Rachel stared up at him. "A tree? A Christmas tree?"
Luke nodded. "Chris and Rob would want Gordie's first Christmas to be special. We'll have a tree and lights but not the usual parties. Dad's followed my advice and booked on a cruise through the holidays. It's something he enjoys doing and hopefully it will help him through this period. He offered to come here but his arthritis will only get worse. I told him we'd visit him in Arizona as soon as he gets back in the New Year."
When Luke used we was it just a figure of speech or had she deliberately been included? A chill chased down Rachel's spine and she trembled as she recalled the kiss last night. Had it just been an experiment or was it one of those I'm-serious ones. Lying awake half the night hadn't provided her with an answer.
"Will you be ready to leave in an hour?" The lifted eyebrow told her he was aware she was day dreaming and Rachel felt the warm color seep into her face. "We'll take a picnic lunch and return about four."
"What about your work?"
The day had assumed rainbow hues suddenly. A picnic with Luke. Hours alone with him. A pulse throbbed in her throat. She wanted to go. She wanted not to.
"All done. I hit the save button at three this morning and punched the messages into the modem at work. I'm free for the rest of the week to give you a hand with Gordie."
Rachel wasn't sure all that freedom and ensuing togetherness was such a good thing. For her at any rate.
Theresa, Juan's wife, came up promptly at eight. David, her youngest, was better today and back in school.
"He loves wading in the stream near the house and it's been so cold lately," she told them both as she picked up Gordie for a hug and a kiss. "Must have caught a chill."
Luke told her about the tree cutting expedition and she nodded her head. "It's a nice day for an outing. Supposed to go up to the mid-sixties today. Don't you worry about a thing. Marie and I will manage fine."
"I could stay back..." Rachel offered, surprised by the rebellion that surged through her at the thought.
"Of course not," said Theresa, looking amazed. "You need to be out in the fresh air. Marie will be here by nine and this is my only chance of some time alone with Gordie."
When they were ready to leave, Luke picked up a picnic basket from the counter. When had he had time to pack that? Between giving Gordie his breakfast and making theirs?
He didn't miss the lingering look she gave Gordie as the latter's face scrunched up in protest of their departure. The ten-month-old knew he was being left behind.
"Don't worry," Luke assured Rachel, giving Gordie a hug and a kiss on the cheek. "These are his crocodile tears. They don't last two minutes. He loves Theresa."
"Maybe I should stay and help? Theresa's rheumatism..."
"Is fine," cut in Luke firmly. "I asked her about it and she said she can manage fine with Marie. Hannah called while you were in the shower and suggested we defrost one of her frozen casseroles for dinner. Theresa doesn't have to do a thing except watch Gordie and she’s looking forward to quality time with him. We ensure that by making sure Hannah has a day she spends with her sister each week. At one time we almost thought they were going to start fighting over who did what for Gordie. Hannah and Theresa are usually never out of sorts with each other. Hannah’s weekly visits to her sister solved that dilemma."
Placing an arm on her shoulders he turned Rachel towards the door. "Anyway, you deserve a day off after being such a brick yesterday. Come on."
He wouldn't let her carry the axe or the picnic basket. She finally managed to get the blanket from him and hugged it to her. It did nothing to smother the budding excitement that made her feel like a diver poised on the edge of a cliff.
A half hour later they were by the little grove. Luke paused for a moment to look around. Taking a deep breath of pine scented air Rachel did the same. The hills had a special softness today and the air was like wine. The exercise had dispelled the morning chill she’d felt at first.
"Watch your step," Luke warned. "The trail gets steeper after this and the pine needles make it slippery."
Rachel looked up. The path wound upwards and disappeared. She wet her lips and hesitated.
"Not afraid of heights are you?"
"No. It's not that." She was just afraid, period. Of the way she was feeling. Of the fact that strange emotions were making inroads into the carefully banked control she had always counted on. The path she was on emotionally seemed to lead into a future where she had no control. And losing control meant leaving herself open to pain.
