Stevie Lee (9 page)

“Oh, no, not us.” Paul repeated.

“We’ll catch you next week. You kids carry on.” Even the dour Garrett couldn’t resist teasing her.

Embarrassed down to the toes of her boots, Stevie opened her eyes and stared over Hal’s shoulder at the three older men. They were staring right back, all grinning like a pack of fools.

Tom cackled. “Yep, you kids do carry on. You sure do carry on.”

Her eyes flashed to Hal’s. He was grinning at her with the best of them.

“Don’t forget where we were, Hal. Right there hanging on that rock.”

“Old Ted and Lars floating away.”

“Charlie praying.” The three men each reminded him of a bit of the story.

“I won’t forget.” He glanced back, lowering his guard for an instant.

It was all Stevie needed. In a second, she dipped under his arm, breaking free. Then she gave the drivers one all-encompassing lethal glare and stomped into the back room.

“Told you it looked like trouble.”

“She’s been needing that kind of trouble.”

“The girl’s been alone too long.”

If she’d had an office door, “the girl” would have slammed it.

* * *

Holding the end of her braid in her mouth, Stevie twisted her back toward the mirror and tried to see what was catching the zipper on her dress. Sunday supper at the ranch with her folks demanded a level of attire she usually avoided, for this very reason.

“Come on, you son of a gun. Give.” It did—by coming apart. Stevie stared silently at the broken zipper. Then she sighed and sat down on the edge of the tub, dropping her head into her hands.

What was going on with her life? she wondered, but not for long. The answer came to her in a visual memory of a pair of dark sun-shot eyes, and a body that didn’t know when to quit. Halsey Morgan was going on with her life. Since he’d walked into her bar, nothing had gone right, and everything had gone right.

His easy going charm brought record numbers of customers into the bar. The Trail was breaking new financial ground every week. But he also teased, cajoled, and kissed her. He rocked her tidy plans and sent them tumbling. He touched her and made her feel alive.

“No,” she said with a moan, burying her head farther into her arms. She shouldn’t want him, need him, think about him all the time. She wouldn’t fall in love. Above all, she had to save herself from the ultimate folly. Before she knew it, summer would turn into fall, and Hal would disappear into the great unknown. His kind never stayed in one place too long. And at the rate she was going, she’d be lucky to get to Denver again, let alone anyplace else.

“No, no, no,” she whispered into her lap, refusing to accept defeat on any quarter. Somehow the Trail would pull her through, somehow she’d hold on to her senses.

A cold wet nose nudging her arm reminded her of the time. “Okay, Tiva. You’re right, we’re already late.” She lifted her head and reached out to scratch the husky’s muzzle, rubbing her fingers up the white mask of fur to a special spot behind the dog’s ears. Tiva groaned in pleasure and shoved her head into Stevie’s lap. “Now look at you. I thought you wanted to get going,” she said. “Your buddy Blue is waiting, hmmm, with her new puppies. And so is Mom’s fried chicken.”

The pitiful state of Stevie’s wardrobe limited her choices to her wedding dress—an unlikely choice for supper—and a mid-calf length skirt. Black, with a deep yoke and lots of tiny buttons up the front, it flowed around her legs. She slipped it over her cream-colored cowboy boots, and pulled on the matching western style shirt. A fancy leather belt with her name scrolled across the back finished the outfit.

She grabbed Kip’s leather bomber jacket on her way out the door. In a typically dramatic gesture, he’d left it the night he walked out on her, promising someday to return and retrieve them both—after he’d worked a few things out, such as the blonde waiting in his car, she’d guessed at the time—after he’d grown up a bit and was ready to settle down, he’d said. After hell freezes over, Stevie had replied.

The last she’d heard, the blonde had been switched out for a redhead, Kip still hadn’t grown up, and as far as she knew hell hadn’t frozen over.

Tiva raced down the road leading to the ranch, and Stevie let her run. The evening sun slanted shadows beneath the pines, and dappled the soft green leaves on a stand of aspens. Stevie’s boots crunched along the dirt and gravel road, her long legs carrying her quickly through the quarter mile of forest to the top of a rise.

A broad, thickly-grassed pasture stretched out on the other side, filled with grazing cattle and a few mule deer passing through. The Bar Rocking C ranch house was another quarter mile up the meadow on the north end, and dotted here and there across the twelve hundred acres were the homes of her brothers.

