Shameless

by Tara Janzen

  Her father had come home that night ten years ago and told her he’d run the boy off for good, but Sarah hadn’t believed him. She hadn’t believed him until the months had kept going by, one after the other, and she still hadn’t heard from Colt. She’d tried to imagine what her father might have said or done to scare him so badly, but the worst of her imaginings were beyond even her father. And the truth, however painful, had been too obvious to ignore. Colt had told her he was leaving, and nothing they’d done that night had changed his mind. If she had an ounce of sense now, she’d send him packing herself. She didn’t want to love him the way she feared she could.

  The door opened with a jingle of the bell, and she looked up smiling, knowing it was him. She didn’t seem to have an ounce of sense after all.

  “I heard you saw quite a bit of country this morning.” She came out from behind the cash register and walked by him to put the “Closed” sign on the door.

  “Just working out the kinks.”

  “Ten miles’ worth?” She hung the sign and twisted the lock. She’d just take things as they came, she thought. She could do that for a day.

  “It was a long night,” he said.

  “Not as long as they were back in December when the snow hit the bottom of my windowsills,” she said, giving him a quick glance. He looked more cowboy than Navy lieutenant at the moment, except for the air of readiness he couldn’t seem to leave behind with his uniform. He was more muscular than he’d been as a boy, having finally filled out to the full potential promised by his youth. His narrow-cut western shirt was flame-patterned in shades of blue and purple with black, colors that brought out the clarity and rich darkness of his blue eyes. With effort, she looked away. “Let’s eat out on the back porch.”

  An old white refrigerator stood by the back door, whirring noisily. Sarah grabbed two bottles of soda from it, using the bottle opener on the wall to pop off the tops. Colt held the screen door for her.

  “This is nice,” he said, gesturing at the cozy alcove built onto the back of the drugstore. The alley was off to the left, Loden’s Garage to the right, and dead ahead lay the Great Plains of the West, golden strands of grass shimmering in the sunlight, edged in spring-rain green.

  “I’ve always liked eating out here, but the porch needed a windbreak to make it comfortable.” She set the sodas down on the small wooden table shoved against the outside wall and pulled out one of the two chairs. “Of course, in this part of Wyoming life needs a windbreak.”

  She laughed a little, but Colt knew she meant it just the way it sounded. Given the truth of the matter, the obvious question came to mind.

  “Why aren’t you married, Sarah?”

  She didn’t meet his gaze, but after a moment she answered.

  “It just never happened. What about you? Why aren’t you married?” She reached for one of the sandwiches he’d taken out of the grocery sack.

  “I was, once.”

  Her fingers never even got close to the sandwich. It was sheer insanity, the sudden flash of fury roiled up by his admission. He’d gotten married. He’d been married. There had been a Mrs. Colton Haines, and it hadn’t been her.

  So much for just taking things as they came.

  “Excuse me,” she said, and removed herself from the table, the porch, and his presence.

  She let the screen door slap shut behind her and took one step inside the drugstore. There she stopped, her hand reaching for the old refrigerator for support. Her eyes were squeezed shut, her mouth frozen in a thin, tight line.

  The bastard. The yellow-bellied, snake-eyed, fornicating philanderer had been married. He’d taken a woman to wife. There seemed to be no end to the ways he could hurt her.

  She was being unreasonable. She knew it, and she didn’t give a damn. She heard him coming and hurried farther into the store. She couldn’t face him like this. She didn’t want to see him ever again.

  She wasn’t given a choice. He grabbed her from behind and swung her around, his hands gentle but insistent.

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.” With great effort, she managed to get the words to sound right.

  “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  How incredibly thoughtful of him. “You didn’t upset me. I just remembered Jean Clymer is coming by to pick up a prescription. I promised her I’d have it ready.”

  “Are you sure?”

  She didn’t answer for a minute, feeling lockjaw set in while she fought and lost the battle of acceptable conduct.

  “No,” she finally said. “No, I’m not at all sure. I’m just an idiot with a five-year degree from the University of Wyoming who runs her own business and was getting along pretty good until you showed up.” She glared at him, jerking her arm free.

  “Sarah.” He reached for her again, but she shook him off.

  “Go back to your wife.” She took a step backward.

  “Ex-wife.”

  “I don’t care.” She was horrified to hear her voice falter.

  “I was young, Sarah. The situation probably wasn’t what you’re thinking.” He kept coming for her, and she kept slipping away, stepping around him until she was back where she’d started.

  “Young?” She pinned him with another glare. “How young? You were twenty when you left, when you asked me to marry you, but that didn’t count, did it? No. I was just some small-town girl you thought you could use—”

  “Don’t,” he commanded, pushing her back against the refrigerator, his voice quietly furious. And it was a command, given in a tone she instinctively knew was unused to disobedience.

  Well, he could get used to it.

  “—the same way you used me the other night. I’m so glad I could be of service to you.”

  “Dammit, Sarah.” His face was close to hers. His hands were tight around her arms, his fingers biting into her flesh.

  “You’re hurting me.” She looked down to where his hands gripped her, large and darkly tanned against the white material of her pharmacy jacket. She was going to cry again, and she hated him for doing that to her. “Let go of me, you . . . you . . . Let go of me.”