"Let's go then, or we'll be walking back in the dark."
Luke set his pace by hers, pausing often so she could look at the view and catch her breath. When they reached the glade of evergreens she squinted up at the sun.
"Eleven o'clock," she announced in surprise. "It took us only forty five minutes to get here. I thought it was much longer."
Luke looked surprised, checked his watch and said, "You're right. Where did you learn to tell time like that?" He had seen her bare wrists too often not to know she didn't own a watch.
"On the job." Rachel smiled self-consciously. "One of the cooks at the main MRA camp had every single meal ready on time. He taught me how to tell time by the position of the sun."
Luke took the blanket from her and spread it on the ground. Rachel sat down cross legged as he began to rifle the picnic basket.
"You really like your work don't you?"
Whenever she talked about her life abroad her face took on a special softness.
"Yes," her eyes took on a serious look as if she was seeing private pictures he had no access to. "Very much."
"What made you decide to go so far away? You must have been a kid when you left."
"Not a kid. I was eighteen," Rachel said reflectively, plucking a blade of grass and chewing on one end. She didn't answer the first part of his question.
"Why did you go Rae?" Luke persisted after waiting a while. "Most eighteen year olds are thinking about college, jobs, having fun, fast cars, dates, clothes."
She had turned eighty the day her mother had left. "The work appealed to me. I felt I would fill a need."
He had it in a nutshell but he wanted more. "Didn't your parents mind? I remember Chris mentioning once that you were an only child like her."
A cold front moved into the grey eyes that gazed into the distance and Luke felt a twinge of prescience. He could tell just by looking at her that it had been because of her family she had decided to go abroad.
She shrugged trying to sound casual, "It's what I wanted to do."
Turning to the basket Luke took out one of Hannah's fruit cakes. Undoing the brandy soaked cheesecloth it was wrapped in, he cursed himself for stirring up painful memories for Rachel. She had looked so alive on the way here, laughing out loud as he had told her about some of the misadventures he and Rob had had on the farm over the years.
Deliberately he embarked on another tale as he unpacked the food, trying to restore her earlier mood. “Rob and I always stole one of Hannah’s fruitcakes and she would go after us with her wooden spoon.” He laughed. “I can’t wait to see her face when she comes back and notices one is gone.”
There were turkey sandwiches and some ham rolls as well as a fresh salad in a plastic container and Luke's favorite Bleu cheese dressing.
Rachel bit into a ham roll. “This is so good."
"Theresa only brings them over when Hannah is away. Hannah's very possessive about who feeds her family."
Luke saw her reach for another roll, glad he had managed to take her mind off whatever troubled secret her past held. Already she looked different from the woman he had seen outside the courtroom. She didn't pick at her food these days and her face glowed with color. She smiled readily, and had lost the air of a doe waiting for a panther to pounce.
"You don't much care for salad do you?" he asked smothering crisp lettuce and tomatoes with bleu cheese.
Rachel stopped with her roll half way to her mouth. "It's n
ot that I don't like salad. It's just that we never ate any raw greens or vegetables abroad. It was safer just to eat cooked vegetables."
Finishing her ham roll she took the turkey sandwich Luke held out to her. Her eyes were on the cake.
"Hannah said they had to remain in the brandy soaked muslin for a month before they would be ready. Won't she be upset?"
"No. We always take one of her cakes when we go on our cutting-the-tree picnic."
He looked at his plate as if he had suddenly lost all taste for his food. Rachel knew Luke was remembering other times when he had come up here with his family. Happier times.
"When were these trees planted?" The need to distract Luke, ease his pain, supplanted her usual shyness around him.
"Five years ago. We plant a new area each year. Great Grandpa Jasper told his son, my grandfather Robert, that the land was a gift from God that had to be preserved as close to its original state as possible. It's become a family tradition to do as much as we can to keep the sanctity of nature intact, mate it with progress in a way that doesn't cause harm."
