After Dark

by Beverly Barton

  “Then, who did?”

  Standing on tiptoe to reach her six-foot teenager, Lane wrapped her arms around him. “I don’t know. But I know that you didn’t.”

  “And I know you didn’t.” He hugged his mother fiercely, holding on to her for dear life.

  She stroked the dark, straight hair that hung to his collar. Like silk in her fingers. Shiny and soft and almost blue-black in the evening sunlight spilling through the windowpanes.

  Lane pushed him away gently. “Why don’t you go help Lillie Mae finish cleaning up in the kitchen? I bet she’d like the company.”

  “I’ll apologize to her. She’s put up with a lot from me lately, and she doesn’t deserve my anger.” Will’s lips curved into a smile. Lane caressed his cheek, then gave him a little shove toward the door.

  “No, she doesn’t,” Lane agreed. “Lillie Mae has suffered as much as any of us. And she loves you more than anything in this world.”

  “Yeah, I know. I—I—”

  “Go help her. You don’t have to say anything. She’ll understand.”

  When Will joined Lillie Mae in the kitchen, Lane slumped down in the enormous leather chair that had been her father’s favorite seat. She still missed her parents and probably always would. Her father’s death in a needless accident, caused by a reckless drunk driver, had reminded her how very brief life is and how very, very precious. When she had come out of the foggy, grief-induced haze following Bill Noble’s death, she realized two things. One being that her mother, whose injuries in the accident had left her little more than a vegetable, would require constant care. For eighteen months, she, Lillie Mae and several private nurses had seen to Celeste Noble’s every need. She had died peacefully in her sleep, with her daughter at her side. And Lane’s second realization was that she couldn’t continue in her marriage to Kent. They had both been miserable, and with each passing year, Kent had become more and more abusive. He had never struck her, but he had verbally tormented her, making their lives unbearable. And a part of her had lived in fear of him, never forgetting what he had once done to her

  Even though Kent hadn’t been the best of fathers, he had loved Will, and Will had adored Kent, the way little boys so often hero worship their fathers. Will’s adoration of Kent had ended the first time he overheard Kent berating her. And Kent’s love for Will had ended the day he received Sharon Hickman’s letter.

  Why couldn’t Sharon have taken their secret to her grave? Why had she felt twangs of conscience when she was dying? She might have eased her own burden of guilt by her deathbed confession, but in freeing herself, she had damned the rest of them to hell. Will. Kent. Lillie Mae. Her. And even Kent’s family.

  Lane had been taught that lying was a sin. And sins required punishment and atonement. She had never realized just how terrible the punishment would be for their lie. Or how costly the atonement.

  Will was an innocent child. The one person who shouldn’t have to suffer for the adults’ sins. But he was the one suffering the most. He was the one who stood to lose everything. He had already lost the only father he had ever known. And now, if she was arrested, put on trial for Kent’s murder and was found guilty, he would lose his mother, too.

  The distinct chime of the doorbell echoed through the quiet house. Lane rose to her feet and walked into the hallway.

  “I’ll see who it is,” Will called out as he emerged from the kitchen.

  She nodded agreement and turned to go back into the den. But something stopped her. A tightening in her stomach. A gut reaction warning her that something was wrong. She glanced over her shoulder as Will opened the front door.

  “Hello,” the deep, husky male voice said. “Does Lane Noble still live here?”

  “Yeah, but she’s Lane Graham now,” Will said. “Who are you?”

  “Will!” Lane screamed his name.

  When her son turned around, obviously startled by her outburst, he moved a fraction to the right, giving Lane a better view of the front porch. The tall, broad-shouldered man wearing a tan Stetson filled the doorway. He had changed. Grown older. Tiny age lines surrounded his mouth and eyes.

  “What’s wrong, Mama?” Will asked.

  “Nothing,” she replied. “This man is here to see me. You go in the kitchen and tell Lillie Mae to put on a fresh pot of coffee.”

  Hesitantly, Will obeyed her, leaving her alone to face a ghost from her past.

  “Hello, Lane,” the man said.

  “Hello, Johnny Mack.”

