The Novels of Nora Roberts, Volume 5 (3 page)

“We play in Central Park, and sometimes in Queens.”

“What’s Queens?”

“It’s one of the boroughs.”

“It’s a mule?”

“No. Jesus. It’s a city, a place. Not a donkey.”

She stopped, set her fists on her hips, and fired at him out of dark, dark eyes. “When you try to make somebody feel stupid when they ask a question, you’re the stupid one.”

He shrugged, and rounded the side of the big red barn with her.

It smelled like animal, dusty and poopy at the same time. Coop couldn’t figure out why anybody would want to live with that smell, or the sounds of clucking, snuffling, and mooing all the damn time. He started to make a sneering remark about just that—she was only a kid, after all, and a girl at that—but then he saw the batting cage.

It wasn’t what he was used to, but it looked pretty sweet to him. Somebody, he supposed Lil’s father, had built the three-sided cage out of fencing. It stood with its back to a jumbled line of brush and bramble that gave way to a field where cattle stood around doing nothing. Beside the barn, under the shelter of one of the eaves, sat a weatherworn box. Lil opened it, pulled out gloves, bats, balls.

“My dad and I practice most nights after dinner. Mom pitches to me sometimes, but she’s got a rag arm. You can bat first if you want, ’cause you’re company, but you have to wear a batting helmet. It’s the rule.”

Coop put on the helmet she offered, then checked the weight of a couple of bats. Holding one was almost as good as the Game Boy. “Your dad practices with you?”

“Sure. He played minor-league for a couple seasons back east, so he’s pretty good.”

“Really?” All derision fled. “He played professional ball?”

“For a couple seasons. He did something to his rotator cuff, and that was that. He decided to see the country, and he ended up out here. He worked for my grandparents—this used to be their farm—and met my mother. That was that, too. You wanna bat?”

“Yeah.” Coop walked back to the cage, took a couple of practice swings. Set. She pitched one straight and slow, so he got the meat on it and slapped it into the field.

“Nice one. We’ve got six balls. So we’ll field them after you hit.” She gripped the next ball, took her position, pitched another easy one.

Coop felt the little lift inside as the ball sailed into the field. He smacked a third, then wiggled his hips and waited for the pitch.

She winged it, and blew it by him. “Nice cut,” was all she said as he narrowed his eyes at her.

He choked up on the bat a bit, scuffed his heels. She fooled him with one that curved low and inside. He caught a piece of the next pitch, fouling it off so it rang as it hit the cage.

“You can toss those three back if you want,” she told him. “I’ll pitch you some more.”

“That’s okay. You take a turn.” And he’d show her.

They switched places. Rather than soften her up, he burned one in. She caught enough of it to have it shooting foul. She caught the next, popped it up. But she got the fat of the bat on the third pitch. If there’d been a park, Coop was forced to admit, she’d have hit it out.

“You’re pretty good.”

“I like them high and inside.” After cocking the bat against the cage, Lil started toward the field. “We’ve got a game next Saturday. You could come.”

Some dumbass boondockie ball game. Would be, he thought, a lot better than nothing. “Maybe.”

“Do you get to go to real games? Like at Yankee Stadium?”

“Sure. My father’s got season tickets, box seats, right behind the third-base line.”

“No way!”

It felt good—a little—to impress her. And it didn’t suck to have somebody, even a farm girl, to talk ball with. Plus she could handle the ball and the bat, and that was a serious plus.

Still, Coop only shrugged, then watched Lil slip through the lines of barbed wire without mishap. He didn’t complain when she turned and held the lines wider for him.

“We watch on TV, or listen on the radio. And once we went all the way down to Omaha to watch a game. But I’ve never been to a major-league ballpark.”

And that reminded him just where he was. “You’re a million miles from one. From anything.”

“Dad says one day we’ll take a vacation and go back east. Maybe to Fenway Park because he’s a Red Sox fan.” She found a ball, stuck it in her back pocket. “He likes to root for the underdog.”

“My father says it’s smarter to root for a winner.”

“Everybody else does, mostly, so somebody has to root for the underdog.” She beamed a smile at him, fluttered long lashes over dark brown eyes. “That’s going to be New York this year.”

