Chasing the Sun (27 page)

After talking to Doc, and when Molly wasn’t around, he’d looked through some of her medical books. In addition to learning more about male sterility than any man should know, he’d found out some disturbing things about childbirth mortality. Thousands of women died every year—young women, bearing normal-sized babies. Molly was thirty-three and he was anything but normal in size. Odds were against them, and Hank would gladly accept sterility rather than take that bet.

“Maybe it’s a good thing, Molly.” Lifting her hand, he twined his fingers with hers, clasping them palm to palm. “Look at you and look at me.” His hand dwarfed hers. His wrist was almost double hers in size. “You breed a fine-boned Arabian mare to an eighteen-hand Clydesdale, you’re just asking for trouble.”

“You’re comparing me to a horse?”

He smiled. “A really beautiful horse.”

She tried to smile back, but the sadness was still there behind her beautiful almost-green eyes.

He pushed on. “And look at Brady and Jessica. He’s smaller than me and she’s bigger than you. Look at how difficult it’s been for her. She almost didn’t make it.”

“That doesn’t signify.”

“It does to me. It’s a real risk, Molly. You could die struggling to bring my child into the world and I couldn’t live with that. So maybe it’s a good thing.”

Releasing his hand, she brushed tears away. “But I wanted to have babies, Hank.
Your
babies. I wanted—” Her voice broke.

“I know.” Pulling her back down against his chest, he wrapped his arms tight around her, as if that might shield her from the pain he knew she was feeling. “But we need you, Molly ... Charlie and Penny and I. And the world needs you for all the good you can do and the people you can help. You’re too important to risk.”

She cried a long time. He said nothing more, just held her and waited for the indomitable spirit that was Molly to reassert itself. It might take a while, weeks even, but when it did, maybe she’d be ready to hear what he’d found out about a thing called the Orphan Train.

“TELL ME ABOUT YOUR TRAVELS,” DAISY SAID.

Jack laughed. “I wouldn’t know where to start.”

He had reversed the schedule for the day, moving Kate’s riding lesson to late morning so they could have a picnic lunch. Now they sat on the blanket amid the remains of their feast, Daisy with her arms around her upraised knees, Jack, stretched on his back, his heels propped on the lid of the picnic basket, Kate by his shoulder, digging happily in the dirt.

Daisy had tried to stay mad at him after his horrid teasing the previous evening when he’d coerced her into singing for the family. But by morning her pique had faded to reluctant amusement. He did that so easily—changed frowns into smiles. Just another part of his charm. And anyway, today was too lovely to waste in anger ... fleecy clouds overhead, the breeze pleasantly cool, the sunshine like a warm hand against her back. Besides, thinking back on his comments, she couldn’t help but be a little flattered. He’d called her voice beautiful, after all.

“Start with the favorite place you’ve been,” she suggested.

“I guess that would be Katoomba in the Blue Mountains,” he said after giving it some thought. “That’s in Australia.”

“Why is it special?”

“It’s a place of mystery. Misty and wild, filled with plants, and reptiles, and birds you’ll never see anywhere else. It looks a lot like that.” He pointed to the flat-topped mountain at the west end of the valley. “But much bigger, and littered with caves, and strange rock formations, and gorges that drop down over two thousand feet.” His smoky eyes took on a distant look. “It’s something to see.”

Daisy suspected that for Jack to stay in one place for long would be as torturous as a slow death.

“But I liked Tasmania too,” he went on. “And New Zealand and the islands of the South Pacific. It’s a big world and I’ve only seen a small corner of it.”

Resting her chin on her knees, Daisy watched the play of sunlight across his handsome features. Had he always had that small lump on the bridge of his nose? And that mole on his cheek? She studied him, noting a new scar cutting through one eyebrow and more squint lines than she remembered fanning out from his remarkable eyes. Were the grooves bracketing his mobile—and talented—mouth deeper? It struck her that despite the intimacy they had shared, in many ways they were strangers. Who was Jack Wilkins really? What drove him?

“Where do you intend to go next?” she asked, seeking clues to this familiar stranger beside her.

“North,” he said without hesitation. “To see a polar bear and the aurora borealis and listen to the crack of ice breaking on the Yukon River. Then maybe east and across the Atlantic. I’ve always wanted to sail the Irish coast where Grandpa Brady lived and stand on the battlements of an ancient fortress.”

