“Can you give me your number, Sheriff?”
“I got a situation here. Just tell the doc to get out here.”
He hung up and moved quickly from the phone. He should be ashamed of being so pleased. But he wasn’t.
As he poured his glass of tea, he heard Lindsey’s mobile phone go off. He heard the veterinarian’s terse tone, if not the exact words.
Tate, seeing Marilee’s reflection in the kitchen window as she entered the living room, went to the doorway. Lindsey was on his feet and talking into the telephone.
“Yeah, I got it. I’m on my way.”
He snapped off his phone and told Marilee, “I got an emergency. Horse hit by a car on Highway Six.”
“Oh…my.”
He kissed her cheek and thanked her for supper, and headed for the door.
Marilee followed and called after him, “I hope it goes well.”
She shut the door and turned to look at Tate across the low-lit room. She looked so worried that he felt a stab of guilt.
“I hope the horse isn’t hurt too badly,” she said and then continued on about how Parker had such a hard time whenever he lost a patient. “And it is even worse on him when he has to put one down.”
“Ah…” He wrestled with his conscience. “There isn’t really an injured horse.”
“What?” She cocked her head to the side, regarding him.
He felt quicksand beneath his feet. “Well, I put in the call to his answering service. I pretended to be the sheriff and said there was a horse…hit by a car,” he finished slowly as he saw his own image reflected in her incredulous expression.
“How could you do that? Parker—” she was getting wrought up and gestured with her arm swinging out “—is fully committed to saving animals’ lives. He is racin’ out there now, committed to doing all that he can to save a horse. He could be in a wreck because he’s hurryin’ out there to save a horse that isn’t even there!”
Tate had no answer to that. The full import of his actions came to him, although he did not see them in quite the disreputable light Marilee painted. Obviously she believed he had crossed over the line of integrity.
“I wanted time with you,” he said. “Lindsey is a big boy, and he will deal with this.”
Marilee heard what he said but could not absorb it. She was too taken up with hurt for Parker. She felt horribly guilty, knowing she was the cause of him being falsely called out.
“He can’t stand to see an animal die,” she told Tate, as she went to the phone on her desk and snatched up the receiver. “He will go to great lengths to prevent that.” In her mind, she saw him colliding with another vehicle in his race to get out to find and save the injured horse.
“Marilee—” he took hold of her forearm “—he will get there and realize what happened. He does not need you to be his mother.”
She looked at him. “You have sent him off on a fool’s errand. I can’t let him be drivin’ all over creation, lookin’ for a horse that isn’t there. He’ll feel a fool when he realizes what you’ve done.”
“That’s it.” Suddenly she was facing Tate’s fury. “Focus on Parker, mother Parker, because you can’t face your own life as a woman. When I found out you had broken off with Parker, I came drivin’ up here at breakneck speed for six hours to see you. I don’t see you getting all worked up about my welfare. I’m tired and lonely and wearin’ my heart on my sleeve here. What are you gonna do about that? About this man—” he jabbed his chest “—not a boy, who is crazy about you.”
Marilee stared at him and felt a type of paralysis come over her emotions and her body. She could not seem to put down the phone. She could not seem to stop her course, even if she wanted to.
“I have to call him. You don’t know how these things hurt.” She did not think she could bear the consequences of not calling Parker, not that she knew what those consequences would be, just that she needed to cling to making the call. She felt compelled to cling to the course she knew, because to abandon it would mean she would be lost.
“Do you think he is too stupid to figure out what happened when he gets out there and there isn’t any horse, nor any police cars?” He flung her arm away in disgust. “Do you have such a low opinion of his coping powers? He’ll figure it out, and he’ll be mad as hell, but he’ll be wiser, and someday he’ll use this same little trick on somebody else. That’s how I learned it—it was played on me, to get me out of the way of somewhere I never belonged in the first place.”
“I can’t,” she said, anger flaring because he was pressing her for something she did not feel capable of giving.
“I’m not going to stand here and beg for your attention. I wouldn’t want to interrupt your motherin’ of Parker. Apparently you need that more than you can appreciate some attention from a man.”
He stalked off to the kitchen, and she called after him, “Go ahead. I never asked you to come around here…and that is what men do—they leave. Better sooner than later.” She shut her mouth then, afraid she might have awakened the children.
The sound of the back door shutting caused her to just about double over, as if from a blow.
What Tate said was true, she realized, her spirit sinking to depths so dark she ached with despair. She simply could never seem to get herself out of mother mode. She had always been a mother, from the age of nine, when she’d had to be a mother to Anita, and on to becoming a mother to her own mother. It was all she knew.
Likely she attracted men who needed her to mother them—like Stuart and Parker—and repelled men, like Tate, who did not require her mothering talents but wanted her to be a full woman and mate, which was something she could not seem to grasp. She could not be a woman to a man, because she did not know how. Probably she did not have some sort of gene required to be a woman to a man. It was as if she were learning disabled in this area, the same as her Willie Lee was in the rest of life.
A voice came from the receiver: “If you’d like to make a call, please hang up and dial again.”
