I love you, too, James, she thought miserably. God, how I love you.
He opened his mouth to speak again, then seemed to think better of it. Stalking to the bed, he picked up her suitcase. “Perhaps I should check the contents,” he bit out, then turned and preceded her down the hallway. “Then again, whatever you took, you can just consider payment for services rendered.”
She forced herself to hold her head high and follow him downstairs, praying the flood of tears would hold off until she was out of the house. She smelled the enticing aroma of Mary’s beef Bourguignon and regretted not being able to say good-bye to the woman who’d become like a grandmother to her. That, she knew, was the least of the crippling regrets she’d have to live with for the rest of her life.
He set her suitcase down near the front door. “Don’t worry. I’ll never contact you,” he said, and walked away.
*
James didn’t consciously seek out his darkroom, yet that was where he found himself moments later, poring over contact sheets while struggling against the blistering reality of what had just happened. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d sought solace by totally immersing himself in his work.
Her words taunted him. I’m not the person you think I am....I deceived you....I was after something...
He told himself that the Leah he knew—the loving, dependable, obstinate, and deliciously sensual creature he’d fallen in love with—could not have meant those words. Something had forced her to say them. But even as these thoughts crossed his mind, they were crowded out by an unbidden memory.
Renee.
It all came back to him in a sickening rush—his wife’s manipulation, her deceit, her treachery. He hurled the stack of contact sheets against a wall, where they fluttered to the floor. What had made him think Leah was any different? Hadn’t he learned enough from his “loving” late wife and others of her ilk? Apparently not, he had to admit. The events of the past fifteen minutes spoke for themselves.
Had he actually told Leah she’d given him back his ability to trust? His humorless chuckle reverberated in the small room. And why did her deceit hurt so much, even more than Renee’s had? But he knew why. Leah was the first woman he’d ever really loved. His long-ago feelings for Renee, what he’d once thought of as love, were like a guttering candle flame next to the raging bonfire of what he’d felt for Leah.
And all the time she’d been laughing at him, hooking him and then reeling him in, like some gullible, lovestruck schoolboy. He welcomed the anger swelling within him. It was so much easier to deal with than his grief and pain.
“That bitch made a fool out of me,” he growled, gripping the edge of the water table with white-knuckled hands.
He remembered their lovemaking that afternoon with merciless clarity: the prickly grass poking through the picnic blanket under him, Leah on top of him, rocking and gasping in mindless deliverance, crying out his name as though in pain. He recalled the way her eyes closed and her lips parted, the way her beautiful breasts swayed and her angel hair was everywhere at once. He felt himself harden at the memory of their final union and cursed himself.
He fished in his shirt pocket for a piece of paper, which he unfolded. On it were sketches and notes. After his magazine interview, he’d met with an old friend of his, a jewelry artist. Together they’d designed a ring for Leah—an engagement ring. It was to have been a large, square-cut emerald, adorned with pearls in a setting of white gold. They’d labored over the details of the design for an hour.
“A fool...” he rasped, remembering how excited he’d been just minutes earlier, anticipating her response to his proposal, to the ring he’d lovingly designed just for her.
What the hell had she been after, anyway? Certainly not marriage, he thought, crumpling the paper and tossing it to the floor. Money? Not likely. Whatever else she was, she definitely had enough drive and ambition to make it on her own—and the desire to see her dreams fulfilled through her own hard work. These were qualities he’d admired in her.
Yet what else could have motivated her? Professional advancement didn’t apply in her case—her work was in no way connected with his. Of course, he’d known women for whom it had been enough simply to be an ornament on his arm, to bask in the reflected glory of being seen with a man like James Bradburn. He’d never respected women like that. None of this fit Leah.
With a jolt he remembered that she’d come to him a virgin. It didn’t make sense. He ran a trembling hand through his hair. Or did it? If a woman wanted something badly enough, wouldn’t she use every tool at her disposal to obtain it? A woman as duplicitous as Leah Harmony would certainly be capable of preserving her “purity”—like any other precious commodity—to use when it best suited her purposes.
