Something in the Dark Read online

  He talked to her in an easy, friendly way, as if they’d known each other before and were just catching up. He said he’d been working for different ranchers and saving up for a place of his own when suddenly he inherited a respectable sum of money from an aunt he had never even met. He liked the area and wanted to buy a ranch, raise some cattle, maybe grow some hay.

  She thought part of her attraction to Blake was simply the recognition of how similar their stories were. She too had been working hard, learning a profession, when she had received an inheritance. It had changed her life as well.

  He asked her to go out with him sometime, show him the countryside.

  “After all, you know the area,” he’d said, “Take pity on a guy who can’t even read a map. Of course, I can understand you not wanting to drive around the county with a total stranger. So that’s why I think we should get to know each other, over dinner?”

  The invitation had been so unexpected she’d been too surprised to reply. Dumbstruck, she’d said nothing. It would have become awkward, but fortunately she was distracted by a lucky interruption--a customer’s question.

  By the time she was free again, he had gone. She was more than a little annoyed at herself for not saying yes when she had the chance. She was also relieved. And that was the way it had stayed. One minute she was mad at herself for being such a socially inept loser, and the next relieved that she hadn’t become involved in something that would probably have ended up messy and painful.

  That had seemed the best way to leave things--no regrets, nothing lost. Then he called the nursery and left a message for her. She hadn’t called back. Not calling back was the same as saying ‘No’. ‘No’ was okay, she decided, but then again, ‘Yes’ might have been nice, too. What an idiot! He was a gorgeous cowboy who smelled incredible and how often did you find that combination?

  Austin ran the sponge across her breasts again, amused at how hard her nipples had become. Maybe she should try to think of something else. But the sponge felt so good, and when she slid her free hand down past her slippery stomach to the ache growing there, well that felt good too.

  When she finally stepped out of the shower she was warm, relaxed and starving. She wrapped a towel around her head, put on her big, white, terry cloth robe and padded barefoot into the kitchen.

  The kitchen had an alcove with a built-in desk and shelves. The space had probably been designed for paying bills and keeping cookbooks, but it had become her home office. The desk held her computer, a phone, an adding machine and stacks of paper waiting to be filed. The shelves were stuffed with books on plants and their diseases and magazine clippings of articles related to lawn maintenance.

  As she walked past she pushed the button on the old- fashioned answering machine that had come with the house. Then she reached into the refrigerator for the lamb chops she’d left to thaw.

  There were three messages. The first was a Ms. Teal looking for someone to mow her lawn. Austin took a moment to grab a pen and jot down her number and then deleted the message. The second message was from a current customer, Mr. Emerson, letting her know he and his wife were going out of town and wanted a fall cleanup and their shrubs tied. She wrote a note to herself to remind the guys to tie up bushes for all the customers. Snow would be falling soon, she thought as she reached over and deleted the message.

  The last message was from Blake. His voice, so soon after her shower, made her blush. "I've decided three times must be the charm. How about dinner? You name the day. Or lunch if dinner won't work. I won't mention breakfast, since that might cause you to believe I have ideas. On the other hand, if breakfast would suit, well, call me." He left his number. How had he found her home number? Dumb question. It was listed. How clever, that ability to use a phone book. Bemused at that thought, as well as by the effect his voice had on her, she decided right then that she would say ‘Yes’ to dinner. She pressed the save button. Unaware that she was humming softly to herself, Austin took garlic from a hanging basket and began to chop it to cook with the lamb.

  Chapter 4

  On Friday morning Austin helped Bunny, the young woman she employed as a clerk, with the routine of opening the nursery store. Bunny counted the till and slipped the drawer into the register while Austin opened the sliding glass front doors and began carting out the merchandise they displayed in front.

  Bunny was uncharacteristically quiet, but Austin was grateful. She had a lot on her mind, and all she wanted was a cup of coffee and some time to sort things out. Quarterly tax time was approaching. She had to figure out a way to keep everyone working during the winter months. The trucks needed tune-ups. But the problem foremost on her mind at the moment was how she would find the courage to return Blake’s phone call and accept his invitation.

