Charlotte's Homecoming

by Janice Kay Johnson

  Gray already knew that Hardesty had yet to turn up. So where was the son of a bitch?

  “It’s probably too soon for Hardesty to make another move anyway.” He leaned against the cinder-block wall of the tavern. Something scrabbled beneath a nearby garbage Dumpster.

  “That’s my take,” Wheeler agreed. “But I plan to loiter at the farm tonight for an hour or so around about midnight just in case.”

  “Both incidents happened about the same time, didn’t they?”

  “Yes, they did.”

  “Huh.” Gray rubbed a hand over his jaw, feeling the bristles. “Keep me informed.”

  “You mean, you aren’t going to call me four more times tonight?”

  Gray grinned. “Could be. But I’m the boss, right?”

  “Oh, yes, sir, you are.” On a bark of laughter, his police chief cut the connection.

  It was 11:06 p.m. when Gray passed the farm on his way home. The highway was dark and quiet, the lights all out in the house. The moon was but a mere sliver, his headlights cutting a corridor through the night but illuminating only pavement. His foot lifted from the gas momentarily, but he couldn’t see a damn thing and if he pulled in he might scare the Russell sisters. He guessed that Wheeler was already there, leaning against the wall of one of the outbuildings or crouched behind an ancient lilac bush.

  He went on home, but despite his tiredness had no success in settling to sleep. One o’clock came, two, then three. His phone didn’t ring, the police scanner gave away nothing but routine exchanges.

  He did drop off eventually, and when his alarm went off he hammered the button with his fist, and groaned when he swung his feet to the floor.

  Damn it, damn it, damn it. One way or the other, Charlotte Russell was costing him a lot of sleep.

  In the shower he bent his head under the stream and closed his eyes, hands braced. He wondered if Charlotte had slept any better than he had last night. Whether she’d thought about him at all. He remembered the feel of her when he held her, shockingly fragile and yet only able to bring herself to rest against him for a too-fleeting moment. She didn’t want to trust him. He doubted she wanted to trust anybody. But him especially, and he knew damn well that was because she’d felt the same punch he had the first time they met, and felt it again every time she saw him.

  He suspected he was battering his head against a wall where she was concerned, but he couldn’t seem to stop. He might have managed, after seeing her at a candlelit restaurant with Ben Wheeler, had it not been for Hardesty’s increasingly nasty assaults on the Russells.

  Faith was his prey, not her sister, but Charlotte wouldn’t hesitate to throw herself between the SOB and her twin. It was in her combative nature. Charlotte was the one who didn’t hesitate to chase after their assailant in the dark with no thought for her own safety, only of her sister’s.

  Gray wished he understood the tension between the two women. The love they felt for each other was so fierce, it was hard to figure how any other emotion had wedged in there.

  He was frowning when he straightened and turned off the shower. He didn’t like thinking he and Gerrit would have ever come to be so damn careful around each other. How was estrangement possible, when you had somebody who counted on you as readily as he did his own eyes and ears?

  Gray knew what losing that was like, but he’d had no choice. In one fleeting moment of carelessness, Gerrit had been gone—first in a coma, two days later dead. Gray would have traded places with him if he could have, so he of all people understood Charlotte Russell’s reckless determination to protect her twin sister.

  What he didn’t see was any willingness in her to love anyone else, except possibly her father. She sure as hell didn’t want to let Gray get close enough to threaten her heart.

  So be it, he thought. Chances were she’d end up flying home to San Francisco and not coming back until Christmas, if then. In the meantime, he was going to be there to wrap his arms around her when she needed to lean on someone, even if she couldn’t bear to trust him for more than a few seconds. And he’d do anything he could to keep her safe, just as she was fighting to do the same for her sister.

  And perhaps, in the meantime, he’d get under her skin. Maybe he could overcome her instinctive wariness. Tempt her.

  If he weren’t so tired, he’d feel more optimistic.

