New Leaf

  “Yeah, a mole, not a spider. I caught a glimpse of it, and I thought it was a recluse.”

  I can’t do this, he thought. If he stayed in this room one second longer, he’d lose it and make her forget all about spiders.

  “Maybe it fell on the floor,” he suggested, trying to regain control of himself. “I’m certain it can’t still be on you.” He thought he saw it on the speckled barn planks. “There it is.” He bent over, studied the spot, and added, “Nope. It’s just a splash of old brown paint.”

  He’d never known anyone so terrified of spiders. Later, when he felt it was okay to have sex with her, he’d know how to get her to shuck her clothes nice and fast. All he’d have to do was yell, “Spider!” God, she was beautiful, and not in a plastic, artificial way, but just naturally lovely. Her heavy breasts drooped just a bit. If they had been completely perky, he would have been turned off. He liked soft, plump breasts, not hard balloons created by a surgeon’s knife and bags of saline.

  “I don’t know where it went,” he said, “but I can guarantee that it isn’t on you.”

  She glanced down, and her cheeks flamed pink, the color a perfect match for her nipples. Barney almost lost it then. He wanted her so much, and the sight of all that gloriously naked skin tested his willpower nearly beyond endurance.

  “I’m going to bed,” he said. “There’s no spider, and if I stay here, things will happen between us that we’ll both regret tomorrow.”

  He released his hold on her, circled her to escape through the kitchen archway, and then strode down the hallway, his body on fire with need.

  It was one of the longest walks of his life.

  When he got inside his bedroom, he sat on the bed and cradled his head in his hands. This was a nightmare. He nearly groaned aloud. And I created it.

  • • •

  Taffeta hugged her pillow and stared at the shifting patterns of moonlight that played over the window glass in her bedroom. Lingering embarrassment still warmed her face. She hadn’t intended to take off her bra, only she had panicked when Barney said he saw a spider inside one of the cups. At that moment, all rational thought had sped from her mind, and she’d gone on autopilot.

  What must Barney think?

  Her plan had been to remove only her top. Stripping down to one’s bra wasn’t really that risqué. Nowadays, bikini tops revealed just as much as a bra did, if not more. But it had been one of the most humiliating moments of her life when she looked down and saw that she was naked from the waist up.

  Even worse, Barney had walked away from her with no difficulty. He hadn’t even glanced back at her. How was she supposed to take that? It definitely hadn’t been a compliment. And, hello, if he had stayed in the dining room, she would have had no regrets in the morning.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Over the next two weeks, Barney learned how it felt to exist in a constant state of physical frustration. Night after night, he took Taffeta out on the town and got so aroused that he could barely see straight, only to drive her back home and not touch her. He couldn’t fall asleep. Cold showers didn’t help. He wondered if Taffeta was experiencing the same ache of desire that he was. They cuddled and kissed in public, but at evening’s end, it was strictly hands off. They circled each other like wary combatants expecting a surprise attack.

  Barney reasoned that he would have breezed through this part of their bargain if he hadn’t been required to act romantic for the benefit of onlookers. Only that was demanded of him, and his body didn’t recognize the difference between pretend touching and the real thing. For him the public displays of affection seemed all too genuine.

  Barney had kept company with several gorgeous women over the years, but he’d never felt desire this intense with any of them. He analyzed the reasons for that and decided it was Taffeta’s sweet nature and genuine goodness that really got to him. He could see the pain in her eyes whenever she thought of her daughter, which happened often, but she somehow set that aside and never took it out on him. Some mornings he would awaken to find her outside with his animals, feeding the horses cookies, tossing scraps to the chickens, and having long conversations with his supposedly pregnant cow, Mary Lou.

  She had laughed until she got tears in her eyes when Barney told her the tale of a bull named Romeo, who was rented out by many local farmers to provide stud services.

  “I paid to have Mary Lou artificially inseminated two years ago,” Barney had shared, “and it was a rodeo from start to finish. Mary Lou wanted no part of it. When I tried to herd her into the squeeze chute, she veered away and butted the inseminator. I swear, he flew ten feet. Then she ran me over. When a thousand-pound cow steps on you, it hurts like the dickens. I had to have my ribs wrapped and do light work duty for a month.

