Chapter 22

Dinner at the Hardesty house was relaxing once Cindy and Ann got over the hugs. Ann went through her "I'm so sorry, baby" phase and Cindy responded with "Thank you, Mizz Ann, but I'm FINE! Really!"

After a very good potroast meal, we retired to the living room and picked up instruments and laughed our way through a practice session. Jim's daughter Teresa worked with Cindy on a duet on a couple of songs and to our amazement, the two actually worked out a little harmony. Sounded pretty good. We figured we were ready for Saturday night.

Saturday morning we were up early, answering the knock of the guy who was going to repair our trailer door. He looked at Cindy. Cindy was in her "I'm knockin' around on Saturday" uniform of jeans, a sweatshirt that was a concession to the cool December morning, just a shade of blue just a bit darker than her jeans, and her hair glowed in contrast to it.

He said, "You're the little girl?"

She tilted her head. "Little girl?"

"Yah," he said. "I heard..."

"Oh, yes," she said. "That was me."

"Damn!" he said. "Uh, sorry ... I'm mighty glad that you're okay. I knew that guy. He was not a nice person. Went kinda goofy. Was on medication for a while, but he quit, an' got kinda crazy."

I stood behind MY Cindy. "He made a bad mistake."

The old guy brushed his bald head. "I guess he did. Twelve gauge? Three times?"

Cindy nodded.

"You're kinda small to do a twelve gauge, huh?"

She took my hand and pulled my arm around her. "My husband showed me how to shoot."

"I guess he did, huh? Baby girl, you did the right thing. That guy, well, they were investigatin' him for some other stuff, too. He could be violent."

He looked at me. "Mister Dan," he said, "I can get this to where it'll close an' lock today. An' I can fix it right next week when I can get the materials." He looked at the bare gravel six feet from the steps. "Not like anyone's gonna try to come in, now, though..."

Cindy didn't say anything. I did. "Not if Cindy's here." I paused. "And I appreciate you doing this for me. You need some up front money?"

"Nah," he said. "Helen said you're like her son-in-law. If Mizz Helen likes you, that's good enough for me."

"Thanks," I said. I handed him a key. "Just drop this at the office when you finish. Cindy and I are going for a ride."

"I'll leave the key with Helen. Ya'll be careful!"

"Thanks!" Cindy smiled, and we left. And hour and a half up the road it was lunchtime and we stopped in on a promising-looking country barbecue joint. It was plenty good enough. We turned around and drove back, chatting, interspersed with "Hey! I like this part!" on the stereo. We stopped at the office to retrieve my key. Helen was there, and Judge Charlie, in a new chair.

I laughed when I saw that. "I see you got your chair," I said.

He smiled and accepted Cindy's hug. "Yessir, I like my comforts, you know."

"Helen, you're still gonna run this place from here? I mean, married and all?"

"Yeah, Dan. Gives us something to do until our next trip. We're arguing about where to go." She started to hand me my key.

"Nah, keep that. When the guy comes to fiinish fixing the trailer next week, he'll need it. He just got us to where we could lock the door today. Needs stuff to finish."

"Oh, okay," she said. "He'll do you a good job. I use 'im all the time here."

"Seems like a nice guy."

Cindy reinforced my comment. "Yes ma'am! He does. Are ya'll gonna be at our concert tonight?"

Charlie smiled. "We wouldn't miss it for the world!"

Cindy said, "We'll see you there!" as she grabbed my hand and pulled me out the door. I waved over my shoulder, smiling.

We had a couple of hours to kill and in ten minutes we were in the trailer, door locked, curtains drawn, and Cindy and I were stark naked. I ate her up. She ate me up. We mated yet again. And tangled in each other's arms we dozed off for a short late afternoon nap. We woke up at five and went to help the Hardesty's move the gear for our concert. We were set up at six-thirty and sitting on the stage sipping cold drinks as the park crowd started filing in. Some of them were first–timers with us, and others had seen us before. And we had fun.

We played. Jim and I sang. Not too bad. But get two sweet, pretty teen-aged girls on stage singing, and you've got something. Cindy did a couple of solo numbers and Teresa joined her for a couple of duets. People clapped and hollered and whistled and Cindy and Teresa displayed poise and talent and a good time was had by all, us on the stage as well as our audience.

The crowd called for encores and we gave 'em encores. But it WAS a park and we were a family, well, TWO families, band, and at a little after ten we started packing up. Cindy and I followed the Hardesty's home and we unloaded the amps and the instruments and bid our friends good night.

In the truck, Cindy was sitting next to me in our favorite position, her holding onto my right arm, her head on my shoulder. "Babe," she said, "THAT'S what I call a great evening!"

I smiled at my young mate. "Yes, sweetie, it was. You were great! I liked the way you carried yourself. You and Teresa made 'em happy!"

