The Comforts of Home

by Jodi Thomas

  “You saw me three days ago.”

  “I know, but I’ve never been good at rationing passion where you’re concerned.”

  She nodded as if she understood.

  “I’ll be home in a few days. Promise you’ll come to my house. I don’t care if you come late and leave early, I want to be with you. I want you to see what I’ve done to the place.” He almost added for you, but didn’t dare. She wanted—no, craved—passion from him, nothing more. No gifts. No promises.

  “I’ll try,” she whispered.

  He knew trying to push her wouldn’t work. He kissed her gently on the cheek. “If you come, I’ll make love to you in every room of my house and then we’ll start all over again.” He added, close to her ear, “There’s no one else there, Claire. You won’t have to bring a change of clothes. We’ll hang up what you wear in when you get there, and you can put it back on when you leave. In between we’ll have wine in front of the fireplace and eat breakfast in bed.”

  She laughed then, something Claire Matheson rarely did.

  As they stood and walked toward her car, she whispered, “I’ll come as soon as I can.” She laughed again. “And I plan to see every room.”

  “I’ll be at the farm waiting.”

  Chapter 17

  THURSDAY

  FEBRUARY 25

  TWO DAYS AFTER HE HAD BREAKFAST WITH HANK MATHESON, Tyler Wright did all his paperwork at the funeral home and left for the hospital. A part of him hoped the woman had already gone. He didn’t remember much about her, except that she was tall and thin, dressed like a teenager, and had seen him at his worst.

  When he walked into Autumn Smith’s room, he remembered the half bushel of dirty-blond hair as well. The woman was curled up in the hospital bed sound asleep. He took the time to study her. There was something hard about her face, almost as if she’d been pretty once, really pretty, and then life had beaten her down, changed her. There were worry lines along her forehead, but no laugh lines around her mouth or eyes.

  He guessed she’d had a hard time, and he hadn’t made it any easier for her. Her cheeks were damp. She’d cried herself to sleep. The nurse told him when he asked about her that the doctor had said she could go home tomorrow.

  Tyler knew without asking that she had no home to go to. He looked around the room. She’d been in the hospital four days, yet there were no flowers in the room, not one card on the shelf. Not one get-well drawing by a child or one balloon wishing her a quick recovery.

  When he looked back her blue eyes were staring at him. “Who are you?” she said, in a voice sounding dry and scratchy.

  “I’m sorry,” Tyler said, moving closer to offer his hand.

  “How about getting out of my room, Sorry,” she said, coming fully awake like a wild animal.

  “I’m sor . . .” he almost said again. “I’m Tyler Wright.”

  “You’re the man who almost got me arrested.” She looked at the bruise on his face. “From the looks of you, I must have won the fight.”

  He smiled. “You did. I landed on icy rocks and hit myself in the head with my flashlight. You, on the other hand, landed on something soft. Me.”

  She didn’t look like she trusted him, but at least she had stopped snarling at him. Tyler considered that progress. “I wanted to drop by and see how you are and to tell you I’m sorry for any trouble I caused you.”

  “They impounded my car, thanks to you.” She pushed her hair away from her face. “Tell them to give it back and we’ll call it even. I’m ready to get on my way. It’s my car. I made every payment even if it is registered in a dead man’s name.”

  “Oh,” Tyler said. He didn’t like hearing about problems he could do nothing about. This young woman should be talking to Jerry Springer, not him.

  “Forget it,” she snapped. “Not your worry. You’re just the cemetery patrol, right?”

  He ignored the insult. “Is there something you need that I could bring you? I’d be happy to help any way I can.” Tyler didn’t know if he meant what he said, but it felt like the right thing to say.

  She stared at him a minute and said, “Any chance you could get my stuff out of the Mustang? If I can’t have the car, I’d like my clothes and books.”

  “I could try. I know the sheriff and it seems like a reasonable request.”

  She shrugged and leaned her head back onto the pillow. “Whatever,” she whispered as she closed her eyes. “So long, Mr. Wright. Don’t let the door hit you in the butt on the way out.”

