Hidden in a Heartbeat (A Place Called Home, Book 3)

by Patricia McLinn

  “Hello, Claudia. How are you?”

  “Terrible, I had a dreadful flight last week from San Francisco – the people they allow in first class is appalling.” If the voice alone had not been sufficient to pitch Rebecca back into her life in Delaware, the timbre of disapproval certainly did the trick. “But you – I hardly recognized you in that – ” Claudia’s hesitation dripped of disapproval. “ – wardrobe.”

  The woman offered one perfectly rouged and powdered cheek, and Rebecca dutifully air-kissed it, careful not to make contact with the Chanel suit. She’d been accused more than once as a child of committing such a sin.

  Claudia Bretton-Smith was very thin. And with her ardently red hair, and overly pale complexion, she created a memorable figure. “Worse than a scarecrow,” Antonia had once said after Claudia scored a coup over her in their social wars.

  “This wardrobe suits my work needs here,” Rebecca said mildly.

  “Oh, my dear, I should hope not. It’s suited only to manual labor.” She couldn’t have sounded more disapproving if she’d substituted prostitution for manual labor.

  Rebecca gave up that unwinnable fight.

  “Claudia, may I introduce Luke Chandler, and his charge, Emily Susland. Luke, this is Mrs. Bretton-Smith,” Before Luke could say anything – from Claudia’s cold head-to-toe assessment of him she made it clear she was not going to say anything – Rebecca added quickly. “We have been seeing Emily’s mother off on a trip. Marti Susland and Luke are clients of mine.”

  Claudia didn’t so much as flick a glance toward the distraught child, but her attitude toward Luke shifted. “I see. So, you are with the historical site commission, Mr., uh, Chandler?”

  Historical preservation was the currency of the prime rivalry between Claudia and Antonia, and Rebecca wanted it clear that neither Luke nor Emily were potential chits in that game.

  “No,” Rebecca interceded. “This is an entirely separate contract – with an extensive cattle ranch in Wyoming.”

  “Ah, you own a cattle ranch.”

  This time, Rebecca heard both speculation of wealth and the willingness to forgive as eccentric the attire the woman’s cold looks to that point had found reprehensible.

  “Claudia, if you have a flight to catch – ”

  “Then perhaps you know – ”

  “Foreman, not owner.” Luke’s blunt words topped all others.

  Claudia underwent an instant reversion – jettisoning eccentric to snatch up reprehensible again.

  If only Luke had been quiet, she might be able to make Claudia Bretton-Smith see ...

  Impossible. All of it. Luke would never adjust himself an inch to affect what Claudia Bretton-Smith thought. Claudia would never understand or accept Luke Chandler, nevermind by way of a hurried explanation in the middle of an airport with Emily howling. And Claudia would never, never pass up the opportunity to score points off Antonia by describing this scene to her.

  “I see. I should hope, Rebecca, that your dealings are with the owner of this ranching establishment. And I see no need for you to dress like this – this hired hand.”

  “Luke is not a hired hand – ”

  “Sure, I am.” And didn’t care what Claudia Bretton-Smith thought of that. “And I need to get back, get Emily home and do my work. Good day, Ma’am.”

  Rebecca held suspended between the man striding easily away with the still-sobbing child and the woman whose face had settled into lines of cold disapproval.

  “Really, Rebecca, I would have thought better of you. And what Antonia would say about an appearance that I could only call inappropriate is something about which I am unprepared to even hazard a guess. I can venture that she would say, as I do, that your current company is entirely unacceptable.”

  “Unacceptable? Unacceptable! You have no right to – You know nothing about – You can criticize my clothes – No! No, you can’t do that, either, because you don’t know anything about it. You don’t know anything about anything.”

  “You – Rebecca Dahl – ”

  “I have to go. I hope you have a good flight, Claudia,” Rebecca lied, with another air kiss toward the woman’s cheek. “Give my best to everyone back – ” Home wouldn’t pass her lips. “ – in Delaware. Got to run now.”

