Coming Home to You

by Fay Robinson

  He checked the side mirror and pulled out into the street. They would keep moving while they talked to avoid arousing suspicion from any patrol cars that happened to be in the area. And when they were finished, he’d drop her back at her car.

  “Give it to me,” he said.

  She pulled a plastic bag containing a computer disk from her jacket. “My prints are on here, too, but those are the only two sets—his and mine. Don’t run them. I don’t want them in the system. Compare them to what you already have on file for him, and give me your expert opinion.”

  “You’ve got it.”

  “And Flapjack, I need this as quick as I can get it.”

  “You always do.”

  “If there was any other way, I wouldn’t ask, but somebody’s been nosing around my research, and I want to make sure it’s not him,” she lied.

  “You sweet on this guy?”

  “Yeah, I’m sweet on him.”

  He snickered. “Katie Kat’s got her a man.”

  “Don’t give me grief, okay? Just look at the prints.”

  “Is this the same dude you had me run DMV records on a few months ago and request files?”

  “Yes.”

  They arrived back at her car. Flapjack pulled over to the curb in front of it. “I’ll talk to you when I’ve had a look.”

  “I’ll be at my condo until I hear from you. I’d rather keep Marcus out of this.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  Kate got in her car and drove home for the long wait. She didn’t go to work the next day, telling her brother she had a virus and didn’t want to give it to him. When the call from Flapjack finally came, she picked up the phone on the first ring.

  “You can relax, Scoop,” he said. “Your boyfriend’s in the clear. Those prints on the disk? Not his.”

  Oh, God!

  Kate thanked him, apologized for putting him to the trouble for nothing and pretended calm as she made arrangements to get back her disk. She even laughed, unsure how she managed it with the knot in her throat and her body shaking uncontrollably.

  When she put down the phone, the first wave of nausea hit her, and she hung her head between her knees to try to get back control.

  Not his. Yet the prints in the police file definitely belonged to Bret Hayes.

  She took rapid breaths, drawing in air to keep herself conscious.

  Not his. If the prints on the disk didn’t match those on file…

  The bile surged upward. She slapped a hand over her mouth and stumbled to the bathroom, almost making it before she threw up.

  THE WIND HAD RISEN steadily all afternoon and now wailed in a ghostly symphony through the cracks in Bret’s barn. This was going to be one of those nights when a man wanted to turn in early and press himself against the warm body of a woman. But the only woman he wanted was a thousand miles away. And in love with a dead man.

  He stood in the barn doorway staring out, his hands in the pockets of his goose-down jacket, watching the sky with growing uneasiness. The light was fading, but the threatening clouds that had been gathering in the east for the past couple of hours were still visible above the shadowed landscape. Snow clouds, rain clouds, he couldn’t tell which. But they bothered him.

  He never worried about snow until late January or February, and it was only the last week of October. Most years it never snowed at all. But rain, now that was a different kind of problem. A horse was pretty sure-footed and reasonably smart, but ice on the ground could turn it into a brainless lump of uncoordination.

  Everything of value he had was tied up in his horses. He couldn’t afford to lose an animal because of something stupid like a broken leg. And the way his luck had been running lately, if they got rain tonight and it turned to ice, there’d be some kind of accident.

  The weather report said a low of twenty-two degrees and no rain, but he wasn’t taking any chances. With Aubrey and Willie’s help he’d gone through his severe-weather checklist. They’d given all the animals an extra ration of sweet feed to help them generate more body heat, and opened the gates so the mares and colts could move out of the wind and into the shelter of the trees that fringed the grass on the hill beyond the barn.

  Inside the unheated barn, they’d put blankets on the studs and set out the portable kerosene heaters in the alley between the stalls. They’d wrapped the water pipes so there was little chance they’d freeze. But still, an uneasiness had settled in Bret’s bones like the cold. Something was going to happen and it was going to be something he wasn’t prepared for. He felt it.

