“Exactly, but she was drunk. Unfortunately, she didn’t start to have second thoughts soon enough to send up a red flag to Wyatt. Wyatt’s attorney cross-examined the woman, and it was her answers then that saved Wyatt’s ass. She said she thought Wyatt was a gentleman who would stop if she asked, and so she simply tried to tell him she’d changed her mind. She didn’t want to panic and do anything stupid, like hit him or scratch him. So she asked him several times in a louder and louder voice to please stop. She believed he would do that, only he didn’t. Finally, when she took her protests to a physical level and began scratching his back, he realized and did stop, but it was already too late.”
“So she didn’t struggle? Did nothing to let him know?”
“With a deaf man, even screaming at him that you’ve changed your mind isn’t going to work. But she didn’t know that and tried to be diplomatic about saying no.”
“I would take the diplomatic approach myself. It’s not smart to piss a guy off when he’s that aroused. Man, Wyatt’s so lucky he didn’t get convicted.”
Erin nodded. “Very lucky. Only was he really lucky, Jules? I think he blames himself for all of it and that’s why he’s sworn off women.”
Julie got up to fetch the bottle of wine and refill their glasses. “Another impromptu girls’ night, I guess. I’ll have a headache in the morning and hate you, but what the hell?” As she sat back down, Julie said, “A number of people might not believe Wyatt’s side of the story. Unless you weigh all the circumstances and understand the limitations of someone who’s profoundly deaf, it’s kind of incredible. I mean, how can a guy not realize when a woman is resisting?”
“Oh, but she didn’t resist, not in time to convey her change of heart to Wyatt.” Erin took a sip of her wine. “She only tried to tell him. Reading the testimonies was surreal. At the beginning of the trial, the prosecuting attorney wanted Wyatt’s head on a platter. By the end, the judge, twelve jurors, and many onlookers who were interviewed afterward—I got that information from newspaper accounts—believed Wyatt was innocent. Even the woman—the victim—broke down on the stand crying and said she had no idea he was deaf. That she never would have accused him of rape had she known.”
“Well, we can’t blame her,” Julie said. “I mean, hello, I’ll bet thousands of guys have said they didn’t know their partner had lost her enthusiasm for the activity. Some men get pissed if a woman leads them up to a certain pitch of arousal and then wants to stop at the last second.”
“Yes, but they can hear and deliberately ignore a woman’s wishes. Wyatt didn’t ignore the woman’s wishes. He couldn’t hear what she was saying.”
Julie closed her eyes. “That’s one of the saddest stories I’ve ever heard. I mean, how awful. I’m sure the woman is still finding it difficult to trust men because of it, and Wyatt is undoubtedly afraid ever to be intimate with another woman for fear it could happen again.”
Erin’s heart twisted with pain for Wyatt and for the woman. She didn’t know which of them had suffered more. Obviously it had been a horrible incident for either of them to put behind them. “Since I don’t know the woman, it’s easier to distance myself from what she must have gone through,” she confessed. “But I do know Wyatt. I saw him work with a frightened horse last year. He was so patient and perceptive with that poor animal, and watching him soothe its fears was one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen. He’s a good man, Jules. A kind man. I don’t think he would ever deliberately harm anyone or anything. And suddenly his determination to avoid any kind of romantic entanglement makes perfect sense to me.”
Julie gazed thoughtfully into her wine for a long moment. “I feel bad for both of them. The woman didn’t realize that Wyatt was deaf.” She shrugged. “I’ve only ever been with three guys that way, and I never changed my mind at the last second, but if for some reason I had, I probably would have handled it pretty much the same way she did, simply by asking the man to stop. I mean, getting frantic and hurting him would be pretty stupid. You only go for the jugular when a guy won’t stop. First, you try to just tell him you’ve changed your mind. It’s only when he doesn’t stop that you go bat-shit crazy on him.”
Erin met Julie’s gaze and maintained eye contact. “I’m really, really attracted to Wyatt.”
