But just as Margaret had been unable to hold on to her husband when he’d decided to leave, Sarah couldn’t force Reese to be something he didn’t want to be.
She swiped her tears away with the back of one hand, irritated by their very existence. Enough tears had been shed over the likes of Reese Walker. He wasn’t worth any more.
Suddenly she couldn’t wait for Ben to get home so that she could leave Clay Creek and Reese far behind. There was nothing left for her here, nothing but heartache.
When she got back to the farm she found Anna and Jackie at the kitchen table playing a game of Go Fish and Lindy sound asleep on the sofa.
“Mama!” Jackie greeted her happily, then immediately refocused her attention on the cards in her hand. “Hmm, do you have any fives?” she asked Anna.
Anna grinned. “Go fish, you little minnow.”
“I’m afraid it’s time for this little minnow to jump into her pajamas and head for bed,” Sarah exclaimed.
“Oh, please, just a few minutes longer,” Jackie protested, looking pleadingly at her mother.
“Sorry, pumpkin, but it’s well past your bedtime.” Sarah took the cards out of her daughter’s hand. “Your Aunt Lindy is already sound asleep and it’s time for all little girls to be in bed. Now jump upstairs.”
“All right.” Jackie sighed. “But someday I’ll be big enough to stay up all night if I want to.”
“And when you’re finally big enough, you’ll be too tired to stay up all night,” Anna replied with a laugh.
“Call me when you’re ready to get tucked in,” Sarah called after her pouting daughter.
“She’s a real pip,” Anna said, a chuckle shaking her shoulders. “She’s got your spunk and her daddy’s stubbornness.”
Again the hollow emptiness echoed inside Sarah. “She’s a great kid,” she agreed. She sat down at the table and pulled Anna’s wrinkled hands into her own.
“You okay?” Anna asked, eyeing her suspiciously.
“Fine.” Sarah shook her head for emphasis. “Thanks for bringing Lindy and Jackie home and staying here.” She lowered her voice. “I just don’t feel comfortable leaving Jackie alone with Lindy right now.”
Anna nodded, a frown furrowing her brow. “Your mama used to hate it when she got into one of these crazy phases. I think Margaret could handle the down moods better than the up ones. At least when Lindy’s down, she just stays in bed. When she’s up, there’s no guessing what she might do.”
“She’s been going at a frantic pace for the last couple of days. I don’t know how her body can tolerate it. Ben is supposed to talk to her doctor in Kansas City about getting her in and changing her medication. It’s obvious what she’s taking now isn’t working.”
“She’d been doing real well until this past year. Poor thing. I think your mother’s death threw her off as much as anything.”
Sarah sighed and rubbed her forehead tiredly. Everything seemed to be a confusing muddle. Her feelings for Reese, her worry about her sister, her concern that somebody might want to harm her all eddied in her head, creating a dull, pounding headache.
“Mama, I’m ready to be tucked in.” Jackie’s voice floated down from upstairs.
“I’ll go on and get out of your hair,” Anna said, rising from the table and pausing only long enough to give Sarah a resounding kiss on the cheek. “It’s past this old woman’s bedtime, too.”
“Thanks again, Anna.” Sarah walked the older woman to the door. She watched from the doorway until Anna had gotten into her car and driven down the lane, then she turned away from the door.
Sarah went into the living room and covered up her sister with an afghan. Lindy lay sprawled on her back, a dust cloth in her hand. It was as if her body had simply given out on her and she hadn’t realized sleep was approaching. If Ben couldn’t get Lindy in to see her usual doctor, Sarah vowed she would find another doctor for Lindy. There had to be something somebody could do to help her.
“Mama!” Jackie’s voice sounded once again.
Turning away from Lindy, Sarah went up three stairs, then paused and went back down to the front door. In all the years she had lived in Clay Creek she could never remember a time when anyone had worried about whether the front door was locked or unlocked. But now, the conversation with Reese still whirling around in her head she knew she couldn’t rest easy unless all the doors and windows were secured.
