigar to celebrate?”

“No thanks,” Mac said with a smile. “I'm in training.”

“You don't mind if I have one.” Andy crossed to his desk, took a cigar from a box on top of it, clipped the end with a sterling silver device, sniffed it and rolled the tobacco lovingly between his fingers. That was as far as he could go. No smoking was allowed in the building.

“When can I set up an appointment with the Tornadoes?” Andy asked.

“Not so fast,” Mac said, seating himself in one of the two modern chrome and black leather chairs facing the desk. “What's the last date I could show up in training camp and still have a chance to make the team?”

“Depends on how fast you can run when you show up,” Andy said bluntly.

“How fast is the new kid?”

Andy gave Mac a figure for the forty that made sweat bead on Mac's forehead. It was two seconds better than Mac's best time before he was injured.

“What about his hands?”

“Misses a few. Fumbles now and again.”

Mac smiled. “Then I have a chance. Being fastest isn't everything. I proved that when I played.”

“Yeah. But being slow will get you cut from the team,” Andy pointed out.

“How slow is too slow?” Mac asked, leaning forward, his elbows on his knees.

Andy shrugged. “Hard to say. But if you aren't within a second or two of your best time…” Andy shrugged again.

Mac sighed and sat back, crossing his good ankle over his scarred knee. “I was afraid of that.”

“Look, there's been some interest in using you as a sports commentator. Why not let me follow up and—”

“That isn't what I want to do with my life.”

“What are you planning to do? I mean, if you don't make the team?”

Mac drew a complete blank. “I don't know. I haven't thought about it much.”

“Maybe you should,” Andy said. “Think about that sportscasting job. It's national television, lots of exposure, possibility of advertising bucks. Lot of dough in a job like that.”

“Lots of travel, too,” Mac said.

“Yeah, there's that.”

“I want to settle down somewhere and have a family.”

Andy cleared his throat. “Uh. I heard about that stop you made this afternoon. Anything I can do to help?”

Mac laughed. “It's taken care of, but thanks for the offer.”

“Sure, Mac, just know I'm there if you need me. By the way, who's the girl?”

“Knowing your penchant for publicity I figure I'll keep that to myself for a while.”

“Hey. Whatever you want,” Andy said. “By the way, how long are you going to be in town?”

“Just overnight.”

“Anxious to get back to your girl?” Andy said with a sly smile.

Mac thought about it, smiled and answered, “Yeah. I am.”

“Look, I know some folks who'd like to have dinner with you. How about it?”

“Will it help you out?”

Andy grinned. “You're a great guy, Mac. I knew you'd come through. I'll have a tux delivered to your hotel room, and I'll have my limo pick you up at eight.”

“A tux! What kind of shindig is this?”

“Charity ball in Forth Worth, complete with politicians and socialites. Won't hurt you to be seen there, Mac. You can use all the good press you can get. You'll be sitting at the mayor's table.”

Mac shook his head. “How do I let you talk me into these things?”

Andy stuck the cigar between his teeth and grinned. “You like me?”

Instead of laughing, Mac looked Andy in the eye and said, “You stuck with me when a lot of other folks didn't. I'm not likely to forget that anytime soon.” He left before Andy could form a response.

C
OLT SAT ON THE SAGGING BACK PORCH
of Jenny's house waiting for Huck to come back out. He tugged at the frayed knee of his jeans, making the tear worse, then glanced up at the hot, noonday sun. He couldn't get what Mac had said about Huck and Jenny out of his mind.

College is a long way off. Maybe they'll change their minds about each other.

Colt would never do anything to separate the two of them—not that he believed anything could alter Jenny's devotion to Huck—but Mac had offered him a sort of hope he hadn't allowed himself to feel in a very long time.

Lately, Colt let his eyes linger on her more. He let his heart fall more completely under her spell. Even though his head said it was a stupid thing to do.

“Hey, Colt. You ready to go?”

Colt leapt up guiltily as the kitchen screen door slammed and stuck his hands deep into his back pockets. “Yeah. Sure.”
Good thing Huck couldn't read his mind.

“You're acting awful jumpy lately. What's your problem?” Huck asked as he crossed past Colt and down the creaking steps. “Some girl finally caught your eye?” he teased.

Maybe Huck could read minds,
Colt thought uncomfortably.

“Who is it? Sarah Logan? Freda Barnett? I know—Betty Lou Tucker!”

Betty Lou Tucker was the prettiest—and most curvaceous—girl in school. Huck was way off the mark. The only girl Colt ever thought about was Jenny. And Jenny wasn't beautiful, she was just…Jenny. Colt thought of Jenny looking up at him with her bluer-than-blue eyes and felt the heat rising up his throat to make visible spots on his cheeks.

