The Man from Shadow Valley

by Regan Forest

  Cody, ill-prepared for discovering such high style after the little white apron and the Pebble Princess label, was thunderstruck.

  “You look stunning,” he said softly, reaching for her hand.

  Exactly as he had done in her dream. And she accepted it with some hesitation, just like before.

  “Our table is ready.”

  The windows of the Silver Nugget Hotel restaurant were located just under the ceiling, so the lighting was soft. Candles flickered on the tables. The chandeliers were not lighted.

  Cody held the chair for her, like men did in the movies. It was fantasy enough the way he had appeared in her life, but all this...

  He even asked if she had a preference of wine, and when she shook her head dazedly, he ordered a bottle by name, and tasted it before the waiter filled her glass with pale gold bubbles.

  He raised his goblet and said simply, “Cheers.”

  “Cheers.” Ellen began to relax. It seemed so natural being in this unfamiliar setting, and natural being here with him. She felt more at ease in the Silver Nugget Hotel than she ever had in the truck stop. No cooking smells or gruff voices or truck engines starting. No radio music here; no music at all.

  They ordered Caesar salads and shrimp prepared in wine sauce, after which Cody gulped his wine and sat back to study the beautiful woman seated across from him. Her blue eyes were sparkling in the candle flickers. All those years in Denver, he had never met anyone who affected him like this woman did. Who would ever have thought in Shadow Valley...

  “Tell me about your school, then,” he coaxed.

  “I’m studying to be a fashion designer. By correspondence. I’m finishing my eighth and last class, actually, which consists mainly of preparing my portfolio. You know, a collection of my designs. The suit I’m wearing is one of them.”

  Cody sat forward. “You’re kidding! You designed this? Who made it?”

  “I did, of course. I’ve been making my clothes since I was twelve.”

  “I’ll be damned. This is real talent, Ellen.”

  “Thanks.” She grinned, flattered.

  “A hotshot fashion designer right here in Shadow Valley.”

  She laughed. “That’s almost a contradiction in terms. I won’t be staying here. The jobs are in New York and Paris. I’ll start with New York.” When he looked at her curiously, she added, “Don’t laugh. I have big dreams.”

  This was not good news for him, although he had wondered since yesterday what a girl like Ellen Montrose was doing with losers who still occupied the old mine-workers’ houses.

  “What’s keeping you in Shadow Valley, then?” he asked.

  “My grandfather. I’m the only one he has. He and my grandmother raised me after my father was killed in the mine and my mother had a breakdown and left. So I’ll be here for him for as long as he lives.” She took several sips from her glass. “Which might not be very long. He’s not well at all. Sometimes I see him staring up at the mountains with such a faraway look in his eyes and I know he’s thinking of my grandmother and my father and missing them terribly. It’s hard to get old.”

  Cody nodded. “How does your grandfather feel about your big plans?”

  “He approves totally. I won’t allow him to feel guilty for holding me here, though. I tell him I’m not ready, that I have to complete my studies. He doesn’t know I’ll be finished in only a few weeks.” She took another swallow, amazed at how good the wine tasted, and how it relaxed her.

  He refilled her empty glass, and his own.

  She said, “Why are we talking only about me? As I recall, you promised to tell me why you bought the radio station.”

  “It was bankrupt. Gone under. And there didn’t seem to be any other interested buyers. Which, boiled down, meant I could afford it. I had worked for a station in Denver, worked my way up to manager, so I learned every aspect of the business. I’ve got ideas for this little old station that will put Shadow Valley on the map. I mean to pump some life into this place. Of course, first I have to wake it up before I can do any jump-starting.”

  “The new programming.”

  “It’s barely started. I need a little time to win over the city fathers. I thought they might fight me a little, but so far, they’re with me. A town like this needs positive input to keep it going.”

  She touched the scarf at her neck, luxuriating in the feel of the silk, and asked, “But why Shadow Valley? When there are so many other towns you could have gone to.”

  “You don’t like this town.”

  “No.”

