Courtship In Granite Ridge. Barbara McCauley

myself for—”

      They hit with all the vengeance of a tornado. Two screaming banshees blew into the kitchen, arms flailing and feet flying. Troy was in the lead, his shrieks a mixture of terror and laughter; Cody was on his brother’s heels, his red face blazing with anger, his hair wet and dripping with green goo.

      “I’m gonna rip your liver out,” Cody wailed. Troy stuck out his tongue. Slater ducked as Cody flung a wad of the green slime at Troy. They circled the table twice, then darted out the back door.

      Slater stared at the open back door. “Shouldn’t we be calling the paramedics?”

      Kasey’s laugh was deeper than he’d remembered, richer. “You haven’t been around kids much, have you?”

      Hardly. Jared Stone had a two-month-old baby, and Jake, Jared’s brother, had a one-month-old. At a family gathering only a few days ago, Savannah, Jake’s wife, had insisted that Slater hold both babies for a picture. Before he knew it, he’d been corralled onto the couch with a tiny baby girl in each arm. He’d faced guerrillas in South America and wild bulls in Texas that hadn’t terrified him half as much. “Can’t say that I have.”

      “Well, Slater,” she said with a sigh, “you’re about to get an education. You might as well sit back and relax.”

      The front door banged open.

      “Stupid face!”

      “Dog breath!”

      “Wussy!”

      “Dork!”

      They blasted up the stairs in a salvo of insults. The air seemed to quiver in their wake.

      Kasey frowned, then rose. The firm set of her mouth and the hard look in her eyes had Slater feeling sorry for the boys. It also had him glad he wasn’t the subject of whatever sentence was about to be laid down.

      “I’ll make up the guest room after I ‘speak’ to my sons. You’re staying the night.”

      He opened his mouth to decline, then shut it again when he saw the firm set of her mouth. He folded his hands in his lap and nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”

      She grinned, then stopped at the kitchen door and looked at him. “By the way, Slate, you might want to wash that green slime off the back of your head before it dries.”

      Three

      Slater rose early, even before the sun began to push its first rays across the horizon. He pulled on a navy T-shirt, worn jeans and boots, then quietly made his way down the stairs.

      Dinner had been quite an experience last night, he remembered with a smile. A noisy one. Excited from their trip, Cody and Troy had talked at the same time, relating every detail of their vacation. Kasey continually reminded them of their manners, corrected their grammar and pushed the green beans. While they were clearing the table, both boys insisted they weren’t even a little tired and couldn’t they stay up and watch “Hannibal’s Heroes”? How else would they find out who had stolen Yuma Blackhawk’s telepathic crystal ring?

      Kasey sent them upstairs for baths, but before the coffee had finished brewing, both boys were sprawled, half dressed, out cold on their beds. They obviously slept as hard as they played, Slater had thought as he’d stood at the bedroom door and watched Kasey kiss her sons good-night. His own mother had died before he’d even turned ten, but he remembered her whispered “sleep tight,” as she’d tuck him in every night, and the memory had brought a tightening in his chest.

      He closed the back door behind him with a soft click, careful not to let the screen door slam. He knew that Kasey needed the sleep as much as her boys. They’d stayed up and talked until long after midnight, covering the highlights of each other’s life for the past ten years, but the long drive from Dallas had taken its toll on her and he’d sent her to bed mimicking the same parental tone she’d used on her sons. She’d gone under protest, and only after he’d promised to fill her in on every juicy detail of his life in the morning.

      The air was crisp this morning, the inside of the barn pungent with the scent of horse and leather and alfalfa. He heard a soft whinny, then a rustling of hay as the animals stirred. So familiar, he thought. Every smell, every sound a reminder of another time, another place.

      A place he’d sworn never to come back to.

      With a sigh, he picked up a rake. The wood felt solid and smooth under his hand. He hadn’t mucked out a stall in ten years, but the rhythm came back easily to him. So did pitching hay, he found, after he’d cleaned six occupied stalls. Effortlessly, he swung the pitchfork into the bale, hooked a bite, then arched the flake over his shoulder into the stall of a pretty little chestnut mare. She munched daintily, then blew out a delicate snort of thanks.

      “You’re welcome,” Slater mumbled, and stabbed the fork back into the bale. His next customer, an unusually fine-looking speckled gray, nodded his approval, then turned his attention to his breakfast.

      Slater had been working in near darkness, but now the dawn light began to spill into the barn through the open doors. And, he noted with a frown, through the roof, as well.

      Leaning against the pitchfork, Slater surveyed the interior of the barn. It was neat and clean, but in desperate need of repairs. Holes in the roof, missing doors on the three end stalls, rotting wood. Only the stalls that housed the horses had been rebuilt.

      He’d noticed the inside of Kasey’s house had shown signs of wear also. The kitchen faucet had rattled and leaked, the screens in the spare bedroom and upstairs bathroom were torn, a window in the living room cracked and the front porch steps ready to cave in.

      Maybe her kids weren’t so far off after all, Slater thought. Maybe she could use a husband.

      He shook his head at the ridiculous idea and tossed a flake of hay to a sorrel gelding in the next stall. Of course Kasey didn’t need a husband. A leaky faucet and broken window hardly required matrimony.

      “Hugh Slater, what exactly do you think you’re doing?”

      Pitchfork in hand, he swung around. She stood at the barn’s entrance, hands on her denim-clad hips, frowning at him. He swiped at the sweat beaded on his brow, then stabbed the pitchfork into the mound of hay and rested his hands on top of the handle. “Good morning.”

      She folded her arms, then tossed her head to shake back the auburn curls spilling over the shoulders of her slate blue blouse. “Don’t ‘good morning’ me, mister. You’re supposed to be in bed, not mucking out stalls and feeding horses.”

      There was purpose in her stride as she marched toward him, and it was impossible not to notice the sway of her slender hips. Curves had definitely settled in all the right places on her. If the lady was looking for a husband, or anything else, there would no doubt be a long line of males eager to oblige.

      “Man’s got to pay for his room and board somehow,” he said, holding tight when she covered his hands with hers and tried to tug the pitchfork away. “Besides, I wanted to see if I still had the touch.”

      She smiled at him. “Slater, you always had the touch, don’t you know that?”

      She’d said the words innocently enough, but an undercurrent moved between them, an unspoken hint of something that had his hands tightening on the pitchfork handle.

      Her fingers were warm and smooth over his, her skin soft. Before he could stop the thought, he wondered if she was that soft all over.

      A mare from the fourth stall whinnied loudly, complaining she hadn’t been fed. Slater nodded toward the distressed animal, thankful for the interruption, uneasy with his reaction to Kasey’s touch. “At least let me finish what I started. Then I promise I’ll sit on my butt and do nothing.”

      And a nice butt it is, Kasey noted as he turned away, then had to swallow back a gasp at her unexpected thought. Something had just passed between them a moment ago, something that still had her a little shaken,