Читать книгу Wildflower Bride in Dry Creek - Janet Tronstad - Страница 10

Chapter Two

Tyler kept his eyes on the road as he drove. The afternoon sun was low in the sky, but it was behind him so he could see clearly without squinting. His window was down a little and the faint smell of sage drifted in. He was trying to keep things between him and Angelina in perspective. Her tears hadn’t been for him personally. It had been unsettling for her to see someone she thought was dead, but that would pass.

Her feelings had always been delicate.

Besides, her father was right to warn him away from her. If he ever married, Tyler told himself he should marry someone who knew what it was like to survive with little money. Someone who’d grown up in the country like he had. He might still think about Angelina, but that was probably just because that year guarding her had been the happiest one of his life. He hadn’t had many friends in his life and no one bubbled over with happiness like she did.

He tried to relax the muscles on his shoulders. The more he thought about it, the more likely he decided it was that Angelina was going to marry that man. She always was skittish about serious relationships. All of her worry about having the man investigated was probably a stalling tactic, just something to allow her some breathing room. It was hard for her to trust men. Her father might not have spent much time with her when she was growing up, but he was unerring in his understanding of her.

Tyler unclenched his teeth and smiled at her. He’d call her bluff on this one and contact Clyde.

“I forgot how dry it can be this time of year,” Tyler said, feeling the slight movement of air on his face. “It’s nice though.”

He glanced over at Angelina and she was looking straight ahead.

Clumps of scrub grass covered the ground on both sides of his pickup and the prairie spread out into the distance with a few weeds and some tiny wildflowers showing up here and there. He’d guess they were bluebells. Back down the road a piece, he had seen a desert cottontail rabbit, its brown body crouched low beside a fence post. The blue sky faded to white in the heat of the day.

“There’s not too much breeze coming in for you, is there?” he asked her, suddenly realizing he hadn’t found out if she minded if he kept his window open a little. He might not be in her social class, but he had always tried to have common courtesy. And women worried about their hair no matter how much money they had. “I know it can be dusty.”

“I drive a convertible,” she replied, turning to him with a quiet smile. Her hair had fallen into place after her ride to town and he hadn’t even seen her pull out a comb.

“Oh.” He looked down to see if she had a purse with her that might hold a brush of some kind. That’s when he saw she was tapping one foot on the floorboard. It wasn’t loud enough to be heard above the engine, but he knew her well enough to know that any kind of foot tapping was a sure sign she was nervous.

“I see someone worked on the road out here,” he said as he looked up again. He didn’t know what could be wrong. Maybe she was worried he might misinterpret the funeral she was planning for him. He should assure her that he understood she had done it because she remembered him from the past.

Before Tyler could say anything, his eyes were drawn down again. He’d always worn cowboy boots, but he marveled at the sparkly footwear Angelina seemed to find. She had tiny leather straps running over her feet and the largest rhinestones he’d ever seen were cinching the pieces together. At least, he hoped they were rhinestones. With her money, he wasn’t sure that they weren’t some kind of rare jewel.

He reigned in his thoughts and tried to focus. “My father kept calling the county officials about the road before—”

Angelina’s tapping stopped. Tyler winced. He should have known better than to bring up his father. Not everyone was comfortable being reminded of a man who had been murdered.

“Not everyone knows that the gravel needs to be just right for these roads,” Tyler pressed on, turning his eyes completely away from her feet and trying to salvage the conversation.

He could feel Angelina looking at him even though he kept staring ahead.

“For the road to be bladed,” he continued, set in his course, “it needs at least four inches of rock and clay mixture. If the rocks are too small they get pushed to the side and nothing is left but dried dirt. If they’re too big, they can fly up and hit a car that’s following someone. Not that two cars ever meet up on this road anyway. Our ranch is—I mean, was—the only place out this way. Well, except for the Mitchell place and they didn’t drive the roads much, either. It was just Amy—she was my brother’s girlfriend. Sort of, anyway. And then there was her grandfather and her Aunt Tilly.”

“I’ve met Amy and Aunt Tilly.”

Now that he was talking, Tyler realized it was very unusual that a county as poor as this one would have spent money to regrade a gravel road leading to a couple of old ranches, one of them deserted and the other one almost as bad since they hadn’t been farming it much even when he left. There was a barbed-wire fence on both sides of the road and somebody must use that land for grazing, but there still wouldn’t be enough traffic to justify the price of new gravel.

Then it hit him.

“You didn’t pay to have the road done, did you?” He turned to Angelina. “I know you’ve invited lots of people out to the ranch, but it’s not worth having the road repaired just so they have a smooth ride in. They’re probably all driving pickups anyway.”

She had always thrown herself into anything she did, so Tyler couldn’t fault her for that. But he didn’t want his funeral to be one of her charity projects. Just because she had money to burn didn’t mean she should waste any on him. Better she should pick up another stray dog like Prince.

“I didn’t do anything to the road,” she assured him stiffly.