  He shrugged, but the shrug was an act because he understood perfectly why she would hate it. He had felt the same, once. It wasn’t a subject she would want to discuss, and neither did he. “The town does have possibilities. And, like I said, I could afford the station. The last manager rode the business into the ground. He didn’t know the ropes of broadcasting. I do.”

  “He didn’t have a voice like yours, either,” she said with a chuckle, her head so light with wine, it had lost much of the faculty of censorship.

  “That sounds like a compliment, pretty lady.”

  “No question about it. You don’t sound like Shadow Valley. I’d never have imagined it was a local voice. But then, technically, it isn’t.”

  Was this the opening he had been looking for? He wanted to tell her that his voice—along with the rest of him—was, technically, local. But she was so relaxed with the wine and obviously enjoying herself. It wasn’t the time to bring up the subject of Pebble Street; not here. Ellen had, for the hour at least, escaped, and he had no right to send her emotions reeling back there.

  So, instead, he ordered another bottle of wine.

  “Really, I shouldn’t,” she protested mildly, but by this time the main course had come, and they decided wine was needed to enjoy it properly.

  She asked him about Denver.

  “I started out as a guitarist in a small band,” Cody said. “We played minor clubs here and there, and I began working as a deejay for parties and clubs. I was nineteen when I was hired by a radio station to do an early-morning show with another guy, and when the band moved on, I stayed and made it a point to learn everything I could about the business. In six years I was assistant manager.”

  “How old are you now?”

  “Twenty-eight.”

  “You could pass for over thirty.”

  He grinned. “I have done, often enough.”

  She grinned back at him. “And I could pass for twenty-one.”

  This remark took away his breath as if he’d been punched. “Good God, don’t tell me you’re not twenty-one!”

  “I’m not twenty-one. I’m twenty-four.”

  “Damn it, don’t scare me like that.”

  “What’s so scary about it?”

  Cody laughed. “Never mind.”

  She pushed her plate aside although not much was eaten, and leaned forward, fingering the base of her wine goblet. “I have a confession to make, Mr. Cody Laird....” Hesitating thoughtfully, she twisted the goblet faster. “I’ve never known anybody named Cody before, except Buffalo Bill, and that doesn’t count because it was his surname. And it wouldn’t count anyway, because I didn’t know Buffalo Bill Cody personally.”

  He was watching the light dancing in her eyes and the way her lips moved when she spoke. “Is that your confession? That you don’t know anybody else named Cody?”

  “No! Of course not.” She sipped from the glass and set it down. “My confession is that I had a dream about you. I wasn’t going to tell you, but the wine impedes my...my restraint.”

  He made himself resist the urge to reach for her hands across the table, although it was becoming more difficult by the minute not to touch her. Cody had begun imagining how her eyes would look in ripples of sunlight or drenched with morning dew. Or how her hair would feel between his fingers. Or how her lips would taste. He asked, “Why didn’t you want to tell me?”

  “About my dream? Well, because it was very
odd.”

  This time she wasn’t teasing. The mention of the dream brought to her eyes that same expression of confusion he had seen in the Blue Spruce. “Tell me the dream,” he said gently.

  Ellen stared at him for an uncomfortable time, as if she were wrestling with control and censoring her response. Finally, she began, “You must have seen the mansion on the hill north of town....”

  “The Whitfield mansion. Sure. It was built by the first owner of the Shadow Valley mine.”

  “It’s empty. For sale.”

  “I saw the sign. Why?”

  “I dreamed about the mansion. You were in it.”

  “In the mansion?”

  “Uh-huh. It was you, all right.”

  “What was I doing there?”

  “I have no idea.”

  He could no longer control the urge, and reached across the table to close his hand over hers. The second he touched her, he witnessed a change in Ellen. She twitched involuntarily; her hand quivered. His natural response was to press harder, protectively, reassuringly, and when he did, she calmed. What had frightened her, though, when he first touched her?

  He asked, “Were you there? At the mansion?”

