They laughed as they put them on. “Since we think like twins,” Jackie said. “Might as well look like ’em, too.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
A simple breakfast was set out on the side buffet at Lone Tree on Christmas morning, and a small group clustered near the tree. Ranch hands, except for Nelly and Reed, were with their respective families.
For Nelly, Lainie had filled a beribboned basket with a variety of applesauce: jars and cans in every brand she could find. Nelly investigated the assortment like a child given something precious. His gaze rose and met hers. “Lookin’ forward to sharing this with you, little missy.”
With only days to spare, a gift idea for Miles had finally occurred to her. Yesterday she’d baked a coconut cake, sliced a neat piece, placed it on a plate and wrapped it with Saran. She’d put it in a fancy white box, marked it fragile, and placed a red ribbon around it. It seemed perfect—yet she worried he might not recall her swiping his cake during their first meeting so the gift would mean little to him.
When he removed the box lid, she watched his brows draw together. He peered into the box as if not sure what was in there, then looked up, caught her eye and grinned. “Took you a while to give this back, but where’s the fork?”
“Tarnation!” How had she forgotten the crowning touch?
His gift to her was also simple, a framed snapshot of her mounted on Glory. She didn’t recall the picture being taken. Gratefully she noted that her face was partially shadowed by her hat so there was little resemblance to her grandmother.
She was disconcerted to find a second gift from Reed. Earlier that morning she’d found a gift box on her pillow containing a light-blue nightgown, the sheerest she’d ever seen, and he’d wanted her to model it, right then and there. She was quite willing to do so. Her breath quickening, she’d slipped into the bathroom and exchanged the old gown for the new one. She loved its silky caress on her skin. It was simply made, just one piece of material with thin folds across the shoulders, falling into a deep vee, then hanging in a soft swirl to mid-thigh. When she emerged, his gaze drank her in, all of her. She turned, giving him the full benefit, then faced him again and he stepped forward.
“Uh-huh,” he said, voice hoarse. His hands slipped beneath the sheer fabric. “Blue is a beautiful color on you.”
She trembled at his touch, then raised her arms to encircle his neck. “I don’t know why you bought me a nightgown. Seems I seldom get to wear one for very long.”
“The prettier it is, the more I enjoy taking it off you.”
Now presented with another gift, and in front of an audience, she was aware of her warming blush and refused to look at the person responsible for it. She opened the second package with some trepidation, but this one was practical and sensible: a canteen, with a device to be hooked on to one’s belt instead of to a saddle.
*
Although Lainie wasn’t a diehard football fan, she’d always made it a point to watch the Super Bowl. Her mind wasn’t on it today, however. She continued to be frustrated with her grandfather’s refusal to listen to her, yet she was growing increasingly anxious as time was running out and the showdown loomed.
She stood in front of the open refrigerator in Reed’s house, trying to remember what she wanted, uncomfortably aware of him watching her from the kitchen doorway.
Oh, that was it. She grasped the pitcher of tea.
“Something’s gnawing at you,” he said. “And has been for a long time now. Surely wish you’d talk to me about it, whatever it is.”
She almost dropped the glass jug.
At her juggling motion, he crossed the room and took the container. He gave her a long look, but when she didn’t respond, he didn’t push. “Was this for you or for me?”
“I was going to pour a glass for each of us.”
“Rather have a beer. Long as you’re there, will you get it?” He withdrew a glass from the cabinet and poured her beverage, then carried it and the bowl of corn chips into the living room. “Best hurry or you’ll miss the kickoff.”
She returned the pitcher to the refrigerator and followed him. She sat on her end of the sofa. He remained still for a moment, just looking at her, then with a shake of his head that mixed amusement with exasperation he got up and went after his beer. She wet her lips, watching him. By forgetting his beer, she’d proved his point.
Confiding in Reed, however, would put him in the middle, which was neither wise nor fair. He might—probably would—take the issue right out of her hands, and that would make him responsible if Miles and she lost each other. And if Reed lost his place at Lone Tree because of running interference for her, then the blame would lie with Lainie.
It was up to her to deal with her grandfather.
*
Though winter in West Texas wasn’t as harsh as what some of the state saw, this year was a cold one. The first week in February the thermometer dropped to forty and got stuck.
On a brisk Sunday morning, Lainie drummed her fingers on Reed’s door, then opened it without being bidden. He was sitting on the sofa, staring at the fire. He looked up, his expression on the pensive, almost dreamy side, a mood she seldom saw in him.
“Weather getting to you?” She stamped her feet to get feeling back into them, hesitated, then removed coat and gloves. She’d warm up faster without extra clothing between herself and the fire.
“Was thinking I’m about ready for another camping trip,” he said, and she blinked.
He laughed, then motioned for her to sit with him, but she settled on the floor next to his legs instead and stared at the wavering flames. She felt a twinge in her knee, but the twinges were becoming fewer and milder. Once she repositioned herself, her discomfort eased.
His hand smoothed her hair. “I was just sitting here, remembering your yen to make love in the moonlight.”
“Um.”
“And I was thinking about a wish of my own.”
She twisted to look up at him. “What might that be?”
