“Nobody. That doesn’t mean it would be hard to do.”
The words sent her stepping back in surprise. She swallowed her anger but couldn’t quite ignore the rejection.
“You’re a godsend of a friend, Jill,” he continued. “Can we just stick with that for a while? Please?”
“I …” She turned away, her disappointment almost physical. Angel stood, stretched, and trailed across the stall to stand between them. Jill knelt and wrapped the dog in a hug, willing herself not to cry like a rejected high school prima donna. Chase placed his hand briefly on Jill’s head. “Of course we can be friends,” she forced herself to say into Angel’s coat. “That’s what matters.”
Chapter Fourteen
BRIGHT, EARLY-JUNE SUNSHINE woke Chase Saturday morning. As he had the past two nights, he’d dreamed fitfully about the few sweet moments in the stall at Bridge Creek, where things had been as uncomplicated as Jill had described—two people, drawn to each other, sharing no more than kisses. To be sure, they’d been incredible, sex-drenched kisses, but teenagers in a parked car would have gone farther.
He’d had to stop them.
Things were better this way.
He threw off his sheet and sat up. Liar, he told himself. Things sucked. Behind the explorations—chaste enough to satisfy a preacher—there had been frightening power. And he couldn’t afford to play with such fire. He’d left Memphis to make a solitary journey. It had to be solitary until he figured out where it led. And that knowledge was as elusive as ever.
Angel padded through the door, and the next thing he knew she’d launched onto the bed. After bestowing two kisses, she settled beside him, rolling to expose her belly.
His mind calmed.
“G’morning, mutt,” he crooned, laughing as her back leg twitched while he scratched.
They’d never returned her to the clinic, and there’d been no response to any of the ads for a found dog. Jill kept insisting they’d find a good home for her, but Chase already knew there’d be nothing but devastation if Angel had to go anywhere.
Thoughts of Jill brought pangs of regret. She’d taken his plea for friendship completely to heart. Her flirtatiousness had stopped. Her teasing held no innuendo. Her warm cheeriness had gone generic. She was being, as requested, a perfect friend.
Oh yeah. It sucked big-time.
So did his guilt. He caught sight of his cell phone on the bedside table and closed his eyes. He hadn’t dealt even minimally with the mess he’d left behind in Memphis. He hadn’t called his brother back, or let his parents or Poppa know he was safe in Minnesota. He’d shoved Memphis and Kentucky away as unremittingly as he had Jill.
On a typical Saturday morning like this, the Marian-Lee Clinic, two miles from Graceland, would be an insane asylum of injuries, colds that had gone too long unattended, and, on a rare day, a welcome baby visit. Saturday mornings had turned into the only times Chase enjoyed his job—the only time families took back the free clinic and gang members slept off the previous night’s territory wars. Brody and Julia would be running ragged unless they’d managed to find help.
Fueled only by shame, Chase reached for the phone. The smooth, slim piece of technology would connect him in mere seconds to the world he’d left, yet it felt like lead in his hand, as if it physically contained every mile between Memphis and Kennison Falls. He turned it on and found a missed call from his mother and four more from Brody. Fresh guilt assailed him.
Deliberately but reluctantly he scrolled to Brody’s number. With his finger poised to dial, he tried to imagine any way the conversation would not be agonizing, or any question his brother might ask that Chase could even answer for sure. Was he all right? Did he have a timetable for being gone? Did he know that Clara Washington was doing fine? Did he know they missed him?
He touched Brody’s name on the screen, and with that small action his breath began suffocating him. You know it wasn’t your fault, Chase. Brody would say it. He would probably mean it. But Chase couldn’t bear to hear it one more time.
He hung up before the signal went through.
Angel whined and literally crawled into his lap. Chase buried his face in the dog’s short, curly hair. She licked his face.
“Aw, shit,” he said. “Don’t you start trying to make me feel better, too.”
