After that kick, the cat made a loud mee-ow and went flying at least three feet. And, then, it ran swiftly away, around the back of the building from where

it had come.

"You jerk!" I hollered, and Leo turned to see me standing there behind him. I was still a good ways away from him. Maybe thirty feet or so.

He moved his hand that had been resting on the side of the building, and faced me.

"Well, well," he said, in a slow drawl. "It's little Miss Rodeo Queen." I didn't know why he was calling me that-unless it was because when he'd

seen me on the porch at the ranch, I'd been wearing jeans and cowboy boots, and most likely a hat, though I couldn't remember that for sure.

Jill had immediately sprung into motion, and headed towards me.

"Harlie, get out of here," she hissed. She put a hand on my arm.

I shrugged her hand off. "Do you get your jollies from kicking defenseless animals?" I demanded of him. "What do you do for a real good time-knock

puppies in the head?"

Leo looked amused as much as anything at the moment. He gave a sort of chuckle, and then pulled a pack of cigarettes from his shirt

pocket. He shook one out, and proceeded to light it up.

"Harlie, go on," Jill said, still in a hiss. "I'm coming right along."

"Are you planning to invite him over for supper tonight?" I hissed right back at her. "Might as well!"

We were talking low enough that I knew Leo couldn't hear every thing we were saying to each other.

"I know what I'm doing," Jill insisted, glaring at me. "Now you go!"

"Daniel's just down the street!"

"I know that!"

Leo had walked closer to us. He took a long drag on his cigarette as we both stopped talking.

"What's all the whisperin' about?" he asked, sounding amused.

"I told her to go," Jill said.

"There's no hurry, is there?" he asked, and smiled at me.

"Yes, there's a hurry," Jill said. "She needs to get home."

"So do you," I reminded her. The fingers she had hold of my wrist with tightened.

"Shut up," she said, between her teeth.

"You shut up," I countered. It was downright ridiculous to be scrapping with her like that right then. I was just so riled up.

Leo had stopped walking and was just standing where he was, smoking, and watching. Jill turned to face me head-on.

"Go on now, Harlie-" she said, real low again, so Leo couldn't hear.

"Are you coming?" I asked, in my regular tone.

"In a few minutes-"

"Then I'll wait for you," I said, stubbornly.

"No."

I glared at her, and she glared right back. Leo had taken the few moments we'd been hissing at each other to make his way to

Jill's side. He looked me up and down in a lazy sort of a way. His eyes!

"You're a cute girl," he observed. "Got a little bit of a-" he paused just then, and touched the tip of his index finger to my bottom lip, really softly. "Big mouth,"

he went on, as though he hadn't hesitated at all.

Before I could react, by smacking his hand away, or possibly not, since I seemed to be frozen, Jill did the smacking.

She slapped his hand, which he did not like, because his eyes turned dark, and he looked angry. Like a thundercloud.

"Bitch," he said, sounding furious. "Where do you get off, puttin' your hands on me?" He looked so angry that I felt frightened for her.

"Leave her alone," Jill said. She didn't sound scared. Just mad.

"Or what?" Leo said, again in a slow drawl, and I felt my heart pounding in my chest. Close up like this, I saw and felt, that Leo was scary. Just plain

scary.

"Or nothing," Jill said. "Just leave her alone."

Leo took another drag on his cigarette, and then said, "Seems to me it's not just your singing cowboy that you're attached to. Like this whole family,

do ya, Jillie?"

Jill didn't answer that. She just stared him down, not flinching, and not moving.

Leo laughed then. And it wasn't a good sort of a laugh. It gave me the shivers. That laugh.

"Well, Jillie-girl, I'm gonna be on my way," he said. "You don't be forgetting all our plans. And, uh, let's stay in touch, hear?"

"Right," Jill said, sassy and sarcastic. "Don't call me, I'll call you."

"Careful now," Leo said. "I'm gonna get the idea you wanna see the back of me."

"That's right," Jill said, with spirit. "Face down in the road, preferably."

Leo held a hand to his chest. "That wounds me, baby. It really does." And then he laughed again.

Jill took my arm in such a grasp that it felt as though I was getting my blood pressure taken at the doctor's with one of those

stupid cuffs. She started hauling me across the street.

"I'll see you 'round sometime, Rodeo Queen," Leo called after us.

7

We were on the other side of the street, on the sidewalk, when I looked back over where we'd been. Leo was still standing there. Just

watching. He gave a pretend tip of his hat with his hand, and Jill said, "Come on."

We were walking towards the vet office when I remembered the checks I was clutching in my hand.

"I have to go to the bank," I said. "I have to do Ivy's deposit-"

"Fine," Jill said. "We'll go to the bank." She did an about face, still holding on to my arm.

"Let go!" I snapped, pulling her hand from my arm.

"Alright!" she snapped back.

I went into the cool air of the bank, while she waited over near the door, looking out the window. I did the deposit of Ivy's checks, and got

the receipt. I paused beside Jill, as she peered out the big bank window.

"Did he leave?" I asked, doing my own looking.

"Yeah. For the moment," she added, and I felt panic rise up.

"Is he going to be waiting for Daniel?" I asked. "We have to let him and Crane know-"

"He won't hurt Daniel," Jill said. "Let's go." She marched ahead of me, out of the bank, back out into the bright sunshine.

One of the older ladies from church, Janie Loftus, came along just then.

She spoke to me, calling me by name and asked how I was. And then, looked at Jill, her curiousity evident.

"Who's this?" she asked.

I introduced her as Daniel's girlfriend from Tennessee, and Mrs. Loftus nodded her head in greeting.

"Well, you keep that young man coming home regular, won't you?" she said, to Jill. "We miss having him play for the church choir. So talented. He started doing that

when he was just a little sprout-couldn't have been more than nine or ten-"

"Excuse us," I interrupted. "Crane and Daniel are waiting for us."

