“Damn it, Glory,” he breathed, his jaw set so tightly it was a wonder he could speak at all, “leave Liza alone! I don’t want her in pieces, when you decide you’re bored with Pearl River and need to move on!”
Glory longed to slap him, but her fury was too great. It practically paralyzed her. “Sorry, Sheriff,” she told him, “but I’m going to be a part of the landscape around here, and you’d damn well better get used to it!” With that, she shoved open the door.
Jesse yelled a swear word, heedless of the neighbors, shoved his hands into the pockets of his expensive overcoat and stalked back to his car.
All night long, Jesse tossed and turned, alternately burning to feel Glory beneath him, receiving him, and wanting to strangle her. She was like a fever beginning in his brain and spreading into his body, destroying his reason, changing him from a man of the nineties to a cave dweller.
After a shower and a haphazard shave, Jesse put on his uniform and called the office to let them know where to find him. And then he got into his truck, backed it out of the driveway, and practically floorboarded the gas pedal.
The vehicle fishtailed on the blindingly white packed snow as he drove toward the main road.
A left turn would have taken him into Pearl River, but Jesse turned right. He stopped once to use the winch on his truck to pull a young couple’s car out of the ditch.
No one was hurt, but they had a baby with them, and the weather was colder than a witch’s nipple. Jesse made sure the old heap they were driving would run before going on.
In a way, he envied those two kids their youth and innocence, as well as the unique young life they’d created together. He hoped they knew they were rich, even if they couldn’t afford a decent rig, and that they would fight to hold on to what they had when they hit the inevitable white water.
He set his teeth. At that age, he would have fought any force in the universe to keep Glory and their child at his side—if he’d been given the option.
He was grateful when Twin Poplars Convalescent Home loomed up in the distance; he’d spent the night thinking about Glory, and he needed a distraction.
Vicky Walters, a nurse Jesse had dated briefly before he and Adara had started seeing each other, greeted him with a smile. Only then did it strike him that she bore a faint resemblance, with her blond hair and blue eyes, to Glory.
“Hi, Jesse. Nasty morning out, isn’t it?”
He grinned and shivered in reply. “Speaking of nasty, is my grandfather up?”
Vicky laughed. “He’s already had his breakfast, and he happens to be in a pretty good mood. He was in his room last time I saw him.”
Jesse’s grin faded as soon as he got past Vicky. Even on his best days, Seth Bainbridge wasn’t an easy man to deal with. And this sure as hell wasn’t going to be one of his best days.
Seth sat at the window, slumped in his wheelchair, dressed in his robe and slippers and gazing out from beneath bushy eyebrows at the dazzlingly white world. He still had his hair, though it was mostly gray now, and his eyes were as sharp as ever, like his mind. But the rest of his body had betrayed him by turning feeble.
“Gramps?” Jesse paused in the doorway, his hands braced on either side of the jamb.
The old man wheeled around and scowled at him. “Hello, Jesse.”
“Can I come in, or do I have to get a warrant?” Jesse asked, trying to smile. It was tough to keep up a front sometimes, because the old cuss could be so hard and cold. And this was one of his good days.
“Come in,” the judge grumbled, waving one hand in a desultory gesture. “Come in.”
Even after he’d crossed the threshold, Jesse couldn’t make himself sit. “How have you been feeling?”
“Like hell,” the old man answered gruffly.
Jesse drew in a deep breath, let it out slowly. He had to go carefully here; he didn’t want to cause the judge to have another stroke. And yet there were things he needed to know. “Glory Parsons is back in town.” He said the words with the same caution he would have used to make sure the ice over Culley’s Creek was thick enough to hold his weight.
He’d expected a reaction, and he got one. Seth’s gaze snapped to his face and narrowed there, and his gnarled hands clenched on the arms of his chair. “That cheap, lying, little—”
Jesse had a lot of unresolved issues where Glory was concerned himself, but he wasn’t about to let the judge insult her. “Hold it,” he said firmly, raising both hands, palms out. “I don’t want a dose of your venom, Gramps, and I swear to God I’ll walk out of here and never come back if you don’t watch your mouth.”
