by Anne Fraser
‘Don’t worry about Kendrick. He’ll be fine. If Satan tosses him, he knows how to fall. He’ll be okay. Satan will come back and I’ll send one of the lads to look for Kendrick. But as I said, I don’t think that’ll happen.’ While he was talking he was counting the money in his hand with a satisfied smile. ‘Those boys don’t know Kendrick the way I do, otherwise they would never have bet against him.’ He seemed to remember his manners. ‘Come inside out of the heat, ma’am. I’ll get you and Kip here a drink.’
‘Have you known Kendrick long?’ Elizabeth asked as they walked towards the house.
Tim’s face lit up in a smile. ‘Ever since he was about Kip’s age. He learned to ride almost as soon as he could walk. Always had a way with horses too. Seems he can talk to them in a way they understand. He should work the ranch instead of doing that crazy job. His father could do with someone to take over.’
The more she learned about Kendrick, the more she realised how little she knew about him.
‘When are his parents due home? We’ll be heading back as soon as we’ve passed Kip on.’
‘They’re due back later this afternoon. How is the boy anyway? He’s up here with his mama most weekends. She rides too. Nothing like Kendrick, but not bad for a girl.’
Tim ushered Elizabeth into a chair on the veranda and left her while he went to fetch them a drink. She bounced Kip on her lap, before giving in and putting him on the floor.
‘No wonder your uncle is planning to put you on a horse, young man. Looks like you’re pretty fond of bouncing around.’
A cloud of dust in the distance caught her attention. As it got closer she could see it was Kendrick and Satan. He slowed the horse to a walk a few yards away and when Tim came back out with the drinks, he left them with Elizabeth and walked towards horse and rider. Kendrick swung his leg over the front of the saddle and jumped down. ‘You should walk him around for a bit to cool him down. I think he’ll be okay to ride now,’ he told Tim.
‘Very impressive,’ Elizabeth said as Kendrick walked towards her.
Kendrick grinned. ‘You think so? I like to impress.’ He bent over and swung Kip into his arms. The little boy giggled with delight.
‘Hey, Kip. What about something to eat? Then I’ll take you on the horse. How does that sound?’
‘You’re not seriously thinking of taking him on Satan?’ Elizabeth said, horrified.
‘Of course not. We’ve plenty of well-behaved horses he can ride. Besides, he’ll be with me.’ He placed Kip back down on the floor, where the child found some ants to study. ‘You could come too. I promise you, you’ll be perfectly safe.’
Elizabeth stretched. ‘Maybe later. Right now I’m just enjoying being here in the sun.’
Kendrick pulled a chair alongside hers. ‘Then that’s what we’ll do.’
They sat in silence for a while, watching Kip as he crawled after the ants. Every now and again Elizabeth or Kendrick had to reach down to stop him putting one in his mouth.
‘Tell me about your parents,’ Elizabeth asked. ‘Do you see them often?’
Kendrick’s expression darkened. ‘Not really. I’m always travelling and, well, my father and I don’t exactly get along.’
‘How come? I would have thought you had a lot in common. Horses. This ranch.’
Kendrick stretched his long legs in front of him and placed his arms behind his head. Elizabeth sucked in her breath. Every part of her seemed to respond to his closeness. It was as if there was a string pulling her towards him. As if there was some kind of force field surrounding him that drew her. She had never felt like this before. Never felt every nerve cell in her body react this way to someone’s presence, and it disturbed her. She’d thought she’d loved Simon, and maybe she had, but she’d never felt that constant pull towards him that she was feeling towards this man. Was this what it was like to be in love? The need to be close to someone. The feeling that the world was a darker place whenever they weren’t around. The feeling of coming home, of being at peace whenever they were. It was more, so much more than just wanting to be in his arms or his bed.
‘We were close once,’ Kendrick said. ‘He was in the army and when I got into West Point he couldn’t have been prouder.’
Elizabeth waited. It was quiet, only the faint sounds of the men shouting as they worked the ranch disturbing the silence.