  Not waiting for Claudia’s response, Rebecca made that run a near reality. Even so she didn’t catch up to Luke until they’d reached the pickup. Emily’s sobs had downshifted to intermittent, interspersed with hiccuping breaths and spells of rubbing her eyes with her fist.

  With no conversation, Luke buckled Emily into her seat in back, and got behind the steering wheel. Rebecca climbed into the front passenger seat, surprised to find the forgotten manila envelopes still in her hands. Exhausted by her tears and perhaps comforted by the familiarity of the truck, Emily fell asleep before they left the parking area.

  As they started their return to Far Hills, Rebecca stared at the envelopes without making any move to open them. It seemed a long, long time ago that Marti had handed them to her.

  She replayed the events over and over – her strange conversation with Marti, Marti’s departure, Emily holding her hand and Luke’s strange expression, Emily’s outburst, her futile efforts to quiet it, Luke’s response, the meeting with Claudia Bretton-Smith. Her own eruption.

  They were nearly to the Wyoming border when she burst out, “All right! I was wrong about having Emily wave good-bye.”

  “Hmphf.”

  She translated that grunt with little difficulty as Damn right, you were wrong.

  “But you were terrible with Claudia. You did your best to make it sound like you’re no more than a hired hand.”

  “I am.”

  “Bull – ” Rebecca bit of the word with a glance to the backseat. Emily was sound asleep. Rebecca still lowered her voice. “Even I know enough to see Far Hills couldn’t run without you – not the way it runs now.”

  “Even if that’s true, you think anything I’d’ve said would make that matter to that friend of yours?”

  “She’s not my friend.”

  He ignored that. “Honey,” he started in his most exaggerated drawl, “if I’d been a horse at auction, she had me headed for the glue factory from the second she clapped eyes on me.”

  “She was awful. She always has been. But you could have tried to win her over, instead of making it so clear you didn’t care what she thought of you.”

  “I don’t.”

  “No, of course not. The great Luke Chandler doesn’t care what anyone thinks of him. Why should you? You don’t need anyone, you don’t want anyone’s good opinion. Your own good opinion of yourself is good enough for you!”

  “That’s the only one I got to live with.”

  There was something in that sentence – maybe not the words, but the tone – that gave Rebecca the unshakable feeling that she was hearing only the tip of an iceberg that rested – hard, cold, immense and dangerous – under his surface. Her irritation evaporated as she groped to understand what was behind his words.

  “If you only have your own good opinion, you’re going to have a very solitary life.”

  “Better solitary than let a pack of other people’s opinions run your life, so you forget to do what’s right.”

  “Surely there’s some middle ground?”

  “Yeah? Have you found it?”

  It was a definite jab, and she felt it, because she’d spent her whole life seeking the good opinion of other people, yet she’d lived a mostly solitary life.

  At the same time, the sharpness in his tone had given her another glimpse of his iceberg. It also warned her to steer clear of it. She’d already gone a hard round with Claudia. She was definitely not prepared for an even harder one with Luke.

  “You want me to drive for a while?”

  He flicked a look toward her, perhaps surprised at her change of subject. “No need.”

  “Luke, there’s no sense in you driving all the way back.”

  He shrugged. “I
did all the way down.”

  “That was because Marti wanted to concentrate on Emily, and I – ” No, she wasn’t going into that.

  “Maybe later.”

  “But – ”

  “I’m hungry.”

  Luke lifted his head to check the backseat in his rearview

  mirror. “Hey, there, Sleeping Beauty.”

  Instead of the little girl’s usual giggles at Luke’s comments, a sniffle was his answer. Rebecca turned around warily.

  “I’m hungry and I have to go to the bathroom,” the child said with decision.

  “Talk about a double threat,” Luke muttered, and Rebecca stifled a chuckle. “Okay, Em, we’ll get off at the next exit.”

  Rebecca knew a moment of panic when she was designated to take Emily to the chain restaurant’s bathroom, but the little girl marched into a cubicle on her own and asked for no help. She even washed her hands without prodding.

