After You Were Gone

by Alexis Harrington

  So it had occurred to him that perhaps the only way he might be rid of it at last would be to receive absolution from the person he had wronged. Not Wes. Wes Emerson couldn’t forgive anyone now, at least not on this earth.

  But he’d do whatever it took to get what he wanted. Only then would he be shut of the past. Why Julianne’s absolution was the key to his true freedom, he wasn’t sure. But it mattered, a lot.

  And that was why Mitchell had returned to Gila Rock. No one living in this tin can of a mobile home knew that, and he figured it was none of their business. He breathed a deep sigh and smelled the scent of dog, the fumes of engine paint, and the stink of stale bacon grease left over from dinner. The dog he could handle, but the reek of time and apathy that hung over this place was more than enough to drive him away. He’d leave as soon as he could, after he closed the door on Julianne.

  Permanently.

  Julianne stood on her back porch in the harsh morning sun, brush in hand, trying to paint over the ugly warning Mitchell had left for her. She’d tucked her ponytail down the back of her polo shirt to keep it out of the way, and it itched. She’d found the shotgun and loaded it. It now leaned against the wall beside her like a sentinel.

  Uncle Joe had stocked quarts of paint, so she’d had several colors to choose from. But they were all as ugly as the bottom of a birdcage. Sunburst Lemon was the least unattractive option, and that wasn’t much comfort. It was so bright, it made her eyes ache. At any rate, it would do until she could have the door replaced. Her fear from last night had simmered away to anger, and that fury put a lot of energy into her work. She needed it. It took some doing to cover the black spray paint, and the old, dry wood sucked up the yellow latex like a sponge. As she swept the brush over the graffiti in long, firm strokes, she heard the sound of footsteps crunching on the gravel on the side of the building.

  Instantly, she dropped the brush and grabbed Wes’s Remington. Pointing it toward the source of the noise, she said, “Unless you want to get your head blown off, you’d better stop right there and tell me who you are.” Thank God, neither her voice nor her hands trembled.

  “Julianne?”

  She sighed and lowered the weapon. “Come on, Cade.”

  Cade sidled around the corner of the building. “Damn, girl, what’s this all about?”

  “I had a visitor here last night.” Then she noticed his right arm, encased in a blue cast and suspended in a sling. “Cade! Good Lord, what happened to you?”

  He walked toward her and climbed the porch steps, looking both sheepish and disheartened. “Oh hell, it was my fault. I was trying to saw a low branch off the tree in my folks’ front yard. I thought the ladder was steady.”

  “It wasn’t?”

  “Nope.” He nodded at the cast. “Broke both forearm bones clean through, just like snapping two sticks. I spent most of last night in the emergency room at St. Luke’s.” It showed in the dark smudges under his eyes.

  “Are you able to drive?”

  He shook his head. “I can’t shift gears—the truck doesn’t have an automatic. I tried, but I was so bad at it I figured I’d probably put the truck in a ditch and do even more damage. My brother was coming to Gila Rock to send off an express mail package at the post office so I hitched a ride with him. It took me more than a half hour just to dress myself.”

  “Oh, that’s awful!” In this part of the country, a man’s truck and his ability to drive it were equal to a cowboy’s relationship with his horse two generations back. A man never walked when he could ride, or in this case, drive. She knew it was a blow to Cade’s male ego. It created a big problem for her, too. She’d been counting on him to deliver her hogs to Benavente’s to avoid any possibility of running into Mitchell. Now it looked like she’d have to do it, and probably have to hire someone to take Cade’s place. “But you didn’t have to come all the way over here. You could have just called. I’ll bet that arm hurts something fierce.”

  “Yeah, well . . .” Men never liked to admit that anything hurt. “They gave me pain pills to chew on for the next few days. Anyway, I decided to get out instead of just lying around with the TV on while my mother’s cats climb all over me.”

  “I guess you’ll be laid up for a while, at least till your arm mends.” She returned the shotgun to its place against the wall and picked up the paintbrush.

