by Beverly Bird
“Ask Adam what?” Kim cried, but her heart was thundering.
“For his help. For money.”
“I’m not asking him for money!”
“I’d help you out, but I don’t have all that much to give you.”
“He doesn’t, either. You said so.”
“He has more than I do.”
“Stop it! This is crazy!”
“No, it’s not.”
He left the room. She stared after him. He wouldn’t do it. But she heard his footsteps on the stairs.
“Joe!”
He didn’t answer. She ran after him. She caught up with him in front of Dinah’s door. She grabbed his arm as he raised a hand to knock.
“Don’t do this because of me,” she gasped.
He turned back to look at her. He held her eyes for a long time. “Am I?”
Dinah’s door opened at the sound of their voices, and she and Gracie popped out. Then Susannah opened the one behind them. Finally Matt stuck his nose out into the hall from his own room, as well.
“What’s going on?” Dinah asked.
“Nothing,” Kim snapped.
“I’m crossing bridges,” Joe said. “I’m trying to put the pain behind me.”
Dinah frowned, clearly not understanding.
Kim tried to swallow and failed. It would shame her into asking Adam for help. Which, she thought angrily, was just what he intended. But she didn’t believe that was all it was. She didn’t believe it in her heart.
Joe took a step into Dinah’s room.
“Mom?” Susannah asked quietly. “I don’t understand.”
“It’s time to start fresh,” Joe said, “to start over.” Then he looked at Kim again. “None of this is Hannah’s fault, Kimberley. And none of your trouble was Jacob’s and Adam’s. You’re only breaking their hearts by not reaching out.”
Kim’s eyes darted to her, and when she looked back, Joe was gone. She flew into Dinah’s room after him. He was at the cradle.
“Didn’t you hear me?” she asked.
“I heard you.” He looked up at her and met her eyes. “It’s time, Kimberley. Things are always easier when you do them together.”
“I don’t want to be together! How many times do I have to tell you that?”
“You stopped being alone on Friday. Apparently, you’re too stubborn to open your eyes to that.”
“You can’t offer that infant your love just to make me see things your way,” she whispered fiercely. “You can’t do that, then snatch it back from her!”
“No. If I didn’t love her, then that would be cruel,” he agreed. “But I do, and I have to start making all this up to her somewhere. And my point is valid, Kimberley. I’ve never set foot in California. I don’t know how it’s done there. But where I come from, something like Friday changes all the rules. It means you’ve got someone to wade through things with you.”
“I only...I don’t generally do that...I mean, I’m not the world’s utmost authority on the subject.” Her words were tumbled, tangled, tortured. Her face flamed.
“I’m not that ignorant,” Joe said slowly.
She couldn’t believe they were talking about this with Dinah and Gracie, Susannah and Matt all standing there staring. She looked at them crazily and Joe read her expression.
“Clear out, kids,” he said levelly.
“But—” Dinah began.
“This is private.”
The girl’s expression became hopeful and confused and angry all at once. But one by one, the children all wandered off.
“I wasn’t the first,” Joe said carefully when they were gone. “Are you trying to tell me I was?”
Kim shook her head helplessly. “No. Of course not. It’s just...I don’t take it as lightly as you seem to think. Once,” Kim whispered, “there was someone. Once I got to California. I can’t...I can’t give anything,” she said for what seemed to her like the thousandth time. She couldn’t imagine why he wouldn’t hear her. “I stopped trying. I couldn’t even...you know, before.”
His eyes narrowed. “You couldn’t what?”
“The, uh, grand finale, was a first for me.”
He stared at her as he understood. And in that moment, he understood a lot. Now he knew what she meant by giving.
His whole face changed. Neither of them realized he had picked up the crying baby, that he was holding Hannah against his shoulder.
“Don’t look at me like that!” she cried.
“Like what?”
“Like you’re going to beat your hands against your chest and grunt in triumph.”
“I might.”
He grinned. Like a fool, she thought. From ear to ear. “You’re crazy,” she whispered.
“Feels good, though. It’s a great improvement.”
She pivoted unsteadily to watch him leave the room. After a moment, she went after him. He was standing in the living room, in front of the sofa. He was still holding Hannah, and she thought he had only just realized it. Amazement and sorrow were in his eyes. She went to him and put her arms around both of them.
“So,” he said. His voice was strained. “Do we have a deal? Are you going to ask Adam?”
Kim nodded, unable to form the words. He’d left her no choice.
They went to Adam’s shop in the morning. They took the horse and buggy because the car was nearly out of gas. Again. Joe drove the animal in silence, lost in thought.
He had tortured himself all night over what he had done to her. What he had done to himself. He wasn’t thinking about Hannah now. He was considering that if he had allowed that apartment to slip away from her through her own obstinacy, then it wouldn’t be as easy for her to leave the settlement once this was all over. Maybe, like her brother Adam, she would even stay.
And, he admitted, he wanted her to stay. But he wasn’t that kind of man.
