Читать книгу The Renegade Cowboy Returns - Tina Leonard - Страница 13

Chapter Four

About four the next afternoon, when Chelsea was making tea and desperately wondering why her heroine wasn’t cooperating, she heard the sounds of Gage’s own issue, loud and clear.

“I don’t want to be here,” a girl said.

“You didn’t want to be in Laredo, either, sweetheart. So here you are,” Gage replied.

Chelsea dried her hands on a dish towel, telling herself she wasn’t eavesdropping shamelessly.

“I didn’t want to come,” the voice said—obviously that of Cat, the surprise daughter.

Chelsea couldn’t imagine what it must be like to discover one had a teenage daughter. Gage hadn’t said a whole lot about his ex-wife—and Chelsea hadn’t wanted to pry. But from the words being spoken outside, he and his daughter had a lot to work out.

“You may not have wanted to come,” he said, “but I wanted you here. So take your bag inside, please.”

Bravo, Dad, Chelsea thought.

“There’s a nice lady inside who you’ll like, so let’s go meet her,” Gage added.

“Lady? I thought you said we were going to be alone. That’s what you told Mom—that it was just going to be me and you,” Cat complained, her voice getting high.

“That’s what I said,” Gage said, “because it’s what I thought at the time. The owner of the house made other plans, and that’s beyond my control. Please take your bag inside.”

“You told Mom there’d be no girlfriends,” Cat insisted. “You said this was an appropriate place for me to be.”

Chelsea heard Gage sigh. “Trust me when I tell you that this lady and I are not romantically attached. I just met her yesterday. Either you take your bag inside right now and quit acting like a child, or I’m going to let you sleep on the porch, Cat.”

Chelsea froze, waiting for them to come in.

When they did, she realized just how full Gage’s hands were with his new daughter—and why Cat’s mother needed a break. Cat had long black hair to her waist on one side, her head shaved on the other. She had a nose piercing, an ear cuff and what looked like a bar through her other upper ear. She had two lip rings, which gave her sort of a snakelike look.

But that wasn’t the worst part. The worst was the stare Cat leveled at her, as if she hated her on sight.

“Hi,” Chelsea said, recognizing she would have to tread carefully. “I’m Chelsea Myers, the upstairs roommate.”

“You’re not going to boss me,” Cat said to her.

Chelsea blinked. “You’re right. I’m not.”

“Cat,” Gage said. “You and I don’t really know each other, but let me tell you something you should know. I don’t tolerate disrespect.”

Cat glared at her father. “You didn’t tell Mom the truth. She always said you were the least honest man she ever met. I guess I know who I can believe.”

Gage sighed. Chelsea saw no reason to explain what Gage had already told to his daughter, so she said, “I made cookies. Does anybody want some cookies and maybe some tea? I’m sure you’re hungry after—”

“‘Does anybody want some cookies?’” Cat mimicked. “Betty Crocker to the rescue.” She set her black duffel on the floor. “Quit staring at me,” she told Chelsea.

Chelsea was about to reply, wanting to head off the explosion she could tell was about to blow from Gage, when the screen door opened and her mother blew in.

“Hello!” Moira Myers exclaimed. “Goodness, the wind is picking up out there!”

Cat stared at Chelsea’s mother, shocked, it seemed, by someone else’s appearance taking center stage. Moira was dressed in hot pink from head to toe, from her sparkly tennis shoes to her calf-length skirt, to the short-sleeved sweater with a pink poodle on it. She even had on hot pink lipstick. Her white hair stood out in cotton candy tufts from her head, liberated from the plastic scarf she usually wore on windy days. In her hand she carried a cage with two lovebirds in it.

“What are you?” Cat asked.

“Cat!” Gage finally exploded.

“Mum, come in,” Chelsea said, going forward to hug her. “You look lovely.”

“She looks—” Cat began, swallowing her words on a yelp. Gage seemed to finally have had enough of his daughter’s sassy mouth.

“Fiona Callahan helped me pick this out. Do you really like it, Chelsea?” Her mother smiled beatifically. “I love shopping with Fiona. She’s so much fun! She made me feel ten years younger.”

“Mum, this is Gage Phillips,” Chelsea said, “and this is his daughter, Cat.”

“Hello,” Moira said, shaking each of their hands. Cat actually offered hers, either because her father had gotten it through her head that he was about to make her life miserable, or because surprise at Mrs. Myers’s appearance had rendered her temporarily unable to carp. “It’s so nice to meet you! And how pretty you are, dear,” she told Cat in her lilting Irish accent. “Would you be so kind as to step outside and get my suitcase off the porch, please? You look like such a nice, bonny lass indeed.”

