“How bad was that thing again?” he asked, his voice even more husky than usual.
“What thing?”
“That—that wart thing.”
“Oh. Bad enough to draw warts on a washtub. Now, where I come from, you can say ugly enough to draw warts on a washtub if you like that better.”
He gave a strained smile. “I’ll remember that.”
She turned to go, and he grabbed her hand.
“Amelia… thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” she answered. His fingers were strong on hers, and again she mentally stressed that she’d helped him because he was Bobby’s friend and because of the camaraderie that developed in a place like this among the patients and their families. She had already gotten to know Mac’s father well. He had quietly introduced himself as they both waited near the operating room to hear about their family member’s surgery. Bobby’s operation had been relatively short compared to Mac’s, and Amelia had come back to the waiting area from time to time to keep a worried old cowboy company. And once, as Mac’s operation stretched into its seventh hour, she smuggled him an ice cold beer. First time in his life, Mr. McDade told her with a twinkle in his eye, that he’d ever drunk beer with a straw.
Mac lifted his head to look at her. “Don’t tell my old man I yelled at you. He’ll bust my—cast.”
Amelia gave a soft laugh at the idea that this big ex-marine might be worried about his father knowing he’d been a little less than gentlemanly. Pop McDade was a genuine cowboy from the old school. He expected womenfolk to be treated kindly, pain or no pain.
“I won’t,” Amelia said, smiling and taking her hand back. She could still feel his warm fingers.
“Pop is crazy about you, you know.”
“I like him too.”
“You’re going to get a Christmas card from him for the rest of your life,” he warned her, trying to smile, but another bout of pain took the smile away.
“Mac,” Amelia said with concern. “Don’t talk anymore. Why don’t you try to sleep? They say you never sleep.”
“Too hot,” he said into his folded arms, his voice barely a whisper.
Amelia hesitated, then picked up a Sports Illustrated from a nearby chair. “I’ll fan you for a while,” she said, beginning to wave the magazine back and forth.
“You don’t have to—”
“Hush!” she said in annoyance. She knew perfectly well she didn’t have to. “Or I’ll tell Pop what you said—swear word and everything.”
“Oh, God, don’t do that—you know what he calls you?”
“No, Mac,” she said, fanning away.
“Darlin’ Amelia—just like Darlin’ was your first name.”
“And what’s wrong with that?” she asked pointedly.
He looked up at her and managed a smile. “What is this soap?” he asked, lowering his head to run his nose along his freshly washed arm.
“English Lavender.”
“Smells like you.”
“Don’t talk. Try to sleep.”
Amelia fanned him until he dozed, until her arm felt as if it were ready to fall off, until she knew she was late and she had a classroom full of paying students waiting for her.
“Lord,” Amelia whispered abruptly, dragging her thoughts away from the past. She did not want to stand in a trance in the middle of the downstairs hallway thinking of Houston McDade, she assured herself, but even then another memory came to mind. Her hands gently lathering the back of his neck with the lavender-scented suds. She’d gotten his turquoise beads all wet.
CHAPTER TWO
THERE WAS NO telephone call from Bobby. A letter came instead, a simple but official-looking thing with a VA Medical Center, Albuquerque, return address. It was from some part of the place called the Clothing Room, an announcement, as it were, that a Robert Ira Taylor had been admitted and would require the following. There were also instructions about how to send him money for his personal use.
“So much for not worrying,” Amelia said to herself as she read the letter again. “Dear God, Bobby!” She glanced at her watch but was too agitated to calculate the time zones, and after nearly an hour’s worth of telephoning, she still knew nothing more than when she’d started. She had reached someone at the hospital who advised her that Mr. Taylor was with “his group” and couldn’t come to the phone, and she had located a number for a Houston McDade in Chimayo, who didn’t answer. She took a long, blowing breath and tried to think what to do.
“Only one thing to do,” she said as she looked up another phone number. “I’ve got to go to Albuquerque—and I’ve got to stop talking to myself,” she added as she waited for the airline ticket agency to answer. “And I hate flying,” she went on anyway.