Julie reached across the table to curl her fingers around Erin’s hand. “Sweetie, I don’t blame you. He’s extremely easy on the eyes, but guys like Wyatt go way deeper than the skin. He’s a genuinely good person, I think. I liked him from the start.”
“Did you know he was deaf when you first met him?”
Julie shook her head, her mouth curving into a tremulous smile. “I’d heard about the deaf cowboy in Mystic Creek. In a town this small, information like that reaches a newcomer pretty fast. But I didn’t recall the man’s name, so I didn’t know Wyatt was the deaf cowboy. In fact, if you’d told me he was deaf right after I first met him, I’d have laughed, because he doesn’t appear to be even slightly hard of hearing. I finally figured it out when he left his wallet lying on my counter one day. I yelled at him to stop. He didn’t. So I ran after him, and with his long legs, he was halfway across the concourse before I caught up with him. That was when I realized. Like you say, he speaks amazingly well for a deaf person. I never even suspected.”
“His ability to speak so well didn’t come easily to him. He spent hundreds of hours perfecting his pronunciation, and he says he still practices.”
Julie’s hold on Erin’s hand tightened. “You have tears in your eyes.”
Erin nodded. “This will sound crazy, but knowing what happened, I now understand Wyatt in ways that I couldn’t before. And it bothers me that he holds himself entirely to blame. Yes, he did misrepresent himself to her in the bar, and, yes, he held fast to the act all evening. But I’m convinced he never anticipated that she might have a sudden attack of misgivings and want to bring a halt to everything. He was twenty-six years old and, like almost every guy that age, wanting to score. But it ended so disastrously for him that even now, nearly seven years later, he’s never been with a woman again.”
Julie’s eyes went sparkly with tears, too. Her big heart was one of the things that made Erin value her so much as a friend. “That’s amazing. For a guy to do that, he has to feel pretty awful about what happened. But I’m not quite getting why you’re so upset that you woke me up to tell me about it. It’s over and done. There’s nothing you can do about it now.”
“I’m into him, Jules. I want to be with him. And now I’ve ruined any chance of that ever happening, because I betrayed his trust and learned things he didn’t choose to tell me. Not little things, either, but something so serious it changed his whole life. Going in, I had no idea I would find something that bad.”
Julie released Erin’s hand and sat back on her chair. “Just don’t ever tell him you did it.”
Erin shook her head. “Eventually I’ll have to tell him, and he’ll be angry with me in a way that I may never overcome.”
“Then just don’t.”
Erin’s heart felt as if it were breaking. “You don’t understand. Wyatt is special. He’s inherently honest. Not about his lack of hearing, obviously, because that awful night might never have happened if he hadn’t fooled that woman into believing he could hear. But in every other way, he’s probably the most direct and honest man I’ve ever met.”
“Sometimes,” Julie said softly, “being too honest can do more harm than good.”
“And sometimes not being completely honest can destroy what might be absolutely perfect.”
* * *
* * *
As Erin drove home, her thoughts were centered on Wyatt and how she had pressed him to be her friend. She hadn’t really believed him when he said he was attracted to her. She’d thought he was just being nice. But now she was starting to wonder if he had been telling her the truth. As she’d tried to express to Julie, Wyatt se
emed to be intrinsically honest. And if he was attracted to her, every moment he was around her might test his willpower.
Later, as she lay in bed, she wished with all her heart she hadn’t dug into Wyatt’s past. For one, it had been his secret to keep. And now that she knew what had happened, she wasn’t sure how to proceed. Should she tell him she’d used her badge to invade his privacy? That she knew things about him he hadn’t chosen for her or anyone else to know? She finally plunged into a troubled sleep and had nightmares about running after Wyatt as he walked away from her. She screamed his name and pled with him to forgive her, but he just kept walking. So she pulled out her only big gun and yelled that she loved him. When he just kept walking, she realized he couldn’t hear her. That she was wasting her breath. The only way she could ever convince him of how sorry she was would be to make him look at her, and she didn’t know if he’d ever willingly look at her again.
