The Groom Who (Almost) Got Away by Carla Neggers

Author:Carla Neggers [Carla Neggers]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781459281035
Publisher: Harlequin

6

Calley was expounding on the virtues of New York bagels a couple of hours after Max had grabbed one of the hands, put her back on her horse and set the two of them on the trail back to the house. She’d gotten off old Stubbs just fine. She hadn’t needed any help from a ranch hand who had a patch over one eye and reminded her of John Wayne in True Grit. He’d looked as if he would have no truck with some New Yorker who didn’t know how to dismount a horse.

If nothing else, she was a quick learner.

Jimmy Baxter had returned from “town”—wherever that was—with groceries and odds and ends, and the boys had gathered in the kitchen for juice and frozen bagels. They thawed them in the microwave, tore them apart and browned them in the toaster. The two older boys put light cream cheese on theirs. Wynne had insisted on grape jelly.

It was all enough to make Calley gag.

At her urging, Jimmy had bought a tin of loose-leaf Earl Grey tea. He’d directed her to the pantry, where she’d unearthed a teapot that she now had steeping. Miraculously, he’d also produced a small, dented strainer that fitted over a cup. Wynne and Timothy, and even Christopher, showed an interest in the entire process, the Slade household apparently devoid of tea drinkers.

The three boys watching closely, Calley poured a little of the tea into her china cup, which she’d retrieved from the dining room. Jimmy had warned her to wash it out first. Neither the china nor the dining room was used often.

The tea was the perfect strength. The boys munched on their bagels as she poured the tea through the strainer. She eyed the bagels dubiously. Cardboard probably tasted as good.

“Sometimes in the morning on my way to work,” she said, “I’ll stop off at a deli where they bake their own bagels. I get them warm out of the oven.”

“With jelly?” Wynne asked.

“No, not with jelly. A light layer of cream cheese.”

“I hate cream cheese,” he said.

She had already discovered Wynne was remarkably forthright about his likes and dislikes. She liked a kid who spoke his mind. The two other boys munched on their bagels as she added a dollop of milk to her tea.

“How come you don’t use a tea bag?” Timothy asked.

“I prefer loose leaf when I can get it, and when I have time. Tea bags are fine in a pinch.”

“I hate tea,” Wynne said.

Christopher finished the last of his bagel. “I want to go to New York sometime.”

Calley remembered “Jill Baxter’s” believable, wrenching desire to experience life beyond Wyoming. How much of that longing had been Christopher Slade’s own? She smiled at him. “I’m sure you will.”

“Max used to live in New York,” Wynne said, squirming onto her lap. After a day playing outside, he smelled like sweat and dirt, and had to be the filthiest child alive. But she found, to her surprise, she didn’t even have to repress an impulse to dump him off her lap.

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