Poppy. Despite the color in her cheeks at the moment, it didn’t suit her. Poppies, in his mind, were flamboyant flowers, in too-brilliant shades of red or orange.
She was more like a little brown-eyed Susan.
“Go ahead,” he said. “I liked it.” More than liked it. It was like listening to an angel sing.
But she wouldn’t sing again. Instead she took off the little boy’s shirt and sponged him off with those tea towels he’d prepared.
“Let’s lay him down,” he suggested. “The back room stays cool.”
When she moved to lift the boy, he took him from her.
“He’s not heavy,” she protested.
He shrugged. Oh, right. It was this brand-new world where women did all the same things as men. Never mind that he had just been evaluating her bale-throwing ability. He suspected it was this kind of thing that had driven Nick away—he demanded the best from everyone and then never gave them a chance to show it to him. But other than toss the kid back at her, he didn’t know what to do about it.
They went down the narrow hall. He managed to snag his bedroom door with his toe on the way by and pull it shut before she got a glimpse of three or four days’ worth of dirty shirts and socks on the floor.
His spare bedroom was as plain as the rest of his tiny house. It didn’t even have a curtain. Not many Peeping Toms could be bothered coming out this far.
Especially to only get a peep at him.
“Poppy, sing,” the wee tyrant demanded again as she tucked relatively clean sheets around the tyke.
She glanced self-consciously in Turner’s direction, and he took the hint and left. He had a pair of boots that needed cleaning before they were ruined, anyway.
But as he bent over the boots with the garden hose, he could hear her voice drifting out the window.
“Oh, little love, close your eyes,
Think of sun and wide blue skies,
Deer playing and grass swaying,
Coyotes at the moon baying...”
After a few minutes the singing stopped. He realized he had stood there, frozen, not paying the least bit of attention to his boots.
She came out the back door a moment later. “He went right to sleep.”
“How do you do that? Just make up rhymes to music like that?”
“I don’t know. It just comes to me. I’m sorry about your boots.”
“They’ve seen worse.”
“What could be worse?” she asked, crinkling up her nose.
He decided to be a gentleman and not describe to her in generous detail the afterbirth of a cow.
“Should we call a doctor?” she asked. “Maybe just run Nicky’s symptoms by him?”
“We’ll wait and see. I don’t think it’s much. Could be too much heat. Maybe he’s carsick. I think the temperature will come right down now.”
“You handle a crisis very well.”
He snorted. “This is a long way from a crisis. But when you do have a crisis, you don’t have any choice when you’re this far from anything.”
She hugged herself and looked out over the land. “I think this is right in the middle of everything.”
Sure you do, honey. “Until the first time you crave pizza at two in the morning.”
“Pizza is easy to make.”
“It is?” he said with reluctant respect.
“Oh, sure. A little bread dough and tomato sauce, pepperoni, and fresh green peppers.”
“Fresh. There you have it. What we don’t have.”
“I can eat it without,” she said absently. “You could grow a garden, couldn’t you?”
He shot a guilty look at the dead flowers in the box under the bedroom window.
She followed his gaze. “Oh. Did you plant those?”
“Not hardly,” he said a trifle defensively. Did he look like the kind of man who planted pansies?
Something tightened in her face, and he could read the whole story of what she thought had happened there. He’d had a brief fling with a woman who thought she was staying and had planted flowers. He’d gotten rid of her and not even bothered to water the plants.
Actually, his sister had planted the flowers in one of those periodic attempts she made to spiff his place up. He’d watered them meticulously for a week or so. And then he’d gotten contracts to put thirty days’ training on six horses, plus he’d acquired that renegade, leopard-spotted Appy mare who only had murder—his—on her mind.
He decided, stubbornly, not to tell his uninvited guest those few facts, even if they might have redeemed his hardened soul somewhat in her eyes.
If she was silly enough to think he was some kind of playboy, let her think it. It might keep her from getting any damn fool notions.
That kid was going to be here for a day or two, and she wasn’t leaving without him tucked in his little seat in the back of her little car.
“Poppy, is it?” Perhaps that would explain a sensitivity to perished flowers.
She looked baffled.
“Your name?”
“Good grief, no. Shayla. Shayla Morrison.”
He thought Poppy was a somewhat more sensible name, even if it didn’t suit her. Shayla was an exotic name, which for some ridiculous reason made him wonder about her underwear again. Frills. He’d bet his last buck on that one. Come to that, he’d probably bet his soul for one little peek, so he’d better get himself out of harm’s way and quick.
“Miss Morrison—”
“Shayla, please.”
“Shayla, I’ve got some chores to do, so you’ve got the place to yourself if you want to have a bath or shower. I’ll pull out the sofa bed for the night.”
“I can’t stay here!”
“Well, you sure as hell can’t leave. That kid isn’t going anywhere, and you’re not going anywhere without him.”
She mulled that over. “And the nearest motel?”
“Care to guess?”
“Close to the pharmacy and hospital?”
“Right around the comer.”
“I guess you’re right.”
“An irritating habit I have.”
She smiled, and it was a nice smile that showed small white teeth and lit up a light inside her eyes, making him realize he’d been wrong about one thing. Because she was downright beautiful when she did that.
The smile disappeared, and she gnawed on her bottom lip thoughtfully. “I don’t know what I’m going to do—”
“I think you’re going to have to stick around. For a day or two. I’ll see if I can track down Maria and find out what’s going on.”
“Track her down? But—”
“She used to have some family in these parts.” Family, he remembered, who lived in a frightful little shack with a car corpse or two in the yard. Part of the reason