And while he wasn’t fool enough to pretend that his recent encounter with Annie didn’t have something to do with that, he was driven by more than just this impossible need to be close to his ex-wife. The acceptance he’d received from the Wild Bunch had been a far better cure for him than all the medications he’d been offered by his doctors.And there was still one member of the Wild Bunch—in some ways the pivotal member—who didn’t even know Blake Smith existed.
He couldn’t do anything about that. Couldn’t get to know a man who’d disappeared into thin air.
Yet, after last night, after breathing life back into the man who’d helped raise Jake Chandler, he’d felt an odd kind of connection with the rebel who’d ridden out of town, never to be heard from again.
Verne hadn’t moved at all during the half hour Blake had sat there with him. Likely hadn’t known anyone was in the room. Blake was glad he’d come, all the same. Something had been served by the visit.
“Blake!” A surprised voice greeted him as the elevator door slid open on the first floor of the small county hospital.
“Luke, good to see you.”
He shook the younger man’s hand, appreciating the firmness of Luke Chisum’s grasp. He identified with the young fighter, as he’d done since their first introduction the month before.
“How is he?” Luke asked, nodding toward the elevator, his cowboy hat in one hand, resting against a denim-covered leg.
“No change.”
“He hasn’t regained consciousness?”
Blake loosened his tie. “Not even for a minute.”
“Not much reason for me to go up then, huh?”
“Probably not. They say he’s not aware of anything at the moment.”
Falling into step beside Blake as he headed back out to the parking lot, Luke said, “Wonder how they can tell that.”
“Brain waves, I imagine.”
He turned to say good-night as the cool October air hit him outside the hospital’s revolving door. And stopped when he noticed an unusual show of emotion on the cowboy’s face.
“You got a minute?” Luke asked.
“Sure. What’s up?”
“Want a beer?”
Blake hadn’t had dinner yet. But a beer would suffice. He followed Luke across the street to a bar he’d visited more times than he liked to remember, when he’d first come home and had had to be near Annie, even though she’d thrown him over.
She’d been all there was to connect him to reality, to life after his long captivity, to hope and positive feelings. And the booze had helped him escape the rest of what he knew.
“I just got word this afternoon that a buddy of mine, my copilot, actually, was killed this morning in a raid outside Baghdad. He wasn’t even on duty. Was in town trying to get a box of chocolates shipped to his mother, of all things.”
Blake took a long swig of beer, blocking out the vision he had of the Middle Eastern desert and the towns that sprang up within it.
“There’s no way to understand the harshness of life over there if you haven’t seen it for yourself,” Blake said.
“The people, so many of them, they live each day like they’re running on batteries,” Luke added. “You notice it right off when you first get there, and then, pretty soon, you look at yourself and you’re doing the same thing, and you don’t even know how you got that way.” Luke nodded. “That’s what happens after a while. It’s a way of life and becomes commonplace, and you get so tired of being afraid that you just start accepting it all.”
“Until you get home and the people around here have no idea about what any of that is like. And you want to be like them, but you aren’t.”
“You, too, huh?” Luke’s grin was crooked.
“It gets better.” Blake told him what he could. “The whole thing works in reverse, too,” he continued, thinking of the parts of his life that had settled into a relatively comfortable routine. “After a while, surrounded by people who are more or less unaware of the darkest side of life on a daily basis, you start to adopt that as the norm.”
CHAPTER NINE
THE ROADSIDE PLACE WAS quickly filling up, the evening’s merrymakers occupying many of the tables and booths. And the more people that filtered in, the more Blake watched the door, keeping a line clear between him and it.
“I guess this whole thing just hit me harder today,” Luke said, motioning for a second beer as their waitress hurried past, carrying a full tray. She took a second to smile at Luke, in a way that couldn’t be mistaken.“What with what happened with Verne and all,” he continued, as if the woman hadn’t been there at all. “I keep thinking about Jake, too, and how he took off out of here and none of us has ever heard from him again. I get him not contacting his uncle. It wasn’t as if Verne was any kind of a father or guardian to him. And he certainly never came to Jake’s defense when the town hung him out to dry for things he didn’t do. But why wouldn’t he contact one of us?”
Blake had some ideas about that. He just wasn’t sure how to share them. Hadn’t spent a lot of time sitting around trading confidences with a friend. Other than the beers he’d shared with Cole—who’d been his brother-in-law before he’d been his friend—he’d spent zero minutes in such a manner.
“We all have perceptions of ourselves,” he said, choosing his words with care. “They aren’t necessarily the way that others see us—though of course, we believe they are.”
Luke was watching him, appeared to be listening. So Blake took a breath and continued.
“So maybe the guy Jake saw himself as isn’t the same guy you knew him to be. Maybe he figured he really was the loser everyone in town had spent so much time telling him he was. He probably figured you were better off without him.”
Just then, Wade Barstow, the man who owned half of River Bluff, came in. Took a seat at the bar. Even the lucky ones drank alone—and outside of town—sometimes.
