by Rachel Lee
They spent the next hour out in the barn studio sorting through Esther’s accumulation of paintings. She had put those she considered the best for the exhibit in one portfolio, and those with which she wasn’t nearly as pleased in another. Jo snatched some of the ones Esther didn’t like and moved them over to the exhibit folder.
“You really underestimate your talent, sweetie. These are gorgeous! And that mountainscape you’re working on…well, that’s going to attract some attention, I can tell you right now.”
Esther looked over at the large painting she had been working so carefully on when the rest of life would leave her alone long enough to concentrate, and wondered what Jo saw in it. To her it was beginning to look…bleak. Barren. Forbidding.
Stepping over to the window, she looked west to the mountains, thinking they didn’t look at all as she was portraying them. This morning the light painted them in a slate blue that wasn’t at all forbidding, and the plains rolling away toward them were still abundant with the life of late summer. Admittedly it wasn’t the lush grassy green of the northeast or of the tropical south, but it was the silvery green of sage and tall wild grasses. Jackrabbits, coyotes and deer could be found out there without looking too far at all.
She turned around and looked at the painting again, and wondered what had been infecting her that she had made those mountains looks like the walls of a prison?
But isn’t that what she had done? Turned those mountains into a wall between herself and the rest of the world?
“I’m going to have to leave soon,” Jo remarked. “Next time you decide to move to some exotic location, try to get closer to a major airport, would you? The drive here is ridiculously long after flying so far.”
“Sorry.”
Jo gave her a sudden smile. “Actually, I understand that it would defeat the entire purpose if you were too accessible.”
“I’m apparently accessible enough. My father certainly didn’t have any difficulty finding me.”
Jo closed the portfolios and tied them snugly. “If someone is determined to find you, I seriously doubt that any place is inaccessible enough.”
“So it appears.”
“Let’s go sit on that beautiful porch of yours and watch the day pass until I have to leave.”
They sat on chairs on the front porch, facing the mountains. Esther wondered where Craig was and what was taking him so long, then told herself it was none of her damn business. She’d poured them each a glass of iced tea, and because Jo confessed to being hungry, she brought out a plate of crackers, cheese and raw vegetables.
It was a pleasantly warm day in the upper seventies and as dry as bone. The grasses rippled in the breeze and Guinevere stirred herself to chase a butterfly.
Jo spoke. “It’d be hard to find a place more bucolic than this.”
Esther glanced wryly at her agent. “Suffering from urban deprivation so quickly?”
“Well, I have to confess to a fondness for the theater, museums and sushi, all of which appear to be utterly lacking here.”
“Well, there is a movie theater, and I seem to recall that the library runs a small museum that focuses on local history.”
Jo pretended to shudder. “I’m surprised you aren’t stark raving mad after more than two years here. How can you stand it?”
“I like my own company.”
Jo turned then to look at her. “Point taken. Oh, all right, I’m not so thrilled with my own company. In fact, I bore me. I enjoy the company of all kinds of interesting people with their diverse interests and quirks. Humanity is a great big Fourth of July parade.”
“I suppose so.”
Jo lit a cigar and cocked a sardonic brow at her. “So, what is humanity to you?” she asked. “A long line of serial killers?”
Esther gasped, stunned by the blunt frontal assault. Before she could reply, Jo reached out and clasped her hands. “I’m deliberately being a jerk here, Esther. I’m trying to make a point. You’ve withdrawn so far from the rest of us that you’re living alone in a dusty, barren valley of your own making. I can’t believe you let that man go this morning as if it didn’t matter a damn if you saw him again.”
“Jo—”
“Just listen to me, then I’ll shut up and get on my horse, as it were, and ride into the sunset. Your entire demeanor when he left said that you didn’t care. But you did. I could see it in your eyes. What makes you think he’ll ever come back if you don’t ever let him know that you want him to?”
Esther felt her stomach sinking in the most hideous way as Jo’s justifiable question drove home. “We agreed beforehand—”
“Oh, baloney! Honey, those things are always open-ended. People have a lot of reasons to want to protect themselves when they feel they’re starting to get involved, and they come up with all kinds of excuses and rationales for how they’re just going to take one bite of the apple and then move on without a backward glance. My husband proposed to me the morning after what we both agreed was going to be a one-night stand without strings. If he hadn’t had the guts to break our ground rules, I’d have missed a lot of fun.”
“This is different.”
“It always is. Oh, well.” She puffed on her cigar and returned her attention to the mountains.
“I just met him recently.”
“Mmm.”
“I hardly know him, Jo!”
“Yep. I hear you.” Jo smiled and waved the subject aside. “I’m great at giving unsolicited advice. Just ignore me. Your life, your choice. You’re the one who has to live with the consequences.”
“Exactly.” Suddenly, inexplicably, Esther laughed. “Did you fly all the way out here just to lecture me on my personality flaws?”
“Hell, no. I have better things to do with my time. And I’m probably all wet, anyway. Who am I to judge how someone else chooses to live? My own lifestyle is pretty…eclectic. And the marriage after the one-night stand only lasted a couple of years, so take my advice for what it’s worth…zip.”