To Chelsea’s surprise—and Gage’s too—Cat went to retrieve the bag. “There, now,” Moira said when she returned a second later, “let me see. I know I’m forgetting something. I’m always forgetting something, aren’t I, Chelsea, love? Oh, I know,” she went on, not waiting for Chelsea to answer. Chelsea would have said she’d never known her mother to forget anything, but Moira didn’t seem to need any response. “This is for you, dear,” she told Cat, handing her the cage with the two beautiful lovebirds inside.

“Really?” Cat took the cage, astonished. “I mean, I don’t like birds. I hate birds. I bet they’ll give me allergies.” She stared at them, seemingly fascinated. “They’re ugly. And it’s stupid to have things in a cage.” She looked at her father. “Can I keep them?”

Gage looked at his daughter with some exasperation. “If Mrs. Myers has given you a gift, Cat, then I think you should say thank-you. And then you should ask Miss Myers where the best place to keep them would be.”

Cat glanced worriedly at the two women. “Um, thank you,” she said to Moira, as if she wasn’t certain how to express gratitude.

“Let’s find your bedroom upstairs. That will be a lovely place to keep them, I’m sure,” Chelsea said, starting up the stairs. Cat followed, not protesting any longer, carefully carrying the birds so they wouldn’t be jostled.

Thanks, Mum, Chelsea thought. Once again, I have a feeling you saved the day.

“This is my room?” Cat asked.

“Yes,” Chelsea said. “I think your birds would be comfortable right here near the window. Not too close to feel the sunshine, though.”

Cat gently set the cage on the shelf near the window. “Your mom is weird.”

Chelsea smiled. “My mother is eclectic. I like that about her.”

Cat looked at her. “You like your mother?”

“Of course. Why wouldn’t I?”

“I don’t know.” The teen shrugged, watching Chelsea warily as she sat down on one of the twin beds. “You’re not supposed to like your mother.”

Chelsea smiled. “I love my mother. She’s my best friend.”

“Wow,” Cat said, “you’re a bigger loser than I thought.”

Chelsea smiled again. “I’m going back downstairs. If you’re hungry, join us. I need to get my mother settled in.”

“I don’t want to join you,” Cat said, following her down the stairs. “I’m only coming because my dad says I have to.”

“That’s fine,” Chelsea said. She was pleased to see Gage and her mother seated in the front room, chatting comfortably. He seemed genuinely interested in her, and Chelsea told herself that anyone wearing that much hot pink had to make people smile. “Mum, can I get you some tea?”

“You can, daughter.” Mrs. Myers excused herself and followed Chelsea into the kitchen. “Quite the fun situation you’ve got going here.”

“I suppose so. It’s really just going to be me and you, though. There’s a lovely creek, and the town is so pretty—”

“I think you’re going to have your hands full.” Moira took the teacup Chelsea handed her, drinking appreciatively. “Ah, no one knows how to make a proper tea except you, daughter.”

“You taught me everything I know, Mum.”

Cat came into the kitchen, obviously hungry but not wanting to seem as if she was. She glanced at Mrs. Myers’s cup. “If that doesn’t have eye of newt in it, could I have some?”

Chelsea laughed. “You never know around here, Cat. You’ll have to go on faith.”

Cat took the cup she handed her, slurping it down quickly.

“Oh, she’s hungry,” Moira said. “Chelsea, where are your manners, love? Bring out the frog-toes cookies and give some to Cat.”

“Gross!” the girl exclaimed.

Chelsea shook her head. “Mum,” she gently remonstrated, handing Cat a plate with three cookies on it. “There’s more, but you don’t want to ruin—”

“My mom said this was going to be a backwater and that I’d probably have to eat some gross stuff, but I’m not eating frog toes,” Cat said. “And you can’t make me.”

“These are homemade chocolate chip cookies, and you don’t have to eat them if you don’t want to.” Chelsea smiled at her.

“You’re both weird,” Cat said, snatching the plate. “Why’d you say there were frog toes in the cookies?” she asked Moira.

“You mentioned eye of newt,” Moira said, her tone pleasant. “Which of course brings to mind Shakespeare’s Macbeth. You know it, I’m sure. ‘Eye of newt, and toe of frog, wool of bat, and tongue of dog…’”

“My mom is not going to be happy that I’m living with a bunch of weirdos,” Cat said, taking out a tongue piercing and laying it on the side of the china plate. “Mmm, these are pretty good.” She seemed pleased by the cookies, eagerly polishing them off.