He grinned before he realized it. “So you say.”

He picked up a ball, tossed it hand to hand as they worked their way toward the trees. “What do you do with all these cows, anyway?”

“Beef cattle. We raise them, then sell them. People eat them. I bet even people in New York like steak.”

He thought that was gross, just the idea that the cow staring at him now would be on somebody’s plate—maybe even his—one day.

“Do you have any pets?” she asked him.

“No.”

She couldn’t imagine not having animals around, everywhere, all the time. And the idea of not having any brought a lump of genuine sympathy to her throat.

“I guess it’s harder in the city. Our dogs . . .” She paused to look around, then spotted them. “They’ve been out running, see, and now they’re back at the table, hoping for scraps. They’re good dogs. You can come over and play with them sometimes if you want, and use the batting cage.”

“Maybe.” He sneaked another glance at her. “Thanks.”

“Not many of the girls I know like baseball all that much. Or hiking and fishing. I do. Dad’s teaching me to track. My grandfather, my mom’s father, taught him. He’s really good.”

“Track?”

“Animals and people. For fun. There’s lots of trails, and lots to do.”

“If you say so.”

She cocked her head at the dismissive tone. “Have you ever been camping?”

“Why would I want to?”

She only smiled. “It’s going to be dark pretty soon. We’d better get the last ball and head back. If you come over again, maybe Dad will play or we can go riding. You like to ride?”

“You mean horses? I don’t know how. It looks stupid.”

She fired up at that, the way she’d fired up to hit the ball high and long. “It’s not stupid, and it’s stupid to say it is just because you don’t know how. Besides, it’s fun. When we—”

She stopped dead in her tracks. As she sucked in her breath, she grabbed Coop’s arm. “Don’t move.”

“What?” Because the hand on his arm shook, his heart slammed into his throat. “Is it a snake?”

Panicked, he scanned the grass.

“Cougar.” She barely breathed the word. She stood like a statue with that one trembling hand on his arm, and stared into the tangled brush.

“What? Where?” Suspicious, sure she was just screwing around and trying to scare him, he tried to pry her hand away. At first he saw nothing but that brush, the trees, the rise of rock and hill.

Then he saw the shadow. “Holy shit. Holy freaking shit!”

“Don’t run.” She stared as if mesmerized. “If you run, he’ll chase you, and he’s faster. No!” She yanked on his arm as Coop edged up, getting a firmer grip on the ball. “Don’t throw anything, not yet. Mom says . . .” She couldn’t remember everything her mother had told her. She’d never seen a cat before, not in real life, not near the farm. “You have to make noise, and, and make yourself look big.”

Quivering, Lil rose to her toes, lifted her arms over her head, and began to shout. “Get away! Get away from here.

“Yell!” she shouted to Cooper. “Look big and mean!”

Her eyes, keen and dark, measured the cougar from tip to tail. Even as her heart pounded with fear, something else moved through her.

Awe.

She could see his eyes glint in the oncoming dusk, glint as they seemed to look right into hers. Though her throat went dry, she thought: He’s beautiful. He’s so beautiful.

He paced, powerful grace, watching them as if deciding whether to attack or retreat.

Beside her Coop shouted, his voice raw with fear. She watched the big cat slink toward deeper shadow. And then it leaped away, a blur of dull gold that dazzled her eyes.

“It ran away. It ran away.”

“It didn’t,” Lil murmured. “It flew.”

Through the roaring in her ears, she heard her father shouting for her, and turned. He charged across the field, scattering surprised cattle. Yards behind him Coop’s grandfather ran, carrying a rifle she realized he’d gotten from the house. The dogs raced with them, as did her mother, with a shotgun, and Coop’s grandmother.

“Cougar.” She managed to get the word out just before Joe swept her off her feet and into his arms. “There. Over there. It’s gone now.”

“Get in the house. Coop.” With his free arm, Joe pulled Coop against him. “Both of you, get inside. Now.”

“It’s gone, Dad. We scared it away.”

“Go! Cougar,” he said as Jenna sprinted past Sam and reached them.

