Something To Talk About

Jeremy looked doubtful. “He was taking a nap when I went down to the lake. I think his leg was hurting awfully bad. He took two pain killers, then went to sleep on the sofa.”

“Shall I get him while you set the table under the oak tree?” She pointed at the picnic table through the window.

“Sure.”

“Paper plates are in here, forks in this drawer.” She pointed them out, then left, feeling quite irritated with the tough cop who didn’t want anything from anyone.

She marched up the steps and knocked sharply on the door frame. Through the screen, she could see Jess’s reclining form on the sofa. The television was on, the sound low.

He sat up abruptly, then swore as he swung his legs to the floor and put a hand on his injured knee.

“Supper,” she called out, keeping her tone cheerful.

“What?” He glared toward the door.

“Jeremy and I caught some bluegills. They’re ready to eat. At the picnic table,” she added, then hurried down the steps and back to her house.

“Is Dad coming?” Jeremy asked when she joined him.

“He’ll be along in a minute. He was still asleep. I had to wake him up.” She prepared glasses of raspberry iced tea. Handing one to Jeremy, she carried the other two outside.

She and Jeremy were seated when Jess came out of the apartment and limped down the steps with the aid of the cane. She pretended not to see his scowl. “Come and get it,” she advised, “before they get cold. We each get three.”

“Kate caught five and I caught four,” Jeremy told his father, surprising her with the use of her name.

Jess stood at the end of the table, taking in the food, then his son’s somewhat defiant expression. His hostess was busily spooning salad into a bowl. She didn’t glance his way. Which irritated the hell out of him.

Logic told him she had simply offered his son a chance to fish, then had let the kid enjoy the fruits of his labor. That’s what logic told him. His feelings were something else.

He was angry, as if she had entered into some conspiracy to win his son away from him. Guilt ate at him. He should have taken the boy fishing instead of going to sleep. The widow was probably trying to do a good deed for a lonely kid. He wished she would leave them the hell alone.

Her eyes became guarded when he took a seat next to his son, across the wooden table from her. He realized something of his feelings must have shown in his eyes. He forced a smile on his face and heartiness into his voice.

“Now this is what I call a real meal. You two caught these in the lake in—” He glanced at this watch “—couldn’t have taken more than an hour or so.”

“That’s right, Dad. You shoulda come down. The fish were really biting. I caught two with the same worm.”

Looking at Jeremy’s eager face, Jess felt the familiar twist of regret. He’d neglected his son since the divorce. It had been easier to stay away than fight with the boy’s mother over every single thing.

Excuses were a poor substitute for fathering, his conscience brusquely reminded him. Glancing up, he stared into eyes that were bluer than the summer sky. She saw too much, this reclusive widow who took the time to show a kid how to catch their supper. He bit back a curse at life’s complications, then helped himself to fish and fries.

“Here, Jeremy. This is the big one you brought in. You get to have him,” Kate said.

Their hostess forked the serving onto his son’s plate with an easy manner that implied a friendship was already established between the two.

He wondered how friendly she’d feel if she discovered he was there to investigate her family. One thing she didn’t know—her aunt, Megan’s mother, had been his sister. Half sister, actually.

Bunny and he had shared the same mother, but different fathers. His had been the drunk, hers the nice guy. But the good die young, and Bunny’s dad had died. Their mom had married his father a year later. His old man had been a loser.

Bunny had left home as soon as she got out of high school. She’d never returned. He didn’t blame her for that.

For the first year after her departure, he’d been so lonely he’d thought he would die. He’d loved her more than anyone. Later, he’d realized his big sis had been the one who had raised him. She’d sung songs and told him stories. Before she left, she had told him she would always love him better than anyone in the whole world. He’d lived on that love for years after his mom had died.

One thing—he’d always had doubts about that drowning accident. His sister had been an excellent swimmer. She’d taught him how, too, in the creek near their broken-down house. Also, there had been a man who had died, as well. Not her husband.

He couldn’t imagine Bunny not being faithful. She’d hated his father—her stepfather—for not being true to their mother.