  Telling himself she wasn’t what he’d ever imagined wanting didn’t help; his sketchy image of an ideal woman had been scrubbed out like the colored charcoal outlines of a drawing on the sidewalk. She hadn’t been real, she was only the next piece he had to put into place to build the perfect life he’d been so sure he wanted.

  Funny, now that he’d met Charlotte—intensely alive, sharply conflicted, bitter and sweet at the same time—he was finding that imagined life no more real than a faded Norman Rockwell print. A kid’s dream, not a man’s. The man he had become wanted Charlotte, and it was killing him to know that, tempted or not, she was utterly determined to stay away from him.

  He spent the morning at city hall returning phone calls, most from citizens who wanted to complain about a neighbor’s fence that was surely a few inches taller than the allowed six feet, or the junk car that had been at the curb for a month, or who wondered why their tax dollars were going to pay for fertilizing and daily watering of the huge flower baskets that hung from downtown lampposts, or the addition of some stop signs in residential neighborhoods. He soothed, he offered resources, he promised to look into concerns. He downed ibuprofen and too many cups of coffee.

  Instead of taking time for lunch, he went to discuss city ordinances with a resident who kept his half dozen junk cars in his front yard instead of at the curb.

  And finally, figuring he could snatch half an hour, he drove out to the Russell farm, just because he wanted to see for himself that one prickly, vulnerable, sexy woman really was all right.

  A couple of other cars were already parked in front of the barn. Gray left his Prius beside a Volvo station wagon and walked to the house. He knocked at the back door, then let himself in.

  “That you, Char?” Don Russell called from the front room.

  “Nope. It’s me, Gray.” He stepped through the arch-way between the dining room and living room. “Just wanted to see how you’re doing.”

  The twins’ father had the bed cranked up and was, apparently, watching soaps. He lifted the remote and killed the TV.

  “You ever try to watch daytime television?”

  Gray grinned. “Yeah, I was laid up after a car accident a few years ago. Thank God for DVDs.”

  Don grunted. “I’d rather read, but these damn pills make it hard to focus on the print.”

  “If you want, I’ll put a movie in for you before I go. Unless—” he nodded toward the now darkened TV “—you’d rather find out what happens to that blonde with the big…”

  “Hair?” The older man gave him a sardonic look. “I know what’ll happen. She seems to be prone to sobbing. She’ll probably fling herself weeping at the doctor who’s lying about his divorce.”

  “Can I get you anything?”

  “No, the girls pop in every half hour or so. Seem to think I can’t even make it to the goddamn bathroom by myself.”

  “Can you?”

  “Just because I fell once…” He scowled. “This place is too much for my girls. They’re working their fingers to the bone while I lie here and watch soap operas.”

  Gray leaned a shoulder against the woodwork. “You’re healing.”

  Don Russell looked at him with eyes almost as blue as his daughters’. “I don’t have the heart for this anymore. I’m a farmer, not a…a… Hell, I don’t even know what kind of operation we’re running! A minimall! It’s not enough to pay the bills, but Faith doesn’t want to hear it.”

  “Charlotte seems to be throwing herself into the business, too.”

  “For how long?” Don turned his head to stare sightlessly at the front window. The lines on his face were more pronounced than th
ey’d been a minute before, the flesh more sunken. “This isn’t the life she wants. It’s not the life she should have! Or Faith, either. They deserve better.”

  Stirred by pity, Gray said quietly, “I think right now it is what they both want. They need to know they fought for this place, and for you.”

  He growled something, then groped for the button to lower the head of his bed. “If only I weren’t so damn muddle-headed…”

  “You don’t want that DVD?”

  “Better shut my eyes again. You go tell the girls not to be poking in here and waking me.”

  “I’ll do that.” Gray waited until Don’s eyes closed and his mouth went slack, then let himself out of the house through the kitchen.

  By the time he reached the barn, one of the cars was gone. He stepped inside, pausing to let his eyes adjust to the dimmer light. Voices came from the nursery area, and he recognized one of them as Faith’s. Gray doubted Charlotte knew a penstemon from a phlox. She didn’t seem like the puttering-around-a-garden type.

