Must Love Pets: A Romance Box Set

by Theresa Weir

  With a quirk of his lips, he let the worry go. If she didn’t know, she’d learn. It wouldn’t take more than once, and painful as it might be to fall into a clump of cactus, it wasn’t fatal.

  Giselle caught sight of him and waved. Luke waved back, surprised when she didn’t break free of her friends to come to him, as she’d been doing the past week at every chance. Instead, like a herd of wild horses, the group of them shifted direction and ran away to a new game.

  The sight of them running so freely through the desert made him abruptly, absurdly homesick for this place. Again he lifted his eyes to the wide open sky and then toward the hazy horizon. The land stretched endlessly, subtly colored and restful to his eyes.

  Home.

  In his imagination, he saw the mountains around Colorado Springs, which had been his home for much longer than this land had. He thought of the way the light broke through the canyons in the evenings and remembered Jessie talking about it that night in his truck.

  But she’d never seen the way the light broke here, the way the sunset stretched in violet and red and yellow fingers across the pale desert, spearing yucca and dancing in arroyos. She’d never seen rain thunder down from the hills in crashing violence, or sat with sheep on a mesa like this and listened to them murmur to each other as the sun lowered in the blazing blue sky.

  With an odd sense of awakening, Luke took up a handful of earth and held it in his palm.

  Four times in his life he’d known grief—the deep and shattering kind, the kind that tore holes wide open in a man’s heart and let him bleed, leaving him empty. Staring at the dun-colored soil in his palm, Luke realized that the first loss—that of this land—had gone deeper than he had ever allowed. At ten, he’d lost his home, and had never quite recovered.

  Then it had been his mother, for whom he’d endured the loss of the land, and then his father, who was his last link to the place.

  And then he’d lost Jessie.

  He let the dirt spill from his hand, watching it with a sense of power growing wider and stronger through him. He thought of his parents, and the pain of those losses was bittersweet, no longer searing. He thought of Jessie and admitted to himself that he’d done all he could to heal the rift between them. He blew the dust from his hand as if to release her completely to her fate.

  He stood up. What he did have was Giselle and the land that waited patiently like a mother to welcome him home. This land and all it had given him were what he would give his child.

  When he returned to the meeting house, calm and sure, he was only mildly curious about the big truck that pulled up. The children playing by the parking lot stopped their game and ran over, shouting, Giselle in the lead. The truck door opened and a man stepped out.

  Luke watched as he bent and scooped Giselle up into a hug, then ruffled the heads of several other children.

  Daniel.

  The braid was still defiantly long, not quite black and streaked with lighter color from spending time in the sun. His cheekbones were sunburned. That was familiar, too.

  But in the twenty years since they’d last met, Daniel had grown broad-shouldered and strong, and carried himself with an unconscious aura of dignity he’d once lacked.

  Across the heads of the children, he caught sight of Luke. His expression shifted from open and laughing to distinctly apprehensive in a split second, giving Luke a deep sense of satisfaction. Considering the jealousy Luke had been suffering the past week, a little discomfort on Daniel’s part seemed only fair.

  Luke lifted his chin in greeting.

  Daniel nodded at something Giselle was saying and set her down gently, then straightened. He crossed the dirt lot reluctantly, coming to a stop a foot from Luke. “Ya ta hey,”he said, his voice rumbling.

  Luke held his gaze and nodded.

  Daniel bent his head, touched his nose, kicked something in the dirt. “Guess you probably have a few choice words for me. I’m willing to listen.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me sooner, Daniel?” Luke kept his voice low, private.

  Daniel winced and glanced off toward the horizon. “A lot of reasons. None of them good ones.” He inclined his head. “I’m sorry, my old friend.”

  “So am I,” Luke said, crossing his arms. “I wish I hadn’t missed all those years of Giselle’s life.”

  Daniel bent his head, wordless.

  “But I gotta tell you, man, I’ve been asleep on my feet for years. Today I’m awake and alive, and I have you to thank for that.”