“Good.”

Then Tyler heard her take a deep breath. “About the road—”

His stomach muscles rolled again.

“I think your brother did,” she added softly. “Fixed the road, that is.”

That made him brake to a stop, right there in the middle of the road. A couple of sparrows flew up from the tall grass beside the road and a cloud of dust floated up from his wheels.

“My brother? Which one?” he asked, joy racing through him as he turned to her. He’d been meaning to call both of his brothers on the telephone. He hadn’t spoken to them for years. They hadn’t been close as boys, but he figured that was because they were each trying to survive their father’s wrath in their own way. “Was it Jake? He left a few phone messages on a number I had given him, but I was overseas and didn’t get them until a week ago. Of course, it could have been Wade, too, I suppose. He wouldn’t have my number, but he’d call if he could. Wade’s my oldest brother, but Jake’s right behind him.”

He stopped before he made a blabbering fool of himself.

“I’m sure they’ll both be happy to hear from you.” She turned to look at him then. Her blue eyes were kind and somewhat earnest. “In fact, they’re at the ranch now.”

“Here?” Now that was good news, Tyler thought.

She nodded and hesitated again. “Along with your mother.”

Tyler was glad he’d already stopped the pickup. He would have run into the ditch otherwise.

“They let my mother come? Here?” he said, relief flooding him. Then he realized. “Oh, of course—because of the memorial service.”

He’d heard of prisoners being given a compassionate leave to attend such events. His mother had to be near the end of her sentence anyway. The judge had gone light on her after news of all of his father’s abuse had come out in the trial. Tyler decided it wasn’t so bad to have this whole mix-up if it gave his mother a few days of freedom.

“I hope the memorial service doesn’t give her a problem with the authorities. Now that I’m not dead or anything. Surely they’ll know it wasn’t intentional.”

He turned to Angelina for confirmation. Her eyes were so somber he wondered if his mother was in more trouble than he knew. Then Angelina reached over and put her hand on his arm. He didn’t flinch even though it was his bad arm and he wondered if he wasn’t feeling the burn all over again.

“They released your mother last Christmas,” Angelina said quietly. “She’s free for good. And she has other news, but I’ll let her tell you that.”

Tyler blinked suddenly. He reached over with his good arm to pat Angelina’s hand. He started the pickup again. And then he remembered.

“They really think I’m dead? My whole family?”

Angelina looked miserable, but she nodded.

“I’m so very sorry,” she stammered. “When Mrs. Stevenson—you remember her? My father’s secretary. Well when she finally told me about the death notice, I had to come here and tell someone you’d died. I didn’t know who I’d find, whether you had any family left here or not. But it didn’t seem right for you to die and no one even know about it.”

She spread her arms at that. “You grew up in this part of the country. It’s your home.

“Oh.” She stopped and brought her arms back to her sides. “I put an obituary in the Billings paper, too.”

He swallowed at that. But what was done was done. And he was going to see his family.

Giving him a memorial service wasn’t the worst thing a person had ever done to him. And she meant well. One thing he’d say for Angelina is that she had a heart of gold.

She still sat across from him with her head down so he reached over with his right hand and ruffled her hair like he used to. “It’s all right, Angel.”

“You remember?” She looked up at him in surprise.

“Of course, I remember.” Was there something he was missing? “It wasn’t much of a code name. Not like they have with the Secret Service. But it worked when we needed it to—”

Tyler thought she would be pleased that he had remembered something like that. But she looked aghast so he added, “I never told your father we had a secret code name or anything. It wasn’t like ‘dear’ or ‘sweetheart’ or anything anyway. It was strictly business. Just between us.”

“You never thought of me as your angel?” she asked, her face pinched.

“Well, no,” he stammered. “I knew I was your bodyguard and nothing more. I’d never presume to—that is, I’d never take advantage of our relationship. Not that we had a relationship. It was a business arrangement more than anything even though it did get me through that last year of high school.”

Tyler kept digging himself a deeper hole until finally he wondered if he hadn’t dug too far. “Not that I didn’t consider you a friend.” That didn’t seem enough, either, so he added, “A very kind friend.”

Angelina was just staring at him.

“I get it,” she finally said. “You would have taken a bullet for me, but only because it was your job.”

Tyler flinched. “I wouldn’t say only, but I was getting paid to protect you.”

She nodded and sighed. “I know. It’s just when you threw that knife at the van tire that day—well, it was magnificent, and I couldn’t even see all of it. You were like a superhero. All my friends said so. The ones who were standing there and watching it all. My friend, Kelly, still talks about it.”

She looked at him fully now and there was a softness in her eyes that made him want to protect her all the more. She didn’t need to know he would have taken a bullet for her even if no one had paid him a dime.

“If I’d been paying more attention, they never would have snatched you off the street like that,” he said instead. “I would have had time to call in the backup guards and it would have been handled without all the excitement.”

They were both silent for a moment, remembering those days.

