Midnight Rider

by Diana Palmer

  Shocked and still grieving for her mother, she’d left his house immediately and gone to her grandfather’s rented home with only a small suitcase containing her greatest little treasures and a few clothes. Her grandfather, grim-faced, had never asked why she’d moved in with him. But from then on, they were a team. Her stepfather had tried to coax her back, but she’d refused and hung up on him. He had a friend who liked her. The friend, Larry, wanted to go out with her. She didn’t like the look of him, or the way he spent time with her stepfather. She imagined that he had the same taste in reading matter and film viewing as the older man. It gave her the creeps.

  She opened her biology textbook and sprawled on the bed. She wasn’t going to think of these things right now. She’d face them when she had to. At the moment her priority was passing biology, a subject she loved but was never really good at. She recalled her first biology exam. She could understand the material; her professor was an excellent teacher. But she ground her teeth together during the oral biology lab. Her professor, a kind but terrifying man in a white lab coat during orals, had grinned when she rattled off the information about circulation through the lymphatic system. It had been harrowing. But that was only a test. She was certain that the final would be much worse.

  She sighed, closing her eyes and smiling. Her physical anthropology class was her favorite. She was actually looking forward to that final. Her roommate, Beth Gaines, a nice girl with whom she lived in a small apartment off campus, was in the same anthropology class. They’d spent days before Bodie came home for the weekend, grilling each other on the material.

  “Bones, bones, bones,” Beth groaned as she went over the dentition yet another time. “These teeth were in this primate, these teeth were in a more refined primate, this was in homo sapiens...aaaahhhhhh!” she screamed, pulling at her red hair. “I’ll never remember all this!” She glared at Bodie, who was grinning. “And I’ll never forgive you for talking me into taking this class with you! I’m a history major! Why do I need a minor in anthropology?”

  “Because when I become famous and get a job at some super university as a professor, you can come and teach there with me.” She wiggled her eyebrows. “I’ll have connections! Wait and see!”

  Beth sighed. Her expression was doubtful.

  “Only a few more years to go,” Bodie teased.

  Beth’s green eyes narrowed. “I’m not taking any more anthropology classes, period.”

  Bodie had only grinned, as well. Her best friend was like herself, out of step with the world, old-fashioned and deeply religious. It was hard to be that way on a modern college campus without getting hassled by more progressive students. But Beth and Bodie stuck together and coped.

  Bodie opened her eyes. She was never going to get this biology committed to memory by thinking about other things.

  She frowned as music started playing. She got up to answer her cell phone, which was playing one of the Star Trek themes.

  Bodie opened it. “Hello?”

  There was a pause. “Bodie?”

  Her heart skipped. “Yes.”

  She moved to the door and pushed it shut, so she wouldn’t disturb her grandfather.

  “About earlier tonight,” Cane began slowly.

  “Yes?” She was beginning to sound like a broken record.

  He cleared his throat. “If I said anything out of the way, I’m sorry.”

  She hesitated. “You don’t remember?” she asked.

  He laughed softly. “I was pretty much drunk out of my mind,” he said with a long sigh. “Honest to God, I remember getting into the truck with you. The next thing I remember is waking up with a pounding headache and so sick that I had to run to the bathroom.” He hesitated again, while Bodie’s heart fell like lead. All that, and he didn’t remember anything?

  “You should stop treeing bars,” she said quietly.

  “If I’m going to have memory loss like this, yes, I guess you’re right.”

  “And more specifically, you should stop trying to pick up women in bars,” she said with a bite in her soft voice.

  He sighed. “Right again.”

  “You need to get back into therapy. Both kinds.”

  There was a long hesitation.

  “You’re not doing yourself or your brothers any favors by behaving like that, Cane,” she told him. “One day, paying off the damage won’t be enough and you’ll have a police record. Think how that would look in the newspaper.”

  There was a sound, like a man sitting down in a leather chair. The sound leather made was no stranger to Bodie, who’d wished all her young life for a chair so fancy for her grandfather. His easy chair was cloth, faded and with torn spots that Bodie kept sewing up.

  “You’re not the only person who came home from the military with problems of one sort or another,” she continued, but in a less hostile tone. “People cope. They have to.”

  “I’m not coping...very well,” he confessed.

  “You have to have a psychologist that you like and trust,” she said, recalling her friend Beth’s entry into therapy over a childhood incident. “I don’t think you liked your last one at all.”

  “I didn’t,” he said curtly. “Smart guy, never had a pain or injury in his life, said you just had to pull yourself together like a man and face the fact that you’re crippled....”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake!” she exclaimed. “You should have walked right out the door!”

  “I did,” he muttered. “Then everybody said I wasn’t trying because I quit therapy.”

  “You should have told why you quit, and nobody would have said anything,” she shot back.

  He sighed. “Yes. I guess I should have.”

  “Aren’t you supposed to be on the road in the morning with Big Red for that cattle show?” she asked suddenly, naming their prize bull who was on the show circuit. He’d won all sorts of awards. Cane took one of the ranch cowboys along with him on the road, to help manage the big bull who was, however, gentle as a lamb on the lead. Having another man who could help if Big Red got out of hand was a smart precaution.

