Must Love Pets: A Romance Box Set

by Theresa Weir

  As she sat there, she realized a certain urgent need to do one more thing. It made her feel a whisper of the same lost emotion it always had, but it was time for her to face down her demons. Firmly, she wiped her face and turned the key.

  All this time, all these years, Jessie had been afraid of herself. She had been afraid that it was her actions that somehow led first her mother, then Luke into alcoholism, that if she’d been stronger, wiser, better, she could have somehow prevented it.

  But that had been Coyote, the trickster, giving her doubts. Jessie wasn’t responsible for her mother or for Luke—any more than Giselle was responsible for Jessie giving up cigarettes.

  Jessie’s mother had been unable to escape her demons. But Luke had. Sometimes he was afraid, sometimes he might be tempted. But she had faith, as once he’d had faith in her.

  She wanted to laugh out loud. Instead, she turned the truck around on the rough, slim highway and headed back to the meeting house.

  Beauty all around me…

  * * *

  Daniel was grinning from ear to ear as the meeting ended. “Well done,” he said. “We’ll still lose a few of them, but it looks like we’d better get those options in order.”

  Luke inclined his head. “Looks like it.” He scanned the milling group for Jessie, who’d stared at him with the most peculiar expression as he talked—he kept seeing her from the corner of her eye.

  “Maybe we can borrow some horses and ride, eh?” Daniel suggested.

  “Sounds good.”

  When they got outside, however, Luke’s truck was gone. Giselle galloped over with a bevy of her friends. “My mom took your truck.”

  Luke narrowed his eyes. “Did she say what she was doing?”

  “It’s all right, man,” Daniel said. “I’ve got mine.”

  “Hey, kid,” Luke said to Giselle, “you want to go riding with us?”

  Giselle looked from the men to the children and quickly shook her head. “No.”

  He chuckled. “All right. You be good, and we’ll see you later. Mary knows we’re going. If you need anything, just tell her.”

  They got horses from a friend of Daniel’s and rode out in the relative warmth of the mid-afternoon sunshine. Luke hadn’t been on a horse for a while and felt deeply awkward at first, but his body remembered quickly enough. “You’ve done a good job with the project, Daniel,” Luke said after a while.

  “It’s about done now. By spring, we’ll have the money for galleries in most of the major markets. Now it will go to the hands of the weavers themselves.”

  “Who’s going to run the galleries?”

  Daniel coughed. “I’ve got a few people lined up already. Sort of hoped to talk to you about the one in Colorado Springs.”

  “Not a chance,” Luke said, but grinned to show he had no hard feelings. More seriously, he added, “I’m coming back to the land.”

  “Ahh.” Daniel nodded. “Does Jessie know?”

  He shook his head.

  “It won’t matter.”

  Luke shrugged. “She has to find her own way.”

  “True enough.” He chuckled. “What about that girl of yours, eh? She’s a pistol.”

  This was the one thing that Luke still had not quite forgiven. “Yeah,”he said gruffly.

  Daniel rode silently. “I didn’t know for a long time, man. Not until she painted the portrait.”

  “And when was that?”

  Daniel touched his nose. “Four or five years ago.”

  “And by then—”

  “By then I thought you were a jackass and didn’t deserve her.”

  Luke lifted his chin, determined not to be offended. “You were there when Giselle was born. Didn’t you see the birth certificate?”

  Daniel looked at Luke steadily. The sound of the horses’ hooves clomping softly against the earth and the ring of the bridles against the air were the only sounds.

  “She didn’t put a name down,” he said quietly, as if he knew the knowledge would wound. “Not then. She went back later and put it in.”

  Luke absorbed this without speaking, his eyes trained on the swoop of a hawk above them.

  “What are the chances,” Luke said, shaking his head, “that she would find you, of all the Navajo people there are in Albuquerque?”

  “Very small,” Daniel replied. “But big enough. Sometimes, the Creator is kind.”

  Luke decided he didn’t want to ask to whom the Creator had been kind. “So, you live in Albuquerque now?”

