The Thunder Rolls

by Bethany Campbell

  She sighed and laid her cheek against his chest. “Yes. Hold me. All night long.”

  She kept on his big shirt. He kept on his jeans. He turned out the light, then opened the bedroom door slightly, so the light from the hall kept the room from total darkness. He climbed into bed beside her and took her in his arms.

  She started to cry, now that it was all over.

  “It’s all right,” he said. “Get it out of your system. I love you. I’ve got you.”

  At last, her tears spent, she lay in his arms, too exhausted to sleep. “Ken?”

  “Yes, sugar?”

  She took a deep breath. It hurt, because her chest still ached from crying. “Are you—will you tell me about the guns? About you and guns? I couldn’t believe he hadn’t shot you. I still can’t.”

  She laid her face against the hardness of his bare shoulder. He was silent a moment, then expelled his breath in a long, harsh sigh.

  “It’s not—” he paused for words “—real nice. But I should tell you. You should know.”

  She waited for him to begin. She put her hand on his chest to feel the comforting rhythm of his heart. He turned his head to kiss her on the hair, then lay staring up at the darkness.

  “I grew up in West Texas. I had me a daddy about like Gordon. He was a ranch hand. He used to—misuse my mama. And us kids. I was the oldest. I’d catch it worst.”

  He paused again. Nora could feel the reluctance in him, the cost it took for him to speak. “I got to hate him. And—my mother puzzled me—I didn’t understand why she never tried to make him stop. She didn’t defend us. She didn’t defend herself. Never. I resented it.”

  He fell silent for another moment. Nora felt his heart-beat speed, grow harder. “Now, I was big for my age and good at most ranch work, which was good, because I could earn money. But the thing I was best at was shootin’.

  “When I was fourteen, we moved again. We were always movin’. He lied about my age so I could quit school and work. Well, he’d always drunk a lot, but he started gettin’ particular bad.

  “One night, I just had a bellyful of it. He came home and started layin’ into my mother. I told him to stop, and he slammed me clear across the room and into a wall. I thought for a minute he’d killed me. Then he started after her again.

  “So I got up, I went in my room, and I came out with a gun. And I said, ‘If you don’t stop, I’ll shoot you.’ He laughed. He said, ‘You don’t got the guts, boy.’”

  Nora rose slightly in bed and stared down at his shadowed face. Even in the darkness she could see the pain etched into it. She touched his cheek and a muscle leaped beneath her fingertips.

  “So I shot,” he said matter-of-factly. “I didn’t shoot to kill him, just to stop him. I shot his ear off, is what. He fell down, screamin’ I’d made him deaf.”

  He swallowed. “My mother came over to me, and she looked at me like she hated me. I said, ‘All I wanted was for him to stop. For once, I wanted him to stop.’”

  “She just stood there, and she looked at me. He was still on the floor, yellin’. And then she said to me, ‘He is my husband. And your daddy.’ She slapped me as hard as she could. ‘Get out,’ she said. ‘And don’t ever come back.’ I did, and I didn’t. I got out. I never went back. I never had much stomach for guns since, though.”

  She shook her head. “Ken,” she said softly. “Oh, Ken.” She touched his cheek again.

  He reached up and took her hand in his, letting both rest on the pillow, lacing his fingers through hers. “It was a long time ago,” he said. “It don’t—bother me no more. Anymore.”

  She bit her lip and tears stung her eyes. He squeezed her hand.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

  “No,” he said, squeezing her hand again. He put his other hand to her hair and stroked it. “I don’t want you feelin’ sorry. I’m lucky. I found this ranch, I found the McKinneys. Most important, I found you and Rory. I aim to take care of you. I don’t want the old mistakes made again. And they won’t be.”

  “No,” she said, laying her hand on his heart again. “They won’t be.”

  He gave her a searching look. “I’ve heard tell that some men fall in love with a woman ’cause she reminds ’em of their mother. Not me. What I liked about you is you weren’t like her at all. You have fight in you. Independence. The courage to leave a bad situation. You love that boy. And you’re strong for him.”

