He glanced at her. She looked from him to the bottle and back again but didn’t say anything. He took her silence for permission. Lord knows, he needed a drink and would have taken one whether she approved or not.
Yanking the cork out of the neck, he lifted the bottle to his lips and took one long pull. The liquor poured down his throat in a stream of liquid fire and filled that hollow, however temporarily. Warmth surged into his veins and with it came the courage to face her.
"I'm just a damned ghost, Rachel. I don’t know why I never went anywhere else." He laughed shortly, mockingly. "Hell, I can’t even disappear proper."
Another drink of whiskey and he wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his shirt. Staring down at the amber bottle in his hands, he went on, more to himself than her. "You lock me out of the store, but somehow I get inside. I look at people and can see what's in their minds. I don’t even know how that stuff happens. And you want me to tell you why I didn't go to Heaven?"
His fingers tightened on the neck of the bottle. "My best guess is that I'm not good enough. Of course," he added in a disgusted mutter. "I wasn’t much good for anything when I was alive, either."
"That's not true," she countered and looked at him until he felt forced to meet her affronted gaze. "You saved me. When I was little, I would have died if not for you."
He snorted and shook his head. "Doesn't count. I was already dead then. Besides, that was Lesley's doing. He sent me."
"But you did it."
"Yeah. A fine job I made of it, too." He took another drink. The whiskey was doing its work already. He felt the blessed numbness spreading through his limbs. Now all he had to do was drink enough to dull his brain and he would be a happy man.
"What do you mean?"He snorted, shot her a quick look, then turned his gaze back to the depths of the amber bottle in his hands. "Just that I messed things up with you then, too."
"But you saved me."
She might as well know everything, he told himself. Before he lost his nerve, he blurted, "Yeah, but I was supposed to do something else before I left you here," he glanced around the dimly lit building, "with the Heinzes."
"What?"
"You weren't supposed to remember me, Rachel." His eyes lifted to hers, and he watched pain flash across her face with the speed of the lightning still crashing outside. "I was supposed to wipe your memory of me."
"I wasn’t supposed to remember you?"
"Nope."
"At all?"
He nodded and took another drink. The whiskey’s warmth was fading too quickly. "See? I made a mess back then that you’re still payin’ for."
"Jackson…"
"If you hadn’t remembered me, you’d probably be married with a couple of kids already."
She flinched as if he'd struck her.
By thunder, he told himself, he was having a helluva good night.
"I'm glad you made that mistake," she said.
"How can you be glad?" He stood up and faced her. "You don’t know what your life might have been like without the memory of me."
"I know what it was with your memory."
He shook his head and set the bottle on the counter. Twirling it between his long fingers, he muttered, "You are the hardest headed female I ever met."
"Thank you."
He flicked her a quick look and couldn't help smiling. Figured that she'd take what he said as a compliment.
"You're not how I remembered you," she said.
"You’ve changed some, yourself," he said and let his gaze slip over her figure. Strange how her too thin, too flat form was beginning to affect him. But then, that was just one of the reasons why he needed that whiskey so badly.
"No, I mean-" Her fingers folded together on the countertop, and she looked at her joined hands as if they held a secret she needed desperately. "I don't remember you drinking."
"Didn’t have any whiskey, then."
"Or swearing."
"Didn't say much of anything as I recall."
She acted as though she hadn’t heard him. "Why do you seem so different?"Jackson snatched up the bottle, took a long drink, then slammed it back down onto the counter. He winced when she jumped, startled. "I'm no different than I always was, Rachel. You’re just older now. You see things different."
"No…"
"I'm not a damned angel," he yelled. "Never was, never will be. I'm just a man —" his voice softened as he finished, "- a ghost of a man."
"Why are you shouting at me?" she demanded. "I didn't ask you to come here. I didn’t ask for you to disrupt my life and interfere with everything I know."
