Welcome to Paradise Page 9

  “All right, then,” Stanley said with a sigh. “Let’s get the wagon unloaded and everything put away. Then we’ve got the animals, dinner . . . Kevin and I’ve got that chicken coop fixed up, and the chickens and tools in it too. Got enough wood. Everyone’s done real good so far. Just a couple more hours, and we’ll be all set.”

  “We’ve got a proposal for you ladies,” Stanley said when the men had hauled in the final box of clothing and humped it up the ladder to their loft, and the women had put away the food supplies as best they could on the rough cabin shelves, started the beans simmering for their supper. “There’s a good swimming hole in that creek, just a bit farther downstream. This has been one tough day for y’all. Why don’t you take that nice white soap, go on down there while there’s still a little bit of warmth to the sun? Get cleaned up, rinse some of the dust out of those clothes. I know you’ll feel better after you’ve done that.”

  “Don’t you want to get clean too?” Mira asked.

  “We’ve still got the animals to see to,” Stanley reminded her. “We’ll put up the clothesline while you’re gone, too, give you a place to hang your wet things. We’ll clean up after you do, while you’re making dinner. Least, I hope you’re fixin’ to do that. I’m as hungry as one of those bears John kept warning us about.”

  “You’ll get your dinner. As long as somebody gives a couple stirs to these beans, keeps them from burning. Because you sure know the way to a woman’s heart,” Zara told him.

  “Well trained,” he said with a smile that had some sadness to it. “We’ll leave you to it, then. Take your time.”

  “Got that clothesline?” he asked Gabe a few minutes later, standing near the cabin doorway, hands on hips, surveying the yard. Martin and Kevin were with the animals. Kevin had turned out to be a surprisingly good milker for someone who, as he put it, “wasn’t used to touching this part of the female anatomy.”

  “Yeah,” Gabe said, digging in the wooden utility crate. “Here it is. We’ll probably want to drive some nails in here, hang some of this stuff on the wall. Save us rummaging for it. And up in the lofts too, for clothes, all that.”

  “Good idea,” Stanley nodded. “Do that tomorrow.” He picked up the hammer and the can of nails, walked outside, around to the side of the cabin away from the creek. “Start here,” he decided, “then run the line on over to that tree? Out of the way, but they wouldn’t have to carry the clothes too far, come laundry day.”

  “I’m sure they’re all looking forward to laundry day,” Gabe said with a grin.

  “Yep. We got the same thing on both sides of the loft here,” Stanley said. “Two good workers, one maybe, and one also-ran. Hope Zara can keep those young ones going. Otherwise it’s all going to fall on her and Mira, especially Mira. That Melody’s about useless.”

  “For decorative purposes only,” Gabe agreed.

  “Got her eye on you, though,” Stanley warned. “Woman like that, she came on the show thinking she’d get by on her feminine wiles. Then wouldn’t you know, she winds up here. An old man, somebody who couldn’t care less—well, probably two of ’em who couldn’t care less—“

  Gabe laughed. “Yeah, I think Martin’s immune on philosophical grounds alone. All those shoes.”

  “Which leaves you. You just watch yourself.”

  “Don’t worry. I’m a young, single doctor. I’m not Alec, but still. I’m all clued up on that.”

  “You’ve probably had a few patients who wanted to hang around after office hours,” Stanley guessed.

  “A few.”

  “Alec said you played some ball too.”

  “Yeah, some. High school and college, that’s it. Blew out my knee, junior year. Wouldn’t have made it to the NFL anyway. Worked out all right in the end.”

  “Football player and a doctor,” Stanley mused. “Yeah, I’d guess you probably know how to turn a woman down gracefully by now. And that your brother does too. Not that he does as much turning down as you do.” He chuckled at Gabe’s rueful smile, then strung out the line to the distant tree, tied it around the trunk.

  “How’s that?” he asked when he came back.

  “Good to go,” Gabe said, tying the sack of clothespins to the line.

  “Of course, only one woman out here worth your while,” Stanley said. “On either homestead. And she’s the one who won’t be making a play for you.”

