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She turned her head a fraction, caught a glimpse of someone brown, huge. Wearing a fur coat? In September?
He shoved her in the middle of her back, slamming her against the plate glass. Her head hit hard. Pinpricks of light floated against her eyelids.
This can’t be happening. Not again. Not in broad daylight. Not in Ordinary. The town disappeared. Darkness fell and she was on her way home from school after a basketball game. Someone shoved her into the bushes, someone strong who bruised and scratched her. She smelled sweat and garbage and city dirt and cigarette breath. And the pain. Too much pain.
She couldn’t breathe.
The man grunted and she was back in Ordinary in the middle of the day. She got mad. She was supposed to be safe in Ordinary, the safest place on earth, Hank said.
“Nooooooo.” Her voice croaked out of her.
The man’s hold on her was so strong and massive she couldn’t get free. No hands to grab, no wrists to break. He was behind her and she couldn’t turn.
Why were men such cowards?
This time she was going to see the face of her attacker.
She pushed against him, but he shoved her harder, knocking her head again.
More starbursts of pain.
He smelled of hay and dirt and, oh, God, the stench. What had he been eating?
She waited for the pain to start, down there, but he wasn’t doing anything, just leaning into her with what felt like hundreds of pounds of weight. What did he want?
“Help,” she tried to yell. It came out a little stronger. He didn’t stop her with a hand across her mouth the way the other man had.
Her blood boiled and she pushed until her arms shook with the strain. He didn’t budge.
She opened her mouth to scream again and the man behind her let out an enormous, ungodly….moo? She covered her ears. The bags in her hands slammed against her cheeks. The sound roared on, deafening her, stunning her.
She took advantage of an easing of pressure and spun around. A huge hairy nose chucked her chin. Enormous brown bovine eyes stared her down. Oh, lord, a cow. C.J.’s cow. The one he’d thought she’d wanted.
She couldn’t relax. Couldn’t laugh about this. That dirty street, that darkness, that pain still lingered in her mind, floated out of her and played across the blue sky like film noir.
Forcing herself to recognize that she was in Ordinary, on Main Street, she breathed in the heat of the September sun to banish the chill she felt in her bones.
The nose mashed her back against the store window. The animal sniffed her bags, tried to take one from her. She closed her eyes and held on.
The door of the shop opened and she heard C.J.’s voice. “Hey, Bizzy, back off.”
Then the pressure eased. She opened her eyes. C.J. stood beside her, holding the cow at arm’s length, a frown between his eyebrows.
“You okay?” he asked.
She shook her head. Her tongue wouldn’t work, wouldn’t form words. The bags of candies fell from her nerveless fingers. The cow grabbed one of the bags and started chewing on it, paper and all. C.J. snatched the other two from the ground.
“I ran out when I heard something hit my window,” he said.
At that moment, an even stronger odor emanated from the cow’s rear end. Janey gagged.
C.J. shrugged. “Candy makes her pass gas.” He shoved the cow. “Take a hike, BizzyBelle.”
When the cow tried to lick his hands, he pushed her harder. “Buzz off.”
The cow ambled away, running her enormous tongue over her big hairy lips.
“You have to show them who’s boss,” he said. “Just like any animal.”
Janey remembered that lesson from Hank, from when he’d taught her how to deal with horses. Her nerves skittered too badly and those memories were too devastating for her to feel like the boss right now.
“Come here,” C.J. said, reaching for her arm.
She flinched away. Her teeth ground together.
C.J. raised his hands, palms out. “Okay. C’mon into the store. We need to get something cold on that bump.” He pointed to her forehead.
He gestured for her to precede him through the door.
She stood just inside the shop and felt lost. She needed her equilibrium back, needed to get away from those old images. A terrible urgency raced through her.
“I need to wash my hands,” she said.
She felt C.J.’s warmth behind her. “Head through the workroom to the washroom at the back.”
She ran past the candy machines to the bathroom and found a sliver of soap beside the faucet. She carefully set down the remaining bags then turned on the water as hot as she could stand it, then washed her hands. She rinsed, then washed her hands two more times, until she felt the stain of those memories flow down the drain.
She couldn’t find a towel. With her hands still wet, she fell onto the closed toilet lid and rested her forearms on her knees. Droplets of water fell from her hands onto the worn black-and-white linoleum floor. She saw C.J.’s boots enter her line of sight.
He ran the water, washed his hands, then handed something to her. She sensed him holding himself back. Probably afraid to touch her after she flinched away from him out front. How embarrassing. She could imagine how stupid he must think her.
“Your forehead is swelling.” He pointed to her face and handed her a wet cloth. “You’re going to have a bump.”
She pressed it to her forehead, weakly. The memories exhausted her. Always.
“I can show you how to make friends with BizzyBelle for next time,” C.J. said.
