A bolt of desire slices across my lower belly and settles between my legs, throbbing. I don’t know if it’s a memory from my love-crazed teenage self or if it’s something new. Either way it makes no difference. I just want him. Despite myself, I want him bad.
Oz stops whistling and gestures to my nephew. “So I never got the whole story. How did Ava wind up with a kid?”
“You’re a sharp guy. Surely the biological basics aren’t lost on you.”
He lets out an exasperated sigh. “Tell me Ren, are you contractually obligated to challenge me every chance you get?”
“No. Care to answer your own question?”
“No.” He’s giving me one of his black-eyed glares. “No goddammit, I’m not.”
“Lower your voice!” I jerk my head toward Alden even though the kid is obviously not listening to a thing. He’s squealing and frolicking around after the chickens.
“I’m not the one screaming,” Oz responds mildly.
I have to stop myself from staring at his lips. I have to stop myself from staring at his chest; his broad, absurdly muscled chest that provocatively stretches the fabric of his shirt from all the hard power that coils beneath it…
“Loren.”
“Yes.”
“Yes, what?”
“Huh? Where?”
He’s giving me a funny look. It might be because I sound completely sun-addled. He pulls his hat off, rubs the sweat off his forehead and waits for me to make some sense.
My mouth is as dry as the ground. “I think I need some water.”
Without pausing, Oz tosses over the bottle he’d been carrying. It’s warm and half gone. I gulp it down anyway
Alden lets out a triumphant little yip as he clutches a fistful of chicken feathers. I’m watching him and then I reach into my bra, ripping out the microphone. Even though Ava’s history is widely known, I don’t feel like being the one to broadcast it. I look up at Oz but he just raises his eyebrows and shakes his head.
“No,” he snorts. “I don’t always wear a leash just because some fucker in a suit says so.”
“Fine. So, about Ava. She can act like the simple-minded socialite. She’s more like a walking heartbreak. I don’t know if you heard about it wherever you were, but she had a role in a short-lived sitcom and started hitting the celeb party scene pretty hard. She got involved with a costar who happened to be one of earth’s more colossal turds. Things went sour even before she got knocked up. The show was cancelled mid season and loverboy wasn’t about to stick around and play daddy. He happens to be another like us, with a famous last name but without two dimes to rub together so there’s no point chasing after him for child support. And that’s just the way it is.” I pause for a breath. “Ava’s a good mom. She is.”
“I believe you.”
I shoot him a sharp glance because he sounds like he might be taunting me, but he’s just watching the kid run around with a thoughtful gaze on his face.
Alden suddenly trots over to me, beaming. “You,” he says and promptly drops the chicken feathers in my lap. I fuss over the bent, half-bald feathers and thank him profusely. Before returning to his chicken torture, Alden stops and stares at Oz. Oz stares back.
Once Alden is back at his games, I try to return Oz’s water bottle. He ignores my outstretched hand.
“Tennessee,” he finally says. “I’ve been there for a little while. Got a job, a nice place.”
“And before that?”
“Before that I wandered.”
“Wandered?”
“Yeah, wandered.”
“You come across any other people in your so-called wanderings?”
A roughish smile crosses his face. “I came in a lot of other people.”
“Jesus Christ,” I hiss, standing stiffly.
“What?” he says innocently. “You don’t want to hear about it? I’m trying to evoke some nostalgia here.”
“You’re disgusting, Oz.”
“Probably. But you’re a shell of what you were, Loren.”
I can’t breathe. If words could pack a punch, those particular ones are made of pure dynamite. Oz Acevedo, formerly Oscar Savage, just distilled my worst horror into one sentence. And he knows it. He waits for me to say something and I desperately want do want to say something. I want to cut him as deeply as he’s just cut me. I want to hurt him. So I tell an enormous lie.
“I was just a stupid girl. In the long run you didn’t mean a damn thing to me.”
He doesn’t even blink. “Ditto, sweetheart. You were just a ripe cherry to pop.”
I’m shaking. I’m going to explode. “God, you’ve turned into such a foul-mouthed pig.”
He answers me casually, like he doesn’t care at all what I think. “And you’ve turned into a feeble-minded wreck.”
He doesn’t wait around for my response. He stalks away without glancing back and disappears around the corner of the barn.
Alden remains oblivious that there is anything more interesting going on than the sight of flustered chickens. Stoically I sit back down and try to banish Oz’s final words from my mind. I don’t know how much the cameras have captured. At this point I can’t force myself to care.
For the rest of the day I focus on Alden. I feed him lunch, I tend to his scraped knee, I welcome him into my lap when he asks for a story. When Ava gets home she finds us on a back porch swing. Alden shouts with joy when he sees his mother and practically vaults out of my lap and into her arms. I stare at my sister and her child, at the pure, unsullied love between them. In a way I’m almost jealous.
Ava sits down beside me and sets the boy in her lap. She starts chattering about the disastrous cattle roping experience. Evidently Bree ignored all instructions and managed to get thrown from her horse, earning an ass full of sand and gravel.
“Well,” I say with false cheer, “I suppose that’s the end of the Savage cowgirl days. Perhaps we should try being farmers instead.”
Ava’s watching me. “Everything okay on the home front?”
No.
“Yup. Everything is fine. If you guys will excuse me, I think I’ll head to the kitchen and bake a cake.”
“I thought you never cooked anymore.”
“I don’t.”
“You used to cook all the time. Back in the bad old days when we lived here. If not for you, we would have been eating cheese sandwiches every night.”
“Just trying to contribute.”
“Ren?”
“What?”
Ava sighs and heaves herself up with Alden in her arms. “I’d better put this kid in for a nap or he’ll be the devil later on.”
Someone has been keeping the fridge and pantry well stocked. I have no difficulty finding enough necessary ingredients to bake a yellow cake with buttercream icing. Once I’m in the rhythm of kitchen activity I decide to cobble together a dinner of roast chicken, pasta salad and baking soda biscuits. The oven is something of an antique but it still works when it needs to.
As soon as I start setting food on the table, my siblings seem to magically materialize. It’s all too familiar. Lita floated far above kitchen tasks and we couldn’t exactly eat out every night all the way out here, even if we’d been able to afford it. If there was any cooking to be done so people could eat, then I was the one to do it.
I wash dishes in the background as Ava happily feeds her son, while Bree grudgingly takes a few bits of salad and then limps elsewhere, when Spence wanders inside looking as rough as if he’d just spent a few hours running with the bulls, which might very well be accurate.
There are cameras.
There is no Monty.
There is no Oz.
The sun is sinking below the horizon by the time I finish putting the kitchen back together. Cate Camp knocks on the door. She wants me to know that I seem to have misplaced my body mic. I don’t answer her. I’ll play the game again tomorrow. Tonight I don’t feel like being wired. In a few hours the crew will drive back to town. Of course, cameras are installed all over the property but they seem more innocent when they aren’t attached to people.