Sweet Return (15 page)

“Oh, I ain’t sick,” the older woman said. “I’m just worn out is all.” She proceeded to straighten an obviously old handmade quilt around her legs. “Sit down, sit down.” She patted the mattress in an indication for Joanna to take a seat on the edge. “Me and Dalton got outta bed and went up to Lubbock real early and run all over the place gettin’ stuff done. Havin’ him around keeps me busy.”

As if she weren’t busy anyway,
Joanna thought. “You saw Lane, of course. How is he?”

Clova looked down at her calloused hands and nodded. A tear fell on her thumb.

Doom and gloom. Learning that Dalton hadn’t left after all might have been a surprise and a disappointment to Joanna, but not enough to darken her good mood. Seeing Clova again in tears over Lane did the trick. She sighed. “What did they say?”

Clova turned her head and looked toward the window. The yellowed shade was pulled down, so there was nothing to see but it and limp lace curtains. “Dalton chased down that foreign doctor that’s takin’ care o’ Lane. Ever’where you look nowadays, the hospitals are fillin’ up with foreigners. I don’t know what the world’s a-comin’ to.”

“What did he say?”

Clova’s head shook slowly. Her eyes squeezed shut and she pressed a knobby knuckle to her mouth. Joanna plucked a tissue from a box on the bedside table and handed it to her. “Tell me what he said, okay?”

Clova returned her eyes to the drawn window shade. “Lane’s gonna be a cripple, Joanna. His left leg’s over an inch shorter than it was. I don’t know exactly what caused it, but that doctor said it was so messed up, that was the best he could do.”

Joanna swallowed the clot of tears that rushed to her own throat. She couldn’t imagine the good-looking, happy-go-lucky, always-grinning Lane limping for the rest of his life. Or walking with a cane. Of course the information was no huge surprise. Joanna still remembered what she had heard the surgeon say the night of the accident. She supposed Lane could count himself lucky he still had the leg, even if it was shorter. “Oh, Clova. I’m so sorry.”

Clova blew her nose on the tissue. “I don’t know how many times I told him about gettin’ in that truck and roarin’ around the highways drunk. He’s lucky, I guess, he hasn’t killed hisself.”

Or someone else,
Joanna thought.

“He would o’ been better off joinin’ the army like Dalton done. Maybe they could o’ straightened him out.”

Joanna only nodded, attempting to digest what kind of new problems having a crippled alcoholic around the ranch would generate. “Is he okay otherwise? I mean his other injuries—”

“They’re gonna move him out of that intensive care place on Monday.” She shrugged and looked down at the tissue wadded into a ball in her hand. “Good thing. No tellin’ what that’s costin’.”

Joanna nodded again. “I suppose he’ll be taking physical therapy, right?”

“I don’t know. We ain’t got any instructions yet. Or a plan, either.”

Chaos and confusion seemed to be the norm with Clova, but Joanna mustered a smile. “Look, it’s suppertime. Have you eaten?”

“I ain’t hungry.”

“What if I went into the kitchen and made a pot of soup? It’s kind of chilly out. Cool enough for me to turn on the lightbulbs in the chicken coops. Soup sounds good, doesn’t it? I know I’m not much of a cook, but I can manage soup.”

Clova looked up at her, her cheeks wet with tears. “You’re a good woman, Joanna. Havin’ you for a friend means a lot to me. I know I’m a burden to you. I don’t mean to be, but seems like I got troubles ever’ time I turn around these days. Don’t bother cookin’ no soup for me. Dalton’s out there puttin’ that machine together. If I get hungry, maybe I can get him to fix me somethin’.”

“Nonsense. I don’t consider you a burden.”

Clova leaned forward, looked closer at Joanna’s forehead. “What happened to your head, hon?”

“I ran into something. Look, I’m going to make soup. I’ll be done in no time.”

Clova sat up and started to move from the bed. “Nope,” Joanna said, urging her back under the covers. “I don’t need your help. Stay right where you are.”

When she walked out of the bedroom into the hall, she crashed headlong into Dalton. His hands came out reflexively and grabbed her shoulders. Shaken by the collision, she stepped back, looking up at him. His hands dropped, but his eyes held hers until she blinked. “Were you eavesdropping?” she asked him.

“I cannot tell a lie.”

