Lone Wolf's Lady

by Beverly Barton

  Phyllis followed her daughter out of the living room and into the foyer, reaching out pleadingly when Deanna opened the front door. “I’m sorry, darling. I didn’t mean to imply that you’re not entirely well now. It’s just that I cannot bear to see you or anyone else hurt by this foolish crusade of yours.”

  Pausing on her way out, Deanna turned to her mother. “If Luke McClendon is innocent—and I believe he is—then doesn’t this family owe it to him to find out who really killed Daddy?”

  A pink flush spread up Phyllis’s neck and over her face. “We don’t owe that man anything! He destroyed this family! Ripped us apart and didn’t give a damn!”

  “Would it matter if I told you that I’m doing this for myself as much, if not more, than for Luke? I need to know the truth. I can’t go on this way, not knowing. How can I live a normal life with these nightmares and memory flashes tormenting me?”

  Phyllis took a hesitant step toward Deanna, who turned quickly and rushed outside and down the front steps. Eddie Nunley stood beside her Mustang. The moment she emerged from the house, he eased his hip off the fender and removed his Stetson.

  “Morning, Deanna,” he said.

  She glanced back at the house, where Phyllis hovered in the doorway, watching them. So, now it was Eddie’s turn to try to talk sense to her. Junior and Phyllis had both tried and failed to dissuade her from reopening the door to the past, so they’d brought in the big guns. When she and Junior were kids, Eddie had been more of a father to them than Rayburn Atchley ever had. He had certainly paid more attention to them, and they’d often turned to him for support and advice. But Deanna’s feelings for Eddie had changed after the night he’d stood by and let her father beat Luke nearly to death.

  “I’m in a hurry, Eddie.” She dashed around him and grasped the driver’s-side door handle.

  “Too big a hurry to give me a couple of minutes of your time, DeDe?”

  Deanna knew he’d used his old pet name for her hoping it would bring back memories from her childhood, days spent in idyllic bliss as a spoiled little girl whose every wish was fulfilled. If her parents had neglected her in any way, they had made up for leaving her alone with the hired help by lavishing money on her, and on Junior as well. And often, Eddie had been the one who had filled in for a father too busy to be bothered with his kids.

  Deanna pulled her hand away from the car door, took a deep breath and turned to face Eddie. He hadn’t changed much in fifteen years. Still tall and lean, with weathered, freckled skin, a less than handsome face marred by acne scars, and a crop of thick, rusty-gray hair that years ago had been carrot red.

  “Let me save us both some time,” Deanna said. “I know why you want to talk to me, and I can assure you that nothing you say is going to change my mind. I’m going to do whatever it takes to find out what really happened the night Daddy was killed.”

  “And Luke McClendon is going to help you? You’re heading over to Montrose right now, aren’t you?” Eddie slapped his Stetson against his thigh. “Gal, don’t you have any idea what a can of worms you’re opening up by doing this? Your mama don’t need all that sorrow dragged up again. And Junior’s in no shape to deal with—”

  “Why are y’all so afraid of the truth, Eddie? Tell me that? If Luke killed Daddy and if that’s what I’m going to find out or what I’m going to remember, why is my family so opposed to me, once and for all, putting the past to rest?”

  “Ain’t nobody opposed to your putting the past to rest,” Eddie said. “But you ain’t doing that, DeDe. You’re digging it up instead of laying it to rest.” Reaching out, he placed his big, bony hand on her shoulder. “I wish you wasn’t having them nightmares. I’d hoped you’d never have no more problems, once you left that place your mama found out in California. I’d hoped you’d never relive that pain.”

  “But I am having the nightmares again. And memory flashes. I’m remembering things about the trial. And about that night. And about...about my baby.”

  “God almighty!” Eddie tightened his hold on her shoulder, then pulled her into his arms and hugged her. “I sure hoped you’d never have to remember anything about the baby.”

  She wrapped her arms around Eddie, as she’d done more than once in the past, when she’d needed parental comfort and he’d been the only one she could turn to, the only one who’d been there for her.