A variety of trucks and cars were in the driveway, and Stevie speeded up her gait, realizing she was the last to arrive. Later in the summer when the weather warmed up, the clan would gather on the front porch until supper, but the coolness of early June kept everyone inside tonight.

Warmth and laughter surrounded her as she opened the heavy oak door. It spilled out of the house from the expansive, pine-paneled living room. A rock fireplace took up one wall, and worn, but much-loved furniture was scattered here and there.

Stevie hung her coat on a rack by the door, between Nola’s rabbit fur jacket and a white, quilted parka, and turned toward the kitchen. Then the color and style of the parka registered in her mind. Stevie jerked her head around. It couldn’t be, but it had to be.

Her mind flashed back to the phone call he’d gotten, and she knew that somehow, some way, for whatever reason, her mother had invited Halsey Morgan to Sunday supper. Without a second thought, she grabbed her coat off the hook. She’d call from her cabin and tell them she was sick, tell them Tiva was sick. No, she instantly changed her mind, that would only bring her mother running. She’d call Francine and have her beg Doug to take her out, and then she’d have to go fill in at the Trail. Or maybe she’d . . .

“Hey, everybody. Stevie’s here.” John, her oldest brother, peeked around the archway from the kitchen. “Hurry up, Stevie. We’re all starving. You know how the kids get.”

Caught with her arms half in her coat, Stevie pretended they were half out, knowing no excuse would get by her mother if she had to lie to her face. Resigned, she rehung her coat and walked on leaden feet into the big country kitchen. The whole family sat around the dining room table—the whole family and one golden-haired, blue-eyed guest.

“Hi, Stevie.”

“Stevie Lee.”

“Stevie.” A hodgepodge of siblings and their spouses acknowledged her arrival with a lift of the hand here, a smile there.

“Hi, Stutz. How’s my girl?” Her father smiled up at her from the head of the table. His dark brown hair showed signs of age in the sprinkling of gray at his temples.

Stevie hazarded a glance in Hal’s direction, and saw his eyebrows rise at her dad’s greeting, then rise even farther when her mother spoke.

“Stephanie Lisa Marie, where have you been? We thought we were going to have to send one of the boys up for you. Your Mr. Morgan must be thinking we never eat around here. Now don’t you come in empty-handed. Go ahead and get the biscuits out of the oven. Nola and Sally, help me with the chicken and stuff. John, why don’t you get everybody another beer.” Elizabeth Carson bustled around the table, a cloud of flour following her every step. “Diana, you stay put, dear. We don’t want that baby coming before its time. Gene, go tell the children that their Aunt Stephanie finally made it.”

Her Mr. Morgan watched the Carsons hurry this way and that, an amused smile crooking the corner of his mouth. Stevie wanted to groan—quite loudly—throw her hands up in the air, and leave. Instead she obeyed every maternal command, piling a couple of dozen buttermilk biscuits into a linen-lined basket and running to the pantry for three kinds of jam.

By the time she returned, only one empty chair remained, the one next to Hal. She should have seen the bit of maneuvering coming down the pike; her mother was nothing if not predictable. Plastering a false smile to her face, she sat down and ignored him the best she could—an impossible endeavor.

“Hi, Stephanie Lisa Marie,” his deep voice whispered below the noise. “I would have waited and walked you down, but I didn’t want to scare you off.”

Keeping her gaze firmly on the napkin she was unfolding in her lap, Stevie began an appropriately stiff reply—rudeness being her last defense—but got no further than the necessary intake of breath before she noticed the nine pairs of eyes trained on them. Damn him anyway. If he’d yelled at her, no one would have noticed. But no, Hal Morgan had to whisper, had to enclose the two of them in a cocoon of intimacy with his rough voice and the incline of his head.

“Don’t give it another thought, Hal. We probably would have ended up talking business, and you know how boring that can be.” The words fell from the tight line of her mouth, fooling no one.

“Mother? Will you lead the prayer?” Richard Carson requested.

Nine pairs of eyes closed. The tenth and eleventh pairs locked onto each other—the gray ones wide with alarm, the blue ones twinkling with mischief.

“Dear heavenly Father, thank you for the bounty and the blessings of our lives . . .” Elizabeth intoned in her sweet, melodic voice.

