The Locket Read online

  Kylie winced again. This wasn’t going as well as she’d hoped, but at least he hadn’t dumped the apples over her head or thrown her off his property. “Yes, and once Robert explained to me what your Boo Boo was…”

  “Boo Boo?” the old woman said, startled. Suddenly it was Braden wincing and his mother who was frowning in exasperated disapproval. “You were takin’ off your pants, weren’t you? Well, no wonder she thumped you! Boy, you count your blessings you’re too big for me to switch!”

  Braden scowled at Kylie. Sullenly, he said, “Some people like seein’ it. It’s a big scar.” He squared his chin, his eyes widening as he added for Kylie’s benefit, “I was in the hospital three whole days and I didn’t die!”

  So there.

  “I’ll bet it was real scary,” Kylie said, answering him with all the solemnity he seemed to think his statement deserved. Her effort was rewarded when a shade of resentment left his face.

  “Yeah. It hurt a lot, too.” He plucked at the front of his coveralls with two fingers.

  His mother wasn’t as easily distracted. “Boy, you are bein’ rude! She came all this way to be nice to you, and here you are, standing like a lump. She done brought you presents. What are you supposed to do?”

  Braden blinked twice, then refocused his eyes on Kylie. He looked at the pie and the apples, and frowned before reluctantly stomping down another step. When she held up the bucket again, he took them from her.

  “Here,” she said, and held up the pie. “I baked this for you.”

  “Isn’t that nice? Now you’ll have something special to put in your boxed lunch for the fair tomorrow.” The old woman waited a half a second before prompting, “What do you say?”

  “It’s okay, Braden,” Kylie tried to smooth it over. “I’m not trying to make anyone feel uncomfortable. I just wanted you to know how bad I feel for what I did. If ever you want to come over for apples, or anything else, feel free. You’ll be welcome there any time.”

  Braden glanced once back at his mother over his shoulder, then down at the pie and then finally down at her. He plucked at the front of his coveralls again. “You hit me in the head,” he repeated. Obviously deciding he wanted to be resentful more than he wanted a piece of pie, he frowned all over again.

  “Manners are important,” the old woman said doggedly. “I’m gonna get that through to him before I die, so help me. Braden! She just done somethin’ nice for us, now what do you say?”

  Moving faster than Kylie ever thought a man his size could do, he snatched the pie from her hands and ran into the safety of the house.

  “No solicitations!” he barked, and slammed the door hard behind him.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Kylie whistled all the way home. She was lugging two heavy wooden buckets of ripe oranges and, for the promise of another pie, had been offered all that she could pick from their orchards whenever she wanted.

  “They’re all just goin’ to waste anyway,” Abigail had told her. “I used to make marmalade out of them, but I’m not gettin’ around like I used to.”

  At which point, from inside the house Braden had yelled out. “I can carry you! You’d get around fine then!”

  “You can’t carry me around the kitchen,” Abigail yelled back. She’d rolled her eyes and given her white head a rueful shake before suddenly bending her body to peer around the side of her chair, shouting, “And it’s rude to eavesdrop!”

  Silence reigned inside the house for only a short time, before Braden’s plaintive whine reached their ears. “But I haven’t dropped any eaves. I haven’t dropped anything all day.”

  Yeah, it was safe to say, Kylie liked Abigail. She wasn’t quite as comfortable around Braden, but he plainly wasn’t as threatening as she’d thought him at first to be.

  Robert was sitting on the front porch by the time Kylie rounded the mouth of the driveway. With a half a dozen apple buckets surrounding him, he was diligently peeling and coring away, just as she’d asked him to before she’d left.

  “How’d it go?” he asked, glancing up as she paused to set a few oranges on the fruit stand.

  “Pretty good. I’ve pressed you into service, though.”

  He paused long enough to give her a look. “Doing what?”

  “Did you know there’s a county fair tomorrow?” She straightened the jars of apple butter and the few remaining bottles of cinnamon-flavored applesauce. Her pies were gone already, and so were the eggs she’d collected from the chickens just that morning.

