Deep in the Heart (6 page)

“Come on, Sam. We’re both dead tired. There’ll be plenty of time tomorrow to look around. Right now the only thing I want to see is the underside of my pillow.”

She let him lead her across the darkened yard and up onto the porch, then stood aside while he fumbled in the lack of light, trying to get the key in the hole.

“Can’t you get it in?” she asked sleepily.

He stopped, his hand suspended in midair, and thanked God for the anonymity of night. What she’d asked had instantly imprinted another set of images into his mind, and it had nothing to do with keys and keyholes.

“Oh, I’ve got pretty good aim. Eventually, I get it right. I’ve had
some
practice since we…” His voice ended on a harsh grunt.

As sleepy as she was, Samantha heard the pain in his voice and wondered where it had come from. He was the one who’d scored the hit and run. He was the one who hadn’t written or called.

“I don’t need a reminder of what we once shared, Johnny, and you’d do well to remember it. I’m not some floozy you’re bringing home. I’m thirty-one years old, and you damn well know it.”

John Thomas frowned. Her anger seemed out of place. She was the one who’d sent back a drawerful of unopened letters. But this wasn’t the time to discuss who was to blame. There was more at stake here than the old history between them.

He jammed the key into the keyhole and turned it with a vicious twist. The door swung open as he reached inside and flipped a switch, instantly shedding all kinds of light onto the situation.

He cupped her elbow and guided her into the house, then turned and locked the door. Wordlessly, he picked up her bag and headed toward the back of the house, expecting her to follow. She did.

The door to the spare bedroom swung open silently as he flipped on another light.

“Bath’s down the hall. We’ll have to share.”

Without waiting for a response, he walked across the room and opened the window beside her bed. Fresh air slipped surreptitiously inside.

“Got everything you need?” he asked quietly.

She nodded, feeling suddenly shy in front of the big, solemn-eyed man.

He started out the door and then stopped and turned.

“Sam.”

She looked up.

“I’m only going to say this once. What happened between us was a long time ago, but it was mutual. You don’t need to feel threatened by me, or afraid of being here alone with me. No matter what else you may think, I wouldn’t take advantage of you or the situation. I like my women willing. So go to sleep.”

Her heart thumped once as he closed the door behind him, and then settled down into a regular rhythm.
Willing?
Once she hadn’t been any other way. But she was too weary to bother about sorting out her mixed feelings. There would be time enough to go through those later.

She unearthed an extra large T-shirt that had faithfully served as her favorite item of sleepwear for the last five years, and quickly traded it for what she was wearing, then sat on the bed and listened to the sounds of water running in the bath at the end of the hall.

After Johnny’s footsteps had silenced and he’d entered the room opposite hers, she ventured out and down the shadowy hallway, smiling to herself at the thoughtfulness of a man who would leave a light on in the bathroom for a house guest unfamiliar with the territory. It didn’t take long to do what she had to do, then sluice a little water on her weary body.

As she buried her face in the towel by the sink, intent on drying what was left of her quickie cleanup, she inhaled the faint but lingering scent of his shaving cream.

Instead of drying her face, she found herself moving the towel all across her neck, and then down her arms, and across her body in a slow, thoughtful motion.

Minutes later as she crawled into bed and pulled up the sheet, she turned her face into the pillow and inhaled again. Now, not only did she catch the pine-scented air filtering through the screen of her open window, but she’d taken a bit of Johnny Knight to bed with her.

It was an intriguing notion and one on which she dwelled only a minute before exhaustion claimed her.

4

S
AMANTHA WOKE SLOWLY
. For a moment before she opened her eyes, she expected her mother to call out at any moment that it was time to get up, and that she was going to be late for school.

The familiar scents of bacon frying, coffee perking, and fresh air wafting through the open windows told her she was home in Cotton. She buried her face in her pillow, reluctant to move from the comfort of her bed, and smiled in half sleep as the piney woods beckoned. At the same time she thought of Johnny, she remembered where she was, and then why she was here.