Esther’s smile widened. “What? Backtracking, Jo? I never saw you as one to back down. Besides, you weren’t offering advice, you were bashing my timidity.”
A laugh escaped Jo. “God, what a bitch I am. Okay, okay, I’ll go back to being an agent. Just make sure that whatever happens you keep painting those pictures, hear? I’m going to need a whole bunch of new ones for Madrid, and after that probably Vienna. You’re becoming quite the international star, m’dear.”
“I don’t want to be a star.”
“No, but you want to be the best. It shows in everything you paint. So enjoy your stardom. Being an artist, you’re entitled to be unpleasantly reclusive and secretive. Just think, you get to have your cake and eat it, too!”
But finally Jo could linger no longer. She had to leave or miss the flight she’d booked after showering, although she offered to forgo the trip if Esther didn’t want to be alone.
“After all, I came out here precisely to see that you had someone to look after you, and I was prepared to stay as long as it took to find someone to do it. But since you’ve already taken care of that…?”
Esther nodded. “Scat. I’ll be just fine, and I’m sure Craig will be back at any minute. Nothing’s going to happen in five minutes.”
Twenty minutes later she watched Jo drive away. When the growl of her engine faded, Esther was once again alone in the vast silence of the prairie.
Craig hadn’t expected to be gone much more than an hour, and he figured Jo was with Esther, which was a pretty good insurance policy against anything that Richard Jackson might be thinking of.
What he hadn’t expected was to blow out a front tire and go into a ditch on his way back to her place. He stood there looking at his truck nosed down with its rear wheels in the air and figured he had a choice. He could walk to his own place and call for a tow truck, or walk to Esther’s to call, because he sure wasn’t going to get that truck out of there without a winch.
Damn! He brushed the sweat from hi
s brow with his forearm and settled his hat back on his head. Double damn! If he’d been paying attention to his driving instead of mooning about Esther, he would never have lost control when that tire blew, and if he hadn’t lost control he wouldn’t now be looking at this mess.
He glanced up at the sun, judging that it was just pushing toward ten o’clock. He hadn’t been gone that long and assured himself again that Jo was with her. He was primarily worried about Esther not being alone so she wouldn’t get scared. Truth was, he didn’t think Richard Jackson wanted to hurt her. Hell, if the man had wanted that, he’d had plenty of opportunity the first time he came out to her place.
Of course—and this was the possibility that began to eat him alive as he stood there staring at the wreck of his truck—he could be wrong. Richard Jackson just might be warped enough to want to play with his victim first, keep her in a state of prolonged fear, before he moved in for the kill. Stranger things had happened.
Hell! He kicked the blown tire, then climbed up the side of the ditch to the road. No one in sight anywhere. Not that there was much traffic along this road in the middle of a weekday morning. Most folks in the ranches around here were too busy working. It might be an hour, maybe two before the first vehicle came along. In that time he could probably walk most of the way to Esther’s.
He swore at his cowboy boots, wishing he was wearing almost anything else on his feet, then set off at a fast walk toward Esther’s.
He was getting mightily attached to that woman, and he was getting awfully tired of pretending he wasn’t. Of course, she didn’t feel the same way about him and he was resigned to that fact. Last night had been, well, wonderful, but it was still only an aberration for her. It hadn’t been that she had wanted him, Craig Nighthawk, as much as it had been that she wanted to solve the mystery of her womanhood.
Well, he could understand that. And because he had wanted her so much, he hadn’t minded being used. Although, to be fair about it, she hadn’t made him feel used. Actually, she had made him feel special by letting him know that he was the only person in the world whom she wanted to share the experience with.
Thinking about that gave him quite a glow as he trudged along the road. No one outside his immediate family had ever given him such a gift of trust as Esther had given him last night. That would have touched him under any circumstances, but it was especially soothing to a soul that was still badly bruised from accusations two and a half years ago. From incidents like the one that had occurred when he took Esther out to dinner.
And that was why there was no real future for them, he reminded himself. That was why he had to keep his distance. For her sake. Not only was he a poor rancher with wanderlust in his soul, but he was an Indian who had been accused of a terrible crime. There were enough people who wouldn’t forget that to make life hell for anyone who cared about him. He couldn’t ask a woman to put up with a regular diet of that kind of abuse. And what about kids? How could he possibly put children through this?
Damn, how had he gotten so far down the road of speculation? Esther wasn’t going to be part of his future, so it was pointless to ask himself how he could put her through such a thing. No need to even consider it.
But thinking about children had a melancholy effect on him, and as he tramped along the road with the sun and the breeze in his face, he found himself thinking about the kids he would never have. Kids he really would like to have.
He thought about trying to run, but looking down at his boots he cast the thought aside. He would break an ankle running in these damn things. Nor could he run barefoot safely, because here and there alongside the road were shards of glass. He was stuck walking as fast as he could toward Esther’s place.
Damn cowboy boots, damn the blisters that were beginning to grow on his heels, and damn life in general. Sometimes it could be so in-your-face unfair.
Everything he wanted was just out of his reach. Well, he shrugged inwardly, what was new? He was used to wanting things he couldn’t have. Nobody in this world got everything and he was damn lucky to have as much as he did.
