Rachel Lee (19 page)

The thought of her tiny panties spread out on the heater made his mouth grow dry. It occurred to him that even though the adjoining door was open, he would be wise not to cross the threshold.

The fact was, he thought as he passed her the magazines and books, he'd been trying not to think about Joni Matlock for an awful lot of years.

And all of that not thinking seemed to be bubbling up inside him suddenly, reminding him of what he'd wanted for so long but could never have.

And that was indeed the simple truth of it: he could never have her.

Witt would blow a fuse, would make her life even more miserable, would make Hannah's life miserable, maybe would even make Barbara's life miserable. So no matter what the opportunity, he had to keep a reasonable distance from Joni. And that meant not having any sexy, yearning thoughts about her.

It also meant not getting himself into stupid fixes like this one.

Christ, what had he been thinking this morning, taking off in the car with her? Did he have some kind of self-destructive urge? Did he want things to get worse instead of better?

"You'd better call your mother," he said to Joni. The suggestion came more from his need to have a few minutes away from her than because he was really worried about Hannah. If Hannah cared for Joni, she should have called some time over the last three days. But she hadn't. And he found it hard to believe that Hannah didn't know where her daughter was staying.

On the other hand, maybe Hannah knew but figured Joni needed time by herself. Maybe she was just giving her daughter some space. Could be.

It still unsettled him.

"No, I'm not going to call her," Joni said. "Why would she even be worried?"

"Oh, I don't know. But she might."

"Forget it. I'm not talking to her right now."

At least she wasn't saying she wasn't going to talk to her mother ever again. "Okay. I need to call Barbara."

Joni disappeared into her room, carrying her clothing and the reading material. She closed the adjoining door behind her, giving him privacy. He found himself wondering why he suddenly felt so cut off.

And how long that door would stay closed.

But for the moment, at least, he was glad it was closed. It gave him some mental space. It made a visible barrier, which he needed. And it would also allow him to talk privately to Barbara.

She answered on the third ring. "Where have you gone?" she asked, first thing. "Do you know how bad this storm is going to be? They're calling it the storm of the century."

Great. Absolutely great. More of his karma, he supposed. "Joni and I are down in Wetrock. I thought I'd get her out for some lunch, a change of scene, only we got stranded."

"How lovely." Barbara's voice implied that he was insane. "I know, I know. I should have paid closer attention to the weather. But it's too late now." "Maybe you never should have invited her to stay with us. You know, Witt is a powerful man in this town. He's a supervisor at the mine, and an awful lot of people look up to him. Now this. You know what he's going to think!"

"He's not going to think anything, because he's not going to know.

Nobody knows we're here together. And besides, he's disowned her."

"Right. And pigs fly. He got angry. He's not going to stay angry, not with his own niece."

"You sure about that? He's managed to stay angry with me for twelve years. The man doesn't seem to have a forgiving bone in his body."

Barbara sniffed and fell silent. "I'm sorry," she said after a moment.

"I'm glad you invited Joni to stay with us. She needs someone right now. As for Witt ... well, his whole problem is that his mother died when he was sixteen. He never got over having to grow up too soon, and he could have used a little more parenting. An extra spanking or two.

Well..." She paused. "All right. I suppose you want me to call Hannah?"

"It crossed my mind."

"All right. But I'm not going to tell her Joni's with you. She can dot the i's and cross the t's however she wants."

"That's fine by me, Mom."

"As for you," she said sternly, "have the good sense not to do something you might regret."

"Trust me, I've learned that lesson."

Maybe. Maybe, if he said it often enough, it would actually penetrate his lame brain. Maybe he could hypnotize himself into believing it.

But all he could think right now was that he was on the verge of making the worst mistake of his life.

Joni turned on the TV and was glad to see they had cable.

