A Home Of His Own
Judith Bowen
A secret marriagePhoebe Longquist and Lewis Hardin got married on impulse, without a fancy wedding, without family, without fuss. Phoebe wants to keep things quiet and uncomplicated…for a while, anyway.A family secretLewis would rather not deceive their families. But he'll do it if she really wants…for a while, anyway. He might be a Glory boy made good, but he's also an ex-con and hardly what Phoebe's parents have in mind for their daughter.A glory ChristmasThen Lewis learns something shocking about his own family, about who he is. And it makes him take stock of what he has.
“I want to get married, Lewis.”
“Are you sure about this, Phoebe?” he asked.
“Absolutely,” she answered. She looked at him. “Are you?”
He nodded. “Yes. I love you. I’d do anything for you. Anything.”
She’d lost him for years and now she’d found him again. She wasn’t letting him go back to Edmonton and maybe find some other woman. Besides, she was tired of always being the good girl in her family, tired of always having to be sensible.
But how to explain this sudden urgency? The sudden overwhelming desire she’d felt this morning, watching him sleep, to be his, really his. In the most sacred, profound way. Marriage. “I know it seems kind of crazy, but doing it like this cuts out a lot of trouble. You know what I mean?”
“Uh-huh. Your folks.” His dark eyes were steady on hers.
Phoebe glanced away. “Them. And everyone else. They don’t know you the way I do. They’d bring up all kinds of complications. They’d think we should get married in a church. All that fuss. Weddings are stupid, anyway! Being married is what counts.”
“Is it?” He turned to study her. “You know I’ll do anything you want, Phoebe, even sneak off like this and marry you. But we can’t hide forever.”
“It’ll just be a secret for a while,” she told him. “Ours!”
Dear Reader,
Writing a collection of books set in and around the small town of Glory, Alberta, has been a challenge and a source of joy for me. I have lived in so many small towns myself that Glory has come to reflect everything I like and dislike about small-town living. No one can say there aren’t disadvantages—lack of privacy, interfering neighbors, limited shopping. But there are great advantages, too—a sense of community, parents looking out for their neighbors’ children, knowing that you’ll always find help if you ask for it.
Lewis Hardin, a young man in trouble in my first MEN OF GLORY book, The Rancher’s Runaway Bride, has always longed for something we all cherish: a home of our own. In this story, with childhood sweetheart Phoebe Longquist’s help, Lewis discovers his special place in more ways than one.
I hope you’ll enjoy the love story between Lewis and Phoebe. It was a wonderful book to write, and brings the folks of Glory full circle, back to the beginning. The place we call home.
Judith Bowen
P.S. Let me know how you’ve enjoyed the MEN OF GLORY books and thank you for your many, many letters over the years. You can reach me at P.O. Box 2333, Point Roberts, WA 98281-2333. Or check out my MEN OF GLORY web page at www.judithbowen.com.
MEN OF GLORY titles in Superromance:
739—THE RANCHER’S RUNAWAY BRIDE
791—LIKE FATHER, LIKE DAUGHTER
814—O LITTLE TOWN OF GLORY
835—THE DOCTOR’S DAUGHTER
872—HIS BROTHER’S BRIDE
900—THE RANCHER TAKES A WIFE
A Home of His Own
Judith Bowen
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE (#u4ac79b84-1653-5dee-8171-42828b60ad8c)
CHAPTER TWO (#u5271a298-d8be-531a-b138-be38bea22632)
CHAPTER THREE (#u2cc18562-4c5d-5613-8328-5f173a439c5f)
CHAPTER FOUR (#u5e8c7477-3a56-5dc3-a12f-c1cc7510dc53)
CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIXTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINETEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE
THE FIRST TIME Phoebe saw Lewis Hardin she was maybe ten. She’d gone out to the Hardin place, at the top of Bearberry Hill, with her mother to deliver some parceled-up goods from the parish. The Hardins weren’t Catholic, as far as Phoebe was aware, but that didn’t matter: they were poor.
That afternoon, bored with the adults’ visiting, Phoebe had climbed a massive poplar in a copse near the Hardins’ old post-and-beam barn, then had daringly crawled onto a ledge that led to the loft. The loft contained very little hay. The roof, under the rafters, was thick with the nests of barn swallows; it echoed with the squeaky shrills of the parents swooping in to stuff their offspring’s bellies with mosquitoes, then out again. There were no animals in the barn, only a few badly rusted farm implements. She’d heard a rhythmic rap-rap sound below somewhere and had crept from one side of the loft to the other, peering through the square holes in the floor cut out for hay and straw to be thrown down to horses or cows.
She was afraid, but she was thrilled, too. This was an adventure. Even dangerous, up here with the stinky hay and the uncertain footing. By herself, too—no Jilly tagging along. The fun of having a new little sister had worn off long ago.
Finally, almost on top of the rap-rap sound, Phoebe cleared the hay cautiously from the place where the wall of the barn met the floor of the loft and peered down. She spotted a boy, about fourteen or fifteen, hammering on a homemade punching bag made from an old feed sack, it looked like, filled with straw. He jabbed at the bag, grunting at the effort, his skinny body gleaming with sweat in the shafts of afternoon sunlight that lazily probed the deep gloom of the barn’s interior. The punching bag hung in one corner of a box stall that had been fixed up with a bed and pallet and a rickety-looking table and bench. There were candles set into pop bottles, on the table, a knife, chunks of wood and several plastic bread bags. Was there food in them? It seemed that the boy lived in the stall, or at least slept there part of the time. A few boards pried out of the barn siding provided an exit.
Phoebe held her breath, rapt. Finally, with a last vicious series of jabs and a shout that thrilled her blood, he swung away from the bag and sank heavily onto the wooden chair. After a few moments of hard breathing, he retrieved his T-shirt from the adjoining pallet and put it on, then picked up the knife and a piece of wood from the table and began whittling.
She was certain he hadn’t seen her, not with the racket from the birds above. She was just thinking of how she could inch her way back, desperately afraid she’d sneeze or something, when he looked up and grinned. “Here you go, you little peeper!” He tossed something at her and she ducked. When she raised her head again, he was gone. She felt around in the hay until she found what he’d thrown. It was a small wooden frog, crudely carved.
Five years later…
SHE’D THOUGHT it was beautiful and had kept it on her windowsill ever since. She’d gone back up to the house to join her mother and the Hardin women that day, but the boy had not appeared.
Now, at nearly fifteen herself, on another such mission of charity, with her mother and her aunt Catherine this time, Phoebe thought about that silly wooden frog. It was grubby from handling, and once she’d actually thrown it away; the next day, she’d dug through her bedroom trash basket and retrieved it. It brought her luck. Or happiness. Something that didn’t bear thinking about.
Saint Augustine’s kept a list of the families they helped in the area, and Bearberry Hill was within the parish. Nothing remained there but a white-painted clapboard church with a windblown cemetery at the brow of the hill and the ramshackle settlement that marked the Hardin place. If there’d been a husband for the older woman, Mercedes Hardin, he was long gone and forgotten by the community. Her daughter, Billy, lived with her, a young-old woman of perhaps forty. She was not right in the head, some said, and others said she was peculiar by choice. Mercedes looked older than her sixty-some years, with flyaway white hair and watery blue eyes. Because of a hip broken years earlier, she favored one leg and walked with a cane, which had always made her seem older. There was another member of the family, Phoebe knew—the son, Lewis. He was in jail.
Ever since Lewis Hardin had gone to jail for rustling cattle the year before, Cal Blake, the rancher who lived up the road a few miles, had kept the Hardins supplied with beef and firewood. He’d promised Lewis they’d be taken care of, according to a neighbor, which was strange, considering it was Cal’s beef that Lewis and a gang of n’er-do-well cowboys had stolen.
“I hear Mercy still keeps a fine garden,” her mother said, from the driver’s seat. “And no one can say they’re afraid of work, the two of them, living like they do.”
“Nan,” her aunt sniffed. “Be sensible. It’s no way to live, two women out here alone. They ought to move to town.”
“Mercy was born on the place and she’d told me once the only way she’ll be leaving is feet first,” replied Phoebe’s mother.
Feet first, Phoebe knew very well, meant dead. Phoebe sat in the back, between two large sacks of used clothing from the parish thrift store, which had been chosen with the Hardin women in mind, and a box of groceries on the floor of the station wagon, which had come from the Glory food bank. Canned goods, mostly—ham and soup and condensed milk—although Phoebe could see several boxes of pasta and, oddly, a flat, paper-wrapped tin of anchovies. Anchovies!
A view of the azure blue Pacific off Peru, silvery with the tiny fish, flashed through Phoebe’s mind…
“And that boy of hers—ooh!” Her aunt shuddered and made a face Phoebe could see in the rearview mirror. “Thank goodness he’s where he belongs—in jail! He’s been nothing but trouble since he was born. Imagine another one coming so long after Billy? It makes a body wonder who the father was…”
“Oh, Catherine,” her mother murmured, driving slowly and carefully. “I don’t suppose anyone cares about all that. Not now. Not after so many years.”
How many years? About nineteen or twenty, Phoebe guessed later when she came across him at the bottom of the orchard—mainly twisted crab apple trees and blighted russet pears. He frightened her, sitting there on a long-downed tree trunk, so still and so alert at the same time. He blended into the dry grass. If she hadn’t smelled the cigarette smoke, she might not have seen him at all. And that thought scared her more.
She’d asked Mercy Hardin if she could go and see the sheep that she’d noticed from the road when they turned into the lane. Since that first long-ago visit, the Hardin women had acquired a scruffy clutch of sheep, black and brown and white, that they kept for who knew what reason. Meat, perhaps. Or wool.
