Lone Heart Pass (11 page)

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Charley
March 10

A
S
THEY
STEPPED
off the porch into the mud Charley slipped his arm around Jubilee's waist so they wouldn't keep bumping together.

She did the same, pulling close against him.

Her tall, lean body fit nicely against his as they slowed their pace in the dark spot between his porch light and hers. Neither said a word, but he guessed she felt as good as he did about being so close.

The day together had changed things. There was more than just a trust between them. He'd grown to really like her. She wasn't crazy; she was just scared.

When they reached her porch, she sat down on the top step and tugged off her boots. “Thanks,” she whispered. “Tonight was fun. Best time I've had in a long time.”

“I doubt chili and cornbread can compare to a fancy restaurant, and toasting marshmallows isn't exactly a wild party.”

“Oh, but it was. I think I still have a piece of marshmallow on my cheek.”

He turned and brushed his thumb over the white spot on the left side of her face. When he licked the tip of his thumb, he winked at her. “Still warm.”

Her brown eyes widened in surprise, or maybe something else. He hadn't meant it as flirting, but it took all his strength to keep from closing the distance between them and seeing if her lips tasted the same as her marshmallow cheek.

Charley leaned back against the post. “Why'd you say this place was your last chance? You must have had a career in DC.” He didn't know if she'd open up, but he had to give it a try.

“I lost my job. I ran political campaigns and my third candidate lost. I'd worked so many hours for years I hadn't had time to spend much money so I did have savings, but it wouldn't have lasted long. No job. No future. Nowhere to go. Then I inherited this place. Last chance.”

“I get it. What about the guy you mentioned you'd lived with in DC.”

“He left a few months before. To tell the truth I barely noticed. As least he was nicer than the others. He didn't stop to tell me all my shortcomings before he left.”

“Shortcomings. You?”

She nodded. “I'm self-centered, controlling and incapable of love. Every boyfriend I've ever had said the same thing, so it must be true. I don't have a heart.”

Charley shook his head. “Impossible.”

“No. It's true. I've never known a man who didn't just walk away. Just once it would be nice to meet someone who stayed.”

“Did you ever ask them to?”

She shook her head. “I don't think I have enough love to give for it to be worth their trouble.”

Something about the storm and the low yellow porch light cast a spell around them. They were talking, really talking for the first time.

He wanted to touch her and the need to just hold her grew inside him every day. But, she didn't move closer, not even as she opened up, telling him about her life.

He leaned back and doubled up one leg. As they laughed and shared mistakes they'd made, Jubilee kept tapping him on his knee, or patting his leg just above his boot.

Charley watched her. It seemed she was back in grade school, the way she was hitting at him. Touching would have been too personal. It might be the start of something. But a tap was all she could manage.

He didn't move away.

When the rain slowed, he stood and offered her a hand up. “I'd better get back,” he said more to himself than her.

“I know, it's getting late.” She didn't turn toward the door. She just stood waiting, watching him.

“Jubilee, when you know what you want, just ask.” The words were out before he could stop them. He wasn't sure what he meant, he only knew he had to say them.

At least she didn't pretend they were talking about the ranch. Her brown eyes studied him a moment before she let out a sob. “I wouldn't know what to ask for.”

“How about a friend, to start? I'm thinking you could use one and I'm short on them myself.”

Her nod was jerky as he pulled her against him.

For a long time he just held her like he'd wanted to do for days. At first she was stiff and jerky as if fighting down tears, then slowly she relaxed and warmed against him.

“You're worth a great deal more, Jubilee, than you think.” He couldn't say the words aloud, but he thought that he wanted to add that she was worth the loving.

The men who'd walked out on her had no idea who she really was.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Lauren
March 13

S
PRING
BREAK
IN
Crossroads, Texas, was probably the worst place a college senior could go. The weather was still too cold to wear a bathing suit. Lauren thought about her friends who'd driven down to Galveston and the ones she knew who went on a three-day cruise to Cancún. In a week they'd come back with tans and stories to tell.

Where was she? Home on the last spring break of her college career. Her mother said she needed to study for her last semester of finals. Her father always thought she should come home. Only this year he had one more reason than usual. Apparently his new research secretary was driving him crazy. He called, begging her for some relief.

Tim O'Grady had worked for her father for over a week but Pop swore it seemed like a lifetime.

“He's a writer,” she insisted. “Of course his mind thinks of ‘what ifs' all the time.”

“He's a few bricks shy of a full load, honey.” Pop insisted. “If I'm in the office he talks to me all day. If I leave, he works out theories. One day he covered an entire wall of my office with notes and pictures. Said we had to
whiteboard
the investigation. You'd think the body in the canyon was a national crisis.”

