Danger, Sweetheart Part 19

She let a day go by before she dared approach him. The Amazon delivery gave her the opportunity she had been waiting for, and dreading.

Shannah and Ruth had come out twice to see him, and he had locked himself in the attic and refused to come out until they left. He didn't say a word to any of them, not even to command he be left alone. Natalie had hovered like a useless idiot and brought Miz Tarbell cup after cup of tea. She couldn't look at the women's pinched, sorrowful expressions. They were too close to the expression she saw in the mirror.

She couldn't even take refuge in calling him out for being childish; the last thing she had was the moral high ground.

He wouldn't speak to anyone, wouldn't interact or so much as smile; he simply buried himself in ch.o.r.es and Natalie wasn't sure why. Because the work was the only thing he had? Unlikely; whatever point his mother had tried to make, she either felt she had made it or had given up. If he flat-out asked her for control of his money back, Natalie bet his mother would have given in. But he wasn't doing that; he wasn't doing anything. Just working.

"Um, Blake, this came for you? The UPS guy brought it?" She could hear her tremulous upward inflection and hated it. Man up, Nat, you conniving b.i.t.c.h. She held up the long brown tube. "Do you want it now?"

"It's for you." He didn't look up. "I ordered it for you a week ago."

Oh G.o.d. That made it so much worse. "It is? Thank you. Um, I wasn't expecting- What is it?"

Silence. She cleared her throat and tried again. "You know, you're doing a good job. I didn't tell you that enough. Before, I mean."

"Well, you had your work at the bank to occupy you."

Ouch. "So d'you just want me to open it here, or..." She swallowed a gasp when he looked up at her from where he was spreading out fresh straw. Those weren't shadows under his eyes, they were trenches. And the swelling! "What's with the b.u.mp on your forehead?"

"Margaret of Anjou objected strenuously to the saddle this morning."

"Cheer up." Oh G.o.d, did I really just say that? Buck up, li'l buckeroo! "She objects to pretty much everything. You know that. It's not personal." A ghost of a smile was all Natalie got, which was a 10,000 percent improvement. She plunged ahead, eager to keep the connection, however tenuous, from breaking. "In fact, I think she hates you the least."

"Ah." He tossed the last of the soiled straw into the wheelbarrow and leaned on the pitchfork. "So she only hates me with the melting intensity of lava engulfing an ice-cream cone."

"You're so odd," she said, not without admiration.

"Is that your professional opinion as a banker, or as a faux farmhand?"

"Okay, that's fair. It's my opinion as ... as a human being."

Blake said nothing, just rested and looked at her. Now that he was finished laying down clean straw, he'd check the raised beds for weeds, and check on the kitchen garden on the south side of the house (before long they'd be a.s.s deep in basil and mint, but the B and B would buy lots of it for juleps and pesto). He'd make sure the White Rose of York had freshwater and slop to her liking (thank G.o.d Roger had weaned her before they'd stolen her-liberated, according to Blake). Natalie wondered why Roger didn't call, or come in person to collect his piglet. Their getaway had not been subtle or quiet. Shannah had probably told him what was going on. Who knew, maybe he was off on one of his sinister vacations again, enjoying his freedom.

Gary or Larry or Harry would be working beside Blake as he did those things. They never worked with him; they always stayed parallel: never meeting. She knew he was growing on Larry and Harry. And he could never grow on Gary, nothing to be done about it. Blake could invent a vaccine for male-pattern baldness and never grow on Gary.

"You're working too hard. Seriously, you're barely cute anymore." Lie. Rugged exhaustion was an excellent look on him. It made her want to plop him in a hot bath, wash his hair and scrub his back, then refuse to let him have any clothes, so he would be forced to prowl the attic in a (small) towel.

She tried again. "Margaret of Anjou doesn't throw you every time."

"No, she's not like Lucy at all."

"Lucy?"

He blinked at her slowly, like an owl. Cripes, he looked done-in and it wasn't even lunchtime. "Charles Schulz. Peanuts. She s.n.a.t.c.hes the football away every time, which proves Charlie Brown is something of an idiot. Margaret of Anjou doesn't do that; she cooperates once in a while. She prefers to lull me into thinking she's finally decided to go along. Her method is much more psychologically devastating."

A perfect description of the pony from h.e.l.l. Time to switch tactics. "Listen, I'm so sorry I misled you about-"

"Talk about something else, please."

