Black Hills

by Nora Roberts

  “Let me see how it looks on you.” She grabbed Tansy’s hand. “Fabulous. Perfect. I am good. Though he actually picked it himself, unless my mental shove actually worked.”

  “It’s why you were babbling this morning. You thought I was talking about Farley asking me to marry him. Not the e-mail.”

  “There was momentary confusion,” Lil allowed, “but no babbling.”

  “He told me, just now, how he’d planned to ask me last night. He had a bottle of champagne and candles. He was going to set the stage in my apartment.”

  “And instead he went to take care of family.”

  “Yes, he did.” Tansy’s eyes went damp. “That’s who he is, and that’s one of the reasons this ring’s on my finger. I figured it out. So he’s younger and paler than I am. He’s a good, good man. He’s my man. Lil? I’m going to marry Farley.”

  With a laughing hoot Lil grabbed Tansy to dance in a circle.

  “What the hell is this?” Matt demanded.

  “I told you it was a really good day.”

  “So the two of you are yelling and jumping?”

  “Yes.” Tansy ran to him, leaped, and nearly knocked him over with a hug. “I’m engaged. Look, look, look at my ring!”

  “Very nice.” He eased her back, out of his personal space, and smiled. “Congratulations.”

  “Oh! I’ve got to go show Mary. And Lucius. Well, mostly Mary.”

  When she ran off, Lil just grinned. “See? A really good day.”

  FAMILY CAME FIRST, Lil reminded herself and tried not to worry as she sat at her parents’ dining room table. Her mother wanted—insisted on—a celebrational family dinner, so she was where she should be. With them, and Farley and Tansy, with Lucy and Sam, who’d stood as Farley’s unofficial grandparents. And, of course, with Coop.

  But her mind kept turning back to the refuge. Security system up and running, she reminded herself. Matt and Lucius and two of the interns on-site.

  Everything was fine. They were fine, her animals were fine. But if something happened when she wasn’t there . . .

  As conversation buzzed around them, Coop leaned over and whispered in her ear. “Stop worrying.”

  “I’m trying.”

  “Try harder.”

  She lifted her wineglass and made sure she had a smile on her face.

  Late summer wedding. She tuned in. And here it was already April, so much to be done. Debates ran on the venue. The farm, the refuge. On the time. Afternoon or evening.

  Did he know she wasn’t there? Lil wondered. Would he try to hurt someone just to prove he could?

  Under the table, Coop took her hand and squeezed. Not supportive and lover-like, but cut it out.

  She kicked him, but pulled herself back. “If I get a vote, it’s for here at the farm, afternoon. That way we can party right through the evening. We’ll close the refuge for the day. There’s more room here, and if we have any sort of bad luck with the weather—”

  “Bite your tongue,” Jenna ordered.

  “Well, the house is more accommodating than the cabins.”

  “Close for the day?” Tansy pushed that single point. “Really?”

  “Come on, Tans. It’s not every day my best friend gets married.”

  “Oh, boy, we have to shop!” Jenna winked at Lucy. “Dresses, flowers, food, cake.”

  “We were thinking to keep it kind of simple,” Farley put in.

  To which Joe muttered, “Good luck, son.”

  “Simple’s no problem. But simple still has to be pretty and perfect.” Jenna emphasized the point by jabbing a finger in Joe’s arm. “I hope your mother can come out soon, Tansy, so we can put our heads together.”

  “There’s no stopping her. She’s called three times since I told her, and already has a stack of bride magazines.”

  “We’ll have a girl trip when she comes. Oh, this will be fun! Lucy, we have to have a shopping safari.”

  “I’m already there. Jenna, remember the flowers at Wendy Rearder’s daughter’s wedding? We can outdo that.”

  “Simple.” Sam rolled his eyes at Farley.

  “Before you women get too far along and start talking about releasing a hundred doves and six white horses—”

  “Horses.” Jenna interrupted her husband by clapping her hands together in delight. “Oh, we could do a horse and carriage. We could—”

  “Just hold on, Jenna. Farley’s looking pale.”

  “All he has to do is show up. You leave the rest to us,” Jenna told Farley.

  “Meanwhile,” Joe said, pointing a hushing finger at his wife. “Jenna and I talked about some practicalities. Now, the two of you might have something else in mind, or maybe you haven’t thought about it as yet. But Jenna and I want to give you three acres. Room enough for you to build a house, have a place of your own. Close enough to make it easy for both of you to get to work. That is, if you’re planning on staying on here at the farm, Farley, and Tansy’s staying on with Lil.”

  Farley stared. “But . . . the land should go to Lil, by rights.”

  “Don’t be an ass, Farley,” Lil said.

  “I . . . I don’t know what to say or how to say it.”