So Lauren had come home, telling herself she would babysit Tim and think about what she wanted to do after she graduated. She'd saved enough birthday and Christmas money to go to Europe for a month. A few friends wanted her to tag along with them. One even had an aunt who lived in London.

But if Pop hadn't gone along with Cancún or Galveston, he probably wouldn't be thrilled about Europe.

At this point in her life, she felt she was standing at the crossroads trying decide which way to go. So, why not be in Crossroads, Texas, while she made up her mind?

As she walked into Dorothy's Café on Main Street it entered her mind that maybe she should come home and open another café in town. Maybe work as a cook first or waitress to learn the business. She'd always liked those cooking shows. Maybe that was her calling.

Only the place was empty. Bad idea to open a café in a town that couldn't even keep one busy. It was two o'clock, but surely someone would be eating late besides her and Tim.

There he was, in the last booth closest to the pass-through window at the back. When they'd been about eight or nine, Tim's mother would drop them off and let them order and eat lunch alone on Wednesdays in the summers. That was the day she taught an art class. Then her father would pick her and Tim up an hour later and claim babysitting duty for the afternoon.

Lauren remembered how big and grown-up she'd felt that first summer of having lunch on her own. Tim always ordered a cheeseburger with double fries, but she went down the menu, ordering a different meal each time.

“About time you got here,” Tim said, as he unfolded from the booth and offered a quick hug.

She didn't answer; she simply stared. Since she'd left at the end of February he'd shaved, had a haircut and started dressing like a hatless Sherlock Holmes. All he needed was a pipe. “Pop says you work twelve hours a day, Tim. Aren't you afraid of too much reality?”

“I simply work until he leaves the office. He says I'm volunteering after five, but I don't care. Figuring out how this old guy died has become an obsession. The sheriff is the same way.”

Lauren believed him. Unless she was at home waiting, she'd always thought her pop would see no reason to stop working. As the only lawman in town, she guessed he often worked sixty or more hours a week.

“I'm starving. Fill me in while we eat.”

Tim slid in across the table from her. “At least I stop for lunch. I'm not sure the sheriff does that.”

Dorothy yelled from the pass-through window. “I told the new waitress she could go get her eyes checked, so no one is going to be dropping menus off. Don't imagine you two need them anyway. Tell me what you want and I'll pass it through. You'll have to get your own drinks.”

“Will do,” Tim answered, “but we're not leaving a tip.”

Dorothy laughed. “Like you ever do, Tim O'Grady. I'm telling you right now, when you publish a book and get rich and famous, I want one autographed free.”

“Promise.” He winked at Lauren and whispered, “It's the least I can do. Growing up I learned most of my R-rated language from her cooks.”

A few minutes later they ordered and Tim got their drinks from behind the counter. The door chimed and two truckers came in. The sound of swearing came from somewhere in the back a moment before Dorothy rushed out to take the truckers' orders.

Tim leaned forward and started telling Lauren all the facts he'd found about the body in the canyon. It seemed as if he wasn't holding anything back. So much for classified information.

He'd been out to the Breaks that ran across county lines to the north, near where the cap rock climbed. “Not much in the way of roads that far out once you turn off County Road 111. I'm guessing some of the people who live in the brush and scrub trees are on public land, but no one bothers them. Most wouldn't talk to me until Charley Collins suggested I take that friend of yours, Thatcher Jones, along.”

“He's not my friend,” Lauren answered, wondering how much trouble Thatcher had gotten into since she saw him last week.

Tim laughed. “According to him, you two would be dating, but he thinks you're too old for him.”

Lauren made a face.

Tim shrugged. “Whatever. Back to me and my investigation. Thatcher knew how to talk to the people out there. It's an odd community. Reminds me a little of what I'd think an outlaw camp must have been like a hundred years ago. Some folks are just scraping by, growing their own food, hunting deer and rabbits and, I suspect, an occasional rancher's calf now and then. They trade for what they need. I doubt any of them have filed a tax return in years, but they've got their own brand of interesting.”

She could see the excitement in his eyes. Apparently, a few miles from home, he'd found that another world existed.

“You wouldn't believe these characters. They're like straight out of some book. They speak a kind of old-time talk, mixing religion and superstition. It's not just that they don't have cell phones and computers—some don't even have running water. But they know things. There I was, standing in front of them with a college education, and a few looked like they felt sorry for me because I didn't know I was standing in poison ivy or had never seen a hog hanging up to bleed out.” He rubbed his eyes. “That's one sight I hope I never see again.”

“Did you find any clues?” She tried to get him back on track.