  Chapter 6

  “Who was that at the front door?” Lillie Mae asked.

  “I don’t know. Some tall guy wearing a Stetson,” Will replied. “Mama said he was here to see her and for me to come tell you to put on a fresh pot of coffee. Wonder who he is?”

  “Tall man? Wearing a Stetson?” Lillie Mae’s heart beat in an erratic rat-a-tat-tat rhythm. Had her prayers been answered? “Black hair, dark complexion? About thirty-six?”

  “Yeah, I guess that describes him. I didn’t get that good a look at him before Mama ran me off.”

  With his message delivered, Will turned to exit the kitchen. As his hand reached the doorknob, Lillie Mae rushed across the room and grabbed his arm. A startled gasp rounded his mouth as his gaze questioned her.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “Don’t go in there and disturb your mama. Her business with that man is private.”

  “You know who he is, don’t you?”

  She tightened her hold on the boy’s arm—the boy who meant more to her than life itself. He was all she had in this old world. Lane’s son. Oh, she knew that Miss Lane hadn’t nurtured him in her body, that she hadn’t given birth to him, but he was her child all the same. Will belonged to Lane as surely as if he had grown inside her. Together she and Lane had loved Will, sacrificed for him and protected him at all costs. But in the end, they hadn’t been able to protect him from the truth. Or from Kent’s vindictive rage!

  “I think I know who he is,” Lillie Mae admitted, as she released her tenacious hold on Will’s arm. “I sent for him, to help your mama.”

  “Is he a lawyer? Somebody you think can do a better job for Mama than James can?”

  “We’d best wait and let your mama answer your questions.”

  Will narrowed his eyes, squinting them so that the expression on his face was identical to the look she had seen on Johnny Mack’s face a hundred times in the years she’d known him as a boy and a young man. Such an angry, embittered young man. But then he’d had a right to be all that and more. Life had dealt him a pretty sorry hand, and he had played it the best way he’d known how.

  “I hate this!” Will gritted the words through clenched teeth. “More secrets! That’s all my life has been—ugly, dirty secrets.”

  “Now, you stop that!” Lillie Mae shook her bony index finger in Will’s face. “There’s nothing ugly or dirty about your life. You’re a good boy. Not one thing that has happened is your fault. Do you hear me? Just like your mama has told you, you’re the only innocent one in all of this mess.”

  Will’s face flushed crimson. “Maybe I’m not so innocent. Maybe I’m the one who…who—”

  She grabbed his shoulders and shook him. “I don’t want to ever hear you talking such nonsense. Let your mama and me and…and that man out there—” she inclined her head in the direction of the foyer—“handle everything. We’re not going to let anything bad happen to you. Not ever again.”

  “That man out there—” Will mimicked her head nod. “What’s he got to do with us? Why would he help you and Mama handle things?”

  “Because he owes your mama his life.” Lillie Mae released her tight grip on Will, then lifted her chin and squared her shoulders. “He’s come back to Noble’s Crossing to pay a long overdue debt.”

  “How’d Mama save his life?”

  Lillie Mae saw the curiosity in Will’s eyes. What would it hurt if she told him about Johnny Mack, about what happened that long-ago September night, without reveal
ing the man’s relationship to Will? Sooner or later, Will would have to be told, but it would be up to Lane to decide when to tell Will who the stranger was and to introduce father and son.

  “Come on back in here and sit down while I put on that fresh pot of coffee.” Lillie Mae motioned for him to sit at the kitchen table. “You stay in here with me and I’ll tell you about how your mama brought home a half-drowned man who’d been badly beaten and dumped in the Chickasaw River.”

  With his attention focused solely on the tale yet to be told, Will pulled out a Windsor oak chair from the round table and sat.

  “When did this happen? How old was Mama?”

  Lillie Mae grinned. She could kill two birds with one stone—keep Will occupied so Lane could talk to Johnny Mack and at the same time give Will some insight into Lane’s past relationship with his biological father.