"We did, didn't we? That's just cool! Making music and making people happy!" She grinned broadly. "But let's have some Beethoven! I need a break."

We soon pulled into the park and were in our home. Two showers. Two naked bodies. And a bed.

"Love me," she said.

I wrapped her in my arms and she rolled me on my back, our mouths engaged, tongues teasing each other. I ran my hands down her sides, over the sweet curves of her butt, and gripped her at the juncture of her thighs and that sweet ass. Her knees moved up as she straddled me. Cindy liked being on top, and I happily accommodated her. When she was there, she was in charge and she was as attentive to my desires as I was to hers.

She looked down at me, smiling angelically. "Babe," she said, "this is my favorite place." She grinned. Loving Cindy, loving WITH Cindy was fun, joyous, happy, and she liked to giggle. "It's my favorite place. Except for all the OTHER favorite places, like you on top of me, or behind me, or us eating each other..." and her mobile bottom lined her juicy expectant pussy up with the head of my dick and we merged into one.

I curled up to fasten my lips over one of her small but perfect titties and teased her nipple with tongue and teeth, biting gently, just the way she liked it. I knew she liked it, because she did the same to me, and when I did hers, she tossed her head back, that red hair fanning in the air, and bit her bottom lip and purred, "Mmmmnnnnnn, oh, Dan!" and put both hands on the back of my head and pulled my face into her chest. That's HOW I knew.

That, and her sliding forward and back over my dick as I plunged it up and back down inside her, and her hands got more desperate, grabbing me, pulling, squeezing, as our bodies tuned to one another and came, my semen squirting hot inside her, her pussy rippling, her cervix pushing against the head of my dick deep up inside her. She collapsed onto me, into my waiting arms and we kissed, at first hot and mobile, then just leaving our lips molded together, breathing each other.

When the kiss broke, she raised her head and smiled.

"I adore you, baby," I said.

She smiled. "I was thinking the same exact thing." And she switched ends and we cleaned up the juices of our copulation, a process which, if things were even close to right, resulted in her whimpering through yet another orgasm. And then she crawled up and fitted herself against me and we lay together. And we slept.

Sunday morning was a gray, drippy late autumn day, promising the passage of a cold front. Rather than venture out, we stayed in the trailer, had cereal for breakfast, and made a pot of soup, Cindy following me through the effort.

"I'm sorry, babe," she said. "I never learned to cook. I didn't exactly grow up with supermom, you know?"

"I know, sweetie. That's okay. But I'm not a TV chef myself. I know a few simple things that work well, and there's enough of 'em to where I don't get bored."

Mid-morning the phone rang. Tootie. Our weekly phone call.

"I didn't interrupt anything, did I?" she laughed.

"Nope. Just me an' Cindy making navy bean soup."

"Yum!" said Tootie. "How're things going?"

I took a deep breath. "You won't believe our week, sis!"

"Bad?" she questioned.

"You don't know the half of it." And I told her the short version of Cindy's ordeal. And Cindy got on the phone and filled in details. That pretty much sat Tootie back on her heels.

"But we're okay, Tootie. Really!" Cindy chirped. "And we're coming home for Christmas."

"That's what I was calling about, at least part of it." Cindy put the phone on the table and hit the "speaker" button.

"Yeah, we'll probably fly in on Saturday morning. If you want to get the house opened up again."

"I'll do that," Tootie said. "And Cindy, I'll put some potpourri in it this time so it smells nice."

"Good!" Cindy said. "And you guys need to come over so we can do one of those gumbos. And play cards."

"We'll have plenty of time for all that. How long are ya'll gonna be down?"

"We start back up on the project the Monday after New Year's. So, like, two weeks."

"Oh, that's nice," Tootie commented.

"Yeah," Cindy said. "It will be."

"Okay, babe. Brother. I'll talk to ya'll later," Tootie said, and the phone clicked off.

Cindy sat back in her chair. "Family. We have family." She smiled. "I got you. And I have a family. And friends. And, you know, I always wondered how life could be, if it was like normal. And this is it, and it's good."

"I love you, babe. It's good because we have each other."

The rain let up a bit and we visited Helen and Charlie at the office. Cindy told them that we were heading out on Saturday to go home for the holidays.

"That's nice, ya'll," said Charlie. "We are going to Germany for Christmas. They make a big deal about it in Nuremburg. We'll enjoy ourselves. And Steve can take care of the place for us."

"Yeah he can. Sounds like we all have our plans."

Then Wednesday I brought Cindy to work with me. By this time the story of her exploits with a shotgun had gotten around. It made a noticeable difference in the way people talked with her. That, and the other bit of knowledge that had gotten around, a situation having to do with identical gold bands on our two ring fingers.

She was still like a mascot on the site, though. I worked in the office trying to get caught up on records and drawings and one of my fellow engineers after another came in, saw Cindy, and took her out to see what was going on. Lunch came and Cindy, I, the boss and two other engineers went to out to eat. Four o'clock came and we were out the gate.