  “I love you,” she said, her throat tight. She bent and kissed him. He folded her in his arms and kissed her back, long and deeply.

  Then he held her, cradling her head against his chest. “Nora,” he said, “I know you’re worried. You’re worried about how Rory will take this. This is going to be hard on him. And Dottie. But we’re going to get through it. Together. I promise you that. We’ll get through.”

  She rubbed her cheek against the crisp hair of his chest. She kissed him over his heart. “Yes,” she whispered. “We will. Together. We will.”

  His fingers touched the top button on the shirt she wore. There was questioning in his touch.

  “Yes,” she said, her lips against the beat of his heart. “Yes.”

  They made love, slowly, passionately, intently. It was a way of promising each other that they would indeed survive and endure together, that they would triumph over the past, and that they would create a future as strong and good as love itself.

  THE TOWN WONDERED and supposed and gossiped. Then it wondered and supposed and gossiped even more.

  It wondered how Dottie faced her son’s death with such strength and even something that approached serenity. Nora never told Dottie the uglier details of the night that Gordon died. Ken and Cal vowed never to tell her, either.

  Instead, Nora told Dottie only that there had been an altercation, and that fortunately nobody was seriously hurt. But when the police came, Gordon, frightened, tried to run away and was hit.

  She told her, as well, what the sheriff had said. That Gordon, dying, might have told the police things that would do great good. He might have given them the information they needed to erase something genuinely evil from the world.

  And finally Nora told Dottie that Gordon had spoken repeatedly of his mother at the end. He had wanted her to know he was sorry and that he had been praying a lot.

  “He died praying, Dottie,” Nora said, her arm around the other woman. “That’s how he died, with a prayer on his lips.”

  Dottie did cry, but the town never saw her do so. She cried in private. Then she dried her tears. Dottie was not the sort to indulge in tears for long.

  She stood straight and tall, and she kept her chin high. She told Nora she must do it for Gordon, out of respect for the good he had done in his life. After all, she said, he had been her joy when he was a baby. He had brought Nora into her life, and he had been part of Rory’s creation.

  Somewhere, Dottie believed, the good part of Gordon still lived and would always live, at peace at last. For the sake of that goodness, she would go on. From the strength of that goodness, she would draw strength.

  THE TOWN SUPPOSED that Rory took Gordon’s death so much in stride because he was young, and he had not lived with his father for some time—Gordon was probably a peripheral figure in his life.

  In truth, Nora and Ken and Dottie, all three, worked as hard as they could with the child, trying to make him understand that there had been good in his father, and that Gordon’s death was an unfortunate accident.

  Ken took Rory fishing again, alone this time, and told him about the complex feelings he’d had about his own father. Rory listened intently, understanding that sometimes other children had parents that they feared. He began to understand, as well, that when children see too much violence, their own feelings can become violent.

  “You just try to work with those feelings,” Ken told him. “You try to make something good out of it all, instead of something bad.”

  Rory nodded. He even talked a bit to Ken about his
feelings, feelings he’d never discussed with Nora and Dottie.

  Although Dottie was dubious, Nora insisted on taking Rory to talk to a psychologist, to make sure that the boy wouldn’t be too confused by too many emotions. After all, he had to deal not only with his father’s death, but also with the prospect of a stepfather.

  The psychologist said he’d like to talk to Rory once a week for the next few months, but smiled and said to Ken and Nora, “You’ve very lucky. That little guy’s got his head screwed on pretty straight. I think he’ll handle things.”

  Nora had been so happy, she’d kissed Ken on the cheek, right there in the doctor’s office.

  TOWN GOSSIP FLOURISHED. What had really happened at the lake house that night? Nora, Ken and Cal all remained tight-lipped, and the police refused to release anything except the barest information.

  New vistas of gossip opened when, near the end of July, authorities broke up a large gunrunning ring, including several men from Lubbock—one of them Gordon’s old partner, Charlie Foss, another a wealthy liquor store owner named Eduardo Chessman.