But, man, did he ache for wanting Esther Jackson.
Esther thought about going out to her studio to paint after Jo left, but she didn’t feel like painting. Not today. What she wanted to do was find a quiet place where she could curl up by herself and think over the events of the past night.
She’d noticed in the past that when something major happened to her she needed to run it over and over in her mind, as if to assimilate all the important details and make sure she forgot nothing of significance. Last night had been an earth-shattering event for her and she wanted to savor every detail, wring from every remembered moment everything that she could. And until this very moment, she really hadn’t been alone so she could do it.
So instead of going to the barn, she curled up on the pillows of the wrought iron chaise longue at one corner of the porch and closed her eyes. The breeze tossed her hair lazily, and she could faintly hear the buzzing of bees in her flower garden. Guin settled down beside her and watched the breeze play with the grass.
Last night had been simply perfect. She wouldn’t have changed one moment of her time with Craig…well, except that she wished she could be sure he had wanted it as much as she did. Having asked him left her feeling a little uncertain about that part of it.
But he had acted as if he wanted it every bit as much as she did, once she had asked him. But that might just have been because he was so kind.
No, she didn’t want to think about it that way! She didn’t want to tarnish a memory that was always going to be one of the most beautiful of her life.
Smiling inwardly, she hugged a throw pillow and snuggled down in the chaise. Not even in her wildest imaginings could she have conceived that a man could make her feel so wonderful, so wild, so…exquisite.
And she was determined, absolutely and positively, not to let anything at all rob her memories of their joy.
Wondering what was taking Craig so long, she gradually drifted off into a doze, lulled by the quiet beauty of the warm Wyoming afternoon. She never noticed the thunderhead building above her.
Chapter 14
“Esther. Esther, wake up.”
She stirred on the chaise, vaguely realizing that someone was calling her. Thunder boomed hollowly, and the breeze that blew over her skin was cool.
“Esther…”
She didn’t recognize the voice. As soon as that realization penetrated the fog of sleep, adrenaline hit her with a sharp jab. Instantly she was awake, sitting up swiftly, looking around.
And facing her worst nightmare.
Richard Jackson stood not more than six feet away, looking down at her. Guin, for some reason, seemed not to be disturbed by his presence.
“Nice dog,” Richard said, and smiled.
“Get out of here!”
But he shook his head and sat in a wicker chair facing her. “I need to talk to you, Essie. Just for a few minutes. Then I’ll go away.”
“I don’t want to hear anything you have to say! Just get out of here.” Inside she was shriveling. As if something about Richard Jackson reached into her very soul and blighted it, she could feel the tender buds of life withering and dying. God, he terrified her.
Pushing herself off the chaise, she began to back away from him. Run! She had to run!
Turning, she hurried as fast as her brace would allow her, away from him. Away from the threat that had stalked every day of her life.
Guin followed her, whining her disturbance. Jackson followed her, too, calling her name. “Essie—”
“Leave,” she sobbed, hurrying as fast as she could, steadying herself against the porch railing when she nearly stumbled. “Get out of here! I’m going to call the police!”
“Essie.”
Guin suddenly turned on him, standing stiff-legged with her hackles raised and growling deep in her throat. Jackson drew up sharply.
“Look,” he said, “I just want to talk to you.”
Esther backed up, holding on to the railing for dear life, aware that she had twisted her leg somehow while she ran, and now it throbbed with fiery pain. Oh, God, she had to get to the phone in the kitchen. “I don’t want to hear anything you have to say.”
He held out his hands imploringly. “Look, I won’t come any closer, I swear. Just hear me out.”
She shook her head almost wildly, torn between fear and a rising anger. He was too close. Guin’s growling seemed to be holding him at bay, but she couldn’t be sure that would deter him for long. “Essie, please.”
“Go away!” she sobbed. “Just go away and leave me alone!” Another backward step and her leg buckled beneath her. Desperately she clung to the rail as she started to fall, and just managed to catch herself. “Get out of here!” Oh, God, if she lost her footing she would be totally at his mercy.
But suddenly Richard Jackson turned away. “Sorry. I thought maybe after all this time you’d want to know that I finally learned something.”
Guin followed him, growling low in her throat.
The fact that Richard was turning away, not threatening her at all, finally penetrated Esther’s terror. And suddenly, as clearly as if he were standing right there, she heard Craig say, “You have to face the demon….”
Shaking, shivering, she gripped the rail with both hands. The urge to flee was overpowering, but where could she run? She’d just proved that there was no way she could outrun anything but a two-year-old. Richard would be able to catch her in less than a half-dozen steps—and would have if he had wanted to.
She felt cornered. Trapped. There wasn’t even anything handy that she could use for a weapon if he tried to hurt her. The only advantage she had that she could see was that if he threw her off the porch she would only get a few bruises.
But he wasn’t coming any closer. In fact, he was walking away, looking back at her over his shoulder.
He had aged, she realized with a jolt. The demon of her youth looked old, with white hair and a sunken face. His shoulders were stooped, as if he were hunched in expectation of a blow. Even the hands, big hands that had once terrified her by their very size, suddenly looked shrunken.