He closed his eyes briefly, then opened them again to look at her. There was a soft, fine flush to her cheeks. Her blue eyes glinted with high emotion. Her bosom rose and fell with her rapid breathing, and the knuckles of her clasped hands were white from the squeezing grip she held.
No, she hadn’t asked for him to come. He didn’t have the right to be yelling at her. Christ, none of this was her fault. But dammit, how could he explain that it was easier to shout at her than to rail against an anonymous Fate that hadn't listened to him in more than fifteen years?
How could he tell her how tired he was of being neither dead nor alive? How could he tell her what it was like existing in some half world where no one heard you, no one cared, and silences stretched on for eternities?
He couldn’t, so he took another drink, hoping for peace. He didn't get it.
As if that one, fleeting moment of closeness between them had never happened, she glared at him and said, "I want you to go. To leave me alone. Go back to your saloon."
He gave her a sad smile. She still had to learn that when it came to "wants," the only ones that mattered were Lesley’s… and his boss's… whoever that was.
Rachel must have read the answer in his eyes. She bit down hard on her bottom lip, slapped her palms against the counter in frustration, then turned for the stairs. Hiking her hem up to her shins, she ran up the steps to the second floor. He listened to her as she raced down the hall and into her bedroom. Then the door slammed shut behind her. A flash of lightning pierced the room, followed by a crash of thunder. The wind howled and moaned like a lost soul. Jackson shuddered and took another long drink.
He was alone. Again.
#
Rachel picked up the broom and stepped outside. Squinting into the bright sunlight streaming down onto the soggy mess that was Stillwater, she felt the promise of a hot day in the morning sun. She inhaled the fresh, clean scent of rain-washed air and set the business end of the broom against the plank walkway. Pausing for a moment, she let her gaze stray over the crowded main street.
Her friends and neighbors ignored the mud and slogged on about their business. Here and there, along the boardwalks lining either side of the road, her fellow merchants were busily sweeping away the remnants of the storm and greeting customers.
Her gaze shifted, moving from face to face, looking for Jackson. He'd been gone when she came downstairs that morning. But she knew he hadn’t disappeared for good. He was there, somewhere in that crowd.
He was close by. Just as, apparently, he had been for the past fifteen years. He had said that he died in Pine Ridge. A little town only a few days south of Stillwater. Knowing that he had been so close and yet so out of reach was painful and frustrating.
All night long, Rachel had lain awake, thinking of the "mistake" he had made so long ago. What would it have been like without the memories of Jackson to comfort her? Growing up in the house of Albert Heinz, she had needed those memories. She'd clung to them like a piece of driftwood, loose in a raging river.
She shuddered to think of the loneliness she would have experienced without them. At least, those memories had given her something to dream on. Without them…
Her fingers tightened on the broom handle. What was happening to her? Only a week ago, she'd been happy. Content with her life. Her friends. Resigned to the fact that she would never feel that sense of belonging with one special man.
/> Now, her life was unraveling.
And she knew exactly what it felt like to be held in the arms of the man she had dreamed of for years.
"Morning, Rachel."
Startled, she jumped and spun around.
Tessa Horn sailed up to her like a brigantine flying a pirate’s flag. The woman's bulk was encased in a too tight black dress, and she held a slightly bent parasol out in front of her like a lance. She only carried it on particularly busy days in town and used it deftly to part the people cluttering up the boardwalk.
"Hello, Tessa."
"Where's that handsome cousin of yours?" she asked and shot a quick look into the Mercantile.
"I was just wondering the very same thing," Rachel said.
"This is a fine how do you do," the older woman snapped. "I'm a busy woman, you know."
Rachel smiled, but felt it fade away as Tessa went on. "The Ladies Guild has decided to ask him to build us a nice dance floor for the social, and I need to speak to him about the details.
"Why Jackson?" she asked. He was beginning to encroach on every aspect of her life now. Even the town ladies were turning to him.
"Well, he is your cousin and he did say he was a good carpenter, didn't he?"