‘Then when I got my helicopter pilot’s licence and was given a commission, it was as if he’d fulfilled his life’s ambition. I don’t know if I said, but he was a colonel before he retired. I knew I had to be better than everyone else so no one could say it was nepotism.’
Kendrick’s smile was rueful. ‘I wanted him to be proud of me, so I worked my butt off. If I was asked to run ten miles with full kit, I would run twenty. If I was asked to do twenty press-ups, I would do thirty. If the best got their helicopter’s licence in four months, I wanted to do it in three. And I did.’ He stood up to remove a crawling Kip from the edge of the step. ‘I made Major before anyone else in my intake.’ There was no arrogance in the words, just a sense of certainty. ‘But then, when I was in Iraq, something happened. They busted my butt because of it. My father intervened and they agreed to put me on desk duty. But I didn’t want to stay in the army to do that. If I couldn’t fly, I wanted out.’
‘What incident?’
Kendrick frowned. ‘It’s not something I like to talk about.’
‘Tell me, Kendrick.’ She wanted to know. She wanted to understand everything about this man. ‘I can’t imagine what you did to be busted.’ A thought struck her. ‘Unless you stole a helicopter to do a stunt?’
Kendrick gave her a slow smile and shook his head. ‘I like it that you’re on my side,’ he said. ‘And of course I didn’t steal a helicopter. ‘But I was in the wrong. I disobeyed orders and put my gunner’s life at risk as well as the helicopter. Those babies cost millions and the army doesn’t like its pilots to mess them up. And mine got pretty messed up. I was lucky to get away without a court-martial.’
That didn’t sound right to Elizabeth. Kendrick was reckless, but she had seen the way he watched out for the others in his team.
Kip tottered to the edge of the step again and this time it was Elizabeth who got up to retrieve him. Her heart ached as she remembered that she’d never had to do this for Charlie. She had never crawled.
‘Dad was furious,’ Kendrick continued. ‘He’s an army man through and through. Obeying orders, being part of the team is what counts. It almost killed him that I could have been court-martialled for my actions.’ A cloud passed across Kendrick’s face. ‘But I would do the same thing all over again if I had to.’ Something in the air between them chilled.
‘Dad pulled out all the stops to stop me facing a military court. Called in favours, used every bit of influence he had, and believe me that was some, to stop it. And he succeeded. So when I decided I was going to leave the army anyway, we fought.’ Kendrick’s lips flattened. ‘Not physically, of course. Until then I had always done more or less what my father wanted. But his fury when I told him I was leaving the army was nothing compared to what he had to say when he learned I had decided to work on movies as a stuntman. He found it shameful. If I had used my pilot’s licence to get a civilian flying job, he might have come around eventually, or if I’d taken over here from Tim as ranch manager, he might have lived with that. But a stuntman? In an industry he has nothing but contempt for? No way.’
‘Why did you choose to become a stuntman? Why not the other options?’
‘This way of life suites me. I’m considering doing some directing.’ He smiled ruefully. ‘One day I’ll be too old to do stunts, or too injured.’
‘What about the risks? Don’t you care that you could get killed? Or paralysed?’
‘Of course I care. But it’s no more dangerous than being in the army. And as for the risks, I do the same as I did then. I try to make sure that the danger is minimised.’
He shifted in his seat. ‘Enough abo
ut me. I want to know more about you. I suspect your folks were proud of you.’
‘Yes, they were. My father was in the oil industry. He worked in Texas for years. He took early retirement and they moved back to England for a while. When my mother died he went to live near his sister in Canada. I was married by that time so I stayed here.’
‘Where did you meet your ex-husband?’
‘Simon? He worked at the oil company my father worked for.’
‘Did you love him?’
‘I thought I did. But I guess I didn’t really know him.’
‘What happened? Can you tell me?’
Elizabeth swallowed hard. ‘Charlie happened.’
She bent down, picked Kip up and held him tight. The familiar, sweet, precious baby smell was instantly painful. But it felt so good to hold the small bundle in her arms. Elizabeth rubbed his cheek gently with her finger.
Kip snuggled into her and yawned. He was clearly ready for his afternoon nap. She sat on the seat swing on the veranda and Kendrick sat down next to her.
