Love on the Line

by Aares, Pamela

  “Everybody likes him.”

  “I’d say I’ve got you backed in that hole you just dug, like a gopher hiding from a terrier.” Molly tapped her fingers along the dash and shot Cara an I told you so look.

  Cara was in no shape to defend herself, and anything she said would just dig the hole deeper.

  “We need the town planning committee to vote through an interim step for a clinic, at least for a doctor,” Cara said, shifting the subject. “You have clout in the community.” And her son had nearly died for lack of adequate emergency access. “Maybe they would listen to you.”

  Molly sighed. “There aren’t any funds for that.” She took in a long breath and let it out slowly. “I didn’t want to be the one to tell you, but I think you had best hear it from me before we get back to town. The county cut the funds for the school bus service. It was announced at the parent-teacher meeting this morning.”

  Cara pressed her back against the seat and willed the leaden feeling dropping in her chest to stop. She’d seen the cuts coming—anyone who read the newspapers would have. She’d even made plans in her head to organize a car-pool system. But she hadn’t expected the cuts to come so soon.

  Molly patted Cara’s arm. “Don’t worry. We’ll all help you until you figure out what to do. I heard there are some jobs in Point Reyes. I mean, I know it’s a commute, but it’s only bad during heavy rains.”

  Molly’s heartfelt concern washed over Cara like a blessing. But Molly couldn’t know that it wasn’t the loss of the job that disturbed her; it was the loss of her role in the community. For two years things had rolled along smoothly. And now nothing was going as she thought it would. Dealing with decisions about the foundation, having Ryan shoot through her boundaries and steal into her heart, maybe even her soul, and now losing her job—how could her carefully plotted life unravel in a few short weeks?

  “It’s okay,” Cara said, even though it wasn’t.

  “It’s not okay. Cutting your job with no notice is awful. And nothing about cutting schools or school services is okay. Don’t those fools realize it’s the future they’re messing with?” Molly lowered her voice. “We’ll be a nation of illiterates if this sort of nonsense keeps up.”

  Cara knew it was stress talking as much as the aftermath of shock. She just nodded and let Molly talk on.

  Molly looked back at Sam. “I know it’s just because he’s mine, but he looks like an angel when he’s sleeping. When he’s sleeping I can imagine that he’ll have a perfect, healthy life.”

  “He will, Molly. I just know it. He’s got you. You see him for who he is. That’s worth a lot.”

  “I guess so. But I shouldn’t let him play sports, especially baseball. All the spurts of running after standing around, all the adrenaline. If his dad were still alive, he’d talk some sense into him.”

  “He loves baseball.”

  “Yeah. More than anything.”

  Cara made the turn into Albion Bay. Both she and Molly had tough choices ahead.

  The cold, crisp scent of approaching autumn met Cara as she stepped onto the bus the next morning. The sun burning through light fog promised a warmer day ahead. She pulled into the gas station and hooked the nozzle into the gas tank. Then she sorted through her backpack, but couldn’t find her favorite wool scarf. The collar of her jacket would just have to do until the sun did its job.

  She’d called the school principal and announced that she intended to drive the bus without wages, but was told that she could continue the bus run only until the end of the week. After Friday, they’d no longer be insured. The announcement had shocked Cara. She’d been so sure her offer to volunteer would solve the problem. But just like that, the end of her job was in sight.

  Cara had worried about how the other kids would treat Sam after his asthma attack, but when she swung the lever and opened the bus door, he hopped on like nothing had happened. She needn’t have worried; Sam was a hero. He’d ridden in the Bugatti and gotten out of a whole day of school, both major coups in the eyes of the other kids.

  Before she let the kids off, she stood at the front of the bus and waved them to attention. She told them the bus run was ending on Friday. The bus sizzled with their protests. When she explained that the parents were putting together a car pool, the older kids groaned.

  That they’d rather have Cara driving them than their parents made her smile, even though she shouldn’t have. She finished the bus run and headed back to town for the town council meeting.

