Star Bright

by Catherine Anderson

  “In what way?”

  “Lots of ways. I stopped talkin’ like my dad, for one, and tried to sound educated.” Parker thought back to that time in his life and shook his head at the craziness that had overcome him. “I got it into my mind that my dad was a low-class, blue-collar worker from the marrow of his bones out, and I wanted to make somethin’ better of myself. I went shoppin’ for some fancy duds—khaki slacks, loafers, and dressy shirts with button-down collars.” He jostled her closer with a quick hug, wanting to warm her so she’d stop shivering. “It took me about three years to mature and realize that the real challenge in my life was to become half the man my father is.

  “It isn’t about the clothes a man wears, or how he talks, or how sophisticated he is. It’s about who he is on the inside. My dad is an honest, loyal, and hardworkin’ man. There’s nothin’ fancy about him, but even with all my education, I’m surprised at how much he knows sometimes. He just went to a different school, learnin’ everything the hard way. When I’m gettin’ ready to breed a mare, I can quote genetic theory that sounds real impressive, but in the end, I’ll make the same call my dad does almost every time. He can’t tell me why he’d breed a black to a gray to get a certain color foal. He just knows that the mix will work. He can’t say how he can tell a gray from a blue roan, but he can tell the difference with one close look. It blows my mind, but he’s right every damned time. A man doesn’t need to go to college to be well educated, bottom line, and when a university graduate with a master’s degree gets to thinkin’ he’s better than everyone else just because he has some book learnin’ under his belt, he’s settin’ himself up for a hard fall.”

  Rainie gazed off through the deepening twilight. “So you stopped wearing khaki slacks?”

  “Yep. Went back to my faded old jeans and scuffed boots, and from that moment forward, instead of focusin’ on how I looked, I focused on who I was. Samantha accuses me of takin’ it too far. I’m the only one of my father’s sons who talks exactly like he does, and with the passage of time, I’ve come to mimic him more and more. She swears up and down I didn’t drop all of my Gs a year ago. What’s up with me doin’ it now? I don’t have any answers. Maybe I’ve patterned myself after him so closely because I feel guilty.”

  “For what?” she asked.

  Parker took a moment to answer, because confessing the truth made him feel like a worthless, ungrateful shithead. “For thinkin’ he didn’t measure up, that he was somehow less than my fancy-talkin’ professors at university, and that I was gonna be better than him just because I was gettin’ an education. An education that he paid for, by the way. I was an ungrateful brat. I know now it was just a stage I went through, and to my credit, it didn’t last very long. But I’ll always feel bad for thinkin’ that way, even for a time. There isn’t a finer man who’s ever walked the earth, and if someone tells me I’m just like Frank Harrigan, I feel proud.”

  Rainie bent her head and dragged the toe of her shoe over a porch plank as the swing moved forward. “So that’s why you downplay the fact that you attended college.” She glanced up, her eyes shimmering in the gloaming, the tendrils of blondish hair at her temples trailing in the breeze. “I’ve wondered about that. Most of the time, no one would ever guess you have one degree, let alone that you studied equine genetics. That isn’t like taking a course in basket weaving, Parker. It takes brains.”

  Parker stared off through the deepening twilight. “It takes brains to be the horseman my father is, too. What I learned after finishin’ that coursework was that it’s only a tool, not a measure of who I am.” He deliberately sent her a questioning look, not wanting her to guess that he’d just bared his soul to her on purpose. “How did we get off on this?”

  “I like being off on this. I’m finding out things about you that I never knew.”

  And he’d been remiss in making her wait so long. “You likin’ what you see?”

  Her sweet face softened in a thoughtful smile. “I’m liking it a lot. I’ve known for a long time that you’re nothing like Peter. This just drives it home. If he had your education, he’d broadcast it everywhere he went. You act as if you never set foot on a university campus. In your position, he’d try to dazzle people with genetic theory. You seldom reveal that you know anything about genetics.”

  Parker couldn’t help but laugh. “Darlin’, if I got started in on equine genetics, your eyes would glaze over with boredom and you’d drop off to sleep.”

