He already knew what she thought about the National Probe and its ilk. He could just imagine what she’d say if she ever found out that he had, until six months ago, been the National Probe’s star investigative reporter.
DANA WOKE UP LATE the next morning. She lay in bed behind the curtain in the sleeping alcove and listened to the birds singing outside in the trees. Funny, but she hadn’t ever been aware of birds that much before she came here, perhaps because in the city there wasn’t so much variety. Here by her little creek, birdsong blended with the purling of the water over the rocks and the sighing of the wind in the trees to create a kind of music that spoke to something deep in her soul.
She thought about last night and how Conn had scarfed down the manicotti. He’d seemed so appreciative of the home-cooked meal, and yet she knew he cooked and did it well if the meat loaf she’d eaten at his place was any indication.
At least he seemed to have warmed to her. Her interest in the hawks was probably what accounted for that. She couldn’t have expected him to have any other interest in her.
And yet—before he’d left last night, when they were standing by the door, his eyes had lingered with what she had thought at the time was longing on her lips. Just on her lips, but that was enough to engender a tension and excitement deep in the pit of her stomach. She was experienced enough to be able to tag this as a sexual feeling, which was ridiculous. There was no way she could be having sexual feelings for a man she’d only recently met, and anyway, it wasn’t as if she expected him to be attracted to her.
She padded into the bathroom and turned on the shower. She let her nightgown fall away from her body as she stared in the mirror above the sink. She couldn’t see the rise of her belly in the mirror, but her breasts were large and the nipples swollen and dark. Her body was preparing itself for childbirth.
Not lovemaking.
And so she might as well stop thinking indecent thoughts about Conn McTavish and face the fact that no man would want to make love to her for a long time. If ever.
WHEN CONN WALKED UP to the customer service desk at the phone company, the clock on the wall said nine o’clock. When he walked out, it was five minutes later. This was a pleasant surprise; after living in Los Angeles where everyone had to wait in line everywhere for everything, Conn still expected things in Cougar Creek to be difficult in that respect.
“I’ll schedule installation for next Friday,” said the gum-cracking young woman behind the customer service counter. “Will that be soon enough?”
It was so much sooner than he’d hoped that it was all Conn could do not to cheer. Next door was a store where he could buy phones, and he bought one for himself and one for Dana. The one for himself was ordinary beige, but he recalled that the paint she’d bought was a color called whisper blue, so he bought her a blue one.
After leaving the phone company, he stopped by the only public phone in town, which was located in a kiosk outside the only drugstore. He called his former boss first.
Martin Storrs was out of the office, said the person who answered. She was apparently someone new, someone he didn’t know. “I can put you through to Mr. Storrs’s voice mail if you like.”
“That’s fine,” Conn said, and he left a message telling Martin in no uncertain terms that he wasn’t interested in working for the Probe. “Not now, not next week, not ever,” he said firmly. That should settle the matter for good, he thought to himself.
When he phoned Catalina-Pacific, a sweet-voiced female picked up the phone on the other end of the line. “Catalina-Pacific, how may I direct your call?” she answered liltingly.
Conn asked to speak to the administrator of the home, and after an interval during which he was serenaded by a Chopin nocturne, someone came on the line and said, “Beverly Rencken.”
This was the administrator, so Conn identified himself and told her that he was indeed interested in having his mother admitted to the facility as soon as possible.
“It will most likely be a couple more months, Mr. McTavish, but I can assure you that we are eager to have your mother at Catalina-Pacific. I’ll transfer you to our admitting department, and they’ll take your financial data so that we can move forward. And, Mr. McTavish, we’re so glad you have chosen Catalina-Pacific for someone as dear to you as your mother clearly is.”
More Chopin, and he was transferred to a John Ayalla in admitting. “Of course we’ll need a deposit from you,” the man told him.
“Of course,” Conn replied.
Ayalla named a figure that was higher than Conn had anticipated. “Excuse me?” Conn said. He thought that perhaps the family of four that was noisily erupting from the drugstore behind him had caused him to misunderstand the figure.
But when Ayalla repeated the amount he had quoted in the first place, Conn was nonplussed.
“And the monthly fee?” he inquired, multiplying numbers rapidly in his head.
The monthly fee was exorbitant. When Conn expressed surprise, Ayalla adopted an overly patient tone and explained that since Conn had first added his mother’s name to the waiting list for Catalina-Pacific, operating costs had risen across the board. “In addition, we offer the very best in nursing care to all our patients,” he told Conn. “In order to do that, we must pay our employees the highest salaries. I’m sure you understand.”
When Conn hung up the phone, he stood for a moment at the telephone kiosk fighting shock and dismay. Underlying those emotions was the fact that he was determined that his mother would have the finest care available. Gladys McTavish should want for nothing as long as she lived.
But now that he knew how much it was going to cost to maintain his mother at the new facility, Conn doubted seriously that he could afford it.
DANA WAS WORKING on the front porch when Conn drove up in his truck, and she saw right away that he was in a bad mood. The slump of his shoulders, the way he planted his boots along the walkway as he trod his way up the path—these nonverbal clues told her a lot about his frame of mind even though she didn’t know him all that well.