  Three more days.

  Three more days and she’d have to sort out more than just losing the routine of driving the bus. She’d lose her day-to-day connection with the kids. Driving them had anchored her in the community. Driving the bus meant more to her than anyone would ever know.

  Cara slipped into the back of the town council chambers. Molly sat next to Cara as the meeting droned on. When the subject of the clinic plans came up, Cara ignored the butterflies in her stomach and walked up to the small podium.

  “I know that everyone wants to hold out until there’s enough funding for a proper clinic.” The PA system buzzed, and she backed away from the mike a few inches.

  She looked out over the faces of the people she’d come to love. Perk was already shaking his head; he knew where she stood and didn’t agree. Belva sat with her arms crossed, her lips pressed into a firm line. Cara swallowed down the lump of emotion in her throat. The race to the hospital with Ryan and Sam had changed everything. It wasn’t just her life she held in her hands anymore. Alston would just have to work with her and find a way to funnel funds to the town.

  “If we can secure funds for a couple of on-call doctors while we look for funding for a full clinic”—she tried to ignore Perk shaking his head—“it could save lives.”

  Belva stood, surprising her. “Cara’s right. We could hold some fundraisers and pull together enough to get a doc in here for a few days a week. McFarley’s old dentist office could be fitted up. I have a few things I can sell. They’re just old antiques collecting dust. And some of you would do well to clean out your attics.”

  “I’ll pitch in forty thousand.”

  Everyone turned to see who had spoken. Cara knew Ryan’s voice, knew it too well. She hadn’t seen him slip into the meeting.

  Perk stood, hands on his hips. “That’s generous of you, Mr. Rea. Very generous. But it’s a mistake to tackle this piecemeal—the road to Hell is paved with piecemeal projects. We need a real clinic out here, a twenty-four-seven operation. If this past week has shown us anything, it’s shown us that.”

  “Get off your high horse, Mr. Mayor,” Belva said in a tone that only a lifelong friend could use with Perk, one that had a few of those in the audience chuckling. She looked to the back of the room. “Mr. Rea—Ryan—we accept.” She waved her hands at the crowd. “And the rest of you, dig in those pockets. Deep.”

  Perk reddened and waved his hands. “Belva, this is town business, you can’t—”

  “Perk Norman, don’t you go telling us what we can and can’t do. I say we vote on it.”

  Cara walked back to her seat, stunned. Ryan’s generosity had solved one problem, but he couldn’t know the tumult he’d set into motion in her. She hadn’t stepped up. She could have, but she hadn’t. She wasn’t ready to face the consequences.

  Perk was the one holdout in the vote approving the plan to hire an on-call doc and fit up the old dentist’s office. After the vote, Cara slipped out of the council chambers and headed back to her cabin. She couldn’t face Ryan right then. Or anyone else. Maybe not even herself.

  Cara turned in to her driveway and saw the crated package leaning against the front door to her cabin.

  Her foot caught on a piece of rotted decking when she leaned down to pick up the crate. Adam had asked if it would be okay to work on Ryan’s place for a week or so, and after hearing about what the donkeys had been through in their short lives, any contribution to Ryan’s effort to provide them a good home was a small price to p
ay. Her decks could wait.

  She looked around to see if anyone was about and then hauled the crate in and propped it just inside her door. She was beginning to feel like a bad actor in a low-budget spy film. Her life didn’t even feel like it was hers anymore. She felt like a ball set in perpetual motion, banging around inside a steel box, hitting the side and bouncing to the opposite side, leaving no impression and just bouncing, moving, with no direction other than that caused by the impact with the wall. If she believed in evil spells, she would have thought she’d tumbled into one.

  She uncrated the painting her father had sent by overnight express. He hadn’t even insured it. A three-million-dollar Renoir, dropped off on her front porch like a package from L.L. Bean.

  She stared at the perfect landscape. Renoir had captured the light of the south of France so that the painting seemed to glow. The birds along the horizon looked alive, as if they could take wing and fly through her cabin.