  She shook herself back to the glossy reality of the moment, trying to ignore the fact that his touch felt exactly in real life as it had in her dream. “We both were there,” she said dazedly. “And someone else. A ghost, I think.”

  Fascinated and flattered, Cody decided he must have made more of an impression on her that first night he happened into the café than he realized. He smiled to put her at ease. “What happened?”

  Ellen was gazing abstractedly at his hand clasped over hers. “Nothing,” she replied without moving, wondering if he could detect the lie. “You disappeared and then I woke up.”

  “Umm. Why the mansion, do you think? Were you ever in it?”

  “No, but as a child I often imagined what it would be like inside. I used to tell myself I’d live in a mansion someday.”

  “Maybe you will.” He felt warmth pulsing into her hands, where moments before they had been cool. “If that’s what you want.”

  “It is. What’s the point of dreaming small when the world is so big?”

  “I know about dreams, myself,” he volunteered.

  She leaned closer. “Real dreams or sleep dreams?”

  Her nearness was causing uncomfortable tugs through his body. The closeness was making him crazy. But he wasn’t ready yet to release her hand because a disturbing and relentless voice somewhere in his head was warning him not to let go. The voice was like a wisp of memory reminding him that if he released her hand, she would disappear—maybe forever.

  “I don’t dream in my sleep, Ellen. I wish I did, because I’d like nothing better than to fall asleep and dream about you.”

  She blushed. “Everyone dreams.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Of course, you do. Maybe you just don’t recall your dreams.”

  Cody shook his head, deep in thought. “I used to dream when I was a kid. I had a recurring nightmare that scared me green, so my mother taught me how to forget my dreams and I haven’t remembered any since.”

  “Really? What was the nightmare?”

  He looked at her blankly. “I forgot it.”

  “Well, there, you see. It’s not that you don’t dream, you just are unaware.”

  “Same thing, as far as I’m concerned.”

  Draining her glass, Ellen said, “My dreams have a very weird quality. Time-wise.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I can’t explain it. And I’d better not try. My tongue is somewhat out of control, thanks to this lovely tasting wine.”

  “Would you like coffee?”

  Ellen looked about the room, aware that people were watching them, whispering about them. Nothing went unnoticed in Shadow Valley and no one would be watched more fervently than the town’s handsome new bachelor. The eligible ladies of repute, of which the mayor’s daughter was one, were bound to see to it that Mr. Laird was soon—tomorrow-soon—informed as to the quality of the company he was keeping. So she’d better enjoy this lunch. What brand of social quality did the guy expect, though, when he befriended a waitress at a truck stop?

  None of it mattered, anyway. A lunch was all she had promised. “If you don’t mind, I think fresh air would do me more good than coffee right now.”

  This suggestion pleased him. He signaled for the waiter. “Let’s take a walk, then. The weather’s perfect.”

  When he reluctantly lifted his hand from hers, Ellen experienced the same dismal sensation of emptiness that had harrowed her after last night’s dream. The sudden sensation of loneliness was a wallop to everything she had ever known as security. It was too intense for understanding, too painful for her well-being. This guy wasn’t good for her! He brought only confusion to her life. Her own emotions, for God’s sake, had gone spiraling way out of control.

  Her attractive, distractive companion left some bills on the small tray, rose, and came around the table, where he offered her his arm.

  He’s not sure how steady I’ll be on my feet, Ellen thought with a private giggle. Bless his sweet, attentive heart. In actuality, her composure was steadfast, dignity unwavering. Touching him, like before, gave her an anchor and buoyancy at the same time.

  At the bottom of the hotel steps Cody was met by a wriggling canine, who commanded an elaborate greeting and got it.

  Ellen joined Cody in the exuberant welcome. “Your dog, obviously.”

  “Just a friend.”

  The yellow eyes were appraising her brazenly. She asked, “What’s his name?”

  “I call him Buster.”

  “Hmm. I knew a Buster when I was a kid. He looked rather similar to this guy.”