  Emily was subdued as she ate half her burger, which left Luke to polish off the other half in addition to his own. She brightened some when Luke let her order a butterscotch sundae for dessert. She couldn’t finish that, either, and again Luke stepped in.

  “Now I see why you let her get dessert even after she didn’t finish lunch,” Rebecca said as they headed to the truck.

  His mouth twitched. “Never thought that no dessert rule made any sense – sure never made me eat anything I didn’t want.”

  “Not all children are as stubborn as you are.”

  He slanted her a look. “I prefer strong-minded.”

  She snorted her opinion of that.

  The silence as they continue north had a different quality now. At first Emily chatted to them, then hummed and sang to herself. After a stretch of silence, Rebecca turned around to see the child sleeping again.

  To her surprise, she dozed, too, lulled by the rhythm. She woke when the movement of the truck changed, realizing Luke was pulling in to a gas station and the sun was nearly gone.

  She stretched hard. Luke glanced toward her.

  “You up for driving some?”

  “Sure.”

  “Or ...”

  “Or what?”

  “It’s been a long day, and it’ll be late before we get in. If you’re beat, we could stop overnight.”

  Bells went off in her head – the scary part was they were not alarm bells.

  Stop overnight. Her and Luke. In a hotel. No one would know ... except her and him and a five-year-old.

  “Oh, let’s push on. I have so much to do tomorrow.”

  “Sure.” He got out to fill the gas tank.

  He sounded as if it didn’t matter one way or the other to him. She got out quickly, nearly forgetting – again – the elevation of the truck’s seat. She drew in the cooling air and stretched more in preparation for her stint behind the wheel.

  “Should we wake Emily? Give her some dinner now?”

  “You ever hear the expression about letting sleeping kids lie? She’ll let us know when she’s hungry. In no uncertain terms.”

  “That’s dogs – let sleeping dogs lie.”

  “They only used that because they hadn’t heard Em in full howl.”

  They exchanged a smile over the truck bed as she came around to the driver’s side. Who would have thought she would find any aspect of that fiasco to smile over – ever, much less so soon?

  “It was incredible, wasn’t it?

  “You should have heard it right next to your ear.”

  She concentrated on driving the truck – so much larger than she was used to – as they got back on the road.

  “What’s this?”Luke’s longer legs had found the envelopes she’d stowed on the floor.

  “Some reading material Marti gave me. I think it’s on the ranch’s history. I meant to read while it was light, but ...”

  “You were too busy being irked at me.”

  “Exactly.”

  She caught the grin curving his lips before he pulled his hat down over his face.

  Dark was coming fast as a line of clouds blotted out the last sunlight. But the road was easy, wide and nearly empty.

  Luke slept for only a half hour. He didn’t change his position, so she wasn’t sure how she knew he was awake, but she did.

  An hour ago, driving through, not stopping overnight had seemed the so-much wiser course. She hadn’t banked on the surprising intimacy of the growing darkness and stillness surrounding them, the child sleeping in back, the man beside her.

  “So, tell me about yourself, Luke.”

  “What’s to tell you haven’t already asked?” He tipped his hat back and sat up. “I’ll ask you now. Have you ever left home?”

  “Of course. I went to college in another state and I lived on campus.” Concessions won after long and careful campaigns.

  “And after?”

  “I have a set of rooms in Dahlgren House. Over the generations, many Dahlgrens have done that.”

  “Dahlgren House, huh?” Before she could defend that seat of the Dahlgrens, he was saying, “That’s what you’d planned to do when you left college? Go back and live in your old room?”

  “Oh, I had some thoughts of an apartment with college friends in New York, but Grandmother is getting older, though she would never admit it, and she’s all I have.” She gave a rueful laugh. “Besides, you know what it’s like when you go home after you’ve been away, and your family starts working on you ...”

  There was a quality to Luke’s silence that made her ask, “I know you’ve been on your own, but you go see your family now and then, don’t you?”

