Hannah murmured an acknowledgment, mulling how much his answer revealed about Dax. He wasn’t impressed by the trips to Europe or the country club or even the obvious sharing of their wealth. But he saw their contributions to the local economy as a kind of loyalty. And the individual efforts of Mrs. Wendlow’s quiet generosity and Mr. Wendlow’s working to help fellow Shakespeare County residents made them okay in Dax’s mind.
He judged, and he used tough standards. But not the world’s standards. Not money or prestige or power or privilege. He judged on loyalty and generosity and pitching in when you’re needed.
The awareness of being watched broke across her thoughts like a wave. She looked up to find Dax had turned his back to the railing; he was resting his elbows on it behind him and unabashedly studying her. Without allowing herself a chance to think about it, she lifted the camera and snapped a picture. No fiddling with the focus or fine-tuning exposure. When that frame was developed she might have nothing. But then again, she might have something . . . special.
He said nothing about it, only, “We’d best get going. Light’s going to fade fast now. Won’t be enough, pretty soon.”
“Yes,” she agreed.
But as they started the steep climb, she wished she’d asked if he meant the light Theresa and Will needed for their project, the light she needed for photographs or something else entirely.
* * * *
“You and your dad seem to be getting along okay.” Theresa pulled out a notebook to copy the information on the plaques describing the plants.
“Sure,” Will said.
“That’s good. Even with—I mean, last week you didn’t seem to like Hannah much.”
“I like her okay, I guess. But I don’t like everybody marrying my dad off to her with their gossip.”
“Oh.” Theresa tucked her hair behind her ear.
“It’s okay now. They’re friends.” He didn’t know why he felt a desire to explain it to her, but he found himself repeating, “Friends.”
She gave him a soft look that made him feel his knees might melt. “You really think so, Will?”
“Yeah.” He said it more sharply than he meant to, but she didn’t get upset. And she didn’t argue.
“Okay.” She bent her head over her notebook. “Can you read off that last sentence to me?”
He read the words describing how juniper smelled on a campfire, which was pretty lame because how it smelled didn’t matter in the mountains on a cold night. But his mind wasn’t on that, anyhow.
“Oh, here, this will be good.” She picked up a twig some passerby had broken off the bush and put it between the back pages of her notebook. “You’re my witness I didn’t pick it, okay?”
“Yeah, sure. What you said before, about my dad and Hannah—you don’t think they’re friends?”
“I didn’t say that. It’s just . . .”
“Just what?”
“Have you noticed how he looks at her? Especially when he thinks she isn’t looking. It’s exactly the way Hugh Grant looked at Emma Thompson.”
“Who?”
“Hugh Grant in Sense and Sensibility. The movie Mrs. Henratty showed us in English last spring, remember?”
Hell, yes, he remembered. “That guy? The one who kept falling over his words and couldn’t hold still? My dad’s nothing like him.”
“Oh, no, I’m not saying that. But there’s something in your dad’s eyes. Well, maybe I’m wrong. You certainly know him better than I do.”
“I know him better than anybody, and he and Hannah are friends, that’s all.” But he’d pay closer attention to his father’s eyes when Hannah was around.
“Okay. It’s kind of a shame, though.”
“Why?”
“Well, she’s nice and your dad’s been alone for so long.”
“He hasn’t been alone.”
“Oh, I know, but you’ll be going off to school in a couple years, and then he’ll really be alone.”
Will hadn’t thought of that. Sure, he’d envisioned going to college, planned on it, in fact. But the vague images he’d conjured had always been of himself at some movie set college—swinging from a Mickey Rooneyish atmosphere of football games and tree-lined paths to an Animal House-like series of escapades. He’d never considered what his father would do when he went to college.
Run the Circle CR, of course. By himself? His dad would have to do all the chores he did now, plus Will’s. And face it, his dad wasn’t getting any younger.
“He can hire a hand to help out,” he said out loud.
But what stuck wasn’t the idea of his father doing double chores. It was his father sitting alone, with no one to talk to at suppertime.
* * * *
Dax pulled into the circular drive in front of the Wendlows’ sprawling, multilevel home and stopped in front of the double doors with the hidden lighting and the bench flanked by pots of chrysanthemums.
“Thank you, Mr. Randall, for taking us up to Shell Canyon and for supper and all.”
“You’re welcome, Theresa.”
While Hannah and Theresa said good-night, Dax gave his son a significant look, and Will slid out of his seat and went around to open Theresa’s door.
“Will,” Dax said. The boy leaned over and peered in the still-open car door. “We’ll wait for you over there.”
Dax eased the car a short way farther around the circle, then pulled off to the side into a puddle of shadow and parked.
He stared straight ahead. The lighting caught his and Hannah’s reflections in the windshield, curving their images and making it seem they sat so close they nearly touched, instead of with as much of the seat between them as Hannah could manage. With the engine off, it seemed incredibly quiet. So quiet, he thought he heard Hannah’s breathing, could almost imagine the sound of fabric brushing against her soft skin as her breasts rose and fell.
He watched the sweet, slow movement in the reflection and his gut burned.