“Have you ever seen the River Walk in San Antonio?”
“I’ve heard of it. Never been there.”
He pulled strands of her hair through his fingers. “I walked it once, almost all of it. It’s busy, but still beautiful and romantic—or could be if you’re with the right person.” His gaze softened. “That’s where I want to go on my honeymoon.”
Slowly, she turned back to stare at the fire.
“I want to take you there, Lainie.” His voice was a caress in itself. “I want to share that walk with you. Share my life with you.”
She was afraid to look at him, or to speak. Her eyes burned and her throat felt choked. An image flashed into her mind’s eye—the Pacific Ocean, walking the beach and wading through the waves with Reed. He could share with her; she could share with him. It was beautiful, yet unattainable, for as long as she held secrets. Until she settled matters with her grandfather, she wasn’t free to love Reed and make plans with him.
Reed’s hands fell to her shoulders. The silence was deafening.
“We can talk about this another time,” he said softly. He’d tried to check his disappointment, she could tell, but it still told in his voice and that broke her heart. “We don’t have to talk about it now.” His lips brushed across the top of her head, then he stood and placed another log on the fire.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Doc Talbot had told Lainie she could get up on a horse again around mid-March, and he’d cautioned her to wait until then to drive as well. She was pushing it by more than a month, but she was fairly certain she could manage a brake pedal.
The day after Reed’s proposal, she waited until no one was around—heavens to Betsy, no way was she going to push her luck with her one-time jailer—and then she took her car out to practice on the ranch roads, where hopefully she couldn’t hurt herself or anybody else if she couldn’t handle the brake. Nelly was aware of what she was doing but made no comment, which reinforced her confidence. After an hour of f
orward, reverse, cornering, and numerous fast stops, she figured she could handle a car as well as she ever could. Slamming on the brake produced a twinge that made her wince but didn’t prevent the action.
Nothing now stood in the way of her having that talk with Miles. She tried planning what to say and how to say it, but at no time in her life had a script worked for her. So she planned on giving him no room to put her off again. But other than that, she’d play it by ear.
He retired shortly after nine each night, so that evening at nine-thirty she returned to the office and marched straight to his desk then behind it to use the intercom. There were three of them: one in the office, one in the kitchen, and another in his bedroom. She buzzed his room, waited, but got no answer. He’d either changed his routine or was in the bathroom. She decided to give him a minute before buzzing again.
Her gaze fell on the five-by-seven frame next to the intercom and her picture in it, a copy of the one he’d given her for Christmas. She’d noticed it, but he hadn’t mentioned it so neither had she. She was touched he’d put a picture of her on his desk. That had made her think they’d be okay. He still wasn’t going to like her deception, but they should be able to work it out.
She reached for the intercom to try again, and it buzzed at the same instant. Her hand jerked at the sound and she knocked the frame over. When she pressed the button to answer, he didn’t give her a chance to speak.
“What is it?” he said crossly.
“It’s Lainie. Something came up. Need you now.” She cut off, not giving him a chance to tell her no. The unit buzzed back immediately, but she ignored it.
She picked up the frame—and wouldn’t you know it, the glass was broken. Fine way to start a dicey conversation with someone who was already ticked off at being disturbed. She removed the backing, carefully withdrew the photograph so it wouldn’t be damaged by the broken glass, but it was a different photo she pulled out. Not surprising to find one picture behind another, except...
“What?” she whispered, gaze fixed on the photograph that had been concealed in the frame. The girl was fourteen, wore a sleeveless blue jersey, and she held a baseball bat poised over her right shoulder. Her hair was brown and was pulled up high in a ponytail. In about a month, her father would finally give in, and the teenager would have her hair cut into a stylish bob with bangs. Two years later, her mother would give in and she’d have it highlighted. And both the color and style would last her into adulthood.
Lainie stared at the picture. It seemed like the room turned into a vacuum, stealing her breath and wits.
“Well, what is it?” The irascibility in Miles’s voice made her head snap up. He was disheveled, as if he’d dressed in a hurry. “Don’t appreciate being summoned to my own office at any and all hours. Now what’s so all-fired important?” He stalked into the room then pulled up short halfway across, as if just realizing she stood behind his desk.
“What are you doing?” he asked, angry suspicion mixing with his impatience.
She still held the frame with the cracked glass in one hand, with the picture of herself atop Glory exposed, and the softball photo in her other hand. She put the picture frame on the desk, feeling like she was moving in slow motion, and held the softball picture in both hands and stared at it.
“This was taken by a professional photographer,” she said, not responding to his question or the demand in it. It sounded to her own ears like her voice came from a distance. “I remember him going around, snapping shots, and then he got a couple posed ones of each of us. It was the only year I played. I wasn’t very good.” She grew quiet, still staring at the picture, then added, “It’s not the one my folks chose. We got the one with my cap on, the ponytail sticking out the back. They said that was the one that looked like me, ’cause I was never bareheaded when I was playing.”
She looked up, a sense of betrayal overtaking the dazed feeling.
“The cap shadowed your face,” Miles said, voice and features lacking expression. “I wanted to see what you looked like.”