Two of the Hardin dogs, who’d barked madly at the car as they drove up to the house, lay at the man’s feet.
“Come here,” he said quietly. At first she didn’t realize it was Lewis. He was supposed to be in jail. “Are you afraid of me?” His eyes narrowed through the cigarette smoke. He wore an old shirt and jeans, no jacket, even though it was cold enough that Phoebe had worn the new wool coat her mother had bought her for school in September. His boots were black, sturdy and plain. Government issue.
“I’m not afraid,” she said, picking her way toward him through the fallen branches and frozen windfall fruit. It was true; she wasn’t. She stood in front of him. “You shouldn’t smoke. It’s a filthy habit.”
He laughed and threw the stub of a cigarette away. It smoldered in the frosty grass. “Who’s up there?” He frowned and hunched one shoulder toward the house.
“And you shouldn’t throw away lighted butts like that. You could start a forest fire.”
“Aw, can it, kid. Who’s up there?” he repeated.
She frowned. “At the house, you mean?”
He nodded impatiently.
“Just my mother. And my aunt Catherine.”
“That’s all?”
She nodded and he patted the log he was sitting on. “Have a seat. I’m not gonna bite you.”
She sat beside him. He edged closer to her, against her, and she realized he was shivering. “How’re Ma and Billy?”
“Why? Haven’t you seen them?” She was thoroughly confused. What was he doing here in the orchard, anyway?
He glanced over his shoulder in the direction of the house. “Naw. Not yet. I’m supposed to be in jail, didn’t you know?” He smiled briefly. His features were harsh and pinched. All these years she’d remembered a dark intensity, a passion, to his thin face; what she now saw was hunger and a certain grim determination.
“Well, why aren’t you?” Later, when she thought about it, she wondered at her nerve.
“I left. Got tired of the food they shove at you in there.” He winked and put his arm around her shoulders in a sudden, impulsive gesture, and held her close against him. “Man, it’s cold! I could use a cup of coffee and a bellyful of beef stew. Some nice warm Parker house rolls. Ma done her baking today?” He had a wistful look in his eyes, then came the knowing, self-deprecating laugh again.
Phoebe stared at him. She shook her head. “I don’t know.” She unwrapped the scarf from around her neck, the one her grandmother had knitted, and gave it to him. “Here, this will make you a little warmer.”
He buried his hands in the scarf. “You’re a good kid, you know that?”
Phoebe shrugged. “Well, I guess I’d better go back to the house.” She made a move, as though to get up, but he bumped her with his shoulder, on purpose. She could feel her thigh warm against his. Her thigh and her arm and her shoulder.
“You won’t say nothing?” He shot her a penetrating look. “About me down here?”
She hesitated. “They’ll get you, you know. Eventually, you’re going back to jail. For even longer.”
He laughed again. “Yeah, yeah, I know that. I just needed a break, y’know? Little holiday. I wanted to see how Ma and Billy were getting on. When your ma leaves, I’ll go up to the house, say hello.” His face was so close to hers. He hadn’t shaved in a while. She couldn’t think of any of her friends who wouldn’t have been scared to death in her situation. Natasha Jarvis, her best friend, would have died. Imagine—she was talking to an escaped convict!
“I— I hate it there,” he burst out. “You can’t understand, a kid like you, what it’s like to be trapped, spied on—” He clamped his jaws closed, as though he’d stopped himself from admitting something. That he missed home. That he longed to be free. Then he shocked her. “Listen, you ever kiss a man?”
“N-no,” she said slowly, shaking her head. She began to get up. He grabbed her arm and she shook him off.
“Boys? You ever kiss boys?”
Phoebe decided to lie. “A few,” she said airily.
He stood up suddenly and put his arms around her. “Kiss me.”
Then his face was right up against hers, and he nuzzled her nose and forehead, as though she were a kitten. He kissed her, softly at first, and then more and more intensely, and she felt rivulets of something weird shoot through her body, through her legs and arms, through her stomach. His mouth was wet and soft and faintly, disgustingly, smoky from his cigarette. But oh, so warm and exciting! Phoebe kissed him back, as well as she knew how, which wasn’t very well at all.
His arms were tight around her, iron bands. Then she felt his hands, cold and hard, under her coat and slipping up under her sweater against her hot skin. She moaned and shivered and pressed herself against him. Suddenly he released her and she nearly fell backward. His eyes were dark and flat. He pulled her sweater down and fastened her coat. “You’d better go, kid. Before we’re both in trouble.”
She began to make her way, stumbling, across the orchard. He called after her, “Hey, kid!”
She stopped. She needed to, anyway, her heart was pumping so hard.
“What’s your name?”
She hated her name. It was a stupid, old-fashioned, ridiculous name. “Phoe—” She couldn’t get the whole word out of her throat, couldn’t shout it back to him.
She turned and ran toward the house.
Later her mother had asked what happened to the scarf Granny Longquist had knitted, the one that matched her new mittens. Phoebe said she didn’t know. That she must have lost it somewhere. But she fell asleep dreaming that her scarf was wound around his neck or warming his hands—as she’d seen him do—and that he’d really meant it when he said she was a good kid.
Of course, it was a sin to lie. Especially to your own mother. But somehow this was different. Somehow this mattered less—and, at the same time, more.
When Phoebe was nearly seventeen…
THE NEXT TIME Lewis Hardin went AWOL, he came to Swallowbank Farm.
She and her sister Jill were picking raspberries at the back of the garden behind the house. Her mother wanted to make a shortcake. Normally Phoebe would have resented having to help with the garden, but today she was glad to be outside. It was a glorious late-June day and she’d been studying hard for her final exams. One more year of high school, grade twelve, and if her marks were good, she’d be in line for a decent scholarship. If that didn’t happen, she wouldn’t be going into the science program she wanted. She’d be taking a hairdressing course. With four brothers and sisters and a father confined to a wheelchair, there was no extra money for things like a college education, even with student loans. Not unless the Longquists won a lottery. And her mother, of course, didn’t buy lottery tickets—they were the devil’s work, she said.
So that was that. It was “be a good girl, get good marks and everything will work out.” She knew if she worked hard and did her part, her parents would support her any way they could.
They were good parents. She loved them both dearly. Her father had been injured in a farm accident working for her uncle Joe, her mother’s brother, who owned the place where they lived, Swallowbank Farm. Uncle Joe had kept her father on, doing the books and helping out with other farm chores that he could handle, but it was tough supporting two families on one hay-and-grain farm. Now that Uncle Joe was married, and his wife, her aunt Honor, worked two days a week at the law firm in town, things were a little easier. But not easy enough that anyone—the Gallants or the Longquists—threw money around.
In fact, her mother had told her this morning that she and Jilly could pick extra raspberries, if the crop was heavy, to sell to summer tourists at the neighboring farm’s roadside stand. But Phoebe was past that. She’d earned money doing that as a kid, but no way was she standing at the side of the road selling berries at nearly seventeen. She had a job lined up at the town library for the summer, although that didn’t pay much, either. It was depressing.
She thought of the little frog she’d had for so long. “Bring me some luck,” she muttered to herself, hunched over in the hot sun trying to fill her dishpan, which seemed to have a hole in the bottom of it. “I sure could use some.”
Phoebe had made several passes back and forth along the rows, looking for ripe berries, before she realized she was hearing something peculiar. It wasn’t the magpies chattering on the fence posts, although they did seem unusually agitated. It wasn’t the distant sound of Uncle Joe working in the fields on his new John Deere tractor. It was something else. Phoebe stopped, straightened and adjusted her hat, resting her dishpan half-full of berries on one hip.
“Pssst!”
She frowned. She could see nothing at all. Only the raspberry canes, stretching up six feet or more, thick and green, the white-painted fence behind them and then Uncle Joe’s hay field stretching out for acres and acres beyond that. Not even a tree to break the horizon.
She bent and began picking again, reaching through into the center of the rows to where the big fat berries hung, among so many still underripe. It looked like her mother’s prediction was good: there’d be a bountiful crop this year.
“Pssst!”
Phoebe glanced toward Jilly, who was at the other end of the garden. Naturally her little sister wasn’t helping at all. She was sitting on the edge of the strawberry bed, gazing up at the cloudless blue sky, her arms clasped around her bare knees. Daydreaming again.
“Pssst! Phoebe!”
Phoebe caught her breath. She didn’t know what to do. Someone must be nearby, but it was so weird that she couldn’t see anyone at all. Probably a wacko. Out here on the prairie? And how would a wacko know her name? Phoebe considered going into the house to tell her mother, then curiosity got the better of her. Whoever it was had to be hiding in here somewhere.
Probably Trevor. Her brother was a prankster. He could get up to anything.
She set down her pan of berries and moved quietly to the back of the bushes. She began to push her way behind the thicket, where the canes had grown up and intertwined with the fence, when she felt something—or someone—grab her ankle.
Her tiny shriek blended with his, “Shhhht!”
“Lewis!” She looked down and saw a male hand clutching her ankle, and a laughing, darkly handsome face. He was lying flat out in the long grass—no wonder she hadn’t seen him—and had snaked one hand under the fence to grab her as she’d crept along.
He let go and raised himself on one elbow, a finger to his lips and a significant nod in the direction of her sister.
“What are you doing here?” She leaned on the fence, ignoring his invitation to join him on the other side. But she wanted to giggle. Imagine!
“Come on over,” he urged.
She set her jaw stubbornly. “No! I want to know what you’re doing here.”
“Scared of me, huh?”
Phoebe answered by placing one sneaker on the lower rung of the fence and swinging herself over. She tossed her braids back—braids! He must think she was a real kid.