Arrogant asshole!
Jaw clenched, she spun and stalked toward the kitchen. She heard him say behind her, “I’m going to the kitchen, Mom. I’ll be back in a minute to see if you need anything.”

Joanna was shaking with anger as she picked an onion and a potato from the dry vegetable bin under the counter. In the refrigerator amid multiple bottles of beer, she found carrots, celery and a package of ground meat. She unwrapped the meat and put it in a cast-iron frying pan to sear.

A minute later, Dalton showed up in the kitchen.

Knowing they were out of Clova’s hearing, Joanna turned on him. “It isn’t necessary for you to spy on me. If you want to know something, just ask me.”

Two feet away, in her space, he stood there, his hands on his hips, his dark eyes leveled on hers. “I think I already know what I need to.”

“Then why waste your valuable time listening at doors?”

Instead of answering her, his mouth curved into a one-sided smirk, he gave a one-shoulder shrug and sauntered to the refrigerator. He pulled out a longneck and tipped the top in her direction. “I don’t suppose you’d want a beer?”

She would have to be stupid not to hear the sarcasm in his tone. He was baiting her and she didn’t intend to stand for it. She pulled a knife from its storage slot in the wooden butcher block that sat in the center of the kitchen, placed the onion and whacked off the ends. “No. And don’t come in here and heckle me. I’m going to make this pot of soup for your mom, then I’m out of here. I can’t leave soon enough.”

Thinking of the computer on the dining table, another annoyance surfaced. It had been in the back of her mind since she entered the house and saw the laptop. Clova didn’t know the first thing about a computer, so Joanna felt almost certain she hadn’t bought it. That meant Dalton had. If he wanted to spend money, this ranch needed many things more than it needed a computer. “I’m wondering why you bought your mother a computer. I’m not aware she can use it.”

“I didn’t buy her a computer,” he said defensively. “That’s my laptop I brought with me. Although I’d buy her one if she wanted it.” He tilted his head back and swallowed a long swig of beer from the frosty bottle. “What I did buy is a few accessories, like a good monitor and a printer. Not that it’s any of your damn business, but I gotta get a little work done while I’m here.”

What kind of work?
she wondered as she chopped the onion into small pieces. But she refused to give him the satisfaction of asking.

As if she had posed the question, he said, “I’ve got a deadline on my new book. Looks like I’m not gonna get back home quick as I thought. Somebody’s gotta start rebuilding that fence tomorrow. I’m thinking that somebody’s me.”

That explained the supplies she had seen in the dually’s bed. She knew enough about barbed-wire fences to surmise that fence building would be easier with more than one person working at it. “You’re going to work on the fence all by yourself?”

“Why not? When I was a kid, I built a million miles of fence without a damn bit of help from anybody. Who’s around to help me, anyway?” He raised the bottle and took another long swig.

Joanna forced herself not to watch. “Right,” she said peevishly.

Anyone with half a brain knew that working on a barbed-wire fence alone in a remote place could be dangerous. Barbed wire had a mind of its own. She had heard plenty of horror stories, had seen many scratches and gashes, even stitches. But hey, if he thought he was Superman, what difference did it make to her? She wondered whether he was a little drunk. She had seen him down two beers since she came and didn’t know how many he’d had before her arrival.

“Exactly what did the doctor say about Lane?” She scraped the chopped onion into a bowl and started peeling the potato. “Clova seems to think he’s permanently affected.”

“His left leg’s screwed up real bad. He lost some bone. He’s facing a long road back. But I’ve seen a helluva lot worse. I’ve seen plenty of fine kids lose a leg or an arm or both doing something considerably more noble than driving drunk. I hate Lane being hurt, but I have a hard time feeling sorry for him, even if he is my brother.”

At least they agreed on that much. “What about his other injuries?”

“He’ll be okay eventually. He can live without a spleen. I’m sure they’ll tell him his boozing days are over. He was lucky this time.”

“I knew it was bad. I was there that night—”

“Why am I not surprised?” His eyes narrowed and a look of suspicion came at her like a spear. “What did my mom do, adopt you or something?”

Joanna’s spine stiffened and she aimed a hard glare right back into his eyes. “And what’s that supposed to mean?”

“You seem to be right in the middle of everything that happens around here. That just strikes me as unusual.”

