Читать книгу Last Dance - Cait London, Cait London - Страница 11

Not all men have good hearts, and that is why the Founding Mothers of Freedom Valley decided to lay out their terms when men came courting. I do not like the rage that burns in my heart now, for someone I love has been hurt and I am powerless to avenge her.

—Anna Bennett

Gwyneth dragged herself from under the tractor and wiped her greasy hands on a rag. She swished the barn’s straw from the backside of her cutoff bib overalls, and stood snarling at the metal monster she’d coaxed to life. She hated the old tractor with all her soul; the unsteady feral growling noises provided frustration relief, curling around the airy old barn. She flopped on her baseball hat and damned Tanner Bennett for making her lose a precious night’s sleep. Yesterday, Tanner had invaded her life, her nightmares. She didn’t want to remember him at all, not the tender way he’d kissed her back then, nor the pain and frustration in his expression that night and all the other times he’d tried to call or talk to her.

She’d hurt him badly, and yesterday his scars were showing. Tanner wasn’t the sweetheart she’d known. The lines across his broad forehead and the crinkling at the corner of his eyes told of hours in the weather. She could almost smell the salt air upon him, the nuances of foreign lands and experience with women. Clean-cut Tanner of years ago was now a man with dark, sultry eyes and broad, powerful shoulders that she wanted to—

She shook her head. No man should have such a flat ridged stomach, narrow hips and long, powerful legs. His worn deck shoes marked his experiences away from Freedom Valley and from her. His body, though still lean, was that of a workman…corded, solid and sending out restless vibrations to hers. Tanner had always preferred action to paperwork and there was a hard, fierce look about him, his shields raised. His dislike of her had draped around her like a heavy, cold cloak.

“Swaggering, arrogant—” she muttered, then a flash of a younger, boyish Tanner, clad in his football armor and winking at her, set her heart tumbling. She didn’t want to remember how he had looked all those years ago, walking toward her, dark eyes gleaming, the night of the Sweetheart Dance. She was just eighteen and it was the first time Tanner had taken her to a dance. She’d been thrilled, freed from her father, filled with summer’s sweet expectations and wearing her first dressy dress, borrowed from Kylie. Tanner had taken her in his arms for the last dance, and she’d felt he was taking her in his arms for a lifetime—

Now, she shivered, mentally tearing herself away from that sweet moment years ago. She’d made a life she could live and without her father’s steady demands, she found peace in a hard day’s work and long, quiet hours at her wheel. She missed Leather, of course, because despite his stingy, hard ways, she was his daughter and loved him. But Anna had been the mother she’d never known—sweet, loving Anna, who understood her fears and always offered a comforting cup of herbal tea….

Gwyneth slashed her forearm across her face, the flannel wiping away the tears. She swallowed and straightened with the resolve that had served her through the years of keeping the Smith ranch, of paying her father’s medical bills. Dew hung on the pasture, and mist layered the morning. Somehow she’d work and manage as she always had…and then Tanner would be gone. He’d only come to set his mother’s house aright, a sad obligation; then he’d be off to a life far from Freedom Valley. She had only to wait. She’d coolly smile at the town’s friendly nudges toward her ex-husband, keep quiet, and mind her own business.

“Oh my, he’s a handsome man. He’s got those wide shoulders and that seaman’s walk and he’s sweet just like Anna. I see her in him,” Willa at the café had said, taking the fresh eggs from Gwyneth. “I’m glad you’re keeping Anna’s chickens. She would have liked that, because she clearly loved you like a daughter.”

Yesterday, Tanner’s dislike of her, a woman who had run from her marriage bed and shivered in fear, was as clear as the wide blue Montana sky. His scowl had turned into a wicked, taunting grin because he knew the truth of their wedding night and the consummation that never took place. It was their secret that he could hold and twist and torment—“Oh, Gwynnie…”

She hated him for that—for holding a part of her life that she’d shared with no one, except his mother. But Tanner didn’t know the reason she fled that night and she wouldn’t give that to him, too. She’d told her deepest fears and the reasons for them to Anna, who had held her as she’d cried.

She had work to do, a ranch to tend, and pots to make and none of that required any thought of an ex-husband. There in the shadows of the barn, the cats daintily licking at the fresh creamy milk she’d given them, Gwyneth kicked the tractor’s tire again. She was in an evil, dark mood and Tanner was the cause of her missing sleep. As she had done for years, she threw out her hands and released the biggest yell possible, stirring the swallows in the rafters. With a quick, tight, satisfied smile that her frustration release technique had worked, she jerked the leather gloves from her back pocket, jamming them onto her hands.

