“
Except your guilt over Wes Cooper.”
Althea mourned the loss of the man Jefferson Hicks had once been,
and seemed determined to never be again.
He stood and stretched his long back as he
regarded the starlit sky. His drawn expression revealed a wealth of
pain—a kind of pain that Althea knew all too well. Guilt. It was
like a cancer that ate away at the heart instead of the flesh, but
it was no less hurtful, for all that. She yearned to reach out and
touch his arm, to offer him whatever comfort she could. But after
the kiss they had shared, she couldn’t trust herself to pull away
again.
After a long moment, he glanced down at her
again and flashed her a mocking grin that she knew was directed
more at himself than at her. “Yeah, well, I guess a man has to do
something with the time he has left on this earth, worthwhile or
not. Guilt doesn’t accomplish a whole lot, but at least if gives
me—” He broke off, as if his train of thought had momentarily
deserted him. “A reason, I guess,” he finished in a hollow voice
that conveyed just how empty he felt. “We all need a reason for
being, and that’s all I really have left, Allie. Deep regret.”
That was the saddest thing she’d ever heard
anyone say. If he’d been any other man, she might have suspected
him of trying to play on her sympathy. But the ache in Jeff’s eyes
told her he truly meant it. His life had been stripped. He was just
marking time with no hopes or dreams to sustain him.
Althea understood exactly how that felt and
wished with all her heart that she didn’t. To look at the endless
road that lay ahead of you . . . knowing that
you would never escape the deep rut in which you
walked . . . and even worse, that there was no
end in sight. Just day after day after day of putting one foot in
front of the other, moving relentlessly ahead to go nowhere, your
only companion a deep, soul-searing regret over events you could
never change. Oh, yes . . . she understood very
well.
“
Good night, Allie,” he said softly.
Then he bounded down the stairs and into the darkness toward the
lean-to.
For a long while, Althea stared into the
blackness that swallowed him and wished she had the courage to call
him back. Only for what purpose? To tell him that she understood?
To offer him the solace his wife had refused him? Her own pain ran
too deep for her to hope to heal his.
Althea sighed and rose stiffly from the
rocker, her gaze locked forlornly on the buttery sphere that
hovered on the western horizon. That’s your moon up there, Allie.
If it was hers, why did it remain so far beyond her reach? That was
a question for which there was no answer, so why torment herself by
asking it? Some things simply weren’t meant to be.
Turning her back on the moonlight, she went
into the kitchen and blew out the lamp.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Olivia remained in bed all night and part of
the following day. Althea slept occasionally, sitting up in a chair
next to her. The rest of the time, she read to her sister, spooned
soup into her mouth, and brushed her hair. She left Olivia’s side
only to cook, and Jeff found his trays on the back porch once
again. She gave him plain fare—lukewarm oatmeal for breakfast and
sandwiches for lunch and dinner, made from the roast beef he hadn’t
gotten to taste the night before.
Though he looked toward the house for Allie
so many times he’d lost count, he never saw her, and the day seemed
lonely somehow. He spent it sweating in the sun and cursing a seed
drill he was trying to resurrect from near-death. It had been left
out in the weather for several years.
A month ago he couldn’t have cared less about
Althea Ford. In fact, he would have been hard pressed to recognize
her name or remember anything about her. He’d been lost in a haze
of whiskey and reliving the past, and that was where he’d wanted to
stay. Now, though, he more often found himself thinking about the
here and now, and looking forward to tomorrow. And he realized that
whenever he did so, Allie was part of both.
Allie, with her sister bound to her as surely
as a ball and chain bound a prisoner.
Finally Jeff wrenched open the screeching
barn door to look for an oil can. The damned seeder was rusted
solid. He’d had to hack a path through the brambles and tall weeds
just to reach it. If he couldn’t make the thing work, he had a big
job ahead of him, seeding the field by hand.
He rummaged through the items on the shelves,
squinting in the cool, semi-gloom to make out the contents of
various dusty cans and bottles. His finger, the one Olivia had
bitten, ached a little. She hadn’t broken the skin but she’d left
her teeth marks on him. He still couldn’t get the scene at dinner
out of his mind—those blood-freezing shrieks, the plates and bowls
flying off the table, Allie, gravy dripping from her hair and
blackberry jam smeared on her dress, trying to comfort her sister.
