by Cara Colter
"If that's all, Mr. Fallon," she said, looking at her watch, "I really should have gone home half an hour ago."
Her voice was perfect. Reprimand accepted. Except then she went and spoiled it all. Her lip trembled just a little bit. She ducked her head, but not quickly enough.
The silence filled the room. She refused to look at him.
His hand found her chin and lifted it, and she was forced to look at him. She saw the immediate remorse flash through the gray depths of his eyes.
"I've hurt your feelings."
"Not at all," she said. Her voice was trembling now, too. It would have been so much better if he didn't touch her, if his hand was not resting on her chin, his fingertips leathery and tough. Yet his touch was not tough at all. It was everything she had known it would be.
Electric. Strong. Tender.
"Here you are, working extra time, as always, and I come in and blast you."
His cold, hard anger was much, much easier to handle.
"You were absolutely right, I should have told you about the knife. I just didn't even think. It won't—"
"Holly, I think what I should have said was that it scared me. When Tomas told me what had happened, I could imagine you at the end of that knife and it scared the living daylights right out of me."
She stared at him. He was not a man who looked like anything would scare him. She had seen him face tough, angry kids, big kids, without even a flicker of fear. So what did that mean, that he had been scared for her?
"I'm sorry it happened to you," he said in a low voice.
Don't read too much into it, she warned herself. He would have been sorry it happened to anybody. He ran a tight ship. An incident had occurred out of the far reaches of his control. His fear for her had not been personal.
"I guess what I wanted to say was that I don't want you siding with the kids against me," he continued. "I need to know what's going on, and I need to know you trust me."
"Oh."
Now that he was being nice, she felt more like crying than ever.
"Maybe," she whispered, "I need to know you trust me, too."
"Oh."
He let go of her chin, thankfully, though her skin felt like it burned where he had touched it. He leaned back and ran his hand through his hair. The rooster tail sprang right back up the instant his hand passed over it.
"You know what?" he said.
She shook her head mutely. Too much to hope that he was going to say, I just realized I'm madly in love with you.
"We've been working too hard," he said instead. "The whole water thing has put an incredible amount of stress on the ranch, and you and I have been carrying the majority of the load. I know you've been putting in more time in the front lines than anyone could have asked of you."
This was looking hopeful. You and I, as in a partnership.
"Joe Colton was right. He told me he thinks it's time to move on."
"That would be a whole lot easier if the culprit had been caught."
"That's what I said. When I spoke to Kade Lummus today, he said they have a firm suspect. That's very confidential."
She knew it was his way of telling her he did trust her. "But he didn't tell you who?"
"No. I took Rory out for lunch after, but I'm afraid I couldn't even use our old college friendship to get that out of him. Not even for the secret fraternity handshake."
His quick sense of humor was coming through again. It was almost as if nothing happened. They slipped so naturally back into the easy give-and-take that had become a hallmark of their relationship.
After they had discussed the water a little further, she told him she had pulled Lucille's file and put it on his desk, as she thought he might need it to figure out what to do about the sudden and probably totally unauthorized arrival of her brother, Tomas.
"He's going to stay with Joe and Meredith for now," Blake told her. "I'll have to do some checking and see what kind of trouble he's in, but really I think—knife aside—he just wants to be with his sister. I'll see what I can do for him."
"You don't believe he's dangerous, either."
"Let's not go there again."
She grinned, relieved that the old tone seemed to be back between them, realizing how much she looked forward to her communication with this man, how much a part of her life he had become.
In fact, the Hopechest Ranch now seemed to be her whole life, much to her father's disgust.
"Your brains and your skills and you're working as a secretary? For a pittance?" Todd Lamb never passed up an opportunity to belittle her efforts.
Well, maybe she was kidding herself, but somehow she felt like more than a secretary. She felt like she mattered, and that these kids needed her. For the first time in her life, someone needed her.
Her relief at the old tone being back between her and Blake was pitifully short-lived.
"Joe told me he and Meredith are going to host a barn dance a week from Saturday to try and lighten the mood in the community, bring people together again. He's got this funny idea that people are more good than bad, given a chance, and that the folks of Prosperino need to be brought back to that wholesome truth."
She ignored Blake's slightly cynical tone. "What a charming idea. Honestly, Joe and Meredith Colton are such a lovely couple." The kind of couple she envied so much. The kind of couple who had found it. That thing that everyone searched for.
Love.
Found it and let it sustain them, but more, had not just kept it as sustenance for themselves and their family, but had given it away over and over again.
To the community, to their foster children.
And in that giving, they lived a truth that the whole world needed to know: that love given away, multiplied itself and came back.
Holly suddenly felt so lonely she thought she might cry, after all. She'd never had that in her own family. Her mother was totally self-involved in her looks and her shape and her clubs, and her father was totally self-involved in his career and his power plays. They were two people with no time for each other, and in the end, no time for their daughter, who had needed things from them so desperately.
"Holly?"