That Luke was a giver Rachel knew already. That he was a man who would always give more than he took, she was beginning to find out.
"This whole area is beautiful."
"Tell me about your work," Luke asked abruptly. He wanted to know more about her get inside her thoughts and find out what had made her the way she was.
"I didn't do much. I was sort of a medical assistant cum general dogsbody."
"Who delivered babies by herself, gave injections and even pulled teeth?"
Rachel's eyes widened, "Who told you that?"
"I heard all about the talk Jason asked you to give the staff last Wednesday night after you treated Mojo. He told me it was a record turnout."
As she busied herself pouring tea, pretending to look for something in the basket, Luke thought back to the evening he'd mentioned. He'd been busy at his computer and when he'd finally surfaced for a cup of tea, Hannah had told him where Rachel was. He'd reached the old barn that had been converted into a recreation hall in time to hear the tail end of her talk.
"It isn't glamorous and it doesn't pay well," she had concluded, "but it has its own rewards."
"Can anyone join MRA?"
The question from one of the younger men was answered with confidence. "Yes, but relief work needs a special kind of strength, mental and physical."
Luke knew she had plenty of both. He just puzzled over how it had been forged in one so young.
Another hand shot up. "Didn't you miss your life here, terribly?"
Rachel turned towards the speaker, "No." Her voice carried quiet conviction and the fact she didn't elaborate made it all the more forceful.
The expressions on the group’s faces told Luke she had captured their attention. He’d looked at her face, flushed with the intensity of her feelings, with love for her work, and felt fear thread his being. Was what he had to offer her enough to keep her here? She had no use for money which left him with only one card to play. Love.
Later, Jason had mentioned to him that the staff was going to start a collection for MRA. Word had gotten around and Hattie Gorkie, one of the men's wives, had invited Rachel to talk to her craft club about her work in Bangladesh.
"Were you happy out there Rae?"
"Why do you keep calling me that?"
"Rae?" Luke held her gaze steadily. "Because I think it suits you. I looked up your name in a book of baby names and Rachel means ewe lamb, but Rae spelled R-A-E means doe and that's what you remind me of. A gentle, beautiful doe."
She swallowed hard. Had anyone told this man he had poetry in his soul? Any defense she mustered would be useless against it.
"You didn't answer my question," Luke reminded her stubbornly. "Were you happy there?"
"Very. I like being busy."
Luke could tell from the look on her face that she wasn't going to say more on the subject.
"Tell me about the worst thing that happened to you, out there," he coaxed.
"It was in Bangladesh, just before I left. The floods had wrecked most of the villages and we were in this tiny village giving cholera shots. I was working alone with the children and Tom was attending a breech birth, when a whole river bank slipped away in front of our eyes." Rachel swallowed, her eyes filming at the memory. "A woman had been washing clothes near the edge and she slipped right into the swirling muddy water, screaming. I found her clinging to a root and managed to get a grip on her wrists. I didn't know if I could hold on long enough, but suddenly Tom was there and some other men. They pulled her out just in time."
The nightmare. This explained it.
"What was the best thing that happened to you?" prompted Luke.
Rachel's brow wrinkled in thought, and then she smiled. "In the middle of my second year abroad, we were working in a village trying to teach the people about nutrition and disease prevention. There were just the two of us then, Tom and me, because it was considered an easy assignment." She chuckled over her memories and the sound gladdened Luke's heart. "Anyway, after we'd been there a week, the headman wanted to know if Tom and I were going to be married soon. When Tom told him we weren't, there was a great deal of head shaking and whispering. The next morning Tom came out of his hut to find two oxen, one goat and five chickens outside.
"This is the dowry for the woman," the headman told him. "She is skinny, but soft spoken and will bear you many sons. Will you have her now?" Rachel laughed at the memory of Tom's face.
"How did Dr. Atwell get out of that one?"