She stopped stirring the paint and waited with hands on her hips as he approached. Today he wore jeans and a red-and-black-checked wool shirt over a T-shirt. He was better looking than a man had a right to be—so handsome that he made her head spin.
“Good morning,” she called, telling herself that she should be used to the way he looked by this time.
“Good morning,” he replied, not smiling. He took the porch steps two at a time and stood in front of her on the layer of newspapers she’d spread under the folding table that she was using as Paint Central. She’d arranged the paint and the brushes and roller pans and rollers in neat lines preparatory to starting the job.
Conn carried a bag, and now he took a box out. “This is for you. Your new phone.”
“I didn’t expect—” she began, but Conn interrupted.
“I know you didn’t, but accept it as a hostess gift. That was a great dinner last night.”
The phone was pale blue, almost gray. “It will match my decor, such as it is,” she said.
“The good news is that I’ve arranged for phone service for both of us. Someone will be out to install phone jacks next Friday and turn on the phones.”
“That’s good.”
“I feel as if I’m opening a Pandora’s box by getting a phone, but it only makes good sense. I can’t go on using the one outside the drugstore every time I have to call someone.”
Dana wondered who it was that Conn needed to call. His mother, perhaps, if she was able to talk. His friend Steve, who was in the hospital.
“Here, why don’t you let me stir while you slide a roller cover on the roller?”
“I didn’t really expect you to help,” she objected as he reached for the paint stirrer.
“I’d feel pretty bad if you fell off a ladder or something while you were painting. I can do the high spots, you can do the low.”
Whatever had been on his mind when he first drove up seemed
to have receded to a place of less importance. Conn concentrated on his stirring. He still looked serious, though. Too serious to her way of thinking.
“Are we painting the kitchen today?” he asked.
“No, the living room. I chose this color because I thought it would blend with the gray of the rock fireplace.”
Inside, she had set up a stepladder in one corner, and she had pushed the furniture to the middle of the living room before arraying drop cloths around the edges. “You should have let me help you with that,” he said sternly when he saw what she’d done, but she said, “It’s not heavy furniture. No big deal.”
She thought she caught him rolling his eyes as he mounted the ladder, but she wasn’t sure.
Conn painted around the trim while Dana wielded a roller on the other side of the room. At first they worked mostly in silence. Dana didn’t want to chatter—considering his low spirits, she didn’t want to make a nuisance of herself. She appreciated his help. If he hadn’t shown up, she knew she’d be looking at two days’ work, probably three, and it was important to her to get the room painted in a pleasant, restful color. Her father had, for some unfathomable reason, painted the room a deep, bilious green. Not hunter, not forest, but bilious.
“I like the color you’ve chosen,” Conn said.
She smiled over at him and dipped her roller in the paint again, carefully rolling off the excess. “It reminds me of the color of my room when I was a kid. I hope the blue will bring the outdoors in. The sky, I mean.”
“It’ll do that, I think,” he said, stepping down from the ladder and standing back to see what she’d accomplished.
She finished what she was doing and joined him to appraise their work. “It looks the way I hoped it would,” she said in satisfaction.
Their shoulders brushed as they each returned to their own side of the room. Conn climbed the ladder, and Dana began to touch up a few spots where she’d rolled the paint on too lightly.
“You said this color reminds you of your room when you were a kid. Was that a happy time for you?”
“Mostly. I wished I’d had brothers and sisters so I wouldn’t be so lonely, but my mom and dad both adored me and let me know it. I think I felt really secure as a child because of that.”
“Letting a child know it’s loved is the greatest gift a parent can give,” Conn said thoughtfully.
“Sounds like you know something about that,” Dana prompted. She left her comment right where it was, hoping he’d pick up on it.
“My mother was as close to a saint as you can get.” Conn came down from the ladder and moved it over a couple of feet before climbing back up. “She worked at a job she hated so I could go to the best schools.”
“What kind of work did she do?”
“She was a mill worker in one of the biggest textile mills in the South. It was dirty work, hard work, but she never complained. At least, not to me.”
The catch in his voice, which she almost didn’t detect, made Dana swivel her head to look at him. He was working along the ceiling, cutting in the paint between ceiling and wall, and he was concentrating on keeping his hand steady.
“How did you find out she had Alzheimer’s, Conn?” she asked.
“She had moved out to L.A. to be near me, and she kept forgetting where things were. That went on for months, but it seemed normal to have lost track of things that might have been packed. It wasn’t until I flew her dearest friend from our hometown out to see her that I realized the problem was more serious. When Ruth had confirmed she was coming, I asked Mom one night when I was there for dinner if she was looking forward to Ruth’s visit. Mom said, ‘Ruth who?’ She clearly had no idea who I was talking about.”
“That sounds awful,” Dana said. It had been terrible when her own mother and father had died in such a short period of time, but she couldn’t imagine the horror of losing a parent in the manner that Conn was describing.
“I got her the best medical help I could, but Mom deteriorated rapidly, and there was nothing anyone could do.”
“I’m so sorry, Conn.” It was all she could think of to say.
“So am I, but I’ve accepted it. I only wish I…” He stopped, seeming to think better of what he’d been about to say.