  She chuckled with him. “Probably so.”

  A long silence fell between them. When Parker finally spoke, his voice had gone thick and gravelly. “I’m sorry he hurt you so much, honey. Just for the record, if I’d met you under other circumstances, and I would have been fired for fraternizin’ with you, I would have told my superiors to take the damned job and shove it.”

  She fixed him with those beautiful eyes that always made him feel as if he might get lost in them. “I know.”

  Those two words meant the world to Parker. I know. He glanced quickly away. She wasn’t ready to make the scary confession I love you, but he could wait. She felt it. That was all he needed to know.

  Just then he heard a faint meow. His gaze flicked to the front steps, where Thomas stood, looking forlornly up at them.

  “Thomas!” Rainie cried, the gladness in her voice ringing like a bell in the descending darkness. She pushed up from the swing to hurry down the steps. “You poor baby! Where on earth have you been?” She cuddled the cat in her arms for a few seconds before returning to the porch. She set the feline gently on his feet in front of the can of tuna. “Are you hungry, big guy?”

  The cat answered by tucking into the canned fish as if he hadn’t eaten in days. Rainie hunkered down to stroke his back while he ate. When the tin was empty, Parker held open the screen and stood back while she carried her pet into the house. Thomas looked a little wild-eyed.

  “The strange surroundings frighten him,” she told Parker.

  He closed the door. “He’ll get used to it here. Maybe you should put him down so he can explore.”

  “I’ll show him where the cat box is first,” she said over her shoulder as she set off for the bathroom.

  An instant later, the cat streaked back into the kitchen, his green eyes wide with fright. After taking one look at Parker, the feline dashed toward the living room. Rainie rushed into the kitchen, looking almost as upset as her pet.

  “Where’d he go?”

  Parker jabbed a thumb. “That way.”

  Rainie ran to the living room. “Oh, no!” he heard her cry.

  “What?”

  Parker adjourned to the other room to see what was wrong. He followed the direction of Rainie’s gaze upward and saw Thomas huddled on the cornice board above the picture window. The feline looked like one of those cartoon cats, every hair on his body sticking straight out. Parker feared he might go into cardiac arrest.

  “What’s his problem?”

  “He’s terrified, poor baby.” Rainie wrung her hands.

  Then she cast a worried look at Parker. “Maybe our coming here wasn’t a good idea. He’s probably lived his whole life in my side of the duplex. Being in a strange place is really scary for him.”

  No way was Parker taking Rainie back home. “He’ll be fine, honey.” He hoped. He made a mental note never to get her another cat after Thomas croaked. Horses and dogs were a lot more predictable. “He just needs some time to orient himself.”

  Famous last words. Thirty minutes later, when Parker had finished preparing the guest room for Rainie’s use, the damned cat was still perched on the cornice board, and Rainie was standing in the living room, gazing up at her pet with a heartsick look on her face. It took some convincing to get her to go to bed.

  “He’ll be settled in come mornin’,” Parker promised.

  “You think?”

  She’d no sooner asked the question than Parker’s clock chimed to mark the hour. With the first peal, Thomas yowled and Rainie jumped. The sec
ond peal sent the cat sailing from the wooden valance to Parker’s recliner, and from there to the mantel. Rainie attempted to collect her pet, but Thomas wanted no part of it. With the third peal, he leaped down and streaked into the kitchen. By the time the tenth chime had sounded, God only knew where the cat had hidden.

  “He’s gonna be okay, honey,” Parker assured her. “He can’t get out. Once the house goes quiet, he’ll be able to sniff around and get used to it here.” He turned off the clock chime. “Maybe if you go to bed and leave your door open, he’ll find you sometime durin’ the night.”

  After taking Mojo out for a quick potty run, Parker returned to the house to find Rainie standing in front of the fireplace again. Thomas had returned to his safety perch on the mantel. Parker took it as a good sign that the cat had picked a slightly lower elevation as his first choice this time. Tucking Mojo under one arm, he dimmed all the lights and then went to grasp Rainie’s elbow.