She
was
in Cotton, or so close that the difference hardly counted. Later she would learn that Johnny Knight’s home was barely two miles outside of Cotton’s city limits. Only a few miles to the southeast was Rusk, the county seat of Cherokee County. But she hadn’t come back for a visit, she’d come for her health. By anyone’s standards, dying was an unhealthy state of being.

She rolled over onto her back, stretched and yawned, and then opened her eyes and gasped with surprise. She didn’t know whether to glare, or just throw back the covers and invite him in. He was standing in the doorway, watching her sleep.

“Mornin’, Sam,” he said softly, and took a deep draw on the cup of coffee in his hands. Swallowing it slowly saved him from saying anything else that might get his face slapped. He knew that he’d intruded. He should have looked in as planned, then pulled the door shut and let her awaken alone. All he’d meant to do was check on her. He hadn’t intended to stay.

But that wild, long, black hair splayed out across the sheets, the way she’d jammed her turned-up nose forcefully into the pillow, and the peaceful sprawl of her long arms and legs as she slept soundly on her stomach had mesmerized him. He hadn’t been able to move.

She pulled the covers up beneath her chin and gave him what she hoped would pass for a glare. She did not know that, to John Thomas, it looked more like an invitation. Her eyelids were still heavy with sleep, and her mouth was all soft and vulnerable, just like the look in her eyes.

“When you’re dressed, there’s breakfast, if you’re hungry.”

She gulped.
He
looked good enough to eat in his low-riding Levi’s and his shirt untucked and only half buttoned. From the appearance of that thick black hair framing his face, she suspected that he’d ignored propriety and used his fingers for a comb.

She managed a nod.

“Did you sleep okay?” he asked, and still didn’t move, unable, or unwilling, to give her the space she obviously needed to crawl out of bed.

“Yes, thank you, I slept just fine. Now get, Johnny, so I can get up.” She smiled. “Or maybe I should call you John Thomas, since you’re so important and proper these days.”

“You can call me anything you want. You always did.”

She thought about the implications of that statement, and for the moment, decided not to pursue them. She folded her arms across her chest, cocked an eyebrow, and stared, waiting for him to move.

He grinned. “I get the message. But you better hurry before Rebel gets what’s left.”

Samantha’s attention piqued. “Who’s Rebel?”

He pointed toward the low, open window beside her bed and waited for her reaction. It wasn’t what he’d expected, but he remembered later that Sam always had a way of making her point without a fight.

She squealed with surprise at the face in the window. A large, brown, lop-eared hound with the saddest face she’d ever seen was staring at them through the screen. His tongue lolled to one side of his mouth as his soulful brown eyes fixed on Samantha intently, seeming to beg for a bite of the food he smelled inside the house.

She pursed her lips and whistled softly, then called out the dog’s name. Rebel seemed pleased at being noticed. Samantha grinned.

“He has your eyes,” she said.

John Thomas laughed. “You win,” he said, as he toasted her wit with his half-empty coffee cup, and pulled the door shut behind him, leaving her to get dressed in private.

“Well,” Samantha drawled, staring pointedly at the big hound who remained at the window. “I don’t suppose you have any more manners than your master.”

But Rebel didn’t move other than to lick his chops, then swallow as he let his tongue shift to the other side of his open, panting mouth.

“I didn’t think so,” she said, and laughed softly to herself as she crawled out of bed.

“Are you ready for this?” John Thomas asked, as they entered the outskirts of Cotton.

He knew that this homecoming, forced though it may be, would be emotional for Samantha. The last time she’d been here life had been simple. She’d been a young girl with a family intact.

“I think so,” she said, and watched with interest as he turned the corner of Fourth and Downey. The spurt of excitement she felt was echoed in her voice. “Oh, Johnny, it’s still here!”

The joy on her face made him smile. “I know, Sam. You didn’t think I’d bring you back to your old street just to give you a big letdown, did you?”

She shook her head and then refocused her gaze on the wide veranda of the small house and the trellis on the east end that hung heavy with wisteria and honeysuckle.