A lumberman passed them on the walk and came a bit too close to Tessa. She smacked him with her parasol, glowered at him when he had the nerve to look insulted, then turned back to Rachel "Now, he’ll only have a week or so to get everything ready, so I must speak to him immediately."
"I don’t know where he is."
"Hmmph!" She flipped a long, gray sausage curl of hair back over her shoulder. Lifting her brooch watch from where it lay atop one pendulous breast, she frowned at the time. "I can't stand about all day waiting for him. Typical man. Never around when you need him. You send him to me as soon as you see him, will you Rachel?"
Without waiting for a reply, she marched off down the boardwalk, sending grown men jumping out of her way as she passed. Her skills with that parasol were widely known.
"Jackson and the Ladies Guild. Jackson and my house. Jackson and Mavis," Rachel grumbled under her breath as she started sweeping. It appeared that the memory of him was easier to live with than the reality. Long, violent strokes of the broom sent debris flying into the street, but didn't seem to make her feel the least bit better.
#
Jackson leaned back in the barber’s chair and settled in as the man snapped a clean white sheet over his chest and let it float gently into place.
Despite his hangover, Jackson had vowed to begin again with Rachel. Sometime during the long, sleepless night, he had decided that the only way to make things easier for her was to throw himself into his mission, accomplish it, and get out as quickly as possible.
The best way to do all that was to find out all he could about Rachel Morgan and the kind of woman she had become. Especially since he’d promised not to use one of his coins to accomplish the task of getting her married.
"Rachel's a fine girl," the barber said now as he started snipping at Jackson's hair with a pair of lightning quick scissors. "Even when she was a little thing, she was always helpin' folks."
A man waiting his turn for a haircut shook the newspapers he was reading and muttered, "Even to them who didn't deserve it."
Jackson frowned into the mirror. "What do you mean?"
" Now Henry," the barber said. "No need to dig up old dirt."
"No diggin' needed." Henry countered. "Everybody around here remembers that old bastard."
"Who?"
The barber frowned, clipped another section of hair, and muttered, "Albert Heinz."
Oh. Sure. Rachel's foster father. The man Jackson had left her with fifteen years before.
"Meanest son of a bitch ever walked the earth," Henry muttered.
"Mean?" Jackson stared into the glass, willing the other man to put his paper down and get on with it.
"Now Henry," the barber whined. " Albert had his good points."
"Yeah. He didn't talk much and he died early."
Jackson didn’t like the sound of this. Guilt had him shifting uncomfortably in his seat until the barber grumbled, "Sit still."
"You sayin' he was mean to Rachel?" Jackson prodded, despite the feeling that he really didn’t want the answer to his question.
Henry snorted, lowered his paper, and looked like he wanted to spit. But there was no spittoon handy, so he didn’t. "I don’t know if he ever hit her or anything," he said. "But mind, there’s other ways of treatin' a child harsh."
No one knew that better than he did. He'd practically raised himself as a boy. His mother had died when he was young, and his father couldn't be bothered with a "pesty child."
Something cold crawled up his spine. Had Rachel experienced anything like that?
"She never said." Jackson whispered. "I didn't know."
"'Course not," the barber consoled him. "How could ya? You wasn’t here, and Rachel ain’t the kind to complain about somethin’ that's long since past and best forgotten." He shot Henry a meaningful look.
"Fine, I won’t say another word."
The barber relaxed until Henry added, "Except this. Albert Heinz worked that girl like a chinaman and never gave her a thing for it. Not so much as a kind word."
Jackson swallowed past the knot of guilt in his throat.
Memories of the young Rachel flitted through his mind and disappeared again. Why hadn’t he bothered to make sure the girl would be safe before he left her in the care of Heinz and his wife? Why hadn’t he taken enough time to find the little girl good parents?
He groaned silently and squeezed his eyes shut. Apparently, forgetting to wipe Rachel's memory of him wasn't the only crime he had committed fifteen years ago.
