“Uh-uh,” murmured Kat, her eyes fixed on one particular cowboy hat at a far table, though she’d already seen his truck parked out in the lot, as it always was Thursday nights. “I had to come here.” She’d promised the calves she’d do this—well, do something—months ago, and her dad had always taught her to keep her promises. Tonight was the best chance she’d ever get. Still, she was feeling sort of sick. Or maybe that was the double order of French fries, which she really should’ve split with Emma. Or the cherry Coke.
“Though I’ve gotta say the scenery’s awfully…scenic,” Emma admitted as they stepped to one side to let three cowboys stride past them. They all slowed down to bestow wide grins on Kat’s companion, ignoring her completely.
She stood on tiptoes to hiss in Emma’s ear. “I gotta run to the Ladies’! Go ahead and get us a table.”
“Sure do like your blue streak,” one of the cowboys was drawling as Kat hurried away, holding her book bag close to her side. “Danged if you don’t look like one of those bluebirds, flyin’ low and fast.”
In the Ladies’, Kat locked the door, then turned to the small, high window that overlooked the parking lot. It was open already and its screen raised easily.
She threw her book bag out first. It made a dreadful clank, but there was no one out there to notice. Hoisting herself up so she balanced on her stomach on the sill, she squirmed out into the dark. Commando on a Mission.
THIS MUCH HAPPINESS was almost scary, Abby told herself, seated at Jack’s kitchen table while he cooked an omelette. She’d become a soap bubble floating up toward the sun, colors sliding across her in rainbow hues. But such a lovely feeling, how could it possibly last? Sooner or later something was bound to pop.
Still, on and on she floated. There had been no discussions since their brief one in the living room. Nothing had been spelled out or defined between them, not in words, but that last time they’d made love…oh, if tenderness counted for anything… Sighing with contentment, she leaned back in her chair.
Jack turned at the sound, cocked his head as he studied her. No smile, but the look that passed between them curled her toes.
“Kat should be arriving any minute,” he noted, lowering the flame beneath his skillet. “Can’t tell you how I’m going to miss you tonight.” Crossing the room, he bent, raised up her chin, claimed her mouth. “Miss…doing…this. If you hear somebody howling below your window ’round midnight…it’s not a coyote.”
“I’ll be the one howling back.” They jerked apart as the phone rang in the living room.
“Blast! I wish the world would leave us alone, just for one night. If that’s one of my clients, I’m gonna fire him.”
“It’s probably Sky reporting in,” Abby guessed, following him toward the sound. “I asked him to call here, since he has our cell phone.”
There’d been no messages from Sky on Jack’s machine when she’d looked earlier. If this wasn’t her son now, she’d give him one more hour to check in, then she’d do the calling.
But a woman’s voice rattled forth in response to Jack’s greeting.
His eyebrows climbed. “What’s she done? When? Tonight?”
Another brief, passionate avowal and a distant phone slammed down.
Jack slammed down his own and lunged toward the door.
“What?” Abby cried, snatching at his sleeve.
“Kat, of course. Michelle wouldn’t or couldn’t explain. She said this one we have to see for ourselves.” He patted his pockets. “My keys? Oh, right.” He headed for the kitchen.
“And turn off your eggs!” she cried, searching for her shoes.
IN THE FAR CORNER of the parking lot at Michelle’s Place, a half dozen onlookers surrounded a big gray Ford pickup. Jack braked beside it and stepped out of the Jeep. Abby hurried around to join him as the crowd grinned, muttered and shuffled aside.
His back turned to the ring of spectators, a tall cowboy stood, arms tightly folded across his chest, head bent down, contemplating the right rear flank of the truck.
Standing by his side, Michelle turned with an expression halfway between laughter and despair. “Behold.”
For a moment Abby thought the emblem marring the truck’s sleek surface was paint—grafitti printed with black precision. But as she moved closer and stooped, she sucked in a breath.
The letters T-R-U-E, surrounded by a lopsided heart, were burned—branded—into the glossy gray enamel, surrounded by a smoky haze. “Trueheart,” she murmured, comprehension dawning.
Dazedly, Jack touched the heart. “You’re certain Kat…did this?”
