by Mary McBride
They both stood there a moment just looking at it, then Sam wrenched open the window.
“You must’ve forgotten to turn it off this morn ing,” he said in a voice that betrayed a good deal of irritation.
Laura blinked at the black melted mess. Under the plastic, the vanity’s wooden frame was charred. My God, if they hadn’t returned when they had…
“I didn’t…” She was sure she had unplugged the appliance after she’d used it this morning. She distinctly remembered scowling in the mirror at the limp curls it had produced, then pulling the plug out, wrapping the cord around the handle and replacing the curler in the little closet next to the tub.
Or was that yesterday?
“I’m sure I unplugged it, Sam,” she said, despite the niggling doubt.
He picked the appliance up, using a washcloth on the hot handle, and held it for a minute like some dead thing, dangling from his hand above the wreckage of the countertop.
“Oh, Sam. I’m so sorry.”
“Just be more careful, will you?” he said, shouldering past her, muttering under his breath all the way down the stairs.
In the kitchen, Sam dropped the curling gizmo in the trash can. It wasn’t such a terrible mistake, he thought, even though the consequences could have been disastrous. A brief, disturbing image of his house in smoking ruins, similar to Laura’s apartment, flashed through his brain. For a second he nearly forgot that she wasn’t to blame for that catastrophe.
He slapped a few pieces of bacon into a pan and turned up the flame beneath it. Maybe it was a blessing that Laura had given up cooking, he thought. She couldn’t clean without bringing down mirrors. She couldn’t shop, apparently, without getting her purse snatched. Trouble seemed to follow her like her very own shadow.
“Can I help?”
Hearing her voice behind him, Sam let his eyes sink closed. Surely there was something this woman could do well other than turn his bloodstream to liquid fire every time she came near him? He reached for the white plastic colander.
“Think you can battle your way through the spiders and grasshoppers again for a couple tomatoes and some lettuce? I’m making us BLTs.”
“Oh. Sure. No problem.”
She took the colander from him, marched to the door, and stood there surveying the backyard as if she suspected a sniper in every tree and a coyote behind every bush.
“Just yell if you need me,” Sam said encouragingly.
“Right.” She sighed. “What was it you wanted? Lettuce?”
“And tomatoes. You know. Those red things. Don’t pick the green ones. They’re not ripe yet.”
“Got it.” She did one more quick surveillance of the battlefield and then charged forth.
Sam was slicing whole wheat bread when she called him.
“I think you ought to come out here, Sam. It’s the tomatoes. Something’s not right.”
He turned down the heat under the frying pan. Laura’s idea of something not right with the tomatoes was probably the absence of plastic trays and shrink-wrap and UPC codes. She was down on her knees, peering into the greenery when he got there. And what was not right about the tomatoes was instantly and sickeningly clear. The plants, in their entirety, had been ripped from the ground.
All he could do was stare for a minute in mute disbelief before he was able to shout, “What did you do, for chrissake? You’re supposed to pick the tomatoes, not the whole goddamned plant.”
“I didn’t!”
He bent to pick up one of the plants, its top heavily laden with green fruit and its exposed roots matted with soil. He almost thought he’d cry. “What were you thinking, Laura?”
“I didn’t do this, Sam,” she said, getting to her feet, furiously brushing bits of leaf and grass from her knees. “Give me a break. I mean, even I know enough to know you don’t rip a whole tomato plant from the ground.”
He was reaching deeper into the foliage, checking to see if any plants were still viable, but not a single one of the six lush bushes had been spared. “I just don’t understand this,” he said.
“Well, um… Do coyotes attack tomatoes?”
He aimed a scorching glare over his shoulder, causing Laura to murmur sheepishly, “Okay. I guess not.”
“Hand me the colander, will you? I’ll salvage what I can.”
“Here. Let me help.”
“No.” He brushed away her fluttering hand and at the same time felt like a lout for blaming her when he knew it wasn’t her fault. “I’ll do it,” he said, deliberately softening his tone. “Why don’t you just go on in the house.”