But by far, his most disturbing recollection of last night was
Olivia’s lucid, calculating hazel eyes glaring up at him when he’d
tried to restrain her.
He’d seen manipulation in his time, but
Olivia Ford took the prize. The reasons for her behavior and how
she’d gotten to be that way were mysteries to him. Her intentions
were pretty clear, though.
Allie didn’t seem to have a clue that her
sister was anything but a helpless, childlike invalid. In her face
he’d seen only worry, empathy and tenderness as she’d clutched
Olivia to her shoulder. The “helpless invalid” was controlling her
strong, good-hearted nursemaid with a tyranny that Jeff knew would
eventually break Allie’s spirit like a dry twig.
He put down a dusty bottle of old liniment
with a thud. Damn it, he knew life wasn’t fair but sometimes it
seemed that fate deliberately stepped in to crush people. To turn
their lives upside down, to keep happiness just beyond their grasp,
to prevent them from having any life at all.
Forget it, Hicks, just forget it, he grumbled
to himself, resuming his search for oil. He’d do well to stay out
of the Ford family’s problems. He had plenty of his own troubles to
ponder if he wanted to give himself sleepless nights. He didn’t
want to think about a smart, pretty woman shriveling up out here on
this tumbledown farm, her life spent in servitude to a sister who
knew exactly how to get her own way. Even if a body could get past
thinking of Althea as one of the peculiar Ford sisters, it was a
certainty that not one man in the whole valley would be willing to
take Olivia Ford as the booby prize for marrying Allie. He sure as
hell wouldn’t.
It didn’t matter that sometimes when he
looked into Allie’s bottomless blue-gray eyes, he swore he saw the
chance to heal his soul in their depths. And if he had just half
the tenderness she gave to Olivia, he might even be able to stop
thinking about Wes Matthews every single day. It wouldn’t take much
encouragement from Allie to make him give up drinking for good and
settle down again. If he had someone like her to come home to— He
sighed and stared unseeing at the cobweb-draped shelf in front of
him. If . . . if . . . Not
much could be accomplished with “if.”
A glaring truth shot through his mind then
and stopped him cold in his tracks. He didn’t want to be saddled
with Olivia—what made him think that Allie would want anything to
do with him, a broken-down drunk without a penny to his name, save
whatever she was going pay him? Even his own wife had given up on
him.
Until that night at Wickwire’s, he’d never
thought of himself as a bad person. His mother had instilled right
and wrong in all her sons; she’d stressed the value of goodness.
But after he’d killed Wes, all that might have been good in him
drained away, as sure as that boy’s lifeblood had drained from his
gunshot heart.
Jefferson Hicks didn’t deserve a woman like
Allie Ford, and realizing that made the hope for tomorrow wither in
the pit of his stomach. At one time, he would have been worthy of
her but not now, and probably not ever.
He touched his shirt pocket where a keepsake
lay furled. Giving in to the urge, he withdrew it. Sometime during
the fracas of Olivia’s tantrum, amid the flying peas and gobbets of
jam, Allie’s ribbon had come loose from her hair. He hadn’t even
realized he’d taken it until he was back in the lean-to and found
it wound in his fingers. It was such a simple thing, a bit of
delicate femininity in a world that had been hard and unforgiving
of him. He lifted it to his nose to inhale the faint scent of her
hair. Soon the pink satin would take on the smell of his sweat and
his own body, but he would savor her fragrance while he could.
After harvest time, he’d go back to his old
way of life, his whiskey and its blessed forgetfulness. If Will
Mason harassed him, he’d move on to another town. But somehow, the
idea of sleeping in doorways and hayricks wasn’t as tolerable as it
had been just a month ago. He’d gotten used to his little
arrangement in the lean-to next to the barn. Well, he would just
have to give it up when the time came. He stuffed the ribbon back
into his pocket. There were some things a man couldn’t change no
matter how much he wished for them.