  While busying herself with preparations for the coffee machine, Lillie Mae let her mind drift back to that night nearly fifteen years ago when Miss Lane had dragged a half-dead Johnny Mack through the back door. She had never seen a sorrier sight. His face had been so bruised and bloodied, she hadn’t recognized him at first. Them that had done the deed had meant to kill Johnny Mack. But they had miscalculated the boy’s strength, determination and sheer survival instincts. He’d grown up hard and tough and wild. It took a lot to kill a man like that.

  “This man…well, he wasn’t much more than a boy back then, but he was a tough kid…he had done things that got some of the menfolk here in Noble’s Crossing all riled up.”

  “What had he done?”

  “Don’t interrupt me. Besides, some of this story is X-rated, and you’ll have to wait until you’re twenty-one to hear it.”

  That comment gained Lillie Mae one of Will’s beautiful smiles. Those smiles had warmed her heart for fourteen years and would continue to do so until the day she died. There was absolutely nothing she wouldn’t do for this boy.

  “Go on,” Will said. “But don’t leave out the X-rated parts, even if you have to sanitize them for me. Okay?”

  “Sanitize them, huh?” Lilie Mae grinned. “Well, this young man had romanced a few ladies who belonged to other men. He was a regular heartbreaker, and your mama’d had a crush on him since she was fourteen. Just the age you are now.”

  “Then, why didn’t she marry this man instead of marrying Kent?” Will’s smile vanished, erased by memories of the man who had so cruelly disowned him.

  “That’s another story, but mainly because this other man left town a long time ago—before Miss Lane married Kent.” Lillie Mae paused, took a deep breath and then continued her tale. “Your mama used to spend a lot of time down by the river. Thinking. Daydreaming.” Using her thumb, Lillie Mae motioned toward the back of the house. “Her favorite sanctuary was the old boathouse. Anyway, that night she went down there and guess what she found lying on the riverbank, half-drowned and beaten so bad he couldn’t even stand up?”

  “This man—the one she’d had a crush on since she was fourteen?”

  “Right. So, she helped him get on his feet, and halfway dragging him, she got him to the back door of this house. That’s when she started hollering for me. We took him to my room because it was the only bedroom on the ground floor. Miss Lane wanted to call a doctor, but he said no, not to call anybody. That’s when he told us that they had tried to kill him.”

  “Who had tried to kill him?” Will sat perched on the edge of his seat, his eyes wide with speculation.

  “He didn’t tell me who, but I suspect he told your mama. And I got my suspicions.”

  “How’d he get better without seeing a doctor?” Will asked. “And what did Grandfather and Grandmother Noble think about him staying here in their house?”

  “Your grandparents were out of town, so they never knew about Miss Lane rescuing him. Your mama and me took care of him, the best we could. He was tough as they come and he was determined not to die. I think plotting revenge is what kept him alive. That and…and your mama.”

  “Who is he?” Will looked Lillie Mae square in the eye.

  “Best your mama tells you.”

  Will snapped his head around and glared at the closed kitchen door. “He’s Johnny Mack Cahill, isn’t he? He’s the lowlife, son of a bitch bastard that Kent told me was my real father!”

  For years after he had left town, Lane had dreamed of this moment. Johnny Mack Cahill coming home—home to her. But as time went by and she never heard from him, she had given up her dream. And somewhere along the way, the love she had once felt for Johnny Mack had slowly turned to hatred. It had been apparent that wherever he’d gone and whatever he’d done with his life, he had forgotten about her. So with each passing year, it had become easier and easier to blame him for her unhappiness.

  But now, suddenly, after fifteen years, he was back—big as life and twice as deadly. What once would have been a dream come true was now a nightmare realized. The devil incarnate stood in front of her. Temptation personified. Every woman’s fantasy. And every woman’s downfall.

  Why now, dear God? Why now?

  “It’s been a long time,” Johnny Mack said in that deep, sexy Southern drawl, as he removed his Stetson and held it in his hand. “You’re even prettier than I remember.”

  Heat rose inside Lane, warming her as it flushed her skin. A compliment from Johnny Mack had always set off a flood of butterflies in her stomach. If all else about their relationship had changed, that one aspect hadn’t. Don’t believe a word he says, an inner voice cautioned. He’s a charmer. A seducer. A heartbreaker.