As he spoke, his features livened and his hand gestures became more enthusiastic. “From there I’d go south. Maybe ride across the Pyrenees on an elephant like Hannibal did. Or walk where the gladiators fought, and rest my hand on the cold face of Michelangelo’s
Pietà
. I want to go to Egypt too. And race an Arabian stallion through the shadows of the pyramids, and visit the tombs of the great pharaohs. Or maybe float down the Zambezi into the rainbow mist of Victoria Falls.” He seemed to catch himself, then turned his head toward her and flashed an embarrassed lopsided smile. “You asked.”

And she was glad she had. This was a side of Jack she had never met. She had never realized how knowledgeable he was. She had to wonder why he hid his intelligence behind a careless smile and presented such a flighty, haphazard image to the world.

“What’s a
Pietà
?” she asked.

Rather than commenting on her ignorance, he became earnest again. “A statue of the Virgin Mary holding the dead Christ. I saw a picture of it in a museum in Sydney. It’s amazing, Daisy. Snow-white marble polished smooth as glass, carved hundreds of years ago by a man barely in his twenties. It’s in Rome. There are a lot of places in Italy I want to see. And Greece. And in Africa and South America. Do you know they eat humans there, and in the jungles are tribes of people no taller than three and a half feet?” He laughed aloud, attracting Kate’s attention. “Katie-girl, you would fit right in,” he told her as he scooped her up and held her over his head. “And I’d be a giant, wouldn’t I? Big enough to eat tasty little morsels like you.”

Daisy watched them tussle for a moment, smiling in spite of her concerns over their closeness. Jack was a high-spirited, openly affectionate man, unlike his reserved middle brother and his stern, intimidating oldest brother. And he was certainly not the empty-headed drifter he made himself out to be. She wondered why he would cultivate such a shallow image, and if his family knew the true man beneath the façade. She wondered if she knew him any better.

Once he’d lowered Kate and she’d settled down on her back beside him to watch cloud figures drift across the sky, Daisy asked, “How did you learn about all these places you want to visit?”

“At sea. Look, Katie, doesn’t that cloud look like a frog?”

“See fwog,” Kate said, pointing her kitty at the sky.

“There’s a lot of free time on a ship,” he went on, his smile giving way to a frown as he studied the sky. “And our captain had a trunk full of books. Reading occupied my mind and kept me from drinking.”

“You quit drinking?” That was a surprise. As she recalled, drinking and gambling were two of Jack’s three favorite things.

“Mostly. Until I got back anyway.” He shot her a crooked grin. “Between the fine Scotch whiskey that Jessica imports and needing a crutch to get me through my brothers’ interrogations, I’ve started the habit again.”

“That’s too bad,” Daisy murmured. Jack, when he was drinking, was a funny, passionate, playful clown. But this sober Jack was much more interesting.

“Not to worry,” he added, apparently catching her unspoken censure even though his attention remained focused on the clouds crowding the peaks to the west. “I’ll never be the drunk I was. That was a bad time. I don’t want to make mistakes like that again.”

She wondered if he thought of her and Kate as part of those “mistakes” but hadn’t the courage to ask.

“See those puffy clouds, Kate? The ones with the pouches along the flat bottoms? If they get bigger and darker, it’ll mean rain.”

“Wain,” Kate said.

Daisy watched Jack’s big hand idly stroke Kate’s stomach and felt a quiver of remembrance move beneath her own skin. Despite his size and strength, Jack was one of the gentlest men she’d ever known.

And those hands held magic.

Forcing herself to look away, she cleared her throat and said, “It’s very quiet and peaceful up here, isn’t it?”

Jack snorted. “Too quiet for me. Sometimes the silence in this country carries such weight it smothers. In the jungles and rainforests it’s as raucous as a cage of birds. And aboard ship, even if no one says a word, it’s still noisy. The snap and flutter of the sails, wood groaning, the slap of water against the hull ... it’s like a whole different kind of music. Except when we’re becalmed. Then it’s like here, so quiet you can hear your own heartbeat. And when it’s that quiet, it means you’re just sitting there, doing nothing.”

Daisy smiled. “And that’s unacceptable to you.”

He looked over and grinned. “Damn right.”

