Summer's Freedom (34 page)

Luke held her gaze. “Yeah. I think so.”

“Are you mad at my mother?”

He took a kitchen match from his pocket and scratched the tip with his thumbnail. Mad? He lit the cigarette and inhaled deeply before he spoke. “No,” he lied, to spare the child who had nothing to do with anything between her mother and father.

The door swung open and Jessie pushed outside, a swirl of color and glitter and fragrance. Luke saw her spy him and Giselle cozily talking together on the sidewalk; then he watched as she planted her feet and crossed her arms in a fighting posture. Squatting as he was, Luke was at a disadvantage.

There was also the small matter of his breath, which seemed to have deserted him.

Damn. He searched for his fury. She’d hidden from him for eight years, not only herself, but her daughter. There should be nothing but fury in him.

He had loved this woman once with an almost scorching intensity. Seeing her again so suddenly unnerved him, tangled him up inside like a can full of rubber bands.

How could anyone remain so unchanged? She was as beautiful as she had been the first time he’d seen her, almost twelve years ago. It was a beauty as wild and tender as the stubborn roses that grew by the sea in her father’s California garden. Her skin was pale and pure, her hair a rich chestnut that spilled in abundance over her shoulders, catching around the rise of one breast as if in a caress.

But it was her eyes that had bewitched him the first time, so many years ago, the same extraordinary eyes her daughter had inherited—eyes the color of the first golden fingers of morning sunlight. They bewitched him again now.

“Come on, Giselle, let’s go,” she said, and turned.

Luke was on his feet instantly. “Jessie,” he called in a harsh voice.

She whirled, ready to battle. He could see it in her stance, in her fisted hands, in the blaze of her eyes. She was scared stiff and as unsettled as he, but battle she would. “What?”

“You can’t just walk away.”

Her lips twisted in a bitter smile. “Can’t I?”

That brought his fury rushing back, clean and pure as a mountain stream. “Well,” he said quietly, “I guess you can. You’ve done it before.”

She just looked at him.

He crushed the stub of his cigarette under the heel of his boot, exhaling in an effort to curb his anger. “I’m asking you not to.” He touched Giselle’s hair in wonder, and she looked up at Jessie with hope, a hope and pleading that broke his heart.

Jessie saw it, too. Luke saw her swallow—and for an instant, he felt pity for her. He and Giselle had nothing to lose, everything to gain. For Jessie, quite the opposite was true. “Giselle,” he said quietly, “give me a minute with your mother, all right?”

“I don’t want a moment with you, Luke,” Jessie whispered fiercely, but Giselle had already skipped away.

He set his jaw. “Looks to me like you got caught red-handed, me and her in the same place at the same time.”

She refused to look at him.

“Look, Jessie, we can let sleeping dogs lie or we can have a bloody, screaming fight in the middle of the street. I don’t really give a damn about the past, but you can’t expect me to just walk away from my only child without a second glance.” He crossed his arms. “Be fair.”

“Fair!” She spat the word.

Light glowed like wine in the rippling fall of her hair, danced like moonlight over her nearly translucent skin. Luke could smell her perfume, a deeply exotic mix of frangipani and sandalwood and something he couldn’t name. It made him dizzy. “Well, maybe fair is the wrong word,” he admitted.

Her gaze, frightened and wary, met his. Luke felt the impact as a fist to his gut and he glanced away. “I’m sober now, Jessie,” he said, looking at a piece of mica caught in the sidewalk just beyond the toe of his boot. In his ears, his voice was rough.

She didn’t say anything for a long time, and in the silence between them Luke felt a rush of things spring and whirl like dust devils. “I can see that.”

“Just come with me now for a little while,” he urged. “We’ll get a hamburger or something. You’ve had a long time to know her, Jessie. Give me an hour or two.” He licked his lips. “Please.”

For a moment, he thought she would refuse. Her chin jutted stubbornly toward the mountains. Suddenly, she capitulated. “All right. But only an hour.”

He found his gaze on the curve of her cheek, at once intimately familiar and completely strange to him. A sword of that old, familiar grief stabbed his gut. In a harsh voice, he asked, “You want to go in my truck?”

“We’ll just follow you.”