Gage hadn’t come into the kitchen. Chelsea figured he’d probably run for the hills, or maybe to the library for a How To Be a Father on the Fly parenting book. “Will you take this plate to your dad, Cat?”

Cat looked at her. “I don’t—”

“Sure, and that’s a good girl, now,” Moira said. “What a lovely lass you are, Cat.”

Cat took the plate and left the kitchen, looking bemused, if not surprised, at the praise.

“Now I see how you got me through my difficult teen years,” Chelsea said. “Have I ever apologized for being a handful?”

“Chelsea, love,” Moira said, sipping her tea, “if anything, you’ve always been an angel. I owe you apologies for saddling you to a life that wasn’t like the other girls’. You could have done a lot more, if you hadn’t had me—”

“Mum!” Chelsea exclaimed. “Don’t say it!”

“Oh, well. It doesn’t matter anyway, does it?” Moira asked, taking a bite of a cookie. “I rather thought the eye of newt question was clever from the lass, didn’t you? She’s older than her years.”

Chelsea shook her head. “I don’t know what to think. I guess we’ll see what happens.” She thought about Gage, wondering about last night. After their visit to Tempest’s house, he’d brought her home and said good-night—and promptly bunked on the sofa.

It had rained all night, a vicious storm that cut the power—and Chelsea hadn’t been able to sleep. She’d huddled in her bed, staring out at the rain washing the windows in sheets, wondering why she was thinking about Gage when she should have been thinking about her plot.

“He’s a handsome man, Chelsea. D’ya fancy him?”

“No.” She shook her head. “Mum, we’re from opposite ends of the earth, trust me.”

“Ah, well. So it goes.” Moira grinned. “Fiona said she was pretty certain the two of you might take a shine to each other. I guess she’d be wrong this time, eh?”

“Definitely,” Chelsea said. “Don’t let the Callahan myth blind you to the fact that Gage isn’t the kind of man I need in my life.”

“What do you need? Do you know?”

Chelsea thought about Gage walking her through an old, falling-down house, making sure she didn’t step on firecrackers and dead mice. She thought about him shooting a snake that wanted to take a swim with her. “I need someone boring,” she said. “I want stable and boring.”

Moira laughed. “Then that handsome rascal wouldn’t be the man for you.”

“That’s right,” Chelsea said. “When I meet stable and boring, I’ll know.”

* * *

JUST GAZING AT HIS DAUGHTER gave Gage a little bit of the willies. What had Leslie been thinking, letting Cat look like this? Do this to herself?

Chelsea and her mother hadn’t seemed too disturbed by Cat’s appearance. Maybe it was a girl thing. He was definitely out of his league with girl things, so he let his worry over this girl—his daughter—and her wild appearance go for the moment.

He didn’t know what to say to her. What had come so easily for Chelsea and Moira didn’t come easily for him. The two of them sat on the front porch swing, miserably not speaking.

“Guess you were surprised about me,” Cat said.

Gage nodded. “It’s a good surprise, though.”

Cat shook her head. “No, it’s not. Mom says you’re just an itin…itin—”

“Itinerant,” Gage supplied, thinking that sounded like something Leslie would say.

“Itinerant cowboy,” Cat said with a nod, “and that you’ve never had two nickels to rub together because you can’t keep a job. She said when you were together, you made mashed potatoes with water in them instead of milk because you were so poor.”

He scratched the back of his neck, thinking that Leslie hadn’t managed to spare him. But maybe he didn’t deserve any sparing. “That’s all true, pretty much, though I do have two nickels.”

Cat didn’t seem impressed. “How long am I staying here?”

He shrugged. “I guess until school starts. You like your school, right?”

“I don’t know. The kids are weird.”

Gage sighed, thinking his daughter wasn’t doing a whole lot to fit in. In that, she was like him. “You want to know about this side of the family?”

“No,” Cat stated. “I’m not going to see you again after August. I’ll never meet your family. So I don’t care.”

It was true she wouldn’t meet the family. Gage generally stayed as far away from them as he could, leaving his sister and two brothers to run Phillips, Inc., in Hell’s Colony. He wasn’t cut out for politics, or family debates. “Well, it’ll make good storytelling, since we’re both bored.”

“I could go back in and talk to the Weirdos,” Cat offered. “Except I think I heard them talking about whipping up some dinner. The old lady mentioned something about dog legs and bat wool.” She shivered.

Gage laughed. “Sounds delicious.”

“I think you should throw them out.”

“That old lady, Mrs. Myers, gave you a pair of pretty birds. Cut her a break.”

