Danger, Sweetheart Part 7

G.o.d. Worse than she thought.

He seemed genuinely puzzled, which cranked her state of mind from p.i.s.sed Off to a.s.sault a Distinct Possibility.

"We had to discuss volume six, The Fifteenth Century, by E. F. Jacob."

"Had to, huh?"

"Oh yes!" To her horror he mistook sarcasm for interest, and warmed to the topic. The boring, inappropriate topic she didn't give a s.h.i.t about. "Jacobs' work was invaluable, but he was a misogynist-not rare in early-twentieth-century academia-and likely a plagiarist, which of course calls his entire body of work into question. And he was a terrible driver. Illegally awful. So it's all quite a mess."

Quite a mess. The perfect description.

"So clearly, leaving it until later doesn't make sense. Oh, sure, you're going to suggest Mackie's The Earlier Tudors-"

"I really wasn't."

"-but my area of interest is in what came before the Tudors, not the Tudors themselves."

"Will you please shut up now? I might- I might have to stab you with something if you don't." Ah, yes, Natalie Lane: the first Lane to lose Sweetheart and then go down for federal a.s.sault. Her ancestors would be so proud.

"You want me to shut up?" Dumbfounded incomprehension. "After I explained? I find that puzzling."

"You find what I'm doing puzzling?"

"It's almost as if you don't care about what time it is in Oxford," he huffed.

"It sure is. That's exactly right."

"I apologize," he said at once. "I get carried away with my work. You were kind to wait for me. It's lovely to see you again." Then he smiled, a slow grin that she felt everywhere. Christ, they must just fall over with their legs open for this guy. The thought p.i.s.sed her off more, which she hadn't thought possible.

"Where's your stuff?"

He blinked. "Stuff?"

"Your things, your clothes and phone and stuff," she said, impatient. "Let's get them to your room and then we can get to work."

"We?"

"Do you always repeat random words back to whoever's talking to you?"

"No, actually." He tried another smile. G.o.d, the man's whole face should be outlawed. "It's just, I don't always understand you. Which is interesting and charming."

No. He didn't call me charming, and I didn't find that charming. No.

She sighed. "C'mon. Let's get your stuff."

Still he didn't move. Well, he didn't move his legs. He stuck his hand out again. "Blake Tarbell."

Oh. Right. Common courtesy. She didn't have the energy to be embarra.s.sed, for herself or for him. "Sorry, I'm Natalie Lane."

"It's very nice to meet you. I was really hoping to see you again, and that was before I knew I'd be staying for a while." He endured another limp I don't care about you and have no interest in making a good impression handshake. "Ms. Lane, have I done something to offend you?"

Besides getting within five hundred miles of Sweetheart? Besides the knowledge that a guy in tailored clothes who Skypes the UK to talk about dead people is my best option? Besides knowing I need you if only to get some of the heat off me? And the fact that you walk and talk like s.e.x personified just p.i.s.ses me off more? Nope, not a thing.

"Not everything's about you, city guy." Lie. This was all kinds of about him. But telling him so resolved nothing. "C'mon," she said for what she hoped was the last time. "Let's get your stuff."

Eleven.

It was never supposed to be like this. She was supposed to save them. And banking was supposed to be a n.o.ble profession, not a punch line. From Renaissance Italy to Sweetheart, North Dakota. From the Medicis to the Lanes. What was the saying? From the sublime to the ridiculous in one step? Yep.

Once, Sweetheart had been a bustling midwestern town of just under ten thousand souls. Yes, they were off the beaten path a bit, but the land was lush, the hills (the few there were) were rolling, the hills were alive with the sound of music, et cetera, et cetera.

