In Blackhawk's Bed

by Barbara Mccauley

  “I brought you a check.”

  She narrowed a gaze at him, then dumped the egg mess in the sink and washed her hands. He’d never delivered a check in person to her, had never sent any money without at least three phone calls. “Sure you did. And if I’m careful, I just might make it stretch into three, maybe four meals.”

  “You wound me, Hannah.” He pulled a folded piece of paper from his shirt pocket and waved it at her. “It’s right here. A cashier’s check. Every penny.”

  She hesitated, felt her heart miss a beat. Casually she turned, wiping her hands on a towel and stared at the piece of paper he waved at her as if she were a dog and he was teasing her with a meaty bone.

  Her pulse started to race, but she refused to let him see any emotion from her. “What’s going on?”

  She saw something flash in his eyes, fear maybe? But it was gone just as quickly and the arrogance was back. He frowned at her, shook his head. “Didn’t I tell you I’d pay you your share when the deal came through? Sweetheart, someday you’ll learn to trust me.”

  When hell freezes over, she thought. Still, her curiosity got the better of her. She walked toward him and reached for the check. Grinning, he slipped it back into his pocket, then grabbed hold of her arm and pulled her close.

  “Let go of me.” Hannah twisted to get away, but Brent had never been a gentle man. His hand tightened painfully on her arm.

  “Maybe you could be nice to me,” he said, lowering his voice. “Show a little appreciation.”

  “Let me go,” Hannah hissed through her teeth. “So help me, Brent, I’ll—”

  “Let her go.”

  Startled by the sound of another male’s voice, Brent’s head whipped around. His eyes widened at the size of the man standing two feet behind him. Instantly he released Hannah’s arm.

  “Who the hell are you?” Brent demanded.

  Seth glanced at Hannah. He stood still, every muscle tensed, and she could feel the anger radiating from him.

  “Are you all right?” he asked her, his voice quiet, controlled, yet laced with an undertone of fury.

  “I’m fine,” she said carefully, kept her gaze steady with his.

  Seth nodded, then glanced back at Brent. “If you put your hands on Hannah again, you better have a good dentist and orthopedist. You got that?”

  Brent paled under his tan, but managed to gather up enough courage to act indignant. “I don’t know who you are, buddy, but if you think because you’re shacking up with—”

  Seth moved so quickly, Hannah didn’t have time to stop it. Suddenly Brent’s arm was bent behind his back and Seth was guiding him toward the front door.

  “Wait!” Hannah cried out.

  Seth stopped, looked back at her, his expression dark and his brow furrowed.

  She ran to Brent, plucked the check from his pocket, then smiled at Seth as she opened the front door. “Okay.”

  Seth shoved the other man out the door and Hannah closed it. A moment later, they heard the sound of Brent’s Porsche peeling rubber.

  Hannah glanced at the check. It really was all there. Everything he’d owed her for the past three years!

  Laughing, she threw herself in Seth’s arms. He held her, but the tension in his body lingered. She rained kisses over his face, and slowly he began to relax.

  “The jerk didn’t even ask about his own kids.” The word Seth uttered was crude.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said breathlessly. “He doesn’t matter. Oh, Seth, this is so wonderful. Somehow a miracle occurred and he actually paid me. I won’t lose the house. I can pay my bills. I can open the Wild Rose. It’s everything I ever wanted.”

  But even as Seth pulled her closer and kissed her long and hard—a kiss that surely would have ended in the bedroom except for two little girls upstairs—even as she kissed him back, she knew it was a lie.

  Everything had changed since Seth had shown up. Everything she’d thought she’d ever wanted and everything that she’d thought would be enough, suddenly wasn’t.

  She pulled away from him, smiled through the tears blurring her vision. “I’m going to go check on the girls now. Then I’m going to come back down and bake you the biggest chocolate cake you’ve ever seen.”

  “A man can’t hardly argue with that.” He grinned at her. “What kind of wine goes with chocolate cake?”

  Smiling, Hannah tipped her head and said in a high-pitched whine, “Maddie’s piece is bigger than my piece.”

  It took him a beat to catch her joke, then he groaned and dragged her close for another kiss. “Hannah Michaels, you are one hell of a woman.”