He sat up, grabbed her hand, and first thing she knew, he’d pulled her down beside him. “Careful! Don’t want anyone to see us.”
She did giggle then. She didn’t dare laugh too loudly in case Jilly heard her and came to investigate, but she was pretty sure it would take an earthquake to interrupt her sister’s daydreams, and even then Phoebe wouldn’t count on it.
She stopped laughing abruptly and turned her head to look at him. He was staring straight up at the blue sky, a stem of timothy grass in his teeth, looking very pleased with himself. His hair was too long, but he was so handsome, grown-up and handsome. “What are you doing here?”
“You really want to know?” He shot her a searching glance, then smiled. “Hey, you’re looking good, Phoebe. Real good. I like freckles.”
She wanted to hit him. Her freckles were the bane of her existence. Everyone had told her she’d grow out of them, but they seemed to go with her auburn hair, and so far there was no sign of them fading.
“How did you know my name? How did you know where I lived?”
“Asked Ma and Billy. They know all about you and your ma and your family. Think you’re wonderful folk.” There was a bitter edge to his words. “Wonderful kind folk.”
He was no doubt referring to the good works her mother and aunt carried out on behalf of the parish. Phoebe ignored the comment. She sat up, cross-legged, then remembered that they were supposed to be hiding and ducked down again. The crushed grass sent up a glorious green sweet scent.
“That’s better.” He grinned at her and she felt her heart lurch around unsteadily. He looked so good in his white T-shirt stretched across a man’s chest, his worn jeans. Her breath hurt in her throat. She remembered the last time they’d met—how he’d kissed her. She’d fantasized about that kiss for months, relived every second of it, until finally she’d had a few dates and got a boyfriend of her own and realized that kissing was no big deal.
“So, are you working around here?” She held her breath.
“No, uh…” He poked his head up over the grass and looked around quickly, then lay back down. “I’m still a special guest of Her Majesty.”
“In jail?” Phoebe felt her skin tighten and her hopes crush.
“I left in the laundry truck,” he said, grinning at her again. She did not smile back. Scratch “grown-up,” she thought sadly. He was still acting like a kid running away from home.
“When was that?” She felt sick inside. She didn’t really want to know. And yet she desperately wanted to know. She wanted to know everything about him.
“Four days ago. I know they’re looking for me. That’s why I couldn’t stay out at Ma’s anymore. I suppose I’m ready to go back. But, hey! I wanted to see you while I had the chance.”
He was teasing her. No question of that. She started to get up. “Well, now you’ve seen me. I’ve got some berries to pick and I guess you can just head back to the slammer. Or are you waiting until they catch you?”
“I don’t know,” he said. He plucked a new stem of grass and stuck it in his mouth. “Haven’t made up my mind yet.”
“Why do you do this, Lewis? Don’t you realize it doesn’t do your mother and sister any good? Don’t you want to make something of yourself? Turn your life around? Be somebody?”
He frowned up at her. “For what?”
“For…” She felt angry, really angry. For me. “For them. For yourself. For…oh, I don’t know!” She plucked a stem of grass and stuck the succulent end in her mouth.
“Hey,” he said, reaching for her hand. She shook him off. “You care, don’t you? You care what happens to me?”
“No, I don’t,” she said, throwing down the blade of grass and preparing to get up again. “Most definitely not. I don’t care a damn about you or if you want to throw your life away. I don’t even know you. I just don’t think it’s fair for your sister and your mom, alone up there on the hill.”
He sat up with her, apparently no longer caring if they were seen. He grabbed her hand and held it this time. “That’s not true, Phoebe. It’s me you care about.”
She couldn’t meet his gaze. She glanced down. She felt his free hand caress her cheek, then his fingers under her chin, forcing it up. “Right?”
She nodded mutely, her eyes filling with tears. Damn him anyway!
“Oh, man, you are such a sweet kid…” His voice was hoarse. He bent and kissed her and, heaven help her, she kissed him back, with every ounce of pent-up feeling she’d had for him since that day so many years ago when she’d spied on him and he’d caught her and had tossed her the little wooden frog.
She reached to put her arms around him as his arms were around her, and they tumbled back down and he rolled and shifted his weight onto her. It felt good! She gave herself up to the sensation of Lewis stretched beside and above her and the warm grass and the bright sky and the soothing buzz of grasshoppers nearby. And kissing. Everything was so peaceful. Except this—what was happening between them.
His breath was hot on her face and neck as he kissed her all over, making appreciative little sounds, working his way down to the open neck of her sleeveless shirt. He kissed her breast through the cotton cloth and she gasped and squealed and felt him put his hand across her mouth to silence her. She bit his hand and then took his head in both hands and pulled him up so she could kiss him on the mouth again.
“Hey-hey-hey…” He laughed, a low, sexy, vibrant laugh. A laugh full of pleasure and boldness.
Phoebe couldn’t believe how quickly her feelings were aroused. Sexual feelings. She’d never ever felt this with any of the boys she’d necked with. Maybe kissing was a big deal, with the right person.
But Lewis Hardin was not the right person. He was an escaped convict. A two-bit rustler. A dropout. A small-town loser. A Peter Pan who refused to grow up. Not her type at all.
“Pheeeeb!”
Phoebe froze. Jilly! What if she discovered them like this? What if she told their parents about Lewis, hiding out here in Uncle Joe’s hay field?
“I’ve got to go,” Phoebe said, urgently, straightening her blouse and her shorts and brushing the grass off her bare legs. She fanned her blouse from her body, back and forth, hoping the telltale damp mark he’d made on her breast would dry quickly. “I— I hope everything works out for you and—”
He grasped her hand as she stood. “I’m not going anywhere. We need to talk. Meet me tonight behind the—” he glanced around “—chicken house. I’ll be the tall one wearing shoes.”
Despite herself, Phoebe giggled. “Okay.” What was she doing promising to meet him later? She must be nuts!
She crawled back over the fence and hurried to where she’d left her dishpan. She caught a last glimpse of Lewis nearly hidden from sight in the grass, arms behind his head, ankles crossed, smiling at her.
“Phoebe! Where are you?”
“Here!” she called back. She tackled the raspberries again, picking furiously to make up for the time she’d missed. Pesky younger sisters. Lousy raspberries. Stupid job at the library this summer.
She hated being poor. Her life was poor and boring. A scholarship was her ticket out. Maybe Lewis Hardin was a loser, but at least he had some excitement in his life. Some adventure.
CHAPTER TWO
PHOEBE HAD NOT SET a time for her meeting with Lewis, and in late June the sun didn’t set until nearly half-past ten. When it was finally dark enough to sneak out, it was quite late. Well, she wasn’t really sneaking out, she convinced herself. She’d been studying all evening and told her father, who was still up watching television, that she wanted to get some fresh air. Jilly was at a friend’s house for a sleepover, and Trevor was out. Since he’d acquired his driver’s license that spring, he’d been out most evenings. Her mother and the baby, little Renee, had already gone to bed.
Harry Longquist looked up and nodded sleepily. Phoebe adored her dad. She felt momentarily guilty—really, she was sneaking out, wasn’t she?—and walked over and dropped a kiss on her father’s cheek. “’Night, Pops.” She squeezed his shoulder.
“’Night, honey,” her father said with a smile before returning his attention to the baseball game. The Jays were taking on the Mariners in Seattle.
Well, she was getting some fresh air.
She made a trip through the kitchen to collect a few leftovers. It had occurred to her when they were having their raspberry shortcake that evening that Lewis must be hungry. She filled a paper bag with a banana and two apples and loaded a plate with potato salad, sliced ham, two buttered rolls and some bean salad. At the last minute, juggling her load, she snagged a quart of milk from the fridge and let herself out the back door.
She set the food down carefully on the outside step, with a hiss at Gerald, the dog, who’d begun to thump his tail happily against the porch boards in gratitude for her apparent offering. Gerald looked offended and sloped off the porch and around the corner of the house. Phoebe reached back inside and grabbed an old windbreaker that belonged to Ben, her older brother. Ben was away, working for Adam Garrick at his ranch west of Glory, as he did every summer. He’d never notice the jacket was gone.
There was a moon overhead, waning now, and a few clouds, so that sometimes she could see nearly as well as daylight and other times she had to be careful not to stumble.
Lewis was waiting for her behind the chicken shed, as he’d promised.
“Oh, baby!” he said when he saw the food she carried. “Man, I was hoping I wouldn’t have to settle for sucking eggs tonight.”
“You wouldn’t!” Phoebe handed him the plate. She’d forgotten to bring cutlery, but it didn’t seem to matter.
“Oh, yeah, I would.” He scooped the potato salad up with a piece of ham and chewed hungrily. “Thanks,” he mumbled, his mouth half-full, waving around the chicken yard. He bowed slightly and took a step backward. “What’s this?” he asked, tasting the bean salad gingerly. “Bean salad?” Before she could say anything, he’d tipped it off his plate, onto the ground. “I hate that stuff. Treat for the hens tomorrow,” he said, grinning at her. “But thanks all the same.”
She held out the jacket and he took it with a smile. “Good girl. You thought of everything. Let’s sit down.”
Phoebe looked around. The chickens were all inside their shelter, roosting for the night. “No thanks. Come on.” Phoebe led him out of the enclosure, shutting the gate behind her, and they sat down on the dewy grass between the chicken coop and the garden.
“I brought you some fruit, too,” she offered. “In case you get hungry later.” She gestured toward the bag, then gripped her knees with her forearms and watched him eat. He popped the lid on the milk jug and drained half of it in one long swallow. Phoebe smiled to herself. She was pleased she’d remembered to bring food. And the jacket. She’d done the right thing.
