CHAPTER 10
Colt
◆
The courthouse oaks kept dropping dry leaves onto the dance floor like they had opinions about every boot moving underneath them.
Colt stood beside the dance planks with Beau's cup of lemonade in one hand and his own hat in the other, watching a fiddler dust rosin across a bow under strings of yellow bulbs.
The air had cooled after sunset, enough for people to pretend the day had been kinder than it was.
Oak leaves shifted overhead. The caller tested the little speaker with a crackle.
Somebody's boot heel struck a board, and the sound went through Colt the way a gate chain did when it settled under weight.
Dancing was never why he came.
He had come because Beau had wanted to see the lights.
Because Della Calloway had asked with that careful brightness brides got when family trouble started showing through the seams. Because Ruston Farke had said there would be enough hands to keep the evening easy and enough eyes on the children during the early part.
Because Junie Mabry had promised to sit with Beau when she got tired, and Junie did not make promises about children unless she meant to nail them to the floor.
Mostly, he had come because avoiding Wren Calloway in a town the size of Dusthallow had begun to look less like discipline and more like fear with its hat pulled low.
Beau tugged at his sleeve. "Daddy, that lady's dress makes a circle."
"It does."
"Can my skirt do that?"
"Not with lemonade in your hand."
Beau looked at the cup, weighing art against refreshment. "After."
"After you finish."
She took one dutiful sip, then tipped her face toward the lights.
A pink star sticker shone on her cheekbone.
Earlier she had pressed one on Colt's shirt pocket and another on Junie's wrist, declaring them both helpers for the dance.
The one on Colt had already gathered lint at the edge. He had kept it there anyway.
Across the square, Wren stood with Della and Paloma Reyes near the long table of paper fans and wedding notes.
She wore a blue dress he knew had been chosen because it looked intentional from a distance and economical up close.
Her hair was pinned back with a few loose pieces the night air had already argued free.
She held a stack of place cards in one hand, the other moving as she talked, sketching some invisible arrangement of tables, lights, weather, and human stubbornness.
Competent and tired. That was what people missed when they looked at Wren and saw only the Calloway polish or the Austin failure they wanted to gossip over.
Colt saw the set of her shoulders. He saw how she laughed when Della said something, then looked down fast, as if joy was a bill she had to decide whether she could pay.
His phone dragged against his thigh in his pocket.
He had checked it twice for Beau reasons.
No message from Junie, because Junie was ten feet away at the lemonade tub, talking to a teacher and watching Beau with one eye.
No emergency from Tuck Saddler, because Tuck had sent one line after evening feed: troughs holding.
Instead there sat the voicemail he had not played, Bennet Orvell's name and the same preview he had refused to open since yesterday.
Mineral lease deadline approaching.
Colt shifted the phone deeper into his pocket. Legal paper could wait. Work could not. Beau could not. Wren under the courthouse oaks with old questions in her eyes should have been something he could make wait too, but wanting had poor respect for a man's schedule.
The caller clapped his hands. "First set, bring your partner. Simple as Sunday supper. If you can count to four, you can survive me."
Beau bounced on her toes. "Can I?"
"You can watch the first one."
"You said after lemonade."
"I said your skirt could spin after lemonade."
"That is dancing."
Junie came up beside them, taking Beau's empty cup before the child could use it as evidence. "I'll take her through the easy part. You can stand there looking haunted by rhythm."
"I am not haunted."
"Then the music ought to be safe."
Beau slipped her hand into Junie's and beamed at Colt as if he had agreed to something larger than two circles and a bow. "Watch me."
"Always."
The first dance gathered children, parents, and people who claimed not to know the steps until the caller shamed them into laughing.
Colt stood with Ruston at the side while Beau followed Junie through a crooked promenade, solemn with concentration.
Della watched from Ruston's other side, her hands clasped at her heart.
"She's darling," Della said.
"She's five," Colt said. "Those overlap on a good night."
Ruston smiled. "You got through the auction?"
"Got through it."
That was enough answer for a man who understood the cost of asking more in public. Ruston nodded once and let it rest.
A rancher by the refreshments was not as kind. "Market roughed you up, Colt? Heard half the county came home short."
