Hot in Hellcat Canyon (11 page)

“If you behave yourself, you’ve got nothing to worry about.”

“Darlin’, I’m still hoping you’ll give me a reason to misbehave.”

She tilted her head. “Boy, it’s like a faucet, isn’t it, J. T.? The charm?”

“It’s like a faucet, isn’t it, Britt? The prickly rejoinders?”

She paused.

“ ‘Prickly . . . rejoinders’?” she quoted.

With great, slow, wondering, savoring pleasure.

Amusement lit up her whole face.

Damn, but he liked this woman. She was
maddening
.

“I know a lot of other words you might be interested in, Britt Langley. I’d be happy to whisper them to you right now.”

“I know a two-letter word you ought to look up, J. T.”

She didn’t sound or even look angry. She was smiling, and she’d swatted that back to him like a tennis pro. There was an accomplished flirt in there somewhere underneath all the thorns.

She did, however, sound firm.

He’d never had so much fun being thoroughly blown off.

“I have to get going,” she said. “Gary will get in touch with you if something opens up.”

J. T. sighed deeply and with great resignation.

She laughed at his suffering and drove away with a wave.

CHAPTER 6

H
e walked into the garage, smiling in a way no man who’d just been resoundingly rejected ought to smile, and inhaled with pleasure the good, masculine motor-oil-and-gasoline perfume of the garage.

A big gray-haired guy sporting a really high quality mustache and a significant belly was waiting for his own truck, which was getting its oil changed. The two of them gazed up at their vehicles on the rack as if in moral support.

He turned and saw J. T. “You must be that Hollywood fella.”

“So I am. You’re that Misty Cat fella.”

“So I am. Glenn Harwood. Me and my wife, Sherrie, we own the place.”

“J. T. McCord.” J. T. shook Glenn’s outthrust hand.

“This your truck?” Glenn gestured upward at J. T.’s old Dodge Ram.

“Yep.”

“Had her for some time, eh?” Glenn diagnosed.

“Since she was born, you might say. She breaks, I fix her.”

Glenn chuckled. “A truck’s a commitment. Not just a commodity.”

“Agreed.”

They stood in silence a moment longer.

“Was that our Britt dropped you off?” Glenn said, almost idly.

“Our?” Interesting choice of words.

“Oh, we kind of think of our employees that way, me and Sherrie. A bit like family.”

“Family, huh? Even that glowering guy behind the grill?”

“Oh, sure. Nice kid, Giorgio, underneath it all. Talented cook.”

Sure he is
, J. T. thought.
Nice like a snakebite is nice.

“Yeah, thought I recognized that car of hers,” Glenn said. “Damn thing is held together with chewing gum and paper clips and string, practically. Wonder when the last time she changed her oil was? Women and their cars.” Glenn gave his head a long-suffering shake. “I have two daughters. Two boys, too. One’s a surgeon at the hospital in Black Oak. But that Britt has some smarts, though, I’ll hand that to her.”

J. T. thought about Britt and that poor, sad ficus. “Something tells me she’s good about stuff like oil. I had in mind renting a house in Hellcat Canyon for a time, since I’ll be filming near town. The house I saw today wasn’t quite right, however. Britt was kind enough to drop me off here.”

Glenn grunted an assent. “House has to fit a man. Like a truck.”

This might in fact be true. J. T. didn’t know. He hadn’t lived in any single place that felt like home since he’d left Tennessee, and he hadn’t thought it mattered. Thanks to what Britt had said today about Rosemary, he now knew his notion of home was lodged in him like an old bullet: it was blue-eyed Mary’s, shirts drying on a line, green everywhere your eye fell, living things rustling about in the trees and brush. An old pain that couldn’t be reached or removed.

He felt a sudden irrational surge of envy for the guy standing next to him. Glenn Harwood knew what home was.

“Yep,” was all he said.

They were quiet again as someone in the garage clanged some metal part good and hard.

J. T. had the distinct sense that Glenn was working up to something.

“She’s a good girl, Britt. A real sweetheart with a wit on her. Everyone here likes her. She keeps a bit to herself, though. Like something spooked her once.”