When he finished, he patted his shirt pocket absently. “Damn, I forgot. I quit smoking.”
“You did?” Phoebe was happy to hear that.
“Well, sorta.” She could hear him grinning in the semidark. “I ran outa smokes. And money, too.”
“I’ll feed you, but I won’t buy you cigarettes,” she said firmly, leaning back, then felt his hand on hers in the grass.
“C’mon, Phoebe. I haven’t got much time. Let’s talk.”
“What do you want to talk about?” She felt shy suddenly.
“You. Me. Everything.” He hunched closer to her and she felt the warmth of his shoulder against hers. She shivered and he put his arm around her. It reminded her of the time he’d first kissed her in the orchard.
“Cold?”
“A little. It’s damp here.” She wasn’t shivering because of the damp and she knew it. “Let’s go over behind my uncle’s house,” she whispered. “There’s a hammock.” She needed to buy a little time, and it worried her that anyone could look out the back of the house and spot them sitting there on the grass. Still, she surprised herself with her own daring, suggesting a more private tête-à-tête. “My aunt and uncle are away.” She glanced first toward Lewis to gauge his reaction, then at the darkened side of her own house. People slept with the windows open on summer nights. She’d die if her mother heard her talking and came out to investigate. Or if Trevor came home and caught them.
“Okay.” He stood and slung the jacket over his shoulder, then stooped to pick up the milk and the bag of fruit. He took her hand and pulled her up beside him. They left the plate in the grass. “Lead the way, princess.”
Princess Phoebe. That was a good one.
LEWIS MUNCHED on the apple. Phoebe could hear the strong crunch of his teeth every time he took a bite, although she could barely make him out in the near pitch-dark.
It had to be close to midnight. They were still in Uncle Joe’s hammock, behind his house. They’d sat on it for a while, swinging their feet. Then—she wasn’t quite sure what had brought on the change—they’d swung their feet up and lay down side by side. Other than sliding his arm around her, so that she could rest her head on it, and occasionally hugging her, he hadn’t tried anything funny. Not that Phoebe was worried; she was quite confident she could take care of herself if the need arose.
But his quiet, just-friends behavior surprised Phoebe, considering their hot kisses that afternoon. Maybe she ought to give Lewis more credit than she had so far. Maybe he wasn’t just out to get whatever he could, whether from a girl or from the system he seemed to despise so much.
“Tell me about your mother,” she said. “Don’t you worry about her living out there alone?”
Lewis thought about the question for a few minutes. Then he sighed. “I do. It’s just that…I don’t have much in common with them. Billy’s more like an aunt or something than a sister. She’s sixteen years older than me and she never talks, never says boo. You know what she’s like. Ma? Well, she’s kind of weird.…”
His voice trailed off. Phoebe realized he was being excruciatingly honest with her. He was right; his sister and his mother were pretty weird. Still, they were his family, he must feel something for them. “Did you send them money? Before…you know?” Phoebe knew that neither woman had an outside job.
“Before I went to jail? Yeah.” Lewis seemed a little agitated. He swung the hammock vigorously with a foot he had extended to the ground. It was fairly cold now, and Phoebe felt clammy from the dew settling in the air. She was glad she was snuggled up beside Lewis. His body was warm, even hot, and he didn’t seem disturbed by the damp. “I gave them money when I was working. Even that rustling business…” He laughed, a short humorless sound. “That was to try and get a decent stake for them. I sold a couple of the steers we stole and made some serious money. I knew it couldn’t last…”
“It was stealing, Lewis,” Phoebe said. “It’s wrong.”
“You can say that. You’ve never been hungry,” he responded bitterly. “You don’t know what it’s like to have do-gooders coming out to visit, figuring if they leave off a bag of grub they’ve got a right to take up your time. Like they own you. Or the religious busybodies…”
Phoebe raised her head to look fully at him. “I hope—”
“No,” he broke in. “Not you or your folks. Your ma’s a pretty nice lady. I know Ma and Billy think the world of her.”
Phoebe lay back down, mollified. He had a point. What about the other side of it? It was one thing to help people out, but what was it like to be always having to accept help?
“How about your dad? You ever hear from him?” Phoebe had never heard anything about a man in the Hardin family, other than Lewis.
“Could be dead for all I know.” Lewis shrugged. “Some drifter, probably. I have no idea who my father is. Do you believe me?”
Phoebe was stunned. “Oh, Lewis…” She turned to him, into his shoulder, and her eyes sought his in the semidark. It had grown lighter now that the cloud was moving off the moon.
“You don’t need to feel sorry for me, Phoebe. All I know is, every once in a while, back when I was growing up, Ma or Billy would find an envelope stuffed with cash in the mailbox. Used to be just like Christmas.” She heard his smile. “I’d get new clothes, Billy would order a bunch of seeds from the seed catalog, Ma would buy a new coat, if she needed one. Or a pair of boots. I never knew where the money came from, but I used to pretend it was my father, looking after us, you know? Maybe it was. But maybe it was just some do-gooder. It was always cash. No return address.”
Phoebe nodded.
Lewis laughed that bitter laugh she was beginning to recognize and dread. “I figure the bastard must be dead. Hasn’t left us any money for quite a few years now. If it was him in the first place.”
Phoebe didn’t know what to say. She couldn’t imagine life without her parents. They were both so understanding, so supportive. A father, especially. How could Lewis have managed with no father in his life? A lot of people thought Harry Longquist was gruff and grumpy since his accident, but Phoebe knew better. He was an old softie inside. It sounded like Lewis had brought himself up, really. She remembered that spare room fashioned out of a box stall, the first time she’d ever seen him. He’d been trying to build up his muscles, working out with that makeshift punching bag. She could still see the sinews in his skinny back, hear the shout of frustration when he gave it up.
Phoebe reached up and put her hand on Lewis’s chest. She touched his throat, bare and warm in the cold night air. “I’d better go, Lewis. I— I’m glad you talked to me. I really hope things work out for you—”
“You mean that, don’t you, Phoebe?” His voice was raw.
She nodded. “I do.”
“Kiss me, Phoebe. Kiss me one more time before I leave. I’m going to start walking toward town. Someone will pick me up— I’m not worried about that. And tomorrow, I’m going to turn myself in to the cops. Finish my sentence.”
“No more sneaking out in laundry trucks?” she asked, running her fingertips along the line of his throat, where his T-shirt met his neck. She felt him shiver.
“Nope. I’m gonna do my time, put it behind me. Start looking after Ma and Billy again. They need me. They got nobody else. And, Phoebe, I want you to…” He paused and turned to her, fingering one of her braids. “Ah, hell, never mind. Just kiss me!”
Phoebe kissed him. She was hoping he’d ask. She wanted to lose herself in the luxury of his arms, his warmth, the skill of his kiss. Lewis was no rank beginner at the art of love, as she was.
He pressed her close against him and she could feel the bulge of his erection in his jeans. He made no attempt to conceal it. Her pulse shot into overdrive, but she knew they had to stop. This…this wasn’t right. She pushed back, gently.
“What…what were you going to say?” she managed, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. Her breath was out of control, her breasts were swollen and aching.
“What about?” he murmured, kissing her neck and throat.
“When you said…something you wanted me to do…” She lay back in the hammock, every nerve in her body singing, every muscle mad with need.
“I wanted to say…” He kissed her deeply, reverently, then raised his head and stared down into her eyes. Phoebe could see him clearly, since the moon had emerged from behind the clouds. “I wanted to say that I wish you’d wait for me. But I know that’s crazy.” His voice was deep, every word he said so…so tender! Just like in the movies. “You’ve got your own life to live. There’s no future for the two of us. You and me. We’re…we’re just…I don’t know—accidental friends, I guess. If you’d never come out to the farm with your mother…” He shrugged.
“You gave me a frog,” she told him softly.
“I did?” He sounded amazed.
“Yes. Remember that first time, when I was up in the hayloft at your place? You threw a wooden frog up to me.”
He grinned. “That’s it, kid. I’m the frog and you’re the princess. Like I said, no future.”
He sat up and swung his legs over the side of the hammock. Then he climbed out and helped her down. Phoebe felt cold now that she was separated from him. She was still wearing shorts, although she’d put on a long-sleeved shirt before she’d left.
He shrugged on Ben’s windbreaker and picked up the paper sack with the fruit in it. They walked toward her house, hand in hand. Phoebe noticed that her father’s truck was parked outside the garage. Which meant Trevor was home. She hadn’t heard him drive up.
“You’re a good influence on me already, Phoebe. You know that?” He stopped and pulled her into his arms and brought her hips close against his. Phoebe was glad of the darkness, because she knew she was blushing.
“Oh? In what way?”
“If I wasn’t trying to turn over a new leaf, I’d be tempted to hotwire that truck over there and drive it to town. Maybe get another six months tacked onto my sentence.”
Phoebe was shocked. How naive was she? Of course. Lewis Hardin had been on his own, looking after himself all his life. These were the kinds of things he did.
“As it is, I’ll just walk out to the main road like a decent, law-abiding citizen and hitch a ride.”
Phoebe laughed. “You’re sure you’ll be all right?” She wondered if she should offer to give him a lift. But if she started the truck, someone would be sure to come out and see what all the activity was about.
Lewis drew her close and kissed her again, one last, lingering kiss. Then he grinned at her. “I’ll be fine—now.” Phoebe thought she’d weep at the sweetness of his farewell. It was so romantic.…
Then he stepped away from her and started walking down the dirt road that led to the farm. It was only half a mile or so to the paved secondary highway. He turned once and raised his hand in farewell.
