She had put her hair up again in a messy bun, showing off the long line of her neck. Who’d have thought little Angie Donnelly would turn into the woman who threatened his resolve as no other woman could? The way he figured, it would do them both a lot more good if he thought of her as a sister, rather than a woman.
The path widened and he strode beside her. She angled her chin toward the full moon, the light filtering through the trees. When she lowered her gaze to meet his, she smiled and said “thank you, Cole.”
“My pleasure, Ang.”
“It’s Angela,” she chided, although her smile brightened.
Cole cut his horse in front of hers, taking up a trot as the path cleared a bit more. She followed him further into the moonlit woods and toward the old creek that ran through his property and what had once been Henry Donnelly’s land. In fact, if memory served, he believed they had crossed the property line and they were now on what used to be his former partner’s land.
He took his horse down the steep bank of the creek. The water would rise in spring from the melted snow, but now it was barely more than a trickle, maybe a foot deep and three feet wide.
Cole reached the water’s edge. “Hey Angie, you ever swim in this creek? Michael and I used to hunt crawdads. Then we’d take them up to the river and use them as bait.”
Angie stood at the top of the bank, staring at a spot just beyond the opposite bank, her face stone white.
Cole spun his horse around. “Ok, it’s easy. Dixie knows how to get down, you just haveto tell her to.”
“I’m sorry. I have to go back. It’s late.” Without waiting for him, she turned her horse and took off in a cloud of dust and dried leaves. He let her go, knowing he could have caught up to her easily. But she needed to brood. Something had upset her, and he would find out what, but not yet.
When he reached the stables twenty minutes later darkness had completely fallen. He took his horse, named Oliver after the orphan in the play, and settled him in for the night. Dixie had also been settled in. Angie had thought to remove the saddle and bridle, leaving them on a bench. Cole picked up the gear and spent the next half hour tidying the stable. By then he figured he had given her enough time.
She opened the door a full two minutes after he’d knocked. Book in hand, she stood in the doorway, blinking up at him through the porch light.
He stayed outside in the cool summer night and tilted his head in offer for her to join him. She set down the book and stepped onto the wooden porch in her bare feet. She wore cotton pajama pants and a plain white T-shirt, her hair loose over her shoulders.
He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back against the post. “Why’d you run?”
She stiffened. “I didn’t run.”
He pushed away from the post, his boots creaking as he stepped to her. “What did you see, Angie?”
He slid his hand to her cheek, needing to keep her gaze on his. Her breath caught in her throat, and he watched in silence as her eyes filled with tears.
“The memories.” She said, fighting to keep the sob from breaking through. “They just keep trying to come back. I can’t stop them. I did. I blocked it out, I kept them away for so long.”
He wiped tears from her cheeks with his thumb.
“At the creek.” She leaned in, her forehead resting against the side of his jaw, drawing from his warmth. “You were talking about swimming and crawdads and all I could think about was the time I ran away from home and hid in the rocks on the south bank. I made it almost half a day before he came and got me.”
Cole tightened his hold on her. “I’m sorry Angie. I should have realized. I’m so sorry.”
“My mom found me. She told him where I was and he came for me.”
“Ah, Ang.”
Angela stepped back and leaned against the porch rail.
“You know, there’s something I never told you,” Cole said softly. “I had a major crush on you when we were kids.”
As he had hoped, his confession made her smile. It was a skeptical and cynical smile, but at least he’d gotten her to focus on something else.
“You’re such a liar,” she said. “You hated me. And don’t try to tell me you didn’t.”
“Aw, the line between love and hate. Such a thin and wavering line it is.” He smiled. “Okay, you’re right. I did hate you and I sure didn’t want to like you. But maybe the reason I’m so good at bronc riding today is because I always made sure to do my best whenever you’d watch me practice.”
“Then why…” Angie shook her head, cutting herself off.
“What? Go on,” he prompted.
“Nothing. I learned a long time ago to never ask questions you don’t want the answer to. “And you’re welcome…for the bronc riding thing.”
Cole smiled. “You had a book when you answered the door. What were you reading?”
“A romance novel.”
“Now who’s the liar?”
She raked her fingers through her hair. “My mother’s diary,” she said, letting her hand fall back to her side.
“Good reading?”
“It’s sad. She was devoted to him, even after all he had done to us.” She tilted her chin to look up at Cole, her height drastically lower without those heels on her feet to lift her up.
“You mean all he had done to you.” Cole said. “He didn’t beat Michael, did he?”
“No.” She shivered. “Nor my mother. But they both turned their back to what was going on. It was easier to ignore it.”
“Angie, when you were in the hospital there was speculation. Did he…ever,” he fumbled over the words.
Her eyes dropped. “I don’t know. I don’t think so.” She looked back up at him, her eyes wide in wonder.
“You don’t know?”
She lowered onto the porch steps. “I don’t remember the beatings, at least nothing more than bits and pieces. Sometimes the before and after.”
Cole followed and sat beside her. “You’ve blocked it all out.”
She turned toward him. “Most of it. And that’s how it needs to stay. There’s no point in remembering.”