Seth had few enough visitors, Jesse suspected, because when it came right down to it, he didn’t have any friends, at all, except for old Doc Cupples. As for family, Gresham and Sandy were dead, of course, and he’d long since alienated Ilene with his black moods. She refused to subject Liza to the old man’s unpredictable temperament, and Jesse backed her up on the decision.
Which left himself and the aging doctor as the only people who ever paid a call of any kind.
“All right,” Seth muttered. He was silent for a long time, then he went on. “She shouldn’t have come back. She promised she wouldn’t.”
Jesse’s fist knotted; he wanted to slam it down on the dresser top, hard enough to make lamps and ashtrays jump, but he restrained himself. “So you did send her away,” he ground out.
“Sit down,” fussed the old man. “It hurts my neck to look up at you like that.”
Jesse dragged a chair over and sank into it. “All right, you old reprobate, start talking.”
“She would have ruined your life,” his grandfather insisted. And had Seth been able to close his hands into fists, Jesse figured he would have. As it was, agitation was clearly written in every line of his body. “You wouldn’t have gone to college. By God, you wouldn’t be sheriff today, with every prospect of entering the state legislature in a few years!”
Jesse rubbed his eyes with a thumb and forefinger and sighed. “Glory was pregnant with my baby, wasn’t she? And you ran her off because of your damn family pride.”
“The baby was yours,” Seth agreed bitterly. “I knew that the moment I saw Liza. But she could have belonged to anybody in the county!”
“Watch it,” Jesse warned, his voice as rough as two rusty nails being rubbed together. In that moment, Jesse realized that he’d suspected Glory’s pregnancy all along; he’d just never been able to get anybody to confirm it.
Seth trembled with frustration and rage and the relative inability to express those emotions. “Glory Parsons wasn’t like Gresham’s Sandy—she didn’t come from a good family. That brother of hers was practically a criminal, and as for her mother—”
“Glory was as good as anybody, Gramps,” Jesse interrupted in an angry undertone, “and better than you and I put together. Dylan was no worse than any of the rest of us, and let’s not mince words here—you didn’t like Delphine because you wanted to sleep with her and she told you to go to hell.”
For a long time, Seth just sat there, gripping the arms of his chair and swallowing repeatedly. Finally he ground out, “I did the right thing, Jesse. Gresham and Sandy wanted a baby, and I made sure they got one. And I saved you from the mistake of a lifetime, you ungrateful young whelp!”
Jesse rose from the chair, went into the bathroom, and drew a glass of cold water for his grandfather. Seth was still red in the face when he got back. “Take it easy,” Jesse said, holding out the glass.
Seth obviously would have liked to knock the cup out of Jesse’s hand, but he didn’t because he needed the water to steady himself. He drank it down thirstily. “I paid her to leave,” he muttered, and the words were ugly to Jesse, even though he’d long since guessed that Glory had sold him out for money.
Hearing the words from his grandfather lifted them out of the realm of theory and planted them squarely in reality. And they were wounding. He averted his eyes to a naked tree beyond the window, but the old man was
ruthless. He knew he’d cornered his prey, and he couldn’t resist closing in for the kill.
“She could have come to you, Jesse, and told you about the baby. You would have married her. But we both know why she didn’t, don’t we? Because I told her I’d cut you off without a nickel the day you put a ring on her finger, and she didn’t want you or the baby if she couldn’t have the Bainbridge money, too.”
Jesse thrust himself out of the chair and turned his back. He felt broken inside, just the way he had that long-ago summer day when Dylan had told him Glory had gone away and wasn’t ever coming back. Only now he didn’t have Gresh to help him get his balance back. He didn’t have anybody.
“You ought to be thanking me on your knees!” the old man went on, tearing at Jesse’s spirit like a frenzied shark. “I saved you from that calculating little tease!”
Not trusting himself to speak, Jesse strode out of the room, his grandfather’s bitter words ringing in his ears.
