Chapter Seven
Derek
By morning, the rain had stopped and the day promised to be sunny and hot. Getting Wyatt's tent and sleeping bag dried out seemed like it should be the first order of business. So, right after breakfast, I helped him drape them over one of the few fences that were not overgrown with flowers.
Micah had brought his kids over to play with their cousins while he worked, which more than doubled the size of Wyatt's fan club. It was entertaining to watch him in the role of Pied Piper. And, frankly, I welcomed the distraction. It had been a little while since I'd practiced orgasm avoidance. I wasn't handling it as well as I used to.
"Let me see if I've got everyone's names right," Wyatt said, as five kids stared at him adoringly. "Keith, and Garth—and I bet you’re both named after a couple of your mom's favorite singers, right?" The two boys nodded. "Okay and you three," he said pointing at Cassie, Jo and Sam. "You're all named after angels, just like your dad and your aunts and uncle are—yes?"
I slanted a look at Gabby. "You never told me that?"
She shrugged. "I thought you knew?"
"No..."
"All right, let me guess." Wyatt narrowed his eyes and pointed at Cassie. "Cassiel?"
"Yep."
He turned to her brother. "Samael?"
"Yes!"
" And, uh..."
"No one ever guesses mine," Jo said in a mournful voice.
"It's Jophiel," Cassie told him.
"'Course it is." Wyatt nodded. "The angel of beauty, right?"
"Yes, exactly," Gabby said, as Jo blushed and beamed. "Good job." She sounded impressed as hell.
I stared at my brother in amazement. "You knew this...how?"
Wyatt grinned smugly. "I know things."
"Obviously."
I think I could be excused, at that point, for believing we'd made it through the storm—in the metaphorical sense. Everyone seemed to be getting along. All the details seemed to be falling into place. Gabby had been in touch with the mobile chapel company that morning. They'd arrive early enough on Saturday that we'd be able to sneak in a quick rehearsal before heading into town to see the play that our friends Chase and Mia had been working on. The flowers were also arriving Saturday, along with the furniture and table linens we'd rented. The cupcakes were being dropped off Sunday morning. The food trucks were set to roll in later in that afternoon. Tomorrow, while Gabby and her sister were in town getting their hair and nails done at something called the Bang and Blow, Chase, Wyatt and I would head into York to pick up Wyatt's suit and enjoy a little bachelor party action—right after we got back from competing in the Mud Run that Wyatt had insisted on signing us up for.
Did I mention I have a rather large competitive streak? It's nothing compared to my brother's. And when the two of us get together? It isn't pretty. But even knowing that, I was feeling optimistic. Because other than the admittedly remote possibility of one of us spraining an ankle during the run, what could possibly go wrong?
By mid-morning, the kids were clamoring to show Wyatt around the farm, and having nothing better to do, Gabby and I decided to tag along. Our first stop was the rabbit hole, where I reacquainted myself with my friend from Tuesday, Madison the ginormous white rabbit. Next, we checked in on some of the goats.
"I thought they'd be bigger," Wyatt observed. "Are these babies?"
Gabby shook her head. "They're bred this way on purpose. We cross the larger Angora goats with dwarf or pygmy goats to get a smaller animal that's a more manageable size and easier to work with."
"But wouldn't you get more angora from larger goats?"
"Actually, these little guys can produce a surprising amount of fleece. The same goes for our mini Nubian goats. They produce as much milk as some full-sized goats. But, in any case," Gabby continued. "We don't get angora from the goats; it only comes from rabbits."
"Did you just say you don't get angora from angora goats?"
My brother sounded confused. I was too, but didn't feel the need to broadcast that fact. Gabby would probably say it's because Scorpios like to keep secrets. She's not entirely wrong.
"You can't get angora from Angora cats, either," Gabby replied, flashing my brother a smile that had to take away some of the sting of embarrassment. "The name comes from the region where they're all believed to have originated, which is somewhere near Ankara, Turkey."
"So, angora's a corruption of Ankara?" I asked—and earned one of those smiles for myself.
"Exactly." Gabby beamed at me. "We get mohair from these goats here, and we also harvest cashmere from some of our silky goats."
"And we get most of our milk and cheese from the Nubian goats," Cassie added. "Those are the ones with the cute floppy ears."
"You mean you don't get milk from the rabbits?" Wyatt asked, making the kids laugh. "How 'bout silk from the silky goats?" The kids were falling all over the place by this point. To give him credit, Wyatt didn't seem to mind.