Kendrick eyed the sleeping baby apprehensively. ‘Ah, peace for a while. Although he is kind of cute, I have to admit I’ll be glad to pass him back to his mother. Kids aren’t my style. But he obviously feels comfortable with you. It must be because you’re used to children.’
Elizabeth flinched and Kendrick hit himself on the forehead.
‘I’m sorry, Lizzie. That was a tactless thing to say. Sometimes I’m an idiot.’
‘It’s okay. I need to talk about Charlie. I thought it would be better if no one knew about her so I wouldn’t have to tell them what happened, but I can’t pretend my daughter never existed.’
‘How did she die?’
‘She had a rare wasting illness called Gaucher’s disease. When she was born, when I first held her in my arms I was so happy. I thought my life was prefect. Perfect husband, perfect child, perfect job. I knew I was blessed.’ She smiled as she remembered the first time she’d held her daughter. The tiny rosebud mouth, the silky-soft skin, her tiny hands, the feel of her skin on her skin. ‘But even as I held Charlie to me, I knew in my soul that something wasn’t right. But I shook the feeling off. I told myself it was just new-mother anxiety.’
‘Go on,’ Kendrick prompted.
‘As she got older that feeling grew stronger. I tried to tell Simon, but he didn’t want to know. He was so caught up in his career I guess he thought I had too much time on my hands and that I was looking for something that wasn’t there.’
‘But when she should have been lifting her head, beginning to sit up, none of that was happening. I took her to the doctor, but like Simon he told me I was being an over-anxious mother, that Charlie would do all of it in her own time. I knew they were wrong. Mothers know. We know,’ she repeated.
Kendrick put his arm around her shoulder and pulled her close to him. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said simply.
‘Eventually I got tired of everyone telling me that everything was okay when I knew it wasn’t. So I took her to a private clinic. The doctor referred us straight away to a specialist children’s hospital. They did tests, hundreds of them, it seemed. I can’t tell you how often I wondered whether I was doing the right thing every time Charlie cried when they took blood. I felt like a monster putting her through all of that and I didn’t even know whether anyone could help her.’
‘Where was your husband during this time?’
‘He had to work. To be fair, there wasn’t much he could have done.’
‘Except be with you,’ Kendrick growled. ‘He was Charlie’s father. Your husband. It was his duty.’
‘Ah, duty,’ Elizabeth said softly. ‘I didn’t want duty. I never want duty.’
‘Then what happened?’
Elizabeth’s chest was tight. Although she’d told Kendrick that she needed to talk about her child, this was the first time she had talked to anyone about those awful months and it was like opening a wound and squirting acid into it.
‘Eventually we got a diagnosis. Gaucher’s is a genetic, irreversible wasting disease that can either affect the nervous system or muscles, or, as in Charlie’s case, both.’ Her throat was so tight she could hardly speak. The day she had learned for certain that Charlie’s illness was both irreversible and terminal had been the worst day of her life. Simon hadn’t even taken the day off work the day the doctors had given their diagnosis.
‘Once I knew that there was nothing more anyone could do, I took Charlie home. Simon was livid. He thought I should have left her in hospital and then have her put in foster care. He said she was better off there. How can any child be better off without her mother? But I would have stayed with her at the hospital, I would have let them go on sticking needles in her if I’d thought there was any chance, any chance at all they could help her. As it was, all they were doing was causing my poor baby pain.’
She buried her face in Kendrick’s shirt as the tears began to fall as she remembered those days—the terrible fights with Simon, the ache of not being able to help her baby.
Kendrick’s hand was in her hair, and he was murmuring to her as if soothing a child.
‘One day, Simon left. I woke up to find him standing at the door, with his suitcases all packed. He said he couldn’t bear to watch Charlie die. That wasn’t the truth. He couldn’t bear it that his child was disabled. It wasn’t part of the perfect image he had of himself and his life. I let him go. I didn’t want him if he didn’t want his own child. I stopped loving him that day. I wonder now if I ever truly loved him.’
Kendrick held a hanky underneath her nose and she took it gratefully.
