I Promise

by Joan Johnston

  Delia was busy absorbing impressions of Marsh.

  He seems taller than I remember. Broader in the shoulders. His hair is still too long, still sun-bleached, but a darker shade of brown. He looks tired.

  He had crow’s-feet around his eyes, and deep lines bracketed his mouth. A scar cut through his right eyebrow, and another scored the edge of his mouth. A man aged better than a woman, Delia thought. All those character lines only made him look more ruggedly handsome.

  “What are you doing here?” Delia repeated.

  “I came back to Uvalde to get my daughter through high school. I got custody of her when my ex-wife died six months ago.”

  “I heard.” At his raised brow she explained, “Rachel told me.” She paused, feeling awkward because it sounded like she had inquired about him when she hadn’t. But it would be dishonest to suggest she hadn’t wanted to know the information, because she had. “I meant,” Delia said, “what brings you to the hospital today? Is someone you know sick?”

  “To be frank, I came to check on your mother.”

  Delia shot him a confused, searching look. “Why would you be checking on her?”

  “I was at the ranch when she had her heart attack.” He paused and said, “Actually, I think I caused it.”

  Chapter Nine

  Marsh couldn’t believe how beautiful she looked. Over the past two decades, memories of Delia Carson had been like a rash that erupted at inconvenient times, irritating, prickly, sometimes painful. He had made a habit of reading the New York Times just to keep up with what was happening where she lived. He had seen the articles when she became a candidate for judge, watched her take a stand in print for what she believed, and drunk a toast to her election success in a smoky Oriental bar in Korea. He hadn’t seen her for twenty years, but it felt as though they had parted only yesterday. The attraction between them was as uncomfortably powerful now as it had ever been.

  “Would you mind explaining that comment you just made?” Delia said. “In what way were you responsible for Mother’s heart attack?”

  Marsh met Delia’s gaze and was startled to realize she was looking right at him. The experience was disconcerting because in the past she had so seldom met his gaze directly. Even when she did, it had been for only brief moments before she retreated behind lowered lids. She wasn’t hiding now. Almost the instant the thought occurred to him, she lowered her eyes to her hands, which framed a Styrofoam cup.

  Hiding again, Delia? What made you nervous? Are you still as attracted to me as I am to you? Or is there something else? What is it that’s kept you away from me all these years?

  “I made the mistake of thinking your mother had come to terms with the issues that caused Ray John Carson’s death,” Marsh said at last. “I was wrong.”

  Marsh got the violent reaction he had been seeking from such a provocative statement, but it came from Rachel, not Delia.

  The congressman’s wife choked and coughed without stopping for several seconds. “Coffee went down the wrong tube,” Rachel gasped when she could speak again.

  Marsh turned back to Delia in time to catch her shaking her head at Rachel. When she saw him looking at her, the gesture stopped abruptly. What was that all about?

  “At any rate,” he continued, “I’m glad your mother survived the incident,” Marsh said. “Will the surgery this morning correct her problem?”

  “Dr. Robbins says it will,” Delia said. “He said he recommended bypass surgery two years ago, but Mother refused to have it. Now she doesn’t have any choice.”

  “I don’t understand why she didn’t do it earlier,” Rachel said.

  “According to Dr. Robbins, she didn’t want to give over management of the ranch to some stranger during the month to six weeks she’ll need to recuperate,” Delia said.

  “Thank goodness you’re here now,” Rachel said.

  “I can’t stay that long,” Delia said sharply.

  “Why not?” Marsh asked.

  “I have responsibilities. I have to be back in court.”

  Rachel looked at Delia wide-eyed. “Who’s going to take care of Mom?”

  “You’re a more logical choice than I am,” Delia said to her sister. “You’re going to be here.”

  “Maybe,” Rachel said. “Maybe I’ll be here.”

  “You aren’t going to back off from what we discussed, are you?” Delia asked.

  “No, but I might not be able to come back right away,” Rachel said.