“Oh-hh, yeah,” Michelle assured him. “When Anse came out, she was standing there bold as you please, holding her brand and the torch she used to heat it. Said she’d done it for the calves. So he’d know what it felt like. And maybe next time he’d think twice.”
Jack groaned and glanced wildly around. “Where is she?”
“A woman who said she works for you has her. I told her they should wait in her car. They’re parked out front.”
Jack swung to face the truck’s owner, who still stood, unmoving, eyes locked on the brand. “Of course I’ll pay for it, Anse. Whatever it takes to put it right—exactly the way it was. Just send me the bills.”
Eyes shadowed by the brim of his Stetson, Anse Kirby slowly shook his head. “It ain’t the paint job…”
“Well, as for Kat, by the time I’m done with her—”
Kirby’s head kept on shaking. “She might as well’ve branded me. I live to be a hundred, I won’t live this one down. Every brandin’ day for the rest of my life, somebody’s going to elbow somebody else and snigger and say, ‘Remember the time that little girl branded Anse Kirby’s truck?’”
He sighed, resettled his hat. “Lately I’ve been thinkin’ about Wyoming, finding some land of m’own up there. Dunno. Maybe this is a sign. Maybe it’s time I headed on down the road.”
“Well, before you pack your saddlebags, there’s time for a good stiff drink.” Michelle caught his arm. “Come on, Anse, I’ve got this bottle of Scotch upstairs that needs opening…” Sending Abby a glance of wry laughter, she silently shaped the word, Later! and towed him toward the café, calling, “Show’s over, folks!” to her other customers.
“It’s illegal to strangle your offspring in Colorado,” Jack muttered, staring at the brand. “Still…” He shrugged. “I was figuring someday she’d end up a biologist. Or possibly a veterinarian. But I don’t know…maybe a master criminal?”
“Or how about an activist? A political crusader? Or just a spirited and passionate young woman with the courage of her convictions?”
“Keep talking. I’d give a lot to be convinced. Meantime, what do I do to her that’s horrible enough to make an impression?”
Abby laughed helplessly and turned up her palms. “Cook your meals for a solid year to pay you back for Kirby’s paint job? Or—” She hooked a hand through the crook of his elbow. “Why don’t you sleep on it and let her worry tonight. Tell her it has to be so awesomely awful, it’ll take you a while to devise a suitable punishment, which it will.”
“Yeah…sounds good. Good enough.” Jack walked with her toward the Jeep. “Poor Kirby. He was shook. Wish there was some way to make it up to him.”
“Well, I had a thought about that,” Abby said as he helped her up onto the seat. “Would a portrait make him feel any better, do you think?”
“Portrait by you?” When she nodded, Jack added, “Of what?”
“Whatever he loves. A sweetheart?”
“Far as I know, he’s a loner.”
“Ah.” Abby glanced up at the lights that had been switched on in the apartment above the restaurant and smiled to herself. “Then…does he have a horse he’s proud of, or—”
“Well, he certainly rides. And he hangs with this big Airedale.”
She laughed. “I could do a dog easily. Or what about his truck? I could show it just the way it was, in all its glory—even better. Super Tru
ck.” Posed heroically on a hilltop, with a red sunset silhouetting its gun racks?
Lifting her hand, Jack kissed her knuckles. “Bless you. That just might cheer him up. It’d give him a way to claim he got the last laugh whenever the other hands rag him. But for now…want to wait here while I go collar the Katster?”
Watching him walk away—body by Michelangelo on his very best day, heart to match—Abby leaned wearily back in her seat and smiled. A proper portrait would take a week or more, what with the preliminary sketches. One more excuse to stay, not that she needed excuses now.
She sighed happily. I hope Anse wants his horse done. If she did a bang-up job, and then word got around… Because how many cowboys lived around Trueheart? If they all cherished their horses—and their trucks—why, there was a livelihood right there, whether she ever succeeded in selling a children’s book or not. She glanced up at the stars. What do you think, Dad? Want another portrait painter in the family?
To think that only a month ago she’d come limping into Trueheart without a job, without a home, without a love to call her own. Yet now, here was happiness blooming, unfurling itself petal by gorgeous petal.