After Laura walked away, Sam closed his eyes a minute. Somebody was sending a message. That was clear enough. But damned if he knew what that message was, or—more importantly—who it was for.
He heaped the white plastic bowl with ripe and nearly ripe tomatoes, leaving dozens of green ones to die, then followed Laura into the house.
Chapter 10
“I know who did it,” Laura said before she popped the final, luscious, gooey bite of the world’s greatest BLT into her mouth, and tried hard not to moan with pleasure while she chewed.
Across the table, Sam’s lips slid into a distinct sneer while one of his eyebrows crooked upward. He’d been so quiet and glum all during lunch, presumably mourning his tomatoes, that Laura almost didn’t mind the current, healthy display of skepticism on his face.
“Really,” she added for emphasis. “I know who did it.”
“Right,” he said with a pronounced snort.
“It’s obvious, Sam.”
“Oh, yeah? Well, maybe you should apply for a P.I. license, Laura, if these things come so easily to you. I could sublease my office to you since I’m hardly using it anyway.”
“Don’t be sarcastic.”
“I wasn’t, actually.”
She dabbed a bit of mayonnaise from the corner of her mouth, then folded her napkin into a perfect little square and nudged it under her empty plate. How could he not want to know her theory?
“Okay. Well, just forget I mentioned it.” Crossing her arms, she leaned back. Her smile, she hoped, wasn’t too terribly smug. Just smug enough and hopefully infectious enough to make Zachary, S. U. sit there and itch with curiosity.
“All right,” he said finally. “I know you’re dying to tell me, so go ahead. Who was it?”
“Pardon me?” She leaned forward, lofting her brows, widening her eyes innocently, cupping a hand to her ear as if she hadn’t quite heard him. “What did you say?”
“You heard me.”
“Oh. Who was it?” Laura tried not to laugh. “Is that what you asked?”
He simply cocked his head, waiting, those gorgeous brown eyes of his glittering while they locked tightly on hers.
“You really want to know?” She cocked her head at the same angle and batted her eyelashes some more. She wished she had a fan to flit in front of her face while she grinned behind it.
“I really want to know,” he said. “Lay it on me, Sherlock.”
“Actually, Watson, my dear, it’s elementary. The culprit is your pal, Janey.”
Sam flinched. He looked as if she had just reached across the table to slap him. The light in his eyes shut down as his entire face darkened.
“Okay. That’s enough,” he said, shoving back his chair, standing, snatching up his plate. “You’re way out of line, Laura. Way out of line.”
Laura was stunned. She thought her theory might surprise him, or maybe even amuse him, but she never in a million years expected it to make him angry. Angry? God, he was furious. A vein was visibly throbbing at his temple, and his mouth was battened down so tightly that his lips were almost white. The air in the kitchen fairly crackled as he stalked toward the sink.
“Well, wait a minute, Sam,” she sputtered. “I mean, it’s just a theory, but think about it. Janey’s…”
“That’s enough, Laura.”
“It’s just that…”
“Stop!”
; His plate shattered in the sink. He turned with his hands clenched at his sides in an obvious, terrifying effort at control. When he spoke, his voice was level, but ominously low. “Not one more word about Janey. I mean that, Laura. Not one more word. Do you understand?”
No, she really didn’t understand at all, but she nodded anyway. She even bit her lower lip to guarantee her own silence. Sam looked capable of killing somebody at the moment. Her!
“Laura,” he said, then stopped to drag in a long breath and let it out slowly, as if he were counting to ten. No, he stood there so long it was more as if he were counting to ten thousand. When he spoke again, his eyes were hard as bullets and his voice was even lower and lethally cold.
“This is none of your business, Laura. You walked into my office a few days ago. Don’t…do not for one second confuse that with walking into my life.”