“You might not have a choice, sweetheart. You need someone who can help you. A professional. God. Me. Somebody.”
She laid her forehead on her knees and let out a breath. “I didn’t come back here to be wrangled into seeing a shrink or finding religion.”
“All right. Then that leaves me.”
“And why is this suddenly your business?”
“I didn’t help you when we were kids.”
“So now you see yourself as my savior?” She stood, the wary evident in her hesitant movements. “You didn’t help me then, so you’ll help me now? Because I’ve fallen into your lap?”
He looked up at her through the yellow glow of the porch light. “Something like that.”
“You’re fifteen years too late.” New tears welled up as she turned and strode back into the house. He let her go and walked back to the main house, his heart heavy and filled with renewed disgust toward Henry. Cole knew it was only a matter of time before those stubborn memories of hers bobbed to the surface.
****
The door closed behind Angela with a soft click. She leaned against it and listened to his fading footsteps. She didn’t recognize this person she had become; weak and sobbing in the arms of a man she remembered only as a cruel child and then as her first heartbreak. Suddenly and fiercely she wished to be sitting in a conference room in a leather chair, fingers resting on polished mahogany. She wanted to hear Jeffrey’s voice booming through the room as he made predictions for the next quarter, or reviewed the previous one. She wanted to be home again, heedlessly caught in the drone of business and working onmaking the company’s next million.
Working until late in the evening and then going home alone to an empty apartment.
She walked to the bedroom and scooped her discarded clothes from the floor. She hadn’t worn jeans in years. This wasn’t her life, nor suited
to the person she had become. Yet here she was in rural Montana, listening to crickets chirping outside her window, her eyes red from memories she had promised herself would never hurt her again.
Cole’s assumptions were absurd. He saw her as a woman who wore expensive suits and makeup to cover the innocence he claimed was still there. He was wrong. There was nothing left of the freckle-faced kid she had been a lifetime ago
She still felt the gait of the horse beneath her. If she closed her eyes she’d recall the wind against her cheeks. She could remember riding Doug Jordan’s horses and feeding them apple slices – happier times shining through the darkness of her memories.
She tossed the jeans into the hamper and sat on the bed. The other memories – the ones that had stolen her innocence
– still burned in the shadows, hidden in the empty places of her thoughts. They were put in their place more than fifteen years earlier and that’s exactly where they needed to remain. Eight
On Monday morning Angela dove elbow deep into work at the arena’s town office before the sun had fully risen. She was not an accountant, but she had dealt with money and investments enough to know her way around ledger books and computer accounting programs. At least it was better than mucking stalls. Still, as she worked her way through the messy books, she wondered if manual labor would have been easier. And cleaner.
At half past nine she rose to refill her coffee mug, her butt and thighs screaming in agony with every step. Her muscles were a long way from remembering what it was to ride a horse.
Tina sat at the only other desk in the room, her hands fisted in her blue and pink-tinted hair as she contemplated an open book.
“Know anything about math?” Tina asked Angela without looking up.
“A little.” She looked over at the textbook Tina was reading. “Summer school?”
Tina snorted and closed the book, leaning back in her chair. “My mom thinks it’ll give me a head start for senior year. I think she’s afraid I’ll blow off half my classes the way my older sister did, end up graduating by the skin of my teeth and then run off to Nashville.”
“She just wants you to succeed,” Angela said. “What are you working on?”
“Trigonometry.”
“Yuck.”
Tina rolled her eyes and pulled the book against her chest. “You and I think alike.”
Sunlight streaked through the wooden blinds, striping Tina’s hair with bands of light. A cynical smiled splayed across the girl’s face, her eyes unexpectedly keen and mature.
“Why don’t you relax,” Angela suggested. “Try again later. Maybe after lunch.”
Tina shrugged.
There was so much of herself in Tina, so many parts of the girl she had been. Angela wanted to hug her as if she could hold herself at that age and warn herself about what was to come. Feeling silly, Angela shifted her focus to a stack of files on Tina’s desk. “What are these?”
“Last quarter’s records. Cole said you wanted to see them.”
“Great. More.” She lifted the stack. “Are the receipts in here?”
“They should be. The files are arranged by date, then alphabetically. We have it all on the computer too; these are just the hard copies.” Tina leaned over the desk and looked up at Angela with a purposeful smile. “Can I leave early today? Billy – that’s my boyfriend – he wants me to go with him to the rec hall dance tonight, and I need to go to Julie’s to get ready.”
“I don’t see why not, but you should check with Cole.”
“But he’ll tell my mom.”
“Your mom doesn’t know you’re going to the dance?”
“Not yet.”
“I won’t help you lie to your mother.”
Tina laughed. “Oh c’mon. Don’t you remember what it was to be my age? I thought you were cooler than that, Angela.”
“It not my place,” Angela winced. “I’ll tell you what…how about I ask Cole if you can leave early. You can tell him, and your mom, why.”
“Fine.”
Tina went back to her math book and Angela sat down at her desk with the stack of files.
“Hey, can I ask you a question?” Tina asked after a few moments.
“As long as it’s not about trig or dances,” Angela said, flipping through the receipts.