SUMMER SATURDAYS WERE notoriously busy at Bridge Creek, and Jill normally loved the bustle. Today, however, she sat on David’s office chair, swiveling idly while her mind raced. Her second-chance lesson with Colin the day before had been a stellar success. He’d been tough and quick to correct. But he’d praised her thoroughly.
“David didn’t exaggerate your abilities,” he’d said. “I’d like to work several times a week through June and see where we are.”
He hadn’t asked, he’d told, as if in his mind her internship had begun. A dream had literally come true. And yet, now that the first flush of excitement had faded, so had the thrill. That made her furious—and sad. Working with and for Colin promised to make for a glorious summer. Why, then, had the shiny promise dulled?
David and Chase had been unequivocal in their excitement. David she understood. But Chase? She didn’t know why he cared this much. She’d known better than to fall for him, or lure him into that kiss. But like a dope she’d done both, and look what it had gotten her. A friend. One with the bluest eyes, thick black hair, an intimate sculpted mouth.
A gloriously hard body.
Stop that.
She was obsessing. She never obsessed over men. And why pick someone who would barely talk about himself to go all moony and stupid over? At first she’d been furious with him for ending their incredible night in the barn the way he had. Now she was simply … confused.
Chase Preston was flipping her life on its head. And for no productive reason she could see. She picked up a note in David’s unique European handwriting letting her know an hours-long group lesson with a troop of Girl Scouts had been canceled. Suddenly she had a fully free afternoon, and she should have been ecstatic with the extra time to work her own horses.
Instead she wanted to leave. To see if Chase was at the house with Angel. To see him.
Her memory returned to the long, hot kiss and Chase’s hot, hard body. Shivers sluiced through her belly.
Half groaning, half growling at herself in annoyance, she rose from the chair and stomped from the office. This was ridiculous.
The idea to turn off the main road on her way home struck like random lightning as she approached the road leading to Robert McCormick’s. She dismissed her first urge to take the turn as proof her world had been upended. When she found herself hitting her brakes and careening onto the gravel road, she changed the self-diagnosis to certifiably cracked.
If anything, McCormick’s farmyard seemed shabbier. Nervousness danced through her stomach. The man did have his reputation, and this time she had no reason to be here. She searched the farmyard without luck and nearly decided to leave before she found Robert McCormick laboring with a hand hoe in a twenty-five-foot garden plot behind his house.
The corn plants he weeded stood about six inches tall. Most of the rest of the garden was weed-free and sown with a variety of vegetables in various stages of growth—feathery carrot greens still only four or five inches high; purple-tinged beet seedlings; a row of young but usable lettuce; short, bushy potato plants; and full-grown pea plants clinging gracefully to a trellis of chicken wire. The immaculate garden-for-one delighted her.
“Mr. McCormick?”
A grunt accompanied the quick straightening of the old man’s agile body. Mistrustful eyes squinted from beneath the bill of the battered, baby-blue Allis-Chalmers cap.
“I didn’t mean to startle you. Do you remember me?”
“Oh, it’s you.”
The piercing eyes softened, and McCormick stooped again over his hoe.
“I’m sorry to bother you.”
“You and that young feller of yours got to be the sorriest pair I know. First he
comes ’round this morning nearly apologizing for having hair on his head and now you. You ain’t got to be so damn sorry.”
Jill didn’t know which surprised her more, McCormick’s gruff welcome or the news that Chase had been there. She ventured closer and stood at the garden’s edge.
“Chase was here?”
“Yah, ’bout ten this morning. Nice young fellow. Helpful. Moved a little hay for me. You here for Hardy again? I didn’t call.”
“No, I’m afraid this time I came on my own. I, ah, wondered how Gypsy is doing. How you’re doing.”
“You rehearse that line?” He looked over his shoulder as if he expected her to wriggle under the accusation.
“No.” She laughed instead. “I guess you and your big horse just made an impression on us.”
Robert McCormick smiled, and an amazing transformation took place. Lines eased away and an ageless handsomeness possessed his face.
“Nobody minds decent company, young lady,” he said. “But you’ll have to talk to my hind side till I finish this corn and get my peas.”