“Mama,” Jackie cried plaintively.
“Coming.” Sarah ran up the stairs and into the bedroom, where Jackie sat on the edge of the bed, her eyes drooping with sleepiness. “Okay, in you go.” Sarah pulled down the blankets and helped the little girl into bed.
Once Jackie was snug beneath the blankets, Sarah sat on the edge of the bed, smoothing her baby-soft hair away from her face, breathing in the sweet little-girl scent that permeated the air. For a moment her love for her daughter pressed tightly against her chest, making it difficult to draw a deep breath.
“Tell me a story,” Jackie said, her eyes heavy.
“Okay, just a short one.” Sarah told her a story about a magical willow tree. It had been one of Lindy’s favorites, and as she told it, Sarah’s heart ached for her sister, who had lost herself in a world of mental illness. Again she vowed that she would do whatever she could to see that Lindy got some help.
When she was finished with the story, Jackie smiled sleepily. “I love you, Mama.”
“I love you, too, sweetheart,” Sarah whispered, and she felt all the tension, all the worries of the day, ebbing away. She stretched out next to Jackie and put her arms around the little girl. Jackie immediately snuggled against her and Sarah felt tears once again burn in her eyes...tears not for herself but for Reese, who would never know the love of his little girl.
Chapter 9
“Thank you, Mrs. Johnson, I appreciate your time.” Reese hung up the phone and covered his face with his hands. He heaved a sigh of frustration. In the last two days he and two of his deputies had contacted most of the farmers Raymond Boswell had bought out, and none of them had been forced off their property by any unusual tactics. Money was the only tactic he’d used, and Raymond Boswell had plenty of that particular commodity.
Shuffling papers, Reese picked up the assortment of documents he’d managed to obtain on Boswell and his company. Financial statements, tax papers, credit reports—everything pointed to a multi-million-dollar industry. Raymond Boswell was apparently a smart man, a ruthless businessman, but that didn’t necessarily make him a criminal.
Still, the man was the best suspect Reese had. Hell, he was the only suspect Reese had. Raymond Boswell had a motive, and he had opportunity. He’d been in town on the day of the shooting and he’d been at the farm the morning of the day that Sarah fell into the well. He could have messed with that board either before or after speaking to Sarah.
Reese had tried several times in the last couple of days to contact Boswell, wanting to confirm his exact whereabouts on the night that Sarah had been shot. But according to his secretary, he was now on a business trip to St. Louis and she wasn’t sure when he’d return.
Reese swept a hand through his hair and leaned back in his chair, his mind still racing with suspicions. All the displaced farmers he’d contacted had succumbed to the lure of Boswell’s money. What would have happened if they hadn’t?
Margaret Calhoun had been a proud, stubborn woman. If she had decided she definitely wasn’t going to sell the farm to Boswell, then no amount of money he offered would have changed her mind. Had Boswell then taken matters into his own hands? Had he played a long shot, hoping the estranged daughter from New York would be more agreeable to selling the property? And what would happen if Sarah continued to tell the man she wasn’t going to sell?
He released a long, almost dizzying sigh as thoughts of Sarah filled his mind. A dozen times in the past two days he’d picked up the phone to call her—just to hear her voice—only to slam the receiver back down before he’d punched in the last digit of
the Calhoun phone number. He knew she was right when she’d said they shouldn’t see each other anymore. She was right that they had no shared future.
Still, the fact that he couldn’t get her out of his mind irritated him. Before she’d arrived, he’d finally managed to find some sense of peace in his life. Now he found that sense of peace disrupted by her mere presence back in town.
And then there was Jackie. In her little face he could see so much of himself. The evidence of his paternity was stamped all over her. Physically she was all his, and yet emotionally she was so different from him. Had there ever been a child so open, so loving as Jackie? She had a smile for everyone, a giggle on her lips at all times. She had yet to learn the pain of being abandoned, the ache of being unloved. He shook his head, as if to shake these very thoughts out of his head. Jackie and Sarah, they had definitely disrupted his fragile peace of mind.
