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“You got nothing, not even a groaning sound?”
“Not a thing.”
“Then it’s probably not your battery. Maybe it’s just a loose connection, or possibly your starter. Hell, it could be a hundred things.” He took a handkerchief from a pocket and wiped his hands on it. “Tell you what, I’m heading back to the ranch now, anyway. Why don’t you ride home with me? You can call the garage in the morning.”
Juliet, worried about her beloved car, shook her head. “Do you think it’s anything serious?”
“That it won’t start…? Probably not. But these gaskets look shot, and the seals don’t seem to be holding.”
“What does that mean?”
He gave her a look with way too much patience in it to be reassuring. Then he asked, “Where’d you buy this car, Julie?”
“Don’s Hot Deals, outside of Auburn.”
“How much did you pay for it?”
She told him.
He looked pained. “I’ve always thought of you as practical, before this.”
“I know.” She giggled, forgetting altogether that she was not a giggling kind of person. She added, downright pertly, “There are a lot of things about me that aren’t the way they used to be.”
“I noticed.”
He looked at her some more, and she looked back. It was kind of fun, Juliet thought, these long pauses where they just looked at each other. At least, it was fun for her. Looking at Cody McIntyre was a purely pleasurable pastime.
“How much do you owe on it?” he asked eventually.
“The car?”
“Yeah.”
“Not a cent. I paid cash.”
“Hell, Julie.”
Juliet smiled and shrugged. “I wanted it. So I bought it.”
“You still have that little brown car?”
“Nope. I never want to see a brown car again.”
Cody shook his head. “Come on. Let’s not stand here all night. Get your things and let’s go home.”
Juliet got her jacket and the big manila folder and followed Cody to his shiny black pickup in the lot behind McIntyre’s.
They were quiet as Cody pulled out of the lot and headed for the edge of town. But once they’d left the lights of Emerald Gap behind and begun the twenty-minute ride to the McIntyre ranch, Cody had a suggestion. “You can use my spare pickup, if you want, until you get that car fixed.”
She looked over at him, smiling. “You’re so good to me, Cody. You always have been. Don’t think I haven’t noticed.”
He looked a little embarrassed at that, and spent a few moments paying great attention to the road. Then he said gruffly, “I’ve got to be honest, Julie. I think you bought yourself a world of headaches with that car.”
Juliet sighed. “I love it, anyway. I’ll get it fixed, that’s all.” She was a little worried about the car. But tonight, even the possibility that she’d spent several thousand dollars on a bona fide lemon didn’t daunt her. Nothing could faze her tonight.
Because she, Juliet Huddleston, who’d spent her whole life in the background taking orders rather than giving them, was going to run Midsummer Madness this year! The prospect was terrifying, but exhilarating, as well.
She rolled down the window and let the warm wind blow back her hair. Then she turned to Cody, ready to tease him a little as she’d imagined doing a while before.
“You didn’t stick around to congratulate me.”
He chuckled. “After the meeting, you were occupied in the lobby. I figured I’d see you soon enough, and you could give me a hard time about my lack of faith in you.”
“Why, Cody McIntyre. When in our lives have I ever given you a hard time?”
He threw her a glance. “When have you ever led a festival? Or owned a red car? Or rented your big house in town, to move out in the sticks?”
“It is not the sticks,” she reproved him. “It is the McIntyre ranch, where I have longed to live ever since first grade when your mom gave that pool party the last day of school. And now I do live there.”
He didn’t laugh this time, but there was humor in his voice when he said, “I get it. Living in my guesthouse is the fulfillment of a lifelong dream.”
“Not exactly. Not quite so permanent as a dream. More temporary. Like a fantasy.”
He grunted. “As your landlord, I’m bound to ask, exactly how temporary do you mean?”
“Oh, Cody. Don’t worry. I’ll give a month’s notice before I leave. And it won’t be for a year or two, at least. What I mean is, it’s just something I always wanted to do, not something that lasts a lifetime. That’s all.”
He was quiet for a time, digesting this. Then he said, “So what gives, Julie?”
His serious tone surprised her. She answered in her old way, with that little frightened catch. “Wh-what do you mean?”
