Welcome to Paradise (22 page)

It was a more rested but not a happier group that seated themselves on the benches in the Clearing again the following afternoon. Martin, Mira was glad to see, was back in action and sitting on the jury, if still on crutches. She gave him a little wave that he returned with a nod from his spot next to Arlene. And there were Chelsea and Melody, looking even more groomed and glossy than the previous week. They must have brought an awful lot of beauty products with them, Mira guessed. Either that, or somebody was shopping for them, wherever they were stashed for the duration.

“So, Kevin,” Cliff began, bringing her thoughts back to the present. “What’s been going on over there? Got a little romance happening?”

“Nope,” he answered promptly. “A
lot
of romance. But sadly,” he sighed, “none of it’s been mine. Well, Bessie the Cow was getting kind of a thing for me, but I had to tell her it wouldn’t work out.”

“Nice attempt at a diversion,” Cliff said with a smile. “I guess I’ll go straight to the source. It’s been an eventful week for you, Mira, and I’m not just talking about your hair. You’ve made some pretty big changes. Done everything but quit your job.”

“I’m waiting on that till I get back,” she found herself saying recklessly.

“Really.” He actually looked surprised.

“Yeah.” She laughed, a little giddy at the thought. “Consider this my two weeks’ notice. Oh, wait. By the time my employer sees this, I’ll be long gone, won’t I?
But, yeah.
I’ve made up my mind.”

“Wow. What’s happened to you out here?”

She kept her eyes on Cliff, avoided looking across at Scott. One quick glance as they’d arrived had been plenty. Instead, she took a tighter hold of Gabe’s hand where it was hidden by her skirt, and decided to answer the question honestly.

“The very first day, Kevin said that you can’t hide who you really are on a show like this,” she began. “At the time, I didn’t appreciate what he meant, but now I see it.
Because it’s so draining, physically and emotionally.
You don’t have any energy left to . . . present a front, I guess. At home, I’d come in from a trip, and I’d think, I’ve got nothing in the fridge. And that would seem really hard, to have to go to the store when I was worn out. But here, if you want milk, you have to get it from the
cow.
Even if you don’t want it,” she added with a little laugh. “You have to milk that cow anyway. And everything’s like that. Just so much harder.”

“So, yes, you can get close to people really fast,” she went on, caught up in her thoughts. “Because you’re seeing them every day, in such close quarters, and under the very toughest circumstances. Seeing who they really are, under the surface. And the same thing’s true of the person you came in with. You’re going to be seeing them more clearly too.”

Her hand trembled a little in Gabe’s as she replayed everything she’d just revealed. She didn’t have to look at him, though, to feel his support. It was there in the solid press of his shoulder and thigh against hers, the sure grip of his hand.

“I think it’s more than that, though,” Zara interjected. “In Mira’s case, and for all of us. You also find out, out here, what
you’re
made of. How much you can handle. I suspect all of us at Paradise have seen that we’re stronger than we realized. You work until you can’t do any more, but then there’s more to do, so you just do it. And that can’t help but have an impact, give you the courage to make the big changes.”

 
“Well, as you all know, this isn’t just a journey of self-discovery,” Cliff said. “It’s also a game, and two people are going to be leaving that game tonight. Gabe, any concerns that you’ve put an even bigger target on your back, or put one on hers, by having such an obvious alliance with Mira?”

“Is that what we have?” he asked. “Not what I would’ve called it, but OK. Not too concerned, no. You want to vote so you weaken the other homestead, and lose as little strength as possible on your own. I hope my team thinks I’m a strong contributor, and as for Mira . . . Well, voting her out tonight would do just the opposite of those two things, wouldn’t it? It would hurt us, and help Arcadia,” he said baldly. “So, no. Not too worried.”

“Kevin,” Cliff went on. “Same question. Are you concerned tonight?”

“I think you always have to be concerned,” he answered. “But even though I’m not as strong physically as Gabe, I’m the best with the animals. And I’m guessing there could be an animal challenge coming up. That’s my ace in the hole.”