Cat sighed. “I guess that was kinda cool. Anyway, I guess you want to bore me to death with your family skeletons. Mom says you’ve got such a closetful of ’em that Dracula would be impressed.”

Jeez, Leslie. “Okay, there’s your uncle Shaman.”

“Weird name.”

Gage decided weird was one of his daughter’s favorite words. “Shaman’s two years younger than me. He’s in the military, been in since college. In high school, the girls were crazy for him because he was definitely anti-authority, anti-establishment. In other words, he was a hell-raiser—although, strangely, he graduated valedictorian.” Gage laughed, still proud of his brother. “He’s probably my favorite sibling, but I haven’t seen him in years.”

“Because you’re on the road all the time, shifting from place to place.” Cat nodded, obviously repeating her mother’s side of the story.

“Then there’s Kendall. She’s two years younger than Shaman, and four years younger than me. Kendall is twins with Xavier. He goes by Xav.”

“They’re the ones who run the family business. Mom says they’ve got more money than King Midas, and that you got kicked out of the business because you were too bone-idle to help run it.” Cat looked at her father. “Why are you so lazy?”

“Because,” Gage said, ruffling his daughter’s hair—the side of her head that had hair, “I’m an itinerant cowboy, and that’s what we do. Let’s go check on Mrs. and Miss Myers. They might need help.”

Cat padded after him into the kitchen, her black-checked tennis shoes not making a sound.

“We’re going into town to get some ice cream,” he said. “Anybody want to join us? What is that?” he asked, staring at the two-tier confection on the kitchen counter that Mrs. Myers was frosting.

“This is dessert for people who eat their dinner and put away their dishes,” Moira said. “It’s coconut cake. My own mother’s recipe.”

“It smells wonderful.” Gage’s mouth began watering.

“It is.” Chelsea took the spreading knife from her mother and handed it to Cat. “You finish the frosting, Cat.”

The teen looked at the cake uncertainly. “I can’t. I don’t know how. It’s just a stupid cake, anyway.” She tried to hand the spreader back to Moira, who shook her head.

“There’s nothing that can’t be fixed, love,” the woman said. “Go on, nice and easy. And when you’re finished, please sprinkle these coconut bits on top.”

Moira turned away to do something at the sink. Chelsea peered into the fridge, monitoring the contents, not paying any attention to Cat. Cat looked at her father, a question in her big brown eyes. He nodded, and she took a deep breath, reaching out to place some frosting on the cake.

“It tore,” she said. “I can’t do this! It’s a stupid—”

Moira took her hand, gently showing her how to spread the frosting in a smooth, gliding motion that didn’t disturb the cake. Then she turned back to the sink, and after a moment, Cat tried again.

The frosting went on like it was supposed to, and Cat applied herself more diligently to the task, silent for the moment. Gage’s breath released from his chest, though he hadn’t realized he’d been holding it.

“Gage,” Chelsea said, “we’re going to need some things from the grocery, now that there are four of us. I’ll make a list, if you’d like to do the shopping.”

“I can do that,” he agreed, glad to be given an assignment. “I’ll pay for the groceries, if you’re going to be kind enough to fix meals.”

“We’re going to have pot roast and…” She glanced at Gage. “I forgot you’re a vegetarian. You’ll have to pick up the veggies and things you like to eat.”

Cat stared at her father. “You’re a vegetarian? That’s weird.”

Gage shook his head, having heard weird one too many times today. “I’ll take care of the groceries, Chelsea. Thank you both for cooking for us. Come with me, Cat. You and I will start clearing out the barn.”

“I don’t want to—” she said, putting down the spreader and following her father.

“I know,” Gage said. “It’s weird. But everybody works if they’re lucky enough to have a job, and we do. So you can help me clear the barn. I need to sketch a new structure, and then decide if this is the right location for a barn, according to Jonas’s new plans, and then we’ll talk to a few architects, let them draw up some things for the big man. How does that sound?”

“Terrible. Boring.” Cat followed her father out, almost at his heels.

Moira smiled at Chelsea. “Nothing a little cake and sweet tea won’t cure.”

Chelsea nodded. She hoped so, anyway. “I’m going to make a list for Gage, and then go write for a little while. Will you be all right?”

“I’m happy as a lark,” Moira replied. “I’m going to play with this new phone Fiona talked me into. She’s been texting me for the past hour, but I haven’t had time to look.” Moira beamed. “I want to see what my old next-door neighbor is up to now.”

“Probably something weird, to use Cat’s word.”

