She was developing feelings for this man, but what sort of feelings? Her entire body had never broken out in goose bumps before when a man walked into a room. And in ninety-degree heat, too. She knew instinctively that this invitation was some sort of turning point between them. What the heck. She could always turn right around and come back to Martins’ the first time Thor Peterson got testy.
But only if she drove her own car.
* * *
“YOU WENT TO lunch with Vince,” Becca said. “Why didn’t you take me?”
“I just ran into him in town. How did you know I’d seen him?”
“You smell like you’ve been working with him.”
“I went to see Sonny Prather about where we could take the minis. Tomorrow, we’re going to load up Grumpy and Molly and go climb some stairs.”
“Finally.” She flounced back into the barn without the first sign of a stagger.
“Ms. MacDonald?”
“Yes, Calvin, and it’s Anne.”
“Yes, ma’am. Miss Victoria said me’n Darrell could swim in her pool if we hose off on the wash rack first. We brought trunks and our own towels.”
“It’s past quitting time. Hose away. I’m headed down to change.”
“You think Becca’ll come?”
“No idea, but a good bet.”
The boys beat Anne into the pool. They gaped at Becca when she walked up in a minimal black bikini. She managed to splash them both when she dove in.
Anne slid in unobtrusively but soon realized that she was in the way of their horseplay. Cool enough, she climbed out, dried off and stretched out on the chaise longue beside Victoria, who handed her a diet soda without opening her eyes.
“I do believe it’s working,” Victoria whispered. “Listen to Becca—she sounds like one of those howler monkeys from South America.”
“Which one will she pick? Darrell or Calvin?”
“At a guess, Calvin. He’s prettier.”
“And taller.”
“So, what’s going on between you and Vince?” Victoria said, still not opening her eyes.
“Nothing.”
“I swore I wouldn’t pry, but he stayed at the cottage the other night.”
“In the other room because he was tired and inadvertently drank himself over the limit to drive. Not, I promise you, in my room. Definitely not in my bed.”
“Actually, I figured, but I was dying to know for sure.”
“You believe me?”
Victoria sat up and took off her sunglasses. “Of course, need you ask?” She lay back down and wriggled herself into a more comfortable position. “Were you tempted?”
Now Anne sat up. “Victoria, that is none of your business.”
“You were. Bet he was, too.”
Anne took a deep breath and the plunge. “He asked me to go home with him for the Fourth of July.”
This time Victoria bounced all the way up to sitting. “He what?”
The three in the pool stopped their play and stared at Victoria.
“Go back to what you were doing,” she called to them, then turned to Anne. “I hope you said no. Why?”
“Why did he ask me? We’d been talking some about his relations with his father. All his family, actually. He said that if I go with him, they’d all have to mind their manners. They put on a big reunion with fireworks. I love fireworks.”
“If you go with him, I’ll bet you have more fireworks than you can handle. Anne, are you falling for this guy? Barbara said you were getting over a bad relationship. Vince is a complicated man, not into love. Certainly not into marriage. Not a good choice for a rebound.”
“You can’t rebound from what never was,” Anne said. “I know Vince is not a keeper any more than a two-hundred-pound catfish is a keeper. He makes no secret of never wanting to marry. I want a husband and at least a couple of babies. I assume I’ll like my own. That leaves Vince out. I respect his skills as a vet, and he’s trying to learn not to snap at people. I enjoy his company. Anything wrong with that?”
“My goodness, you’re in love with him.”
“I most certainly am not.”
“Are too. Listen, go to Mississippi with him for the Fourth of July, but make certain you drive down in your SUV, so you can run out if things go bad.”
“I want to, but I’m not certain what kind of excuse I can come up with for not driving down with Vince.”
“Your problem. We’ll work out a signal on your cell phone. Call or text if you need to scram out of there. I’ll call back demanding you come home because of some disaster or other. Heck, I’ll come get you if I have to.”
“If I drive myself down, I can drive myself back.”
“Unless they take your keys or puncture your tires. Oh, I know I’m being melodramatic. I want you to know my offer stands in an emergency.”
“Victoria, I will not be spending the weekend in Dracula’s castle, and Vince’s farm is a long drive away. So, you think I should go?”
“I think you should not go, no way, no how. But you’re going, aren’t you?”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“NOT IF HE doesn’t mention it again, I’m not,” Anne said the next morning as she stared at her reflection in the bathroom mirror. “Your eyes look like they’re sinking right out the back of your skull, woman, and as if you’ve been using bootblack as eyeliner. Not sleeping, are we? Tossing and turning? Do we go or do we stay? And how do I manage to drive my own truck?”
She’d have to decide before the end of June. She couldn’t descend on his family out of the blue. She’d been invited to a party. Lots of people in the South drove long distances and stayed overnight for parties. No big deal. If she went, it would be to support Vince in his quest to better his relationship with his father. He wanted her for his wingman—woman. She could do that for a couple of days.
