Lost and Found Groom

by McLinn, Patricia

  “Oh, I like that!” She said of his turn. “It feels like the way the hills look from up here, smooth but curvy. See that pasture, over there, Daniel? Beyond that line of trees? That’s where I met my first rattlesnake.”

  She told him other stories, in between spotting landmarks.

  “There’s Ridge House–see Ellyn’s car? And there’s Kendra’s house, with the fence–I told Luke that fence wasn’t straight.”

  He chuckled. “You’re a tough taskmaster. I sure hope you don’t take surveyor tools to the section I helped him fix.”

  “You’re a novice. You’re allowed some leeway.”

  “Thank you, ma’am.”

  He wondered about this change of attitude. She’d clearly mistrusted him at the start. Maybe his dealings with Matthew and Kendra had persuaded her he wasn’t a threat to them. If so, that was more than he’d managed with Kendra.

  “I hear you’ve been doing some volunteer spotting for the firefighters on the west slope.”

  Somehow he wasn’t surprised she knew. Would she tell Kendra?

  “A little. Filling in for Rufus.”

  He took her down close enough to see the stubble from a recently hayed field. Then climbed toward the mountains. Threads of streams sewed the patches of land into a mosaic that swept part way up the mountains before giving way to the textured green of pines.

  Marti pointed past him, out his side window. “See that rock outcropping? There, beyond those fir trees, two-thirds of the way up that mountain with the uneven peak. That’s Crooked Mountain, the western edge of Far Hills Ranch. And you can get almost as good a view of the spread from that outcropping as you do from up here. Almost.”

  Marti didn’t speak again until they’d landed, he’d shut down the engine and unbuckled his seatbelt.

  “Did Kendra tell you about the founding of Far Hills Ranch?”

  “Not that I remember.” And he remembered it all.

  “It happened right here, in 1878,” Marti said in a dreamy voice. “The campfire burned for four days and four nights on that outcropping on Crooked Mountain, until my great-grandfather Charles Susland rode up there to see an Indian woman named Leaping Star.”

  Daniel listened to a story of Kendra’s family five generations old. He didn’t even know who his mother was. Was that Marti’s point?

  Marti ended with, “Kendra used to want to hear that story all the time when she came here for summers. I’m surprised she didn’t tell you about Charles Susland. She seems to feel she told you everything there was to tell during that hurricane.”

  “She told me some.”

  “And you told her nothing. It’s going to take some doing to get her to forgive that you know her so much better than she knows you–or so she thinks.”

  *

  “Daniel?”

  At the sound of Kendra’s voice on the phone, Daniel pushed aside the sectional charts he’d been studying, acquainting himself with mountains he’d be flying over to spot the fires’ progress.

  “ ’Morning, Kendra.”

  “Daniel, I wondered–if you can’t do it, it’s all right–but I wondered if you’d be free to take care of Matthew for a couple hours today.”

  “Sure.”

  “I wouldn’t ask you, but–”

  “You can quit explaining, Kendra, I said yes. What time?”

  “Oh. Twelve-thirty? It’s the yearly meeting with the ranch accountant, Marti likes me to be there. I’ll be back by three. But you should know–Matthew was up all night with a sore throat and fever. That’s why he can’t go to the co-op. He’s better, but . . .”

  “I’ll come now.” He heard the beginnings of her protest and talked over it. “He was up all night, so you were up all night. You can get some sleep before your meeting.”

  “Daniel?”

  “What?” He braced for more arguing.

  “Thank you.”

  “I’m glad you called me,” he said gruffly.

  *

  “So, Daniel’s taking care of Matthew,” said Marti, not for the first time. “Getting easier and easier to rely on him, isn’t it?”

  “I’d be a fool to get too deeply involved with him.”

  It was more a reminder to herself that she was a fool than an answer. Kendra did rely on him more and more, and that was a form of involvement.

