Wild in the Field (4 page)

She trudged up to the main house, yanked open the back screen door and yelled for Violet. No answer. She tried upstairs, downstairs, the basement, then the front yard. No sister in any of those places, either. Finally she found Vi in the back of the second greenhouse, up to her elbows in potting soil and roots and plants. She'd look like an earth mother if it weren't for the five pounds of bangly gold bracelets and wildly tousled blond hair. The place was a jungle of earthy scents and humidity and plants that seemed to be reproducing in every direction.

“Cam!” Violet said delightedly when she spotted her. “You haven't come out here before. I never thought I'd get you to see all the stuff I've been doing in the greenhouses—”

“And I'm not here now,” Camille said. “I'm here about the dog.”

“What dog?”

Camille sighed. If Violet had to ask, then she obviously didn't know. “Do you have any dog food around? Or anything I could use for dog food? And do you have last night's paper?”

Asking Violet was a mistake. Once she knew the details she immediately wanted to drop everything and come help. Thankfully, a customer showed up and occupied her sister, which left Camille free to raid the farmhouse kitchen. Vi had enough cat food to feed a
zoo of felines. And three days worth of newspapers, none of which listed any reference to a lost dog.

She stomped out of Violet's house, more aggravated than ever, carting a grocery bag full of dry cat food and a mixing bowl. How on earth had this come to be her problem? She couldn't care less about a dog she didn't know from stone and wasn't conceivably her responsibility.

Getting the bowl of food close to the shepherd was an uphill struggle, since it seemed to want to kill her even more than it wanted to eat. She ended up storming back up to Vi's kitchen, slamming doors around, heating up some dadblamed hamburger and driveling it into and over the cat food, then storming it back to the worthless mutt.

It quit snarling and lunging when it smelled the ground beef. The tail didn't wag, the fur didn't stop bristling, the eyes didn't look any less feral…but at least the damn dog let her push the bowl within its reach.

Then it fell on the food as if it hadn't eaten in a week, looking up and growling every few bites—but still, gulping down the chow almost without stopping to chew. By then, Camille had managed to get the heavy mixing bowl of water secured within its reach, too. God knew why she was going to so much trouble. The dog was pitiful. Too mean to love, too ugly for anyone to care, and definitely not her problem. But pitiful.

She never meant to go inside and wash windows. She hadn't done a single thing to make the cottage more livable, and still didn't plan to. But because she had to keep glancing out to check on the damned dog, the filthy windows were distracting. And once she
rubbed a spot clean, the rest of the window looked disgusting. And then once one window got cleaned, the others looked beyond disgusting.

She'd used half a roll of paper towels when the dog's sudden fierce, angry barking made her jump and look out.

Pete was out there, leaning over the fence, his jeaned leg cocked forward, wearing an open-throated shirt as if it were a balmy spring day…which actually, Camille guessed it was. He was just…hanging there…looking at the dog, not appearing remotely disturbed by the canine's aggressive, noisy fury.

For just an instant, she felt the most curious fear, as if she should hide behind the door, not go out, not risk being near him again. There was an old Scottish phrase her dad sometimes used.
Ca awa.
It meant something like “proceed with caution” and that's what she thought every time she saw Pete. Something in those sexy, ever-blue eyes made her feel restless and edgy. Something in his long, lazy stride, in his tree-tall height, in those slow, teasing smiles of his made her stomach drop.

She wasn't aware of him as a man.

She couldn't be.

She certainly didn't
want
him. She didn't want anyone. She never planned to want another man as long as she lived. But damn…he did bug her.

Quickly, she shook off the ridiculous sensation. Pete MacDougal was no one she needed to feel cautious around. She knew that. He was a neighbor. He was interfering and bossy, for sure, but being afraid of him at any level was absurd. And more to the immediate point, he'd obviously noticed the dog.

So she hurled out the door lickety-split. Immediately Pete glanced up and motioned toward the shepherd.

“I see you managed to give our boy some food.”

“Our boy,” she repeated, abruptly realizing that Pete already knew the dog. “Peter MacDougal! You did this to me?”

“I did what?”

“You left me this dog? You tied this mean, godforsaken, dangerous dog to
my
tree? Why in God's name would you do such a thing?”

He smiled. As if she hadn't just screamed abuse on him up one side and down the other.

“His name is Darby. Used to be a show dog. Hard to believe, the way he looks now, isn't it? But he's a thoroughbred shepherd with a long, pretty lineage. The neighborhood kids used to play with him, he was that sweet and gentle….”