Natalie switched gears as smoothly as she could. "Not even Larry puts in the hours you do."

"Larry hates me."

"Not as much as when you first got here." G.o.d, I suck at this cheering-up stuff. At his skeptical expression, she added, "Well, yeah, a little."

"As do Gary and Harry."

"It's not personal," she said again, like that made any of this easier, or better.

"No? I a.s.sume they knew you were an impostor, and said nothing. They probably laughed almost as much as you did."

"I never laughed." b.i.t.c.hed, yes. Raved, insulted, cursed his name and all Banaans, uh-huh. He'd scored a bull's-eye with impostor, though. This farm was the one place in the world she had never felt like an impostor. Whites thought she was playing for their team when she didn't whip out her Native American Decoder Ring. Dakotas thought she was pa.s.sing when she celebrated St. Patrick's Day. "That's not hate. It's indifference. They're just marking time and they know it. Please, I don't blame you for thinking like this, but you don't have to look for conspiracies everywhere...." She trailed off and pondered the stupid thing she had just said. Yeah, I just lied, half the town abetted my lie and never bothered to clue you in, which led to your humiliation in front of your mom and grandma, and maybe all your work out here was for absolutely nothing, but don't be paranoid, it's not personal. Why, he was bound to feel better soon!

She tried again. "They'd hate anyone doing what you're doing. But they hate you less now."

"And what am I doing?"

He sounded wiped and looked like he'd been in a fight with straw and s.h.i.t and s.h.i.t won. "Making it right. Fixing things. They know you didn't have to stick it out. You did, though. That's worth a lot here."

He stripped off his gloves and looked down at his hands. Large and tan, broken fingernails and freckles on the backs. Some blood from a burst blister that hadn't become a callus yet. Raw, and trembling a bit.

"Okay, you need to take the afternoon off." Natalie tucked the tube beneath her armpit, caught both hands in hers and gave him a gentle squeeze, then remembered she was wearing gloves, too, and grinding dirt into his wounded palms, and took them off, and then blew on his palms, getting rid of the dust. Blake sucked in his breath; it probably stung like crazy. "You're wiped; you're done for the day. I get that you're upset, you've got every right to it, but driving yourself to a total physical collapse won't solve a d.a.m.ned thing. I want you to take the rest of the day."

"Pardon me, but a banker who doesn't own this farm cannot dictate when I rest and when I don't."

"Please!" she burst out, and he looked up, startled. "Please, I'm sorry. Please don't punish yourself for my bulls.h.i.t. Be good to yourself; you deserve the day off, you deserve a month off. I'm so sorry; please, please rest for a while."

He sighed. "I dislike seeing you upset. I especially dislike being the cause."

Yes, okay, she could work with this. She had no idea why he wouldn't glory in her being upset but wouldn't question it. "Gary brought a b.u.t.tload of lemons from the grocery store this morning for G.o.d only knows what sinister purpose-"

"He prefers fresh-squeezed lemonade made with a pitcher of well water, a dozen lemons, and a cup and a half of sugar. He makes it at night and lets it chill, then sips it all the next day." He managed a small, a very small, smile. "No vodka."

"Well, let's make some and guzzle it all down. He'll be superp.i.s.sed. Vengeance will be yours."

He gave her a look. "I'm not interested in further antagonizing a man who could run me over with a tractor."

"He wouldn't dare." Probably. "Look, I didn't explain myself very well."

"Sometimes you don't explain yourself at all." At her wince, he looked away. "I apologize. I'm tired."

She put out a hand, then let it drop. "It's okay; listen, like I was saying before, it's not personal. You being here really screws him."

"A familiar refrain."

"No." She felt a bit desperate, he sounded so tired and ... and dull; that was the only word for it. Like he not only didn't care about anything but also didn't care he didn't care. The marked change was startling; she kept running across it and being surprised all over again. From the very first day he'd been vital and interesting. Now he was a shadow. "Not for the reason you think. He was counting on Heartbreak's foreclosure."

Blake politely raised his eyebrows. "Oh?"

"C'mere and sit down. Give me that." She made him sit down. Well, she couldn't make him do anything, but he allowed her to do it. She hurried over to the small boxed-in area he'd made for the White Rose of York, scooped up the piglet, then practically thrust her into Blake's arms. She had seen him last night, sitting by himself in the barn and holding the White Rose of York and not looking at anything and not saying anything and oh, f.u.c.k, what a b.a.l.l.s-up this all was.

