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“Maybe not,” Cat said doubtfully. “Maybe you should ask the Weirdos again if they want to go with us.”
Gage glanced at his daughter. “You wouldn’t mind?”
She shrugged. “We’ll look like a freak show, but no one knows me here, I guess. And the old lady was nice to bring me some birds. I really like them. Mom won’t let me have pets—she says they’re dirty. She’d flip out over birds, I bet.” Cat sounded cheered by that. “And that lady you stare at all the time—what’s her name?”
“Chelsea,” Gage said, “and I do not stare at her.”
“Yeah. You do. Kind of like my mom stares at Larry.” Cat shuddered. “Larry is such a loser. I don’t know why she stares at him. He looks like a frog.” She glanced at her father. “You don’t look like a frog.”
“Thanks.” Gage smiled. “You want to go inside and invite the ladies?”
“Do I have to?”
“Your idea.”
“Ugh.” Cat walked into the house to the kitchen, where she knew she’d at least find the old lady who loved pink clothes. “Hey, Dad’s taking me for ice cream. He said it would be nice if you and your daughter came along to keep us company. He says we don’t know what to say to each other, and that it’s pretty awkward.”
Moira glanced up from her cookbook and smiled at Cat. “What a bonny idea. As a matter of fact, I was thinking you and I should make a trip to the library one afternoon.”
“What for?” Cat asked suspiciously.
“As we were discussing Macbeth,” the old lady began, and Cat shut that down in a hurry.
“You were discussing Macbeth. I just didn’t want you giving me any fried newt eyes.”
Moira smiled and tied on her rain cap.
“What’s that for? It’s not raining.”
“You’re right. It’s not,” Moira said, tying the pink polka-dotted plastic securely on her head. “Could you be a love and run upstairs and get my daughter, please? Knock first, and only go in if she says you may. She might be writing.”
“Something awful, I’m sure,” Cat said, her tone depressed and certain that whatever Chelsea was writing, it had to be worse than a third-grader’s school paper. She banged on the door.
Chelsea opened it, smiling when she saw Cat. Cat sniffed to let her know she didn’t like her. “Dad says you and your mother have to come eat ice cream with us. He says he needs you because we don’t like each other very much. Your mom’s putting on her hair thing, and she looks kind of weird, but she’s going to take me to the library someday, so that’ll be a real drag.”
Chelsea nodded. “Ice cream sounds wonderful.”
Cat looked past Chelsea into her room. “You’re probably not a very good writer.”
“Um—”
“I bet nobody would ever buy your books.” Cat looked up at her. “Anyway, you should be a schoolteacher or something.”
“Why?” Chelsea asked, following her down the stairs.
“You look like one,” Cat said, making it sound as if it wasn’t good to look like a teacher.
“Thank you,” Chelsea said. “My mother was a schoolteacher. I always admired her.” A schoolteacher! No one probably ever told Tempest she looked like that.
Chelsea wondered if Gage thought she looked like a schoolteacher. She patted her hair, which had a tendency to get wild and unruly when she was writing, from constantly shoving a hand through her bangs when she was deep in thought.
“I’ll sit in front,” Cat said, “next to my father.”
“Perfect. This is a nice truck, Gage,” Chelsea said.
“I just bought it.” He turned to smile at her, and Chelsea noticed her stomach give a little flip. He had such nice white teeth in his big smile, and his dark eyes seemed so full of life that it was hard not to smile back.
She saw Cat glowering at her, and wiped the answering smile off her own face. “I saw you shooting, Cat. Was it fun?”
“No,” Cat said.
“Do you shoot, Chelsea?” Gage asked.
“Not unless I have to.”
“I do,” Moira said. “I can bag a quail at fifty paces.”
“She can,” Chelsea said. “Many a time we ate something Mum brought home.”
“Eye of newt,” Cat said.
“Maybe,” Chelsea said. “In my home, we ate what was on our plates, said thank-you, excused ourselves and cleared the table. No questions asked.”
Cat turned to look at Moira. “Are you going to make me do all that?”
Moira nodded. “Of course, lamb. Otherwise, I don’t cook.”
“Jeez,” Cat said. “This is worse than prison.”
