Janet Evanovich - Wife for Hire

“I think you’re just trying to get out of walking,” she said. “I think you’re lazy.”

The grin widened. “No, you don’t. You think I’m only out for one thing, and I’m sweet-talking you.”

She felt the flush creep into her cheeks. “Well, you are the scourge of Skogen.”

“True. But I’ve changed. All that’s behind me. It’s been years since I’ve been worth anything as a scourge.”

“What about Linda Sue and Holly?”

Linda Sue and Holly felt like part of his extended family. He’d grown up with them. They made girlfriend noises, but it had been a long time since he’d found them exciting. Not since high school, in fact. And anything in a skirt had been exciting when he was in high school. “Linda Sue and Holly are my friends.”

“Have you explained that to them lately?”

“Linda Sue and Holly are good at talking, short on listening.”

“Tell me about apples,” Maggie said, following the rutted road. “I want to know about your orchard.”

“I grow five varieties of apples. The original orchard was all McIntosh, but I’ve put in Paula Reds, Empire, Red Delicious, and Northern Spy. It’s extended my growing season, and I think the blend of apples makes a more interesting cider.” He picked a small green apple. “This is a Northern Spy. It’s the apple I intend to build my pie business around. It’s a hard baking apple. Matures late in the season. Keeps well.” He threw the apple down the road and Horatio took off after it.

So, he had to prove himself, she thought. She could relate to that. Her life wasn’t exactly filled with stellar accomplishments. She’d barely graduated from college, barely hung on to her teaching job, barely kept her sanity in Riverside. She was one of those women who put their sheets in the dryer because she knew damn well they wouldn’t mea sure up.

It was kind of funny that she and Hank had come together. Two misfits aiming for their first real success. And how were they doing it? He wanted to bake pies, and she was writing about a madam. They were outrageous.

They walked until they came to a stream. “ Goose Creek,” Hank said. “My land ends here. When I was a kid, I spent a lot of time fishing and swimming in Goose Creek. If you follow it downstream, it fans out into a nice deep pool.”

Maggie stood on the grassy bank and stared at the water. The colors of the land were muted, the sky was brilliant with a sunset, and Goose Creek gurgled as it rushed over rocks. She thought this would be a nice place to be a little boy. Goose Creek and cows and row after row of apple trees. It was the American Dream.

When Aunt Kitty was a little girl there had been farms like this surrounding Riverside. Now there were shopping malls and highways and houses. Lots and lots of houses. And lots and lots of people. The people spilled out of the houses, clogging the roads and the supermarket aisles. Maggie’d had to stand in line to go to a movie, cash a check, buy a loaf of bread. And now here she was-just her and Hank and Goose Creek. It felt a little odd. All she could hear was Goose Creek and a cow, mooing in the distance. A cow, for crying out loud. Who would believe it.

“I think I’m experiencing culture shock,” she told Hank.

“What’s the matter, don’t they have cows in Riverside?” He moved closer, draping an arm around her shoulders. He felt her stiffen and gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze. “Don’t worry. This is a friendly gesture. I’ve decided not to put any big moves on you until your opinion of me changes.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“I’m not even going to repeat my proposal of marriage for a while. I mean, after all, who would want to marry the scourge of Skogen?”

She could hear a hint of laughter in his voice. It pulled at her, causing her to shake her head and smile with him. He was a man who could laugh at himself. That was nice. She suspected he was also a man who knew how to manipulate a situation. So she was still going to be careful. “Seems to me there are a number of women in town who would be more than happy to marry you.”

“Yeah,” he said, “but they only want me for my apples.”

Before they returned to the house, total blackness had descended on the orchard. Without benefit of a moon, they slowly, blindly picked their way along the dirt road.

“You sure you know where you’re going?” Maggie asked.

“Of course I know where I’m going. This is my apple orchard.”

“There aren’t any bears around here, are there?”

“The closest thing we have to a bear is Bubba, and he’s pretty much harmless. Of course, if you’re afraid you can come cuddle up to me, and I’ll protect you.”

“I thought you weren’t making any more moves.”

“If I’m not breathing heavy, it doesn’t count as a move.” He groped for her hand in the darkness. “Give me your hand, and I’ll make sure you get home safe and sound.”

