Ally glanced up at the loft, then looked away. Like her dreams, those years were gone. The reality of life was that here in the mountains, she was a woman past her prime. It was likely she would never marry, but that didn't seem quite as devastating as it once had. She'd grown accustomed to being alone. When a gust of wind blew rain in on her face, instead of stepping back, she walked out into the storm.
Wes watched Ally coming out of the barn. She walked with her head bowed and her steps dragging. Water was ankle-deep in the puddles, but she didn't seem to notice. There was a defeated slump to her shoulders that he'd never seen before, and he hated himself for putting it there. But there was a more urgent problem than her hurt feelings. He didn't know what Roland Storm would have done if he'd caught up with Ally today, but he didn't think it would have been good. He'd looked into Storm's eyes. He'd seen the twitch at the corner of his mouth. The man was unstable.
Then Wes sighed. That was a case of the pot calling the kettle black. He wasn't exactly Cool Hand Luke himself. Besides that, when he'd walked away from his stepbrother's apartment, the last thing he had wanted was to get involved. He didn't want to care. He didn't want responsibility. Most of the time he hadn't even been too crazy about taking his next breath. But all of that had changed because of a woman who had given him shelter. Wes saw her stumble, but then she caught herself before she fell. When she got to the back door, she left her poncho and her shoes on the porch. It wasn't until she shut the door that Wes finally breathed easy.
When he saw the lights come on, he knew she was safe, but only for the moment. He couldn't just walk away in good conscience without warning her about Storm. He wouldn't always be around as he had been this time, and from what he could tell, Ally was usually alone all day. It made her a perfect target for a man with no good on his mind.
Bracing himself for the confrontation, he headed for the back door, then knocked.
Ally was stripping out of her wet clothes when she heard footsteps on the back porch. Startled, she reached for one of her father's clean shirts from the laundry she'd folded earlier and was putting it on when someone knocked. The hem of the shirt brushed the tops of her knees, leaving her legs bare, but she was covered, and that was all that mattered.
When she peeked around the corner and saw Wes standing on the porch, her heart skipped a beat. She pulled the shirt a little tighter across her breasts, then called out through the door, "What do you want?"
"It's me, Wes. I need to talk to you," he said.
"You shouldn't have come out in this weather in your condition," Ally said.
"I'm suffering from a lack of good sense, not a fever," he fired back.
Ally grinned in spite of herself and opened the door.
Taken aback by her bare legs and feet, Wes found himself staring, unwilling to remove the only obstacle between them, which was the screen door.
"Well...are you coming in or not?" Ally asked. Wes gritted his teeth and opened the door. "I'm getting water on your floor." She looked down at the growing puddle in which he was standing, and smiled. "Yes, you are." Wes almost smiled back. "Sorry."
"I should hope so," Ally said. "So I am assuming you have a good reason for coming down to my house in this rain...since you pretty much ran me out of yours."
Water was dripping from the heavy braid in her hair, dampening the shirt just enough that it was molding itself to her body. The faint hint of soft, womanly curves made him ache—made him yearn to get lost in a sweet woman's arms. But as soon as he thought it, he felt guilty again, as if he'd betrayed Margie—or, at the least, her memory. Because he was pissed off at himself, he blurted out the reason why he'd come without pretext.
"Do you know Roland Storm?"
The change of subject was abrupt, but she went along with it just the same.
"Yes...well, not really, but I know who he is. My brothers are going to work for him soon."
Wes thought of the lab, the dead animals in the woods and the dissected rodents, and frowned.
"Doing what?"
"He hired them to harvest a herb crop."
"What kind of herbs?" Wes asked.
Ally was already concerned, and his question hit a nerve.
"He told them they were Chinese herbs. He's also supposed to be paying them five thousand dollars apiece for the job."
Wes had suspected all along that the man was involved in something criminal, and her information confirmed his suspicions.
Ally frowned. "Why the interest in Roland Storm?"
"I just caught him following you. From the way it looked, he's done it before. Were you aware of that?"
All expression disappeared from her face, and Wes immediately regretted his abruptness.
"What do you mean? Like stalking me?"
He nodded.
"When?"
Her face was pale, her hands shaking, but Wes had to give her credit for guts.
"Just now. As you were leaving, I sensed we were being watched. I snuck out the back of the house and found him following you. I think he'd been watching my house, but when you left, he followed you, which led me to believe it's you and not me he was tailing."
Ally swayed where she stood. Wes caught her just before she went down. At that point, he realized the shirt was all she was wearing, and again felt guilty that he'd noticed.
Ally started to weep, but she was angry, as well.
“This is so pathetic," she muttered.
Wes frowned. "What do you mean?" She pulled from of his arms, needing distance between them.
"I can't believe this is happening. Although you have made your feelings clear, you're the first man I've ever let get under my skin, so I have no one to blame but myself. I'm just mad as hell for letting it happen."
When she saw Wes's expression, she hastened to add, "Oh, don't panic. I'm not going to jump your bones or beg you for something you don't feel. But it sucks. As if that's not enough, my father has been pushing me to marry this loser, because he thinks no one else will have me. Freddie Joe is mean and lazy and bullied his first wife repeatedly. She died last year—probably just to get away from him—but her death left Freddie Joe with no wife and three kids to take care of. And, since I'm such a charity case, everyone is assuming I'd be stupid not to accept his attention." She swiped angrily at her tears and threw her hands up in the air. "Now you're telling me that I have another loser dogging my heels, which proves my father was wrong. There is another man interested in me. Although he's a stalker. Maybe I should be grateful that he's choosing to keep his interest in me all to himself. Anyway, what's one stalker, compared to marrying and sleeping with a degenerate like Freddie Joe?"