“Thought so,” Huck said with a laugh. “Betty Lou's been looking at a lot of guys since she broke up with Bobby Ray.” Huck unlooped the reins from the tie rail in front of the Double D ranch house and mounted his horse. “You coming with me, or you gonna sit on Jenny's back porch all day?”

“I…uh…think I'll wait to talk to Jenny before I leave…about some stuff.”

Huck shook his head in disgust. “Jenny's gotta feed the little ones before she can do anything. You might be waiting a while. She was asking me if I could help her out, but I've got better things to do with my time than housework. You're welcome to take my place.”

“Maybe I'll do that,” Colt said, his heart thumping a little harder.

“See you tonight at the movies?” Huck asked.

“Naw. My dad asked me to do some bookkeeping with him.”

“When are you gonna tell him you're not gonna stay on the ranch?” Huck asked.

“Sometime,” Colt said.

“Better be soon, or he'll be depending on you so much you'll never get out,” Huck warned.

“I hear you,” Colt said irritably.

Huck kicked his horse into a lope, raising a choking cloud of dust from the dry, sunbaked dirt around the house.

Colt stepped back and waved away the worst of it so he could breathe, then turned and stared at the screen door. All he had to do was knock and offer his help. It was bound to seem a little odd to Jenny for him to volunteer, since he'd never been in her house before.

There was a reason for that. He stayed away from sick people, and her mother had been sick nearly the whole time he'd known her. Her mother's breast cancer had gone into remission for a long time, but after the youngest child was born, it had come back.

Now Mrs. Wright was dying of cancer. Colt knew what that meant. Hair falling out from chemotherapy. Frail limbs. Eyes dead long before the body was. He had seen too much of it at Camp LittleHawk. Enough to know that it hurt desperately to like—let alone love—someone who was ill and who might or might not survive another week, another month, another year.

The only thing that could make him go inside Jenny's house right now was the knowledge that he would get to spend time alone with her. They would probably talk and maybe laugh together. That possibility was worth having to share Jenny's pain as she tended to her dying mother.

But Huck had said Jenny was feeding the little ones. Colt was the baby in his family, but he figured he could probably manage whatever Jenny asked of him.

Colt knocked on the door, said, “Jenny, I'm coming in,” and let himself inside. He immediately took off his Western straw hat and stood still inside the screen door until his eyes adjusted to the darker room. When he could see, he found Jenny staring at him, her jaw hanging open.

“Colt. What are you doing in here?”

“Huck thought you might need some help.” He clutched the hat against his chest feeling foolish, but said, “Here I am.”

She smiled, and he knew it was going to be all right. He looked for a place to hang his hat, but didn't see anything.

“Put it on top of the refrigerator,” she said. “That way Tyler and James can't get to it.”

He looked at the baby sitting in the high chair before her and the older child sitting in a youth chair next to him. “They seem pretty well lassoed,” he said, but he put the hat where she told him, anyway.

She gestured him toward her. “This is Randy,” she said, sticking another spoonful of something gross looking in the baby's mouth, “and next to him is Sam. Tyler and James are playing in their room.

“Here. You can take my place.” She rose and handed Colt the baby spoon and the open jar of baby food. “Randy loves peas.”

Colt took one look at the contents of the jar and nearly gagged. “This doesn't look edible.”

Jenny laughed, and he felt his whole body go still at the sound. “Don't tell Randy. He eats it like it was green ice cream.”

Colt sat in the chair she had vacated and aimed a spoon of peas in Randy's direction. When his mouth opened, Colt shoved it in, and Randy cleaned it off. “He's a human vacuum cleaner!”

“He'll probably end up as big and tall as my dad,” Jenny said as she set a plate of more recognizable food in front of Sam. The music had gone out of her voice by the time she got to the end of her sentence.

“Where is your dad?”

“He left,” she said, her eyes focused on Sam. “Took off when Mom got sick the second time.”

“I'm sorry, Jenny. I didn't know.”

She tried to make light of it. “Can't really blame him. It isn't pretty to watch someone die. He loved her very much, you know.”

Colt couldn't believe how matter-of-factly she was speaking about such a tragic situation. “It must be hard for you and your mom to get along on your own.”

Her chin came up, and she looked at him with her incredible blue eyes. “We manage.”

He heard her message loud and clear:
Don't feel sorry for me.
He admired her gumption. But what choice did she have? She wasn't old enough to leave home and get a job. Where would she go? He realized now why she had been so worried about being left behind by Huck.

“Good thing you have so much help around the house,” he said. “All those brothers, I mean.”

“I'm the eldest,” she said. “Tyler is ten, James is nine, Sam is five and Randy will be one in a couple of months.”

“Who takes care of them when you're in school?”

