by Lisa Jackson
“Mom?” Cody asked.
“You go back to the house,” she said. “You know better than to get up in the middle of the night.”
“But I heard Runt—”
“Take him with you.”
Cody looked at his mother and then back to Chase. “Maybe I should stay.”
“I can handle this,” Dani said angrily. “Go back, to the house. If I don’t come up in half an hour, call the sheriff and tell him that one of Caleb Johnson’s men is trespassing!”
Cody’s eyes rounded in the darkness, but he did as his mother had commanded. With a short, sharp whistle at the dog, he was gone.
“You don’t have to get melodramatic,” Chase said angrily, wading out of the creek. “I get the message.”
“About time.”
“Dani, look. I only want these samples to prove that Caleb’s trying to force you off your land.”
“How?”
“I’m not sure, yet. But I will be soon. Can you trust me for a few more days?”
“You’re pushing it, Chase. Why didn’t you tell me you needed some more samples?”
“I thought that was pretty obvious since you ruined the last ones. And I thought you knew I needed these—”
“So you had to come trooping out here in the middle of the night?” she mocked, pursing her lips together. “You could have told me—last night or this morning. Or didn’t it occur to you?”
“I wanted to wait until I was sure.”
“Sure?” she repeated, her fury causing her to shake. “Of what? That I’d fall for you?”
Chase swore angrily. “Didn’t I stand up for you yesterday?”
“Yes,” she said tightly, trying to hang on to her rage. But seeing Chase in the moonlight, his shirt fluttering open, his straw-blond hair mussed in the night breeze did strange things to her.
“Didn’t last night mean anything?” he asked softly.
She had to remind herself that she was outraged. “I don’t know. You tell me.”
“Nothing’s changed.”
“Except that you snuck over here again, without my knowledge, and started digging in my creek. It’s not that I really care if you’re on my land anymore,” she admitted, “it’s all this sneaking around and mystery that I don’t understand. From the first time I saw you, you haven’t been straight with me.”
“I have.”
“Then what the hell are you doing here?”
“Looking for proof.”
“Of what?”
He stared straight into her eyes. “That Caleb knowingly contaminated your water.”
“What!”
“Look, Dani. Just go home and go to bed. I’ll contact you when I know more,” he promised, as he climbed the short rise of the bank to stand next to her.
“But . . . wait a minute. What are you saying? Caleb contaminated my water.”
“The creek.”
“With what?”
“Dioxin.”
“Dioxin?” she repeated, incredulous. “ls . . . is that why you were asking me about herbicides earlier today?”
“Yes.”
“You thought I’d done it?”
“No, I just wanted to be sure.”
The weight of what he’d said to her made her lean against the trunk of a tree. “But . . . how?”
“The other day—the day you destroyed my first samples—I found an old five-gallon drum of something buried in the creekbed, just on the other side of the fence. I had it checked. It was dioxin, but what I don’t know yet is why the drum was buried, who buried it, and whether it was done for malicious intent.”
“But you think so,” she whispered, shivering with dread.
“Didn’t you say some of your cattle died last year?”
“Yes, but—”
“Did they drink from the creek?”
“Of course.”
“And the rest of the herd?”
“Wasn’t affected. A few got sick, but they recovered. You know, I had this feeling, I guess you’d call it, that Johnson was behind the poisoning, but I wasn’t sure. Oh, God,” she whispered, not really wanting to believe that Caleb Johnson was so desperate he would stoop to killing her livestock.
“I’m still not sure that Caleb was involved. But I’m working on it.”
She stared up at him and noticed his blue eyes had darkened to the color of midnight as he walked over to her. “You know, I really want to believe you, to trust that you’re on my side.”
“But you don’t?”
“I didn’t say that,” she whispered. He jerked off his gloves and touched the underside of her jaw. In the moonlight her hazel eyes looked silver. “It’s . . . it’s just that I don’t really know what to think. Ever since you’ve come here, nothing has made a lot of sense.”
“Just trust me.”
“Oh, God, Chase, I want to!” she said, her throat tight as his cool lips touched hers. Willingly, she wound her arms around his neck and sighed when he parted her robe to touch her breast. Her thick hair streamed down her back in soft waves of brown and gold.
“I love you, Dani,” Chase admitted against her neck. “Just remember that I love you—”
“Mom!” Cody’s voice, distant but worried, cut through the night.
“Oh, Lord, I told him to call the sheriff, didn’t I?” Pushing Chase aside, she clutched the lapels of her robe in one hand. “I’m coming,” she called before turning back to Chase. “Just don’t lie to me,” she whispered. “For God’s sake, Chase, don’t lie to me.”
And then she was off, running through the rough field and up to the house. She glanced back once. Chase had walked out of the trees and was standing, feet wide apart, shirt billowing in the breeze, and watching her. Her heart squeezed painfully at the sight of him and though she stumbled once, she continued to the house.
By the time she reached the back porch, she was out of breath and shaken.
“Are you okay?” Cody asked, his eyes round with worry.
“Of course I am, sport,” she said, hugging the boy. “I can take care of myself.”
“But that guy works for Johnson.”
