Catching Calhoun. Tina Leonard

don’t usually keep secrets from Mom.”

      “Trust me, this is a good one to start with.” He patted Kenny’s back. “Is it a deal or not?”

      The kids nodded. “Deal. We won’t tell Mom how fast you can run,” Kenny said.

      Calhoun squatted down to where they could look down into his face. “That wasn’t it, exactly. Skip the part about looking for a father. That’s not something she wants to hear.”

      Kenny sighed. “Okay.”

      Minnie stared at him. “We’re not dumb, Calhoun. We know it’d never work.”

      After a moment, he nodded.

      “I mean, there are other girls in the world, ones who wear pretty dresses and ribbons in their hair and who don’t spit-comb their brother’s hair,” she said mildly.

      He glanced at Kenny’s hair with some interest. “Spit-comb?”

      Minnie shrugged. “Works better than water.”

      “Hmmph.” He took her small hand in his. “Just for the record, I’m the kind of guy who’s more impressed by ingenuity than froufrou, okay?”

      “Cowboy, I’m pretty smart because my momma homeschools me, but I don’t know what froufrou means. And neither does Kenny.”

      Kenny shifted from boot to boot. “Can we start now? Before Mom finds us and drags us off for another lecture on how we’re not supposed to be bothering Calhoun?”

      Calhoun grinned. “Just remember what I said,” he told Minnie. “One day you’ll meet a guy who feels the same way I do about froufrou, and you’ll know he’s the one.”

      Minnie sat on the barrel, taking the little girl’s place and feeling pretty good about it. “Maybe Momma would like you better if you spit-combed your hair,” she commented.

      Calhoun smiled and picked up his paintbrush. “Keep your head turned this way and don’t glance at the paintings.”

      “We already saw them,” Kenny said. “They’re naked women. You must like naked women a bunch.”

      “And you’re going to paint a naked woman on a saddle for that man, to make his butt happy,” Minnie said. “I guess that’s what you mean by froufrou.”

      Calhoun looked at Minnie, with her honest eyes, her straight hair and her wide mouth, which was, coincidentally, budded up into the same expression of disapproval he’d seen on her mother’s face earlier. On Olivia’s face he’d found it cute—but on Minnie’s face, it was disconcerting. Olivia was right: her child was a worrier.

      And her equally worried brother sat beside her, with eyes like Minnie’s, only Kenny’s had a deeper reservoir of sadness, almost like Charlie Brown, as if his world was never going to be quite right but he’d keep searching for the good in life anyway. Catch ’em being good, adults liked to say about children. In Kenny’s watchful gaze, it was as if Kenny was waiting to catch Calhoun being good.

      “You know,” Calhoun said heavily, sitting down next to them. “I should paint you two.”

      “I want a deer,” Kenny said, as Calhoun touched the paintbrush to his cheek.

      “I meant, paint a portrait of you. Together.”

      Minnie watched over his shoulder as his hand moved deftly over her brother’s face. “Why?”

      “I don’t know why. Change of pace, maybe.” He’d never painted anything but nudes. Well, once in high school, he’d painted graffiti on the gym walls and gotten suspended for three days—after he’d painted the entire gym again, by himself, in a new coat of school colors. The school had suspended him, but it had been Mason who’d dragged Calhoun back to the school to tell them he wanted to make right what he’d done wrong.

      Curse Mason, and curse Maverick’s legacy of trying to instill rightness in all of them. It was almost like having a Goody Two-shoes gene one couldn’t outrun.

      “If you paint us,” Minnie said, her voice colored with wonder, “paint me with a pretty dress and ribbons. My hair done right, and Kenny’s lying down, not stuck up like a bird perch on his head. Okay, Calhoun?”

      Calhoun stopped, his hand floating in the air, paintbrush suspended, as he realized what she was saying.

      Minnie dreamed of a world she was never going to have, even if she was practical enough to know that her life with her family was better than the little girl’s with the ribbons and cotton candy and father who wanted his butt to be happy. But still, she dreamed of adding more color to her personal portrait. She’d remodel Minnie Spinlove.

      “Minnie and Kenny, what are you doing?”

      Olivia’s voice startled Calhoun. He turned to face the mother of the children whose faces he was painting. She looked none too happy.

      Before he could stop himself, Calhoun reached out and painted a big dot on Olivia’s cheek.

      She stared at him as if he’d lost his mind.

      “Face painting,” he said. “And we’re obeying all the rules. They’re paying customers, Ms. Spinlove. Scout’s honor. Just like the little girl who was here before getting her face painted. Even ladies like to get their face painted. It takes them back to their childhood. Would you like your face painted?”

      “No, thank you,” Olivia said. “I will wait until you are finished, though. I suppose, Minnie, that you managed to find the only cowboy in Texas who paints faces?”

      “At this rodeo, Momma,” Minnie said. “At least I didn’t see any others. And even if I did, I’d still want Calhoun to do it, ’cause he’s an awesome painter. He can paint a pretty naked woman, Momma,” she added as Calhoun gently wiped off the blue splash of paint he’d put on Olivia’s cheek.

      Olivia looked behind her at the exhibits where people were milling around, gazing at the paintings. “I…see.”

      “Ah, Minnie,” Calhoun said, taking her face in his hands to finish her unicorn. “You certainly are mini,” he told her. “But I suspect you’re high voltage all the time.” Then he painted a sparkly unicorn on her cheek.

      Kenny scooted a barrel next to Calhoun so he could intently watch the process now that he had a deer on his cheek. Olivia hung back, her boot tapping nervously on the ground.

      “These customers waited patiently for their turns,” Calhoun said conversationally to Olivia, hoping to calm her down. They were all breaking the rules, and he suspected she wasn’t buying the paying customer routine, but he knew the kids were after a little attention. He was willing to supply it until everybody said sayonara tomorrow night, so what was the harm? As their mother said, they pestered everybody for attention.

      And Minnie wanted him to paint a doctored-up portrait of her and her brother that represented the image in her mind, the one she wished for. An image that was right up there with the idea of unicorns being the fabled symbol of happiness.

      He couldn’t give the kids what they wanted, any more than he could give them real unicorns. Or an idealized family with picture-perfect hair and dolled-up dresses.

      He knew all about trying to create a reality out of the painted picture in one’s mind of the perfect family. “There,” he said gently to Minnie. “The best one I’ve done all day.” And he rumpled Kenny’s hair so that the spit-combing was shot. “Yours, too, kid. Y’all got the best I had.”

      “Thanks, Mr. Calhoun,” Kenny said. Getting up, he went to his mom so she could inspect the artwork. “You should let him paint your face, Mom,” he said. “It feels kinda funny when he touches you, but you’d like it.”

      Olivia blushed deeply. She could feel it, because it felt as if she’d just broken out in some kind of flu-like rash. Glancing at Calhoun, she was grateful to see that he was pretending not to hear. He was, simply, the most