In the instant before she turned, Luke thought he glimpsed a tear.

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(Excerpt)

by
Barbara Samuel

One

D
aniel Lynch drove back to the ranch in a roar of spitting gravel, unable to fathom what had just happened. For nine months, he’d been waiting for this day, April 30, when he could legally claim the land that was his birthright.

For almost a year, he’d lived at El Durazno Ranch, refurbishing the abandoned adobe farmhouse, clearing irrigation ditches of tumbleweeds, pruning the peach trees that gave the land its name. Last June, after determining the peach trees occupying the warm, protected canyon were indeed the mythical Lost Orchard—the only Navajo peach orchard to escape Kit Carson’s burnings—Daniel had paid the two years’ back taxes owed on the property and moved in. All winter he’d been waiting for this day, when he could pay the third year of taxes that was were owed claim the land as his own.

It was his. The orchard had been planted by his great-great-grandmother in the mid-1800s, and members of his family had owned it until prejudice had forced them out. Now Daniel had worked the land for a year; he had begun to understand what it asked of him. He’d fixed the house...

His.

But someone had beaten him to the assessor’s office. By one day. Late yesterday afternoon, Winona Snow, to whom Jericho Snow, the previous owner, had left the land in his will, had paid the current year’s taxes.

Legally Daniel Lynch didn’t have a single recourse. Legally the precious, long-sought land and its orchard belonged to Winona Snow.

Daniel gnawed his lip as he turned into the long drive that led to the farmhouse. Against the whitish desert afternoon light, cottonwood leaves glittered, a dark, gray-green counterpoint to the mountains on the horizon. Below the sturdy branches of the cotton-woods, the farmhouse lay in a pool of cool, inviting shade, the deep porch in shadow.

Daniel cursed again. He hated to lose the fight now. Hated it as he’d never hated anything.

Maybe this woman, the heir to the ranch, had simply become aware that the taxes were in arrears and had paid the current year to maintain her claim on the land. It didn’t mean she wanted to live there; wanted to take it away. If worse came to worst, surely she could be convinced to allow him to live in the house and act as caretaker.

The thought made him feel marginally better. If he could get an address and phone number for her, maybe she’d even be willing to talk about a fair price for the land. At the very least, he had to maintain his temper until he could talk to her.

But a burning anxiety filled his stomach and he peeled an antacid from the roll. Damn. Damn. Damn. He’d known the risks when he’d started with this plan, but he had never expected anyone to come forward. Jericho had been dead almost three years. What were the chances of an heir materializing after so long?

As Daniel came around the final curve of the drive, he saw the child first. Small and thin, dressed androgynously in jeans, flannel shirt and baseball hat. Only the narrow face and delicate hands gave away her sex. She sat on the porch steps with her hands clasped around her skinny knees.

Daniel parked, then turned off the engine of his truck. He didn’t immediately get out but leaned back and narrowed his eyes. A Volkswagen Bug—“Slug bug!” he heard Giselle say in memory, and it pained him—loaded to the gills, was parked beneath a tree. It had Wisconsin plates. The paint was worn, the tires almost bald.

Not a particularly good sign. He’d been half hoping Winona Snow might turn out to be a wealthy suburbanite, with maybe a husband who practiced some kind of civilized law. What would a woman like that need with four hundred acres of ranch land in the wilds of northern New Mexico?

Unfortunately, it didn’t appear that his little fantasy would turn out to hold even a gram of truth. The back seat of the Bug looked as if everything in the world were packed into it. Daniel saw the triangular head of a well-used iron pressed against the glass—not the sort of thing a casual traveler carted around—and the handle of either a broom or a mop.

The girl on the steps hadn’t moved; only sat there, watching him. It finally penetrated his anxiety-stricken brain that the kid hadn’t driven there by herself. He peered into the deeper shadows cast by the vigas of the porch roof and saw a woman sprawled in the hammock.
His
hammock. She seemed to be out cold.

Could that be Winona Snow? He couldn’t make out many details, only a tumble of corkscrew blond curls and long, strong-looking legs poking from well-worn cutoffs. Her feet—big feet—were bare but clean.

Daniel stepped out of the truck and slammed the truck door hard, hoping to wake her. To the girl he said, “Who are you? And may I ask what you are doing here?”