She was still standing there, holding the receiver. She stretched a finger to depress the button and start again, but her inclination to call Parker had faded. Suddenly she did not think she could speak, she was so totally discouraged. Likely Parker was close to figuring out that there was no emergency with a horse, anyway. Surely another ten minutes and he would know this. He would be furious and feel the fool, and she did not feel up to taking on his emotions.
Tate, at the back gate, stopped in his tracks. It was as if a hand had come down on his shoulder and turned him around, and he distinctly heard a command to get back in there.
He had come too far to give up now. And he wouldn’t leave her his tea, in any case. By golly, he was not wasting any more tea on the woman. He would just march right in there and get his pitcher. He went up the stairs and burst in the doorway.
Marilee, hearing the back door open, threw the receiver onto the hook and hurried to the kitchen doorway, from which she saw Tate stalking across the room toward the counter.
“I forgot my tea.” His tone and manner were furious. He snatched up the pitcher sitting there. “I’m takin’ it back.” He had lost his mind, he thought.
Marilee, standing with her hand on the door frame, tried to drag herself from her odd paralysis of emotion, a course she had seemingly been on all her life. He had driven six hours for her…for a woman like her.
The phone rang, and this jarred her into motion. Two steps and she lifted the receiver.
But then Tate was there, taking hold of her and jerking the receiver from her hand. He said into it, “Go away,” then let it drop, where it bobbed and banged against the wall, while Tate took her by her shoulders and looked deep into her eyes.
“Let me in, Marilee. Open up and let me in.”
His eyes entreated her; his voice commanded her.
“I can’t…. I don’t know how.” Crying, shaking her head, trying to avoid his lips, but still he went to kissing her cheeks and her eyes. She hit his chest wi
th her balled fists. “I don’t want to be married…I can’t go there again…it hurts too bad…I don’t know how.”
He found her mouth and stopped her words with his kiss, which caused an immediate and enormous response from deep inside of her. Quite suddenly she found herself kissing him in return, with the passion of a woman come to life, full of desire that burned away the fear. They became all hot breath and pounding blood and passionate bodies. When finally Tate lifted his head, so that she could see his luminous grey eyes, she could not stand up and had to hold on to him.
“That’s how,” he whispered against her lips, and then kissed her again, having to hold her up against him to do it.
When at last the kiss ended and she was staring up at him through dazed eyes, she said what popped into her mind. “I’ve wanted to know what it would be like to kiss you from the moment I saw you.”
“I’ve wanted to know, too,” said Tate, with a ragged chuckle. Then, “Let’s do it again.”
And he kissed her again.
When at last he raised his head, she gasped for breath. “I won’t,” she managed to say, meaning she would not sleep with him, she would not marry him, she would not go any further.
He merely chuckled again and gave her yet another kiss, deeply and expertly, making her know in that minute that she would follow the delicious passion wherever it led. He kissed her, and she kissed him, until they were both about to burst into flame.
She had never in all her life been so thoroughly kissed, so that she felt it in every cell in her body.
“Now, what were you sayin’?” he whispered in her ear, his breath warm and moist upon her tender skin.
“I can’t remember.” She felt helpless. Never had she felt helpless with a man. She did not know if she liked the feeling.
“The phone’s still off the hook.” The recording was speaking about hanging up.
“Leave it.”
“Okay.” She could not think a coherent thought.
Tate scooped her up into his arms and carried her through to the living room, where he sat in the big chair, holding her across his lap.
“Why not the sofa?” she asked, as getting down into the chair proved to take some doing.
“You and Parker used to be on the sofa.”
“Oh.” She laid her head on his shoulder and nuzzled into his neck. “I cannot have sex with you. I have two children in the other room.”
“Quit blaming it all on the children. I’ll wait until you are ready.” He stroked her head, and she felt ready.
“I want to marry you,” he said. “That’s what I want.”
She realized that Tate was a little struck silly by passion, too. “I don’t know if I can marry you. I don’t think we should even try to think about it right now.” Heaven knew she could not think.
She added after a moment, “I don’t know if I can ever marry anyone.”
“I’ll wait for you to find out.”
“I don’t know how to be a wife. I’m a good mother, but I am awful at being a woman with a man.”
She began to cry. She could not figure out her emotions. They were no longer paralyzed but now felt as if they were fighting to go in all directions. She cried harder, so hard that she soaked his shirt, while he held her to him and kissed her hair and murmured that she was just the sort of woman he needed.
“What sort is that?” she asked, sniffing. “What did you mean—a woman like me?”
It seemed a very long time before he answered. She pulled back and looked at him. He looked puzzled, and at last he said, “That you are a full and passionate woman who demands that a man stand up on equal footing. I have to be a better man when I’m around you. I have to be all the man I can be.”
“Oh, Tate.” Had ever a woman been so complimented? Her heart felt as if it had cracked in two. She kissed him full and hard.
After that kiss, he said, “Will you be my girl?”
“Yes.” At first the word would only come in a whisper. She tried again. “Yes, I’ll be your girl. But I am not making any further promises.”