She looked up, forced herself to smile. "Hmm?"
"You looked so sad for a second there."
"Oh," she said. "I think you were right. Too many things have happened. It's been very stressful. You may have even been right about the incident with the knife. It may have made more of an impression than I thought."
"You're in need of some diversion."
"I have a great book at home." She wished she could snatch that back the moment it slipped out of her mouth. Good grief, she sounded like a pathetic old maid. It was a good thing she hadn't mentioned her cat, as well.
"I had something else in mind," Blake said. "Why don't you allow me to take you to the dance? As a way of thanking you for all the extra work you do, and apologizing for being such a boor right now."
She understood then that their relationship could never go back to what it had been before. Not now that she was carrying the secret. If she didn't love him, it wouldn't have mattered that he had only asked her out as a way of saying thank-you. Or apologizing. Or because he felt sorry for her.
Even with her new secret knowledge, or maybe because of it, she had some pride.
Her handsome boss fully expected his plain-Jane secretary to fall all over herself with gratitude because he had asked her out.
Methodically, not meeting his eyes, she turned off her computer and neatly covered it with the dust cover. She placed her paperwork in a neat stack, and when she was totally composed she gave him a steady look and a frosty smile.
"Let me think about it," she said, and was rewarded with the stunned look that appeared on his features.
She suspected no one had ever said no to Blake Fallon before. Oh, she'd seen how all the beautiful women of Prosperino fawned over him.
Well, it certainly wouldn't hurt him to feel what the rest of the world felt fo
r once.
She took her pocketbook out of the bottom drawer of her desk and shrugged back into her neat navy jacket, then stood up.
"Excuse me," she said coolly.
He couldn't get off the edge of her desk fast enough. She suspected he was still watching her, his mouth open, as she went out the door.
But she didn't give him the satisfaction of looking back, even though she suspected he stood in the office doorway, watching her as she walked all the way home.
Home was only a few hundred yards from the office, a lovely little cabin that had once served as a bunkhouse on the ranch.
Her mother and father, had they taken the time to visit her here, would have been mortified by her humble lodgings. She was a long way from the palatial home outside of Prosperino that her mother and father had once shared and that she had grown-up in.
But as she walked up her creaking steps, she felt a wonderful sense of homecoming. The cat, Mr. Rogers, woke up from his favored position on the rocking chair on the front porch and came to greet her, rubbing himself against her legs until the static crackled.
"So it's you who's responsible for the hair I always have on the seat of my pants," she greeted him. She realized if anyone was watching, talking to her cat would make her seem even more the pathetic old-maid secretary.
So she bent down to pet him, taking a quick glance back over her shoulder at the office. She had been wrong. The door was firmly shut, and Blake was not watching her.
As if.
She opened the door to her cabin and went in, and the troubles of the day seemed to fall away.
She loved this space she had made for herself. Some of her favorite drawings from the children were on the rustic log walls, pictures of the children themselves crowded her mantel. The rough wood floors that demanded slippers at all times were covered in bright throw rugs.
Her simple furniture—two red plaid armchairs and a yellow love seat—were shaped in a semicircle around the fireplace. The same stonemason must have done all the ranch fireplaces, because they were all equally beautiful.
A ball of wool attached to two needles, which a sweater had been taking shape out of for the last six months, was heaped on one of the chairs.
There was a stack of romance novels under the coffee table—a new addiction, one she now could see was quite related to her feelings for her boss. It was a safe way to explore her feelings without making a fool of herself.
The way she would have if she had said yes to his invitation to accompany him to the dance.
She wandered through to her bright but small kitchen, put her purse on the table and traded her shoes for her slippers.
Of course, she reminded herself, she hadn't exactly said no, either.
She had said she would think about it, and true to her word that's exactly what she was doing.
The lovely feeling of homecoming dissipated, and it occurred to her that of course she was going to say yes. Eventually.
With a moan of something approaching terror, she went into her bedroom. It was another room that gave her great pleasure, a peaceful feeling. Her big four-poster bed with the white eyelet lace cover and pillows provided such a beautiful contrast to the rough-hewn gray logs of the walls. It was a room that would have looked in place a hundred years ago. It was a restful space.
And that restfulness was completely lost on her.
She threw open her closet door and began to sort frantically through the meager items hanging there. After realizing she had not one suitable thing to wear to a barn dance or any other kind of dance, she went into her tiny bathroom and looked in the mirror.
She took off her glasses and studied her eyes. Hesitating, she reached for a small pot of makeup.
An hour later she stared at herself, aghast. She looked precisely like Bobo the Clown.
She found herself making the call she never thought she would make.
"Mom? I need you."
Four
Blake lay awake and restless in his bed until he could stand it no more. He hadn't had a decent night's sleep in weeks. He would lie down, and the horror of all those people getting sick would start to replay in his mind. Especially the kids. The fear in their eyes. The paleness of their skin. Running the first ones to the hospital in the old van. Then the old yellow school bus. And then the ambulances coming, one after another.