Her highwayman was leaving her.
Phoebe felt her lower lip tremble, then realized her face was wet with tears. She raised her hand in return. “Goodbye,” she murmured, catching back the “godspeed” that had trembled on her lips. She realized she’d read too many novels. “Don’t worry, I— I’ll wait for you, Lewis Hardin. Forever. I promise.”
FOREVER WAS a very long time.
That summer Phoebe started dating one of the boys who’d graduated the year before but returned to Glory to work for the summer in the town office. His kisses weren’t anything like Lewis’s, but on the other hand, he was ambitious and smart, and everyone said he was bound to go far.
Go far. That was what Phoebe wanted.
She worked hard in her senior year and graduated at the top of her class. Her parents were ecstatic. Two scholars in the family! Ben, her brother, hadn’t achieved marks as spectacular as hers, but he was doing well at his course in university, working part-time during the school year and saving every penny he made in the summers to put himself through.
Phoebe got a scholarship from Cross-Canada Pipelines—their big scholarship, which they awarded to only one student in each Western province. She wouldn’t have to worry about money. All she’d have to do was keep up her average…and the future was hers.
In Glory, her path only crossed Lewis Hardin’s again once. After grade twelve, she gave in to curiosity about Lewis, and what he was like now, and bid on him at a bachelor auction in town. He was out of jail by then and working at a ranch west of Glory. She didn’t know what had possessed her to do such a crazy thing.
Phoebe shuddered when she remembered the disastrous evening she’d spent with him. Any silly romantic dreams she might have had about Lewis Hardin had died a swift death. How could she have been so wrong about anyone?
She never heard from him again while she lived at home. Then, in her first year of university, she got a letter forwarded by her mother, with a note attached expressing her amazement that Phoebe was corresponding with “that Hardin boy.” Phoebe had never talked about her feelings, had only confided a few girlish yearnings to her brother Ben. She knew now that what she’d felt for Lewis was nothing more than a crush. The note told her, with many misspellings and scratched-out phrases, that Lewis had given up ranching and taken a job on a wildcat rig up north. Somewhere up by Fort Chipewyan.
A long way from Glory. A long way from the University of Alberta in Edmonton, where she’d begun her science degree, specializing in organic chemistry. Phoebe had reread the letter, alarmed that her first sense of relief had given way to something else. An ache. A yearning. A wondering—what was he like now? Had he ever changed…for the better?
She’d never know. And she had too much to think about these days to wonder for long about the life and prospects of Lewis Hardin, ex-convict. Lewis—along with the wooden frog, which she’d left at Swallowbank Farm at the very back of the closet in her room, taken over now by Jilly—was part of the past, of her childhood.
Phoebe was twenty now. And she had serious prospects of her own.
CHAPTER THREE
Three years later, the present…
LEWIS WIPED his face. Or attempted to wipe his face. His sleeve was as muddy as the rest of him. The roar of machinery and the dull sound of the diamond bit far below the earth’s surface, coupled with the shouts and curses of tired, overworked men, filled the early-morning air. There was no time to appreciate the full richness of midsummer, the cries of the black-capped chickadees with their nesting songs from the willows. Or to notice the sharp scent of the poplar trees, white and black, gorged and green with summer sap.
All Lewis smelled was drilling mud, male sweat and the sudden stench of fear in the hot summer sunshine.
Men were shouting. They’d lost pipe! Disconnected steel shafts and rogue chains whipping across the base of the drilling tower could be lethal. Slippery drill mud made for treacherous footing, even in steel-toed, caulk-soled Grizzlies. Last night’s rain hadn’t helped.
But the crew was seasoned. Lewis knew they could handle anything that came up on the site, including this kind of setback, which had happened just as they approached their target depth.
Drilling for oil and gas was a twenty-four-hour-a-day business with big money at stake. The Calgary syndicate that had put together the cash for this venture expected returns, and they expected them fast. Anything Lewis’s crew wanted, they got. Whether it was racy movies or porterhouse steak served twice a day. Lewis’s employer, F&B Drilling, drew the line at bringing in women, but everything else was possible. Nothing mattered except getting the job done.
The job? To get in and get out as soon as possible with the kind of drill samples that could send a syndicate’s shares soaring on the exchange or crashing through the basement. If the news wasn’t good, it wasn’t unusual for the principals or the good friends and wives of the principals to bail out before the news spread. It was illegal, of course—insider trading, or the nearest thing to it—but that couldn’t always be proved. Nothing grabbed an oilman’s blood like the fever for black gold.
A tight hole meant approved personnel only on the site. Other companies, competitors, were not above sending in spies. A tight hole meant a security check on each and every pickup that drove in. Every delivery. Every visitor. The big sign out front at the secondary road, where the raw, freshly bulldozed and graveled rig road led to the site, meant exactly what it said: Tight hole. No admittance. That means YOU.
Tight holes and the security that went with them were Lewis Hardin’s particular specialty. No one got into a site, drilled and got out faster than Lewis Hardin’s crews. He’d begun as a roughneck on the drilling platform, the roughest, meanest, dirtiest job in the business. He’d moved his way up to tool-push, the captain of the project. His rise had been spectacular, and he had men on his crew—men who respected him—who were nearly twice his age. The partners who owned F&B were urging him to join them as a full partner, sweat-equity. Other companies had been courting him, too, incessantly, annoying him more than anything.
But Lewis wasn’t sure that partnership—or switching to another drilling outfit—was a move he wanted to make.
He was twenty-seven and getting restless. He’d never stayed at one job as long as he had this time with F&B, which was the hottest medium-size drilling company in the province. He sure wasn’t going back to ranching—not until he had the stake to set up his own place—but he was getting tired of the oilfield. Two, sometimes three weeks on the job, twenty-four hours on call, then a week or two off, if you had an assistant push. If not, you stayed until the job was done. It was a cowboy, Dodge City kind of life: work your guts out, then spend your paycheck in town and start all over again, broke. For most single guys, the money made it all worthwhile.
But after a while, even the toys began to pall—the brand-new four-wheel-drive vehicles, the snowmobiles in winter, the prize shotguns and the best dogs in duck season, the dirt bikes and ATVs in summer. Lewis used to enjoy it, but the last few times he’d taken time off, he’d driven five straight hours to do some fishing by himself down in Glory country, back where he’d been born and brought up. He spent a few days helping Billy and Ma, fixed a squeaky door, spaded a new garden patch, tacked down some roof shingles. Keeping up the fence alone was a mammoth task, and he’d almost decided not to bother. What was the point? The Hardins had no animals but the few sheep they kept in the derelict orchard. A dozen or so scrawny chickens in the henhouse. There was no haying or farming going on. Never had been, in Lewis’s memory. But the two women who’d raised him, his mother and his sister, wouldn’t hear of giving up the homestead. Last time he’d been home he’d convinced them to lease some of their grown-over pasture to a neighbor. At least that meant a little money coming in monthly, besides what Lewis sent them.
How did they live? Lewis really had no idea. Of course, they had no mortgage. No debts.
No expectations. No hope.
They kept a garden and had a few eggs from their chickens. The only cash they needed was to pay their electric bill each month and their taxes once a year. Mercy sold the quilts she made, several a winter, to a craft store in town. Billy sold garden produce at a roadside stand, but mostly, she just gave it away. They bought tea and flour and sugar. Dog food. Feed for the sheep. Ma and Billy both wore secondhand clothes, and their Ford pickup was ancient. It shouldn’t have been running at all, but somehow Ma kept the old wreck going with a little haywire and a lot of luck.
Glory.
The town was like a great big bad dream. He’d thought he’d left the place behind him for good when he’d quit Adam Garrick’s place that first terrible summer after he’d gotten out of jail. But maybe he hadn’t. Something always seemed to pull him back like an invisible line, especially lately. A thin, taut line, a strand of twisted steel that never let him go. A yoke. The farm itself, he supposed, was one thing. It had been in Ma’s family forever. The Rockies, the foothills? Maybe. He loved the wide-open country. It was a place where you could breathe. Something pulled him back.
Phoebe Longquist? Ha. He’d never forgotten her, but she wasn’t much more than a fuzzy memory now, just a kid dressed in shorts and a home-knit sweater. Some hot kisses. A few quick gropes in her uncle’s hay field. The kind of heart-to-heart midnight talk that had embarrassed him the next day, in the hard light of noon. Girl talk.
He’d had half a dozen girlfriends—maybe a dozen—in the years since he’d last seen Phoebe, the late-summer night she’d come out of nowhere to spend her hard-earned money on him in a charity auction. What a disaster that had been. He hoped the experience had cured her of any romantic notions, if she’d needed curing. She didn’t need a guy like him in her life, and he was pretty sure she’d got the message that night.
He’d balked at joining the other cowboys in the auction right from the start. Publicity of any kind was the last thing he wanted, either to remind the town of him and his prison record or of his long-suffering crazy family living out there on Bearberry Hill. Adam Garrick, who’d hired him when he got out of jail, had told him the auction was for a good cause. Not that a good cause normally would have pulled any weight with Lewis, but he owed Adam and this was as good a way as any of repaying him. Adam had taken him on at the Double O, albeit reluctantly, when few other ranchers would even look at him. A cowboy who’d gone to jail for stealing his boss’s steers had few prospects of employment in ranch country, no matter how shorthanded an outfit might be. Country people had long memories.