Besides, he had no intention of telling her how often he still drove past the old house and remembered the girl-child who’d lived inside so many years ago. He also had no intention of telling her how devastated he’d been when he came home for his father’s funeral and found it empty.

Samantha shifted in the seat and pointed in excitement.

“Even the flowers are still there.”

“Or some just like them. Remember, it’s been a long time.”

“It seems like it was only yesterday,” she said softly, then pointed. “I would try to slip out the back door to meet you without Mama knowing, but the hinges always squeaked.”

“I’m really sorry about your parents. I know how close you were. You must miss them a lot.”

She nodded slowly, remembering the gentle way of life and the long, slow days of summer. The days when she thought she’d be a child forever and that things would never change.

Just then a small girl ran out of the old house, obviously hell-bent on escape from something or someone inside. Her head was thrown back, her wispy blond hair flying in the breeze as she ran, and a smile of delight was spread across her face.

“Look!” Samantha cried and pointed. “A family with children lives in my house.”

John Thomas grinned. “Yes, I know. And you’ll never guess who.”

She looked at him expectantly.

“Remember Hank Carver?”

“The one who made me cry? How could I forget him? He was the first, and the last, dragon anyone ever slayed for me. That’s not something a girl ever forgets, Johnny. Not even if she’s only twelve years old.”

John Thomas wished with all his heart that he could slay the dragons that threatened her now as easily as he’d decked Hank Carver. He looked at her out of the corner of his eye, unwilling for her to know what he was thinking.

I wish I understood how you forgot our love so easily. How could you lie down beneath me and love me so sweet, then leave me without a word?

But there was no answer for a question that couldn’t be asked. And John Thomas had no intention of asking. He’d learned long ago that asking questions often got you answers you wouldn’t like.

“Johnny?”

“Hmm?”

“Exactly why did you punch Hank Carver in the nose?”

His hands froze on the steering wheel as his memory somersaulted back in time to the day when he’d been forced to realize that Samantha Jean might not stay his personal property forever.

He cocked an eyebrow. “You sure you want to know?”

She frowned. “Of course, or I wouldn’t have asked.”

“I punched his lights out because he noticed you were wearing a bra.”

A slight flush stained her cheeks, but she managed a grin. “And that made you mad?”

“No, not exactly. What made me maddest was that he’d seen you were growing up and I hadn’t. You were mine, Samantha. Always had been. Always would—”

He froze in midsentence and glared at the road before him. “Hell.”

His anger was unexpected, as if she were somehow to blame, and yet only she knew how certainly that was untrue.

“Come on,” Samantha urged. The shadows on his face made her nervous and she wanted to erase them.

“Show me some more. Let’s drive by the school. Then if we have time, we could go out to the old Kellog place and see if the blackberries are ripe. Oh, Johnny, remember the berries and what fun we had?”

“It’s too early for berries. And yes, we had fun, Sam. We sure did.”
Probably the most fun I ever had in my life, Samantha Jean. And it ended the day that you left me.

“Whatever you want,” she said. “Just drive, I’ll look. That’ll be enough to satisfy me.”

He watched the play of emotions cross her face and wondered who would be sick enough to want to snuff out the life of someone like Samantha Carlyle. He couldn’t fathom the world without her in it, somewhere.

Breeze came through the rolled-down window of his pickup truck and lifted the hair away from her face. The old T-shirt she had on and the blue jeans she’d rolled up to her knees somehow made her look younger—more vulnerable—and yet too damned much of a woman. Their little trip through Cotton might satisfy her, but he was in serious doubt about his own satisfaction, or his diminishing peace of mind.

It hadn’t taken long for word to get around that little Samantha Carlyle was back in town, and why. Tongues were wagging on every corner.

John Thomas had figured that the simplest way to protect her was to tell everyone what had happened to her. And the quickest way to get the word around was simply to tell Angus Weaver. Angus never could keep a secret and he always got his facts straight.

People needed to know that if a stranger came to town, the sheriff was to be informed immediately. So, he’d told Angus Weaver all about the letters and the other threats Samantha had received in L.A.—and he’d added that the police in L.A. hadn’t really believed she was in danger. That was all it took.