Kentucky Home (4 page)

Mal walked out the kitchen door and stood on the step for a second, inhaling the crisp fall air deeply. She buttoned her new corduroy jacket and wrapped the thin plaid scarf around her neck. It felt warmer than it had yesterday; of course, today she was wearing jeans. The sun was bright and the hills were green and so, OK, her fake fiancé had abandoned her for unknown but, according to Libby, not unexpected reasons—but there were horses. She smiled to herself as she crossed the yard toward the fenced-in enclosure where several horses were grazing. They snorted and flicked their ears as she approached. Was it bad to feed horses? Did they bite? What did horses eat?

They were chewing on the short grass near the fence, one of them trying to stick its snout underneath to try to reach the taller grass on the other side. Mal pulled a handful up and leaned her arm over the fence. “Come here, boy! Here's some delicious grass for you. Please don't bite my hand off.” The horse sniffed, blowing a warm wet breath onto her hand, then opened its lips to take the grass from her.

“Whoa, you have really big teeth. I mean, you're very beautiful and powerful. And thank you for not biting me.” She stood on the bottom rung of the fence to lean over and pet the horse's back. His hair was coarser than she expected, but it was smooth, almost like skin. “You're a strong one, aren't you? I bet you get all the ladies.”

“That's actually a female horse.”

Mal started, standing up and pulling her hand back, nearly falling off the fence in the process. Keith stood on the other side of the fence, holding a beat-up-looking tin bucket, which he placed in front of the horse, who began to drink.

“How can you tell?” Mal asked. Then, blushing stupidly, said,

“Oh. Duh. I didn't think to, um, check.”

Keith pushed his cap back and scratched his forehead. He wore scuffed-up boots, one of those quilt-lined plaid shirts, and jeans that looked like they would hold the shape of his hips even after he took them off. He looked sort of deliciously rugged. Like he could be Mr. October in a Handsome Farm Guy Calendar for Women Who Liked Their Dirty Calendars Modest. And Scowling. He was definitely scowling at her.

“OK, well, I didn't come out here to molest the horses. Just, you know, looking around.” He didn't say anything, but continued to look at her. She held on to the top rail of the fence and looked around in what she hoped—really hoped—was a cool and casual assessment of her surroundings. “Very nice. Very horse farmy.”

“Did you need something, Mal?”

Just a new life, that's it, thanks.
“No, I just thought I'd come out here, see if you need any help or anything.”

“You know anything about horses?”

“Well, no.”

“How were you planning on helping?”

“I don't know; don't you need slop hauled or something?”

“This isn't a pig farm. We don't have slop.”

She was beginning to think he wasn't being charmingly teasing, the way Luke was with her. That he was maybe being sort of a jerk.

She should just turn her back on him, leave him standing there glowering in the morning sun with his stupid jeans and his stupid butt and his stupid rugged good looks. But she had nowhere else to go, nothing else to do. Luke was gone, Libby was too polite to say that she had too much work to do to entertain her, and she didn't even have a good book to read.

“Listen, Mal, I've got too much work to do to entertain you.” Apparently he wasn't too polite.

“I'm not asking to be entertained, Keith.” She practically spat his name. Man, this guy pissed her off. “I'm just trying to be helpful. I know I don't know what I'm doing, but surely there's some mindless physical task you can give me that will make me tired enough that I don't go crazy sitting on my hands waiting for Luke to come back, since that is all anyone seems to expect me to do.”

She had worked herself up into quite a lather. Her knuckles were white on the fence rail, and she was breathing hard.

“Maybe Libby needs help in the kitchen.”

“Libby sent me out here. To enjoy myself.” She clutched the fence post a little harder.

“Where's Katie?”

“She's out riding.”

“Maybe you can go shopping or something.”

“I hate shopping. Look, it's not that I'm not grateful for your family's hospitality, because I am. Really. But I have a lot of nervous energy at the moment and, frankly, if you don't give me something to do right now, I'm just going to follow you around until you do.”

 

 

“I don't really have anything for you to do,” Keith said, feeling very nervous. He really didn't want her following him around. She was starting to look a little cute to him.

“Well, what were you about to do?”

“Muck out the stalls, exercise the horses a bit.”

“Oh, mucking out the stalls, I've seen that in movies. That's just, like, with a shovel or something, right? I can do that. Then you can exercise the horses and you'll have extra time to stand in the corner and give me scowling looks before dinner.”

Keith looked at her, considering. She was flushed with her barely controlled anger and her hair had come loose from her ponytail. As a strand blew across her forehead, she brushed it back, losing her balance on the fence post and landing on her feet, ungracefully, on the ground. Dammit, she was cute.

“I'll show you how to muck out the stalls.”

Stall-mucking smelled a lot worse than Mal thought it would. She thought it was maybe just shoveling out the old hay and sweeping up the dirt and putting down some more hay. Somehow it hadn't quite occurred to her that a horse's stall was also its bathroom.

“I guess you can't just let them out every time they have to go,” she mused as Keith handed her a heavy pitchfork.

He just sort of looked at her, his eyebrows raised, and handed her a pair of dirty work gloves. “You sure you don't want to change your pants?”