  “It’s all right.” She patted his back, then eased out of his embrace. “Even though Mother told me what happened, I want to remember. You can’t protect me anymore. I’m not a child. And I’m not so emotionally fragile that I can’t deal with the truth. The whole truth.”

  “What if when you find out the truth, you have to make a choice between the truth and hurting someone you love? What will you do then?”

  “Do you know the truth, Eddie? Have you known all these years and kept it to yourself?” Deanna searched his face for a sign of emotion that might reveal his thoughts, but he just stared at her with faded gray eyes.

  “All I know is that what you’re doing is bound to wind up hurting everyone involved, including you.” Eddie placed his Stetson back on his head. “Luke McClendon will hurt you, if you give him the chance. He’s an angry son of a bitch. They say those years in prison turned him mean. He’s a real loner, more than he was when he was a kid. Don’t have no friends and ain’t never had nothing to do with no decent woman. They say he’s like a wild animal, roaming the hills and the range, staying outside many nights, out in the woods. Don’t have no use for another living soul, except maybe Kizzie and her young ’uns.”

  “If you’d been convicted of a murder you didn’t commit and sent to prison for five years—when you were only twenty years old—what do you think it would have done to you, Eddie?” Deanna asked him, her gaze locking with his.

  Eddie didn’t reply; he shook his head and snorted.

  “I know what it’s like to be locked up for years and years, kept caged like an animal,” Deanna said. “Only my cage was a lot nicer than Luke’s. And while I had to fight to regain my sanity, Luke had to fight to stay alive.”

  “Damn, don’t you know all I’m trying to do is save you some heartache? If you give him the chance that man is gonna rip out your heart and feed it to the buzzards.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not,” Deanna said. “I have no power over Luke’s actions, just over my own. And I’m tired of living with all these lies, tired of trying to pretend that it doesn’t matter that I can’t remember the most devastating night of my life or the months afterward.”

  “Then do it on your own, DeDe. Don’t go to Luke McClendon for help.”

  “I’m sorry, Eddie, but I need Luke. And if he’s willing to offer his help, then I’m going to accept.”

  Deanna opened the car door, slid inside and started the engine. As she raced out of the driveway, she glanced in her rearview mirror and saw her mother and Eddie on the front porch, both of them solemnly watching her departure.

  “You want to talk about it?” Kizzie lifted the glass pot from the coffeemaker and tilted it over her mug.

  “Talk about what?” Luke bit into one of Alva’s buttermilk biscuits.

  Kizzie poured the coffee, picked up her earthenware mug and walked over to the kitchen table. “Deanna Atchley.”

  “There’s nothing to talk about” Luke speared a sausage link with his fork.

  “She came over here to see you last night, didn’t she?” Kizzie sat down across the table from Luke and placed her mug beside the breakfast plate already waiting for her.

  “Yeah, she came by.” Luke attacked the scrambled eggs, filling his mouth. He concentrated on eating, hoping he could avoid his stepmother’s questions. Sometimes he wished he was the sort of man who could open up and cry on his mama’s shoulder. But he wasn’t. He didn’t cry on anybody’s shoulder, didn’t share his feelings or his hopes and fears.

  “What’d she want?” Kizzie took a sip of black coffee.

  “She says she wants me to help her find out what really h
appened the night her father was killed,” Luke said. “She claims she’s having nightmares and memory flashes about that night and the weeks afterward.”

  “Then she knows you didn’t kill Rayburn, doesn’t she?”

  “She says she’s always known I didn’t do it.” Luke shoved his plate away from him, scooted back his chair and stood.

  I’ve always known. In my heart. He heard Deanna’s words taunting him, promising him things he could never have, giving him hope, making him feel again. Hell, he was a fool if he believed her. Deanna Atchley didn’t have a heart. She had proved that to him, hadn’t she? When she took her family’s side against his, she had shown him exactly how little he meant to her.

  “Is she still claiming she doesn’t remember what happened that night?” Cradling her mug in both hands, Kizzie glanced up at Luke.

  “Yep. She’s sticking to her story. Same one she told in court, fifteen years ago. Only now, she wants me to help her find out the truth.” Luke chuckled, the sound tinged with the deep hurt that was always with him.

