“Now you have to talk to me,” she said with a sly smile.
“No, I don’t.”
“Then you’ll just have to listen,” she said with a laugh. He liked her laugh, and her smile. He wished he didn’t.
He really wished he didn’t. It was one of the main reasons he had decided to renovate the line shack — so he wouldn’t have to see her every day. There’d been an instant attraction from the moment he first met her that was as jolting as it was unexpected. He’d tried to ignore it. But it was obvious from her visit she felt it, too.
She said, “You know, it’s funny. I don’t have any problem talking to you. Ask anyone down there and they’ll tell you I’m kind of stuck-up and, you know, aloof. They know I’ve been with Mr. T. for a long time and they don’t know what to think about that. But I know you won’t tell anyone else what we talk about because you’re not a talker. And you can’t tell me I’m wrong, can you?”
Nate said nothing.
“If Mr. T. says he trusts you to be his second earner, I trust you. Simple as that. Lord knows we need another earner around here.”
Nate didn’t like the word earner.
“There’s a lot of stress down there,” she said, after a few minutes. “Tension and stress. Living on a ranch is like living in a big dysfunctional family. It’s not like we just see each other during the day, you know, like a regular job. We have to eat together and see each other in the evenings — there isn’t much personal space. I don’t know how Mr. T. stays calm all the time. If it was me, I’d tell ’em all to stop their whining and get the hell back to work. Or back to town. I don’t know how he does it, I really don’t. I just know how much I admire that man, even if he brings a little of it down on his own head. That’s why I stayed with him when he moved out here in the middle of freakin’ nowhere. When I told my people I was moving here, my aunt didn’t even know where it was. She thought Wyoming was somewhere by Nevada.”
He continued to circle around the stovepipe, securing it with the screws.
She put her hands on her hips and said, “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there isn’t exactly a big population of sisters around here in these hills to gossip with.”
Nate responded by not looking at her but raising his hand and opening and closing it even faster than he had the last time.
“Stop it with the hand,” she said. “I’m on a roll. You know those two women down there in the castle, the ones with the fake boobs? A redhead and a blonde? Do you know who I’m talking about?”
“No.”
“Well, he told them it was time for them to go. He did it in a nice way, like he always does. He offered them their golden parachutes and all, standard operating procedure. But they are none too happy about it, so there’s lots more bitching than usual. That blond one, her name is Adrian, I never liked her anyway. She should have been gone months ago, if you ask me.”
After a while, Nate thought, her voice was like anything else: the breeze through the trees, birds chirping. Other things he’d learned to filter out. But he grudgingly admitted to himself that he enjoyed the timbre and cadence of her voice and found it beguilingly musical.
She said with a conspiratorial whisper, “Mr. T.’s getting the place ready for someone new. I’ve been working for him long enough that I think I can recognize that Mr. T. is in love.”
Nate couldn’t help himself. He looked at her. She showed no signs of jealousy. In fact, she seemed delighted by the prospect.
“That’s right,” she said, nodding. “He’s getting the walls painted and replacing old furniture. He got a nice proper poster bed to replace the decadent round one he’s had forever, so I was wondering what was up. I used to ask him, ‘When you getting rid of that white-trash Hugh Hefner bed?’ and he’d just say it was in the castle when he bought it, which it was. But when he sent those two bimbos away and asked me to help him pick out a nice new bed to order, I just knew it. He’s bringing in a new lady. I couldn’t be happier for him. I think he’s been lonely. Those bimbos weren’t exactly interesting conversationalists, you know. So this new lady — she must be something pretty special.”
Nate went back to the chimney pipe.
“So in the middle of them bitching and whining at breakfast about having to pack up their stuff to be out of here by tonight — one of the staff is driving them to the airport in Rapid City — two of our local redneck employees show up and demand to see him. Usually those types come in the door with their hats in their hands, acting all docile because they want something from him. But these two walked straight into the breakfast room and said they needed to talk to him right away. They had no manners, just like most of the people around here. They were muddy and dirty, and they had blood and feathers stuck to them. It was disgusting,” she said, making a face.
“I escorted them into Mr. T.’s office. He was calm and cool as always, but they were all worked up. They said they had a big problem, and like always they expected Mr. T. to fix it. They started going on and on before I even left the room. You know, Mr. T. can’t fix every damn thing there is around here, even though some of those people seem to think he can.”
She muttered to herself and shook her head back and forth before continuing. “But they said they knew Whip was back, which is something no one is supposed to talk about. None of the staff is even allowed to say his name, just like they aren’t supposed to say yours. No one. Those rednecks said they wanted Mr. T. to send Whip to take care of their stupid problem.”
She wagged a single finger in the air. “That just isn’t done. You don’t ask Mr. T. to send Whip. You just leave Whip alone and don’t look at him or meet his eye or talk to him. Those are the rules. You just leave that man alone. Those fools don’t know what they’re doing even mentioning his name, and they don’t know what kind of… man… they’re dealing with. Whip—” She caught herself. Then: “He’s the coldest alive, and not someone to mess with. Not for something like this.”
She paused, and Nate waited.
“Did you hear what the problem was?” Nate asked.
“Not the whole thing,” she said. “Something about a new game warden.”
The screw slipped out of his fingers and rolled down the length of the roof and fell to the dirt below.
“You dropped something,” she said, advancing again to pick it up. “Hold on a second, and I’ll bring it up to you.”
“It’s okay,” he said. He thought: Game warden? “I’ve got another one.”
Liv retrieved it anyway, moved the ladder back, and climbed up. When she reached to hand him the tiny screw, their fingers touched and Nate felt it deep inside like he was afraid he would.
“Time to go now,” he said.
“You know, Mr. Falcon, you’re a hard man to flirt with.”
“Good.”
“You gonna tell me what the problem is?”
“No,” he said, turning away.
12
Jim Latta was over an hour late arriving for breakfast at the Longabaugh Café in Sundance, and Joe checked his wristwatch and ordered a second refill of coffee. He needed it, since he’d slept only three hours after returning to the Whispering Pines Motel.