by Sharon Sala
He turned at the sound of her footsteps crunching on the graveled path, and the last straw in her resistance crumbled. She’d never seen so much pain on a man’s face in her life.
When he saw who it was, he turned away without speaking, yet Toni knew that it wasn’t because he hadn’t cared about his partner, but because he cared too much.
She stood beside him without speaking, resisting the urge to hold his hand as the search crew carried what was left of five men through the clearing toward the waiting vehicles from the coroner’s office.
One black bag followed another, pitifully small and weightless. Somewhere within them were the remnants of two prisoners, two pilots and one good cop. Yet, after crashing, then burning, what more would there be?
It was impossible for Lane to put into words what he felt. He sensed Toni’s concern, and while he appreciated her presence, he could not trust himself to speak. His shoulders hunched against the sight of the five black bags. Why wasn’t I killed, too? he wondered.
Therein lay the crux of his misery. He hadn’t been able to get beyond that question. One thought after another had followed it, but it always came back without an answer.
The worst of it was that there was no reason for his survival. Upon impact, he and Emmit Rice had not even been strapped into a seat. By every rule and caution known to man, they should have been the first to die.
There should have been one more body at the crash site. And because there wasn’t, Lane would not rest until Emmit Rice was found. Officially, Rice was listed as missing and presumed dead.
Hell, they are all dead...except me.
“Your leg is bleeding.”
Lane jerked, startled by the sound of a human voice, after he’d been so lost in watching the parade of death passing by. He’d actually forgotten that she was still beside him. Toni’s quiet voice held no censure, only compassion, but his bitterness had to go somewhere, and because she was the only one around, it fell to her to suffer his rage.
“Tell it to them,” he said harshly, and pointed toward the body bags before he turned and stalked back toward the house.
Tears blurred her sight, but not so much that she couldn’t see him dragging his injured leg as he hobbled over the graveled path on his bare feet.
Knowing that he wasn’t ready to hear it, Toni waited until he was out of earshot before she muttered, “It’s not your fault, you know.”
She ignored the impetus to follow and assure him further. Instead, she turned away, unable to watch him leave. She didn’t want to feel compassion, or give in to the urge to throw her arms around him and comfort him. She needed to feel separate from him in order to do what she’d decided upon.
Last night, in the midst of a sleepless and lonely vigil, Toni Hatfield had come to a life-altering conclusion. She didn’t know how, and she didn’t know when, but she wanted Lane Monday to be the father of the child she so longed to bear. And she kept telling her heart that she didn’t care that he would come and go in her life without notice. What he left behind would, for her, suffice. If she wasn’t destined to know the love of a good man, so be it. But there was no handwriting on the wall that said she couldn’t have a good man’s child.
That was what Toni kept telling herself as she watched the last vehicle drive away. A stray lock of her hair slipped out of its clip. Toni gave it a halfhearted swipe as she turned toward the house, ignoring a painful shaft of conscience. She couldn’t afford to care about a man who would be leaving in a matter of days. She had the rest of her life to live without him when he was gone. With that thought in mind, she started up the hill.
“Miss Hatfield, wait up,” a voice said.
Toni turned and looked back down the hill. Coming toward her were the two other men from Lane’s office who had arrived the night before to coordinate the investigation. Along with a stack of papers and an armful of cameras, they had brought a suitcase full of Lane’s clothes. Someone had had the foresight to recognize the situation that a man his size would be in.
Bill Reese and Chuck Palmer were ordinary-looking men. The only thing that set them apart from just anybody on the street were the U.S. marshals' badges that they carried. From the looks on their faces, they had been affected by the situation as deeply as Lane had been.
“You both look as if you would trade your last dollar for a bath and something cold to drink. Am I right?” she asked.
The men looked at Toni, then at each other. Chuck Palmer managed an uneasy chuckle as Bill Reese spoke.
“Yesterday when you offered to let us stay here with Lane, I knew you were one-in-a-million. Now we find out you're a mind reader, as well. Just lead the way, pretty lady. We're right behind you.”
Toni flushed. Pretty lady, indeed.
“Lane’s not in a very good mood,” she warned as they neared the porch. “He’s fighting a lot of hurt from both directions. Right now, I would hate to guess what hurts more, his heart or his leg.”
Reese sighed. “Coming up a body short in the investigation doesn’t sit well with us, either. We've got searchers and dogs in the hills, checking for any sign of Rice, but we're pretty sure that he drowned in the same flood that nearly got Lane. It’s simply a matter of waiting for the body to surface, and it will. As for Lane being sad, well, he and Bob Tell were real close friends and had been ever since Lane’s wife died,” he said.
Toni stumbled and paled, but the men behind her never noticed.
“Watch that first step, it’s loose,” she muttered, and hoped that it covered her shock.
Lane had told her that he’d been married, but she’d assumed he was divorced. Knowing that his wife had died instead changed a lot of things. He might not be as receptive to what she’d planned as she’d hoped. What if he was still grieving? What if the idea of making love with another woman was repugnant to him?
“How long has he been a...when did she die?” Toni asked.
Reese frowned thoughtfully and then looked at Palmer for assistance. “At least four or five years, don’t you think?”
