Hold Me Close

by Rosalind James

  His dark eyes captured her in their depths. This time, when he raised a slow, careful hand, she didn’t flinch. He touched her cheek with the backs of his fingers, the lightest of caresses, and said, “Thank you for telling me. Be careful going home, all right?”

  “All right.” It was barely a whisper. “Good night.”

  His upper body moved toward her, the merest suggestion, and she thought he was going to kiss her cheek, but he didn’t. He seemed to check himself, dropped his hand, said, “Good night,” and left.

  She heard his boot heels ringing down the hallway, fading into the distance. And she missed him.

  “Mom,” Eli complained on Sunday as Kayla wetted down his hair and applied the comb. “I thought it was a farm. Why do I have to dress up to go to a farm?”

  “Because these people are important to me,” she tried to explain. “Because I want us to make a good impression.” She finished with his hair, went to the closet, and held up the green dress on its hanger. No. She’d worn that too much lately.

  You mean that he’s seen you in it before. No, that wasn’t it. It couldn’t be, because she wasn’t interested in a man. Any man. Luke wasn’t Alan, no. She was sure he wasn’t. But she wasn’t ready. She was sure of that, too.

  She hung the green dress up again and pulled out the pink one instead. A better choice anyway. The skirt was longer, the sleeves decorously capped, the wide neckline pretty but not as low. She wanted to look nice to meet Luke’s parents again.

  But if Luke was taking them to the farm first? She remembered how scratchy the hay had been. If they really were going into the barn, if he’d meant it, jeans and tennis shoes were the only choice.

  For being in the hayloft with Luke. Stop that. With Luke and Eli.

  She couldn’t believe she was even imagining being alone with Luke. He wasn’t the boy she’d known, no, and when he’d confronted her on Thursday, she’d been nothing but panicked. But he’d been so kind. So patient, and he hadn’t touched her. Well, only once, anyway. When the backs of his fingers had brushed her cheek, and she’d been able to tell that he wanted to kiss her.

  He hadn’t kissed her, though. He’d held back. That was why she wanted to see him again. Today, she was going to see his parents for the first time in twenty-three years. She wondered what they would think of her. Luke hadn’t seemed disappointed, but then, it was obvious that Luke liked the way she looked, and that influenced a man.

  She finally solved the question of what to wear by putting on a slightly snug, light-blue T-shirt with a scoop neck along with her good jeans, the only ones she’d had in the laundry bag when she’d run. The tight, cute ones. Maybe she was dressing for Luke, or maybe she was dressing for herself, for pride, and there was absolutely nothing wrong with that.

  The knock, when it came, made her jump, because no matter what she told herself, she was nervous. Eli opened the door, immediately went to his knees to pet Daisy, and Kayla looked across the two of them at Luke.

  “Hi,” he said, and smiled. Just smiled. His dark Levi’s clung to slim hips and strong thighs, a white dress shirt stretched over broad shoulders, and his cowboy boots made him even taller. His eyes were warm again, and appreciative, too. “You look too pretty. Am I allowed to get you dirty?” He stopped. “Whoops. Sorry. I didn’t mean—”

  He was trying so hard not to flirt, and that was so . . . so sweet. “No, that’s OK.” She lifted the plastic bag in her hand. “I’ve got a dress in here. Think Cal will let me change in his house before I meet your parents?”

  “Sure. You don’t have to dress up, though. What you’re wearing is fine.”

  “You did, so I’m guessing Sunday dinner calls for it.”

  “Ah. Well, I hate to admit it, but this wasn’t for my folks. This was for you.” He smiled a little more. “I know I’m not supposed to say it, but here I am saying it anyway. I wanted to make an effort.”

  “Oh.” She could feel the blush rising, and was sure he could see it, too. “Should we go?”

  “Sure.”

  Eli talked in the truck on the way to the farm, thank goodness. “Did you really know my mom when you were a kid?” he asked Luke.

