“The need was so great. I didn’t bother with buildings. I just helped carry people. . .children. . .” He couldn’t go on about what he’d seen. He didn’t want anyone burdened with those horrors.
“It’s so selfish to worry about my own exhaustion after all they’d suffered. But. . .I can’t do it anymore.”
Emily ran soothing hands across the nape of his neck and between his shoulder blades.
He reveled in the touch until he remembered. “I finally got home. The long-lost engineer. The conquering hero returns. And found my girlfriend in my apartment with—” He stopped, remembering Stephie.
Tish had been a companion. If Jake needed a date for some event while he was in town, he took Tish. They were friendly acquaintances, that was all. He knew Tish liked to brag to her friends that it was more, but Jake had no real interest in her, nor she in him. But to find her there, using his condo, the disrespect of it when he was ready to quit anyway, so burned out—
He clenched a fist and rested his chin on it. “So here I am ranching. What do you think, Stephie? Would a real country boy fall into a sticker patch?” Jake made a face at Stephie and she grinned.
“I’ve done all I can do.” Emily patted his shoulder. “There will be some I’ve missed. I’ll check again in a few days. I’m so sorry you got hurt last ni—”
“I’ll stay away from those stickers,” Jake said, cutting her off. No one had said anything about last night. “Thanks for taking care of me. I’d better get home.”
“Do you want some cookies? Emily makes the best homemade chocolate chip cookies in the whole world.”
He needed to get out of here. Emily’s groan told him she was dismayed at the invitation. To be contrary, he accepted. Well, not just to be contrary. He hadn’t eaten anything since last night. He climbed off the table, pulled his shirt on, and took the chair Stephie slid toward him. He straddled it to protect his back.
“Does he need Band-Aids, Emily?”
Jake smiled. “Band-Aids, the most prized of all medical treatments to an eight-year-old.”
“No, the best thing for him—”
“I’d like a Band-Aid.” Jake knew better than to grin when Emily’s eyes narrowed at him, but he did it anyway.
Stephie pawed through the first aid kit.
Emily leaned two inches from his face. “It would take five hundred Band-Aids to cover those battered shoulders, hotshot.”
Jake grinned as Emily’s face flushed with anger. He couldn’t remember ever being so entertained by a woman. He watched her steal a glance at Stephie and wondered what ego-bruising crack she wanted to make. He really wasn’t in the mood for that. What he was in the mood for was a kiss from Em—
“Here they are. Do you want me to put them on?” Stephie wanted to help, not to mention play with the Band-Aids.
Jake couldn’t say no.
The story of his life.
“Just put two on the big scratch on his neck, okay? The rest will heal better uncovered.” Emily glared at him.
Stephie ducked behind his back to start fussing.
Jake was surrounded by the Johannson women’s care even if the one in front did hiss from time to time. Nothing had ever felt so good.
He couldn’t remember why he didn’t like women.
❧
Emily turned away and grabbed the cookie jar. She fished cookies out and grabbed a plastic sandwich bag out of a drawer and threw the cookies in. “Jake told me he has to go home now.” She looked at him.
“No, not yet. Please stay.” Stephie jumped up and down.
Emily saw the anger in Jake’s eyes. “How about if you come home with me, Stephie?”
A tigress awoke in Emily. “No.”
“Oh, please, Emily. Please, please, please. I won’t stay long. I’ll do all my chores and help—”
The litany of promises was lost on Emily. She knew exactly what Jake was doing. He was proving that there was no way Emily could keep Stephie away from him. And the more Emily stood in Stephie’s way the more she’d drive them together. And the more completely shattered Stephie’s heart would be when he left.
Emily dropped to one knee in front of Stephie. “Honey, Jake seems like a really nice guy. I’m sure he is.” When he wasn’t torturing her. “But he’s a stranger. You learned about strangers in school. And we had a lesson about it in Sunday school, too.”
“Jake’s not a stranger.”
Emily thought of how much Stephie had snooped around the poor man’s house. Stephie probably know the man better than anyone. “Jake—”
“I wouldn’t hurt her.”
