Читать книгу Date with a Cowboy: Iron Cowboy / In the Arms of the Rancher / At the Texan's Pleasure - Diana Palmer - Страница 8

Sara took the ogre’s books home with her on Friday, just as she had the last time, so that she didn’t have to go to town. At least it wasn’t pouring rain when she went out to her car early Saturday morning to make the drive to the White Horse Ranch.

This time, he was waiting for her on the porch. He was leaning against one of the posts with his hands in his jean pockets. Like last time, he was wearing working garb. Same disreputable boots and hat, same unpleasant expression. Sara tried not to notice what an incredible physique he had, or how handsome he was. It wouldn’t do to let him know how attractive she found him.

He looked pointedly at his watch as she came up the steps. “Five minutes late,” he remarked.

Her eyebrows arched. “I am not,” she shot back. “My watch says ten, exactly.”

“My watch is better than yours,” he countered.

“I guess so, if you judge it by the amount of gold on the band instead of the mechanics inside it,” she retorted.

“You’re testy for a concert goer,” he returned. He smiled, and it wasn’t sarcastic. “You like Debussy, do you?”

“Yes.”

“Who else?”

She was taken aback by the question. “I like Resphigi, Rachmaninoff, Haydn and some modern composers like the late Basil Poledouris and Jerry Goldsmith. I also like James Horner, Danny Elfman, Harry Gregson-Williams and James Newton Howard.”

He eyed her curiously. “I thought a country girl like you would prefer fiddles to violins.”

“Well, even here in Outer Cowpasture, we know what culture is,” she countered.

He chuckled deeply. “I stand corrected. What came in?” he asked, nodding toward the books she was carrying.

She handed the bag to him. He looked over the titles, nodding and pulled a check out of his pocket, handing it to her.

“Is it serious?” he asked abruptly.

She just stared at him. “Is what serious?”

“You and the cowboy at the concert. What’s his name, Fowler?”

“Harley Fowler. We’re friends.”

“Just friends?”

“Listen, I’ve already been asked that question nine times this week. Just because I go out with a man, it doesn’t mean I’m ready to have his children.”

Something touched his eyes and made them cold. His faintly friendly air went into eclipse. “Thanks for bringing the books out,” he said abruptly. He turned and went in the house without another word, closing the door firmly behind him.

Sara went back to her car, dumbfounded. She couldn’t imagine what she’d said to make him turn off like a blown lightbulb.

The next day she went to church and then treated herself to a nice lunch at Barbara’s Café in town. The ogre’s odd behavior had disturbed her. She couldn’t understand what she’d said to put that look on his lean face. She was upset because she didn’t understand. She wasn’t a woman who went around trying to hurt other people, even when they deserved it.

After lunch, on an impulse she drove back to her church, parked her car and walked out into the cemetery. She wanted to see her grandfather’s grave and make sure the silk flowers she’d put there for Father’s Day—today—were still in place. Sometimes the wind blew them around. She liked talking to him as well; catching him up on all the latest news around town. It would probably look as if she were crazy if anyone overheard her. But she didn’t care. If she wanted to think her grandfather could hear her at his grave, that was nobody else’s business.

She paused at his headstone and stooped down to remove a weed that was trying to grow just beside the tombstone. Her grandmother was buried beside him, but Sara had never known her. She’d been a very small child when she died.

She patted the tombstone. “Hello, Grandad,” she said softly. “I hope you’re in a happy place with Granny. I sure do miss you. Especially in the summer. Remember how much fun we had going fishing together? You caught that big bass the last time, and fell in the river trying to get him reeled in.” She laughed softly. “You said he was the tastiest fish you’d ever eaten.”

She tugged at another weed. “There’s this new guy in town. You’d like him. He loves to read and he owns a big ranch. He’s sort of like an ogre, though. Very antisocial. He thinks I look like a bag lady …”

She stopped talking when she realized she wasn’t alone in the cemetery. Toward the far corner, a familiar figure was tugging weeds away from a tombstone, patting it with his hand. Talking to it. She hadn’t even heard him drive up.

Without thinking of the consequences, she went toward him. Here, among the tombstones, there was no thought of causing trouble. It was a place people came to remember, to honor their dead.

She stopped just behind him and read the tombstone. “Ellen Marist Cameron,” it said. She would have been nine years old, today.

He felt her there and turned. His eyes were cold, full of pain, full of hurt.