She fetched his battered water bottle from one of the posts, gave it to him, watched him drink. "Gary wants to quit; he wants to leave. But he's tied to this place same as a lot of us. Unlike us, he doesn't want to be, but his wife does. He's too whipped to put his foot down, he's not driven enough to make a fresh start somewhere else, so he just goes along. All the farms going belly-up is his chance to get out without his wife getting p.i.s.sed. If Heartbreak shuts down, he's off the hook. Can't feel guilty for abandoning a place if it's sold out from under you, right? Easier to tell your wife, 'Hey, there's no jobs around here; it's not my fault; let's go where the work is.'"

There was a long silence while Blake sipped water, scratched the piglet behind her ears, and pondered. Then: "So much of the town loathes me for selling off treasured family farms. But the employees of the farm I'm trying to save are also p.i.s.sed at me because they're trapped in some sort of h.e.l.lish agricultural limbo?"

"Pretty much."

"That would explain their increasingly alarming antics."

He said it so dryly Natalie had to laugh. Okay. Progress. At least he's talking to me. He's not even being as mean as he could, and we both know I deserve it. "Well. Yeah. Mostly it's Gary; Larry and Harry are ramblers by nature. They're not from here; they go where the work is. They don't mind moving on; they just hate moving on because the bank tells them to. My bank."

"Which is why they didn't let on to your real job. If you're out here working, everything else-including foreclosure paperwork-slows down. It was in their best interest to have you out here as long as they could."

"Yeah. Gary, though. Gary wants out."

Gary had accidentally driven the tractor through the back wall of the garage, then forgotten to mention it to Blake for fourteen hours. (It was a measure of Blake's exhaustion that he hadn't noticed in the first place.) Then Gary had fertilized the tomato plants with weed killer, turned the sprinkler system on to water the driveway (as opposed to the kitchen garden), and added fabric softener to Blake's laundry, if "softener" was another word for "bleach." Again, it had taken Blake a bit of time to notice his gray clothes were now whitish gray. Gary had suggested on more than one occasion that Blake should just fire him already.

"You talked about Peanuts, remember? Okay, remember Pig-Pen? The dust that kid kicks up?" That earned her another smile; Blake knew what she was thinking. Gary had decided to host, and be the only guest for, his one-man kegger party last week. He'd walked around all day with a cloud of beer fumes preceding him. Annoying enough, but Gary had decided the next day that the paralyzing hangover wasn't worth it. Instead he unplugged the fridge to defrost it and never got around to actually cleaning the thing out.

"I could summon no pity for the man, though he suffered what appeared to be a devastating hangover."

"And you made him teach you to drive the tractor that morning!" The memory made her positively gleeful. The tractor sounded like a dozen chain saws thrown into a pile of railroad ties. "Diabolical!" In fact, it had earned him some grudging respect from Harry and Larry, who were stuck picking up the slack for the third of their trio.

"It's unfortunate Gary doesn't know I don't have the authority to fire him. Nothing short of arson would result in termination, and perhaps not even that."

"Yeah." Natalie snickered. "Too bad for him."

"Me as well," was the cold reply. Then: "I disapprove of him endangering lives to collect unemployment." Blake paused. "Is that something Heartbreak even offers? Or are you all independent contractors?"

"Depends on the individual.... Listen, my point is, you're working hard and almost all of us appreciate it."

"It's kind of you to want to cheer me."

She shook her head so hard, her ponytail almost put out her eye. "No. I'm not kind. You know that now, don't you? I-I tried to tell you. Before."

"You're referring to your deception."

"Well, yeah."

"And the fact that you only took me under your wing, so to speak, but showed me the ropes, also so to speak, because you wanted my money."

She was startled. She'd been so busy kicking herself about not telling him who she really was, she'd forgotten the reason at the middle of everything: Sweetheart was in trouble because of money: there wasn't enough. Money could save Heartbreak. No one in Sweetheart had money. If Heartbreak could be profitable, they wouldn't have to sell it to Putt N'Go. If Putt N'Go didn't have Heartbreak, they wouldn't want the other farms. Blake had money. Blake was in town for mysterious Banaan-related reasons. Ergo ...

