He was going to have to make a decision about Donna soon, since he was fast running out of time and excuses. Somehow, he just couldn’t do it, couldn’t bring himself to hand her over to the legal process. Not yet.
As she came up the steps with Beau, the bloodhound almost tripped her as he pressed against her knee as a strong hint that he expected to be petted for serving as her escort during her walk. Roan, watching them, said, “I didn’t know you and Beau were so thick these days.”
She gave him a tight smile. “We came to a mutual agreement. I feed him ice cream and he doesn’t bite my leg off.”
“Makes sense. You hit on his fatal weakness.”
“Not by trying,” she said sharply.
She apparently thought he was accusing her of sabotage. “No, if you want to know the truth, I think he’s partial to women as well as ice cream.”
“Is he?” She moved past him to settle in the porch swing then set it in easy motion with the toes of one foot, avoiding Beau who followed her and plopped down so close that the swing passed back and forth over him.
“He was orphaned at four weeks old,” Roan went on as he turned to face her. “Carolyn, Jake’s mother, bottle-fed him every four hours until he was weaned.”
She gazed at him a second before she said, “He must be getting on in age then. I hadn’t realized.”
“Yeah.” He had nothing to add to that comment, mainly because he was sorry he’d brought up the subject. He crossed his booted feet at the ankle as he leaned on the railing.
“I somehow got the idea that your wife didn’t much care for the dogs.”
His reluctance to talk about past history was more than just a matter of privacy or even the normal male inclination to avoid personal problems. It was bone deep, something he’d learned at his father’s knee: family business was discussed only with family. Still, he didn’t want to cut Donna off just now. He was proud she was talking to him at all, since he’d expected her to hold a grudge over the monitor much longer. Though he was also aware that his concern about such a thing was a bad sign.
“Carolyn liked puppies and babies fine just as long as they were helpless and happy,” he said as he crossed his arms over his chest. “It was when they began to have minds of their own that she had problems. But Dog Trot and Turn-Coupe were what she really couldn’t stand. And me, of course.”
The only sound on the porch was the steady creak of the chains on the swing. Just when Roan was beginning to think Donna had lost interest in his personal life, she spoke again.
“I saw a wedding photograph of the two of you when I was in the attic. Wouldn’t it be more natural to have it out where Jake could look at it instead of putting it away as if his mother were never here?”
This was why you didn’t discuss family affairs, he thought. People always figured they knew better than you what was best. He asked, “Find anything else interesting while you were snooping?”
“I wasn’t snooping, just…exploring.”
“You and Jake.”
“He wasn’t there. Anyway, I didn’t think you’d mind.”
“You were wrong.” It touched him briefly that she would exonerate his son, even as he wondered what kind of idea she had of him that she figured Jake needed protection from his father.
She halted the swing and extended her ankle toward him. “Take this off and you won’t have to think about what I’m up to while you’re gone. I’ll have something to do besides poke around in your business.”
“Such as hightail it out of here.”
“I’m not that stupid.”
“I wouldn’t have to worry if I locked you in your room, either.”
“You wouldn’t!”
He wasn’t at all sure of that. This woman had an uncanny ability to touch him on the raw, so he said and did things that were less than rational. He fixed his gaze on the toes of his boots while he breathed through his nose. Finally, he sighed and uncrossed his arms, bracing his hands on either side of him on the railing. “Maybe not,” he said finally. “At least, not tonight.”
“But you might,” she said, her voice flat. “Especially if I tried to make this place a little more like a home instead of a museum.”
“Dog Trot is fine as it is,” he answered a shade defensively. “We don’t need gewgaws catching dust and cluttering up the place.”
“Most people don’t consider family keepsakes clutter.”
“Anyway, Jake broke a couple of collectible figures and a vase or two playing ball in the house. That was after my Mom died. My dad and I figured anything of value was safer put away in the attic.”
“He’s not a child anymore,” she said.
“Your concern for his welfare is touching, or would be if I believed it. Unfortunately, I don’t. So what are you getting at? What is it you want now?”
“Nothing,” she protested. She started the swing again. “I was just thinking, for obvious reasons, about memory. Photos are one of the best aids we have for recalling the past. They also help kids to feel connected, so they understand the things that happened. If a picture or two of his mother were sitting around, she might not be such a mystery.”
“There aren’t that many,” he said shortly.
“One, then. Jake’s mother was pretty in her wedding photo, but so young and…fragile-looking.”
That was an astute observation. “Exactly. She wanted to be married, but it was like a fairy tale to her. After the big deal of the wedding, she hated everything about it, especially being pregnant and having a baby. She liked playing with Jake well enough when he was smiling, but handed him to someone, me, my mother, my father, every time he cried. So how is it supposed to help Jake to be reminded that she tried to commit suicide after he was born, then deserted him while he was still in his so-called terrible twos?”
Her eyes were dark as she stared at him. “Jake said she was depressed, but I didn’t realize she tried to kill herself.”
“With my handgun,” he said with repressed savagery.
