by Robin Wells
“You have a lovely home,” she remarked.
“Would you like to see it?” he asked impulsively, anxious to do something, anything to quell the maelstrom of emotions churning inside of him.
“I’d love to.” Her smile blinded him like staring into the sun.
He escorted her through the house, telling her about the history of the furnishings, listening to her murmurs of admiration with more pleasure than he should prudently feel, getting more and more caught up in the role of tour guide. The next thing he knew, they were standing in the hallway outside the last upstairs bedroom.
Too late, he tried to steer her away.
“Is this your room?” She brushed past him and peered inside.
Josie gazed around in surprise. It was absolutely immaculate. No piles of dirty clothes, no littered dresser tops, no beer bottles or pizza boxes or other signs of bachelorhood disarray. In fact, the most telling detail about the room was its very lack of personal effects or disorder of any kind. The large oak dresser, the matching chest of drawers and the corner desk were all devoid of any items at all.
The other bedrooms in the house were all tastefully decorated with colorful bedspreads and pillows and pictures, she mused. How odd that Luke’s was so spartan.
Beyond spartan—barren. Barren, lonely and somehow forlorn. Most depressing of all was the large, heavy bed, draped in a drab, faded army blanket.
“Where’s your bedspread?” Josie asked.
Luke shrugged. “I haven’t used one in years.”
“Why not?”
He shifted his stance and shoved a hand in his jeans. “Never found one I liked, I guess. Consuela brought home a different one every week for a while there, but none of them seemed to look right.”
Josie’s throat suddenly constricted with emotion. The quilt. He hadn’t used a cover on his bed since the quilt wore out.
No wonder none of the bedspreads had looked right— that quilt had been tailor-made for him, personalized with his name and a special message. None of the replacements would have felt right, either, she thought. The quilt had been made with love. Love had been tucked into the stuffing, stitched in every seam, woven into the very fabric. A store-bought model would seem like a cold, pathetic substitute.
Luke would rather do without than have a poor imitation, she realized, her heart warming and expanding. She wondered if he had any idea how telling that was about his character.
She looked around the colorless room, and everything about it seemed suddenly telling, too. Nothing was out in the open. Everything was hidden in a drawer or tucked in the closet or pushed beneath the bed.
The man who slept there was just like the room, she suddenly realized. He tried to keep his feelings out of sight, too. He didn’t want anyone to see inside him, to know him, to be able to touch him.
She fought a strong, absurd urge to open his closet doors, to empty his dresser drawers on the floor, to do something to shatter his sense of control and order. But that would only make him angry, she thought sadly; it wouldn’t touch his deeper feelings, wouldn’t free him from the thing that kept him emotionally locked up and shut down: a deep-rooted fear of abandonment.
She looked around the bleak, colorless room, and her heart ached to help him.
A quilt. The idea struck with sudden clarity. She’d make him another quilt. She would pattern it after the one in the lodge, and she’d surprise him with it at Christmas.
The idea made her pulse quicken, and her thoughts started racing as she followed him back downstairs to his study and reseated herself in the chair across from his desk. She’d brought her sewing machine from Tulsa, intending to make some curtains and throw pillows for her small apartment. She could buy some fabric and quilt batting in Tahlequah, and…
“What did you want to see me about?” Luke asked, seating himself behind his desk.
With an effort Josie forced her thoughts back to the business at hand. “Your marketing plans.”
“I don’t have any marketing plans.”
“That’s exactly why we need to discuss them.” Josie smiled, but received only a wary look in return. She opened her folder. “I’ve reviewed the bookings for the next few months, as well as the monthly occupancy reports for the past two years.” She handed him two impressive looking charts.
Luke stared at them. “I’ve never seen these before. Where’d you get them?”
“I made them.” He shot her a surprised look. “On the computer,” she added.
Luke studied them, as impressed with Josie’s computer skills as he was with her initiative. He had a PC here in his office that he used to handle the ranch’s bookkeeping and inventory control, but it was a different system than the one his father had installed at the lodge. The fanciest thing he knew how to do on his computer was line up a ledger column.
Josie leaned across the desk and pointed to a dip on the charts. The scent of her perfume made it hard to follow what she was saying, and it took all of his willpower to force his eyes away from the neckline of her dress and onto the paper in his hand.
“As you can see, the lodge has a pattern of low occupancy during the winter months,” she said.
He felt a keen sense of disappointment when she pulled back and reseated herself in her chair. “To counter that, I propose that we market the ranch as a site for small corporate meetings. We could easily offer team building programs.”
“Team what?”
“Outings that help management teams bond with each other. I contacted a management training company in Tulsa that conducts these programs, and one of their executives visited the ranch yesterday. He thinks the Lazy O is a perfect site, and he agreed to participate in some joint advertising programs with us.”
“But we don’t do any advertising.”
Josie smiled and pulled out another chart. “Which brings me to my next topic.”
She proceeded to methodically lay out all the reasons they needed to advertise, then launched into a carefully thought-out marketing plan. By the time she finished, his head was swimming with time lines, budgets and projected returns on investment.