  His eyes scanned the barn until he saw her, apparently dusting and rearranging vintage glass and ceramics displayed on a tall, open shelving unit. She didn’t notice him until he’d almost reached her, which gave him time to study her.

  She was picking up a tan, although her shoulders, bared by a tank top, were peeling. Her skin was too white to surrender to the sun without a fight. Even doing something so mundane, her every movement was tense; she kept moving a set of crystal goblets, as if determined to achieve some perfect placement.

  “Hey,” he said.

  Charlotte spun around fast, the goblet in her hand brandished like a weapon. “Oh. Gray.” Her eyes closed in momentary relief. “You scared me.”

  “I’m sorry. I just stopped by to make sure I didn’t miss some excitement last night.”

  “Oh, come on.” Her self-control restored, she slanted a look at him. “You can’t tell me you wouldn’t have been kept up-to-date, minute by minute.”

  He grinned. “Maybe. But I like to see with my own two eyes.”

  Her brows rose. “That suggests a certain lack of faith in your police chief.”

  “Not at all. I just like to get out in the community.” He nodded at the goblet. “Planning to brain someone with that?”

  At last, a smile curved her mouth. “If you’d been that bastard Rory, you’d be face down on the floor this minute.” She turned and set it on the shelf, seemingly having lost interest in an artful arrangement. “You’re not here because you have news?”

  Gray shook his head. “No. Hardesty seems to have gone to ground.”

  “Unless he just happens to be away, visiting a friend.”

  “Without calling in to work?”

  Her sigh was almost soundless. “It occurred to me that we could be dancing with the wrong shadow.”

  “Who else, then?”

  “I don’t know.” She wrapped her arms around herself. “I just don’t want to be responsible for us jumping to conclusions.”

  He had to shove his hands into his pockets to keep from reaching for her, trying to wrap her in his arms. “Do you believe we have?”

  “You know I don’t,” she said, then walked away from him.

  Damn it, even now he could help looking at her long legs, at the sheen of sweat on her back above the scoop of the tank top, at her hips just a little too curvaceous to be a boy’s. He wanted to touch the back of her neck, where the delicate bones of her vertebrae were exposed. To keep him from making a mistake, he balled his hands into fists in his pockets.

  He strolled after her, not surprised when she went behind the counter with the cash register as if to place a blockade between them.

  “I see the corn maze is open,” he remarked.

  She relaxed infinitesimally at the innocuous subject. “Faith says we’ll be busy with it this weekend. She claims it’s devious enough to bewilder and dazzle the most cynical teenager.”

  He leaned against the counter, smiling at her. “You tried it out yet?”

  “No, and Faith says I have to. Apparently, rescue missions are occasionally required.”

  Gray laughed. “Someone goes in and doesn’t come out?”

  “Or you hear a child start sobbing in there somewhere.”

  His smile faded. “Yeah, that might make you plunge right in.” He paused. “Doesn’t look like you’re too busy right now.”

  “No. Weekdays seem to be pretty slow.” She shrugged, looking unhappy.

  Gray nodded. It appeared that Faith was the only member of the family who still entertained hopes that the barn business would succeed.

  Right then, Faith came in from the nursery area with another woman who was carrying a cardboard flat of plants. She was apparently taking advantage of the thirty-percent-off sale on perennials that was advertised on a sign out front. The two of them were talking about fertilizer, and Faith grabbed a box of slug bait as she came.

  “I’ll ring this up,” she told Charlotte, who moved aside.

  “I thought maybe I’d steal Charlotte and try out your maze,” Gray said.

  Faith looked up. “Oh, what a good idea! I’ve been trying to talk Char into walking through it.” Strangled sounds came from her sister, but she ignored them and flapped her hands. “Go. Go, both of you!” She flashed a grin. “I’ll come hunting for you if you don’t reemerge in, say, half an hour.”

