“Steve, we came to see the foal,” Laura Jane said breathlessly.
“Right in there.” He tilted his head toward the stall he had just left.
Laura Jane went inside it. Steve searched Caroline’s eyes inquisitively. “Cancer,” she said in answer to his silent question. “Only a matter of time.”
Steve cursed under his breath and glanced toward the young woman kneeling in the hay, crooning to the foal. “Have you told her?”
“Yes. She accepted it better than any of us.”
He nodded and smiled at Caroline ruefully. “Yes. She would.”
“Oh, Steve, she’s beautiful, isn’t she?”
He touched Caroline’s shoulder briefly, self-consciously, then went into the stall. Caroline followed and watched him as he awkwardly knelt down beside Laura Jane. The Vietnam War had left him without the lower half of his left leg. He wore a prosthesis that was virtually indiscernible unless he had to bend it as now.
“She is pretty, isn’t she? And her mania’s so proud of her.” He patted the mare’s rump, but his eyes were on Laura Jane. Caroline watched as he reached up and pulled free a straw that had attached itself to Laura Jane’s hair. His fingers lightly grazed her flawless cheek. Laura Jane raised her eyes to him and they smiled at each other.
Caroline was momentarily stunned by the intimate exchange. Were these two in love with each other? She didn’t quite know what to make of the idea. Tactfully she withdrew, but Steve looked up at her. “Mrs. Lancaster, if there’s anything I can do …” He left the offer open-ended.
“Thank you, Steve. For the time being just carry on as you have been.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He knew she had been instrumental in Roscoe’s hiring him. She had been working for Roscoe when Steve Bishop had showed up to apply for the job of stable manager, carrying his bitterness in front of him like a shield. His ponytail had grown halfway down his back, his denim vest was covered with peace signs and patches with antiwar and anti-American slogans on them. He had been surly and belligerent, almost daring Roscoe to give him a job, a chance, when so many others had refused to.
Caroline had seen through his disguise and into the real man. He was desperate. She felt an automatic affinity with him. She knew the hurt that could come from being labeled, knew what it was like to be judged by an appearance and background one couldn’t help. Because the veteran said he had worked on a horse ranch in California before the war, Caroline had talked Roscoe into hiring him.
Roscoe had never regretted it. Steve had cut his hair and modified his appearance immediately, as though the trappings of rebellion were no longer necessary. He worked diligently, conscientiously, and had a rapport with the thoroughbred horses that was uncanny. The man had only needed a vote of confidence to restore his self-esteem.
Caroline mused on all that as she went back toward the house. Steve and Laura Jane in love. She shook her head, smiling, as she entered the foyer. The telephone was ringing and she automatically picked it up before Haney had a chance. “Hello?”
“Caroline, Granger.”
“Yes?”
“I’ve spoken with Rink. He’ll arrive some time this evening.”
There were a million things to be done in the afternoon, a million people to notify. Roscoe had no living relatives save his son and daughter, so there was no family to be concerned with. But everyone in the county, and many in the state of Mississippi, would want to know of Roscoe’s illness. Caroline divided the list with Granger and spent a great deal of time on the telephone.
“Haney, you’d better get Rink’s old room in order. He’s coming home tonight.”
At that the housekeeper burst into copious tears. “Praise God, praise God. I’ve been praying for the day my baby would come home. His mama is dancing in Heaven today. She surely is. All that room needs is fresh bed linens. I’ve been keeping it clean against the day he’d come back to it. Lordy, Lardy, I can’t wait to clap eyes on him.”
Caroline tried not to think of the moment when she would have to look at the prodigal son, speak to him. She busied herself with the myriad tasks at hand.
Nor did she think of Roscoe’s imminent death. That would come later, in private. Not even when she visited the hospital late in the afternoon and sat by his bedside did she let herself dwell on the thought that he would never leave the place. He was still a captive of the anesthetic, but she thought a small pressure was applied to her hand when she took his and squeezed it in goodbye.