He got up from his desk and paced the small confines of his office. Who the hell was he kidding? It wasn’t just their presence that had shattered his peace. It was the memory of making love with Sarah again. It was the desire to see her eyes go smoky from the heat of his caresses. It was the need to make love to her over and over again.
A perverse anger swept through him at this thought. Need. He didn’t need Sarah. He didn’t need anyone. He’d stopped needing the day his mother walked out on him, leaving him with a bitter alcoholic father who’d made his life miserable. On the day his mother left, he’d sworn to himself that he would never need anyone in his life again. There was only one person he could depend on, one person he completely trusted, and that was himself.
Disgusted with his own thoughts, he grabbed his hat, opened his office door and went out into the tiny reception area of the Clay Creek Police Station. “I’m going for a walk,” he said to Ida Cook, who manned the phone and dispatched calls. She raised a hand to acknowledge that she’d heard him but didn’t look up from the romance novel she read.
It was one of those days that couldn’t decide if it was summer or fall. There was a slight nip to the air, but the sun was unusually warm. A fall day pretending to be summer.
He slapped his hat on, then began walking down Main Street, looking for lawbreakers to take his thoughts off more personal agonies. He stopped in front of the bank and leaned against the brick building, observing the town—his town—around him. The need to escape from this place had left him long ago. He liked Clay Creek, had made his peace with the people here. He sighed. So what was wrong with him?
He watched an old woman slowly making her way across the street. He could give Mrs. Tildenbaum a ticket for jaywalking. But there wasn’t any traffic and she’d assail him with a list of her present physical complaints. Mrs. Tildenbaum was Clay Creek’s resident hypochondriac and was always on the lookout for a sympathetic ear.
For the first time since becoming sheriff, Reese felt a nagging sense of dissatisfaction with his life. Ten years from now, would he still be leaning against this same building, trying to decide if he should give Mrs. Tildenbaum a ticket for jaywalking?
He shoved himself away from the brick bank building and took off walking once again. He had no direction in mind, no final destination, just a need to keep moving...stop thinking.
And then he saw them, the three of them all walking down the sidewalk toward him. The Calhoun women—Sarah, Lindy and Jackie. They were all laughing, and as his gaze lingered on Sarah, he felt a peculiar pang in his heart. He used to be able to make her laugh. At times he’d played the fool just to bring that sparkle to her eyes and the husky laughter to her lips. Her face loved laughter, her features embraced the emotion and glowed with inner mirth.
As they got closer and Sarah caught sight of him, the smile on her lips dropped away and her footsteps faltered slightly. The only one who looked the least bit pleased at seeing him was Jackie, who released her mother’s hand and raced toward him.
“Hi, Mr. Sheriff,” she greeted him brightly. “Mama bought me a new baby.” She held out a doll that still had cellophane wrapped around its bright gold hair.
“You better get that plastic off her head, otherwise she won’t be able to breathe,” Reese observed.
Jackie giggled. “She’s not a real baby,” she explained with childish patience. “I wanted a real baby—a little brother—but Mama says maybe when I’m older.”
Reese nodded, refocusing his gaze on Sarah. God, she looked so beautiful with the sun shining in her hair and the afternoon light caressing her features. She appeared to glow with an inner incandescence. She looked warm and radiant and he wanted to capture her radiance, hold it inside forever.
She seemed to sense his thoughts. A pink blush rose up her neck and suffused her face, and she looked away.
“So, what brings you ladies out this afternoon?” he asked in an attempt to diffuse some of the tension that crackled in the air.
“We’ve been shopping for wallpaper,” Lindy explained. “I stripped all the old out of the kitchen and Sarah helped me pick out the new.”
Sarah smiled at her sister. “Of course Lindy wanted to buy new paper for every room in the house, but I talked her into doing one room at a time.” She looked back at Reese. “Have you found out anything...about what we discussed the other day?”