Moira laughed and Chelsea went upstairs to ponder her heroine’s dilemma. Life for Bronwyn Sang wasn’t getting any better. Bronwyn had been dangling off the edge of the cliff for three months. Chelsea’s book was due to her editor in one month.

She’d written only ten chapters.

“I’m in deep water here,” she told Bronwyn. “I’m starting to think your problem is that you’re passive. If you had an ounce of kick-ass in you, you wouldn’t be dangling. He’d be dangling.”

She sighed, and decided to write the grocery list first. That was something she could handle, a small little list that—

Chelsea stopped fiddling with her pen, her attention caught by Gage and Cat outside her window.

He was showing her how to aim his gun at a large can he’d placed on an old moldy hay bale near the ramshackle barn. “Argh,” Chelsea said. “It isn’t any of my business. You’re my business,” she told Bronwyn, turning back to her book, which was going nowhere fast. “If you were anything like Tempest, you wouldn’t just be hanging around—”

Tempest. Now there was a woman who had decided she wasn’t going to be a doormat to anyone, probably including evil villains. The photo of Zola as a child and the adult renderings of Tempest had been vastly different. Only the eyes had looked the same, eyes that had seen a lot in life.

Tempest, Chelsea wrote, tapping on the screen just under where Bronwyn dangled, awaiting certain death from the killer in book three of the Sang P.I. mysteries, is a woman who knows what she wants. She walked away from her small town and she never looked back, making herself into one of the most sought-after women in the world. She is beautiful and independent, and men throw themselves at her feet. But she is in charge of her own destiny, so she doesn’t need a man to save her.

I wish I could meet Tempest.

The crack of a gun outside made Chelsea jump. She peered out at Gage and Cat. Cat was receiving a high five from her father, and the can had been pretty much obliterated.

“Really!” Chelsea muttered. There had to be another way to bond with one’s long-lost daughter. Grinding her teeth, she put on her headphones and went back to Detective Sang.

* * *

“GREAT JOB.” GAGE retrieved the can and set it back up on the bale. “Looks like you’ve got sharp eyesight and good hand-to-eye coordination. You’d probably like archery, too.”

“I don’t know,” Cat said, looking like Eeyore. He felt sorry for his daughter with her half-shaved head. She’d be such a pretty girl without the angst written all over her. A bit of anger boiled up inside him at his ex-wife. It had been simmering ever since he’d found out Leslie had kept Cat a secret. Anger, he knew, did nothing, didn’t help anything. He preferred to blot those emotions, any emotion, really. Seesawing emotions blinded one to what needed to be done in life.

But his daughter shouldn’t look so despondent, even if she was a newly minted teen. “Hey, what do you say we go for a horse ride?”

“I don’t know how to ride a horse.”

“You live in Laredo. There are plenty of horses.”

“I know, but Mom’s afraid of them. So I never learned to ride.” Cat shrugged thin shoulders. “They’re just stinky animals, anyway.”

He remembered Leslie saying something like that. “Okay, you don’t have to ride.”

Cat looked around at the vast, empty acreage. “So I’m stuck here for the rest of the summer? With no friends? Surely there’s somebody besides the two oddballs in there.” She flipped her hand toward the house, and Gage sighed.

“First, we don’t know that they’re oddballs. Anyway, the truth about meeting people is that usually it’s best to give folks a chance. If you talk to them twenty times and you still don’t like them, then that’s just the way it is. But sometimes you get a wrong first impression. It’s easy to do.”

“Yeah.” Cat didn’t sound as if she thought she’d like Moira and Chelsea on closer inspection. “So, where’s your family you were talking about? Mom says you’re the loner, and that none of them really like you.”

Gage put his gun away and ran a hand over his daughter’s long side of hair. “Here’s the deal. I know you love your mom. And that’s a good thing. But let me suggest that Leslie hasn’t seen me in a great many years, so she doesn’t know me. And I think you’re old enough to make your own decisions about things.” He shrugged. “I’m not saying whatever your mom said about me and my family isn’t true, I’m just saying it may not all be true. And you owe it to yourself to make your own mind up.”

Cat took that in for a minute. “Okay.”

“Good.” Gage thought his daughter probably wasn’t a bad kid, probably just confused and somehow out of place. The mouth likely got her into trouble, and the air of I-don’t-give-a-damn, when she clearly very much did.

I remember that stage. It sucked.

“So, anyway, I guess I’ll never meet my aunt and uncles,” Cat said morosely.

Gage let out a breath and went to sit on the bale of hay. “Never is a long time.”