“Cat,” Gage said, his tone warning.
Chelsea looked out the window, amazed by the lack of cars on the road into town. “Tempest is like an old postcard that never changed.”
“I like that,” Gage said. “I like that it seems preserved in time.”
“I do, too.” Chelsea jumped when Gage’s gaze caught her eyes in the mirror above the dash.
“It looks boring,” Cat said, her nose pressed to the window as she looked out at the farmland they passed. Cows and horses and an occasional llama dotted the dry landscape. “I’d be embarrassed for my friends to know I was stuck out in the middle of the desert. I’ll probably get stung by a scorpion.”
“That reminds me—by chance did your mom send you with a pair of boots?” Gage asked, glancing at her black-and-white-checked tennis shoes.
Cat shrugged. “I’ve never had boots. I don’t need any, because I’m not going to be an itin…itin—”
“Itinerant,” Gage supplied.
“Cowgirl,” she finished, convinced she had life all figured out.
Chelsea’s gaze once again caught Gage’s in the mirror. He appeared a little chagrined by his daughter’s attitude. Chelsea told herself that his and Cat’s problems had nothing to do with her. In fact, she should be at home writing, giving Bronwyn a chance to figure her way out of her mess.
It was so much more exciting to wonder about Tempest, and how she might handle the pitfall Bronwyn had landed in.
I’m not good at pitfalls. I don’t like guns. I don’t like scary stuff. How did I ever wind up writing mysteries?
Maybe I write mysteries because I love puzzles. And I crave adventure—just like Cat.
She looked at Gage, thinking he was pretty much the call of the wild in real life—but she wasn’t adventurous Tempest. Except for her and her mother’s excursion to America, adventure came to her only on the safe pages of her novels. She would never have the courage to walk away from her life and be someone she wasn’t. “Gage,” Chelsea said suddenly, telling herself it was folly to get involved, “do you know when the nearest rodeo is?”
“Santa Fe. This weekend.” He looked at her. “The four of us could go, if you’d want to see one. Moira, have you been to a rodeo?”
“Not a one, and I’d love to,” Moira said. She shot her daughter a glance of approval, then looked at Cat.
“I’ve attended one, and I’d really like to go again,” Chelsea said. And give Cat a chance to see boot-wearing cowgirls and cowboys outside her hometown, doing their jobs.
“Great. We’ll go,” Gage said.
“Sounds boring,” Cat said.
Chelsea smiled. “We’ll see.”
* * *
AFTER A QUICK GROCERY RUN, they ran into Blanche the waitress at Shinny’s Ice Cream Shoppe. Introductions were made, and when Moira went off to look at the photographs on the walls, and Cat and her dad were engaged in some getting-to-know-you chitchat, Chelsea wandered over to the gregarious waitress. “What flavor?”
Blanche smiled. “Peppermint. My favorite. You?”
“I think peach.” Chelsea liked Blanche. In fact, she liked much of what she’d seen around the town of Tempest so far. Which brought up the name that had been stoking her curiosity, even making her wonder if she’d plotted her heroine wrong in her current book. “So tell me more about Tempest.”
“You’re not asking about the town, are you?” Blanche gave her a smile that reached her big eyes behind red-and-blue-swirled glasses frames.
“I want to hear about that, too. But I have to admit you caught my interest with the tale about Tempest.”
“C’mon.” Blanche waved her over to a black-and-white photograph on the wall. “This is Zola when she was just a wee thing.”
Chelsea blinked. “She seems so thin.”
“Yeah. Well, it wasn’t for lack of eating, I don’t think. Her mom used to send her down every day to this very ice cream shop. My husband, Shinny, over there—” she pointed to a friendly-looking, balding man who was sweeping up “—he owns this shop. He gives ice cream out to the kids, especially the ones he knows got folks who can’t afford it. Zola was on his list of kids who always got a double scoop, or a milkshake if he could talk her into it. Chocolate,” Blanche said with a smile, “in case you were going to ask. Shinny’s special.”
Chelsea moved to a photo of Tempest’s most famous citizen standing in a field, looking at the camera with wide eyes. Her bare feet looked dirty and her overalls not much better. “Did she have a high school sweetheart?”
