by Sandra Brown
But it was Anna’s car. David bounded down the steps, talking and signing at the same time. “Mom, Mom, guess what? My suitcase is all packed and I’m ready to go to Dallas. What time are we leaving tomorrow? As soon as I wake up, or do we have to eat breakfast first? Jack let me ride one of the horses today. He held the reins and led it around the corral, but I got to sit in the saddle all by myself, and don’t worry ’cause I held on real tight to the saddle horn and didn’t fall off. My dinosaur book is in my suitcase, too. I already took my bath and we’re playing Old Maid.”
How much of that Anna understood, Jack couldn’t guess. She got out of her car and knelt down to hug her son close. Then she lifted him off the ground and hugged him even tighter. David wrapped his legs around her waist and returned her hug, his small hands patting her back.
Jack’s eyes connected with Anna’s over the boy’s shoulder.
And he knew.
Eventually David wiggled free and she released him, letting him slide to the ground. “We had sundaes and Jack let me pour the Hershey’s on it. I didn’t spill any. I can make you a sundae if you want one, Mom, ’cause I know how.”
She signed to him. David told Jack, “She says some other time, but not tonight. She’s tired.”
“Then I think we’d better get her inside.” As they went in, Jack tried to catch Anna’s eye again but she avoided looking directly at him.
In the kitchen, she took a carafe of orange juice from the refrigerator and poured herself a glass.
David was still chattering. “Guess what we had for dinner, Mom? Hot dogs. Jack makes good hot dogs. He’s going to teach me how to play checkers so I can surprise Grandpa when he comes home.”
Anna’s smile slipped. Quickly she turned to place her empty juice glass in the sink.
“Know what, David?” Jack said. “I think she’s tuckered out. I know I am. What say we all go to bed? Why don’t you walk your mom upstairs? I’ll lock up before I leave.”
“The sooner I go to bed, the sooner I can get up, right, Jack?”
“You bet.”
David slipped his hand into Anna’s. “Come on, Mom. I’ll take care of you.”
Anna stroked his cheek, but David seemed not to notice the tears shining in her eyes.
“Good night, Jack.”
“Sleep tight, David. See you in the morning.”
Jack cleaned up the sticky sundae dishes and placed them in the dishwasher. He left the kitchen to take some damp dish towels into the utility room. When he returned, he was surprised to see Anna there.
She looked weary and fatigued, her spirit as whipped as her body. She had removed her sandals and pulled her shirttail from the waistband of her skirt. Her makeup had worn off, and her eyes looked watery, red, and weak.
“Delray…?”
She gave a slight nod, then moved soundlessly toward one of the cabinets. Jack intercepted her. “Whatever you want, sit down and let me get it.”
That she consented so readily indicated just how exhausted she was. She took a seat at the kitchen table, reaching for her notepad and pen. “What would you like?” When she pointed to a tea canister, Jack filled the electric kettle and plugged it in.
He brought a cup and saucer to the table and sat down across from her. “Did you tell David?”
Sighing, she shook her head and made the sign for sleep.
“I think you made the right decision. Tomorrow’s soon enough.”
She wrote that David would be disappointed that the trip to Six Flags was canceled.
Jack gave her a rueful smile. “Well, he’s a kid.”
“Thank you for staying with him today.”
“No problem.”
“I had no idea I’d be away so long. I—”
Jack reached across the table and took the pen from listless fingers. “I enjoy David. I didn’t mind staying with him. I’m glad I could help.”
She signed “Thank you.”
Jack signed “You’re welcome.”
The telephone rang. He pointed toward it and asked if she wanted him to get it. “Please.”
“Hello?”
“Is this Mr. Sawyer?”
“Yes.”
“It’s Marjorie Baker. I’m calling to see if Anna made it home safely.”
“Just a few minutes ago.”
“How is she?”
“About like you’d expect. Very tired.”