  “Thanks for supper,” Gabe said, pushing back from the table a couple hours later. The bath in the icy stream had done as much to refresh the men as the women, and dinner had helped even more. He hadn’t realized how hungry he was until he’d discovered how good cornbread could taste. No question, though, it had been a long, exhausting day.

  “Five o’clock’s going to come pretty early,” he said, standing and stretching. “Guess I’ll grab a couple of those blankets and head outside. I’ll take first shot at guard duty, if somebody wants to volunteer along with me.”

  “I’ll do it,” Stanley offered, swinging his legs around the crate that had served him as a seat and standing up as well. “Been a while since I’ve slept under the stars. Kinda looking forward to it.”

  Gabe looked at him thoughtfully, jerked his chin and walked outside, where Stanley joined him a moment later. “You sure?” Gabe asked him quietly. “That leaves Martin and Kevin tomorrow night, with the shotgun. Kevin’s not too bad, but he’s never shot—or slept outside, I’d be willing to bet.”

  “You’re right,” Stanley decided. “Take Martin instead.”

  “I was afraid you’d say that,” Gabe sighed. “Well, if anything especially nasty does come around, I’ll shoot, and he can open negotiations. This ought to be a fun night.”

  By the time Gabe and Martin had taken themselves off and she and Maria-Elena had finished washing and drying the last enamelware plate and cup, Mira knew she had never been more tired, although the dim light coming through the cabin windows told her it was probably no later than eight-thirty. The sun hadn’t even begun to set, the summer days lingering this far north, but it felt to her aching body like the middle of the night. Her steps literally dragged as she washed her face and brushed her teeth using a carefully tipped-out smidgen from the precious jar of tooth powder, then made a final visit to the outhouse.

  She climbed the ladder behind Maria-Elena to the women’s sleeping loft, then stripped down to her chemise by the light of the oil lamp Zara and Melody had carried up with them earlier. Folding her clothes and placing them next to the wall, she spared a brief thought for modesty. A week ago, dressing and undressing next to these women might have given her pause. Now, she barely cared about the sheet they’d hung across the end of the loft to screen it from the men’s sleeping area. As long as she wasn’t filmed while she undressed, that was enough for her. She lay down next to Zara on the empty mattress ticking and folded quilt that covered the bare floorboards, pulled her half of their sheet and blanket over herself, and was asleep as soon as she closed her eyes.

  The Preacher’s Kid

  Mira sat up with a jerk at the sudden clanging in the dark. Where was she? Her groping hand encountered Zara, stirring awake beside her.

  “What is it?” the other woman asked groggily, pulling herself up to sit as well, then reaching for the blanket again with a shiver.

  The clanging stopped, to the accompaniment of a rumbled exclamation from across the way. Stanley, Mira realized, the world coming back into focus. Turning off the alarm clock. They were in the cabin, and it was . . . morning?

  “Tell me it isn’t five,” Zara moaned.

  The window above Mira’s spot on the floor shone pale gray, a clearly visible rectangle against the pitch-black of the rest of the loft. She could hear Kevin voicing his own complaint, the rustling sound of the men moving around. Then saw the faint glow of a lantern through the sheet.

  “It’s five,” Mira decided with a sigh. Every muscle in her torso protested as she reached for their own lantern, set carefully beneath the window the night before.
Scrabbled for the box of matches and lit the wick, revealing Zara shaking a reluctant Maria-Elena awake.

  Mira got to her feet and located her pile of clothes. Fumbled to find the waistband of the unfamiliar drawers and hopped from one cold foot to the other as she pulled them on. Zara, moving more slowly, began to do the same beside her.

  “Which way’s the top?” Zara mumbled, turning her corset over in her hands, moving closer to the lantern to check before she pulled it around herself and began fastening hooks. “If it’s upside down, too bad. This is way too much work. Where’s a fuzzy bathrobe and slippers when you need them?”

  Mira laughed, oddly exhilarated despite, or maybe because of, the early hour and the cold. The overwhelming first day was behind them, and she’d made it through pretty well, she thought with some pride. Today they would start their adventure in earnest. A groggy Maria-Elena was finally up too, but Melody had merely turned away from them and gone back to sleep.

  Zara reached out with one bare foot and poked firmly at the young woman’s back. “Rise and shine. Lots to do.”

