by Diana Palmer
He opened the screen door and she started through it, only to be encased by his long arm as it shot out in front of her, blocking her way.
“I loved it,” he said gruffly. “But we have to go slow. I don’t do one-night stands any more than you do.”
“Oh.” She seemed to have developed a one-syllable vocabulary in the time she’d known him. She kept her eyes on his arm, instead of his face.
He tilted her face up to his. “If I wanted to give you the brush-off, I’d come right out and say so,” he remarked. He bent and brushed his mouth gently over hers. “You don’t gulp down an exotic dessert,” he whispered. “You take your time and savor it, draw it out, make it last.” He nibbled her lower lip gently before he lifted his head. “Suppose I come up to Houston after you get through with summer camp? We could go to the theater and the ballet, even a rodeo if you like. I’m pretty flexible in my entertainment, I like everything.”
“So do I,” she said, sounding breathless. “I love opera.”
“Another plus,” he mused, grinning. “We’ll fly up to New York with Tom and Elysia one day and go to the Met.”
“I’ve only been there once,” she told him. “I loved it.”
“It’s unforgettable,” he agreed. “The settings and special effects are every bit as enjoyable as the opera itself.”
She shyly traced a pattern on his shirt. “I’d like to go out with you.”
“Then it’s a date.” He glanced past her at the boys in the distance, standing in a group as if they were being lectured. Probably they were, he thought, because Kells was a quick study and he’d learned a lot in the past few days. “It wouldn’t be very easy to go out even to a movie with that bunch in tow,” he added with a chuckle. “They’d hog the popcorn.”
“I suppose they would.” She touched his arm where the muscle was thickest and enjoyed its strength. She liked the way it felt to be close to him. “You’ve been good to them, especially to Kells.”
“He’s had a raw deal. I guess they all have, but it shows more on him. Do you know, the guys in the bunkhouse took to him right away. One of them told me that it was flattering to have a teenager ask for information instead of trying to give it. He made them feel important by asking them things.” He pursed his lips. “I wonder if he realizes what a gift he has for making people like him? Even Cy Parks, who hates just about everybody.”
“He’s learning that he has traits he can exploit, I think. But I don’t know that he would have arrived at this point so soon if you hadn’t intervened. Thank you.”
He shrugged off her gratitude. “Like I said, I’ll benefit from all his enthusiasm. He really loves cattle.”
She searched his lean face. “So do you, I think.”
He grinned. “There was never anything I wanted to be more than a cowboy when I was a kid. One of our wranglers had been a rodeo star. I used to sit and listen to him by the hour.”
“We had one of those, too, on my brother’s ranch,” she replied. “Ward and I liked him a lot, until he had an affair with our mother.”
He frowned. “What?”
She sighed. “You might as well know. Our mother was very promiscuous. Anything in pants would do. She finally ran off with one of her conquests and we had to stay and live down her reputation. Ravine is about the size of Jacobsville, so you can imagine the gossip. It was harder on Ward than on me.”
“There are a lot of miserable kids in the world,” he remarked.
“I noticed.”
“Is that why you don’t spend much time at your brother’s ranch?”
She chuckled. “No. It’s because of his house-keeper—excuse me, now his aunt-in-law. Lillian is a matchmaker. She brought her niece Marianne out to Texas from Georgia on some gosh-awful pretext and Ward fell in love with her. He didn’t want to, so things got bad before he admitted he couldn’t live without her. She’s changed him. He isn’t the same hard-hearted, ruthless man he used to be since he married Marianne. So Lillian had that great success and now she’s got her eye on me.” She smiled. “I don’t like her choice of suitors, so I keep well clear of the ranch.”
“What sort does she toss your way?”
“Big, husky mechanics and any delivery boy who comes within half a mile of the house.”
His eyebrows arched. “You’re not that desperate.”
“Thank you,” she replied. “How about writing and telling her so?”
He grinned. “Give me time. I’ll take care of that problem for you, in the most natural sort of way.”
She wondered what he meant, but she wasn’t confident enough to ask. She smiled and went past him out the door.
In the days that followed, Luke was almost a constant visitor to the camp. Sometimes he brought Kells, sometimes he came alone. He taught the boys how to make a fire from scratch, how to trap game, how to live off the land.
“They say these are outdated skills,” he told the group after he’d started a small fire. “But what if the oil suddenly gives out and everything electronic or electrical goes dead one day? Frozen food would spoil. Computers wouldn’t work. Since most telephone exchanges are computerized, communications would be out. Cars wouldn’t go far, houses wouldn’t have heat, air-conditioning wouldn’t work. If all the old skills of survival are lost, one day the only humans who live may be the ones who can live off the land—assuming there’s any land left after the developers get through.”
The Native American boy, Juanito, touched a tiny bunch of twigs that Luke had bunched to use on the tiny fire. “My great-uncle says the same thing,” he volunteered. “But he can trap game and find water in places where it usually isn’t. He knows which cactus plants can give water or be eaten, and he knows how to make smokeless fires. His grandfather rode with Geronimo.”