Well, she could go to hell, he thought, taking a deep breath and blinking to clear his vision. He wouldn’t waste one more millisecond of his precious time, one more iota of mental energy—and certainly not one tear—on the woman. With a monumental effort, he hardened the shell around his heart and vowed to forget about Leah...the woman he’d wanted to bear his babies, the woman he’d wanted to grow old with.
The woman he’d never really known.
He started setting up his chemicals, readying his enlarger. One thing is certain, he thought while grimly preparing for a mind-numbing marathon photo-developing session.
I’ll never let it happen again.
Chapter Eleven
“What color hair should I give my little girl—red or orange?” Merlina Moody Harmony reached into the large plastic shopping bag leaning next to her lawn chair and rummaged through skeins of yarn.
Leah had just arrived at her childhood home in Texarkana for a visit. Douglas was working at the tire plant, but Merl was behind the house in her usual spot, doing needlework for her church’s Christmas bazaar—an avocation that kept her busy all year.
Leah found another beat-up lawn chair near the simple four-room cabin Douglas had built twenty-four years earlier and in which she’d grown up. She dragged it over the weedy lawn next to Merl and examined the bald Raggedy Ann doll in her lap. “I’m partial to orange. Do you ever make Raggedy Andys?” she asked.
“Oh sure. The Anns sell better, though. Most folks are still real small-minded about giving dolls to boys. Course, if I ever get great-grandsons of my own—” she sent a meaningful look to Leah “—I’ll make ’em all the Andys they want.” She sighed eloquently and pulled a skein of orange yarn out of the bag.
“Mama, you’re impossible.” Leah smirked at the unsubtle reminder of her disappointing marital status.
“Now, tell me again—why did you and your Andy break up?”
My Andy? Oh. Right. Her New York boyfriend, “Andrew.” Leah groaned inwardly; she’d hoped they were all through with that. “Look, it’s like I told you. We...just didn’t get along. You know how it is.” It had been two months since she’d left James. Two months of trying to forget a pair of sky blue eyes and the feel of a warm, hard body melding with hers. Two months of waking in the dark and reaching out for a memory.
Merl adjusted her reading glasses and calmly threaded the yarn through a fat needle. “Yeah, I know what you said. Doesn’t sound like much of a reason, that’s all. You two were pretty serious.”
“Well, maybe I just don’t want to talk about it, okay?” Leah squirmed, trying to get comfortable in the rickety old chair that had been rewebbed a half dozen times. During the long drive from Little Rock in her air-conditioned car, she hadn’t noticed how hot the day had become. Now she was glad she’d worn the lightweight pink linen sundress and sandals. Her hair was secured in one long, thick braid down her back.
They sat near a large vegetable garden striped with row after row of lush green plants. She shielded her eyes against the brilliant late morning sun and let her gaze follow the yard’s scraggly grass and bushes past a tumbledown log fence that separated the lawn portion of the property from the pasture. In the distance a brown and white cow reclined in the grass, c
hewing her cud. Chickens scratched in the dirt near the henhouse.
Leah continued, “Some things just aren’t worth rehashing. I mean, I never hear you talk about your first husband.” She reached down to pet Penny, a shaggy, cream-colored mutt.
“That marriage was never meant to be.”
“I don’t know about that. You got Annie from it.”
“That reminds me.” Merl methodically drew her needle through the doll’s scalp and tied off loops of yarn hair. “I had a visitor—someone I hadn’t seen in ages.”
Leah was relieved at the abrupt change of subject. Merl would now go into a long-winded description of a visit from some old biddy or other, complete with endless scraps of gossip about people Leah didn’t know, and she’d half listen. Penny rolled onto her back and presented her plump pink belly for scratching. “Oh yeah?” Leah said. “Who?”
“James Bradburn.”
When she could think again, could breathe again, she realized she was staring in openmouthed shock at Merl, one hand still on Penny’s belly.
Merl continued to apply Raggedy Ann’s hair. She cast a swift glance at Leah. “James Junior. The young one. His daddy, that devil, he passed away, it turns out.”