“Yeah.” She shrugged, and sat on the ground cross-legged. “Mom called your sister.”

Gage’s jaw clenched. “Did she?”

“Yeah. She told her about me. Mom said she was hoping maybe what’s-her-name would know where you were this summer.” Cat looked at him. “Mom said your sister didn’t know, but gave her your cell phone number and then said some rude things about her.”

Gage winced. “Don’t worry about that. It has nothing to do with you, Cat. Kendall’s mouth runs away with her at times.”

“I was hoping for a normal family,” Cat said, her tone wistful.

“We all do, sweetie. ‘Normal family’ is pretty much a fairy tale.”

“Brittany Collins goes to my school, and she has a normal family,” Cat insisted.

“That’s good,” Gage said, thinking that his daughter was very young, very confused. It was only to be expected that she might look around her and see girls whose lives she’d like to emulate. “We better get going to buy those groceries. And you wanted ice cream.”

“That sounds boring,” Cat said, and Gage laughed.

“Boring’s not so bad.”

“Maybe not,” Cat said doubtfully. “Maybe you should ask the Weirdos again if they want to go with us.”

Gage glanced at his daughter. “You wouldn’t mind?”

She shrugged. “We’ll look like a freak show, but no one knows me here, I guess. And the old lady was nice to bring me some birds. I really like them. Mom won’t let me have pets—she says they’re dirty. She’d flip out over birds, I bet.” Cat sounded cheered by that. “And that lady you stare at all the time—what’s her name?”

“Chelsea,” Gage said, “and I do not stare at her.”

“Yeah. You do. Kind of like my mom stares at Larry.” Cat shuddered. “Larry is such a loser. I don’t know why she stares at him. He looks like a frog.” She glanced at her father. “You don’t look like a frog.”

“Thanks.” Gage smiled. “You want to go inside and invite the ladies?”

“Do I have to?”

“Your idea.”

“Ugh.” Cat walked into the house to the kitchen, where she knew she’d at least find the old lady who loved pink clothes. “Hey, Dad’s taking me for ice cream. He said it would be nice if you and your daughter came along to keep us company. He says we don’t know what to say to each other, and that it’s pretty awkward.”

Moira glanced up from her cookbook and smiled at Cat. “What a bonny idea. As a matter of fact, I was thinking you and I should make a trip to the library one afternoon.”

“What for?” Cat asked suspiciously.

“As we were discussing Macbeth,” the old lady began, and Cat shut that down in a hurry.

“You were discussing Macbeth. I just didn’t want you giving me any fried newt eyes.”

Moira smiled and tied on her rain cap.

“What’s that for? It’s not raining.”

“You’re right. It’s not,” Moira said, tying the pink polka-dotted plastic securely on her head. “Could you be a love and run upstairs and get my daughter, please? Knock first, and only go in if she says you may. She might be writing.”

“Something awful, I’m sure,” Cat said, her tone depressed and certain that whatever Chelsea was writing, it had to be worse than a third-grader’s school paper. She banged on the door.

Chelsea opened it, smiling when she saw Cat. Cat sniffed to let her know she didn’t like her. “Dad says you and your mother have to come eat ice cream with us. He says he needs you because we don’t like each other very much. Your mom’s putting on her hair thing, and she looks kind of weird, but she’s going to take me to the library someday, so that’ll be a real drag.”

Chelsea nodded. “Ice cream sounds wonderful.”

Cat looked past Chelsea into her room. “You’re probably not a very good writer.”

“Um—”

“I bet nobody would ever buy your books.” Cat looked up at her. “Anyway, you should be a schoolteacher or something.”

“Why?” Chelsea asked, following her down the stairs.

“You look like one,” Cat said, making it sound as if it wasn’t good to look like a teacher.

“Thank you,” Chelsea said. “My mother was a schoolteacher. I always admired her.” A schoolteacher! No one probably ever told Tempest she looked like that.

Chelsea wondered if Gage thought she looked like a schoolteacher. She patted her hair, which had a tendency to get wild and unruly when she was writing, from constantly shoving a hand through her bangs when she was deep in thought.

“I’ll sit in front,” Cat said, “next to my father.”

“Perfect. This is a nice truck, Gage,” Chelsea said.

“I just bought it.” He turned to smile at her, and Chelsea noticed her stomach give a little flip. He had such nice white teeth in his big smile, and his dark eyes seemed so full of life that it was hard not to smile back.

She saw Cat glowering at her, and wiped the answering smile off her own face. “I saw you shooting, Cat. Was it fun?”

“No,” Cat said.

“Do you shoot, Chelsea?” Gage asked.