  “They do one every year.” Having stripped the skin from the apple in his hand, he cut it into sections before coring each one, dropping the scraps into a waste bucket which would later be fed to the chickens, and then the apple quarters into another bucket filled with water. “What about it?”

  “Abigail says there’s going to be some sort of box lunch auction to help raise money for wounded soldiers coming back from overseas.”

  “Yeah, I know. They were talking about throwing a Welcome Home dance at the church out on Old Country Road. I suppose as a way for guys coming home to nothing to match up with widows needing help around the house.” He picked up another apple, rinsed it, then started peeling again. “Where do I come into this, exactly?”

  “Well…” she paused in the act of picking through the cherry bowl to give him an assessing look from the corner of her eye. “She asked if I’d be packing a lunch for the auction and, it being for a good cause and all, I said sure.”

  Robert stopped peeling and looked at her again. “You do realize you’re going to have to eat that lunch with whomever buys it, right?”

  Kylie paused for a second before tossing the one bad cherry that she’d found into the chicken-food bucket. “No, actually. Abigail never mentioned that part.” Having wasted as much time as she could at the fruit stand, she crossed the yard with her orange buckets in tow. “Anyway, their car isn’t working, so I said you’d give us a ride.”

  Robert looked at her a moment longer, then grunted. “Yeah, okay. I guess I can do that.”

  “I also said you’d be happy to chaperone the younger kids who’ll be entering the junior box lunch auction.” She hurried into the house before he could object, but still heard it when he thunked the paring knife, point first, down into the step and came after her.

  “You said I’d do what?” he demanded, calmly chasing her as far as the kitchen doorway.

  “Do you like marmalade?” she asked, dumping the oranges into the sink.

  “Don’t change the subject.” Hands braced on his hips, he glared at her. “What makes you think I’ve got the time to chase a bunch of love-struck teenagers all over the fairground?”

  “They were short-handed. The guy who usually does it wasn’t available this year.”

  “He wasn’t available,” Robert emphasized, “because of the three shot-gun weddings that took place last year. Kids are crafty, Kylie, especially when they’re thinking with their britches.”

  “I’ll help you,” she offered.

  He took another step, coming close enough almost to be toe-to-toe, and inclined his head. He could have kissed her. That was the first thing Kylie thought, although he certainly didn’t look in a kissing mood. Her gaze dropped to his mouth anyway, and a tiny little flicker of warmth ignited in the pit of her belly.

  “You won’t be able to help me,” he reminded softly. “You’re going to be off having lunch with another man.”

  That looked like it bothered him. Maybe it even bothered him more than being conscripted into chaperoning duties did. It was a little surprising how inordinately happy the idea of that could make her at this point in their relationship.

  “Not if you buy my lunch.” She smiled.

  “Ha!” he said, and turned to walk away. “Half the county’s already bought one of your mouth-watering pies. Hell, the other half’s probably heard about them by now. I haven’t got a chance.”

  “Aw,” she called after him, not sure whether she ought to be more sympathetic th
an amused. As she turned her attention to washing and peeling the oranges, she watched through the kitchen window as Robert walked out to meet the customer that had just pulled up to the fruit stand. The man took some oranges and a bottle of apple butter spread. As he was driving away, Robert emptied the money bowl into his palm. He glanced back at the house, jiggling the coins in his hand before pocketing them.

  He was so going to buy her boxed lunch.

  Giggling to herself, already planning what she could cook that might pack well and still be warm, wonderful and exceedingly delicious several hours later, Kylie pulled out her canning pot for marmalade.

  * * * * *

  Robert dressed in his nicest pair of jeans and a short-sleeved, button-down checkered shirt. He’d spent the morning spit-shining his Sunday shoes and with his hair combed and parted neatly to the right, he looked very…fifties-ish, so she guessed he was ahead of his time, fashionwise.