Immediately she hunted for the Weather Channel, and what she saw didn't make her feel any better. The predictions were far worse than they had been that morning. A major storm was stalled over five states, dumping record amounts of snow, and it wasn't expected to budge for at least another twenty four hours. That meant they might be stuck in this motel yet another night.

The idea made her uneasy for a lot of reasons. The first and foremost was that she really didn't want to be cooped up with nothing to do but think for two days. It hadn't been so bad at Hardy's house, because she had her job to distract her, and if it had gotten really bad, she could have gone out for a walk. But after three days of basically running on automatic and thinking the same thoughts over again, she didn't know if she could stand two whole days of her own company.

Then there was Hardy. He could certainly distract her. But she was afraid of the ways he could do that. Afraid of the barely acknowledged longings in her own heart and body. Well aware that giving in to them might be the biggest mistake of her life.

He wouldn't want her, of course. Being with her must be like rubbing salt in a wound. She was rather surprised that he could stand it at all.

Sighing, she went to pull the curtains back and look out at the snow.

It was really blowing hard, looking like a dense, white whirlwind.

Even if it stopped overnight, there was a chance the plows wouldn't be able to clear all the roads until late tomorrow.

She ought to use the time to take a nap. Since her mother had dropped the bomb, she hadn't slept well at all, tossing and turning for much of the night, and having nightmares when she did sleep. Too much stress, too much anxiety, too many shocks.

She turned to look at the double bed, thinking how good it would feel to just stretch out. Maybe, with the TV on, she could keep herself distracted until sleep managed to catch up with her.

She propped herself up against some pillows and stared at the TV, flipping through channels, hoping to find something that would hold her interest just enough to keep her from thinking, but not so much that she couldn't fall asleep.

Of course she was out of luck. It was the middle of the day. The movies were all old and too familiar to appeal to her, the soaps had never really engaged her, and the other programming didn't catch her eye. Finally she returned to the Weather Channel, telling herself that she might as well get ten-minute updates on the storm.

Which reminded her that she needed to call her boss and warn him that she probably wouldn't be in tomorrow. He was understanding, and three minutes later she was staring at the tube and trying not to think.

But she thought anyway. Much to her own dismay, she remembered a fantasy that she'd had in high school. She and Hardy got stranded in a snowstorm. The way in which Karen was removed from the picture varied.

Sometimes they'd been going to pick her up at the airport. Sometimes they'd just gone on an errand together, while Karen stayed at home to do something.

And then they got caught in a blizzard. The car went off the road.

Nearby was an old cabin, where they went for shelter and found enough wood to build a fire in the fireplace, and some canned goods that looked safe to eat. And while they were stranded, Hardy always discovered that he was crazy about Joni and wanted to be with her instead of Karen.

Those fantasies had seemed harmless back then, simply because she knew she would never act on them. Drawn as she was to Hardy, Karen was her best friend and cousin. She would never, ever, have done anything to hurt Karen.

But since Karen's death, those fantasies had come back to haunt her in the most awful way, making her feel like a terrible person. Making her wonder if her wishing Karen out of the way in all those secret fantasies hadn't had something to do with what happened.

That was magical thinking, and she knew it. But she couldn't escape the guilt.

Then there was Witt. She sometimes wondered if she imagined that look in his eye, that look that seemed to say, "Why are you here and not Karen?" He'd never said anything like that, but she'd felt it. Felt it so strongly it hurt.

And now he'd disowned her. God. The man who had grieved unstoppably for twelve years for his daughter had tossed her away as if she mattered no more than a used paper napkin.

That hurt. And she didn't want to think about it. Not at all.

There was a knock on the adjoining door. For an instant she considered pretending to be asleep, then decided that was childish. What could it hurt to talk with Hardy for a while? He'd never expressed any interest in her at all, other than as a friend.

Rising, she went to unlock the door and open it.

"Sorry to bother you," he said, "but I'm bored. Nothing on TV. So I thought if you wouldn't mind sharing one of the magazines or books...?"

