by Rachel Lee
“But she’s in heat!”
“Well, hell.” He looked after the rapidly vanishing dog, then chuckled. “Guess my kids’ll get those pups sooner than I thought.”
Almost in spite of herself, Esther felt her natural good humor reasserting itself. “They’ll be mutts. Most likely half komondor.”
He arched a dark brow. “She’s got a thing for Nighthawk’s dog, huh?”
Esther chuckled. “The two of them appear to be madly in love. For the moment at least.”
Micah shook his head. “Well, that ought to make one hell of an interesting cross. Then again, maybe the two of them won’t get together.”
“I’ve got my fingers crossed, but I wouldn’t put any money on it.”
Micah reached inside the Jimmy and pulled out the grocery bags. “I’ll carry these inside for you, then I’ve got to be heading home. Faith always worries when I’m late. Say, would you like to come have dinner with us?”
Again she felt tempted, a desire that surprised her.
Ordinarily she backed away from such invitations without the least regret. “Thank you. May I have a rain check? I need to be here when Guin gets back.”
Ten minutes later she watched from the front porch as Micah Parish drove away. With his departure, her unease returned, but there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it except go inside and lock the door behind her.
Come home, Guin, she thought. Come home soon. I don’t need to be worrying about you, too.
“Oh, hell!” Craig looked at the two dogs out by the shearing barn and wanted to groan. Esther was going to be furious.
“Where’d that Saint Bernard come from?” Enoch asked.
“She belongs to Esther Jackson.”
“The woman you’re spending the night with?”
“The lady on whose porch I’m sleeping,” Craig corrected him quickly.
Enoch flashed a very male grin. “Yeah. Right.”
“Believe what you want. But I know better than to get mixed up with another white woman. They’re nothing but trouble.”
Enoch’s smile faded. “Yeah,” he said finally. “It can be a real pain.” Craig suddenly remembered how badly beaten Enoch had been in high school when he dared to ask a white girl out. Her brother and his friends had made sure that Enoch never got so far above himself again.
Craig looked at the two dogs who were quite happily mating and wondered what the hell he was going to tell Esther. Not that there was much he could have done. Mop was plainly in his own yard, and Guin was just as plainly trespassing.
“Oh, hell,” he said again as it struck him that something might be wrong with Esther. The dog had gotten away from her somehow. What if she was hurt? “I need to get over to Esther’s place pronto. If Guin’s running loose something’s wrong.”
Enoch gave him another irritating smile. “Yeah. Okay, go see what’s up. I’ll bring her dog over when they’re done.”
Craig hesitated, knowing that if the dog had merely gotten away from Esther somehow, she was probably going to be upset with him for not bringing Guin. On the other hand, given what the two dogs were doing right now, it might be forty-five minutes before they could be separated. And, damn, didn’t the two of them look pleased as punch? He nodded to Enoch. “Thanks.”
He trotted across the yard to his pickup, then took off like a bat out of hell. It was entirely possible he was overreacting, he knew, but he was suddenly unable to think of anything except the note that had been on her door last night. That fluttering white sheet of paper saying the bastard had been there in the dead of night.
And for all he passed it off as nothing unusual to Esther, he felt every bit as disturbed by the timing of that note as she did. He just hadn’t wanted to add to her anxiety by agreeing with her—although in retrospect maybe he had been treating her like a child. Esther certainly didn’t deserve that from him.
The long summer evening was just drawing to a close as he pulled up in front of her house. The Jimmy was parked out front where she usually left it, and lights were blazing throughout the first floor of the house. She was growing uneasy as night descended, he realized. She didn’t even have Guinevere to keep her company now.
Unless something was wrong. Fear gripped him by the throat as he trotted up the steps and hammered on her door.
A minute crept by, and then another. He hammered again, shouting her name, and wondering if he ought to break the door down.
“Craig?”
He swung around and found Esther standing in the yard to his left.
“Craig, what on earth…?”
He bounded down the porch, leapt the rail, and picked her right up off her feet. “God, woman, you scared me half to death! Your dog is over at my place, all your lights are on but you didn’t answer your door….”
“I was out looking for Guin.” She sounded breathless and was looking at him uncertainly. Her hands were braced on his shoulders as she dangled helplessly in his arms. “Craig, I don’t like to be…picked up….”
He could hear the note of panic beginning to rise in her voice, and he quickly set her on her feet. “Sorry,” he said swiftly, stepping back. “Sorry. I was just so glad to see you okay….” He didn’t want to admit any more than that, either to himself or her. “I didn’t mean to overwhelm you.”
She astonished him with a wry smile. “I think you’re overwhelming by nature. So Guin is at your place? Can one hope she isn’t busy making herself a mommy?”
He spread his hands. “I cannot tell a lie. I would have brought her but I was worried about you and there was no way just then to separate the dogs so…” He shook his head. “I’ll help pay for whatever costs there are from this.”
Esther couldn’t allow it. “Absolutely not. Guin set off on this misadventure all on her own. She’s my responsibility and I won’t have you paying for her misconduct.” She shook her head and tsked. “I was afraid she was going to get to Mop. Do you suppose dogs fall madly in love?”
