“Humph,” said Edna and trotted over to the pantry door, vanishing inside.
“Rrrrooom, rrrrooomm.” Ethan appeared from the short hall that led to the stairs and the great room. He was flying his favorite plastic jet.
“Ethan,” said Tess, “Did you put those blocks in the bin like I told you?”
“Rrrrooom, rrooom, rooommmm…” Ethan kept his jet airborne.
“Ethan John,” said his mother, pausing in the process of sprinkling flour on a half-flattened ball of dough. “Stop flying that plane and answer me.”
Ethan let his hands drop to his sides, plane and all, and made a big show of slumping his four-and-a-half-year-old shoulders. “Aw, Mommmm…” Tess pointed her rolling pin at him and gave him a narrow-eyed scowl. With a put-upon groan and a tragic expression, Ethan stomped back out the way he’d come.
Edna emerged from the pantry. She held two full Mason jars, one in each hand. “How about blackberry—and this nice apple butter I put up last fall?”
“Perfect,” said Tess.
Edna carried the jars to the table and set them down. “So. We’ll take the three pies and the beans and the jam over there. What else? We have some of last year’s tomatoes….”
As the two older women launched into a discussion of what else should go to the Hart place to welcome Mr. Hart home, Starr wiped up the sink and hung the breakfast pans on their hooks. She poured herself another cup of coffee at about the same time Tess and Edna decided that last year’s tomatoes would do just fine. And a couple of loaves of fresh bread, too. Edna would start on the bread right away.
Mug in hand, Starr turned from the coffeemaker and leaned against the counter. “Who’s going to take all this stuff over there?”
Tess carefully guided the flattened dough over a waiting pie. “Well, we thought we’d do it together, Edna and me.”
Casually, Starr blew across the top of the steaming mug. “Why don’t you let me?” She dared a hot sip as a thoroughly annoying glance passed between Edna and Tess.
Starr knew they were both thinking about all that mess with Beau in the past. But come on, she was a grown woman now and had a right to make to her own decisions when it came to men—not that there was any decision to be made about Beau. There was nothing between them anymore.
Yeah, she’d danced with him on the Fourth. One dance. And she felt really good inside about that dance. They’d talked like two old friends, and laughed together. When she thought of Beau now, there was no bitterness. All that old garbage was over for good. That dance, to Starr, had signaled true peace between them. She felt really good about that.
But peace between her and Beau didn’t mean she meant to run over there and jump the man’s bones or anything. Taking the food was a neighborly gesture, and she wanted to do it—and who could say if Beau would even be at the house when she got there?
“Don’t you have to work?” asked Edna.
Starr took a sip of coffee. “I don’t need to go in today.” Like her employer, she did any and everything over at the Clarion—including a little reporting on local goings-on. “I’ve got a piece for the Ranching Life section to finish up and I have to put together an article on what’s going on with the plans for the county fair. I’ll do those on my computer and send them over by e-mail. And I can take the opportunity while I’m at the Hart place to do a follow-up on how Mr. Hart’s feeling.” Jerry had done the original piece, but he’d be pleased if Starr handed in an update. “And besides,” she added, “you two have been baking pies and making beans. I’d like to do a little something to help out, too.”
“Well,” said Edna, still at the table beside the jars of preserves. That was all. Just, well, and nothing else.
Tess pinched the edges of her pie and sent Starr a soft smile. “Why not, if you’d like to? That’d be real nice.”
Edna’s baked beans were the slow-cooking kind. They didn’t come out of the oven until four. By then the pies had cooled and the bread was all wrapped and ready to go. They loaded everything into the old Suburban that Zach had bought Tess when they first got married. Starr had inherited the vehicle last year, when Zach bought his wife a new one.
As she was heading off down the long, dusty driveway, one of the ranch pickups came in. Her dad was driving, Jobeth at his side. Starr pulled to the bumpy shoulder so the pickup could get by. Her dad honked and Jobeth waved as they went past. The pickup was covered in mud and so were the two in cab. Starr grinned as she watched the filthy tailgate recede in her rearview mirror. They’d probably been out pulling something large and obstinate from a muddy pond.
It took about twenty-five minutes to get to the Hart place. Starr used a series of back roads made mostly by oil companies drilling test holes, seeking oil-bearing strata. Through the ride, she was aware of a rising feeling of anticipation.
Okay, it was silly. It didn’t mean anything, but she was really hoping that Beau would be at the house. Maybe they’d talk a little.
The Suburban lurched over a bump in the dirt road and Starr licked her lips and swallowed. She was kind of thirsty. She’d ask for a tall glass of iced tea. If Beau was there, he could keep her company out on Mr. Hart’s big front porch while she drank it. Just being neighborly, of course.
And professional. She’d interview Beau on Mr. Hart’s convalescence while she sipped that cool, refreshing tea.
Beau was standing on the porch, staring off into nowhere, trying pretty much unsuccessfully to get his mind around the enormity of what Daniel had just told him, when he spotted Tess’s old Suburban coming up the drive.
For a moment or two, he just stared, his mind still back there in the bedroom, hearing, but hardly daring to believe, the things Daniel was saying to him. And then, as the vehicle drew closer, he frowned. He hadn’t seen Tess driving it since Zach bought her the new one….
In fact, hadn’t Zach said they’d passed the old one to Starr for her use whenever she was home?
Beau straightened from the post he’d been leaning against. With the wild mustangs on the loose in his chest again, he stuck his hands in his side pockets and waited for the Suburban to pull to a stop about ten feet from the base of the porch steps.
Starr beamed him a smile through her side window. The mustangs bucked high and his breath snagged hard in his throat. The window slid down and she stuck her head out. That midnight hair, loose around her angel face, caught the sun and gave off a blue-black shine.
“Hey, Beau.”
Dazzled, he gulped to make his throat relax. “Hey.”
“How’s Mr. Hart?”
“Doing well. Real well. Chomping at the bit to get out of bed and back to work.”
“I heard you hired him a nurse.”
“Yeah. He’s already making the poor woman crazy with his demands to be up and about.”
“Hope she’s strong enough to make him stay in that bed until he’s well enough to get out of it.”
“You know Althea Hecht?” The nurse, a local woman, stood about five-eleven and weighed a hundred and eighty or so pounds, very little of it fat.
Starr was nodding. “Althea can keep him in line if anyone can—and I’ve got a Suburban full of food. Pies and Edna’s baked beans, fresh-baked bread and half a pantry’s worth of preserves.”
He came down the steps, his boots seeming