“I know, but I think he’s different than most of Johnson’s men—hey, you didn’t call the sheriff, did you?”
“Not yet.”
“Good.” She sighed and hugged her son, but Cody’s expression was puzzled.
“How can you be sure? That he’s different, I mean?”
“I don’t know. Maybe intuition.” She planted a kiss on the top of Cody’s head. “Now you go upstairs and go to bed, okay?”
“Okay,” Cody said begrudgingly as they walked through the screen door.
Dani lingered at the door for a minute, staring down toward the creek and squinting into the darkness as a cloud passed over the moon.
Chase was gone, or at least she couldn’t see him. Involuntarily she placed her fingers to her still-swollen lips and wondered if trusting Chase would only cause her heartache.
* * *
She didn’t hear from him for the rest of the week. Deciding that he’d probably come to his senses and had just given her some cock-and-bull story about the drum of dioxin, she tried to ignore the pain in her heart and told herself that it was all for the best that she hadn’t seen him again.
“So why have you thought about him day in and day out for the past week?” she grumbled, driving back from Martinville with a load of seed grain for the October planting of winter wheat.
The pickup bounced as she tried to avoid the most severe potholes in the rutted lane. Before the weather changed, she’d have to buy several yards of gravel and spread it over the rough road.
“Just one more expense,” she told herself. One of a hundred that she couldn’t afford.
Chase’s Jeep was parked near the house. Dani’s pulse jumped at the sight of the dusty vehicle. Why was he here? Did he know that she’d be gone?
She got out of the pickup warily and heard the sound of voices near the barn. Following the
noise, she rounded the corner of the house and saw Chase and Cody playing one-on-one basketball on the far side of the barn where Cody had hung a hoop two years earlier. The netting had all but rotted off the metal rim, but Cody still used the basket for practice. Both Chase and Cody were into the game, to the point that neither one had heard or seen her arrive. In the shade of an ancient apple tree that stood near the back porch, Dani watched as Chase played with Cody, gave the boy pointers, and in the end, let him win.
“Good match,” he said, his low voice drifting up to the house as he clapped Cody on the boy’s bare back.
“Aw, you let me win.”
“You think so?”
“Didn’t ya?” Cody asked, his brown eyes crinkling at the corners, his sweaty, heat-reddened face beaming up at the tall man.
Chase was wiping the sweat from his face with his T-shirt and his taut muscles rippled in the hot summer sun. His blond hair hung limply over his forehead in dark, wet strands. “How about a drink?” he asked the boy.
“Sure, Mom’s got some lemonade and maybe a couple bottles of Coke.” Cody started sprinting toward the house before he noticed his mother. “Hey . . . when did you get here?”
“Just a couple of minutes ago.” Dani cocked her head in Chase’s direction. “What about him?”
“Oh, I don’t know. A while.”
“I’m surprised you let him stay.”
“Why not? You do,” Cody said, before dashing to the house.
Dani was still watching Cody’s vanishing act and wondering what to do about it when Chase approached. He saw the vexed expression clouding her clear eyes. “Don’t worry about him,” Chase suggested, cocking his head in the direction of the house as Cody sprinted up the steps and ran inside. “He’s a good kid.” Sweat was still trickling down his neck.
“But he’s growing up.”
“They all have a habit of doing that.”
“I know,” she whispered. “But sometimes it just seems to come too fast.”
Chase draped a familiar arm around her shoulders. “I don’t know a parent who would disagree with you.”
“How did you convince him to let you stay?”
“That wasn’t so easy,” Chase drawled, offering her a lazy smile. “He wasn’t too keen on me showing up.”
“I’ll bet not.”
“But I told him I was a friend of yours.”
“Oh, great.”
“Yeah, that wasn’t the smartest thing I’d done. But I noticed he was packing around a basketball and I offered to show him how the game was played.”
“And?”
“He didn’t think he needed a teacher.”
Dani laughed. How many times had she seen Cody’s stubborn streak surface?
“But I wasn’t about to take no for an answer. I wanted to wait for you. So I offered to play him one-on-one for the privilege of staying.”
“And he agreed?” Dani was surprised.
“Not exactly.”
“Well?”
Chase’s grin broadened. “He wanted to play for a dollar a game.”
“Oh, God,” she groaned.
Chase squeezed her shoulders and wrapped his T-shirt around his neck. “Don’t worry. He didn’t take the shirt off my back. See, I’ve still got it.” He grinned and his eyes sparkled with the afternoon sunlight. “And don’t bother with a lecture, I gather he already had one.”
“Apparently it didn’t work.” She pursed her lips and started for the house.
Chase’s fingers tightened around her arm. “Don’t say anything to him.”
“Why not?”
“’Cause part of the deal was that I wasn’t supposed to let you know anything about it. And,” he smiled to himself, “I think he learned his lesson.”
“Oh, no,” Dani whispered. “How much does he owe you?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“Yes, I do! He’s my son and—”
“And I think his gambling days are over. Let it lie.”
Dani let out a sigh of frustration. “All right. This time. But if he ever so much as—”
“He won’t.”
“You sound so sure of yourself.”