"What about Missus Heinz?" Jackson asked, quietly hoping that Rachel had had some kindness.
"Ah well." Henry eased back in his seat and lifted his newspapers again. An easy smile creased his leathery features. "Martha was a saint, pure and simple. Put up with Albert — why, I don't know, and fairly doted on that girl."
Jackson released a breath he hadn't known he’d been holding.
"But she died only a year or two after Rachel came to them." Henry’s smile shifted in to a sneer. "Only mean thing Martha ever did in her life was to die and leave that child alone with the likes of Albert."
"Don't you have somewhere else you could wait?" the barber demanded.
Henry snorted at him, hid behind his newspapers, and slid into silence again.
The barber went about his business, leaving Jackson to his own miserable thoughts. A voice in the back of his mind tried to rationalize his actions. After all, it reminded him, his mission had been to find folks to take care of her. He had. Was it his fault that one of them had turned out to be a bastard? How was he supposed to have known that?
He could have checked, he thought, dismissing the placating voice as a mercy he didn't deserve. Beneath the sheet that covered him, Jackson’s hands curled into fists of helpless rage. Who he was more angry at — the late Albert Heinz, or himself — he wasn't sure.
When he left the barbershop, Jackson wandered down Main Street, stopping every few feet to gather more information about Rachel from her friends. At the hotel, he was told what a good neighbor Rachel was. In time of sickness or trouble, she was always close at hand.
The mayor of Stillwater, a short, squat man with a nose that looked to have been broken a few times in his younger days, bragged about how Rachel had raised most of the funds to build the town’s schoolhouse and hire a full-time teacher.
A couple of older ladies stopped him to tell him what a fine wife she would make for somebody if Jackson could only talk her out of this Spinster Society nonsense. And the man at the livery stable confided that several of the men in town had tried to court Rachel at one time or another. But she'd turned them all down flat. The other men, he admitted, were probably a little intimidated by such a strongwilled female.
Jackson finally turned towa
rd the store around noon, his head spinning with more information than he knew what to do with. Rachel was certainly admired by the folks in town. But the ladies were mad about the Spinster Society, and most of the men were just plain scared of her.
This job looked to be getting harder and harder every minute.
He shoved his hands into his pockets and his fingertips brushed across his three remaining coins. Tossing a glance skyward, he muttered, "A little help now and again wouldn’t be out of line, you know."
He waited hopefully for some sort of answer, but wasn’t surprised when none came. In fact, he thought, he wouldn’t be surprised to find that Lesley was stretched out somewhere, watching him and laughing his wig off.
As he neared the Mercantile, he spotted Rachel, out front washing down the rain-spattered windows. A moment later, a middle-aged man wearing a well tailored suit over a comfortable belly stopped beside her.
Hmmm. Older, he thought. Settled looking. By the cut of his clothes, he had plenty of money — he could afford a wife. And best of all, Rachel was smiling at the man. Hope blossoming in his chest, Jackson jumped off the boardwalk and hurried toward them.
Chapter Nine
"Actually, Mr. Sprague," Rachel said, I’d like to talk about increasing my loan."
The nearly bald man tugged at the vest that strained to contain his formidable stomach, then lifted one hand to smooth the wispy strands of gray hair stretched across his scalp. He seemed to mentally measure each word before speaking. "A loan is not something to be undertaken lightly, Rachel," he pointed out.
Irritation flared up briefly in her chest. Since taking over the Mercantile after her foster father's death, she'd more than doubled the business. She carried more stock, priced her merchandise more reasonably, and kept longer hours.
Howard Sprague, though, looked on her success as a stroke of good fortune that could peter out at any moment.
She swallowed her impatience and forced a smile. After all, it wouldn’t do to make the one banker in town angry.
"I realize that, Mr. Sprague," she said. "But on the other hand, you must admit that I’ve been a good risk so far. There are several ways I'd like to expand the Mercantile, and there is the new house I'm building."
Still Close to Heaven Page 10