That devil was Leah’s daddy, too. The unspoken fact hovered in the air like a bad smell.
How hard it must have been for Merl, so forthright about everything else, to keep such a thing for so long from the girl she’d raised as a daughter. Leah wondered, if she hadn’t stumbled on the truth of her parentage, would Mama and Daddy have taken their secret to the grave?
Merl shifted a little in her seat and returned her eyes to her task. “Mrs. Bradburn passed away, too, he said, ten years ago. I was mighty sorry to hear that. Anyway, you mentioning Annie reminded me about James.”
“He came to see you,” Leah mumbled, incredulous.
“Yep. Seems he heard Annie passed away.”
“Did he ask...did he ask how she died?”
Merl’s lips tightened. She continued her needlework. “I told him the same thing we always said—that it was pneumonia. He and Annie used to play together. Course, I never told anyone up there that she was gone, so I don’t know where he coulda heard about it.”
Leah swallowed hard and directed her gaze into the distance to where old Zelda the cow was ambling lazily into the large fishing pond to cool off.
“Anyway, James and me had a nice long chat.”
“How did he know where you lived, Mama?”
Merl shrugged. “He said he looked me up.”
Leah forced herself to ask, “Why did he look you up?”
Merl pointed to a manila envelope resting on a sack of fertilizer near the house. “To give me that. Real sweet of him to come all the way down here to deliver it personally and pay me a visit after all these years. He’s nothing like his daddy was.”
Wondering if she was going to regret it, Leah rose on unsteady legs and crossed to the fertilizer sack. She picked up the envelope and drew out a large photograph...
And heard her own startled gasp. She blinked through a sudden film of tears to examine the picture James had made for Merl. She’d seen this image hundreds of times before, but never like this—crisp, clear, and large.
Annie sat on a bench surrounded by what Leah now plainly saw was a wooden arbor, its sides and ceiling covered with beautiful large leaves and heavy bunches of grapes. She looked carefree and happy, dressed in a short-sleeved white summer shirt, shorts, white socks, and sneakers. Her knees were scabbed.
It was a blow-up of the snapshot Leah carried in her wallet.
Merl continued adding hair to her doll, but her eyes were unfocused, glistening. “You still have that old snapshot?” she asked. Leah nodded. “Well, it was young James that took that picture, you know, and he gave Annie that little snapshot. He was just a boy then. Anyway, he said he came across the negative and thought he’d make it up into a picture for me...said I oughta have it. There’s more copies in there.” She indicated the envelope. “Some little ones, too. He said maybe you’d want one of those for your wallet.”
Leah threw a sharp look at her. “He mentioned me?”
“Well, I told him about you.” She held up the doll and smoothed out its thickening tresses. “I told him I had another girl that came into the world the same day my poor Annie left it. And he said he figured Annie’s sister might like a picture for her wallet.”
Leah stumbled back to her chair. Why would he say that unless...
He went through her wallet! How could he? But then she looked down at the image of Annie, laughing, happy. James had made this picture for Merl. He’d brought it to her. And he obviously hadn’t let on to Merl that he knew Leah. Just as Merl had failed to enlighten him about Leah’s true parentage and the fact that she was his half sister. Thank goodness.
Her head was reeling. She closed her eyes and rubbed her temples. If he’d seen the picture in her wallet and recognized Annie, why hadn’t he asked her about it? It was too confusing—her head hurt with the effort of trying to fit the pieces together.
“Have any luck?”
Merl’s screechy holler made Leah jump, grating her already frayed nerves. Who was she yelling at? A low male voice answered from across the expanse of pasture. “Luck had nothing to do with it.”
Leah’s head whipped up. Her heart slammed to a halt, then started thumping in a wild tattoo that echoed in her temples.
“I think I’ve earned a beer, Merl,” the voice called. Leah shielded her eyes again and stared into the pasture at the figure as it came into view from behind the run-down tool shed. The man was walking toward them. He was tall and powerfully built, nude to the waist, his muscular bronze torso glistening with sweat. A red bandanna was tied around his head as a sweatband, and he was liberally decorated with machine grease and dirt.