  His words warmed her, made the longing rear up in her chest again. Her knees were weak as she made her way up the stairs, her heart heavy. But for the moment, for this tiny space in time, she was happier than she’d ever been in her entire life.

  The Fruitcake Festival had begun.

  The people of Ridgewater, and neighboring towns as well, turned out in droves for the annual event held on the Ridgewater High School football field. Food and game booths lined the outer running track and a country-and-western band played on the forty-yard line. The scent of barbecued chicken and hamburgers filled the warm September air while the sounds of a Clint Black tune beckoned young and old alike to clap their hands and strut their stuff.

  And in the midst of it all, enclosed in a clear plastic display case which sat on an American-flag-draped grandstand, was the World’s Largest Fruitcake.

  Four feet tall, six feet round, one hundred pounds of fruit and fifty pounds of nuts, the humongous glossy dark cake sat proudly on the center-field line.

  “She’s a beaut, ain’t she?”

  Seth glanced at the short, balding man who’d stepped up beside him. Charlie Thomas, the plumber. Seth wasn’t certain if Charlie was talking about Hannah, who stood under the grandstand speaking to Lori’s husband, or if he was talking about the fruitcake.

  Seth glanced back at Hannah. She was laughing at something John had said. “Absolutely stunning,” Seth murmured.

  When she looked over at him at that moment and smiled, Seth felt his gut tighten. He knew Charlie was rattling off statistics about the fruitcake, but the words simply weren’t registering.

  She’d bought a new dress: soft lilac, long and flowing with a scoop neck and tiny white buttons marching up the front. When she’d walked down the stairs this morning, a blush on her pretty cheeks, she’d made him ache. He’d wondered, if only for a moment, what it would be like to watch her walk down those stairs every morning, what it would be like to fall asleep in that big bed of hers every night, to wake up with her in his arms.

  They never made love when Maddie and Missy were home, were careful not even to touch except for an occasional stolen caress or kiss. But when the girls were at school, when Hannah wasn’t out covering a shift at the diner or running her endless errands, they’d reach for each other, breathless and eager. This past week had gone by quickly. He’d surprised her by setting the tile for her in the upstairs bathroom, a skill he’d picked up from one of his dozen jobs between high school and joining the force. He’d also painted the upstairs bedroom she’d been working on, replaced the broken fence slats in the front yard and repaired a leaking faucet off the back patio.

  He’d forgotten how good it felt to work with his hands. To repair something, then stand back and be satisfied with a job well done. How long had it been since he’d felt a sense of accomplishment or pride, since he’d felt that what he did or who he was mattered? Since he’d felt that he belonged, really belonged?

  His adopted parents had been good to him, they’d loved him in their own quiet way, but something had always been missing. Seth looked around, saw the energy of the people surrounding him, the happy, excited faces. This was all so familiar, yet not familiar at all.

  He watched two young boys run by with cotton candy and felt the ground shift underneath him. Heard an odd buzzing in his head, then voices, almost as if someone had just flipped on
a movie…

  “…and the first-place winner of the nine-and ten-year-old division of Junior Bronco Rodeo is Rand Blackhawk, son of Jonathan and Norah Blackhawk of Blackhawk Ranch.” Pride swelled in Seth’s chest as his big brother stepped forward and the man pinned a shiny blue ribbon on his chest. “Look, Mom, look, Dad, it’s Rand,” he said pointing. “He won! He won! Rand won!”

  Seth looked up at his mother’s smiling face, her bright eyes and wavy brown hair. She held Lizzie on one hip, two years old only three days earlier, and his sister’s big blue eyes were wide with excitement at all the commotion surrounding her. Rand raced down the steps and joined his family, turned bright red when Kristen McDougall, a pretty blonde in the fifth grade ran up and hugged him, then ran away.

  They threw darts at balloons, tossed dimes onto smooth glass plates, ate hot dogs with catsup and pink, soft clouds of cotton candy…

  “…and requires an oven big enough to drive a Buick into,” Charlie was saying. Seth stared at the man, saw his mouth moving, but barely made out the words. The image of that day more than twenty years ago stayed with Seth, made his hand shake and his chest tighten.