There was a mystery tied to the scandal. He intended to find out what it was and what had really happened to Bunny, the only person he had ever trusted completely—

“Salad?” the widow asked sweetly, breaking into the dark thoughts that haunted him.

Kate would have been around nineteen, maybe twenty, when his sister and the man with her had died. He hadn’t learned about the deaths until he’d become a cop and started a search to find his missing relative. It was a shame Bunny’s husband, Sean Windom, had gotten himself killed in a car accident a few years later. Damned bad luck all around.

Jess wondered what Kate knew about the accident, but he wouldn’t ask. Not yet. First he wanted to do some undercover investigating before word got around and everyone closed up like clams at a change in the tide. He knew what these small-town people were like. They all banded together when trouble brewed and one of their own was involved. He wasn’t sure he suspected skullduggery, but it paid to be cautious.

“Thanks.” He managed a tight smile and took the bowl from her. She returned his smile in the same vein. It was as if she were taunting his determination to keep a careful distance.

She should have been inside his head last night. She might not be so smug if she knew the erotic thoughts that had run through his dreams, all of them about her and him.

“Good, huh, Dad?”

Jess relaxed somewhat when Jeremy broke the dangerous trend of thought with his innocent question. “Delicious.”

“I cooked the one you’re eating. Kate showed me how.”

“Well, that was…neighborly.”

He caught the smile she held back, and realized she knew he was fighting a totally irrational fury as well as an equally irrational attraction. He cursed silently, letting the bitterness flow, wanting it to drown the need this woman aroused, which he didn’t understand.

She was just a woman with gorgeous eyes that made him think of things he hadn’t let himself think on in years. He glanced around the yard, the garden, the supper the three of them were sharing in the warmth of the last rays of the sun. To an outsider he was sure they looked like the ideal family. Mom and dad and sonny makes three.

He had once wanted those very things, had dreamed of them, yearned for them, worked at making his life fit that ideal. That was when he’d been a stupid kid, one who thought he could make the world right. He knew better.

Kate and Jeremy were discussing the big ones that got away and arguing over whose had been the largest. He felt the pull of her deep within, in that place where he allowed no one.

No one.

He didn’t want any interference in his life, not at this stage of the game. He had all he needed to contend with at present, thank you very much.

Not that fate had ever cared much about his wishes.

Chapter Three

Kate heard the truck engine stop. Jeremy, turning the compost heap, looked up, too.

“That must be Dad.”

“Uh-huh.” She continued pulling weeds out of the row of lettuce while wondering about the detective’s trips. After four days of sleeping and lounging around, he had started leaving the ranch each morning at nine and returning around noon. This was the third day in a row for this behavior. She realized it was Thursday, and her guests had been in residence for a week.

And she was certainly no closer to knowing more about them. She refrained from questioning the son. It seemed sneaky.

For the past couple of days, the boy, instead of watching television, had taken to helping her in the garden while his father was gone. In the afternoons the two males fished or rowed around the lake in the john boat she and Jeremy had moved from the barn at the big house down to the lake at Megan’s urging. Her cousin had invited Jeremy to come up and ride with her when he felt like it.

Kate thought he was too bashful to go alone, but she hadn’t volunteered to accompany him. Jess didn’t seem to like seeing his son with her.

She felt the disapproving stare before she turned and met his eyes. Again she was reminded of shadows in a forest, deep green and filled with mysteries she knew nothing of.

“Hi,” she called out brightly, putting dazzle in her smile just because his expression was so dour.

He nodded. “Jeremy, I brought you a couple of burgers and some fries. You’d better eat while they’re still warm. The bag is in the truck.”

Jeremy leaned the shovel against the shed and loped off, casting a thanks to his father over his shoulder. Kate picked up the mound of weeds and tossed them on the compost heap. She realized she was hungry, too.

“Food sounds good. I ate a light breakfast.”

“You don’t need to skimp on food. You aren’t fat,” he said, his gaze harsh as he looked her over.

“I didn’t mean to indicate I was dieting.”