  Low voices were coming from downstairs now, the sound of the front door opening and closing, feet up and down the ladder. Gabe and Martin, Mira realized, coming in from outside, returning blankets to their loft before heading out again to care for the animals.

  “Too tired,” Melody mumbled, pulling the blanket more closely around her. “Couldn’t sleep. Floor’s too hard.”

  Zara snorted unsympathetically. “Get up and get to work, and I guarantee you’ll be sleeping tonight. Come on. Let’s go. Everyone else is up.”

  Melody rolled over and opened her eyes with obvious reluctance. “We could take turns,” she suggested sleepily. “If you and Mira did it today, you could sleep in tomorrow.” Maria-Elena looked hopeful at the suggestion.

  “Yeah, right,” Zara scoffed as Mira finished tying her bootlaces and searched her cloth bag of belongings for her brush and comb. “Tomorrow morning, you’re going to draw all the water, empty the ashes, light the stove, gather the eggs, fetch the wood, and cook breakfast. Uh-huh. Nobody forced you to come out here. You volunteered for this game, and you’d better start playing it. This is what you signed up for.”

  “But if I don’t sleep some more, I won’t be able to do anything at all,” Melody pleaded. “Because I think I’m getting sick. I have a really sore throat.”

  “That’s wood smoke,” Mira heard Zara saying impatiently behind her as she and Maria-Elena climbed down the ladder and into camera view. She guessed that the microphone was picking up the entire conversation. “You go ahead and do what you want,” Zara continued. “But when you do get up, you can just walk right over to Arcadia and tell Chelsea you want to quit. Save us voting you out.”

  “All right, all right,” came Melody’s sulky voice. “I’m getting up.”

  Kevin looked up from the washstand, where he’d been splashing water over his face, and met Mira’s rueful gaze. “The Beverly Hillbillies, she’s not,” he pronounced, reaching for the single thin towel and rubbing it briskly over his bewhiskered cheeks, then heading out to catch up with the others.

  By the time Melody came cautiously down the ladder, streaked blonde hair rumpled wildly around her head, Mira and Maria-Elena had finished their woefully inadequate morning toilette: a quick wash of their faces in the ice-cold water, a brush through their hair before pinning it up with the inadequate aid of the shaving mirror perched on top of the washstand, and, of course, the requisite visit to the already less-than-salubrious outhouse.

  “I am never, ever going camping,” Maria-Elena declared, coming back into the cabin.

  Mira laughed. “You never know. It might grow on you.”

  After a horrified glance in the mirror and a quick session with her hairbrush, Melody peered out one of the small windows in disappointment. “Where did the guys go?”

  “Chores,” Zara said economically.

  “Is there coffee?” Melody shivered and pulled her wool shawl more tightly around her.

  “Not till the stove gets hot, and we boil water,” Mira reminded her.

  “I forgot,” Melody said miserably.

  “Here.” Zara handed Melody the bucket with the ashes Mira had just swept from the stove. “Take this with you to the outhouse. The cold air out there should wake you up. And come back right away this time. I mean it. No messing around.”

  “Why are you picking on me?” Melody complained. “Nobody else has to do a chore when they haven’t even gone to the bathroom yet!”

  “It’s such a tough chore, too,” Zara snapped. “Want to go get water or wood instead? You aren’t actually a princess, no matter what your daddy told you, and we aren’t your servants. Get busy.”

  “Bitch,” Mira heard Melody mutter as they headed out the door together. Melody stomped down the path to the outhouse, while Mira carried her own bucket to the well in the dim light of sunrise to begin the laborious process of drawing the morning’s water.

  “Well, that’s Day Four down,” Stanley said a few days later, when the men were walking back from their evening bath at the swimming hole. “Not too bad.”

  “Except that little garden incident.” Kevin said with a grin.

  Gabe laughed. “That’s making it into an episode for sure.”

  “Yep,” Kevin agreed happily. “That’s entertainment.”

  “What happened?” Stanley asked. “Martin and I missed out, huh?”

  It was Kevin who answered, his tone gleeful. “So Gabe and I are digging irrigation ditches in the garden. And Melody and Maria-Elena are supposedly weeding. Except they aren’t. They’re taking a “break” over in that tall grass instead. And when they don’t come back with the vegetables for lunch like they’re supposed to, Zara comes out to see what they’re doing. And if you had any doubt that Zara’s a tough customer, just lay that right to rest.”

