Into the Light (6 page)

“Oh, look. Isn’t it beautiful!”

Before the last sparks faded, more rose.

“Do you ever wonder if men like Washington, Adams, and Jefferson expected that people would be celebrating what they did with the Twentieth Century right around the corner?” she said.

“I don’t know if they expected it, but I know they hoped it. They knew how great an experiment they started, and they wanted it to last.”

Deborah settled back against the bench, enjoying a discussion of the country’s history with him more than the displays overhead. She spent as much time searching the shadows for any glimpse of his outline as watching the fireworks.

When the last sparks dissolved in the sky and quiet returned to the night, she said, “I know I should introduce myself, but....”

“But talking to a shadowy stranger has an allure that plain Mr. Smith would not.”

“Yes.” No one had ever understood any of her feelings before. He seemed to understand them all.

“I feel the same way, but I’ve wasted far too much time trying to decide if you’re blonde, brunette, or even a redhead. Settle that much for me.”

“Brunette.”

“Are you? Me too.”

He might have wondered about something so basic, but he couldn’t have spent as much time thinking about her as she had about him.

“Will you go back East soon?” Why ask him that? Yes, he was going to leave. Tonight was an unexpected gift.

“I’m not sure. I’m not even sure where I’ll go when I leave or what I’ll do, drift around and see the parts of the country I’ve missed maybe. What about you? Have you thought of applying for a position that would let you escape your overwhelming family for more than an hour or two at a time?”

Applying for a position? Traveling?
Her stomach flipped. “Oh, no, I’m content with my life. I don’t want anything different.”

“I see.”

Did the soft way he said those two words indicate disappointment? Did he imagine her to be a stronger, braver woman than she was? If he questioned her more along those lines, he’d learn the truth. “I’m glad you were here. I enjoyed talking to you again, but I need to go.”

His shadow rose from the opposite bench. “I enjoyed it too, but at the risk of spoiling our invisible acquaintance, I’m going to walk you home.”

“Oh, no, you don’t need to do that. It’s only a short way, and I’ll be fine.”

“I do need to.”

“No!” Deborah stumbled around the bench and took off running.

She didn’t want to see him, didn’t want to have proof positive he was no more than Miriam’s age. She didn’t want him to see her, at least half a dozen years older. And she didn’t want the mystery ruined.

T
REY ONLY TOOK
a few steps after her before returning to the bench, cursing. Even if she was older than he thought and stout, there was no use pretending he could catch a healthy woman running from him, and if he could catch her, what would he do? Behave like the sort of ruffian he wanted to protect her from in order to force her to accept his escort?

At the thought of throwing a woman over his good shoulder and promptly collapsing to the ground, smothered in petticoats, skirts, ruffles, and bows, his temper changed to amusement.

He sat for a while, wondering. Not stout. Surely a stout woman couldn’t run like that. Brunette. At what age did a woman say she’d never married as if it were no longer a possibility? How much did it matter?

Unable to come up with an answer he liked, he groped around for the cane, rose, and headed back to Jamie’s.

T
REY HAD BEEN
back and forth to town so often he didn’t need to so much as twitch the reins to direct his tired little buggy horse to turn from the ranch road toward the main barn. She stopped with her nose almost touching the big door she knew separated her from hay, grain, and rest.

Shaking his head in sympathy, Trey rotated stiff shoulders, arched his aching back, and gave each leg a shake before climbing down, refusing to think about the days he would have, could have, jumped. Leaving Hubbell at first light and traveling at a steady clip meant he’d arrived at the V Bar C with time for a bath and nap before dinner.

Now, with the ranch house in sight, he wished he’d left later and traveled slower. The best way to avoid quarreling with his father and sister was to avoid his father and sister, and their presence at the dinner table was a certainty.

He slid the heavy door open and led the mare out of the hot summer sun into the cooler gloom of the barn and began unhitching.

“Here now. Don’t you bother with that. I’ll do it.”

