Page 82 of Ardently Yours

She bounds down the steps and throws herself at me, bracing her hands on my biceps, damp dish towel included. A smile wreaths her face. “Oh, it is nice to meet you, Arden. I’m Maggie. You can call me Mom.”

For the space of a heartbeat, I freeze. Charlotte’s mother doesn’t appear to have noticed that Reese pulled his sidearm. I narrow my eyes at him, and he slides it back into his shoulder holster, then proceeds to don a face of innocence.

I smile. “It would be an honor to call you Mom.”

This is already going better than expected. Of course they’ll ask for money, which I’ll give them. Then they’ll tell Charlotte what a nice man she’s found. I’ll have family politics in hand within the half hour. After I introduce Reese, she turns to me.

Maggie Miller . . . Mom . . . leans back on her heels. “I gotta admit you’re a bit longer in the tooth than I expected.”

I found a single gray hair today. One. I’m notdoddering.

She pats my shoulder. “Not that I’m complaining. It takes boys longer to mature.”

“I see where Charlotte gets her sass,” I say with a smile.

She slaps my arm with the towel. “All right, silver tongue.”

Mom points to the left of the farmhouse. “Bob and Max are out back. You’re going around the house, past the pole barn and coop.”

She glances at my Ferragamo loafers and cringes before giving me another smile. “The chickens are free range. Mind the rooster. He’s a mean son-of-a-bitch.”

With that, she turns on her heel and walks back up onto the porch. I straighten the cuffs on my Armani suit.

The walk around the side of the house is uneventful, if less than pleasant. A warm spring breeze burns a hole in my sinuses. The grass is damp and slick underfoot. Reese walks beside me, both of us audibly squelching as we go.

I lift a fist to my nose. “I thought the country was supposed to smell good. Give me exhaust fumes over this.”

Reese grunts. “Manure. They put it on the fields as fertilizer.”

We pass the pole barn with a big green tractor parked inside. Then we approach a mucky section with what looks like a kids’ playhouse on stilts. The ground surrounding the area is nothing but churned up mud. At least twenty brown chickens stop what they’re doing and eye Reese and me like we’re invaders.

“Keep walking. They’re just big pigeons,” I say.

Reese nods, and we continue. En masse, they bob over to investigate.

“They probably think we have food. They’re kind of cute, aren’t they?” I ask.

I bend and pet one on its silky back feathers.

A hoarse, screeching bellow emanates from the side of the coop. Reese and I turn our heads in unison. Time slows as the most evil-looking bird I’ve ever seen charges straight for me. Pits of hell burn inside the thing’s eyes. I’ve seen serial killers with less evident psychopathy than this vicious creature. Long, sharp talons churn the mud as he gains on me, his beak a flashing scythe. A red flag of fury waves above his head. Huge crimsonflaps of flesh sway side to side with every step. For the first time, I truly understand the direct line of descent from dinosaur to bird.

Time speeds back up. Reese and I scatter like the chickens around us, dodging the fucking thing as it chases us. I slip and slide as I go, jumping over a fat hen when she doesn’t move out of the way fast enough, and stomping over the boards of the ramp that leads to their little house. A cacophony of angry poultry squawk and squall.

When I get a few feet between me and the rooster, the giant bird pauses, apparently debating whether he wants me or Reese for lunch first. I crouch, hands spread. “Don’t test me, fucker.”

He crows, stomps his foot and lowers his head.

“Walk away, asshole.” I don’t want to hurt Charlotte’s father’s bird.

He comes at me, and I pivot. I have an eighth-degree black belt in jiu-jitsu. I can handle a chicken that doesn’t reach my knees. He flaps his wings enough to gain a few inches of height. My thousand-dollar shoes prove useless in rucked-up mud and chicken shit. Arms windmilling, my feet skid out from under me. I land flat on my back in the mud with the breath knocked from my lungs. I roll away before its beak strikes the ramp near my head.

I jump to my feet just as Reese fires a shot in the air. All it does is cause the spawn of Satan to turn on Reese, rather than me.

Bob Miller, wearing denim overalls and a John Deere hat, jogs into the fray, bends over, and picks the demon up by its neck. Straightening, he holds the rooster at arm’s length and gives it a little shake. “Mind your manners, Reginald. He’s not interested in your ladies.”

The bird’s eyes roll, but he doesn’t fight. Bob sets him on the ground, then chases Reginald up the ramp and into the coop, yelling, “Go on. Git.”

When Bob returns, he plants his hands on his hips. Gaze starting at the mud in my hair and traveling down the length of my body, he comes to rest on what’s left of my shoes. He grunts and looks into my eyes. “Welp,” he says slowly in what I’ve learned is the local dialect in Blackwater. “Best head on up the house and ask Maggie to get you a change of clothes.” He frowns, then lifts his chin. “Hose off outside first. She’ll read you the riot act if you track up her floors.”

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