The chill that shot through her entire body was painful, almost numbing. It left her with barely enough strength to rise from her chair, to face him squarely, and to say, “It was easy to walk in, Sam. But, trust me, it’s going to be even easier to walk out.”
Laura slammed the front door behind her, stomped down the porch steps, and headed for the road, a shopping bag clenched in each fist. The one advantage in being a refugee was a minimum of baggage, and the one advantage in being blazingly, blindingly angry was that she wasn’t the least bit worried about where she was going. Away was good enough at the moment.
Away was great.
Laura picked up her pace. At the end of the short stretch of gravel road, she paused for a second, sorely tempted to turn around for one last glimpse of the lovely white clapboard house, all snug within its wraparound porch and rose bushes, but she was afraid that Sam would be standing there and he was the one person she never wanted to see again in her life. So, instead of taking a last look back at the house, she glanced up through the trees at the afternoon sky.
Uh-oh.
When had the clouds begun to turn such a horrible, sickening shade of gray? It had been sunny all morning. In fact, there hadn’t even been any clouds. Now they were scudding across the sky, joining together to form bigger, denser, more threatening shapes, obliterating the sun. The wind seemed to be picking up, too. Just then a sudden gust brutally twisted the trees above her, bringing leaves and twigs down on her head.
This was not good.
This was very, very bad.
Laura’s heart started to pound, but even so she could hear the tiny voice at the back of her brain. Go back, it urged her.
“No way.”
She gripped her shopping bags tighter and walked faster, turning right onto the canopied blacktop that would eventually lead to the highway.
Go back to Sam’s? Never in a million years. Not after he had turned on her so viciously. Her friend! What a joke! How could he be so deliberately cruel, telling her she’d walked into his office, not his life?
Taking Janey to the emergency room in the dead of the night and driving through a hurricane to do it apparently was nothing to him, but let Laura make one teensy remark that rubbed him the wrong way and Bam! He’d let her have it with both barrels, right between the eyes.
Walk back into his life? Not on her life. Not if she lived to be a thousand years old. Not ever.
She walked faster, away, every now and then looking up and squinting through the trees at the ever-darkening sky.
Go back? Go to hell, Sam Zachary. She’d rather get fried by lightning.
“Just kidding,” she muttered under her breath.
In the pasture to her left, Laura could see cows moving together, closing ranks in a tight circle of black and white, while the wind whipped through the surrounding grasses. Birds leapt from the fence posts along the side of the road, then seemed to be carried away on the wind rather than flying on their own.
Not good. Not good. Oh, God, this wasn’t good. She didn’t mean it about the lightning, really.
Go back.
“No way.”
Then the rain came. Sideways. Slashing at Laura’s face and arms. Soaking her hair and clothes. Still, it was only rain. Rain was harmless enough. It was just vertical water. At least there wasn’t any…
Thunder shook the ground beneath her feet, reverberating up through Laura’s whole body. Her eyes nearly popped out of her head as she looked frantically around for shelter and found nothing but trees and fence posts. There wasn’t even a ditch in which to flatten herself.
A scream was clawing its way up her throat just as the truck pulled up beside her and the passenger door swung open.
“Get in.”
Sam pulled to the side of the road, cut the wipers and the engine, then flicked on the hazard lights. The wind was blowing hard enough to punish the two thousand pound Blazer, and the rain cascaded in a thick, gray sheet down the windshield. The lightning was close and fierce.
“Hell of a storm,” he said, half turning, leaning his back against the door, with one arm draped over the steering wheel, the other over the seat back.
Laura nodded. Her wet hair flung beads of water across the dash. She was shaking so hard her bones were nearly rattling in her skin. After what he’d said to her, though, he’d be surprised if she accepted his comfort.
“I’ve got a hug I’m not using,” he said softly. “You need one?”
She shook her head vehemently, sending forth another spray of water, just before a resonant clap of thunder sent her scrambling across the center console and into his ready arms.
“I hate this. I hate this. I hate this,” she muttered into the front of his shirt.