"So, I assume the cashmere goats come from somewhere near Kashmir?" I asked.
Gabby's lips quirked. "Not exactly. Y'see, cashmere isn't a breed. You can get cashmere from pretty much any goat that's not an angora."
"Clear as mud." Wyatt met my gaze and shook his head sorrowfully. "At least tell us they make Kashmiri carpets from cashmere?"
"Uh, no, actually. I think they're made from either wool or silk."
"Silk again, huh?"
"We had silk worms at school one time," Gath said. "But mom wouldn't let me bring them home. I wanted to start my own silk farm."
Gabby sighed. "Garth, do you know how many silk worms you'd need for even a tiny bit of silk?"
"A lot?"
"A whole lot. And do you know how many mulberry trees we'd have to grow in order to have enough leaves to feed all those bugs?"
Garth sighed heavily. "Too many?"
"Yes. Way too many. And do you know what you have to do to those silk worms in order to harvest the silk?"
"You drop them in boiling water," he answered with another beleaguered sigh. "And they die."
"Exactly. You don't really think your grandmother would go along with that do you?"
"I don't know why," Garth argued. "She boils eggs, doesn't she?"
"Yes, but that's different."
"How?"
"Because most of the eggs we eat aren't fertile. That means they—" She stopped suddenly and shook her head. "You know what? You should ask your mom."
Wyatt cackled softly. "Keep on passing that buck as long as you can."
Gabby's cheeks turned red and I thought I was going to have to smack my brother for embarrassing her, but then she laughed. "Oh, believe me, I intend to. That's what Godparents are for, isn't it? To answer all those awkward questions that parents don't want to deal with?"
I don't know what reply my brother might have made, because just then Jo tugged at his sleeve and asked, "Do you wanna go see the Easter eggs?"
"Uh...sure," he replied, looking faintly panicked. "We could do that. But, um, it's June. Wouldn't they be rotten by now?"
"It's not what you think," Gabby told him. "Easter Eggers are chickens that are bred to lay eggs in several different colors. Yellow, blue, lavender, pink, green, orange, red..."
"Green eggs?" Wyatt looked skeptical. "Like the book?"
"Chocolate too," Keith added.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa." Wyatt shook his head. "C'mon little dude. Now I know you're playing. That can't be right."
"No, really," Gabby insisted. "Remember, we're talking about the color of the shells, but it's true enough. Some of them have a lovely dark, reddish brown color."
"Easter eggers, huh?" I asked. "I'm going to go out on a limb again and guess that they're not originally from Easter Island?"
"No, they're not." Gabby laughed. "They're actually a variety of types that, as I said, have been cross bred to produce different colored eggs."
"What kind of crazy set up is this?" Wyatt asked. "You've got chickens laying chocolate eggs, and silky goats that don't produce silk."
"We have silkie chickens, too," Sam piped up.
"And frizzles and sizzles," Keith added.
Wyatt cocked an eyebrow. "What about fried? Or fricasseed?"
As the kids collapsed in laughter once again, Gabby translated. "Silkie chickens have long, silky feathers. Frizzles have curly feathers. And sizzles are what you get when you cross a silky with a frizzle."
"Lemme guess," Wyatt said. "Long, curly feathers, right?"
"Pretty much."
"But you can't cross a frizzle with another frizzle," Cassie added. "Because then the chicks could turn out frazzled, and that'd be bad."
"I'm not even gonna ask," Wyatt said with a sigh. Then he held out his hand to Jo and said, "Okay, let's go see all these frizzled, sizzled, fo'rizzled chickens."
Gabby and I watched as the group headed down the path that, I assumed, led to the chicken coop. Or the hen house. Or whatever crazy name they called it. I wrapped my arm around her shoulder and sighed, "Alone at last."
"Don't get too used to it," she advised, snuggling against me. "I have a feeling 'alone time' is not something we're going to have a whole lot of going forward."
Had a cloud moved across the sun? It must have done so, because something caused my skin to pebble up just then as I thought about never being alone with her again, never having time to spend together—just us two. Once the baby arrived...
"I thought you said your brother doesn't like kids?" Gabby asked.
"I said he doesn't want kids," I corrected. "He likes 'em fine. He just doesn't want the responsibility of raising them." And the truth was, despite all my big words, everything I'd said to Wyatt last night, everything I'd said to Gabby in the past month, I wasn't sure I was ready for it either. Not that I had a choice any longer.