  “It’s been a long day, honey. You need to get some rest.”

  She nodded, her gaze still fixed on her cat. Parker wished she could talk with him about what was going through her head. The tom was upset, yes, but he was bound to acclimate to his new surroundings sooner or later. They just needed to wait him out. Rainie’s distress over the cat’s reaction seemed disproportionate to the situation, in Parker’s opinion, and he suspected she was upset about something more that she didn’t feel comfortable talking about with him. Off the top of his head, he could think of several issues that might be troubling her, but he’d never been good at guessing games. Was she afraid that he might get amorous once they went upstairs? Was she worried that Danning might break into the house during the night? Were her thoughts racing about the legal ramifications if the authorities learned that she was alive? He wished she’d just tell him. Instead she stood there, staring at her cat, looking like a forlorn waif.

  “Come on,” he urged softly. “It’s time to get you tucked in for the night.”

  Her reluctance obvious, she accompanied him upstairs. Once on the second-floor landing, he escorted her to her bedroom door. Still wearing the jacket that he’d draped over her shoulders, she looked so young and upset when she turned to face him that he didn’t follow through on his urge to kiss her good night, choosing instead to chuck her lightly under the chin.

  “If you need anything, I’m right down the hall. I’ll leave my door cracked open in case you holler for me.”

  She nodded and vanished into the bedroom. After the door clicked closed behind her, Parker stood there for a long moment, wishing that he could hold her close until she fell asleep. Not. She was coming to trust him, but she wasn’t ready for that yet. All in good time. For now, he could only be there for her as a sounding board.

  He sighed wearily as he went to his own room.

  Chapter Twelve

  Worrying about Rainie made it difficult for Parker to fall asleep, and it seemed to him that he’d dozed for only a few seconds when a creaking noise brought him wide awake again. He lay in the darkness, staring blindly at the ceiling, his ears pricked for the least little sound. Footsteps? Someone was on the stairs, and whoever it was didn’t want to be heard. Taking care not to jostle Mojo awake, he slipped from bed, groped for his clothes, and hurriedly pulled them on. Boots. Parker trusted in the security system that monitored the property, but on the off chance that Danning had found a way to breach the perimeter and enter the house, Parker wanted to be wearing his shit-kickers. No self-respecting cowboy or horseman willingly engaged in a physical confrontation barefooted. Not bothering with socks, he jerked on his trusty Tony Lamas. Then he tiptoed out into the hall.

  A rectangle of faint light spilled across the corridor ahead of him, the illumination coming from Rainie’s room. Her door stood partly open. When Parker reached the opening, he flattened a hand against the wood to press the portal farther open. No Rainie. The bedclothes were rumpled, as if she’d tossed and turned in her sleep, but she wasn’t there now. No light shone from under the closed door of the adjoining bathroom, either.

  Concerned, Parker made his way downstairs. Thomas still perched on the mantel, sound asleep now, but Rainie was nowhere to be seen. Just as Parker turned to go back upstairs, he heard another creaking noise. Because he’d so recently sat on the swing with Rainie, he recognized the sound of the suspension chains grating on the eye hooks. What the hell? It was a strange hour for her to be sitting outside.

  When Parker stepped out onto the porch, he saw Rainie hunched forward on the swing seat, elbows propped on her knees, head resting in her hands. All she wore over her cotton nightgown to protect her from the cold was the jacket that he’d lent her earlier. In central Oregon, the temperatures grew frigid during the wee hours. Making a U-turn, Parker went back into the house to grab an afghan. When he returned and draped it around her shoulders, she stirred to look up at him. Then she resumed the dejected posture.

  Parker sat beside her. “Bad dream?”

  Her voice was faint when she replied. “I have them pretty often, the same one, over and over.”

  He almost asked what her nightmare was about, but given all she’d told him yesterday, he figured he already knew. Danning. The thought made his muscles snap taut. The jerk had caused her enough pain.

  “Want to talk about it?”

