“Tory! Oh, God.” Leah shuddered, then convulsed beneath her as she cried out and her orgasm soaked the sheets and Tory’s hand.
They collapsed, trembling together. Tory’s heated body still covered Leah’s as they gasped for breath and waited for the pounding of their hearts to slow. Mine. Tory’s thumb, still encased in Leah’s warmth, twitched, and Leah groaned.
“Out, out,” she ordered, clutching her crotch when Tory withdrew. She rolled onto her side with her back to Tory.
“Are you okay?” Tory asked, appalled that she might have been too rough in her passion. “Did I hurt you?”
“Oh, God, no. I don’t think I’ve ever come so hard. I’m just so sensitive right now. If you touch me there again, I’ll hit the ceiling.” She reached back and pulled Tory forward to spoon against her. “I need some recovery time after that, baby,” she mumbled sleepily.
Tory drew the covers over their cooling bodies, then wrapped her arm around Leah’s waist to pull her tight against her. Leah guided Tory’s hand up between her breasts, cuddling it against the now-soft pulse of her heart.
“Sleep,” she muttered.
So Tory closed her eyes, too, and they did.
Chapter Fourteen
When Tory woke again she was alone, though the pillow she was hugging to her body still smelled like Leah’s tropical-scented shampoo. She cursed herself for not waking up earlier, then closed her eyes and let her mind, like virtual hands, run over a warm, naked Leah’s slender hips, full breasts, beautiful shoulders—
The bathroom door banged open and Leah stood at the end of the bed, showered and fully dressed.
Tory gave her a sultry smile. “Hey,” she said. She patted the empty space next to her. “Bed’s still warm.”
Leah swatted Tory on her sheet-covered butt. “Get up. We’ve got a long drive, and I want to go by the pens to check on Long Shot before we leave.”
“Long Shot?”
“Our mare. We bought her with the money we won on a long shot, so that’s her new name. Now, get up.”
“You’re no fun in the mornings.” Despite her complaining, Tory liked the way Leah said, “Our mare.”
Something unreadable flashed across Leah’s face before she walked over to her suitcase and began packing to leave. “I have to get back to Gram so my sister can head back to Tennessee, Tory.” Was that a trace of regret in her voice?
“Okay, okay. I’m getting up.”
Tory made no effort at modesty as she threw the sheet back and sauntered naked over to her suitcase for some clean clothes. She wanted Leah to get a good look at what she was missing this morning. And she did. When Tory headed for the bathroom, she caught a glimpse of Leah in the bedroom’s full-length mirror. She was biting her lip and definitely checking out Tory’s backside.
*
They made a quick stop by the pens where the hauler Tory had hired to transport Long Shot was beginning to load up for the trip. Leah was pleased that it was a woman, and she seemed very adept at handling animals that had never ridden in a trailer before. She loaded a couple of yearlings first. Long Shot, seeming eager for the company of her herd mates, was hesitant but willingly stepped up into the trailer to join the others.
On the trip back, Tory was hyperaware that Leah, who routinely touched people, even strangers, when she talked to them, was skillfully avoiding any physical contact between them.
She seemed to relax a little after they left the island and were speeding down the highway toward Cherokee Falls. Tory began to gently probe to get Leah to open up.
“So, where’d you go to college? I didn’t notice any mascot tattoos on you last night.”
Leah ignored the reference to them being naked together. “I got my undergrad degree from University of Maryland and my master’s from Columbia.”
“That’s impressive.”
“Yeah, well, it got me hired with no real experience at the Dallas paper. But I had to work my butt off to get on the investigative team. The newsroom has about two hundred fifty reporters, and the investigative team consisted of only four people.”
“What’s so special about the investigative team?”
“For starters, you don’t get grabbed to do the story of the day—weather, lost dog, stuff like that. You get months to really investigate something. I’m kind of a computer geek, so my specialty was interpreting database and public-record information to sniff out inconsistencies.”
“Sort of like an auditor?”
“Something like that. Once I dug out the information, the team would go after the people at the heart of the problem, setting up interviews and figuring out what other information we needed to request.”
“Do you consider yourself a reporter more than a writer?”
“Hmm. That’s a good question. Writing comes naturally to me. I never had to work at it very much. I guess I’ve concentrated on investigating because it was a skill I had to develop.” Leah sighed. “But since I’m out of a job and real journalism seems to be a dying industry, I don’t know what I’ll do.”
“You could be a cop. You certainly seem at ease with weapons, and you could finally fulfill that handcuff fantasy you mentioned.”
Leah laughed for the first time in days. “I don’t really have the temperament to be a police officer. Some scum would piss me off resisting arrest and I’d just shoot his ass rather than haul him back to the station.”
“You may be right about that.” It felt good to hear Leah’s lilting laugh again.
They were quiet for a while, Leah staring out the window.
“Tell me about Dallas,” Tory said.
Leah took a deep breath and blew it out. “George W. Bush happened. But I won’t get into all that. Basically, newspapers make their money by selling advertising, not by selling subscriptions. When people began to max out their credit cards and default on loans, they quit buying things. When they quit buying things, the companies that advertise quit making money and cut back on their advertising budgets. Then newspapers lost money and they laid off reporters.”
