A Love to Call Her Own (12 page)

He leaned against the railing, hands next to his hips on the well-worn wood. “Your accent gets heavier when you talk about home.”

“Does it?” People had pointed out before that thoughts of home made her sound like a cross between Scarlett O'Hara and Suzanne Sugarbaker. Good Georgia girls. “I bet you don't fall for smiles and flirting.”

“I haven't fallen for anything in a long time.”

Not since he'd picked up a girl at the feed store and she'd broken his heart. It must have been as close to love at first sight as possible, for them to have married ten days later and him still mourning four years after her death. If he knew the state of her relationship with Aaron at the time he died, he wouldn't want anything to do with her.

She
didn't want anything to do with herself.

After a long, pensive quiet, he looked at her. “You ready?”

She nodded, stopped at the table to get her purse and the sweater she hadn't needed, then they went inside the restaurant. They'd reached the vestibule when a man waiting with two small boys did a double-take, then spoke. “Hey, Dalton. I haven't seen you since—”

He broke off, his gaze darting away, leaving no doubt how he would have finished:
since Sandra's funeral.
Color bleeding into his face, he cleared his throat. “In a long time. How're you doing?”

Jessy waited for Dalton's answer. The man she'd met two months ago would have mumbled something and pushed on past. No, that man wouldn't have been here in the first place.

“I'm okay,” he said and sounded as if it were at least half true.

“And your parents?”

“They're good. They came through a few days ago.”

“Yeah, I ran into them getting gas on their way out of town.”

The guy's gaze shifted to Jessy, accompanied by a polite smile and a nod, but Dalton didn't take the hint and introduce her. She was glad he didn't, she told herself, but somewhere deep inside, a part of her smarted at the slight.

The realist chastised her.
Fair's fair. You hoped he wouldn't pick you up until Ilena and Bennie were gone because you didn't want to introduce him to them.

Of course, Ilena and Bennie wouldn't have waited for an introduction. They would have overwhelmed him with greetings and sly questions until he began looking for the nearest gopher hole to dive into. The margarita girls had that effect on a lot of people.

“Well.” The man gestured toward the bathrooms. “We're just waiting on my wife and little girl. It's good to see you.”

Dalton looked at the hand he offered before hesitantly taking it, letting go in the fastest handshake in history. “Yeah, you, too,” he said even as he ushered Jessy out the door.

Forcing him to slow his pace with her own deliberate steps, Jessy gazed into the starry sky. “Old friend?”

“Yeah. Lives down the road a couple miles.”

A neighbor, too, and he hadn't seen Dalton in four and a half years. He'd taken the hermit thing much more seriously than she'd realized. How had he stood grieving alone, with no one but the animals for comfort? She'd done the first eighteen months alone, with only casual friends, co-workers, and pickups for company, and it had almost killed her. If she hadn't met Carly, Therese, and the others when she did, she might not have survived.

But she had survived. Now it was up to her to make something worthwhile of her life.

Again the gentleman, he opened the door and waited while she climbed into the truck. Balancing on the running board, she faced him instead of sliding onto the seat. Finally she had the height advantage. Grasping the brim of his cowboy hat, she pulled it from his head and settled it on her own. It sank to cover her eyes and ears until she tilted it way back, then she studied him. “Do you get tired of being alone?”

Without the hat, he couldn't hide his eyes in the shadows. The moonlight glinted on his face, on every hard line of his somber expression. He was still so long that she thought he could have turned to stone, the way she imagined herself doing, then slowly his lips parted and he exhaled. “Yeah. Sometimes.”

She gazed down at him, and he looked back, until the restaurant door banged, followed by kids' voices. He had to know it was his neighbor's family coming out, that they would be heading for one of the few vehicles left in the parking lot, but he didn't tense, jerk his head around to look, or impatiently hustle her into the truck. For that reason, she stepped inside, sitting on the cloth-covered seat, fastening her seat belt.

