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“Yes,” Laura said. “But it wasn’t easy, and it took three of us pulling on that rope.”
“Those calves are gonna be born late,” Blake said.
“It’s a new rotation,” Todd said.
Maddy realized then that they were talking about cattle breeding. Right at the dinner table, like this was normal. She suddenly didn’t feel so badly about the questions and conversation topics that had been thrown around at the lunch table at her momma’s.
Kyle returned, a plate of food clutched in his oven-mitted hand. He put the whole lot in front of Maddy and said, “There you go, my queen.”
She looked from the delectable shredded beef taco to her boyfriend’s face. “Thank you,” she said. “Your Majesty.”
“Oh, brother,” Todd said dryly. “Don’t call him that. Then he’ll start insisting we all do.” He pointed one long finger at his brother. “I’m not calling you ‘sir’ or ‘your majesty.’”
Kyle laughed, and everyone except Todd did too. Maddy then tucked into her meal, feeling like a queen for how well Kyle had taken care of her that day.
* * *
The following afternoon,Maddy’s nerves felt one inch away from busting through her skin. The door had opened, and the first child had just walked in. “Howdy,” she said in her teacher-voice. She used it on the first day of school, and whenever a child seemed a little nervous, the way this one did. She knew the feeling, but it fled as her instincts, training, and experience kicked in.
She’d once had a student who’d come to school crying every morning for a solid six weeks. She was the only one who could coax him away from his anxious mother, and by the end of the school year, he’d cried when he’d had to move to first grade.
“What’s your name?” She went right over to the child and dropped to her knees. “I’m Miss Maddy, and I’m going to be showing you how to paint today.”
The boy looked up at her, his long, fluttering eyelashes blinking slowly over big, brown eyes. “Gavin,” he whispered.
“What a great cowboy name,” she said. “Do you want to be a cowboy, Gavin?”
He looked up at his father, but Maddy didn’t check for the dad’s reaction.
“An astronaut,” the boy said.
“Wow,” Maddy said. “That’s amazing.” She reached out her hand. “Maybe you’ll paint the moon today. Or the stars. Or…Saturn?”
The little boy put his hand in hers, and Maddy got to her feet. She took him over to the table that had been sized for children under age eight as he asked, “What’s Saturn?”
“Saturn is a planet in our solar system,” she said. “It’s got so many rings, we can’t even count them all.” She pulled out a chair for him. “Do you think you could paint a planet with lots of rings?”
Gavin sat in his seat, his chin held high, totally ready to do what she’d suggested. She turned back to find the father slipping quietly out of the room, and two more children entering it. Over the course of the next ten minutes, Maddy greeted children, got their names, checked them off, and gave them a place to sit. The class was for kids anywhere from six to sixteen, but she didn’t have anyone older than thirteen. That girl looked like she might upturn the table at any moment, so Maddy went over to her and asked, “Will you be able to paint and help me today?”
Her face brightened, and she nodded. “Yeah, sure.” She certainly wasn’t from Texas, and Maddy gave her a smile.
“Great. Let me explain what we’re doing, and then I’ll have you help me pass out materials.” She walked up to the front of the small room, silently thanking the Lord it had windows. When Blake had shown her the room this morning, it wasn’t this one. She’d insisted they find something with windows, and they’d cleared out this room at the end of the hall specifically for the painting classes.
“Today,” she said. “We get to go on an adventure in our minds, and then.” She paused for dramatic effect, remembering how much she loved working with children. “You get to bring your imagination…to life.”
A couple of the younger kids gasped, and Maddy giggled and grinned at them. A tall figure filled the doorway, and Maddy met Kyle’s eyes. He folded his arms and leaned against the doorframe, and Maddy very nearly lost her train of thought. He was so sexy, and she didn’t want to flub up her teaching in front of him.
She looked down at the book in her hand. She couldn’t do anything without literature—not even art—and she lifted it, her lesson coming back into her mind. “While I read this book, there’s going to be some blank spots. I want you all to close your eyes and let your mind fill them in with whatever it wants to. The first thing. By the end of the story, you’ll know what you want to paint.”
She scanned the two tables in the room, the twelve children who’d paid an extra fee to be there for the next ninety minutes. They all closed their eyes, ready to go with her on this adventure. When her gaze landed back on Kyle, he had too, and Maddy’s heart sent out a couple of extra beats just for him, the cowboy perfection in the doorway.
ChapterEight
Maddy’s voice painted pictures in Kyle’s head. Pictures of a far-off grassland, full of wild animals. Giraffes, zebras, elephants. When she said, “And then, right there, out of the treess, came a…”
She hung on the word, her pretty little voice pitching up. He thought baby, and he knew he’d paint the African safari with a pod of elephants and their babies. He had no idea if a group of elephants was called a pod, and Maddy had said he could let his imagination run wild.
Wild, it had gone.