He raised one eyebrow as if questioning just what she did mean.

“What have I done to make you so disapproving?” she asked out of the blue, not realizing, until she spoke the words, how much his attitude irked her. “You look at me as if I’m a gangster who got off on a technicality.”

He shrugged. One hand rested on his right hip. He shifted his weight to that leg and rested the left one while he continued to peruse her old work shirt and the jeans which were out at the knees and full of holes elsewhere.

“Stay away from my son,” he said finally and turned his back on her, limping as he headed toward the apartment.

“What?” she said in disbelief. She jumped across three rows of vegetables, caught up with him and grabbed his arm. “Just what the heck did you mean by that?”

He rounded on her. “I mean neither I nor my kid needs you. We don’t need nurturing—”

“Maybe you don’t, but he does.”

“We’ll be gone as soon as I…” He stopped and eyed her with distaste. “By the end of the month,” he finished. “There’s no use in building attachments that won’t mean a damned thing.”

“You don’t want your son to have friends?” she demanded, incredulous at the idea. “Is that what you’re saying? You leave him here alone day after day and think he doesn’t need someone to talk to?”

A faint flush spread over his neck. “Staying here is his choice. As far as socializing goes, there’s no point in it, not with you or anyone here. We won’t be here that long.” He moved his arm, dislodging her grip.

“Maybe you don’t need friends, but he does.”

At his derisive snort, a devil took hold of her tongue. “Maybe he and Megan and I will become friends for life. Maybe he’ll come visit us in the summer—”

She got no further. He gripped her collar as if she were a suspect being brought to justice and yanked her on her toes until they were within kissing distance. But that wasn’t on his mind. He looked dangerous, threatening.

“If any of you does anything to hurt that boy, I’ll be all over you like a case of hives, you got that?”

She nodded slowly.

Jess saw fear flicker through her eyes before she tossed her head and flashed him an insolent smile.

“That was real original,” she drawled. “Something from an old detective movie you watched on TV this week?”

He had to give her credit for holding her ground, but that crack about his son needing friends got to him. He didn’t want Jeremy facing the same disappointments in life he had.

“I don’t want any expectations built up in the kid that won’t be met. Life is tough enough for the young.”

“The way it was for you?”

He cursed at the pity in her eyes even as he felt like crawling into those blue depths and drowning in the promise of fulfillment there. Damn. He didn’t know what was wrong with him. She made him think of things…well, he knew better.

Life held no surprises for him, good or bad. It served up the usual fare. He didn’t want his son to expect too much, then have his heart broken by lies and promises not kept.

“Just leave me and mine alone,” he reiterated and pushed away from her before he forgot the anger and yielded to the demands of his flesh. Need was in him, mixing with the pain of each step, driving him to fury….

He sighed and wiped the sweat from his face. Life had taken another swipe at him. He wanted Kate Mulholland with every fiber of his being. He wondered if she felt the same.

What the hell was he thinking?

Women. They made a man crazy. That’s what he needed to remember. That’s all. Nothing else.

Kate showered and dressed in a pair of old sweats and thick socks. The mountain air had grown chilly as soon as the sun had set. She dried her hair and slipped a terry-cloth band around her head to hold it back from her face.

Going downstairs, she padded out on the porch and sat in the swing. The fresh nip in the air toyed with her senses. The quarter moon was up. The western sky wasn’t quite dark. Touches of magenta and purple mingled with the blue of twilight.

Sprays of forsythia and flowering quince graced the rock garden she’d made at the corner of the old-fashioned porch. It was her favorite spot at her favorite time of day.

The swing gave off a soft but pleasant squeak with each backward sweep of the chain on its hook. She was comforted by the familiar sound. Tonight she needed comforting. For some reason, the past, with its harsh regrets, crowded her thoughts.

The sky darkened and stars crept out, shyly at first, then more and more until the heavens were filled. With an effort she staved off the old memories, induced by her tenants, she realized. Jess Fargo and his son reminded her of the possibilities of life, of the family she’d once assumed she would have. Shaking her head slightly, she pushed the cold emptiness of old dreams back into their cubbyhole.