She felt that flutter again, and knew if she weren’t careful, this man would break through all her carefully erected barriers. “Do you know the time?” she asked, needing to pull herself back to safer ground.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a watch. As he did, something small and shiny tumbled down onto the blanket. Kate immediately reached for it.

Instead of taking it away from her, Jack leaned over and kissed her forehead. “Keep that for luck, Katie-girl, but don’t eat it.”

Knowing whatever her daughter had in her hand would eventually end up in her mouth, Daisy asked what it was.

“Just a trinket.” He studied his watch. “It’s a quarter past four. We’ll have to start back soon.” With a sigh, he sat up and stretched.

Freeing the object from Kate’s resisting grip, Daisy saw it was a silver cross intricately engraved with twining roses. “This is beautiful. Did you pick it up in your travels?” As she spoke, she turned it over and saw letters engraved on the back: “EMR to AJW.” Anger clutched at her throat.
Elena.

Quelling the urge to fling it at Jack’s head, she handed the cross back to Kate, then looked up to see Jack studying her, his expression guarded and somber.

“It’s just a trinket, Daisy. One I no longer need.”

Somewhat mollified, as well as embarrassed that he had seen her angry reaction, she asked what the “A” in his initials stood for.

“Andrew. Andrew Jackson Wilkins.”

“You’re named after ‘Old Hickory,’ the president?”

He shrugged. “My father thought if he named his sons after heroes, they might act like heroes. Hank is named after Patrick Henry, and our little brother Sam, after Sam Adams. Brady, being eldest, carries our mother’s maiden name.”

Sam?
“There’s another brother?” She had only heard of three.

A shadow came into his eyes. “Was. Sam died when he was twelve. Tortured by Elena’s brother, Sancho. Brady ... found him.”

Daisy was shocked at the tangled web that bound these people together. It was too fantastical to be true, yet the sadness in Jack’s face told her it was.

He must have sensed her curiosity and hurriedly answered her questions before she could voice them, as if wanting to get the subject behind him as quickly as he could. “We were feuding with the Ramirez family over the ranch. We won. Sancho went crazy, killed his folks, and set everything on fire before Jessica set
him
on fire.” He smiled grimly. “Rough justice, don’t you think?”

Daisy was astonished. Prim and proper Jessica had killed a man too? A sudden image of Bill Johnson exploded in her mind, and for a moment her whole body seemed to clench in reaction. Then she remembered that Johnson had come to steal Kate so he could sell her to some pervert, and fury swept regret and guilt aside. Justice deserved and served. She wasn’t sorry she’d rid the world of vermin like that.

“And yet Elena stayed,” she observed, going back to what Jack had said. “Why?” What kind of woman would align herself with the family that had taken her home and killed her brother?

Jack shrugged. “She had nowhere else to go. Besides, she’s been like part of the family since she was six. Like a sister, almost.”

Except a man didn’t fall in love with his sister.
Pushing that disturbing thought away, she said, “But Jessica killed her brother. Didn’t that cause strife?” Daisy had no siblings, but she was sure if she did, and he or she had been killed, she wouldn’t have become “almost a sister” to the killer.

“There was no love lost between Elena and Sancho.” His voice had turned cold, his tone clipped. “He was the one who crippled her. Nearly kicked her to death. But that’s all in the past.” Abruptly he stood, ending the conversation as well as the easy companionship of their hilltop picnic. “It’s late. We better get going. I don’t like the look of those clouds.”

“You think it’ll rain?”

“I’m more worried about lightning. We’re too exposed up here.”

Left with more questions than answers, Daisy had no choice but to let the subject drop. But she was beginning to realize that simple, lighthearted Jack Wilkins was a much more complicated man than she had thought. And this new Jack would be far harder to walk away from.

As she tossed the remains of the picnic lunch into the brush, a sudden gust swept over the hilltop, whipping her skirts around her legs and peppering their faces with grit. The sun disappeared behind dark billowing clouds, and the air felt suddenly chilly and damp.

Kate began to cry, Kitty hugged close in her arms.

“Damn,” Jack muttered. “Forget the food. Where’s the pouch with our jackets?”

Daisy tossed it to him, alarmed by the urgency in his voice. As she tried to stuff the blanket back into the picnic basket, another gust almost wrenched it from her grip.