“How do you know when you’re ready to, you know…do it?”
Angela looked up from the receipt she was holding and turned her attention fully on Tina. The girl averted Angela’s gaze and blushed.
“Is Billy suggesting that you and he…do it?”
“Yeah, kinda.” She shifted in her chair.
Angela suppressed a sigh. She was the person least qualified to preach about the virtues of abstinence and the word “hypocrite” flashed like a neon sign in her thoughts. A horrible, uncomfortable ball settled in her stomach.
“You’re only seventeen,” she said, turning back to her paperwork.
“So?”
“So, you should wait.”
“Fine. Shoulda known you’d say that.” Tina went back to her math book.
Angela glanced at the clock, then the door. Cole, where are you?
****
The cup of coffee had gone cold at Angela’s elbow before she had thought to take more than a few sips. The jingle at the door had her glancing up distractedly from her work.
Cole stepped across the threshold and offered her a curt nod. She closed the file she had been sifting through and took her cold coffee cup in her hands, watching uneasily as he scanned the room.
“Tina here?” His words were measured, his steps hesitant.
“She’s in the file room.”
“Morning.” He called loudly enough for her to hear him from the next room.
“Morning, Cole!” Tina’s muffled voice came excitedly through the walls and Angela smiled. She had a hunch the girl had a crush on Cole. Who could blame her? Angela thought as she studied his long, lean build, sturdy hands and the kind of eyes that could make a girl feel like the luckiest female on the planet when he bothered to look her way.
“I’ve been at the arena all morning. Otherwise I’d’ve been here.”
“I can handle things all right by myself,” she said. “By the way, you should talk to Tina. She wants to leave early today.”
“Will do.”
Tina’s dramatic groan reverberated through the wall.
“Looks like you’ve got quite a mess here. Is all this last quarter’s records?”
“Among others.” She brushed her hair back from her face. “I’m baffled by your expenses. They’re outrageous.”
She stood and scooped up a file. Holding it open for him, she pointed to an invoice. “I can’t believe you paid this much to have the sign painted. Didn’t you shop around?”
“Jason’s a friend and he does good work.”
“Favors for friends have no place in business if you want to make money. No wonder this arena’s in trouble.”
Cole raised his brow. “Jason has five kids, Angie, and his wife’s been out of work.”
“I doubt my dad cared about that,” Angela said. “Didn’t he have something to say about this?”
“It’s still the way of it around here. Even Henry knew that.”
Angela pressed her lips together and then opened her mouth to argue, but she couldn’t find the words.
“Look, it’s real nice of you to care about this, Angie. That wasn’t part of the deal, and I appreciate it. But I’m not going to turn away work from friends just to save a buck or two.”
She closed the file. “I’m not talking about a buck or two, Cole. This arena’s spending habits are out of control. Frivolousness was my father’s forte. But we can’t keep doing things that way.”
He shook his head and laid a hand over hers. “I appreciate what you’re willing to do. Now, I don’t always do what’s right, and Lord knows I struggle every day, but it makes me feel good to be able to give something back. There are other ways to save money.”<
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She frowned, considering his words, and then tucked the receipt back into the file. “You’re hell bent on making this complicated, aren’t you?”
“No more than you are,” Cole said, drawing her gaze. The blue of his eyes darkened, the intent in them disturbingly piercing.
“We aren’t talking about finances anymore, are we?”
His smile broke the intensity in his eyes. “No, darlin’, we’re not.”
“Do you know trig?”
Angela jolted, knocking a stack of files off the desk when Tina bounced into the room. Cole chuckled and bent to pick them up.
“If you are referring to a particular math course, no.” Cole set the stack back on the desk. “I got a C in that class and that’s only ‘cause Amy Bedley sat in front of me. She was real smart and she wrote real big. But she was set on teasing me, only letting me see her answers about half the time.”
“I wish Amy Bedley sat in front of me. I have a test tomorrow,” Tina whined, leaning against the wall.
“And you have work to do here.” Cole said sternly, though he smiled to soften the reprimand. “I pay you by the hour, darlin’ and you’re wasting company time.”
Tina smiled and blushed because he had called her “darlin’.” Cole’s stern tone was lost on her. She smiled sweetly and said, “If I ace trig, I would be more of an asset to this company.”
“I doubt that. Angie here barely passed basic algebra, and she’s a big city business woman. I bet she even has a corner office with windows.” He smiled and winked at Angela, then turned back to Tina. “Why don’t you just study tonight?”
Tina winced. “I have a date with Billy.”
“I thought your mom told you to stop seeing Billy,” Cole said. “Is that why you’re leaving early?”
Tina sputtered out the beginnings of a protest, but then she tossed up her hands. “Okay, fine. I’ll call my mom and ask her if I can go tonight. But only if you help me with trig. Fifteen minutes is all I need. Deal?”
“All right,” he sighed. “I’ll quiz you or something. Go on and call your mom. I’ll be there in a minute.”
“Thanks.” She bounced in her shoes and left the room.
Heart of Grace (Return to Grace Trilogy #1) Page 8