At dinner, she told Laura Jane about Rink’s coming home. The girl jumped out of her chair, grabbed Haney and began to dance her around the room. “He promised he would come back someday, didn’t he, Haney? Rink’s coming home! I’ve got to tell Steve.” She raced out the back door toward the stables, where Steve had an apartment.
“That girl’s gonna make a nuisance out of herself if she doesn’t leave that young man alone.”
Caroline smiled secretly. “I don’t think so.” Haney cocked one inquiring eyebrow, but Caroline didn’t elaborate. She picked up her glass of mint-sprigged iced tea and went out onto the front veranda. As she sat down in a wicker rocking chair, her head fell back onto the flowered cushion and her eyes closed.
This was the time she loved best at The Retreat, the early evening, when lights from inside the house shone through the windows and made them look like jewels. Shadows were long and darkly hued and melded into one another so that there were no sharp angles or distinct shapes. The sky overhead was a rare and lovely shade of violet, dense and impenetrable. The trees were looming black etchings against it. Bullfrogs down on the river channel croaked hoarsely and cicadas filled the breeze-less, humid air with their shrill soprano notes. The rich delta earth smelled of fecundity. Each flower gave off a unique and heady perfume.
After long moments of rest, Caroline opened her eyes. That was when she saw him.
He was standing motionless beneath the branches of a sprawling live oak. Her heart rocketed into her throat and her vision blurred. She didn’t know if he were real or a mirage. Dizziness assailed her and she gripped the slippery iced-tea glass hard to keep it from sliding through her cold, stiff fingers.
He nudged himself away from the trunk of the tree and moved, pantherlike and silent, coming closer until he stood at the brick steps leading up to the porch.
He was only a shadow among many, but there was no mistaking the clean masculine lines of his shape as he stood with his feet widely separated. Physically the years had been kind to him. He was no less trim than the first time she had seen him. Darkness hid his face from her, but she caught the shine of straight white teeth as he smiled slowly.
It was an indolent smile if it matched his tone of voice. “Well as I live and breathe, if it isn’t Caroline Dawson.” He placed one booted foot on the bottom step and bent at the waist to prop his arms on his knee. He looked up at her and the light from the entrance hall fell on his features. Her heart constricted with pain … and love. “Only it’s Lancaster now, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it’s Lancaster now. Hello, Rink.”
That face! That face had haunted her dreams and filled her fantasies. It was still the most marvelous face she had ever seen. Good in his twenties, he was magnificent in his thirties. Black hair, the Devil’s own, intimated the wildness of his spirit with swirling strands that defied control. His eyes, which had mystified her from the first time she had seen them, intrigued her anew. People with no imagination would call them light brown. But they were gold, like the purest dark honey, the finest liquor, like sparkling topazes.
The last time she’d seen him, those eyes were blazing with passion. Tomorrow. … Tomorrow, baby. Here. In our place. Oh, God, Caroline, kiss me again. Then: Tomorrow, tomorrow. Only he hadn’t returned the next day or ever again.
“Funny,” he commented in a tone that left her to believe it wasn’t funny at all, “us sharing the same last name.”
There was no answer for that. She wanted to shout that they could have shared the same las
t name years ago if he hadn’t been a liar, if he hadn’t betrayed her. Some things were better left unsaid. “I didn’t hear your car.”
“I flew in, landed on the airstrip and walked from there.”
The landing strip was about a mile away. “Oh. Why?”
“Maybe I didn’t know what kind of welcome I was going to get.”
“This is your home, Rink.”
His curse was vicious and rank. “Yeah, sure it is.”
She wet her lips with her tongue and wished she had the courage to try standing. She feared to, afraid her legs wouldn’t support her. “You haven’t asked about your father.”
“Granger filled me in.”
“You know he’s dying, then.”
“Yes. And he wants to see me. Wonders never cease.”
