Sisters of Spirit, Pure Romance Set

by Nancy Radke

  Chantal didn’t answer, and after letting the phone ring a dozen times, Alison hung up. Chantal and Jake looked like they might make a go of it; they had straightened out the Miami affair without too much difficulty. Jake was taking his time, but according to Chantal he had already given her Super Bowl tickets and asked her if she would accompany him to the Pro Bowl in Hawaii.

  So if nothing else good came from Alison’s stormy relationship with Logan, at least Chantal might have Jake. But to lose Logan...all because of a practical joke...

  No, that wasn’t fair. It had nothing to do with the joke.

  It was her own suspicious mind that had destroyed her happiness. She had done it to herself and was now paying for it. To rebuild called for a bold step forward. She had been wrong in staying away from the game. She should have gone with Chantal. What she would have done there, she didn’t know, but at least Logan would’ve known that she had made the effort to see him.

  Then Ryan called to say that he had flown back to meet with Logan, Jake and the FBI.

  “A man tried to run Logan down,” Ryan said, “right outside your apartment.”

  “When?” This was the first she’d heard about it.

  “The last time he was there.”

  “Is that why he hasn’t come back?”

  “I don’t know. But Logan had seen the man before, at the Seattle airport,and remembered that he had talked about the Minnesota quarterback. Logan decided the man would have picked Mason Powell as his quarterback, so we were able to narrow the search to around a hundred names.”

  “A hundred?”

  “Sounds like a lot, but he also had a pretty vivid recall of what the man looked like—I guess he was making a jerk out of himself and got right in Logan’s face. So Logan did a session with a sketch artist. The FBI now have a picture. It’s been sent to every airport. They’re going to get that guy pretty quick.”

  “That’s wonderful.”

  “Just wanted you to know.”

  “Did Logan ask about me?”

  “No. Sorry.”

  Alison had no jobs scheduled for today or tomorrow, but the housework had suffered during last week while she had been doing so much interpreting, and some good physical exercise looked welcome right now. She stripped the bed and took her dirty clothes down to the laundry room and started them, took her rugs outside and shook them hard, got out the sweeper, cleaning solutions, scrub brushes and mop and went to work.

  By five o’clock she had the interior shining. The windows needed washing—they could wait till tomorrow—and her bed needed to be remade. She’d grabbed a sandwich at noon and was suddenly exhausted and hungry.

  One more trip to the laundry area to bring up her dry clothes; then she would order a pizza. Maybe tonight she would go to a movie—it was a Tuesday and Tuesdays had become synonymous with Logan—just to keep her mind occupied and away from thoughts of him.

  If only she had trusted him more. If only she hadn’t gone to Miami, seen what she had seen, and been so dumb as to jump to the wrong conclusions. Her suspicious heart and cutting tongue had completely destroyed her own happiness.

  Angry at herself, she ran down the stairwell to the basement laundry, gathered her clean clothes and brought them back up. Entering her apartment, she carried them through and dropped them in a heap on her bed to fold. It was time to order the pizza and get a much-needed shower.

  A sound behind her made her spin around, her eyes immediately finding the source. Her apartment door was open—she had not closed it completely—the setting sun backlighting the tall man standing halfway in, a determined look on his face. He had on a heavy overcoat over a black suit, the fur collar up, for there was snow on the ground today, a light layer but the air was chilly.

  “Logan!” The surprised cry of longing revealed her innermost feelings more than a hundred words, and the agony of the past week was there in her eyes, unhidden, for him to see. Her hand stretched out towards him even as he spoke.

  “You inviting me in?”

  “Did you ever need an invitation?” Her lips were burning with a deep desire for the touch of his and she moved forward as if compelled, afraid of saying the wrong thing and sending him away again.

  “No, but I want to be sure of my welcome this time. No Mace.” He stepped away from the doorway to meet her, the determined scowl replaced by a relieved smile as she flew the last few yards to him, and the strength of his welcoming arms as they closed around her canceled out the harsh words he had spoken when he left...such a long, long time ago.

  It was not really a time for speeches. It was a time for the kind of healing that can only be done with comforting arms and questing lips. It was time to say ‘I love you’ without words.

  Each gave and gave again...their heart with a searching intensity—apologizing, forgiving, comforting...all the things that can best be said by showing.

  She clung to him as to a lifeline, the need for him so great that her reserve was cast away entirely as she gave herself in love to this man...this one who was a stranger no longer.

  “Oh, Logan, I love you—”

  “And I love you. That’s the last thing you said to me. It kept echoing through my mind. I knew you wouldn’t have said it if you didn’t mean it.”

  “My letter?”

  “It came, yesterday. I was regretting leaving you before I was halfway back to Green Bay. I reminded myself of your background, your mother’s husbands, knowing that they were why it was difficult for you to trust. But I stubbornly kept away, trying to make my head rule my heart.”

  “I’m so sorry I said those things.” Her voice was low, a gentle whisper across his lips.

  “It’s okay,” he said, pulling her closer so that there was not a hair’s breath between them. “But I came so close to losing you—”

  “Not so close. I wouldn’t have given up that easily.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Yeah. I was headed for Tennessee. As soon as the Super Bowl was over, you were going to find me camped on your doorstep.”