It all sounded good—too good, he thought grimly. He knew it was irrational, but the idea of the lodge full to bursting with guests all-year-round filled him with cold dread instead of delight. And the thought of Josie being this smart and effective at her job made his stomach churn. He didn’t want to admire her, didn’t want to rely on her, didn’t want to need her in any way.
He knit his brow into a frown. “I can’t make a decision on all this today,” he said curtly. “I’ll need time to think it over.”
“We don’t have much time if we want to meet the deadlines for some of the prime publications. I’ll need a decision by the end of the week.”
Luke didn’t like being pushed, didn’t like being pressured, didn’t like being manipulated. As a matter of fact, he didn’t like anything about this entire situation. “You’ll get a decision when I’m good and ready to arrive at one.” He rose from his chair in a clear signal their meeting was over. “Is there anything else you need from me today? Because if you’re finished, I’ve got a stack of work I need to see to.”
He directed his attention back to the pile of papers in front of him, not bothering to escort her to the door as she left. She’d found her own way in, by golly, and she could find her own way out. He hadn’t asked her to come here, and he had better things to do than play nursemaid to her.
Scowling, he picked up the stack of invoices he’d been perusing when she’d interrupted. But he couldn’t get her off his mind. For the rest of the morning, he wondered why that hurt look in her eyes had made his chest tighten like a cinched saddle and why he felt lower than the bottom of Black Star’s hooves.
Chapter Nine
Josie opened the door of her apartment. “Luke!” she said, surprised.
She was framed in light as she stood in the doorway, and Luke thought she looked as dazzling as an angel atop a Christmas tree. She wasn’t
wearing anything special, just a loose gray sweat suit, but she had the same effect on Luke’s pulse rate now as she’d had in that red dress she’d worn to his house last week.
Had it only been a week? It felt like a lot longer.
He drank in the sight of her like a man dying of thirst, then abruptly realized he was staring. He shifted his hat to his other hand. “I know it’s late. I hope I’m not disturbing you.”
“No…not at all. I was just sewing and watching TV.” She opened the door wider. “Come on in.”
Luke stepped inside and gazed around in surprise. The small apartment looked completely different, but he couldn’t figure out why. The furniture was all the same. “What did you do to this place?”
She grinned. “Made some curtains and throw pillows, hung some pictures, brought in some plants.”
She’d really settled in, he thought, as if she were going to stay. The thought filled him with an odd hope, and the reaction alarmed him.
She would only be here long enough to land another job, he warned himself. If he had any sense, he’d be wishing she’d get the heck out of here as soon as possible and leave him in peace.
That was what he’d originally wanted—wasn’t it? He was no longer sure of anything he’d ever thought or felt where she was concerned. He frowned, wondering what the heck was happening to him.
He felt her eyes on him and forced a smile. “The place looks nice.”
“Thanks.”
A sewing machine on the dining table caught his eye. “Making more curtains?”
“No. It’s a…a…crafts project.” She darted over, gathered up the multicolored scraps of fabric stacked beside the machine and stuffed them into a plastic bag. “Excuse the mess. I wasn’t expecting company.”
She seemed oddly flustered. It was probably rude of him to just drop in like this, but he’d needed to talk to her, and he hadn’t wanted to say what he had to say over the phone. Luke hooked a thumb in his front pocket and decided to get down to the purpose of his visit. “I got the message you left on my answering machine that you needed to see me. I figure it’s about the advertising.” Luke swallowed hard. He was trying to eat some crow, and it wasn’t going down very easily. “I’m, uh, sorry it’s taken me a while to get back to you, but I’ve been really busy.”
Right, O’Dell, he mentally derided himself. Busy trying not to think about her. Busy trying to forgive himself for being a jerk to her at the house. Busy fighting off the urge to come see her. “Anyway, I dropped by to tell you I’ve thought it over and you can go ahead with your plans.”
“You like them?”
“Well, like might be too strong a word,” he hedged. “I’m not too keen on anything that has to do with the lodge. Let’s just say you made a valid case for it.”
“You won’t be sorry.”
He’d ended up sorry about nearly everything he’d said or done ever since she’d arrived at the ranch, he thought sardonically. Why should this be any different?
“Let’s just give it a try and see how it goes.”
Josie smiled and sat down on the sofa, patting a place beside her. “Thanks for the vote of confidence. But that isn’t why I called.”
He lowered himself beside her. “It isn’t?”
“No. I found something on the computer that you need to see.” Her voice held a quiet, somber note he’d never heard before, and the serious expression on her face alarmed him.
She picked up a thick stack of papers from the coffee table and held them out to him. “Luke, your father kept a journal. I discovered it this morning when I was going through the computer files.”
Luke’s heart thudded and stopped, then resumed beating at an erratic pace. “A journal? You mean like a diary?”
Josie nodded.
Luke stared at the papers as if they might bite. His arm felt heavy and stiff and seemed to move in slow motion as he reached out to take them from her.
He saw the sympathy in her eyes and wondered why it was there. Because she knew he was nervous about reading his father’s words, or because she already knew what he’d written?