  Daniel looked up, startled. He laughed suddenly and reached out to give Luke a rib-crushing hug. “Good!”

  “Yeah.”

  A strong voice rang out into the day. “Daniel.”

  Against him, Luke felt Daniel’s body change, stiffen. He let go of Luke and turned slowly as Jessie approached. Her eyes sparked with an expression Luke knew was dangerous, and he glanced toward Daniel to see if he knew it, too.

  On Daniel’s face was an expression Luke knew intimately, painfully, and he had a fleeting wish to protect this friend of his childhood, to stand between the woman approaching and the pain he saw in Daniel’s eyes.

  He loved her. There was a gentling on the harsh features, a shine in his eyes, a quirk of his lips as he lifted his hands, then dropped them. “Hey, Irish,” he said.

  She looked up at him, focused so completely on Daniel that Luke might have been made of stone. His heart pinched at the conflicted expression on her face. Maybe now Luke would truly lose her. Surely she couldn’t look into Daniel’s face and not see what Luke did.

  But if she saw it, she gave no sign. “You weren’t even sick, were you?”

  He glanced at Luke, then back to her. “No.”

  “How long have you known that he was Giselle’s father? And why didn’t you just come out and tell me you knew instead of being so sneaky? And just what, exactly, did you hope to accomplish?”

  “You want an answer to any particular question first?”

  She shook her head. “How could you be so manipulative, Daniel? You can’t go around playing God all the time.”

  Daniel sobered. “I was trying to help.”

  “Jessie,” Luke said, nodding toward the curious faces of children gathered not far away. “Leave it till later.”

  She looked at him, and he saw the suddenly stricken expression in her clear topaz eyes. It seemed she would say something, something to just him, and her fingers closed around his hand on her arm. Then she looked back to Daniel. “I feel betrayed,” she said.

  Daniel nodded. “I know. I’m sorry.”

  “We’ll talk about it later,” she said, and sounded tired. She let go of Luke’s hand.

  Both of them stared after her, and Luke knew Daniel’s eyes would reflect his own thoughts if he dared glance in that direction. He couldn’t stand it.

  “Hell of a woman you got there,” Daniel commented.

  “She’s not my woman. Hasn’t been for a long time.” Luke shook his head slowly. “You could have claimed her anytime, all those years.”

  “It wasn’t like I didn’t try.” His voice was tight.

  “That’s what I figured.”

  “The trouble was,” Daniel said, turning to face Luke eye to eye, “she gave her heart away a long time ago to somebody else. He let her down.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  Now all lightness fled from Daniel’s sharply carved face. “I’m gonna tell you the truth, my old friend,” he confessed in a voice not friendly at all. “I didn’t send her up there for you. I did it for me. I thought if she saw you, she’d finally get you out of her system and the one damned thing in my way would be gone.”

  “Pretty big gamble.”

  “Yeah.” He laughed without humor. “And it only took one glance to see I lost.”

  Luke narrowed his eyes. “Why are you telling me this? You think I’m gonna feel bad about it?”

  “No,” Daniel answered heavily. “I just wanted you to know you aren’t the only one who lost som
ething. I stole time from you, and for that I’m sorry. But I’ve done what I can to make it right.”

  They stared at each other beneath the bright winter sun, divided by a child and a woman, but linked by something rich and warm from long ago, when they’d ridden horses against the winds of the desert and run to a mountain to escape the world.

  Luke stuck out his hand. “Truce.”

  Daniel accepted it.

  “It’s almost time for the meeting,” Luke said. “We oughta get inside.”

  “You want me to take over now?”

  Luke shook his head. “No. I know what I need to say.”

  Chapter 15

  Jessie found her seat in the meeting room. The post-lunch crowd seemed decidedly more energetic, she noticed and wondered if it were Daniel’s arrival that had made it so.