His scathing remark brought her out of the chair without having to think about it. “He’s a sick old man, Rink. Not at all the way you remember him.”
“If he’s got one breath of life in his body, he’s exactly the way I remember him.”
“I won’t argue with you about this.”
“I’m not arguing.”
“And I won’t have you upsetting him or Laura Jane or Haney. They’re looking forward to seeing you.”
“You won’t have? My, my. You do consider yourself mistress of The Retreat, don’t you?”.
“Please, Rink. The next few weeks are going to be difficult enough without—”
“I know, I know.” His long sigh reached her where she stood tensely on the porch, her hands clasped tightly together. She had set her glass of tea on the porch railing for fear of dropping it. “I can’t wait to see them, either,” he said and glanced toward the stables. “I saw Laura Jane come out of the house a while ago, but didn’t want to suddenly appear out of the dark and scare her. I remember her as a little girl. I can’t believe she’s all grown-up.”
An image of Laura Jane and Steve kneeling in the hay of the stall together, his rough fingers brushing her cheek, came to Caroline’s mind. She wondered what Rink would think of his sister’s romance. It made her uneasy to surmise. “She’s a woman now, Rink.”
She felt his eyes on her, touring, analyzing, assessing. Like warm brandy they poured over her and touched everywhere. “And you,” he said softly. “You’re all grown-up now, too, aren’t you, Caroline? A woman.”
She was remarkably unchanged. The beauty of the fifteen-year-old girl he had known had only mellowed.
He had hoped to find her fat, disheveled, frumpy, with lackluster hair and heavy thighs. Instead she was still reed slender, with a waist that looked like a strong Gulf breeze would snap her in two. Her breasts had matured to a soft fullness, but they were still high, round and achingly touchable. Damn her! How often had his father touched her?
He took the steps up to the porch slowly, like a predator who wasn’t hungry but only wanted to torment his prey. The golden eyes, gleaming through the darkness, held hers. The wide sensuous lips were fixed in a sly, knowing smile, as though he knew she was remembering things she wished she could forget, like how his lips felt on her mouth, on her throat, on her breasts.
She spun on her heel. “I’ll call Haney. She’ll be—”
His hand flashed out to manacle her wrist and she was jerked to a halt. He forced her around to face him. “Hold on a minute,” he said silkily. “After twelve years, don’t you think we can greet each other more cordially?”
His free hand wrapped around the back of her neck and brought her face up dangerously close to his. “Remember, we’re kinfolks now,” he whispered tauntingly. Then his lips swooped down on hers, hard and angry. He took them brutally with his mouth, punishing her for all the nights he had had to think about her, his unspoiled Caroline, sharing her bed, her body, with his father.
Her fists dug into his chest. There was a roaring in her ears. Her knees went to jelly. She fought him. She fought herself harder. Because she wanted to fling her arms around him and hold him close, to know again the thrill of being in his embrace.
But this wasn’t an embrace, it was an insult. She struggled for all she was worth to tear her mouth free.
When she succeeded, he slid his hands into his jeans pockets and grinned with mocking triumph at her outraged expression and bruised lips. “Greetings, Mom,” he drawled.
Chapter 2
Caroline gasped, her breasts heaving with anger and humiliation. “What a wretched thing to say! How can you be so horrible?”
“How could you marry that rotten old man who just happens to be my father?”
“He isn’t rotten. He’s been good to me.”
His laugh was a short barking sound. “Oh, I can see how good to you he’s been. Are those pearls in your ears? Diamonds on your hand? You’ve come up in the world, haven’t you, Caroline of the river? You live in The Retreat now. And didn’t you tell me one time you’d give anything to live in a house like this?” He leaned over her and spoke in a low growl. “Let me guess what you gave my father before he married you.”
She slapped him hard. It happened before she could measure the wisdom of it. One instant he was grinding out his insults and the next her palm was cracking across his hard cheek. It made her hand burn and she hoped his cheek felt the same sting.