  “Are you going to do it?”

  “Told her I’d think about it.”

  “And have you?”

  “Yeah.”

  He’d been able to think of little else since Deanna left last night. Tossing and turning as thoughts of her plagued him, he’d finally gotten out of bed around one this morning and taken a walk. He did that fairly often when he was restless, and he was restless a lot. People talked about him. He’d heard that they said he was like a wild animal, spending so much time alone up in the hills, sometimes riding over the whole of Montrose—all eighteen thousand acres—without going home to bathe or eat or sleep. Ever since his release from prison, he had needed to feel that he was free to roam, to go where he pleased, when he pleased.

  He hadn’t gone far this morning. Just ridden a few miles up into the hills, where he’d waited for dawn to break. Often, his love for Montrose and his sense of obligation to Kizzie and his stepsiblings was all that kept him sane. The land belonged to him in a way it didn’t belong to the others, and just as surely, he belonged to the land.

  “What are you going to do?” Kizzie asked. “About Deanna?”

  “She’s coming by today,” he said. “If she shows up before lunchtime, tell her to wait. I’m driving into town to place some orders with Fred Swain and then I’m going to stop by Old Man Cooley’s and see if he’s decided to part with Hercules. I made him a damn good offer two weeks ago and haven’t heard a word from him. He’s about ready to sell that bull. He just needs a little prodding.”

  “You want me to entertain Deanna Atchley until you get home?”

  “Nope. I just want her to wait. No need for you to stay with her. Put her in the living room or the den and go on about your business.”

  “Ah.” Kizzie grinned.

  “Ah, what?”

  “Just ah.”

  “Don’t go jumping to any conclusion. Just ask Deanna to wait.” He should have known better than to try to fool Kizzie. She was too shrewd and knew him too well. But she was wise enough to leave it be, just as she’d always let him be whenever he needed to be alone.

  “You haven’t made up your mind whether or not you’re going to help her, have you?”

  “I’ve about decided.”

  Kizzie set down her mug, stood, and followed him out onto the back porch. “Luke, if you decide to help her, be careful. I don’t want to see you get hurt again.”

  He removed his black Stetson from the hook near the back door, stepped off the porch and called back over his shoulder to Kizzie. “Don’t worry. Deanna Atchley doesn’t mean a thing to me. If anybody gets hurt this time, it’ll be her.”

  Luke heard Kizzie’s gasp as he walked away. She’d worry about him, just like she worried about the others. Sometimes, he thought she worried about him more. His stepmother was a mother hen, not only to her own two, but to him and his half brother, Grant—Baxter McClendon’s legitimate son.

  Luke got into his truck and revved up the engine, listening with satisfaction to the sound of the motor running. Although he could afford the most expensive sports car or a new Jeep or the best truck money could buy, he preferred his eight-year-old GM truck. The old four-wheel drive had been well used, but never abused. He took care of his vehicle the way he took care of the ranch. With a tender loving consideration that he’d never shown any human being.

  He flipped on the radio as he drove along the road. The latest Garth Brooks hit blasted, loud and throbbing, but not loud enough to drown out his thoughts. Maybe while he was in town, he should stop by and see Corrine Watkins. She had told him to stop by any time. Could be that he needed a willing woman before he went home and faced Deanna Atchley. If some other woman had satisfied him, maybe he would be able to control his response this time when he saw Deanna. Then again, maybe Deanna would pleasure him as the price for gaining his help.

  Luke grinned at the thought. He liked the idea of Deanna coming to him, offering herself in exchange for his assistance. Could be her returning home with a mission would finally free him from her—from the hatred, the need for revenge and even the fragments of desire still trapped in his body. What would she say, he wondered, if he offered to help her only if they became lovers again? If she agreed to his demand, she wouldn’t be the one in charge. Not this time. He wasn’t fool enough to think himself in love with her the way he had when he was twenty, or to believe she loved him. He had long since realized that a man like him wasn’t meant to ever have real love. And he didn’t care. Not anymore. Sex was good enough without love. Especially sex with Deanna. He wondered how many lovers she’d had in the past fifteen years. How experienced was she now? The first time he’d taken her, she’d been a virgin, and he’d been stupid enough to think her giving her innocence to him had actually meant something.