“Would you give her a message for me? Tell her I placed a call to a funeral director. She and I have an appointment at nine in the morning.”
“That was awfully nice of you, Ms. Baker.”
“It’s the least I could do. Got a pencil and paper?”
He wrote down the pertinent information, then said, “If I could just trouble you…? I don’t want to tire Anna any more than she is by making her write it out, but I’d like to know what happened. Last I heard, Delray was on his way to Dallas for surgery.”
“He suffered another heart attack. All efforts to resuscitate him failed.”
Jack listened as she gave him a brief account. “I see,” he murmured when she finished. “Well, thanks. I’ll give Anna your message.”
“Tell her not to hesitate to call if I’m needed.”
“Thanks again.”
He hung up just as the kettle started whistling. He carried it to the table and poured boiling water over the tea bag Anna had selected, then returned to his seat across from her.
“Want something to eat?” Declining any food, she stirred a teaspoon of sugar into the berry-flavored tea and took a few sips before again raising her eyes to his. He passed her the slip of paper with the time and place of the appointment for the following morning. She read it, acknowledging it with an absent nod. “Ms. Baker told me they worked on Delray for almost half an hour.”
She wrote, “They did everything they could. They just couldn’t bring him back.”
“Christ, Anna, I’m sorry.”
The features of her face began to work with emotion. The tears he had seen shimmering in her eyes earlier began to slide down her cheeks. Jack scraped back his chair, ready to go to her, but she waved both hands in front of her to stave him off.
He lowered himself back into his chair. “What caused it? Hearing about Cecil’s visit?”
Wiping the tears off her cheeks, she wrote, “Possibly.”
“Did news of the bank robbery this morning reach the hospital?” When she nodded wearily, Jack asked, “Do you think Delray heard it?”
She raised her shoulders, then wrote, “I don’t think so, but he was already worried. He didn’t die peacefully.”
Jack just looked at her, giving her an opportunity to elaborate.
To what she’d already written, she added, “I don’t think he knew about the robbery, but he was afraid of what Carl and Cecil might do. He died worrying about them, the ranch, and his bank loan. About David’s future.”
When she glanced up, Jack said, “About you, too, I’m sure.”
“What about me? Did Delray talk to you about me?”
She was becoming agitated. He could tell that by the two emphatic slashes she’d drawn beneath the last word. “Not at any length, Anna. He just hinted to me that maybe he’d been unfair to you.”
Brows drawing together, she wrote, “Unfair how?”
“Uh…” Having painted himself into a corner, he now didn’t know what to say. Delray hadn’t actually admitted to him that his possessiveness had been unfair to Anna. He had implied it, but Jack couldn’t put words in a dead man’s mouth.
Anna scribbled across the pad then turned it toward him. “You don’t know anything about it.”
“I know he loved you.”
In a flash, she was out of her chair and leaving the kitchen. Jack almost upset his chair going after her. She went out the front door and closed it behind her. Ignoring the hint, Jack followed her onto the porch. She was leaning into one of the support posts, her cheek resting against it.
Jack took her by the sh
oulders and turned her around. She resisted, but he didn’t let go. “Of course he loved you, Anna, and he didn’t have to tell me for me to know it. Any fool could have figured it out.”
She signed something, a quick, brusque sign.
Jack shrugged helplessly. Switching from the word sign to the alphabet, she spelled out How? “How did I know he loved you? Because he could have taken advantage of your unique circumstances. He didn’t.”
Then it was Anna’s turn to shrug with misapprehension.
“Okay, I’ll spell it out, too. He didn’t make sex a condition of providing you a home. That could be chalked up to shyness or morality or a dozen other things, I suppose. But I think Delray loved you too much to dishonor you by even suggesting that you sleep with him. And don’t shake your head and look bewildered like you don’t understand what I’m saying, because I know you’re getting at least the gist of it.”
She averted her head and squeezed her eyes shut. Taking her chin in his hand, Jack turned her face back toward him. She opened her eyes, but gave him a cold, remote stare.