YES, GLORY WAS on his mind, but damned if he was going back there this time. It was a good three-hour drive to Edmonton, with an eye out for radar traps, and he intended to spend the first couple of days in the province’s capital city. He kept a studio in an apartment-hotel, right downtown on Ninety-Eighth Avenue. Bed, table, stove, fridge. He never cooked, but the fridge was handy for beer and leftover pizza. He wasn’t sure why he rented the apartment, since it was expensive for the use he got out of it—maybe a week a month, if that. But Lewis liked having his own place, no matter how barren and impersonal. Ma’s run-down homestead, a cell in the lockup at Fort Saskatchewan, cowboy bunkhouses, mattresses on the floor at various friends’ places in town—most of his life had been spent under someone else’s roof.
One day Lewis intended to change all that. The apartment was a start.
This weekend was the big event that Bethany had been waiting for. He’d known Bethany Cook for six months. They’d been lovers for four, although Lewis was aware that the relationship was cooling off. Bethany, he knew, saw other guys when he was out of town. Which was okay by him. When you were contemplating a split, it was always easier when the other person had been no saint, either.
He’d offered to help Bethany with her deliveries and setups this afternoon for the big riverboat event. She ran a small florist shop on Whyte Avenue— Bethany’s Blooms—and this reception on the Alberta Queen for the new dean of science at the University of Alberta was a huge coup for her, one she hoped would lead to more university business.
Miles of lonely muskeg and thickets of black spruce swept by on either side of the highway. It was a grim landscape, but Lewis barely noticed. He was used to it. Once in a while he’d catch sight of a coyote skittering off into the ditch. Or a deer or moose. Sometimes he’d see a black bear browsing in the lush grass beside the road; it wouldn’t even look up as he drove by. He’d driven this road a thousand times, it seemed, in the past few years.
As he got closer to Edmonton, the scruffy forests gave way to cleared land, first bare-knuckle little farms and ranches, scraped out of the muskeg and trees, then more verdant hay and grainfields, fenced pastures with cows. There was no cattle ranching here on the scale of southern Alberta, but the district grew plenty of grain and hay to supply the ranchers and feedlot managers. Wheat, too. Some of the fields showed tall stands of winter wheat, almost ready for harvest. Lewis noted the mallards and pintails that had already raised their families in the weedy shallow sloughs that lay in the hollows of the hills; they were still hanging around, resting up, building reserves for the long flight south.
Summer made him restless. The truth was, every change of season had that effect on him. Closer to the provincial capital was plentiful evidence of Alberta’s new emphasis on agribusiness. Telltale clutches of feed silos marked the windowless, vented barns of broiler and hog operations nearby.
Poor trapped creatures, Lewis thought. Never even glimpsed that high blue sky. Just scrapping for their share of chop, chewing on each others’ tails and ears out of boredom, then the short one-way ride to the slaughterhouse.
Nothing like old Molly Baskins, the black-and-white Berkshire sow he remembered Ma keeping when he was a child. Old Molly Baskins had just lain down in the orchard one day with a great sigh and never got up again. They’d had to dig a hole right there and roll her in and cover her up, Ma bawling her head off the whole time. That sow had had the best possible life a pig could have. Table scraps, rotten apples, oats and barley chop, pleasant afternoons spent rooting through the orchard for succulent roots and smelly old fungi. An ancient collie for a pal in her last years. A mud puddle to lie in on a hot day in August.
Lewis grinned. Quite the life, all right! Then he frowned—why the hell had they called her Molly Baskins? Probably one of Billy’s crazy ideas. Who ever heard of a pig with a last name?
Finally Edmonton loomed on the skyline—a spread-out prairie city located on the wide winding valley of the North Saskatchewan river.
Was this home? It didn’t feel like it. Somehow he’d never felt really comfortable living anywhere he couldn’t see the Rocky Mountains.
BETHANY AND HER PART-TIME helper had really outdone themselves. By the time Lewis got there, ready to help load and deliver the flowers, the floor of the small shop was crowded with arrangements and loose, freshly cut flowers in buckets, ready to go to the riverboat where the reception was being held. The Alberta Queen was a recently launched tribute to the old-time riverboats that had once plied the North Saskatchewan from York Factory to Edmonton, delivering freight and passengers. This modern riverboat delivered Dixieland jazz and passengers up and down the river on scenic cruises, for a price.
“Oh, Lew!” Bethany flew into his arms and kissed him. “Thank goodness you’re here. I just said to Reg—” Reg was her assistant “—that it’d be just like you to get here two minutes before the reception—”
“I told you I’d be here,” Lewis said firmly, with a smile at the overwrought Bethany and a nod to Reg. “And here I am. Ready to help.”
Bethany kissed him again in a frenzy of new energy, and Lewis grimaced as he stepped back and removed his jacket. Bethany Cook in this mood was, well, hard to take. She was a fine woman, but her constant and varied enthusiasms wore him out. He liked a little more quiet in his social life, a little less excitement. Reg, nineteen and a floral-arts student at the local community college, fed Bethany’s flames with his constant reminders of potential disaster. His what ifs and his did you remember to…s drove Lewis nuts. They were quite a pair.
Lewis loaded the van without saying anything else. He took the map Bethany had drawn and studied it for a moment or two before getting into the driver’s seat. Then he dropped it on the passenger seat beside him; he knew where the riverboat dock was.
The reception, Bethany had told him, was scheduled for four o’clock. Apparently the high-up civic muck-a-mucks and the university crowd were going to munch and nibble during a river cruise. Speeches, probably. Smoked salmon. White wine. He could imagine the type of thing. B-O-R-I-N-G.
It was two o’clock now. Plenty of time for Bethany to get set up. She and Reg were coming behind him, in her little car, with some of the other arrangements. He, Lewis, had instructions to unload the flowers. Period. Bethany and Reg would do the arranging.
Which was fine by him. Flower arranging wasn’t one of his specialties.
He had the flowers unloaded by half-past two. Where was Bethany? He waited for her in the van, watching as a few early birds pulled into the riverboat parking lot and got out for the short walk through the trees to the actual dock. The nervous types, worried they’d be late. He watched them go, women in fluffy jackets, short skirts and pearls, men in navy blazers and gray flannel pants. All laughing. All merry. All looking forward to a pleasant outing on the river.
Lewis idly wondered what could shake up their worlds. Losing a job? A call from Revenue Canada? A botched dry-cleaning job? A daughter caught stealing lipstick at the local drugstore?
“Lew!” Bethany jumped out of the small red car that had just pulled up beside him. “Omigosh! We’re late. We couldn’t find the new carton of floral clay I’d ordered and—can you hang around and help us, Lew? I really need your help!”
How could he say no? So Lewis got out of the van, locked it and helped Reg and Bethany cart the special arrangements down to the boat. These were small arrangements that she apparently wanted on each table. The loose flowers were to be arranged in large vases on the decks and under the canvas awnings.
Lewis wasn’t happy. This was typical Bethany Cook. Bad planning. Lousy logistics. It was the kind of thing that bugged him because organization was so critical to his own job. What if he forgot to order some crucial element on a two-week drilling job? Say, dynamite. Or grease guns. Or extra chewing tobacco in case the men ran short. He’d be out of a job so fast he’d have a headache.
But he knew Bethany—somehow she’d muddle through and it would all come off just fine in the end. He had to admit he admired her grit and persistence.
“That’s it?” They were finally done. A few more couples had arrived and were standing around in small knots, talking and laughing. Lewis knew Bethany was a little embarrassed because she’d intended to have all the floral arrangements in place before the guests showed up.
“I think so. I need to talk to the steward for a minute…” Bethany and Reg moved off, and Lewis stepped behind a large fake potted palm that was part of the boat’s everyday decor.
His heart stopped. That woman—that woman in the black dress. The one with legs that went on forever and russet hair that brushed her shoulder blades on her very bare back. Her very bare freckled back. Lewis had only caught her profile for a flash before she’d turned away from him.
He watched her accept a glass of something that a tall, weedy blond type had plucked off a tray and handed to her with a smile. The guy wore glasses, the old-fashioned horn-rim kind, but they were probably cutting-edge fashion now—with a certain type of man.
Lewis’s heart started to beat again. Nah, couldn’t be.…
But hadn’t he heard that she’d won some big science scholarship? That she was studying pond scum or fish or bugs or some damn thing at the university? Who could have mentioned it to him— Ma? Billy? He knew that his mother and sister thought highly of the entire Longquist family.
She turned again, this time straight toward him. Lewis’s heart lodged in his throat. Yep. Same nose, same eyes…same freckles everywhere. It was Phoebe Longquist.
Had she seen him? He hoped not, but then he noticed that her hand had tightened on her drink and her companion had turned in Lewis’s direction, too, as if aware that his date’s attention was suddenly elsewhere.
“Lew!” Bethany rushed up to him. Thank the Lord for small mercies.
“What is it, Beth?” Lewis couldn’t keep the irritation out of his voice. It was one crisis after another with this woman.
“You’ve got to go back to the shop—here, take the key!” She thrust a key on a chain attached to a wooden daisy at him. “I forgot the most important arrangement, the one for the buffet table.”
“What about Reg?” All Lewis wanted was to go back to his apartment and turn on a baseball game. He was tired of the florist business. Tired of everything.
He didn’t dare look toward Phoebe Longquist. His brain was still churning, trying to think of what he’d say if she approached him. If he couldn’t avoid her entirely.
“Reg can’t drive and I’ve got to finish up here. Pleeease!” Bethany had tears in her pretty blue eyes.
“Hey, of course I will,” Lewis said soothingly, taking the key chain and feeling a little foolish for even thinking he’d rather be watching a baseball game. He’d intended to help her all along. Trust Bethany to hire an assistant who couldn’t drive.
