Kathleen couldn’t speak.
Wesley got up and brought back a glass of water, which she accepted gratefully.
“This is dreadful,” she managed. She drew several shaky breaths and then stood, setting the glass aside. She needed to be doing something, whether it was necessary or not. Her eyes stung with empathetic tears as she spooned freshly ground coffee into the old-fashioned electric percolator she’d been using for thirty years. “Was anyone hurt?”
Wes shook his head.
She felt a dizzying rush of relief, and a need to prattle. “The ladies aid will want to take up some kind of collection for those poor children, I’m sure. They could certainly stay in our guest house for as long as they needed—”
Wesley grinned at her. “I love you, Mom,” he said. He gave the endearment a few moments to sink in. “I suppose they’ll live with J.T., though. He’s been rattling around in that big old house all by himself anyway, and Billy will want to be close to his job.” Wes paused, glanced toward the open backdoor. “Is Dad around? Like as not, there’ll be a barn-raising soon, and I expect he’ll want to donate some of the materials.” Although Reece had sold the family milling operation, he’d kept back a sizable inventory of lumber and other supplies. No doubt that made him feel as though he was still a part of things, where the business was concerned.
“I’m sure your father will be happy to help,” she said, a little stiffly. It seemed that Reece was eager to grant everyone’s wishes lately—except for hers, of course. She was expected to turn her back on everyone and everything she knew—family, friends, house, garden, the very warp and woof of her existence—to simply uproot herself from a life more than forty years in the making and take to the road like some gypsy.
“Is he here?” Wesley asked again, carefully.
Kathleen got out two large ceramic mugs, made during her pottery-and-ceramics phase, and set them on the counter. “As far as I know,” she said coolly, “yes.”
Wesley sighed audibly, but before he could formulate a reply, Reece himself breezed in from the backyard, accompanied by the whooshing sound of the sprinklers and the scent of new-mown grass, looking cheerful as you please. Clean-shaven and spit-shined, as a matter of fact. Kathleen’s blood simmered, and she tightened her lips. Her worst suspicions were proving to be true, she thought, as something collapsed inside her. Reece McCaffrey had taken up with another woman.
“Mornin’,” Reece said.
Wesley nodded cordially at his father. Men. They were all alike, and no better than they should be. “You’re out and about early, Dad,” he remarked.
“No earlier than you are,” Reece answered lightly. He caught Kathleen staring, and she looked away, flushed, but not before she saw him grin that McCaffrey grin. Well, if he wanted coffee, he could just get out his own cup and pour the stuff for himself, she fumed.
“I guess you’ve probably heard about J.T.’s fire,” Wesley said.
Reece nodded. “Things are buzzing down at the Stagecoach CafÈ,” he said. “Murder and arson, in one week. Poor Purvis is probably in way over his head this time.”
Before anyone responded to that observation, Maggie’s dog tottered in from the sunporch, and Kathleen dished up a bowl of kibble, then leaned down to set it on the floor.
When she straightened again, her gaze collided with Reece’s, and she realized, by the twinkle in his eyes, that he’d been admiring her backside while she was bent over. She might have slapped him right across that handsome kisser of his, if they’d been alone. Or not.
He chuckled, and Wesley looked away and cleared his throat.
Kathleen glared at Reece and stormed back to the counter, where there was nothing whatsoever to do except wait for the coffee to brew. It was percolating nicely, filling the kitchen with a fragrance that evoked earlier, better times. Tears sprang to Kathleen’s eyes, despite the formidable opposition of her will.
Behind her she heard quiet words pass between her son and husband, then the screen door opened and closed again, with a dearly familiar creaking sound.
Strong hands came to rest on Kathleen’s shoulders, hands she knew so well.
“Kathy,” Reece said. He was the only one in all the world who called her by that name; it was a private intimacy, theirs alone.
She sobbed, overcome by heartbreak.
“What is it, darlin’?” Reece asked. “How can I help you?” He turned her around and took her into his arms and she allowed it only because she didn’t have the strength to resist.