“Oh, the investigation. Thatcher got a few people to say they'd seen someone who fit the dead guy's description. They claim he lives far back. One remembered the two scratched-out tattoos. Another said he thought the guy grew his own pot.”

“Any of them able to ID him?”

“No luck. Only name I got on him was Hubcap. They said he paints old hubcaps and mailboxes for the fall trade days. Says he does pretty good selling them, too.”

“Well, at least that's a start.”

When the hamburgers arrived, the subject changed to tattoo parlors. By the time they both ordered cherry pie, Tim was talking about all the ideas for stories he'd collected, and Lauren wondered if he'd even found one useful fact that might help the investigation.

When he finally ran out of steam, he leaned back and stared at her.

She swore she could almost hear his brain running. “What are you thinking, Sherlock?”

He leaned across the table. “I was running through my list. You know, that list everyone keeps in their head about what they want to do or should do or have to do before they die.”

“Okay,” she answered, thinking she'd forgotten to start her list.

“When I was in school I thought I was learning to write, but I was wrong. I was just beginning. What I need to know is out there in the world. I need to live, walk in others' shoes, drink deep of the good and the evil.”

Lauren had followed Tim down this rabbit hole before. It never went anywhere beyond talk. One year he'd wanted to climb Denali and cross Africa. One summer he'd read all about flying and decided that as soon as he graduated, he'd join the army and fly jets.

“So, Tim, where do you want to go now?”

“Nowhere. I want to stay right here and learn to understand people better. Why they love and why they hate. Why they stay out along the Breaks when civilization is only a few miles away. Why people stay in Crossroads when the city isn't that far.”

She joined in. “Why do they live in Lubbock when New York is a three-hour flight away?”

“Right. Why do they put up with the noise of a big city when they could live on a ranch right outside Crossroads?”

They both laughed. He reached across the table and took her hand and held on tight.

“How can I help?” she asked, thinking maybe they should make up a questionnaire.

Tim stared at her. “How about sleeping with me, L?”

“What?” The question blindsided her. For a moment she thought it was part of the questioning, but then she saw the look in his eyes. He wasn't just talking or kidding. Tim was serious.

“You know what I mean. We're both adults. I want to know how it would feel to have sex with a friend. We could talk about it as we did it. No mixture of love or approval or flirting. I just want to know how it feels with no emotions involved. You're my best friend. You'd be the perfect one to do it with.”

Lauren felt as if they'd been sailing along on a cruise and she'd suddenly fallen off the boat into shark-infested waters. Tim had kissed her dozens of times, but not because he was attracted to her. He was just playing around.

Suddenly, the swinging door to the kitchen popped open and Dorothy stormed out. Lauren looked up and saw fire in the old woman's eyes and had no doubt she wasn't dropping by to refill drinks.

She raised a long flat skillet and thumped it against the back of Tim's head.

He yelped and let go of Lauren's hand.

Dorothy, skillet still in hand, put her fists on her hips. “Tim O'Grady, you've said some crazy things over lunch, but your idea today beats all. Everyone says you got a creative mind, but it needs a little straightening out.”

Tim rubbed his head, pulling his fingers away, testing for blood. “You're stepping in on a private conversation, Dorothy. I work for the sheriff's office. I believe what you just did was assault.”

“Yeah, you go report it and see what the sheriff does when you tell him what you just suggested. Bullets are bound to hurt more than my omelet skillet. You're going to die a virgin, boy, if you think any woman in the world would fall for that crap.”

Lauren was choking on her laughter. “She's right, Tim.”

“I guess so.” He glanced at Dorothy. “She seems to feel strongly about it.” He took a deep breath accepting defeat. “I'm sorry for the suggestion, L,” he turned slowly to Dorothy. “Thanks for setting me straight.”

“You're welcome.” Dorothy lowered the skillet. “Leave a tip. Scrambling brains is extra.” She walked back through the swinging door.

The two truckers dropped bills on the table and rushed out.

Lauren laughed so hard she finally had to stop or she'd throw up.

Tim left a ten-dollar tip. As they walked out, he said, “You want to come over and see what I've done on the investigation?”

“Sure.” She smiled. “Still friends?”

He looked a little surprised. “Always.”

She took his hand. “You're going to be a great writer, Tim. I know it.”

“How?”

“Because your mind doesn't work like anyone else's.”

Tim rubbed his red hair with his free hand. “Right now, it doesn't seem to be working at all. I may have brain damage. If I die, will you cry over my grave?”

“Of course. What are friends for?”

“Don't ask me that question. Though, I have found out recently what they are not for. So much for the idea of ‘friends with benefits.' Doesn't seem to be an idea that's caught on in Texas.”

Lauren started giggling again. “With Dorothy around, I don't think it ever will.”