She jumped as a man’s voice called, “Ms. Lake? I thought that was you. Evening.”
Bret Halliday, owner of the airfield, had just stepped out of the café. He stood near the Jeep, fishing a ring of keys out of his pocket.
“Oh, hello.” She smiled, too tired to make conversation.
“That was too bad, about today,” the man went on, opening the door to his car. “Nice kid you’ve got there. And patient, too. Hated to see him so disappointed.”
“Excuse me?” Abby sat up in her seat. “What are you saying?”
One foot inside his car, Halliday paused. Frowned. “Then you weren’t home when I dropped Sky off. You haven’t been back yet?”
“I…” Slowly Abby’s hand crept to her throat. “You…” Oh, no, please, no. “Why did you drop him off? And what time?”
And what, dear God, had Skyler seen?
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
DAWN OF THE LONGEST NIGHT he’d ever known. Jack steered his Jeep slowly up the northern slope of the valley, zigging up bird streets and zagging down stars, covering every possible route through the town that a sad and angry and bewildered boy might have taken. Scanning the bushes and side yards through strained and gritty eyes. Sky, Skyler, you contrary kid, where are you?
“Abby, I’ll find him for you. I swear I will,” he muttered with a glance toward the east. Maybe an hour left before the sun rose above the low range of mountains known as the Trueheart Hills, and they’d been hunting since midnight. You’d think by now somebody would’ve spotted him.
But only if Sky wanted to be found, and clearly he didn’t. He could be crouched down behind any fence or garbage can and they’d never see him. Sky, you poor little surly beggar! Running and sulking never helped anything.
How much had he seen to make him run?
Nothing too shocking, Jack was fairly certain, given the time Halliday had fixed for his drop-off. Possibly Sky had seen nothing at all. Only heard them laughing upstairs in Jack’s bedroom, then put two and two together. But stack that revelation on top of his father’s letting him down…
And why did the rat stand him up? Sky had only told Halliday there’d been a change of plans, but not why. Throughout the long night, Abby had tried reaching her ex, but for some reason Lake wasn’t answering his cell phone. Damn the man! And if there’s anybody really to blame for this, I’d place it squarely in his lap. If Lake had made good on his promised visit to Sky, this never would’ve happened. Sky wouldn’t have witnessed something he wasn’t yet ready to accept.
Blame. Jack gritted his teeth, swung the wheel again at the end of a block. Abby was blaming herself. Half-hysterical, near collapse with exhaustion, she just wasn’t being reasonable. If I’d been looking out for my son’s happiness, instead of my own! she’d cried, shoving against his chest when Jack had first tried to hold her, to comfort her.
But Abby had wanted no comforting, at least not from him. She wasn’t blaming him, thank God. Abby wasn’t a blamer, or not of others, anyway. But clearly she thought their day of bliss had brought this punishment down from above.
And so she wanted nothing more to do with him.
Whether she realized it or not, she was bargaining with God. Proving to Him that she’d be willing to trade all chance of happiness to have Skyler back. Give it up forever, if need be. Give me up. Throw us—what we could be to each other—right out the window. Out of her life.
Jack braked the Jeep at a crossroad and sat, staring down over the rooftops, seeking any sign of movement between the houses. God, to go from such shining hope and happiness yesterday—to this?
Off to the west, something moved. He swung around and squinted, then made out a blue car, creeping eastward along the road past the white spire of the little Lutheran church, then down the hill into town. Halliday’s car, returning. He’d agreed with Jack that the airfield was a possible destination for Skyler. The last point of contact with his father, it was also a symbol of the kid’s dreams and ambitions. Of happier days. Halliday had volunteered to search the hangars, the planes, the outbuildings, and if that didn’t prove fruitful, to prowl on west toward Cortez, though it seemed unlikely the kid would run west.
Abby was convinced Sky had headed east. That his running meant a complete rejection of everything she’d brought him to—Trueheart, this new life she’d been building here. Her relationship with Jack. She was sure her son was on his way back to New Jersey, either to the home she’d sold this spring, or to the house Lake had bought in a nearby town for his new family. Conceivably to Sky’s grandmother in Maryland. But east, definitely east. Back to his world before the divorce.