“Please, let me help with the peas?” A surge of silly excitement struck her.
Surprise glazed McCormick’s eyes. He grunted. “Suit yourself. Bucket’s over there.”
Jill carried an old shallow pail to the long row of plants she’d earlier admired and knelt beside the bulging little pods.
“First time I had help pickin’ peas since my Olive died.”
“When was that?” Jill asked gently.
“Nineteen-eighty.”
“I’ll bet it seems like yesterday sometimes.”
Their gazes met across the garden before each turned back to work.
McCormick’s conversational skills surprised her. Interwoven with blunt, acerbic observations, he shared bits and pieces of his history on the farm and laced his stories with unexpected wit. By the time ripe peas filled the pail and the corn had been weeded, Jill knew he’d been born on the farm, married his high school sweetheart, Olive, and, by age twenty-five, taken over the farm and bought the land from his own father.
His only son, Karl, had died in Vietnam. Robert had farmed all six hundred forty acres until Olive’s death. Now he grew enough hay for his horses, gardened for himself, and bred one mare each year to sell the foal and live off the profit. Jill marveled at his vigor and tenacity and told him so as she helped carry garden tools to the barn when the work was done.
“I ain’t had it no better or no worse than most folks around here.” He brushed off her compliments. “It was hard losin’ the boy. And hard when Olive passed. I don’t know why I’m still doddering on, but I’m plain mean enough that I don’t want that damn fool Krieger or his boss to get their way too soon or too easy. I’d like to live a little longer just to enjoy being a real pain in Krieger’s ass. Excuse me.”
Jill could only laugh as they checked on the two huge mares in the pasture behind the barn. Gypsy, enormous with the foal whose birth was clearly imminent, still trotted thunderously to the gate at the call from her master. Beside her, mere inches shorter but positively petite in her non-pregnant state, Belle sought attention, too, impatient but knowing her place in the two-horse pecking order. After she looked at the nearly healed cut on Gypsy’s flank, Jill patted both horses in a reluctant good-bye.
She followed McCormick through the barn to the house where he produced a pitcher of lemonade and two glasses from a dorm-sized refrigerator tucked into a corner of the decrepit porch.
“Got me this refrigerator so I can get lunch without trackin’ through the house. I don’t clean like Olive did.” He took a swallow of the lemonade and pursed his lips absently. “I don’t make lemonade like she did either.”
The liquid burned its tart citrus tang down Jill’s throat, and tears stung the backs of her eyes. It was the best lemonade she’d ever tasted.
“Then Olive’s lemonade must have been pure heaven, Mr. McCormick.”
Once again the remnants of youthful handsomeness eased onto his weathered face. When she finished her drink, Jill stood.
“The time has flown,” she said. “I really should go. But if you’re sure you don’t mind I’ll see you again when the foal is here.”
“Ya, sure. Suit yourself.” Jill wondered why he put on such a crotchety act and why so few people ever got past it. “ ’Preciate your pea pickin’. It wasn’t necessary.”
“I enjoyed it. And the lemonade.”
He grunted in acknowledgment and spoke without looking at her. “Been a long time since I shared it with someone.”
Feeling oddly tender at the awkward compliment, Jill touched his shoulder.
“It’s peaceful here. I wish there was a way to hang on to places like this forever. I’m glad the contractors think what they think of you. I won’t tell them they’re wrong.”
“They ain’t all wrong,” he growled.
“Whatever you say.” She winked at him. “Thanks again.”
What a messed-up day, she thought as she drove from the old farm. The place that should have been her safe haven had driven her away, and an old man supposedly the scourge of the county had made her feel more at home than she did, well, at home. Then there was the puzzle that was Chase’s visit to McCormick. The whole softhearted image of Chase doing sweaty chores for a man he barely knew left her utterly confused. Chase was strong and decisive, yet secretive and aggravating. Was he a hot catch or some sort of fugitive?