She made a reservation on the next morning’s flight, then left with the letter to go buy the things on the list for Bobby. When she returned she could hear the telephone ringing as she got out of the car, and Daniel and his close friend, Kerry Dawn Stevenson, were waiting on the porch.
Amelia allowed herself a small whimper of despair as she walked toward them, when she actually wanted to fling her arms heavenward, Job-fashion, and cry, “How long?” Daniel and Kerry Dawn were absolutely the last thing she needed at the moment. Admittedly, they were a striking couple. They were both tall, and they had nearly the same copper-colored hair. Daniel was freckled and blue-eyed, with rugged Irish good looks and the academic poverty-chic way of dressing that drove his female students wild. And Kerry—Kerry was the flower of lithe, athletic American womanhood, able to leap unsuspecting professors’ wives in a single bound, brown-eyed and big-breasted and sexually prow, able to do advanced aerobics by the hour. Amelia preferred the serenity of yoga herself. She had kept her figure—albeit six inches shorter and fifteen years older than her replacement’s. Amelia wore her dark hair in a short, becoming cut, and she was pretty enough—she cringed at the next phrase—for her age. One thing was certain: No one could accuse Daniel Quinn of being attracted to the same type of woman.
Amelia forced her face into something like a smile, one that entirely matched her tone of voice. “What do you want, Daniel?”
“He wants his money,” Kerry informed her, and Amelia gritted her teeth. It drove her absolutely crazy to have to communicate with Daniel through his interpreter.
“Aren’t you allowed to talk anymore?” Amelia asked him.
The phone was ringing again, and Amelia pushed on past Kerry to unlock the door. She dropped her packages in the struggle to turn the key, and six pairs of Hanes briefs scattered on the porch.
“Yours?” Kerry asked sweetly as Amelia still worked with the door. The phone stopped ringing before she could get it open.
“I’m looking for Bobby,” Daniel said, stooping to help Amelia pick up the underwear.
“Your deadbeat brother owes Daniel three hundred dollars,” Kerry said. “We need it.”
“I do need it,” Daniel said. “I’m going on a dig in the Grand Canyon. It’s a promising site. Looks like it might be pre-Pueblo. Of course, Basket Maker is too much to hope—”
“That’s nice,” Amelia said, cutting him short. She had a lot to do, and he was going to have to discuss his anthropological data with someone else. And she hadn’t missed Daniel’s subtle changing of pronouns—evidently so she wouldn’t realize Kerry was going along. The simple truth was that the baggage he took with him didn’t matter to her anymore. She set her packages down on the swing and opened her purse, writing out the check she couldn’t afford.
“Thanks, Amelia,” Daniel said—without Kerry’s help.
“You’re welcome,” she answered, her voice flat. “You and Kerry Dawn have a nice trip. And don’t let me keep you.”
The telephone was ringing again, and this time she managed to unlock the door, leaving Daniel and Kerry to find their own way off the back porch.
“Damn,” she whispered when she didn’t get to the phone in time again. She sat down heavily on the deacon’s bench in the hall. S
he had no job until school started in the fall, and she’d just given Daniel half her ready capital. “And I’m still talking to myself.”
Talking, but not letting herself think, either about Bobby or about how much Houston McDade had to do with her decision to go to New Mexico. No, she decided. Mac had very little to do with it. He still lived in Chimayo, she supposed, and Albuquerque was a big place. She could go there and never see Houston McDade.
Amelia did some mental arithmetic on her way back outside to get her packages. In the fall she’d have two jobs—by day, teaching learning disabled children to read, and three times a week at night teaching adults to read. The money would be good with the combined salaries—she could get the roof fixed—and her life would be filled with the work she adored. But the summer stretched out ahead of her—empty. She had nothing but her worry over Bobby.
Amelia was unable to suppress a smile as she picked up the packages of men’s underwear and shaving supplies from the oak swing. It really was over when your ex-husband showed no curiosity whatsoever about such a plethora of male underclothing.
Darling Kerry.