“Not unless I have to.”

“I do,” Moira said. “I can bag a quail at fifty paces.”

“She can,” Chelsea said. “Many a time we ate something Mum brought home.”

“Eye of newt,” Cat said.

“Maybe,” Chelsea said. “In my home, we ate what was on our plates, said thank-you, excused ourselves and cleared the table. No questions asked.”

Cat turned to look at Moira. “Are you going to make me do all that?”

Moira nodded. “Of course, lamb. Otherwise, I don’t cook.”

“Jeez,” Cat said. “This is worse than prison.”

“Cat,” Gage said, his tone warning.

Chelsea looked out the window, amazed by the lack of cars on the road into town. “Tempest is like an old postcard that never changed.”

“I like that,” Gage said. “I like that it seems preserved in time.”

“I do, too.” Chelsea jumped when Gage’s gaze caught her eyes in the mirror above the dash.

“It looks boring,” Cat said, her nose pressed to the window as she looked out at the farmland they passed. Cows and horses and an occasional llama dotted the dry landscape. “I’d be embarrassed for my friends to know I was stuck out in the middle of the desert. I’ll probably get stung by a scorpion.”

“That reminds me—by chance did your mom send you with a pair of boots?” Gage asked, glancing at her black-and-white-checked tennis shoes.

Cat shrugged. “I’ve never had boots. I don’t need any, because I’m not going to be an itin…itin—”

“Itinerant,” Gage supplied.

“Cowgirl,” she finished, convinced she had life all figured out.

Chelsea’s gaze once again caught Gage’s in the mirror. He appeared a little chagrined by his daughter’s attitude. Chelsea told herself that his and Cat’s problems had nothing to do with her. In fact, she should be at home writing, giving Bronwyn a chance to figure her way out of her mess.

It was so much more exciting to wonder about Tempest, and how she might handle the pitfall Bronwyn had landed in.

I’m not good at pitfalls. I don’t like guns. I don’t like scary stuff. How did I ever wind up writing mysteries?

Maybe I write mysteries because I love puzzles. And I crave adventure—just like Cat.

She looked at Gage, thinking he was pretty much the call of the wild in real life—but she wasn’t adventurous Tempest. Except for her and her mother’s excursion to America, adventure came to her only on the safe pages of her novels. She would never have the courage to walk away from her life and be someone she wasn’t. “Gage,” Chelsea said suddenly, telling herself it was folly to get involved, “do you know when the nearest rodeo is?”

“Santa Fe. This weekend.” He looked at her. “The four of us could go, if you’d want to see one. Moira, have you been to a rodeo?”

“Not a one, and I’d love to,” Moira said. She shot her daughter a glance of approval, then looked at Cat.

“I’ve attended one, and I’d really like to go again,” Chelsea said. And give Cat a chance to see boot-wearing cowgirls and cowboys outside her hometown, doing their jobs.

“Great. We’ll go,” Gage said.

“Sounds boring,” Cat said.

Chelsea smiled. “We’ll see.”

* * *

AFTER A QUICK GROCERY RUN, they ran into Blanche the waitress at Shinny’s Ice Cream Shoppe. Introductions were made, and when Moira went off to look at the photographs on the walls, and Cat and her dad were engaged in some getting-to-know-you chitchat, Chelsea wandered over to the gregarious waitress. “What flavor?”

Blanche smiled. “Peppermint. My favorite. You?”

“I think peach.” Chelsea liked Blanche. In fact, she liked much of what she’d seen around the town of Tempest so far. Which brought up the name that had been stoking her curiosity, even making her wonder if she’d plotted her heroine wrong in her current book. “So tell me more about Tempest.”

“You’re not asking about the town, are you?” Blanche gave her a smile that reached her big eyes behind red-and-blue-swirled glasses frames.

“I want to hear about that, too. But I have to admit you caught my interest with the tale about Tempest.”

“C’mon.” Blanche waved her over to a black-and-white photograph on the wall. “This is Zola when she was just a wee thing.”

Chelsea blinked. “She seems so thin.”

“Yeah. Well, it wasn’t for lack of eating, I don’t think. Her mom used to send her down every day to this very ice cream shop. My husband, Shinny, over there—” she pointed to a friendly-looking, balding man who was sweeping up “—he owns this shop. He gives ice cream out to the kids, especially the ones he knows got folks who can’t afford it. Zola was on his list of kids who always got a double scoop, or a milkshake if he could talk her into it. Chocolate,” Blanche said with a smile, “in case you were going to ask. Shinny’s special.”