  She struggled against him, landing an ineffectual blow on his chest. It was like hitting the proverbial brick wall, and that made her angrier, angry enough to cry.

  “You liar.” She came up with the word while she wiped at a tear running down her face.

  The soft sound of his laughter jerked her head back up. With one look, though, she saw it was laughter of the most self-deprecating kind, laughter born of soul deep frustration. He rested his forehead on hers, closing his eyes, and his hold on her gentled.

  “God, Sarah. I don’t know what to do with us.” His hands stroked her arms. “Making love makes you feel helpless, and it’s the only time I feel like I know what’s going on. For me, being like this is helplessness. Never wanting to, but always hurting you. How can that happen? How can I hurt you so much, when all I want is to hold you and keep you close and safe? How can I hurt you, when all I want to do is love you?” He slipped his arms around her and gathered her within his embrace.

  She didn’t have any answers for him, but she let him hold her, and his warmth and his words took the anger out of her. She sighed, a rough, ragged sound, and rested her head against his chest.

  The refrigerator fan whirred along, the only sound other than their breathing. He kissed her temple and lowered his head to the crook of her neck, but he didn’t kiss her again. He only held her, soothing her with his hands in long, even strokes.

  Minutes passed as she relaxed against him and drew closer to him in her heart, irresistibly moved to be a part of him. He wanted to love her and maybe didn’t. She didn’t want to love him and probably had never stopped. She sighed again and turned her face the other way, toward him.

  His stomach rumbled, and she hid her face in his shirt.

  “Don’t worry. I’m not going to faint or anything,” he assured her.

  “Maybe you should tell me about her.
”

  “My ex-wife?”

  She nodded.

  “It’s not a long story, but if you’ll let me eat while I do it, I’ll try to drag it out as much as possible.”

  “You’ve got a deal,” she said, hoping she was up to hearing even a short story of how he’d loved someone else enough to marry her.

  He pushed open the screen door and led her out, stopping once to steal a kiss from her mouth. It was a full-scale invasion, hot and sweet, but short, like a surprise attack, and sexual in the way only he could make her feel. Their eyes met for a moment, hers startled and his teasing, and he kissed her on the cheek, a gesture of chaste affection. Without hardly trying, he had her going in a thousand different directions. Like him, she admitted, she didn’t know what to do with the two of them.

  “Her name was Sumi,” he said after they were settled at the table.

  “Sumi?” Sarah repeated, forcing herself to glance up at him from her sandwich, as if the information was only mildly interesting and not in any way hurtful. “That’s an unusual name.”

  “No, not unusual, Japanese.”

  Sarah’s glance held as visions of a delicate, dark-eyed woman, coy and graceful, danced across her mind. She heard soft laughter and the rustle of silk, and saw lustrous lengths of jet-black hair cascading over slender olive-skinned shoulders. No wonder he’d been gone for ten years. Damn him.

  She looked away, wishing she hadn’t asked. She didn’t know what she’d expected, but a mysterious, exotic wife was harder on her confidence than the suspected California girl would probably have been.

  “It’s a very pretty name,” she said, going about the business of organizing her sandwich and fruit salad, transferring a few potato chips to her napkin, and generally ignoring him.

  “She was pregnant.”

  The potato chips disintegrated in her fist, and he was rude enough to notice. He picked up her hand and brushed off the crumbs.

  “By another sailor, a friend of mine,” he went on dryly. “She was desperate. Her family had ostracized her, virtually put her out on the street.”

  “Why didn’t your friend marry her?”

  “He was already married, had a wife and two kids in Bremerton.”

  “I still don’t understand why you married her,” she said, slapping a few more chips onto her napkin. And she didn’t. She didn’t understand it at all.

  “Believe me. If I had it to do over again, I’d walk away and never look back.”

  “That bad?” she asked with a lift of her eyebrows, hoping against hope.

  “Not exactly. It’s just that it got a little more complicated than I had expected. And the Navy sure as hell didn’t like it.”

  He was blushing. She was sure of it. The faintest touch of color edged his cheekbones.

  “I don’t want you to think I’m some kind of a saint,” he added.

  Actually, he was in little danger of her thinking he was a saint, and she was just about to tell him, when he continued.

  “Of course, after the baby was born, we didn’t get within ten feet of each other. She didn’t want any more accidents, especially since we’d agreed the marriage would only last a short while after the birth. She didn’t want any doubts about the baby’s legitimacy, but she didn’t want to be married to an American any longer than necessary either.”

  “She must have been very pretty.” A ridiculous statement, but it was the best she could come up with, considering how very glad she was that they’d had enough sense to stop sleeping together after the baby had been born, and how very glad she was that he hadn’t withheld this vital bit of information.

  “I remember thinking so at the time,” he said, sending her a quick, unreadable glance. “We certainly weren’t in love, but we got along well enough until she could get her life organized.”

  “What happened to her?” She had to know, no matter what else she felt, which was mostly aching disappointment. She was supposed to have been the one and only Mrs. Colton Haines.