He liked his brothers, their sons, their wives and even his present stepmother. Anne could avoid the old man most of the time. If he behaved badly, she could leave.
Vince would hate that. She would be polite and courteous if it killed her. Hey, she might even make friends with Thor Peterson.
Probably not.
Vince said his family understood the old man well enough. They just didn’t like him.
She really should judge for herself.
Was she crazy, or what?
She decided to tell him that evening that she would go with him for the Fourth.
Late in the afternoon, he did not stroll in from the parking lot with his bathing suit in his hand. He left the van running and the door open, jumped out and ran down the path.
Anne intercepted him. “Vince, what’s wrong?”
He grabbed her arms and held her away from him. “I’ve got to go home. Daddy’s been in an accident. He’s in the hospital.”
“Oh, Vince,” Anne said.
Victoria and Edward ran up from the patio.
“We heard. How bad?” Edward asked.
Vince shook his head. “Don’t know. Cody was freakin’ out. He said Daddy’s in surgery.”
“What happened?” Victoria held his arm and swung him to face her.
“I don’t know, but it’s bad enough for Cody to tell me to come home. There’s no airport close to fly into, so I’m driving down. I ought to make it before midnight. I didn’t want to just call you from the road.” He started back to his van.
“Should you be driving?” Anne asked as she ran beside him.
“I’m okay.”
“I’ll drive you.”
He shook his head. “I know the road. I’ll be faster.”
“Call the minute you get there. Please.” She hoped he heard the worry in her voice.
He started to climb in, then reached for her. “Say a prayer for the old coot. I’m sorry about all this. Listen
, one thing... I love you.”
He swung under the wheel. A moment later his tires kicked up gravel as he spun into the road outside the gate and disappeared over the hill.
Becca ran up from the pool. “Was that Vince? Where’s he going? Did he forget his bathing suit or something?”
“He has to go home. His father’s been hurt,” Anne said. She clasped her hands in front of her to keep them from shaking. Please don’t let his father die. Please look after Vince. She stared after the man she could no longer see. The man she loved.
Victoria came up behind her and put a hand on Anne’s shoulder. Anne covered it with her own. She whispered, “He said he loves me.”
“Of course, he does,” Victoria whispered back. “There’s nothing we can do about this now. Go sit down. Becca and I will make sandwiches.”
“Me?” Becca asked.
“You.”
“I don’t even know what’s happened.”
“I’ll tell you in the kitchen. Edward, look after Anne. At least it’s not raining. Makes the drive safer.”
“Long drive down to his home place,” Edward said. “Who knows what he’ll find when he gets there.”
“Surely somebody will call him to let him know what’s going on.”
“If there’s time.” Edward dropped his arm across Anne’s shoulder.
Anne reached for Victoria’s hand and held it hard. “I tried to tell him when I talked about my mother. We always think there’s time to mend fences, make amends, let people know we love them. Sometimes there isn’t.”
* * *
ANNE HAD BEEN right as usual. Vince knew he probably shouldn’t be behind the wheel of a motor vehicle in his emotional state. He set his cruise control at the speed limit so he wouldn’t speed, turned on a country music station as loud as he could stand it and sang along when he knew the words. He didn’t want to stop long enough to fill his gas tank and go to the bathroom, but he did. The place where he stopped carried iced coffee. He bought three large cups and headed back down the road.
He had told Anne he loved her. Where did that even come from? All he could figure was that he was so freaked that all the governors had slipped off his brain stem and let his emotions run wild.
He had wanted to bring her with him right now. She’d offered to do the driving, but he had no idea what he was getting into or even if his father would be alive by the time he arrived. He plugged his phone into the car jack so there was no chance he’d run out of battery power, but he didn’t want to stop to call the hospital. He’d have to trust Cody or Joshua to call him if anything changed.
He had to keep his mind on the road, so he didn’t wreck his van and add to everybody’s problems. He’d never wanted another human being the way he wanted Anne right this minute, as if holding her against him would drain away all his pain.
Was this what love felt like? All he’d ever known was that love was impermanent, could not be trusted, didn’t truly exist. At this moment he knew—not thought, but knew—that what he felt for Anne was as permanent as life itself.
Now, when it might already be too late, he admitted to himself that he still loved his father, whatever his flaws. He prayed he’d have a chance to tell him.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“HE’S STILL ALIVE.”
Anne had not allowed the phone to complete a single beep before she picked it up. “Vince. You got there safe.” She checked the clock. “You must have flown down the road.”
“Cruise control at the speed limit.”
“What happened to him? How bad is it?”
“He’s got a bad concussion, but they didn’t have to open his skull. They’re treating the brain swelling medically. His left fibula is broken, but it’s a clean break. They say it should knit without pins. At his age, who knows? Bunch of cracked ribs. Cuts, scrapes and bruises.”
“Have you seen him?”
“Not yet. He’s in ICU. Unconscious.”
“Have they induced a coma?”
“Shouldn’t have to. The immediate concern is that he’ll develop a blood clot. At his age, a stroke is a major possibility.”