On her lunch hour, Glory left the bank and drove cautiously along the icy roads until she reached the Pearl River cemetery. Then, parking her car outside the gates, she made her way on foot to Dylan’s grave.
The headstone was mounded with snow, but the letters of his name were clearly visible. Glory sniffled and shoved her hands into the pockets of her coat. Then, after looking around to make sure she was alone, she started talking.
“Last night Jesse and I went out to dinner,” she said, pulling one mittened hand out to wipe her eyes. “We took that fancy old car that belongs to his grandfather and—well—we ended up making love on the seat like a couple of teenagers.” Glory paused to sniffle again. “Actually, it wouldn’t classify as lovemaking, given the fact that Jesse was just trying to get back at me for hurting him. The Anglo-Saxon term would fit better, but you know me—I can’t say that because I think it’s so ugly.”
An icy breeze swept in among the naked trees, ruffling Glory’s hair and stinging her ears. She tried to imagine what Dylan would say if he were there, and it wasn’t difficult. He’d have vowed to find Jesse Bainbridge and loosen a few of his teeth.
“Violence won’t solve anything, Dylan,” she said firmly.
She guessed that then he would have put an arm around her shoulders and told her not to be so hard on herself, that everybody makes mistakes.
“Thanks,” she snuffled. Then she took one of the small candy canes the bank was giving away from her purse, stuck it like a little flag in the snow on top of Dylan’s headstone, and carefully returned to her car.
She got back to the bank just in time for a staff meeting, and the rest of the afternoon was so busy that quitting time came long before she expected it.
Not wanting to go home to her apartment and sit in a folding chair, staring at a blank wall, Glory went to the diner instead. Delphine was off-duty, and her daughter found her upstairs, curled up on the couch with a romance novel.
“Hi,” Glory said brightly. And then she promptly burst into tears.
“I’d ask what’s bothering you,” Delphine said with gentle wryness, patting her daughter on the back, “but I already know it’s Jesse. Sit down, and I’ll get you a nice hot cup of tea to settle your nerves.”
Glory collapsed into a chair without even bothering to take off her coat, and let her purse tumble to the floor. “He hates me,” she said, resting one elbow on the arm of the chair and propping her forehead in her palm.
“Nonsense,” replied Delphine from the kitchenette. “He just wants your body, and it’s making him crazy.”
Glory let out a despairing wail. “He’s already had my body!” she sobbed.
Diplomatically, Delphine waited a few beats before responding to that. “I take it we’re not talking about ten years ago, when you were young, foolish and hormonal.”
“We’re talking about last night!” Glory ranted.
“Good grief,” Delphine muttered, materializing at her side with a glass of water and two aspirin tablets. “Get a grip before you give yourself a headache.”
Glory swallowed the aspirin and felt a little better just for having been fussed over. “This would all be so much easier if it weren’t for Jesse.”
“None of this would have happened if it weren’t for Jesse.” She patted Glory’s shoulder distractedly. “Honey, please don’t tell me you’ve come up with some crazy plan to replace Liza by getting pregnant with Jesse’s baby all over again.”
“Of course I haven’t!” Glory cried, getting awkwardly out of her coat and leaving it all bunched up in the chair behind her.
Delphine returned to the stove as the tea kettle began to whistle. “Well, then, how did it happen?”
“I’ve never been like this with any other man,” she marveled furiously. “But for some reason all Jesse has to do is kiss me and I go absolutely wild.”
The older woman arched one auburn eyebrow as she handed Glory her cup of tea and then sat down to face her. “You know,” she said, her eyes twinkling with mischief as she tapped the cover of her romance novel, “Storm Ravenbrook is having the same problem with her man, if it’s any comfort to you.”
“It isn’t,” Glory assured her huffily.
Delphine sighed. “Sweetheart, I warned you about staying here in Pearl River. To quote those old western movies on TV, this town just ain’t big enough for the two of you. And since Jesse owns a mansion, the sawmill, and half the real estate in the county, he isn’t very likely to move on. That means—”
“I know, I know,” Glory interrupted wearily, taking a somewhat unladylike sip of her tea. “I’ve either got to leave or learn to deal with our illustrious sheriff.”