  Tyler straightened. He wanted to tell her that people never talked to him that way, but he figured she wouldn’t care. Glancing into the open closet as he walked out, he saw no warm robe. No slippers. Only a folded hospital gown and a cheap comb. A pair of muddy tennis shoes. A sweatshirt with what looked like dried blood on it lay across muddy jeans on the closet floor.

  He could see why she would want her things. He didn’t know much about women, but he knew, poor or rich, they all wanted their things around them. Walking out to the lobby, Tyler tried to decide how involved he wanted to get in the business of someone who obviously wasn’t expecting much. She sure didn’t seem to like him.

  Tyler figured he must attract women who didn’t like him much. Willamina had left without a word, Kate seemed to have lost his e-mail address, and now Miss Autumn Smith didn’t want anything to do with him. If a female serial killer ever passed through town, she’d probably stop at the funeral home first.

  With a shrug he turned into the gift shop. “Morning, Mrs. Lovelady,” he said to the sweet little lady who’d been volunteering at the hospital for thirty or more years.

  “Morning, Mr. Wright, and how are you this beautiful day?”

  Tyler glanced out the window. Rain had been threatening to fall all morning, and the wind whipped between buildings, almost knocking folks down, but to Mrs. Lovelady, the days were always lovely.

  “I need your help, please,” he began. Immediately he saw excitement in her smiling face. “I’d like to send a few things to a woman who is stranded here because of an accident. I don’t think she has any family, or at least none who know she’s here. She doesn’t know me, but I think she could use some cheering up, so just tell her the gift is from a friend.”

  Mrs. Lovelady got her pad. “Were you thinking flowers? We have some nice potted plants.”

  He shook his head. “She’s leaving tomorrow; she’d have nowhere to put them, or balloons for that matter.”

  Mrs. Lovelady tapped her pen against her bottom lip. “A card or a book, maybe a stuffed animal.”

  “No. I think something useful would be better.”

  “We have a nice set of bath soap and lotions. Every woman can use those.” She led him toward a display of personal items. “Does she have a robe?”

  Tyler frowned. “I don’t think she even has a toothbrush. Could you just make up a basket of everything she might need on these shelves?”

  Mrs. Lovelady looked thoughtful. “If I add our best fluffy robe and gown, with slippers to match, it’ll be a big basket. You’d be wise to just buy the suitcase to put it all in. It’s a little expensive, but it would do her far more good than a basket.”

  Tyler reached into his pocket for his money clip. He peeled off two hundred-dollar bills. “Will this cover it?”

  The lady shook her head. “For another hundred I’ll throw in a nice jogging suit. And of course, the bow and card for free.”

  “What a deal,” he said as he handed her three Franklins. “Send it up to room three eleven, Autumn Smith.”

  “Oh, the woman who was sleeping behind the cemetery.”

  Tyler should have been surprised that Mrs. Lovelady knew hospital gossip, but he wasn’t.

  “I’ll toss in some chocolate where there’s room. When I was pregnant I always liked chocolate.”

  “She’s pregnant?”

  Mrs. Lovelady nodded. “Dr. Spencer was here all night the night they brought her in. I heard one of the nurses say the poor thing almost
lost the baby.”

  Tyler walked out of the hospital and ran to his car. He might have had nothing to do with Autumn Smith getting pregnant, but he definitely had some part, no matter how small, in her almost losing the baby. He felt terrible.

  AUTUMN SMITH WATCHED THE STRANGE LITTLE CHUBBY man running to his car. He’d been all dressed up in a suit like some kind of lawyer. Maybe she was in more trouble than she thought. She swore. That wasn’t possible.

  The Mustang might still have her father’s name on the title, but he’d been dead five years, so he wasn’t likely to have claimed it as stolen. She’d been sixteen when she’d picked it out all shiny and new. He’d had to sign for it, but she’d made every payment. He’d said he’d change the title when it was paid for, but before she could make the last payment, he died and no one thought of the paperwork on her car. He died on her eighteenth birthday, leaving his little farm to a common-law wife Autumn had never gotten along with.