  What Deanna had lacked in experience, she’d made up for in passion. What would it be like to make love with her now that her experience probably matched her passion? If he followed through with his plan, he’d find out soon enough.

  “Luke’s gone into town,” Kizzie said as she welcomed Deanna into her home. “He asked that you wait for him. He’ll be back by lunch.”

  “Oh. Perhaps I should come back then.” Deanna hovered in the giant foyer, her nerves jittery from the thought of seeing Luke again.

  “No, he said specifically for you to wait for him.” Kizzie motioned toward the living room. “I can’t wait with you. I’ve got things to do. You know a working ranch the size of Montrose doesn’t run itself.”

  Deanna glanced around, taking a better look at the interior of the house than she had last night. The stairs and overhanging landing had been constructed of hand-hewn logs taken from the original log home built on the property in the nineteenth century. The floors in the foyer and living room were stone and the walls had been painted a soft white. She’d never been inside the McClendon house until last night. Not once in the year she and Luke had been together had they ever set foot inside either of their families’ homes. They’d sneaked around, meeting here, there, anywhere. And then, when they had become lovers, Luke had taken her to the small cabin up in the hills. A cozy hideaway for two young lovers. The happiest moments of her life had been spent in that cabin, lying naked in Luke’s arms.

  A searing pain pierced her heart. A memory of the last time she and Luke had been together as lovers. Remembering the pleasure and the joy was sheer agony now.

  “Are you all right?” Kizzie asked. “You’ve gone pale all of a sudden.”

  “Yes, I’m fine,” Deanna said. “Please, just show me where to wait and you can go on with whatever you need to do.”

  “All right. Come on in here in the living room.”

  Deanna followed Luke’s stepmother into the enormous room. The outside end wall was solid stone and surrounded a large fireplace. Barn and buggy lanterns decorated the naturally aged wooden mantel, and a large deer’s head hung centered on the wall. On the opposite wall, a portrait of
Baxter McClendon dominated the space above the seventeenth-century Charles II oak chest.

  “That’s Luke’s father,” Kizzie said, as Deanna’s gaze was drawn to a life-size portrait of the big, robust cowboy, who’d been painted in his jeans, work shirt and Stetson. “He was about the age Luke is now when I had that done.”

  “Mr. McClendon was a handsome man. I—I see some of Luke in him.” Deanna walked the length of the room and stood in front of the portrait. “It’s his eyes. Luke’s eyes are that same mossy green.”

  “Yes, Luke has Baxter’s eyes,” Kizzie agreed. “And he got his size from his father, too.”

  “And the hint of a dimple in his chin.” Deanna remembered how Luke would shudder whenever she ran the tip of her tongue up and down that shallow cleft.

  “Won’t you sit down, Deanna?”

  Kizzie nodded to the arrangement of furniture in front of the fireplace. Two overstuffed gray leather sofas faced each other, separated by an English silver chest used as a coffee table. Deanna chose the maroon corduroy recliner that completed the U-shape and directly faced the fireplace.

  Kizzie sat down on the edge of the sofa to the right. “I’m fixing to talk plain to you, girl. I wasn’t sure whether to say my piece or keep my mouth shut, but...Well, I’ve decided to say what needs to be said.”

  Deanna placed her hands in her lap, then shifted her body just enough to be able to look directly at Luke’s stepmother. “What do you think needs to be said, Mrs. McClendon?”

  “If Luke agrees to help you, it’ll mean trouble for you as well as for him.” Kizzie took a quick, deep breath, relaxed her shoulders and leaned forward toward Deanna. “Luke’s not the boy you remember. He’s hard and cold. More even than when he first came to us when he was fifteen. He’d just started to feel like a member of our family when your daddy found out about you two. He was just beginning to trust people when you betrayed him in the worst way possible. That boy loved you beyond all reason. He was so sure you’d defend him, that you’d testify to his innocence.”