She crossed to the fence, her gaze sweeping the ground for a log big enough to brain him with.

“…belonged to Arthur Chapman. You remember him, don't you? Quiet guy, lived down Cooper Street and across the creek, that property on the left after the bridge. Good man. Dog lover. But then Art got Alzheimer's. Naturally, people realized he was getting strange, but you know how folks are tolerant in White Hills. So they just tried to let him be. Nobody realized that in his own house, he'd gotten mean, was beating and starving the dog. It wasn't really his fault. He wasn't in his right mind. Anyway—”

She couldn't find a log. Lots of twigs in the grass, but nothing big enough to do any damage.

“Anyway, the neighbors finally figured out that Art wasn't coping on his own. They called the cops, who called Social Services, all that. Everybody was pre
pared to take care of Art, but no one realized they'd find the dog in such a godawful mess.”

“You're taking this dog right back.”

“Nope, I'm not. But if you don't want him, you can call the pound.”

“I most certainly do not want him—”

“Of course, they'll put him down,” Pete assured her genially. “They don't have the time or means to turn him around. Actually, I'm not sure anyone can. But the pound, for sure, will believe it's easier to put him to sleep. In fact, that's probably what I'd do.”

“You son of a sea dog, you take this dog back! I can't believe this! That you'd desert me. Leave me alone with this horribly vicious dog!”

“Naw. I'll give you the number for the pound, if you want them to come and kill it—”

“Quit
saying
that.”

“Quit saying what?”

“That they're going to kill the damn dog!”

“Well, Cam. That's how it is. I just thought… Darby's got one chance left. That is, if you'll give him one. He was such a great dog that I just thought, man, he has to be worth one last try…. But hell.” Pete pushed back from the fence. “Who cares, right? I'll go home, get the phone number for the pound—”

A log was too good for him. She vaulted over the fence, determined to give him what-for. She wasn't precisely sure how to deliver that what-for, but she was madder than a bed of hornets and the “how” didn't immediately seem that important. She hurled after him, yanked at his shirt, put a wagging finger up in his face, and the next thing she knew, she was in his arms.

It all didn't make a lick of sense. She was mad. She
knew she was mad. And whatever emotion Pete MacDougal might have been feeling, he'd never let on for a blink that he felt anything sexual for her.

Yet his lips came down on hers as if they had been waiting for just that moment. His arms slid around her waist, as if he'd known she was going to be on shaky ground. The sun tilted in her eyes, so bright and hot she couldn't see. She still planned to sock him. Eventually. It was just that right then…she was so stunned.

His lips were sun warmed, smooth. He dipped down for a second kiss before she'd recovered from the first. He was tall enough to make her feel surrounded, protected. She heard the yearning coo of a mourning dove. Felt the damp earthy loam beneath her feet, felt the sliver of breeze tickle the hair at her nape. She felt his heart, beating, beating. Felt her own, clutched tighter than a fist.

Slower than a sigh, he lifted his head. His gaze roamed her face, his eyes dark with awareness, electric with what they'd kindled together. She felt his fingertip on her cheek. His voice came out rough and tender-low.

“I knew it was in there. That soft, wonderful heart of yours. I hate to see you hurting so bad, Cam.”

He didn't lower his hand particularly fast, or turn around and start walking away with any speed. But still she couldn't come up with an answer before he was already a hundred yards onto his own property. She couldn't talk at all. She still seemed to be gulping in air and sensation both.

There'd never been anything wrong with her IQ. She realized perfectly well that Pete had been trying to reach out a hand to her ever since she'd come home, but she'd assumed it was a neighborly hand. She'd
never expected…kisses. She'd never expected to feel his heart thundering against hers, to see the stark shine of desire in his eyes, to feel his body rousing because of their closeness.

Pete wanted her.

It seemed an astounding revelation.

She stared after him, but memories of Robert suddenly pushed into her mind—her lean, elegant Robert, with his city ways and boyish grin. He'd loved the night lights. So many Friday nights they'd gone clubbing, her in her highest heels and slinkiest black dress, Robert in his city-guy clothes. Robert could dance down the house when he got in the mood; he knew his wines, knew his music, knew all the cool places to go.

Camille couldn't imagine Pete giving a damn about “a cool place” in a thousand years. He was day-and-night from Robert in every way.