When Jeff at last put his hand on an old oil
can, he carried it to the barn door and oiled the thing so it
didn’t screech anymore. Allie hadn’t wanted him to bother fixing
it, but that high-pitched scraping of metal against metal set his
teeth on edge. He slid it back and forth on its wheels until the
lubricant coated the mechanism and it ran smoothly.
Satisfied, he held a faint hope that the farm
tool outside would be as easy to fix, but it was in far worse
shape. He’d turned to go back to it when he became aware of an
insistent cheeping. Looking up, he saw the mud-and-feather nest of
the barn swallows anchored to a corner formed by a beam and the
wall. A doting parent, dressed in steel blue and chestnut plumage,
flew through the open barn door and clung to the side of the nest.
Eager babies bobbed up in unison with beaks open wide to receive
their breakfast. Jeff chuckled.
He wondered again if Allie knew these birds
were out here. Remembering how she loved to feed the birds in the
orchard, he thought she’d probably get a kick out of seeing them.
And like it or not, he knew he’d get a kick out of showing them to
her. It might be a nice change for her, a chance to get away from
her sister.
“
Will you just forget about it?” he
muttered to himself again, making a disgusted noise. Allie was no
princess who needed rescuing.
And he sure as hell didn’t own a white
horse.
~~*~*~*~~
Despite acting as his own Dutch uncle, Jeff
looked up eagerly the next time he heard the screen door open. But
instead of Allie, as he expected, it was Olivia Ford who stood on
the back porch. She moved to the rocker and sat down, watching him
as though he were a most fascinating subject.
He was still wary. He saw nothing of the wild
harpy who had pitched a tantrum at the dinner table and sunk her
teeth into his finger. In fact, with her pale hair secured by a
cherry-colored ribbon, she looked rested and very tidy, like
someone expecting visitors or going to a tea party. But there was a
smug, knowing glint in her expression.
The swallows flitted back and forth, while a
silent, awkward moment stretched between them as they studied each
other. Eli Wickwire had said that Olivia’s only problem was her
fits, but Jeff wasn’t so sure. Hell, the whole town referred to
Allie and her sister as crazy. Allie seemed perfectly normal, but
what if Olivia really was deranged? She couldn’t very well be
blamed for her behavior. When he’d looked into her eyes last night
at dinner she’d seemed sane enough to him, just spoiled and
willful. But he didn’t have much experience with lunatics. Drunks
and belligerent cowboys, yes—mean bastards and cranky bitches,
some.
So which was it? Was she touched in the head,
or merely a conniving, coddled, overgrown brat, determined to keep
Allie under her thumb?
“
Afternoon, Miss Olivia,” he ventured,
since she seemed not inclined to speak first. “How are you
today?”
“
Me? Why, I’m fine, Mr. Hicks. In fact,
it’s such a pretty day, I thought I’d come outside for awhile and
take some air while Althea is napping. She seems to be rather tired
today.” A shadow of concern crossed her delicate
features.
Jeff dropped his gaze to the gear he was
oiling. “Is she? Do you think it’s because of last night?” It
wasn’t a very subtle question, but he was doing his best.
Olivia leaned back in the rocker and gave it
a slight push to put it into motion. “Last night? Oh, you mean all
the preparations for dinner? I’m sure it’s possible. She takes such
good care of me, just like a mother cat with one kitten. She really
doesn’t have much energy left for company. One person can only do
so much, you know.”
Kitten. Jeff glanced at the teeth marks on
his hand. More like a cougar with a burr up its ass. But he stifled
a smart remark. Allie had said her sister had no memory of her
fits. Well, damn, maybe it was true. How else could she carry on
this conversation with him as though nothing had happened? Maybe
he’d been too harsh in his judgement of Olivia—he knew how it felt
to be on the receiving end of that kind of thinking. God knew the
display he’d seen at dinner yesterday wasn’t the everyday act of a
rational person. His curiosity demanded an answer to this riddle
and the only way he could think of learning that answer was to
spend a little time with Olivia Ford. But how? She wasn’t the type
a person could engage in conversation. She seemed so immature. Then
an idea struck him.
“
You know, I found a family of barn
swallows in there,” he gestured at the rickety structure behind
him. “They’re just babies—would you like to see them?”