Joanna bridled at the implication. “You’ve already made that point loud and clear. Not that you could possibly understand the situation from thousands of miles away, but Lane’s been a mess for quite a while. He’s given your mother a lot of trouble and contributed damn little around here lately. Clova’s needed a friend, and I happened to be the one present and willing.”

He said nothing else with his mouth, but with a withering glare from his X-ray eyes, words were unnecessary. She felt those eyes scrutinize her every move. The meat in the skillet began to sizzle. She walked over to the stove and lowered the flame under the skillet.

He returned to the refrigerator, pulled out another beer and twisted off the cap. “Want me to help you? So you can get out of here sooner, I mean?”

Joanna drew in a deep breath and exhaled, trying to calm herself. Her insides were shaking and she still had carrots to slice. If she didn’t calm down, she could cut off a finger. “You can watch the meat. Don’t let it burn.”

She went back to the cutting board, but from the corner of her eye, she saw him assume a position in front of the stove, beer bottle in one hand, a spatula in the other. She went on slicing carrots, then moved to the celery. When she finished, she dumped the cutup vegetables, a couple of cans of tomato sauce, some spices and some water into a large pot and carried it to the stove. She came face-to-face with him in the aisle between the butcher block and the stove, and she could feel the uptick in her heartbeat. Their gazes locked for a few seconds before she backed away and set the pot on the burner. “That meat needs to go into this pot. But not the grease.”

With skill she hadn’t expected to see, he scooped the hamburger out of the pan with the spatula, let it drain for a few seconds, then dropped it into the pot. Between the two of them, they soon had vegetable-beef soup simmering on the stove, and he returned with his bottle of beer to the dining table and the computer.

As the house filled with aromatic smells of spices and tomatoes, she walked to the kitchen doorway, watching him as he deftly hooked devices to the laptop. Despite her confusion of emotions about him, she had to admit she had never seen a man so comfortable with who he was. He might be arrogant and blatant, but he seemed to like himself just fine. “I didn’t see the rental car when I drove up.”

“Turned it back in. No point paying for that piece o’ shit to stay parked in the driveway. I’d rather drive the work truck.”

“You’re planning on staying a while, then?”

Before he could answer, his cell phone chirped. He flipped it open and placed it to his ear. “Yo. It’s me, babe.” A big grin came over his face. “How are ya, sweetie?…Yeah, I had a couple of beers…” He walked out of the dining room and all the way outside, talking as he went.

Joanna’s jaw clenched.
Babe
, indeed.

Twenty minutes later, Joanna ladled soup into a crockery bowl, set it and some saltines on a tray and took it in to the bedroom. She found Clova sound asleep.

She carried the tray back to the dining room. Dalton had come back in. He had pushed the computer and its parts toward the center of the table and was eating a bowl of soup. “What’s up now?” he asked.

Joanna set the tray down on the table. “Clova’s asleep. She must be feeling really bad. I’ve never seen her just go to bed like this.”

Dalton looked at her, his spoon poised in the air, then returned to eating.

Joanna cocked her head and gave him a pointed scowl. “Aren’t you worried about her?”

He put down his spoon and opened his palms. “What is it you think I should be doing?”

Joanna opened her mouth to scold him but stopped herself. There wasn’t much to be done, by him or anyone else. Clova probably just needed a good rest. “I suppose you should keep an eye on her.”

“I will.” He shrugged. “If she’s not okay in the morning, I’ll take her into town to see a doc. If that’s what she wants.”

If
he
suggested that Clova see a doctor, she probably would. Satisfied, Joanna picked up the tray. “You should make her go.”

“Soup’s good,” he said, changing the subject and making it obvious he didn’t want her advice or recommendation. “We did a pretty good job cooking it. Why don’t you have some?”

Joanna gave him a wary glance. He had done another about-face in attitude. What was he up to now? “I need to get home.”

“Oh, yeah. Saturday night. Got a hot date?”

She huffed a laugh. “Only with my Tempur-Pedic mattress.”

The minute the words came out of her mouth, a tiny lurch zipped through Joanna’s middle. She turned her back and walked into the kitchen carrying the tray. And wishing she had said yes, she did have a hot date. In her distraction, she banged the edge of the tray against the counter, clattering dishes and spilling soup on the linoleum floor. “Shit.”

She grabbed some paper towels, dropped to her knees and began mopping up the mess. Fortunately, the soup was no longer hot.