“Your daughter,” she guessed softly.

“Killed in a wreck,” he replied tonelessly. “She’d gone to the zoo with a girlfriend and her parents. On the way back, a drunk driver crossed the median and t-boned them on the side my daughter was occupying. She died instantly.”

“I’m sorry.”

He cocked his head. “Why are you here?”

“I come to talk to my grandad,” she confessed, avoiding his eyes. “He died recently of a massive coronary. He was all the family I had left.”

He nodded slowly. “She—” he indicated the tombstone “—was all the family I had left. My parents are long dead. My wife died of a drug overdose a week after Ellen was killed.” He looked out across the crop of tombstones with blank eyes. “My grandfather used to live here. I thought it was a good place to put her, next to him.”

So that was the funeral he’d come here to attend. His child. No wonder he was bitter. “What was she like?” she asked.

He looked down at her curiously. “Most people try to avoid the subject. They know it’s painful, so they say nothing.”

“It hurts more not to talk about them,” she said simply. “I miss my grandfather every day. He was my best friend. He taught history at the local college. We went fishing together on weekends.”

“She liked to swim,” he said, indicating the tombstone. “She was on a swim team at her elementary school. She was a whiz at computers,” he added, laughing softly. “I’d be floundering around trying to find a Web site, and she’d make two keystrokes and bring it up on the screen. She was … a child … of great promise.” His voice broke.

Without counting the cost, Sara stepped right up against him and put her arms around him. She held on tight.

She felt the shock run through him. He hesitated, but only for a minute. His own arms slid around her. He held her close while the wind blew around them, through the tall trees that lined the country cemetery. It was like being alone in the world. Tony Danzetta was out of sight watching, of course, even if he couldn’t be seen. Jared couldn’t be out of his sight, even at a time like this.

He let out a long breath, and some of the tension seemed to drain out of him. “I couldn’t talk about her. There’s a hole in my life so deep that nothing fills it. She was my world, and while she was growing up, I was working myself to death making money. I never had time to go to those swim meets, or take her places on holidays. I wasn’t even there last Christmas, because I was working a deal in South America and I had to fly to Argentina to close it. She was supposed to spend Christmas with me. She had Thanksgiving with her mother.” He drew in a ragged breath and his arms involuntarily contracted around Sara’s slim figure. “She never complained. She was happy with whatever time I could spare for her. I wish I’d done more. I never thought we’d run out of time. Not this soon.”

“Nobody is ever ready for death,” Sara said, eyes closed as she listened to the steady, reassuring heartbeat under her ear. “I knew Grandad was getting old, but I didn’t want to see it. So I pretended everything was fine. I lost my parents years ago. Grandad and I were the only family left.”

She felt him nodding.

“Did she look like you?” she asked.

“She had my coloring. But she had her mother’s hair. She wasn’t pretty, but she made people feel good just being around her. She thought she was ugly. I was always trying to explain to her that beauty isn’t as important as character and personality.”

There was a long, quiet, warm silence.

“Why did you decide to live here?” she asked suddenly.

He hesitated. “It was a business decision,” he replied, withdrawing into himself. “I thought new surroundings might help.”

She pulled back and his arms fell away from her. She felt oddly chilled. “Does it help?”

He searched her eyes quietly. After a minute, the intensity of the look brought a flaming blush to her cheeks and she looked down abruptly.

He laughed softly at her embarrassment. “You’re bashful.”

“I am not. It’s just hot,” she protested, putting a little more distance between them. Her heart was racing and she felt oddly hot. That wouldn’t do at all. She didn’t dare show weakness to the enemy.

“It wasn’t an insult,” he said after a minute. “There’s nothing wrong with being shy.” His eyes narrowed. “Who looks after you, if you get sick? Your boss?”

“Dee’s wonderful, but she’s not responsible for me. I look out for myself.” She glanced at him. “How about you?”

He shrugged. “If it looked like I was dying, Tony the Dancer would probably call somebody if he was around—if he wasn’t on holiday or having days off. My lawyer might send a doctor out, if it was serious and somebody called.”

“But would they take care of you?” she persisted.

“That’s not their job.”

She drew in a long breath. “I know you don’t like me. But maybe we could look out for each other.”

His dark eyebrows lifted. “Be each other’s family, in other words.”

“No ties,” she said at once. “We’d just be there if one of us was sick.”

