A pot of red geraniums added a splash of color to the chipped and weathered white paint.
Brian and Justin lagged behind by several feet because they’d stopped to check out two different birdhouses in a maple tree. The birdhouse on the left was pretty basic, but the one on the right was three stories with a wraparound porch and looked like something straight out of his mother’s Southern Living magazine.
Toby continued to the front door and knocked loud enough to be heard over the sound of Taylor Swift belting out her latest hit. He cringed, although he knew that, as a proud Texan, he should favor country music, even crossover pop artists like Taylor Swift. But his well-guarded secret was that he couldn’t stand the stuff. He preferred his music with a lot more soul and a lot less twang.
When the front door swung open, Kylie, her face smeared with green goo, greeted Toby with a bright-eyed smile. “Guess what? Mr. Murdock and Angie had a nail-painting contest and I got to be the judge. And see, Mr. Murdock won because he painted the cutest little horse on my big toenail.” She lifted her right leg high in the air in an effort to put her toe in front of his face.
“Yeah, well, Mr. Murdock cheated,” came Angie’s reply. “He took an hour to do it, using a magnifying glass and his model-airplane paint, which, by the way, isn’t washable. That horse will never come off.”
Toby couldn’t actually see Angie, since she had her back to the door and was leaning over the arm of the sofa, a white container in one hand and a green sponge in the other.
Both amused and touched by the sight, Toby couldn’t help but chuckle.
“Ooh, gross,” Brian said, when he spotted his sister’s face. “What happened to you?”
“I’m getting pretty—just like Angie.”
Both boys began to hoot and howl.
Toby couldn’t say that he blamed them. Kylie, who was a cutie-pie when she wasn’t whining, looked like a pint-sized version of the creature from the black lagoon, walking around with a green face and her fingers and toes splayed out wide so the paint would dry.
The little red-haired girl stepped aside to allow them into the small house, just as Angie straightened. As Toby’s eyes landed on Angie’s face, it appeared as though she’d climbed from the same lagoon.
She smiled as if having green goop smeared all over wasn’t the least bit unusual. “We didn’t expect you back so soon.”
“It certainly appears that way.” Toby couldn’t help but laugh.
“Just for the record, I did not cheat. You never established any ground rules.” Elmer Murdock sprang up from the sofa Angie had been leaning over, the same green mud on his face. And Toby didn’t know whether he should hoot with laughter or try his best to hold it back.
Was this the formidable retired marine who’d instilled fear in most of Horseback Hollow High School’s youth with his loud shouting during football practices?
And for some reason, the old leatherneck didn’t seem to be the least bit embarrassed at being caught having a facial.
Mr. Murdock slapped his hands on his hips and zeroed in on Angie. “I didn’t complain about you cheating when you used way more material on that Bird McMansion than I did during our birdhouse-building contest.”
Toby quickly grabbed his ball cap from his head and pulled it lower over his face to cover his smirk. Was this the one-and-only Elmer Murdock?
His brothers would never believe this.
“You built that huge birdhouse outside?” Brian asked Angie. “I didn’t know girls could build like that.”
“Girls can do anything. Especially this girl.” Angie pointed to her green-covered face. “I got an A in woodshop when I was in high school. Give me a hammer, wood and nails, and I can build anything.”
“Can you help me build my car for the soapbox derby?” Brian asked.
“Only if you want to win,” Angie replied. Then she pointed to the sofa. “Have a seat, guys. Mr. Murdock has a few more minutes for his face to dry, but it’s time for us ladies to wash off our masks. We’ll be back in a Flash, Gordon.”
“Hey,” Brian said. “Flash Gordon. That’s funny.”
Toby crossed his arms and shifted his weight to one hip. Wow, Brian had been pretty quiet and distant ever since the state had stepped in and removed the kids from their aunt’s custody. But he’d warmed up to Angie in about three minutes flat.
As Angie led Kylie across the small living area that served as both kitchen and sitting room, Toby couldn’t help but watch the brunette who wore a pair of cutoff jeans that would have put Daisy Duke to shame pad across the floor. Her hips moved in a natural sway, her long, shapely legs damn near perfect. He remembered Doris Edwards’s cutting potshot at the Superette and thought that from where he was standing, there was absolutely nothing wrong with Angie’s curves.
He continued to watch her from behind until she and Kylie disappeared into the only other room in the house and shut the door.
Justin was sitting next to Mr. Murdock and reaching out his fingers to the wrinkled weather-beaten cheek. “Is that mud?” he asked the old man.
“Justin,” Toby scolded, “keep your hands to yourself.”
“Yeah, but this is sissy mud,” Mr. Murdock answered casually. “It’s supposed to clear your pores and detoxify your skin or some such bull. I’ll tell you what, we never worried about our pores when we were covered in mud back in that wet foxhole in Korea. All we cared about was not getting our fool heads blown off.”
“Wow, you got shot at in a war?” Brian asked as Justin started using the white container to apply stripes to his own eight-year-old face in a war-paint fashion that would make any Apache proud.
“Mr. Murdock,” Angie yelled from the bathroom at the end of the small hall, “stop talking so much. You need to keep still and let the mask dry. Every time you talk, you crack it.”
Mr. Murdock clamped his thin lips together in their perpetual grimace.
As Toby scanned Angie’s small living area, he couldn’t help but take note of the freshly painted blue walls that had been adorned with the oddest forms of artwork—the label side of a wooden produce crate that advertised Parnell’s Apple Farm, an old mirror framed with pieces of broken ceramic, a coatrack made out of doorknobs...
She’d placed a whitewashed bookshelf against one wall. Instead of books, it held various knickknacks. A bouquet of bluebonnets in a Mason jar sat on top. The furniture was old, and while the decor was kind of funky, the house had a cozy appeal.
“So you’re running the old Double H Ranch?” Mr. Murdock asked Toby, lasting only a couple of minutes before he broke Angie’s orders to stay quiet. It was hard to take the crotchety old man seriously with the green mud caked onto his face and his lips barely able to move.
“Sure am,” Toby replied, warming up to his favorite subject—his ranch. “We have more than three hundred head of cattle now, and I’ve been doing some breeding.”
“I used to do some roping back before I enlisted, you know. Could probably still out-rope most of you young upstarts. I should swing by your place and we could have a little contest.”
What was it with this old man and contests? Apparently his competitiveness went well beyond the high-school football field.
Before Toby could politely decline the challenge, the door swung open and the girls came out.
Angie had apparently swapped the denim shorts for a yellow floral sundress, yet she was still barefoot, her toenails painted the same pink shade as Kylie’s—minus the horse.
“We