“You wanted to see what I looked like,” she echoed. “You saw all of them?”
He nodded. At the back of her mind, she was aware of the change in his attitude since he’d entered. Now he appeared circumspect, watching her cautiously as if not knowing which way she’d blow. She didn’t know either. She felt like an accident victim too shaken to feel anything yet.
“But she said you didn’t even know I was born,” she murmured, her mind working at a snail’s pace as she tried putting it together. She looked at the fireplace and the portraits. “You guessed. You saw the resemblance, started checking...” Her gaze lowered again to the picture in her hand. “But this is more than ten years old.”
She looked up, searched for answers in his face. “How did you—”
Suddenly she jerked her head toward the file cabinets, attention zeroing in on the top left drawer. The one she’d found empty. Her gaze shot back to him. “Reports. You hired detectives, got routine reports.”
“That I did.” He didn’t sound proud or defensive, was just stating facts. Then he added, “People shouldn’t snoop where they don’t belong. Might come across stuff that bothers them some.”
He was taking offense at the fact she’d discovered the picture instead of explaining how he had it? She shook her head, trying to clear it, trying to make sense out of the whole thing. “Hey, wait a minute, you’re scolding me? You’re the one who—”
“Who what, Lainie Sue? Who played host to his granddaughter, who didn’t even bother telling him who she was?”
“I tried. You wouldn’t listen. Remember?”
“Tried real hard, didn’t you. And took your sweet time getting to it in the first place.”
She scrunched her eyes closed, and again she shook her head. “Hold on here. Where’s this going? What...”
He strode to the desk, took the photograph from her and looked down at it. “Should’ve known better than to bring this out again,” he murmured. “Everybody had just figured it was a picture of my daughter. I put it in the drawer right after Rosalie brought in your resume—your name blaring across the top of it—then took it to my room and nobody ever caught on.”
She rubbed her forehead. It was getting away from her—what she’d come to tell him, what he should be telling her. “You knew. Even then you—”
One hand sliced sideways, cutting off her words, and then he slapped the picture down on the desk. “ ’Course I did.” His eyes turned accusing, as if he was recalling the interview and not liking the memory. “You were a good little actress. I can say that much for you. But when my granddaughter crossed this room and shook my hand, I knew exactly who she was. Don’t you doubt that for a minute.”
Involuntarily, she took a step back. Clearly he thought the best defense was offense, and she didn’t want to let him get away with that, but her thoughts weren’t clear enough and coming fast enough to counter him. Lifting her shoulders, she raised her hands, palms up in a questioning gesture. “Then why didn’t you just say so?”
“Why didn’t you?”
Because she hadn’t known what kind of person he was and hadn’t trusted him. And she knew now that the same distrust and reasoning had been on the other side of the desk.
“You waited till your mother died, then came to see me,” he went on, angry speculation right up front. “Wondered what you wanted then, and still wondering now.”
She glanced again at the portraits above the fireplace. “Then you must’ve known when she got sick.” It was more a statement than a question. She was still working it out, piecing it together.
He also looked at the portraits, and he took so long to answer she thought he wasn’t going to. Then he said, voice wooden, “Yes, I knew.”
“But you didn’t...how could you not...” She lifted her hands, as if pleading, but he didn’t look at her. After a long moment, she dropped her hands and felt herself closing off from him. “You’re that cold-hearted?”
&n
bsp; “Don’t judge me.” His voice held warning as he turned back to her.
She remembered her mother fighting the pain those last weeks, the unbelievably rapid loss of strength, the despair in her eyes. Then she thought of this man, sitting here in his office, knowing and yet keeping his distance. “You bastard,” she said under her breath.
He jerked as if she’d slapped him. “I don’t allow language like that in my home. And, just to keep the record straight, my parents were married. It was yours who weren’t.”
She drew in an unsteady breath.
“You didn’t know that, did you?”
“No, I didn’t.” Her body tightened up like a coiled spring. “How kind of you to enlighten me. And now that we’re speaking so plainly,” she went on, tone as cold as ice water. “Is there anything else you’d like to tell me?”
He gave her back stare for stare. “Long as you think you can handle it. She ever tell you about your father? Not Walter, your real father.”
“Walter was my real father. If you’re talking about my biological father, she told me he died before I was born.”
“Not before you were born, Lainie Sue. He didn’t die till you were a year old. Murdered. Shot in a drug deal gone bad in Florida. Doubt your mother ever knew that. Or even that she would’ve cared much by then. She’d learned, but not fast enough, who and what he was.”
It seemed that his words carried weight; Lainie felt like she was being buried with them.
“Had him traced, too,” he went on, biting the words off as if the anger was still with him. “But he took longer to find. Crossed my mind more than once I’d like to kill him with my bare hands. But somebody else beat me to it.”
Feeling an almost desperate need to put distance between herself and her grandfather, she rounded his desk and walked to her own, aware of his hard gaze following her. Once there, because she felt both weak and numb, she sat down. “You must’ve hired detectives as soon as she left,” she said. She squinted at the desktop, still working on piecing it together—the situation then and now.
Lone Tree Page 24
