The Farmer's Wife Read online

  A common ailment of farm dogs. “I’m sorry. And I’m sorry about your parents, too. I didn’t know until I came back.

  “Why would you?”

  Though she could understand Brian’s pain, his continued gibes were beginning to make her fingers curl into fists again. She took a moment for a deep breath and deliberately shook her hands loose. Ignoring his rhetorical question, she jerked a thumb toward the porch. “What’s with the sheep?”

  He shrugged. “Her mother died at birth. I bottle-fed her, kept her in a dog cage in the kitchen. When she got bigger, she followed Rebel around. Started doing what he did—announcing visitors, keeping them away from the house, herding the cattle to the barn. It was weird. But she’s an excellent watchdog.”

  “Watch-sheep, you mean.”

  “Whatever.”

  “And her name is Ba?”

  “So she says.”

  He reached for the door handle on his truck, then released it with a muffled curse. Kim stifled her instinctive need to touch him, soothe him, hold him. She crossed the remaining distance to her car, opened the passenger door and raised a brow in his direction.

  He sighed, defeated, and came around the front, frowning at the hood the entire way. “Ever hear the term American made?”

  “Ever hear the term bite me?”

  He blinked and for a minute she thought he might laugh. Kim wanted to hear him laugh so badly she even leaned toward him, wishing it so.

  Instead, he clamped his lips and folded his long length into her little foreign car.

  The ride to the hospital was blissfully silent, except for the thunderous pain inside Brian’s head and the whimper coming from his wrists.

  He couldn’t believe he’d taken one glance at her and fallen on his face. It was every adolescent nightmare come true.

  Brian found himself staring at Kim’s ridiculous excuse for shoes. His gaze wandered up her legs—she had always had spectacular legs, among other things— taking in her orange skirt and flamboyant, Hawaiian-print blouse. Only Kim would wear yellow high heels and a short skirt to a dairy farm.

  What had charmed him once only proved to him now that though she’d been born here, just as he had, she had never truly belonged. Kim had no allegiance to the land, no fondness for the farm; she did not share his devotion to the legacy.

  Her leaving had probably been the best thing for everyone, but the fact remained, she had walked out on him when he was in agony—an open, aching, bleeding wound where his heart had been. He’d had no one to talk to, no one to share his grief with. He’d tried to forget but been unable to. Just as he had not been able to forgive.

  “You never did learn how to dress for the farm, did you?”

  “If you mean overalls and boots, damn straight. They make me look stumpy.”

  “And how you look means so much in the scheme of life.”

  “My scheme of life is none of your business, Brian Riley.”

  “You made that clear a long time ago.”

  Kim took the turn from the back roads onto the main highway fast enough to make gravel spray across a grassy ditch. He cut a glance her way, waiting for the explosion. Though her jaw worked in agitation, none came.

  In the old days Kim had been a volcano forever on the verge of eruption—to anger, to laughter, to passion. Apparently she’d learned to keep her emotions under control, as he had.

  They reached the hospital in short order. She pulled up to the emergency room entrance and parked in a loading zone. Her blatant misbehavior made him as uneasy now as it had in the past.

  “My legs are fine.” He pointed to the visitors’ lot several hundred yards away. “We can park over there.”

  “I see your raving only-child syndrome is still in full force.” She flicked on the hazard lights and clipped around the car to let him out.

  Only-child syndrome had been Kim’s phrase for Brian’s “toe the line, follow the rules, always be a good boy no matter what” personality. Kim’s disregard for such run-of-the-mill concerns had fascinated him, excited him, ruined him.

  Brian managed to get out of the car without her help, though it wasn’t easy. He was being foolish and stubborn, but the thought of her touching him made Brian’s stomach dance with panic. He tried to blame the pitch and roll in his belly on the ache in his head. He could not still be susceptible to the hold she’d always had on him. He would not be.