“I do hate this part of it,” Stanley said on the walk home. “And that was much harder than the last one.”

“I just hope that Lupe doesn’t think it was anything Maria-Elena did wrong,” Mira agreed unhappily. “Because she did great. It was just . . .”

“That she’s eighteen,” Kevin finished. “And that I
am
good with animals.”

They were surprised two mornings later by a visit from John.

“Going to get you started on the plowing,” he announced when the five of them were gathered in the yard. “You’ve got some pretty good hay in, got a reasonable woodpile too,” he judged. “Not near enough to make it through to spring, of course, but a good start.
But all that’s just maintenance.
Survival. If you’d been doing this for real, you’d have had to get started on your crop. Because you had to have a good amount of land under cultivation, at least forty acres, to prove up your homestead. You had to make some cash money too, buy your supplies. And all that means planting.”

“What can we plant now, though?” Kevin asked. “I’d think planting started in the spring.”

“You’d be doing that too,” John acknowledged. “Spring, you’d be putting in some alfalfa, better feed for your animals than that hay you’ve been cutting. Dried peas and lentils, too. Bet you didn’t know that the Palouse is the lentil capital of the United States.”

“No, I did not know that,” Kevin admitted. “My lentil knowledge is sadly lacking. I barely know what one is.
Little brown things?
Taste like sawdust?”

“That’d be your lentil,” John agreed. “But you’re right, that’s spring planting. Right now, what you’ve got is your winter wheat.”

“It grows in the winter?” Kevin asked, puzzled. “I thought it snowed here.”

“Sprouts before it freezes, lies dormant under the snow,” John explained. “You can harvest early, that’s the idea. That’s your cash crop, next summer. Get you through another year out here. Unless you’re unlucky with your weather, of course.”

“Of course,” Kevin said gloomily.

“And the first step,” John said, “is the breaking plow. That’s what I’ve got here.” He indicated the heavy implement sitting in the yard now, the truck that had delivered it having moved conveniently out of camera range. “You already know how to hitch your horses to the wagon, how to use ’
em
to snake trees out of the woods. Now I’m going to teach you how to hitch ’
em
to a plow, and what to do with it once you do.”

“I knew there was a reason I chose bartending instead of farming,” Kevin groaned at lunch, his hair still wet from the scrubbing of head and hands that he and the other men had done in the creek before coming into the cabin to eat. “Thanks,” he added to Mira as she handed him a plate filled with red flannel hash, beans, and the inevitable cornbread.

Stanley accepted a glass of cold buttermilk from Mira with a weary smile, took a long drink. “You did the best of all of us, though, keeping the furrows straight,” he pointed out. “But you’re right, that’s a heck of a job.”

“What makes it so hard?” Mira wondered, dishing up her own plate last and joining the rest of them.

“The ground, for one thing,” Gabe explained. “We had that cloudburst yesterday, softened the dirt up a little bit. That’s why John’s here today. But we still had to put a log on top of the plow, give it a little more bite to get through the soil.”

“Well, we don’t have to actually do forty acres, that’s the good thing,” Stanley said. “Do it for about a week, John said. Then run over the same ground with the cultivator. And only one of us can be plowing at once, somebody else up
there
leading the horses. Lets us trade off, and leaves someone to help you in the garden, Mira. And keep the
woodbox
full, draw some water for you all.”

“We’re not actually planting anything, though,” Zara said. “Are we? Not like somebody’s going to be harvesting that wheat in the spring. So why do you have to keep doing it? Just so we can have more sessions with Cliff, talking about how hard it is?”

“Nope,” Kevin said promptly. “But we have to hope Arcadia looks at it that way, decides that they’ll do it while John’s watching, then take it easy. Because don’t you figure that’s going to be our next challenge?” he asked the others.

“Yep,” Gabe agreed, taking a last bite of lunch, a last swig of coffee, and swinging his legs back around the bench again with a sigh. “And practice makes perfect. Let’s go.”