Then the state highway came, four lanes at 65 mph, set the cruise for 72 if you hadn't had a recent speeding ticket, and all at once, or so it seemed, all roads did not lead to Sweetheart. Fewer visitors meant the local B and Bs had to work harder for fewer (and fewer) guests. Less money meant ... well, less money. Add a few exceptionally bad droughts, and then the farmers-in a town where every third family was in the ag biz-were in a jam. Add a s.h.i.t economic downturn lasting over a decade, and everyone was in a jam. Too many young people left (like Shannah Banaan and call her Shannah Banana once. just one time. see what happens) and birthrates weren't high enough to compensate.

Any one or two of those things were survivable, but the combination made for a Michael Crichtontype chain of events that led to economic disaster, which in many ways was worse than a plague of k.n.o.b-turning velociraptors.

So now this. Now this mess that went on and on. She thought that was the worst part: Sweetheart wasn't even a ghost town. A ghost town had no one; it had been dead so long it was less than a skeleton, practically dust. Sweetheart was the still-warm corpse, and not all the vermin knew it was time to abandon ship.

(wow, nice, Nat! you should write children's books!) Now here came Vegas Douche with his Skyping and his awesome dark blond hair and his Italian shoes and his dopey grin, and Natalie truly didn't know whether to laugh or cry. She was afraid if she indulged in either she wouldn't be able to stop.

"Do you work here?" Vegas Douche was asking. "In addition to the bed-and-breakfast?"

"How's that important?" she replied, in no way planning to answer the question.

"Well. Yesterday you were wearing a navy blue double-breasted suit with a cream-colored blouse and nude panty hose, dark-blue-and-white running shoes, no jewelry."

There were no words. So she kept feeling perplexed. Yep. Perplexed was working. She was sticking with perplexed.

"And now you're in jeans and a red T-shirt lettered with the puzzling warning 'One by one the penguins slowly steal my sanity.' The same running shoes as yesterday."

"That's ... quite an eye for detail." Ya big perv. Who memorizes tennis shoe colors? It's definitely not turning me on. It's not making me feel special at all. "But farmers and their ilk do occasionally dress like grown-ups. It's not like the movies. We don't all wander around barns wearing filthy overalls and chewing straw."

"I met one yesterday and he wasn't filthy. Why," Blake kept on, clearly bewildered by the turn the conversation had taken, "would anyone chew straw?"

"I'm one of your foremen here, I'll be the one showing you what you've taken on (so welcome to h.e.l.l, Vegas Douche); that's all you need to worry about. So this is your room," she said, deciding to get back to the subject. "I'm sure it's not what you're used to."

"It's not."

She'd get a headache if she rolled her eyes much harder. "But times are tough, so we all have to-"

"It's better."

"-make sacrifices and you'll just have to what did you say?"

He had been wandering around the attic while she dodged his job questions and suit observations, looking at the furniture, testing the bed for firmness, peering out the windows. "I live in a Residence Inn in Las Vegas. It's nice. I have no complaints. But it's a Residence Inn."

"Oh, Vegas?" Natalie had to take a second to clear her throat, going for nonchalance. "That's where you're from? I hadn't known that. Before." Subtle!

Vegas Douche will never trip me up. Nope. Not this girl, Vegas Douche! No idea where you're from, Vegas Douche, Chicago, maybe? Pierre? London?

"This is..." He had stopped wandering and was now staring out one of the south-facing windows. "... much much better."

She tried to see the attic from his perspective, with a stranger's eyes, but all she could come up with was, This is the place I went when I couldn't bear to go home. This isn't my home and it will forever be my home. It has old parts and new parts, and pretty parts and unlovely parts. It's on the market for pennies on the dollar and it's priceless. She couldn't look at it with stranger's eyes; she had never been one.

The original farmhouse had burned to the foundation the year Prohibition was appealed. During a deliriously drunken party to celebrate Americans' right to again get s.h.i.t faced, a party guest got too enthusiastic while feeding a bonfire, a situation made worse when the bonfire was inadvertently moved inside. The drunken guests tried to fight the blaze with alcohol. Good-bye, original farmhouse, we barely knew ye.