She lay back in his arms then, and he kissed her softly, and then held her. They sat there, and it was both sensual and comfortable. She listened to his heart beating and inhaled his scent, imprinting it on her mind, imprinting the feel of his body through their clothing. He stroked her leg, and it was in such a tender and worshipful manner that she began to cry again.
Tate did not say so, but he had a feeling that Marilee had never known a man to truly make love to her. Obviously she had experienced sex, but quite possibly never experienced having a man make love to her as a woman enjoyed by a man. This thought excited him, but it made him a little nervous, too. He hoped he would be up to the job. It would take a hell of a man to give Marilee what she needed. Maybe he would need to study books or something.
He was thinking so hard on this matter, that it was some minutes before he realized she had fallen asleep. He sat there, for that space of time, as if he had opened wide the door and was staring into the full secret of life in his heart.
Twenty-Five
Life is Good
The night lifted, and the light of a new day dawned on the roofs and trees of town and across the land, west to where a long, white limousine turned off the interstate and onto the state highway, gliding past the sign that read: Valentine, 10 miles. The driver, commanded by his employer, who did not like speed, went at a slow pace.
In town, garbage trucks started their run, the City Works crew were gathering to make another attack on the sinkhole, and Winston Valentine, putting on his glasses, looked out the kitchen window at the thermometer; the needle pointed already at eighty degrees.
“Summer’s here,” he said, and turned, heading through the long hall, where he took up his flags from the hall table and went out the front door. He was early, and this seemed prudent, with the heat coming. Everett had apparently made the same decision; he was just coming out his door, too.
As Winston went to his flagpole, his gaze focused in the distance at the Blaines’ driveway across the meadow, and Perry’s black Lincoln sitting there, still. That seemed a promising sign. Vella had called Winston last night to say that Perry had moved back in. He would go down there later and see how things had gone. He had not felt up to being all Vella wanted of him, but he was a little sad to lose her attention. Oh, well, aggravating Perry would give him something worthwhile to do.
Down on Porter, Tate, minus Bubba, who was sulking, jogged past Marilee’s cottage; it was quiet. He knew better than to stop in, because he knew Marilee was not a morning person.
At the house on the corner, the young UPS man was coming down his front walk. He had a black eye.
“Woo-ee, that’s a beaut,” Tate said, admiring, but not breaking stride.
“You should see the other guy.” The young man grinned and then winced.
Tate, sweat already beginning to wet his hair, turned left instead of right on First, and jogged down to where a burly City Works employee was guiding a concrete truck into position some feet away from the sinkhole site. Apparently they were going to run a tube from the truck, so as to not take a chance of getting the truck stuck in the hole.
Tate took a second look at the big elm tree in the front yard of the Methodist Church parsonage; it seemed to be leaning toward the sinkhole.
“We got a handle on this thing now, Editor,” the burly City Works worker told him. “We are fixin’ to pump thirty-five yards of concrete into this sucker. That’s gotta stop it.”
Tate gave the worker Reggie’s phone number and requested the man call her immediately on his cell phone, so she could get a shot for the Sunday paper. Then he headed back along to Main Street, waving at Bonita Embree through the bakery window. The flag was not yet flying at the Voice; Charlotte was much later than usual this morning. He wondered what that was about. Turning the corner at the police station, he headed up Church, keeping an eye out in the distance.
There came Lindsey down the hil
l.
They met at the intersection. Tate was prepared to defend himself. He had not had a fight in a long time, so he hoped he could come out of it in decent shape.
Lindsey stopped to stretch his legs, and Tate followed suit.
“Guess you think you’re pretty funny, don’t you, Editor.”
“Clever is the better word. Actually, I think it could be considered outmaneuvering.” He was warming to the descriptions, yet still keeping a watchful eye on Lindsey’s demeanor.
At that moment, there came Leanne Overton, flying down the hill on her bicycle. She cast a nod directed at both men as she zipped between them and curved around to Porter heading east, the cheeks of her lovely derriere moving in rhythm as she pedaled.
“If you hurry, maybe you could catch up with her,” Tate suggested, a little puzzled at how Lindsey was just standing there, as if out of energy.
Lindsey shook his head. “Her looks hide some other stuff. You know?”
“Ah, well, that’s not too good.” Tate felt a twinge of pity for the guy.
But suddenly Lindsey straightened his shoulders and looked straight at Tate. “I’m goin’ to get you back, Editor. It may take me a while, but I’m goin’ to pay you back for last night.”
It was a firm promise, and with that, the veterinarian swung into motion, heading away east on Porter at an easy jog with his powerful tanned legs.
Tate decided to cut his jog short and went on around, entering through the back door. The phone was ringing.
“Would you like to come to breakfast?” It was Marilee!
“Do you know your voice is very sexy first thing in the morning?” he said. “And I’ll be over in fifteen minutes.”
Life is good, he thought as he hurried upstairs to shower. He had a woman who liked to cook, and who had a sexy voice, too.
He ran his shower quite cold.
The long white limousine glided to a stop in front of the James house. The neighbor across the street saw it and kneeled on her couch to get a better look out her front window.
Marilee was putting homemade biscuits in the oven when the doorbell rang. Corrine was setting the table.
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