“Those two seemed to have. Mop’s never gotten this excited or mopey over Bucket.”
“Poor Bucket,” Esther said whimsically. “Her husband has been unfaithful. Whatever will she do now?”
Craig stared at her then let out the heartiest laugh he had in years. “What will she do? She’ll keep on herding sheep with Enoch, and at some future date she’ll make puppies with Mop. He may be wild about Guin, but he’ll probably find Bucket’s blandishments too much to resist when the time comes.”
“Just like a man.”
His smile faded. “I hope you’re joking about that.”
“Should I be?” She tried to take the sting out of the words with a smile but failed.
“I realize your father formed your impression of men, Esther, but some of us are okay, you know? We don’t believe in cheating, we don’t beat women, we don’t get drunk, and we love our kids. Some of us belong to a very different class of person.”
She instinctively reached a hand toward him, but didn’t touch him. “I know that,” she said quietly. “I didn’t mean to insult you.”
“I wasn’t insulted. I’m just tired of being lumped into groups without regard to the kind of person I really am. Lazy, drunken Indian is another category where I don’t fit, but lately I seem to be getting lumped into the ‘men are rotten’ category even more often.”
“Trust me, I wasn’t lumping you into any category at all, Craig. If I had been, I’d never have said those things.”
“Now how am I supposed to take that? That as far as you’re concerned, I’m not a man?”
She took a quick step back, obviously frightened by his vehemence. That made him even madder, but before he could act like an absolute jerk, he caught himself. She had good reason to think poorly of men, he reminded himself. Plenty of reason. He had no business getting on her case about it, and when it came right down to it, maybe he did belong in that Rotten Men category. Just look at how he was haranguing her over a stupid, perfectly innocent remark. The kind of remark pe
ople—both men and women—made a thousand times a day.
The real problem, he realized unhappily, was that he didn’t want Esther to lump him in with her father. In her eyes, he wanted to be as far removed from that man as possible. She was hardly likely to do that if he kept jumping on her.
“Sorry,” he said. “I guess I’m getting too sensitive.”
Her expression softened and she stepped closer. “I can understand that. Male bashing seems to have become a national pastime.”
“Bashing anything seems to have become a national pastime.”
They looked at each other for several moments, as if allowing themselves time to regain their balance and absorb their new perceptions of one another. Esther spoke first.
“Is there…any chance that Guin will come home tonight?”
“Oh! Sure. I should have mentioned, my brother-in-law is going to bring her over as soon as—well, you know.”
Dusk had grown too deep for him to be sure, but he thought she blushed. He liked that about her, that she could still blush. He was all for women’s equality, but he didn’t see why that had to mean that women became as tough as men. Of course, to be fair, he still held some old-fashioned, pigheaded notions. Esther was exactly his kind of woman in a lot of ways.
Except, he reminded himself, that she was rather prickly and a little too emotionally wounded. God, how he hated knowing that he was always being judged according to what her father had done. Every time she got that scared-rabbit look in her eyes he wanted to shake her and shout, “Look, I’m not your father!” Which of course would have proved he was no better than Richard Jackson. Regardless, he wouldn’t do such a Neanderthal thing anyway. But sometimes he sure as hell wanted to.
“It’s nice of your brother-in-law to offer to bring Guin back,” Esther said uncertainly.
“Oh, I think he just wants an excuse to meet you.”
“Meet me? Why?”
“Because I’m spending so much time over here.” Now he was sure she blushed.
“Oh.”
She looked down at her toes and Craig became suddenly aware of how dressed up she was today, and how pretty she looked. “You look nice,” he heard himself blurt.
Esther’s blush deepened and she looked shyly up at him.
“Thank you. Would you like to come inside? I can make us something to drink.”
Grabbing at anything that might set the world back onto an even keel, he said, “I could kill for a glass of orange juice right now. You wouldn’t happen to have any?”
“I have some frozen concentrate. I’d be happy to make that if you like.”
“I’d like it very much.”
She had to unlock the door to let them in.
“I got worried when I saw all these lights on,” he told her. “You don’t ever have your place lit up like this.”
She gave him a wry smile. “It was a totally childish impulse on my part. Without Guin I started to get really uneasy, and when I finally decided to go out and look for her a bit, I realized the last thing I wanted to do was come back to a dark house. Of course I understand perfectly that light is no protection, and that an intruder could have hidden just as well with all the lights on but—” She shrugged and gave a self-deprecating laugh.
“I might have done the same thing.”
“You?” She laughed again. “Oh, I don’t believe you’re ever scared.”
He watched her pull a can of orange juice from the freezer, open it and dump it into a blender with water. “I’ve been scared.”
She turned to look at him, the blender whirring behind her, and he could tell from her expression that she realized she had said the wrong thing. It was no big deal, he told himself. What did it matter if she thought that he was never afraid. They were just neighbors and she could believe anything she wanted about him.
But somehow it was important to correct the record. “I was scared to death when I was in jail for a crime I didn’t commit. I could hardly sleep most nights, and sometimes I thought I couldn’t stand another minute of it. I get scared sometimes when I walk down the street and I realize some people are staring at me like I’m going to pounce and kill one of them at any minute. I get scared that some night some of them might decide to take the law into their own hands.”