  Her father was a thickheaded blunderbuss, but he was right—she loved the little painting. Always had. It called to the part of her that had set out to find her place in Albion Bay, the part of her that wanted to live close to the land, to the sea, connected to the lives of the people around her.

  She read the note that her father had taped to the back of the frame.

  We all need beacons in our lives. I know this painting is one of yours.

  She took the painting and the note upstairs to her bedroom. She put the note on the bookshelf next to her bed, nestling it alongside the owl feather she’d found her first day in Albion Bay. The paper slipped down and she propped it up, reading her father’s slanting script once again. For the first time it occurred to her that her father might be just as lost in the life he’d cobbled together as she was in hers. To her surprise, she felt a camaraderie with him, a kinship she’d never expected.

  She hung the painting on a wall opposite her bed, right next to her faded poster of wildflowers of the California coast. Though mismatched in their value to the outside world, both held equal value to her. She stepped back and adjusted the plastic frame of the poster and couldn’t help smiling. The two pieces of art seemed happy together. When Renoir had stood in the fields of southern France, painting in the afternoon light, he couldn’t have known that centuries later his small painting would command such a dear price. She hoped he’d be happy to know it was cherished simply for its beauty rather than for profit or status.

  On the way to her kitchen, she pressed the button on her answering machine. Alston’s phone message was vague, but his tone gave her hope. Surely there was some way she could stall until Alston found a clever way to help her. Ryan’s gift to the town was generous, but as much as she didn’t want to admit it, Perk was right—hiring an on-call doc was a stopgap. The town meeting had put a knife-edge on her resolve to find a way to funnel money to the clinic project and yet stay securely anonymous in the background. There had to be a way. And there had to be some way to get rid of Dray Bender other than for her to take on the presidency of the Barrington Foundation.

  Her stomach grumbled. She grabbed the stack of papers she’d picked up from the post office and headed into her kitchen. She could read through them as she ate lunch. In the kitchen she focused on the soup pot, staring into it. At the bottom were the slightest remains of charring from the night she’d made love with Ryan. Clutching the pot, she sank into the chair by the table.

  For three years she’d convinced herself that community was enough. For three years she’d kept herself aloof from entanglements with men. Until Ryan.

  She ran her fingers along the back of her hand. The previous night she’d slept for the first time in weeks. Exhaustion fueled it, exhaustion and nerves. And she’d dreamed. Dreamed vividly and emotionally.

  The sensations from her dream swept through her, as fresh as they’d been when she’d awakened, stunned. She pressed her palms to her eyes. Images rushed back. Ryan had held her, their bodies melded in the ecstasy of passion and... and in a pure sensation that she had no words to describe. He’d pressed her back across a bed that morphed into a lake of billowing clouds and together they’d floated—weightless, touching and tasting. He’d come to her from a world beyond her consciousness, beyond anything she’d ever known, and together they’d twined their hearts and bodies into a primal, wordless dance that left her breathless and disoriented when she’d awakened.

  She thought of those children’s games where you take the pieces apart and put them back together and the thing you construct in no way resembles the creature you had in your hands just moments before. Like such a creature, her parts were the same, but a new spirit inhabited her, enlivened her.

  She swept her hand over her forehead and tried to ignore the knot forming deep in her belly, tried to reconcile the lively feelings with the lurking, gnawing sensation that told her events were moving too quickly for her to process. Ryan had opened territory she hadn’t ever expected to experience.

  She locked her fingers in her hair and tugged, felt the pull along her scalp and tried to center herself in the familiar sensation. There couldn’t be a worse time to start out on any kind of a journey, especially one she hadn’t planned for.

