When he said nothing, she felt an urgent need to fill the silence. “Tommy’s doing very well. He’s just gotten a job with a big firm in Kansas City. He and Megan are there now, looking for a house. The girls will be going out there in the fall. I’ll miss them terribly, and it’s been good to have them here. They love the farm. It’s not like it was when I was growing up. We have help around here now, so I have time to spend with them. They’re at that age where everything fascinates them. The days don’t seem long enough to show them everything.”
She caught herself rambling and suddenly fell silent. Steven leaned back against the counter, crossed his jeans-clad legs at the ankles and watched her. Agitated, she worked the dough even harder. At the rate things were going, it would be very tough bread.
“You still haven’t said what you wanted,” she said at last.
“Nothing special. Just a neighborly visit.”
Her gaze rose and met his, caught the knowing gleam in his eyes. “Neighbors don’t usually wait for years before dropping in.”
“Would I have been welcome any sooner?”
“You’re not welcome now.”
“I’d hoped—”
“What? That the strawberries would soften me up.”
He grinned. “Well, you are harder than you used to be,” he admitted. “I could see that yesterday. It might take more than strawberries, but I figured that would be a start. I’ve been waiting all this time for some sign that you’re ready to let go of the past, but you won’t even look at me when we pass on the street in town.”
The dough hit the counter with a resounding thud. “Did you honestly expect me to greet you with open arms?” The angry words were out before she could stop them, yet another admission of a pain she hadn’t wanted him to see. Where was her Danvers’ pride?
“No, not open arms.” His voice went quiet, and the hint of laughter left it for once. That softening shook her. “Just an open mind.”
Lara felt a sigh ripple through her.
“What’s happened to you, Lara? When we met, you were filled with so much gaiety, so much excitement. I’ll never forget that day I first saw you down at the stream.”
“I’ve grown up a lot since then.”
“Growing up shouldn’t mean an end to laughter. I’ve watched you over the last few years. You never seem to laugh anymore. It’s as though someone broke your spirit. Was it me?”
The observation rankled. “I hate to spoil your egotistical fantasy that you’ve ruined my life, but I’m quite happy. I have a full life—family, friends, work.”
“That’s not what I hear. I hear the only thing in your life is this farm.”
“Gossip is a pretty unreliable source of information.”
“It’s all I’ve had, since you’ve made it plain you don’t want me around.”
“I’m surprised you bothered even with that.”
“I wanted to know how you were doing.”
“Why? So you could buy up the rest of the farm the minute it fails? I hate to disappoint you, but we’re operating in the black.”
“I know that, too.”
Lara stared at him, incredulous that he’d apparently been prying into her life. “Mr. Hogan, I suppose?”
“He’s very proud of your success.”
“He’s glad the bills are being paid,” she retorted with a touch of asperity. Forcing a more cheerful tone, she said, “Well, now that you’ve seen for yourself how terrific things are around here, you can be on your way.”
Steven ignored the blatant dismissal. “You’ve never married.”
Lara’s hands stilled. “So? Marriages don’t guarantee happiness. From everything you had told me about yours, you of all people should know that.”
He winced. “You’re right. I was just a kid, and my marriage wasn’t a particularly happy one. That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t try again, if the right woman came along. What about you?”
“I suppose, if the right man came along, I’d marry.”
“But in all these years he hasn’t appeared? Maybe your standards are impossibly high.”
She frowned at the sarcasm. She’d heard the same thing from Tommy all too often. Even mild-mannered Megan chastised her for shutting herself away on the farm. Only Greg, the youngest of the three siblings, left her alone. He was too absorbed with his paintings to even notice the rest of the family. Choosing a solitary existence for himself, he saw nothing odd about her life-style.
Her resentment of the familiar refrain was all too clear in her tone. “Your mythical perfect woman apparently hasn’t shown up, either, or am I wrong?” she said, attempting to turn the tables and put him on the defensive. “Have there been other women since you left here eleven years ago?”
“There’ve been women,” he admitted curtly.
“But no marriages?”
“No. I think I was spoiled.”
“Oh?” She heard a note in his voice that puzzled her. It was the same solemn hint of regret she’d caught at the bank the day he’d offered to buy her land.
He picked up a small piece of dough, worked it nervously for several minutes as tension built. The air was still, crackling with the promise of a storm and something more. At last he dropped the dough back onto the counter and let his hands fall to his sides.
“I’ve missed you, Lara.”
Her eyes widened in shock. That disconcerting quiet note was back in his voice. He actually sounded sincere. “What did you say?”
“I’ve missed you,” he repeated with a touch of belligerence. “Is that so hard to believe?”
“Since you’re the one who walked out on me without a word, yes, it is a little surprising.”
“We all make mistakes.”
“And I was one of yours?”
“Not you, Lara. Leaving you. That was the mistake. At the time I was so sure it was the right thing to do, but now I don’t know.”
She swallowed hard. “I think you’d better go.”
“Nope,” he said, his voice merely conversational rather than challenging. “I ran away once before. I won’t do it again, not without explaining, not without trying to make things right.”