“I know. It’ll be over soon.”
Sam sat there, holding Laura, trying to absorb her shivers and her fears, trying not to notice how good it felt to have her in his arms again. Not that he deserved feeling good after lashing out at her the way he had a little while ago. Hell, he suspected Janey, too. He just didn’t want to deal with it, and so he’d behaved like an insensitive clod.
He pressed his cheek against Laura’s wet, fragrant hair, closed his eyes, and selfishly hoped the storm would go on for at least another hour.
It didn’t. The rain slackened and the fierce winds blew themselves out in a mere ten minutes, and Laura made a strangled little sound as she began to push herself away from him. But Sam didn’t let her go. He held her even closer against him.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “I shouldn’t have said what I did. You know, that bit about you walking into my office but not my life. I didn’t mean it.”
She went completely still within the circle of his arms, and Sam didn’t know if that meant she accepted his apology without further explanation or if she was merely gathering her strength, ticking like a silent time bomb prior to exploding.
All he knew was that he didn’t want to let her go. This woman had done more than merely walk into his life. She had altered his lone existence completely, changed it for the better somehow, irrevocably, only he didn’t know how to explain it to her much less to himself.
“What did you mean, then?” Her words were muffled in his shirtfront, warm against his chest.
Sam sighed, smoothing his hand along her damp upper arm. “Damned if I know,” he said. “Other than I don’t want you to go. I don’t know any other way to say it, Laura.”
“Try,” she said, apparently unwilling to let him off the hook.
He closed his eyes. “I’m not good at this,” he said, struggling to find the words that would help her understand what he hardly understood himself. Was he in love? Or was he temporarily insane, allowing his body to make decisions rather than his mind? How did his heart figure into it all?
“You couldn’t have been more wrong,” he said, “when you accused me of having a string of women. It’s just the opposite, in fact. I’m thirty-three years old and I’ve only been with one woman in my entire life. Since kindergarten, all those years, I never even looked at anybody else but Jenny. It never occurred to me. Not even after she died. I thought I was content. I
thought there never could be anybody else. And then…”
He sighed. Maybe it was love if love walked in wearing slinky blue velvet and spiked heels. “And then you walked into my life.”
“Lucky me,” she said with more than a hint of sarcasm in her tone.
“Yeah,” Sam laughed softly. “Lucky you.”
He shifted his weight in the seat, but didn’t loosen his hold on her. Now that the storm was over, he was so afraid she’d bolt.
“Just come back, Laura. Please,” he said. “At least until you’ve got someplace else to go.”
She sighed, a long, wet and weary exhalation which Sam took for acquiescence.
“Good,” he said before she had time to change her mind.
He was about to straighten up and start the car when a single headlight beamed just a way down the road. Damn. If he’d told Janey once, he’d told her a dozen times that she needed to get that broken light fixed. It wasn’t safe, driving out here in the country, with a single beam. Not for her or Samantha.
Laura began to rise up.
“Stay down just a sec,” he said, pressing his hand on her shoulder. “Janey’s coming. No sense setting her off.”
Oh, by all means, let’s not upset poor Janey.
In spite of Sam’s admonition, Laura was tempted to pop up behind the steering wheel, right in Sam’s lap, like a leering jack-in-the-box, if only to see the look on the woman’s face.
Janey’s voice was tight, wound up, so full of phony cheer that Laura nearly gagged. She had driven right over to give him the good news, Janey told Sam. Samantha’s tests came back from the hospital and there was no indication of meningitis. None whatsoever. Now there was a surprise, Laura thought uncharitably, even as Sam was offering a convincing sigh of relief.
Wouldn’t he like to come over for dinner to celebrate? Just the three of them? No, he didn’t think that would be possible. Not this week, anyway. There was this case…
The case in question almost laughed out loud in the vicinity of his belt buckle. Why did he continue to be so nice to her? Why in the world didn’t he just come out and say “Take a hike, Janey”?
