One From The Heart (17 page)

She stood there remembering the feel of being wrapped in that raincoat with him, his body hard and warm against hers, and the endearing way he’d wanted to show her this place.

She suddenly remembered Elizabeth’s question:
Did you lie to me?

No, he’d told her.
No
.

Mim could be matter-of-fact about his loving Elizabeth. Hannah couldn’t. It hurt. And she knew that what Mim had said about him was true. John Ernest Watson was a caring man. That was the reason he’d stayed and helped her look after Petey in the first place, and that was the reason he’d sent Mim to make sure she was all right now.

She looked up at the sound of a truck coming too fast—recklessly fast—down the long dirt drive that led in from the highway. The truck was new and shiny black, but the driver paid no attention at all to the recent rain, hitting the potholes hard and sending a shower of water and mud in his wake. He turned sharply toward the house, pulling close to the porch.

He was already getting back into the truck when Hannah reached the yard. She stood squinting in the bright sunlight, trying to keep her hair from blowing into her eyes, waiting for Jake Browne to tell her what he was doing here.

He was a tall man, his face weathered and ageless from being out in the sun. He was in his work clothes, jeans and boots and a fleece-lined denim jacket. He wore a cowboy hat with a silver and turquoise band and, as incongruous as it seemed to Hannah, a diamond ring on his left little finger. She could still see much of the young man from the picture in Mim’s album.

He caught sight of her just as she was about to slam the truck door closed. “I didn’t think anyone was here,” he said, clearly startled but recovering quickly. His eyes traveled over her face, but she had no idea what he was thinking. She wondered if he even knew who she was.

“No one is,” she answered, “except me.” She shivered in a blast of wind. “I’m going inside. You can come in if you want.”

She left him sitting there, half in half out of his mud-splattered truck. She expected him to leave, but he didn’t. He got out and slammed the door closed, following her onto the porch—probably because he wanted to see for himself whether she was hiding Ernie and Elizabeth.

“I’m looking for Watson,” he said as they went into the house. He was close enough for her to decide that he smelled exactly the way she’d always thought her father, the rancher, would smell: a bit like horses and stale pipe tobacco.

“Yes, I know. I haven’t seen him since he took Elizabeth home.” She shrugged her coat off and hung it on the peg. “There’s some coffee, but it’s cold. I’ll heat it up if you want.” It surprised her how calm she sounded. Perhaps it surprised him as well. He certainly looked as if he’d never even considered the possibility of her offering him a cup of coffee.

“I—all right. If it’s not too much trouble.”

“It’s not any trouble.” She set about warming the coffee. She felt no obligation to play hostess other than that, and she left him standing awkwardly while she began to gather up the dirty dishes from her breakfast with Mim.

“They tell me you’re a … career woman,” he said after a time, dragging a chair away from the stove and sitting at the kitchen table.

“I am. But don’t worry. Mim made the coffee.”

He almost smiled, and the conversation lagged again.

“Look,” Hannah said finally. “You don’t have to hang around here for the coffee if you don’t want to. I don’t know where Ernie would go with Elizabeth—”

“Is that what your mama taught you?” he broke in. “Offer somebody coffee and then try to run him off?”

“No, that’s not what she taught me. She taught me not to let anything suffer if I could help it.”

“Even me,” he suggested.

“Even you,” she agreed.

“Watson tells me you think I’m not your daddy,” he said out of the clear blue.

“If you are, you’re a damn poor excuse for one,” she answered, and he laughed.

“You don’t mind telling me to my face, do you?”

“Not much, no.”

He looked at her thoughtfully. “You don’t look like her—your mama.”

“No,” Hannah said, turning away from him to get the coffee pot. She poured him a cup, wondering where this conversation was leading.

“You look like
my
mama,” he said, and she looked up at him. “You and Petey both. Yeah, you’re mine, and yeah, I’m late on being a father to you. Nothing I can do about it now, though.” He took the cup she offered him.

“There’s something you could do for Elizabeth.”

“Now, look!” he said, slamming the cup down on the table. “I’m getting a little bit tired of outsiders like you and Watson trying to tell me what I ought to be doing about my daughter!”

“Fine!” Hannah said. “But Elizabeth needs you to love her enough to get her some help instead of indulging her every whim. And outsiders or not, Ernie and I are the ones she trusted to take care of Petey, aren’t we?”

He got up from the table. She shouldn’t have said that, but it was too late now. She knew by virtue of the fact that he’d come here how worried he must be.

“Much obliged for the coffee—and you know Watson’s left you high and dry, don’t you? Damned if I know what the two of you see in that scamp.”

“He’s a good man,” Hannah said quietly.

“Girl!” her father said in exasperation. “He ain’t nothing! He ain’t got nothing and he ain’t ever going to.”

“Being a success has got nothing to do with having money,” Hannah said. “My mother taught me that, too.”

They stared at each other—until Jake Brown abruptly turned and left, letting the screen door bang behind him in much the same way as Ernie had. Hannah stood at the window and watched him drive away, with mud flying and with no regard for new tires and shiny black paint.

I have got to get out of here
.

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

Ernie, where are you?

She looked around the room. She’d straighten up the place, and then she’d see Petey, and then she would leave. That’s all there was to it.

She washed the few dishes and made the bed and closed the dampers on the stove, rushing around as if she truly had to catch a bus. She gathered up the last of her things and stuffed them into the duffel bag. If she put some distance between herself and all this, maybe she could decide what to do next.

The telephone rang, and she stumbled over her duffel bag in her haste to answer it.

“Please be Ernie,” she said out loud, not even realizing she’d said it.

It was Mim, sounding upset and out of breath.

“Hannah—Jake was here. I was afraid you’d gone thumbing along the highway—”

“Mim, have you heard from Ernie?” she interrupted.

