Eleven

When Pete finally pulled in the drive, Sean was huddled in the passenger seat of the truck, silent as a stone. His son reminded him of himself in a sulk. He had the same moody eyes, the screw-you posture, the slouchy scowl.

“Come on, Sean. I don’t think I’m being unreasonable. I’d rather you worked on the land with me and your brother. You know how much we have to do this summer. But you can work there with the horses for a month. And if you still feel after six weeks that you want a horse, I’ll do it.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“You’re giving me all this attitude and I don’t know why. Give me a break. You know how expensive that horse is going to be.”

“I know.”

“You’ve loved every animal that was ever born. But neither of us is familiar with horses. A horse presents a different range of problems.”

“I know that, too.”

“So don’t you think it’s a fair compromise? Work with the horses, be around them. Get a chance to see if you really like the animal and what it’ll take to keep one. Before jumping in.”

“Dad, for cripes sake. Sometimes I get so sick of your being reasonable. Yeah, that’s all fair. Yeah, I want to work with them. But I wanted a horse right now, you know? Why can’t you just let me sulk in peace for a while?” Simon hurled out of the truck and slammed the door.

Pete stared after him, shaking his head. Teenagers.

Both boys had been pistols for a week now-and their grandfather had been just as huffy. Pete pocketed the truck key and strode toward the house, knowing full well the reason for their testiness. The family had assumed he’d blown it with Camille. All three of them had actually believed he and Cam were going to tie the knot.

He’d told them it was never going to happen. He’d told them from the start; he’d told them last week; he’d told them this week. His dad had adored Camille from the day she was born, and the boys were crazy about her-so they’d only heard what they wanted to hear.

Pete could hardly confess the personal details, but he knew the truth. A man couldn’t hold a woman through family or land or money or any other peripherals. There had to be something inside him that made her want to stay. Made her want to love. Made her want to commit. And Pete had already discovered the hard way, when Debbie left, that he’d never had that mysterious something.

“Hey, Dad!” Simon suddenly barged out the back door, leaping down the two porch steps, his eyes bright with excitement. Sean, who’d walked into the house with an old man’s despair, bounded out right after his brother with the same exuberance.

“What’s going on?” Pete asked suspiciously.

“We got something to show you. Hurry up, hurry up-it’s in the kitchen.”

He followed, expecting anything-God knows the boys had put him through “anything” in the form of surprises before. Still, he could hardly be prepared for the heap taking up a vast amount of space on his kitchen floor.

The dog looked something like a loose puddle of caramel-colored wrinkles-tons of wrinkles. Pete hunkered down, pulled up an eyelid, and then the other. The eyes looked healthy, and the dog blinked, proving it wasn’t dead. Beyond a hopeless moan, though, she appeared comatose.

“Who would do this to us?” Pete asked.

Simon chose to answer the questions he wanted to answer. “Her name is Hortense. And she’s depressed, because she belonged to a cop and now he died, and so she’s grieving. Grieving bad. She needs love, Dad. She needs us. She needs you.”

Pete was unimpressed with those answers. “Who would do this to us?” he repeated.

“In fact, she said that Hortense especially needs you, because you’re so great at helping somebody get over grief. And she oughta know.” Simon added, “I got her to eat some ice cream when I spooned it into her mouth. But then she went back to moaning on the floor again. Can we keep her, Dad? Can we?”

Pete lifted the dog’s head, looked into its sappy eyes, and shook his head again. “Aw, come on, guys. Do you two have any idea how stubborn a hound is?”

“She said…that was the point. That you knew how to deal with extra stubborn critters.”

“But this is a bloodhound. You can’t tell a bloodhound anything.”

“Camille-she said you knew about that, too. She said that was why she thought of you, because you were really great with females who wouldn’t listen. She’s paying us back, isn’t she, Dad?” Sean stood up, hooked his thumbs in the back jeans pockets, exactly the way Pete always did.

“Yeah. And payback in a woman is ugly, son.”

Simon stepped forward, doing the thumbs thing now, too. “Well, I think we should keep her.”

“Who? Camille or the dog?”

The boys exchanged glances. They weren’t going to touch that one with an electric prod, but he saw that hopeful glint in both their eyes. “Damn dog is going to eat us out of house and home. And hounds smell unbelievable when they’re wet.”