Trey looked up to see Herman Gruner reaching to unfasten the trace on the other side of the buggy. The old man’s jaw jutted mulishly with his determination to take over even such a small task. Not many stove-up cowhands were kept on to take care of odd jobs and livestock, and those who were that lucky needed to be seen earning their keep.

“Sure,” Trey said as he pulled the trace on his side off the singletree. “Let’s get her unhitched, and if you hobble around and take care of the horse, I’ll hobble up to the house and take care of me.”

The tension left Herman’s face. “You can’t make us out to be a matched pair. You’ve got a few more miles left on you. All’s you need is to get something big enough and get back in the saddle. There’s a good bay gelding out back. Not a mean bone in him.”

Trey shook his head ruefully. “I’ve been back in the saddle, and it hurts like hell. This little lady gets me around just fine.”

He gave the mare an affectionate slap and left the barn before Herman could say more. No one else needed to know that after half an hour in the saddle, numbness started to creep up his legs. Trey saw no reason to gamble with frightening reminders of last year’s helplessness.

Grabbing his cane and valise from the buggy, he headed for the house. As a boy, Trey had ridden and hiked over every one of the thousands of acres of the ranch, and almost all those acres were treeless grasslands. A slight rise in one spot or old buffalo wallow in another was often the only landmark for miles.

Here at the heart of the V Bar C, though, the land changed from flat to rolling, just a little, just enough. Cottonwoods grew along the creek. The buildings nestled among hackberry and walnut trees far enough from the water no spring flood had ever come close.

Trey knew his father would have perched the ranch house on a majestic hill if one had been available. As he labored up the incline from the barn to the house, Trey thanked Heaven for the ranch’s singular lack of majestic hills.

The walk wasn’t the struggle it had been a month ago, but it still left him short of breath. He paused and dropped the valise. Just in case anyone was watching, he tried not to lean too obviously on the cane and pretended to study the house he’d been born in, lived in happily for sixteen years and miserably for another two.

Massive, stark white even in the softening light of late afternoon, the house had never fit the landscape. The wide veranda was a mere decorative addition. No one ever sat there. Individual balconies jutting out from second-story bedrooms were more indicative of the nature of the Van Cleve family, although no one used those either.

His breathing almost back to normal, Trey shrugged and continued up the path. Living in tents, bunkhouses, and the bare rooms in New York had been better than living here those last years — or now.

Like the barn, the house was dim inside, a quiet, cool refuge from the heat of the afternoon sun. As expected, he found his mother in the small green and white parlor she called her own.

He watched her a moment from the doorway. A magazine lay neglected in her lap. She stared out the window, lost in her own thoughts.

Lorena Van Cleve had changed less than anyone in the family in the years Trey had been away. Elegant in a pale yellow dress that clung to her slim figure, she sat as perfectly straight as ever, her back not touching her chair. The strands of silver in her hair only made the gold appear paler, softer. From this distance the fine lines at the corners of her eyes and mouth were invisible. Lines that should have appeared years before they did.

He cleared his throat. “I’m back.”

She rose gracefully and met him in the middle of the room, the light scent of her floral perfume enveloping him as he hugged her.

“Oh, I’m so relieved. I worry about you traveling back and forth to town alone.”

Did she? No sign of relief showed in her expression. Her smile was as serene as always. His mother sailed through life, rarely affected by the emotions of others or showing her own.

If he had inherited that coolness instead of a male version of her bone structure, her green eyes, and the height of the men in her family, he might be able to deal with his father as easily as she did.

Stepping back, she patted his shoulder. “Tell me you’re going to change into something respectable and join us for dinner.”

Trey considered his dark blue denim trousers and cotton shirt respectable, even if not up to V Bar C dinner standards, but he didn’t argue.

“I am. Bath, nap, and dinner.”

“Excellent. You go on upstairs, and I’ll let Edna know there will be six of us this evening.”

Fatigue dogged Trey up the stairs and to his room. He collapsed on the bed, knowing if he let himself fall asleep there would be no bath, just a knock on the door when dinner was ready. Still, he drifted — quiet room his mother had redecorated in blues and grays sometime in the years he’d been gone, soft bed, soft pillow.