He seemed to be seriously considering it. “I had flu and almost died last winter,” he said quietly. “It was just after I lost my daughter. If Tony hadn’t come back early from Christmas holidays, I guess I’d have died. It went into pneumonia and I was too sick and weak to get help.”

“Something like that happened to me this year,” she said. “I got sick and I had this horrible pain in my stomach. I stayed in bed for days until I could get up and go back to work. It was probably just the stomach bug that was going around, but I thought, what if it was something serious? I couldn’t even get to the phone.”

He nodded. “I’ve had the same thoughts. Okay. Suppose we do that?”

She smiled. “It’s not such a bad idea, is it?”

“Not bad at all.”

“I would be more amenable to the plan if you’d stop treating me like a bag lady,” she added.

“Stop dressing like one,” he suggested.

She glowered up at him. “I am not dressed like a bag lady.”

“Your socks never match. Your jeans look like they’ve been worn by a grizzly bear. Your T-shirts all have pictures or writing on them.”

“When you’re working, you don’t look all that tidy yourself,” she countered, not comfortable with telling him the truth about her odd apparel, “and I wouldn’t dare ask what you got on your boots to make them smell so bad.”

His eyes began to twinkle. “Want to know? It was,” and he gave her the vernacular for it so wickedly that she blushed.

“You’re a bad man.”

He studied her closely. “If you want to be my family, you have to stop saying unkind things to me. Give a dog a bad name,” he said suggestively.

“I’d have to work on that,” she replied.

He drew in a long breath as he glanced back at the small grave. “Why did you come out here today?”

She smiled sadly. “Today is Father’s Day. I put some new silk flowers on Grandad’s grave. Sometimes the wind blows them away. I wanted to make sure they were still there.”

“I meant to call one of the local florists and get them to come out and put a fresh bouquet on her grave. But I’ve had some business problems lately,” he added without specifying what they were. “I write myself notes about things like that.” He smiled wryly. “Then I misplace the notes.”

“I do that all the time,” she confessed.

He cocked his head, staring at her. “Why can’t you wear things that match?” he asked, noting that she had on mismatched earrings.

She grimaced. It was much too early in their ambiguous relationship to tell him the real reason. She lied instead. “I’m always in a hurry. I just put on whatever comes to hand. Around town, people know I do it and nobody makes fun of me.” She hesitated. “That’s not quite true. When I came here to live with Grandad, some of the local kids made it hard on me.”

“Why?”

“Well, my mother wasn’t exactly pure as the driven snow,” she confessed. “She had affairs with three or four local men, and broke up marriages. The children of those divorces couldn’t get to her, but I was handy.”

She said it matter-of-factly, without blame. He scowled. “You should sound bitter, shouldn’t you?” he queried.

She smiled up at him. “Giving back what you get sounds good, but these days you can end up in jail for fighting at school. I didn’t want to cause Grandad any more pain than Mom already had. You see, he was a college professor, very conservative. What she did embarrassed and humiliated him. One of her lovers was his department head at college. She did it deliberately. She hated Grandad.”

His eyes narrowed. “Can I ask why?”

That was another question she didn’t feel comfortable answering. Her eyes lowered to his tie. “I’m not really sure,” she prevaricated.

He knew she was holding something back. Her body language was blatant. He wondered if she realized it.

Another question presented itself. He frowned. “Just how old are you?”

She looked up, grinning. “I’m not telling.”

He pursed his lips, considering. “You haven’t lost your illusions about life, yet,” he mused, noting the odd flicker of her eyelids when he said it. “I’d say you haven’t hit your mid-twenties yet, but you’re close.”

He’d missed it, but she didn’t let on. “You’re not bad,” she lied.

He stuck his hands in the pockets of his slacks and looked at the sky. “No rain yet. Probably none for another week, the meteorologists say,” he remarked. “We need it badly.”

“I know. We used to have this old guy, Elmer Randall, who worked at the newspaper office helping to run the presses. He was part Comanche. Every time we had a drought, he’d get into his tribal clothes and go out and do ceremonies outside town.”

“Did it work?” he asked with real interest.

She laughed. “One time after he did it, we had a flood. It almost always rained. Nobody could figure it out. He said his grandfather had been a powerful shaman and rode with Quanah Parker.” She shrugged. “People believe what they want to, but I thought he might really have a gift. Certainly, nobody told him to stop.”