“You—were—out all— night—” she wailed.
He chuckled into her hair, a deep, rumbling, comforting sound. “That I was, Kathy,” he said, teasing her with his version of the brogue. In the past, it had always made her laugh. It was, she thought, like hearing John Wayne say, Tennis, anyone? “I slept in the RV.”
She looked up at him. “Alone?”
He scowled indignantly. “Of course I was alone,” he said.
She wanted to believe him, wanted it with all her heart, but there was no sense in kidding herself. Where there was smoke, there was fire, and Reece McCaffrey was definitely up to something. Why, until he’d bought that silly motor home of his, he’d spent most of his time on the computer in the family room, surfing the Internet, and when Kathleen looked back on that lull before the storm, she realized he’d been downright furtive about it, too. When Helen Bisbee’s husband ran off with a woman he’d met via email six weeks back, Kathleen had of course been outraged on poor Helen’s behalf. Reece had said it served Helen right, the way she’d gotten so caught up in playing bingo every night of the week. It wasn’t hard to make the link between Helen’s admittedly compulsive bingo-playing and Kathleen’s own foray into the worlds of folk art and e-commerce.
She stepped back, out of her husband’s embrace, and looked away. Let him take his silly RV and whoever he might be chatting up, on-line or in person, and hit the road. She meant to stay put, in the house where they’d raised three children, and she’d hold her head up if it killed her. Which she thought it just might.
“Kathy? You don’t really think—?” He couldn’t even say the words, it seemed. But then, he’d always been a smooth talker.
It still affected her, though, his being so close, and after all these years. “J.T. will be needing some lumber,” she said.
Reece was still for a long while. Then, with a sigh, his workingman’s hands at his sides, he stopped trying. “Yes,” he ground out, looking grim. “I’d better see to that, hadn’t I?”
He walked away from her, paused at the screen door. The hinges squeaked as he pushed it open. “Kathy,” he said again, more firmly this time.
She made herself meet his gaze, calling upon all the pride and defiance she possessed. A thousand times she’d worked up the nerve to challenge him, to demand to know what was going on, but she’d always backed down, afraid of the answer.
“I was telling the truth when I said I spent the night alone in the RV,” he said. And then he went out, quietly closing the door behind him.
Kathleen put a hand to her mouth and closed her eyes tightly, but tears came anyway. She wanted so much to believe him, to find her place in his heart again, but it seemed to her that they’d set out on divergent paths, and maybe there was no going back. She wanted to stay in Springwater and paint, and he wanted to travel all over the United States and Canada for the rest of their lives. Neither was inclined to compromise.
She looked down at the dog. “Oh, Sadie,” she said, “what shall I do?”
Sadie collapsed onto the rug in front of the sink and heaved a despondent, snuffling sigh of her own. Plainly, she would be of no significant assistance.
9
Maggie felt dazed, standing in J.T.’s driveway, as though she’d awakened suddenly while sleepwalking to find herself there, surveying the gnarled and blackened skeleton of his barn. J.T. came out of the house by the backdoor, moving slowly, even reluctantly. Damn him, she thought, he’s drawn to me, and he knows I’m draw
n to him, and even now he’s walling himself off. Doing his best not to care.
She watched him, her throat thick with sorrow and confusion and with the stench of charred wood aching in her sinuses. She couldn’t speak for a moment, she was so shaken, her mind flooded with horrific images of what might have happened to J.T., to Cindy and Billy, if the fire hadn’t been contained in time.
J.T. sighed. Freshly showered and wearing jeans, boots, and a white T-shirt, he was damnably attractive. Maggie was torn by conflicting desires; on the one hand, she wanted to embrace him and weep with relief. On the other, she knew that would only complicate matters further.
“Scully Wainwright built that barn with his own hands,” she said, falling back on history, the safest topic that came to mind.
J.T. nodded, surveyed the wreckage, folded his arms.
“It was arson?” she asked. She needed confirmation of what she’d already heard in town just to believe her own eyes. A prompt denial would have been preferable to the truth, if only temporarily, but J.T. was his usual blunt self.