“I’ll be right here, Lew.” She glanced at her watch. “You’re going to have to hurry. The boat’s due to leave in less than half an hour. We’ve got to be finished and out of here by ten to—”
“Don’t worry.” Lewis impulsively dropped a kiss on her nose. She smiled and looked slightly relieved. Lewis desperately wanted to see if Phoebe had noticed. Why had he done that—kissed Bethany? Except to hope that Phoebe noticed.
All the way back to Whyte Avenue, Lewis cursed himself for a fool. Phoebe Longquist was long out of his life. And he was long out of hers. But he could still see her tender smile, her shining eyes the night she’d raided her mom’s kitchen for him and they’d talked until past midnight on her uncle’s hammock in the backyard. He’d felt her genuine goodness warming him through and through. He’d believed that she really, truly cared for him—a stranger—the way no one had ever cared for him before. Not Ma—who’d always been old and preoccupied, as long as Lewis could remember. Not Billy—who kept to herself and was so much older than he was. She was kind, but he sometimes felt he barely knew her. She never talked to anyone if she could help it, anyone except Ma.
Lewis had a hard time getting the key in the front door of Bethany’s Blooms. And then when he did, it wouldn’t turn. Cursing, he tried the old Yale lock on the back door. It fit—just. Naturally Bethany hadn’t mentioned which door the key was supposed to open. Once in the small shop, he looked wildly around for what might be the missing arrangement. There were all kinds of small stock arrangements in the front of her store. Potted baskets. Violets with ribbons. The sort of thing people took to hospital patients.
The cooler.
That made sense. There was a huge, spread-out arrangement of fall flowers in the cooler. That had to be it. And if it wasn’t—tough.
Lewis loaded the arrangement into the van, taking care not to bruise or break any of the stems. He checked his watch. Still fifteen minutes before the boat sailed.
He made the trip back to the dock in record time and leapt out of the van. It was difficult carrying the awkward arrangement with any speed along the footpath, but somehow he managed, sweating and cursing the entire way. It would be a long time before Bethany Cook roped him into something like this again.
So where was she? Lewis hadn’t thought to look for Bethany’s car in the parking lot and now, aboard the Alberta Queen, she was nowhere in sight. Nor was Reg.
Lewis slammed the floral arrangement down on the buffet table in the space that had obviously been left for it, ignoring the scowl of the steward. Or whoever the dandy was, outfitted in a penguin suit and visor cap and looking as if he was in charge. Lewis ripped off the cellophane covering the flowers and thrust it at him.
“Any sign of the flower lady?” he asked, noting that the steward had speedily handed off the plastic wrap to a surprised underling, who stuffed it in the nearby trash container without comment. There was obviously a chain of command here.
“Flower lady?” The steward gave him an icy stare.
“Oh, never mind.” Lewis stalked off. He headed toward the open foredeck, screened from the afternoon sunshine by a big blue-and-white canvas awning. He scanned the deck. Lots of guests, chatting and sipping their wine, but no sign of Bethany or Reg.
Lewis wheeled, intending to leave the boat and give Bethany a piece of his mind as soon as he located her. He stopped.
Phoebe Longquist was standing right in front of him, with the worried-looking blond man at her side.
“Lewis…”
Lewis took a step back. “Hey,” he said, taking a deep breath and nodding. “Phoebe.”
“I…I thought I saw you earlier, bringing in the flowers…” Her eyebrows rose delicately over green-blue eyes. The color of a mountain lake at sunset. God, she was beautiful!
“Yeah, that was me, all right,” he admitted. “Helping a friend.” He looked around and frowned, saw the light in Phoebe’s eyes dim slightly. Man, he could be an unsociable jerk sometimes. Where were his manners? “So, uh, how are you?”
“Fine. And you?”
“Great. I see you’ve still got your freckles.”
Her eyes flashed dangerously. “And I see you’ve still got your bad attitude. Lewis, this is a friend of mine. Boyd Paterson. Boyd— Lewis Hardin.”
Against his will, Lewis found himself shaking hands with the weedy academic type.
“Professor Paterson,” corrected the blond man, nodding vigorously. “Ha-ha. Just recently appointed to the department.” He turned to Phoebe. “Old friend of yours?”
“You could say so,” Phoebe murmured. Lewis saw that she was ruminating over the word friend. “We’re from the same district in southern Alberta.”
Yeah, well. Lewis glanced toward the open deck. He wanted out of here. Fast.
“Are you in the sciences, too, Mr. Hardin?” the professor asked, the sun glinting off his lenses as he inspected Lewis’s casual attire. He’d obviously missed Phoebe’s comment about the flower delivery earlier. “Freshwater algae, perhaps, like our Phoebe here?” He laughed. A rather stupid laugh, Lewis decided. Our Phoebe. What did she see in a goof like that?
“No, I’m in oil,” he said abruptly. “Oil and water don’t mix, as you know.” The date hooted with laughter.
Just then Lewis realized that the sound of the boat’s big diesels had changed. The boat was moving. Damn it! He looked around.
“Lose something?” Phoebe muttered, adding just for him. “Something with, er, long black hair in designer jeans?”
Lewis cast her a sharp glance. She’d noticed that he and Bethany were together. “You could say that,” he replied smoothly. “How long is this cruise supposed to go on, anyway?”
“Four hours,” she said, tipping up her glass to finish the champagne, then handing it to the professor with a charming smile. He moved off with the empty glass. She knew damn well Lewis hadn’t planned to sail with the boat. “The dean is over there.” She pointed to a middle-aged man in the middle of the deck, looking very flushed. This was his big day.
“They docking anywhere else?” He could hope.
“Not as far as I know,” she replied, still smiling. She seemed delighted to see him in this predicament.
Lewis stepped over to the side of the boat. He hadn’t made it as far as he had in a tough business by letting petty details stop him. They were only seventy yards or so from the dock, upstream. It was doable. And the south bank of the river was even closer.
“Lewis!”
He grinned. He’d shocked her, after all, right out of her creamy smooth, Phoebe Longquist, algae-specialist self by stripping off his T-shirt and tossing it to her. She caught it by reflex. He kicked off his sneakers. He’d buy a new pair.
“Sorry, Phoebe, Professor Paterson,” he said, stepping up to the railing. The professor had returned with two full glasses and was regarding the crumpled white material in Phoebe’s hands with an expression of horror that might ordinarily be reserved for, say, a rattlesnake. “Sorry, folks, can’t stay. I’ve got other plans.”
And with that he dived smoothly into the North Saskatchewan River. When he surfaced, he laughed and waved at the boat. Dozens of screaming spectators leaned over the side and the boat’s steam whistle shrilled. He saw Phoebe in the background, waving back. He’d swear she was giggling.
Lewis sputtered. It was tough to swim and laugh at the same time. Then, with steady, powerful strokes, he set off for shore.
As he’d told her, he had other plans.
CHAPTER FOUR
WHEN LEWIS GOT BACK, Bethany and Reg were kissing and cuddling in the tiny crowded office of Bethany’s Blooms.
He was astonished. “I thought Reg was gay.”
“What!?” With her hands on hips, disheveled as hell, Lewis had to admit Bethany looked as if they’d been having a good time. Her face was flushed and her eyes were soft. Funny, it didn’t hurt at all. In fact, Lewis wanted to laugh. Loverboy was hiding in the office—the coward—with the door closed, while Bethany confronted Lewis in the shop.
“Yeah. I thought—”
“You thought he was gay? Just because he works in a florist shop? Just because he loves flowers the same way I do? Just because he’s a fine, sensitive, artistic young man? Lewis Hardin! You should be ashamed of yourself. You’re just one cliché after another.”
“I am?” Now Lewis was hurt. “He’s six years younger than you. He can’t even drive!”
“So what? He has many other fine qualities. And, yes, you are one testosterone-loaded, macho-oilfield cliché after another, with your…your big muscles and your smelly boots!” With that final salvo and one long manicured finger indicating the door, Bethany asked him to kindly leave her establishment, which Lewis did, shaking his head. Smelly boots?
It was true. He’d found some steel-toed boots in his Jeep and had put them on when he got back to where he’d left his vehicle, in the alley behind her shop. He’d also found an old shirt to wear. His jeans were soaking wet. Bethany hadn’t asked how they’d gotten that way. Hadn’t she even noticed? Just before he climbed into the Jeep to leave, Bethany ran out and hugged him and thanked him for all his help with the riverboat. The flip-flop was pure Bethany. She was a good kid, underneath all her craziness.
“Where were you, anyway?” he asked when he got his breath back. “Why’d you leave the riverboat?”
“We were worried you weren’t going to make it in time so we…we thought we’d hurry back to the shop and see what was happening.” Bethany looked doubtfully at him. “I had to drive.” He figured she knew very well that she was making no sense. He handed her the keys to her van.
Whew! Some females. Lewis got into his own vehicle and left. He felt better than he had in a long, long time. His big muscles and his smelly boots?
Bethany and little Reg. Well, hot damn. Who’d’a thought…
PHOEBE STUFFED Lewis’s T-shirt in her bag and asked the boat’s steward for a plastic bag so she could take his sneakers, size twelve, home with her, too. She’d return them to Mercedes and Billy Hardin next time she was in Glory. They could make sure Lewis got them back. No point wasting perfectly good clothing.
Boyd quizzed her about Lewis as he drove her home, but Phoebe’s mind wandered, and she realized she wasn’t paying as much attention to him as she usually did. Generally she enjoyed the young professor’s conversation and his company. He’d been the one to insist she go to the reception today, telling her it couldn’t hurt to be seen at a few department events. It was sincere and well-meant advice. But somehow today, since she’d seen Lewis peel off his shirt and take that flying leap into the icy North Saskatchewan River, Boyd seemed…well, pale. Thin and pale and not nearly as interesting as she’d found him in the past.