“I am. It’s a lesson my pa taught me when I was just a little older than Cody. We were playing cards with a neighbor and Dad let me bet against him. I kept pressing my bets and I lost to the point that I owed the guy over two hundred dollars. I spent that whole summer working off my debt doing yard work for the neighbor.”
“And regretting every minute of the card game.”
“You got it.”
“So how is Cody going to pay you back?”
“He doesn’t have to. I let him off the hook this time. But I doubt if you’ll ever have trouble with him gambling over his head again.”
“I hope you’re right.”
Cody returned with three glasses of lemonade, downed his and after asking permission, took off on his bike to visit the Anders brothers.
“Don’t bother them if they’re working,” Dani said as the boy hopped on his ten-speed.
“I won’t! I already called. Jonathon wants me to go fishin’ with him.” Then he pedaled out of sight with Runt galloping behind the back wheel.
Chase leaned against the fence under the shade of the apple tree. “He’s a good boy,” he observed, finishing his drink. “You worry about him too much.”
Dani swirled her ice cubes in her glass and stared across the fields to the creek. “Something I just can’t help.”
She felt Chase’s hand on her shoulder, his fingers gentle as they forced her to turn and face him.
“Have you wondered why I stayed away this past week?” he asked.
“I thought you’d changed your mind.”
“Nope. First, I didn’t want Caleb to get too suspicious. If he gets wind of the fact that I found that drum of dioxin, he’ll cover his tracks.”
“So that wasn’t just a story.”
“What? The herbicide?”
She nodded.
“No. But I’m still doing some checking with the agriculture department and the extension office. I want to make sure I know where I stand before I confront Caleb.”
“I see.”
He studied the doubts in her eyes and then let out a long breath of air. “Besides, I had to stay away because I wanted to give you some time to think things through, to realize that I was sincere. I thought you’d come to the same conclusion that I have; that we love each other and should be together.”
“Like some fairy-tale romance,” she countered.
He grimaced and leaned over the fence. “Like two sensible people would. You can’t tell me you haven’t thought about it.”
“To tell you the truth, I haven’t thought about much else,” she admitted.
“And?”
She sighed and lifted a shoulder. “I think we should just give it a little time, that’s all. I—I want to be sure this time.”
“I thought you realized that I’m not like your ex-husband,” he said softly.
She flinched and bit her lower lip. “And I won’t hurt you or Cody.”
She forced a trembling smile and looked into his eyes. They were a clear ocean-blue that seemed to see into the shadowed corners of her soul. “I’d like to marry you,” she admitted huskily. “But I can’t. Not yet. I just need a little time to think things through.”
“I’ll be here about two more weeks,” he said.
“And then?”
He raked his fingers through his hair. “Then it will be near the first of September. I have another job to go to.”
“In Idaho?”
Shaking his head, he stared across the fields and watched the grazing cattle. “Central Oregon. Then I’m back in Boise.”
She ran her fingers along the top rail of the fence and shivered despite the heat. “And what about Caleb Johnson?”
“I don’t know.”
“You told me part of your deal with him was to get me to sell off my land.”
“He’d like that. For the final twenty-five percent.”
“And . . . and do you think that by marrying me you could convince me to sell my land and move to Boise with you?”
His brow creased and impatiently he ran a hand over his tight jaw. “You still don’t trust me, do you?”
“I want to.”
“But it’s impossible?” he said, his temper flaring.
“I’m just trying to be cautious.”
Closing his eyes, he tried to count to ten. He got lost at three. “Son of a bitch!” he whispered through clenched teeth and began pacing along the fence line. “You don’t trust Caleb and with good reason, and I’m convinced that he’d do just about anything to get you to move off this land, but for crying out loud, Dani, I am not asking you to marry me because of Caleb Johnson! Or my company! As far as I’m concerned, he can keep the final twenty-five percent of the company. He’s in a minority position and will have no authority! I can do as I goddamn please!”
He walked up to her and with his face twisted in anger, took hold of her shoulders. “And what I want, lady, is you! I’ve waited and been patient and asked you nicely to marry me, and you’ve pussy-footed around the issue, as if I’ve got some dark ulterior motive. Now I realize that you have your reasons to doubt me, but dammit, I love you!”
His lips came down on hers hungrily and his strong arms wrapped around her so tightly and possessively that she was barely able to breathe. He moaned into her mouth and his broad hands covered her back, pulling her close to him, against the hard wall of his chest and between the muscular lengths of his legs.
“Dear God, Dani,” he whispered into her hair, his breath ragged and torn, his heart thundering in his chest. “Just say yes.”
She swallowed hard, looking into his deep blue eyes and, with a trembling smile, nodded. “Yes, Chase,” she said irrationally. “I’ll . . . I’ll marry you.”
“Thank God.” A weary grin stretched from one side of his face to the other and he kissed her again, softly this time. “I’ve spent the last week lying awake at night and wondering what I’d do if you turned me down.”
“And what did you decide?”
His smile turned wicked. “It was simple. I was going to ask Jenna Peterson to watch Cody and then I was going to kidnap you and take you to a mountain cabin and hold you hostage until you agreed to become my wife.”