“It’s also possible,” Blake continued, watching the successful rancher and taking comfort from his aloneness, “that Jake figures the rest of you did exactly what he did and got the hell out of Dodge, never to return.” Forgetting the town patriarch, and his own wayward thoughts, Blake took a long sip of his beer.
“He wouldn’t be too far off on that one,” Luke said, staring down into his mug. “Cole’s the only one who stayed in the area after graduation. But we all came back for visits. We all kept in touch.”
“You had families to stay with when you came back.”
And family made all the difference. Blake had learned that the hard way.
“So how do you do it, man?” Luke held Blake’s gaze. “I saw some bad shit over there, but at least I was free to come and go. To decide what I wanted to eat. To choose my entertainment and sleep in a real bed. Being shot down was nothing, compared to what you went through. And you’re a rock.”
A rock. Talk about misperceptions.
“You just ride with it, take things in stride,” Chisum continued. “Nothing gets to you.”
Blake’s first inclination was to ask the cowboy who’d paid him to say such things.
“There’s got to be some trick to it,” Luke continued, when he remained silent. “Some head thing you do.”
“I just get up each day and keep breathing.” Blake told Luke the part of the truth he could share.
“Do you ever think about not doing that?”
“Nope.” Finally—an easy answer. “Never.”
“BEC? IT’S ME.”
Back in the beanbag early on Thursday evening, Annie held the phone to her ear.“Took you two days to call,” Becky replied softly. “I was getting worried.”
“I…” She didn’t have an explanation.
“So how’d it go?”
“Good.” Great. Sort of. The sex part was fabulous. The evening had been fabulous. Right up to the part where Blake pulled away from her, got up, put on his clothes and left, as if they hadn’t just spent four hours joining their bodies time and time again, bringing eac
h other a pleasure that was unsurpassable.
“And?”
“And now I wait a couple of weeks and do a home pregnancy test.”
“That’s it?”
Becky echoed the question that had been lodged in Annie’s heart for two days.
“What else could there be?”
“You just slept with the love of your life, Ann. There could be all kinds of things. Not the least of which is regret.”
“There’s none of that.”
“None.”
“Okay.” Already in the sweats she was planning to sleep in, she lay back against the pillow she’d brought in from her bed and pulled an afghan over her bare feet. “There’s a little bit of regret.”
“Tell me about it.”
She wasn’t sure she could. “I don’t know. I’m not sorry for choosing Blake. Not sorry I might be pregnant.”
“What, then?”
“I just…maybe…it was difficult, you know?” She finally said the words she’d spent forty-eight hours trying to avoid. And this was why she hadn’t called her friend. Becky always knew. Always identified the things that Annie would prefer to hide away.
They were always the issues that, if left to fester, would get in the way of her happiness.
“Hard in what way?”
“To have him so close again, and then gone. I feel as if I’ve just lost him all over again.”
Tears filled her eyes as she gave voice to the emotions she’d been trying to ignore. As though, if she didn’t acknowledge them, pretended not to feel them, they couldn’t hurt her.
“Ah, sweetie, this was exactly what I was afraid of.”
“And you were right, Bec. I should have seen this coming. I’m an idiot.”
“No. You’re a woman who loved deeply and possibly forever. I think that on one level, you did see it coming, but there was this other part of you, obviously a bigger part, that needed to make love with Blake again. And that’s why you did it.”
Annie thought so, too. She just didn’t know what to do about that.
“I can’t get back with him.”
“Has he asked you to?”
“No, and he’s not going to.”
“You could ask him.”
“I can’t, Bec. You know that. Blake’s reserve hurt me so much it made me crazy—and then jealous. I can’t live like that. I can’t do that to him. And even if I could, I can’t spend my life with someone who won’t tell me he loves me. I spent too many years feeling abandoned and rejected.”
“Your father’s suicide had nothing to do with you, you know.”
“Of course I know that, but it’s as if I never quite believe it. If only I’d been more…something…Maybe it would have been enough to keep him alive, given him a reason for living.”
“You just have to keep telling yourself that isn’t true until you finally start believing it. You’ve been to all the classes and counseling sessions and read all the books, Annie. You know that suicide is the result of a person being in a place where the pain is worse than the coping skills. Period. It has nothing to do with anyone else.”
“Unless something about me contributed to his pain and the loss of his coping skills.”
“And what would that have been, sweetie? You were thirteen. And he was a manic depressive who went off his medication.”
Annie had a tendency to forget that part sometimes. “I’ve never understood why he did that,” she said now.
“Have you asked your mother?”
“Of course not. She practically had a nervous breakdown after Dad died. I’ve never dared broach the subject with her.”
“It was a long time ago, Annie.” Becky’s soft voice was warm, and filled with compassion. “She’s had a lot of time to recover. I bet she could handle that question now.”
Annie rejected the idea immediately. But then she thought over Becky’s words. It had been a long time. And she’d just considered the notion last week about how her mother might have made some changes that Annie had somehow overlooked.