“That’s the verdict,” he said, without apparent emotion. “The insurance company has looked it over already. They found a gas can and some other evidence that it was deliberate.”
“What about the animals?”
J.T. smiled gently at her concern, and the usual tension undulated between them, as elemental as their heartbeats and the currents in the atmosphere itself. “All of them are safe. A little edgy, maybe—like the rest of us.”
Through the trees separating the main house from where Billy and Cindy had lived, Maggie glimpsed the ruins of the trailer, twisted and blistered. Her stomach did a slow roll—dear God, what if they’d been sleeping?—and her knees went weak. For a moment, it was as if she’d lost them all—J.T., Cindy, and Billy— and she was overwhelmed.
J.T. was standing directly in front of her when she opened her eyes. He took her upper arms in a firm but painless grasp and held her steady. A grin tilted his mouth sideways. “Take a deep breath, McCaffrey,” he said. “Everything and everybody is all right.”
She knew that wasn’t true. J.T. himself was a casualty of things that had happened on this ranch, not only last night, but in the distant past, and so, indirectly, was she. Still, she swallowed hard and nodded. Tried to smile.
“Come on,” he said, tugging her toward the door, which still stood ajar in the bright light of that summer morning. “I’ll buy you a cup of coffee. You look like you need reviving.”
She allowed him to take her loosely by the elbow, usher her toward the house, up the back steps. In the kitchen she sank into a chair at the table, assaulted by memories of earlier, happier times, while J.T. got a mug down from the cupboard and poured the promised coffee. “What happens now?” she asked, as he took a chair across from her and leaned forward, bracing his muscular forearms against the table top.
He shrugged. “I build a new barn.”
Emotionally swamped, she still wanted to bolt, but she made herself sit, and spoke in a mild, almost nonchalant tone of voice. “What about your uncle?”
J.T. sighed again, shoved the splayed fingers of his right hand through his hair. “There’s an ongoing investigation, for all the good it seems to be doing. The body’s being held at the country morgue until further notice.”
Maggie was quiet for a long time, sorting through her feelings. Then, turning her half-filled mug slowly on its base, she added, “That’s all you’ve got to say?”
J.T.’s gaze smoldered. “Are you looking for sentiment, McCaffrey? Clive used to beat the hell out of me about every other day, once my dad was gone. He knocked my aunt around, too, though I only caught him at it once.” He drew a ragged breath, thrust it out again. “You’ll pardon me, I hope, if I don’t cry at the funeral.”
“Why did you spend so much time here, if things were so bad? Why didn’t you stay in Las Vegas, with your mother?”
J.T.’s jawline hardened, and his eyes flashed. “Because you—” He stopped, looked away, looked back, fiercely. “Because, damn it, right or wrong, for better or for worse, this ranch is my legacy. My home.”
Maggie felt another dizzying upsurge of that strange jumble of jubilation and despair that J.T. so often aroused in her. He had started to say, Because you were here, she knew that as well as she knew the streets and houses of Springwater, but no power in heaven or on earth would ever make him admit as much. Which only went to prove what she’d suspected all along: No matter how attracted she and J.T. were to each other, no matter how deep their love or how strong their passion, the barriers between them were insurmountable. She would accept nothing less than his whole heart, and he simply wasn’t able to open up that much.
Tears sprang to her eyes.
J.T. groaned. “McCaffrey, don’t cry. Please, don’t cry.”
“I can’t help it,” she said angrily.
He folded his arms, leaned back in his chair. “I’ll say it again— I didn’t kill Clive Jenson.”
“What brought that on?” she demanded furiously, crying harder and not even trying to stop. “Did I say I thought you did?”
“You wouldn’t be the only one.”
She bit her lower lip. “You must have some idea who—” She fell silent at the look on his face.
“Like I have some idea who killed my dad?” he interrupted with quiet fury.
She sighed. “Look, J.T., I’m on your side. Stop treating me like a hostile witness.”
