by Janet Dailey
JANET DAILEY CAPTURES
THE HEART OF AMERICA!
LOOK FOR:
The Four Volume Calder Saga:
This Calder Range
Stands a Calder Man
This Calder Sky
Calder Born, Calder Bred
The Best Way to Lose
For the Love of God
Foxfire Light
The Glory Game
The Great Alone
The Hostage Bride
The Lancaster Men
Leftover Love
Mistletoe and Holly
Night Way
The Pride of Hannah Wade
Ride the Thunder
The Rogue
The Second Time
Separate Cabins
Silver Wings, Santiago Blue
Terms of Surrender
Touch of Wind
Western Man
PUBLISHED BY POCKET BOOKS
“Please, Don’t Stop Now, Linc.”
She was practically begging him to make love to her but she didn’t care.
A second later, his fingers were gripping her wrists and pulling her arms from around his neck. In dazed confusion, she opened her eyes and blinked at the harshness of his features.
“What is it? What did I do wrong, Linc?”
“Do I have to spell it out for you?” His mouth was grim. “Maybe I just don’t like the idea of being a vacation fling—someone to brag to your friends about back in California.”
Books by Janet Dailey
The Great Alone
The Glory Game
The Pride of Hannah Wade
Silver Wings, Santiago Blue
Calder Born, Calder Bred
Stands a Calder Man
This Calder Range
This Calder Sky
The Best Way to Lose
For the Love of God
Foxfire Light
The Hostage Bride
The Lancaster Men
Leftover Love
Mistletoe & Holly
The Second Time
Separate Cabins
Terms of Surrender
Western Man
Nightway
Ride the Thunder
The Rogue
Touch the Wind
Published by POCKET BOOKS
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster Inc.
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Copyright © 1982 by Janet Dailey
Published by arrangement with Silhouette Books
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ISBN: 0-671-87502-7
eISBN: 978-1-4516-3984-1
First Pocket Books printing January 1984
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Printed in the U.S.A.
FOX RIRE LIGHT
Chapter One
Most of the lime-green bedspread was hidden by the two suitcases lying open. Both were nearly filled with neatly folded summer clothes. The doors leading off the bedroom to the veranda were standing open to let in the cool night breeze off the California desert.
Joanna Morgan emerged from the spacious walk-in closet with more clothes destined for the suitcases. Her shoulder-length, ash-blonde hair was tied with a white silk scarf at the nape of her neck to keep it out of the way while she packed. Leggy and slim, she moved with an unconscious grace, her posture revealing her self-assurance and self-confidence. It was all completely natural to her, an in-born characteristic that did not need an artificial air of sophistication.
Preoccupied with her packing, she didn’t notice the elegantly dressed woman pause outside the hall door. She was older than Joanna, but skillful makeup and the youthful style of her bleached blonde hair concealed her true age. The physical resemblance was sufficient for any on-looker to guess they were related but few suspected that Elizabeth Morgan was Joanna’s mother. More often, outsiders guessed she was a young aunt.
The veneer of amiable sophistication fell away as Elizabeth surveyed the partially packed suitcases with surprise and sharpening suspicion. “Joanna, what is the meaning of this?” she demanded as she entered the room.
After sliding a brief glance at her mother, Joanna resumed her packing. There was a faint lifting of her chin to indicate her determination not to surrender to the intimidating ways of her mother.
“Uncle Reece is vacationing at his place in the Ozarks. He invited me to join him—and I’ve decided to accept.” Her reply ended on a note of challenge.
There was a thinning of the precisely outlined carmine lips. “Why wasn’t I told about this before now?”
With a pair of white slacks neatly positioned in the suitcase, Joanna turned and walked calmly to the chest of drawers. She didn’t bother to immediately answer as she took out several sets of undergarments and carried them to the bed.
“In case you’ve forgotten, Mother, I am twenty-one. I don’t exactly need your permission anymore,” she stated. One shoulder was lifted in a shrug that seemed to lessen her stand of defiance. “Besides—I only decided this afternoon that I was going.”
“You’ll simply have to change your plans,” Elizabeth Morgan announced with the airy certainty of one accustomed to having her wishes granted. “I’ve made arrangements for us to have lunch tomorrow with Sid Clemens. He’s the head of a very prestigious advertising firm. I’m certain he can find a position for you in his agency.”
Joanna stopped packing to face the woman standing at the foot of the brass bed. “I am leaving to get away from all these private job interviews you keep setting up. I haven’t had a minute to call my own since I received my bachelor’s degree.”
With barely disguised irritation, she picked up the underclothes and began arranging them in the suitcase. Without looking, Joanna was fully aware of the affronted expression her mother was wearing. A trace of ironic humor appeared in the sudden slant of her mouth.
“We really have—’come a long way, baby,’” Joanna mockingly quoted the phrase attached to the women’s lib movement. “You know there was a time when mothers paraded their daughters in front of every eligible bachelor in town. Now—we’re dragged around to meet every prospective employer.”