"The people you work with treat me nice," she announced.

No doubt," I laughed, "Especially when the story got around about you and the shotgun." After a couple of weeks, Cindy was over the shock and realized that although she'd ended the life of another person, that person, as they say in the south, "needed killin'".

Still, it had been a process. I'd held her many a time when the enormity of ending another's life hit her, even if she was defending herself and our home.

"Oh, Dan," she said, faking exasperation, "It's not THAT at all. One of 'em said that I asked better questions than the people who are supposed to be working there. D'ya know I got INSIDE a boiler today?"

"Uh-huh," I said. "They mentioned that. And showed me the pictures you took. Saved somebody else a trip. And babe," I said.

"Yeah, babe?" she looked at me.

"Boilers are a lot more fun when they're new. Just so you know."

"I figured that out myself. Even if we ARE burning natural gas."

Which left me considering the enigma sitting next to me, a fourteen year old girl who even gave a thought to combustion characteristics in boilers. I laughed and freed a hand from the wheel to give her a hug. "Dammit! Cindy," I said, "If you were eighteen they'd have you out here as an intern."

"I know," she said. "Wouldn't that be cool?"

"That would be the coolest thing imaginable." I was serious. I knew couples who needed to be apart from one another. I'd been with Cindy every night since her mom left almost three months ago. And Cindy was just perfect. The right amount of funny. The right amount of serious. Inquisitive. Insightful. A joy to be around. Work with her all day and go home with her at night? You bet. More of the stuff dreams are made of.

We made our customary stop at the park office to visit a little with Helen and Charley. I finally, at this stage, stopped calling him "Judge" but he was still Mister Charley most of the time. And Helen was still Mizz Helen. Yeah, they both objected a bit, but I told 'em that training is hard to break.

Cindy recounted her day at the project, gaining Charley's rapt attention.

"You know, Dan," he said, "She REALLY gets excited about this stuff."

"She's almost the mascot out there. They call her "The Engineer's Apprentice". I tell 'em what day she's gonna be there and they always manage to figure out what's the most exciting thing going on for her."

"That's mighty fine," Charley said. "She's quite an impressive young lady."

I smiled at her when she realized we were talking about her and turned around. "Yessir, she truly is. She's got a mind even more dazzling than those eyes."

That got me a Cindy skipping over to give me a chaste kiss in front of our friends. "Mister Charley, you oughtta see Dan in HIS element. THAT'S my inspiration!"

I shook my head. "Darlin', you'll pass me up. I'm just another guy engineer. You're gonna show up one day and completely disarm the whole place when they look at you, and THEN you'll take 'em apart and put 'em together right."

Helen commented to Charley, "See! They're like a set, bookends, salt and pepper shakers, whatever!"

Charley said, "Helen, my dear, I never doubted you. It's just that seein' 'em together makes me happy."

That's a good note to leave on. Cindy and I took off for dinner.

The next night was a pizza party at the Hardesty house. As in "Dan, you DON'T have to buy your way in here with food."

And Friday night we did fried catfish. And Saturday morning we were at the airfield early, loaded up, the plane rolled out onto the apron, Cindy perched on top of a ladder checking the fuel levels, the truck backed into the hangar. I touched the controls lightly as Cindy taxied us out onto the runway. I was only slightly more active when she did the run-up and take-off.

Yeah. It was like that. Show her once, and let her go. Well, to be honest, five feet three inches has problems getting on the toe brakes on the rudder pedals, and the nose of a Cessna 180 gets in the way of vision when taxiing even if you're over six feet tall, and a certain amount of flying is muscle memory that comes with practice, but her moves were in all the right directions even if they weren't polished. And she flew from the right seat, having to look across the cockpit at the instruments in front of me, but she did just fine.

Four hours later she had us on short final for the home runway and I followed her as she handled the toe-dance that was required to land the old tail-dragger. Tootie's SUV pulled up next to us as we tied the plane down on the apron. Cindy got the first hug as I was unloading luggage.

I sat in the back seat and let Tootie and Cindy talk. They laughed, giggled, and caught up on things. We walked into our house.

"Wow, Tootie! You made it smell soooo good!" Cindy squealed.

"Yeah! I'm gonna hate to see my potpourri bill."

"Oh, get over it, Dan! Cindy is a LADY! She doesn't need a house that smells like an armpit!"

I laughed as Cindy glided in beside me and took my arm.

"Put the luggage in the bedroom, babe," she said. "We need to go to Tootie's for gumbo. And be nice to your sister or she's gonna spit in your bowl."

As I hauled the bags into the room and dropped them, I heard Tootie comment, "You're trainin' 'im right, Cindy!"

I chose to ignore sister's gibes. I opened the garage door and checked to make sure our own SUV started. It did.