The other boys were impressed. “But even if you can do those things, what good are they in the city?” one of the other boys asked. “What are you going to trap in Houston?”
“Girls,” one of the older boys said with a wicked grin.
“He’s got a point,” Luke said, nodding toward the boy who’d asked about country skills in the city. “People who live in cities are going to be the hardest hit if we ever have a major energy crisis. Look what happened during the last big power outage in the west.”
“They had a movie about that. It was scary,” another boy said.
“Well, we’ve got lots of dead dinosaurs lying around yet to be discovered, so I don’t think it’s going to be an immediate problem,” Belinda mused.
That led to the obvious question of what did dead dinosaurs have to do with energy, and for several minutes she traced the evolution of petroleum products for the boys while Luke watched and listened attentively.
Later, when the boys were in for the night and he was ready to go back to his ranch, he paused with her in the shadows, beside the pickup truck.
“You make a good lecturer,” he commented.
“Thanks,” she said, surprised. “Some would say I have a big mouth and can’t keep it shut.”
He took her hand and drew it to his chest. “I like the way you treat the boys,” he said quietly. “You never talk down to them or make them feel stupid when they ask questions.”
“I try not to,” she agreed. “I’ve had it done to me in school, and I didn’t like it.”
“Neither did I.” He smoothed his thumb over her short, neat fingernails. “You have nice hands.”
“So do you.” She liked the strength of them, the way her heart jumped when they touched her own hands. She looked up at him through the darkness, trying to see his face in the dim light from the cabin behind her.
He chuckled. “I was just thinking how strange life is,” he told her. “I was hopping mad when I found out some lunatic was going to open a summer camp for delinquent boys right on my boundary line.”
“I remember,” she chuckled.
“It was a surprising day all around, especially that Kells.” He shook his head. “What a treasure he turn
ed out to be. And your guy Juanito, whose grandfather rode with Geronimo. These boys are interesting, and they aren’t at all what I pictured them as.”
“These are unique,” she said. “But for every success, I’ve had three failures,” she added sadly. “When I started working in the public defender’s office, I had the idea that all these boys were in trouble because of their home lives. It was a mistake. Any number of them had loving parents and an extended family that really cared about them, but they could never see anything criminal about stealing and lying and hurting people. One of my charges actually wrestled me down in my office and tried to rape me.”
She felt him stiffen. “What did you do?”
“Oh, I’m an old hand at self-defense,” she said, making light of the terror she’d felt. “I got an opening and almost made a eunuch of him. It taught me a lesson. Some of the juveniles can’t be turned around, no matter how dedicated you are to saving them. There’s always going to be a percentage who feel comfortable with making a living outside the law.”
“I don’t like the idea that you might be attacked,” he said.
She smiled. “I’m glad. But I’m not as naïve as I was. I never have closed-door sessions with any of my clients anymore. I have a good secretary and she’s always there when I need her.” She sighed. “But there are times when I feel so useless. Like with Kells in the chief of police’s office. I really don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t been able to get through to Mr. Parks.”
“Cy’s not so bad,” he said. “You just have to stand up to him. He’s the sort of man who’ll be hell on anybody who’s afraid of him.”
“You weren’t.”
He shrugged. “I grew up swinging,” he mused. “I learned early that fear is the worst enemy. Once I got past that, I wasn’t afraid of much.”
“I noticed.” She leaned close and laid her cheek against his chest, feeling his arms come around her with a sense of wonder. She closed her eyes and let him hold her, drinking in the sounds of the night and the warm, safe strength of his body. “I only have a week left here.”
She felt him stiffen. His hands stilled on her back. “A week?”
“Yes. I have cases waiting and my vacation’s almost over.”
“I didn’t realize it was that close.”
Her eyes opened and she saw the faint light of the horizon far away. Crickets were chirping madly in the night. “I’ve been enjoying this so much that I didn’t want to spoil it,” she confessed.
His arms tightened around her. “So have I. But I’ve already told you that Houston isn’t that far away.”
“Of course it isn’t.”
They both knew it wasn’t quite true. It was a great distance, and Luke couldn’t leave his ranch to run itself. A long-distance romance was going to be difficult, even though they both knew it was what they were leading up to.
“I don’t suppose you might like to come and work in Jacobsville?” he asked.
She hesitated. “That would be nice,” she said. She wondered why the thought made her so uncomfortable. He was asking for more than a move on her part, and it frightened her. He was thinking about a future that included both of them, but all she could think about was the disaster of her parents’ marriage. Ward had made it work with his Marianne, but Belinda had been on her own for a long time. She wasn’t ready to think about spending her life with anyone.
“We have a juvenile court system here,” he continued. “It’s on a circuit, and we may not have the caseload you do in Houston, but you’d stay busy. We’ve got local kids who could use a good attorney.”
“There are kids everywhere like that,” she said tightly. “But Houston is home to me now. It’s where my job is. I wouldn’t feel comfortable starting all over again in a new town, especially a small town.”
He was still for a moment and then he eased her away and stepped back. “The job is that important to you, is it?”
She felt a coolness in him that hadn’t been there before. But she wasn’t backing down now. She was fighting for her independence. “Well…yes, it is. I feel that I’m beginning to do some good.”