  His mother.

  His father.

  Rand. Lizzie.

  He’d dreamed of his family over the years, but the dreams were always fuzzy. He’d remembered bits and pieces of his life when he was small, but there’d never been anything concrete, certainly never anything as clear, as strong or as detailed as the memory that had just jumped into his head.

  He didn’t remember anything about the night of the accident, the night he’d lost his family. But he knew that Seth Blackhawk had died that night, too. He’d been reborn Seth Granger. A new home, new parents, new school.

  And it had never felt right.

  Never.

  He shook the feeling off, forced himself to listen to Charlie. Somehow—though he didn’t understand how—Seth was certain that whatever the man was saying, it was important.

  “…my granddaddy laid the foundation and Andy Philpot’s granddaddy set the bricks,” Charlie said. “’Course, that was nearly eighty years ago now, and the oven was a woodburner back in those days. Not easy to keep her at an even 275 degrees for three days, but everyone pitched in shoveling wood until Henry Willard’s daddy brought in gas pipes…”

  “Seth!” Maddie and Missy came running up, their blue eyes bright and cheeks flushed. “Come see, come see. They’re gonna cut the cake now!”

  “Apologize to Mr. Thomas for interrupting,” Hannah said as she came up behind her daughters.

  “Sorry,” both girls said together, then each grabbed one of Seth’s hands and pulled. “Come on!”

  Seth looked at Hannah. “You mean they actually eat this monstrosity?”

  “Of course we eat it.” Hands locked behind her back, she followed along beside Seth and her daughters. “What did you think we did with it?”

  “What everyone does with fruitcake.” He let himself be pulled into the growing crowd. “Wrap it back up and send it on to the next person, who wraps it up and sends it to the next person, and so on. Word has it, there’s just one lonely fruitcake that circles the world. ’Course, with this puppy—” he looked at the giant cake “—you’d need a freighter to ship it anywhere.”

  Hannah rolled her eyes at his nonsense, then turned her attention to Mayor Mooney’s official cake-cutting speech, a rousing tribute to Wilhems’ Bakery, tradition and community spirit.

  The mayor raised a silver, foot-long knife, held it over his head like a sword, then applause and whistles broke out from the crowd as he placed a slice of cake on a silver plate. “This year’s honorary first slice is presented to—” the mayor paused dramatically, then glanced at Seth.

  Oh, God, no…

  “Seth Granger!”

  He narrowed a gaze at Hannah, who appeared to be as startled as he was. Maddie and Missy jumped up and down, then Seth found himself pulled up on stage. Too stunned to resist, he faced the mayor, was forced to listen to a highly embellished recap of his bravery over saving Maddie, then accepted the slice of cake the mayor placed in his hands.

  The crowd went quiet, stared intently at him, and Seth realized that three thousand people were all waiting for him to take a bite. Teeth set, he scooped up a chunk and popped it in his mouth.

  Dense, but moist. Molasses-sweet, with a light crunch of nuts and a faint taste of fruit.

  Damn. It tasted good.

  When he raised his fork, the crowd cheered. When Billy Bishop snapped a picture, Seth frowned darkly.

  Everyone received a slice after that, and the festival proceeded with a Garth Brooks number from the band and a magic act on the grandstand. Seth endured the hand-shaking and back-slapping from the townspeople while Hannah danced a two-step with Wilson Jones, the elderly man who owned the tavern in town. When a younger, good-looking guy took the next dance and slipped his arm around Hannah’s waist, Seth moved in quickly and stole her away.

  She’s mine, Seth said silently as he smiled at the disappointed man. All mine.

  The day went by quickly. They ate hot dogs with catsup, threw darts at balloons, tossed dimes on smooth, glass plates and ate cotton candy.

  “Just concentrate on the sight.” Seth moved behind Hannah at the Ducky Decoy Rifle Shoot, leaned down close so their bodies touched. “Aim high and squeeze the trigger slowly.”

  She wiggled to get in position, and the innocent brush of her bottom against his groin sent instant fire through his veins.

