by Cait London
His eyebrows lifted. “Defend me? How so?”
“You needed my protection, and that’s all I’m going to say about it. Oh, I wish I had my sports bra—”
Moments later, Mitchell let Uma out of the house. “You look cute,” he drawled, patting her bottom.
“I don’t have any briefs on and I’ve never, ever gone out of the house without a bra since I was a little girl.”
His “mmm” sounded as if he were anticipating a delicious event.
“You’re full of surprises, honey,” Mitchell admitted slowly as her small flashlight caught a thread on the rose bushes between his house and hers.
Roman appeared out of the night. Then, seeing Mitchell and Uma, he nodded. “What’s up?”
Mitchell held up the single thread. “Our boy lost something. We’re going on a little sightseeing tour. Take care.”
“Take care,” Roman answered, and slipped back into the night again.
They moved silently across the street to where the BBs had to have been fired. Another thread, a different color, clung to an opulent rambling scarlet rose bush. Uma held his hand as they moved between several other houses, pointing out the old cellars, the outside basement doors, until they were on Main Street, moving down an alley.
“I’m starting to enjoy this,” Mitchell whispered as his hands eased her bottom higher and she climbed up onto the paint store’s roof.
“If you do put in that big super center building and supply store that everyone wants, you’re going to run a lot of little people out of business.”
Mitchell stepped on a trash bin, grabbed a television antenna and hefted himself upward. “If you fall—”
“We did this all the time—Lauren, Shelly, Pearl, and me. I miss Lauren so,” she finished fiercely. “Come on.”
She made her way to the top of the roof and lay down. When Mitchell didn’t lie down beside her to scan the street below, she looked upward to see him considering her backside. “No briefs, huh? Just you under those pants?”
“Not now. Mitchell, we’re on duty.”
“Uh-huh.” He lay down beside her, but one big hand found her bottom, caressing it. He bent to kiss her, and she tasted the passion lingering between them. “I just love it when you’re so Double-O-Seven.”
“You’re enjoying this, and if you don’t stop making fun of me, you can just go home.”
He tugged her braid. “Whoops. Sorry.”
Mitchell’s expression said he wasn’t; he was like a child enjoying a game, a playful little boy inside the man who held his emotions so tightly in check. “You’re irritating me. Shelly would have been a better partner than you.”
“Roman is set to marry her, you know. That might cut down this midnight roaming. You might be forced to ask me again. Now, why are we here?”
“Mrs. Dougan wouldn’t give Elinor Stills a cutting from her rose bush, so Elinor decided to steal a start. She really needs to place better in competition, so she got up at two o’clock one morning and bicycled to Mrs. Dougan’s, where she got her clipping. On her way, she noticed a sleek little back Miata cruising through town—no lights.”
“Uh, makes sense. Pete Jones was the suspect in a Miata theft. They never found the car.” Mitchell’s hand prowled down to her bottom, then back up to her pants’ elastic waistband. He lifted it slightly and turned to peer down at her briefless bottom. “Mmm. Interesting.”
He bent to lightly bite her there and Uma stiffened, shocked at his play. He lifted his head to grin at her. “I love getting to you—seeing your face go absolutely blank before the blush sets in. You really don’t know how to play, do you, honey?”
“Sure I do. I’ve played games all my life.”
“Chess…Parcheesi…bridge…croquet?” he mocked. “All very ladylike.”
“Any game you want to play, I can play.”
“We’ll see.”
Uma put her hand over his face and pushed gently; she wasn’t certain how to handle Mitchell in a playful mood. “Jones has been dead for a year. Mrs. Dougan saw the Miata in May. I just found out today, when she called to gossip—and to tell me that Pearl is hunting things for her bazaar. I feel badly about having to put Pearl in her place. She’s had such a hard life.”
“I think you are the sexiest woman I have ever known,” Mitchell whispered rawly as he drew her over him.
“Here?” she asked after an earthshaking kiss. Mitchell’s hands were easing open their clothing. “We’ll roll off the roof, and how would we explain that? Oh, Mitchell—”
Clinging to the rooftop by her fingertips, Uma held her breath as he slid into her, full and heavy and hot.