Amelia hadn’t had Kerry’s self-assurance at that age, and she hadn’t had Kerry’s expertise at lovemaking—Kerry had made sure Amelia knew exactly how she and Daniel spent their leisure time. Amelia had been a timid virgin when she and Daniel Quinn first met. He had been her first lover—and, she thought ruefully, her last. Not that she hadn’t had numerous offers to help her get through her current agony of sexual withdrawal—most of them from Daniel’s “close friends.” Daniel had had to work patiently and well to bring her from her early maidenly shyness, but he had been a good teacher, and she an apt and willing pupil. Amelia couldn’t deny that she missed that part of her life, but until the last year of her marriage she had never been to bed with a man who didn’t love her. That man had been her husband, and the difference in the intimacy they shared had been profound—traumatic enough to keep her away from casual affairs and one-night stands. Someday she might find a man who appealed to her enough so that the lack of commitment wouldn’t matter, but until then she never wanted to experience that feeling of being used again.
Amelia looked out across the land and sighed heavily. Every sigh is a prayer, her mother always said, and remembering that made her give a soft laugh. She must have completely overrun central receiving by now. She went back inside to finish her packing. Thanks to the vagabond life among the archaeological digs she’d led nearly every summer with Daniel, she was an excellent packer, and the task didn’t prove complicated enough to keep her mind off Bobby. He’d solicited Mac’s help in hiding his problems from her, just as she used to help Bobby hide whatever current mess he was in from their mother. Well, Bobby was going to have his work cut out for him if he thought he could pull that with her. She knew all that sandbagging from the inside out, and she was the only family Bobby had left. Whatever was the matter, she intended to know.
The phone rang again well after midnight.
“Amelia?” Mac’s voice said in the darkness, and she came abruptly awake, not remembering how the receiver happened to be in her hand. She sat up, fumbling for the lamp.
“Mac! I tried to call you. What’s going on with Bobby?”
“Now, take it easy. He’s all right.”
“He’s in the hospital, Mac!”
“I know that, Amelia. Just don’t worry. He’ll call you—”
“You keep saying that! I want to know what’s wrong with him.”
“Amelia, he will call you himself and tell you,” Mac said with just a little too much patience. It made her angry.
“Will you stop doing that!”
“Doing what?”
“That don’t-you-worry-your-pretty-little-head garbage. My little head is plenty worried, and you’re not helping—”
“Amelia…”
“What!” she snapped.
“Amelia, you’re putting me between a rock and a hard place here. Bobby doesn’t want you to know—exactly.”
“Why not? Exactly.”
“I… guess he thinks you’ve been through enough… with Daniel.”
Amelia held the phone aside so she could swear. “Listen,” she said, coming back on the line, “and you can pass this information on to my brother. Many, many women get through a divorce and survive. It’s not easy, but the process hasn’t left me deranged. I’m not even suicidal. What I am is tired, and one of the things I’m tired of is Bobby and his peccadillos. I didn’t know he was going to New Mexico, but that’s all right. He’s old enough to go wherever he wants. But when a hospital sends me a letter with instructions for clothes and money for him, don’t you think I deserve just a tiny hint as to what the devil’s going on?”
“Yes,” Mac said simply.
“Well?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Damnation!” Amelia said between her teeth, and Mac chuckled. “I’m glad you find this so amusing,” she said sarcastically.
“Amelia, I gave Bobby my word—”
“Oh, I get it. It’s one of those male cross-your-heart-and-hope-to-die blood-brother things, isn’t it?”
“Something like that. You know. Semper fidelis—always faithful.”
“You may as well know I’m coming out there,” she said, expecting him to try to talk her out of it.
“Can you?” he said instead, and there was a quality in his voice that made her heart lurch. He wanted her to come, and she knew it. No—no, it couldn’t possibly be that. If he wanted her there, it was so she could reclaim her cavalier brother.
“My flight leaves in the morning—this morning.”
“That’s … good, Amelia. What flight?”
She told him, her heart still pounding from that near longing she was sure she heard in his voice. No, she wasn’t sure. What was there to hear in two words? He sound perfectly normal now.