  “No. Left to start college and haven’t been back since.”

  “Your family didn’t ... You worked your way through college?”

  “Yeah. Took five and a half years. Bet you went through like clockwork, four years right on schedule. So you could go right back to being under your grandmother’s – ”

  Thumb her mind filled in.

  “ – wing.”

  He’d tricked her into that thought. Hadn’t he?

  “You’re no different, Luke. Why’d you come back to Far Hills if it wasn’t to get back under someone’s wing?”

  “A job. I can leave any time.”

  “Right.” She gave it full force of sarcasm with no apparent effect on him. “Like you haven’t settled right back where you were as a kid, just like I did.”

  “So you are still living at home.”

  “No,” she said with precision, “I am living three-quarters of a continent away. And renting an apartment from Helen Solsong.”

  “Same difference.”

  “They’re nothing alike.”

  “I meant living under somebody’s wing.”

  “Oh. Of course. You know, I think it’s time to stop for dinner.”

  “Okay. You hungry, Em?”

  “Yeah.”

  Surprised, Rebecca looked in the rearview mirror, and saw Emily was wide awake. How long had she been listening? How long had Luke known she was awake? Why hadn’t he let her know the girl was listening? And what made her think she’d ever understand why he did what he did?

  * * * *

  Rebecca finished her survey of the offerings along the back wall of the Far Hills Market, turned to her left to start up the outside aisle and came face to face with Luke.

  I’m not ready, she thought.

  Will I ever be?

  It didn’t matter, she supposed, because he was right here in front of her blocking her path, not thirty hours after he’d dropped her off.

  Not thirty hours after she’d taken her overnight bag from him and started to climb the stairs, only to turn and watch the truck back out of the driveway, into the street, then drive away, leaving her a totally unexpected sense of emptiness. She stood there holding her bag, with the dining room curtain twitching like a frog in electroshock therapy, until she realized she was shivering.

  She’d told herself at least she’d have some time to get over this strange feeling, mayb
e even enough to figure it out, before she’d see Luke again.

  Wrong.

  She’d discovered her refrigerator – which only required a couple pieces of fruit, a hunk of cheese and some eggs to look full – was as bare as her cupboards. After a breakfast of three crackers, she decided to pick up groceries before heading to the historical site commission.

  “ ‘Morning, Rebecca.” Luke’s voice came deep and slow.

  That’s how the words would sound to a woman waking in his bed.

  “You aren’t supposed to be here. You should be at the ranch.”

  His brows raised. Before he could say anything – and Rebecca could only be grateful, because she immediately remembered his telling her he’d be bringing Emily in to the babysitting co-op each morning – another voice intruded.

  “Luke Chandler, stay right there. I have something to say to you.” Fran Sinclair was barreling down the aisle toward them.

  “I was just going,” Rebecca said. “Excuse me, I’ll ...”

  Not without his cooperation, she wouldn’t. And his level stare declared he wasn’t in a cooperating frame of mind. Rebecca couldn’t get past him without nearly full-body contact. She wasn’t going to risk that.

  The older woman frowned at him. “Luke, you’re embarrassing Rebecca. Let her pass, then I’ll say my piece.”

  He didn’t budge. “I got nothin’ to hide. From anyone.”

  Fran huffed in exasperation. “You rub everybody’s nose in that attitude of yours.”

  “I go my own way, not bothering anybody else. Like always.”

  “Not like always. Not while you’re taking care of Emily. I promised Marti I’d keep an eye on things and I’m telling you that your life is going to have to change temporarily, if you’re going to do right by Emily.”

  “I’m doing right by her.”

  “By your way of thinking, I don’t doubt it for a second. But your way of thinking’s not the only one that counts right now. You’re going to have to make changes. For starters, where were you yesterday morning?”

  “That’s my business.” For an instant Rebecca thought she saw a flash of the boy Fran had described when they all had lunch together, a boy who’d firmly shut his mouth against the medicine that could cure him.

  “And I’m telling you it’s not just your business anymore. Where were you?”