Emily looked away from Stephie, and the hurt in Jake’s eyes brought her to her feet. “But this isn’t about you, is it? It’s about rules and being safe.” Emily did her best to beg with her eyes. “Back me up.”
Proving beyond Emily’s ability to doubt that Jake wasn’t dangerous, he turned to Stephie. “She’s right about strangers. I know you feel like you know me, but you need to practice all the rules you’ve learned, so practice on me, okay? You stay here and I’ll come and see you later, with your big sister here. I’ll come for supper. That’d be great. I’m starving.”
Stephie grudgingly agreed.
“You’re always starving,” Emily muttered. Wonderful. She felt like she’d adopted a stray dog. Wrong. Jake was going to be way more trouble.
“And later you and Emily can come over and have a tour.” Jake smirked at her, then headed toward the door.
Which cornered Emily pretty neatly into having to spend even more time with him. Which reminded her of her tingling fingers and the fact that Jake had a life he couldn’t say no to, that was bound to catch up with him at any time and he’d leave—breaking Stephie’s heart in the process. So how did she keep him away from her?
She knew. “Don’t forget your mail, Jake.”
Jake looked over his shoulder, no doubt to toss a smart remark at her. Nothing came out.
Emily passed him and grabbed the letters off the kitchen counter.
He was right behind her. “What is this?”
Emily glanced at Stephie and enjoyed watching Jake keep the explosion inside. He rifled through the letters, muttering words Emily was glad neither she nor her little sister could hear.
Nine
“Where did you get these?” Jake’s strangled question made Stephie twist her fingers together nervously.
He saw a pang of remorse cross Emily’s face. She was being ten different kinds of coward to dump this on him with Stephie as a witness.
Emily squared her shoulders. “Stephie, you know how Jake wanted to be a secret?”
Stephie nodded, looking between them.
“Well, these letters may mean someone knows he’s here, and he’s upset. Why don’t you go outside while we decide what to do?”
Jake couldn’t believe it. Here was Emily’s chance to turn Stephie against him. About five well-chosen words from her and his temper would erupt, and Stephie would never trust him again. And Emily obviously didn’t want Stephie trusting him. But she hadn’t goaded him. She was too fair, too honest, too decent, too kind. Resentfully, he knew that made him the biggest jerk in the room. The better he knew Emily the more he couldn’t stand her.
“Does this mean you have to leave?” Stephie whispered, catching hold of his fingertips.
Stephie Johannson was probably already the best friend he’d ever had. He dropped to one knee in front of Stephie. “I’m not going anywhere, sweetheart. Let me talk to Emily alone, okay?”
Stephie laid a butterfly-soft kiss on his cheek.
Tears stung his eyes. He rested a big hand, callused from touching destruction, against her baby soft hair. Considering the bad news he’d just been handed, he was remarkably at peace.
“I want you to stay.” She threw her arms around his neck.
He gently wrapped his arms around her and drew strength from her. Jake let her go and stood up with a calm that surprised him. “Go on out now, please?”
“Where did you get these?” He shuffled through them.
“The mailman gave them to me when I was in town. My father’s name was John. I still get things addressed to J. Johannson. These are to J. Joe Hanson. You know how addresses get messed up on junk mail. It seemed likely they were mine.”
He flipped to the open one, fingered it as he read Tish’s return address. “Did you read all of them?” It was obvious the rest were untouched. But Emily had read Tish’s drivel. Since Tish wasn’t here to blame, Emily seemed the natural choice.
“No, I didn’t read them. I opened that one from someone named Tish. Is she—”
“She’s none of your business.” He pulled the letter out and compressed his lips. “You read this. You must have. No woman could resist.”
“I said I didn’t read it, and I didn’t. Well, at least not all of it. As soon as I realized it wasn’t for me, I stopped.”
He kept reading, glancing up to try to catch Emily’s reaction, embarrassed to think Emily had been subjected to this. None of this implied-romance garbage was true. All he was looking for was a reason she’d sent the letter to Cold Creek.