"He said something about not being able to marry me because he was already betrothed to another woman, but he had taken it on himself to find a husband for me among the other workers. The headman wasn't too happy but he had to accept that. When we left he reminded Tom that the dowry would be there any time it was needed. A year later we were at a neighboring village, and he sent a man over to find out if I was still unmarried and to remind us of the waiting dowry."
The woman who heard him mention the price of his stallions without flicking an eyelash had eyes filled with tears over the memory of plain, honest caring.
Her sandwich was gone, Ray noticed. Talking seemed to have given her an appetite.
Rachel took the plate Luke held out to her. The generous portion of fruit cake he had cut her looked tempting. The first bite proved it. "Mmm. This is heavenly. Hannah could market it and make a fortune."
"She and her sister do." Luke named the brand it was marketed under. "Hannah has quite a bit of her own money. What I give her is nothing compared to what she does for us. It's the same with the Rodriguez' but after the accident nothing would do except Theresa should come up to the house every day and help Hannah. I protested but Juan told me to let her be. It was the only way she could come to terms with her grief he said."
"Chris and Rob were well loved weren't they?"
Luke nodded. "Yes. There are people here who've seen Rob and I grow up, been part of our lives forever. Juan was Rob's godfather. Chris' found her own place in their hearts with her warm nature, her capacity for caring about everyone she met." His eyes darkened reflectively. "She was so much fun, always teasing me about getting married and making her an aunt, giving Gordie some cousins to play with."
"Does your father like Arizona?" It was time to change the subject; to dispel the returning shadow of sadness in his eyes.
"My mother died three years ago and after that he lost interest in the farm. Dr. Kenton suggested a change would help his arthritis and help him stop grieving for my mother. He's made a few friends in Arizona, has a small stable, and rides every day. He visits us twice a year."
"He isn't in a home then?"
Luke looked surprised. "Oh no. He has a small house in what is called a retirement community but he's very independent."
Life, Rachel knew, followed a pattern of regeneration, woven by human emotions. Birth, death, suffering, joy, were all part of the pattern. When Luke brought his bride to the D
iamond Bar, happiness would reign again. Rachel wondered about the kind of woman he would choose. Someone like his mother who had grown up in these hills or someone like Chris, warm, wonderful, who would bring sunshine into his life and Gordie's. Rachel blinked. For some reason her mind refused to supply her with a composite sketch of Luke's future wife.
Luke took off his jacket bundled it under his head and stretched out. His eyes closed and she looked at the fan-sweep of his dark lashes against his bronzed cheeks. He looked strangely vulnerable like that.
"You aren't going to fall asleep now after that big meal, are you?" she asked.
He opened one lazy eye, "I can't cut down a tree right this minute. Why don't you lie down as well?"
Rachel looked at the arm extended to pillow her head, at the length of Luke's hard frame. Preposterous ideas flooded her brain. Willful, insistent, demanding. She jumped up as if she'd just seen a rattlesnake. "I'm going for a small walk."
"Okay," he said comfortably, "but remember we have to walk back too. I have to manage the tree...I won't be able to carry you."
Rachel didn't go far. Out of sight of Luke she stopped and looked around. From here she had a clear view of the ocean, could even see the waves as they flung themselves on shore. If she closed her eyes, she could recall the sensation of being carried by Luke. His arms had cradled her to his strength. In her present picture he didn't leave her on the bed. She held her hand out to him and his eyes changed as he looked down at her, the look in them promising her the happiness she had never let herself dream about.
Rachel's eyes flew open raising a hand to her head. The brandy in that cake must be affecting her. It was the only explanation for her hallucinations.
Luke was fast asleep when she got back. Stretching out beside him without touching him, Rachel told herself she would get up in a minute and closed her eyes.
Gordie was patting her cheek with one arm as she gave him his bottle, saying softly, "Rachel." She frowned. There was something wrong with her dream. Gordie couldn't say her name yet. Opening one eye she saw Luke's face directly over hers, suffused with an incredible tenderness. He didn't belong in her dream.
Faith Hope and Love (A Homespun Romance) Page 10