Carolina Moon

something to mull on.
    “Boss?” Piney took a last pull on his cigarette, then carefully tramped it out underfoot. “You got female problems?”
    Since his mind was full of work, it took Cade a minute. “Excuse me?”
    “See, myself, I’ve kept pretty clear of females, but I been around this world long enough to recognize a woman getting up a head of steam.”
    He shifted his gaze, squinting against the sun, and nodded lazily to where Tory was plowing her way up the rows. “There’s one now. From the look of things, you’re dead in her sights.”
    “I got no problems.”
    “I’d say you’re wrong about that one,” Piney muttered, and eased a step back so as not to be hit with the fallout.
    “Cade.”
    It was a pleasure to see her, a simple, easy pleasure. “Tory. This is a nice surprise.”
    “Really? We’ll see about that. I need to talk to you.”
    “All right.”
    “Alone.”
    “I’ll just mosey along.”
    Tory sucked in her breath, remembered her manners. “I beg your pardon, Mr. Cobb.”
    “No need for that. Didn’t think you’d remember me.”
    She hadn’t, or hadn’t consciously. She’d said his name without thinking about it. Now, for a moment, her temper was coated with an old image of a scrawny, thin-chested man with wheat-colored hair who smelled most usually of liquor and snuck her little peppermint drops.
    He was still scrawny, she noted, but age and drink had ravaged his face. It was red and worn and saggy, and the wheat-colored hair, if he still owned it, was thin enough to be covered completely by an old gray cap.
    “I remember you used to give me candy, and you worked the field next to my father’s.”
    “Did.” His lips stretched out in a smile, revealing teeth as tilted and gapped as an old picket fence. “Work for the college boy now. Pays better. I’ll just be getting on. See you in the morning, boss man.”
    He tipped his cap, then took a peppermint out of his pocket and handed it to Tory. “As I recollect, you always favored these.”
    “I still do. Thank you.”
    “It pleased him that you remembered,” Cade said, as Piney walked across the field toward the road.
    “My father used to shout at him about the evils of whiskey, then about once a month they’d get drunk together. Next day, Piney’d be out in the field, working as usual. And my rather’d go back to shouting at him across the rows.”
    She shook her head, turned to face Cade. “I didn’t stop for a trip down memory lane. Just what do you mean telling your friend Dwight that we’re seeing each other?”
    “I’m not sure—”
    “We’re not seeing each other.”
    Cade arched a brow, slipped off his sunglasses, hooked them on his shirt. “Well now, Tory, yes, we are. I’m standing here seeing you right now.”
    “You know very well what I mean. We’re not dating.”
    He didn’t smile, but he wanted to. He settled for scratching his head instead, and looking bemused. “Seems to me we’re doing something pretty close to that. We’ve gone out, what, four times in the last ten days or so. To my thinking, when a man and a woman go out to dinner and such, it’s a date.”
    “Your thinking’s wrong. We’re not dating, so just get that straight.”
    “Yes’m.”
    “Don’t grin at me.” A trio of crows cawed by, sleek and shiny. “And even if you had that idea in your head, you had no business, no right , to tell Dwight we were involved. He went right off and told Lissy, and now she’s got it in her pea-brained head we’re having some sort of wild sexual affair. I do not want or intend for people around here to assume I’m your latest fling.”
    “My latest?” He hooked his thumbs in his pockets, rocked back on the worn heels of his work boots. As far as entertainment went, he considered this the day’s highlight. “Just how many flings do you think I’ve had?”
    “I have no interest.”
    “You’re the one who brought it up,” he pointed out, just for the pleasure of seeing her snarl.
    “The point is you told Dwight we were involved.”
    “No, I didn’t. But I don’t see …” It came back to him. “Oh yeah. Hmm.”
    “There!” With a kind of triumph, she jabbed a finger at him. “You’re a grown man, and should have gotten over the locker room talk.”
    “It was a misunderstanding.” And a fascinating one, in his opinion. “Lissy keeps trying to set me up. Can’t appear to stand having a single man running loose. It’s a pain in the ass. Last time it