The Husband Quest

by Lori Handeland

  “Love is a luxury, Jillian. Not for women like us. Never, ever marry for love.”

  “Poor men are for play. Rich men are for keeps,” Jilly recited. “I’ve been living by your rules all of my life. I know them by heart.”

  “Then how could you forget them?”

  “You saw him. It was easy.”

  EVAN STOOD JUST INSIDE the window. He could hear everything Jilly and her mother said.

  You saw him. It was easy.

  He’d been easy, obviously. A poor man to play with. Why did that hurt so much?

  Because he’d never been anything but an amusement to every woman he’d ever known. Most men wouldn’t care, but Evan did.

  Why he’d thought Jilly was different was a mystery to him now. He’d wanted so much to have his dream that he’d ignored the truth.

  Jilly was from another world, and she’d never be able to live in his. She’d been slumming, playing, amusing herself, while he’d been falling in love with a woman who didn’t exist.

  “I need to talk to Evan,” Jilly said.

  He tensed. Evan didn’t want to talk to her, couldn’t face another woman telling him he was nothing more than a one-night stand. Just because they’d been together for more than a night didn’t make what they’d shared anything beyond that.

  He’d given her something no other man ever had. An orgasm. That just might earn him another gold star toward his gigolo merit badge.

  “Wait a minute,” Jilly’s mother snapped. “We’re not through here.”

  Evan took the reprieve and ran with it. Lucky for him his truck was parked out back. He was able to load all the kids into his pickup, except for Lightning, who was too damn big for the truck bed and had disappeared again anyway. The thought of Fergus made him pause, but he couldn’t figure out how to transport an alligator several hundred miles without making him miserable, sick or worse.

  He would just have to trust the Seitz brothers to keep an eye on both the alligator and the horse. They ought to be capable of that much.

  Leaving his tools, his clothes, his camping gear behind, Evan climbed into the truck. If he drove straight through, he might make it home by supper.

  “YOU’RE WRONG.” Jilly pulled her arm from her mother’s grip. “We are through. I love Evan, and I’m going to tell him so.”

  Her mother laughed. “You’re mistaking great sex for true love. Don’t be foolish. Don’t ruin your life. You can have both Rupert and Jethro.”

  Jilly’s lip curled. “That’s disgusting, Mother. I wouldn’t do that to Evan, or myself.”

  “Don’t you remember what it was like? No food, no house, no clothes? You want to go back to that?”

  You want to go back to a life without love, girl? Believe you me, it ain’t worth livin’.

  Jilly cocked her head. That had sounded just like Addie.

  Her mother snapped her fingers in front of Jilly’s face. “What’s the matter with you?”

  She shrugged. “Must be hearing ghosts.”

  “Ghosts?” Her mother rolled her eyes. “I suppose you’ll tell me next that fairies live under the cabbage leaves. You’ve got magic dust that’ll grow all the food you need. And you can live on love.”

  “I’d rather believe in something than nothing at all.”

  “You want to starve here, with him?”

  Jilly looked around the yard, up at the inn, into the trees and beyond. She listened to the birds, breathed in the musty aroma of the creek, let the sun shine on her face, and she knew.

  “I’ll starve, freeze, die if I have to. But I’m not leaving Evan. Ever.”

  Her mother’s lips puckered, as if she’d just sucked a lemon. “You choose him, you lose me.”

  “Aren’t you supposed to love me no matter what?”

  A crease marred Genevieve’s perfect brow. “Why would you think that?”

  “Unconditional love?”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “There’s a shock,” Jilly muttered.

  “I’ll write you out of my will, Jillian. You’ll get nothing.”

  “Which will be different from what I’ve been getting from you all my life, how?”

  “Sarcasm is unbecoming. I’ve given you plenty.”

  “But not one thing I truly needed. Goodbye, Mother.”

  “Don’t come crawling back to me when you’re nine months pregnant and you have two toddlers in the back of your Chevy.”

  Jilly smiled at the image, which was supposed to frighten her, no doubt, but instead made her long for the future. “I won’t.”