He wanted her, in his arms, in his life. He supposed he had been subconsciously aware of that for a while now. And now he had admitted it to himself. But he wanted her to be with him, part of his world, because she had deliberately chosen to. He didn’t want her to slide into his life, deluding herself the whole while that it had happened because she’d had no choice. He had his pride, after all.
Kim leaned against the buggy door as the horse’s hooves beat a brittle tattoo against the macadam, caught up in her own thoughts. “That was blackmail,” she said finally. “What you did last night.”
“Yes.”
“Don’t you have a conscience?” she demanded.
Joe shrugged. “A deal’s a deal.”
He stopped the buggy on a village side street and got out. She scrambled after him, but stopped when he started toward a small, glass-fronted shop.
“You’re just going to leave him here?” she called out.
Joe looked back, surprised. “Who?”
“The horse.”
“He never goes anywhere.”
“Because every time we’ve taken him somewhere, you’ve unhitched him and put him in a paddock.”
“Kimberley, you’re stalling.”
She blanched. “Damned right,” she muttered. “Coward.”
“I hate you, Joe.”
“Wouldn’t that be easy?”
Yes, oh, yes, she thought.
Adam looked up expectantly when the little bell jingled over the door. Then his jaw dropped at the sight of them. It took him a moment to find his voice. “Kimmie?” he asked. “What’s up?”
Joe took his hat off and set it on a display case. Kim turned slowly, her arms crossed protectively around her waist, taking everything in. It wasn’t just gewgaws and quilts, she saw, though enough of the latter hung from the rafters. Shelves along one wall were laden with preserved fruits and vegetables. There was a table full of carved wooden toys. The other wall was covered with decorative Pennsylvania Dutch plaques, gardening stakes, clocks and wreaths.
“I don’t believe this,” she murmured, finally turning back to Adam.
He
scrubbed a hand over his beard. He looked a little embarrassed. “A man’s got to do what a man’s got to do,” he mumbled. “Got to make a living.”
Kim remembered Joe’s expression of masculine victory in Dinah’s room last night. “You guys need to let off some of this excess testosterone,” she muttered.
Joe heard her. His eyes fared. “There’s a thought.”
Instantly, without warning, everything inside her heated. Kim tried to come up with a witty response, and realized she was tongue-tied.
“So what’s going on?” Adam asked again, saving her. “To what do I owe this honor?”
Kim looked his way again. Ask him. She opened her mouth and closed it once more. She simply couldn’t do it.
But Joe had picked up the baby.
“Kimberley has something she needs to ask you,” Joe prompted. His words felt like an elbow in the ribs. Kim forced herself to nod.
“I...uh, lost my job,” she heard herself say. “I’ve been away too long. My apartment...I’m afraid I’m going to lose that, too. I have no money left. So there goes my health insurance, as well.” She looked deliberately over her brother’s head at a sampler on the wall as she waited for his response.
“How much do you need?” Adam asked.
“I...” At last she looked at him. “You don’t have to do this,” she whispered.
“I know that. And I probably won’t have the chance.”
“I...I don’t understand.” She gazed at Joe questioningly. He shrugged.
“Not once Jake finds out you need help.”
She stared at him. “Jake doesn’t know. I’ve only just asked you.”
“Kimmie, I could give you a thousand dollars right now, and I’d do it, except something just occurred to me. You’d be doing Jake a huge favor if you asked him, instead.”
She felt a spurt of anger. “Are we back to that again? He fixed my car. He found Grete Guenther. He talked her into giving blood. And it’s pure craziness that he ever owed me anything in the first place!”
“He doesn’t see it that way. And I’ve finally figured out that there’s no reasoning with him. Believe me, I’ve tried. You saw how he was that first night you came here. Kimmie, help me out on this. He’s torn himself up for a lot of years because he never helped you... back then. And because he never helped Mom.”
Color flooded her cheeks “So what? You’re going to make me ask him before either of you will help me? Would you like me to jump through a few hoops while I’m at it?” She turned away, more hurt than she would have believed possible. She could have told Joe this wouldn’t work. She should have known better. When had a Wallace ever not put strings and conditions on giving?
Then she heard a little bell ring, and she looked back. Adam had opened the cash register.
“Here,” he said, gathering up a handful of bills, holding them out to her. “For God’s sake, Kimmie, it was just a thought. I was just trying to figure out a way to help both of you.”
Kim swallowed carefully. Her head hurt. “But—”
“You could give him something, Kimmie. You could both benefit.”
Without strings or conditions. She heard her own thoughts of a moment before. Except she had never been any good at giving anything to anybody.
“I can give him this,” she repeated slowly, staring at the money still in Adam’s hand. Then she squared her shoulders. “Fine. Point me in the direction of the nearest pay phone.”
“Take a right at the next corner.”
She took a step for the door, stopped, then looked back at both Adam and Joe. Her voice was wire thin. “I don’t have any change.”
Adam went into the register again. This time he put the bills back and pulled out change. Kim went and took it, stared at him a moment longer, then she walked back to the door. Something wriggly and panicked was moving in her stomach. Her heart was pounding.
The little bell above the door jangled wildly with her departure. Joe stared after her, thinking of what this was costing her, and the courage it required. He loved her, he realized. He really loved her. But he still didn’t know how he was going to hold on to her. He looked back at Adam to find that the other man had been studying his face.