He backed away, grinning a sardonic smile that made her angrier than his deprecating words. “Whatever I gave him, it was more than you did these last twelve years. He was heartbroken, living alone in this house, pining for you.”
He laughed again. “Pining? That’s good, Caroline. Pining.” One knee bent so that his weight was shifted to his other leg in an arrogant stance. His arms crossed over his chest and he tilted his head. “Why is it so difficult for me to envision my father pining over anything? Especially my absence.”
“I’m sure he wanted you here.”
“He was as glad to see the last of me as I was of him,” he said harshly. “Spare me any more sentimentality. If you attribute it to Roscoe, I assure you, you imagined it.”
“I don’t know what your quarrel was, but he’s sick now, Rink. Dying. Please don’t make things harder than they already are.”
“Whose idea was it to notify me, yours or Granger’s?”
“Roscoe’s.”
“That’s what Granger said, but I don’t believe it.”
“It’s the truth.”
“Then he sure as hell has an ulterior motive.”
“Roscoe wants to see his son before he dies!” she exclaimed. “That’s motive enough.”
“Not for Roscoe it’s not. He’s a cunning, manipulative bastard and if he got me here to watch him die, believe me he has a reason.”
“You shouldn’t speak to me this way about him. He’s my husband.”
“That’s your problem.”
“Caroline? Who’s— Oh, my Lord. Rink!“ Haney barreled through the screen door and embraced Rink in a hug that would have squeezed the life out of a less brawny man. He hugged her back just as hard. Tears came to Caroline’s eyes as she watched the bitterness and derision leave his face to be replaced by a wide grin of pure joy. His golden eyes were now lit with happiness, his teeth gleamed whitely behind a broad smile.
“Haney! God, how I’ve missed you.”
“You could have written more often,” she sniffed, drawing herself up and trying to look indignant.
“I apologize,” he said humbly, though his eyes were as mischievous as they had been every time the housekeeper had caught him with his hand in the cookie jar. He’d always gotten away with it. He did now.
“I see that you’ve met Caroline,” Haney said, beaming at the two of them.
“Oh, yes. I’ve met Caroline. We’ve been getting to know each other.”
The housekeeper missed the glance he gave Caroline. “You haven’t been eating right, I can see that. Making money hand over fist, picture showing up in the newspaper all the time, and still you look like you never get a decent meal. Well, get on inside. I’ve got supper warmed over for you.”
“And pecan pie. I can smell it from here,” he teased, pushing her through the door.
“I didn’t bake it special for you.”
“Now, come on, Haney. You and I both know better.”
“And it’s a coincidence that we had chicken gumbo for supper, too.”
For weeks after Caroline had moved into The Retreat as its new mistress, she had felt like a visitor who didn’t really belong. But months had passed. Laura Jane had accepted her as a friend. Haney had come to like her. But now, seeing Rink in his home, hearing the sound of his boots on the antique hardwood floors and hearing his voice echo through the high-ceilinged rooms, Caroline once again felt like an interloper. Rink belonged here. She didn’t.
By the time she had followed them into the kitchen, Haney had Rink sitting at the large round oak table with a heaping plate of food in front of him. He was surveying the room. “Nothing’s changed,” he said warmly.
“I had the kitchen painted a couple of years ago,” Haney told him. “But I told Mr. Lancaster that I wasn’t going to change the color. I wanted everything to stay the same for the day when you came home.”
Rink swallowed and moved a forkful of food around his plate. “I’m not home for good, Haney. Only until Daddy … gets settled down again.”
Haney’s busy hands paused in their endless tasks. She looked down at the man as though he were still a young boy in her charge. “I don’t want you to go running off again, Rink. This is where you belong.”
His eyes flicked toward Caroline then back down to his plate. “There’s nothing here for me anymore,” he said angrily before shoving another bite into his mouth.
Bitter Sweet Rain Page 2