“How can I get through to you? I don’t want your strawberries or your explanations. I don’t want to have casual little chats with you about old times. In fact, I don’t want you here at all.” Her voice rose, ending on a note of frustration.
“I think you do.” He took a step closer. “I think that’s why your cheeks are flushed that becoming shade of pink and your pulse is racing.”
“If my cheeks are flushed, it’s because I’m angry,” she retorted. “And my pulse is not racing.”
A rough, tanned finger reached out, and she jerked away instinctively, backing up. He pursued her. A single step was all it took. He touched her neck gently, found the telltale pulse and lingered for just an instant. “Liar,” he said.
Furious and suddenly all too vulnerable, Lara felt tears form in her eyes. “Why are you doing this?”
“Because I’ve waited long enough.”
“Long enough for what?”
“For you to come to your senses. Long enough to see if I was right.”
“Right about what?”
“I came back here three years ago hoping that I’d been wrong, praying that you weren’t the reason no other woman appealed to me. I had this image of you in my mind that wouldn’t go away. It was there when I was awake. It was there when I slept. Worse, it was there no matter whom I held in my arms.”
His gaze met hers, and she saw the shadow of pain in his eyes. It stunned her that Steven had not escaped the past years without scars, either. She tried to steel herself against what she saw. It made him appear defenseless, more accessible than the heartless man who’d been able to distance him
self from a girl he’d promised to love. His smile now was a weary hint of the blaze of pleasure it had once been.
“Then I saw you,” he said, sounding as bemused as she felt. “God, how you’d changed. There were shadows under your eyes. You’d pulled that incredible golden hair of yours back so severely that all I wanted to do was yank it loose and run my fingers through it until it was the wild tangle I’d remembered. And you were thin, all those ripe adolescent curves gone. But I wanted you, just the same. I wanted you so badly I hurt, just the way my body is hurting right now. I knew right then that I could never let you go again.”
“Stop it,” she pleaded. “Stop saying that. You left, Steven. You betrayed me. You betrayed all of us. You can never change that. It’s too late. I don’t want you back.”
As if her words had been a challenge, a slow, gentle smile, brighter now, tugged at the corners of his lips. “I’ll make you want me again, Lara. You know I can do it, too, don’t you?”
His words were spoken confidently, laced with a dare. Once Lara might have taken him up on it, but no more. She’d built a quiet, pleasant life for herself. Safe. More secure than ever, now that the farm was doing well each year. Steven Drake would not waltz in here one summer afternoon and take that hard-won serenity away from her.
Oh, but he has, she thought. That’s exactly what he’s done. If he left right now and never came back, he would take her hard-won peace of mind with him.
“You’re still here!” Jennifer shouted with enthusiasm as she came back into the kitchen, tugging Kelly with her. The two-year-old’s eyes were still sleepy, and she held her favorite blanket clutched in one hand. The end was dragging on the floor. “Kelly’s just a baby. She still has to take a nap.”
Steven reached down and scooped Kelly up. She promptly put her head on his shoulder. Lara glared at her.
“She doesn’t look like a baby to me,” he said. His voice was filled with such tenderness and delight that it tugged at Lara’s heart. It was as if he’d guessed that the free-spirited, independent Kelly was closest to the way Lara had once been. Did he recognize the similarity she’d felt so often and responded to it as she did?
“I think she’s almost as pretty as you are,” he said to Jennifer.
“You think I’m pretty?” Jennifer asked, twirling around excitedly.
“Absolutely. When you grow up, I’ll bet you’ll be as beautiful as your Aunt Lara.” His eyes met Lara’s, but she looked away, unable to deal with the clear message she saw there.
“Tell you what, girls,” he was saying now, his voice so deliberately casual, he immediately aroused Lara’s suspicion. “Why don’t you come over and go swimming again tomorrow? I have it on good authority that there are bigger fish waiting to be caught, too.”
Jennifer’s eyes lit up. Even Kelly, normally slow to wake fully from her naps, seemed to perk up at the prospect of another adventure.
“Oh, can we, Aunt Lara?” Jennifer begged. “Swimming’s the most fun of anything, and I want to catch that big fish before Kelly and me have to go away.”
Helpless in the face of their enthusiasm, Lara evaded giving a direct response. “We’ll see.”
“Noon?” Steven persisted. “This time I’ll have my housekeeper fix the picnic.”
Another picnic by the stream with its inevitable memories was the very last thing Lara intended to do with Steven. He’d reached new heights of insensitivity just by suggesting such a thing. Then, clearly aware of her discomfort, he’d knowingly backed her even further into a corner. The man was maddening.
“I don’t think so,” she said finally. “It would be too much trouble, and we have things to do tomorrow, anyway.”
“What things?” he and Jennifer said in a chorus.
She gritted her teeth to keep from yelling. “This is a farm. There are always things to do.”
“But you said earlier you had enough help now,” Steven reminded her. “Surely you could find the time for a picnic.”
“Not tomorrow,” she said firmly.
Not ever, she thought.
Steven nodded at last, accepting the finality of her decision. “Okay, kids, we’ll do it another time. Your Aunt Lara and I will work it out.”