Mira walked with Zara up the path from the swimming hole that afternoon, stopped suddenly as they approached the corral.

“What is it?” Zara asked. “Leave something behind?”

“I’ll just go in and . . . tell Gabe they can take their bath,” Mira said. “If that’s OK with you. Since we’ve got the rabbit stewing already, and all.”

Zara smiled at her tolerantly. “You do that. Take your time.”

Mira opened the corral gate, closed it carefully. Picked her way among the piles of manure to where Gabe sat, his back to her, milking Bessie.

“Fish not biting?” he asked without looking up from his task.

“It’s me,” she said, suddenly feeling shy.

He looked around quickly, his hands stilling on Bessie’s teats. The smile started, then. “Yeah, I see it’s you. Hi, you.”

“Hi.” She smiled back at him foolishly. They hadn’t had any time alone together since a short walk on Sunday evening after the challenge, when they’d been followed relentlessly by Stu, and had confined themselves to talking in low voices and holding hands, ducking into the cover of the trees for a few rushed kisses before admitting defeat and returning to the cabin.

“The other guys fishing?” she asked now.

“Yep. I said I’d take care of the evening chores.
Virtue’s
more than its own reward, in this case.
Because now I get to talk to you.
Here.
” He got up and grabbed an empty feed bucket. “Come sit by me.”

“Can I try milking?” she asked, settling herself on the stool, Bessie turning around to give her a curious look.

“Sure, if you want to,” he said with a laugh, upturning his bucket and sitting next to her. “Got a burning desire?”

“I do. I’m out here, after all. I might as well learn. I’ve only done it once, with Alma. Come on,” she said, looking up at him with a reckless smile, “teach me something new.”

He looked down at her, arrested. “What are we talking about here?” he asked slowly.

“I’m not sure,” she confessed. The freedom of it was heady. Could she really just ask for what she wanted? Was it that simple? “For right now, since we’re sitting here in the manure . . . Teach me to milk.”

She was clumsy at first, but became more confident after a few minutes, some quiet words of instruction. Gabe’s hands over hers, showing her how to draw the milk out more efficiently, didn’t hurt either.

“It’s not so bad,” she said with pleasure, as the creamy yellow milk squirted freely into the bucket.

Gabe laughed. “That’s because Bessie’s a little bit of a slut, like Kevin says. She doesn’t quite perform for me the way she does for Kevin, but you put your hands on her, she lets her milk right down.”

“Who knew he’d have such a touch with women?” she asked. “Women of the bovine persuasion, anyway.”

She gave up after fifteen minutes, her hands cramping from the unfamiliar activity, but lingered with him while he finished.

“Well,” she said, getting up reluctantly as he stood with the heavy pail, moving it carefully away from Bessie’s careless hooves, “I’d better get back and help Zara.”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “I’ll walk up with you, get this milk into the separator, then come back and do the rest of the chores before I go have my own bath. You aren’t going to want to sit at the dinner table with somebody who smells as bad as I do right now.”

“I always want to sit with you,” she said, latching the gate behind the two of them. “No matter what. Even,” she began to laugh, “next to a cow.”

“I’ll make a deal with Kevin, then,” he said, smiling down at her. “Take on the evening milking from now on, get you to myself for a few minutes. And I’ll make sure,” he added, “that I get the stint in the garden with you tomorrow.”

It wasn’t as easy as that, he found the next morning.

“Why don’t you go get some shots of the plowing?” Mira asked Danny as he set up in the garden that she and Gabe were laboriously watering, one bucketful at a time. At least, Gabe thought, there was less to water now. The peas had finished producing, the lettuce had bolted, the radishes were done, and the spinach was full of aphids. Two-thirds of the big space, though, was still plenty to weed and keep watered in the hot sun of August.

Danny shrugged. “Gordon’s out there with them,” he reminded her. “But unless somebody hurts himself, it’s not all that interesting.”

“Zara’s making bread, and a pie,” she suggested hopefully.