  She ushered him into the Gainsville ER. Her gaze flicked around the room. A few words to the nurse at the desk and people scurried to and fro. Kim ordered a wheelchair; a wheelchair she got. She wanted a private room; he had one. A doctor? Shazaam! A doctor appeared.

  Brian watched in amazement. She looked the same; she even acted the same—laughing, smiling, touching people in that casual way she had that made them feel special—but she was also very different. She no longer asked for things; she expected them. She knew who to talk to, what to say to get what she wanted with minimal trouble or time. Kim was in charge from the moment she entered the building.

  “Mr. Riley, did you lose consciousness at any time?”

  With difficulty Brian pulled his attention from the sight of Kim working the emergency room to the doctor at his side.

  Lose consciousness? He remembered falling, hitting the ground, pain in his head, his wrists, the sight of Kim, pain in his chest, believing she was a dream, then—

  “I must have,” he muttered. There was no other excuse for touching her face and wishing she were real.

  “Humph.” The doctor scribbled something on his clipboard.

  “Is that bad?”

  “I think we’ll keep you here for a few hours, just in case.”

  “In case what?”

  But the doctor had already strode away to join Kim outside the open door, drawn like a fly to an open can of pop, willing to drown in sugar just for a taste of her mouth.

  Brian rubbed his eyes. He had definitely hit his head too hard if he was waxing poetic about flies—hell, if he was waxing poetic about anything. He was not now, nor had he ever been, a poetic man.

  “I’ll have someone bring his insurance card.” Kim smiled and touched the doctor’s shoulder. The man practically fell to the ground and kissed her yellow shoes. “You just order him that little old CAT scan, hmm?”

  Kim had matured into a take-charge woman. He shouldn’t be surprised. She’d always wanted to be a lawyer, which Brian had thought an odd choice for a girl who didn’t care to follow the rules. But then again, how many juvenile delinquents wound up as cops or preachers?

  When she was fifteen, Kim’s maternal grandmother had left her enough money to achieve her dream. But in the end, Kim had become a paralegal not a lawyer, then bought into a law practice in Savannah. He had to wonder what had changed her mind.

  “Looks like you did a number on those wrists.”

  He glanced up. Kim watched him warily from the doorway. Suddenly he remembered what she smelled like in a haymow at dawn, what she tasted like at midnight in the cool, silvered grass of a meadow. He shook his head to make the images go away and wound up with a slice of pain for his foolishness.

  “I figured that out two minutes after I fell,” he muttered. “How bad are they?”

  “One’s broken, maybe both. They’re going to take you to X ray in a minute. But it’s your head he’s worried about.”

  “Me, too.” He had to be insane to be thinking about the scent of her skin and the taste of her lips.

  “He doubts you cracked your skull, and so do I.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “It would take something harder than cement to bust that head.”

  “Nice. Kick a man when he’s down.”

  Brian had meant to be funny, but he hadn’t been in so long, he seemed to have lost the talent. Something flickered in her eyes, and for a moment he thought she might cry. Instead, Kim straightened her shoulders and took a step backward out of his room.

  “That seems to be one of my specialties,” she said, an
d then she was gone.

  “Does everything you touch turn to shit?”

  Kim considered slamming down the pay phone hard enough to give Dean a ruptured eardrum. But then she’d just be proving him right.

  “Brian needs his wallet.” She was proud when her voice didn’t shake. “And he could probably use you, too, since you’re his best friend.”

  Lord knows why.

  “Hey, someone had to be.”

  She ignored that gibe. She was getting very good at it. “Just go to his house, get his wallet and get over here.”

  “Who died and appointed you princess? Oh, wait, you were born one.” He slammed down the phone, and then Kim was the one with the earache. Would she ever learn?

  She and Dean had never been pals. He had resented her relationship with their father and deplored her inability to get along with their mother. Nothing she did had ever been right enough for Dean. Leaving his best friend had no doubt been the last straw. Dean was nothing if not loyal—to a fault.