“Whatever works,” he agreed. He checked his watch. “I’d better get home. I’m expecting a phone call from Japan.”

“Do you speak the language?”

He laughed. “I try to. But the company I’m merging with has plenty of translators.”

“I’ll bet Japan is an interesting place,” she said with dreamy eyes. “I’ve never been to Asia in my whole life.”

He looked surprised. “I thought everybody traveled these days.”

“We never had the money,” she said simply. “Grandad’s idea of international travel was to buy Fodor’s Guides to the countries that interested him. He spent his spare cash on books, hundreds of books.”

“He taught history, you said. What was his period?”

She hesitated as she looked up at his lean, handsome face. Wouldn’t it sound too pat and coincidental to tell him the truth?

He frowned. “Well?”

She grimaced. “World War II,” she confessed. “The North African theater of war.”

His intake of breath was audible. “You didn’t mention that when I ordered books on the subject.”

“I thought it would sound odd,” she said. “I mean, here you were, a total stranger looking for books on that subject, and my grandfather taught it. It seems like some weird coincidence.”

“Yes, but they do happen.” He moved restlessly. “Did he have autobiographies?”

“Yes, all sorts of first person accounts on both sides of the battle. His favorite subjects were German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel and General George Patton, but he liked the point of view of the 9th Australian Division, as well as British General Bernard Montgomery’s memoirs.”

“I asked the high school age son of one of my vice presidents which of the generals he liked to read about when he was studying history. He said they hadn’t taught him about any individual officers. He didn’t even know who Rommel was.”

The allusion to vice presidents went right by her. She smiled sheepishly. She’d only graduated from high school two years before, and he didn’t know that. “I didn’t, either, from high school courses,” she confessed. “But Grandad was good for a two-hour lecture on any subject I mentioned.”

He pursed his lips, really interested. “Who was the last commander of the British Eighth Army before Montgomery in North Africa?”

She chuckled. “You don’t think I know, do you? It was Auchinleck—Sir Claude. He was a big, redheaded man, and his wife was from America.”

His eyebrows arched. “You’re good. What was Rommel’s wife called?”

“Her name was Lucie, but he called her Lu. They had a son, Manfred, who eventually became Lord Mayor of Stuttgart, Germany.” She wiggled her eyebrows at him. “Want to know what sort of anti-tank field artillery Rommel used that confounded the British generals? It was the 88 millimeter antiaircraft gun. He camouflaged them and then lured the British tanks within firing range. They thought it was some sort of super weapon, but they were just regular antiaircraft weapons. One captured officer told Rommel that it wasn’t fair to use them against tanks. But it was war.”

“It was.” He was looking at her in a totally different way than he had before. “Do you ever loan books?”

She frowned. “Well, I never have before. But I might make an exception for you. Grandad would have loved talking with you about North Africa.”

“I would have enjoyed it, too.” He glanced again at his watch. “Lord, I’m late!”

“I have to get back home, too.” She looked down at the tombstone. “I’m sorry about your daughter.”

He sobered. “I’m sorry about your grandfather. Holidays are the worst times, aren’t they? I stayed drunk for two days last Christmas. It was my first without her.”

“I don’t drink,” she replied. “But my heart wasn’t in celebrating. I spent Christmas day at one of the senior citizen homes, reading to a lady who didn’t get any company.”

He reached out unexpectedly and touched her hair. “I wouldn’t have guessed you had so many soft spots. Sara. Isn’t it?”

She nodded, thrilled by the faint caress. “Sara Dobbs.”

He smiled tenderly. “I’ll be in touch.”

She smiled back, her eyes twinkling with emotion. “See you.”

He drove off in a fancy red sports car like ones she’d seen on televised auto shows. She smiled as she considered his interest in her because of Grandad’s favorite subject. First Harley, now the iron cowboy. She felt better than she had in years.

But she wondered if her ogre would still be interested if he found out how young she was. She’d just keep that to herself, she decided, like her past. There was no need for him to know anything about either subject yet. And by the time there was … well, maybe it wouldn’t matter anymore.

On Thursday, when she got home from work, she sorted out Grandad’s books, carefully pairing subject matter with time period, in case Jared Cameron wanted to borrow one. She knew her grandfather wouldn’t have minded. He enjoyed teaching students about the amazing contradictions of the North African theater, where what many called a “gentleman’s war” was fought. Rommel had actually called a truce during one bloody battle and sent his men to help move Allied wounded off the battlefield.