“Also much less interesting than this,” he assured her with an understanding smile. “Face it, Mira. You get the A team, because you’re the ones providing the story.”

“Not if you don’t leave us alone, we’re not,” Gabe growled. “We’re not lab rats. We don’t reproduce under observation.”

Mira gasped, then laughed. “That’s true. Pretty ironic, isn’t it, Danny? You want romance, you’ve got to give us some space to have it.”

“I just follow orders,” he apologized. “And you’re not supposed to talk to me. Just . . . do your thing.”

“Right,” Gabe muttered, turning back toward the creek with his bucket. “My
thing.”

Mira reached a hand out for his, pulled him back toward her. “So what is it you want, Danny?” she challenged him. “What are you hoping to find out here? This?”

She tugged at the straps of her sunbonnet, pulled it off and tossed it aside. Then moved against Gabe, stood on tiptoes, and pulled his head down to hers.

“Kiss me,” she muttered against his mouth.

“Mira,” he protested, his hands coming around her all the same, as if they had a mind of their own. “He’s
filming.”

“So?
Your patients going to be shocked that you kissed a girl?
Come on, Dr. Gabe,” she taunted. “You said you wanted to do it. Kiss me.”

“Oh, man,” he groaned. “I am so going to regret this.” Then threw caution to the winds, pulled her against him with one hand, shoved the other one into her hair, and kissed her, long and sweet. And despite the fact that they were standing in the dirt, and she was wearing that stupid corset, and Danny was ten feet away, it felt just absolutely fantastic.

Mira dropped back to her heels, kept her hold on him as she turned toward Danny. “That enough for you?” she challenged the cameraman. “Or do you want us to have sex against the fence?” Her hand reached for Gabe’s midsection and began to inch downward. He grabbed her wrist and stared at her. What the hell?

“Mira.” Danny was holding the camera away from him now. “Come on. Stop it. You know I’m just doing my job.”

“Well, Gabe’s right,” she said. “We can’t have a romance if I can’t even kiss him. And I
want
to kiss him. So give us a chance!”

“What do you want from me?” he asked in exasperation.

“A few minutes of privacy, that’s all. Let me talk to him while he’s milking. Give us a couple minutes when we’re in the garden. Come on. Have a heart.”

“You’re going to get me fired,” he grumbled.

“No. What would get you
fired
is if you
did
film us having sex against the fence,” she corrected. “And I’m
this
close to going for it. Go film Zara making a pie, if you don’t want to see.”

“I am
not
having sex with you on camera,” Gabe exploded as soon as Danny had taken himself off to the cabin. “Or out here in front of whoever walks by. What are you
doing?”

“Getting us a little privacy, like I said,” she said, her earlier confidence beginning to shrivel at the storminess of his expression. “It worked, didn’t it?”

“I know we’re supposed to ignore the cameras,” she went on, looking up at him pleadingly. “But I
can’t.
I can’t talk to you if they’re filming. Not the way I want to. Don’t you feel that way? Don’t you want to talk to me too? Don’t you want to . . . do more?”

“You must know I do,” he said, still looking upset. “I can’t exactly hide how you make me feel. But
warn
me next time. I about had a heart attack. I thought you were actually going to ask me to have sex against the fence. And the worst thing about it?” He started to laugh. “I probably would’ve done it. That’s how crazy you’ve got me.”

She began to giggle as relief filled her. The giggles increased until she was leaning against that same fence, laughing helplessly, her hands on her knees. “I can’t believe I said that,” she got out. “I didn’t know I was going to. I don’t know what’s
wrong
with me. I start by telling Scott what I really think, and it’s like . . . I can’t help myself.”

He came to prop himself next to her, picked up her hand. “Never been bad before, huh?” he asked with a grin.

She shook her head, smiled up at him. “Nope. I’ve been a good, good girl for twenty-nine long years. Never made waves, not a single solitary one. But it’s starting to look like those days are over. So look out, world.”