Sky, you poor crazy kid. You can’t go back. You have to square your shoulders and set your face to the future, no matter how it hurts. I should’ve been teaching you that instead of carpentry. Would’ve been honored to teach you.
Jack rubbed his hand across his face. Don’t give up. Not yet. This was just exhaustion talking. And blues.
And aching loneliness. Abby, could you really throw us away? Leave me now, just when I’ve handed over my heart?
Once they’d searched their two cottages and yards, finding only DC, crouched on the kitchen stoop, they’d scoured the town itself—the school buildings and streets, the shops on Main, the library grounds, the park. Anse Kirby, Michelle and Halliday had helped in that first round of searching, while Emma had stayed at Jack’s cottage, in charge of home base communications and Kat, who, in spite of her protests, had been sent, sleepy and chastened, off to bed.
When they’d combed Trueheart and failed to find the runaway, they’d called in reinforcements. Whitey and Tripp McGraw were covering the roads to the northeast, out toward Suntop and the Circle C; Rafe Montana, the back roads northwest toward the Jarrett ranch. Sheriff Noonan had returned from some unspecified investigation out of town to join the search.
He’d shown up just in time to head off a major blowup. Abby had been insisting that she and Jack should drive separately to cover more ground. But Jack refused to let her go alone, exhausted and upset as she was. He’d threatened to confiscate her keys to the Subaru if he had to, and she’d been crying, insisting that she’d drive her own bus, when Noonan arrived to break the impasse.
So Abby had gone east in the sheriff’s car, helping him scan the highways, since her greatest fear was that Sky was hitchhiking. By now he might be wandering through the truck stops on the outskirts of Durango, seeking a ride.
God, don’t let her be right. The kid was too smart for that. Basically sensible, even if he was outraged and upset.
With Abby in good hands, Jack had opted to reexamine the town. Sky didn’t take his cat. That was part of Jack’s reasoning for sticking close to Trueheart. And his dad let him down. Wouldn’t that have given him pause?
If it was me, I’d look for refuge somewhere I�
�d been happy. If I felt little and lost and scared, then I’d go where I’d last felt competent. In control. So Jack was working his way uphill, toward his building site, where this summer Sky had learned the satisfaction of working with his hands. Of building something, in this changing world, that would last. Abby might call this guy-think, but then maybe it took one to know one.
To find one.
Not that he hadn’t searched here once already. It was the first place he’d looked after Haley’s Comet Street. Still it would’ve been easy for Sky to hide if he didn’t care to be found. But by now? He’s had a whole long, cold night to feel sorry for himself. Without a bite to eat.
Parking at the base of the drive, Jack walked up, scanning the gaps between the gnarly old apple trees. Or I suppose he could be up on a branch. He’d wait for better light to search the grounds, then go on over the ridge.
He reached his house and stood, surveying the plywood floors in hope of fresh sneaker tracks in the dew. But found nothing, not a sign.
He sighed wearily and trudged on, checking the picnic table out back, then the metal shed where they locked up their tools. But the combination padlock hung in place, so Sky couldn’t be inside. So much for his theory.
Maybe he should call Abby, see if she’d had any luck. Emma had lent Jack her cell phone for the search and Abby had recovered her own. She’d found it in Sky’s bedroom, in his backpack.
One more reason I don’t think he’s hitchhiking. Surely he’d have taken his pack?
Unless the kid had seen something that had so shaken him he’d fled without thought or plan.
He blew out a breath, turned toward the ridge. No. It wasn’t light enough for bushwhacking yet. Turned back—and frowned.
The foundation enclosed a full-size cellar, dug into the slope. His future workshop, but right now it was where they stored the lumber and more valuable supplies, such as the finished windows waiting to be installed. Someday the walk-out door to the basement would be covered by a set of steel bulkhead doors. At present, Jack tacked a sheet of plywood to the door frame at the end of each weekend. Hardly an unbreachable seal, but at least it hid the contents from view.
Kelton's Rules (Harlequin Super Romance) Page 25