Tish had precious little to do with why he’d taken off. But she’d definitely been the last straw. He’d been away three months and barely thought of her. He’d come home overwhelmed, knowing he had to get out of Hanson and Coltrain. He’d walked into his own apartment and seen the woman who had his keys so she could water his plants, entwined with his pool man.
Jake had left his apartment with the clothes on his back. There wasn’t even anything in his home he wanted to keep. No pictures, no scrapbooks, not even an old football trophy. He’d sent a note to Sid, saying he was through.
Taking every bit of cash he could scrape together out of several bank accounts—a considerable amount—he hit the road. He’d stopped at his cabin in the Rockies, and in the window of a Realtor’s office in the nearest town, he’d seen the picture of the Barrett house, huge, impractical, isolated, and so cheap he should have known better. But he’d recognized home.
Home had turned out to be a white elephant in Cold Creek, South Dakota, that was trying to kill him. Isolation was a snoopy, argumentative woman who cooked like a dream and an angelic little girl who didn’t want him to leave.
Emily broke into his whirling thoughts. “These letters are sent to the town. There is no box or route number. Somehow they got the name Cold Creek and they’re taking a shot in the dark. I’ll return them with a note in the open one, explaining about my name.”
Jake couldn’t gather his thoughts enough to respond.
“Look, if you want to call her up and beg for forgiveness, feel free to use my phone.”
The thought of talking with Tish made him shudder. “Send them back. Sid’ll be here sooner or later. I make him too much money. But maybe they’ll learn they can get along without me in the meantime.” Jake shoved the letters into Emily’s hands. “What a mess. I’m tempted to pull up stakes and hide somewhere else.”
He looked out the window in the kitchen door and saw Stephie running across the lawn.
“I’ll try to make it sound good, Jake. And I’ll tell the post office to return any new mail.”
“No, I’d better see it.”
“But why? Surely it would be better to—”
“Just bring it home and let me look through it before you return it.”
“Listen, hotshot. I’m not your secretary. Don’t—”
“You’re the one who offered to help,” Jake said, cutting her off. “Then the minute I want something, you start meddling.” She was a woman. She had manipulated him from the moment they met. About the tree. About the way he was living.
Emily’s straight-forward differences of opinion and Tish’s deviousness were just different sides of the same coin.
He glared at Emily. “Just do as I ask for once.”
Emily sighed. “Fine.”
Jake wanted to storm off, but of course he had to say one last thing. “What time’s supper?”
❧
“Have you found him?” Tish stormed into Sid’s office.
Her yellow spandex dress started low on top and ended high on the bottom. Her mass of blond curls swayed and bounced right along with the rest of her.
“No, I haven’t found him,” Sid snarled. At least she spared him that vapid help-me-big-strong-man voice. “Any response from those letters?”
“Yeah, look at this.” Tish snapped a piece of paper out flat and dropped it on his desk. “What do you think?”
Sid scanned it.
“Should we send the PI?” Tish jiggled her wrist while he studied the letter.
The sound of her bracelets set Sid’s teeth on edge. The polite Miss Johannson told him nothing. But that scrap of paper from Jake’s lodge in Aspen had said Cold Creek. “Yeah, I’ll get the agency on it.”
Tish kept jingling until Sid grabbed her arm. “That racket is driving me crazy.”
Tish narrowed her eyes, and he let her go. She wasn’t someone he wanted mad. She knew too much about how short Hanson and Coltrain was on cash. Without Jake, half the engineers had quit. Sid hadn’t slowed his spending, neither had Tish, who had been on the payroll since Sid had introduced her to Jake.
“We’re in trouble if we don’t find him soon. Sorry I grabbed you.” Then, because apologizing made him choke, he added, “You never did tell me why Jake took off.”
“Yeah, I did.” Tish jingled her arm a couple of times, caught herself, and clenched her hands.
“No, you didn’t.”
“Sending him to another job was what did it.” Tish slid a hand up to rest on one hip.
Sid knew she was probably right. But he hadn’t had much choice. “I’ll call the PI.” Sid grabbed the phone.