“The economy will eventually recover. It always does. Any chance they’ll rehire you when things get better?”
“No, I don’t think so. The legitimate media will survive this, but it’ll be forever changed with people moving to the Internet for their information. The Internet is like television, all about sound bites, with no real investigation.”
“Shows like 60 Minutes do investigating.”
“Yeah, on a national level. Newspapers have always borne the responsibility for being the public watchdog on local issues.”
“Who’ll be the public’s watchdog now?”
Leah shrugged. “Don’t know.”
“You said that you had a girlfriend. How long were you together?”
Leah stared out the window again. “Not long. We cohabitated for about eighteen months.”
“What happened?”
“I came home with the contents of my desk and a severance check in a cardboard box and explained that we’d have to relocate when I found another newspaper job. She had different ideas. She wanted to get me a job loading trucks where she worked at FedEx. She grew up in Dallas and didn’t intend to move. So I packed up and left.”
Tory chewed on that for a while. Leah seemed to have a pretty casual, live-in-the-moment attitude about relationships. Was that what last night was to Leah, a moment? She wanted to ask, but couldn’t muster the courage.
When they pulled up at Gram’s house, Tory put the truck in park and they just sat there.
Leah finally spoke. “Thank you for this weekend. For making it so much fun, for doing what you did for Long Shot.” She grasped Tory’s hand. “For chasing my demons away for a short time.”
Tory stared down at her lap, picking at a spot of mud that had splashed and dried on the leg of her jeans. “Is that all we were doing?”
“You’re so very special. But I’m just not in a place in my life where I can be what you deserve. What I really need is
a friend.”
Tory started to protest, but Leah cut her off. “I know I said this before and then crossed the line. But I really need for us to just be friends.”
“I can’t stop thinking about last night,” Tory confessed. “About touching you.” She closed the distance between them, intent on tasting the sweetness of Leah’s mouth one more time. She paused at the first touch of their lips, but Leah didn’t pull away so she moved to deepen the kiss. A loud rapping on Leah’s window startled them both.
“Shit! That’s Debbie, my sister.” Leah’s very angry sibling stood just outside the window. Leah held up a finger, signifying that she needed one more minute. She turned back to Tory. “I can’t do this, Tory.”
“Leah—”
“Just be my friend.”
Rap, rap, rap!
“Just a fuckin’ minute,” Leah yelled at Debbie. She turned back to Tory.
“Please.”
Over Leah’s shoulder, Tory saw Debbie getting ready to bang on Leah’s window a third time. She grabbed the handle on her door and pushed it open.
“I’ll get your bag out of the back for you,” she said, sliding out of her seat.
Leah and Debbie were furiously arguing in low voices on the other side of the truck, so Tory carried Leah’s luggage to the porch and turned to watch them. She was surprised when she felt a hand on her shoulder.
“Willie, I’m so glad you’re here.”
She looked up to see Gram smiling at her.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” Gram said. “I need your help in the barn.”
“But…” Tory pointed toward Leah and Debbie.
Gram grabbed her hand and tugged her toward the barn. “Oh, don’t mind them. They argue all the time. It’s time for the bossy one to go home,” she declared.
Tory raised her eyebrows, surprised. “You mean Leah?”
Gram laughed and entwined her arm in Tory’s as though she was being escorted to a social. “No, silly. I mean the other one. Oh, I can’t ever remember her name.”
“Debbie, isn’t it?”
“That’s it. Debbie. She takes after her father. Leah’s much sweeter. Smarter, too.” Gram smiled up at Tory. “She takes after me.”
“Ah. Now I see where she gets her charm.”
Gram giggled. “You’re quite a charmer yourself,” she said shyly.
They stopped in front of Nighty’s stall. “What’s the problem here?” Tory asked. “Are his feet getting worse?”
It was an old barn, so the stall was constructed simply out of waist-high board fencing. Nighty moved restlessly around, pushing at the locked door.
“Poor dear,” Gram said. “He wants to be out with the other horses, but I can’t find the key to this lock.”
“I know he hates staying in here,” Tory said. “But he has to until his feet get better. Then he can only be out in the pasture for a short time every day. Maybe twenty minutes.”
Gram wrung her hands. “Oh, my. I guess if you’re sure. You always did know a lot about the horses.”
“I’m sure. It’s very important that he doesn’t get out and eat too much grass. It’ll make him very sick.”
Tory led Gram back to the house, but Leah and Debbie apparently had gone inside.
“Come in and have some pie, Willie,” Gram encouraged.
“Thank you, but I should go. Please tell Leah I said good-bye.”
*
“How dare you leave with some woman when I was coming for the weekend?”
“You said you wanted to help with Gram. Watching her for me over the weekend was a big help.”
“We were supposed to find a place to move her, but you decided to run off and do God knows what. I don’t want to even think about it. It’s disgusting.”