  “It sounds like you two have a problem,” Marsh said. “Maybe I could be of some help.”

  Delia frowned. “I don’t see how.”

  “I’m living close by, and I know the ranching business. Maybe I could fill in at the Circle Crown until your mother’s on her feet again.”

  “We couldn’t ask you to do that,” Delia said.

  “Why not?” Rachel asked. “If Marsh has been kind enough to offer, I don’t see why—”

  “Because I said we can’t, that’s why,” Delia snapped.

  Her eyes were hidden from him again. What was she so afraid of? Marsh wondered. He shrugged nonchalantly. “If you don’t want my help, you don’t want my help.”

  “If you won’t let Marsh help, Delia, what are we going to do?”

  Marsh watched Delia swallow hard before she looked him in the eye and said, “I’ll have to stay myself. At least until I can hire a manager.”

  She had seen the trap too late and fallen into it. But he wasn’t going to help her out. Not when he had her exactly where he wanted her.

  “Thank goodness that’s settled,” Rachel said. “I hope you’ll excuse me, Marsh. I want to see Mom before she goes into surgery. Want to come, Delia?”

  “I’ve already spoken to Mother. I’ll meet you in the waiting room in a little while.”

  “All right.”

  Marsh scooted out of the booth to let Rachel pass.

  “Thank you for offering to help, Marsh,” Rachel said once she was on her feet with her clutch purse tucked under her arm. “I know Delia appreciates your offer as much as I do.”

  “You’re welcome,” Marsh said with a smile.

  “See you soon, Delia,” Rachel said before she turned and walked away.

  Marsh couldn’t help following Rachel with his eyes. She had turned into a stunningly beautiful woman. But Rachel’s beauty didn’t hold a candle to the fire he saw in Delia’s eyes when he sat back down across from her.

  “You tricked me,” she said as soon as Rachel was out of earshot.

  “I made an offer. You refused.”

  “You knew I couldn’t accept your help,” Delia said. “Not after everything that’s happened. I owe you too much already to be taking anything more from you.”

  “Will you have trouble getting the time off?” Marsh asked.

  Delia grimaced. “I have some vacation coming. And I can ask for a leave of absence. But the timing isn’t terribly convenient.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Let’s just say a certain district attorney will be doing cartwheels when he hears I’m off the bench for a while, and it irks me to give him what he wants.”

  “Is that the only reason you don’t want to be here?” Marsh asked quietly.

  Delia avoided his gaze. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. When she looked up into his eyes, he was stunned at what he saw. The pain made his breath catch.

  He reached out automatically to touch her, to comfort her, but she pulled her hand free of his.

  “Don’t touch me. Please. This is hard enough without . . .”

  He wished he didn’t feel so much for her. Especially when Delia seemed in such a damned awful hurry to get back to New York.

  She was avoiding his gaze again. He reached out and gently raised her chin with a forefinger until she was looking at him. “Conscience bothering you, Delia?”

  “What I did was unforgivable. I shouldn’t have left you to face those charges alone. I’m sorry, Marsh.” A sigh of relief quivered thr
ough her. She edged back until she was free of his touch. “I didn’t realize how much I needed to say that.”

  “I won’t say I wasn’t upset when you left,” Marsh said. That was a whopping understatement. “As it turned out, I didn’t end up facing anything. The charges were dropped.”

  “Because I wasn’t there to testify.”

  Marsh shook his head. “No, even before that. Someone came and talked to Sheriff Davis. Someone made him believe Ray John Carson had committed suicide. The sheriff told me I was no longer a suspect in Ray John’s death, and that the rape charges had been dropped.”

  “But who . . . ?”

  “You figure it out.” Marsh rose from the booth, retrieved his Stetson, and settled it low on his brow. “I’ve got some business to take care of in town. I’ll check back later to see how your mother’s surgery went.” He hesitated and said, “Unless you’d like me to stay?”

  She shook her head. “No. I . . . I need some time to think.”