Wes felt as if he'd been sideswiped. He couldn't decide which made him angrier—her sleeping with some bullying bastard, being dogged by a creep like Storm, or the fact that she had admitted her feelings for him and he didn't have the guts to respond. What he did know was that her tears made him sick.
"I'm sorry," he said.
"Don't be," Ally said, then lifted her head, unaware that she'd angled her chin as if bracing herself for some unseen blow. "Pity disgusts me."
Wes's eyes narrowed angrily. "I don't pity you," he snapped. "I just wanted you to be aware so you could be careful."
Ally sighed. "Of course, and I should thank you for the warning, which I will take seriously. I apologize for being angry. It wasn't directed at you, just the circumstances of my miserable life."
"You're beautiful," Wes said softly. “The men around here must be both stupid and blind not to have seen that in you."
Ally was simultaneously startled and angry. She didn't want to hear platitudes when her heart was breaking.
"Yes, well, thank you so much for the compliment, but the men up here are too gutless to take a chance on marrying a woman who might give them flawed children."
The word children hit Wes like a fist to the belly. He tried to draw breath, but it sounded more like a sob. He looked at Ally, then turned away.
Immediately, Ally knew she'd said something wrong. She ran to his side.
"What? What did I say? Whatever it is, I’m sorry. I'm so sorry."
Wes shuddered.
Impulsively, Ally wrapped her arms around his waist and laid her head against the middle of his back. "Please forgive me. I didn't mean to hurt you." There was a long moment of silence in which Wes selfishly let himself be comforted, but he had to accept that he wasn't the only one in pain. His was new and fresh and as devastating as anything could be, but hers came from a lifetime of disappointment and shame, neither of which she deserved.
He turned around, and when she would have turned loose of him, he pulled her close, savoring the softness of a woman against his body. "I was married. We had a son." Ally stilled. She had let herself get too close to a man she didn't know, and it was all her fault. She wanted— no, needed—to know what made him so sad, but she was afraid of the answers. Still, she waited.
Wes rested the side of his cheek against the crown of her head and closed his eyes, letting himself remember. "Margaret...Margie...was my childhood sweetheart. We got married after I'd finished basic training."
Ally felt his arms tightening around her and knew he was remembering another woman, another time and place. It hurt to know she was a substitute, but she'd asked for it just the same.
Wes continued. "She made it fine as a military wife—until we went to war. She was so damned scared and tried not to show it, but I knew. Our son was so small. I think she feared I would die and he would grow up without a memory of the man who was his father. Only I wasn't the one who died. If there is a God, he has a horrible sense of humor."
"God doesn't kill people," Ally said. "People kill people."
Wes felt as if he'd been punched. He'd needed to place blame ever since the day it had happened but had never thought of it that way.
"Where were you when I needed you?" he muttered, more to himself than to her, but Ally heard him.
She leaned back until she could see his face.
"I was here, waiting for you to come," she said.
He groaned, then pulled her off her feet and up against him so tightly that she could barely breathe. When his head lowered and his mouth centered on her lips, Ally thought she would die. It was everything she'd ever dreamed a kiss could be, and at the same time, the saddest she'd ever felt. He was kissing her but remembering the woman who was his wife. It wasn't what she would have wished for, but she wouldn't turn him down.
When he finally pulled away, they were both breathless and shaking. It would have been easy to let the kiss be the start to something more. But not even Ally was desperate enough to let the ghost of another woman into her bed. She cupped his face with her hands, then rubbed a thumb across his lower lip, feeling the strength, but remembering the tenderness. "What happened to them, Wes?"
He drew a deep breath, then closed his eyes.
"Remember the bombing at Fort Benning last year?"
"Yes. It was awful. The news was full of it for months." Then she realized what he was trying to say. "They were there?"
When he opened his eyes, they were swimming with tears. He nodded.
Her expression crumpled. "Oh, Wes, I'm so sorry."
"Yeah, so am I."
She held him again, but this time there was nothing but comfort in the touch. Finally he pulled away.
"Don't take Roland Storm's attention lightly."
"I won't," she said. "I promise."
He nodded. "If there's anything I can do for you, just ask."
At that moment, a thought occurred.
"Do you mean that?" she asked.
Wes didn't hesitate. "Yes."
"Come to supper Friday night."
"Okay...but why?"
"Other than another chance to eat my wonderful cooking, I would appreciate a buffer between me and Freddie Joe."
Wes's eyes widened.
"He's coming to eat with you Friday night?"
"Despite my objections and at my father's insistence, and with all three of his children."
Wes hadn't been around children since the day Mikey had died. He didn't know how he would handle it, but it was the least he could do for her after all she'd done for him.
"Are you sure you want to do this?" he asked.
"Yes, I want you here. No, I don't want to deal with Freddie Joe, but Daddy has given me no choice."
"I'll come," Wes said. "But now I'd better be going before your father comes home and finds you with me and wearing that shirt."