Pete was lean himself, but when a man was built that tall and physical, he just wasn't…elegant. His shoulders were as broad as a trunk. His skin had an earthy tan; his hair never looked brushed. He roared when he was mad, laughed from the belly when he was happy. Nothing scared Pete. He was elemental, earthy, wild himself.

He made her think of male alpha wolves—of the kind of guy a woman was instinctively very, very careful around. Not for fear he'd hurt her, but for fear of being taken under by a force bigger than her, an emotional force, a sexual force.

Camille shivered suddenly, and then abruptly, scowled. Elemental force? Where on earth was this horse hockey coming from? The damned man had left her with a filthy, vicious dog that no one could love or
want, and somehow managed to divert her attention for a couple seconds by kissing her senseless.

Well—the next time she saw him, there'd be no kisses and no nonsense either. She whirled around, only to find Killer—alias Darby—snoozing on his side in the maple's shade.

If that wasn't typical! Both males had wreaked total havoc on her day, and now one was sacked out and the other had walked away.

She was simply going to ignore them both, and that was that.

W
hen most women got kissed, Camille thought grimly, their mood perked up. At least if it had been a
good
kiss. And Pete's kiss had certainly qualified as a humdinger.

As she trudged toward the lavender fields, carrying a long-armed set of clippers, she could feel every creaky, cranky muscle in her body complaining. For three days, she'd been working nonstop in the lavender. Specifically, that was the same three days since Pete had brought her that dadblamed mangy dog and kissed her.

Working herself into a state of exhaustion hadn't made her forget Pete—but it was doing a fabulous job of completely wearing her out. It was also giving her something to do to earn her keep. The lavender appeared to be a thankless, ridiculous, hopeless job—but that just suited her mood, anyway. She wasn't looking
for meaningful. She was looking for something so mind-numbing and exhausting she'd be too tired to have nightmares.

When she reached the crest of the hill, the late-afternoon sun was temporarily so blinding bright that it took several seconds before she realized she wasn't alone. There were bodies in the lavender field. Two of them. Squinting, she realized they were boys. Both were hunkered down in the first row of the overgrown lavender, working with clippers—in fact, working with far better clippers than her own.

In a single blink, she knew who they had to be. Pete's sons. They were identifiably young teenagers—at an age when boys tripped over their own feet and their arms seemed longer than their whole bodies. But she could see Pete in their height, the strong bones and ruddy skin. Both had his brown hair, too, with that hint of mahogany in the sunlight.

She clomped closer, building up a good head of steam. Obviously Pete had sent them over with the clippers. Her father would have labeled Pete a
clishmaclaver
—which was one of his Scottish terms for busybody. Doggone it, she hadn't asked for his help. And she may have turned into a rude, ornery bitch—and was proud of it!—but even a curmudgeon had to have a line. She sure as heck wasn't going to let two young boys kill themselves working in those hopelessly overgrown twenty acres.

“Boys! Hey!” She yelled, the instant she was within hearing distance. It wouldn't take her two seconds to send them both packing; she was sure of it.

They both immediately jerked upright. “Hey, Ms. Campbell!” Damn, but they were startlingly alike. Except one had a cowlick—the same one who pushed a
step forward, with an agonizing-red blooming on his cheeks as if he normally died from having to speak to strangers. “Hi, Ms. Campbell, I saw the dog in your yard.”

She still intended to throw them both off the property, but obviously that comment forced her to recognize a greater priority—their safety. “Good grief—you guys didn't try to go close to Killer, did you?”

“No,” the shy one spoke up again. “I meant—I saw what you did with the snow fence. Making a yard for him and all. That was cool. Giving him a way to get some exercise so he didn't always have to be tied up.”

Camille perched a fist on her hip. She didn't need praise from some baby-aged kid for hauling five tons of snow fence, all to create a stupid yard for a mangy, worthless, violently aggressive mutt who hated her and everyone else. She needed someone to give her a whack upside the head for being so crazy. But before she could correct the boy's misconception of her, his brother pushed ahead of him. This one was just as good-looking and gawky, but he didn't have a cowlick—and no shy blush on his cheeks. “We shoulda said who we were. I'm Simon. That's Sean. Sean's the one who found Darby. Dad says he's always finding trouble.”

“Am not.”