  Aubrey came up beside him and scanned the sky. “Well, it don’t look good.”

  “I might start using that as my motto,” Bret said with dead seriousness.

  “Thinkin’ of puttin’ it on a business card, are you?”

  He almost smiled. “Maybe.”

  “You should paint it on a sign down at the road. Make sure folks know what a hard-luck guy you are. Maybe have you some flyers printed up and passed around town.”

  That did it. Bret’s lips twitched against his will.

  They’d known each other long enough that Aubrey could get away with poking fun at him and his dark moods. And he’d been in a dark one lately, the darkest he could remember in a long while, or so Aubrey kept reminding him. He could pinpoint when it started by the xs he’d drawn on the calendar in the office, one for every day of the six weeks since Kate had gone back to Chicago.

  He didn’t know why he bothered to count the days. She was never coming back. He hadn’t heard a word from her. No apologies. No attempt to explain her feelings. But why should she when her feelings were obvious? She was in love with a rock star. And there was no room in her heart for a simple country man, a horse-breeder.

  “You want me and Willie to hang around a spell, see what the weather’s gonna do?” Aubrey asked, interrupting his thoughts.

  “No need. I can handle whatever happens.”

  “We don’t mind.”

  “I know, and I appreciate it, but this storm will probably blow over, and even if it doesn’t there’s not much else we can do right now. And something tells me, the way you two have been whistling all day, you have plans tonight.”

  Aubrey grinned and confessed, “Promised to take a couple of fine-lookin’ ladies dancin’.”

  Bret suppressed a chuckle at the image of a bowlegged Aubrey whirling some woman around the dance floor, and shy Willie even talking to a woman, much less dancing with one.

  Aubrey leaned out the door and spit tobacco juice in an arc toward the corral. “Why don’t you come along? Don’t imagine we’d have too much trouble rustlin’ up a female who’d mind starin’ into that face of yours for one night.”

  Bret shook his head and gave the answer he gave every time Aubrey asked him to join them in their constant attempts to woo women. “Thanks, but some other time.”

  Aubrey didn’t persist, having learned by now it wouldn’t do any good.

  They stood awhile in the gathering darkness, watching the mares slowly make their way across the pasture and up the hill, with the friskier colts and fillies trotting among them. The scene was part of a larger picture Bret had often thought about back in those days when his life had begun to fall apart. He’d dreamed of waking up here every morning to a slower simpler existence, horses grazing peacefully on the hill. The dream had kept him going.

  He’d believed that getting back to the land now and then and doing a hard day’s work with his hands would right what was wrong with his life, and it almost had. But the price he’d paid—his brother’s life—had been too great. And lately he’d begun to realize that heaven looked a lot like hell when there was no one to share it with you.

  “You should call that little gal and tell her how you feel about her,” Aubrey said, accurately reading his thoughts. “Ain’t healthy for a man to brood over a woman like you’ve been broodin’ over that one and not do somethin’ about it.”

  Bret shifted and leaned against the doorway, cross
ing his arms over his chest. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Yeah, you do. You’re being your usual hard-headed self.”

  “Don’t you have somewhere to go?”

  Aubrey spit again and wiped his sleeve across his mouth. “Yeah, I reckon I do, seein’ as how you’re not gonna listen to me, anyway.”

  “Go on, then. I wouldn’t want those fine-lookin’ ladies mad at me because I made you late.”

  When he’d gone, Bret made a second check of all the faucets to make sure they were dripping in a steady stream, then settled in at the desk in the small room he used as an office. Bookkeeping wasn’t his specialty, but he’d learned it to avoid having to turn his books over to a stranger.

  He switched on the lamp and ignored the dust that coated his desk. Maybe one day, if he ever got his life back together, he’d build a new barn at the homestead, although he had to admit this old place had served him well for a lot of years.

  He was adding up his first column of figures when the sound of the wooden door opening and closing made him raise his head. He made a mental note to oil the rusty hinges.