  Sure, she would have known him, Cody thought. Old Buster was friendly with all the kids. So Ellen remembered his dog and not him. And he didn’t remember her. It was the age difference, of course; five years between kids was a profound gap. An older one was too occupied with being the tough guy to acknowledge the bothersome younger children.

  Under the cloudless blue sky, Buster jogged along beside them, down the sidewalk, to the park in the town center. An aroma of late-blooming lilacs mingled with fresh mountain pine. The grass was soft and springy under their feet. They walked past the swings and slide to the shady slope above the round white bandstand.

  She asked, “Does your friend live with you?”

  “He seems to think so. From the way he latched on to me, I can only assume he doesn’t belong to anybody.”

  She mused, “Dogs know.”

  “Know what?”

  “About people. Their instincts serve them much better than ours do. If we even have any.” She leaned against the trunk of a quaking aspen and gazed up at the play of spangled sunlight through the leaves. “My head feels clearer. I don’t know why I drank so much wine.”

  “Hell, because you just wanted to. What’s wrong with that?”

  “It makes me giddy. I hate feeling out of control. Do you feel it, too?”

  “Sure,” he lied. He had been feeling out of control, all right, but not from the wine. He was used to wine, but not to what had been going on in his head and his body for the past hour.

  She asked, “Don’t you have to go to work?”

  “Pretty soon. What about you?”

  “My shift starts at two.”

  He looked at his watch. One-twenty. “Can I walk you home?” He asked knowing she would decline.

  “No,” she answered quickly. “Don’t bother. I...want to make a couple of stops on the way, and I’m sure you’re facing a busy afternoon.”

  “When can we do this again?”

  Ellen’s heart sank. She forced herself to look at him. “The bargain was for one lunch, Cody.”

  “This was just for openers, wasn’t it?”

  “I can’t...” Her gaze lowered to the ground. “I can’t see you again.”

  �
��Will you explain that?” He frowned. “I haven’t seen any signs of revulsion on your part. In fact, it’s the opposite.”

  Tears formed in her eyes the instant she looked back at him. “It’s not you, it’s me. It’s because I’m going to leave—”

  “You haven’t left yet.”

  Her words were so weighted with sadness, she could scarcely get them out. Probably they wouldn’t make sense to anyone but her. But he deserved honesty; or at least, as much honesty as she dared. It was impossible to tell him how terrified she was of her own emotions. Every movement of his body, every syllable from his mouth assailed her senses with forbidden promises. His deep, velvet voice was a lullaby wrapping her in unspoken caresses. His hypnotic eyes absorbed the colors of hers, mysteriously taking possession of them. And what was his heart doing? Wilfully timing its beats in synchronization with her own? Or was it the other way around?

  “How can I explain?” she murmured. “My life has only one purpose—to find my way to a better place. I have no ties here, other than my grandfather, so when he’s gone I will turn my back on Shadow Valley and never look back. I’m frightened of anything that threatens to make leaving more difficult.”

  His words came gently. “You’re frightened of having a friend?”

  “Not a friend. You.”

  He knew exactly what she meant; there was nothing to gain by pretending otherwise. Ellen admitted to keeping clear of any matters of the heart; she didn’t understand what was happening to her and couldn’t deal with it—didn’t want to. He said, “So nothing can interfere with your plans.”

  “Nothing. Cody, here my life is...is wrong. I don’t belong here. I’ve never belonged here.” She wiped at a tear on her cheek. Why did the plea for freedom hurt so much? “Oh, I couldn’t expect anyone to really understand....”

  But he did understand. He knew the sound of taunts and ridicule, the echoes of those hateful names. White trash. Even now, the words hurt, and filled him with rage. People he saw now on the streets—people he went to school with—didn’t recognize him because the kids of Pebble Street had no proper names and no faces. He was out of the role now. He was somebody with an investment the town needed and welcomed. The stigma of their birthplace would have taken an even heavier toll on a girl who couldn’t use her fists to retaliate. Cody felt her pain all the way into his soul. Oh, yes, he understood.