“That’s about the size of it,” Delphine agreed. Having listened to people’s problems at the diner for so long, she’d probably heard more sad stories than the average psychotherapist. Her basic philosophy was that ninety-seven percent of life was just a matter of showing up, and the other three consisted of rolling with the punches.
“Thanks, Mama,” Glory said.
“What for?”
“For not judging me. Until they start a group called Jesse Anonymous, I’m afraid I’m going to have to play this thing by ear.”
Delphine laughed. “In your case, I think the affliction may be incurable. Has it ever occurred to you, my darling daughter, that you might still be in love with the man?”
Glory’s eyes went wide with alarm at the suggestion. As much as she thought about Jesse, as wantonly as she’d behaved in his arms the night before, the possibility had never crossed her mind.
“No,” she said. “No!”
Delphine just shrugged and asked Glory if she wanted to stay for dinner. Harold, who was working on a plumbing job in Fawn Creek, was going to stop off on the way home and pick up a big pepperoni pizza.
Glory shook her head and gathered her crumpled coat around her. “I’d just be a drag,” she said. Then she stood, bending to kiss Delphine’s forehead. “Thanks for everything, Mama. I love you.”
Delphine squeezed her hand. “If you decide you want to talk some more or just hang around, I’ll be right here until about eight o’clock. Then Harold and I are going over to the new house to put shelf paper in the cupboards.”
Glory promised to seek her mother out if she hit another crisis, and left. She was walking back to the bank parking lot, where her car was waiting, when Ilene came out of the bookstore and waved.
“You look half frozen,” the woman called. “Come on over, and Liza and I will thaw you out.”
After the last twenty-four hours, the offer of time with Liza was irresistible. Glory looked both ways and then hurried across the icy street and into the bookstore.
A lush-looking artificial tree had been set up in one corner of the shop, which was now closed for the day. Lights were strung among the branches, and Liza was decorating the boughs with old-fashioned glass ornaments.
“Hi, Glory,” she chimed with a smile that pulled at Glory’s insides and almost brought tears to her eyes.
G
lory hid her reaction by taking off her coat and hanging it up. “Hi, there,” she finally answered, when she was a little more composed. “That’s a pretty tree.”
“Thank you,” Liza replied. “Aunt Ilene says cutting down a live one is senseless slaughter. Uncle Jesse always gets a big spruce for the big house, though.”
Amusement at Liza’s vernacular saved Glory from flinching, at least inwardly, at the mention of Jesse. The twinkling colored lights on the tree cheered her a little, and she carefully picked up an ornament and handed it to the child.
Liza hung the piece from a branch and looked up at Glory with Christmas reflected on her earnest little face. “Will you stay for supper, Glory? Aunt Ilene said it was all right to invite you, and we’re having Chinese.”
Glory glanced at Ilene, who smiled and nodded. “I’d like that very much,” she said softly, reaching out one hand to touch her child and then drawing it back at the last moment. Embarrassed, she turned to Ilene again. “Is there anything I can do to help?”
Ilene’s expression was one of tender understanding. “Just keep this young lady company,” she said, gesturing toward Liza, “while I deep-fry the wontons.” With that, she turned and left the shop for the apartment upstairs.
“Aunt Ilene’s a good cook,” Liza confided. “She thinks trying foods from other countries will promote peace, so we eat lots of strange stuff.”
Glory smiled and began decorating the top portion of the tree, where Liza couldn’t reach. The activity was so ordinary—parents and children did this everywhere, every year—but to Glory it was precious. “What are you asking Santa for?” she inquired casually, not sure whether her daughter believed or not.
“Santa’s really Uncle Jesse,” Liza confided, leaning close to whisper the words gently, lest they come as a terrible shock. “And I already got what I want.”
“What was that?” Glory asked, her voice hoarse because of the lump in her throat.
“For Uncle Jesse not to get married to Adara.”
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