She jerked awake and sat straight up in bed. Sweat trickled down her sides and along the curvature of her spine. Her hair was soaking wet. She felt as if a clawlike hand was ripping her heart from her chest. As sleep moved away to make room for reality, she registered that it had been only a dream. She wasn’t in love with Wyatt Fitzgerald. She’d only known him for a few months. Well, more than a few, but they hadn’t been around each other all of that time. Falling in love with a man took time, lots and lots of time. But in her dream, the feelings had been so sharp and painful within her that she couldn’t deny them now as she shook off the last vestiges of the nightmare.
They’d felt real, and they still did.
That brought her wide awake. She looped her arms around her upraised knees and stared into the shifting moonlight and shadows that cloaked her bedroom, willing herself to shove the absurd feelings away. She wasn’t a teenager who imagined herself to be in love with every guy she crushed on. She was just letting her hormones get the better of her, she reasoned. Even worse, she was allowing her feelings of desperation to find the love of her life to mess with her head. She still had time to find her one and only. She was letting her age and her dissatisfaction with her job plant within her subconscious a need to find someone before it was too late. So she was just fabricating a great love story between her and Wyatt.
She slipped out of bed to pace her house, wearing only a T-shirt and panties. She always turned down the heat at night, and she was soon shivering. Not even that physical discomfort could chase her back to the warmth of her bed, because the dream terrified her. She absolutely could not allow herself to fall wildly in love with Wyatt Fitzgerald. At best, he was a bad bet, because he was determined never to be in an intimate relationship again. And it was entirely possible that he was as screwed up emotionally as she was. If she let herself fall in love with him, she felt pretty sure he would walk away from her, just as he had in her dream, and he’d never look back. If that ever happened, it would destroy her.
* * *
* * *
The days were getting longer, Blackie decided as he pushed the ignition switch of his Ford Edge to kill the engine. The driver’s seat immediately moved back into what Blackie thought of as the escape position. Even so, he sat for a moment, staring at Julie’s home, a Victorian reproduction that sat on the edge of the Bearberry Loop golf course. It was a pretty house and appeared to be large enough for an entire family, which gave him an uneasy feeling. Like him, Julie had been running away from a nasty divorce when she’d found a hidey-hole in Mystic Creek, only it looked as if she’d brought at least one of her unattained dreams with her: to one day have children. Why else would a single woman living on a shoestring budget buy a home large enough for the Partridge family?
Blackie almost pressed the ignition button again, his every instinct warning him to get away. He was fifty-three years old, and it would be nuts for him to start a relationship with a woman twenty years his junior. He could plead a last-minute illness, he guessed. A sudden stomach complaint would work. Or the beginnings of a sore throat. Only he wasn’t big on polite lies. In fact, he wasn’t into lying, period, not necessarily because he was morally superior, but because he had never been able to pull it off.
He sighed and studied the house. A flagstone path curved from the parking area to the Victorian’s front veranda, bisecting a velvety green lawn interrupted only by blue spruce trees and well-tended flower beds that displayed a riot of color, lending credibility to the saying that “April showers bring May flowers.” Only this was mountain country, where the nights could bring temperatures below freezing. It wasn’t easy to grow things here until June had a good foothold.
With a sigh, Blackie forced himself to man up. Julie was fixing him dinner. He had accepted the invitation. If he backed out now, he’d hate himself for a week and feel guilty. It wasn’t Julie’s fault there was something about her that got to him as no other woman ever had. It also wasn’t her fault she was two decades younger than he was and still had life goals that were the norm for people her age. He’d just enjoy dinner with her, be a gracious guest, and keep his eye on the end goal, going home as fast as his legs would carry him. Seeing her house told him things about her that he hadn’t been able to detect in other settings.
She was still in the nesting stage of her life.
Blackie climbed out of the car. Without bothering to lock it, he strode along the curved path. Once on the porch, he noticed tasteful wind chimes hanging from the porch eaves. Large porcelain pots filled with Wave petunias accented the white safety railing around the veranda. There was even a sitting area, appointed with Adirondack chairs and a two-person swing. He had to give Julie credit; she knew how to make a house into a home.