  “It’s something you’ll want to talk to your bride about,” Joe told him. “The land’s yours if you decide you want it. And no hard feelings if you decide you don’t.”

  “The bride has something to say.” Tansy rose, went first to Joe, then Jenna, to kiss them both. “Thank you. You’ve treated me like family since Lil and I were roommates in college. Now I am family. I can’t think of anything I’d like more than to have a home here near you, near Lil.” She beamed over at Farley. “I’m the luckiest woman in the world.”

  “I’d say that’s settled.” Joe reached up to close his hand over the one Tansy had on his shoulder. “First chance we get, we’ll go scout out that acreage.”

  Too overcome to speak, Farley only nodded. He cleared his throat. “I’m just gonna . . .” He rose, slipped into the kitchen.

  “Now we’ve got something interesting to talk about.” Sam rubbed his hands together. “We’ve got a house to build.”

  Jenna exchanged a look with Tansy as she got up and followed Farley.

  He’d gone straight through and stood on the porch, his hands braced on the rail. The rain Lil had scented that morning pattered the ground, soaked the fields waiting for plowing. He straightened when Jenna laid a hand on his back, then turned and hugged her hard. Hard.

  “Ma.”

  She made a little sound, weepy pleasure, as she pressed him close. He rarely called her that, and usually with a kind of joking tone when he did. But now that single word said everything. “My sweet boy.”

  “I don’t know what to do with all this happy. You used to say ‘Find your happy, Farley, and hold on to it.’ Now I’ve got so much I can’t hold it all. I don’t know how to thank you.”

  “You just did. Best thanks going.”

  “When I was a boy they said I’d never have anything, never amount to anything, never be anything. It was easy to believe them. It was harder to believe what you and Joe told me. Kept telling me. I could be whatever I wanted. I could have whatever I could earn. But you made me believe it.”

  “Tansy said she’s the luckiest woman in the world, and she’s pretty damn lucky. But I’m running neck-and-neck. I have both my kids close by. I can watch them make their lives. And I get to plan a wedding.” She drew back, patted his cheeks. “I’m going to be such a pain in the ass.”

  His grin came back. “I’m looking forward to it.”

  “You say that now. Wait until I’m nagging you brainless. Are you ready to go back? If you’re out here too long Sam and Joe will have designed your house before you get a chance to say whoa.”

  “Right now?” He swung an arm around her shoulders. “I’m ready for anything.”

  26

  Wicked, windy thunderstorms pounded through the night, hammered into the morning. Then it got nasty.

 
The first rattle of hail spat out like pea gravel, bouncing on the paths, chattering on the rooftops. Well-versed in spring weather, Lil ordered all vehicles that could fit under cover. She maneuvered her own truck through the mud as the golf balls began to ping.

  The animals had enough sense to take shelter, but she watched some of the interns racing around, laughing, scooping up handfuls of hail to toss. As if it were a party, she thought, and the slashes of lightning cracking the black sky were just an elaborate light show.

  She shook her head as she caught sight of Eric juggling three balls of hail, like a street performer while the cannon fire of thunder boomed.

  Someone, she thought, was going to get beaned.

  She cursed as a clump the size of a healthy peach slammed into the hood of her truck. Even as she squeezed the truck under the overhang on the storage shed she snarled at the new dent.

  Not laughing now, she noted, as interns scrambled for the nearest shelter. There would be more dents and dings, she knew. Shredded plantings and an unholy mess of ice to scrape and shovel. But for now, she was warm and dry and opted to wait it out in the truck.

  Until she saw a softball of ice wing into the back of one of the running interns, and pitch her forward into the mud.

  “Crap.”

  Lil was out and sprinting even as a couple of her other kids rushed to pick up the fallen.

  “Get her inside. Inside!” It was like being pelted by an angry baseball team.

  She grabbed the girl, half dragged, half carried her to the porch of her own cabin. They arrived wet and filthy, with the girl pale as the ice that battered the compound.

  “Are you hurt?”

  The girl shook her head, and wheezing, braced her hands on her knees. “Knocked the wind out of me.”

  “I bet.” Lil flipped through the jumbled data in her brain to find names for the two of the new crop of interns while thunder roared over the hills like stalking lions. “Just relax. Reed, go in and get Lena some water. Wipe your feet,” she added. For all the good it would do.

  “It happened so fast.” Lena shivered, and her eyes stared out of a face smeared with mud. “It was just like little ice chips, then ping-pong balls. And then . . .”

  “Welcome to South Dakota. We’ll have Matt take a look at you. Are you sure you’re not hurt?”