  A shadow of what looked like panic crossed his mild features. “The docs said that would take a couple of months. But once I get the hang of using my left hand and arm, I can still work around here.”

  She glanced at the back of the building. The paint was peeling, and really, more than the door needed a good going-over. “But there’s a lot of heavy lifting and moving to be done. Cade, I might have to hire someone else to do that until you’re healed. I signed loan papers yesterday that pretty much put my back against the wall. I’ve got to get this business up and going. You can understand that.”

  He sighed and nodded. “Yeah, I do.” He tapped the toe of his boot against the can of paint sitting on the concrete step next to her. “What are you doing, anyway?” Though the black paint still showed through the yellow, it was now a dull charcoal-gray shadow. At least the message was no longer legible.

  She told him what had happened the night before. “I called Sheriff Gunter earlier this morning, but you know, it’s the same old story. He said it would help if I’d actually seen the ‘suspect.’ But he promised to check into it.”

  “You think it was Mitchell Tucker?”

  “Of course. Who else would leave me a message saying it’s not finished? If you were Mitchell, wouldn’t you want revenge on the person who sent you to jail?” Even as she said it, though, she knew that really didn’t match the man she’d once known. Mitchell hadn’t been as vindictive as the rest of his clan. But he’d been furious when she’d split up with him, and after seven years in prison he probably would have learned what hate really meant. Now, she felt like his next target.

  “That’s not the way I heard it happened. You didn’t send him. The law caught up with him.”

  She shrugged. The history she shared with Mitchell included so much more than that one horrible night, but she couldn’t tell Cade about that. The secret of her relationship with Mitchell Tucker lived on, despite the passage of years and events, and in that way she was still tied to him by a strange, indefinable bond. “The outcome was the same. Anyway, this kind of stuff used to happen at the farm, too, before Wes died.”

  “Yeah, I know, and that’s got me worried.” He touched her forearm with his good hand. “Julianne, if he’s going to harass you, I don’t like the idea of you being here alone.”

  Neither did she, but she lifted her chin, unwilling to admit it. “I refuse to live in fear.” It was the same thing she’d told herself last night. Saying it out loud reinforced her determination. “Besides, this is my home now and I’m not going to let anybody chase me out of it.”

  “You need someone around here—a man—to protect you.”

  She looked at him and saw the spark in his eyes that she’d noticed a lot lately. An awkward tension sprang up between them. Maybe that crush she suspected was a reality. That was all she needed right now, on top of everything else. “Why, sir, what a quaint notion,” she drawled in her best Texas accent, trying to keep the moment light. “And a noble one, too, y’all wanting to save a damsel in distress. But I do believe I’ll manage just fine.” She tipped her head toward the weapon. “I know how to use that thing, and I’m even a decent shot. I’m thinking I’ll get a dog, too.”

  He wasn’t smiling. “I’m serious.”

  “So am I.”

  “Well, I’ll tell you what. Maybe I can’t do much lifting and hauling, but I know how to run a retail store—I’ve been doing it for years. You have a computer, right?”

  “Yes, I brought it over here from the farm.” She’d used it to keep track of the farming operations, although toward the end, there hadn’t been much that needed tracking.


  “I could work on the computer for you.”

  “Do you have experience with it?”

  “Um, yeah, some. How hard can it be?”

  She gave him a skeptical look. “I don’t have the money to pay you for that. I’m still going to have to hire someone to do the other work.”

  “Look, just give me a cot in the back room and a meal, and I’ll do it for nothing.”

  She put her fists on her hips, still clutching the brush. “You can’t live here with me under the same roof. And no one can afford to work for free. What is this really about, Cade?” If there was something going on, she wanted to know.

