Chapter Six
The cactus wrens ushering in the pre-dawn outside Rose’s camper chattered like car engines in perpetual ignition, and a gentle breeze drifted through her windows. Rose set her electric kettle to boil, dropped an herbal tea bag into a thrift-store mug, knotted up her long hair, and breathed in the solitude.
Her phone vibrated on the mini counter. She quickly swiped her finger across the screen.
“Hey there. How’s my munchkin?” she said, remarkably able to get a cell signal as impending sunlight brightened the eastern horizon and illuminated the distant plateaus in pastel light. She turned down her tiny stereo to a low background murmur.
“I’m fine,” Sage replied.
A constant tap, tap, tap, tap in the background told her Sage dragged a stick along the fence delineating her father’s driveway from the front pasture. The banging stopped at the sound of a fumble, then heavy footfalls and harder breathing as Sage ran. No doubt, he had dropped the stick and because he was a perfectionist, he would have to start over at the beginning of the fence to complete the length all in one go properly.
“Did you feed Peanut Butter and Jelly yet?” she asked, pouring her boiling kettle over her tea bag.
“Yes. Abuelo said to feed them at five thurty every day.”
“What did you put in their buckets?”
“Um…” The tapping started again, a steady metronome.
“Sage?”
“I fed them hay.”
“Did they like it?”
“They like evwything.”
Rose laughed. “They’re goats.”
When her dad had given Sage a goat, he’d named it Peanut Butter, and because goats always needed companions, Rose had named Peanut Butter’s best buddy, Jelly.
“Mommy? Are we going to the lake?”
Rose sighed. At least he’d heard and answered a couple questions before reverting back to the same old question he’d already asked a hundred times. Sage loved to go to the lake, and per tradition each summer, he always asked.
“Do you remember what I told you?”
“Yes.”
“Which was?”
“We’ll go to the lake when we get back to Austin,” Sage parroted in an ever-monotone voice.
“Yup.” She could hear him thinking. Could hear the gears in his mind grinding as he processed the explanation, even though he said so little.
She basked in a breezy swell cutting across the camper that ruffled her errant curls—the screens the only barriers to keep out the wasps, scorpions, and snakes—and took her tea to sit outside in her camping chair. The rest of her students were still asleep.
“What did Abuelo fix for breakfast?” she asked, stepping down the rickety trailer steps, when she came face to face with none other than Toby Dixon, his face shadowed by his sexy Stetson, his body defined by a tight men’s undershirt and plaid shirt hanging open, jeans distressed from wear slouched around his hips and hugging the ridges of his thigh muscles. He had a shiny belt buckle with gold trimming.
“Eggs. Bacon. Ownges.” He couldn’t put the r in oranges yet. “I don’t like ownges.”
She froze, staring at Toby who tipped his hat with his fingertip and watched her curiously. Who’s on the phone? he mouthed.
She didn’t want to say her son. Saying she had a kid might be a deal breaker to him, and whatever had happened between them yesterday, she’d really liked it, even if he was the kind of man she ought to avoid. Who also hosts summer camps to hike his mountain and strikes deals with youth educators and, as it turns out, doesn’t really want to raise cattle for slaughter. Deal breaker?
Man, she’d enjoyed sneaking peeks at Toby through the windows while she’d set up the lab, as the summer-camp bus rolled up, as the kids had crowded around him. He’d been all shiny and showered by that time, and he’d teased them one by one while tossing out bottles of water and free T-shirts with the Legacy’s logo on it.
“Who’s ready to do some hiking?”he’d called, as the kids crowed in reply. He’d hooked his hand around his ear. “That’s all you got? Shoot… I said, who’s ready to do some hiking?” and this bout of taunting was rewarded with twenty high-pitched squeals while chaperones hastened to slather sunscreen on wiggling bodies. He’d played with a cluster of girls who’d tried to tag him, chuckling at their attempts while jumping out of their way, mock roughhoused with a couple boys before playfully scolding them.