When he didn’t seem inclined to pick up where he left off, Dana set her roller in the pan and stretched. “I don’t know about you, but I could eat something. Maybe some of the manicotti from last night? Heated up?”
“Hey, that would be great,” Conn said. He smiled at her from the top of the ladder, and she went into the kitchen. All the while she was reheating the manicotti, she thought about Conn and his reluctance to say much about his personal life. She could relate. She certainly didn’t want to talk about her personal life, either. At the same time, it was difficult not to discuss what normal people usually discussed.
At Conn’s suggestion, since the sun was high in the sky and it had turned into an unseasonably warm day, they took their plates down by the creek and sat on a large stone on the bank beneath a black walnut tree. Dana listened to the hum of a bee on the opposite side of the creek, and they watched as a large fish—Conn thought it was a crappie—chased away some minnows in the shallows below them. A couple of blue jays chattered in a nearby clump of pines.
It seemed like a bold thing to say, but the sunshine and the purling water had lulled her into a sense of relaxation. “Haven’t you met some people around here since you arrived, Conn? You seem like such a loner.” Like me, she added mentally.
He didn’t seem annoyed by her question. “I’ve met people, sure. No one with whom I have much in common.” His eyes met hers with dawning comprehension. “Do you mean women?”
She ducked her head and chased a bit of pasta around her plate with her fork. “No, that’s not what I meant. Not at all.” At the same time she realized that maybe she had.
“There hasn’t been a woman in my life for a long time. The whole time I lived in L.A., I played the field. I had no interest in settling down.”
“Mmm,” she said noncommittally. If he had come to Cougar Creek to get over a lost love, he wasn’t about to admit it. But somehow she didn’t think that was why he was here.
“Well, I’d better get back to work,” he said. “We might as well finish up as fast as we can.”
“Might as well,” Dana agreed. It surprised her when he gave her a hand up off the rock, but then again, it didn’t. He was proving to be a thoughtful guy.
A thoughtful guy who didn’t give too much away. But that was all right, because she didn’t, either.
CONN COULDN’T HELP GRINNING to himself as he drove home late that afternoon. Dana and her questions, which were designed to find out if there was a woman in his life, were so transparent.
He turned the radio in the truck up loud, thinking about tomorrow morning when he and Dana would go to Shale Flats. He was looking forward to it more than he could have imagined. The physical activity of painting had done him a lot of good, bummed out as he’d been over what Catalina-Pacific was going to cost. He had some time to figure out how to scrape up the money, and Dana was proving to be a good diversion.
When he drove up to his house, his mind was on the hawks and which one he’d allow Dana to fly all by herself. So when he saw the draperies on the front window were open, he did a double take. He had closed them earlier as he always did before he left the house.
He had learned early in his days as an investigative reporter that he couldn’t be too careful. He never knew when someone might take it into his head to get even for a story he had written. He stepped down from the truck cautiously, unsure whether to call out a warning or simply to enter.
Then his former boss, Martin Storrs, beer in hand and wearing an incongruous felt cowboy hat, sauntered out from behind the house and greeted him with a wide, expansive smile.
Chapter Five
“You really shouldn’t leave your door open for anyone who happens along,” Martin told him.
�
�In this part of the country, no one ‘happens’ along.” He bounded forward, glad to see Martin despite all that had happened when he left the Probe. “How did you get all the way out here, anyway?” He saw no sign of a rental car.
“Kid by the name of Billy Wayne. Hair purple on one side, orange on the other. Nice kid, though, and he seemed interested in the birds. He says he’s the librarian’s nephew.” They shook hands, and Martin clapped him on the back. “I warned you that I’d come scouting for you if I didn’t hear from you,” the older man said.
“I didn’t receive your letter until yesterday,” Conn told him.
“I mailed it over a week ago.”
“Well,” Conn said sheepishly, “I’ve only been picking my mail up at the post office once a week.”
“You mean there’s no home delivery here in Hicksville, Arizona?”
“The Cougar Creek natives would not appreciate your rechristening their town. And no, there’s no home mail delivery in Cougar Creek and environs. Say, Martin, you look great.” Except for the cowboy hat, which was entirely out of character for the man, but Conn didn’t say that. His former boss had lost ten pounds or so and was dressed casually in a way he had never dressed for the office, where he had always maintained a certain formality.
“Yeah, well, I bought some new clothes after they insisted on changing the dress code. At the Probe these days, we don’t have casual Fridays. We have free beer Fridays and casual Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. That’s another reason I think you’ll enjoy coming back to work. Say, do you like the hat?”
“Trust me, Martin, it’s not you.” Conn held the door open, and Martin preceded him into the house. He saw that Martin had deposited a brown canvas duffel in the middle of the living room floor. “You’re planning on staying awhile?”
Martin tossed the hat over the elk antlers mounted on the wall. “I thought I’d get in some R and R. Maybe you could let me watch you do whatever it is that you do with those birds.”
This statement caught Conn in the middle of removing a beer from the refrigerator. He thought about Dana and taking her with him to Shale Flats tomorrow. Did Martin’s presence mean their date was scrubbed?
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