  He glanced away for a moment, then looked at her dead on. “I care about you, Julianne. I want to be more to you than a hired hand. I feel like we have a shot at something good. We have more things in common than not. I admit I don’t have a lot to offer in the way of money or possessions . . . not now anyway.” He turned and gazed across the gravel parking area behind the store, and the words tumbled out, as if this were his one opportunity to speak his mind—and heart. “I-I know you said there haven’t been any other men in your life since your husband. Maybe you’ve been waiting for the right one to come along.” He looked at her again and took her paint-speckled hand. Blotchy color filled his face from throat to hairline, and his obvious discomfort radiated to her. “Maybe you’ve been waiting for me. I’d like the chance to prove to you that I’m the right one. I want to be that man.”

  Before she realized his intent, he moved closer and pressed a soft kiss on her lips. He smelled of soap and a faint whiff of aftershave.

  Julianne pulled back and stared at him with raised brows. This was a lot more serious than infatuation, and the suddenness of his confession and the kiss astounded her. She’d never thought of Cade Lindgren in a romantic light and didn’t really want to. For her, he was a friend, a buddy. He said he “cared” about her, but instinct told her his feelings ran deeper than that. She cared about a lot of things and people—she had cared about Wes, and she cared about Cade—but she had loved only a few, and she knew the difference. It had taken a lot of courage for him to reveal his feelings. But this changed everything, and at the moment, she wished he’d kept his mouth shut.

  Feeling panicky, she took her hand from his. “Cade, I can’t . . . this isn’t the time . . . we don’t . . .” She couldn’t seem to wrap her mouth around a single complete sentence. At last, she thrust the paintbrush into his hand and jammed her straw cowboy hat down on her head. “Is your brother coming back to pick you up?”

  “Yeah.” He looked a little downcast. Plainly, this wasn’t the response he’d been hoping for.

  “All right, then.” She opened the door, grabbed her wallet and keys from the stool just inside, and slammed it again. Then she picked up the shotgun. “I’m going out to the farm to pick up those hogs and drive them to Benavente’s.” Right now it seemed the least fearsome of the two problems. “We’ll have to talk about—everything—later.”

  He grabbed her arm again. “Julianne? Will you think about it, anyway?”

  She opened her mouth, but again, no words came out. Bounding down the stairs, practically running toward her truck, she left him standing there with his blue cast and her yellow paintbrush.

  Damn, damn, damn it all to hell, Julianne fumed, as she turned her truck down the rutted dirt road that led to Benavente’s. As she bumped along, the two sows in the back grunted and squealed their complaints loudly, but she barely heard them. With everything else she had to worry about right now, Cade had decided to goop up the works and turn into a romantic. He’d actually kissed her. At best, it put her in an awkward position. Worse was the confusion he’d stirred up in her by upsetting their nice, well, buddyship. It was good, comfortable, to have a male friend who didn’t hit on her.

  During the first years after Wes died, she had fended off a number of tacky, bad-mannered passes. One of them had even come from, of all people, Darcy Tucker. It had been years ago and happened outside of the Shoppeteria. He was coming out of the place as she was going in to buy groceries. Hey, how ’bout if we go out for a beer sometime and get better acquainted, now that you’re a widow and all? God! His crude come-on had shocked her even more than Cade’s admission of his feelings. She hadn’t bothered to answer and had breezed past him. She’d encountered him a couple of times after that, and that had been when his evil temper had shown in the rude comments he’d thrown at her.

  Cade’s kiss hadn’t been all that bad, she supposed. It even felt kind of nice, maybe because no one had kissed her or really even touched her in the past eight years. Of course, that had been the way she’d wanted it.

  But sometimes it got lonely. There were times, deep in the night, when the bed seemed as vast as the Big Bend itself, and Julianne craved the joy and mystery of intimacy. Not just sex—she could get that anywhere. Anyone could. What she yearned for was that feeling of her soul mingling with another’s. She’d known that once. Not for long, and it now seemed like a lifetime ago. She hadn’t forgotten how it felt, though—the tenderness, the sweetness of it.

  That craving could make her heart ache as little else could, save the memory of one thing.