Rationally he knew it wasn't his fault.
Irrationally, he believed it was his job to look after them, and that he had failed, just like everyone else most of these kids had ever placed their trust in.
The helpless fury came then. Who would hurt children? Especially ones like these, who had already been hurt so damned much by life?
After punching the pillow a few more times, and getting his legs tangled up in the covers, he finally got up. The room had a distinct chill in it, so he pulled on his jeans, then flipped on the light. His bedroom, like his office, was free of clutter, and had about as much character as a barracks. Metal frame bed, gray blankets, white sheets. Clothes folded neatly on the chair underneath the window. Somehow those rooms had been vastly preferable to the constant bickering of his mother and father when they had been together. After they had split, his home life had deteriorated even more. He knew with that razor-edged intuition of children, that neither of his parents wanted him. He put a cramp in his mother's manhunt, his father was cold and indifferent. Blake came to wear the label worn by so many children in pain: incorrigible.
These were the kind of rooms he had come to manhood in. Plain, no frills foster home bedrooms and detention center dorms.
Then he'd arrived at the Coltons'. Meredith had delighted in making a room just for him, asking him subtle questions about his favorite colors and his favorite sports, leading him up the stairs one day and throwing open the door of a room he had never seen before.
"This is for you," she'd said.
Just for him, a bedroom that had been every boy's dream. She'd tactfully overlooked his interest in motorcycles, which had been the cause of most of his grief, and decorated in a baseball motif. The walls were covered in baseball posters, and there were matching blue, red and white curtains and quilt. She had found him a signed Joe DiMaggio ball and put it in a glass case. The bat, which had hit a winning run in a California Angels game that Joe Colton had taken him to, was signed by the team and mounted on one wall. There had been a desk and a computer and a stereo and a study lamp.
But the truth was, he'd been sixteen when the Coltons took him in, and his tastes were already formed. He felt at home with a certain monkish austerity, or maybe deep inside himself he did not believe he deserved all the fuss, did not quite believe he would ever be the kind of wholesome all-American boy who would fit in a room like that one.
Brushing aside the memories, Blake went out to his kitchen and flipped on a light. There was paperwork all over the table that he had wanted to get to tonight, but even though he couldn't sleep he didn't want to do it now.
His decorating theme of no-personality repeated itself in this room. It looked like a kitchen in an empty apartment. Except for the papers on the Formica table, it was a barren landscape. No canisters on the counters, no magnets on the fridge, one little soup stain on the stove the only evidence someone actually lived here.
Out his window, he could see the ranch and all its buildings. Emily's House for the young unwed mothers, the Homestead that lodged temporary residents, kids waiting for fostering or adoption or to go home, and the Shack, a halfway house for juvenile delinquents. There was a school and a gymnasium and an art studio. In the center of the buildings was a green area and baseball diamond, and on the outer rim of the ranch were barns and corrals and fields and pastures.
He might have allowed himself a moment's pride, since much of this had been his doing, but the ranch seemed unbearably uninhabited, like a ghost town. Even the livestock had been moved because it would have been far too expensive to start trucking in water for cattle and horses.
His eyes were draw
n across the roadway to Holly's little cabin. In the window boxes her red geraniums were gilded silver by moonlight. The cat was enjoying the rocking chair on the porch. It looked like the kind of homey scene someone with some artistic talent might want to capture. Cat in a Rocking Chair at Midnight.
He looked for any shadow of movement, the ranch grounds bathed in the soft orange of the yard lights they had installed just last week, in case whoever poisoned the water came back to finish the job they had started.
He shook his head, not wanting to get back on the merry-go-round of fury and helplessness.
He gazed instead at the darkened windows of her cabin and bet her kitchen didn't look like this.
Come to think of it, he didn't really want to think about her either.
He opened his fridge and inspected the contents. One carton of milk of dubious age. One package of cheese which had not been that shade of green and blue when he had originally purchased it. Mustard and ketchup, neither of which he thought would make a very appetizing sandwich on its own. In the crisper were two withered apples and a package of slime that he deduced had once contained lettuce.
He glanced out the window again and told his mind firmly not to go there.
It went anyway, right into her fridge, where there would be neat rows of delicious and healthy things to eat. Fresh milk, cream for her coffee, oranges and apples and pineapple spears, maybe a neatly packaged leftover chicken potpie or tuna casserole. She probably had chocolate chips to make cookies, and lard to make pies.
"Or maybe her fridge looks exactly like this one," he told himself.
This preoccupation with food was a brand-new one. When the kids were in residence the camp cook fed him along with everyone else and didn't mind him scrounging through the fridge for leftovers in the middle of the night. He loved Dagwood sandwiches, and seeing how many things he could squish between two slices of bread. Whole pickles, thick slices of beef, jalapeño peppers, tomatoes.
His mouth watering, he opened his freezer compartment. The Häagen-Dazs was at the very center of a frigid cave of thick, wavy ice.