"I didn't- I-" She could almost feel her voice, low and strangled. What was she even trying to say? Was she denying it? Apologizing for it? It wasn't so much the money; I just hated you not knowing the real me. But it's okay now, it's okay to trust me this time, because this time I'm telling the truth. Oh G.o.d, she didn't blame him and she couldn't fix this. "Blake ... that's not what I-"

"You were only interested in my money." He let that hang there for a moment, then sighed. "I am surprised I am surprised."

"For Heartbreak," she managed, "not myself. And I wanted you to understand us, how it is here, more than I wanted your money. It was never just the money, bad enough as that is; it was everything else, too. I was greedy; I wanted it all."

He just looked at her.

Yell, scream, stomp around, throw stuff, break something. Jesus! The look was worse than any of those things; it was worse than all of those things.

"Natalie, do you think it matters to me, the name I write on the check, if it's the reason you tolerated me at all?"

"No, Blake. Now that I know you better, I don't think that. I'm sorry." Sorry sorry cripes they're just words they don't help anything they don't solve anything shut up shut up shut up.

"Open your present."

She had no idea what he was talking about, then remembered the long brown tube from Amazon. She went to fetch it (she'd left it on the counter in the tack room), grabbed a twine cutter, and started slitting it open. She realized almost right away that it was a poster and, puzzled, she unrolled it.

She looked at it for a long time.

"I hear you talking about Degas all the time, you and Gary, Harry, and Larry. Garrett and a couple of other people in town, too. You must like his work. I thought- I wanted to show my grat.i.tude. For being so patient with me. And as you know, I didn't have a lot of money; I couldn't show grat.i.tude the way I usually do. So..." He gestured at the poster. "This."

Horror and a species of dull shame was creeping through her. She couldn't look at him. Blake must have mistaken that for confusion, or surprised pleasure, because he leaned forward and seemed really engaged for the first time in over twenty-four hours.

"It's called Two Laundresses and a Horse. As you know, Edgar Degas is known primarily for his paintings of dancers, but he did several outdoor scenes with horses as well. And I saw that one and thought of us and Margaret of Anjou and I thought- I thought you might like it."

"Blake. You didn't have to-it's too much."

He frowned. "It's not the actual painting. It's only a print. Are you all right? Forgive me for being blunt, but you look awful. All the color's fallen out of your face."

Her mouth worked. Nothing came out. Don't lie. You can't lie to him. Not this time, not even if it's the last time he speaks to you, which it probably is. "Not Edgar Degas. That's not what you heard. That's not what they've (chickens.h.i.t!)- I mean, that's not what we've been saying. You overheard people saying 'Vegas Douche.'" Miserable, she finished her sad-a.s.s explanation with, "It's, uh, it's just a dumb nickname. I don't call you that anymore."

"Ah."

Dear G.o.d, could you maybe strike me down with a heart attack or an aneurysm or just jab me with a lightning bolt, anything to get me the h.e.l.l out of here, thanks, your friend, Natalie Lane.

"You're right," he said after a long long long while.

"I am?"

"You're not kind."

She nodded. Then she burst into tears, and for a minute she didn't know who was more shocked, her or Blake.

"Er. Natalie. Please don't. Natalie?" He put down the piglet, who'd almost been dozing on his lap, and then raised his hands until they sort of hovered over Natalie, like he had no idea 1) if he was allowed to touch and 2) if so, where he was allowed to touch. "I take it back."

"Don't you dare take it back!" she nearly screamed, sobs tearing from her throat like they were trying to escape. "You're right: I'm not kind; it was s.h.i.tty; I'm s.h.i.tty-"

"That is enough." She was shocked out of crying and rubbed her eyes with her knuckles, smearing dirt and sweat around like a kid after a fight on the playground. She hadn't known his voice could go so deep and dark. "There are many words I would use to describe you, Natalie Lane, and 's.h.i.tty' is nowhere on the list."

"Then you're an idiot."

"I haven't discounted that," he replied, so mildly she almost laughed. He reached out and patted her shoulder, almost as if he was afraid she'd slap his hand away. She couldn't help it; she leaned into his touch, and, bolder, he rubbed circles on her back. "A few instances of bad judgment does not translate to s.h.i.tty. I know you."

This was all very nice, but she couldn't let it stand. Bad enough to cry like a sorry-a.s.s fraud; she wouldn't take advantage of him being flummoxed to let herself off the hook.