  She steered her mind away from that memory, the most painful one of all, worse than Mitchell’s treachery, worse than Wes’s death. It was locked up tight in the core of her being, and though she would never forget, she didn’t want to remember, either.

  But even these thoughts couldn’t distract her from the very strong, distinct odor of hogs. The ripe smell hung over the farm, despite the fact that Rafael Benavente ran a very tidy and well-tended operation. There was no way to describe the odor, and no way around it, especially with a place this size. Although she was long accustomed to it, she wouldn’t miss it.

  She pulled the truck into the yard and honked, two long, sharp blasts to bring someone out who could tell her where they wanted her to park to off-load the sows. After a moment, Rafael himself appeared and waved to her. He walked around to her side of the truck and pushed back the brim of his straw cowboy hat. He was about the age her father would have been, had he lived. In fact, Rafael and her dad had been friends.

  “Hola, Julianna!” Except it came out Hoolie-ahna, and that always made her smile.

  “Hola, Rafael. I brought the two sows I talked to Victor Cabrera about.”

  He moved down and put both hands on the side of the truck bed to get a look at them. “They look good,” he said, coming back to her window. “Nice young ones.”

  Yes, and that was a problem for her. Julianne wished she could have kept them a bit longer. The females were small and not worth as much as they would be in a few months. But she didn’t have a few months. She had to sell them now.

  “I’m sorry to hear of your troubles with the farm. I know it must be hard for you.”

  She shrugged slightly and looked past his shoulder to the hills on the distant horizon. “I think everything changes eventually. We just have to make the best of what we end up with.”

  He nodded philosophically, and patted her hand where it gripped the steering wheel. “You have a plan?”

  She told him about the store, and they chatted for a few moments in an olla podrida of English and Spanish. After they agreed on the price, she asked, “Where do you want me to park?”

  He put up a big, work-rough hand. “No, no, you don’t trouble yourself. You wait here. I get your money and send one of the boys to take the sows. They’re not so big and there are only two, yes?”

  “Yes, thanks, Rafael. Tell Mrs. Benavente hello for me. Oh, and have her drop by the store the next time she’s in town. It’ll be good to see her again.”

  “Yes, I will tell her.” He walked back to his office and returned quickly with cash, which Julianne appreciated. She put the bills in her wallet and was sitting in the cab of her truck when she heard someone drop the tailgate.

  Automatically, she opened the door and jumped down. “You’ll want to be careful of the black-spotted
one. She can be a little cranky when—” Julianne stopped in her tracks, thunderstruck.

  “Hello, Julianne.” She recognized the voice before she looked at the face that went with it. It was whiskey-rough and as familiar as an old pair of shoes—shoes that hurt like hell to walk in.

  Mitchell Tucker. Again. He was holding a ramp to put on the end of her tailgate. More jumbled pictures flashed through her mind as she stared at him, unable to tear her gaze away from those sea-green eyes. It was like looking at a gruesome accident, or something so wicked and profane that it fascinated. He wore a white T-shirt and dusty, boot-cut Wranglers. The afternoon sun picked up the flecks of red in his dark hair.

  Then the most recent image flared—one of black spray paint.

  Didn’t Rafael know that she wouldn’t want to have anything to do with him? How could he send Mitchell out here to unload her hogs? Shaking with righteous anger and nerves, she reeled toward the office.

  “Rafael!”

  “Wait, Julianne. I’ll get these pigs and—”

  Her stomach had tied itself into a knot and climbed to her chest. “Rafael, get another man out here!”

  The owner appeared in the door of his office, took one look at the situation, and started gabbling in Spanish too fast for her to follow. The one name she did catch was when he yelled for Victor Cabrera. A string of vague profanities followed regarding the species of Cabrera’s parents.

  Behind her she heard the sound of the plank hitting the bed of her truck. One squealing sow ran down the ramp and scampered off across the dusty yard. The other followed close behind.