Just as she was thinking it was time to go in to bed, a shadow appeared at the corner of the house, causing every nerve in her body to jump.

Jess limped across the grass and up on the porch. “That swing is driving me nuts,” he said by way of explanation. “I brought some grease.”

Without another word, he pulled a chair over to the swing, stood on it and oiled the hook. Moving back, he advised her to try it. The swing made no noise when she moved.

“Thanks,” she said, injecting sincerity into the word.

“It wasn’t for you. It was for me.” He moved the chair back to its position, then stood near the steps.

When he didn’t leave, she hesitated, then invited him to join her. Expecting him to take the chair, she was startled anew when he settled on the swing with a weary sigh.

“Your leg is bothering you?” she asked, sympathy winning out over other, harder emotions.

“Yeah, and then some,” he agreed wryly.

“I know,” she said softly, remembering the ache that lasted long after the actual pain disappeared.

“Look,” he said, “I didn’t mean to sound weird this afternoon. It’s just that I’m worried about the boy. He’s having a hard time, and he’s…vulnerable.”

“He needs someone. You, I think. It’s good that you’ve been doing things together.”

“You think so?”

She was surprised at the hope in his voice. So the tough cop needed assurances, too. “Absolutely.”

After a few minutes he exhaled deeply and relaxed against the wooden slats. She started the swing to moving. They swished back and forth while crickets chirped and the wind whispered of secrets millions of years old.

She heard the lazy caw of a crow in the alders down by the creek. “The wind raven,” she murmured.

“What?”

Kate stirred self-consciously. “It’s an old story my grandmother told us. She said an Indian woman told it to her grandmother when she was a child. When the raven caws before dawn, when the wind blows down the mountain rather than up the valley, dire happenings are foretold. My grandmother’s mother heard the ravens before her husband and son were killed by a falling tree. My grandmother said she heard the crows down by the creek the night her baby died. And the wind was blowing.”

As if on cue, the cold night air swept around the eaves with a low moan. Her father had explained the house moaned because it wasn’t built right for wind, but as a child, she’d thought the wind and the house knew when tragedy was coming. The hair prickled on the back of her neck.

“Do you believe in myths?”

His voice was as soft, as sorrowful, as that of the wind, its deeper cadence blending with the whisperings of the river alders. The prickle became a tremor that raced through her.

“I believe there are things the mind can comprehend and others that only the heart knows and still others that no one understands.” She spoke barely above a whisper herself.

He moved, turning slightly as if to study her, laying his arm along the back of the swing, crossing his sore knee over the other while he watched her. She became uneasy.

“What bothers you about me?” he asked.

The silence grew—a mound of unsaid words between them. “Your unhappiness,” she said at last. “Your dislike and disapproval for no reason that I know of.”

“I don’t dislike you,” he said, so low she nearly didn’t catch the words.

“Your distrust…of women or everyone?”

His laugh was bitter. “Of life.”

“I understand.”

“I doubt it.” He was back to tough, cynical.

“I was married twelve years ago today. Barely past my twenty-first birthday.”

“It wasn’t a happy union,” he guessed.

“My father didn’t want me to, but nothing would have stopped me, not even a gypsy with a genuine crystal ball that showed me what my life would be like if I went through with the ceremony. I probably knew without the crystal ball.”

“But you did it, anyway.”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“We fought the good fight, one might say, but it didn’t work for us. Not all the love or hope or faith in the world could change what was inevitable.”

“You divorced.”

“No. He died.”

“How?”

She heard the sharpened interest of the experienced cop in the question. She couldn’t decide how much to tell him or if she wanted him to know. Suicide. She hadn’t said the word in four years, and she wasn’t sure she could say it now.

“Suicide?” he said before she could get the word out, again in the deep tone that harmonized with the wind.

A raven cawed. Another answered.

“Yes.” The emptiness returned and with it the memories of a fate she had been powerless to change, although at twenty-one, she had thought she could. By the time she was twenty-nine, she had known she couldn’t.