  “Yeah, but not for much longer. There’s a peach orchard near Canyon de Chelly, abandoned and caught up in probate. I’ve been talking to a man about it.”

  “You don’t miss living on the reservation?” Daniel shrugged. “No good phone lines. The electricity is patchy, too. I have trouble with it sometimes.” He looked a little sheepish as he admitted, “I gotta have my computers.”

  “Computers?” Luke laughed, thinking of the battery-operated bells and elaborate circuits Daniel had built when they were children, from scraps of anything he could find. “What do you do with them?”

  “All kinds of things. Fix ’em, build ’em, play with ’em.” Again he gave Luke that slightly apologetic look. “Went to school for programming at UNM. Teach a little now, too.”

  “Maybe you’ll teach me,” Luke said with a grin. “Maybe. If you’ll come fix the wood at the farmhouse.”

  Luke reined the horse for a minute. “I owe you, man,” he said seriously.

  Daniel chuckled. “Yeah, I reckon you do.” He frowned. “Tell me how you let that woman get away from you.”

  Luke lifted a brow. “Someday maybe. Not today.”

  Daniel nodded. They rode on, content in the silence.

  * * *

  When Jessie got back, Daniel and Luke were gone, which made it somehow easier. She slipped inside the big hall and paused there a moment, breathing in the change of the room as young men pulled tables to one side and set chairs in a circle around the drum.

  Jessie steeled herself and went to the kitchen. On the threshold, she stopped. Here were a dozen women working, as if they knew exactly how to mesh themselves together, the skirts of the grandmothers swirling against the calves of the younger women’s jeans. Navajo and English spilled around them.

  Swiftly, before she could lose her courage, Jessie surged forward, taking a knife from the counter. A woman was spilling onions onto the table, and Jessie scooped several toward her. The woman said, “Chop them fine for the chili,” and Jessie nodded.

  Next to her, another woman gave her a kitchen match to put in her mouth. “For your eyes,” she said, and stuck one in her own mouth. Side by side, in easy silence, they chopped.

  After the onions, there was lettuce to shred, pans to wash—a host of small things that needed doing. Jessie forgot her self-consciousness and moved along with them, feeling a quiet kind of joy in the smell and sound of the other women moving all around her, talking and laughing, teasing each other, chatting about children, complaining about husbands or sons. It was safe. It was homey.

  It was exhilarating.

  And because she saw the world with the eye of a painter, it was beautiful, too. Piles of chopped red tomato next to an enormous bowl of pale green shredded lettuce, the silver gleam of knives, the old hands and young hands deftly patting big angles of fry bread into shape. Women’s hands.

  Mary Yazzie nudged Jessie in the ribs, lifting her chin toward the wide window toward the hall. Luke stood there, watching her with a peculiar expression on his face, as if he’d been passing and had only glanced over, then been caught.

  Mary nudged her again. Jessie took a breath and put down her knife. She wiped her fingers on her apron and then took it off. She glanced at Mary, who nodded at her, then walked toward the door.

  “Are you all right?” Luke asked. “I was kind of worried about you.”

  “I’m fine. Will you come outside with me for a few minutes?”

  For a moment, he didn’t move, his d
ark eyes deep and still. Jessie reached out to take his hand. Surprised, he looked at the clasp of their hands together, and back to her face. He nodded.

  They made their way toward a side door. Jessie liked the feel of him next to her, the brush of his jean jacket over her sleeve, the way their steps fell into harmony, the way he shifted his hand in hers so that their fingers were laced together. He smelled of sunshine and clean air, like the desert, and his boots were dirty. “Did you go riding?” she asked.

  “Yeah.”

  That was all he said, and now Jessie felt a little wave of nervousness. The sun hung low on the horizon as they went outside, and she paused by the door.

  He shook his head. “Let’s walk.”

  “Okay.”

  He led, holding her hand, out toward a bluff not far from the meeting house. In town, lights were coming on, and the children who’d been rambling over the desert all day now hung close to the building.

  On the crest of the bluff, they stopped and he lifted his chin toward the prairie. “You talked about the light in Cheyenne Canyon,” he said. “I wanted you to see the sunset from here.”