“Listen,” he went on, “when you get to Albuquerque, take a jitney bus to Santa Fe—no, wait for me at the International Airport in Albuquerque. Don’t leave if I’m late. I’ll come and get you.”
“Mac, I want to see Bobby.” She might as well get the reason for her coming established right up front—for herself and for him.
“Bobby won’t be in Albuquerque. He’ll be in Chimayo with us.”
“Mac, I don’t understand—”
“I know you don’t. And I can’t explain it now. Just come. And wait for me at the airport. I’ll pick you up.”
“Mac…”
“Good night, Amelia.”
She didn’t answer, and she could feel him waiting until there was finally a click. She hung up the phone, feeling oddly bereaved as she lay back against the pillows in her big four-poster. She sat up again to turn off the lamp. The night was quiet except for the whippoorwill and the crickets. It was too early yet for katydids. She watched the lace curtains billow in the cool breeze, trying to sort her thoughts. She knew Mac hadn’t married—or he hadn’t as of December. Pop had complained about his son’s unwedded state in his Christmas card.
Amelia turned on her side in the big bed. It didn’t matter to her whether or not Mac was married. She wasn’t looking for a husband. She wasn’t even looking for a lover. She pulled a pillow around to clutch it to her tightly. She was feeling alone, and she didn’t sleep.
CHAPTER THREE
ONE COULD SEE anything in an international airport, Amelia thought as she worked her way through the crowd to answer her page. She noticed the big cowboy almost immediately. He looked like one of Louis L’ Amour’s western heroes, like a Hondo or one of the Sacketts—hard and masculine and lonely. His dark hair was a bit long and raggedly cut, but his beard was trimmed close, and he seemed to have stopped in the middle of some cowboy chore to come to the airport. He was wearing a big straw cowboy hat, faded jeans tucked into tall dusty boots, short leather chaps, and a somewhat unorthodox gray sweat shirt with the sleeves cut off. He looked tired and harassed, and he kept hovering just out of her field of
vision.
“I’m Amelia Taylor,” Amelia said to the young woman at the information desk.
“Right over there, miss,” the girl said, and Amelia turned, seeing no one but the cowboy with his hat pulled low over his eyes.
“Where?” Amelia said, wishing the cowboy would get out of her way.
“Right there, miss. The… uh… cowperson.”
“Mac?” Amelia said disbelievingly, trying to peer under the cowboy hat. He took the hat off and held out his hand. His fingers were rough and call used under hers, and she could see a sprinkling of gray in his dark hair and beard. He was staring at her intently with the grave hazel eyes she remembered, taking her in from head to—well, not quite to toe. She was wearing a white linen suit with a pale pink silk camisole, and his eyes seemed not to make it too far below that. She let go of his hand because of a stirring of emotion she noted at precisely the moment their fingers touched, forcing herself to stand politely under his scrutiny and waiting for him to say something.
“My God,” he obliged her. “What did you do to your hair?”
There was a time when she would have been able to laugh at such a greeting, but that was before she’d been relegated to the role of a woman scorned. She hated the feeling of insecurity that went with it, the lack of confidence because she’d been divorced and because she was no longer twenty-one years old. That, combined with her anxiety over her brother, made her stiffen and turn away.
“Thank you,” she said coldly, picking up her suitcase. “I’m just crazy about the way you look too, Tex.” She started walking, holding her suitcase aside so he couldn’t take it from her. She hadn’t expected the surprised, almost hurt look in his eyes, and she wanted to get away from it.
“Hey! Amelia, where are you going?” he called after her.
“To find a paper bag so I can cover my head,” she said over her shoulder, her sarcasm intact.
“Oh, you don’t have to do that on my account,” he said cheerfully as he caught up. “I can get used to it, I guess.” He had to sidestep a group of boys in short pants who were coming in the opposite direction. “I would have said something sooner,” he called over their heads, “but I wasn’t sure it was you. It looked like you, if you were a fifteen-year-old boy—so you see the kind of trouble I was having—”
Such Rough Splendor Page 2