  “So this last autumn, when I heard about Romeo, I decided that getting her pregnant the natural way was the easier way to go. It was only fifty bucks a month to rent him.”

  “And did he do his job?” Taffeta asked.

  Barney had warmed to telling the story. “Don’t get ahead of me. When the owner pulled in with the stock trailer and unloaded Romeo into the pasture, my heart soared with excitement. That bull literally ran toward Mary Lou! I thought, ‘Way to go, Romeo! Get the job done straightaway. I’ll pay the fifty bucks and send you home.’ But Romeo bypassed Mary Lou and went straight for my hay. The owner said Romeo was probably tired because he’d just spent a month out to pasture with nearly a hundred cows.”

  “That would make any bull tired, I guess,” Taffeta mused.

  Barney nodded. “Yep, and all indications were that Romeo had met his baby quota for the year. I never once saw him make a romantic overture. Mary Lou just stood around, looking downcast and rejected, chewing her cud.”

  That got another laugh from Taffeta. “Poor Mary Lou! The local rent-a-bull didn’t want her!”

  “My brothers nicknamed Romeo the midnight lover, and I could only hope they had it right, because he sure as heck didn’t do any business during the day.”

  Taffeta had loved the story, and after that, she’d bonded with Mary Lou, fussing over her as if she were with calf even though Barney didn’t know for sure if the cow was pregnant or not. Her belly had grown, but he didn’t know if that was due to gestation or if she was just fat. Taffeta wasn’t helping on that score with all the treats that she gave her. Kate had given Taffeta her horse cookie recipe, and one weekend Barney’s whole house had been redolent with the scent of molasses as Taffeta baked batch after batch. Enjoying the sight of Taffeta working in his kitchen, Barney spent his Sunday off making sourdough bread, which led to some jousting between him and his wife for the use of the oven.

  Barney’s umpteenth attempt at turning out the perfect loaf was once again a failure. That time, he’d tried to make a big baguette, and it was so hard and dense that he could have used it as a ball bat.

  Hands gooey with cookie dough, Taffeta had asked, “Are you territorial about your bread-making endeavors?”

  “Hell, no. If you can make sourdough, teach me!”

  She’d placed two baking sheets in the oven and stepped to the sink to scrub her hands. How she managed to look so sexy in baggy clothes, Barney didn’t know, but she did. It seemed she was starting to come into her own, even if she did still hide her figure. “Remember my telling you about Mrs. Brassfield, the old lady who taught me how to love? Well, she also taught me how to make fabulous sourdough bread. It’s very tangy, rises beautifully, and tastes divine.”

  “So, what am I doing wrong?” Barney thumped his baguette on the granite. “That sounds like a drunk banging on drums.”

  She giggled. “I think it’s your starter. In all the sourdough cookbooks I’ve seen, it says to create a starter with flour and water. Some recipes call for a dab of yeast as well. Others suggest potato water instead of plain water. But Mrs. Brassfield used pineapple juice and flour instead.”

/>   “Pineapple juice? I don’t want sweet sourdough bread.”

  “It won’t be sweet. It is a fabulous starter. And do you want to hear something really weird? I’m often online looking for different ways to use sourdough, and I recently stumbled across a scientific study done on sourdough starter. I can’t remember the scientist’s name now, but she studied all kinds of starters under a microscope and discovered that pineapple juice as a hydrator keeps the pH level of the starter lower, creating a perfect environment for yeast to grow. Somehow Mrs. Brassfield figured that out on her own by trial and error. People who love sourdough try all different things to make the perfect starter, and she stumbled upon pineapple juice long before a scientific study was done.”

  Barney headed straight for Flagg’s Market to buy a pack of six-ounce cans of pineapple juice. When he got home, he dumped his old starter down the sink and watched over Taffeta’s shoulder as she blended a new batch with pineapple juice. He realized that he enjoyed being in the kitchen with her. The faint scent of roses that clung to her blended sweetly with the smell of warm molasses. Standing behind her, Barney felt his mouth watering as he studied the sensitive indentation at the nape of her neck. He yearned to kiss her there and taste her skin.