A sharp, happy bark whipped her head around to the doorway, where the intruder stood. She couldn’t see his face, but the tall, powerful lines of his body said Tanner had come to call, Penny and Rolf nuzzling against his hands. “Get off my land, Tanner,” she snapped, walking toward him.

There was no Leather to stand between them now, no sweet Anna to help soothe the rough edges of her fears. Time had changed Gwyneth, for now she wanted to deal with that nasty mood prowling between them. She’d been in control of her life before he’d come back and she’d liked her freedom; she wouldn’t have another man pulling her strings by anger or by love. “Penny. Rolf. Down,” Gwyneth ordered and immediately the dogs sat by Tanner.

“You yelled?” he asked in an overpolite tone. “You seem to like doing that.” In the misty morning, his hair was damp and waving, his jaw dark with stubble. His mouth was set in the same unforgiving grim line as yesterday, but today fury burned his deep-set eyes. The black sweatshirt he wore emphasized his dangerous look, his worn jeans and work boots damp with dew from his walk to her house. “You should answer your telephone, Gwyneth. I didn’t like your little visit yesterday. It wasn’t polite. I thought I’d repay the favor and even the score.”

She cut her hand across a layer of cool mist, tearing away the cobweb tenderness of the past. “There is no score between us. I stay on my land and you’re trespassing, Bennett.”

“You’re in a nasty mood, Mrs. Bennett. Had a good night’s sleep, did you?” he asked in a dark, pleasant tone that lifted the hairs on her nape. The name Bennett slapped her, accused her.

“Did you?” she tossed back; she had no guilt to spare for him. Gwyneth resented looking up those inches to his face, resented the tremor that went through her, the memories that had been safely tucked away slashing at her.

He handed her a note written by Anna. “This was by her telephone.”

The note read: “Call Gwyneth. Ask her to plow my garden.”

Gwyneth fought the hot burn of her tears, carefully folding the note and tucking it into her bib overalls pocket; she’d read it again later, treasuring a woman she loved. “I usually do that for her. That was six weeks ago….”

“You never plowed it.” Tanner’s voice was angry, biting her, condemning her. His gaze slashed the corral gate, hanging from one hinge, the unpainted house and the assortment of old farm equipment rusting in the field. “You’re killing yourself on this place. You’ve got guard dogs—trained guard dogs—four locks on the front and back doors, and you’re…”

His lips clamped on the rest and he scowled at her. “I want this cleaned up. I’m not going anywhere soon and I don’t want you tearing into my mother’s driveway again for a kamikaze attack. You’re working too hard,” he added more softly, watching her too intently, as though he could see where the darkness tore at her.

“Ranch work is hard. It’s my land now and I’m keeping it. Fences don’t mend themselves, you know, and cattle still have to be fed in the winter, when a blizzard comes through.”

Tanner slammed his open hand against the weathered barn boards. “Don’t hand me that. You’re still terrified of men—or is it just me? Everything was fine until that night—you were a bit pale and jittery looking, but innocent brides-to-be are known to be—What happened to you, Gwyneth?”

“Lay off,” she said, brushing by him and slapping her bare thigh for her dogs to follow. Penny and Rolf remained at Tanner’s boots, tongues hanging out as they grinned, their tails happily thumping the ground.

She slapped her bare thigh again, impatiently this time, and Tanner’s easy smile wasn’t nice. “We’ve become friends. As soon as your van leaves, they both run to mother’s house. They each have a bowl at her back steps and I just continued to feed them as she had done. They are trained guard dogs and I want to know why. Invite me in and we’ll chat. Just to set the rules. Unless you’re afraid.”

Afraid? When had she not been afraid? Gwyneth tried to ignore the pounding of her heart and fought back to when she hadn’t been afraid—she hadn’t been afraid of Tanner and Leather was a man others feared, keeping her safe. Then just before the wedding, her life had changed. “I’m not afraid of anything,” she lied.

“Well, then, you won’t be afraid to invite me in for a neighborly chat, will you?”

“You’re nosing around here, just for the sheer nastiness of it. Anna wouldn’t have liked that.”

He looked down at her, and for a heartbeat, the hard line of his mouth softened. “Are you getting all steamed up to yell again, Gwynnie?”

“Anna wouldn’t have wanted you bothering me,” she restated firmly.

Don’t hide behind my mother. Don’t ever hide from me behind anyone again,” he said, reminding her of how she’d hovered behind Leather, afraid to talk with the husband she abandoned on their wedding night.

