CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
Lance~
“New boots?” he asked, although it was obvious those red ones were just out of the box. “Very sharp.”
“I think they’re just beautiful,” she said warmly. “And they match the gloves perfectly.” She waved a pair of genuine hand-made pigskin gloves at him.
He forced a smile to his face. “They do look warm,” he managed past his fury. That rich bastard Bascom had easily put a month’s wages on Amber’s hands. And the same again on her feet.
“They are,” she said happily. “And they are so soft. I love the color too. They’re perfect.” She glowed like a kid at Christmas.
“It’s a good red.” He gave her a boost into his truck.
“But I’ll treasure them mostly because of the giver,” she murmured shyly.
He gaped at her. She was blushing. It dawned on him that she believed he was the provider of the snappy red boots and exquisitely expensive gloves. He was tempted to let her go on thinking that. But sooner or later, Bascom would claim credit for his gift. He backed out of his parking space and got a grip on his temper.
“Hang on one minute, Amber. Don’t say another word. I didn’t buy those boots and gloves for you. Which is not to say I don’t wish I had, but I didn’t.”
“You didn’t?” She sounded almost in tears. “But I got them muddy.”
“Only a touch around the soles. The mud has mostly frozen. They still look fine.”
“I can’t send them back with mud in the treads.”
“Why would you send them back?” he asked. He turned onto the main drive that led to the road to town. Amber didn’t seem to notice that he had bypassed the turnoff to her cabin.
“I can’t keep such an expensive present when I don’t know who the sender is,” she wailed. “It wouldn’t be proper.”
It was almost amusing. If it hadn’t pissed him off so much. Who but his Amber still cared about such things? She might almost have been raised in the South. “You said yourself you got them muddy and will have to hang onto them. Are you sure you can’t think who would slap down a credit card to buy you expedition-quality boots?” he hinted.
“It wasn’t Heather.”
“No?”
“No. I called. And, I forgot to tell you, Lance. There’s awful news. Stella’s sick.” Her voice broke.
“Hey. Hey. It’s going to be okay. Stella is in a good hospital. She’ll be fine. What did Heather say?”
“That they were giving her antibiotics in a drip. Another tube. That poor little scrap is stuck like a p-p-pincushion.” Amber’s tears came then.
He handed her a box of tissues from the dashboard. “Blow your nose. It’s been a long, hard day, but we’re going into town to eat the blue plate special at the diner.”
“Are we?”
“We are. And then I thought we could buy some groceries, in case you felt like cooking me lunch tomorrow.” Take that, Calvin Bascom.
She wiped her eyes and blew her nose defiantly. “Thank you. I’d like that – supper and groceries both. If only I knew who to thank for these boots.”
“Calvin.”
“Calvin? Why would Calvin Bascom buy me boots and gloves?” She was genuinely, totally surprised. And not very happy.
“Look in the mirror,” he teased.
“I’ve looked,” she shot back. “Nothing special there. Calvin dates supermodels and actresses. What would he want with me?”
“What any red-blooded man would want when he meets a girl as sweet and pretty as you.”
“You think I’m sweet and pretty?” she asked.
He sneaked a look at her rosy cheeks and downcast lashes. Sweet, innocent and fresh as flowers in a field. “As jonquils in the springtime,” he assured her.
“What are jonquils?” she asked.
“Daffodils.”
“Oh, thank you.” But her pleased smiled didn’t last. She sighed.
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
“If Calvin gave me these things, I can’t keep them. It wouldn’t be right to accept such expensive presents from a man I’m not related to.”
It would serve that poaching bastard right if she threw his damned expensive presents in his face. But Amber needed those boots and she wanted them. “Seems to me Calvin is kinfolk. His first cousin is married to your sister. Calvin and Patrick are closer than brothers. Raised together, by what I hear. That would practically make him your brother-in-law.”
“It still doesn’t feel right. I don’t know what my Aunt Debbie would say,” she fretted.
“Not your mamma?”
“My mother died when Heather and I were real little.”
“I’m sorry. That must have been hard. What about your daddy?”
“He died before we were born.”
He clucked his tongue. “So who raised you?”
“Lots of people. Mostly we lived with my Uncle Bobby and Aunt Marlene. And sometimes with my Grandma Shirley. But Aunt Debbie is my favorite aunt and always gives us good advice. Come to think of it, she’s a Bascom too.”
“Is she?” Lance asked.
“Yeah, she married Cal and Patrick’s Uncle Gilbert*.”
“Oh. Yeah. I knew that. So Debbie Bascom is your aunt?”
“Yup. French Town is a very small place.”
“Hmm. Well now, what do you think your Aunt Debbie would say about those boots and gloves? My own grandma would say that as long as they were a gift from a relative, you should accept them with thanks.”
“Would she?”
Lance chuckled. “She would. And she would advise you to write Mr. Calvin Bascom a nice prim note on your best paper and send it to him right away, so he didn’t get any misplaced ideas.”
He sneaked a look at her. Amber’s eyes were round. “She would?”
“My grandma is an old-fashioned Southern lady. When my sisters got to be old enough to think about beaux, she gave them each boxes of pale blue writing paper with their names engraved at the top, so they could write letters of thanks for any little thing they received.”
“Gosh. I don’t think I’ve even got a notepad.” She sounded worried, of all things.
“We’ll go to the drugstore.” Lance Prescott, Boy Scout and etiquette adviser to orphans. If his buddies in Recon could see him now.
She visibly cheered up. “Okay. What should my letter say?”
“That you are grateful for his kindness in providing such a useful gift. That you like the boots and gloves and wish the sender good health.”
“Sounds a little stuffy.”
“That, my dear, is the whole idea.”
At last she giggled. “I don’t know why Calvin Bascom even wants to look at me.”
“Maybe he sees how happy your sister has made his best friend, and wants that too.”
“How happy Heather has made Patrick?” she parroted.
“Yes. Hasn’t she?”
“I never thought of it like that. I mean, I always think more of whether Patrick could or is making Heather happy.”
“Marriage is a two-way street. I’d say a man who picks up and moves himself across country for a woman is dead set on making her happy.”
“Huh. Well, Calvin Bascom is too namby-pamby for me. For gosh sakes, he plucks his eyebrows.”
“So he does. But honestly, Amber, here we sit, two people who make our livings trimming stray hairs from the fetlocks of horses. Plucked eyebrows don’t seem much different. Or like much of a crime.”
“Well, he also waxes his chest!”
That made him laugh. “I did that once,” he told her.
“Really?” She was genuinely shocked.
“Really. Hurt like being painted with fire.”
“Oh. But why?”
“I wanted a tattoo. The artist told me to get waxed first.” He shook his head. “Talk about your pain and suffering to be beautiful.”
“You have a tattoo on your chest?”
He felt the blood in his face. But he had started this. “I do.”
“What is it?”
“Well, you have to understand, I was nineteen. Proud as punch of my first promotion. Bunch of us guys had been drinking. Went to a tattoo parlor. I wanted the Marine insignia across my manly chest. The artist must have been blind drunk. I wound up with a big brown bear with a rose in her mouth.”
“You have a brown bear on your chest?” She sounded not shocked but astonished.
“She’s really a black bear – but she has – had – cinnamon colored fur. And a big red rose in her mouth.” He laughed. “It’s not as silly looking as it sounds, but it’s a good thing my chest hair thickened up.” Not that there was much left of either the tat or the hair.
Her blue eyes were like saucers. Her grin about to split her face. “I can’t wait to see that.” Sounded like she meant it too. Not that his chest was any kind of sight for a young lady.
*Bearly Beloved