The McClane Apocalypse Book 4 (67 page)

“It’s ok,” Jason offers. “Guess
everyone’s got a story like that now, right?”

She just nods but doesn’t start
spewing her own sad tale. She’s just not comfortable with that kind
of disclosure a half an hour after meeting someone. He seems very
comfortable, though, with himself and her and their time alone away
from other people. Paige knows that Sue never would’ve arranged for
their meeting if he was an untrustworthy person.

“So you and your brother, Dr. Simon,
live out on the McClane farm, huh?” he presses.

He is tenacious, she’ll give him that
much.

“Yep, me and my doctor
brother,” she says
with
a smile thinking about Simon. Apparently everyone
in town considers him to be on the same level as Dr. McClane,
although that would anger Simon.

“That’s cool,” he says. “I haven’t
seen you around, though, until recently.”

“I just arrived here a few months
ago,” she tells him. “With my friends. I came with some other
people.”

“Good. We can always use more people
to build up our town’s population again and grow it. Not too many
of us twenty-somethings left.”

“How old are you?” she asks, not that
it really matters.

“Twenty-nine,” he answers.

This surprises Paige. She wouldn’t
have guessed that he is seven years older than her.

They walk a little further,
Paige making notations on a small notepad about
good
locations. He continues
to tell her about growing up
in
this small town
, something of which she is
unfamiliar having grown up in a big city. Then he tells her some
stories about going to Yale. She can see hints of his former self
when he speaks with a fondness and a touch of sadness for his alma
mater.

She consults her watch,
noticing that it’s almost time to head back. She’s sweaty and grimy
and probably completely unattractive in her borrowed clothing, old
boots, and dust. It’s a long walk from where they’ve ended up,
which is close to the end of the built wall where no protection is
offered. It’s really not safe to be out this far, and she notices
that Jason doesn’t have a gun of his
own
unless it’s hidden underneath his
clothing. They turn
direction
and good to his word, Jason
walks her all the way back to the clinic which will force him to
walk home to his dead parents’ house over a mile away. He doesn’t
seem to mind. He’s also openly flirting with her. Paige isn’t a
juvenile
thirteen-year-old
girl. She’s an adult woman who’s had
relationships, good and
bad,
and knows when a man is flirting. She fiddles
nervously with the thin strips of leather she has tied on her
wrist.

Her brother is standing near the
truck, tapping his toe and glaring at her as they
approach.

“Well, thanks for walking me back. I
told you that you didn’t have to. That was kind of far,” Paige
tells him.

“Maybe I like the company,” he
suggests lightly and catches her eye.

“Ok, thanks again,” she offers
cordially.

Jason snatches her hand and says, “I
hope to see you again, Paige.”

This time there is no doubt in her
mind that he is interested in her.

“Oh, um, sure,” she
mumbles.

When she glances toward
Simon, his eyes have
widened,
and he’s stalking toward them.
Oh great! Another confrontation like when he’d
barked
at the single
dad
to get lost when she’d first come to
the farm. She turns to Jason, interrupts whatever he is about to
say and blurts another quick, “Thanks. It was nice meeting
you!”

Then she pivots and walks quickly to
her brother who resembles a muscular bull. He’s just missing the
steam coming out of the nostrils.

“Who was that jerk?” he demands
angrily.

“Simon!” Paige admonishes. “That’s
unfair. Be nice.”

He doesn’t answer but raises an
eyebrow waiting.

“He’s the vet’s nephew. His name is
Jason, and he is a very nice man,” she explains, although she has
no idea why she’d need to explain herself or her actions talking to
someone to her younger brother.

Her brother snatches her
arm, glares over her head and leads her to the truck where they
climb into the bed with the other family members. Sue is also
sitting there next to her husband. She has a rotten grin on
her
pretty
face. Paige just mouths the word, “thanks” to the other woman
who chuckles. Paige returns it with a light
grin
. Her brother, on the other
hand, is fuming.

They arrive at the farm after dropping
Wayne Reynolds and Zach Johnson at their respective farms. Her
brother hops down and offers assistance to her and Sue. When Paige
tries to walk toward the house, he pulls her back.

“Who the hell was that?” he asks
again.

“Simon, chill!” she says vehemently.
“I told you already. He’s just some guy that lives in
town.”

Derek comes over to them and says,
“It’s cool, bro. Jason seems all right.”

Simon doesn’t look like he’s about to
let it drop or let her out of his sight again in town.

“He looked weasely,” Simon declares
angrily.

John comes around the other
side of the truck and laughs before saying, “Jason’s an ok guy. He
tries to help out his uncle.
Tries
to help
us
keep him sober long enough to do
his job so that he can
help
the farmers with their livestock. Jason’s a pretty
good guy. Used to be some kind of lawyer or something in
Nashville.”

“Accountant,” Paige
corrects. The men look at her. “He worked for lawyers.
Look, Simon
, I’m
an adult damn woman. I’ll talk to whomever I please.”

She stomps off but glances over her
shoulder to find the men trying to talk some sense into her
protective brother. As soon as she enters the back door to the
kitchen, Hannah asks her to find Sam. She always seems to be
missing, off somewhere drawing or playing with the
horses.

“Sure thing,” she returns.

“I think she’s in the horse barn,”
Reagan says as she comes into the room with her son. “I’d start
there.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Paige replies and goes
right back out the door she’d just come in.