  “That offer of help stands,” Marsh said. “If you need anything, give me a call.” A grin flashed. “Anything,” he said with an exaggerated leer, “means anything.”

  Delia made herself laugh at Marsh’s blatant sexual invitation, doing her best to hide the shiver of excitement she experienced at the thought of being held in his arms and kissed . . . and loved the way they had never had a chance to love. “Get out of here,” she said with a hard-won smile.

  Feeling as though the world had tilted on its axis, Delia watched Marsh walk away. Marsh was obviously willing to take advantage of their forced proximity to have a long-delayed love affair with her. She had to admit the idea was tempting. She had often, over the years, wondered what it would have been like to have sex—Would it be making love at this late date?—with Marsh.

  She didn’t fool herself that it could ever be more than a brief affair. She had her life. He had his. He would never settle down again, and she could never settle for a wandering man.

  She couldn’t. Wouldn’t.

  But there was so much about him—about the man he had become—that she admired. She had followed his work with The Chronicle. His investigative articles were incisive, articulate, insightful. He had seen so much of the world, and done his part to help right wrongs by exposing them to public scrutiny. He was seldom in one place for very long, it seemed, heading from one trouble spot to another.

  She had been tempted more than once to contact him, but had chickened out. In the beginning because she wasn’t ready to see him yet, and then because she had learned he had a family. She hadn’t even known she was still harboring a secret desire to marry him until she discovered he was married to some other woman. The news had struck her like a punch in the gut. It had taken her a while to recover. She had finally fallen in love with a Manhattan attorney, Averill Matthews, but it hadn’t worked out. An astute man, A very had figured out her heart wasn’t free to love him.

  And Marsh was so lucky to have a daughter . . . who might have been theirs, if fate had not intervened.

  Delia tried not to think of might-have-beens. It was unproductive and disheartening. She focused on the facts.

  She had a demanding career she loved and wasn’t willing to give up. Marsh had the same. Their lives had no chance of intertwining except intermittently. When her mother no longer needed her, she would return to Brooklyn. When his daughter graduated from high school he would fly away to some trouble spot somewhere. End of story.

  At least she had cleared her conscience. At least she had said she was sorry.

  Delia frowned. She had heard long ago that the charges against Marsh had been dropped, but she hadn’t investigated how it had happened. She had always assumed it was because she hadn’t been there to testify. But according to Marsh, someone had come to the sheriff’s office and cleared his name.

  Why had he brought it up? What was it he wanted her to figure out?

  She racked her brain to think of a person who could have known enough to confirm Ray John’s suicide and clear Marsh at the same time. Someone with enough credibility for the sheriff to believe him . . . or her.

  Rachel? Rachel hadn’t even known Delia was pregnant. Who else was left?

  Mother?

  Delia’s arm hairs lifted.

  It wasn’t possible. Her mother was the one who had wanted to press charges against Marsh in the first place.

  Who better to clear him with the sheriff?

  Why would Mother help clear Marsh?

  Because she knew the truth.

  She didn’t believe me. She called me a liar. She took Ray John’s side.

  At first. But she had time later to think about it. Maybe she started to believe you.

  Why didn’t she tell me so? Why didn’t she send word to me, asking me to come back home?

  Delia rose abruptly from the booth and headed for the hospital waiting room to meet Rachel. She had cast her mother in the role of villain for too long to believe Hattie Carson could have been wearing a white hat all these years. Nor could she believe her mother would have allowed her elder daughter to believe the worst of her for so long without seeking to correct the situation.

  “You’d better live, Mother,” Delia muttered under her breath as walked briskly down the hospital corridor. “We have some talking to do when you’re able.”

  Delia was stiff when she rose from the waiting room chair to greet Dr. Robbins. It was nearly three-thirty in the afternoon. Several times she had feared something must have gone wrong, but the nurses had assured her the surgery was commencing on schedule. The elderly doctor’s surgical greens were patched with sweat, and clumps of gray hair stood askew where he had pulled off his surgical cap. His shoulders sagged wearily.