‘The next time I saw Simon,’ she said, ‘was at Charlie’s funeral.’
Kendrick kicked Satan into a gallop. Elizabeth had taken Kip into one of the bedrooms and had asked Kendrick to leave her alone for a little while.
He wanted to think—no, strike that. He wanted not to think and so he was doing the only thing he knew that would stop the thoughts tumbling around his head, driving him crazy. Just as Lizzie was driving him crazy. He would have preferred to go big-wave surfing or BASE jumping, that would really have sorted his head, but he was stuck here in the desert with no waves or nearby cliffs.
So riding Satan as fast as the horse would go would have to do.
What Elizabeth had told him had shaken him. The thought of Elizabeth, his Lizzie, going through all that on her own filled him with rage. How could any man do that to his wife and child? He would never let Elizabeth face a trip to the dentist without being there for her.
How could any man leave a woman like Elizabeth? She was warm, caring and loyal even though she had been to hell and back. She had faced the worst life could throw at her with dignity and courage. He, on the other hand, had tried to run away from his guilt and loss. She was a better person than he was. A woman any man would be proud to have by his side.
The realisation hit him like a blow to the chest. He was falling in love. He didn’t know when or how he had started to feel like this, but he knew he wanted to be with Elizabeth more than any other woman. He could race Satan to the back of beyond but that wasn’t going to change the way he felt.
When Kendrick got back to the ranch, he still didn’t know what he was going to do or say to Elizabeth, if anything. Maybe whatever this was would go away if he gave it enough time.
To his dismay, by the time he’d rubbed Satan down and walked over to the house, he saw that his parents had arrived. Hell. He wasn’t expecting them back for another couple of hours at least. His mother was sitting next to Elizabeth with Kip in her arms. The two women looked as if they’d already made friends.
‘Kendrick!’ His mother passed Kip to Elizabeth and came across to greet him with a smile. ‘It’s so lovely to see you. Why does it have to take Kip to get you to come and see us?’
‘Mom.’ He kissed the papery cheeks and gave her a hug. ‘I see you’ve met Dr Elizabeth Morgan?’
‘Yes, Elizabeth and I have been getting to know each other
.’
Uh-oh. He recognised that look on his mother’s face. She was always asking him why he hadn’t settled down yet.
His father came out onto the veranda and Kendrick’s heart sank. Every time he and his father met, things ended in an argument. Perhaps with Elizabeth being here they could remain civil for the next couple of hours. Or perhaps he should just leave straight away. He had done what Kendall had asked and delivered Kip. He had done his duty.
‘Are you staying the night, Kendrick?’ The hope in his mother’s eyes made him flinch.
‘We need to get back to the set, Mom. Maybe another time?’
She tried to hide her disappointment, but not quickly enough. This was exactly why he didn’t need or want relationships. It only brought trouble. He had to remember that.
Elizabeth stood. ‘But as long as we get back before tomorrow morning, it’ll be okay. Won’t it, Kendrick?’ Now she was ganging up on him too.
He relented. ‘Sure. We’ll stay for dinner, if that’s okay?’
The look of delight in his mother’s eyes was reward enough.
‘Kendrick!’ His father strode towards him with his hand outstretched. ‘Good to see you, son.’ They shook hands, more like acquaintances than father and son.
‘Hello, Dad. Did you have a good trip?’
From the corner of his eye he could see that Elizabeth was watching the exchange with a look of bafflement on her face.
‘I did. And I have some news for you. Good news.’
‘I think it should wait until after dinner, Hughie,’ his mother interrupted hastily.
Kendrick knew then that whatever news his father had for him, it wasn’t something he wanted to hear.
‘Now, why don’t you watch Kip, while I show Elizabeth where she can freshen up?’ his mother continued.
Kendrick managed to hold a conversation with his father long enough for Elizabeth and his mother to return. It helped that they had Kip to divert them. Kendrick had never known that toddlers required so much watching and after a few minutes of constant chasing after the lively toddler his father had suggested they saddle one of the horses and Kendrick take Kip up in front of him. It had worked like a charm. The rocking movement of the horse had sent the boy to sleep almost immediately.