“I am only trying to help you,” her mother declared stiffly.
“Well, don’t,” Joanna retorted sharply, then released a long breath. “I just want to get away and relax for a couple of days. There isn’t any harm in that.”
“But why on earth would you want to go to the Ozarks?” Elizabeth Morgan plainly showed her disapproval of the choice.
Joanna just shrugged. “It’s been quite awhile since I’ve spent any time with Reece.” She rarely referred to him as “Uncle” Reece, although he was her father’s brother. She had always called him by his first name. Again, there was a half-smile when Joanna added, “And the Ozarks sound far away from Los Angeles.” Her brown eyes cast a measuring glance at her mother. “You’re just upset becaus
e Reece didn’t invite you to come, too.”
Her mother appeared taken aback, and more than a little flustered by the hint of an accusation that she was jealous. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she protested. “Why would I be upset over that?”
Aware that her question had hit a sensitive nerve, Joanna continued with her packing, taking her time. “Daddy’s been dead for almost fifteen years now. And lately, I’ve been getting the impression that Reece is more than just Daddy’s older brother to you.”
There was a wary attempt to guard her expression and hide her true feelings when Elizabeth replied, too calmly, “Over the years, Reece and I have become very good friends but if you are hinting that I want to marry him”—she paused, a little uncomfortably—“Reece has always been too much of a playboy to ever settle down.” She stopped trying to explain her own attitude, diverting the topic to an explanation of his. “He isn’t likely to change his spots this late in life.”
But Joanna had guessed that her mother would love to be wrong. Her ego needed the excuse that it was Reece’s inability to settle down that had kept him from marrying, rather than her inability to attract him to the altar.
Her mother deliberately changed the subject to revert to their original topic. “Since you insist on traveling to that hillbilly country,” she began, on a faint note of contempt for Joanna’s destination, “you could at least postpone your trip for a couple of days. I went to a great deal of trouble arranging our luncheon engagement with Sid Clemens tomorrow. The least you could do is keep it.”
“No.” Joanna closed the lid of one of the suitcases and locked it. “I’ve already talked to Reece and told him I have reservations on the first flight out of L.A. in the morning. I’m not changing my plans for you—or Sid Clemens.”
On this issue, she could be as stubborn as her mother. She was going and she wouldn’t be talked out of it.
The night air was somnolent and still, with not enough breeze to ripple the moon-shot surface of the lake. The dark sky was dusty with stars. In a nearby cove of the lake, a bullfrog sang its bass solo to the background music of chirruping crickets. It was a warm summer evening, the heavily wooded Ozark hills unwilling to relinquish the day’s heat.
Where a hill sloped into the lake, a cabin sat in a man-made clearing, the new-fangled kind made of precut logs, modern rustic. Its covered porch faced the lake and ran the width of the cabin. A light burned inside, attracting the moths to the screened door. The soft whirr of their wings could be heard as they beat themselves against the wire mesh.
In the shadows of the porch, beyond the fall of light fanning out from the doorway, two men sat in a pair of cane-backed rockers. The run of silence between them was companionable. Yet the two men were sharply different and the differences were evident in a glance.
One was older, on one side or the other of the fifty mark. His dark hair was showing signs of graying, but his features retained the lean handsomeness of his youth, proud and strong. His eyes were dark, nearly black, lit by an unquenchable vitality. There was a worldliness about him that was not gained from this environment. His experience did not come from these hills, but outside them. Reece Morgan was the outsider, the “furriner.”
The fact was reinforced by the creased finish of his khaki tan slacks and the silk-like material of his white shirt, tailored to fit his physique. The cuffs of his shirt were precisely rolled back to reveal tanned forearms and the gold sheen of an expensive watch on his wrist. His hands were smooth, unmarked by callouses, indicating an absence of physical labor in his lifestyle. Yet, the “Ozark Mountain Country” of Missouri, raw and untamable, satisfied an inner need in Reece.
In contrast, Linc Wilder was a product of the hills, a ridgerunner as the Ozark natives called themselves. A generation younger, he was two years past thirty. His long legs were stretched in front of him, the rundown heel of a boot hooked over the arch of the other.
His faded Levis were worn smooth and soft, the material naturally molding itself to narrow hips and sinewed thighs. The plaid shirt had seen many washings. Its thinness was evident as it pulled across his wide shoulders. Clothes were not indicative of a man’s status in the community. It was the quality of the man they judged, not his possessions, and his name commanded a hard-earned respect.
His long-bodied frame was relaxed in the high-backed rocker. A weather-beaten cowboy hat sat low on his forehead, shadowing his features. A ravel of smoke curled from the cigarette between his work-roughened fingers.