Chelsea moved to a photo of Tempest’s most famous citizen standing in a field, looking at the camera with wide eyes. Her bare feet looked dirty and her overalls not much better. “Did she have a high school sweetheart?”

“No.” Blanche pointed to a football team photo with a pretty brunette standing in a shiny uniform beside the team. “Maggie Sweet was the girl the guys went for. Not a skinny, brown-headed sparrow like Zola. Funny thing is, when she grew up and left this town behind to become Tempest, men pursued her like mad. She went through men like candy, and I don’t think she was serious about a one of them. She had one serious guy, some minor royal from Scotland, I think. Anyway, she found out he had a lady on the side, and left him just like she’d left this town.” Blanche smiled, remembering. “We were all afraid she’d be heartbroken, but Tempest said it was his loss.”

“How do you know all this?” Chelsea had to know more. “I thought she went away and never looked back.”

“She used to call back here from time to time. It’s just been the last year or two we haven’t heard a peep from her. About to send a delegation over to check on her.” Blanche didn’t look convinced that that would have much impact. “We still love her here. She’ll always be Zola to us.”

She’d always be that dirty little girl in the threadbare clothes, Chelsea thought. No wonder she wanted to make herself into Tempest. Chelsea could understand wanting to get away from her old life. It would be fun to be a heroine in a book for a day. Not my heroine. She’s been dangling so long she’s afraid she’ll never get off that cliffside.

“Ready to go?” Gage asked Chelsea, smiling a greeting at Blanche. “I’ve got to get Cat home. She says she’s tired after her big day of traveling. If you want me to come back later and pick you up—”

“I’m good. Thanks.” Chelsea smiled at the woman in turn as she got up from the swivel seat she’d settled on while they’d been chatting. “I enjoyed the town history lesson, Blanche. Thank you.”

Blanche waved a hand, reached out to pat a grumpy-looking Cat. “You come back anytime, sugar. Free ice cream for pretty little girls.” She smiled at her. “You look so much like your daddy.”

Gage appeared pleased. “Thanks, Blanche. I take that as a real fine compliment.”

Cat glanced up at him, surprised. “You do?”

He nodded. “Sure I do.”

Cat didn’t seem to know what to think about that. She remained silent, following him as he went to escort Moira to the truck. Chelsea went out behind them, watching Gage interact with his daughter, thinking that for a man who’d just found out he was a dad, he was handling it very well.

* * *

“THANKS,” GAGE SAID as he walked the women to the front door. Moira and Cat went on inside to check on the birds, which Cat had named Mo and Curly—he guessed Larry hadn’t been her favorite of the Three Stooges—so Gage grabbed the chance to tell Chelsea exactly how he felt.

Damn grateful.

“For what?” She looked at him, surprised.

He shrugged, not certain how to express what he wanted to say. “Helping Cat make the transition. And me.”

Afternoon light glowed softly on her features as she studied him. Gage waited nervously, as if he was on a first date, not certain why he felt so skittish around Chelsea. Her eyes were so kind and radiated understanding. She wasn’t the type of woman who made men nervous, he was pretty certain.

Which meant…he must dig her.

A little.

The stray thought made Gage even more nervous. Since his relationship with Cat’s mother, Leslie, he’d stayed busy, making no time for dating. A night or two with a lady sufficed.

He shouldn’t feel differently about this russet-haired Irishwoman. For many reasons—not the least of which would be not wanting to play right into Jonas’s hands.

A man had his pride. Gage looked away from the redhead with the big eyes.

“I didn’t do anything for either of you,” Chelsea said. “I like Cat. She reminds me of myself at that age.”

He couldn’t imagine any resemblance, in any way, between the two of them. But he smiled. “Thanks.”

“No thanks necessary.”

There was no reason to keep Chelsea outside longer than he had, either. The shame of it was he really wanted to talk to her more. His heart drummed inside him, and he wished he had his typical easy talk at his disposal. But he didn’t.

And then he did the unthinkable, brushing his lips from the side of her mouth to her cheek, as “just friends” as he could manage.

God, she was soft.

“See you around,” he said, not hanging in to find out what price he might have to pay for stealing a brotherly peck. He didn’t know what had possessed him. He’d let his mouth do the speaking his voice couldn’t. “I’m leaving, Cat! Are you coming?”

“I’ll catch up in a sec!” she yelled back from upstairs. He heard the screen door close as Chelsea went inside.

Good thing, too. Or he’d be tempted to go back for another helping of “just friends.”

Now that he knew how soft she was, he was going to have to put the brakes on temptation. Hard.