“You’re different. You’ve changed. I didn’t really notice it until today, when you suddenly insisted I let you take on the pageant. But it’s been happening for a while, a few months at least. I can see that now, looking back on things.”
She turned in her seat to face him. He gave her a quick, encouraging smile. Then he looked back at the road, which was climbing now, up into the pines, as they grew nearer the ranch. “I’d really like to know, Julie,” he said, this time not glancing over.
“Y-you would?”
He nodded.
She realized she wanted to tell him. Maybe it was that he’d actually asked; no one had asked before. Or maybe her confidence was finally high enough, that after tonight, she wouldn’t need to keep her resolution secret anymore.
But she supposed it didn’t really matter why. What mattered was he’d asked.
As he drove the twisting road to the ranch, she told him everything. About her vow that her next thirty years were going to amount to more than the past thirty had—and about all the steps she’d taken to make that vow come true.
He listened and nodded, and laughed a little when she told about that first time up in front of the group at Toastmasters International, when she’d been so nervous that she’d gestured wildly, knocking over her water glass into her shoes, which then made embarrassing squishing sounds every time she shifted her weight through the rest of her speech.
The miles flew by. She was just telling him how terrified she’d been for those first seconds up on the stage this evening, when the front entrance to the ranch came into sight. It was a high stone wall broken by two widely spaced stone pillars, with an iron M on a rocker in a cast-iron arch across the top.
Beyond the arch, Juliet saw the sloping lawn of the house grounds and a blue corner of the big pool. Kemo, Cody’s dog, stood between the pillars, wagging his tail in a hopeful manner. Juliet waved at the mutt and caught a brief glimpse of the rambling two-story house before they sped past and turned into the small drive that led to the guesthouse next door.
Juliet finished her tale as he pulled up before the little house she rented from him.
“So that’s that,” she told him. “I’m making myself a whole new kind of life, from now on.”
He gave her his beautiful right-sided smile. “And then what happens?”
“When?”
“After Midsummer Madness is over. After you’ve proved beyond a doubt that you’re the most assertive woman around.”
“Well,” she confessed, “I haven’t thought that far ahead yet.” She scooped up her jacket and her manila folder and leaned on the door latch. It gave, and she jumped down. “But I’ll let you know, as soon as I figure it out. If you’re still interested, that is.”
She turned and practically skipped up the stone walk to the small porch of the guesthouse before she realized that in her excitement over all she’d accomplished, she’d forgotten to thank Cody for the lift home.
Conveniently, he hadn’t driven away yet but was still sitting there staring after her, with his engine idling. She rushed back to the driver’s side and leaned in the window.
“Thanks, Cody. Thanks a bunch.” She kissed his cheek—it was warm and a little rough, very pleasant to the lips, actually. And then she whirled and danced back up the walk.
Cody sat and watched her go, bewildered at the change in her. Why, damned if her blouse hadn’t been open two buttons down. He’d got himself the sweetest glimpse of that little shadow between her small, high breasts when she leaned in the window and put her soft lips on his cheek.
He couldn’t figure it. What in the hell was innocent Julie Huddleston doing showing cleavage, making a man think about her in a whole new way?
He had half a mind to call her back and tell her to button up. But she was already bouncing up the steps of the guesthouse, turning once to wave, and disappearing inside.
Cody sat there a few minutes more, deciding that telling her to button up would have been presumptuous anyway. He was glad he hadn’t done it. It would have sounded nothing short of crude—and besides, then she would have known that Cody McIntyre, who had always looked out for her, had just now been looking down her blouse.
Three
Juliet’s only problem that night was getting to sleep. She was just too keyed up to simply close her eyes and drift off. So she lay with the window open and only a sheet for a cover, staring up at the ceiling and enjoying daydreams of her success.
She planned a little, thinking it would be fun to try to get a real professional auctioneer this year to raffle off the baked goods at the big picnic on closing day. And this year, for the frog jump, she was going to see that there were separate categories for out-of-county frogs. Recently, some tourists had been buying some real long jumpers from Sacramento pet stores and running them against the more short-hocked local frogs. It just wasn’t fair.