  The last she saw of Genevieve, Rupert and the count was the taillights of their limo disappearing down the dusty lane.

  “Evan!” She ran into the inn, anxious to tell him everything she’d discovered.

  The huge, old building echoed back her call.

  She continued to shout his name, on the first floor, the second, the third. Outside, down by the creek, into the woods.

  His truck was gone, and that didn’t bother her—until she noticed the dog cage was gone, too. As were the dog, the cat, the raccoon and the opossum.

  Damn him. He’d left her.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  EVAN ROLLED INTO Gainsville long past the supper hour. He’d stopped in Bloomington and bought everyone cheeseburgers, except for Peter and Zorro, who appeared to prefer chicken.

  He was going to have to keep an eye on them. If they raided his mother’s chicken coop, she’d shoot them. Literally.

  The town appeared the same. No big surprise. Gainsville hadn’t changed in all the time he’d lived there. Oh, they’d added a hospital, the television repair store was now a coffee shop, the pharmacy had moved into the grocery store, but for the most part Gainsville was exactly the same now as it had been fifty years ago. One of the things he both loathed and loved about the place.

  Evan waved a finger to every car he passed, and the other drivers did the same. In farm country, it was rude not to greet everyone you met on the road.

  His father’s silos appeared on the horizon, tall and white, an American flag waving on top of each signaled they’d been bought and paid for. Considering the price of a silo, this was saying quite a bit. John Luchetti had always been a farmer’s farmer and Dean was just like him, which had only made Evan’s differences stand out all the more.

  He lifted a hand from the wheel and touched the longer length of his hair. His dad was going to have a stroke when he caught sight of him now. Maybe he’d get a haircut, make the old man happy.

  The image of Jilly running her fingers through his hair, whispering how much she loved it as he caressed her with the tips of each strand, shot through his head, and he forced it right back out. He’d come home to forget her, and forget her he damn well would.

  He wheeled into the long gravel lane that led down to a stone farmhouse and several white outbuildings. Dogs streaked from every direction, barking a welcome.

  His father’s dalmatians, Bear and Bull, were joined by Bear’s offspring, the doodles. The resulting sound was nearly deafening, especially when Mario, thrilled to see his brothers and sisters, joined in.

  “Quiet!” Evan shouted as he got out of the truck.

  Bear and Bull shut up, though they continued to perform three-foot-high leaps to emphasize their excitement. The doodles stayed on the ground but kept barking.

  The slam of the farmhouse door and a snapped, “Zip it!” had every doodle scurrying for cover. Evan lifted his gaze to his mother’s.

  She hadn’t changed, either—sturdy as the stone of their farmhouse, steady as the breeze from the west. Her long ponytail had once been brown, like his, but he couldn’t remember it as anything other than white.

  Her hands were hard; her eyes were blue. The lines around them had come from both laughter and the sun.

  “’Bout time you showed up.”

  She walked down the porch steps in bare feet, and he was reminded again of Jilly. The pain surprised him, and he fought the sigh. Forgetting
her wasn’t going to be as easy as he’d hoped.

  “You know I don’t like it when you disappear for weeks at a time.”

  Had it been that long? He’d lost track of the days while living with Jilly. Life at the inn had been charmed, his work there gratifying, the friendships he’d made good ones. He hadn’t thought of calling home since he’d asked for a doodle.

  His mother opened her arms, and Evan went into them for a hug. She’d never been the cuddly type. Too many children too close together had taken care of that. But in the past few years she’d made a conscious effort to be more hands-on. Which meant he and his brothers now got more than their share of hugs and kisses. The newfound shows of affection took some getting used to.

  Suddenly she stiffened and pulled away. “What is that?”

  He turned. Zorro and Peter peeked over the side of the truck bed.

  “Well, I couldn’t just leave them there,” he said.

  His mother put a hand to her forehead. “If I’m not mistaken, that’s the same doodle I got rid of.”

  “Mario?”

  “We called him Forest.”

  “As in ‘can’t see him through the trees’?”

  “No, as in Gump. Notice anything strange about that dog?”

  “Well, he is a little…special.”