Still…
“Maybe someday I will,” she allowed. But not this week. Or next. Right now she had too many other things to deal with. She wasn’t sure she had the capacity to handle whatever answers her mother might give her.
“HOW’S YOUR DAD?” Blake asked Luke a couple of hours later as the two men walked back across the street to the hospital parking lot, where they’d left their cars.
Luke’s father, Henry Oliver Chisum, founder of the Circle C Ranch, had suffered a stroke six months before, and the tall, proud cowboy now struggled to walk, even with a cane.“He’s good.” Luke’s voice might have had a bit of forced cheer to it. Blake couldn’t be sure. “I tried to get him up on a horse yesterday, to bolster his spirits. They say that mind over matter can heal, but my dad wasn’t having any of it.”
“And your brother?” Had they not had a beer or two, Blake would probably never have thought to ask such a personal question. Wasn’t even sure why he had, except that he’d heard the other guys ask that same question every single week since Luke’s return.
He just wasn’t sure why.
“Cantankerous as always.” Luke’s grin fell a little short. “He’s always resented me, though I’ve never quite been able to figure out why. This time around, I know why, though. He thinks I’m pushing Dad too hard.”
“And maybe he thinks you’re going to run out on him again.” Blake had heard enough talk around the poker table to wonder if that was true, though only Luke would know. But by all accounts, Hank Chisum was a fair man. A likable one. A kind one. Except when it came to his much younger adopted sibling.
According to the other members of the Wild Bunch, Hank’s attitude never made sense.
“Maybe he’s afraid you’re going to come in, stir things up and then be gone, leaving him to deal with the backlash.”
“Maybe. Couldn’t really blame him, I guess, but I’m not going to. I’m home to stay.”
“I don’t doubt you,” Blake was quick to add. “Just trying to see things from Hank’s point of view. The one left at home so often feels abandoned.”
“Well, if that’s what he’s struggling with, he can get in line.” Luke’s sardonic reply was a step back from his usual jovial personality. Forced or not.
“I heard the guys razzing you about some girl you left behind,” Blake continued. “She wanting to get in line, too?”
The grin he’d expected to see didn’t appear on the cowboy’s face. Nor was there even a hint of humor in his eyes.
“You could say that,” Luke said, with more emotion in his tone than Blake had ever heard. “Becky’s the nurse at River Bluff High School now, but when I knew her she was the most beautiful eighteen-year-old girl ever to have lived.”
“You had it bad, huh?” Blake leaned an elbow against the Lincoln, commiserating with the other man.
“Worse than bad.”
“So what happened? I’m assuming if she’s sore at you for running out, she must have returned your sentiment. At least somewhat.”
“Stupidity happened,” Luke said, as if there was still some leftover bitterness from that particular sting. “Becky was the sheriff’s daughter, and he’d made it known to all the boys that it was jail or hell if anyone messed with his daughter. So we all stayed clear of Becky. One night the poker guys and I were playing and getting a little drunk. They dared me to ask Becky for a date and I didn’t want them to think I was chicken so I did. Becky and I hit it off and we became a couple around school. Then someone told her about the dare. I had forgotten about the stupid dare, but she was crushed, thinking I was talking to my friends about her. She wouldn’t listen to anything I had to say. The sheriff told me he’d kill me if he ever saw me around his daughter again.”
“And you believed him.”
“I was eighteen.” Luke pulled a set of keys out of the front pocket of his jeans. “My brother had been making life a living hell then, too. Jake had already skipped town. Brady was lea
ving. Cole was going to college. It was clear I wasn’t going to be welcome running the Circle C anytime soon. Right about that time this army recruiter came through, promising us the world if we signed up.”
“So you did.”
“Yep.” Luke tossed his keys in the air. Caught them. And headed over to his truck without another word.
NINE O’CLOCK. Annie had been talking to Becky for more than an hour, and still wasn’t eager to hang up. To be alone with her thoughts. Much of the time they’d discussed a kid Becky had seen too many times at school. She suspected the young woman was being sexually abused by a family member.
Not the kind of thing they normally heard about in a small town like River Bluff.Becky had been struggling incessantly, trying to figure out what she could and should do. And after weighing all the issues, she’d just decided to turn the case over to the authorities. If she was wrong, she could lose her job. If she wasn’t, however, she might be saving a life.
“How’s Shane been this week?” Annie asked as her friend seemed to come to peace with the decision.
“Okay.” Becky drew out the word, making it sound as though she wasn’t entirely sure. “He’s doing his chores. Being respectful. He’s in by curfew. And seems to be getting his homework done.”
“But?”
“I think he’s lying to me, Annie.”
“About what?”
“That’s just it. I don’t know. It’s just this feeling I get. But how can I call him on something that has no factual basis?”
“Just ask him if there’s anything he’s not telling you.”
“I did.”
“He denied it, of course. But what teenage boy wouldn’t? Let’s face it, he’s fifteen years old. There are going to be things he isn’t going to tell his mother.”
The Baby Gamble Page 9