❧
Jake had managed to stay underfoot at most meals. He’d been so kind to Stephie that Emily was very close to lifting the “stranger” label from the man.
Not that he wasn’t dangerous. Watching him enjoy his food and dote on Stephie put Emily’s heart in terrible danger.
After picking up the mail, Emily stopped in the feedstore for mineral blocks on her way to fetch Stephie and Lila Murray from their last day of school.
Men sat around a table, drinking coffee, and they called greetings to her.
She noticed Wyatt Shaw among them. “How’s the buffalo business?”
The whole room erupted into laughter. Wyatt’s former hostility to buffalo and his now being the proud owner of a herd of them was the source of a lot of good-natured teasing.
“Fine.”
“Tell Buffy I’ll see her in church on Sunday.”
“She’ll be there if the baby doesn’t come first.” Wyatt’s love for his wife was enough to handle all of the teasing in the world.
Emily did her best not to envy her childhood friend his happiness. The men went back to their gossiping while she paid for her mineral.
Just as she stepped out of the building, someone said, “A guy came around my shop askin’ for someone named Jake Hanson. Told him about Lizzie and Edgar Hanson, but he said this Jake is a young guy.” The low-pitched voice slipped out the rapidly closing door.
Wyatt Shaw asked, “Fella driving a maroon Taurus? All rusted out?”
“Yeah, that’s him. Hung around town all day. Said he. . .”
The door snapped shut. Emily reached to yank it back open. She stopped herself. How could she go back in? She’d draw attention to herself if she asked about the stranger. She forced herself to go to the truck. She had to warn Jake.
Emily whirled to jump in her truck and race home and almost ran over Buffy Shaw.
“Whoa, girl.” Buffy, hugely pregnant and smiling, raised her hands to catch Emily before she plowed right over her friend.
“Hey, Buffy. I’m sorry. I didn’t see you.”
Laughing, Buffy gave her an awkward hug. “That is the nicest thing anyone’s said to me in months
. I’m so big satellites can see me.”
“Hey, you’re due pretty soon, aren’t you?” Buffy had on a lightweight black tank top with a picture of a buffalo on the front and the words Shaw Buffalo Ranch in a curve about the buffalo. Emily had seen plenty of the shirts around—the Shaws sold them out at the ranch and in the mini-mart in Cold Springs—but Emily had never seen a maternity version of the shirt before.
Groaning, Buffy shook her head. “I’ve got two months to go.”
“Well, that’s not long.”
Buffy’s eyes narrowed. “Only someone who isn’t pregnant would say such an obscene thing.”
“Sorry.” Emily laughed. Then, because Jake was always in the forefront of her mind, Emily added, “I just heard Wyatt say something about a guy snooping around.”
“Yeah, it was weird. He said he was a private detective. I don’t think I’ve ever met one for real before, but he had ID. Wyatt checked. At first we thought he might be asking about your dad. He said Joe Hanson, and Wyatt misunderstood and thought he meant Johannson, you know.”
“Yeah, I can imagine doing that.”
All too well.
“Wyatt wasn’t about to send some strange man out to your place, so once he was sure the guy wasn’t looking for you, he didn’t tell him any more. Did he show up at your place?”
“No. We’re so far out we don’t get any traffic, so I’d have noticed if he even drove by the place. When was this?”
“Maybe four days ago. I’m not sure. Don’t you ever get lonely, living out that far?”
Not wanting to ask more and maybe raise Buffy’s suspicions about why Emily was so interested, she let Buffy change the subject. “I’m used to it. Stephie’s great company.”
They talked about the buffalo for a few minutes. “Well, I’ve got to pick up Stephie and Lila, so I need to head out.”
“It was great to see you. Come over for dinner after church sometime.”
“I’d like that. I’ve been so busy with spring work I haven’t been anywhere. Bye.” Emily fretted about the private detective all the way to school.
Emily picked up Stephie and Lila. The two girls screamed and giggled, thrilled that summer vacation had begun. Emily dropped off Lila at home and backed out of the driveway before Helen could catch her. She still hadn’t come up with a good explanation about Friday night.
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