When he took a drag on it, the flaring glow from the cigarette cast a light on his angular features, throwing into sharp relief the hard curve of his cheekbones flattening out to the carved Line of his jaw. The light briefly reflected the lustre of thick, brown hair before the hand holding the cigarette was lowered.
His brown eyes were light-colored with a dominant gold sheen. Some called them “painter’s” eyes, the Ozark term for panthers or cougars. They were ever-alert, ever-alive to what went on around him, making his surface indolence deceptive.
Even now, Linc had noticed his older companion’s intense interest in the thick forest of hardwoods that crowded the clearing. Without changing his relaxed position, he swung his gaze to the woods, a mixture of hickory, oak, and cedar.
A ghostly light, bluish in color, wavered in the distance at about a man’s height. His glance ran back to his friend’s curiously aroused expression as the corners of his mouth were pulled in, a controlled show of amusement.
“Linc, do you see that light? What is it?” Reece Morgan’s voice did not contain the lazy, regional drawl of the area. Its accent came from another part of the country.
The rocker creaked as Linc pretended to look, then settled back in his chair. “Must be ghost-lights, the spirit of a lost soul wandering the woods.”
“Please, none of your folklore and legends.” The reply was heavy with amused patience.
“It’s called by a lot of names, depending on where it’s seen—graveyard lights, marsh lights. In the deep woods, it’s known as foxfire.” He flicked his cigarette butt into the night’s darkness, watching the red arc it made.
“A will o’the wisp.” Reece Morgan gave it the term he was more familiar with.
“Right.” Linc let his gaze wander back to the light, a phenomenon of nature. “It’s caused by the decomposition of matter, giving off gases. When the conditions are right, there is an incandescent glow.” The strange light appeared to move away, fading into the night and disappearing altogether.
“In all the times I’ve been here, I don’t recall seeing it before. Is it common?” Reece asked with an intrigued frown.
“No. I’ve only seen it a few times myself. The first time I was just a boy and it scared the livin’ daylights out of me,” Linc smiled briefly at the memory. “I thought it was the ghosts of the Spanish soldiers with Cortez that were massacred by the Indians, come back to haunt the hills.”
“A child’s imagination is a vivid thing,” Reece agreed and released a soft, contented sigh. He paused a moment as if to savor all that was around him, the sounds, the smells, the silences of the land. “I have been coming here, to this place, for the last ten years, yet I haven’t tired of it. Sometimes, when my life becomes really hectic out there, it is by remembering all this that I am able to retain not only my sanity but also my perspective on what is important.”
“It doesn’t seem like it’s been ten years,” Linc mused, thoughtful for a moment.
“You have changed a great deal since that first summer we met,” Reece observed and watched the dry quirk of Linc’s mouth. “You were a regular hellion then. The following year, when I learned your father had died, I half-expected you to squander all the wealth and property your father had managed to accumulate in his lifetime.”
“So did a lot of people,” he acknowledged.
“You had to grow up fast.” Reece considered that fact. “Perhaps too fast.”
Only now and then did he see traces of the wild, d
evil-may-care youth. Responsibility at a young age had hardened the man, leaving him with a mouth less inclined to smile and a closed-in expression. Linc Wilder had become somewhat of a loner, a rogue, not without friends but with few who could appreciate the pressure associated with his responsibilities.
This was the common ground they shared, the foundation their friendship was built on. It was this insight that enabled Reece to see the restlessness that stirred beneath Linc’s apparently calm surface, and had been present since Linc had arrived nearly an hour ago. He didn’t know the cause for it, and nothing Linc had said enlightened him. He had been waiting for Linc to tell him, but now he decided to do a little probing.
“Have you heard from the bride and groom since they returned from their honeymoon?” Reece masked his interest in a casual question, referring to the recent marriage of Linc’s baby sister, Sharon; at eighteen the youngest of the Wilder children.
“They stopped by the other evening,” he admitted. “Sharon is still a giggly bride with stars in her eyes, blushing at the smallest remark.” That statement led him into imparting information about the third member of the family, his younger brother, David. “David won’t be coming home at all this summer. He’s clerking for an attorney firm in Dallas.”
“The house must seem empty.” His dark gaze narrowed thoughtfully as Reece read between the lines.
After nine years of being the family breadwinner and stand-in father for his younger brother and sister, he was no longer required to fill those roles. His mother had passed away last fall; his brother was in law school; and his sister was married.
“I have some peace and quiet at last.” Linc seemed to mock his own words.
“Now you are free to think of yourself,” Reece reminded him. “You should find a woman, get married and raise a family before you become a crusty bachelor too set in his ways to change.”
“In one breath you say I’m free, and in the next you’re suggesting I should tie myself down again,” Linc chided. “I notice you’re still single. Why don’t you get married?”
“If I could persuade a certain lady to say ’yes,’ I would. But unfortunately—” There was an expressive shrug of his shoulders—“it seems the desire is all one-sided.”