“I…I’m sorry.”
“Sorry that it happened, or sorry that you brought it up? Never mind. Since you know so much, you might as well hear the rest. It happened here in the house, in the room where you’re sleeping. We were living with my parents—it’s a big house and Carolyn didn’t much want the responsibility of a place of our own. I was off duty so my holster was hanging over a chair in our bedroom. Dad and I were working with the dogs down behind the barn, training a new leader. I heard the shot and started running. When I found her, she was lying on the floor in the white nightgown she’d worn for our wedding night. She’d tried to shoot herself in the head, but botched it, and I…” He stopped, not quite sure how to go on, or why he’d been so determined to give her the grisly details.
“You had to apply first aid,” she finished for him in sharp understanding. “That’s why you were so upset when I was shot.”
“When I shot you,” he corrected. A shudder rippled over him, leaving goose bumps in its wake. He stared beyond her at the evening shadows lengthening under the trees, though what he saw were bright-red splotches on white. Blood, so much blood.
The swing jerked and swayed as she left it. Moving to his side, she put her hand on his arm. “It wasn’t your fault, any of it.”
He met her gaze with its sympathy and instinctive women’s wisdom. In rough rejection of it, he asked, “How do you know?”
“You were right about the way I came at you out of the van that night. I was just so determined to get away, to get to you, that I didn’t think how it might look. Afterward, it was such a shock to have my escape turn into a nightmare that I wasn’t responsible, said things I didn’t mean. It’s the same with Carolyn. Jake mentioned that she’d had a difficult time of it before you married. You couldn’t help that, or her problem in dealing with it.”
“I used to think I could,” he said, then gave a humorless laugh. “I thought I could slay all her dragons.”
There was more comfort in the
feel of her palm on his skin than he would have believed possible. The low timbre of her voice seemed to ease some sore spot deep inside him. Strange, but he had a real need to make her understand how the thing with Carolyn had all come about, maybe because Donna was a stranger without preconceived notions, maybe because the two women were connected in his mind.
After a moment, he went on. “When we were young, twelve or thirteen, I used to help Carolyn sneak out of the house so that her dad couldn’t find her and beat her when he came home drunk. It was worse on Friday nights, so we’d camp out in the fort we built down by the river. Carolyn was a bookworm. She lived in a sort of fairy-tale dream world. She used to call me Sir Roan, tell me I was her knight in shining armor and she knew I’d always protect her. It felt good to be looked up to like that, but it was scary, too. I tried to be what she expected, I really did, but sometimes I think it was the wrong thing to do. By fighting her battles for her, I kept her from standing on her own feet.”
“Weren’t things better after her father left?”
“Not really,” he answered, wondering at the same time what else Jake had told her. “Her mother wasn’t able to work, and the public assistance they got didn’t go very far. She and Carolyn were too proud to accept help from the church groups, much less ask for it. They always pretended things were better than they were, or that their circumstances were going to change somehow, some way. I tried to help. I drove Carolyn and her mother to town to shop or to keep doctors’ appointments. I mowed their yard and kept their old house painted and repaired. One year I planted a garden for them, but they didn’t gather the vegetables because that might have looked as if they needed to grow their own food. Carolyn would accept a few dollars from me when her mother needed medicine or some other comfort. That was all.”
“So you had both Carolyn and her mother leaning on you then,” Donna said in tentative tones. “It must have been a heavy burden.”
Surprise held him silent for a moment. He’d never looked at it like that, but simply accepted it as his duty to help a friend. “Anyway, everybody noticed how close we were and sort of assumed we were a couple. I guess we did, too. She liked coming here to Dog Trot, being with my mom and dad. After she and her mother had to move in with her mother’s brother, it seemed like a good idea to get married. We did, and I thought everything would be all right.
“But it wasn’t.”
No, it hadn’t been, for all the reasons he’d given before. Roan turned his head to meet Donna’s gaze. Something in his face must have unsettled her, or else she realized she was still touching him, for she lifted her hand and stepped back. He studied her features, her eyes with their hint of compassion behind their coolness, the yielding softness of her mouth, the self-possessed tilt of her chin. She had her problems, but she was nothing like Carolyn. Nothing at all. Thank God.
The shift of a breeze across the porch brought her scent to him. He breathed it in before he could stop himself, that soap-clean fragrance tempered by a mind-stopping whiff of warm woman that had haunted him for days as he sat beside her bed. The involuntary tightening of his body was inconvenient, but no surprise. He’d been in a state of semiarousal for so long now that it was beginning to feel natural. What was new was the sudden ferocious need to bury his face in the tender curve of her neck and draw long breaths of that special scent, to burn it into his memory.
His changed mood seemed to communicate itself to her. She tilted her head and lifted an inquiring brow. When he said nothing, she asked, “So was it really postpartum depression that triggered the suicide attempt, as Jake seems to think, or was it something else?”
“Both, I guess. Her mother died, they found her father in a shallow grave, and she was never the same. It was as if she figured out, finally, that things were never going to get any better unless she did something about them.”