"So, you're saying the way he feels about kids is kinda like the way I feel about the animals here on the farm?"
"Maybe?" But probably not. She lit up when she discussed the goats and the chickens—not I something I'd noticed Wyatt doing when the subject of kids came up. And I sure hadn't missed the habit she'd suddenly fallen into, how she was all at once referring to everything around her—not just on the farm, but in Sapphire Falls itself—in possessive terms, using words like "we" and "ours" and "us" to describe how things were done here.
But aside from my occasional misgivings, things continued to go smoothly right through lunch. Well, other than Mick's worsening mood.
Maybe Gabby was right and it wasn't the fact that we'd been having rock-my-world sex the other night that had her father's shorts in a wad. But something was bothering him. Things had gotten so bad that even his wife and daughters had taken to commenting on it.
I could have told them that was the wrong tack to take with a guy like me—and I was beginning to think that Mick was a lot like me. We don't like being badgered. If we're in a bad mood and not talking about it, it means we're not ready to talk. Constantly asking us what's wrong is gonna make us clam up even more. When we're ready to tell you, believe me, we will. There'll be no shutting us up. Until then, if you ask me, the less said, the better.
But, there again, no one had asked me. And, as an outsider, I wasn't about to volunteer advice.
Things only got worse when the kids all left to attend the festival with their friends. I think it's safe to say we were all feeling that lack of a buffer. So, when Gabby suggested that she and I take a trip into town—and that maybe Wyatt wanted to come too—we jumped at the chance to put a little space between us and the older Brownes. Then Wyatt surprised me by asking Arielle to join us. And Arielle surprised everyone by saying yes. Which is how the four of us ended up at the Come Again just in time for the weekly Sand Volleyball Tournament.
Remember those competitive streaks I mentioned? If my brother hadn't been with us, I probably would have been content to just watch the action from one of the wrought iron tables on the patio. I definitely wouldn't have stayed to play two matches. And I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have had as much to drink as I did.
Either way, I still wouldn't have danced. The music they play there may have had Gabby's toes tapping, but it's not quite my jam.
At the end of the night, Gabby and I would still have taken each other's hands and walked the couple of blocks to the town square where the festival was taking place. But it probably would have happened sooner than it did. And I'm sure we'd have stopped a time or two along the way to kiss each other beneath one of the blue-painted lampposts. I know for a fact that I would've tried to talk her into finally going through the haunted house with me.
But that's not how it happened.
Instead, by the time Wyatt and I finished playing, Gabby and her sister had been absorbed into a lively group of mostly locals; practically all of whom she insisted I meet, too many of whom wanted to buy me a drink. After a while, the names and faces started to blur together. That might have been the Booze talking.
"I think I've had enough," I finally told Gabby. I had to lean in close to be heard over the music and the noise of the crowd. I had to wrap my arm around her shoulders and pull her near. I had to practically press my lips against to her ear as I spoke. None of which was a hardship, of course, unless you counted the way my body reacted. One whiff of her honey-and-vanilla-sunshine scent had me stiff as a board. "Are you ready to go?"
Gabby nodded. "Where are the others?"
I glanced around. Arielle was short enough to disappear in the crowd, but I should've at least spotted Wyatt. "I don't see them."
Gabby tapped the woman next to her on the shoulder. "Hey, do you know where my sister is?"
The woman nodded. "I think she and her date left about ten minutes ago." She prodded the man next to her. "Didn't Arielle leave already?"
A wide grin split his face. "Sure did. Said something about wanting to show that guy Wyatt where the Ferris Wheel was located."
Gabby's mouth dropped open. "Shut the front door. She did not."
Instead of answering, our informant called to another man, "Hey Carl. Didn't Arielle tell you she was headed to the festival?"
Carl's face clouded over; obviously he did not appreciate the reminder. I detected a tinge of bitterness in his voice as he said, "Yeah. Said she and that guy she picked up were gonna go 'see the sights'."
Date? Ferris Wheel? Picked up?
"Let's go," Gabby grabbed my hand and all but pulled me through the crowd.
"Would you slow down?" I snapped as we hit the street and Gabby's pace picked up. "What's the matter, anyway?"
Gabby all but snarled at me. "The matter is that your brother has taken my sister for a ride on the fucking Ferris Wheel at the town festival."