“Craig!” Her voice was full of horrified sympathy.
He shrugged. “It hasn’t been that long since this area was settled. Some folks around here still think Indians are vermin.”
“But—”
He interrupted her. “Most people here don’t feel that way. I know that. That’s one of the reasons I settled here and brought my sister’s family here. But how many people does it take to form a lynch mob?”
Her hand flew to her mouth. Behind her the blender labored on.
“I realize that those things aren’t supposed to happen anymore, but there are a lot of ways to kill a man without making it look like vigilantes did it. I’ve been beaten bloody for no reason other than I’m an Indian, so it isn’t hard for me to believe that somebody might take that extra step, especially when they still think I hurt that little girl.”
He shrugged, looking straight at her. “I’ve been scared lots of times, Esther. But I still live here, and look those people right in the eye. That’s what I was trying to tell you last night.”
She shook her head as if she could forestall what was coming.
“You have to face what you fear, Esther. Honest to God, if you keep running, the bogeyman just gets more powerful. Spit in the devil’s eye. Meet him head-on.”
“He could kill me!”
“I’m not suggesting you meet him alone. Just that you set up a meeting with him at a safe place. I’ll be there. Hell, half the Conard County Sheriff’s Department would be there if you asked. Meet him and face him. Take his power away from him!”
Chapter 9
Esther stared at Craig with huge, horrified eyes. “I can’t,” she whispered. “I can’t.”
He thought he’d never heard sadder, more hopeless words. He rose from the table and crossed the kitchen to her, reaching around behind her to shut off the blender. “I know,” he said finally, a sense of hopelessness bleeding into his own words. “I know you can’t. But it would still be the best thing you could do.”
She looked up at him, her hazel eyes beseeching him. Damned if he knew what she wanted, but he knew what he wanted. His whole damn body was screaming at him to just lean against her so he could feel her womanly softness.
But he wasn’t going to do that. Standing before him looking as enticing as a tall glass of icy water on a hot summer day was the biggest trouble a man could walk into. Never mind that she was white and he wasn’t and that the racial purists would have a field day trying to make her miserable. Never mind that the looks and stares would finally be more than she could handle. Never mind any of that hogwash he usually used as an excuse to keep his distance.
No, the real problem here was that this woman was wounded in a very essential way, and that she didn’t have the inner fortitude to face her demon. As long as her life was being controlled by fear, she wouldn’t have room in it for much else.
He kind of wished that wasn’t so, because it would be the easiest thing in the world to just lean into her right now and drive all her fearful thoughts away with the heat that was pounding in his loins. He was hot and heavy and aching so fiercely he could hardly believe he had gotten to this state just from being in the same room with her.
“Face him, Esther,” he heard himself say hoarsely. Then with more self-control than he thought he had, he turned away and resumed his seat at the table.
Esther stared after him, feeling frightened and disappointed all at once. Something had happened in the last few moments. She had seen it in the sudden fire of his gaze, in the way he had loomed over her as if she were prey and he the hunter, as if she were all that existed in the universe.
The moment had passed quickly, but she knew she hadn’t imagined it. The air was almost
too thick to breathe, and her body was responding to something powerful. Deep down inside, where her womb throbbed yearningly, she knew she wanted his possession and damn the consequences.
Just once, whispered some pleading voice in her mind, just this once. Let me know. Let him teach me. Take me. She was willing to give herself completely if only she could have one taste of the forbidden fruit.
But he had turned away just as she had almost fallen into his arms. He had turned away as so many before him had, but this time she didn’t think it was because of her brace. This time, even worse, she felt he turned away because he found her lacking in some essential way that had nothing to do with her injury.
Face him, Esther.
She turned her back to Craig and with shaking hands finished mixing the orange juice. It was ridiculous of him to expect that of her, she told herself. He didn’t know anything about her father, about the vicious, deadly kind of man he was. Face him? She would be facing her own executioner.
She placed a glass of orange juice in front of him, but as she started to turn away, he gently caught her wrist.
“Esther.”
She looked down at him, resentment, fear and anger all warring within her. “You don’t know,” she said thinly.
“No. You’re right. I don’t know.”
She jerked her wrist out of his grip and stepped back. “I don’t like to be grabbed. I don’t like to be picked up. Don’t touch me like that again.”
A knock sounded on the door before either of them could say another word.
“That must be Enoch,” Craig said. “I’ll get it.”
She let him because of course it might not be Enoch. It might be Richard Jackson. Fear was a worse prison than iron bars, she thought bitterly. Far worse.
She heard voices from the front of the house. The next thing she knew her kitchen was suddenly filled to overflowing with two ecstatic dogs. Guinevere and Mop ran in circles chasing each other joyously. They managed to knock over a chair, and nearly knocked Esther over, too.
“Hey,” said Craig from the doorway. “Mop, cut it out.” The komondor let out a joyous groan and skidded to a halt right in front of him. Guinevere skittered across the linoleum, bumped into the cabinets and stopped beside Esther. She looked up at her mistress with a big grin, her tongue lolling to one side.