With a sigh of resignation, he stepped onto the doormat and reached sideways to ring the doorbell. Almost instantly, the front door opened to reveal Julie, who was all smiles of welcome. As always, she looked beautiful, with glossy, dark hair spilling down her back. She wore a pink top the same color as some of the petunias, one of those silky-looking things that had cutouts at each shoulder, a style that mystified Blackie. When he bought a shirt, he wanted all its parts to be present. He sure as hell wouldn’t let clothing manufacturers save money on fabric by convincing him it was the style to go around with sections of his arms naked.
“Blackie! I’m so pleased that you came!” As she stepped forward, her shin-length skirt shifted gracefully, the floral pattern sporting the same shade of pink as her half-there blouse. Her arms encircled his neck in what he was sure she intended to be a friendly hug, but when her slender body, so femininely soft in all the right places, pressed against his, he felt a lot more than friendship burgeoning between them, and he quickly put distance between their hips. “You’re just in time for before-dinner drinks and appetizers.”
She had already teased his appetite, only it wasn’t for food. Blackie followed her into a foyer with barnwood flooring in muted tones of gray and brown. The satin, no-gloss finish would stand up well to the patter of little feet, he noted. The snow-white walls, however, were a bad choice for kids, which she would regret when and if her yearning for a family was ever fulfilled.
A curved staircase swept up from the foyer to a second floor, but she turned right and led him through a large living room, which he expected to be ornate and too fancy for practical use. But even though she’d added touches of Victorian fussiness, her sofa and recliners were big, cushiony, and upholstered in gray leather, picking up the color that streaked the floor. To his left, he saw a large, formal dining area, open to the living room, but they passed through another archway to reach a blazing-white kitchen with equally white appliances. More into earth tones, Blackie didn’t immediately like it, but then the dark green accents caught his eye, and he decided he did, after all. It was a bright, welcoming kitchen with a large work island and a spacious bay that was home to a round table, also white, but adorned with a centerpiece that sported green foliage.
“Your home is lovely,” he told her.
; “Oh, thanks. I like it. Way too large for me, but I fell in love with the yards. I’m into gardening.” Stepping over to the fridge, she opened the door and said, “I decided to be brave and serve dinner outside. It’ll get a little nippy as the sun goes down.” She grinned at him over her naked shoulder. He decided he could grow to like tops with some of their parts missing. They allowed a man to admire things about a woman that he wouldn’t normally see, and Julie did have beautiful skin, creamy white and smooth. “I’m glad you wore a light jacket. I was prepared to drape an afghan over you if necessary. I hope you enjoy eating al fresco.”
“I do.” Blackie had added a balcony onto his upstairs apartment so he could barbecue and dine outdoors. He enjoyed the treehouse feeling it gave him, and food always tasted better to him when fresh air accompanied it. “As for the light jacket, I’ve lived here long enough to anticipate the chill that comes with sundown. It can get nippy even in July and August.”
She drew a tray from a refrigerator shelf, turned, and bumped the door closed with her hip. “Don’t you love that, though? Over on the west side of the Cascades, the summer nights can be so hot that you need air-conditioning in order to sleep. Here, Mother Nature cools things down. I replaced all my downstairs windows last year. Well, the ones that open, anyway. I wanted the kind that lock into position, no matter how wide they’re opened. That way, I can raise them only slightly to enjoy the fresh air and not worry about a burglar gaining access to the house while I’m asleep.”
Blackie almost warned her that most burglars knew how to disengage simple locking mechanisms like that, but since this was Mystic Creek, where a lot of people didn’t even bother to lock their doors, he kept that information to himself. “I’m the same way. I open all my windows at night to enjoy the cool air. I have regular windows, though. I’m upstairs and don’t need to worry unless a cat burglar comes to town.”
Huckleberry Lake Page 17