Chapter 8
8
E llen put a hand on the freezer and tried to still her trembling fingers. Her whole body felt like Jell-O. She had been scared to death that Travis was going to get hurt. He didn’t even seem to hear her calling for him to stop, but she’d shut her mouth after he’d been able to get himself up enough to block Chalmer’s punch and get in one of his own. She’d been terrified that something was going to happen to him after he had finally returned after five years away.
Then, after Chalmer was on the ground, and they’d gone inside to get things with her straightened out, it finally hit her that he bought Shanna’s lunch bucket. It was like high school all over again.
But he’d insisted they should just be friends. And she’d honored that, although she hoped for more all the time. He promised he was going to kiss her. But apparently it was Shanna that he had been pining for, since the night he got home, he was already eating supper with her.
She tried to swallow the feeling of bitter disappointment. Push aside her heartbreak.
“Are you okay?” a voice asked from behind her. The general murmur and laughter of the townsfolk was muted in the kitchen, although she could still hear them. The hustle and bustle that would have been going on earlier as everyone grabbed food and drinks and got seated had died down, and the kitchen had been deserted. At least she thought it had been.
She turned around to see one of the Clyborne sisters, Claudia. Claudia was about the same age as she was, and they had become good friends since Claudia had moved in with her family. They bought the Sweet View Ranch complex outside of town and, with the help of a few anonymous investors, hoped to make the ranch a roaring success and bring even more commerce dollars into Sweet Water.
The family was an asset to Sweet Water, although Ellen didn’t know them all well. Claudia had been kind, and Ellen considered her a friend.
“I’m fine.”
“You look white as a sheet, and your fingers are trembling.” Claudia lifted her brows, but her voice was gentle. She wasn’t accusing, she was asking. Stating what she saw and then inviting Ellen to tell her what the issue was if Ellen so chose. Ellen appreciated the fact that she wasn’t trying to force her way into Ellen’s life.
But at the same time, she really wanted to tell someone. Or at least talk to someone. Maybe not bare her heart. Could she?
“You saw Chalmer buy me.”
“Yeah, I felt bad for you. If I had had more money on me, I would have bought you myself. It didn’t say that it had to be a man.”
“No. And that would have been a relief, trust me.”
“Yeah, I’m sure. I was sitting there thinking to myself that I was really glad that I had brought a lunch bucket to put on auction, because if I hadn’t, and they sold me… I don’t know if I would have gone through with it.”
“I didn’t want to. But honestly, I didn’t really think they would force me to do it. I guess I could have insisted, but it would have been a scene. And I’m not very good at that.”
“I know. You’re so sweet. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, it’s just I can see how they would have railroaded you into it before you even realized it.”
“Yeah. That’s exactly what happened.”
“So it didn’t go well?” Claudia raised her brows.
“No. You could say that.” Ellen laughed a bit, and Claudia looked intrigued.
“Spill,” she commanded.
Ellen sighed, opening up the freezer and getting the ice tray out before going to the drawer looking for a Ziploc bag as she spoke.
“Chalmer grabbed a hold of me and wouldn’t let go. I told him no, told him to let go, but he didn’t listen.”
“And that’s where you popped him in the face. And then ran screaming for your life,” Claudia said firmly and with a little heat.
“I was getting ready to do that. He’s bigger than I am but not as big as my cows. If I can manhandle them, I figured I could handle him, at least enough to get away.”
“I’m glad you got away… You did get away, right?” Claudia’s voice held compassion and concern again, and Ellen nodded immediately. She didn’t want Claudia to think the worst.
“Yes. That’s why I’m getting this ice,” she said as she filled the bag up with cubes before putting the tray back in the freezer. “Travis came. And he and Chalmer fought.”
“Really? You had two men fighting over you?”
“Not really. Travis is just a friend, and he heard me tell Chalmer no, and he was just making sure the guy listened.”
“Well, that sounds like about what you need to do to make sure that Chalmer listens, only take a sledgehammer to the hardest head in Sweet Water.”
“Yeah. I don’t know how Shanna managed to stay with him for as long as she did.”
“Shanna gets what she deserves, from what I can see,” Claudia said with a little bit of irony in her tone.
“That’s possible. Travis bought her bucket though. And they’re eating together.”
“Then she should be the one in here fixing ice for him,” Claudia said, laughing a bit, and Ellen wasn’t sure that she could tell Claudia that…she didn’t want Shanna fixing Travis up. She didn’t want Shanna anywhere near Travis.
“Travis is my friend. I don’t mind helping him at all or giving him ice which is probably all I’m going to do. But… I guess I want someone better for him than Shanna.”