“No.” Blanche pointed to a football team photo with a pretty brunette standing in a shiny uniform beside the team. “Maggie Sweet was the girl the guys went for. Not a skinny, brown-headed sparrow like Zola. Funny thing is, when she grew up and left this town behind to become Tempest, men pursued her like mad. She went through men like candy, and I don’t think she was serious about a one of them. She had one serious guy, some minor royal from Scotland, I think. Anyway, she found out he had a lady on the side, and left him just like she’d left this town.” Blanche smiled, remembering. “We were all afraid she’d be heartbroken, but Tempest said it was his loss.”
“How do you know all this?” Chelsea had to know more. “I thought she went away and never looked back.”
“She used to call back here from time to time. It’s just been the last year or two we haven’t heard a peep from her. About to send a delegation over to check on her.” Blanche didn’t look convinced that that would have much impact. “We still love her here. She’ll always be Zola to us.”
She’d always be that dirty little girl in the threadbare clothes, Chelsea thought. No wonder she wanted to make herself into Tempest. Chelsea could understand wanting to get away from her old life. It would be fun to be a heroine in a book for a day. Not my heroine. She’s been dangling so long she’s afraid she’ll never get off that cliffside.
“Ready to go?” Gage asked Chelsea, smiling a greeting at Blanche. “I’ve got to get Cat home. She says she’s tired after her big day of traveling. If you want me to come back later and pick you up—”
“I’m good. Thanks.” Chelsea smiled at the woman in turn as she got up from the swivel seat she’d settled on while they’d been chatting. “I enjoyed the town history lesson, Blanche. Thank you.”
Blanche waved a hand, reached out to pat a grumpy-looking Cat. “You come back anytime, sugar. Free ice cream for pretty little girls.” She smiled at her. “You look so much like your daddy.”
Gage appeared pleased. “Thanks, Blanche. I take that as a real fine compliment.”
Cat glanced up at him, surprised. “You do?”
He nodded. “Sure I do.”
Cat didn’t seem to know what to think about that. She remained silent, following him as he went to escort Moira to the truck. Chelsea went out behind them, watching Gage interact with his daughter, thinking that for a man who’d just found out he was a dad, he was handling it very well.
* * *
“THANKS,” GAGE SAID as he walked the women to the front door. Moira and Cat went on inside to check on the birds, which Cat had named Mo and Curly—he guessed Larry hadn’t been her favorite of the Three Stooges—so Gage grabbed the chance to tell Chelsea exactly how he felt.
Damn grateful.
“For what?” She looked at him, surprised.
He shrugged, not certain how to express what he wanted to say. “Helping Cat make the transition. And me.”
Afternoon light glowed softly on her features as she studied him. Gage waited nervously, as if he was on a first date, not certain why he felt so skittish around Chelsea. Her eyes were so kind and radiated understanding. She wasn’t the type of woman who made men nervous, he was pretty certain.
Which meant…he must dig her.
A little.
The stray thought made Gage even more nervous. Since his relationship with Cat’s mother, Leslie, he’d stayed busy, making no time for dating. A night or two with a lady sufficed.
He shouldn’t feel differently about this russet-haired Irishwoman. For many reasons—not the least of which would be not wanting to play right into Jonas’s hands.
A man had his pride. Gage looked away from the redhead with the big eyes.
“I didn’t do anything for either of you,” Chelsea said. “I like Cat. She reminds me of myself at that age.”
He couldn’t imagine any resemblance, in any way, between the two of them. But he smiled. “Thanks.”
“No thanks necessary.”
There was no reason to keep Chelsea outside longer than he had, either. The shame of it was he really wanted to talk to her more. His heart drummed inside him, and he wished he had his typical easy talk at his disposal. But he didn’t.
And then he did the unthinkable, brushing his lips from the side of her mouth to her cheek, as “just friends” as he could manage.
God, she was soft.
“See you around,” he said, not hanging in to find out what price he might have to pay for stealing a brotherly peck. He didn’t know what had possessed him. He’d let his mouth do the speaking his voice couldn’t. “I’m leaving, Cat! Are you coming?”
“I’ll catch up in a sec!” she yelled back from upstairs. He heard the screen door close as Chelsea went inside.