“I’m sorry,” he said tightly. He didn’t seem all that contrite to Maggie, but then, with J.T., it was hard to tell.
“What are you going to do?” she asked evenly.
He paused for a long time before answering. “The usual. Go over the scene again. And again. Read the coroner’s report until my eyes cross. Ask a lot of questions.” He paused. “And pray this doesn’t attract the press. Things are getting pretty weird around here, and Purvis and I have our hands full as it is, without a bunch of reporters underfoot.”
“Do you think it’s all connected—the poisoning incidents and the fire and—and what happened to your uncle?”
“No telling,” J.T. said, calmer now. “If I had to venture a guess, I’d say yes. Springwater is a small community, after all. There can’t be that many big-league criminals around here.”
Maggie agreed, feeling glum. “Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help,” she said, a little stiffly, finishing her coffee. “Billy and Cindy are welcome to use my folks’ guest house if they need it.”
“They’ll be bunking in here for a while,” J.T. said. “I’m planning to build a small house for them to live in, where the trailer was. One of those prefabs.”
She watched him. “So you’re staying?”
He frowned. “Why wouldn’t I stay, McCaffrey?”
She swallowed so hard it hurt. “You’re obviously a target of some kind—” Until then, she didn’t think she’d consciously acknowledged that fact, or how much it frightened her. When she’d first heard about his shooting, while she was living in Chicago and he was still with the NYPD, she’d been physically ill. Dear God, If something were to happen to J.T.— He reached across the table, cupped a hand, callused from ranch work, under her chin. “I’m back,” he said. “And I’m here to stay.” He grinned that lethal grin, the one she had no defenses against. “Get that straight, all right?”
She pulled back slowly, stood, and crossed the room to set her cup in the sink, pretending he hadn’t complicated everything by touching her that way, just when she thought she had him all figured out. “There’s Quinn,” she fretted. “Will he be safe here?”
J.T.’s expression was instantly serious. “I’ll see to it,” he said.
Maggie believed him. Anyone who wanted to harm the boy would have to go through J.T. first. She nodded, reassured. “I’d better head back to town,” she said with brisk resignation. “I’ve got a business to run, you know.”
J.T. rose from his chair, and his presence seemed to fill the kitc
hen, to thrum in the very air itself, like the reverberations of some silent but completely cataclysmic explosion. Maggie wondered if he was aware of the power and prowess he exuded, and decided he had to be. J.T. was many things, but stupid wasn’t one of them. “Thanks for stopping by, McCaffrey,” he said, in a low drawl. “Given what a coward you are, it must have taken a lot of courage.”
Heat surged into her face, an aching fever, and anger pinched the pit of her stomach. His nerve was colossal. “What?” she marveled.
“You heard me,” he said, obviously enjoying her outrage. “When it comes to the two of us, as in you and me, you’re chicken, McCaffrey.”
“Of all the nerve!” Maggie stormed. “You, of all people—”
He stood watching her, damnably unruffled, and if she’d been the violent type, she surely would have doubled up her fist and socked him one. “Okay,” he said reasonably, “if you’re not scared, prove it. Let’s go to bed.”
Her mouth fell open. She couldn’t believe he’d actually said that. Nor could she believe how much she wanted to accept the outrageous invitation. “Go to hell!” she managed, after strangling on a couple of attempts to speak, and then she stomped out.
He followed her all the way to the driveway, where her Pathfinder was parked. “About that date to go riding—”
“We don’t have a date!” Maggie raged. “You can take that horse of yours and—”
He started to laugh. “Chicken,” he said.
She slammed the car door, ground the key in the ignition. “We’re not kids anymore, J.T. We can’t sleep together on a dare!”
“Why not?” he asked.
Completely stumped for an answer, she turned the Pathfinder around and sped down the driveway without looking back.
Just as J.T. had feared, reporters began arriving the following evening, drawn to Springwater by the dramatic death of Clive Jenson. Apparently it was a slow news week elsewhere in the world. Perhaps war, famine, and political scandal finally had become too commonplace to be of interest.
Springwater Wedding Page 16