The girl, her eyes owlish behind a singularly unattractive pair of glasses, only stared at him.

Daniel kicked out a heel in the dust and put his hands on his hips, looking from girl to woman and back again. The woman hadn’t stirred one iota. “Is she sick or something?”

“It’s malaria.”

The voice was thin and whispery. He had barely heard her.

“Malaria?”

“She took her medicine about two hours ago, but she won’t be better until morning. Maybe a little longer.”

“Is she Winona Snow?”

The girl nodded. Daniel noticed with a small part of his mind that the kid was older than he had thought at first, maybe thirteen or fourteen. Probably pretty, with those cheekbones and light, clear skin, but the glasses made it hard to tell.

“And who are you?”

“Joleen.”

Lips pursed, Daniel measured the situation—the girl and the packed, shabby VW Bug, the woman passed out on the hammock. He climbed the steps to take a closer look at her. “Where did she pick up malaria?”

“Peace Corps.”

Even in the cool shadows of the porch, the woman’s face was dewed with perspiration, and quite flushed. Daniel touched her cheek and found the skin clammy. He didn’t know a lot about malaria, but she was plainly quite ill.

As he stood there in the cool shadows of the porch, pondering what his next move should be, he noticed something else—Winona Snow was not a small woman. He’d lain in the hammock often enough to know that she’d be almost as tall as his six-feet-three-inch frame. Nor was her body the sort of fashion-model emaciated that he’d come to associate with very tall women. She was busty and broad of hip, with big hands and big feet.

Not his usual type, but he found himself admiring the look of sturdy strength in her bare arms and legs. In contrast, her hair was a tumble of pale, airy curls, as glittery as a silver bracelet. Her mouth was plump, her brow wide and intelligent. As he bent over her, she made a whimpering noise, low in her throat.

“She’s pretty sick,” he said.

“Her medicine will help soon,” the girl replied.

Daniel sighed. He could hardly turn them out. And the truth was, he was obligated to them, considering everything. Technically it was their house, even though he’d begun to think of it as his own. It was disconcerting to be suddenly dropped to the status of poacher.

“Well, open the door,” he said, tossing the girl his keys. “Maybe you can help me figure out what to do.”

Once upon a time, it wouldn’t have been much of a task for him to carry a woman from the porch inside. But this was no ordinary woman and he wasn’t as young as he used to be. He slid his right arm under her knees, his left under her shoulders and lifted all six feet of her. For less time than the space between two breaths, he hesitated, surprised at the startlingly pleasant feel of womanly softness against him after so long a time. Her breasts pushed against his chest, and her hair brushed his arm, and there was the faintest scent of soap and skin that made him remember the things men and women did together.

With a grunt, he turned and carried her inside, his muscles straining to hold her utterly unconscious weight. He’d thought to take her to the small bedroom at the back of the house, but as soon as he got inside, he knew he couldn’t make it that far. Instead he settled her on the couch in the living room.

To the girl he said, “Run into the back room, down that hail, and bring me a pillow and a blanket off the bed.”

She did as she was told, literally running down the hall. On the couch, the woman made a soft, murmuring sound and shifted.

Daniel knelt beside her. “Can you hear me?” he asked. Some instinct made him brush a lock of spun silver hair from her cheek, and his fingers registered the elegance of her skin before he let go.

A tumble of nonsense spilled out of her mouth, a warning, he thought, but couldn’t be sure. “Shhh,” he said. “It’s all right now.”

She shifted abruptly to her back. Daniel tried not to notice anew the rich, rich curves the position displayed, but he was a man, after all, chemically rigged to respond to siren swoops of miles of womanly dips and swells. It wasn’t a figure currently in fashion, but he didn’t know too many men who wouldn’t take a minute or two to admire it with the reverence it deserved.

Mama mía.

The child—Joleen—came back and hesitantly held out a feather pillow and a striped cotton blanket. Daniel smiled, wanting to ease the timid terror lurking in her big eyes. “Thanks. You want to lift up her head and I’ll put the pillow under?”

Joleen nodded and did as she was told. When Daniel would have spread the blanket over the woman’s endless legs, Joleen said, “I think it’s better if you don’t cover her.”