"Oh, surely. Have a good day, girls," the older woman said, and went on her way.

"She'd be here all day talking if we let her," I muttered.

Jill gave me a strange look. "She seemed nice," she said.

"She is nice. She just talks a lot," I said.

"She seemed to really care about Daniel," Jill said, sounding in awe.

I stared at her, people milling around us on their way to and from the bank.

"She does," I said.

Jill still looked as though she was trying to figure it out, and I said, impatiently, still irritated with her, "So what? There's lots of people around here

that care about Daniel and all of us-"

"That's just really nice," she said, softly, sounding wistful.

I blinked at her, and then she seemed to come back to the reality of our situation. She became the prickly, tough-nut Jill again.

"You know something? You don't listen worth a damn," she accused. "Why didn't you go when I told you to go? You're just lucky that Leo

didn't-"

"Didn't what?" I demanded, and then lowered my voice as Mrs. Carlton from the post office walked past us. "Carve you up with his

knife that you said he carries in his boot?"

"I was fine," she said. "It's you that could have put a kink in the mix."

"You're blaming me?" I asked, incredulously. "You aren't even supposed to be talking to him at all-or meeting up with him."

"I didn't know I was going to see him," Jill said. "I wouldn't have come if I'd known-"

I gave her a look that said I didn't believe her, and to my surprise I saw a quick flash of hurt cross her face.

It was gone just as quickly, though.

"Believe what you like, Harlie," she said. She turned and starting walking towards the vet office again. I caught up with her,

and there was silence.

"It's just lucky that Daniel and Crane didn't see-" I said. "There might have been a fight, and it's just good that they don't have to know-"

"I'm going to tell Daniel," Jill said.

"You are?" I asked, surprised.

"Of course. Why wouldn't I?"

"He'll get upset-" I began.

"Yeah. I'm sure he will. But, I'm not going to not tell him."

She said it so matter-of-factly, as if it had not even occurred to her to lie to Daniel-

That caused me to calm down.

"What were you doing, though?" I asked. "Talking to him at all? Didn't the lawyer say to not have any contact-"

"That's right. He did."

"Well-what are you doing, then?" I asked. "What do you think talking to him now will do? You said yourself that he won't see any reason-"

"Good Lord, Harlie," Jill said, and paused again, stopping right there on the sidewalk. Though now we were near the vacant lot just up from the

veterinary office.

"I know how to get around Leo," she said, by way of explanation. "I'm trying to get him to go back to Tennessee."

"Does he know you're going to file for divorce?" I asked.

Jill sighed heavily, as if her patience was worn thin. "No. If I tell him that, he'll cause problems."

"How were you going to get him to leave?" I persisted.

In answer, Jill just gave me a long look, and said, "I was working my way around to convincing him-when you decided to make your

appearance."

"Well, excuse me for being concerned about you!" I snapped.

Jill tilted her head and stared me down. I knew exactly what she was thinking.

"I was there before he kicked the cat, remember?" I prompted her. "I was worried about you-even before he did that-"

Jill gave me a slight smile. "You're a good person. You really are." And we started walking again.

I don't know why, but that comment from her took all the wind out of my sails, so to speak. I mean, I didn't feel angry any longer with her. Just

still scared, shaky from the way that Leo had looked at me, but I wasn't mad at her. I figured she must have had her reasons for talking to Leo

that way.

"He's scary," I admitted. There was no need to identify the 'he' that I spoke of.

Jill gave me a look. "I wouldn't have let him hurt you, Harlie."

I thought of how she'd stepped in between Leo and I when I'd popped up in the bar parking lot a few days before. And, today, this afternoon, she'd

done the same, and told Leo to leave me alone. She'd tried to warn me off.

By now, we were at the office door. Before she pushed it open, I said, "Did he hurt you? I mean-not today, but before-"

Jill paused, her hand on the door knob, but she didn't give away anything by her facial expression or by her words.

"You know enough," she said. And, I could tell that she was serious about not giving me any further details.

"I'm going to be in trouble," I said.

At her puzzled look, I said, "You know. When they find out that I approached him-and that you had to tell him to leave me alone-Brian will kill me. They all will."

"You were trying to help," Jill pointed out. "Won't that count for something?"

I shook my head. "No. They will say I should have gone to get Crane and Daniel. They'll be really mad."

I guess Jill could tell I was really worried, because she said, "I won't say anything about you being there."

I stared at her, shocked in silence.

Jill shrugged. "You're okay. Not hurt. They don't need to know if you don't want them to."

"But-that's like lying," I pointed out. "And I don't want you to have to lie to Daniel-"

For some reason it was vital to me that she not lie to Daniel. On the other hand, just the thought of facing angry brothers yelling and threatening, well,

that made me feel as shaky as Leo had.

Whatever Jill would have said then was paused, because the door was pulled open. Daniel stood there, grinning.

"Here you are," he said, pulling Jill to him with a grease covered hand. He gave her a noisy kiss on her forehead. "Just in time."

"All finished, huh?" Jill asked.

"Yep." Daniel gave me a smile, and I tried to smile back.

Crane and Ivy appeared next, and somehow the five of us were all standing outside in front of the doorway.

"Everything okay at the bank?" Ivy asked me.

"Um, yeah," I said. I handed her the deposit slip. I'd clenched it in my hand and it was crumpled.

"Good," Ivy said. "Thanks."

"Uh huh."

"How about the five of us go out for supper?" Daniel suggested. He looked so happy. I knew it had a lot to do with the news they'd gotten from

the lawyer, and how he felt that there was a goal set for he and Jill's future. Free from her past. After what had happened earlier, I had my doubts

about Jill ever being free from Leo.

7