  “I don’t mean to be rude,” Lane said, ever the polite, mannerly Southern belle her mother had raised her to be. “But why are you here? What are you doing in Noble’s Crossing?”

  You swore you’d never come back—that hell would freeze over first. What changed your mind?

  She tried not to stare at him, not to take inventory of his physical assets. But with a man as devastatingly male as Johnny Mack Cahill, she found it impossible not to visually appreciate his long, lean body and his ruggedly handsome face. Dressed casually in jeans and a dark cotton shirt, he looked like a working man all cleaned up for a night on the town.

  Just where had he been all these years and what had he been doing? And why, after fifteen years, had he shown up on her doorstep tonight?

  “Aren’t you even going to ask me to sit down?” He eyed the living room from his position in the foyer.

  “Is this a social call?” she asked, her stomach churning, her nerves rioting.

  “I’m not sure what kind of visit this is,” he admitted. “A search for the truth, maybe.”

  Lane willed herself not to gasp aloud. Did he know? Had he somehow found out about Will? But how, after all these years? Was it possible that the story of Kent’s murder had reached him wherever he lived now? Maybe he wasn’t here because of Will. Maybe he didn’t know he had a son. Perhaps he had come back to Noble’s Crossing to help her. If that were true, then he was, as the old adage said, a day late and a dollar short. If she had ever meant anything to him, he would have come back for her long before now.

  “And just what truth are you seeking?” She stuck out her chin defiantly, as if daring him to mention Will. At the thought of her son, she glanced toward the closed kitchen door and prayed that Lillie Mae could keep Will occupied until she could get rid of her uninvited company.

  “Worried about the boy overhearing our conversation?”

  Johnny Mack’s lips curved into the turn-a-woman’s-knees-to-jello smile that Lane remembered only too well. So, he knew she had a child, but just how much did he really know about Will?

  “Yes,” she admitted. “Until I know why you’re back in town, after an absence of fifteen years, I’d prefer my son not meet you.”

  “Fair enough.” Without another word, Johnny Mack reached inside his back pocket and pulled his wallet from his jeans. After retrieving a folded piece of paper, he spread it apart to reveal a newspaper clipping and
a small photograph. He held the items out to Lane. Their gazes met and locked. A hard knot of apprehension formed in the pit of her stomach. With trembling fingers, she reached out and accepted his offering.

  The photograph was of Will. Last year’s school picture. The knot in her stomach tightened. He looked just like Johnny Mack, feature for feature, right down to the devastating smile. How could Johnny Mack have seen this picture and not realized that the boy was his?

  Hurriedly Lane glanced at the newspaper clipping and recognized it as being the front-page story about Kent’s murder that had run in the local paper. The Herald, which she co-owned with Miss Edith. Lane turned her attention to the last item in her hand. A sheet of lined notebook paper on which two succinct sentences had been written. Come home. Your son needs you.

  Bile rose into her throat. Her knees weakened. She closed her eyes, momentarily shutting out the truth. Johnny Mack knew that Will was his son!

  “We can’t talk here,” she told him, then neatly folded the items and handed them back to him. “We need to talk privately, where there’s no chance of our being overheard.”

  Johnny Mack glanced past her toward the hallway leading to the kitchen. “All right. Where and when? The sooner the better.”

  “Yes, I agree. The sooner the better.” Lane’s mind splintered into fragments, each flying off in a different direction. Without even thinking she blurted out, “Tomorrow. I’ll meet you, wherever you say.”

  “I’m staying at the Four Way,” he told her. “What time?”

  Only people who couldn’t afford better stayed at the Four Way. It was one step above a rat hole. Clean, but shabby. Lane supposed that Johnny Mack’s finances hadn’t improved much over the years.

  “Ten o’clock in the morning,” she said.

  He nodded agreement, but his gaze remained riveted to her face. She sensed that he wanted to say more, that he wanted to touch her. To shake her hand. To squeeze her shoulder. Something. Anything. To make a personal contact. She couldn’t let that happen. She didn’t dare.