  Frustrated when the power of the dream wouldn’t release its hold on her, she opened her eyes and set the pot on the table, pushing it away with her fingertips. Then she picked up the stack of papers Alston had sent. She read through every grant application that Dray Bender had approved in the six months he’d been at the helm of the Barrington Foundation. After reviewing the reports, she was sure that Alston’s suspicions that Bender was getting kickbacks from the projects were true. If she wanted hard evidence, the best way to find it was to track the money. She read through the information Alston’s team had gathered about Bender’s financial dealings. He’d purchased stock in the pharmaceutical companies he was funneling grants to. Clearly the companies were feeding him information that could be considered insider trading. It wasn’t legal, but there were always loopholes. Loopholes Bender apparently had every confidence no one would challenge.

  The laws seemed to be written so that plundering by those in power, by those who wanted to bend the rules to their own purposes, couldn’t be easily discovered or stopped. A mechanic who made a mistake on his tax return could be charged a steep fine, even face jail time, but a person of means and very few morals could walk off with illegal millions and never even get his wrists slapped.

  Her grandfather had based his entire life on the principle that what was good for the everyday citizen was good for the country as a whole. Bender was exactly the sort of guy that he would have taken to the mat.

  Why her father didn’t see any of this... She shook her head, considering. Maybe he didn’t want to know. And maybe she didn’t want to know what Bender had on her dad. But resolve jelled in her. There was no way she was going to let a man like Bender misuse her grandfather’s legacy. It wasn’t right.

  What it would take to stop him, she wasn’t sure. But with Alston’s help, she would. She wouldn’t take on the role of president of the foundation, but she’d find a way to oust the current president.

  She wrapped her arms across her chest and sought the blissful feeling she’d had—was it just that morning? But she couldn’t call it back to her. She eyed the stack of papers on her table. Her brain raced with options and scenarios, none of them ideal and all of them less than welcome. Knowing the destination of the road ahead and finding her way along it were two very different ventures.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Ryan levered the fifty-pound spool of fencing wire and rolled a length of it between the last of the fence posts needing reinforcement. Pain shot through his arm as he twisted the wire cutter, and he cursed.

  “That doesn’t sound like fun.”

  He turned and saw Alex Tavonesi walking toward him on the rutted path. He’d forgotten Alex had invited himself over to the ranch that morning. He was forgetting too many details he usually wrangled with ease.

&n
bsp; Ryan dropped the roll of wire into the dry grass at his feet.

  Alex surveyed the line of fences and whistled. “Anyone ever tell you you’re crazy?”

  Ryan wiped his sleeve across the sweat beading his forehead. “If I remember correctly, you’re the guy who risked a Triple Crown batting title to chase down armed kidnappers on a cliff side.”

  “Kidnapper,” Alex said, still eyeing the fences. “There was only one. And yes, guilty. But there was a life at stake.”

  From the posture of Alex’s stance, Ryan knew the shock of nearly losing Jackie still lived in his friend. Trauma had a long tail and a hard lash. He’d spoken in jest, without thinking. But it didn’t do either of them any good to duck the truth. Trauma only got stronger if you tried to bury it.

  “Well, there’ll be fourteen lives at stake here.” Ryan knew Alex’s fondness for animals. “So you’re just the guy I need.”

  He took off his gloves and handed them to Alex. “The rescue centers are at overcapacity, so some of the donkeys are coming directly here before they’ve been rehabbed. I intend to make good on my promise to provide a safe and humane environment for every one of them.”

  “Then let’s get on with it.” Alex donned the gloves and then picked up the spool of wire by the wooden dowel running through its center. “One thing a vineyard teaches you is how to run wire.”

  Alex had wire-cutting and fastening techniques Ryan had never seen used on the ranches in Texas. Evidently cowboys didn’t know all there was to know about high-tech fencing. He followed Alex’s instructions and admired the deft moves of his teammate.

  When he’d been traded to the Giants, he’d never imagined finding guys like Alex and Scotty on the team, guys who weren’t only excellent players but who had more than the usual team spirit. Most of the guys were like that, as if they’d been hand-picked for their sense of camaraderie and cooperation as much as for their stats and ability to perform.