  “Yep,” he said, his big, sinewy hands so sure on the wheel. He worked in an office, but he didn’t have office hands. He had capable hands, the hands of a man who knew how to fix things, how to do things. “When I was your age, in fact. So you’d better look out. Some girl at your school? She could show up in your life again after twenty years and turn it upside down.”

  “I didn’t do that,” Kayla protested.

  “No?” He glanced quickly across at her, then turned his attention back to the winding road. “Sure feels like it.”

  “That’s not going to happen to me,” Eli said. “I don’t like girls.”

  “Yeah,” Luke said. “You just tell yourself that.”

  “I haven’t seen this landscape in so long,” Kayla said. “I’d forgotten.” To distract herself, and because it was true. The soft, low hills undulated and flowed in ever-changing patterns, an inland sea of gold and cream. Nothing but stubble left now, the waving, rippling wheat and barley having been cut in the harvest. What would it look like when it was green, in the spring? Beautiful, she decided, and hoped she’d be here to see it. They drove past the occasional house, with its barn and outbuildings standing off the road. A horse here and there, twitching its tail against the late-summer flies, and that was all.

  “No?” he asked. “Haven’t you been out here since you came, then?”

  “No car,” she said simply, and he nodded. “And when we came, it was at night.”

  Eli tensed beside her and clutched Daisy a little more tightly, and she put an arm around his shoulders. Those first few days had been rough, and Eli had looked over his shoulder as often as she had herself. Staying in the shelter, the haunted faces, the too-quiet children—it had been a refuge, and a reminder, too. It had taken her two days just to work up the courage to go outside. How far they had come in just six weeks, and still the fear was there, just beneath the surface.

  “But I remember this,” she said. “Aren’t we almost there? Because I remember the wagon-wheel fence.”

  “Yep.” Luke glanced in the rearview mirror, then slowed for the left turn off the highway. “That must be the most-photographed fence in . . . well, in Idaho anyway.”

  The truck raised a plume of dust on the gravel road, and then Luke was making another turn, and this was the road. The tiny, ancient graveyard off to the left, a black iron fence around tombstones going back a hundred twenty years, telling stories that had touched her heart even as a little girl, when Luke and Cal had read them out to her. Of their ancestors, and the ones who hadn’t lived long enough to be anyone’s ancestors. Old men and women, facing a harsh land together, and at last, buried beside each other. Young men cut down in long-ago wars, far from home. A mother and a newborn baby, laid to rest together. And the children, because this had been a hard life, and an unforgiving one.

  Now, it made her wonder. What would it be like to grow up knowing so much about the people who had come before you, who had lived a life so much like yours, and nothing like it at all? It would be good, she thought. To know all the stories, to know that you were part of them in some way, or that they were a part of you.

  She saw the barn first. Big and red, like a barn in a picture book, exactly as she remembered it. And then the white house sitting up on the hill, the wide wrap-around pillared porch softening its square, uncompromising edges, all of it looking as it must have for generations. Like it had been planted along with the crops that surrounded it. Like it was supposed to be there. And the porch swing, still cushioned, still so inviting. Luke had a swing like that on his front porch, too. She wondered if that was why.

  “It looks just the same, except hardly any flowers,” she said.

  “Cal kinda let that go whe
n the folks moved out. He’s not so good at flowers.” He glanced at her as he pulled into the driveway and came to a stop in front of the metal-walled shop that sat next to the road. “How about you? Your dream house have a garden?”

  “Yes. Always. When I visited here—” She broke off.

  “Ah,” he said. “Dream house?”

  “Well—yes.”

  “But you never had that?”

  “No.” The prick of tears was there all of a sudden, behind her eyelids. She’d had a few flowerpots on the concrete outside the apartment she and Kurt had shared, and that she and Eli had gone on to live in alone. She’d lost that place after she’d lost her job, and she’d wondered if anyone would water her flowers, or if they would just die. And then she hadn’t had any energy left over to wonder about that kind of thing anymore.

  This place had lived on in her memory, though. The huge vegetable garden, the hanging baskets on the porch, the little orchard of pear and apple trees, and the tree bearing the sour pie cherries that had been her favorites. The sweet floral scent wafting up to her as she’d rocked in the swing. All of it except the trees gone now, and it wrenched at her heart. But then, nothing in this world lasted, except dreams.