“So when she didn’t die, after all, she left. Tragic.”
“Maybe, maybe not.” He pushed away from the railing, putting distance between them. The last thing he wanted was her compassion. What he did want was her hands on him again, touching more than his arm, occupying his thoughts to the exclusion of all else, bringing him the peace that was always just beyond his grasp. The impossibility of it ever happening made his voice harder than he’d intended as he added, “Could be it was for the best.”
“Meaning?”
“Carolyn needed professional help. I never realized it, wouldn’t admit that I couldn’t make everything right for her. That I wasn’t all she needed.”
His voice died in his throat as he heard what he’d just said. He’d acknowledged that he was partly responsible for his wife’s problems. That was something he’d never done before.
“I think you’re taking too much of the blame,” Donna said, her tone pensive, as if she might be thinking of something other than his dismal history. “It was your wife’s decision.”
“In a manner of speaking. Her therapist told her she’d never find herself while she was clinging to me as a lifeline, that she needed to let go. I guess it was true, since that’s more or less what she did.” Roan turned his head to study the woman beside him. “I don’t suppose that’s what you might be doing here, would it?”
A short laugh left her. “Finding myself? Hardly. But I thought you were sure I was a hardened criminal.”
She was right. Had his thinking shifted, or was he just considering possibilities? He couldn’t let her know he’d weakened even that far, or there was no telling how she might try to use that advantage. Anyway, it was the law that mattered, not what he might or might not think.
With an offhand shrug, he said, “I meant maybe that was the reason you took up with your pals, Zits and Big Ears. Maybe you’re a poor little rich girl with problems that you’re trying to solve by chucking everything for a life-style with no rules or obligations.”
The look she gave him was dark. “Would that be so bad?”
“It has its appeal for all of us at times, but it’s no remedy. At some point you’re either forced to turn around and come back or else you run full circle. Either way, the problems are still there waiting for you. So what’s the answer?” He waited to see if she would respond with the truth, or if the curtain would go up on another scene of her endless playacting.
She shifted uneasily, then moved further along the porch railing. Without thinking, he followed, wanting to be close, cursing himself for the weakness. She was under his protection. He had to keep that in mind at all costs.
“Maybe I’d rather not remember,” she said in compressed tones.
It was marginally possible, but he wouldn’t bet on it. He let silence stand as his answer.
“Actually, I don’t care if I never do. I think I could get used to being in the country like this, to following the seasons, working in the garden, being able to watch the stars at night.”
“Judging by your anklet, I’d say the stars in your world have a bit more glitter,” he offered with deliberate irony.
Her laugh sounded forced. “From rhinestones?”
“Not according to the local jeweler. He says the stones are blue-white, finest quality diamonds. A photo of the anklet is circulating in the national network, but nothing has turned up on it.”
“You mean it hasn’t been reported stolen or missing.”
“And no one’s taking credit for being the designer.”
“You think of everything,” she said flatly.
“I try.” He paused, then went on. “There are aids to memory, if you agree. Hypnotherapy, for one.”
She straightened with a challenge in her gaze. “You expect me to let you poke around in my memory?”
“Not me, personally. Dr. Watkins is certified, and you couldn’t be in better hands.”
“I don’t think so, thanks.”
“Afraid of what we’ll find?”
“As I said, I prefer my memory as it is, even with its glitches.”
She had an answer for everything. He had to admire that.
“You might remember something that would clear you.”
“My, my, Sir Roan, are you trying to solve all my problems now?”
He flinched; he couldn’t help it. He’d known that telling her about his private life was like handing her a weapon, but had expected her to have more scruples than to use it. He must have come too close to whatever it was that she was hiding. That was a promising idea though he allowed nothing of it to show on his face.
“I’m trying to do my job,” he said evenly. “That includes solving your problems, since they impact the case.”
“In other words, you want to be rid of me as soon as possible.”
“Your stay at Dog Trot was always supposed to be temporary,” he said without emphasis.
Her lips twisted at the corners. “So it was. Too bad.”
“Meaning?”
Her lashes came down and her gaze rested on the star pinned to his shirt, as if it fascinated her. For an instant, he thought she was going to reach out to touch it, as she had before. As she spoke, her voice was low and not quite steady. “Given enough time, we might have come to a better understanding.”
Did she mean what he thought? It didn’t bear thinking about. In rough denial, he answered, “I think we understand each other well enough.”
“Do you? But there’s always room for…improvement.”
It was a test of his willpower and sworn avowal that he wouldn’t touch her. She was tempting him, even taunting him, because she knew very well that he wanted her. She thought she could use the oldest trick in the book to make him forget why he was holding her prisoner, forget everything except the sweet, sweet pleasure of tasting her, having her. And she was right, damn them both to hell.
“Don’t,” he commanded in hard, self-directed contempt.
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t look at me like that, don’t say another word. Go into the house now, before you get in more trouble than you can handle.”
She lifted her chin, her gaze meeting his in clear challenge. “Suppose I’d rather not?”
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