  Autumn had packed everything she owned in the back of her car and driven away with her almost-stepmother waving from the porch. There was nothing left for her in Tennessee.

  “Five years,” she whispered. “Five years of trying to make a living, of trying to keep body and soul together.” She didn’t want to think about how badly she’d failed at love, at life, even at surviving. And now, she carried the baby from a man she barely knew and had never liked. He’d said he wanted her, needed her. She’d gotten pregnant before she realized that he was lying. His kind of want and need had nothing to do with love.

  Autumn couldn’t take care of herself. How was she ever going to take care of a kid? But she couldn’t end the baby’s life any more than she could end her own. Somehow, deep down inside, she had to believe that things would change. She knew life would never be easy, but did it have to always be so hard?

  Chapter 18

  SIMS PLACE

  DENVER SIMS THOUGHT THE RINGING WAS IN HIS HEAD for a few times before he realized it was the phone beside his bed. He opened one eye and smiled, realizing he was home in Harmony and not in some hotel between flights. His house on Lone Oak Road was the only place he felt like he could let his guard down. He might have remodeled and had it furnished in Mission-style décor that looked more like it belonged in New Mexico than West Texas, but this place was very much his lair. The place he went when he needed to rest, to hide out.

  The house phone sounded again.

  With a loud groan, he frowned and climbed out of bed. Home didn’t have wake-up calls. Who’d be phoning him before dawn? Claire had promised to try to drop by one night, not at sunup.

  “Hello. This better be important!” he snapped in a voice he hadn’t used since the army.

  “Denver, you awake?”

  “I wasn’t.” Denver sat on the edge of the bed as he recognized the voice of his best friend and only neighbor within shouting distance. “Is it time for the babies to come, Gabe? Are you on your way to the hospital?”

  “No, we’re still five weeks out,” Gabe answered with a laugh. “But since you’re awake, there’s something I want to talk to you about.”

  “I’m not helping you name the twins.” Denver had thought his friend was an intelligent, talented guy until his wife got pregnant. Gabriel Leary could write a book, and illustrate it, on how not to be an expectant father. “And I’m not, I repeat not, having a discussion about breast-feeding again. I couldn’t even look at a woman from the neck down for a week after our last talk.”

  “Forget that,” Gabe said. “It turns out I don’t have a vote on the breast-feeding question, and after my last suggestion on the names, Liz and her mother both agree I don’t get a vote on that either.”

  Denver knew he’d be sorry he asked. “What did you suggest?”

  “Well, after Thing One and Thing Two didn’t go over, I thought Thor and Loki. After that, I was told to stop thinking period. Apparently, my role in this whole thing is sperm donor and nothing more.”

  Denver smiled, having a hard time feeling sorry for the luckiest guy he knew. “So, since your job was over more than seven months ago, why are you waking me up today?”

  Gabe paused a moment as though he were starting to lose faith in his ideas. “I think we should practice a few runs into town. You know, run surveillance to make sure there is nothing in the way that will slow us down when labor starts and we’re on our way to the hospital. This time of morning there should be no one on the roads, but just to be on the safe side we could do runs at different times.”

  “Gabe, we’re five minutes from town, another five to the hospital. If we start when the contractions start, that’s maybe one or two contractions before we’re there.”

  “I read they sometimes start closer together than that. What if they start three minutes apart? Liz will have a half dozen before we can get her inside the hospital.”

  Denver saw that there was no reasoning with the man who’d saved his life in combat more than once. He figured he owed him one. “Why don’t you get a room at the hospital and just leave Liz there the last few weeks?”

  “Great idea!” Gabe shouted. “I’ll be over to get you in five. We’ll go in and see if they have any openings we can book ahead.”

  Denver tried to argue, but the phone went dead.

  Before he could find his shoes, he heard Gabe’s pickup flying into his drive.

  Denver walked outside barefooted and yelled, “I don’t want any credit for this dumb idea. You’ve already got every Matheson woman including little Saralynn thinking you’re crazy. I don’t want to be guilty by association.”