Palmer nodded. “At least. Monday’s two years younger than I am, and I just turned forty. He was in his early thirties when it happened. Yeah, that would be about right.”
Toni nodded while she made mental calculations. Four or five years. Surely he’d passed the celibate part of grief by now. If he hadn’t, all of her plans would be futile. The cold, abstract calculation of what she was planning made her feel guilty as hell. But the last man she’d counted on had broken her heart. She’d long since given up on being loved by a man. She was past counting on anyone but herself.
“When you're ready, supper will be waiting,” Toni said.
Both men hurried past her on their way to their rooms, anxious to remove the stench of death from their clothes and their memory.
Lane heard them come into the house. Their voices carried down the hall and into his room. He rolled over on his back and closed his eyes, hating himself for the way that he’d lashed out at Toni. It was a miserable thing to do to the woman who’d saved his life.
And yet, he couldn’t get the sight of those body bags out of his mind.
“Damn it, Tell, that wasn’t the way it was supposed to happen,” he groaned.
His stomach lurched as he fought back a wave of emotion. Like Bob Tell, Lane had contained no illusions about his job. Being a sheriff had always held more than the normal share of risks. Every lawman faced the possibility of being shot in the line of duty, maybe even dying in such a manner. But the senseless act of nature had been unexpected, and because of that, oddly more difficult to accept.
Outside his door, the sound of Toni’s laughter was soft, but unmistakable. One of the men, probably Reese, had obviously cracked a joke. Lane knew Reese was good at making strangers feel comfortable.
He wondered if Toni’s eyes had crinkled at the corners as he’d seen them do before. Or if she’d turned away to return to her work with a lingering smile on her face. And the moment he thought it, he wondered why
he cared. What was happening to him? Why was he becoming so fixated upon Toni Hatfield’s every movement? She was a good woman, maybe even a special woman. But that was as far as it went.
He rolled to the side of the bed and sat up, trying to make sense out of what he was feeling.
“This connection I feel with her must be because she saved my life.” He combed his fingers through his hair in frustration and wished for things he could not have. “That’s got to be what it is. I don’t have a personal desire to get mixed up with a woman again. Damn it, I don’t!”
Yeah, Monday, say it often enough and you might even convince yourself, he thought, pulling himself to his feet.
The stitches in his leg pulled as his muscles contracted. He winced, savoring the pain; he felt he deserved that and much more. What was a little pain compared to the devastating sense of loss that the families of those crash victims would suffer? His pain would pass, but their loss would be with them forever. And Lane knew about loss in a big way.
When Sharla had died, he’d wanted to die with her. Month after month, he’d waited for the breath to leave his body as ruthlessly as it had left hers. But it hadn’t, and over time, the feeling had passed. He was proof that life did go on, maybe not as fulfilled as before, but breath was drawn, years passed and the pain faded, leaving a void where his heart had once been. That void was not going to be filled, not if Lane had anything to say about it. He had loved once. He wasn’t about to go through the pain of loving and losing again.
But while he wasn’t ready for emotional entanglements, the apology he owed Toni was past due. He’d had no reason to lash out at her when it had been himself with whom he’d been angry. Shame sent him out of his room and in search of the woman who had borne the brunt of his pain.
He found her on the back porch. He stood in the kitchen and looked out the screen door, absorbing the serenity of the scene before him.
The evening shadows that stretched across the yard were long and pencil thin, a reminder that the day was near its end. The porch-swing chain gave an occasional squeak, warning its occupant not to fall asleep. A half-empty basket of peas sat nearby, while Toni shelled from the bowl in her lap.
Toni’s repose as she worked was so much a part of the scene that Lane hesitated to interrupt. Her long, nimble fingers bent, stripped, then emptied the supple, purple pods of their bounty, spilling the dark-eyed little peas into the bowl with constant regularity. Her purple-tinged fingertips bore the mark of her labor, while a small pile of empty pods accumulated at her feet.
The screen door squeaked as Lane pushed it open. Startled, Toni turned sharply at the sound, causing a dark abundance of curls to spill from her loose topknot of hair. The tendrils fell against the back of her neck, then fluttered in the soft evening breeze, giving her face an unusually fragile, feminine look. Lane saw beyond the richness of her hair to the shadows in her eyes, and hated himself for being the cause.
“If it didn’t hurt so much to bend, I would kneel at your feet,” he said.
Her pulse jerked, then steadied. From the tone in his voice, she guessed that he’d come to apologize.
“I would settle for a helping hand instead,” she said, and gave him a judging glance before scooting over on the porch swing to make room.
Lane sighed as his guilt lifted. Just that small, telling look and a gentle smile from a woman he hardly knew, and the knot in his belly was gone. He wondered what else she might remove if given half a chance, and then the minute he thought it, he willed the thought back to hell where it belonged. He didn’t need this kind of trouble. But, if he was going to help shell peas, he did need a bowl. When she handed him hers, he wondered if she also read minds.
Blue was her favorite color, but Toni wondered if she would ever again be able to see it and not think of Lane Monday’s eyes. She looked at him and forgot what she’d been about to say, so she handed him the bowl in her lap instead.