Smiling into the darkness, Juliet rolled over and tried to settle down. But ideas kept coming. She thought of a better way to arrange the booth spaces for the Crafts and Industry Fair even as she started planning her own costume for the Gold Rush Ball. Maybe she’d go as Maria Elena Roderica Perez Smith, the doomed laundress from local history. Or as one-eyed Charlie Parkhurst, who’d lived her life pretending to be a man. Or maybe Madame Moustache, the lusty bighearted saloon owner of Nevada City fame….
Juliet rolled over again and looked at the clock; it was past midnight. She really ought to get some sleep. Tomorrow was Friday, a regular workday. She had to finish off the payrolls for Duane’s Coffee Shop and Babe Allen’s Gift and Card Emporium, not to mention get a good start on that unit cost analysis for McMulch’s Lumberyard.
From outside, she heard the crow of a rooster who was up way past his bedtime. Juliet grinned. She knew the rooster. The ranch, which was mostly timberland, didn’t support too many animals. Cody kept three horses, Kemo the dog and a cow called Emeline. There were a few chickens pecking around the stables, and one big mean black rooster that Cody swore was destined to be thrown in the pot one day soon. Cody called him Black Bart, and he was the only one ornery enough to stay up making noise all night.
Black Bart crowed again. And as the sound of his crowing faded off into the night, Juliet heard, drifting in the open window, the sweet, high sound of a harmonica.
It was Cody. Playing that silver mouth organ of his in the way that only he knew how, the notes sliding all over the scale, from so high and sweet your heart ached, to those low, sexy notes that vibrated down inside a person in the most stimulating way. Lord, Juliet thought, that boy could make music. No wonder his songs drove the ladies wild.
For a while she just lay there, as she had many a night since she took the guesthouse, her senses gratified and her spirit soothed by the impromptu concert that drifted through the window on the night air.
And then it occurred to her that getting Cody to perform in the Midsummer Madness Revue would be a coup of sorts. Every year they asked him, and every year he very courteously declined. Cody would provide goods and capital to the festival, but he always claimed he was too busy to commit himself to getting up on the stage every single night.
Juliet closed her eyes and hummed along a little, until her own lack of musical talent made her fall silent, so that she could better enjoy the magic spell that Cody could weave with just a song.
Yes, she thought, as he began a new tune, she would definitely ask him. As she’d learned in assertiveness training, nothing was ever lost by asking. If the answer was no, you were in no worse a position than before you asked; if you got a yes, you were one ahead. Besides, maybe Cody would agree to perform if Juliet was the one asking. Maybe he’d do it for the sake of their lifelong friendship—if she caught him in the right mood.
As the second tune ended on a high note, the thought came to her: Why not just go ask him now?
She nodded at the ceiling. Yes, that would be a good approach. To ask him right now, spontaneously, in the middle of the night when neither of them seemed to be able to sleep.
Juliet pushed back the sheet and rose from her bed. She pulled on her light robe over her pajamas and decided not to even worry about her feet. She could use the little iron gate in the stone fence between the two houses. That way, there were only smooth paving stones and soft grass between his house and hers.
She went out the back door and down the few steps to the stone walk that led to the gate. The stones, as she padded from one to the next, were still warm from a summer day’s worth of sun.
Overhead there was no moon, but the stars were very bright. The gold grasses of the open pasture on her right, which was separated from her house by a wooden fence, seemed to reflect the starlight, so Juliet had no trouble seeing the way. She flew past the hay barn and small stables, which loomed just on the other side of the fence. Cody began another song as she pulled open the gate to the main grounds and slipped through.
Beyond the gate was another world. Six acres of sloping, manicured grass were bisected by a gravel drive that ended in a roomy garage. On the near side of the drive lay the swimming pool, lit now and casting its eerie light up toward the night sky. On the far side of the drive, up a walk lined with rose bushes, was the house, a two-story white clapboard structure with green roof and trim.
Originally, as Cody’s mother had once explained to Juliet, the guesthouse had been the main house. The ranch had been smaller then, more of a homestead than anything else. Cody’s great-grandmother had run the place, while his great-grandfather owned and operated the Rush Creek Digs mine. They’d closed the mine in Cody’s grandfather’s time; Cody’s grandfather had bought more land, then built his family a bigger, more comfortable place to live. Cody’s father, retired and living in Arizona for the past few years, had opened the hardware store in town and added the Olympic-size pool at the house. When he retired, Cody’s dad had signed both the ranch and hardware store over to his only son. Now Cody took care of it all, as well as the bar and grill that was his contribution to the family holdings.