  “Sounds like a sight to see,” Stanley said with a chuckle.

  “Yeah,” Gabe agreed. “Danny was just lapping it up. Give her credit, Maria-Elena apologized. I think she did feel ashamed. She’s a nice girl, really. Easily influenced, that’s all.”

  “Whereas Melody . . . .” Kevin said. “She just got snippy. And oh boy, the fur really flew then. But that wasn’t the best part, was it, Gabe?”

  “I shouldn’t laugh,” Gabe said as a chuckle escaped him. “I know it was painful. I performed the first aid duties, after all.”

  “What was painful?” Martin asked, sounding more cheerful than he had all day. Well, Gabe supposed, he was probably happy that somebody else had been in the injury spotlight for once. Gabe had been kept busy with him since they’d arrived, bandaging cuts and taking out splinters. How he’d managed to hurt himself so many times was a mystery.

  “She got a few . . . ants,” he said, trying manfully to stop the laughter. “In her drawers. And they bit her.”

  “Ouch,” Stanley said sympathetically.

  “Yep. Sat right on an anthill,” Kevin said with satisfaction. “The wages of sin might not be death out here, but they aren’t a whole lot of fun either.”

  “If I carried a chair outside for you,” Stanley asked Zara after dinner, “think I could talk you into playing that guitar for us, and singing us a song or two? I’d dearly love to hear you sing.”

  “Only if you’ll sing with me,” Zara said. “I have a feeling you know how.”

  “I’ve sung a song or two,” Stanley admitted. “But I wouldn’t stack up against a professional like you.”

  “Church choir, am I right?” she asked, as she went for her guitar case in the corner of the cabin.

  “You got me pegged,” he chuckled. “Y’all coming too?” he asked the others.

  “Wouldn’t miss it,” Gabe said. “Give me a hand with this bench, Kevin. Give the women something to sit on.”

  “Do I have to?” Maria-Elena asked plaintively. “A sing-along is kinda lame, isn’t it?”

  “You don’t have to do a single thing,” Zara answered ch
eerfully. “I’m going to sit outside, watch the sun set, and sing a couple songs. Please yourself, though.”

  The girl came along, because, Mira thought with amusement, there really was nothing else to do. Even thinking about entertainment was progress, though. The first few nights, they’d been so tired that they’d gone to bed as soon as the dishes were done.

  Outside, the air was cool enough to be glad of the layers of clothes she wore, a welcome relief after the heat of the day and the dark stuffiness of the little cabin. Alpenglow was beginning to touch the mountains to the north, and she could hear frogs in the creek begin their own nightly song.

  Mira took a seat on the bench the men had carried out, Maria-Elena sinking down beside her with ill grace after seeing the quicker Melody nab the spot on the log next to where Gabe sat with his long legs outstretched, booted ankles crossed. Gabe barely glanced at her, his attention focused on Zara as she settled herself on the chair and fastened the strap of her guitar, strummed a few chords.

  “Gotta be period-appropriate,” Zara said. “I’ll see what I can come up with.” As she began the intro, Mira recognized the tune to “Michael, Row the Boat Ashore” even before the older woman’s beautiful alto filled the evening air. After a line or two, Stanley added his nearly bass voice, and to Mira’s surprise, Gabe almost immediately contributed his own surprisingly strong baritone.

  The second time the simple chorus came around, Zara urged, “Come on, join in,” and Mira obliged along with the others, shy at first, but finding that her voice blended easily, leaving her free to feel the joy of creating music, the song filling her body, resonating inside as well as in the air around her, mingling with the sound of the river as the pink-tinged mountains and sky added their own magic. By the time Zara had taken them through “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” with Stanley providing a soulful harmony that brought tears to her eyes, everyone but Martin was singing along, some softly like her, others with less inhibition. Maria-Elena’s voice turned out to be a sweet and true soprano, rising above the others like birdsong, the girl eventually closing her eyes and swaying a little as she sang. Her reluctance and teenage cool, as Mira had suspected, clearly went only skin-deep.