“Oh, God. You’re all right.” She took Lil, giving Joe the shotgun. “You’re all right.” She kissed Lil’s face, her hair, then bent down to do the same to Coop.

“Get them in the house, Jenna. Take the kids and Lucy, and get inside.”

“Come on. Come on.” Jenna draped her arms around both children, looked up at Sam’s grim face as he reached them. “Be careful.”

“Don’t kill it, Dad!” Lil called out as her mother pulled her away. “It was so beautiful.” She searched the brush, the trees, hoping for just one more glimpse. “Don’t kill it.”

2

Coop had a couple of bad dreams. In one the mountain lion with its glinting yellow eyes jumped through his bedroom window and ate him in big greedy bites before he could even scream. In another, he was lost in the hills, in the green and the rock, in the miles of it. No one came to find him. No one, he thought, even noticed he was gone.

Lil’s father hadn’t killed the cougar. At least Coop hadn’t heard gunshots. When his grandfather and Mr. Chance had come back, they’d had cherry pie and homemade ice cream, and had talked of other things.

Deliberately. Coop knew all about that adult ploy. Nobody would talk about what had happened until after he and Lil were in bed, and couldn’t hear.

Resigned to and resentful of his prison, he did his chores, ate his meals, played his Game Boy. He hoped, if he did what he was told, he’d get a parole day and be able to go back to the Chance farm and use the batting cage.

Maybe Mr. Chance would play, too, then he could ask him about what it was like to play professional ball. Coop knew his father expected him to go to law school, to work in the family firm. To be a big-shot lawyer one day. But maybe, maybe, he could be a ballplayer instead.

If he was good enough.

With his thoughts on ball, on escape, on the misery of his summer sentence, the big yellow-eyed cat might’ve been just another dream.

He ate his breakfast of flapjacks, as his grandmother called them, in silence at the old kitchen table while she fiddled around at the stove. His grandfather was already outside doing some farm thing. Cooper ate slowly, even though the Game Boy was forbidden at the table, because when he finished he’d have to go outside for chores.

Lucy poured coffee into a thick white mug, then brought it with her to sit across from him. “Well, Cooper, you’ve been with us two weeks now.”

“I guess.”

“That’s about all the brooding time you’re going to get. You’re a good, bright boy. You do what you’re told and you don’t sass. At least not out loud.”

There was a look in her eyes—a smart look, not a mean one—that told him she knew he sassed in his head. A lot.

“Those are good qualities. You also tend to sulk and don’t say boo to a goat and drag around here like you’re in prison. Those aren’t such good qualities.”

He said nothing, but wished he’d eaten his breakfast faster and escaped. He hunched his shoulders, figuring they were going to have a
discussion.
Which meant, from his experience, she’d tell him all the things he did wrong, and how she expected more, and he was a disappointment.

“I know you’re mad, and you’ve got a right to be. That’s why you got these past two weeks.”

He blinked at his plate, and a line of confusion formed between his eyebrows.

“The fact is, Cooper, I’m mad
for
you. Your parents did a selfish thing, and didn’t take you into account when they did it.”

He brought his head up about an inch, but his eyes lifted and met hers. Maybe it was a trick, he thought, and she was saying that so he’d say something bad. So he could be grounded or punished. “They can do what they want.”

“Yes, they can.” She nodded briskly as she drank her coffee. “Doesn’t mean they should. I want you here, and so does your grandpa. I know he doesn’t say much, but I’m telling you the truth. But that’s a selfish thing, too, for us. We want you here, we want to get to know our only grandchild, have time with him we never got much of before. But you don’t want to be here, and I’m sorry for that.”

She was looking right at him, right at his face. And it didn’t
feel
like a trick. “I know you want to be home,” she continued, “with your friends. I know you wanted to go to baseball camp like they promised. Yeah, I know about that.”

She nodded again, and sipping coffee stared off hard out the window. It seemed she
was
mad, as she’d said. But not at him. She really was sort of mad
for
him.

And that was something he didn’t understand. That was something that had his chest getting all tight and achy.

“I know about that,” she repeated. “A boy your age doesn’t get a lot of say, a lot of choices. They’ll come, but at this stage you just don’t have them. You can make the best out of what you’ve got, or be miserable.”