“That was nice of you.”
At the first sound of Hannah’s voice he jerked guiltily. Friends, he’d promised her. Platonic, she’d said. Not sitting next to her lusting after her. Not with all his blood and sense headed south so none remained to fuel his brain cells and he didn’t have a clue what she was talking about. How many times had that happened today? More than he liked.
“What?”
“Giving them some privacy.”
In the windshield he could see that she’d shifted to look at him. All he’d have to do was turn his head and their reflected images would be mouth to mouth. In reality, he’d have to reach for her. Take her shoulders in his hands and pull her toward him. Press his lips to hers. Open her mouth with the pressure of his tongue. Touch her soft curves—
“You know. Will and Theresa?” She seemed both amused and puzzled.
“What about them?” He sounded as if he’d eaten sandpaper. Felt like it, too. And his arm muscles twitched with the urge to take hold of her.
“Giving them some privacy. Pulling over here like this so they wouldn’t think we were staring at them, spying on them, as they said good-night.”
He stretched his arms and pressed his palms against the steering wheel.
“I didn’t do it for them.”
Three days ago his palms had absorbed the sweet sensation of her nipples, hard and warm.
“Oh?” She still faced him.
He slid his hands around the steering wheel, to the bottom. If her eyes followed the movement, her focus would be square on his lap, where there was more to focus on every second.
“A man on a diet who watches someone else eating cake is a fool.”
“Oh.”
He barely heard that, because she found something real interesting to study in the dark out her side window just then.
He jerked his hands away from the wheel, the left one landing on the door handle, the right one on the seat. The tips of his fingers grazed her thigh and she jumped. His left hand clenched in reaction and the handle c
licked as the door opened a crack.
That brought her head around as he turned to apologize for touching her and there they sat, face-to-face. No more than twelve inches from mouth to mouth. The world spun down to the two of them. There was no light except what touched her face. No sound except her breathing. No smell except her spice. No touch except her remembered soft heat.
“Hannah—”
The world exploded in on them. The dome light glared and the back door creaked as Will yanked it open with an excess of youthful muscle. The dry earthiness of fall fields and Will’s own scent of boy and leather boots billowed into the vehicle as he plopped down in the center of the seat, slammed the door closed and leaned forward, all beaming smile and wind-mussed hair.
“Thanks, Dad. Let’s go.”
Dax had driven with twists and strains of every limb and more muscles than he could count, but he couldn’t remember in all his born days a more uncomfortable driving experience than this trip. He ached. Inside and outside. And Hannah sat silent and unreachable beside him, while Will hummed tunelessly.
“You know, Dad, if you wanted to drop me off first, that would be fine,” Will said as they turned onto the highway that led first to the Westons’ ranch and then theirs. Will might have meant it as man-to-man magnanimity, though his voice held an odd note.
“I really should get back—”
“No.”
His grim negative coincided with Hannah’s more tempered response, and that ended the discussion.
So they dropped Hannah off, with twin awkward farewells from the Randall men. Dax guessed they were neither one of them sure how to deal with Hannah now that she was a friend.
Though he strongly suspected that Will did not deal with the problem when they got home by stripping down and stepping into a frigid shower.
Chapter Ten
A phone call interrupted Wednesday’s breakfast with the Westons. Ted answered.
“It’s for you, Hannah. It’s a man.”
“Why don’t you take it in the den, dear,” Irene suggested. “You’ll have some privacy.”
“It’s not Dax,” Ted added.
Hannah flushed at Ted’s implicit expectation that the man who’d be calling her was Dax Randall—and that she would need privacy only to talk to him. But she simply thanked him and went to the den.
“Hello?” She heard the click of the extension being hung up.
“Who’s Dax?” came the long-distance question.
“Ethan! How are you? Why are you calling? Is something—”
“Nothing’s wrong. I’m fine. Mandy’s fine. Who’s Dax and why would he be calling you?”
“He wouldn’t. I mean he might, but I didn’t necessarily expect—”
“Who is he?”
“He’s a man out here I’ve gotten to know.”
“Dating?”
“Some. Casually,” she added hurriedly.
“Good. Mandy’ll be happy.”
“Oh, Ethan, don’t—”
“Don’t tell Mandy? You’ve got to be kidding.”
She’d recognized the foolishness of the request as soon as she heard herself voicing it. Mandy could smell a secret a hundred miles away, and she and Ethan rarely kept any from each other. “I don’t want her making a big thing of this.”
“Mandy? You’ve got to be kidding,” he repeated, this time with a big dollop of sarcasm.
Hannah laughed. “She called me last week all wrapped up in a story about a woman from the civil war she’s studying in a class.”
“Mary Albert. Don’t I know it. I’ve been hearing about Mary Albert for weeks.”
“The best thing is, Mandy’s got one of her notions that I could be headed for the same fate.”
Instead of a laugh from Ethan, Hannah heard silence. “Ethan?”
“She’s worried about you. We both are.”
“There is no cause to be worried about me. I’m fine.”