  “You forget somethin’?” he called out.

  But Aubrey didn’t answer.

  He got up from the desk, walked to the door and looked down the dark alley. The heaters with their eerie orange glow provided the only illumination and did little to breach the darkness, but the silhouette of a figure by the door was unmistakable. “Aubrey?”

  Kate stepped out of the shadows.

  “You are really something,” she said, the harshness to her voice letting him know this wasn’t his sweet Kate talking, but the hard-edged reporter Kathryn Morgan. He could feel her anger, even from thirty feet away. “You jerked me around like a puppet. You made me doubt my own sanity when I couldn’t separate the two of you in my head. You used me, lied to me, manipulated me. You made me feel cheap and dirty because I let you touch me even when I knew it was wrong.”

  She walked over to him and slapped him hard across the face.

  “Damn you, James!”

  THREE DAYS PASSED before he decided he was ready to talk. On Sunday afternoon he showed up unannounced at the motel, looking as if he hadn’t slept or shaved or even eaten since she’d left him. His handsome face appeared gaunt, his eyes red-rimmed and puffy. In the instant after she opened the door, she felt remorse for the agony she was putting him through, but it was quickly replaced with the anger that had boiled within her since she’d realized who he was and how he’d manipulated her.

  At the barn when she’d confronted him, he’d denied everything and refused to talk to her. He’d walked away. Three days of stewing about it had apparently convinced him she wasn’t going to simply disappear.

  “You have to give me the chance to convince you not to publish what you know,” he said now. Not… “I’m sorry,” or “Forgive me,” or “I care about you,” or any of the declarations her schoolgirl heart had dreamed he might make.

  “I have to?” she repeated incredulously. “I don’t have to do a damn thing.”

  “Let’s get out of here. Will you take a ride with me?”

  “I suppose.”

  In the truck, as they rode, the air was frigid, but not only from the weather. James became silent and morose. For the moment Kate was glad of his silence, because she didn’t know how they could ever resolve this. It also gave her the opportunity to study him.

  James. She still couldn’t believe it, even though the evidence sat next to her. She’d wished again and again after the plane crash that some miracle would bring him back, and here he was—older and bigger than the James she’d known, but still vital and overwhelming. A mature man had replaced the willowy long-haired youth.

  “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “My house. If we’re going to talk, I don’t want to risk someone overhearing.”

  “Should I be worried you’ll slit my throat and dump me in a ravine somewhere?”

  His gaze flicked to her and returned to the road. “That’s not funny, Kate.”

  “It wasn’t meant to be.”

  “You can’t actually believe I’d hurt you.”

  She wanted to say he already had. Instead, she chose silence, turning to watch the passing scenery from the side window. Let him wonder what she thought.

  A few minutes later they pulled into the yard. James parked the truck and got out, coming around to open her door. When Kate stepped down, Sallie came wriggling up, licking Kate’s shoes and slacks. Kate knelt and rubbed her head. “Hey, girl. How are you?”

  “She missed you,” he said, making her look up. He gave her a small tentative smile. “I missed you.”

  She frowned. “Don’t,” she warned. “I’ve heard enough of your lies to last me a lifetime.” Angrily she stood and walked to the front door. James had left it unlocked, and she pushed it open and went inside. He followed her in, turning up the gas heater in the living room to knock the chill out of the air. He took their jackets and threw them over the back of the couch.

  They faced each other across the living room like boxers in a ring. “Do you want to hit me again?” he asked finally.

  The absurd question took some of the steam out of her. “Of course not.”

  “Then can we talk calmly about this?”

  She swallowed the anger that had settled in her throat. “I don’t know. I’m so furious right now I’m not sure I can stay in the same room with you long enough to talk.”

  “Will you try?”

  Reluctantly she made her way to the couch. He came forward, apparently intending to sit next to her, but she quickly pointed to the other end. “Down there. I don’t want you touching me, trying to manipulate me.”