  She laughed. “I’ll say. He never could catch on to the whole potty-outside thing.”

  “Why did Dean send him to me then?”

  “Why do you think?”

  Stupid question. Mario had been Dean’s idea of a joke. Well, the joke was on Dean. Because the doodle was back here to stay.

  Henry jumped on top of the dog cage, arching and hissing.

  “Stop that!” she ordered. Henry did. Animals and small children obeyed Eleanor Luchetti without question.

  “A cat?” She glanced at Evan. “Like we don’t have twenty too many?”

  “One more won’t hurt.”

  “Evan.” She shook her head. “Aaron always brought home strays, not you.”

  “I figured you missed the excitement.”

  “You figured wrong,” she muttered, but she didn’t tell him to get rid of them, so Evan guessed the animals were as welcome as he was.

  That was what he liked about home. No matter what you did, where you roamed, who or what you brought back with you, you were welcome.

  “Your old room is empty.”

  “But…” He glanced in the direction of the threshers’ cabin, where he’d lived before he’d left the last time.

  “Dean and Tim need space of their own. No one’s in the big house but me and your dad. Plenty of room for you.”

  She’d turned away, but from the slope of her shoulders he could tell she was holding back tears. His mother had rarely cried, until recently.

  Evan laid a hand on her arm. “Bobby?”

  She shook her head. “Since Colin saw him in Pakistan there’s been nothing. Not a word from him, not a speck of information worth having from anyone in power.”

  “What do they say when you call?”

  “Same old party line—he’s a Special Forces operative, and his status is classified.” She threw up her hands. “All I want to know is if his status is dead or alive. I’m his mother. Is that too much to ask?”

  “If he was dead, they’d tell us.”

  “Would they? What if he died somewhere the U.S. Army isn’t supposed to be? What if his being alive, or the threat of his being alive, was keeping some moronic terrorist from performing his idiotic terrorist act?”

  Evan sighed. “I don’t know, Mom.”

  “Neither do I. Bobby told me there’d be times we wouldn’t hear from him, but I didn’t think he was talking about years.”

  “No one did.”

  Evan had called asking for information about Bobby on several occasions. They told him even less than they told his mother. Basically, back off.

  His brother Colin, a former foreign correspondent, had nearly gotten himself killed searching for Bobby in the Middle East. He’d been kidnapped, tortured, then rescued by Bobby himself.

  Bobby had dumped Colin at a hospital and disappeared again, after telling Colin to let him stay lost. Colin was of the opinion that their brother had been recruited for Delta Force, the elite antiterrorist unit. Colin was probably right, but that didn’t make Bobby’s disappearance any easier for their mother to bear.

  “How’s Zsa Zsa?” Evan asked, in an attempt to lighten the mood.

  Eleanor wiped her eyes, even as she laughed. “That girl was born a high-fashion model. She cracks me up.”

  Evan smiled. Zsa Zsa cracked him up, too. He wanted a daughter, or two, exactly like her.

  His smile faded. The way he was going, he doubted he’d ever have one.

  “Two years old and already she frowns and points if I wear white shoes before Memorial Day. Where does she get this stuff?”

  “It’s a mystery,” he said, though he had a pretty good idea. Kim had a shoe fetish and a wicked sense of humor.

  “Well, well, one of the prodigals decided to come home.” Dean leaned against the porch rail. “Should we kill a calf?”

  “Not a calf, Daddy. Ew!”

  Tim ran past Dean, threw his arms around Eleanor’s waist for the fastest hug in the west, then hurried toward Evan. But he was distracted by the animals in the truck.

  “Hey!” He clambered up the tire and hung over the edge. “That’s the weirdest lookin’ cat I ever seen.”

  Tentatively he reached out to pet Zorro. The raccoon batted his fingers with gentle paws, and Tim giggled.

  “He’s never seen a raccoon?” Evan asked.

  “Not riding shotgun,” Dean said dryly. “Where’d you find him?”

  “Whoa!” Tim scrambled into the truck bed and lifted Peter up high. “What’s this?”