  Austin measured coffee and poured it into the filter waiting in the coffee maker. She filled the machine from a garden hose hanging on the wall and pushed the on-button. The shelves are dusty, she thought as the coffee pot began to hiss and pop, and how much would it cost to knock out a wall and expand twenty feet or so?

  The nursery, named Grace Gardens after Austin's mother, was situated on a little over 40 acres of nearly level ground. It was located just off the main highway, which cut through the south hills, then curved slightly east on its way through the valley and on to the north.

  In addition to ten acres of cultivated fields, the nursery consisted of two large greenhouses, two small greenhouses, several outbuildings, a pump house and the store. This was a square building no larger than a two-car garage. Opposite the sliding doors, taking up a back corner, was an L-shaped counter. The long part of the L held the register. The short section held a coffeepot, cups, sugar, creamer and a tin of cookies that customers had to pass on their way in and out the back door. Behind the counter, along the back wall, a narrow table, with file cabinets for legs, held a computer, fax machine, phone and stacks of invoices. This was the office.

  Austin had placed signs along the highway to attract tourists, and in the belief that tourists by nature would be more interested in unique finds than in gardening supplies, she had added the work of several local artists and craftsmen to the store. These hand-thrown pots, ceramic sculptures and carved bits of wood fought for space with racks of seeds, rolls of twine and cans of pesticide. Up above, across the open ceiling rafters, wire had been strung and hanging plants, mostly poinsettias at this time of year, filled nearly every inch of space. The store was a well-organized, if crowded, chaos of colors and textures.

  As Austin was turning the “Open” sign around, she looked through the sliding glass doors and saw the other nursery employee, Will, walking across the parking lot. She opened the door for him. As he stepped inside Bunny snapped, "Nice of you to join us."

  "Huh?" said Will.

  "I said," repeated Bunny with a huge sigh, "How nice of you to join us."

  "You are one sarcastic bitch, you know that?"

  "Hey," said Austin, surprised and annoyed by their immediate hostility. "That is really not appropriate."

  "She should get off my back."

  "And maybe you should get to work on time," snapped Bunny.

  "Okay, I don't know what is going on with you two and I don't really care. Just work it out somewhere else,” Austin insisted.

  "Uh-huh," Will mumbled under his breath, then, "I'll be out back potting up those bulbs that came in Tuesday."

  "Good. That'll be fine."

  After he'd gone Austin turned to Bunny. "So, what's going on?"

  "Oh, he's such a jerk. He walks around with that long hair and that scraggly thing he calls a beard, pretending to be some kind of hippy.”

  "Well it takes all kinds, you know."

  "I don't mind the hippie thing. It's just that he's such a phony. Do you know he has the key to a Mercedes on a chain around his neck?"

  "No, I didn't, but so what?"

  "Come on. Hippies aren't supposed to be into material things. It's proof of what a phony he is."

 
"Well, he works hard and is great with plants, and that's all I care about."

  "Yeah, you don't know the half of it."

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "Oh, nothing. I'm just in a bad mood this morning, I guess."

  "Fine."

  Austin knew there was more going on than Bunny was willing to confess, at least to her boss, but she wasn't about to pry. She had a good idea what the problem was anyway. Bunny was–well, Bunny.

  She had white blonde hair, big blue eyes and a heart- shaped face, but it wasn’t her face that was her problem. It was her body. “Like a toothpaste tube squeezed in the middle,” someone had once described it.

  She was short, with heavy breasts and hips but a tiny waist. Austin didn’t completely understand it, but the combination obviously worked, as men fell all over themselves trying to get close to Bunny. And the truth was, they really didn't have to try that hard. Bunny loved the attention. Austin knew the main reason she stayed on, despite the lousy pay, were the opportunities she had to meet men. Bunny had said as much.