  Gabe shrugged. “Maybe it’s not a good idea, but we could ask. What harm could it do to just ask about booking a room?”

  An hour later, when Dr. Spencer threatened to call the sheriff if they didn’t leave, Denver decided to physically drag Gabe out of the hospital corridor.

  “Lets go to the diner and have some breakfast,” he suggested as he took Gabe’s keys.

  Gabe nodded as he continued to mumble death threats under his breath. When he climbed in the passenger side of his Jeep, he frowned. “I don’t know what they were getting so excited about. All I was going to do was canvass the area and see if a few of the older patients might be willing to check out a little early to make room.”

  Denver fought down a laugh. “I think it might have been the term check out that upset them. Maybe you should have used go home.”

  Gabe shook his head. “Touchy people.” He rolled down the window, ignoring the fact that it was freezing. “I’m not sure that Dr. Spencer is old enough to be a real doc. We’ve both seen more blood in battle than she’ll probably ever see. She’s so young I wouldn’t be surprised if she parks a tricycle in the hallway when she makes her rounds. She does have small hands, though. That could come in handy if the baby . . .”

  “I don’t want to know.” Denver shot out of the parking lot. “How about we make a deal? We don’t talk about anything related to being pregnant or having a baby while we eat.”

  “You got it, Lieutenant.”

  The years of being a soldier seemed a long way away, but the fact that they had the same shared history would forever bond them as friends. More than friends. Brothers.

  Denver tried to help. “If you’re worried about the five minutes it’ll take to get to town, how about you and Liz moving over to Winter’s Inn? It would cut the time in half.”

  Gabe shook his head. “I don’t think I could take sweet old Martha Q for more than a day. I think the last time we ate over there with Hank and Alex, the old lady patted me on the bottom.”

  Denver laughed. “She’s interested in you, I guess.”

  “No.” Gabe shook his head. “I think she was just testing to see if I was fat enough to eat yet. I swear she was the role model for the witch in ‘Hansel and Gretel.’ For years she made men miserable by marrying one after the other. Now, she’s fattening them up to eat.”

  Denver didn’t argue. “Speaking of man haters, what do you hear from Liz’s
sister, Claire?” Denver always tried to work Claire into the conversation when he could without being obvious. He would have liked to talk to Gabe about her, but Claire wanted their relationship kept secret from her family, and half the town was either part Matheson or married to one. As far as the Matheson family knew, he was just Gabe’s friend who came to dinner now and then at the ranch house. They all seemed to like him, but Denver wouldn’t be surprised if Alex, a Matheson by marriage, hadn’t had a background check run on him. Alex Matheson was the best sheriff he’d ever seen. Little got past her.

  “From what I hear from Liz’s mom, Claire is home working like crazy,” Gabe said, between telling Denver how to drive. “Only comes down every night to eat dinner with Saralynn and help her with her homework. Then by nine she’s back working. I heard her last painting was of a businessman face down in the mud with the shadow of a plane over him. The caption read: FASTEN YOUR SEAT BELT, PLEASE. Her agent says she’ll get twenty or thirty thousand for it. She’s sketching out one with a guy lying dead in a parking lot. Huge black crows are pulling bites off him. She’s calling it Picnic in the Park. You might be careful, Denver. I swear this new guy in the painting looks a bit like you.”

  Denver frowned.

  Gabe didn’t seem to notice. “Claire’s getting richer every day and more of a recluse. If her agent didn’t make her travel, I swear she’d never leave the house. She tolerates me, but it’s obvious that woman doesn’t like people and hates all males. Liz says her sister was never boy-crazy as a teenager, but when she came home after her marriage broke up, she’d changed inside. Like something had died and would never return.”

  “Look who’s talking, Gabe. Before you met Liz you lived around here five years without more than a handful of people speaking to you.”

  They reached the diner and got out. Neither seemed to notice the wind that almost knocked them down. They’d lived on the plains long enough to ignore wind.