“Go,” the raven called from the river bank. “Go.”

She rose and went inside without another word.

The wind came up during the night, sluicing down the mountain, pouring into the valley, bringing lightning and the promise of rain. At dawn the rain still held off, but the clouds lingered like a lid clamped over the land, holding in the growing tempest.

Kate rose and dressed in fresh jeans, tank top and a long-sleeved flannel shirt. The temperature was in the low fifties. She put on coffee, then ate her usual bowl of cereal.

Standing by the kitchen windows, she watched the wind toss the branches of the alders. The sky was dark, threatening. Along the edge of the mountain nearest her, she stared at the curtain of white without realizing what it was.

“Hail,” she said as the first white balls began to hit the glass and skip along the grass. She saw it tear through a leaf of a bush, then knock a flower off another.

The garden! The hail would ruin her carefully tended lettuce and beans and sweet peas. It would rip through the broad leaves of the cucumbers, squash and pumpkins. She slipped into old loafers and ran to the garden shed for the drop cloths that served multiple purposes around a ranch.

The wind beat at her, so hard it felt as if it would tear her clothes from her body. The hailstones, all nearly the size of marbles, hit with ferocious tenacity. She secured a corner of the drop cloth with a rock and tried to cover the row of lettuce. The wind whipped the material from her fingers.

“I’ll get it.” Jess reached across her and grabbed the flailing cloth and put it into place. “Get one of those big rocks,” he told his son.

Between the three of them, they got the most vulnerable vegetables covered. As they ran for the house, the rain started, lashing across the land in long, shimmering curtains.

“Wow, I don’t think the weatherman predicted that,” Kate said with a laugh once they were safely inside the kitchen. She tossed towels to her helpers, then dried herself off.

She checked her clothing to make sure she was decent. When she glanced up, Jess was watching her. The quickly hidden flare in his eyes told her he remembered their first meeting. His words of the night before leaped into her mind.

Desire flamed in her, echoing her restless night. She missed the heat, the pleasure of sex, the deep satisfaction and closeness afterward. In those early years of marriage, when hope still reigned, she had sought it eagerly. Later she had tried to use it as a bond to help her husband live in the present, but he had retreated more and more into the past, to places where she had never been and couldn’t go.

“I have coffee,” she said rather abruptly, turning from her guest’s steady perusal. “This feels like a pancake-and-sausage morning to me. How about you?”

“Yeah,” Jeremy said enthusiastically, pulling the towel over his hair as if he were polishing a shoe. He glanced at his father. “Uh, if we have time.”

Only a curmudgeon could have denied the youngster’s eager hunger. Kate looked at Jess. The corners of his mouth tightened, but he nodded.

She threw her towel on top of the washing machine in the adjoining room, then started preparing the meal. Jess and Jeremy followed her example but took seats at the table. She served coffee to the older male and cocoa to the younger one.

After they ate, Jeremy asked to be excused. He wanted to check on his e-mail. Kate grinned as he thanked her, then bounded out and across the wet yard, jumping puddles. As soon as he was inside, the rain came pouring down again.

“This might last all day,” she informed Jess. “The roads won’t be passable at low spots.”

“So I shouldn’t go to town?”

“I’d give it an hour or so after the rain has stopped for the roads to drain.”

“I will. Today seems a good day for staying in and reading, anyway. You have any books?”

“In the study. First door on the right down the hall. Choose anything you like. I’ll bring fresh coffee.”

When she brought in their mugs, she found Jess standing in front of the bookshelves. He continued to read over the titles. “You have quite a collection of Western lore here.”

“My family has collected first editions for generations.”

“Some of these might be valuable.”

“The ones behind the glass doors are. The others aren’t. Except to me.”

He moved over to the glass-fronted bookcases. “Mark Twain. Bret Hart. What’s this? Mrs. Beeton’s Every Day Cookery and Housekeeping Book?

“Household hints from 1865,” Kate explained. “The author was English.”

He glanced through the volume. “It says here that all the household belongs to the husband, and the wife must look after his interests well. Sounds like a sensible female.”