  “Some people say to never use metal utensils with sourdough,” she said, “but Mrs. Brassfield never fussed over things like that.” She grabbed Barney’s large wire whisk from the utensil crock near the stove. “You want to work air into your starter,” she said. “Yeast bacteria are present in the flour, but your starter will also capture yeast spores from the ambient air.”

  For Barney, creating a new starter with Taffeta was almost as arousing as engaging in sexual foreplay. He wanted her so badly that his groin throbbed, and he seriously considered picking her up, lying her on the table, tearing her clothes off, and enjoying her as a starving man might a smorgasbord.

  One morning before they both left for work, they grabbed a quick breakfast together at the kitchen table. Taffeta took a banana from a bowl that also held apples, oranges, plums, and kiwis. Sitting across from him, she carefully drew down the peel and then skimmed her small white teeth over the flesh of the fruit. Mesmerized, Barney stopped chewing a mouthful of cereal to watch her. It’s a guy thing, he told himself. She isn’t deliberately trying to make me come in my jeans. And he knew he had that right. Taffeta wasn’t a tease, and she never made a calculated attempt to turn him on. But, he realized dismally, she could arouse him without even trying.

  Barney left for the department wondering when he’d gotten so damned horny that he could be jealous of a stupid banana. But he was. When he arrived at work, he nearly snapped Garrett’s head off for wishing him good morning.

  “What the hell’s so good about it?”

  Garrett gave Barney a wondering look. “Uh-oh. The honeymoon must be over.”

  Barney winced. Being a huge grump when he came on duty was no way to project to the world that he was head over heels in love with his wife. “The honeymoon is not over,” he retorted. “I just didn’t get much sleep last night, so I’m tired.”

  That was the absolute truth. Barney had tossed and turned all night, barely catching a wink because he couldn’t stop thinking about Taffeta, sound asleep in her own room and oblivious of the torture he was going through.

  Shuffling through a stack of papers, Barney took a deep breath and slowly exhaled.

  “Well,” Garrett said, “there are worse ways to get tired, man.”

  Barney gave the junior deputy a warning look. If Taffeta were actually his wife, he would never discuss their love life with a coworker, or with anyone else, for that matter, and he sure as hell didn’t plan to now. The fact that they actually had no love life to discuss was a mere technicality. “Careful, Garrett. Don’t step over that line.”

  The other deputy bent his head back over a report and said nothing more. Barney tried to focus on his own tasks, but his mind was filled with visions of Taffeta skimming her teeth across the length of a banana. I’ll live through this, he assured himself. He just wasn’t sure how.

  • • •

  Over the next few days as Barney came to know Taffeta better, he realized that there were so many beautiful facets to her personality that he’d never tire of discovering something new about her that he admired. It wasn’t only her looks that wowed him; it was the soul-deep essence of who she was that he found overwhelming. Though his parents bore living testimony to the possibility of love at first sight, Barney had never believed that it would happen that way for him. He wanted to find the right lady—and maybe he had done so in Taffeta—but he was in no hurry to reach that conclusion. People who jumped into relationships usually ended up jumping back out of them just as quickly. He would have to know a woman as well as he knew himself before he ever told her that he loved her.

  That said, Barney had to concede that Taffy—he’d fallen into the habit of using her nickname when he addressed her—was an extraordinary person. She loved her little girl so much that there was no sacrifice too great for her to make to ensure the child’s happiness and well-being. As for his animals, she’d taken to farm life as if she’d been born with a pitchfork in her hand. Day by day, her timidity around the horses diminished. She had named all of his hens and was waiting until a perfect handle for the rooster came to her. Every day, she lured Mary Lou into the inexpensive head gate that Barney had purchased and attached to side panels to create a squeeze chute. As a reward for cooperating, Mary Lou got cookies. The cow that had once been terrified of the chute and had trampled Barney to avoid it now raced into the enclosure and willingly thrust her head through the V-shaped catch to get her goodies. At first, Taffeta hadn’t used the manual squeeze mechanism, but now she did so as part of the practice routine. To Barney’s amazement, Mary Lou eagerly thrust her head through the opening, showed no sign of panic when Taffeta dropped the squeeze bar, and happily munched on cookies until released.