“It makes me kind of sick to think about you and fat boy doing the dirty, too. So we’re even.”
Debbie glared at her, then marched into the house. Leah followed and watched as she dug through her purse. She pulled out a business card and thrust it at Leah.
“Call this man. He’s a developer. He’s offering a small fortune for this property, but he wants to sign a contract as soon as possible.”
“I’m still researching care homes for Gram, Debbie. I won’t sell this farm out from under her without finding a place where she can be happy.”
“She won’t know any difference, no matter where you put her. She’s crazy as a bedbug. I found her out there trying to pry the boards off that stall at midnight last night to let that pony out.”
“She gets her days and nights mixed up sometimes.”
“I haven’t been able to sleep all weekend because I was afraid she’d wander off. It’s worse than having a toddler in the house.”
“If you sleep on the couch, you can hear her if she gets up during the night.”
“Call that man, Leah. Daddy wants this taken care of.”
“Why should he care? It’s not like the money’s going in his pocket.”
Debbie didn’t answer because Gram came in the front door and settled in her rocking chair in the small sitting area off the kitchen. She stared blankly at the television as she rocked. “That picture just keeps moving and moving,” she said absently.
Debbie sighed and went into the bedroom to retrieve her suitcase. When she came out, she went over and kissed Gram on the cheek. “I’ve got to go, Gram. I’ll give Albert and the boys your love.”
Gram looked at her blankly. “Willie had to leave.”
Leah went to the door. Tory’s truck was gone. Damn it.
Debbie patted Gram on the arm and motioned for Leah to follow her out to the car. She waited until they were outside before she spoke. “Daddy’s lawyer says that if we have Gram evaluated and declared permanently incompetent, they can go ahead and execute her will.”
“Why would y’all want to do that?”
“This man is offering over two million dollars. That’s more than enough to take care of Gram for the rest of her life and pay for a new Christian-education building for Daddy’s church. He’ll name it after Grandpa, of course, because this is really Grandpa’s farm.”
Leah realized her teeth were grinding together. “How convenient. Well, you can just tell Daddy that as long as I’m alive and have her power of attorney, nobody will get a goddamned penny of Gram’s money until she’s dead and gone and doesn’t need it anymore.”
She stepped onto the porch, but stopped and turned back to Debbie. “And you can tell him that what’s left is going to the Human Rights Commission.”
“What’s that?”
“Google it,” Leah snarled before going into the house and slamming the door behind her.
*
Leah threw her bag on the bed and began yanking her dirty laundry out of it to add to the week’s wash. When she came across her camera comfortably cushioned among the clothes, she abandoned her unpacking, grabbed her laptop, and headed for the kitchen table.
Work was what she needed to take her mind off everything. She’d start the article on the pony swim. She downloaded the pictures from her camera and began deleting the shots she didn’t like. A photo of Tory popped up, standing on the ferry with those green eyes staring at her, and Leah’s breath hitched. With her hand that had been hovering over the Delete button, she reached out as if to brush back the shaggy locks the wind was blowing across Tory’s forehead. She wanted so badly to run into the safety of Tory’s arms. But it was wrong. She knew it was wrong. She would be leaving, and it wouldn’t be fair to use Tory that way.
She closed her photo program. Working on the Chincoteague article reminded her too much of her weekend, too much of Tory.
Glancing at her watch, she realized it was time to eat. Gram had to eat so she could take her medicine. She got up, opened the refrigerator, and spotted a large bowl of spaghetti sauce Debbie had apparently made over the weekend.
“How about some spaghetti for dinner, Gram?”
“That’s fine, dear.” Gram was busily crocheting pat
terned squares.
Leah put a pot of water on to boil for the pasta and joined Gram in the sitting area. “What are you making there, sugar?”
“I’m crocheting Willie an afghan. She’s always loved my afghans.”
Leah raised her eyebrows at the “she,” then decided it was just part of Gram’s confusion over Tory, who was definitely female, and this guy named Willie from Gram’s past.
“That’ll be pretty.”
Gram straightened the portion she’d already completed. “It matches Willie’s eyes.”
Leah stared at the rich green color of the soft yarn. Yes, it did.
“You’ve got some mail over there,” Gram suddenly said.
“Really?” Leah grabbed a stack of mail piled on the counter. Among the water and light bills, she found a padded yellow envelope addressed to her from the Virginia Secretary of Health and Human Services. There were no papers inside, just a disc. Hmm. This was different. She’d expected printed reports with large chunks of them blacked out so she couldn’t read confidential patient information.
Leah dropped the pasta into the boiling water and loaded the disc into her laptop.
“Holy shit.” Some clerk had just copied ten years’ worth of uncensored inspection reports onto the disc. When she scanned through them, she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. Fines of only a couple thousand dollars had been ordered for incidents that ended in patients’ deaths. In some cases where coroners’ reports noted excessive bruising and untended fractures, there were no fines.
She quickly prepared Gram a bowl of spaghetti and helped her take her medicine. Then she returned to her laptop, where she set up a database to chart the information from each report and settled in for a long night of work.
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