Fifteen minutes later, Mitchell helped a very shaky Uma down from the rooftop, catching her as she leaped into his arms. After gently placing her on the ground, he kissed her softly, and smoothed her disheveled braids.
“I certainly didn’t see that coming,” she managed, still stunned by the passion she hadn’t expected to flame so quickly between them.
He tugged one braid, and there was that lazy pleased smile, so delicious she could almost devour him again. “You did okay.”
Uma couldn’t help but throw her arms around his shoulders and open her already sensitive lips to his. “What am I going to do with you?”
His smile said he already had a suggestion. “You’ll think of something. Right now, take me to Rosalie’s.”
Minutes later, Rosalie’s house was dark—except for the small flashlight Uma used to show Mitchell the receipts for cloth that Rosalie had special ordered for her customers. “See? This one isn’t for cloth, but references her letter questioning what thread they recommended for a special 1930s fabric. Her appointment book was missing, but I started going through her tax receipts for the last year.”
“Good girl.”
“I think there’s a connection to the bullets that shot up the old windmill—and Pete—but I can’t make it. It might be something.”
Mitchell jotted down the name of the manufacturer on a scrap of a paper and tucked it into his jeans. “Could be. Let’s go home.”
But Uma’s flashlight had caught the small trash basket, overflowing with scraps. She bent to collect the one that wasn’t summer flowers and cotton, but a heavier weave. “Do you think these scraps might match that thread?”
“Maybe. Keep it.” He glanced outside the lace-covered window to where Lonny’s police car was gliding beneath a streetlight. “Let’s go.”
In Mitchell’s shower later, Uma gave herself to his gentle hands, to the sensation that she was finally home. Mitchell eased her out of the shower and began drying her. He traced the tiny stretch marks on her belly. “Tell me about Christina.”
“She was my world—from the moment she was conceived.”
He nodded slowly. “You’re a woman who deserves a family. You never wanted to try again?”
“I think,” she whispered honestly, “that she was so perfect that I feared nothing could compare, that I couldn’t love another child as I did her.”
The bathroom light caught the water droplets in Mitchell’s hair, face, and shoulders as Uma studied him. She traced her fingertip across his brows, wiping the water there. He’d gone to another place suddenly, drawing away from her. “Mitchell?”
“I—” he began slowly, unevenly. The steamy mirror behind him revealed a powerful male back and a woman’s soft, almost ethereal face looking up at him, her hands smoothing his hair.
Gentleness ran between them, and playfulness and passion so deep it tore at her control. With Mitchell she was free and alive—
He placed her fingertips on his lips. “When I held that baby, I wondered if Dad had felt that with us, a life so new and fragile. I felt as if I were cracking open, peering into an unknown storm of life that I’d never experienced. I just knew that there was a truth I didn’t know—or that I was ignoring. And I had nowhere to go, not really, except back here.”
“Your instincts were right. One’s heart always knows where home i
s. All one has to do is listen to the call. For you, it was that baby delivered in the back of the taxi. It signaled to you that you had to work through your life and make sense of it. One—”
“Shut up, you,” Mitchell whispered gently. “And come here…”
SIXTEEN
The morning sun was blinding as Roman climbed the old windmill, fighting the pain in his knee. He’d dozed on the front porch and had refused Shelly’s invitation to come into the house for breakfast. Behind her stood the woman he’d detested for years, the woman who’d run out on the tough times, her husband, and her sons.
Morning was still cool, the trees slanting fingers of shade over the windmill as he sat and scanned the land he’d hated.
Shelly’s small pickup pulled next to his motorcycle, and she spotted him immediately. In that long-legged stride, she moved toward the windmill and started upward on the boards serving as a ladder, and Roman’s skin went cold. “Don’t come up here.”
She climbed steadily, the sunlight catching the burnished sheen of her hair, her body agile in its ascent. She stood on the platform and scanned the land. “Nice view.”