  “I’m headed out later, in fact. I just wanted to make sure I hadn’t abused your trust,” he added gently. “Not good policy, to alienate your only caretaker.”

  “Tank or Mallory could save bars from you if they had to,” she pointed out.

  “Well, yes, but not without some broken teeth. You can do it with fewer bruises.”

  “Nice to know I’m useful,” she replied with a smile in her voice.

  There was another pause. He didn’t like talking on the telephone. He did it reluctantly at best. “You dating anybody from that college you go to?” he asked suddenly.

  Her heart jumped. “Why?”

  “Just curious.”

  “I’m too busy studying to run around with men,” she muttered. “I wasn’t blessed with the size brain all you Kirk boys have. I have to dig for my grades.”

  “We all have degrees,” he admitted. “But we had to dig for ours, too. Well, maybe not Mallory. He’s just smart.”

  “He is.”

  “When do you go back to school?”

  “Tomorrow morning before daylight,” she said heavily. “My first final is after lunch tomorrow. It’s finals all week.”

  There was another pause. “You coming back home after you finish those?”

  “Yes. I’ll be here until the first of the year, through the holidays. Granddaddy would be all alone without me. We only have each other.”

  “And your stepfather,” he said, but without any warmth in his tone.

  “Will Jones is not part of my family,” she bit off. “Not at all.”

  “Can’t say I blame you for not claiming him,” he admitted. “None of us ever understood what your mother saw in him.”

  Not for worlds would Bodie admit what her mother had said, that she knew she was dying and it was worth putting up with her new husband’s quirks because he was well-to-do and was willing to pay her medical bills and t
ake care of Bodie. It had been a little more complicated than that. Bodie had spent the past two years getting undressed in bathrooms and locking her door at night to prevent any unwanted attention from her mother’s husband. Then when her mother died, everything had come to a head just after the funeral and she’d gone to Granddaddy’s home for good.

  “There’s no accounting for taste,” Cane said.

  “Truly.”

  “It was money, wasn’t it?” he asked suddenly. “She was sick for a long time and couldn’t work.”

  Bodie’s heart skipped. Her bow lips made a thin line. “Something like that.”

  “She was proud,” he said unexpectedly. “Not the sort of person to ever ask for help.”

  She didn’t reply.

  “All right, I won’t pry,” he said after the silence. “So, I guess I’ll see you when you come home.”

  “Yes,” she said, hesitant.

  “If I said or did anything to upset you, I’m sorry,” he added. “I wish I could remember, but the whole night’s a blur. Tank said you looked a little ruffled when he drove you home.”

  “I should have looked ruffled!” she replied with spirit. “Trying to wrestle a huge, heavy man onto a bed when he’s deadweight would cause most people to look ruffled! And then you passed out...”

  “Oh.” He laughed, softly, deeply. “Okay. That’s really what I wanted to know.”

  She was blushing. Thank goodness he couldn’t see. “So, you don’t owe me any apologies,” she said.

  “I guess not. I had this really crazy dream tonight...but it was just a dream, I guess, after all.” He laughed, while Bodie bit her tongue. “Damned woman hurt my feelings so bad,” he said in a heavy tone. “I take things hard.”

  “Women come in all shapes and sizes and dispositions,” she pointed out. “I don’t think women who hang out in bars looking for men are particularly sensitive. Just my two cents.”

  “You want to know what they’re looking for, I’ll tell you...”

  “Don’t!”

  “It’s money,” he said flatly. “It was a five-star hotel, and a lot of rich men have a nightcap. She was waiting for a patsy to show up, and I walked in. If she’d seen an empty sleeve, she probably never would have come near me, with her hang-ups about disability,” he said curtly. “I guess I should toss that damned prosthesis in the trash can. I would, except I could buy a car with what it cost.”

  “They’re working on prosthetics that can be directly connected to nerve endings, so they work like real hands,” she told him. “The whole field of prosthetics is very exciting, with all the advances....”

  “And why would you be reading up on that?” he asked suddenly.

  She hesitated. “Because I have this idiot friend who thinks he’s disabled,” she fired right back.

  He burst out laughing. “Are we friends?”

  “If we weren’t, why would I be rescuing you from bars and certain arrest?” she wondered out loud.

  He sighed. “Yeah,” he replied. “I guess we are friends.” He paused. “You’re barely twenty-two, Bodie,” he said gently. “I’m thirty-four. It’s an odd friendship. And just so you know, I’m not in the market for a child bride.”

  “You think I’d want to marry you?” she exclaimed.

  There was a hesitation. She could almost feel the outrage. He’d be thinking immediately she didn’t want to marry him because of his arm.

  “Just because you know a tibia from a fibula when you dig it up, right?” she continued quickly in a sardonic tone. “And because you know how to pronounce Australopithecus and you know what a foramen magnum is!” she said, referring to the large hole at the base of the skull.

  He seemed taken aback. “Well, I do know what it is.”

  “You wait,” she said. “When I finish my master’s work and get into the PhD program in anthropology, I’ll give you a run for your money.”

  “That’s a long course of study.”