She slid her hand into his, not because she was afraid, but because, even though his reputation left something to be desired, she liked him enormously. He was fun and he was comfortable. And she liked the way her hand felt in his. It felt like it belonged there. She was feeling a little homesick for all of the things she used to hate about Riverside, and it was good to know that at least her hand was in the right place.

They crested a small hill and were greeted by a single dot of light. Elsie had put the porch light on before she’d gone off on her date. Hank guided Maggie to the front porch and opened the screen door.

“We forgot to lock up the house,” Maggie said. “We didn’t even close the door.”

“I can’t remember the last time I locked this house. I don’t even know if I have a key.”

“My Lord, anyone could walk right in.”

“I guess that’s true, but no one ever has. Except Bubba, of course. And Bubba wouldn’t care if the door was locked. He’d just give it a good kick and that would be the end of that.”

“Don’t you have any crime in Skogen?”

He switched the light on in the foyer. “Not since I promised to behave myself. And that was a good while ago.” He went into the kitchen and looked into the refrigerator. “I could use a pudding. How about you?”

Maggie got two spoons from the silverware drawer. “A pudding sounds great.” She sat across from him at the table and dug into her pudding. “What sort of crimes did you commit before going straight?”

“The usual teenage stuff. I borrowed a couple cars.”

“Borrowed?”

“Technically I guess I stole them. But they were my father’s. And I always returned them with a full tank of gas.”

“Anything else?”

“Got a few speeding tickets. Got caught buying beer with a forged ID a couple times.”

“I know you’re saving something good for last.”

“There was this thing about Bucky Weaver’s barn, but it really wasn’t my fault.”

Maggie cocked an eyebrow. “Am I going to need another pudding to see me through this?”

“Wouldn’t hurt.”

She took the last two puddings out of the refrigerator and gave one to Hank.

“It was a deciding factor in whether or not I should try pro hockey,” he said. “Actually I had my choice of hockey or the army.”

“Uh-huh.”

A splash of color appeared on his cheeks. He really wasn’t enjoying this, but he wanted to tell her before she heard it somewhere else. His whole childhood had been a struggle for in dependence. In fact, looking back, he thought his childhood had been a struggle for survival. There’d been no room in his father’s rigid lifestyle for a little boy with chocolate on his face. His father had no patience with a seven-year-old who couldn’t color inside the lines, or a fourteen-year-old who couldn’t tie a perfect Windsor knot, or a seventeen-year-old who was put into remedial reading because it was finally discovered he had dyslexia.

Every time Hank failed by his father’s standards, the rules and restrictions grew tighter. And the more rules his father imposed, the more Hank had rebelled. If he wasn’t going to get approval, then he sure as hell was going to get attention.

After a couple of years on his own knocking around the hockey circuit he’d grown up, thank heaven. Now he set his own moral standards and imposed his own rules of conduct. The only approval he needed was his own. Until Maggie. Falling in love, he discovered, brought with it a whole new set of needs and responsibilities.

He looked at Maggie sitting across from him and took a deep breath. “One night, about a week before graduation, I persuaded Bucky’s daughter, Jenny, to meet me in the barn behind her house. We had a six-pack of beer. We were up in the loft and it was dark, so I lit the kerosene lantern. Bucky saw the light go on and thought he had a thief in his barn. I don’t know what he thought the thief was stealing, because the barn was empty except for about twelve years’ worth of pigeon droppings. Anyway, he got his old bear gun down from the mantel and blasted the hell out of his barn.”

“Was anyone hurt?”

Hank grinned. “No. But he hit the lantern and burned his barn down.”

Maggie clamped her hand over her mouth to keep from laughing out loud. “It must have been terrible,” she finally managed.

He was relieved she could see the humor in it. It hadn’t been too funny at the time, and years later, when he’d returned to Skogen, people were still telling the story about the time Bucky Weaver burned his barn down. “It was a turning point in my life,” he told her. “I had to leave Skogen, and it was the best thing that ever happened to me.”

“But you came back.”

He shrugged. “It’s home.”

Maggie wasn’t sure she felt the same way about Riverside. She’d been born and raised there, and she felt a flurry of homesickness from time to time, but she wasn’t sure it was home.

“Couldn’t home be somewhere else? Isn’t there any place else you’d like to live?”