When he kissed her at the elevators that led to the third-floor apartment that Phoebe shared with another graduate student, she didn’t invite him up. Men were allowed on the women’s floor between 8:00 a.m. and 10:00 p.m. Phoebe and Lindy Sokoloski were “floor mothers” in the undergraduate girls’ residence, Hanratty Hall. It was a job, extra income that paid for her accommodation, which meant she could use all her scholarship money for school and books. Well, most of it. She looked down guiltily at the little black dress she was wearing. It had been on sale, she reminded herself, or she’d never have spent the money.
And now that she’d graduated at the top of the dean’s list and been accepted into a very limited postgraduate program, she had a certain amount of socializing to do, even within the department, as Boyd had reminded her. She needed clothes, besides the jeans and T-shirts she wore to classes and in the field. She had a career to develop. There was politics in the sciences, just as there were in the arts. Maybe more, with everyone jockeying for publishing credits and grant money. Boyd Paterson’s specialty was studying the sediments at the bottoms of lakes. It was a subspecialty of geology. Pond science, she called it privately.
Algae was her particular passion. Chemistry and plant science. She was excited about the work she’d be doing this year with algae. New breakthroughs in DNA technology had opened up possibilities for the simple-celled organism to supply all kinds of useful products—starches for the food industry, waxes for cosmetics, enzymes that might prove useful in medicine, even oillike substances that might help replace fossil fuels someday.
“Lindy?” No answer. The apartment had an empty feel, and Phoebe was a relieved. There were disadvantages to sharing such a small space; lack of privacy was one.
She went into the small alcove that served as her bedroom— Lindy had one on the other side of the tiny living room—and folded Lewis’s T-shirt carefully, pausing to stroke the soft, overwashed texture of the cotton knit. How would she have explained pulling this out of her purse if her roommate had been home? Plus a pair of men’s sneakers? Lindy might not have asked. She was pretty easygoing, one of her qualities Phoebe admired most. Lindy was practical; she’d just assume Phoebe had a good explanation for bringing home a pair of men’s size-twelve sneakers and a T-shirt. Otherwise, or so Lindy would reason, why would she have them?
Phoebe buried her nose in the soft folds of the T-shirt and breathed deeply. A faint musky scent lingered in the fabric. Lewis. That summer so long past came rushing back—the scent of the crushed grass, the taste of Lewis’s kisses, the warm strong feel of his arms around her. His laughter.
She sat down on her narrow bed and gave herself up to the flood of memories.
The way he’d looked at her back then, the way no man or boy had ever looked at her before or since. As though this magical thing between them, this thing that had just happened, would go on forever and ever. She’d been half in love, no question. Her girlish, sensitive heart had been terrifically impressed with him. He was the romantic hero of all the novels she’d read in her quiet bookish childhood.
And, then—that horrible evening after her high-school graduation when she’d impulsively bought him at the charity auction. He’d insisted on replacing the money she’d spent, over her protests. She didn’t understand the fine cold anger on his handsome face. He acted like a stranger. Didn’t he want her to “buy” him? Did he think she was chasing him? Didn’t he want to see her again?
Apparently not. The rest of the evening had been a nightmare. They’d spent a very uncomfortable hour or two—at least for her—in the tavern of the Glory Hotel with the friends Lewis had met. Losers and drunken cowboys, every one of them. Phoebe didn’t like beer. He drank several glasses, but before they left, she saw him go up to the hotel bar and purchase something else.
They’d left and, without even consulting her, he’d driven his truck to the town dump. He’d parked right in front of the dump, rather than at the nearby lovers’ lane. By then it was dark. He kissed her, his kisses rough and hard, not at all like the Lewis she remembered. These were a man’s kisses—a frustrated, demanding, powerful man. She was frightened. When she came back to the truck after going out to the bushes to relieve herself, he’d started drinking whatever it was he’d bought at the hotel. Rye whisky, straight out of the bottle. She thought hotels were only allowed to sell beer, off-license. What did she know?
He didn’t offer her any. Not that she would’ve been interested. In fact, he barely spoke to her, just flicked the truck’s lights on once in a while and watched the skunks and possums scatter before switching the lights off again, grinning. Some inner joke, she presumed. It was sick. She didn’t find the scavengers or the spotlight he put them in the least bit amusing. Finally she realized he was too drunk to drive; too drunk to do anything. She considered getting out and hitching a ride back to town, but that meant she’d have to walk to the main road first, at least half a mile in the dark.
When he got out to relieve himself—she noted that he didn’t bother to move more than ten feet away from the pickup door, although he did have the decency to turn around—she slid into the driver’s seat, grabbed the keys out of the ignition and locked the door. Lewis had to make his way around to the passenger door, cursing and staggering.
As soon as he got in, he passed out. Thank heaven. Phoebe had driven him back to the Double O ranch, had opened the passenger door and, with a combination of pushing and pulling, managed to flop him onto the porch at his boss’s place, dead drunk. Then she’d driven his truck back to the Glory Hotel where she’d picked up her car, leaving his keys under the floormat on the driver’s side. Someone would find his vehicle there. Someone would tell him where she’d left it.
Phoebe tucked his T-shirt into the bag with his sneakers and shuddered, remembering. That was the last time she’d seen Lewis Hardin and the last time she’d ever wanted to see him.
Until this afternoon.
Of all places—to show up on the Alberta Queen. She wondered if he’d found his black-haired girlfriend; if he’d managed to carry out his pressing other plans.
She could just imagine what they were.
She set the bag with the sneakers and T-shirt on her bed and turned to stare out the window. There weren’t many people about. Summer school was over. It was the quiet time between summer school and the start of the fall term. She could leave if she wanted. There was nothing really keeping her in the city between this reception today and the beginning of the school year. She’d planned to stay in town, catch up on some reading, do some shopping, go to a few plays.
But suddenly she was homesick. She wanted to see her mother and dad. Even Jill, who was in her last year of high school now and becoming more of a friend than the annoying kid sister she’d always been. And Renee, the youngest. It was her birthday soon. She’d be turning six, Nan and Harry Longquist’s last little one, coming more than ten years after Jill. And Trevor—would he be home? He was in his first year of veterinary college in Saskatoon.
Phoebe made up her mind suddenly. During the summer there weren’t many students in the residence, so it wasn’t as though she was leaving Lindy with a whole lot of extra work. And Lindy planned to go home, too, for a week. To Vegreville, where her family had a big hog-and-grain farm.
Phoebe changed, packed the suitcase Uncle Joe and Aunt Honor had given her for her high-school graduation, left a message for Boyd on his answering machine—she was glad he wasn’t answering his phone—and wrote a note to her roommate. Then she grabbed the bag with Lewis’s clothes and left the apartment.
The next week or so had taken on a whole new aspect. Midsummer. Foals and calves in the fields. Lazy sunny afternoons. Grasshoppers. Picnics. Fresh corn on the cob.
Mostly, though, it was the thought of going home to Swallowbank Farm. The thought of going home to Glory.
PHOEBE WAITED two days before bringing up the subject of the Hardins.
“Fine drying day, isn’t it, honey?” Nan Longquist said with a sunny smile as she brought in a basket of clothes, fresh from the outdoor clothesline. “We’ve had a lovely month so far. I hope the weather holds for harvest.”
Phoebe nodded. Her uncle Joe and her father were out working on the big machines today, making sure everything would be ready when the grain was ripe. She was helping her mother fold laundry. Ironing—after sprinkling and rolling and folding into a plastic bag—would be tomorrow. Nan believed that air-drying clothes was superior to using the dryer, even though with her large family, that meant a lot of pegging out over the years. She still ironed pillowcases and tea towels, just as her own mother had before her. Phoebe thought it was a complete and total waste of time.
“Have you gone to Bearberry Hill lately, Mom? To the Hardins?” Phoebe glanced up from pairing socks.
“No.” Her mother snapped out a tea towel and expertly dampened it and rolled it up. “Catherine told me she saw Mercy in town the other day. Looking like a total disaster, as usual. Needed a haircut something awful.” Nan Longquist shook her head. “I don’t know how those women manage, although I suppose that son of hers must send them money. When he’s not in jail!” she added with a severe look and another shake of her head.
“Oh. I’m sure that was long ago, that jail business,” Phoebe murmured, then stopped. She wasn’t certain she wanted to pursue the subject. She knew her mother didn’t think much of Lewis Hardin. Ever since his conviction for rustling years ago, he’d been persona non grata in the community. Rustling didn’t go over in a farming and ranching community, particularly when the rustler was one of their own.
“I thought I’d drive out and say hello to them this afternoon.”
“Oh?”
“Or tomorrow,” Phoebe added hastily. “There’s no rush.”
“They’d like that, Phoebe,” Nan said, handing her one end of a sheet to fold. “I’ve always thought the world of Mercy, keeping body and soul together, the way she has. Times have been tough, and having a no-good son is no help, that’s for sure. And that Billy’s never been much help. You know, as a girl, she was quite pretty and talented. Oh, yes, she had a lovely singing voice! I remember her well because she went to school with Aunt Dahlia.” Aunt Dahlia was actually Nan Longquist’s cousin.
“I don’t know whatever happened to her. But it doesn’t matter.” Phoebe’s mother frowned, her eyes on the folded sheet. “She’s got a heart of gold, poor foolish thing, she really does. And where would Mercy be without her?”
Most people, Phoebe thought with a smile, had hearts of gold, according to her softhearted mother.
With the exception of that no-good Lewis Hardin, it seemed.
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