She stared at him, heard the words but had trouble understanding their meaning.
Her head buzzed and she breathed hard as if she’d run a marathon.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“Give me a minute,” she answered but her voice sounded thin. She hated her weakness for showing.
HER FACE WAS IN DANGER of being swallowed whole by her eyes, two enormous brown-black windows to a terrified soul.
She didn’t look like the tough-edged woman who’d practically demanded the job. She looked like a scared little girl.
“You want a glass of water?” he asked.
She nodded, sort of looked as though she couldn’t form words. Man, who would think a cow could scare a person so much?
She looked young up close, her face chalk-white against the jet-black hair.
The red collar of her dress had tiny skulls embroidered in black. The short sleeves revealed arms with the least blemished skin he’d ever seen. No freckles. No scars. Just that tiny tattoo on the inside of her left elbow, but he couldn’t make out what it was.
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. He could see her breasts swell against her dress. Her scent, tropical fruit and coconut, wrapped around him like a silk scarf.
He dumped his toothbrush out of the glass that sat beside the faucet and ran cold water into it, then handed it to her.
She drank half of it in one go.
She sucked in another great big breath. A second later, all of that air whooshed out of her. The tough woman was back in full force.
Handing him the half-full glass of water, she rose. She was short compared to his six feet.
“I have to go,” she said, unsmiling and cold again.
Hugging the wall, she inched around him and left the room.
JANEY STEPPED OUT of the shop. How was she supposed to get over the past when the slightest thing set her off? Well, maybe not the slightest. Up close, BizzyBelle was huge.
For a minute, she stood still, allowing the sun to warm her, until she felt under control again.
No way would she let this defeat her.
She’d just gotten a job. She would finally return to her studies.
She looked to the sky and imagined Cheryl watching over her. Oh, baby girl, I wish you could be here with me.
On the sidewalk up ahead, a dirty rag heap of a man sat on a concrete step leaning against the closed door of a shop, holding a torn paper coffee cup in his hand.
So even in small towns there were homeless people? She thought that only happened in the city, around cheap apartment buildings like hers that had smelled of mildew and cabbage. She was never going back to urban poverty. Never.
She reached into her pocket for a five to give to the guy, and then remembered that all she had were twenties. Man, it was hard for her to give away so much of her precious store of money.
His head, his shoulders, his chest all bowed forward, as though he was closing in on himself.
Aw, buddy, I know how you feel. I know that kind of emptiness.
Maybe she should get him a burger from the diner. That way she’d know for sure he wouldn’t buy booze instead of food. Who was she to judge, though?
Whatever gets you through the night, pal.
She took one of her twenties and dropped it into the paper cup.
Startled, the man glanced up and studied her with bloodshot eyes, watery and gray and unfocused. Broken veins dappled his nose. Janey would be surprised if he were half as old as he looked.
“Th-th-thanks.” He took in her clothes and her hair. “Are you rich?” he asked doubtfully.
“No. I just got a job at the candy store, though.”
“That’s good.” He nodded. “Jobs are good.”
He had no gift for conversation, had probably burned half his brain cells with hard liquor.
“Don’t you spend that all in one place,” she said. On impulse, she opened the bag of humbugs and dropped a few into his cup on top of the twenty.
Janey continued on her way down Main Street to walk the few miles home to the ranch.
“Wait.” The order from the deep voice stopped her cold.
Janey turned around.
A tall, thin man loomed over her with his hands clasped behind his back and his thick dark eyebrows arched above his big nose.
His suit of unrelieved black looked hot as hell for a day like today. Janey wore black as a statement. What was this guy’s excuse? Then she realized what he looked like—some kind of holy man. A reverend or a priest?
The deep vertical line between his eyebrows, below his massive forehead, made him appear as though he chewed on the world’s problems every night for dinner.
He looked really, really smart.
Janey lifted her chin.
“Yeah?” she asked, giving her voice the edge that protected her from people like the preacher, from the look on his judgmental prudish old face.
The Reverend rocked back on his heels. “You like Sweet Talk, do you?”
Janey nodded. Why the heck did it matter to this guy whether she liked the candy store?
“Did I just hear you tell Kurt that you were going to work there?”
Kurt must be the homeless man’s name. “Yes,” she answered. “That’s right. The owner hired me.”
The Reverend rocked forward onto the soles of his feet and nodded. “Did he?”
“Yes.” She cocked her head to one side. What did the old goat want with her?
“Really?” he said, his voice silky, a hard glint in his eye. “I would advise you not to take the job.”
“What?” she asked. “You’re kidding, right?”
“No, I’m not. Don’t take the job my son gave you.”
His son? This was C.J.’s father? Wow, he didn’t look anything like him. “Why shouldn’t I take the job?”
“I raised a good boy. He doesn’t need trouble from someone like you.”