  Still caught up in her emotions, she folded her hands over her chest protectively as she sat down. She felt like a hapless fly, stuck between the window glass and the curtain, unable to find her way free to flight.

  Daniel and Luke came in from the back, and she could see both of them were on guard. Uneasy. Then Luke leaned over and said something, and Jessie watched a slow, ironic grin smooth the lines of tension in Daniel’s face. He clapped Luke on the shoulder.

  She found herself absently rubbing her hands together as she watched them come to the front of the room. These were the two men she knew best in the world. Daniel was her best friend. He’d given her hope and something to believe in, braced her up when she fell into her sorrowing modes, pushed her when she hung back, badgered her and hugged her and been there for her.

  And now he’d pushed her out into the painful circle of confronting the past, the unhealed past she shared with Luke.

  Seeing them together now made her feel strangely apart, distant. She’d always thought Daniel quite handsome, but seeing him next to Luke made him almost plain. Daniel was broader, Luke was taller. Daniel’s mixed blood showed in the lighter brown streaks of his hair and his pug nose. Luke had a calm about him that contrasted vividly to the restless, humming energy that surrounded Daniel.

  But they were very much alike, too—male and Indian and bonded by a shared history in a place as mysterious to her as the moon. As Daniel sat down, he winked at her. Jessie simply looked at him, unable to sort her feelings well enough to figure out what the right response should be. She felt a little mean when his smile faded and he looked out over the crowd, trying to pretend his feelings weren’t hurt.

  And yet, what had made him think it would be all right to do this? To link her and Luke once again, face-to-face. How had he justified playing God like that?

  The room settled as it became obvious they were about to start. Luke and Daniel sat side by side, waiting as Mary Yazzie made some announcements about a dance that would be held here this evening. When she finished, she looked toward Luke and Daniel.

  To Jessie’s surprise, Luke stood up. And she saw immediately that there was something different about him this afternoon, something strong and clean in the way he stood there, looking toward the weavers in respect.

  He began to speak, and the translator looked at Jessie. “You want me to tell you what he’s saying?”

  She nodded. It seemed critical to understand every word of what he was going to say.

  So the words came to her in stereo, parts of the Navajo slipping in before the translator gave her the English. She leaned forward, struck anew with the musical sound of Luke’s clear tenor rising and falling with the lilting syllables of his native tongue. His everyday speaking voice held this same tone, but she had never realized just how deeply the rhythm of those early words had marked his English.

  She was caught in the sound and didn’t really tune in at first. He spoke of being the son of a weaver, who had given him respect for what she did. And he told them about Reeves, the gallery owner in Colorado Springs.

  These things she knew, and only paid them scant attention. But then he began to tell a story about Coyote, the traditional trickster of Navajo legend.

  Suddenly riveted, Jessie lifted a hand to the translator so she could hear the words in the original tongue, and she did miss a few words, but most of it was clear.

  “Coyote, this time, isn’t something outside,” he said, “but something inside. He’s like the worm in an apple, trying to make you believe the special gifts you were given by Spider Woman are not worthy of all they can command.

  “Some people here are afraid of witches, but we found the boys who were causing that trouble. You know them, and know they are young men with problems. They were working for some of the galleries, trying to make you give up. They put on Coyote clothes to make you think you aren’t worth more, but you are.”

  As transfixed as the rest, Jessie stared at Luke. She had never seen this side of him before, this gently funny man, Navajo through and through. With the rest of them, she laughed when he made jokes and teased and made light of the darkness.

  But it was as she was laughing over one of his jokes that she realized she had seen this side of him. It was this wry, strong Luke who had loved her so fiercely when she was broken and afraid as a young woman. It was this Luke who had loved her so unconditionally and completely and passionately that Jessie was able to be the kind of mother to Giselle that every little girl should have.

  It was Luke who had given her the gift of her child and the tools to be her mother.