The replacement farmhouse had gone up the year Roosevelt put the New Deal into effect. It had been modernized over the years (central air and heat, among other unnecessarily necessary things), but it was still a three-story forest green farmhouse with white trim and a wraparound porch. The attached garage, also green, was large enough for four cars; the farming equipment was kept in another building off Barn Main. Inside the farmhouse were s.p.a.cious rooms in shades of tan and cream, a series of bedrooms and sunrooms and nooks, a sizeable working kitchen with multiple refrigerators and freezers, three bathrooms, and all of it topped with an attic that ran the length and width of the house.

The attic, too, had been done in light neutrals and, since heat always insisted on rising (dammit, physics!), was warmer than the rest of the house, but not unbearably so. There were two ceiling fans and the windows were all screened and opened easily. Where the roof slanted so that standing upright was impossible there was a series of deep bookshelves. They were crammed with everything from Good Housekeeping issues from the fifties to the entire Little House on the Prairie series to C. S. Lewis to Mark Twain to how-to tomes to gardening to a Bible to books on Nichiren Buddhism to J. D. Robb to Jane Austen.

The floor was all blond planking, but several throw rugs were scattered about, cutting down on the splinter potential. At the far end was a double bed made up with pale yellow sheets and a wedding ring quilt, placed just under key, slanted windows that gave whoever was in bed an unimpeded view of the eastern sky. A rocking glider was placed beside one of the south-facing windows beside a small fridge for snacks. Natalie had made sure it was clean and plugged it in for him last night but drew the line at stocking it with snacks and/or booze. If anyone deserved a fridge full of booze where they slept, it was her, dammit.

It was comfy and welcoming and she couldn't help being a little (a little) glad he seemed pleased. Glad, and surprised. No room service here at the farm. No one to launder his delicates or bring him a midnight hot-fudge sundae. And if he wanted a copy of USA Today slipped beneath his door at dawn, he'd first have to hoof it five miles into town and hope the gas station was open, buy yesterday's paper, then come back and slip it under his own d.a.m.ned door. Maybe Vegas Douche hadn't thought of those drawbacks yet.

"This is..." Huh. He was still babbling about his home away from hotel home. "... wonderful."

"I ... I didn't think you'd much care for it." Counting on it, more like, her spiteful side whispered. It was true, she'd been antic.i.p.ating shrill b.i.t.c.hing. And he'd foiled her-again!-by finding the whole thing enchanting. She should be more annoyed than she was. "It's probably not what you're used to."

"I didn't think I would care for it, either," he confessed gleefully, like a boy who'd been caught stealing cookies and, instead of being punished, got more cookies. "Now tell me, what is the piglet situation?"

"The what?"

"I don't see any cookie sheets filled with excretions from an infant pig."

"What?"

"Thus I'll surmise I'll be the only one sleeping up here." He looked around. "No piglets then, very well."

"You sound disappointed. Why are you disappointed? Why do you love the attic but are disappointed we don't keep pigs in it?" Unspoken: What is wrong with you? Las Vegas must be so much weirder than she imagined.

"And look!" he added, and actually flopped back onto the bed so he was staring up at the slanted window. "You can see the whole sky from here! Not literally, of course. Even if we were outside and had an un.o.bstructed view-"

"Pretty easy, because North Dakota-" Natalie interrupted.

"-yes, although I pa.s.sed quite a few hills in my Supertruck, even so at most we would only see fifty percent." Then, as if he was antic.i.p.ating Natalie's furious reb.u.t.tal, he added, "But quite a nice view anyway."

"Wait till the sun rises at five thirty tomorrow morning; see if you love it then." She'd gone for b.i.t.c.hy, but it came out exasperated. At least it wasn't fond exasperation.

"Thank you for the warning; you are most kind," he replied, and though he was trying for solemn the giggle ruined it. And the sight of the big, neatly dressed man wriggling around on a double bed over a decade old so he could look out the window while laughing his a.s.s off just slew her. She couldn't help it, she tried to help it, but she laughed, too. The mingled noise was ... how'd he put it? Wonderful.