"Yeah, I got all that." The truth? I didn't get it at all. The way she was emphasizing practically every other word made it clear that, in her mind at least, this was a much bigger deal than I thought it was. "It sounded to me like it was the other way around. Should I be worried about her intentions?"
"It's not funny!"
"Gabe. Stop a minute." I put a hand on her arm and pulled her to a halt. "Why is this a problem? It's a fucking carnival ride! If you're worried about Wyatt taking advantage of her, don't. He's not like that. I promise."
"You don't get it."
"No shit? How 'bout you explain it then?"
She sighed and glanced away. "It's not 'just a ride' Derek. Not here. In Sapphire Falls going on the Ferris wheel with someone means you're serious about them."
"What is this, high school?"
"It's life in a small town. Which, yes, resembles high school in many, many ways. Everyone knows what you're doing, and who you're doing it with..."
"And you don't want your sister doing stuff like this with my brother. Is that it?"
"Arielle doesn't do stuff like this. Not with anyone. I don't think she's gone on a single date since her divorce. She lives like a freaking monk."
"That sounds kind of sad."
"I know that! And I hate it. But it's her decision. And... I just don't understand why she's doing this now."
"Maybe all she wants is to have a good time with someone who doesn't equate a ride on a Ferris wheel with a lifetime commitment. You ever think of that?"
"Maybe. But that doesn't change how everyone else will react—and she knows that. She knows my mom will get phone calls tomorrow from friends asking about Arielle's new boyfriend. She knows everyone will assume she's in love with him; and when he leaves here next week, she knows they'll be whispering behind her back, talking about poor Arielle and how heartbroken she must be."
I shook my head. Reminding Gabby that her sister was capable of making her own decisions would obviously be a waste of time. Besides, I had no idea how much Arielle had been drinking. Maybe she wasn't so capable after all "What's the plan then? We find the kids and drag 'em home?"
Gabby sighed. "I'm sorry. I know you think I'm making too big a deal of this. And I know you wanted to spend some time at the festival, but..."
"No need to apologize. You're looking out for your sister. And besides, I'm sure in fifteen years or so we'll be glad for the practice."
"Fifteen years? Practice? What are you talking about?"
"You know, when we're dealing with actual teenagers?"
"Oh. Funny."
It wasn't really. But with the haunted house off the table once again, I could think of worse things than going back to the farm, locking ourselves in our wagon—just the two of us this time—and spending a little quality time together.
If only it were that easy.
Let me tell you something about the Booze they sell here. I don't know what all is in it, but it definitely qualifies as a mood-altering substance. By the time we caught up with our runaway siblings, it was clear they'd both imbibed a little too much of the good stuff. They'd ridden the Ferris wheel and visited the haunted house. And, yeah, I was just a little bit jealous of that.
Arielle was giddy, and unrepentant. There was a gleam in her eye that dared anyone to tell her that she couldn't kiss whomever she pleased and have it mean nothing at all, if that's what she wanted. It was a good look on her. I'd have approved of it even more if Wyatt weren't looking quite so mind-fucked. Maybe there was some truth to the whole Sapphire Falls Ferris wheel mystique. Or maybe consuming huge amounts of Booze right before taking a spin on a large, revolving wheel was a less-than-stellar idea.
He recovered quickly, I'll give him that. I could hear them in the back seat murmuring and giggling together—just like the hypothetical teenagers I'd equated them to earlier. It would not have surprised me at all to learn Arielle was planning to visit my brother in his tent later tonight.
But she never got the chance. We found what was left of the tent still draped over the fence, along with a few mounds of fluff that I assumed had come from his sleeping bag. Apparently, the goats had found them first. It's really true that they'll eat just about anything.
Gabby stared at the shredded mass of nylon and mesh, then threw her hands in the air. "I can't even," she said as she stomped off toward the wagon.
"Sorry," Arielle said, shooting Wyatt an apologetic glance. She gave his hand a quick squeeze, then turned and hurried off toward the house.
"Guess you know what this means," Wyatt said glumly.
I shook my head. "No."
"C'mon, bro. You can't leave me out here in the cold."
It wasn't that cold. It was only about sixty degrees, and the skies were mostly clear. But that wasn't the point. I was at least ninety-five per cent certain that if our roles were reversed, he wouldn't have wavered for an instant.
"All right. Come on," I said, resigning myself to another night of frustration.
And, wouldn't you just know it? That was practically the only time all week that I got something right.