“I can handle you on my own,” she answered, lifting her chin to angle a hard stare up at him.

“Can you?” The question was too soft as Tanner reached out, grabbed the flannel shirt covering her T-shirt and hauled her up close to him. Fear ruling her, Gwyneth brought her boot down on his and there in the quiet layers of morning mist, with the meadowlark trilling on the old fence post and the roosters crowing, Tanner studied her face. “I’m wearing steel toe work boots, honey. I never felt a thing. Now that was an interesting move. You’ve had some self-defense training, too, haven’t you? Why?”

Her hands had sought an anchor as he’d lifted her to her tiptoes, and the warm muscles surging on his upper arms told her that Tanner had only gotten stronger. She met his dark look, forced her fingers to uncurl from his arms and pushed the trembling fear back in its hole.

“The Founding Mothers knew how to shoot well enough to protect themselves and others. Times haven’t changed that much, just a new twist on the methods,” she shot back and tore herself free of him. She breathed unsteadily, trying to recover her reality before Tanner began prying into her life, yet every breath took his scent into her.

“Not around here. That’s what the video training course was at my mother’s, wasn’t it? She was helping you. Why?”

She missed Anna terribly. “We were friends. I loved her. She helped me…we learned self-defense together. That’s all you need to know.”

“My mother? Sparring in the backyard?” he asked in disbelief.

His expression was dazed, almost comical and Gwyneth waded in to deepen the shock and shake his almighty arrogance. Apparently Tanner had the same view of women as Leather—that they needed big, strong men to protect them. “We used my barn hay and I was very, very careful not to hurt her, but she tossed me good once or twice. I was quick, but Anna was sure.”

Tanner ran his hand through his waves, tilting his head in that old way, his eyes shadowed by those gleaming lashes, as though he was trying to understand. He lifted his head to scan the Smith ranch yard and fields, the house with its missing shingles and boards nailed over her bedroom window. His gaze lingered there, reminding her of how he’d tossed a pebble at her window years ago; he’d given her a wildflower bouquet at midnight and told her he loved her. Now the sound of his hand sliding slowly across his unshaven jaw caused her to shiver. “Invite me in, Gwyneth. Let’s talk. I need answers.”

“Is that why you came? To push and pry and ruin my life again?”

“You’re hot-tempered too early in the morning—I wonder why? Is it because you know that I tried and you didn’t? How many times did I try to talk with you? How many times did I call? And how many times did Leather lie for you, enjoying taunting me?” His finger strolled down her taut jaw. “I came to get my mother’s two milk cows. You’ve got enough to do here without milking chores. But the yell sounded real interesting—I want answers, Gwyneth. Something is very wrong and it has been for years. You flinched when I touched you yesterday and again today. Haven’t you gotten over that yet? Do I repulse you that much?”

For just a beat of her heart, Tanner’s expression revealed that same quick shaft of confusion and pain. Then his look down at her was too mild, his half smile too practiced.

She swallowed, forcing moisture down her dry throat, for this man wasn’t young Tanner; dark rivers of emotions ran through him now, and the mist seemed to pulse with his storms.

“Everything is just peachy. Go away.” She wished she hadn’t seen the doily escaping his jeans pocket. He missed Anna, and the painful task of separating her household possessions still awaited him and his sisters.

“Sure,” he returned easily. “I knew you’d be too afraid to actually talk to me. Is that your studio, that addition onto the old house?”

He was a carpenter, learning from his father, a hand-craftsman and perfectionist. The addition she’d built was poor looking, but sturdy. She’d used old boards from a shack, read how to build a block foundation and set studs, but none of it could compare with the work Tanner could do. It was all hers, her safe place, where the potter’s wheel hummed and fear and worry spun away in the clay. She couldn’t let him into her life; she couldn’t. “I’ve got work to do—”

“Sure you do, Gwyneth.” His singsong taunt said he didn’t believe her, that he knew she was trying to escape him. “You can yell now. I hear it’s good therapy,” he said before turning and strolling toward Anna’s two milk cows.

Penny and Rolf followed at Tanner’s heels. “Deserters,” Gwyneth muttered darkly and tried not to notice how Tanner had become broader than the boy, his walk easy in the manner of a man who was proud, who knew who he was, and where he was going. As if he decided his fate. She resented that confidence, resented the hungry lingering of her gaze upon him. When Tanner reached to pet Sissy, she heard herself call, “You’re no farm boy, Tanner Bennett, and those cows need milking twice a day. Make sure you let me know when you turn them back into my pasture, and make yourself scarce in the meantime. And don’t you sell them to anyone but me. And don’t you sell Anna’s house until you let me—”

She hated swallowing the rest of the words. But the new well had cost too much and her mortgage to the bank wouldn’t allow the purchase of Anna’s home. Somehow she’d find a way, she always had, and she always paid her bills.