It was admirably subtle.

But J. T. was pretty sure this was Glenn’s way of warning this Hollywood Casanova to not be cavalier with Britt.

If not to stay away completely.

He instantly seesawed between being amused at the guy’s nerve and sizzlingly angry at the insinuation.

Glenn didn’t know him at all.

But then, only a few people really did. But there was a trail of photos and articles implying things about him, not all of which were wrong, and J. T. had to admit he would draw the very same conclusions about himself if he saw the photos.

He went absolutely silent and rigid for a moment. But one of the advantages of being just a little older was that he thought now before he spoke and good sense more often than not elbowed aside his ego.

He was the interloper here in Hellcat Canyon, after all. He’d had to prove things to people his entire life.
Why stop now?
he thought ironically.

He guessed, in the end, he was glad someone cared enough about Britt to issue a warning.

“I kind of got that sense, too,” he said carefully.

It wasn’t really reassurance, but something told him that Glenn was no dummy.

They didn’t look at each other.

Glenn just gave a short nod.

Spooked
. An interesting choice of word. But the more J. T. thought about it, the more it kind of fit. Because . . . how had she put it? Why would she only “want the basics”? In his experience, people like that were made—through some kind of experience—not born.

When he’d asked her whether she’d learned anything the hard way . . .

Well, no person with a heart would have asked her a single other question after seeing her expression.

Britt Langley might be hiding something. But hiding didn’t come naturally to her.

Her eyes gave her away.

They watched their respective trucks for a little moment of silence.

“Film crew in the area will mean more customers at the Misty Cat,” Glenn mused.

“Yep. I’ll make sure they know about it, too.”

They were guys, and they didn’t really need to say any more than that. Glenn’s satisfaction with this turn of events was palpable, and J. T. was a businessman, too.

“I believe I met one of your daughters and your granddaughter—outside the flower shop. Cute little girl. Smart. Annalise, I think her name was? A great speller.”

Glenn glowed. “Oh, that’d be my second oldest, Edie—Eden, her name is—and her daughter. Smart doesn’t cover it with the little one. She can spell like a sonofagun. And
stuuuuborn
. Like her mama. My wife is a softie. So Edie must have got her hard head from me.” He said this with a sort of regretful, abstracted pride.

J. T. smiled at that. “Stubborn women,” he repeated. Vaguely but approvingly.

“McCORD!” A guy with a clipboard appeared, like a doctor. “Got a sec to talk about your truck?”

“Well, I’m up. I’ll be back for another Glennburger soon. Best burger I’ve ever had.”

Glenn beamed at him. “Tell me something I don’t know, son.”

A
bent rocker arm was no small thing, but they’d actually called around and were able to find the part and they could have it messengered over, courtesy of some internet magic. J. T. could have the truck back tomorrow.

He sighed with the same relief he experienced every time he managed to patch his truck back together again and signed the estimate.

Then he stopped in at the little service station mart attached to the garage to grab a couple of bottles of water and peruse the selection of snacks, most of which were packaged in lurid cellophane and comprised of preservatives.

He paused suddenly before a collection of black plastic cone-shaped bins that usually held bunches of flowers. Only one bouquet was left, a haphazard cluster of daisies and carnations and marigolds and some kind of purple flower embellished with frayed greenery, all of it just hours away from going limp, if he had to guess from the looks of things. Yesterday, he wouldn’t even have noticed it.

And he thought of Britt kneeling next to that poor dying ficus, and about people who went nuts flailing for ways to make their lives something safe and comfortable and bearable, him included, his mama, maybe even his pa with his bottle, and he thought about the oppressive clutter at the Angel’s Nest. It seemed to J. T. his life had comprised torrents of things he was either trying to dodge—like his dad’s fists, matrimony, or bad publicity—or things he ought to grab, like women, opportunities, and good publicity. He was good at shooting those kinds of rapids.

It was the damnedest thing, but helping a beautiful, prickly woman carry a half-dead ficus felt like a grace note amid all of that. Maybe because, while his entire life had been pretty eventful and glamorous and enviable, none of it had been . . .