  “Your mother came through the surgery just fine,” Dr. Robbins said. “She’ll be in recovery for quite a while, and then we’ll keep her sedated so she can rest. You should go home and rest yourself. I’ll have the nurse give you a call when Hattie’s ready for visitors.”

  “You’re sure she’s all right?” Delia asked.

  “The surgery was a success,” Dr. Robbins said. “But your mother’s heart has some scarring. She’s going to need a lot of help and support in the coming weeks and months.”

  “Months?” Delia said. “Doctor, I was only planning to be here a couple of weeks.”

  “Then you’d better hire someone to take over for you. Your mother isn’t going to be able to manage the Circle Crown on her own for a long time—if ever again.”

  “I thought you said there was only a little scarring from the heart attack,” Delia challenged.

  “This isn’t the first attack,” he said.

  “What?”

  “She had an attack two years ago. That’s when I first recommended the surgery.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me about this sooner?” Delia asked.

  “I’m not sure I ought to be telling you about it now,” Dr. Robbins said. “Hattie is going to be madder than a wet hen when she finds out. But I like the old bird, and I’d hate to see her try to do too much too soon.”

  “If she takes care of herself, is she going to be all right?” Delia asked.

  “Her heart will work better after the surgery. But it’s never going to be as strong as it was.”

  Delia turned to make eye contact with Rachel, who was on the pay phone in the hall with Cliff. How were they going to get Hattie to slow down? How were they going to find someone they could trust to manage a ranching empire the size of the Circle Crown?

  “My sister and I will wait at the ranch to hear from the nurse,” Delia said. “You’ve got the number there?”

  “I’m sure we do,” the doctor replied. “Call me if you have any further questions.”

  Delia shook his hand. “I will. Thank you, doctor.”

  The doctor had left the waiting room by the time Rachel hung up the phone. “What did the doctor say?” Rachel asked.

  “Mother’s going to be fine. We’ll be able to see her tomorrow morning.�
�

  “Thank God. I told Cliff Mom wasn’t out of surgery yet, and I had to stay one more day. He wasn’t happy, but he agreed. At least we’ll have one evening together before I have to leave. What do you want to do?”

  “I want to go home,” Delia said. She meant to Brooklyn. But that wasn’t possible. “To the Circle Crown,” she clarified, “to shower and change clothes.”

  “All right,” Rachel said. ''I’ll follow you in my rental car.”

  “Afterward, how about if I buy you dinner at the Amber Sky?” Delia suggested.

  “Chocolate chiffon pie for dessert?” Rachel asked with a grin.

  Delia laughed. “Sure.”

  “You’ve got a deal!”

  Delia glanced at her watch as she drove up to the back door of the Circle Crown, pounded the steering wheel as she realized the time, and swore, which did nothing to ease the sudden anxiety she felt. She hopped out of her rental car and waited for Rachel, who had been following her, to pull up beside her in another rental car. She knocked on Rachel’s window, waiting impatiently for the car’s electric system to roll it down.

  “It’s 4:00 P.M.! I had no idea it was so late. I’ve got to call Janet right now if I want to catch her before she leaves for the day.”

  “The door’s open,” Rachel said. “It always has been. Make a run for it, Delia. I’m heading upstairs to change into something I can wear to the Amber Sky without looking like a city girl.”

  Delia left her sister sitting in her car and hurried inside. The phone call was necessary, but also provided an excuse to go inside without Rachel on her heels asking how it felt to be back, a way to get past the first awkward moments home with her attention focused on something else besides the home she had left twenty years before.

  But even the smells were familiar—tamales in the kitchen as she passed through, and after twenty years, gunpowder in the hall as she passed her father’s gun room. That had to be her imagination, but the odor was sharp enough to pinch her nostrils. Memories were hard to shake.

  She headed for the phone in her mother’s office. That room had the fewest memories, but also the worst ones. She hadn’t expected them to bombard her from the doorway.