  Squinting at the yellow metal duck that moved across blue wooden waves, Hannah took aim and fired. And missed. “I’m not very good at this,” she said with a frown.

  “That depends on where you’re standing.” He waggled his brows when she slid a glance at him over her shoulder.

  A blush rose on her cheeks. “You’re distracting me.”

  “I was thinking the same thing.” He leaned closer and whispered in her ear, “You smell like cotton candy. Did I ever tell you how much I like cotton candy?”

  “Too much sugar will rot your teeth,” she insisted, but he felt her move into him, saw her blue eyes darken with desire.

  “Life is full of danger,” he murmured. “Sometimes you just have to—”

  “Hey, Seth! I been looking all over for ya!”

  Both Seth and Hannah pulled away at the loud, deep voice. It was Ned, from the repair shop.

  Dammit, anyway.

  With a sigh, Seth straightened, looked up and shook the mechanic’s extended hand. Ned was six-foot-eight, a huge barrel-chested biker with a meticulously trimmed moustache. Ed, his son, stood beside him. At nineteen, Ed was only six-five, the runt of the litter, so Ned had told Seth when they’d met in town last week.

  “Hey, Hannah.” Ed stared moon-eyed at Hannah. When she smiled back, the kid turned bright red.

  “Got good news for you.” Ned handed Seth a key. “Finished your bike two days early. Ed rode it over here on a test drive and she screams like a bi—”

  Ned glanced at Hannah, caught himself before he finished the crass remark about to come out of his mouth. “Ah…she runs great. Anyway, your insurance took care of the bill, so she’s all yours.”

  Seth stared at the key in his hand, then looked up at Hannah. The blush that had been on her cheeks only a moment before had faded, the light in her eyes gone.

  “Thanks.” Seth slipped the key into the front pocket of his jeans, felt the metal burn through denim and scorch his skin. “Thanks for everything.”

  “Nice to see you Ned, Ed,” Hannah said with a smile that didn’t make it to her eyes. “But you’ll have to excuse me. Lori took the girls to the face-painting booth ages ago and I better go check up on them.”

  When Seth moved to go with her, her smile widened, but a look of near panic lit her eyes. “You stay,” she insisted. “Talk shop. I’ll be back in a little while.”

  She hurried away, and Seth started to go after her, then stopped. What good would it do? What would he say? They�
��d never talked about it, but they’d both known he’d be leaving when his motorcycle was repaired.

  He didn’t have a clue how to say goodbye. To Hannah or the girls. But he knew he needed to.

  When he turned back to Ned and Ed they discussed the new air-cooled engines vs. the water-cooled, debated the question of whether a bike could have too much chrome, but Seth’s mind wasn’t on the conversation. It was on a pretty blonde in a lilac dress and two little five-year-olds who loved Charlie Choo Choo’s Coco Crazies.

  Hannah rolled the window down on the drive home from the festival, let the first crisp chill of autumn waft through her car. In a few days, pumpkins and straw scarecrows would decorate porches and storefronts, and shortly after that, the scent of cinnamon and apples and roasting turkeys would fill the air.

  She’d always loved this time of year. The fun and excitement of sewing Halloween costumes, the blessings of Thanksgiving dinner, then the joy and chaos of decorating a Christmas tree and wrapping presents. The Fruitcake Festival had always signalled the start of the holidays, was the first ripple of anticipation of the upcoming weeks.

  But tonight was different from all the others. Tonight she felt no excitement, no joy or thrill of anticipation.

  Tonight would be the last night she’d spend with Seth.

  She pulled into her driveway, saw him sitting on his motorcycle in front of her house and felt her heart slam against her ribs.

  Since Ned had handed Seth the key to his bike, there’d been no opportunity to discuss when he’d be leaving. But she knew. She’d seen it in his eyes after he’d slipped the key into his pocket, felt it in her heart. He’d be leaving in the morning, she was certain.

  She wouldn’t ask. She’d known all along that he’d leave when his motorcycle was repaired. There’d been no promises, no plans for the future. He had a life in New Mexico, a job, and her life was here.

  Arms loaded with two stuffed teddy bears, a purple armadillo and an orange parrot, she slid out of her front seat and headed toward her front door.