  Jessie faced the wide sweep of desert below them. Deep shadows hung in an arroyo, making it a sharp contrast to the light above. Fingers of pale gold sunlight edged the sharp spikes of yucca and highlighted the bristles on cacti, making them look furry and friendly.

  And as they watched, the world changed color. The muted colors of the land grew rich, filled with deep purple shadows and blazing red points of light, reflected in the sky. A wisp of cloud, nearly invisible a moment before, suddenly flared a bright gold edged with orange.

  Jessie looked at Luke and saw in his face the shift of light, the play of shadows. It seemed suddenly impossible to tell him everything she had been thinking all afternoon. She said, “It’s beautiful.”

  “I knew you’d like it.”

  “I don’t know why I was so afraid of this place. I’m sorry I didn’t want to come with you before.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “No, it really isn’t. I’ve treated you badly, Luke. Often, both in the past and in the last few days. You deserve more than that.”

  “Jessie—”

  She shook her head, holding up a hand. Now that the words were coming, she wanted to let them all out. “I tried to put the burden of proving everything on you. And it wasn’t you with the unresolved issues. It was me. I had to see what my mother left me or didn’t leave me.”

  Her throat felt tight and she turned away for a moment, taking power from the display around them. “I’ve been so lost without you, Luke. I managed to get through, and I convinced myself that it was a good life, but the minute I saw you, I knew it was a lie.”

  “What, exactly, are you telling me?” he asked, and his jaw looked hard.

  She took a deep breath. “That I love you. That I’m tired of running away from you.” Her voice softened. “That I’d love to have more babies and see your face at the supper table for the rest of my life.”

  He looked at her hand, caught so tightly in his own. “Jessie, you have to know there are no guarantees with an alcoholic.”

  She shrugged lightly, and smiled. “What’s life without a few risks?”

  “It’s no joke.”

  “I’m not joking.” She touched his cheek. “Sometimes all we have is faith that things are going to be okay. I have faith in you, Luke, more than you have. Do you know the longest time my mother was sober?”

  He shook his head.

  “Three months. Two different times, she made it three months.”

  “I understand what you’re saying, Jessie, but one day at a time is all anyone can do it.”

  “The funny thing is, Luke, I discovered I have faith in myself, too. If I have to leave you again, I will.” She smiled. “I don’t believe I will have to, but if it came to that, I would. And I’d survive.”

  A shimmer of humor touched his eyes. “You mean you wouldn’t die of a broken heart without me? I’m crushed.”

  “What I’m trying to say,” she said impatiently, “is—”,

  He laughed, and the planes of his face lightened, as if the sun had struck him anew. His eyes crinkled and his brown throat moved with the sound of his laughing, and then he bent to kiss her, hard. “I told you this morning I loved you, Jessie. I want babies, too. I want you with me, always.” He sobered a little and touched her cheek. “Without you, it was like winter. Finding you is like spring again.”

  Jessie caught his face in her hands and kissed him full on the mouth, staring deep into his eyes. There she saw the future, the way it had been in her mind so long ago—a future filled with children and noise and love. So much love. “Luke.” She sighed and leaned into his embrace, drawing strength from him, feeling it circle back to him. It was, quite simply, the best feeling in the world. “I love you so much.”

  He pressed his cheek against her hair. “Will you mind coming here to live, Jessie? It would be good for Giselle.” He lifted his head. “It would be good for me.”

  “As long as we’re together, I don’t care where we live.”

  “Good.” He touched her nose lightly. “I think we should go tell Giselle.”

  Jessie laughed. “Oh, yes.”

  They found her and Daniel sitting on the swing set just beyond the door to the kitchen. Jessie glanced inside the door as they passed and saw Mary, who waved at her, smiling broadly when she saw Luke and Jessie hand in hand.

  Luke let Jessie’s hand go and went to stand before the little girl on the swing. Very seriously, he sank to a squat and took her hands. Giselle looked suddenly wary.

  “Since I have no parents and no one to give me a blessing,” Luke said quietly, “I want to ask you if you will give me permission to marry your mother.”