  “When her baby comes, she may need help,” Taffeta mused aloud one evening. “It’ll be easier to help her give birth if she’ll just walk into the chute and let me catch her head. Right?”

  Barney nodded, wondering why he’d never thought of using treats as a way to acclimate Mary Lou to the chute. “That’s amazing,” he said. “Now let’s add a new element for her to get accustomed to.”

  He had fabricated a hock bar with his welder. He swung it across the rear end of the chute and locked it down. Taffeta watched with a bewildered expression. Mary Lou shifted nervously when she felt the steel against her back legs. “Can you give her a couple more cookies to distract her?” Barney asked. “Whisper sweet nothings in her ear, too. She needs to get used to this.”

  Taffeta fed the Hereford-Angus mix, cooed to her, and scratched her woolly white topknot. “She doesn’t like that bar behind her legs. Is it really necessary?”

  “If she has trouble dropping her baby, she may get frantic. The bar will stop her from kicking whoever comes in behind her to pull her calf.” Barney wished he could afford a really nice squeeze chute instead of this jury-rigged one, but the important thing was that it worked. “A cow can be dangerous.”

  “Oh, he’s so silly,” Taffeta said to the cow. “You’d never kick anybody. Not my sweet Mary Lou.”

  Barney could have reminded Taffeta that sweet Mary Lou had once cracked two of his ribs, and maybe for safety reasons, he should have. But after watching his wife and the cow interact, he honestly didn’t believe Mary Lou would go berserk around Taffeta. The two of them seemed to have forged a very special friendship, and the bovine obviously trusted Taffeta in a way that she had never trusted Barney.

  “For a person who never had a pet, you sure have taken to my animals,” he commented.

  Taffeta circled the chute and unlatched the bar behind Mary Lou’s hocks. “Let’s not test her patience by keeping this behind her for too long,” she said. “I’ll do it every day from now on so
she gets used to it.” She smiled up at Barney. “As for the animals, I’m making up for lost time and learning how to be a farmer. When I get Sarah, I’m going to try my best to get a place similar to this so she can have a horse, raise baby calves, and collect eggs. What a wonderful way for a little girl to grow up!”

  Barney had met so many women in Crystal Falls who pretended to like farm animals and horses, but in the end—usually about the time they stepped in a pile of shit—their true colors showed. Taffeta had manure on her running shoes right now, and she didn’t seem to notice, let alone feel disgusted. Was she real, this lady? Or was he dreaming?

  Chapter Sixteen

  The next morning when Barney emerged from his bedroom, fully dressed in his uniform, Taffeta was nowhere to be seen. He checked the living room and the kitchen. Where the hell was she? As he passed the window over the sink, he caught a flash of movement out in the yard. He peered through the glass and saw Taffeta outside, coaxing Mary Lou into the squeeze chute. Hands resting at the edge of the sink, Barney made fists over the cold stainless steel as his wife walked around the narrow pen to fasten down the hock bar. Before getting it secured, she bent down, putting her head right in Mary Lou’s line of fire. He nearly had a heart attack.

  By the time he got outside, Taffeta was rewarding Mary Lou for her acquiescence with cookies. She saw Barney and beamed a proud smile. “She’s getting used to that kick bar! When she has her baby, it’ll all go smooth as soft butter.”

  “Don’t ever put your head down behind her back legs like that again!” Barney’s pulse was still racing. “Do you realize that cow could kill you?” He snapped his fingers. “One kick, just like that, and you’d be laid out.”

  Taffeta’s eyes went round. “I didn’t mean to give you a scare,” she apologized. “You’re right. I wasn’t being careful. I won’t do it again.”

  Barney’s bones felt like candle wax gone soft in the sun. It hit him then how much he’d come to care for this lady. In the golden light of early morning, she looked too damned beautiful for words, and he knew she was just as sweet inside as she appeared to be on the outside. He wasn’t ready to put a name to the way he felt about Taffeta, but he knew he had entered uncharted emotional territory. If something happened to her, he wasn’t sure he’d ever get over it.