  As soon as he’d shown up, he’d hustled her off to her room with orders to sleep. And she had. Matthew’s crying had awakened her once, but she’d recognized it as the sound of frustration rather than pain, and she’d fallen back asleep. Only when she was showering and dressing for the trip to Sheridan with Marti had she recognized that she’d trusted Daniel to deal with their son.

  She added aloud now, as she drove up the ranch road on their return home, “He’s going to be leaving soon.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not.”

  Kendra turned from watching storm clouds bubbling over the mountains. “What do you mean? Do you know something, Marti?”

  “Can’t say I know anything.”

  “Marti,” she warned.

  “Look at that,” Marti interrupted as she turned into the road to Kendra’s house. “Somebody lost a hubcap.”

  Although Kendra spotted the shiny object in the ditch beside the road, she ignored the red herring. “You haven’t said anything about going flying the other day. Did Daniel tell you something?”

  “I decided you’re right. I shouldn’t be quizzing you about the boy, so I’m keeping my thoughts about the flying to myself.”

  Kendra had never said anything of the sort–thought it, yes, but hadn’t said it. They’d reached her door, so there wasn’t time to argue. Besides, arguing might sound as if she welcomed Marti’s comments on her situation with Daniel or wanted to know what her aunt and he had talked about while they were encased in that tiny airplane.

  Neither, of course, was true.

  Marti pointed toward Daniel’s parked car. “Must be his hubcap.”

  “I’ll tell him. Thanks for the ride, Marti.”

  The only sound in the house was a faint murmur from the back of the house. She hung up the red wool jacket she’d worn over a princess-seamed denim dress and followed the sound. She stopped in the doorway to Matthew’s room.

  Daniel sat in the rocking chair, with Matthew across his lap, the child’s head cushioned against his father’s arm and a blanket wrapped around him. In a low, soft voice, with his eyes closed, Daniel sang one of the soothing songs she remembered from Santa Estella. Matthew was sound asleep.

  She’d thought so many times that for Matthew’s sake she would never keep father and son apart. Now she saw it was also for Daniel’s sake.

  She stepped back, retracing her steps soundlessly, not sure if she meant to give Daniel privacy or protect herself from having to acknowledge what she’d seen. And felt.

  In the kitchen, she clattered dishes in starting a pot of coffee. She was looking out the kitchen window at the patch of clouds now nearly on top of them when Daniel came around the corner.

  “Hi. How’d the meeting go?”

  “Fine. Marti would like to see my cousin Grif more involved, but. . .” She shrugged. “How’s Matthew?”

  “Fine now. I gave him more of that medicine at two like you said. That seemed to help. He’s sleeping.”

  “Good. Thanks. Oh, you tossed a hubcap turning into the drive. Marti spotted it. One of the hazards of ranch roads. And you never know when you might need a hubcap to hold a fire.”

  If she could have snatched the words out of the air she would have. What was she thinking, reminding him of their refuge from Aretha? It gave him the perfect opening to bring up their past, when she’d been working so hard to avoid that.

  But he said only, “I thought I heard something. I’ll get it after a cup of that coffee you’re making.”

  “You better go now. Storm’s coming.”

  He looked toward the back door, which showed only blue sky in its window. “I’ve got time.”

  She
raised her eyebrows, but didn’t argue. He’d learn about Wyoming storms. She got out the last of the oatmeal raisin cookies Marti had brought over, and poured Daniel his coffee.

  The conversation about her meeting was easy and casual. He’d finished his coffee and four cookies when he got up.

  “Guess I’ll get that hubcap now.”

  “Okay.” She took the dishes to the sink to hide her smile.

  As soon as he was out the door, though, she followed, watching him saunter down the driveway. Sure enough, he was about two yards from the hubcap when she heard the first, fat drops hit the roof. Daniel lifted his face to the sky, as if he’d been hit, too, but picked up his speed only a little. He had bent over to retrieve the piece of metal when the skies opened.

  She was laughing hard by the time he reached the door she held open for him. He was soaked–dripping, sopping wet. He swore in a mixture of English and Spanish as he dropped the freshly washed hubcap on the porch.