  Was it true that Gordon Jones, with virtually his dying breath, had given police the information to crack the case? Dottie held her head a bit higher. Rory smiled more often than he used to. But none of them—Dottie, Rory, Nora, Ken, Cal—ever said for sure.

  So that gossip, too, had its day and died. Other topics captured the town’s interest. Bubba Gibson and Billie Jo Dumont were together again—even though there was something haunted in Billie Jo’s eyes that hadn’t been there before.

  Bubba would walk down the street in broad daylight with his arm around Billie Jo, calling her his love woozle. How long would Bubba play the aging Casanova? How long would Billie Jo settle for being the Other Woman? How long would Mary Gibson put up with the scandal of it all?

  And was the sheriff, Wayne Jackson, developing a gleam in his dark eye for a certain musically talented young lady of Crystal Creek? Had Shirley Jean Ditmars had her thighs liposuctioned? It certainly seemed that something unnatural had happened to them.

  Oh, yes, even in a town as small as Crystal Creek, the opportunites for gossip went on forever.

  KEN HAD NORA, Rory and Dottie to his house for supper. He was always careful these days to include Rory and Dottie as much as possible. It often made romance awkward, but Nora loved him so much for doing it that it sometimes brought tears to her eyes.

  Serena had made another of her famous pizzas, and Cal had saddled up Grumpy, so that Rory could ride a real rodeo horse.

  The meal over, dessert finished, Rory went back outside to contemplate this most fabulous beast.

  Dottie sighed and pushed her chair away from the table. “It was wonderful.” She smiled, patting her stomach with her freckled hand. “Just wonderful.”

  She looked from Nora to Ken, then back to Nora again. “And I want to tell you something.”

  Ken and Nora, still lingering over their coffee, looked at her expectantly.

  “The two of you are wonderful,” Dottie said. “Nora, I’ve told you more than once about how I feel about you. That I love you as much as if you were my own daughter. There’s nobody better than my Nora.”

  Nora colored slightly at the praise. Ken flashed her a private look that said, That’s right. There’s nobody better than my Nora. There was love in his eyes and pride in the curve of his half smile.

  Dottie turned to Ken. Her face grew more serious. “But I’ve never told you, Ken.” She paused and clenched her hands together in her lap, but her eyes did not leave his. “I’ve lost a son. Nothing can replace him. But you’ve been so good to Nora and to Rory—and bless you, even to me—that I feel like God has given me a second son. You.”

  Tears rose in Dottie’s eyes, but she blinked them back.

  “I—I have to say again that—that I don’t think of you as replacing Gordon. No one can. But I think of you as a son because I think of Nora as a daughter, and you are as much a part of her—the two of you are as much a part of each other—as heaven intended man and woman to be.”

  She swallowed, then lifted her head higher, still keeping her gaze trained on his. “There are people in this town,” she said, her voice tight, “that will say, ‘Dottie Jones is an unfortunate woman. Look at what life’s given her.’”

  She tossed her head, a rebellious gesture. “I’m here to tell you that’s not so. I’m a lucky woman. Much has been taken from me. But look what’s been given to me. Nora—Rory—and now you, who love them so much.”

  The tears shone afresh in her eyes, this time in spite of her blinking. “You love them so,” she said, nodding, “that I know they’re always safe with you. Safe and cherished and blessed. I could die happy this moment, knowing that they’ve found you. And for that, I love you.”

  She ducked her head and angrily brushed away her tears. “There,” she muttered. “I’ve said it. I’ve been meaning to say it. And after I’ve gone and said all that, the least you could do is come give me a kiss, you big galoot.”

  She dug into her pocket, drew out a handkerchief and blew her nose, making a comic toot that broke the tension. She stuffed the handkerchief back into her pocket, then stared at Ken. “Well?” she demanded.