She is glad to see that the men have
dispersed, her brother included. Striding right up to the barn
door, she almost interrupts Simon and Sam in a heated discussion
which she decides to eavesdrop on instead. People on this farm seem
to believe that Sam has feelings for her brother. Either she’s just
missed it, or they’re wrong, this might be her opportunity to find
out for herself.

“Simon, your
sister
is plenty
old enough to choose someone to spend time with or marry or
whatever,” Sam is lecturing.

Marry? What the hell?
She’d
walked
a mile with
Jason
and now they are getting married? Paige frowns
hard. Granted, he’s an attractive man, but marriage? Get
real.

“We don’t even know him!” Simon hisses
angrily.

“I’ve been around him quite
a few times. He comes out with his uncle sometimes to neighbors’
dairy farms to help with their cattle. You are kind of a control
freak, Simon,” Sam says
on
a haughty laugh.

Simon actually growls. Paige’s young,
innocent, sweet brother just growled menacingly at his supposed
friend. She hears Sam laugh at him with insolence.

“I am not a control freak,” he argues.
“Paige is my responsibility. So are you, young lady, so don’t go
getting any ideas from her.”

“I don’t take orders from you, Simon,”
Sam says intolerantly, yet very quietly and with more calm than
Paige could’ve mustered. “I’ll do as I like, thank you very much,
sir. And if I want to start dating a boy in town, then I
will.”

“Excuse me?” Simon seethes in the most
hysterical tone Paige has ever heard.

She decides she’d better intervene
before her brother completely loses his shit. She clears her voice
loudly and strolls down the middle aisle of the barn.

“Hey, Sam,” she yells out as if she
wasn’t just listening to them. “They’re calling us all in for
dinner.”

“I’ll be right there, Paige,” the
smaller woman returns kindly. “I’m almost done. One last mare to
check on.”

She’s obviously been at home with
Kelly and Reagan taking care of the chores while the rest of them
were in town working.

Paige’s brother glares
at
her,
narrows his eyes suspiciously and takes his leave. She decides
to help Samantha, although she really doesn’t know anything about
the horses, especially not pregnant or sick ones which would be the
only reason any of them would be stabled.

“Can I help?” she asks the
delicate- or not so
delicate
in light of the conversation Paige has just
overheard- woman with the pitch black hair.

Sam glances over her shoulder and nods
with uncertainty. Paige is glad that she came out to fetch her.
There is also strife between the two of them, and she wishes to
correct it.

“Hand me that can of grain?” Sam
requests.

“Sure,” Paige says through the stall
door, locates the can half full with grain and opens the door.
“Here ya’ go.”

“Come on in,” Sam offers.

“Hm, I don’t know,” Paige
says
with
a
grimace.

The horse inside the stall
is
huge
,
pregnant and due any day. It looks uncharacteristically angry in
Paige’s
opinion
as if it would like to bite or kick her and probably
will.

“She’s a sweetie,” Sam lies. “Come
on.”

This time she holds out her hand to
Paige, which makes Paige feel like the world’s biggest wimp. She
takes Sam’s hand and inches into the stall. It immediately feels a
lot smaller and more cramped as she presses as hard as she can into
the stall wall.

The horse makes a weird noise which in
turn causes Paige to jump.

“She just wants her food,” Sam
probably lies again. “Here, Paige, place it in this corner feeder
for her.”

“How… how do I get over there?” Paige
asks because Sam has squeezed past the giant horse and left
her.

She comes back and takes her hand
again. Sam tugs her along after her and helps her pour the can of
crushed corn and oats into her corner trough.

“See? Not so hard. She
wouldn’t hurt you,” Sam lies once again in Paige’s opinion. “None
of them would do it on purpose.
Usually
when people get hurt from
horses,
it’s their
own fault.”

“By using that reasoning alone and the
fact that I know zero plus zero about these giant beasts, then I’ll
probably be killed by one,” Paige admits with large
eyes.

Sam laughs gaily. Her laugh is light
and feminine. She’s been nothing but kind to Paige since she’d
arrived, and Paige had betrayed her.

“Hey, I wanted to say I’m sorry,” she
tells her.

“It’s ok, just give her some attention
and she’ll love you. They all will. Pet her here along her neck or
scratch her chest like this,” Sam instructs.

She takes Paige’s hand and lays it
against the huge mare’s neck.

“No, I didn’t mean I’m
sorry about the horses. We’re never going to be friends. I like
them but just for looking at them in the pasture, not being up this
close to them. I was saying that I’m sorry
to
you.”

Sam looks directly up at her, pinning
Paige with her bright blue eyes.

“I kind of ratted you out the other
day to Simon when you went into the woods,” Paige
confesses.

“I know,” Sam says quietly.

“I’m sorry. It’s just that
you were gone for
kind
of a long time, and I got worried,” Paige
explains. “I didn’t chase him down immediately and tell him. I
waited for you to come back, but it seemed like it was taking a
long time.”

Sam lays her hand on Paige’s, still on
the horse’s neck. “I forgive you. I wasn’t mad. I knew it was you.
Nobody else knew I went out there.”

“I just didn’t want you to
be angry with me. You’ve been so nice to me since I got here, and
you’re close
with
my brother. I just want us to be friends,” Paige
offers.

“Me, too,” Sam says and hugs
her.

It surprises Paige that the
younger woman is so completely open and honest with her. Sam is a
rare treat. Simon would be lucky if this young
woman
was in love with him.
She’s a good person with a big heart. Her heart is probably
the
biggest
thing on her. She only comes as high as Paige’s chest when she
hugs her. Perhaps she’s needed a friend closer to her own age,
too.