“Oh. I see. Yeah, from what I’ve heard about Travis, he could do a lot better too. He apparently has been quite successful since he left Sweet Water. I’ve never met him, but if he’s your friend, he must be a good man.”
“Oh my goodness. Yeah. He’s definitely a good man.”
Travis was better than good, but she couldn’t really gush on about him without Claudia thinking things that probably were true. Or maybe they were a little bit true. That Ellen cared a lot more for Travis than what she wanted to let on. Although, if he truly wanted Shanna, she would step back and allow it.
At least she’d try to.
“I guess I can understand why you’d be concerned. From what I’ve heard about Shanna, she is not exactly a good person. Or at least, she’s not good to men.”
“No. But I’m guessing that no one was holding a gun to Travis’s head and telling him that he had to purchase her bucket, so I assume he did it because he wanted to.”
“I don’t know. I think hers went after everyone else’s. In fact, I think he bought it after you left with Chalmer.”
“Yeah. I’m pretty sure that’s true. I didn’t see it auctioned off at all anyway.” She had remembered when she was walking out that Mr. Higginbotham had been saying that they had found a couple more buckets. Shanna’s must have been one of those.
Not that it mattered. Although, she hadn’t even considered that Travis might have been standing there when she had been bought and hadn’t bought her himself.
They were just friends. Why would he buy her?
She tried to lift her chin up and push down all of the swirling feelings of pain and disappointment and not being good enough that wanted to rise to the surface. All those feelings that she felt in high school and thought that she had gotten over. Maybe she’d only gotten over them because she thought Travis and she had something going on together, something they would pick up when he came home.
She had waited for ten years. But she couldn’t really blame Travis. They both changed a lot in those years. She didn’t regret not pursuing any romantic relationships. She’d accomplished a lot more with her dogs and her cows than she would have if she had been tangled up with a man.
Still, she wanted a home and family of her own, and maybe she would already have had that if she hadn’t been…waiting for Travis.
They made a couple of comments about the festival, and how well it was going, and how much money they probably made from all of the buckets that had been sold and the other items that had been donated for the auction, and then Claudia walked out beside her as she carried a tea towel that she wet at the sink along with the ice and another dry towel.
They parted at the door with Ellen going outside and Claudia saying that if she needed a nurse, come on back in and Claudia would get her sister, who was a registered RN.
Ellen said she would and then opened the door to walk outside.
Travis stood at the swing set, pushing one of the children on the swing, while Shanna stood beside him, her hands on her hips, her mouth going, but Ellen was unable to hear exactly what she was saying.
She stopped talking as Ellen got closer.
“Shouldn’t you be sitting down?” she said to Travis, knowing that he had taken a couple rather bad blows to his head. If she had taken those blows, she knew that her head would be pounding with a headache at the very least.
“I guess I was waiting for you,” he said easily, and he didn’t look at Shanna as he left the swing and walked over, sitting down at the bench that was situated beside the swing set.
“Are you just going to leave him on the swing?” Shanna said, acting like she wasn’t standing right there beside the swing.
“I think you can watch him while I put some ice on his jaw to help with this swelling and wipe off the blood.” Ellen didn’t realize that she could be so commanding and bossy as she listened to the words come out of her mouth.
They shut Shanna down, and she turned to the swing and took care of her child.
“Grr,” Travis said, humor in his tone.
“You’d better just shut up and let me see your face, or I’ll yell at you, too,” she said, although her voice didn’t hold any of the strident anger that she’d directed toward Shanna.
“Yes, ma’am,” Travis said, and she felt like he was eighteen again, and they weren’t adults, with adult problems and adult lives.
Like he hadn’t just bought Shanna’s lunch pail and committed to eating with her.
Of course, he had bought Ellen as well. She tried to remind herself of that, but he hadn’t bothered to begin with. Only moved to keep her from being dragged away by Chalmer.
“I take it Chalmer disappeared?” she asked, lifting her head and looking around.
“Yeah. I hope that’ll be the last of it. I should have called the police, but I didn’t want him to drag you away any further than what he already had.”
“I appreciate you taking care of me. I…didn’t appear very grateful, I’m sure, and I really was. I didn’t want to be with him.”
“So are you thanking me for buying you? Or just for having a fistfight over you?”
She laughed. That wasn’t exactly what happened. “Both,” she said as she dabbed at the blood on his face.
“Ouch,” he said, but the word didn’t have any heat and not much emphasis either.
“I’m sorry. I guess I don’t really need to get every single spot of dried blood off, but that’s what you see them doing in the movies anyway.”
He laughed. “I’ve never been confused about whether or not I belonged in the movies.”
“Me either. I wouldn’t want to be, although it’s not like opportunities are dropping in my lap either.”
“Can I say that I’m happy about that?”