  He looked thunderstruck, a man unaccustomed to emotions suddenly confronted by unexpected hordes of them. Yet he looked touched, as well. Wordlessly he rose and went to Dottie. He took her hands and drew her up to stand. He gazed down at her, tenderness in his eyes, but something troubled playing on his lips.

  “No,” Dottie said tartly, as if reading his mind. “I don’t expect you to say ‘I love you’ back to me. It took you five years to work up the nerve to say it to her.”

  She gave Nora a short, ironic nod. “So,” Dottie said, staring up at Ken, “just give me a little kiss. And a hug, if you’re feeling generous.”

  Ken bent and kissed her cheek. Dottie smiled shakily, then kissed him back soundly on the sharp line of his jaw.

  He put his arms around her, and hugged her. Nora saw the emotion passing over both their faces and bit her lip to keep it from quivering. She, too, blinked back tears.

  Instead of breaking his embrace, Ken hugged Dottie to him more tightly. She put her arms around his neck and hugged him back.

  “Let’s put the pain behind us,” Dottie whispered in a husky voice. “Because there’s joy ahead. My Nora’s going to be happy. My Rory, too. Take care of them always.”

  “Always,” Ken assured her, hugging her again.

  “Grandma!” Rory called from the porch, “Come out here—Cal’s gonna let me ride with him, and we’re gonna rope a calf! Tell Mom and Ken to come, too.”

  Dottie sighed, a long, shivering exhalation. Then she drew back from Ken. “Now we’re all going to have to look at that fool horse again. As if I never saw a horse before! That boy’s so taken, I’m afraid he’ll turn into a horse himself. Well, let me go first. The two of you take a minute for yourselves.”

  She gestured for Nora to rise and come to her. Nora did, and Dottie reached for her hand and put it into Ken’s.

  “Another thing,” she said with false sternness. “The two of you have got to take more time alone. I’m going to insist on it. But for now—” she looked up at Ken and gave him a conspiratorial pat on the arm “—you’d better at least steal a kiss from her. I know you want to. You’ve been eating her up with your eyes every time you look at her.”

  “Grandma!” Rory’s voice was taut with excitement and impatience. “Come on! And get Ken and Mom, too.”

  “I’m coming,” Dottie called, and she started for the door. “But give Ken and your mother a few minutes. They’re busy. All right?”

  “All right,” Rory said with a shade of disgust. “But you come, okay?”

  Dottie smiled, almost to herself, opened the door and went outside, leaving Ken and Nora alone.

  He put his arm around her shoulders.

  She wound her arm around his waist and looked up at him happily.

  He smiled.
She smiled back.

  Neither said anything because they had reached the stage where things didn’t always have to be said to be understood.

  He bent and kissed her, just as he’d been aching to do all evening. He kissed her so long and so deeply, they both grew dizzy and desirous with it. They could not get enough of kissing.

  But then there was a clattering on the porch steps, and they knew too much time had passed, and Rory was impatient for them to come watch him. They broke away and looked at each other, almost shyly, almost guiltily.

  Rory burst through the door. “Mom—Ken—come on—come see.”

  “We’re on our way,” Ken said with a rueful sigh. One arm around Nora, he started for the door.

  But Rory stood still, blocking their path and gazing past them. “Hey, Ken?” he said, his voice quizzical.

  “What?”

  Rory squinted at the dining room table. At its center, in the midst of the clutter of dishes, stood an oversize pot with a single clover plant growing in it, large and thriving and ready to blossom. Its leaves were verdant, and its buds were parting to show lavender petals.

  Rory frowned. “I meant to ask you. How come you got an old clover on your table? Does it mean something or something?”

  Ken looked at Nora, then smiled. Keeping one arm around her, he put his other hand on Rory’s shoulder and started to guide the boy back outside.

  “That clover? It’s a long story…son.”

  ISBN: 978-1-4268-2698-6

  THE THUNDER ROLLS

  Copyright © 1993 by Harlequin Books B.V.

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario M3B 3K9, Canada.