  “A most forward young lady. What would your mama say to that?”

  “Probably tell me to hurry up and bring you home.”

  She looked down at herself, wrinkling her nose in chagrin. “You pick the worst times to come through that door. “

  “What’s wrong?” he said, his smile permanent now, settling in his blue eyes and spreading across his face from within. “You look fine to me.”

  He had to be in love if he wasn’t bothered by the dirty, disheveled state she was in. “I need a shower.”

  “Go get one...I’ll wait.”

  She dithered, wanting to get clean, but not wanting to leave his side. “How soon do you have to leave?”

  “I have a week.”

  “A whole week?”

  “Uh, huh. Coach Dobb gave me that long to ask you to marry me and get my head back on. He figured I could get ready for the Super Bowl best by seeing you.”

  “Oh. He knew what was going on?”

  “Jake told him. I had trouble in the last game—”

  “I watched. The first quarter. But you got things straightened out—”

  “Coach told me to either come to a decision before I went back onto the field or else he’d put in Steve Rollings, my back-up.”

  “But—” She looked indignant and he defended the coach’s actions.

  “I couldn’t concentrate. A professional athlete is supposed to play his best no matter what’s happening in his private life, but the tension and despair was affecting my performance. A happy man plays better than a sad one, every time; and carries the team with him.

  “So I made my decision, told him what it was, got congratulated by the whole team—and we went out fired up and ran right over the Hornets.”

  “And he gave you a whole week off?”

  Her bewilderment made him chuckle. “Me and some of the injured players. He’s not being generous, just wants to win. And he figures a quarterback who has his life s
traightened out is going to play better than one who doesn’t. He said to tell you if you didn’t promise to marry me he was going to come out and ask you himself.”

  She smiled, gently amused, and he added, “He would, too.”

  Suddenly conscious of the open door, Alison pulled back and looked at it. Quick to pick up the direction of her thought, Logan released her and took the two steps necessary to close it.

  Then stopped.

  The young man from the airport entered, kicking the door the rest of the way open and stalking inside, a gun in his left hand and a set of keys in his right.

  Logan heard Alison’s gasp as his training took over. The handgun was not yet pointed towards them, which it would be as soon as the man cleared the rebounding door. Less than a second, it was all he needed to shift his weight and launch himself at the intruder, his right hand sweeping out to knock the gun down.

  A reflex squeeze on the trigger sent a bullet into the intruder’s leg, and Logan lost no time in spinning him around and dropping him to the floor. He landed an elbow on the man’s throat, hearing the cry of pain as he wrestled the gun away and shoved it beyond them, towards Alison.

  She was standing frozen, with a shocked look on her face, but walked forward, picked up the gun and pointed it at them.

  Logan saw her look down at her finger and move it off the trigger. He nodded, happy he wasn’t going to get shot.

  He had been attentive when the coaches described certain moves as being dangerous and against football rules. Here and here, the places he wasn’t supposed to hit anyone, he now used to further put the maniac out of action. He left the guy curled in a ball on the floor and very carefully took the gun from Alison.

  “Call 911,” he said, and she did so while he made sure the man stayed still except for his groaning.

  “You...you hurt me!” the man cried.

  Logan thought of all his friends and fellow players whom this man had injured or killed and had no sympathy at all. The guy would probably be declared innocent because of insanity.

  “If you give pain, you’ve got to be ready to receive it,” he said. “You’re getting off lightly.”

  Alison began to tremble, and sat down quickly on the nearest chair. Logan pulled up one for himself, checked the bullets—there were plenty, and looked over at her. She was hugging herself closely, her lips trembling, but she was safe, unhurt, and had just said she loved him. Again.

  “Thanks for taking your finger off the trigger,” he told her. “You had me worried.”

  “More than him?”

  “He was on the floor. You had the gun.”

  “It’s heavier than a can of Mace,” she admitted.

  “Remind me to teach you to shoot.” He smiled at her and she smiled back—the flashing sweet smile that he often watched for, that encompassed her features; making her eyes glow and lifting her lips slightly. He could see her relax, no longer feeling threatened.

  The police arrived and it didn’t hurt that they quickly recognized him. Logan explained the importance of catching this man, that he was wanted by the FBI for the murders of several players. He did not want them to let him go on a technicality. Two of them assured him that they would accompany the man all the way to his arraignment, and would double guard him until the FBI took him into custody.

  “We’ve all received alerts about this guy,” one said. “It was fortunate you were able to disarm him.”

  Logan pulled out his wallet and extracted Mark Stone’s card. “Here’s the agent who’s handling the case.”

  It took two hours to wrap everything up, then they were once more alone in Alison’s apartment.

  Alison closed the door and turned to Logan, who was putting a chair back into the dining area. She was so happy he hadn’t been hurt. She had recovered from the shakes while the police was there, but she still felt weak. “I thought he was going to kill you.”

  “I was lucky. Now we can all get back to normal living,” he said with a smile of relief. “No more watching over our shoulders for him to try something.”