  “All right?” Luke asked, and she realized that he had long since stopped, that he and Eli were looking at her, waiting to get out of the truck.

  “Oh! Sure.” She opened the door and climbed out, wiping surreptitiously at her eyes, then shrieked and jumped at the sight of the big, ugly brown mutt that came running straight at her, barking.

  Not running at her. Running at Daisy, because Daisy had sailed out right behind Kayla and was wagging her tail furiously. Luke was around the truck now, standing between Kayla and the circling animals, one hand on her elbow, and she was shrinking back, trying not to gasp.

  “It’s just Junior,” he said, his voice low and comforting. “He looks a whole lot scarier than he is. As long as he’s among friends, that is. You’re safe, I promise.”

  It was true that Junior’s whip of a tail was wagging hard as he sidled forward and rubbed his head along Luke’s jeans-clad leg. Luke gave him a few affectionate thumps and said, “Junior Jackson. The original article. Go on,” he told Eli. “Give him the back of your hand to sniff.”

  It didn’t take Eli long at all to get comfortable, and Kayla did her best, although if it were really true that dogs could smell fear, surely Junior was smelling hers. He didn’t seem to mind, though, just sniffed her hand, wagged his tail a few times, and ran off with Daisy.

  “Come on,” Luke told Eli. “I’ll show you around.”

  “Don’t we have to . . . check in?” Kayla asked.

  Luke laughed. “Nope.” He opened the door of the shop and flipped on the lights.

  “Wow.” That was Eli, just a breath of a word. “Look at all the tools. It has everything. And a tractor, too.”

  “Yep. Cal will be working on that, is why it’s here. The shop’s what you might call the heart of a farm. People think it’s the barn, but this is where it’s at. This is where I grew up, down here with my brother and my dad. Where I learned to take apart an engine, and where I learned how things work. Where I learned that problems have solutions, and broken things can get fixed, as long as you have the knowledge and the patience. But come on, because I’ve got something even better.”

  The dogs followed them out the door and along to another building, even larger, rising tall against the backdrop of the hills.

  Luke opened another door, a bigger one. “Here’s where we keep the good stuff.”

  “Wow. Wow.” Eli was nearly speechless. A big tractor in the front, two smaller ones behind it, and looming in the shadows, something hulking and huge.

  Luke flipped on a few more lights, and the behemoth came into view. “This is a combine,” he told Eli, heading toward it, skirting enormous, heavy-treaded tractor wheels. “The big mama, the machine that helps us do the harvesting. This is what you’d call the farmer’s summer home. Where I had spent my weekend, that night when you came over to my house a few weeks ago. I spent a whole lot of the summer in one of these things, in fact, more years than I care to remember.”

  “Cool.”

  “Well, not so much,” Luke said with a grin. “But come on and haul yourself up here.” He showed Eli how to climb up into the cab. “Slide on in there behind the wheel, and I’ll show you how it’s done.”

  “It’s not like a car, Mom,” Eli called down to her. “It’s like a . . . an airplane or something.”

  “Yep. Just about as many controls, too,” Luke said. “Here. This is a moisture sensor. Tells you whether the wheat’s dry enough to cut.”

  “What if it isn’t?” Eli asked.

  “Then you don’t cut it. Might be the north side of the hill isn’t ready, so you cut the south side instead, see? Where the sun’s hit more. Come back in a few days for your north sides.”

  They spent a few more minutes up there, Luke explaining, Eli asking questions. “All right,” Luke said at last. “Jump on down, because the next part of this is for your mom, and I’ve been waiting all week to show it to her.”

  He led the way out and closed the door behind the three of them, the two dogs racing over to rejoin them. Luke pointed to the barn and said, “There. Go,” and smiled as Eli took off with the dogs running ahead.

  “Do you miss it? The farm?” Kayla asked him a little shyly. He seemed so comfortable, so much in his element. How could he have left?