“No, they're just jeans. They can get dirty.” And she had no other pants to change into. She was already feeling large and unwieldy in Luke's old rubber boots because Katie's were too small. Besides, the boots came almost up to her knees—how deep was she going to be mucking?

Keith sighed and lined up the shovel, the broom, and pushed the wheelbarrow to the entrance of the first stall. He walked to the end of the barn and grabbed a hay bale, lifting it by two invisible pieces of twine, his back straining. Jeez, he was strong.

“So,” he said, dropping the bale at her feet, “you're just gonna put the dirty straw in here”—he indicated the rusty green wheelbarrow—“then spread out some new clean straw. Call me when you're done, I'll move the load to the manure pile.”

“I think I can move a wheelbarrow. It's not like driving a stick shift.”

Keith considered her for a moment; obviously, he was not impressed by her physical strength. “OK, just don't fill it. These things are hard to steer when they're full.” He kicked the wheelbarrow like an old man kicks the tires of a car, showing off, testing it out.

The wheelbarrow fell over.

She thought maybe Keith was blushing a little as he bent to set it to rights. Man, he looked good in those jeans. She shook her head. Focus on the manure pile.

“Thanks,” she said, thinking about poop. “You want me to do all of these?” The barn seemed to reach to West Virginia, millions of stalls with millions of gallons of excrement needing mucking. Really, she thought as she quickly counted, there were only twenty.

“No, we've only got six horses at the moment. Just do the ones with straw in them.”

“Why do you have such a big barn if you've only got six horses?”

“Well, I guess because people prefer to board their horses with the fancy new outfit up the road and don't want to deal with a socially inept old man who won't go out and drum up new business. And because that same old man won't invest in new horses for breeding or for training and won't try any new damn thing, so we have a big old barn with six horses. But that's fewer stalls for you to muck, so don't worry about it.”

If this was how Keith was talkative, she wasn't sure she didn't like him better silent.

“Well, thanks for the rant. I'm going to go shovel some poop now.” She turned to the first stall.

“Sorry, that wasn't—”

She turned back, eyebrows raised expectantly. He just sort of stared at her, mouth gaping, lost for words, then adjusted his hat and turned.

“Yell if you need a hand,” he called over his shoulder, not looking back.

Like she would voluntarily spend more time with him, she thought as she maneuvered the first forkful of dirty straw into the wheelbarrow. The man had the social skills of a barrel. Well, until he started talking. Then he was more like . . . she paused, leaning on her pitchfork. He was a little like Michael. Taking his beef with other people out on her. That made her mad. So she took it out on the horse poop.

Mal shook the straw out over the last stall, making sure it was fluffy and even. She had long since stopped trying not to step on the straw in her dirty boots. Beyond being impossible, it also didn't make much sense, since as soon as she cleaned out the first stall, its resident, the ancient mare she, uh, fed that morning, came in with muddy hooves. “All of my hard work,” she said to her, patting her nose. The horse snuffed on her coat in response.

Now she was glad Keith had found her one of those plaid quilty jackets. It looked machine washable. Her jeans had gotten very dirty, especially after she knelt on the floor trying to clean up the contents of the wheelbarrow that had tipped over when she tried to move it. Still, the stalls were mucked and the manure was piled. She felt very farmy and very tired. She imagined this was what Cal and Luke and Libby and Katie went to bed feeling like every night, tired and satisfied with a job well done. And smelling like poop.

 

 

“You had her muck out
all
of the stalls on her own?”

To her credit, Miss Libby did not precisely hit him with the dish towel, although she looked like she would have hit him with a pot, given half the chance. She just sort of flapped it generally in his direction, albeit with menace and disapproval.

“She wanted something to do,” Keith said lamely. He was just trying to be brotherly to his future sister-in-law. Of course, brotherly was not a feeling he had toward her when she bent over to pull on Luke's old boots. But she'd looked about ready to burst when he'd run into her outside the barn. He knew that feeling—that feeling you get when you want to run around and scream and pull up trees, but people expect you to just sit there nicely and
relax
. Keith was not good at
relaxing
. He liked to work.

Mal said she needed to work. So what if she ran to Miss Libby when she was done, complaining about him being a slave driver; so what if he was wrong about her. At least the stalls were clean. She did a pretty good job, too. He was kind of looking forward to turning over that chore.

“Keith Carson, I swear. When we have a guest in this house, you do not put them to
work
, no matter what they say. She came into the house smelling like—” Libby paused, waving the towel.

“Like horse shit?”

“I was trying to find a more ladylike word.”

“Good thing I don't have to worry about that.”

“You should still watch your mouth. We don't want Mal thinking we're a bunch of backward rednecks who can't speak properly.”

Keith reflected briefly on Mal's generous use of language, especially when she tried to maneuver the too-full wheelbarrow for the first time. He was just coming into the barn to get a brush when he heard a string of the foulest curses he'd ever heard in his life—and he had grown up with cowboys.