“Don’t you get lonely, Hannah? I mean, without—”
“Oh, Ethan, of course I miss you and Mandy, but I’ve hardly had time to get lonely. You’ve barely been to school a month and what with work and this trip . . .”
“I wondered about Richard. Do you regret—”
“Never. You and Mandy have this crazy idea I somehow sacrificed myself for you. That’s absolutely not true. As for Richard, one of the things I’ve realized out here is that that time of my life is absolutely behind me, and so is he, and I’m glad.”
“Does this Dax have anything to do with that?”
“I told you, it’s nothing serious.” For half a heartbeat an impulse to tell Ethan the whole story tempted her. The notion that she didn’t tell him because it might be disloyal to Dax she dismissed as quickly as the original thought. It simply wasn’t Ethan’s business. “Casual, that’s all.”
“But you don’t want it to be?”
The question stopped her. She was surprised Ethan would ask it. She didn’t immediately know the answer. “I’m going to be here only a few more days.”
“So?”
She could have told him he sounded like several people in Bardville, but that would have meant more explaining than she intended. “He’s a very nice man. I’m getting to see some of the area. Oh, and Ethan, it’s amazing country. You’ll have to see it someday. It’s incredible.”
“And what about this very nice man named Dax? Will I meet him someday? Any chance he’ll be visiting North Carolina?”
“No,” she said firmly, because she knew what he really wanted to know. If there was a future. “But speaking of visiting, when are you and Mandy going to come home for a weekend?”
As the conversation shifted to the activities that would keep her siblings on campus until Thanksgiving, Hannah felt a pang and wondered if she’d told a lie when she said she wasn’t lonely. Or if it was only regret at having to so firmly kill the image that had sprung to life of a Thanksgiving table with Mandy and Ethan joined by Dax, Will and June.
Only later, walking along the stream behind the cabins, did she think of the face not included in that image—Sally Randall.
Dax kept such a solid wall between himself and his mother it even influenced her.
Now, that was interesting. Because Hannah had learned that if someone didn’t care about something, they didn’t bother building walls against it, they walked away. Only strong emotions needed walls to hold them in. Or out.
Why did Dax need such a strong barrier?
She considered what Irene, Cambria, June and Dax had said about his childhood and marriage—and what Dax hadn’t said.
The realization burst across her brain like a fireworks display.
Dax kept away from his mother because he didn’t trust his defenses against wanting his mother’s love. A love he didn’t believe in and didn’t trust.
As long as he kept distance between them. Sally posed no threat to the wall he’d built around his heart. But if he’d thought the wall was unbreachable, he wouldn’t have minded seeing her. So, if someone threw the two of them together and let nature take its course . . .
Surely that wasn’t trying to change the man. It was simply letting the true man come out of a self-imposed exile.
* * * *
The knock on the cabin door shortly after one in the afternoon startled Hannah awake from a doze. She hadn’t slept well the past week, especially not since Sunday, and this was not the first time she’d dozed off on the couch while reading professional journals—the only work Boone appeared willing to have her do. It was also not the first time Dax had invaded her dreams, with his dark eyes, roughened hands and firm mouth.
It was the first time she woke to find Will Randall standing on the cabin porch, with fist raised to knock on her door again.
“Will?”
She paused in the motion of running her hands through her hair and looked from the boy to the man who stood behind his right shoulder on the porch. For a disorienting second she wondered if she’d conjured him up from her d
reams. The same tough body, the same sun-streaked hair and the same steaming heat in his eyes.
But no, he couldn’t be a remnant of the dreams that plagued her. He hadn’t been wearing anywhere near as many clothes as the work shirt, faded jeans and beat-up boots he had on now. Though he had, come to think of it, had his cowboy hat on at times.
“Uh, Hannah? I wondered if you could maybe do me a favor?”
Will’s voice cleared her mind and broke whatever had riveted her eyes to Dax’s.
“Come in. Come in, both of you.” She backed into the small living area of the cabin, scooped up a fan of advertising journals from the couch cushions and dropped them on the low chest that served as a coffee table. “Have a seat.”
Will followed her gesture to the couch, but Dax went across the room, took a chair from the square table, turned it around to face the room and sat down, one booted ankle over the other knee.
Reading all this to mean that Dax wanted Will to handle this on his own, Hannah sat in the comer of the couch, angled to face the boy. That left Dax also in her line of sight. She concentrated on Will, but remained attuned to his father. Dax seemed decidedly grumpy.
“What kind of favor, Will?”
“It’s a . . . I thought—I hoped—maybe you could, er, would . . .”
Will checked over his shoulder to his father. “His idea,” Dax said, his low voice barely a rumble.
“I’m sure we can work something out, Will,” she said with a soothing smile.
He looked at her anxiously for a moment, as if trying to gauge her sincerity, then drew in a breath, set his jaw just like his father did and said, “It’s about going to supper at the country club.”
“The country club?” she repeated, not following.
“There’s a big party there every year the Saturday of Shakespeare Days Week. They have a real good view of the fireworks from the county fairgrounds and I guess they have dancing and this big, fancy supper. Only it’s not a supper, it’s a dinner.”
The Rancher Meets His Match Page 14