“Is your job more important than marriage would be?”
She wouldn’t think that far ahead. “I haven’t thought much about marriage. Or if I have, it’s a long way in the future. I don’t want to be tied down just yet.”
He studied her with pursed lips and a calculating stare. “Then you might be in the market for an affair.”
It was like a stone between the eyes. She couldn’t even find the words to express what she was feeling.
“No, I…I don’t want an affair,” she stammered. “I don’t have time for that sort of thing. I have a caseload that’s more than enough for three people, but there’s only me to do it.”
He let go of her completely and stood away, leaning against the hood of the truck to study her. “One thing I learned early is that jobs don’t matter as much as people,” he said coolly. “I’ve never put work before my family.”
“Ward always did,” she replied.
“You’re not your brother. And you said he’d changed since his marriage.”
“Yes, but I grew up learning that you gave everything in you to whatever job you were doing. My father hammered the work ethic into both of us from childhood.”
“You don’t think you could change?”
She frowned. The conversation was going far out of bounds. She wasn’t sure what she believed anymore. She was drawn to Luke, but he was talking as if he wanted her to give up her job and just stay at home all the time. She knew she could never do that. Her work was fulfilling, important, almost sacred. She had a mission in life that she couldn’t sacrifice for dirty dishes and housework.
“I’m not cut out to be a happy homemaker,” she said on a hollow laugh.
“No pots and pans and dirty diapers for you, right?”
She wasn’t sure about that, but he was being sarcastic. “Maybe so,” she said after a minute. “I’m doing an important job, and it isn’t one that everybody can do. I enjoy my work. I have to feel that I’m contributing something to the world.”
He turned his head and stared toward the horizon without speaking. He hadn’t counted on this. He was falling in love, and he’d thought she was, too. But she obviously wasn’t the marrying sort of woman, and she didn’t want an affair. That left nothing but friendship, and that wouldn’t be enough for him.
“I’ve never been much on glorious causes,” he said finally. “I raise cattle. It’s what I enjoy, and it makes a good living for me. But I always thought that it would come naturally to me to be a family man. I want kids. I’d be good to them, and they’d have all the things I didn’t have when I was growing up, like loving parents and security.” He shrugged. “I suppose it’s an old-fashioned ideal in this modern world, but it’s still what I want most.” He stared off into space, his chin lifted, the air cooling his face. He sighed and turned and looked down at her. “Well, I’ve enjoyed having you and the boys around, despite our bad beginning,” he said and actually smiled. “And if you come back next summer, you can bring your brood over again and I’ll show them what ranching is all about.”
He was pleasant and friendly and all at once she felt a door closing. He was going to be her friend, her good neighbor in the summer, and not one thing more. She knew without a word being spoken that there would be no trip to the opera, no weekend visits to Houston. She knew it as certainly as if he’d spoken aloud.
“I’ll remember,” she replied in a subdued tone. “Thank you.”
He shrugged. “What are friends for?” he mused. “Well, I’d better be going. Keep an eye on Kells for me when you get home, will you? He’s a fine young man. I’d hate for him to backslide.”
“I’ll make sure he doesn’t,” she promised.
He nodded. “So long, then.”
“So long.”
She watched him climb into the cab of the truck, crank it and drive off with a careless wave. I
t was more than a door closing. It was the end of something that would have been sweet and fulfilling, and she’d smashed it with a few cold words.
She folded her arms around her chest and wondered why she’d felt compelled to say things that she didn’t really even believe. She was afraid, she decided. Afraid to take a chance so risky, to get married and end up as her poor father and mother had. She wasn’t the sort to be unfaithful and she didn’t think Luke was, either, but she’d seen a bad marriage firsthand and she was frightened.
Her job was safe, comfortable, secure. She knew where it would take her, she knew the path well. Marriage was a trek through a maze, with false turns and sudden stops and danger all around. She barely knew Luke. What if the man she saw on the surface wasn’t the real man at all?
She turned around and went back inside. It was useless to speculate. She felt empty and alone, but she knew it was for the best. She was too uncertain to take that final step with Luke. He deserved someone who knew what they wanted.
Chapter Five
Belinda stuck to her guns about being independent, but if she expected Luke to try to change her mind, she was disappointed. He came by frequently to talk to the boys, and he was making inroads into teaching Kells cowboying. He brought the youth over to see Belinda, and he was as open and friendly as he had been at the beginning. But he wasn’t approachable.
“I guess you’re packing already,” he remarked a few days before her vacation ended as he stood leaning back against one of the support posts on the cabin’s front porch. “Eager to get going?”
“Not terribly,” she said carefully. “It’s been educational and a lot of fun. But I’ve got work to catch up. Vacations can’t last forever.”
“They wouldn’t be much fun if they did,” he remarked. His blue eyes slid over her slender body in jeans and a knit shirt. “How old are you?” he asked abruptly.
She blinked, surprised. “I’m twenty-seven,” she said.
His eyes narrowed. “The older you get, the harder it’s going to be to give up your independence. You’ll draw into a shell and never come back out.”