Wren's head turned from across the table before Colt answered. He felt it, that quick attention of hers, and with it the old irritation of being read too well.
"Market did what markets do," Colt said.
"Well, least the dance is free."
A few people laughed because they did not know what else to do. Colt kept his face easy. He had survived worse than a careless joke. Still, the words put his cash-tight life on display under the bulbs, and he hated that Wren stood close enough to hear them with pity trying to stay off her face.
No. Pity would have been simpler. Worry.
That might have been worse.
Cressie Ames drifted near the paper fans, sharp smile ready. "Della, honey, your square is looking lopsided. Bride and groom ought to pull in whoever still remembers how to move their feet."
Della's gaze went from Cressie to Colt to Wren. The calculation there was quick and not unkind. Wedding peace, town pressure, a roomless room full of people waiting to see whether old trouble would spoil fresh joy.
"Colt," Della called before he could prepare his refusal. "Wren. Help us even the set."
Wren's eyes widened a fraction. "Della."
"Do it for me," Della said, sweet as pie and twice as dangerous.
Ruston already had Wren by one hand, drawing her toward the planks with the gentle authority of a man saving his bride from another hour of whispered speculation. "One dance," he said. "Then everybody can say the wedding party is united and go back to judging lemonade."
"I am not in the wedding party," Colt said.
"You are in the town," Ruston answered.
That was harder to argue.
Beau, from Junie's side, clapped both hands. "Daddy dance!"
Colt looked at Junie.
Junie lifted her brows. "You heard the child."
The set opened for him. That was how Dusthallow worked.
Folks made room with their boots and held the real pressure in their eyes.
Colt stepped onto the planks because standing aside would make a story, and because Wren had gone still in the middle of them, waiting to see whether he would leave her there alone.
He would not.
Her hand was cool when he took it.
"We have been handled," she said under the music.
"Della's better at moving cattle than she knows."
Wren's mouth curved, nervous and grateful. "Should I be offended?"
"Only if you bolt through a weak gap."
"I have never bolted. I have made strategic exits."
The caller started them before Colt could answer. Hands joined. Circle left. The whole set moved under the oaks, boots thudding over borrowed boards, skirts turning, laughter rising when someone missed a step and dragged half a line with him.
Wren did not miss.
That was the problem.
Eight years fell away in pieces he could not stop.
Wren turned under his lifted hand before the caller finished saying it.
She shifted weight on the second beat, not the third, because she knew Colt's left knee had always been slower after a day of work.
When the line drew them apart, she looked over her shoulder at exactly the place he expected her to look, and his body answered before his good sense caught up.
The town saw it.
Colt felt the watching sharpen around them. He had been watched after Harlow died, watched in the grocery aisle when Beau had cried for her mother, watched at the auction when numbers came in low. This was different. This was people seeing a match strike where they had expected damp ash.
He set his jaw and kept dancing.
Wren's fingers slid from his palm, then returned in the next figure.
Her breathing had changed. He knew that too, which was unfair.
A man should not remember how a woman breathed when she was trying not to laugh or cry or run.
He should not remember the exact pressure of her hand when she trusted him to swing her out and bring her back.
But Colt remembered.
The dance ended with a clatter of applause and people bowing too dramatically because embarrassment needed somewhere to go. Beau ran to him and threw both arms around his waist.
"You did it," she said, amazed.
"Barely."
"Miss Wren did the twirl right."
Wren crouched, her smile gentling in a way that made Colt's guard stand up and ache. "Your turn was better."
"Junie said I have to sleep soon."
"Junie is usually right."
Beau leaned against Colt's leg, the sudden weight of tiredness arriving all at once. "Can I watch lights in the truck?"
He checked his watch. Later than he wanted. Dawn water checks would not care that the square dance had run long. "Five minutes, then we head home."
Junie appeared with Beau's little denim jacket over one arm. "Or she can fall asleep in your truck while I sit by the open door, and you can give Della ten more minutes of looking civilized."
"I can take her."
"You can. Or you can accept that I am parked beside you and have known how to watch a sleeping child since before you learned which end of a bottle was up."
Beau yawned into Colt's shirt. "Junie tells good shelf stories."
"Shelf stories?"
"The cans talk."
Junie shrugged. "Inventory has drama."