  He did as she said, leaning forward to rest his forearms on his knees. “First,” he said, “I want to tell you that, although I had no choice but to mislead you, I didn’t like doing it.”

  “You used me. You pretended to have feelings for me so I’d get distracted and you could play out this bizarre little masquerade of yours.”

  “You’re wrong about that.”

  “What really infuriates me is how you compromised my book. All that stuff about what a bad guy James Hayes was. I don’t know what’s true and what’s fiction anymore. Do you know you’ve ruined years of work?” She didn’t give him a chance to answer. “What possible reason is there for doing that?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “Another fictionalized one, no doubt.”

  “Come on, Kate, ease up.”

  “Ease up? You’re joking. All those lies you told, and you expect me to calmly sit here and listen to more of them?”

  He sprang to his feet. “This isn’t getting us anywhere. How long do you intend to stay mad at me?”

  “As long as I breathe.”

  “Ah, forget it. Talking to you is like hitting myself in the head with a baseball bat. I don’t know why I was stupid enough to think you’d care about me enough to listen.”

  He walked with angry strides to the front door, jerked it open and walked out.

  Kate ran after him and onto the porch. He was already in the yard headed toward the side of the house, with Sallie racing next to him. “Where are you going?”

  “Out,” he said, not stopping.

  “It’s freezing.”

  “Yeah, but that’s still a lot warmer than being in there with you.”

  “But you forgot your—” he disappeared around the corner of the house “—jacket.” She sighed, went back inside and slammed the door. Well, let him freeze.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  PIGHEADED. RATCHET-JAWED. Temperamental. With every stroke of the brush on the horse’s flank, James thought of another word to describe Kate. Annoying. Exasperating. Stubborn. He’d never met a woman who riled him more than she did.

  Sallie whined at his feet a second before the barn door squeaked. James had his back to the door, but Sallie’s wagging tail told him it was Kate and not the wind that ha
d made the noise. He continued to brush the horse, his heart in his throat, and it was only a few seconds before she came and stood silently at the horse’s head. He glanced at her and she held out the jacket she’d draped over her arm. He slipped it on, then immediately resumed his brushing.

  “Your leg,” she said stiffly. “Did it heal okay?”

  “Yes.”

  “And your side?”

  “Fine.”

  She said nothing else for several minutes, only watched as he worked. The horse didn’t need brushing. He’d already done it once today. But he enjoyed it. And it kept his hands busy and away from that lovely throat of hers.

  “You still play the guitar sometimes, don’t you?” The question surprised him and he stopped brushing to look at her. He had an old acoustic guitar in the storage room, and occasionally at night he took it out, sat on the porch and serenaded Sallie and the deer that ate his garden. But Kate couldn’t possibly have known that.

  “How did you know I still play?”

  “The calluses on your fingertips. I noticed them that day at the ranch, when you took me to see the graves of your ancestors.” He raised his hand and rubbed his thumb across the calluses made by pressing the strings. “At the time I thought it odd you’d have calluses like that on one hand and not the other, particularly on the ends and not the pads of your fingers.”

  “Is that what tipped you off?”

  “Partly.” She reached into her pocket, took out a red-and-gray capsule and gave it to him. “Then there was this. You hid it in your jeans and lied about taking it that night you got hurt. James Hayes is allergic to penicillin, but Bret Hayes wasn’t.”

  “I was hoping that had dissolved in the washing machine.”

  “I found it when I emptied your pockets.”

  “One pill and calluses on my fingers couldn’t possibly have been all that gave me away.”

  “No, it was a hundred little things that didn’t add up. Your lifestyle, the fact that you aren’t living on the money you inherited. The inconsistencies bothered me from the beginning, and they only really made sense if you were James pretending to be Bret. But that seemed so implausible I couldn’t force myself to even consider it. After I did, after I accepted it might be possible, I set out to prove what I suspected.”