James had never looked more handsome.
“Leah, go and get a beer for James, would ya?” Merl asked.
“You—you didn’t say he was still here!”
Merl stared at her. “Well, I didn’t say he wasn’t, did I? What’s got into you? That boy’s been out there fixing that old Rototiller of your daddy’s. He needs something to wet his wh—”
“You put him to work fixing machinery?” Leah watched as, in the distance, James gave a wide berth to something in the grass that caught his eye. Merl cackled. Leah groaned. The last thing she’d expected to see today was James Bradburn, Jr., looking like a greasy mechanic and dodging meadow muffins in her folks’ pasture.
Merl said, “James volunteered to take a look at that old tiller.”
Right. Leah knew Merl. It wasn’t unusual for guests in her home to end up “volunteering” to do everything from taking out the garbage to hanging drapes.
“Besides,” Merl continued, “he wanted to stick around and meet you. I told him you were coming.”
James opened the rickety gate in the log fence and closed it behind him. Leah stood, and that was when he noticed her. He paused and held her gaze a moment, his face impassive, before continuing his trek in their direction.
She bolted inside to the little kitchen, the squeaky screen door rattling shut behind her. Get him a beer? Let him get his own damn beer. What kind of game was he playing, anyway? She raced down the short hallway to the front door of the house, where she paused, panting, her hand on the doorknob.
She couldn’t leave without saying good-bye to Merl. She’d just arrived. Maybe if she was quick...
She’d just reached the back door when a large form filled it, blocking the light. She could only stand there and stare in mute outrage as James opened the screen door and carefully closed it behind him. His crystal blue eyes seem to glow in his sun-darkened face. His skin was damp, the black hair on his chest glistening with sweat. Her eyes strayed to his faded, low-slung jeans, now splotched with grease from the tiller.
Noting the grating squeal of the door hinges, he said, “Maybe I’ll oil this thing next.”
“What the hell ar
e you doing here?”
His face remained neutral, but a muscle jumped in his cheek. “You’re not the only one who likes to play tourist, Leah.”
She flattened herself against the counter as he moved past her to the pitted enamel sink. Heat seemed to radiate from his large body in waves and he smelled pleasantly of fresh sweat. At the sink he scrubbed the grime from his hands and dried them on a kitchen towel. She watched him open the fridge door and bend down, perusing the contents.
“Not that many sights to see in my parents’ pasture unless you count what old Zelda leaves behind. I had no idea you were such a whiz with machinery.” She leaned against the chipped Formica counter and fidgeted with a scorched oven mitt, trying to ignore the hammering of her heart.
He located a beer and turned back to her, popping the can’s top. “Seems there’s a lot you and I don’t know about each other.” He took a long swallow.
“You said you weren’t going to contact me.”
“Did I contact you? I thought I came to see your mother.”
She was about to deliver a scathing retort until she remembered the picture. She looked down. “It—it was nice of you to make that picture of Annie for her.” When she raised her eyes, his expression was an unsettling blend of bewilderment and carefully controlled rage.
“Leah...why?” His voice was a hoarse whisper. “Why in God’s name didn’t you tell me you were Annie’s sister?”
Anything she said would only make the situation more painful for them both. She tried to make it to the back door, but he moved like lightning, capturing her arms in a relentless grip and forcing her to look at him.
“What did my father do to your family?” he demanded. She swallowed hard and looked away. “Dammit, I’ve been trying to figure this thing out. Nothing else makes sense—he’s got to be the reason you came to Whitewood.”
James released her and put some distance between them. He yanked the sweat-soaked bandanna off his forehead and tossed it into a laundry basket sitting by the back door. “Your family was with us for years. Don’t tell me this whole thing has nothing to do with that bastard.” He stared at her a few moments before adding, in a softer voice, “It would explain a lot, Leah. If he did something to hurt Merl or Douglas...well, what I mean is, it would cast a different light on your actions, make it easier to understand why you...” He ran his fingers through his sweat-damp hair.
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