“Hurt her and you’re a dead man,” Adam said quietly. “Mariah would kill me for saying this. She hasn’t quite forgiven me yet for meddling with Jake and Katya.” Admittedly, that had almost turned out to be a disaster. “But Kim’s my sister. Blood gets even thicker than friendship, Joe.”
Joe gave him a strange smile. “Me? Hurt her? What I’m terribly afraid of is that it’s going to be the other way around.”
Chapter 17
Joe went outside and waited for her in the buggy. When she came back around the corner, her color was high. The breeze tossed her long hair. Her hands were balled into fists and thrust deep into her jacket pockets—he could tell by the way they bulged.
What a picture she makes, he thought. Then, as she drew closer, he saw that her eyes were unnaturally bright. He said nothing as she opened the buggy door and slid onto the seat beside him. He decided it would be best to determine which way the wind blew first. He picked up the reins, clucked to the horse, and they began moving.
“Why do you do that when he can’t hear you?” she demanded suddenly.
Joe scowled slightly. “Do what?”
“You always make that sound to the horse, but he’s on the other side of all this glass.”
He looked at her, cocking a brow. “There’s a change of subject if I ever heard one.”
Kim flushed.
“It’s habit,” he explained. “So what happened? Did you get through to Jake?”
She nodded. She was having trouble swallowing. “He was so...glad,” she said finally. “So glad to do something for me. I don’t know who just gave who more.”
“He’s going to send money?”
“Sure.”
“Then what will you do?” he asked carefully. “Will you keep the apartment?”
“I don’t know. It seems a waste to keep paying for it if I’m not going back there for a while.” She pressed her hands to her temples. “But I don’t want to fly back there right now to get my stuff out, Joe.”
That was something, he thought.
“I don’t want to leave Susannah for even a day. Not if...” She trailed off. “And traveling is so hard on her.”
“Is there anyone there you can call to take care of things for you?” he asked.
She gave a quick shake of her head.
“No one?”
“I’m not big on friends, Joe. Susannah and I kept to ourselves.”
“Then why don’t you pay the rent for one more month and...just wait and see how things go?” Every instinct of his fought against suggesting it. Yes, he thought, he wanted her to let the place go. He wanted her to decide, to see, that things were good here, and so much more than what she had had at home.
“I suppose,” he thought she said uncertainly. Then once again she changed the subject. Joe let out his breath.
“Want to celebrate?” she blurted. “You know, now that we’ve both upheld our parts of the bargain?”
“What did you have in mind?”
“I don’t know. Another trip to the barn, maybe?”
His heart slammed. Instantly and without reserve. Now he understood why she’d seemed a little pensive earlier.
Her heart fluttered with something almost like hope. Maybe it was a mistake. Maybe she was getting in far too deep, as he had said. She already knew his feelings about what had happened on Friday.
But...she was riding a high. She felt relieved, certainly, about the money. But it was more than that. The pleasure, the relief at doing something for her, had been so real in her brother’s voice. Right or wrong, whether she agreed with him or not, it had...touched her. She felt giddy, daring, almost reborn. And she wanted to keep feeling this way for a while longer.
The ride to the farm wasn’t long. Joe turned into the drive on the opposi
te side of the road from the house and went around to the back of the horse barn. But then he drew the reins in and just sat for a moment, trying hard not to be a fool. Trying to be sane, smart, sure. He needed to say certain things, and he wasn’t sure how to go about it.
“What you said last night...” he began. And that simply, he felt her stiffen beside him.
“We both said a lot last night,” Kim interrupted.
“About California.”
“It’s a big state. Stretches along a good part of the Pacific coastline.”
“About someone there.”
She inched a little closer to the door. She hadn’t meant to admit that. To anyone. Ever. He did things to her, brought things out of her, that she would never have believed possible.
“Never mind,” she said. “This was a bad idea.” She started to get out of the buggy. He stopped her.
“I need to know, Kimberley.”
She looked back at him, anger in her eyes now. “Why?”
“I want to go into that barn,” he said honestly. “God help me, I want it as much as I ever wanted anything. But I need to know how much it matters to you first. You can’t just throw the suggestion out all light and casual like that, Kimberley. It means something bigger than that.”
“Don’t do this to me, Joe.” A pleading tone crept into her voice. It struck her then that if making love with him had changed things, then speaking about her feelings could well be the point of no return.
“If it’s all a lark to you,” he continued, “just something here, something now, then I’m probably better off not doing it. Not getting in any deeper.”
“You said it was too late!” she burst out, though she hadn’t meant to say that, either. “Last night you said we were already in deep.”
“I am,” he admitted quietly.
Everything inside her began to shake. “What is it that you want me to say?” she demanded. “What are you asking me?”
He honestly didn’t know. He just needed...something. Some comfort. Something to hold on to. He needed to hear her say that she didn’t roll on hay bales as a matter of course. Was it just male jealousy? Possibly, he thought. He was accepting more and more often lately that he wasn’t above other men.