“So? So do we.” This logic was irrefutable to Sean.

“I gotta tell you two more little things, Dad. Although I guess they could wait-”

“Hold it.” When a fourteen-year-old didn’t want to tell something, it meant it needed to be told. Yesterday if not sooner. “Spill it,” Pete instructed.

“Camille…she said, like, that you could bring the dog back.” Simon hustled to get more in. “Like you could bring it around seven. For dinner. But I told her you’d be okay with the dog. Not to worry about it. I mean, you know she can’t take in another animal. Not this fast. Not when we already pawned off Darby and the cat on her already.”

“So I don’t have to go over there at seven unless I’m taking the dog back?” Messages relayed from teenagers always needed clarifying.

“Actually, I think she wanted you to come over for dinner to talk. At seven. Dog or no dog. That’s how it came across. But…”

“But what?”

“But then there’s the other thing,” Simon blurted out. “Someone really messed with her.”

Pete whipped his head around, no longer playing. “What do you mean, ‘messed with her’?”

“You’re not even going to recognize her. That’s what I mean. That’s why I was thinking about not telling you about dinner. Because, like, if you go over there, don’t start out telling her she looks horrible. I mean you’ll just make her feel bad. Whoever did that to her…well, it’s pretty scary. But I don’t want Camille to feel bad, you know? I mean, what’s the point. Like you always say, judge the person by what they do, not how they look-”

“For God’s sake, son, you’re starting to scare me.”

Simon threw up his hands in a classic male gesture. “You’re scared. I took one look and hardly recognized her. So just watch it. It’s done now. She can’t help it, so be nice about it.”

It wasn’t possible-not from his son’s description-to have a clue what Camille might have done to her appearance. Still, Pete didn’t even consider stopping over before seven.

In fact, at fifteen minutes to seven, he’d showered and shaved and put on fresh clothes-but he still wasn’t sure if he was going over there. The issue was courage. He’d been avoiding her. Not that they hadn’t regularly seen each other over the last week; he’d helped her every single day with the lavender. But with the boys out of school, it had been so easy to travel over there as a trio. He hadn’t seen her alone once.

Sometimes a guy was strong enough to take a knife in the gut and some days he just couldn’t face it.

Still, he climbed in the truck at precisely five minutes to seven. The hound clearly put a line in the sand. And his boys-and their grandfather-weren’t about to let him get out of dinner besides. Since they watched him from the window, it wasn’t as if he could turn the truck toward Timbuktu. He had to turn toward her place. And since her cottage was essentially next door, he couldn’t drag out the ride to any longer than a minute and a half.

When he parked at the cottage, evening sunlight was shivering through the trees in soft yellow patches. Her porch was shady and cool-and damned quiet. The dog and cat were both slumbering on the top step. Neither budged to make room for him to pass, although the cat at least opened her eyes.

“Cam?”

He rapped once on the door, not quite able to see through the screen. But then she opened it. And his heart stopped.

Gone was the waif who’d come home with her heart broken. The woman in the doorway was barefoot, with long sun-kissed legs. She was wearing a scarlet scoop of a dress, held up with a couple of promises-the straps didn’t seem more substantial than that-and it sure didn’t appear that she was wearing anything underneath it. Her shoulders were as bare as her legs, smooth, golden, the simple fabric sculpting the swell of her breasts and curve of her hips.

Weeks ago, she hadn’t had that swell, those curves. Weeks ago, she’d been all bones, all eyes. The darned woman was still all eyes, but now all that ghastly chopped-off hair was wisping around her cheeks. Her lips were red as sin, her posture sassy. She looked…sexy. She looked…splendiferous. She looked like she could make any man drool without half trying, and she’d made him drool even when she’d been a waif.

“You’re late,” she said.

“I know. I’m sorry.” He handed her a bottle of wine. The twins and their grandfather had explained that you didn’t go to dinner with a woman without wine. They’d moved him to speechlessness-that the boys would conceivably think they could educate him about courtly manners. The same boys who couldn’t stand women. The same boys who never wanted a woman in their lives for the rest of their lives. “It’s probably the wrong wine,” he said.

“There is no wrong wine. Now before you say anything about the bloodhound-”