At the speed limit sign on the edge of town, she slowed her mother’s little Accord, which she’d borrowed so Chase could have The Creature, and when Dewey’s garage came into sight, Jill moved at a near crawl, searching the parking lot. Chase had planned to spend part of the day working on the motorcycle. It was only three-thirty, but Dewey’s place was locked up tight.
She rolled on past the beauty and barber shops facing each other across Main Street. On the next corner, the small, once-pretty library building was still boarded up, and empty pedestals guarded its door. Jill and everyone in town mourned the half-sized lions that had perched atop the columns before the tornado.
A block later, she nearly slammed on the brakes in the middle of the street. A crush of cars filled every parking spot and curbside space around the Loon Feather, including Dee’s little red Miata parked directly behind The Creature. It took five minutes for Jill to find a spot of her own, and when she pushed open the new etched-glass café door to find out what was going on, a buzz of voices hit like a wave.
“Wekkom kom!”
“Hi, Cotton. Welcome, come in,” she said absently, moving curiously into the restaurant.
The Loon was filled nearly to bursting. Every chair was taken and tall stools from the bar had been brought into the café. Jill scanned the crowd in amazement. At the far end of the room, Mayor Sam Baker stood in a small hub of people. It didn’t take long to find Elaina, Dee, and Chase seated at a table near the front.
She passed Effie and her husband, Bud; The Sisters, Gladdie Hanson and Claudia Lindquist; and finally reached the table where Chase bent close to Dee. Her sister nodded vigorously, and Jill suppressed a twinge of jealousy.
“What’s this? Someone throwing me a surprise party?” she asked.
Chase’s head popped up. “Hey! I’m glad you’re here!”
It was more of a welcome than she’d expected. Unsurprisingly, Dee only scowled. Chase stood and pulled out his chair.
“Sit. There are more chairs by the back door.” He left and returned before Jill had finished greeting her mother. “They said you usually work late on Saturday. I didn’t hold out any hope you’d make it.”
“I had a big lesson cancel. But make it to what? I have no idea what’s going on.”
“An impromptu meeting, I guess. I’m only here because Dewey dragged me along. I guess there’s some sort of new information about the gravel pit?”
“Look at you, involved in small-town politics already.”
“Oh no. I don’t plan to be involved at all.”
Sa
m Baker broke away from his group, and while the others blended into the crowd, the mayor raised his hands for silence.
“Thank you all for coming. This is not a decision-making meeting, so I’m a little surprised at the crowd. Proof how hot this topic has become.” Sam was a fireplug of a man, short, wide, and powerful. He’d been mayor since Jill’s high school years, and he wasn’t likely to be replaced any election year soon.
“We heard tell the gravel pit they been sellin’ us is only a fourth the size of what it really will be.” Stanley Severson, who owned the local pharmacy, wasn’t known for his subtlety or his patience. “Heard it straight from the gravel pit people themselves. I want to know what you’re planning to do about that, Sam.”
“Oh c’mon, Stan, sit yourself down and hold your horses.” At the firm, kind voice behind her, Jill smiled. Gladdie Hanson, seated next to Stanley, literally tugged him into his chair. “You know Sam can’t do anything on his own. That’s why we’re here.”
Gladdie’s sister Claudia Lindquist patted Stan on the shoulder. “Give the mayor time to be mayorly,” she said.
A mass chuckle rippled across the room. Gladdie and Claudia held almost as much sway in Kennison Falls as Sam did. If they said to sit down, you sat down.
“The Sisters,” she whispered to Chase.
“Your mother was telling me about them.”
“We do seem to have some conflicting reports,” Sam told the assembled group. “I called Duncan Connery this morning, and he claims all his paperwork is in order. That the gravel company signed off on the square footage we were told about. I don’t see how I can call him a liar without proof.”
“It doesn’t matter. The original size of the pit is too big.” A voice rang from the back of the room.
“We’ve read study after study saying any size pit will harm the groundwater and erode land in the park,” called another. “How do we stop this crook Connery?”
“Now, wait.” Dewey stood. “Connery has taken on a job and he wants to complete it. Just because we don’t want him to do it, doesn’t make him a crook.”
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