She removed the hat when it bumped the headrest, started to set it on the console, then rubbed her fingers across it instead. When she heard
straw hat
, she always thought of the rough-woven hats she saw on beach vacations, not the elegant weave of this cowboy hat. It was soft to touch, nubby, and when she lifted it once more to lay it on the console, she caught a whiff of Dalton on it.

She missed manly smells.

The good ones, at least.

Once he was settled, he put the hat on again, backed out of the space, then asked, “AC or windows down?”

“Windows down, please. I spend way too much of my life in air-conditioned places.”

“I'll trade you,” he said dryly as he lowered the windows.

Of course he spent most of his days outside. The deep bronze of his skin was testament to that, as far as it went. To the best of her fuzzy memories, that was somewhere just south of his waist. From there down, he was paler than she was. And muscular. Well formed. Long legged, narrow hipped, and—

Don't go there, Jessy.

The breeze coming through the windows fluttered a piece of paper from under her seat, tickling her leg as it swirled upward. She caught it, glanced at the Double D Ranch logo on it, then tucked it under a pair of sunglasses in the cup holder. “Men and breasts,” she said, faking a reproving tone. “Tell me you didn't name the ranch after Sandra. Better yet, tell me you didn't name it at all.”

He sat easily, all loose and comfortable, with one hand resting on the steering wheel. The look he gave her was tinged with just a little bit of humor. “Okay. I didn't name it. The first Smiths to work the land did—Dooley and Donald. Every generation since then has had two sons whose names begin with D to continue the tradition.”

His younger brother's name was Noah, which meant… “So it's you and…”

“Don't ask.”

His voice was as level and benign as it had been most of the evening, but she sensed he meant the words seriously. Mystery Brother was obviously not a subject he wanted to talk about. Okay, she had no problem with that. “You know what my parents named my sisters? I'm named after a damned vine, and my sisters are Anne and Mary. You can't get any more normal than that. When Mary was born, it proved what I had suspected all along—that my mother had it in for me.”

He snorted. “And you were how old at the time?”

“Three. But I was a very wise three.”

“Did Anne and Mary ever rebel?”

Wishing she had long hair so she could take it down and feel the wind blow through it, she combed her fingers through it anyway. “They showed potential when we were young, but by middle school, they'd decided to follow the path of least resistance.” She paused a moment, then slyly added, “Traitors,” and earned a chuckle from him.

She didn't blame her sisters for taking the easy way out. Their parents were formidable people.
She
had tried her damnedest to be malleable, but something inside had refused to back down, to conform into a perfect, fragile-smiled, superficial mini-Wilkes. Lord, she had regrets, but that wasn't one of them.

Tilting her head, she gazed out the side window into the dark, hearing occasional snatches of barking, catching occasional whiffs of honeysuckle in bloom. No matter how sorry her life was now, it was preferable to the one her parents had wanted for her. That sense of entitlement, smug superiority, absolute lack of obligation, empathy, understanding…It would have smothered her.

She'd never felt as free as the day she moved out of the family home. She would never be welcomed back, and the family bank had dispensed its last dollar, but she hadn't cared. She'd walked out anyway, with the sense that
finally
she could breathe.

The rest of the trip passed in silence, and she was okay with that. Sometimes she talked just to hear the sound of a voice, but being quiet with someone else was a whole different thing than being quiet alone. With Dalton—at least, right now—it was mostly comfortable.

When he pulled to the curb in front of her apartment, she wondered if he would walk her to the door or expect to be invited inside for coffee, a drink, sex. The thought made her stomach cramp. She didn't do sex in her apartment, didn't do it without booze, was trying to avoid—

He shifted into park and shut off the engine, and she swallowed hard. But he made no move to undo his seat belt, made no move at all except to turn his head in her direction. “Isn't it noisy living downtown?”

The question pulled her from the mini-panic tumbling in her gut and allowed her to draw a full breath. “Not as much as you'd think. These old buildings are solid. You hear the trains, the church bells on Sunday, big trucks, but regular traffic, people, business, not much.”