It occurred to him that the word he might be looking for was
gentle
.

He snorted at himself. But he added the bouquet to his things on the counter, anyway.

H
e walked back to the Angel’s Nest and paused a moment outside to watch the guys clambering over the billboard with big roller brushes.

The words . . .
wish they were you
were now readable.

“Damn straight,” he told the sign.

Most days, being him was a pretty good thing to be. Even days when thorny little blondes blew him off.

And then he held his breath like a deep-sea diver against the wave of potpourri and pushed open the door.

Rosemary was still working on the ledger, fingers deftly tap tap tapping at the keys. She glanced up briefly and her fingers didn’t stop.

“There are cookies in the lounge, hon, if you want some, fresh out of the oven.”

He could
almost
smell them through the potpourri. Chocolate chip, if he had to guess.

“Thanks. I could use a cookie.”

She paused and looked up when she sensed he hadn’t moved on.

He thrust the gas-station bouquet out at her. “These looked kind of lonely at the gas station. Thought they might look nice right up here on the counter.”

Her eyes widened. She nervously pushed her glasses up onto the bridge of her nose.

And then she slowly flushed a pleased shade of red that complemented the one on her head and took it from him.

“Oh, my goodness, aren’t you a
sweetheart
.”

He’d managed to fluster her again.

He’d actually managed to fluster himself a little. Somehow he’d forgotten the sort of pleasure that could be had in making someone happy for no reason at all.

He frankly couldn’t think of the last time anyone else had tried to make him happy for no reason at all.

She took the bouquet and buried her nose in them. “It was
just
what the room was missing.”

It was the
only
thing the room was missing, more specifically.

“My thoughts exactly,” he said.

She naturally located a vase shaped like an angel. It was sporting wings.

He begrudgingly allowed that they
were
, as Britt suggested, kind of pretty.

He was two steps toward the stairs, on his way to hunt down a cookie, when Rosemary said, “You just missed meeting Cherisse and Kevin, your neighbors. They came in from a hike and went back up to their room.”

He froze mid-step. Closed his eyes. Swore silently.

He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t stay trapped in that purple room with Kevin and Cherisse boffing noisily away all afternoon.

He pivoted smoothly.

“You got some trail maps down here, Rosemary? I’m in the mood for a hike.”

She licked the tip of her finger and swiped a turquoise flyer from a stack next to the pink ones. “I sure do, hon, and this has all the best routes and landmarks marked. The Eternity Oak, now that’s worth seeing.” She laid it on the counter and pointed to an illustration. “Big beautiful old live oak they say was just a baby when the Maidu Indians lived in these hills. Legend has it that if you carve your initials and your sweetie’s initials into it,
nothing
can ever sunder your union—you’ll be bound to that person for life, for better or for worse. So you better be damned sure about that person before you do it. People around here take that oak seriously. You won’t find too many initials on it.”

“Hell. Do you use that story to scare the kiddies on Halloween?”

Being bound to the wrong person for life sounded like the worst kind of purgatory. Given how long it might take to find out that person was
really
wrong. Say, something like five years.

“I take it you’re not a romantic, Mr. McCord?”

“Let’s just say I have a healthy sense of self-preservation,” he said dryly.

“Well, we all need that, too, don’t we? Oh, hon, there are a few awful stories around here about what happens if you don’t get the right name up there. And they say the oak grows over your initials if your love is destined to die.”

“Damn.” He was impressed. “That is one brutal tree.”

“I don’t make the legends up, I just repeat ’em. Now, you got yourself a black belt, hon. I know because I read it on Wikipedia. Won’t work against a bear but any random crazy hill folk might be startled if you start in on them that way, so you stay on the trail.”

“I’ll be ready for random crazy hill folk. I
come
from random crazy hill folk.”

“I believe you, hon, but you also don’t want to go too far and make a wrong turn up at Coyote Creek settlement, because some folks have been known to grow”—she lowered her voice to a whisper and held her hand against the side of her mouth—“
marijuana . . .
way, way up in those hills and, well, let’s just say they’re enthusiastic about their privacy.”