“But not so far?”
“Not so far. It could have been much worse.”
“You still haven’t said what happened.”
“He’s got a rusty old pickup he uses around the farm. He drove it out into the pasture to pick some bales of hay to bring into the barn.”
“But isn’t he in a wheelchair?”
“Only when he chooses to be waited on. Most of the time he just uses a cane. Sometimes not then. Big bales. They weigh over sixty pounds apiece. He’s not supposed to handle them at all, much less alone, but he thinks he can do everything he could do at twenty. It looks as if he hit a flooded pothole on the side of a berm, skidded sideways in the mud. There’s not a bit of tread on those old tires. No traction. The truck tipped over, threw him out and ran over his leg. Needless to say, he wasn’t wearing a seat belt. Darned fool.” He hesitated. “Look, about what I said...”
About loving her. Here came the retraction. Once he found his father was alive, she’d expected him to back away. The usual pattern in their relations all along—he’d tell her one important, personal thing, then step back to impersonal. This was, however, the most important thing he’d ever told her. She expected the words to be retracted or conveniently forgotten. “You were talking under pressure. I get it.”
“No, you don’t. No idea why I said it, but I meant it. Good night, call you tomorrow.” He hung up before she could say good-night back.
What did she expect? When he spoke of love, was he speaking the same language she did, or was he simply reaching out for support, simple human warmth?
* * *
“I’VE MADE UP your old room,” Vince’s stepmother, Mary Alice, said as she hugged Vince in the visitors’ waiting room at the small, local hospital where his father was being cared for. “I told Cody to tell you not to drive down. You’re so busy, and it’s such a long way to come when we’re not certain how bad it is. Still, I’m so glad you came.”
“Have you seen Daddy?” Vince asked her.
She dropped onto one of the plastic-covered hospital-green sofas. She was not that much older than Vince, but at the moment she looked every bit as old as his father. “Why, or why did he do it?” she asked.
Cody walked into the waiting room and held a plastic cup of coffee out to Mary Alice. “Hey, Vince. If I’d known you’d made it, I’d’a brought you some coffee, too.”
The two men hugged and slapped one another on the back as though this was a casual meeting, then broke apart in haste and avoided one another’s eyes.
“I told Daddy I’d move the darned hay bales for him from the run-in shed after I got back from driving the boys to soccer practice,” Cody said. “He got mad, said I never did anything he wanted. Said he was the only one ever did anything around the place. Said I wasn’t worth the air to blow me up and a bunch more. Like I’d never have a thin dime if he didn’t keep me on his payroll.
“Shoot, Vince, you know how he gets. For once in my life, I told him I was not only gonna drive the boys to practice, I was gonna stay and watch them, and that we might stop for a milkshake on the way back. Then I hung up on him. It’s all my fault. He was so mad he took that piece of junk truck and went out to the back pasture to do it on his own.”
Mary Alice patted his arm. “Don’t you feel one bit responsible. You could have moved those bales anytime in the next week. Not like you’re running out of the hay already stacked in the barn.”
“He wants what he wants when he wants it,” Vince said. “You did the right thing taking the boys.”
“He wanted to feel put-upon,” Mary Alice said. “Make you feel ashamed that you went off to play sports with your boys, when you ought to be helping your poor old father.” She huffed.
�
�What if I killed him?” Cody wailed.
“You haven’t killed him yet, boy,” she snapped. “Don’t let him play the guilt game with you. You probably saved his life. I didn’t even think to see if that old truck was in the yard. If you hadn’t spotted it on its side when you brought the boys home, he might still be lying out by the run-in shed bleeding all over creation. Now you go on home. No sense in all of us waiting. The boys need you.”
“Nicki and Nell have all four of them at Joshua’s house. They don’t know what’s happening except that their grampa is hurt. I need to stay. Joshua wanted to come, but I told him to look after the place.”
“You aren’t calling people about this, are you?” Mary Alice looked concerned.
“Well, Mary Alice, it’s not like it’s a secret,” Cody said.
“It is unless you want the state of Mississippi from the governor on down calling and showing up expecting us to entertain them,” she replied. “Your daddy is an important man. I’ve got the switchboard downstairs handling any calls except from family. Go home, Cody. Get some rest. Vince is here to take your place.” Mary Alice pulled herself up to her five-foot-three and stared Cody down as though she topped his six-foot-four.
“Vince is tired, too,” he grumbled.
“Not as tired as you,” Vince said. “Go home, little brother. You have a family that needs you. I don’t.”
“We’re your family,” Mary Alice said. “‘Until such time as you find you a decent woman and start making your own babies.” She shook her finger at him. “And don’t give me your usual nonsense about never getting married because we’re all so hateful.”
He chuckled and hugged her against him. “I never thought you were hateful, sweetheart.”
“Oh, Vince, I don’t want to lose him,” she sobbed against him. “I still love the old fool, and I know he loves all of you. He just never figured out how to act like it.”
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