“Still a lot compared to where I live. Lots of light, too. But at least you have a good warm overlook for the Christmas parade.”

Normal conversation. She could do that. She could appreciate that. “Oh, no, no, no. Christmas parades are meant to be enjoyed up close and personal, in the cold—preferably snow—and near enough to snag an occasional piece of candy thrown to the little ones. After I've ogled the firefighters, waved at Santa Claus, and admired the horses,
then
I go inside and warm up with a mug of hot chocolate.” With a splash of dark rum, Kahlua, or Bailey's.

Again she swallowed hard, for a totally different reason. She wished she could blink and it would be morning. She would feel stronger in the morning, with bright sunlight and the promise of a hot day.

“You spend too much time in heated places if you like the cold.”

Jessy shrugged carelessly. “Hey, you can always put on more clothes, but once you've stripped down naked, that's all the cooling you're gonna get.”

The image of bare skin and lots of it hung in the air between them, turning the air thick, damn near making it sizzle. Between the two of them, they didn't have a complete recollection of being together, but she'd seen enough of his muscles, his long legs, his broad shoulders, and his solid chest, and she had a smokin' hot imagination.

No, no, no. No naked thoughts,
she counseled herself frantically, but damn, once they were there, they were hard to push back into their corner.

Dalton cleared his throat, his voice sounding as if he had a decent imagination himself. “Yeah, tell me that when your prize mare has decided to foal in a subzero wind chill and you're wearing so many clothes you look like the Michelin tire man.”

And had a smokin' hot cowboy to help her out of them. Peeling off layers was good. They made reaching the last layer that much more rewarding, stirring steam and heat and hunger…

She would have fanned herself if he wasn't watching. Instead, she focused on the first part of the image he'd conjured—her all bundled up in coveralls and thermals and whatever the hell else ranchers wore to brave the winter temperatures—but it refused to form. That was enough to steer her thoughts in the right direction. After all, for one, she didn't do ugly clothes. Two—she didn't do
birthing
of any sort. Three—well, one and two were enough.

“Sorry, cowboy, that's not happening.” She opened the door, gathered her purse and sweater, then looked back at him. “Thanks for dinner. I enjoyed the company.”

Though he'd commented earlier about downtown's excess of lights, she couldn't make out the expression on his face before he slowly responded with a bit of a smile. “Yeah. I did, too.”

She leaned closer to him, voice lowered, breathing shallowly to avoid the intoxicating scent of him. “Good night, Dalton.”

As she slid to the ground, he murmured to her back, “See you later.”

Vague words, as much a brush-off as a promise, but they sent a tiny spark of pleasure through her as she closed the door, flashed him a smile through the open window, then sashayed to her apartment door.

She didn't hear the truck pull away until she was locked safely inside. But how safe was it, really? she wondered as thirst tugged at her.

She'd made it through two nights. Would she manage a third, or was she going to be one sorry mess in the morning?

The only funeral services Lucy had ever thought she would help plan were for her parents, when they were in their eighth or ninth decades, but on Thursday afternoon she found herself at one of the local funeral homes. One of the grimmest places on earth, though she'd been in others even grimmer.

To her left sat Patricia and LoLo Baxter. Declining the offer of a seat, Ben stood behind them, clearly uncomfortable in the setting. While Patricia answered the director's questions about George's background for the obituary, he wandered away. After a moment, Lucy followed him into the room next door, filled with caskets and discreet signs listing their features.

“At least Patricia doesn't have to deal with this,” she said quietly when she stopped beside him. “The Army provides it.”

He nodded, though his look was distant as if he hadn't really heard her words. He touched the gunmetal finish of one sample casket, then laid his fingertips against the pale gray satin lining. “I was twenty-five when I did my father's funeral arrangements.”

“I was twenty-eight when I did Mike's. Thank God, his mother and mine were with me.” As soon as she said the words, she grimaced. Ben's mother hadn't been with him, having long since married George. Hopefully, he'd had an aunt, an uncle, a friend, to help him get through it.