  Kylie, on the other hand, was back in polkadots and, God help her, she was even wearing the hat. Neither went well with her white ankle socks and off-white sneakers, but it was what she had. At least until Robert raided his mother’s old bedroom, bringing her a pair of seamed stockings and way-too-small dress shoes. She was standing in the kitchen, packing food into her lunch box when he brought them to her.

  “Well, it was a thought anyway,” he said, as she leaned against the counter to compare her foot with the tiny shoes he’d brought her.

  “At least the nylons ought to fit,” she said with a smile.

  “They’re silk,” he said, leaning one broad shoulder against the doorway, hands stuffed deep into his rear pockets. “Pre-war. Mom could make anything last an obscenely long time. She’s got clothes in her closet from when she was first married, and they look practically brand new. This is the only pair I could find upstairs, though. So if you split them with your fingernail, you’re going to be out of luck.”

  “How thoughtful. Thank you.”

  As she retreated out to a dining chair to put them on, Robert took advantage of the open box to steal a peek inside. He lifted a corner of the kitchen towel that separated the hot food from the cold and breathed in. “Mm. Smells good. That’s not one of our chickens that you’re planning to feed some strange, horny soldier, is it?”

  “Hacked, plucked and fried,” she confirmed, carefully bunching the fragile silk stockings between her hands before sliding them over her toes and up the curve of her leg. They only went a few inches higher than her knees before ending, and they didn’t end in elastic. “Who knows, that horny soldier might actually be you. Hey, how do I keep these from falling down?”

  Reappearing in the doorway, Robert held up a garter belt, dangling it from his fingers and smiling. “Want help putting it on?”

  “Ha ha.” When she held up her hands, he brought them out to her. “Turn around.”

  “Why?” His gaze dropped first to admire her stockinged legs, and then settled on the hem of her skirt, bunched and lying high across her thighs. “Supposedly, we’re going to be married someday.”

  “Someday isn’t today, though.” She motioned with one finger for him to turn his back, and then waited until he’d obeyed before unbuttoning the front of her dress and shimmying out of it altogether. The garter wasn’t difficult to figure out, but fitting the edge of the stockings into the clasps—particularly the rear clasps—would have been much easier if only she had a few extra fingers. When she finally managed it, her inexperience was obvious.

  “Your seams are crooked,” Robert said.

  Kylie snapped her head around to check, but no, he hadn’t turned around. Instead, he was unabashedly using the semi-reflective surface of a glass picture frame on the far wall to watch her.

  “Hey!” Abandoning her stockings, she quickly crawled back into her dress. By the time he turned around, she was mostly covered with her fingers flying from button to button until the blouse-like front was once more decently closed. “You peeked,” she accused.

  “What do you expect from a horny soldier? You looked good, too. Here.” Coming back to the table, he lowered himself to one knee. “Turn around. Let me help you.”

  Kylie folded her arms across her chest. “I was born forty years from now, not yesterday.”

  His eyes were definitely laughing now, but his face was utterly serious as he spread his hands, palm up to show his good intentions. “No funny stuff, I swear. I’m pretty sure you don’t want to be seen in public with crooked seams. Come on, turn around.”

  The dirty look she gave him was only half serious, and eventually she followed it by turning her back. Staring straight ahead and out the dining room window, she felt her face turn at least three different shades of pink as he quietly gathered the back of her skirt, raising it high enough to expose the garter clasps, the backs of her legs all the way up to her thighs, and even a goodly portion of the lower swells of her bottom.

  “Hold this here,” he said, sounding completely professional and not at all like a red-blooded man at eye-level with her booty.

  Kylie obligingly took the back of her dress in both hands, holding the folds of fabric up out of his way. His fingers brushed her thigh as he plucked a clasp away from her skin, unfastened it and carefully rolled the stocking back down again. First one leg and then the other.

  “It helps if you bend over,” he said, as he dressed her again, taking great care with the seams as he stretched the fragile silk back up the length of her slender leg.

  At first, thinking he was joking, Kylie didn’t move. But as he reached the back of her knee, she spread her legs slightly to help maintain her balance and then bent over. “How far? Like this?”