  “I know. Years and years. But I don’t have any plans to marry, either,” she added, “and certainly not to a man just because he can tell an atlas from a sacrum. So there.”

  He laughed softly. “I used to love to dig.”

  “You can get people to dig for you, and still do it,” she suggested. “In fact, when you’re doing the delicate work, it doesn’t really require two hands. Just a toothbrush and a trowel and no aversion to dust and mud.”

  “I suppose.”

  “You shouldn’t give up something you love.”

  “Bones and mud.”

  “Yes.” She laughed. “Bones and mud.”

  “Well, I’ll think about it.”

  “Think about the therapist, too, would you?” she asked. “I’ve already lined up a summer job at a dig in Colorado next year after graduation. I’ll be away for several weeks. Nobody to rescue you from bar brawls,” she added pointedly. “And depending on which specialization I choose, I might go overseas for PhD work, do classical archaeology in the Middle East....”

  “No!” he said flatly. “Don’t even think about it. I’ll talk to your grandfather if you even consider it.”

  She was surprised and flattered by the protest. She knew he was remembering what had happened to him in Iraq, with the roadside bomb. “Cane, I wouldn’t be working in a combat zone,” she said softly. “It would be at a dig site with security people.”

  “I’ve seen the quality of some of their security people,” he came back. “Rent-a-Merc,” he said sarcastically. “Not even real military—independent contractors who work for the highest bidder. And I wouldn’t trust them to guard one of our culls!” he said, alluding to the nonproducing cows who were sold at auction each breeding season.

  “Selling off poor cows because they can’t have babies,” she muttered. “Barbarian!”

  He laughed roundly. “Listen, ranches run on offspring. No cow kids, no ranch, get it?”

  “I get it. But it’s still cow insensitivity. Imagine if you couldn’t have kids and somebody threw you off the ranch!”

  “I imagine they’d have a pretty hard time harnessing me,” he admitted. “Besides, that’s not something I’ll ever have to worry about, I’m sure.” He hesitated. “You want kids?”

  “Of course, someday,” she qualified, “when I’m through school and have my doctorate and have some success in my profession, so that I can afford them.”

  “I think it might be a problem if you wait until you’re moving around with a walker,” he said.

  “It won’t take that long!”

  “Generally speaking, if you wait to have kids until you can afford them, you’ll never have any.” There was a pause. “I hope you don’t plan to do what a lot of career women do—have a child from a donor you don’t even know.”

  She made a huffing sound. “If I have kids, I plan to have them in the normal way, and with a husband, however unpopular that idea may be these days!”

  He laughed. “Statistically, married people still have the edge in childbearing.”

  “Civilization falls on issues of religion and morality,” she stated. “First go the arts, then go the morals, then go the laws and out goes the civilization. Egypt under the pharaohs, Rome...”

  “I have to leave pretty soon.”

  “I was just getting up to speed!” she protested. “Where’s my soapbox...?”

  “Another time. I studied Western civ, too, you know.”

  “Yes. Sorry.”

  He hesitated. “You’re sure that nothing...happened?” he asked again.

  “Cane, you were too drunk for anything to happen,” she replied. “Why are you so concerned?”

  “Men get dangerous when they drink, honey,” he said, and her heart jumped and skipped in a flurry of delight, because he’d never used pet names. “I wouldn’t want to do anything out-of-the-way. Maybe it’s a bad idea to let my brothers keep calling you when I go on a bender. One day, I might do something unspeakable and we’d both have to live with it.”

  “The
answer to that is that you stop getting drunk in bars,” she said in a droll tone.

  “Spoilsport.”

  “You can drink at home, can’t you?”

  “It’s the ambiance of bars. I don’t have that at the ranch. Besides, Mavie would throw me out the back door and pepper me with potato peelings if I even tried it.”

  “Your housekeeper has good sense.”

  “Good something. At least she can cook.

  “Well, I guess I’ll let you go,” he said after a minute.

  “You be careful on the road,” she said softly, in a tone far more intimate than she meant it to be.

  “You be careful, too,” he added. His own tone was oddly tender. “Wear a coat when you go out. Temperature’s dropping.”

  “I noticed.”

  Soft breathing came over the connection. “I guess I should go.”

  “You said that,” she replied, and her own tone was as reluctant as his.

  He laughed softly. “I guess I did. Well...good night.”

  “Good night, Cane.”

  “I like the way you say my name,” he said suddenly. “Bye.”

  He hung up abruptly, as if he regretted what he’d just let slip. Her heart was pounding like mad when she put up the phone and opened her bedroom door. She felt as if her feet weren’t even touching the floor.

  All the same, she did manage to get the material memorized for her biology final. She got up very early the next morning to drive back to school in her battered old vehicle.

  She kissed her granddaddy goodbye.

  “Good luck on those finals,” he told her as he hugged her.

  She grinned. “Thanks. I’ll need it. I’ll see you next weekend.”

  He managed a smile. “Miss you when you’re not here, girl.”

  She was touched. “I miss you, too. I won’t be away that long, and then we’ll have the Christmas holidays together. I’ll make cakes and pies...”