  Dean snickered. “Bringing home roadkill now?”

  “Someone has to. You should be thankful I didn’t bring the alligator.”

  “You’re shittin’ me.”

  “Twenty-five cents, Dad.”

  Dean ignored his son. “You have a pet alligator?”

  “I wouldn’t call him a pet, exactly. And he wasn’t mine.”

  “Seems pretty damn dangerous to me.”

  “Fifty,” Tim muttered.

  Dean shot him a glare that was pure Eleanor. Tim glanced at the sky and began to whistle.

  “Fergus, the alligator, doesn’t have any teeth. He’s older than—” Evan shrugged “—Mom.”

  “Watch it, bub,” she said, but she smiled.

  “Kitty!” Tim shouted. “And Forest’s back. Just like you said, Dad.”

  “What did Dad say?” Evan asked.

  “That you’d never be able to stand him and you’d bring him home. I didn’t want to lose any more doodles.”

  Eleanor gritted her teeth and pulled at her hair behind Tim’s back.

  “Nice, Dean.”

  His brother shrugged. Tim promptly launched himself at Evan, who caught him in midair. The boy wrapped his legs around Evan’s waist like a monkey.

  “So, didja nail that lady, Uncle Evan?”

  Eleanor’s eyes went wide. Dean choked. Evan wanted to.

  “That doesn’t sound like a good idea to me. Nailin’ people. Why’d Dad tell you to do it?”

  “Dean?” Their mother’s voice was set a notch below eruption.

  “Tim, you aren’t supposed to listen in on the phone. We’ve talked about that.”

  Evan set Tim down. The boy hung his head. His hair, which always seemed overgrown and unruly no matter how often it was cut, fell over his freckled nose and bright blue eyes.

  “Sorry.”

  “Sorry doesn’t always help, pal. Apologize to Evan, then Gramma, then get your butt to bed.”

  “It’s still light out!”

  “You’ll be lucky if you see the sun in the next week. Do what I told you.”

  “Sorry, Uncle Evan. Sorry, Gramma.” Tim lifted his skinny shoulders, then lowered them. �
��But I still don’t understand why you’d nail someone.”

  “Tim!”

  The boy flinched at Dean’s bellow. Their mother frowned and shook her head. Dean took a deep breath and appeared to be counting to ten—a parenting trick he’d no doubt learned from the master at his side.

  “I’ll explain it to you later,” Dean said gently. “Now go.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Tim headed in the direction of their cabin, dragging his feet so much they could follow his progress by the dust spurts alone.

  “Anyone want to explain to me what he was talking about?”

  “No, ma’am,” Evan and Dean said at the same time.

  “I didn’t think so. Evan, I’m glad you’re home, but you know the rules.”

  She went into the house without waiting for his answer. He did know them. They all did.

  No women in his room. No staying out all night. Her house, her rules. Which was why he’d moved to the threshers’ cottage. He glanced at Dean, who shook his head.

  “No room at the inn. Besides, you can’t have women at my place with Tim around.”

  Evan wasn’t interested in women. Not now, maybe never again.

  He gave a mental roll of the eyes. He wasn’t the type of man to remain celibate. But right now the thought of touching anyone but Jilly depressed him. Which was foolish. She’d never loved him. She’d only wanted him. She was no different than any of the others, and he deserved more.

  “You okay?” Dean asked.

  “No.”

  Zorro opened the dog cage, and Mario started chasing Henry around the yard. The other doodles joined in and Henry scampered up a tree, hissing at them from a low branch.

  “Knock that off out there!” his mother shouted from the kitchen window.

  Every living being went still, and Evan smiled. “There’s no place like home.”

  “Man, you’ve been gone too long.”

  “I know.”

  JILLY WANTED TO FOLLOW Evan, but she didn’t have a car. Even if she had, there was the funeral to arrange, then attend.

  Ruth and Barry got married the day after that, Naomi and her beau the week after that.

  There was an epidemic of poison ivy, followed by an outbreak of chicken pox. Jilly had to close up Addie’s house and move all the perishable herbs and cures to the inn, along with Fergus.