  He grimaced. “Yes and no. If I really had, I could’ve done it. Nobody thought Cal would come back. It was mine for the taking, and I didn’t take it. I don’t know. It has to run in your blood, I guess. You have to want it. It’s too much work unless you love it.”

  She took a quick glance up at his face, studied the thoughtful lines of it. “And you don’t?”

  “Oh, some things, sure. The peace of it, knowing what you need to do, getting to decide for yourself. No meetings, no committees. Every challenge something you’ve got to meet yourself, no choice, nobody to pass the buck to. The combine breaks down in the middle of the field, there’s just you to get it right again, and you know how, and that’s a satisfying thing. But . . .” He shrugged. “I like being around people too much, I guess. I’d rather fix people than machines, if it comes down to it. Farming’s a lonely life. And it was never my life.”

  “Because you weren’t the oldest,” she guessed.

  She caught his sharp look. “Yeah. You’ve got it.”

  “And still, you stayed. Like you said. You couldn’t leave and go to the city after all.”

  “Yeah. Well. That much of it—that is in my blood. These are my roots, and they run pretty deep. Five generations out here—that has a pull, you know?”

  “No. Not really.”

  “No place you feel like that about?”

  Here, she didn’t say, because how strange would that sound? “We moved a lot,” was all she said.

  It seemed to be enough, because he nodded and said, “You came back here, anyway. That’s good enough for me,” and her heart did a funny little flip.

  They’d reached the barn now, and she stepped from bright sunlight into shadow. Eli’s head poked over the edge of the hayloft. “Come up, Mom!” he said. “It’s really cool!”

  She followed Luke up the ladder one more time, trying not to notice how good those jeans looked on him and failing utterly. Tall, dark, handsome—and built, and nothing she told herself could keep her from noticing it. The eight-year-old boy who’d made her heart beat faster with his sweet smile and cheerful laugh, his sinewy strength and confident, loping grace . . . and still did.

  “There is a rope swing!” Eli said.

  “You bet there is,” Luke said. “That’s a rule. Got to have a rope swing. Just climb right up on those bales in the corner and take off.”

  They watched as El
i swung out across the dimly lit space with a whoop. “You still scared?” Luke asked her quietly.

  “You remember that?”

  “Sure I do. That you were scared, and that you did it anyway. You were a brave little thing, weren’t you?”

  “Was I? I didn’t feel that way.”

  “Well, no. Courage never does feel that way. It feels like you’re scared, but you push yourself to do it anyway. And, yeah, I remember that about you. And I remember how you made me feel, too.”

  “You? How?”

  He shrugged and turned to watch Eli, scrambling back up now for another run. “You made me feel . . . big. Strong. Not sure that’s so admirable, but there you are.”

  He was standing close, the fresh, sweet scent of hay all around them, and she’d forgotten, for once, all about Eli. “I’m not sure it’s good,” she said slowly, “that you liked me scared and little.”

  “Hm. But you know, I don’t think that’s it.” His hand went out to pluck a bit of hay from her hair, because he’d forgotten, maybe, not to touch her. And she didn’t mind. “I think I liked knowing that being with me made you less scared. That you were counting on me.”

  She had to remind herself to breathe. “A . . . a lady-killer even then, huh?”

  “Not a lady-killer. I’ve never been that, I hope. A lady . . . lover.”

  She heard the hitch in her breath, and knew that he could hear it, too. “Maybe that’s why you didn’t stay on the farm. Not enough girls.”

  She got a low laugh for that. “Could be. So what do you say? Get you up on that thing again? Can I make you feel safe enough to try again? You know what they say.” His smile was so sweet. “If you do fall? That’s all right. Falling’s the funnest part.”

  OLD HOME WEEK

  When they arrived in the little town of Fulton, a few miles from the farm, Luke’s mom came hustling out of the house before the truck had even stopped in the driveway. She was already laughing, exclaiming, “Kay! I can’t believe it,” when Kayla was climbing out. And then she’d had her arms around her, and for once, there was no flinching. This hug didn’t feel anything but welcome, because it was familiar.