She composed herself and wolfed down half of the hamburger. He went to the counter and returned with a to-go box in which he placed the other half of her hamburger.
Soon, they were leaving Hogg’s, her with a half of a hamburger in her satchel. Daylight had already turned to twilight. He walked her to her car door. She scooted behind the wheel and looked up at him. “Thank you for supper.”
“You’re welcome. Sure you’re okay to drive now?”
“I’m fine, I told you.”
“Okay, then.”
He closed her car door and she started the engine. He stood back and touched the brim of his hat. “You be careful, you hear?”
Without giving him another look, she backed out and drove out of the parking lot.
***
That woman’s crazy, Nick thought. And he hated thinking that because appearance-wise, she was the kind of woman he liked—pretty hair and eyes, tall, well-built and healthy-looking. Biologically speaking, except for the fact that she was a few years older than eighteen, she was a perfect specimen for propagation. And she was passionate. No more time than he had spent around her, he had seen that much. In his mind, passionate trumped crazy. In his experience, passionate women liked red hot sex and that was mostly all he wanted or needed from a woman.
***
That guy is even better looking than I remember, Sandi thought. And he was intriguing. But the word “intriguing” didn’t explain her visceral reaction every time she had been in his presence. She’d had two husbands and she couldn’t say that she had ever found either one of them intriguing nor had either of them made her stomach tremble.
As she neared the curve in the road where she had encountered Nick earlier in the day, she eased her foot off the accelerator and slowed to a crawl, scanning for livestock that might have escaped the fence. She saw nothing but a panoramic expanse of flat pasture, mesquite trees and sage brush and several seesawing pump jacks. Plenty of oil, but no cow. And no cowboy.
Chapter 9
The next morning, before daylight, a cold nose and a whine awoke Sandi from a troubled sleep. She sat up slowly. Her eyes felt scratchy and sore after yesterday’s crying jag. Waffle darted to the doorway and stood wagging his tail and anxiously looking at her. When she didn’t rise immediately, he ran back to her and placed a paw on her knee.
“What is it, boy? What do you want?”
On a canine whine, he started out of the bedroom, stopping once to look back at her. With a groan, she got to her feet and followed him. He beelined to Jake’s room and began to whine and spin in front of the closed door. He typically went to Jake’s bedroom door first thing every morning, but he didn’t usually appear so fretful. Then it dawned on Sandi that he must be able to tell that the parrot wasn’t inside the room.
“He went to a new home, sweetheart.”
She opened the door, instinctively holding her breath. Sometimes the smell when she first opened Jake’s door took her breath. Nick’s words from last evening rushed at her:...Maybe you could be glad the parrot’s gone. Now you don’t have to clean up after him. I’m sure he made a hulluva mess....
A little part of her that she hated acknowledging clapped with glee at seeing the empty room. She shut it down. She had been Jake’s savior. Who could say what would have happened to him if she hadn’t been willing to act as his foster caretaker. “See? He isn’t here,” she said to Waffle.
She had never seen anything that looked as lonely as Jake’s empty room. When she had given the bedroom over to him, she had removed everything that didn’t have a hard surface that she could wash, including the carpet. She had spent money she couldn’t afford to spend on laminate flooring that was easy to mop. This morning, seeing dollar signs with wings made her even gloomier.
The bird’s shoulder-height perch stood in the middle of the room. The square white Formica table where he ate looked bare and cold. The small table where she had tried to teach him to go potty most of the time stood in the corner, its surface clean. The cabinet where she kept his supplies and toys stood open-doored, its shelves empty. She had taken everything of Jake’s to her aunt in Salt Lick. New tears burned her eyes.
Waffle walked in and looked around, sniffed everything, then looked back at her with big questioning eyes, a keening sound coming from his throat.
“Oh, Waffle...”
Stop it, Sandi!
She had no time for this. What was she doing grieving over a damn bird? Having him gone was going to free up hours of her time. When she agreed to take him, the plan had been for her to keep him for a short time while the SPCA found him a new home. She would have stuck with it except that the SPCA appeared to have made little effort to relocate Jake. WLA had found him a place with her, so everyone stopped worrying about him. That was what was annoying about the SPCA and the animal shelter. Half the time, they failed to follow through. That was how she had ended up with a menagerie. And now poor Betty Ann, her employee, was finding herself in the same boat.
Sandi quickly dried her eyes. “We have to hurry, Waffle. Betty Ann and Jessica are already at the shop making raw food. Come on, now, and eat your breakfast.” She grasped the dog’s collar and dragged him toward the kitchen.
In the kitchen, she found that Waffle had already nosed into her bag, opened the Styrofoam box in which the half a hamburger she had brought home from Hogg’s had been stashed and helped himself. She fed him anyway, then threw