The door flew open so violently it banged off the stop, jerking him awake. Trey sat up and scrubbed his face with his hands before meeting his sister’s angry dark eyes.

“And good afternoon to you too, my dear,” he said. “How are you feeling?”

“As if you care. How do you expect to butter Father up if you keep spending more time in town with your Irish friend than you do here? Don’t you think you should at least pretend an interest in what you’re trying to steal?”

Any answer he gave would provoke more temper. He studied her in silence.

As much as he favored their mother and her family, Alice was their father’s daughter, short and round, dark of hair and eye. Even as a boy he had recognized she would never have their mother’s beauty, but he’d thought her pretty once.

Now anger, envy, and spite distorted her features into pure ugliness. Since he’d returned to the ranch, Trey had never seen her any other way. Did she relax into her old self when he was in town, or did his very presence less than a day’s ride away keep her like this?

“You can’t be doing the baby any good working yourself up this way,” he said finally.

“That should make you happy. You’d love it if I lost the baby, wouldn’t you? Especially if I lost a son.”

“Alice....”

“You’re not coming back after all these years and taking everything. You’re not. I’ll kill you myself first!”

“I’ve told you before, and I’ll tell you again. I don’t want it. I’ll be gone again before winter sets in. I’ve told you, and I’ve told him.”

“And I don’t believe you.
He
doesn’t believe you. You come back just long enough to make sure he knows you’re alive and able, take off again, gallivanting around the country free as a bird, and all you have to do is show up before he dies and say what he wants to hear.”

“Get out.” Trey rose from the bed and moved toward her, ready to push her out of the room and shut the door in her face if he had to.

“Don’t tell me to get out. I’ll leave when I’m ready, and I....”

“Arguing like this is a waste of time and bad for both of us. If you keep this up, he’ll outlive you and you won’t have to worry about who inherits what. If I let you drag me into it, he’ll outlive me. Out you go.”

“It should be mine. I want it, and I didn’t disappear for nine years. Just because you’re male....”

He shoved her out in the hall, shut the door, and leaned against it until he was sure she’d given up and stormed off. Falling asleep before bathing was no longer a problem. Calming down enough to sleep before midnight might be.

If it weren’t so depressing, it would be funny. Webster Van Cleve had only two children — Trey, who wanted no part of the empire his father had cheated, stolen, and murdered to build, and Alice, who wanted it all. And Webster Van Cleve would never leave an acre, a cow, or a stock share to a woman.

Trey stripped off his clothes, wrapped up in a robe, and headed for the bathroom. The year he’d decided he should dedicate to this impossible effort at reconciliation would be over right before Christmas. When he left Kansas this time, he wasn’t coming back.

Whether her baby was a girl or boy, sooner or later Alice would have a son. She could damn well be satisfied with being mother to the Van Cleve heir.

U
NABLE TO SLEEP
or even focus on a book, Trey made it to the dinner table ahead of the rest of the family. He watched the others as they entered.

His mother smiled and thanked his father as he helped her to her seat at the foot of the table, never meeting her husband’s eyes. Alice had herself under some semblance of control, nodding curtly to her husband, Vernon Forbes, as he performed the same courtesy for her.

A vivid memory of Cal Sutton lifting his wife in the air, kissing her on the mouth, and spinning her in a circle as she laughed up at him flashed through Trey’s mind. He reached for his water glass and took a large swallow as his father marched to the head of the table like a general, ready to inspect troops and find them wanting.

Just as Trey wondered if inheriting beauty would have made Alice a happier woman, he wondered if enough extra inches of height would have made his father a better man. Not that going through life having to look up at his wife, son, and pretty much everyone he dealt with was an excuse for arson, theft, and murder. Still, at times like this, seeing his father standing at the head of the table, neck and shoulders stretched as high as possible, the thought always came to mind.

Once everyone stopped fussing with their chairs and gave him proper attention, his father bowed his head and said a short prayer of grace. Trey bowed his own head and bit his tongue.