He had poked his head around the doorway to see Mal struggling to right the wheelbarrow, then kneeling down in front of the spilled and very dirty straw. She sat there for a minute and Keith saw the tense set of her shoulders and thought maybe she was going to cry. He was about to go over and tell her she could go back into the house and clean up—anything to get her not to cry.

Then her shoulders rose and fell on a sigh and she leaned forward, scooping up armfuls of dirty straw and throwing it into the wheelbarrow. She was muttering to herself while she worked, and Keith couldn't hear it all, but he could definitely make out “Why don't you go shopping? We don't have any pigs here. I'm grumpy because my farm is going out of business and I don't have enough people to boss around and I'm an adult but I still live with my dad and I inhaled too much horse shit as a child so I'm incapable of decent human conversation.” She started to kick the wheelbarrow, but apparently thought better of it because she paused midkick, then turned and kicked a stall door, letting out another string of curses.

No, they definitely didn't need to worry about Mal's virgin ears.

“Like I said, Lib, she wanted to help, so I let her.”

“But
mucking out the stalls
. Didn't you have a more dignified chore for her?”

“There are no dignified chores. That's why they're called chores. Besides, don't you think she should get used to farm life if she's going to be marrying into this family?” That last part felt a little bitter on his tongue. Keith tried not to think about it.

Libby sighed. “I hope that Luke decides to settle down here with her. We still have those little cottages just sitting there like overgrown bushes. And you did such a nice job fixing up that little bunkhouse—who wouldn't want to live in a cute little place like that?”

“Lib, I don't think you should get your hopes up about Luke sticking around. He didn't even last twenty-four hours this time.”

“Well, Mal certainly won't make a case for it if you keep asking her to do the dirty work. What's next? You gonna have her fixing fences?”

“No, Dad and Chase are doing that.”

“Chase is here? Where is that boy? He didn't come in to get anything to eat before he went out.”

“He didn't look like he was in a mood to talk to anyone.”

“So naturally he jumped at the chance to go out with your father. Reach up and grab me that pot.”

Keith did as he was told, then leaned back against the sink.

“You sure take after your daddy, strong and silent.” Libby shook the colander full of potatoes. “But that doesn't mean you're off the hook, young man. Mal is a guest here, not free labor.”

“I'm sorry if I made her mad; I really thought—”

Libby sighed as she dumped the potatoes into the pot on the stove. “No, she wasn't mad. She came in smelling to high heaven and smiling like a loon.”

“So if she's not mad, why are you mad?”

“It's just not right, Keith, that's why.”

“Miss Libby, it's all right.” Mal stood in the kitchen doorway, wearing that floral skirt and socks, holding her dirty jeans. “I threatened him with bodily harm if he didn't give me something to do.”

Her hair was still tied back in that messy ponytail, and she wore one of Luke's old sweatshirts with the sleeves rolled up at her wrists. She looked dead tired, and Keith had the sudden urge to go over to her, kiss those dark smudges from under her eyes.

Libby patting his arm broke his reverie. “All right, I'll forgive him. He always was a good boy.” She crossed the kitchen, grabbing Mal's jeans, as she said, “to throw them in the wash presently.”

 

 

To say an awkward silence descended on the kitchen would be an understatement. But Mal forged on, determined to—she wasn't sure what, exactly, but it seemed very important that Keith like her. Even though she wasn't entirely sure that she liked him. “So,” she said, rocking back on her heels with forced casualness, “did the mucking pass muster?” She winced.

Keith rubbed the back of his neck, rocking back on his heels to mirror Mal. “Yeah, for a first-timer.”

“Was there something wrong with my mucking? Should I go out and—”

Keith grabbed her arm as she headed out the door. To the barn. To re-muck. In her socks.

“It was great. Mal.”

It felt sort of weird and intimate to hear her name coming from his mouth. He said it like it was a secret, just for the two of them. She turned, his hand still on her arm, but gentle.

“You did a great job,” he repeated.

Then she was flush against him, her hips against his. Her nose against his teeth.

They looked at each other, stunned, for about half a second. Then Keith pulled her behind him and shouted, “No, Peanut! Out!” By the time Mal registered that she was still wearing the stupid stunned expression, that she was now pressed against Keith's back, and that the dog of which she was terrified was trying to lick her toes, Peanut was out the door, corralled by a stranger in a used-to-be white cowboy hat.

Inappropriate sexual tension was a great cure for fear of dogs.

Keith turned and cupped Mal's face in his hands.

“Mal? Mal, can you hear me? Are you going to throw up?”

She fluttered her hands in front of her face, brushing him away. “I'm OK,” she said, keeping her eye nervously on the door.

“It's OK, Chase took Peanut out.”

“Who?”

“Peanut. The dog. Do you remember?” He looked at her with concern, as if he thought she'd hit her head or something.

“I know Peanut. I mean, I am aware of Peanut.”

“He makes sure of that.”

“Who is Chase?”

“Oh. He works here.”

No other information seemed to be forthcoming.

“He took Peanut out?”

“Yeah.”

“Is Libby mad?”

“She doesn't know yet.”

“Well, I'll say one thing for you. You have a loyal and affectionate dog.”

“He's just excited because he hasn't seen me all day. Usually he's running around with me—”