“Mom has a sister who takes care of her during the days and keeps an eye on the little ones. I pick up the slack at night and give Aunt Lenore a rest.”

Colt caught her glance for a moment and saw a sort of desperation he had often felt himself. A yearning to be free to follow your own path, to see the world, to explore to your heart's content. And the knowledge that destiny—or your parents or family—had other plans for you.

He had thought Huck was the only impediment to having Jenny. He saw now what the future held for her as well as she probably saw it herself. Unless she ran away, and he did not see Jenny as the kind of person who ran away from anything, she would be tied to her family until the boys were grown.

Huck would leave her behind when she couldn't go with him, because Huck would never understand why she couldn't go. Colt understood, though. It was the same reason he might never fly jets. Because she couldn't bear to hurt her family to please herself. As he could never bear to hurt his.

Colt wanted to tell her that he understood. That he knew what she faced. That he would be there for her, even if Huck wasn't.

What if you get a chance to fly jets?
an inner voice asked.
Would you stay and work at Hawk's Pride just to be near Jenny?

Colt was glad he didn't have to make that kind of decision for four years. He would be here for her now. Even though she was Huck's girl. And might always be.

 

J
EWEL
, P
ATTY AND
G
AVIN WERE
sitting in the sand at the bottom of a canyon with eleven campers, pencils and notepads in hand, sketching the primitive art etched on the stone canyon wall that rose up on one side of them.

Some of the kids were sitting cross-legged, some lay on their stomachs. Only one child had not relaxed and made himself comfortable. The twelfth camper, Brad Templeton, stood directly in front of the wall, staring up at it intently.

“How are you doing?” Jewel asked the campers as she rose and began to walk among them to see what they had produced in the half hour they had been drawing.

“Okay.”

“Pretty good.”

“What's that thing there?” A girl's finger pointed to a stick horse etched on the stone wall.

“What does it look like?” Jewel asked.

“It's a horse, dummy,” the boy sitting next to the girl said scornfully.

“Yes, it is, Louis,” Jewel said. “But you can see why Nolie might not recognize it. It could be some other animal.”

“It has a long tail and pointy ears like a horse,” Louis said.

“True. But some dogs have long tails and pointy ears.”

“Oh,” Louis said thoughtfully. “It looked like a horse to me.”

“That's why we're making these drawings,” Jewel explained. “And writing down what we think they mean.” She put a supportive hand on Patty's shoulder as she encouraged one of the campers and exchanged a thankful look with Gavin, who had one of the youngest—and most homesick—campers sitting in his lap.

“We'll send your drawings to an archaeologist at the university who studies primitive art. She can tell us what she thinks the drawing means. When I send you her findings later this summer, you can compare your conclusions with hers.”

“Does the drawing really mean something?” another little girl asked, staring at the primitive figures.

Jewel shrugged and smiled. “I don't know. Maybe someone a long time ago was just having fun drawing.”

The kids laughed.

Jewel had reached Brad's side and noticed his drawing pad was blank. “Is something wrong, Brad?” she asked quietly.

He kept his eyes on the stone wall and spoke in a voice that only she could hear. “I know what it means,” he said.

“You do?” Jewel turned to stare at the wall of stick figures and arrows pointing in different directions with a sun above it all. “Tell me. I've always been curious.”

“What does it matter? What does anything matter?”

Jewel's brow furrowed. “You can't give up, Brad,” she said.

“Why not?” he shot back. “People give up on stuff all the time. They quit hobbies and they quit school and they quit jobs.”

“They don't quit living,” she said.

“Some do,” he said stubbornly. “They just stop doing things. You know what I mean.”

Jewel felt a chill run down her spine.
People like her. As afraid of living as Brad was of dying.
“Tell me about the drawings, Brad.”

He turned to look up at the wall. “The man wants to go somewhere far away, to have an adventure. But he isn't sure which is the best way to go. So he doesn't go anywhere at all. He stays right where he is. Where it's safe.”

Jewel stared at the wall. The sun shone brightly above a stick-figure man and his stick-figure horse. They were surrounded by arrows pointing in all different directions—some of them back at the man himself.

He doesn't go anywhere at all. He stays right where he is. Where it's safe.

Jewel's throat squeezed closed. Brad might have been describing her own life for the past six years. Recently she had begun to make changes, but even so, she had been relying on Mac to get her over the worst hurdles. That had to stop. She had to start thinking about moving forward on her own. Or she might end up stuck forever right where she was.

She had to stop letting the past control her present. She had to open herself to new relationships. She couldn't count on Mac to solve her problems. He wanted to be her friend, nothing more. That had become apparent when she discovered from reading the newspapers the real reason he had gone to Dallas three days ago.