“You’re right, this isn’t any of my business. But I see what you’re doing.”
Her angry look said “Okay, what?”
“You’re laying a big fat guilt trip on yourself because you didn’t love Delray the way he loved you.” He pressed her shoulders. “Don’t do it, Anna. You’ve got nothing to feel guilty about. You sacrificed so much for him. Your education. Your photography. A social life. Even speech. You couldn’t love Delray back. He knew that. Which made him love you all the more for staying with him.”
At first she looked ready to tackle that argument, but then he felt the tension ebb out of her. Her shoulders slumped. The muscles of her face relaxed, and her haughty expression became one of profound sadness. She lowered her eyes.
Although unintentional, that downward sweep of eyelashes was sexy as hell. Mentally Jack crooked his finger and summoned forward the mental image that he had kept on standby all day. Since morning, he had kept it in the wings of his mind for later recall. Now was a good time to summon it to center stage.
She had rushed straight from her bed to fetch him in the trailer. The nightgown she’d been wearing had thin straps, but it hadn’t been designed with seduction in mind. It wasn’t a fancy negligee, not by a long shot.
But it had looked soft and airy, not very substantial. Like it would melt in your hand like cotton candy does in your mouth. She hadn’t been wearing much, if anything, underneath it.
He hadn’t been able to think about that then, not with the CCU nurse on the telephone talking about a life-threatening situation. Then David had spilled his milk and Anna had rushed off, and, what with chores and baby-sitting David, Jack had been denied time to luxuriate in the recollection of Anna in her nightgown.
But now he let his imagination curl around the thought of her shape—the way it had looked in the black-and-white self-portrait—beneath that sheer cloth. The dew of the grass had left it damp and clinging to her calves. Something about that and her bare feet had made her seem fragile and in need of protection. Her skin had looked soft and smooth, a striking contrast to his hairy chest and legs. He had felt like a gorilla hulking over a butterfly.
And he felt much the same now. Standing this close, he sensed the gentle rise and fall of her chest with each breath. One small move from either of them and they would be flush up against each other. Actually, it wouldn’t even require much motion; just a slight inclination and they would be belly to belly.
With any other woman, he wouldn’t have to think about it. Instinct would guide him. He would know when the time was right to reach for her. He would know where to place his hands, how to touch her, what to caress, when to kiss, when to start removing clothes. With consensual strangers, he knew the protocol. He took them to bed at night and left them in the morning, physically refreshed but emotionally disconnected.
But with Anna, standard practices didn’t apply. Anna he knew. He knew her circumstances, her family, knew how vulnerable she was tonight, and knew how she would hate him later if he exploited that.
This wasn’t something that had just come up—no pun intended. It wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment lech. He hadn’t been seized by a sudden raging lust. Desire had set in when he first laid eyes on her, and it had been building ever since. For days he refused to acknowledge it, even when he noticed her watching him from the back door while he worked in the corral, even when he realized that the episode in the barn had held some meaning for her. Flattering, yeah, but he hadn’t pursued it because… well, because he wasn’t going to be here long.
And because he wasn’t his father.
The biggest deterrent, however, had been Delray. Knowing how he felt about Anna… Well, it just wouldn’t have happened. Not in a million years. He wouldn’t have let it happen even if Anna had initiated something with him.
But Delray was no longer here, and Jack wanted badly to touch her. But he didn’t. Because it could go one of two ways. She would either respond to him and they would engage in mind-blowing sex. Or she would tell him to keep his grubby paws off her and send him packing.
Either way, he’d be screwed.
So he dropped his hands from her shoulders. Actually they sort of slid down her arms all the way to her wrists before he broke contact and stepped back. She raised her head. His tongue felt thick, but he managed to say, “You’d better go inside, Anna.”
She must have sensed from his expression that it was in her best interest to do so, that staying a second longer could upset some delicate balance, that within heartbeats everything could change, and that unless she were willing to let that happen she should immediately remove herself.