  “I tried to tell you. No–stay there, I’ll get a towel.”

  “You didn’t try very hard,” he called after her as she went around the corner to the laundry area. “And there’s still blue sky.”

  “There’s so much sky here, that most of it can look clear, but if you’re under the clouds, you’ll get it.”

  She rounded the corner with the towel and stopped. One minute she was laughing, and then she wasn’t. The storm had dimmed the small back hall. The rain had plastered his shirt and jeans to his body, and he’d combed back his wet hair with his fingers.

  She would have liked to have been able to say the change in atmosphere started from him, but that wasn’t the truth. He looked up, reaching for the towel, then stopped as their eyes met.

  She took the final step forward.

  His lips were cool and wet, then hot in an instant, as their mouths met and opened. She wanted to wrap herself in his scent and his taste. She felt him against her, his body solid and familiar, his arms around her bringing her a warmth she hadn’t known since he had made her forget a hurricane.

  Memories.

  She jolted away from him. Pushing against his chest.

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t–this was a mistake.”

  He backed off less than an arm’s length, his hands cupping her shoulders. “Mistake.”

  “The rain. And . . . with your hair like that, you look like you did–then. Like Paulo.”

  She’d said the words deliberately. A weapon to make him back away before she no longer wanted him to back away.

  And she could see from the way his skin thinned over his cheekbones that her weapon had struck home. She dropped her head and saw wet marks on her dress from where their bodies had met. She brushed at them, as if that would erase what had happened.

  “You were kissing Paulo?”

  She heard the anger in his voice, knew she’d pushed him toward some edge. But that was all right. Because it would pull her back from her own edge. The edge of forgetting what she couldn’t feel, what she couldn’t let happen.

  “If that’s what you want to call it. The rain, the smell. All those memories. It was Paulo. A memory–no, a figment.”

  Anger was in his eyes, too. But there was something else. Something not as easy to define–or withstand–as anger.

  With deliberate movements he placed his hands to either side of her neck, resting against the wall behind her, then slowly he bent his elbows, leaning his body toward her.

  “You’re lying.”

  She tensed to keep from responding to the heat and damp surrounding her, to him surrounding her.

  “Memories are powerful–”

  “You’re lying, Kendra. This isn’t memory. This is now. This is us. You know who I am. You know.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Who am I, Kendra?”

  “It’s the rain, you look–”

  “Who am I, Kendra? Now.”

  “It’s the rain–”

  “Who am I?”

  “Daniel, it’s . . . You’re–”

  His kiss was relentless, demanding. She met it. Equaled it, deepened it. She felt the form of his body, under her hands, pressing against her tightening breasts, and lower, where the heat grew and spread. But she wanted more, she wanted to feel the texture of his skin again, the flow of his muscles.

  Their mouths still joined, she struggled with the maddening buttons and wet cloth of his shirt. He grasped either side of her dress and pulled the snaps open down the front, his hands sliding over her body in hot, welcomed strokes.

  At last his shirt opened, and she spread her palms across his chest, the wet, curling hair clinging to her fingers. He’d opened her bra, freeing her breasts so they pressed against his bare skin as he drew her firmly against him, one hand spread on her back, the other across her buttocks. He stroked his tongue deep into her mouth, and she knew that rhythm immediately. Pulsed to it, strained to it. Until she thought she would explode with it.

  He kissed down her throat, then lower. His tongue flicked over her hardened nipple, then his mouth covered it, as she felt his fingers tug at the waistband of her panties.

  Longing and pleasure braided together so tightly that she moaned with it. As her hands stroked over his bent back, he gave a sound from deep in his throat that celebrated their heat.

  And then another sound. A creaking–familiar, and yet for an instant it didn’t register in Kendra’s desire-fogged mind.

  “Hey! Anybody home?” Ellyn’s voice.

  Oh, God–the door! That was the sound.

  “Good heavens, we had a real gully-washer for a while. I’m afraid it’s already let up, though, and they’re saying it won’t be enough to break the–” A gasp, partially smothered interrupted that flow. “Oh! I–Oh, I’m sorry.”