“Sit down.” Roman held her hands as she sat by him, legs dangling side by side.
“Nice view. What are you doing up here?”
“Trying to figure it out.” Mitchell had told him of the unread letters Grace had written, and of Fred’s dying words. You’re all I’ve got left of her, you and Roman. I loved that woman with all my heart…tell Grace I’ve always loved her, his father had whispered amid his pain. Everything was my fault. Take Roman and go to her—
Shelly scanned the burned, overgrown house place and barn, the old garage where Pete Jones had been found. The sun caught the fluttering tendrils beside her cheeks, fiery silk that had escaped her ponytail. She pushed them back with her hand. “I don’t want you cleaning houses with me. It’s therapy of a sort, and I like it. It’s my special time when I do my thinking.”
Images swam by Roman—Shelly managing hard physical work and then caring for his baby—and he hadn’t been there to help. “It’s hard work. You deserve better.”
“I worked out a lot of frustration cleaning those houses. They’re mine—sort of…I want to thank you for what you’ve done with Dani. That hard makeup is gone. She looks—”
“Sweet, like you. Fresh and sweet and new.”
Shelly swung her jeanned legs and a blush rose up her cheeks as she followed a bird’s cutting flight across the sky.
“Hawk,” Roman noted. “Looking for chickens, or mice.”
Shelly took his hand and brought it to her lap, stroking it. “Tell me about that night, when the house burned. Tell me why you tighten up and close off when that’s mentioned. The other day, Dani said something and you got that look, and your forehead beaded with sweat, though we were inside, in air conditioning.”
The sun blinded him now, searing through the years to that night. On the ground below, he saw the flames devouring the barn, the house…
Yet in the distance, Lonny’s buffalo were slowly moving toward the house. The past and the present, caught in time as the old windmill’s blades began moving slowly.
“Mitchell has the scars. I’ve got the guilt.”
“Tell me.”
He heard Fred’s screams again, horrible sounds of a man who had always been so strong, so—so hard, impenetrable, unmoving, stubborn…“Children are supposed to love their parents, right? I didn’t love either one. Grace deserted us and nothing was ever good enough for Fred. He rode Mitchell one way and me another. Mitchell took the brunt. I’ve been sitting up here thinking how hard Dad struggled to hold this—this place. I wouldn’t have. I’d have taken the easy road and just managed the garage—he could have done that, but not both things.”
Yet Fred’s dying words were for his love and for Roman’s safety. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he’d demanded rawly of Mitchell, who just shook his head.
“He loved her,” Roman said slowly. “His dying words were his love of Grace. He wanted Mitchell to take me to her. My brother didn’t want to. Maybe I resent that, or maybe I don’t. But he should have told me.”
“Talking is difficult for both of you. It hurt him and he didn’t want you to hurt. Go on…”
Roman closed his eyes, fighting off the sounds of Fred’s cries. “Dad was a drunk, and he kept this godforsaken piece of earth’s crust out of spite. He could have made a go of the garage, but not both. We were ragtag kids, working too hard, without the right food or clothes—or a mother, or pictures of one. He destroyed everything of Grace. I remember his digging out her rose bushes, ones she loved and babied in drought.”
He eased his hand away from Shelly’s; he didn’t want her to be touched by the darkness in him. “I didn’t help Mitchell pull Dad from the fire. All I could think of was the hard work, the yelling, the shame of having a drunk for a father. I didn’t do what I could have…instead, I watched Mitchell trying to save him.”
“You’ve been carrying this all these years. You were only a boy, Roman. Grace loved him, too. Talk with her—”
“No, I won’t.”
Shelly eased to her feet and stood looking down at him, her hands on her hips. Then the flat of her hand swept against the back of his head, knocking him gently. “She’s Dani’s grandmother, and they are already attached to each other. Fred loved her, and she loved him. Maybe you’d better unlock your mind, mister.”
