Husband For Hire

Against his will, Rob felt a surge of…something. Just for a second, he thought it was yearning, but he quickly buried the notion. It was probably something he ate.

CHAPTER THREE

“OKAY, SPORT, ARE YOU about ready?” Twyla called, glancing at the clock over the kitchen stove.

“Coming!” With a drumroll of running steps, Brian raced downstairs. He never walked anywhere. To his mind, if a place was worth going to, it was worth running to.

Twyla met him in the foyer just as he grasped the banister and his feet left the floor, swinging out and around the newel post. “Brian, I told you not to—”

“Oops,” he said as the knob came off in his hand. With a sheepish look, he handed it to her. “Sorry, Mom.”

“Fifteen minutes early to bed tonight,” she said. To a six-year-old, it was an eternity.

“Aw, Mom—”

“You have to learn to take it easy on this poor old house.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

As she fitted the wooden peg back into the hole, she felt an unwelcome glimmer of the resignation that always seemed to be lurking at the edges of her life. Built in the twenties, the house sat on a knoll a little north of town. It had a big yard and a tree with a rope swing and that peculiar weary charm of an old, long-lived-in home. But it also had the liabilities that came with an old house—inadequate wiring, leaky plumbing and a variety of wooden aches and pains.

That was the only reason Twyla had been able to buy the place when she’d come to Lightning Creek, pregnant and shell-shocked by events back in her hometown. The property had been remarkably affordable. It was a little more challenging to pay for its upkeep.

Chastened, Brian was subdued for about ten seconds. Head down, freckled face solemn, he looked—momentarily—like a kid on a greeting card illustration. Twyla wasn’t fooled. She knew the next bit of mischief was never far away. Reaching out, she smoothed his sandy red hair, smiling when the cowlicks went their own way. “How’s that loose tooth of yours?”

He tilted back his head and wiggled it with his tongue as he spoke. “Thtill looth.”

“I think it’s ready to come out,” she suggested. “Want me to pull it out for you?”

“No way!” He clapped his hand over his mouth.

She smiled; it was the one thing he was squeamish about. “All right. Carry that box of raffle tickets, would you, sport?” she asked.

“Sure, Mom.” Picking it up, he raced out to the pickup and jumped in the passenger side. She could see him bouncing up and down on the seat, and his exuberance made her smile. With just two weeks of school to go, he could hardly bear to wait for summer vacation.

“Are you sure you don’t want to come with us, Mama?” Twyla called. Her mother was in the small suite of rooms off the kitchen, an add-on from the forties. Twyla’s invitation was automatic. So was her knowledge of what the reply would be.

“No, thank you, dear,” Gwen said, coming into the foyer. As always, she looked scrubbed and spry. Her Bermuda shorts and cotton shirtwaist were spotless, her cropped hair pure white and beautifully styled.

Somehow, her mother’s attractiveness made things all the more frustrating and baffling. A widow for the past seven years, Gwen lived with her daughter and grandson, watching Brian while Twyla worked. At first it had seemed an ideal arrangement, every working mother’s dream. It was a luxury to have a loving grandmother in the house, baking and singing and reading stories. Now Twyla looked back on those starting-anew years and wondered if there was anything she could have done to prevent Gwen from developing the affliction that had shadowed them for so many years.

If Gwen had any clue to her daughter’s thoughts, she gave no sign. “I was browsing through that bachelor brochure you brought home from the shop.”

“See anything you like?” Twyla asked, teasing.

“Oh, heavenly days, not for me. I was thinking of you, dear. You might as well go for one of the younger men. They never mature, anyway.”

“Mother, really—”

“They’re all a bit young for me.” Her eyes, which looked so blue in contrast to her white hair, glinted with mischief.

“Depends on what you buy them for,” Twyla pointed out.

Gwen eyed the crooked newel post. “Maybe if you get one cheap, you could bring him home and get him to work on the house.”

Twyla laughed. “I didn’t see any home-improvement specialists in that brochure.”

“Not knowing how to fix something never stops a man from trying,” Gwen pointed out.

“True. But I’m not buying. Just going along to sell raffle tickets for the hospital guild quilt.” She patted her mother’s hand. “You did a gorgeous job on it, Mama.”