Reese knew she was talking about Raymond Boswell and he shook his head, his frustration coming back to gnaw at him. “Nothing.”
“You’ll let me know if you discover anything?”
“Of course,” he replied. “When’s Ben getting back into town?”
“He called last night and said it would probably be another week. By that time I should have all the farm business pretty well taken care of,” Sarah said, her gaze once again skittering away from his.
And she’ll be leaving Clay Creek again, he thought, fighting off another deep wave of irritation, mingling with dissatisfaction.
“We’d better get going,” Lindy said impatiently, shifting her shopping bag from one arm to the other. “I’d like to get this paper up tonight.”
Reese nodded and stepped aside, fighting his desire to grab Sarah by the arm, watch her eyes widen, get a reaction of any kind from her—anything but her cool distance.
“Bye, Mr. Sheriff,” Jackie said as they moved past him and down the sidewalk. He nodded to her then watched until they disappeared around the corner.
Another week and she’d be gone and he wouldn’t have to worry about running into her on the street or bumping into her at the café. And he hoped out of sight would prove to be out of mind for good.
He continued his walk down the street, nodding to the people he passed, fighting off another wave of deep inexplicable depression.
In another week Sarah would go back to her life in New York. Eventually she would meet and marry a man who would love her, a man who would be a father to Jackie. And probably, eventually, they would give Jackie a little brother or sister. It was all for the best. It was the way it should be.
So why did it make him feel so bad?
* * *
“Lindy, why don’t you wait until morning to finish this up,” Sarah suggested, watching as Lindy struggled with a piece of the wallpaper. She’d offered her help several times, but Lindy had insisted she wanted to do it all herself. She’d managed to get the paper up on one wall but was having problems with the rest of it.
“How about if I make us a cup of tea and you take a little break,” Sarah suggested, knowing her sister had to be exhausted. She’d been keeping a frantic pace for the past four days. Sooner or later she was going to crash, and Sarah dreaded the time when that happened.
“I don’t want a cup of tea and I don’t want to take a break,” Lindy replied, her voice cutting with a sharp edge. She slammed the tape measure down on the table and picked up the roll of paper and a pair of scissors.
Sarah, sensing one of her sister’s irrational bursts of anger, went into the living room, where Jackie was sprawled on the floor. “What are you doing, pumpkin?” she asked, sitting down on
the sofa near her daughter.
“I’m drawing a picture,” Jackie replied, not looking up from her artistic efforts.
“What kind of a picture?” Sarah asked, leaning forward to peek at the masterpiece.
Jackie giggled and covered it up with one hand. “It’s a surprise.”
Sarah settled back into the sofa and smiled. “I like surprises.” She leaned her head back and closed her eyes, realizing she was tired. It had been a full day.
She’d spent the morning in her mother’s bedroom, packing up clothes and shoes to give to the church, boxing up personal items that wouldn’t be given away. It had been a difficult task, one that had caused a ball of emotions to press fully against her heart. It had been like the final goodbye to her mother.
After lunch she’d spent the remainder of the afternoon with the lawyer, signing papers that would allow the lawyer to oversee the financial end of things on her behalf. Within another week she should be able to tie up all the loose ends that would permit Ben and Lindy to work the farm and receive the proceeds without Sarah’s presence in Clay Creek.
Over the past two days she’d had plenty of time to reflect on the two accidents that had nearly taken her life, and she had come to the conclusion that she and Reese had overreacted. There was a logical explanation for the stray gunshots, and although there wasn’t such an easy explanation for the sawed-through well cover, she didn’t want to believe it had been intentionally weakened with the design of causing her harm.
Much more harmful than the two accidents had been making love to Reese once again. It had been a stupid, foolish mistake. She’d known better but had been unable to control the passion that had exploded between them. It had been like a raging wildfire, out of control before she even knew it existed.
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