“Are, too.” Simon poked him, then kept talking as if the two of them regularly conducted conversations while socking each other. “See, we heard about Mr. Chapman being taken to a rest home. But it's like nobody remembered that he had a dog, until Sean did. Mr. Gaff let us in the house. Sean found Darby in the back room, locked in, all dirty, no food, no water. He'd turned wild like. In fact, I thought he was gonna kill
Sean. Not that that wouldn't be a good riddance and all—”

Sean slugged him. Simon slugged back. Camille rubbed two fingers on her temples, wondering when and how she was going to throw them off the property, when so far she couldn't even get a word in.

And Simon kept right on talking, even as he was being slugged. “Anyway, the pound loaned us this leash they use on wild or sick animals. It's like any other leash, except that it has this stick thing attached so the dog can lunge, but not so close he can bite you. Anyway, then Sean brought it home—”

Sean finally ventured another comment. “—And Simon's gonna tell you that Dad was mad at me. Which he was. But it's like no biggie. Dad always has a cow when I bring home another animal. The point is that Dad figured out right away that you'd be the perfect person to adopt Darby.”

Camille's jaw dropped. “Your dad said what?”

“He said you'd be the one person who could save Darby. I mean, I could save him, too. But we've already got dogs and cats and raccoons and homing pigeons and all, and like, obviously, Darby is too ornery right now to be around other animals. So we couldn't take him. There was just no way. And that's when Dad said you were the perfect one. Because you were the only one in White Hills who was even meaner than Darby.”

Again her jaw dropped. “He said
what?
”

“Yeah, cool, huh? I wasn't convinced, because you're a woman and all. But then Dad explained that you're not really like a woman.”

This time her voice seemed to raise a complete octave.
“He said what?”

The brothers exchanged glances, as if suddenly aware she didn't sound thrilled with the conversation. The one without the cowlick—Simon—seemed to be inherently elected to handle difficult verbal situations with adults. “Dad said you're okay. Like, look at you. You dress like a guy. You've got dirty boots. Your hair's all messed up. You're ornery. I mean, you're practically like us.”

Sean nodded, as if anxious to clear up this problem of potentially offending her. “See, once Mom took off, we all just said screw it. We don't need or want women in our lives, you know? Because Dad was, like, way depressed. And now he's fine. The whole trick was getting rid of women.”

Simon finished up the explanation. “Now do you get us? If you were like a woman, we'd never have trusted you to take Darby.”

“I see.” Actually, what Camille saw was that a chill wind was scooching over the hill; it was nearing the dinner hour; she hadn't gotten a lick of work done; and now she had to translate fourteen-year-old-teenage-boy lingo into something an adult might understand. That godforsaken dog was clearly a prize. To them. And that she was apparently too unkempt and ornery to be “like a woman” was a giant compliment. To them.

“Okay. Anyways…” Both boys suddenly turned around and picked up their clippers again.

“Whoa. Wait a minute there—”

“It's okay, Ms. Campbell. We know what to do. Dad called the county extension office, and this guy talked to all of us about lavender, how it's grown, what to do and everything.”

“We know it's a flower. Neither of us wanted to
work around anything sissy like flowers, but it's not your fault, after all, that your sister's so bonkers—”

“Simon, shut up. You're insulting her family, you nimwit.”

“Oh.” Simon glanced back, stricken. “Hey, I didn't mean anything. I meant to say how sorry I was for you. Your sister scares all of us, and you have to deal with her all the time. It can't be easy.”

“Anyways…” Sean started
clip, clip, clipping
as he talked. “We learned a bunch of junk. It was pretty interesting, about how there's English lavender and French lavender and Spanish lavender. What you got here is apparently all kinds of crossbreeds.”

“And what we have to do is lop off about a third from the top and sides.” Simon glanced at her clippers, shook his head. “Yours aren't sharp enough. They have to be good ones. But back to the job. We have to cut the stems back to a few inches from where the woody part starts. See?”

He motioned, and stayed hunkered down like that until she came over, scowling, and bent down to have a look. Then he went on. “This is like a big mess. It'll take three years to get it back, the county guy said, but you can do it if it's worked right. Lop the sides and top. Then the stems back. Then next year, you do another third. Then by the third year, it'll be vible again.”

“Vible?”

“Vi-
a
-ble,” Sean said disgustedly. “He gets Cs in English. He's so stupid.”

“Am not.”

“Are, too. Anyways, Ms. Campbell, you really got a lot of this lavender.”

She tried wildly waving a hand to get a turn in. “I know I do, but I don't need you boys!”