The huge yard of the main house was surrounded on three sides by a stone wall. The north side, except for the garage, was divided from the pasture by a wooden fence. It was a stunning effect, Juliet had always thought: the pampered, lush grounds, cut off from the road and the outbuildings by the high wall—but opened right up to the wild, wide field on the north side. There, the tall grasses rolled away for a half mile or so until they hit the woodlands of the surrounding hills.
Once inside the gate and sheltered by the spreading shadow of a big fruitless mulberry tree there, Juliet hesitated, partly in hushed appreciation of the starlit yard, and partly to gauge the source of the music that curled through the still night.
The melody came, as she had suspected, from the wide front porch that faced her across the drive. She could see Cody there, now that she looked for him. Since the porch light was off, he sat in shadow, lounging against one of the two pillars that flanked the front steps. He faced the main gate and had his back to the garage. He was shirtless—she could see the sheen of bare skin—and barefoot, too, just as she was. His naked feet were on the second step. Not far away from him, near the porch railing, she could make out the sprawled black shape of the dog, Kemo. The dog’s head was raised and pointed in her direction.
Cody, staring off toward the front gate, seemed lost in his music. If he had looked, he could have seen her, even in the shadow of the mulberry, for her robe was the palest shade of blue and drew what little light there was within the darkness. But he didn’t look.
Kemo, still peering in Juliet’s direction, whined. Cody stopped playing to murmur a soft order to the animal. The dog laid his sleek black head on his paws once more.
Juliet stood for a while, listening to the song, suspended in the moment and glad to be there. All of her senses seemed heightened. There was the music, the faint gleam of Cody’s skin across the yard, the cool caress of moist grass at her feet. The grass had a sweet, full earthy smell that mingled deliciously with the dusty scent of the drier, wilder grass on the other side of the fence.
Cody paused for a breath. From somewhere on the green lawn, a frog croaked; it was a rough, humorous sound, after the beguiling beauty of the song. Juliet smiled. Cody played on.
It occurred to her that, were she to circle the pool and cross the drive up by the garage, she could approach from the side steps and keep from disturbing Cody for a few minutes more. It seemed appropriate, somehow, for her to come up on him quietly. It was in keeping with the enchanted mood of moonless darkness and haunting song.
The thick grass tickled her feet as she crept, still smiling to herself, beneath the trees that grew close to the stone wall. By the time she reached the wooden fence, it had become a sort of game to her. She shot across the open space, picked her way over the pebbles of the drive in front of the garage and then flew across the unprotected space on the other side. Then she had one of the pair of huge old chestnut trees that grew in front of the house for cover as she approached the side of the porch.
When she put her dew-damp foot on the bottom step, Cody began yet another song, one of his own that Juliet had heard once or twice over the years. It was a love song, about a poor boy who loved a rich girl whose family kept them apart. Now, of course, he only played the melody. But Juliet recalled the general flow of the lyrics, and felt sad for the penniless lover, whose dream girl could never be his.
Juliet mounted the steps and then, still unchallenged, began to approach the man who sat on the front steps with his back to her, playing one of those songs that broke women’s hearts.
The wooden boards of the porch were with her; they gave out nary a squeak. The dog, too, seemed to be on her side. Though he raised his head and watched her, he made no sound.
Juliet tiptoed to the Mission-style easy chair, one of a pair that flanked the double front door. And then, lost in the music, she hovered there, staring at the marvelously sculpted musculature of Cody’s bare back, until the sad song came to an end.
There was a silence, one that slowly filled up with the sounds of the night. An owl hooted somewhere behind the house. The crickets spun out whirring songs of their own. A mourning dove cried. Out in the field, a quail loosed its piping call, just as Kemo’s snaky black tail began beating the porch boards, and the dog opened his mouth to pant in a welcoming way.
Cody said, “Julie.”
He said it softly, in a different way than anyone had ever said her name before. He turned his head, slowly, and smiled at her.
Juliet smiled back, with no shyness or hesitation. It seemed that her triumph at the meeting earlier had boosted her confidence, while the magic safety of the darkness made her bold.