  Without looking up, she shook her head no. But then she started talking anyway. “I feel so lost in the dreams, Parker.”

  “Lost in what way, honey?”

  “It’s hard to explain. Not physically lost and trying to find my way. It isn’t like that. It’s more an emotional kind of lost. Have you ever been in a maze of mirrors at the carnival?”

  “Once, a long time ago.”

  “Well, I’m in a maze of mirrors in my dream. I wander from mirror to mirror, frantic to find my way out of there, and Peter is laughing because I can’t.” She shivered, the afghan a trembling drape over her shoulders. “But that’s not the scary part.”

  That sounded pretty damned scary to him. “What is, then?”

  “That it’s not me in any of the mirrors,” she said hollowly. “I run from panel to panel, but my reflection is always of a stranger, some woman I’ve never seen. I get so frightened, and Peter just laughs harder. I keep thinking, ‘I’m here. I’m here somewhere.’ Only I’m not.” Her voice trailed away to a faint squeak that nearly broke his heart. “No matter how many mirrors I look into, I’m not there.”

  “Oh, honey.”

  She shivered again. “I think I keep having that same dream, over and over, because I know, deep down, that I’ll never be truly okay again until I find my way back.”

  Bewildered, Parker studied the crown of her bent head. “Out of the maze, you mean?”

  “No.” She shifted the position of her cupped palms to cover her eyes. “To me,” she said, her voice low and ragged. “I know it sounds loony, but somewhere along the way, I lost me.”

  His heart caught at the raw pain in her voice. “Ah, sweetheart.”

  “It’s true,” she cried. “I’m not the same person I used to be.”

  “None of us stays the same. Life has a way of changin’ everyone.”

  “No, you don’t understand.” She finally lifted her head to give him a beseeching look with tear-drenched eyes shot through with silver in the moonlight. “I’m completely changed, no longer the person my father raised me to be. I’ve turned my back on everything he ever taught me.”

  Parker wanted to argue that point. Rainie had held true to countless fine qualities that her father had undoubtedly instilled in her. But he sensed that interrupting her right then might prevent her from saying anything more, so he held his tongue.

  “The last promise I ever made to him was that I’d always come out swinging, that I’d never let anyone or anything beat me down.” Her chin quivered as she made that admission, a telltale sign of how deeply it troubled her to say it aloud. “We were in the kitchen, and I was goofing around, shadowboxing, when he got all serious suddenly and
started asking me to promise him this and promise him that. I think he knew he was going to die soon, and he was worried about leaving me all alone.”

  “Of course he was worried.” Gazing down at her sweet face, Parker tried to imagine the gamut of emotions her father must have felt right before his death. “He loved you, and you weren’t mature enough yet at only seventeen to fend for yourself. The thought of abandoning you, even though he didn’t have a choice, must have broken his heart.”

  “Oh, but I was mature enough. It was how he raised me to be.” She wiped under her eyes and swallowed convulsively. “When I was little and got discouraged, Daddy always said, ‘There’s no such word as can’t.’ He taught me to meet every challenge saying, ‘I can,’ and as I grew older, that became my mantra. When he died and left me all alone, I was terrified, but that mantra saved me from panic. I could go home from the hospital to that huge, empty house without him. I could attend the funeral without falling apart. I could live with the crotchety old housekeeper until I graduated. I could deal with the attorney. I could finish high school. I could attend college. I could survive the loneliness. I could handle my own finances. No matter how scary something seemed, I had that mantra to give me courage, and I’d keep saying it to myself, ‘I can, I can, I can.’

  “And I did it, Parker. I really and truly did, all by myself, without any support, I did all of it. I graduated from high school with honors. I graduated from college summa cum laude. I kept a tight rein on my spending and touched no more of my inheritance than was absolutely necessary. I was the daughter he raised me to be every step of the way until—” She broke off and squeezed her eyes closed. “I met Peter.”

  Parker wanted nothing more than to gather her close in his arms.

  Spiked with wetness, her lashes fluttered back up. When he searched her beautiful eyes, he felt as if he might drown in her shimmery tears.