  She glanced toward Daniel, who watched Luke with a glitter in his eye, a resounding and nodding approval. Daniel, too, had played his part, had given Jessie the tools to enter Luke’s world, then pushed her into it, screaming and fighting all the way. Because Daniel knew her, he knew well that Coyote had had a stranglehold of fear on Jessie’s life for a long, long time.

  She took a long, deep breath. Oh, yes, the trickster had made mischief in her life, all right. By making her doubt herself and her instincts. By manipulating the guilt carried by most children of alcoholic parents. By making her feel she had no judgment.

  With the same stunning sense of revelation she’d felt over seeing the endless mothers in her paintings, Jessie now saw something else. She’d been right to leave Luke eight years ago. It had been the only choice she could have made. In taking that step, for herself and for her child, she’d broken her cycle of co-dependency.

  It might have been wrong to hide his child from him all these years. She didn’t know. But the past was gone and couldn’t be retrieved.

  And with surprise, she thought of her behavior with Rudy the night before and realized just how far she’d come. No, not everyone felt the need to tend to drunk alcoholics, any more than everyone wanted work in a hospice. The work was too depressing for most people.

  She did it because she wanted to, because sometimes there wasn’t anyone else. Like a nurse, she had a need to tend the ones who were ill, to ease their pain until they could get well, or at least be one kind face in the world if they didn’t.

  Overcome, she abruptly stood up and walked quickly toward the back door. Luke’s truck was parked in the lot, with the keys dangling from the ignition. For a minute, she hesitated, wondering where Giselle was. A high laugh sounded from the swings around to one side, and Jessie recognized the sound. Jessie whistled, and Giselle came around the building. “Hi, Mom! Is the meeting over?”

  “Not quite. Tell Luke I’ll be back in a little while, okay?”

  “Okay. Bye.”

  Jessie drove around for a while, trying to rein in her emotions, the overwhelming insights that had been rocking her all day. Each one hit her anew, one after the other, in little bursts. Her mother. Luke. The tricks Coyote had played.

  At an isolated spot, she stopped at the edge of the narrow highway and parked. She bent her head over the steering wheel and let go. She cried in joy and release and a certain inescapable sorrow. Mostly she cried in relief at the freedom she felt soaring into the free air, where she could breathe, where she was no longer responsible for everyone and everything in the world.<
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  She wept because she loved Luke with every fiber of her being and didn’t want to leave him. How often did it happen that the most sacred, holy, most heartfelt of dreams came true? How many people ever got a second chance?

  And when the built-up emotions were spent, when she was cleansed by her tears, she lifted her head to stare at the harsh and beautiful land Luke loved so much. It was beautiful. They were all beautiful to Jessie—the coast of California, the forests of Washington, the farmland in Iowa, the mountains of Colorado.

  Beauty all around me.

  With a wry smile, she realized something else. Because of her unstable childhood, because she had no real roots of her own, she’d learned to embrace a feeling of home where ever she went. Her home was inside herself, a private, quiet place to which she had been retreating all of her life.

  All at once, she felt an urgent need to paint her mother. Not drunk or sick, but as she had been sometimes when she went on the wagon. Oh, how Jessie had lived for those rare sober days—coming home from school to a house cleared of clutter, to cookies on the table and a fine Irish tea in the pot. In those times, Jessie’s mother had spoken of the Ireland she left behind, that bleak land of the north where war still raged. It had been terribly painful for her mother to leave Ireland, a fact Jessie hadn’t understood until she was grown.

  Now Jessie wanted to paint her, the bright blue eyes and the benevolent, patient smile. She would paint her in Ireland, perhaps. She laughed a little to herself. Maybe if she painted her own mother, her real mother, who had done the best she could in spite of her illness, Jessie could finally move on to some other subjects.

  And more. Jessie would tell Giselle about her other grandmother, the Irish one, let Giselle claim Jessie’s half, too. She might even call her father, and ask him—

  No, she didn’t know how far she wanted to go with her father. Maybe some things were better left alone. Her father had sealed his wounds and put the past behind him. Jessie would not disturb that old pain.