Tanner turned slowly, like a man who chose everything in his own time, not another’s; he studied her across the small distance of the field. Then he blew her a kiss that sailed across the morning air and knocked her back into the old barn and pushed her breath from her body. “Don’t you dare start up with me, Tanner Bennett,” she heard herself whisper shakily. “Just go somewhere I’m not.”

Late the next day, Tanner slapped his hand against the stack of new boards. Gwyneth drove herself too hard to keep the Smith ranch, doing enough work for two men. As a boy, Tanner had seen his mother too tired, pitting herself against work that was never done. He remembered the late nights when she made jams to sell, doing other people’s laundry, and then sitting down with a pad and pencil and her checkbook to see what was left. She’d cleaned houses and baby-sat, and never once complained. As soon as he could, he helped, sending money home—there was college tuition for Kylie and Miranda, but Anna wanted nothing for herself; she was happy with what she had, with the balance in her life. Anna had achieved what most sought and couldn’t find—peace.

But the frustration of seeing his mother work too hard, draining her body and mind to keep them together, to feed her growing family, had remained deep within Tanner. He’d been too young to help much, but he had, hiring out to ranchers for bailing, farm and cattle work. He’d hated the way his mother’s shoulders drooped back then, weary from work, the way her hands were too broad and callused for a woman’s, the way she’d made do with old clothes.

Now Gwyneth was doing the same thing, working too hard, trying to hold her land. Without looking at her hands, Tanner knew that Gwyneth’s were callused and competent. The defined yet feminine muscles of her shoulders, arms and legs said she’d tested her strength to the limit. He’d planned to collect Anna’s chickens, too, but Willa at the café had said that Gwyneth needed the egg-money, just like his mother had. He glanced at Koby Austin, who had come to help him build a new chicken house. Koby had lost a wife in childbirth and a son who never drew breath. Now his power saw tore across boards as fate had torn him apart. He glanced at Tanner and switched off the saw, lifting his safety glasses to his head. “This is like old times, isn’t it? You and me working together, like when you came to help my folks build that barn. You were just twelve, when your dad died, and you hitched a ride to the ranch, toting your father’s toolbox. My mother said you’d be a catch someday and that she was in love with you right then.”

Tanner tossed Koby a cola from the small cooler. “My dad taught me a skill that will always serve me. Teaching wasn’t for me and in the merchant marine, I made enough money to help Mom and my sisters. But I like the smell of new lumber, the feel of wood in my hands, waiting to come to life. I want this place in good shape—for Mom. I built the old chicken house when I was twelve and taking up where Dad had left off. It was my first project without him.”

“Some say you’ll sell, others say you Bennetts are like your mother, that Freedom Valley is where you’ll settle. That means you’ll be meeting Gwyneth upon occasion. Can you handle that? Or have you moved on since the last time you were moaning about how much you loved her?”

“Love can be evil and cold,” Tanner said, tilting his cola high. “It’s better to leave it behind.”

They sat on the stack of new lumber, facing the Smith ranch and sipped their colas in the shade of Anna’s biggest oak tree.

Tanner took a long, assessing look at his friend and Koby smirked knowingly. “Nope. Never thought about asking Gwyneth out. Rejection isn’t good for my psyche and besides that, it would seem incestuous, starting up with a good friend’s woman. But if we’re going to debate on the logic of women, we should do it in comfort—food, music and beer to ease the pain? In a righteous place where men come to understand the meaning of life and the intricacies of the female mind?”

Tanner lifted his eyebrow. “The Silver Dollar Tavern?”

Koby chugged the remainder of his cola and grinned. “I’ll make a few calls. The Women’s Council needs a little competition and we’ll have our own meeting. Now that you’re back, the rest of the pack will want in on this.”

Is the Women’s Council still shoving men around?” Tanner remembered all that his mother had said about the ten women who had come from all parts of the world to settle in Freedom Valley. They’d banded together for protection, setting the rules for potential suitors who had to pass standards before marriage.

