This chapter is dedicated (in apology) to Humbug. I know I said it would be soon but writers block knows no time table. Sorry guys. Hope ya’ll are having a happy new year so far!

Chapter 3-

The brief walk into town was mostly silent and Jayne was getting nervous, thinking Kaylee might still be mad enough to spend the whole afternoon not talking to him, despite the apple he had given her. He should have known better though. Kaylee couldn’t hold a grudge with a tractor beam and a dozen grapple hooks.

Walking along she asked him suddenly, “You think the mountains here are pretty?”

Jayne furrowed his brow with confusion but looked up to study the scenery. After several minutes he answered, “Yeah. I suppose.”

She nodded absently to herself.

He wanted to know why she asked but he had a pretty good idea it had to do with Simon and he didn’t want to hear that name pass her lips this afternoon. To change the subject he asked her if she had ever heard the one about the Shepard, the whore, and the malfunctioning anti-grav device. When he told her the joke, she laughed so hard she had to stop walking for a minute, bent over by the road holding her sides. The big man experienced a surge of gratification more powerful than anything he had felt in days. They spent the rest of the walk into town trading jokes, each trying to out do the other for sheer dirtiness. Kaylee knew several that would have reddened the ears of any normal man but had Jayne guffawing long and loud.

There wasn’t much as far as shopping possibilities in town but there was a pretty fair junk yard that Kaylee seemed to hone in on almost magically. She made her way through the streets toward it so surely Jayne had to ask, “What? Can you smell spare parts or somethin’?”

She smiled at him and he had to fight the instinct to smile back when she replied, “Naw. They just tend to be in the same place in any town.”

Under a makeshift awning at the entrance of the yard sat a wrinkled old man, slowly cleaning out an equally old part. Without a