Dear Lord, don’t let him shout out
, Stevie privately prayed alongside her mother. As the “Amens” came closer and closer, she wrapped her hands around each other tighter and tighter, steeling herself for the worst.

“. . . please watch over our dear Diana as she brings another of your sweet blessings into our lives. We’d like a girl this time, Lord.” Mother Carson and the Lord were on very personal terms, allowing for a number of special requests over the years. Not so surprisingly, the good Lord had granted most of them, a fact Elizabeth never let pass without her gratitude. “. . .and thank you, especially, for bringing Mr. Morgan back into the safety of your fold. Our prayers have been with him these many years while he was lost in pagan, tropical lands . . .”

The heavenly message resounded in Stevie’s heart and mind, turning her emotions inside out and filling her with pure, unadulterated guilt. Her chin dropped lower to her chest. Her shoulders slumped in heartfelt penance. She’d virtually banked on his death or disappearance, and then he’d come out of nowhere and filled her life with his own, making every day new again.

Suddenly she knew she didn’t want him to leave. The sheer force of the realization frightened her. How had such a thing happened? When had she become so vulnerable?

As if sensing her distress, a large, calloused hand reached over and covered hers. His thumb brushed across her skin. She wanted to pull away, meant to pull away, but the forgiveness and understanding in his touch held her captive in his grasp.

Daring all, she opened her eyes and found him quietly in prayer, his thick dark lashes resting on his cheeks, his mouth moving in unspoken words. Gently he twined his fingers through hers and pulled her hand into his lap.

Lord help her, she thought, her eyes drifting closed. She was falling in love.

Six

Love? There had to be a mistake, or so Stevie kept telling herself all through dinner, all through dessert, and all through the following hour of chitchat in the living room.

“No,” she whispered, staring into her lap. She had to have more brains than to fall in love. A little physical attraction? Fine, she’d concede to attraction. But love?

“No,” she decided aloud with another whisper. Just because he was crazy and fun, gorgeous and passionate, and had lived, actually lived, the life of her dreams was no reason to go falling in—

“Stephanie? Stephanie, dear.” The sound of her mother’s voice broke into the middle of her silent argument.

“What?” She lifted her head and found all the Carson women looking at her. After dinner the men had gone outside to kick tires and lean on fence posts. The ladies had retired to the living room, and from the sofa to the piano bench to the overstuffed chairs flanking the fireplace, they were all looking at her.

Elizabeth clasped her hands in her flour-dusted lap and leaned forward, her head inclined to an inquisitive angle. “Dear, you’ve been mumbling to yourself over there for nearly a half an hour, and frankly, it’s starting to worry me. Are you feeling all right “

“Fine, Mom. I’m feeling fine. It’s summer, that’s all. You know, long hours, lots of business.” Stevie hedged around the truth, far from ready to accept it herself.

“I think it’s something else,” Nola said in a sing-songy voice, plunking out a few notes on the piano.

From one of the doily-covered chairs, Diana chuckled in agreement. The soft laughter flushed her cheeks and shook her gently rounded tummy. “My, my, I never thought I’d see the day. I think our Stevie is—”

“Fine, Mom. Just fine,” Stevie quickly interjected, throwing both of the other women silencing glares.

“Are you sick, Aunt Stevie?” A little voice asked.

“No, Josh. I’m fine,” she reassured her three-year-old nephew, beginning to feel like a broken record.

“Oh,” Josh’s pink mouth rounded. Then he went back to running his matchbox truck over the blue cotton of his grandmother’s dress, using the pleats as drag strips and her apron as a grandstand. G.I. Joe and He-Man shared one floury pocket. A passel of Thundercats shared another.

She saw her mother gearing up for another question, but she was interrupted by the returning men.

“Elizabeth, where did I put them new truck keys. Hal here is going to take it for a spin. The boy’s never driven a king cab with dual rear wheels before. I told him there’s nothing like it, nothing like it”—her father rummaged around the cluttered top of the ranch’s accounting desk—“but be danged if I can remember what I did with the keys.”

“They’re in your pocket, dear.”

Without the slightest embarrassment Richard Carson dug into his pocket and came up with the keys. “Now be gentle with her, Hal. Ease her out of first, try the wheel a little until you get the hang of her. Test ’em out first, that’s what I always say. Keeps you from running into a brick wall.”