  Before coming to work at Grace Gardens Bunny had been a sales girl at a woman's clothing outlet. "Talk about your wastelands," she had complained. "The only men who go to a woman's clothing store are either married or cross-dressers. She'd related some stories about the latter that had made Austin laugh so hard tears ran down her cheeks.

  That was the best thing about Bunny. When she was in a good mood she was irrepressible, bubbly, like a goofy little sister. But when she was in a bad mood . . . well, no one could match that sense of drama. Will didn't stand a chance.

  As for Will, he was pretty obvious about his interest in Bunny. But though they were close to the same age, both in their early twenties, Bunny seemed a little old for Will. He didn’t seem to have acquired any social skills where women were concerned. Austin imagined his courtship of Bunny to consist of something like punching her on the arm. She doubted Bunny would appreciate that approach.

  "Car coming," Bunny said.

  Austin nodded. She too had heard the distinctive sound of tires on gravel as a car pulled into the parking lot. First customer of the day, she thought. But when she looked up, it wasn't a customer walking toward the store.

  "Muncie."

  He slid open the door and stepped in.

  "Hey Sis."

  He was her masculine counterpart, four inches taller, fifty pounds heavier, with wide shoulders and narrow hips. They had the same shade of chestnut hair, brown or red depending on the light, the same eyes, as dark as bitter chocolate, and the same lopsided smiles.

  She gave him a hug. "About time you got back. Did you drive all night?"

  "No, I got in late and went straight home. I was wiped.

  "What did you think of the campus?"

  "Not bad. Coffee on?"

  Austin rolled her eyes, "As usual, I guess I'll have to drag it out of you one piece at a time.” She moved down the counter to pour him a cup of coffee, her actions at odds with her tone of mock anger.

  "So, you going to Portland State?" Bunny asked.

  "Don't know. Pretty expensive," Muncie answered.

  "I'd go. I'd do anything to get the hell out of this place. I'm so sick of snow and slippery streets and having to dig my car out. I hate having to wear ten tons of clothes all the time. If I could get out of here before winter I sure would. I bet I could make a lot more money in Portland and I could meet a lot more interesting people."

  Austin made a face at Muncie behind Bunny's back. Like Will, Muncie had also once been interested in Bunny. Austin had been against Muncie dating one of her employees, but he had ignored his sister’s concerns and he had gone out with Bunny a few times.

  Eventually he realized that Bunny was too immature for him, and he had stopped seeing her. He had confessed that, though he was only a few years older, the whole thing had left him feeling like a lecherous old man. Austin liked to tease him about it whenever she could. She felt it was her duty as his sister to inflict a little character-building pain.

  Muncie had come by to make good on his promise to patch hail-blasted holes in the roof of one of the greenhouses.

  “Did I tell you how much I appreciate you fixing the roof?” she asked.

  “I’m just glad it’s only one roof,” he replied.

  “I’m pretty sure they had the rest of the roofs torn off and replaced. This greenhouse is the smallest and in pretty bad condition. It’s definitely got a sort of lean. They probably planned to tear it down.”

  “Well if it’s leaning maybe that’s what you should do.”

  “Oh no, it’s leaning against the wind so it should last awhile,” she said, joking. “Besides,” she added more seriously, “there’s no money for new buildings in my budget. I will, however, purchase for you a three-course meal today as a gesture of my thanks. Providing, of course, you don’t cost me a fortune by falling through the roof and breaking a leg or something stupid like that.”

  “Your concern for my safety is touching,” Muncie replied. “And the offer of a meal is of course a bonus, unless one of the three courses is French fries?”

  “Amazing. Have you always been psychic?”

  Muncie shook his head, gathered his tools, took the cup of coffee she offered to him and, without another word, went out through the back door to get started.

  Austin went back to work. By nine, the morning mist had burned away and the temperature was steadily climbing. At noon, the sky was a cloudless blue and the temperature a relatively balmy 65 degrees. That was the weather at five thousand feet, completely unpredictable – as unpredictable as the customers. She'd thought such a warm day would get everyone out working on their yards, but only three people came in the entire morning. Things were so quiet that Austin decided she would join Muncie for lunch at a restaurant in town. She couldn't wait to ask him about his time in Portland.