“Yes. He called just now. He couldn’t talk but a minute—and then Jake came.” Mim stopped to catch her breath. “Ernie wanted me to tell you something.”

“Mim, what?”

“He said to ask you to wait for him. And then he said, ‘No, ask her to
please
wait.’ He said he’d come there as soon as he could.”

She didn’t say anything.

“Hannah, did you hear me?”

The silence lengthened.

“Hannah?”

“Yes,” she said finally.

“Hannah, honey, I don’t want you to feel you have no choice. Michael and I will take you back to Dallas if you want to go. And I told Ernie that.”

She closed her eyes for a moment and pressed her fingers against the tight circle of pain that a restless night and a worry-filled day had centered in the middle of her forehead. “No, Mim. I’m … going to stay here. For a little while.”

She could hear Mim’s sigh of relief.

“Hannah, you know I think it’s the best thing for you and John Ernest both. You’ll find plenty to eat in the refrigerator. And will you walk over here if you get lonesome?”

“I—yes. I’ll walk over. And you’ll call me if you hear anything? And Mim,” she added. “Could I talk to Petey?”

“Jake took her with him, Hannah. He’s her grandfather. I couldn’t say no.”

Hannah sat for a long while after she’d hung up the telephone—not an easy thing to do when all she wanted was to be gone. She just didn’t know what Ernie wanted from her … again. Elizabeth needed help, needed Ernie; she knew that. It was just that she was afraid—not of losing him precisely, since she’d never really had him. She was afraid of losing a chance with him. That was all they had, a chance, a beautiful, golden chance to go through life together, even if it meant putting up with strangers on the couch and middle-of-the-night drives to take some hard-luck cowboy someplace he needed to go. She smiled to herself. During her gypsy childhood, there had been any number of times when she and her mother had needed a friendly couch or middle-of-the-night transportation themselves, plenty of times when they’d arrived at some out-of-the-way motel to find a No Vacancy sign when they’d had neither the money nor the strength to go on. The Alma, the Bluebird of Happiness, the Evening Breeze. Beautiful neon names. But her mother had never been discouraged. If you were tired, you rested. If you needed money, you went to work.
Somebody always needs a good waitress, Hannah Rose
.

She suddenly frowned. Unfortunately, somebody didn’t always need a good television person. One scratched to find a position, and one continued scratching to hold on to it. She’d been indulging herself in the fantasy of somehow sharing a life with Ernie Watson, and she’d been doing it with no thought whatsoever of how her career was going to fit into that life. This new indifference about her work was nothing if not glaring; Nathan Williamson would never believe it.

She sighed heavily. “And Ernie thinks
I’ve
turned
his
life upside down,” she said aloud. “Look at me. I’m sitting here waiting—talking to myself—when I
know
better. Just because he wants me to.”

The key phrase was
he wants me to
, and she knew it. He’d helped her with Petey, probably kept her from losing the job she now felt indifferent about, and she knew she owed him that …

Who was she kidding? She was doing this because she was in love with the rascal; that was why she was doing it. She tossed her duffel bag into a corner before she stumbled over it again, and she set about the business of passing the time. She opened a can of tomato soup when she got hungry, and she found a small radio on the kitchen counter, which only picked up a local station, KTLQ. She read a paperback detective story she found in a magazine rack by the piano, and she tried not to think about Ernie and Elizabeth every time KTLQ played “You Still Move Me.”

Desperate for something else to do, she decided to change her clothes. It was her policy to travel in comfort, so she’d only brought jeans, but she’d also packed one pale blue silk shirt. It was oversized, clingy, flagrantly sexy, and it gave her gray-green eyes more color. She’d brought it along for only one reason. She’d wanted him to see her in it, to see her womanliness enhanced as only soft, languid silk could do. She gave a mischievous smile as she put it on. She needed all the help she could get, and while a silk shirt was hardly the key to solving her problems, it certainly couldn’t hurt.

But she grew more and more restless as the day stretched into early evening. It was getting dark, and her resolve was fading, silk or no silk. She was crazy to wait here, regardless of what Ernie wanted. She’d been foolish enough to tell him right out loud that she loved him, and she knew what kind of man he was. He’d want to tell her face to face that he was still involved with Elizabeth, and he’d want to make sure she was all right after he did it. He’d feel he had to buy her another Starlight hamburger and a brown milk shake to cheer her up, and then see her safely back to Dallas.

He’d make her feel better; he had a knack for it—with her, and with Elizabeth, and with Petey. She just didn’t think she could stand it.

She put on her coat and grabbed up her duffel bag, hooking it over her shoulder and replacing the key on the nail on the porch rafter by the door. She looked back once at the dark house—when she passed the musical waterwheel. The evening was starry and cold and still except for
Swan Lake
, and she could hear the melody during almost the entire walk to Mim’s.

There were no vehicles in Mim’s yard, but she could see a light on in the kitchen. She walked up onto the porch and knocked loudly, but no one came to the door. She continued knocking for a moment, then sat down on the porch steps.

“This really hasn’t been a good day,” she muttered to herself. Something must be happening, she thought. Mim wouldn’t tell her to walk over and then go off someplace. She sighed. There was nothing to do but walk back to Ernie’s father’s place. As desperate as she was to leave, the idea of thumbing her way along the highway didn’t appeal to her at all. She waited a few minutes longer, until the cold drove her to start walking again. But cold or not, she lingered a moment at the pond. She was always going to remember this place. Always.

She was well into the yard before she noticed the track—Ernie’s no-color pickup—parked close to the porch the way her father had done. Her heart leaped. She walked faster, looking at the empty track and wondering why the lights on the house weren’t on. She crossed the porch, letting the screen door squeak and slam, hesitating only a moment before she opened the door and stepped inside.