  “You have to understand that she had an unconventional streak in her, or she wouldn’t have gotten mixed up with an American sailor in the first place. She came from a good family. Sumi was the outstanding scandal in generations of Sunakawas.”

  “What happened to her?” Sarah repeated, irritated by his apparent protectiveness.

  He hesitated a moment longer before finally answering.

  “In essence, she sold herself to the highest bidder.”

  Sarah mulled his explanation over for a minute, trying and failing to keep a stunned expression off her face. What he’d said sounded too horrible to contemplate.

  “You let her do this?” She couldn’t help sounding condemning.

  “Let her?” he said, looking surprised. “I couldn’t have stopped her. She knew she was ruined for a traditional Japanese marriage. She took what she considered the next best thing, which wasn’t marriage to a Yankee sailor. She was right. Everything has turned out very well for her.”

  “How?” Sarah asked, her eyes widening in disbelief. She couldn’t imagine how anything as awful as selling yourself could work out well in any context.

  “She became the mistress of a high-up executive in one of the car-manufacturing companies. Stood by him when he hit bottom on charges of corporate espionage in his division, and was there to ride the crest of the wave when he came back on top. The ordeal killed him, but not before he’d settled her in Hawaii with a house and a few good investments worth about a million dollars.”

  “And the child?” Sarah asked, not quite hiding the skepticism she was beginning to feel.

  “Lives with Sumi and Sumi’s mother in Hawaii, on Oahu. Sumi sells real estate.”

  “Colton Haines, I have never heard so much out-and-out bull in my whole life.” He must think she was a total fool. “If you don’t want to tell me about your wife, don’t. I don’t care. I don’t even think you were married, if that’s the best you can come up with. Why, I never—”

  “Sumi Sunakawa Haines,” he interrupted. “If you ever get to Oahu, you can look her up, or give her a call. She’d know you right off. I told her all about you.”

  “Oh, I’m sure you did.” She let out an exasperated sigh and shoved a bite of sandwich into her mouth.

  “It’s early in Hawaii. We could call her now.”

  “I most certainly will not,” she mumbled around her sandwich.

  “Just don’t go on about the doings in Rock Creek. She got so tired of hearing about this place. ‘Lock Leek! Lock Leek, Wo-ming! All you ever talk, Cote, is Lock Leek!’ ” He mimicked a high female voice, ending with a laugh. Then, resting his chin in his hand, he gave Sarah a long, thoughtful look. “She never got tired of hearing about you, though.”

  “I bet,” Sarah said, stabbing a slice of banana out of her fruit salad, still not believing him.

  “A man called this morning,” he said unexpectedly, “while I was making the coffee. He left a message on your machine. Somebody named Hank.”

  He was watching her. She could feel his gaze warming her skin into an embarrassed blush.

  “He said he was going to ride at Gillette Friday and Saturday, and wondered if you’d like to come up and give him some luck. He promised to be good, and he called you ‘honey’ a lot.”

  That was Hank, all right. He always called her honey, and he always promised to be good. But he was too wild even to know what being good meant.

  “I should have figured,” Colt went on, “that there’d be a rodeo cowboy in your life somewhere along the line.”

  “Hank isn’t exactly ‘in my life.’ He just gets lonely sometimes, but not often enough to do anything permanent about it.”

  “Is he the reason you’re not married?”

  She could have laughed at the irony of Colton Haines asking such a crazy question of her, but she didn’t.

  “No,” she said, shaking her head. “I knew right off that Hank was missing whatever parts make a person want to settle down.” She waited a moment
, then slanted a glance up at him. “A million dollars in real estate and investments?”

  He nodded.

  “She must have been very pretty,” she said, not feeling the least bit ridiculous this time.

  He laughed and reached for her, caressing her cheek with his thumb. “I remember thinking so at the time.”

  Nine

  Ten o’clock was bedtime, had been for years, ever since Sarah had been sixteen. She didn’t always last until ten, but she seldom lasted longer, unless she was out on a date or at a party. It was a rare evening at home when the news signed off before she did. The nights when there had been a man in her house after ten o’clock were even rarer.

  She finished drying a coffee cup and shoved it in the cupboard, not because she was excessively tidy and couldn’t go to bed until every last dish was washed, but because having Colton Haines wandering around her house made even thinking about going to bed an emotional mine field.

  They’d reached an understanding of sorts over lunch, though she’d be hard-pressed to explain it to anyone, including herself. He’d done a few odd jobs around the drugstore to pass away the afternoon, heavy jobs she’d been putting off for months. After closing time, he’d helped her with her deliveries and taken her to supper at the cafe.

  He’d touched her a lot and kissed her more than once, more than twice. Natural, easy, undemanding kisses that had started a fire in her regardless of their simplicity.

  She was restless, and it was his fault. He was the cause and the cure, and she wasn’t going into the living room to say good night until she was damn sure she could do it without looking wistful.

  She grabbed another cup out of the dish drainer and roughed it up with the towel. Despite their nebulous understanding, he’d still made no promises, no suggestions or references to anything beyond the moment, and her survival instincts had responded by pumping up to fighting strength. If she didn’t have his love or commitment, she would at least have his respect.