Almost before she’d finished knocking on the door, she turned the knob and yelled out an exuberant “Yoo-hoo!” Teague bounded from a far room to greet her.
That fast, she forgot all her nettling fears. Forgot about being cautious. Forgot all the hard-won lessons she’d learned from picking men who weren’t for her.
His grin was more infectious than chicken pox. He galloped down the hall and pounced, taking a kiss as if she were breakfast and he’d been starving for weeks. Then lifted his head and grinned again at her dizzy-eyed response. “Where have you
“It’s ten to one. Didn’t you tell me to come at one?”
“Well, yeah. But I’ve been waiting for you since yesterday.” Another kiss, as he stripped off her coat and hat and started pulling her toward the den.
He let her up for air halfway down the hall, only to roll his eyes at her attire. “The slacks, the silky blouse-you call those varnishing clothes?”
“I know they’ll get ruined. But they’re old. They’re what I’ve got.”
“Nah. We’ll fix you up better than that.”
His theory of fixing her up was to strip her down to the buff, make love with her on the pale-pink carpet of the stranger’s hall, and then loan her his shirt to work in. An hour later, give or take, she had a chamois cloth in her hand.
“You need another rag?” he asked her.
“You! Don’t come near me! If I need another rag, I’ll get it.”
“Hey.”
“Don’t you hey me,
“And this is a problem…how?” He managed to look bewildered at the question she raised, which obviously required her stalking over to his side of the room. She kissed him good. On the navel. The shoulder. Under the chin. And once, swiftly, below the waist.
Then scurried back to her side of the room. “I love making your eyes cross,” she mentioned.
“That’s because you’re an evil, evil woman.”
“Don’t try complimenting me. You can’t get out of making me dinner.”
“Somehow I ended up with a really raw deal there. It’s your payday but I’m the one doing dinner. How does that work?”
“It works fine in a woman’s head,
“Yeah. I get that. What I can’t get is how I got bamboozled into the deal to begin with.”
It was such nonsense talk. Silliness. She had no idea how three hours passed so fast. He explained the process of finishing the wood. The redwood was all naked and sanded. All she had to do was dip her cloth in the bowl of gunk and “love it in” as he called it.
They’d ambled through conversations. His political views were misguided, but she educated him. She told him stories about growing up in Vermont, the winters, tobogganing and skating with the MacDougal boys next door, her dad leading a Percheron-driven sleigh in the fields with the three sisters trundled up in fifty layers of clothing.
He told her about his mom and dad-how his mom was the blockhead of the family, the one whose genes he’d inherited. “Dad had the patience of a saint, put up with her, put up with me. My sister-Riley-she was the perfect kid. I was the snot.”
“I know, I know. It’s hard to believe. But it seemed like I was always getting suspended for opening my mouth to a teacher. The thing is, when they were wrong, I liked to correct them.”
“And you always knew what was right?”
“Yup. I did. And my mom did. Sometimes we butted heads.” He thought. “Sometimes we still do, I guess. When she and I go at it, we can generally clear the room faster than a skunk.”
“You yell? At your mother?”
“She yells at me. The louder the argument, the more she likes it. My dad used to say, let’s hope and pray they broke the mold with you two.”
“Did he try giving you two time-outs?”
“Nah. Both my parents were hard-core softies. No discipline. Encouraged Riley and me to explore any damn thing we wanted. Dad even encouraged the arguments, because he said they taught me to think. And Mom-she really screwed me up.”
“Yeah?”
“She was the one who pushed the major independence. If I got kicked out of class for speaking my mind, she just laughed. When I fought with Dad to travel around the country my senior summer alone, he thought I was too young. She pushed me to do it. Every damn thing I did wrong, Mom was there to egg me on.”
“You’re blaming her for the times you got in trouble?”
“Well, I wouldn’t put it that way. She just likes to take credit, when sometimes I think I should get some credit myself. But what can you do? She’s my mom. I have to let her have her way.”
She loved listening. It was so nice, hearing someone talk up their parents. How good they were. That he enjoyed being with them. He told her about Christmases. About hiking the Appalachian Trail. About his history skiing-which involved a lot of drinking at a ski lodge and very little skiing.
He had endless stories to tell-in most of which, he was the villain, or so he claimed. He kept her laughing and talking so much that it only occurred to her later that he’d failed to mention any of the girlfriends in his life. She was about to call him on that when he suddenly walked over, hooked his hands on his hips and shook his head.
“Holy cow, are you
He said it in such an admiring tone that she blinked, then glanced down. The shirt he’d loaned her was an old blue chambray with a few spots on it. Now it was thoroughly polka dotted with the finishing product and smelled like something that needed fumigating.
She couldn’t help it. There was something about working with the wood. Rubbing in the finish. Bringing out the beauty and grain of each board. Loving it in. She’d had no choice about putting her whole self-and his shirt-into it.
Teague shook his head. “Did you play in mud puddles when you were a kid?”
“Are you kidding? I aced the class in sissiness. I got in lots of trouble, but I was always dressed for it.”
“You’d never know it now. Come on.”
“Come on where? We can’t leave. I’m not done.” Although, when she glanced out the window, the sun was gone. In fact, the entire day was gone. It was wicked-dark and snowing like a banshee.
“We’ve been at it nonstop. It’s after six. This is nuts. I know you said you didn’t have to close up the cafe tonight. But we both need showers. I need to start dinner, and first off-before the stores close-we have to go buy you some decent clothes.”
“Um, Teague.” She waved a hand in front of his face to get his attention. “In case you haven’t noticed, the one thing in this life I very definitely have is decent clothes. The last thing I need is more.”
“You don’t have the kind of fancy label stuff I’d buy for you,” he insisted.
Oh, God. He dragged her into the General Store on Main Street. It was one of those truly old-fashioned places where you could buy a wedding ring, a hoe, dry powders for headaches and stamps at the same time. The back of the store housed clothes-all on shelves, nothing hung up. The denim was so stiff it could walk by itself. The shirts were so sturdy they were heavier than she was.
“You think these overalls work like a chastity belt?” she asked him. “I don’t see how anyone could get in or out of them.”
“I hadn’t thought about that advantage,” he said thoughtfully.
She slugged him. But she couldn’t stop him from buying her a new wardrobe of jeans, flannel shirts, gloves, wool socks. “You’re sure you can bend your knees in these pants?” she worried.
“You don’t wear them
She gasped when she saw the total. “For Pete’s sake, Teague, I can get real clothes for that amount of