  Though Kim and Brian were the same age, she’d been just a nuisance to both him and her brothers until their junior year of high school—when everything had changed.

  Dean had graduated and started to work full-time for their father. Brian had suddenly noticed Kim wasn’t so annoying after all, and they had become inseparable. Dean had made his displeasure quite clear. But hormones were a powerful thing.

  Kim had never understood what Brian saw in her cranky, sarcastic brother, but they’d been friends since they were old enough to follow their fathers around milking. Maybe that was what bound them together— the love of the farm, the land and the animals—things she could not fathom.

  With Brian at X ray and nothing to do but wait, Kim traversed the bustling halls of Gainsville Memorial until she reached her father’s room, then stepped inside.

  At the sound of the door closing, he glanced up from the notepad in his lap. Creating knock-knock jokes again, no doubt—a man had to have a hobby.

  An immediate smile of welcome creased his face. The panic that had been pulsing in Kim’s throat since she’d watched Brian fall, the sadness and the guilt she’d been fighting, threatened to break free.

  Her father’s smile became a frown as he sensed her distress. “What’s the matter?”

  To her mortification, Kim burst into tears. He opened his arms, and she went into them gladly. She couldn’t recall the last time she’d cried. Since leaving here, she’d found very little worth spilling tears over.

  He let her wind down before he asked her again. “What’s the matter?”

  She didn’t want to talk about it, but he’d hear the story soon enough.

  Kim raised her head, plucked tissues from the box on his nightstand and scrubbed half the makeup off her face. When she was certain she no longer resembled a waterlogged raccoon, she took the chair next to the bed.

  “I went to see Brian.”

  “How did that go?”

  “I just brought him into emergency.”

  Her father’s eyebrows shot up. “Not well, then.”

  She shook her head and quickly explained what had happened. “Dean is right. Everywhere I go, disaster follows. I should have stayed away from Brian.”

  For more reasons than one. Ever since she’d seen him, touched him and he’d touched her, her body tingled, her mind remembered and her heart yearned. She felt alive in a way she hadn’t for a long, long time, and that was more dangerous than a gainer from the roof of a barn.

  “You know what you have to do, don’t you?”

  Her father’s solemn question brought Kim’s head up with a snap. “Do?”

  “To make this right.”

  For an instant she thought he knew the secret that had sent her running. But there was no making that right. Not ever.

  “How is Brian going to take care of his place with two broken wrists?” he asked.

  Her eyes widened. She’d been feeling so guilty she hadn’t thought past the initial tragedy. “He might not have two broken wrists.”

  Her father waved off the rationalization. “One is enough.”

  “Dean can help him.”

  “In the barn. But he’s going to need help in the house, and Dean won’t be able to stay. He’s going to have to help me.”

  “I’ll help you.”

  “That’s sweet, honey, but when was the last time you drove a tractor and spread manure?” Since the answer was never, and they both knew it, he continued. “Brian won’t be able to cook or clean. He won’t even be able to dress himself for a while.”

  Kim’s cheeks burned. She’d had plenty of practice undressing Brian Riley. “Not me, Daddy.”

  “If not you, then who?”

  “Anyone but me.” Her voice was too loud. Her father was looking at her too closely. If he kept staring at her like that she just might tell him everything. She’d never been very good at keeping secrets from her daddy. Another reason she’d had to run.

  “I think it would be best if you helped Brian, don’t you?”

  No! Helping Brian would be a disaster. Just as it had been a disaster to see him. But Kim knew the inevitable when she heard it.

  Until Brian was able to care for himself, she was going to become exactly what she’d always feared.

  A farmer’s wife.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “I have no idea where she went.” Dean yanked the wheel of his pickup truck to the right and bounced onto the gravel lane leading to Brian’s place. “Knowing Kimmy, as far away from trouble as she could get.”