  Giselle’s mouth dropped open. She looked from Luke to her mother, standing a few feet back, then to Daniel and back to Luke. “You mean we’ll all live together in one house?”

  “Yeah,” Luke said.

  Giselle stood up and whooped, a wild animal cry of joy, then leapt into Luke’s arms. “Yes!” she cried.

  Jessie blinked back tears. Daniel waited, standing quietly to one side. She smiled at him, but he didn’t smile back. He looked weary, a little lonely, outcast from the picture he’d helped create, but also misplaced now from the place he’d once held. When Luke turned, Giselle on his hip, to take her inside, Jessie said, “Go ahead. We’ll be there in a minute.”

  Luke touched her arm and nodded, then ducked inside with his child, leaving Jessie and Daniel in the stillness of the dying day. Jessie just looked at him for a long moment, seeing a kaleidoscopic whirl of images overlaying the present view of him—Daniel taking her to the hospital, Daniel bullying her into one project or another, Daniel earnestly learning computers at UNM at thirty-two years old…

  She took a deep breath at the loneliness in his eyes now. “Daniel, my friend,” she said in Navajo, holding out her hands—and couldn’t go on.

  Slowly a smile dawned on his face, one of pride and gentleness. He stepped forward and hugged her. “Ah, Jessie. I’m going to miss you.”

  All these years and she had never guessed, not even for a moment, that he’d ever had anything but friendly intentions. She hugged him back, fiercely. “It won’t be the same anymore, will it?”

  She pressed her forehead into his shoulder. “Daniel—I—” She broke off, then continued, “Thank you. I can never repay you.”

  “No, my friend,” he said quietly and let her go, holding just her arms. “It’s I who can never repay you.” He twitched his lips. “Go on, now. He’s waiting. I’ve worked hard for this. Don’t cheat me of the payoff.”

  She tiptoed up to kiss his cheek, a quiet and simple mark on the end of the friendship that had meant so much to her over the years. She knew she wouldn’t lose him, that he would always be a part of their lives, but from this moment forward, there were always going to be differences.

  Then she turned quickly and h
eaded back into the kitchen, where the women were beginning to serve the evening meal.

  Chapter 16

  On Christmas Eve, Jessie waited on the bridge over Helen Hunt Falls. Around her, fat snowflakes drifted down from a pearlescent bank of clouds. The pines and spruce held a vast silence, a silence echoed by the gathering people below. It was a small number. Giselle, Marcia and Daniel.

  And Luke. He stood at the edge of Helen Hunt Falls, his face turned toward her. He wore a suit made of soft gray flannel, and a crisp white shirt with a silver bolo tie. His black hair shone with the fiery gloss of recent washing, and snowflakes stuck in starry clusters in the heavy strands.

  Next to him, Giselle for once stood utterly still, dressed in a soft white dress covered with lace, tied in back with a big blue sash. Blue ribbons were laced into her braid. In her hands she held a spray of white carnations.

  Jessie looked at Marcia, who smiled and lifted her violin. As she began to play, Jessie shifted her shawl on her shoulders and clasped her own white carnations more tightly, then turned and began the slow descent to the foot of the stairs. The long fringes of the shawl Marcia had given her as a wedding present brushed her thighs and swung in a seductive rhythm around her hips.

  She took Luke’s outstretched hand, feeling a jolt at the almost overwhelming beauty of him standing there, love shining from his liquid eyes. With a sudden sense of mischief, Jessie leaned forward and so low no one else could hear, she murmured, “Alessandro, I presume?”

  He laughed outright, squeezing her fingers tightly before he tucked them under his arm and turned them to face the minister.

  Jessie tried to concentrate, she really did. The ceremony and setting were beautiful. It should have been sacred, solemn, holy. And it was, but she was also so blindingly happy, she couldn’t stop grinning. And Luke seemed to be having the same problem. He nudged her at one point and pretended to eat the flower on his lapel, a glitter in his eyes. Jessie playfully lifted her bouquet for his perusal, and he opened his mouth—

  “Do you, Jessie, take this man…” the minister said in a slightly reproving voice.