  Gray waited as Charlotte huffed, then snapped, “Oh, fine,” and stalked past him as if he wasn’t there. Smiling, he followed her. Gray had high hopes that the maze was indeed so convoluted it would take them the entire half hour to find their way out. He wouldn’t have a better opportunity to begin his campaign to tempt Charlotte.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “YOU’RE NOT DRESSED FOR THIS, you know.” Charlotte knew she sounded irritable and ungracious, but couldn’t stop herself. The idea of plunging into the narrow, twisting corridor between tall, thick stalks of corn with Gray Van Dusen breathing down her neck made her edgy, and she couldn’t help that.

  He’d left his suitcoat and tie in the car. Now he un-buttoned the cuffs of his white shirt and rolled up the sleeves. “Better?”

  She snorted. If he wanted to ruin those shiny black wingtips, who was she to argue?

  When she looked back at him, it was to find him grinning as he studied the painted plywood arch over the entrance. It was black, with bloodred letters.

  Faith had decided it needed a new look this year, and Charlotte had volunteered. The job sounded her style more than some of the farm work. She’d painted it herself, with the help of stencils, and let some of that crimson paint drip like blood, just as she’d painted the arch over the exit, twenty feet to their left. She’d damn near sweated blood, standing on a ladder in the August heat, taping up stencils, painting and clambering down to move the ladder every time the job exceeded her reach. Conscious the whole time she teetered up there of how uneven the rough field was.

  All Hope Abandon, Ye Who Enter Here! the letters above the entrance read.

  “Dante,” he murmured.

  “Nice effect, don’t you think?”

  “Yeah, I do, and it might even educate some of our local heathens.”

  “Really?”

  “No, just wishful thinking.” He nodded toward the cornfield beyond the arch. “Lead on.”

  “Lord.” She took a deep breath and started in. “Let’s not get lost, okay? Think how embarrassing it would be. And Faith would kill me if I trampled my way out.”

  “This must have been a hell of a lot of work.”

  “I think this is the third corn maze she’s created. The first year it was just for fun, and open only for a few days before Halloween. Last year she got serious and started charging.”

  After Faith realized Dad was near to having to sell the farm.

  The path curved immediately, so that the entrance was lost behind them. When it diverged, Charlotte chose the right-hand way at random. The sun, still high in the sky, beat down on them. The corn
grew well over Gray’s head, and the leaves were thick and green, the cobs swelling in the husks, the emerging silks shimmering gold. The air was closed and still, smelling of turned earth and growing things.

  Another Y opened ahead; this time she went left, then a moment later right.

  “Dead end,” Gray observed, when she faced a wall of corn stalks.

  “So I see.” She planted her hands on her hips. “You choose next time.”

  They retraced their steps, and went left, only to be faced immediately with yet another choice. Gray shrugged and went right.

  “We grew corn when I was a kid,” he said. “A few rows. I never got lost in them.”

  She liked the picture of him as a little boy, no doubt with a shock of blond hair. Pure mischief, she guessed, except when he was watching people’s faces the way he did hers, taking careful note of every nuance of expression.

  “Faith and I used to hide in the cornfields,” Charlotte heard herself telling him. “We loved knowing no one could find us. We’d whisper secrets and giggle.” It was the secretiveness that had held the most appeal; they had a hideout, and no one knew where it was. Not even their parents would have been able to find them. She wondered when Faith had last thought of those times.

  “Do you get the feeling we’re going in circles?” Gray asked after the path had branched, and branched again.

  “Yes.” Charlotte stopped and looked around, but how the heck could they tell? One corn plant looked an awful lot like another, and the sun was too high to give direction. “Let’s try left again.”

  “Okay.” There were circles of sweat under his arms. It had to be a hundred degrees in here, with no breezes able to find them.

  “Maybe we should have water stations.”

  She loved his stride, long and loose. His body was tall and rangy, lean like a runner’s. Charlotte wondered how he maintained his build, hurrying between one job and another the way he did. The only time she’d even seen him out of slacks and dress shoes was when he’d appeared in her house in the middle of the night in those well-worn jeans and a T-shirt that had looked as if he’d snatched it off the floor in his hurry. He’d looked as good in those jeans as he did in his well-cut slacks.