  Daniel shifted so his shoulder rested against the wall, his back to the door, shielding Kendra from sight.

  “It’s all right, Ellyn,” Kendra got out. “We’re just . . . It’s all right.” Her fingers couldn’t manage the complex motion of hooking her bra in back with her dress still partially on. She gave that up and frantically pulled the sides of the dress together to start snapping it closed, and discovered the telltale wet blotches.

  “I’ll go,” Ellyn volunteered, a laugh lurking.

  “Don’t be ridiculous. I’ll . . . I’ll be right back.” And with that, she turned and fled, leaving Daniel to deal with Ellyn as best he could.

  Daniel watched her go. It would take several days of fence-fixing to put a dent in this ache.

  “Sorry, Ellyn,” he said, still with his back to her.

  “I’m the one who’s sorry. I rushed in to get out of the rain, and now it’s already stopped. Guess the drought will continue.”

  “Yeah.” He didn’t bother to button his wet shirt, but he adjusted his jeans before turning around. “No end for this drought.”

  He didn’t see the other meaning for his words until he caught the glint in her eyes as she followed him out the back door.

  “I might as well go, too. Somehow I don’t think Kendra’s going to be in the mood to talk about my great idea for the supplement’s layout. But remember, Daniel–” She patted his arm. “The end of any drought starts with a drop.”

  *

  She would have made love with him. Right there in her kitchen. She couldn’t deny to herself, didn’t even try, that in another few minutes, she would have joined with him with the same rush of rightness she’d experienced with Paulo on Santa Estella.

  Only he wasn’t Paulo.

  There’d been no confusion in her mind. Or her heart. The man she would have made love with was Daniel Delligatti.

  Daniel Benton Delligatti.

  And who the hell is he?

  He’d promised after he arrived at her door using a name she’d never heard that he would answer her questions, give her a chance to know him. She’d recognized what that cost him, a man accustomed to masking his emotions and burying himself. And she hadn’t made it easy on him. Stil
l, he’d kept his word.

  Maybe more so than he’d intended. His emotions over Matthew’s birth certificate and when he’d returned from his debriefing had been raw, uncensored, stripped of the self-protectiveness provided by the self-mocking delivery he’d used to reveal other hurtful elements of his past.

  Was that when she’d started to fall in love with Daniel?

  She covered her mouth, as if that could stop the words her mind had spoken.

  Started. Oh, God It had to be only started.

  Because there remained that part of Daniel she couldn’t reconcile with. The element in him that had given rise to Taumaturgio. The masked crusader. The risk-defying miracle worker. The man who would fly into the night to save the world, and never return to her or to their son.

  Taumaturgio was as much a part of Daniel Delligatti as the street-hardened child or the confused adolescent or the rumpled Tompkins or the gentle Paulo. And Taumaturgio was the part of him that could break her heart, and Matthew’s.

  *

  Daniel hadn’t lost his skills. He knew someone had tracked him through the aisles of the Far Hills Market.

  He stepped into the express lane with his coffee, crackers, apples and peanut butter, then turned to face his pursuer.

  Marti Susland.

  “Daniel. I’d like to talk to you.”

  “Okay,” he agreed slowly. “Here?”

  “No. I’ll get us soft drinks from the machine–” She tipped her head toward the exit. “–and meet you across the street on the bench by the post office.”

  She popped the top of her soda can as he arrived.

  “Remember what I told you about the founding of Far Hills?” she asked as he took the can she held out. “About the legend?”

  “Yeah, I remember.”

  “But I didn’t tell you what happened after Leaping Star died up on that overlook.” She gazed off to some distant point. “I’d always heard about the Suslands having a lot of tragedies, but I didn’t know the details, not until I started doing research for the local history section we’re working on. I didn’t know a lot of things . . .

  “Charles Susland and Annalee had five babies–one died at birth, another died of diphtheria. A daughter died in childbirth. A son died in an insane asylum. My grandfather was shot to death during a bank robbery in the thirties.