“It was a pleasure to work on.” The Converse County Quilt Quorum met once a week at Twyla’s house, twelve ladies stitching and gossiping over the long afternoon. Their creations had become local legends, coveted for the freshness and energy of their designs. Twyla always wondered at the way a basket of mismatched scraps and snippets could be magically transformed into a work of art.

She got her keys and went out to the truck as her mother waved through the front bay window. The rusty ’74 Chevy Apache wasn’t pretty, but the pickup was too reliable—especially in winter—to send to the junkyard. Just for fun, Twyla had applied a magnetic Tease ’n’ Tweeze sign to the door. The pink sign, with its sparkling ruby slippers logo, looked incongruous against the gray undercoat of the truck door she couldn’t afford to have repainted.

As she took off, she glanced in the rearview mirror. The geraniums in the window boxes were blooming, but one of the second-story shutters hung crooked. The contrast between the beautiful flowers and the run-down house was not funky; it was simply pathetic. Maybe she should get a small apartment in town where she wouldn’t have to worry about upkeep on a big place. Then she thought of Brian, racing with Shep across the yard or climbing the rope-swing tree, and she dismissed the idea. She wanted her son to be raised in a family home, even if the family consisted of only a mismatched and troubled mother-and-daughter set.

As they approached Lost Springs, Brian sat forward, his narrow chest straining against the seat belt as he stared out the window. His tongue worried the loose tooth.

“So what do you think, sport?” she asked. “This is a nice place, isn’t it?”

“I guess.” A split-rail fence lined one side of the road. In the distance, a herd of horses grazed placidly through tufts of mint-green meadow grass that grew in the shade of a clump of oak trees. Dust dervishes swirled across the sun-yellowed pastures. Summer had come early to Wyoming this year, and on the slope behind the main building, wildflowers bloomed, a snowfall of avalanche lilies, goldenrod, Indian paintbrush, purple heliotrope and long green fronds of high grass.

“This is where Sammy Crowe lives,” Brian said with a reverent hush in his voice. “The boys who live here are orphans.”

“Some of them are, yes.” Twyla didn’t know a lot about the ranch, though it had been a fixture in the area for many years. Sammy, the boy in Brian’s class, rode the bus in to school every day. One of the first-grade mothers had whispered that the boy’s mother was doing time in the state women’s detention unit. “Some of them are here because their parents can’t take care of them.”

“Like my dad couldn’t take care of us?”

Twyla forced herself to stare straight ahead, keeping her face expressionless. With Jake, it hadn’t been a case of “couldn’t” but “wouldn’t,” though she’d never tell Brian that. “Not exactly,” she said carefully. “You have Grammy and me to take care of you.”

“But who takes care of you and Grammy?”

She glanced sideways. “We take care of ourselves, kiddo. And we’re doing all right.”

“All right’s good enough for us, Mom.”

She grinned, turning her gaze back to the road. It was hard to believe how quickly Brian was growing and changing. How wise he seemed sometimes, for his age. She wondered if that old-soul streak of maturity came from being raised without a father. Some nights she lay awake, racked by doubt. She was raising a wonderful boy, but she couldn’t help worrying that there were things a father could give him that a mother and grandmother could not. They were the intangibles. That unique chemistry that existed between dads and kids. She’d felt that magic with her own father. He’d had his faults, but his love had enriched her life beyond compare. How would she have turned out without it?

She worried sometimes that Brian would always be missing a small, settled corner of his heart that should be filled by a father’s love. Like a quilt with one of the squares missing, he would be fine but somehow incomplete.

She shook away the thought, feeling guilty. She would only admit to herself that single parenthood was a lot harder on her than on Brian.

Trolling for a parking space, she pulled into a spot adjacent to the ball fields. The lot was filling up fast with vehicles from all over. Amazing, to think so many people were interested in this strange fund-raiser. She spotted a number of rental cars and vehicles with out-of-state plates. Plenty of these were sleek and expensive late models. The organizers of the auction—ranch owner Lindsay Duncan and director Rex Trowbridge—must be well connected.

Or maybe the brochure didn’t exaggerate the success of the various bachelors. But really—an auction?

A couple of news vans had set up, bundled cords snaking along the ground toward the arena where the auction would take place. Some of the bachelors had celebrity status, attracting local and national media. It was the fantasy angle they were after, she supposed. The idea that women were about to compete—publically—for a date with one of these guys.