  “Um. No. Just sort of . . . wowed. Thanks, Reed.” She took the water bottle, drank deep. “Scared me. And still.” She looked past Lil to where the ice balls hammered the ground, and a vicious pitchfork of lightning hurled out of the clouds. “Weirdly cool.”

  “Remember that when we’re cleaning up. The hail won’t last long.” Already slowing, Lil judged. “Storm’s tracking west now.”

  “Really?” Lena blinked at her. “You can tell?”

  “The wind’s carrying it. You can use my shower. I’ll lend you some clothes. When it’s over, the rest of you report to the cabin. There’ll be plenty to do. Come on, Lena.”

  She took the girl upstairs, gestured toward the bathroom. “You can toss out your clothes. I’ll throw them in the wash.”

  “I’m sorry to be so much trouble. Taking a header in a hailstorm wasn’t the way I wanted you to notice me.”

  “Sorry?” Lil turned from where she dug fresh jeans and a sweatshirt out of her dresser.

  “I just mean we’ve been working mostly with Tansy and Matt since I got here. There hasn’t been a lot of opportunity to work with you directly with everything that’s going on.”

  “There will be.”

  “It’s just that you’re the reason I’m here. The reason I’m studying wildlife biology and conservation.”

  “Really?”

  “God, that sounds geeky.” Lena sat on the john to drag off her boots. “I saw that documentary on your work here. It was that three-part deal. I was home sick from school and really bored. Channel surfing, you know? And I hit the part about you and the refuge. I missed the other two parts, because—you know—back to school. But I got the DVD, the same one we sell at the gift shop. I got really into what you were doing, and what you said and what you were building here. I thought, That’s what I want to be when I grow up. My mother thought it was great, and that I’d change my mind a dozen times before college. But I didn’t.”

  Intrigued, Lil set the jeans, the sweatshirt, and a pair of warm socks on the bathroom counter. “That’s a lot from one documentary.”

  “You were so passionate,” Lena continued, rising to unzip her mud-died hoodie. “And so articulate and involved. I’d never been interested in science before. But you made it sound, I don’t know, sexy and smart and important. And now it sounds like I’m sucking up.”

  “How old were you?”

  “Sixteen. Up till then I thought I’d be a rock star.” She smiled and wiggled out of her wet jeans. “Not being able to sing or play a musical instrument didn’t seem to be a problem. Then I saw you on TV, and I thought, now that’s a rock star. And here I am, stripping in your bathroom.”

  “Your instructors gave you a very high rating when you applied for internship here.”

  Obviously unconcerned with modesty, Lena stood in her underwear and watched Lil with wide, hopeful eyes. “You read my file?”

  “It’s my place. I’ve noticed you work hard, and you listen well. You’re here on time every morning and you stay late when you’re needed. You don’t complain about the dirty work, and your written reports are thorough—if still a little fanciful. I’ve noticed you take time to talk to the animals. You ask questions. There may be a lot going on, and that’s cut into the one-on-one time I like to put into the intern program. But I noticed you before you took the header in the mud.”

  “Do you think I have what it takes?”

  “I’ll let you know at the end of the program.”

  “Scary, but fair.”

  “Go on and clean up.” She started to leave, hesitated. “Lena, what’s everyone saying about what’s going on? How are you guys dealing with it? You talk,” she said. “I was an intern once. I remember.”

  “Everyone’s a little freaked. But at the same time, it doesn’t feel really real.”

  “It’d be good if you all stuck together. As much as you can. Head over next door when you’re done.”

  Lil went down to toss the clothes in the wash, ordered herself to remember to put them in the dryer when they were clean. While thunder, distant now, echoed, she thought about the girl up in her shower, and realized Lena reminded her of Carolyn.

  The idea gave her a quick shiver before she went out to start cleaning up from the storm.

  AT THE FARM, Coop and Sam let the horses out to pasture. Sam limped a bit, and maybe always would, but he seemed sturdy and steady enough. Enough that Coop didn’t feel the need to watch his grandfather’s every step.

  Together they watched the young foals play while the adults grazed.

  “At least we hadn’t gotten any of the spring crop in. Could’ve been worse.” Bending, Sam picked up a baseball-sized hunk. “How’s that arm of yours?”

  “I’ve still got it.”

  “Let’s see.”

  Amused, Coop took the ice, set, then winged it high and long. “How’s yours?”

  “Might be better suited for the infield these days, but I put it where I throw it.” Sam plucked up another ball, pointed to a pine, then smashed the ice dead center of the trunk. “I still got my eyes.”

  “Runner on second’s taking a long lead. Batter fakes a bunt, takes the strike. Runner goes.” Coop scooped up the next ball of ice, bulleted it to his imaginary third baseman. “And he’s out.”

  Even as Sam chuckled and reached for more ice, Lucy’s voice