“You betcha. My sister, Rita, wouldn’t have it any other way. She’s a widow now, with kids and a small farm, and she’s active in the Women’s Council. My brothers, Adam and Laird, scoff at the tradition and Rita jumps them. Those ten women in the 1880s may have needed protection by sticking together, but Freedom Valley’s women still have a fist hold on how a man treats a woman he wants. Our families are descended from those stubborn women who came to Montana and banded together, and times haven’t changed much.”

“So much for man’s country. Did you court your wife according to the Rules for Bride Courting?”

“I did, and so did any man around here who wanted to stay on the good side of the Women’s Council. You, my friend, did not. You rushed Gwyneth into marriage, and you’ve got a big red “Cull” marked on your backside. You may get a notice from the Women’s Council to appear before them, just to set you straight. They really enjoy defining the rules of a Cull to someone who’s been away. And you’re prime for their picking. I’m not coming to the funeral.”

Tanner took a long, deep breath filled with the scent of the newly mowed lawn. “Sometimes I wonder if things would have worked out—if I had followed the Rules for Bride Courting with Gwyneth… If I hadn’t pushed her into marrying me so quickly.”

Koby shrugged again, a man who had lost a wife and a baby. “You’ll figure it out. Every man has to come to terms with the past and the here and now.”

“You don’t intend to marry again, do you?” Tanner asked his friend.

“Nope. I had a good marriage. I was happy. That’s enough for me. It’s more than some people have in a lifetime. Your mother was like that—happy with what she had. You still have a football we could toss around later, old man?”

Tanner sat brooding, dawn filtering through the lace curtains of his mother’s quiet house. After the Bachelor Club’s impromptu reunion at the Silver Dollar, he’d picked up a few bruises in the late-night football game. He couldn’t sleep, his mind restless. He ran a finger over his mother’s journals, neatly stacked on the polished dining room table that had been passed down from Magda Claas, an ancestor on his mother’s side. Beside Anna’s journals was the prized English style teapot of a great-great grandmother on his father’s side. Lined across the antique buffet were small framed pictures of the Bennetts and their ancestors.

Memories circled the rooms, his sisters’ filled hope chests waiting upstairs in their rooms. Miranda and Kylie cared little for the tradition inherited from the Founding Mothers. His sisters had sprung into the outside world as he had done, only coming back to Freedom Valley to visit Anna. But his mother wanted them to have hope chests as she had had, and so for her, they embroidered hastily without really intending the use.

Young Gwyneth had fretted about her lack of a hope chest—old Leather hadn’t allowed her to spend “silly time embroidering and such.” Gwyneth had wanted to wait, to fill her hope chest as Tanner’s sisters were doing—but there wasn’t time and he’d pushed her….

Tanner ran his fingertip across the pineapple design of the table’s doily, his mother’s hook always flashing, a certain peace wrapped around her as she crocheted in the evenings, after the work was done. She’d learned from her mother and so on, the patterns handed down from Magda Claas. Kylie and Miranda never took time to learn, both of them too impatient.

He traced the frayed corners of the journals, letting his mother keep her secrets, her life, the thoughts that a woman would have at the end of the day. He’d seen her writing late at night, sometimes in bed. What gave her such strength to face raising her children, providing for them without a complaint?

Restless and unanswered questions prodding him, Tanner stood abruptly and scrubbed his hands across his unshaven jaw. Kylie and Miranda had promised to come back, to help sort their mother’s things, but right now, Tanner needed answers to the past. He stretched out his fingers, missing the boats that he loved to build, the smooth wood sliding beneath his touch. He placed his open hand on one journal, wishing his mother were here, alive and smiling, baking bread…

Was it his right to read his mother’s journals? Her private thoughts should remain her own and yet, he ached for his mother and wanted to hold her close.

He inhaled sharply and gently with one finger and the sense that he was prying, Tanner eased open one journal. He gently stroked the dried lavender stalk she’d pressed within the journal, the delicate fragrance wafting around him like memories. My Life his mother had written on the title page, the date just one year ago. “That night three years ago is stormy, just as my thoughts remain about the evil those men did to a sweet girl. I have never felt such anger in my life as when Gwyneth ran to me that night. The sight of her, torn and bleeding by those men’s rough hands, just three days before she was to marry my son haunts me,” she’d written in her precise, feminine hand. “I begged her to tell him before the wedding, and she couldn’t bear to hurt Tanner. She talked to me of it, how she tried to push herself, and knew she should tell Tanner. Yet she couldn’t. I kept my promise not to tell my son, but knew it was so wrong.”

Tanner frowned and with a sense that his mother had reached out to him, to help him understand, sat down to read.