“Eve has ridden plenty of horses.” Eve was also the type to refer to herself in the third person. She must be a blast at parties.
“Good, good.” Charlie frowned at the ground. “Would you like to get a cup of coffee?”
“Yes.” She charged ahead, ignoring the impliedwith me.
“Beautiful morning,” Charlie tried again, joining her at the table.
Jean glared at him over the rim of her tin mug. “Is it?”
He could make those doe eyes at someone else. Adriana Asebedo, for example. Once she finished the tense discussion she was having with Margaret. Maybe they were negotiating a new custody agreement, alternating weeks with Charlie.
“Are you having a good time?”
“Peachy.”
Charlie ignored the sarcasm. “It can be relaxing to get out in nature. Alone—or with other people. Whose company you enjoy.” He tried to give her a significant look, but Jean wasn’t having it.
“It’s hard to relax when you don’t really know the people around you. Or if you can trust them.”
“Oh, you can,” he said at once.
“Even if they’ve lied to you?” she asked sweetly.
“Maybe it onlyseemslike a lie.”
“If it quacks like a duck, it’s a duck,” said Sergeant Cowboy, who happened to be passing by with a manly fistful of trail mix.
“Quack, quack.” For reasons she couldn’t explain, Jean made flapping motions with her elbows.
“Did you know that bread isn’t good for ducks?” Charlie asked, with an air of desperation. “Too many empty calories. They fill up on bread and stop foraging for more nutritious food.”
“I guess they don’t know any better. Ducks are easy to fool. But once they wise up, look out.” She narrowed her eyes at him in case he thought the duck part was literal.
“The truth can also be hard to swallow,” Charlie countered. “If you don’t know how the… duck will react. Or you’re afraid it will change things. Between you and the duck. If you’ve had a bad experience in the past. With ducks.”
“Well maybe it’s unfair to judge a duck because you happen to be paranoid.”
“Unless the reason you feel paranoid is that you like that duck so much, you can’t imagine anything worse than losing them.”
That brought Jean up short, but only temporarily. How dare Charlie say things like that with a straight face? “If you like a duck that much, why run away from it?”
“I—I’d guess the person was scared.”
“Of ducks?”
“Not all ducks. Just the one very special duck. With the most beautiful feathers.” His eyes didn’t move from her face, even when Sergeant Cowboy’s bellow rang through the clearing.
“We ride in five, greenhorns. Let’s get this place shipshape.”
Jean looked away first, draining the rest of her lukewarm coffee.
“Do you think we could talk more later?” Charlie asked, as she turned to drop her mug in the plastic bin provided for that purpose.
“Won’t you have your hands full?” she hinted. “With all your otherguests.”
He blinked at her, like he didn’t know what she was getting at. Please. Did she look like that big of a sucker?
“I’ll probably have a headache.” She meant it as a transparently BS excuse, but Charlie’s face flooded with concern.