She felt herself color. "I'm sorry! I forgot all about them." Forgot that she had taken them with her into her room. "Come on in. They're on the table."

"I wish I'd gotten a deck of cards," he said as he followed her in.

"But I didn't run across any, and it never occurred to me to look."

"That's okay."

He went to the table and picked up an entertainment magazine. But he didn't walk out immediately. Instead, he stood there holding it, looking at her. "The weather's going to be bad for a while."

"I saw." Talking about the weather. After all they'd been through together, one way or the other. It seemed . strained.

"Yeah." He stood there, looking uncertain in a way that seemed to touch her past all the feelings that had been swamping her for days.

"You know..."

"Yes?"

But he hesitated a few moments longer. "Why don't we just make some coffee or tea and kibbitz our way through one of the movies that are on or a soap opera."

She had to admit that TV didn't sound so boring when she thought about watching it with him. "Sure." And she smiled, the first really easy smile she had given in days.

He seemed to catch his breath, then nodded. "Let's go."

She wondered what had made him catch his breath that way, but his face offered no clue and for some reason she was afraid to ask. Maybe he'd just had a twinge of some kind. After all, he must have gotten very tense while they were driving through the storm.

They decided on tea, then fluffed the pillows on his bed so they could sit up with a bag of chips between them. It was, Joni thought, almost like a pajama party.

Except no pajama party with Hardy Wingate could ever be innocent. Not in her mind, which seemed bound and determined to play nasty little tricks on her, by making her notice how long his legs looked encased in those worn denim jeans. How soft the denim looked.

She dragged her gaze away and tried to focus on the soap--she didn't even know which one of the daytime programs they had tuned in to--where one of the characters was having a major crisis over whether his wife was really having an affair with a guy she used to be in love with but had ditched because he was a ne'er-do-well. Or at least that was the impression she was getting.

Then the scene switched to the wife--or she assumed it was the wife, anyway--who was indeed meeting secretly with her former lover, but not to have sex, or so she said. It was just to help him with some personal angst he was having with another exgirlfriend.

Joni looked at Hardy. "Why does this remind me of my own life?"

He laughed, and his eyes sparkled. "Maybe because it really does resemble real life. We all go through periods that would make good fodder for these shows."

"We do?" Joni didn't know if she wanted to believe that. She supposed it was true. "Well, I guess my problems are trivial by comparison."

"Comparison to what? This show? That's not a good comparison to make, Joni. Your problems are real, and they hurt. If you want to pace the room, rubbing your arms and dumping all over me, be my guest. You're entitled."

But she didn't want to do that. "I've been doing enough of that," she said. "I'm sick of myself."

He nodded. "Been there. It's an awful feeling, isn't it? The problems won't go away, but you can't stop thinking about them until all you can do is feel disgusted with yourself."

"You've done that, too?"

"I sure as hell have. There've been times when I've wanted to run to the far ends of the earth. Trouble is, all your problems just go with you. "

She shook her head. "I don't know about that. I'll just stay away from Hannah and Witt. If I don't have to be around them, I don't have to think of how... duplicitous they are. I mean ... I still can't get over it. If they'd been total strangers, I could understand it better."

"Yeah." He sighed and slouched down lower on the pillows. Apparently he wasn't even going to pretend to watch the show anymore. "You know, I can't imagine how it happened. You know I'm not real fond of Witt.

I sometimes think he's one of the biggest jackasses in creation. But only about how he's treated me. Otherwise, I've always figured him for a real straight arrow."

"Me too. He goes to church twice a week and teaches Sunday school every spring."

"That doesn't mean he isn't human."

"True." She sighed and looked down at her hands, which were twisting in her lap.

"It just kind of boggles my mind," Hardy continued. "Witt worked hard to put Lewis through med school. I mean, he practically gave up his own life from the time he turned sixteen. A guy who'd do that wouldn't be really keen on committing adultery with that same brother's wife."