“You promise?” Jennifer inquired skeptically, disappointment etched on her face. That expression was almost Lara’s undoing.
“Cross my heart,” he said as he put Kelly down and headed for the door.
“No go,” Kelly protested at once, dropping her beloved blanket and holding up her arms.
“I’ll be back, sweetheart. You can count on it.”
The promise was addressed to Kelly and Jennifer, but his eyes were on Lara. Deny it or not, now her cheeks were flushed and her fingers trembled, but she refused to look away. It had been years since she’d felt this way, giddy with excitement and filled with the yearning ache of desire. Too many years, she admitted reluctantly and hated herself for the traitorous response.
“He shouldn’t have come back,” she murmured when he had gone. “He should never have come back.”
But he had.
Chapter Three
Logan Fairchild stood with one dusty boot propped up on the bottom rung of the split-rail fence. He whipped off the sweat and dirt-stained Stetson he’d worn ever since Lara had hired him and wiped a red bandanna across his weathered face.
Everything about Logan, from his deliberately Western attire to his slow talk, bowlegged walk and rough edges, suggested a man who’d grown up with Texas-style ranching. Lara knew for a fact, though, that Logan had been born not thirty miles away in northwestern Ohio some sixty years ago. In all that time the closest he’d ever been to a cowboy was a John Wayne movie, but he lived out his dream nonetheless. He was the best farm manager she’d ever run across, steady, knowledgeable and willing to take orders from a woman—as long as she listened to his advice first.
“This here corn’s lookin’ mighty good, Ms. Danvers.” Brown eyes scanned the fields spread out before them. “It’s Fourth of July, and already it’s high as an elephant’s eye, just like the song says. I told you this hybrid was gonna do right by us. If the weather holds, you’ll have your best year yet.”
“I hope so, Logan. I used the last of the money we got for selling the land to buy that new equipment. What with that and hiring the extra men last year we barely made ends meet. I don’t want this place to start running in the red again. Tommy and Greg will start in on me again about selling. Since Tommy left, they think the farm is too much for me to handle.”
“Not with me around, it’s not. Don’t you worry. We’ll do okay, Ms. Danvers,” he said. “If the Lord wants us to.”
He pulled an ear of corn off the nearest stalk and stripped away the corn silk to reveal plump yellow kernels. He poked a thumbnail into a juicy kernel and apparently found it tender. He nodded in satisfaction. “We ought to start harvesting this field by the end of the week.”
“Do you have the men you need?”
“We should be okay.”
“If not, pick up some day workers. I don’t want the crop going bad because we couldn’t get it harvested in time.”
“No chance of that,” he chided. “I know my business.”
She grinned at him. “Probably better than I do, right, Logan?”
“You’re pretty good yourself,” he conceded grudgingly. “For a woman.”
“How did I know you were going to say that?” she said with a resigned shake of her head. “You’re an unrepentant male chauvinist.”
He hooted at the charge. “Through and through, Ms. Danvers. Through and through. Now get along with you. That parade’s starting in town pretty soon, and you don’t want those little ones to miss it.”
“They’re already having their own parade. They’ve been carrying flags around the house all morning. I lef
t when Jennifer started beating on a pan.” Recalling the noise, she shuddered.
Logan reached into his back pocket and pulled out a whistle he’d carved. “Give her this. Maybe it’ll go easier on your nerves.”
“Thanks, Logan. I’m sure she’ll love it. I know I will.”
Lara walked slowly back to the house, thinking about this year’s crop. She hoped Logan was right about the new corn. This year could be a turning point for her. With a good crop, she’d be able to add to her special account meant to buy back Steven’s property. A bad year could be devastating, especially with the pressure from Tommy and Greg. She didn’t know why they’d suddenly gotten it into their heads that she should sell the place, but they could both take a flying leap before she’d consider it. Before her agitation could build, she brought herself up short. She wasn’t going to think about that today, not with a big holiday celebration waiting in town.
Long before she reached the house, she could hear the girls. As she turned the corner, she saw them waiting impatiently for her on the porch.
“We make music, Aunt Lara,” Kelly said, clapping two pan lids together. The makeshift cymbals were accompanied by Jennifer’s improvised drum, the bottom of one of Lara’s best pots. The performance made up in enthusiasm and volume what it lacked in rhythm and musicality. Lara shuddered again but kept a smile on her face.
“That’s very loud music,” she said, a comment she was certain they would consider high praise. “As soon as you’re finished with your song we can leave for the parade.” The pan and lids clattered to the porch. She shook her head. “Nope. They go back inside.”
There was much scurrying before they finally reappeared, miniature American flags in hand. Dressed in red-and-white-striped shirts and blue shorts, they made a patriotic pair. Lara pulled her camera out of her pocket. “Let’s get a picture of you two to send to Mommy and Daddy. I’ll bet they’re missing you a whole lot today.”
The girls posed reluctantly, clearly more excited about the prospect of the parade. The instant the camera’s shutter clicked, they were off to pile into the car. Jennifer had already fastened her seat belt, and Kelly was crawling into her car seat by the time Lara got there.
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