  They sat at a booth and their waitress, one of Austin’s regulars, came right over. They chatted for a minute about the new hybrid roses and whether they would really be tough enough to withstand a Blue Spruce winter. Then she took Austin and Muncie’s order to the kitchen, her white nurses’ shoes incongruous with the crisp white blouse and narrow black skirt she wore.

  Austin looked across the table at her brother and felt a sudden, overwhelming sense of sadness. She hoped it didn’t show. She busied herself, tearing the wrapper off a straw and stirring the glass of ice water in front of her, ice clinking against the glass.

  “So,” she said brightly. “I guess you’ll be heading for the big city soon.”

  “I’m a big city kind of guy.”

  “I know you are. I keep thinking you should be designing houses, not building them from someone else’s plans.”

  “I will eventually. It’s not like I’ve been wasting my time. It’s good to have a solid background in construction.”

  “I guess you’re right. It’s just that I feel like the only reason you moved here was, well, for me.”

  “Not just for you. I didn’t feel any more rooted then you did. Besides, getting away from Debbie was good for me.”

  “She was toxic.”

  “Yes, but if we’d stayed in Denver I’d probably be married to her right now. We’d have two point five children, a golden retriever and a minivan.”

  “There isn’t anything wrong with that. That’s what a lot of people want, you know.”

  “With the right person, maybe that’s enough, but with Debbie? I don’t know.”

  “No. Not with Debbie. I never could understand the attraction. Of course, I never could see the attraction to Bunny either.”

  “Really? Strange, and it was right there in front of her the whole time.”

  “Disgusting.” Austin pelted Muncie with a tiny bag of Sweet n’ Low. He would have retaliated, but the waitress appeared with their lunch and they were forced to pretend to be grownups.

  CHAPTER 5

  After lunch they drove back to the store, but even before Muncie had pulled h
is truck into a parking space they could hear the screaming. Exchanging glances, they hurried in. Bunny and Will were standing face to face, only inches apart, faces distorted with anger, and yelling so loudly that it hurt Austin's ears.

  "What the hell is going on in here?" Austin demanded.

  "Ask the princess," Will barked.

  "Kiss my ass," Bunny snapped back.

  "Somebody better tell me what's going on, or both of you are walking out of here."

  "If anybody's getting fired it ought to be him. Why don't you ask him about the plants he’s growing behind the jade in the little greenhouse?"

  "Will, are you growing weed on my property?" Austin asked.

  “Uh, I mean. . .well uh yeah, but only a couple of plants. Just for personal use."

  "Do I look like a cop to you? I don't care how much or what for. Do you know I could lose my business, my property? Get out there and get rid of it. Muncie, go with him and make sure he does it."

  "Am I fired?" Will asked.

  "I don't know. Don't talk to me right now."

  "I think that means you're not fired," offered Muncie as he led the way toward the door.

  When they were gone Austin said, "Okay, this is your chance. Tell me what this is all about."

  Bunny took a tissue from the box on the counter and dabbed her eyes. "Well, it’s kind of personal.”

  “When you bring it to work it’s no longer personal,” replied Austin curtly.

  “I guess,” Bunny agreed reluctantly. “Me and Will were sort of seeing each other and he got me pregnant. Well, anyway I thought he did. Turned out I wasn’t."

  "Oh?"

  "Yeah, and then when I told him I was pregnant you know what he said?"

  Austin had a pretty good idea, but she just shook her head.

  "He asked me who the father was. The jerk. I told him I knew it was his. Then he said he'd get some money from his old man and I could get an abortion. He never even asked if I wanted one or not." Bunny burst into fresh tears. Austin felt at a complete loss as to how to respond. She rubbed her hands across her face. Was she an employer or a babysitter? Sometimes it seemed like the same thing.