Oh, h.e.l.l. I am not finding Vegas Douche charming. That s.h.i.t ain't happening. Not. Happening.

Right?

Right.

Twelve.

Natalie Lane was a would-be murderess, a fiend so vile she had the potential to give Elizabeth Bthory compet.i.tion. She was clearly trying to kill him, and had an excellent chance of succeeding, but he had yet to fathom her motive. Inherent sociopathy, he a.s.sumed, was not a motive, or at least not enough of one.

Oh G.o.d, she's so beautiful and her hands are so small and I want to hold them, I want to hold them all the time- He shook off the sentiment. He would die on this farm. This horrible, hateful, brutal f.u.c.king farm. Heartbreak Farm, ha! It ought to be renamed Myocardial Infarction Farm.

Oh my gaaaawd! Rake laughed in his head. Drama queen is not a good look for you, big brother; it's worse than that time I dyed your hair orange in your sleep. Sure, everybody called you Mario Batali all summer, but you had some dignity, man.

He had suspected nothing that first day. In fact, he had taken quite a liking to Heartbreak at first look, not least because Natalie Lane, of all people, worked there! And appeared to love it and everything about it: the work, the animals, the buildings, the house, the best ways to torture Blake ... it filled the already lovely woman with zeal that left her dazzling.

Zeal that left her ... my G.o.d, man. Get ahold of yourself.

Good advice. He tried.

Natalie had given him a tour of the house, the barn (called Main One for a reason she would not explain), the other outbuildings. She had introduced him to several sullen men and women, and if glances could decimate he would have been murdered half a dozen times before lunch. Also, lunch was not at lunchtime. He had missed lunchtime. By thirty-eight minutes.

"Breakfast at five, lunch at nine thirty, supper at four."

"What about second breakfast?"

Yes! A small smile. "G.o.d, I love Billy Boyd." He found that puzzling but didn't comment. (Hours later, as his griping stomach kept him awake, he Googled and saw that was the name of the actor who played Peregrin Took in a series of movies that were somewhat popular. And thank goodness. He'd been afraid she had referenced a boyfriend, and then been annoyed he'd been afraid.) "Almost as much as Peter d.i.n.klage," she'd finished (it was fine; Google had explained Mr. d.i.n.klage was another actor and thus their relationship was platonic at most).

Along the way he was educated on the difference between a ranch and a farm. "Heartbreak Ranch? Really? Have we somehow ended up in a nineteenth-century Western?"

"Not a ranch. It's a farm."

"Difference, please?"

"A farm raises mostly crops. A ranch raises mostly cattle. A farm can have loads of cows and still be a farm. A dairy farm that grows no crops is still a farm. All ranches are farms, but not all farms are ranches."

"That makes no logical sense," he protested, annoyed, as he often was, by imprecise explanations. "Is there a cutoff point? If you have so many acres for farming, and so many cows for milking and what have you, where are you on the spectrum that the addition of one more cow makes a farm of a ranch?"

She had stared at him and that was the first time he felt close to death by foreman beatdown. Then had bypa.s.sed the definitions and added, "And I can't imagine you care, but it's called Heartbreak Farm because in the early nineteen hundreds a townie from Sweetheart proposed to a farmer's daughter."

"A story," he said, leaning against his Supertruck. (After she had given him a tour of the house they had returned to the great outdoors.) "Excellent."

"She turned him down because she wanted her kids to grow up the way she had, working the land, and all he wanted to do was leave town and make his fortune and never come back. So he left town and made his fortune ... and came back a decade later. He bought up all this land and started building." She gestured at the house, the barn, the fields. "The house first. And when that was done he asked her to marry him again, and she said no. So he built the garage. She said no. He bought more land. She said no. He built Main One."

"And then she said yes," Blake said, since the answer was self-evident.

"Well, no, by then she had died of a stroke."