“Have you read it?” he asked abruptly.
Josie hesitated, then nodded, her eyes apologetic. “I know I shouldn’t have. I started reading it before I knew what it was, and then, well…I just couldn’t stop. I’m sorry. It was an invasion of privacy, and—”
“I don’t care about that.” The content of the damned thing was what had his stomach in knots. What if it confirmed what he’d always feared—that his dad blamed him for the accident?
The room suddenly seemed too warm, the open collar of his shirt too tight. He gazed down at the papers, and the words seemed to swim on the page like letters in a bowl of alphabet soup. He couldn’t bear to read it. He swallowed again, his Adam’s apple jerking in his throat. “So what does it say?”
He clenched his jaw and braced himself, wondering wildly if he should tell her to never mind, that he really didn’t want to know. Maybe he should just take the blasted thing out and burn it, or bury it until he felt ready to deal with it. A hundred years or so should do the trick.
“Maybe you should take it home and read it when you’re alone,” she suggested gently.
He felt her hand on his, and raised his eyes from the papers to her face. Her gaze was warm, her eyes soft and comforting. Whatever the news, he could trust her to break it gently.
He grasped her hand and spoke in a voice like rough gravel. “I’d rather hear it from you.”
Her eyes took on added depth, like a sapphire turned in the light. She returned the pressure of his hand. “Your father loved you, Luke. He built the lodge because he didn’t want you to end up like him.”
“What?” The word came out cracked and low.
“He was afraid you were going to deal with your divorce from Cheryl like he dealt with your mother’s death—by isolating yourself and shutting everyone out.” Josie laid her other hand on top of his, sandwiching his between. “He knew he was in bad health, Luke. He built the lodge so you’d be forced to deal with people.”
“What do you mean?”
“He knew you’d be surrounded by people if you had to run a lodge,” she repeated. “He was worried that you’d turn into too much of a loner if you only worked the ranch.”
Luke stared in silence, trying to take it in. “That old son of a gun,” he finally murmured. His mind seized on another thing she’d just said. “He knew he was going to die?”
“He knew his heart was bad.”
Luke leaned back on the pillows, trying to absorb it all.
“He blamed himself for your mother’s death, Luke,” Josie continued softly. “He thought he should have gone with you that day, that he should have been driving the car. His feelings of guilt and grief paralyzed him. The distance between the two of you just kept getting wider and wider, and by the time he pulled himself together enough to realize what was happening, the distance was so great, he didn’t know how to close it.” Josie’s hand tightened on his. “But he loved you, Luke. He built the lodge because he loved you.”
His father had loved him. He hadn’t blamed him for his mother’s death.
Luke sat perfectly still and stared at Josie, hearing her words, but not yet emotionally comprehending them. It didn’t seem real. The only thing he was sure was real were her light blue eyes, filled with warmth and concern and compassion.
He finally lowered his gaze to the pages she’d printed from the computer and started reading. Josie sat close beside him, reading along with him, occasionally pointing out something she’d mentioned.
Thirty minutes later he set down the last page. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he muttered.
He hadn’t been rejected, he hadn’t been blamed. He’d only been a victim of his father’s grief and depression. His chest was a tight jumble of emotion. Sorrow for his father’s pain and loneliness, remorse that he hadn’t understood, regret that they’d been unable to connect and comfort each other—and overridin
g it all, a deep, vast sense of relief and freedom. A millstone he’d unfairly carried for twenty years had been dropped from around his neck.
“Are you okay?” Josie asked softly.
Her eyes were the sweet, welcome blue of the sky after a storm, and his heart fluttered at the sight like a caged bird longing to be set free. He nodded, not yet trusting himself to speak, and wondered how much of the emotion churning in him was sadness, how much was relief and how much was gratitude.
“This is all going to take some getting used to,” he finally managed to say. “It puts a lot of things in a new light.”
And one of those things was how he felt about her, he realized. He’d wanted her—no, he’d needed her—with him when he learned the truth about his father’s feelings for him. When she’d held his hand, he’d felt warmed and comforted and strengthened. When she’d looked in his eyes, he’d felt cared about. When she was beside him, he felt less alone than he’d felt in years. She made him feel connected and close, and he ached to get still closer.
No, a voice in his head warned him. Jeez’em Pete and Gladys, she was already as close as his own skin. She’d wedged her way into nooks and crannies of his being that no one else had touched. He’d never intended to let anyone get this close again. People got close, then they left. He never wanted to risk getting hurt that way again.
He glanced at her and felt his heart turn over, his resolve flattening out like one of Consuela’s tortillas. He wanted to pull her into his arms, and the warm, inviting light in her eyes told him she wanted the same thing. How much harm could there be in a simple hug?
A lot. He wasn’t thinking clearly. His mind was muddled with all this new information. He didn’t need to hug her. He needed to leave. He forced himself to his feet and headed for the door. She rose with him.
He lifted the stack of papers. “Thanks for giving this to me.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Well, I owe you.”
“I’ll try to think of a way to make you pay,” she said lightly.