  “I’m so happy he’s gone.”

  “Me, too. I didn’t want to bring you into danger. One of the other reasons I stayed away was to keep him from you. I wonder how he followed me?”

  “He’s been around here the last few days.”

  “What?”

  “I thought he was a new tenant.”

  Logan looked like he had just witnessed a horrible tragedy. “Oh, my dear. I put you in danger... If he had hurt you... Ahh! I can’t imagine...”

  “He didn’t.”

  “No. No thanks to me.” He took a deep breath, shuddering. “I love you.”

  “And I love you,” she told him, almost in amazement. It seemed strange to be able to say it to him. Yet her love seemed to deepen with every magic moment they spent together.

  He stepped closer, serious. “Will you marry me?”

  “Yes...if you think we can make it work.”

  “Marriage...it’s like that lane in Alderwood. We take the chance and go down it. It might be disappointing or it might be full of promise, but we’ll never know until we take the risk. I want you as my partner, for life.”

  “But what if I mess up? I’ll try not to, but—”

  “I’ll love you so much you won’t have the time or inclination to have any doubts about me.” She smiled more broadly at that—he would know how—and agreed with him when he added, “I’m willing to take the chance that we can weather pro life together. I certainly can’t see me ever wanting to marry anyone else. I love you, my dearest.”

  Alison nodded her head. At last she realized that life could only progress if people were willing to take chances. If he was willing to take the chance for future happiness by trusting her with his love, she could do the same. And told him so.

  “Perfect.” He thrust his hand into his coat and pulled out a ring box. “This is to make it official.” He flipped the lid open to reveal an emerald solitaire in an unusual antique setting of gold.

  She couldn’t think of words to say and watched as he removed it and slid it on the fourth finger of her left hand. It was a trifle loose, she’d have to get it made smaller so she wouldn’t lose it.

  “Do you like it?” he questioned before she could get her tongue unstuck. “You do want one, don’t you? I mean—”

  “Oh, yes, it’s beautiful; it’s...it’s striking.”

  “If you wanted something else...a diamond?”

  “Oh, no. This is marvelous It took my breath away, that’s all. I’ve never seen anything so lovely.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “You just try and take it away from me,” she declared, words coming easily now. “You’ll never get this back,” she warned, “so you’d better be prepared to go ahead with a wedding.”

  The relief showed in his eyes as she threw her arms around him for another kiss.

  “I thought maybe we could go see your folks, then go to mine.”

  “When?”

  “As soon as you can get ready.”

  “Now?”

  He nodded.

  “I’ll have to get someone to cover for me tomorrow—”

  “How about the rest of the month? I’d like you to stay with my folks when I go back to Green Bay, get to know them better, then come to the Super Bowl with them.”

  “Done.” She picked up the phone and started dialing, her appointment book in front of her as she took the plunge into her new life.

  THE END

  Thank you for reading “Tennessee Touch.” If you enjoyed this story, please do me a big favor. Go back to www.amazon.com and leave an honest review. Authors live and die by their reviews. The few extra minutes readers take really help an author out. Thank you.

  APPALOOSA BLUES

  Sisters of Spirit #8, The Traherns modern day

  By Nancy Radke

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

  CHAPTER ONE

  Adam Trahern sat on his horse, alone, his bl
ue heeler, Murray, sitting beside him as he studied the ranch lands spread out before him. He was at his favorite lookout point where he liked to come to watch the sunset. He often became so caught up in keeping the ranch going, that he missed coming here. This place renewed his spirit, helping him keep going when the economy, or his neighbor, or both, proved difficult.

  Now he had a new problem. One that could change his life for the better or completely destroy all hope. If only he would figure out which way to proceed. He had to control the situation with Grandpa Davies, his elderly neighbor. If he couldn’t, several lives would be ruined, including his.

  His cell phone rang and he reached into his pocket and brought it out. Cell phones were a great invention, but they never let you rest. You were almost always reachable, unless you turned the irritating thing off.

  “Trahern here.”

  “Hey, Adam. Could you look at forest road 25? Moira thinks she saw a covered truck go up it. None of ours.”

  The local ranchers with mountain pastures, were losing beef, and had banded together to watch for strange vehicles, anything large enough to put a calf into and haul away. They’d asked Adam to be their eyes, since his ranch lay on a ridge of its own above the rest. He had a large telescope at home which he could train on a parked vehicle. Sometimes he could even read the license plate.

  Reaching into his saddlebags, he pulled out his binoculars. “I’ll check. I’m in a pretty good position right now for that road.”

  He dismounted and swept the road. Nothing at first, then he saw it, a small panel truck coming up the ridge road, past the few trees that grew there.

  Here in the Blue Mountains of northeastern Oregon, the roads were on the ridges, the heavy growth of trees covering the valleys. It made it easy to see who was traveling the roads, especially since he’d invested in high-powered binoculars.

  This truck stopped and a dark-complected man got out and looked to be taking pictures. Another man with light brown hair joined him and they stood talking and pointing around. The dark-complected man was taller than the other, but Adam had no way of telling how tall they really were. They were dressed in jeans and T-shirts, the standard ranch wear.