She began down the wooden ladder. On the ground, she looked up at him. “I always thought this was a beautiful place. If Mitchell isn’t going to do anything with it, maybe you might think about giving Dani something special, all her own, a family heritance. But you can’t do that with bitterness wrapped around you, can you?”
“Lay off,” he yelled at her.
“When I’m ready.” Shelly turned and marched toward her pickup. Then she looked up at him and called, “It’s never too late to change.”
Moments later, Roman was still stunned. Instead of her pickup, Shelly had chosen to drive his bike back to town.
Grace smiled when Shelly passed her on the road, riding Roman’s Harley. Shelly waved, but she was scowling and Grace knew that look—she’d worn it enough with Fred.
“Mom is in a snit,” Dani noted as she drove expertly toward the old ranch. “He’s done it again. She’s hard to rile, but he sure knows how to push her buttons.”
“Dani, pull over to this old motel.”
“It’s deserted. Dates back to Bonnie-and-Clyde days. Walter bought it, and people thought he was going to make a museum out of it, but there’s not enough traffic on this road now since a main road has gone through.”
“We spent our wedding night there,” Grace whispered softly, and remembered how carefully Fred had touched her.
The European roses were still there, lush and pink, heavy blooms draping over the unpruned bush. She’d taken clippings for their home, loving them into life. “That’s enough, Dani. When my things arrive, I’ll show you how it was, the old place and your grandfather—my sons look so much like Fred, and just as stubborn, too. Let’s go to the ranch.”
“Just a minute. You deserve a bouquet, Grandma.” Dani leaped out of the car and hurried to cut the roses with her small pocketknife. Holding the roses in front of her, she looked down and scraped the dirt with her biker boot, frowning. Then she grinned when she entered the car with the fragrance of roses, the lush pink blooms still touched by dew.
Grandma. Grace wallowed in the title, loving it, as Dani beamed at her. “I wish I could have held you as a baby and helped your mother.”
“Well, we’re here now, and together, Grams. All we have to do is to get Pops and Unc to see the light.”
“They’re like their father. That might not be easy.”
“You came back, didn’t you?” Dani asked, shifting expertly.
“Yes. They refused to see me and Fred—” Grace brushed away her tears, fighting the past.
The morning sunlight shone through
the windshield as Grace thought of Uma and her softness, and how Mitchell had carried her so protectively into his home last night. She prayed that Mitchell could learn to bend, to give that wounded part of him into Uma’s care.
Pain shot through Grace once more as she saw the old home place, the rubble that had once been her dream house.
“That’s Pops, brooding up on the windmill,” Dani said as they stepped from the car.
Fred, I loved you so. How could all of this have happened? For a moment she was frozen, the happy and the horrible memories swirling around her. Then pain bore Grace down to the ground, her hands covering her face.
Dani didn’t waste time. She hurried to the boards leading up to the windmill, and swiftly climbed up to stand over Roman. “Do something. She’s hurting.”
“Let her hurt.”
Dani nudged his bottom with her boot. “Listen, Pops. It’s a package deal. Little sweet me, my mom, and Grams.”
“Lay off, kid.”
“Boy, no wonder I’m stubborn, coming down through you. I’ve decided I’m going to buy this place when I can. I haven’t had a heritage, and now that I do, I want what’s mine. All of it, Grams and the land my grandfather tried to save for me.”
Roman looked up at her. “You’re hard, kid. But not tough enough to pull that one off.”
“I’ve always wanted a horse. I like bikes, sure. But they’re hard to hug. I’m going to work really hard, and get some money, and buy this place and live on it and hug my horse. My land, Pops, part of my heritage.”
“Kid, you probably can’t even ride a horse.”
“Well, you’ll just have to teach me, won’t you, Pops?” The flat of her hand buffed the back of his head, just as Shelly had.
Roman watched his daughter briskly, agilely descend the ladder. “Women. Both up here on the same day, telling me what to do, whopping me on the head as if I were a wet-behind-the-ears kid stealing candy.”
He saw Grace crouched on the ground and a part of his heart softened and turned. Then he looked out at the clear blue Oklahoma sky and shut his mother away.