Patton had entered the campaign too late to face off against Rommel, but he had read Rommel’s book about the strategy and tactics of World War I. The general was known for his own lightning strike sort of attack; he said that fewer soldiers were lost when battles were won quickly. Both soldiers led from the front, and both were respected by not only their own men, but by the enemy as well.

Her hands touched a book by a missionary who’d worked in Africa and stilled. This had been one of Grandad’s favorite biographies, although it had nothing to do with World War II. The author of the book was a physician. He’d gone to Africa, sanctioned as a missionary, and remained there for many years treating natives. The book had inspired Grandad to missionary work, but he’d chosen to become a college educator instead. He’d regretted his decision later in life and had sold the idea wholesale to his daughter’s husband.

Sara put the book aside, shoving it into a bookcase with undue savagery. If only he’d realized what the consequences of his fervor for mission work would be …

She stacked the books she was through sorting and got up. Morris was crying to be fed.

As she moved into the kitchen, she felt suddenly nauseous, and that pain in her stomach came back full force. She managed to get the sack of dry cat food and poured some of it into his bowl. Then she sat down and groaned. She was so sick she could barely move. It hurt to move, anyway.

She rested her forehead on her forearm, draped across the scarred little kitchen table where she and Grandad always had meals. She was sweating. It wasn’t that hot in the house. She had a window air conditioner, and it was running full tilt.

These sick spells were getting closer together. Could she be having the same virus week after week? she wondered. Or could it be something else?

Her grandmother had suffered from gallbladder disease. She remembered, barely, the old lady being taken to the hospital when Sara was about four years old to have an operation. Doctors had removed it. She recalled that old Mrs. Franklin had complained of terrible pain in her stomach and feeling nauseous.

But gallbladder problems were in the upper right area of the abdomen. This felt like it was dead-center. Could she possibly have an ulcer?

It would pass, she told herself. She’d just sit very still and not move around and it would go away, like it always did.

But it didn’t go away. An hour later, it hurt to walk and nausea washed over her unexpectedly. She barely made it to the bathroom in time to lose her breakfast. The pain was horrible. She’d never felt anything like it. She felt feverish as well. Something was wrong. Something bad.

She crawled to the phone in the living room and pulled it down on the floor with her. She pressed in 911.

When the dispatcher answered, she gave her symptoms and then her name and address. The lady told her to stay on the line while she sent the paramedics out.

Sara leaned back against the wall, so sick she couldn’t bear the thought of being moved. The pain was in her side, her right side. It was so bad that even the lightest touch of her fingers caused her to jump.

Morris, sensing that something was wrong, came into the living room and rubbed against her, purring. She petted him, but she couldn’t let him get into her lap.

Fortunately she hadn’t locked up for the night. She’d managed to reach up and turn on the porch light. When the paramedics knocked, she shouted for them to come in.

One of them was a girl she’d gone to high school with, a brunette with short hair who’d been kind to her when other students hadn’t been.

“Hi, Lucy,” Sara managed as the woman bent over her with a stethoscope.

“Hi, Sara. Where does it hurt?”

Sara showed her. When Lucy pressed her fingers against it, Sara came up off the floor, groaning.

The three paramedics looked at each other.

Lucy put the thermometer into Sara’s ear. “A hundred and two,” she remarked. “Any nausea?”

“Yes,” Sara groaned.

“Okay, we’re taking you in to the hospital. What do you need us to do?”

“Get my purse on the sofa and make sure I’ve turned off everything and then lock the door with the key that’s in this side of the dead bolt,” she said weakly.

“Will do. Curt, can you check the appliances and turn off the lights?”

“Sure. What about the cat?”

“He can stay here, he’s been fed and he has a litter box. I’ll get my boss to run out and feed him tomorrow …” She sat back with a sigh. “My goodness, it stopped hurting,” she said, smiling at Lucy. “I may not need to go to the hospital …”

“Get her loaded, stat!” Lucy said at once, and moved away to speak into the microphone on her shoulder so that Sara couldn’t hear. She nodded as the reply came back. When she turned, Sara was on her way into the ambulance, arguing all the way. She wouldn’t know until hours later that the cessation of pain had been a signal that her appendix had perforated. If she’d argued successfully to stay home, she’d have been dead by morning.