Hesitating only briefly, she quickly sidestepped him and slipped inside the front door.
Jack watched her go, whispering his eulogy to the dead man. “Delray, you were a hell of a lot better man than I would have been.”
Chapter Thirty
“What’s with him anyway?” Connie Skaggs was keeping well to her side of the getaway car’s backseat.
Myron was folded into the opposite corner. The space between the front and back seats barely accommodated his long legs. His knees poked up almost on a level with his chin.
“Is there something wrong with him, or is he just spooky as hell?”
Addressing her in the rearview mirror, Cecil said, “He’s a little different, honey, is all. But Carl says once you get used to him you hardly notice his strangeness. Isn’t that right, Carl?”
“Yeah, that’s what I said.” Carl sat hunched down in the front passenger seat, his shoulders pulled up so close to his ears that his shirt collar bracketed his mouth and made his mumble even more inarticulate.
“Well he gives me the creeps,” Connie stated candidly, as though Myron weren’t within earshot. “He’d better keep those pasty white hands off me.”
“He’s not going to bother you,” Cecil assured her.
“I’m just saying…” She let the implied threat dangle for a moment. Then, protectively folding her arms across her middle, she turned her head away from Myron to stare out the window, although it was dark and there wasn’t much to see.
With his head lolling forward, Myron had snoozed through the conversation. A bead of saliva clung precariously to his lower lip.
Cecil wished that Connie felt more kindly toward Myron. Or, short of that, that she had kept her low opinions of him to herself. This situation needed no additional drawbacks. Having the four of them compacted into such close quarters for an extended period of time would create a fertile breeding ground for dissension. If they didn’t tolerate each other’s idiosyncracies, the tension could get fierce. Already Carl was in one of his dark moods.
He had removed the necktie and jacket of the pinstripe suit he’d worn into the bank. But he still had on the suit trousers and polished wingtips. Cecil wondered where he’d stolen the outfit. It sure as hell didn’t belong to him.
When they had spoken in the ba
nk, Cecil barely recognized his brother with his sideburns shaved off and his hair slicked down. The plan had been for them to meet there at the designated time. Carl’s disguise had taken Cecil aback for an instant, but it had been effective. A casual observer never would have connected the buttoned-down executive with the escaped convict. That’s what made Carl so damn special. He was clever as all get out.
But for somebody who had pulled off a daring bank robbery worth several hundred grand, his baby brother didn’t seem very happy. Carl should be experiencing a heady rush, a high. He should be celebrating their success. Instead, he was about as merry as a gravedigger. This was of paramount concern to Cecil, who knew from experience that nothing good ever came from one of Carl’s black depressions.
Hoping to divert a disaster, he tried to lighten the mood by engaging Carl in conversation. “You two pull that job the other night at the gas station?”
“What do you think?” Carl muttered.
“Figured it was you.” Cecil nudged him playfully with his elbow. “Sounded like the kind of mischief that would appeal to my little brother.” Less jovially Cecil added, “I guess you had no choice but to get rough with that kid, right?”
Carl turned his head, his eyes seeming to lock into place when they connected with Cecil’s.
Cecil smiled nervously. “You gotta admit that was pretty raunchy, what y’all did to that girl. Not that I don’t understand. Because I do. I mean, what they say now is that rape isn’t about sex. It’s about control.”
Carl stretched his arm across the back of the seat. “Is that what they say?”
“I heard it on America Undercover. You know, on HBO.”
“No. I don’t know. Where I was at we didn’t get HBO.”
Cecil wished like hell he’d never brought this up. “They did this documentary on rape, and that’s what they said.”
“Well, they were wrong. I shot a wad into any hole I could find and never once thought about controlling myself.”
“That’s disgusting!”
That from Connie. Carl looked into the backseat. “Is anybody talking to you? No. I didn’t hear anybody say a goddamn thing to you.”