  “That’s perfect.” A half second later, he attached the rear clasp to the top of her stocking, followed quickly by the front, and then her right leg was done. He smoothed his hands up both sides of the seam, moving from her ankle to her thigh, but must have deemed it straight since he then turned his attention to the other side.

  Kylie felt ridiculous, bent over with her bottom practically in his face and holding her dress up practically around her waist while he played with her legs. She cleared her throat once, and then again before the need for distraction—any kind of distraction, particularly as one of his hands brushed up along the sensitive inner slope of her thighs—prompted her to make a stab at conversation. “Why?”

  “Why, what?” Her seam must not have been perfect because he took her stocking back down all the way to her shin before trying again.

  “Why does it help to bend over?” She started when she felt his hand caressing up between her thighs again, ascending high enough that the back of his thumb ever so slightly touched the narrow strip of white panty that covered her sex. Her breath couldn’t help but catch when she felt that.

  He fiddled with each clasp in turn, then smoothed his hands up her legs again, first one and then the other. “It improves the view,” he said with a grin, and gave her bottom a slap before he stood.

  Kylie vaulted upright, laughing even as she snapped around to slap his shoulder with the back of one hand.

  “Horny soldier,” he repeated between chuckles, and then as if she’d been dawdling all morning long, added, “Hurry up and pack my lunch, woman. We’ve got to get going or we’ll be late.”

  “I’ve changed my mind,” she teased, smoothing down the back of her dress until she was certain she was covered once more. “I don’t think I want you to win it. I understand half the county’s tried my pies. There must be half a dozen war-weary guys eager to appreciate me and my cooking.”

  “Probably,” Robert agreed, but as she passed him on her way back into the kitchen to finish packing the dessert, he gave her ass a playful slap. “You’d better hope I do win it, though. If I have to spend the rest of the day thinking about some other guy raiding my future wife’s lunch box, sampling all her—” The heat of his gaze roved somewhat south of her face. “—tasty tidbits, said future wife may find sitting difficult when we get home tonight.”
r />   Unsure whether to laugh or be offended, Kylie paused in the midst of adding two sweet oranges to the lunch. “You’d spank me if somebody else outbids you at a fundraiser I have no say over whatsoever?”

  “Absolutely.” Although still smiling, as Robert walked slowly toward her, the look on his face caused her to abandon her packing entirely. She backed up against the sink, allowing herself to be pinned between his arms when he braced them on the counter at either side of her hips. “I’d spank you to remind you who you’re coming home with.”

  “If you’re going to spank me anyway, wouldn’t it make more sense to do it before we leave?” Her stomach did a crazy little flip-flop, but there was no stopping that suggestion from just falling out of her mouth like that. Her bottom tensed and shivered. His very nearness was as much responsible for that as the idea of his hand caressing her bottom in the same gentle way as he had between her thighs.

  He half smiled, leaning slowly in to her. “Woman, do you want me to spank you?”

  “I don’t know,” she lied. “That depends on what kind of spanking you’d give me.”

  “Sadly, spankings only come one way,” he said, with a tsk and a shake of his head. “The good, old-fashioned kind, guaranteed to turn your bottom a hot shade of red and keep you sitting gingerly for at least a couple hours afterward.”

  “But that’s a disciplinary method,” Kylie said, the very thought of submitting to his unyielding hand making the flesh of her bottom cringe. “What about the other kind?”

  “What other kind?” He leaned in again, as if he were about to kiss her but stopped just short of trying.

  Her chin tried to lift, to close those last few inches between them until her mouth touched his. Her breath was catching in her chest, making it very hard to think. “I want the warm and sexy kind. With caresses interspersed between spanks. The kind designed to gradually heat up my bottom, instead of scalding and blistering it. If I had a man that knew how to give that kind of spanking,” Kylie lifted her shoulder in the smallest of shrugs. “I’d never forget who I was going home with, regardless of who bought my lunch.”