Reflex made him grab for it, and when their hands touched, Toni jerked back and then jumped to her feet, suddenly anxious to put some space between herself and the future father of her child.
“Do you know how?” she asked.
Lane grinned. That was a loaded question if he’d ever heard one. And being the man that he was, he couldn’t resist the urge to taunt.
“Do you really want me to answer that, lady?”
The flush on Toni’s face went from pink to red before she found her voice. “I meant shelling peas, and you know it.”
She glared as he grinned.
“Maybe you’d better demonstrate,” Lane said. “Do a couple for me. I'll watch and learn.” And when Toni bent over to do just that, his deep voice rumbled in her ear. “I'm a quick study and really good at just about everything.”
Her hands trembled, but she wouldn’t have bolted for all the trees in Tennessee. This was her land, her home, her back porch, for Pete’s sake. Why should she let some overgrown oaf make her act like a silly schoolgirl?
“Maybe so,” Toni said shortly. “But you don’t float worth a darn.”
Lane couldn’t think of a thing to say in response to her less-than-subtle reminder that she’d saved him from drowning. He looked down at the bowl in his lap, then at her long, slender hands deftly working their magic on the pea pods, and he tried to imagine them holding his head above water, and pulling his limp and all-but-lifeless body from the flood.
“You aren’t paying attention,” she warned, and was rewarded by a grin before he refocused on what she was doing.
It looked as simple as unzipping a zipper, but something told him that it had probably taken her years to perfect the skill. And when she laughed at his effort, he knew he’d been right.
“You'll get the hang of it...eventually,” she said. “You're a quick study. Remember?”
Not wanting her to leave, Lane caught her hand, then turned it over palm up, and studied the perfect shape and hidden strength.
Toni’s stomach tilted, and her pulse raced as she looked down. As big as she was, his hand dwarfed her own. Just thinking about his body covering hers in the same manner made her sick with guilt, and she realized that what she was planning to do might be too cold-blooded to consider.
No matter how badly she wanted a child, she was finding it more and more difficult to face the idea of lying down with this man and taking something from him that he might not be willing to give.
There’s always artificial insemination. Her stomach turned at the thought. Now she was back to square one and a lonely, empty life unless she was able to talk this man into her bed.
The ball of his thumb traced the center of her wrist, testing the pulse that pounded beneath.
“Toni, I'm sorry about this afternoon. I hated not being a part of the search team, and I wanted someone to tell me they found Emmit Rice’s body in the wreckage. Watching them carry Bob Tell out instead was hard. I took my hurt out on you. It was uncalled-for, and unforgivable, especially after all you've done for me, but I'm asking you to forgive me all the same.”
The blue in his eyes had softened to a dusky gray. The tone of his voice had gone from sexy to serious. Resisting him was impossible; giving up her dream even more so. She wondered if it could be done. She pulled back her hand, unwilling to let him learn too much about how she felt.
“I knew why you said it,” Toni said. “I didn’t take it personally.” And then she grinned, unaware that bitterness colored her smile, as well as the rest of her response. “I learned that lesson the hard way a long time ago. A man rarely means what he says, at least not to me.”
She stood abruptly, causing the porch swing to tilt. “Supper in thirty minutes. I'll finish the peas later. Go visit with your friends or something. You don’t owe me anything, Lane Monday. I did what I did because I don’t think before I act, not because I wanted something in return. And don’t you ever say I did.”
The back door slammed as she disappeared into the house, and he wondered where the hell that had come from. All he’d do
ne was try to apologize for being rude and offer to shell a few peas.
He sighed. Try to figure out what goes on in a woman’s head and a man will go crazy.
He looked down at the bowl in his lap, then frowned and picked up a pea. By God, he wasn’t going anywhere until he’d shelled this bowl of peas first.
* * *
The night air still held the heat of the day. Although the air conditioners hummed softly inside the house, Toni couldn’t bear another minute of being cooped up within these walls. Lane had his friends to keep him company, she’d already changed the bandages on his leg, and the last pea had been shelled and stored in the cooler. There should be no further need of her services from anyone or anything, at least not today. She slipped out the back door, careful not to let the hinges squeak. She was tired of pretending that she didn’t care.
Just when she’d gotten used to being unneeded, all of this had happened. When everyone left, she would have to adjust to loneliness all over again. But tonight, she wished for something more than a job to keep her busy. She wished for companionship, even for love. But because there was no one there to hold her, she hugged the porch post instead, closing her eyes and leaning her forehead against the cool, smooth wood in weary defeat.
It smelled of paint and the fainter, but more enticing, scent of wisteria. The vine was nearby, running up the trellis and falling down around the edge of the back porch like a lavender ruffle. The thick, sweet scent made Toni think of her mother. Next to her eight children, the vine had been her mother’s pride and joy.
Toni opened her eyes and lifted her head, gazing intently into the dark, cloudless sky. The new moon gave off no glow, and the stars seemed too far away to even twinkle. She had more company inside her house tonight than she’d had since the day of her father’s funeral. But she’d never felt so alone...or so lonely.