  Brian winced, then pretended he’d bumped one of his wrists against his belly. He had a knot the size of a golf ball on his head, two splints held on with Ace bandages and a matching set of slings. He’d been provided with plenty of drugs and orders to keep his wrists above his heart as much as possible for the next several days to reduce the swelling. Only then would he receive two casts.

  He had broken both wrists, and according to the doctor he was lucky. The breaks weren’t bad enough to need surgery, and he could very well be dead. But right now, with his wrists screaming, his head pounding and his stomach churning, dead didn’t look half-bad.

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if she hightailed it back to Georgia,” Dean continued. “She came, she saw, she screwed things up. Her work here is done.”

  Dean stopped in front of the house, shut off the truck, glanced at Brian and sighed. “Sorry, man. I should keep my mouth shut.”

  “You should. But you won’t.”

  Silence descended. Dusk hovered, heavy and damp. When Brian stepped out of the car, his breath would smoke the air, icy dew would bathe his cheeks and the honk of geese in the distance would make him think of how lonely he would have been these past few years without Dean.

  Of course he would never put such feelings to words—he was a guy, after all. But truth was truth. He and Dean were pals—always had been, always would be—no matter what. Friendship like theirs didn’t come around every day, sometimes not even in every lifetime.

  “I’m sorry,” Dean repeated. “You know Kim and me—we’ve never seen eye to eye.”

  Brian snorted. “Is that what you call it?”

  “What would you call it?”

  Brian wasn’t sure. He’d never understood the anger between Dean and Kim. Of course, he’d never had a brother or a sister, but still, if he had, he liked to think that he would have befriended, not belittled, him or her. As long as Brian could remember if there was a puddle, Dean pushed Kim into it. If there was a clever put-down to be had, Dean was certain to be the butt of it. Brian had tried to make peace, and in the end only made things worse.

  “I don’t know,” Brian admitted. “But I do know I’m tired of it. Can’t everyone just get along?”

  “No,” Dean said simply, and climbed out of the truck. He came around and opened Brian’s door. But he knew better than to help him out. He did, however, stand close enough to catch Brian if he fell, once again, on his face.

  “Baaa!”
The black sheep scampered around the side of the house.

  “Some watch-sheep you are,” Dean sneered. “I could have cleaned the place out by now. And what would you have done?”

  Ba tilted her head in a fair imitation of a dog that recognizes a word in a conversation, but isn’t quite sure which one it is. “Baaa!”

  “Exactly.” Dean turned his attention to Brian. “When are you going to get a dog?”

  Brian remembered burying his last dog, after burying his parents, after burying his—

  “I’m not,” he snapped. “Dogs are overrated. Ba and I get along just fine.”

  “But you’re not fine, and you haven’t been for a long time.”

  Already headed toward the house and an overdue date with his couch, Brian paused. “What are you talking about?”

  Dean glanced longingly at the barn, even leaned in that direction. Heart-to-heart talks were not his style. Then his shoulders slumped, and he kicked the gravel with the toe of his knee-high rubber boots. “I’m talking about you. You don’t go anywhere. You don’t do anything. You won’t even name your animals”

  “What?”

  “Ba? What kind of name is that? I suppose you call the cats Meow and the cows Moo.”

  Brian looked away. “So?”

  “You do, don’t you?” Dean cursed beneath his breath. “Have you touched a woman since Kim left?”

  Brian gaped. Dean might not know when to shut up, but he did know better than to ask personal questions. Which was why they were still friends.

  “Piss off,” Brian said, and headed for the house again.

  Dean’s heavy hand landed on his shoulder. Rather than struggle and end up in more pain, Brian stopped, then turned.

  “I’ll take that as a no,” Dean murmured.

  Brian made his face go blank—something he’d become very good at.

  “There!” Dean waved a finger in Brian’s face. “That’s what I mean. You used to be a different guy. Happy. Funny. Cheery, even. No one could be sad when you were around. But not anymore.”