They stopped working abruptly, but both of them looked crushed. “Dad's paying us, Ms. Campbell, so you don't have to. And it's either this or we have to clean the bathrooms and do the wash. I mean, come on. We really work good. I promise. And we can get here most afternoons by like three-fifteen or so. You wouldn't fire us before you even gave us a chance, would you?”

For Pete's sake. She'd like to throw up on the whole damn world, but how was she supposed to be mean to two motherless brats? “You two can't possibly do this whole twenty acres and that's that. You can work for an hour in the afternoon sometimes. IF you want to.
When
you want to. And only if it doesn't interfere with your damned schoolwork, you hear me?”

Yup, they both heard her. They were both nodding like bobbing corks.

“And I never said ‘damned' either!”

More exuberant nodding. Hell. It was all she could do not to slick down Sean's cowlick and jog up to the house to bring cookies to the brats.

She stormed back to the cottage, thinking that this just wasn't going to work. She knew it. But this was Pete's doing, so the only way she could stop it was to go directly to Pete.

And that meant risking being near him—not that he'd want to kiss her again. Considering that he apparently thought of her as an unkempt, ugly, genderless nonwoman, it was astounding that he'd wanted to kiss her the first time. Nevertheless, once you'd been stung by a mosquito, you knew what the itch was like and obviously avoided it a second time if you could.

She could put up with the boys. For a while. Any
thing was better than risking getting too close to Pete again—at least until she figured out what the Sam Hill that kiss had been about.

 

Camille waited the dog out for three more days, but by Saturday afternoon, she'd had it. When the temperature climbed to a reasonably warm seventy-six degrees, she pulled on ragged shorts and a black tee, then carted outside a bucket, flea shampoo, rags and a hose.

Killer—alias Darby—had been allowing her to bring food and water, particularly if the food included ground round, and he'd quit snarling in her presence. But coming close enough to touch him was a different proposition. He bared his teeth when she stepped off the cottage porch, and bristled into a hair-ruffed growl when she got within five feet.

She stopped there. Temporarily. “Look,” she said irritably. “You stink. You stink so bad I can smell it through the windows. I've had it with this whole attitude thing. If you think you can out-mean me, buster, you've got another think coming. Now you're getting a bath today, and I mean to tell you, that's that.”

Growl, snap, snarl. Growl, snap, snarl.

Camille pushed back her hair, put her hands on her hips, and growled right back. Her voice was deceptively as soothing as a whisper. “You want to tear me apart?” she demanded. “Well, where you're making a mistake, Killer, is thinking that I care. If you were a person, my dad would be calling you a
sumph
. You know what that is? In Scottish, it's the word for a half-wit. Because that's how you're behaving. Half-witted.”

She'd been talking to him for days, knowing he was completely ignoring her, but she didn't turn her back on the dog. She wasn't that stupid. Quietly she bent down, added the flea shampoo to the warmish water in
the bucket, and dunked in the rag. Killer stopped snarling—until she took another step closer—and then he resumed the fierce warning growls.

“I am
so
sick of this. You snap at me, I'll snap right back, you no-count worthless mutt. You think life's treated you so terribly? Well, big frigging deal. I lost everything….” When he stopped growling, she took a quiet step toward him.

“So the owner you loved turned mean and now you don't trust anyone. That's tough. Real tough.” She took another step. Then another. “But the guy I loved was killed by strangers. The court system barely slapped their hands. I'll never feel safe again as long as I live. I literally lost everything—my job, my husband, my life. Myself.” Calmly, slowly, she sponged the soapy water on his neck and back. The dog went still, rigid as stone, eyes tracking her with the fierceness and anger of a predator. “So don't waste that stupid attitude on me. I'm tired of it. You think life's unfair? I agree. You think life's not worth living? I agree. You just want to be left alone to be miserable—man, I agree with that, too. And I'll leave you completely alone. But you have to have a bath first, because I'm the one trying to sleep under that window there. I've been living with that smell ever since you got here. I've had enough…”

It wasn't as if she were sweet-talking the darn dog. She was being plenty mean and tough. She just happened to be using a crooning tone of voice, because as long as she kept talking, he stopped growling and was letting her wash him. Maybe he was just sick of being filthy, who knew? But her heart was beating hard enough to implode—it wasn't easy getting this close to the dog, when she had every reason to fear it might
attack her. Still. She had to try something. The wild, despairing rage in its eyes—she couldn't stand it anymore. She understood it. All too well.