“It was still very brave.” She sighed. “How’d you learn to throw a knife like that anyway?”

“Rattlesnakes,” he answered, thankful to move the conversation along. “You have to be quick and deadly if all you have is a knife and you’re facing a rattler. Growing up here, I always kept a small knife in my boot.”

“You still have the knife?” she asked.

He nodded and puffed his chest up just to amuse her. “Still have the boots, too. You see any rattlesnakes around, you let me know.”

Finally, he got a smile out of her.

Neither of them said anything as he drove the rest of the way to the dirt road that turned off the main gravel road and led up to his family’s old ranch.

He stopped just after the turn. Someone had been busy. The field to the right had been plowed and planted this year. Tall stalks of wheat went back deep in the acreage. He wondered how they were controlling the grasshoppers. On the left side of the driveway, the ground was freshly turned. He’d guess someone was going to plant something else there. And in the distance, behind the barn, he saw a herd of cattle, some of them with calves. The place had never looked so good.

His brothers weren’t just home, they were working the land. And then he saw a house. No, two houses in the far field. He wondered if his brothers had sold some of the ranch.

“They’ll be happy to see you,” Angelina whispered as she sat there with him.

He glanced down before she could see the dampness in his eyes. Even if some of the land was gone, he was glad to see his family on this ranch again.

Just then he heard a thump from behind and he turned around to see the dog leap to the ground.

“Prince!” Angelina rolled down her window and called out, but it was too late.

The mutt was off and running, with so much joy evident in his whole body that Tyler had to smile. “He looks like he’s home.”

“But he can’t live here,” Angelina protested. “I rescued him.”

“He won’t be happy going back to Boston,” Tyler said. “Not if he’s used to running around in the country here.”

“I’m still here for another month.”

“Well, you’re going to break his heart when you leave. That’s all I have to say.”

Tyler didn’t dare think about his own heart.

* * *

Angelina sat in the pickup. “Do you think I’m being selfish? Wanting to keep Prince with me?”

“You’ll need to ask Prince. Maybe he’d like to see the ocean.”

“Everybody should have a dog.”

By then, Prince had run all the way up to the house and another dog came out from behind the barn, barking. Prince didn’t seem to mind the other dog and he started chasing what looked like a Rhode Island Red hen that was now running toward the barn. Angelina smiled as the chicken slipped inside the slightly open door at the side of the building.

Prince nosed at the door, but couldn’t get it to move so he turned his attention to the three pickups parked next to the house.

“I don’t want to startle everyone,” Tyler said then, looking over at her. “Maybe you should go inside first and tell them to all sit down, at least.”

“That’s what I told them to do when I told them you were dead.” Angelina wished she could take that conversation back. “I don’t want to make them think something else is wrong.”

Tyler stopped his pickup next to the other vehicles. “I’m surprised no one’s come outside yet. Maybe they’re not here.”

Angelina shook her head. “They are probably just upstairs in your room getting your boyhood treasures for display. We were going to show them tonight at your service.”

“My marbles.” Tyler looked at her. “That’s all I ever had. Who would want to see my marbles?”

“Well, people do that at funerals. We wanted to give everyone the sense of who you were growing up here. At first I thought of a slide show, but your brothers didn’t have pictures of your childhood.”

“Of course not. Didn’t you hear about the Stone boys? We were fortunate to survive childhood. We didn’t have any picture-worthy moments.”

“Well, yes, I know, but we wanted to celebrate your life tonight. We had to have some good times to talk about. There must be something.”

“Mrs. Hargrove gave me a plate of chocolate chip cookies once when I snuck into her Sunday school class. I think she meant them for the whole class, but she just scooped them all into a bag and gave them to me. I was supposed to be hunting rattlers down in the coulee, but I rode our horse into town and went into the church basement just before she started talking. I’ll never forget the look on her face. She was really surprised.”

“Well, see, that’s a good memory.”

“Later, she offered Jake a whole pie if he would go. I almost figured I’d come in second best on that one.”

“Life isn’t about measuring how much you have against how much someone else might be given.” She might sound a little pompous, but she had to say it. She was turning her life around and that was an important part of it.

Tyler grunted. “Easy for you to say when you can have all the pie in the world just waiting for you.”

“As a matter of fact, it’s not easy for me to say,” Angelina protested. “And maybe I don’t always have all the pie.”

She’d known for a long time that money didn’t buy happiness. But she was just coming to understand that the loneliness she felt when she looked at loving families was the same kind of ache that other girls had in high school when they looked in her closet and thought she had every pair of designer jeans in the universe. It wasn’t just the missing of the other thing—whether it was clothes or money or loving parents—it was when the lack of that one thing tricked a person into feeling like they were not important to God. That’s when people were in trouble.

Just then Prince found another chicken and started to bark again.

“Maybe you should be going,” Tyler said to her as he looked toward the dog. “I don’t think my brothers will put up with much more barking before one of them comes to see what’s going on. The cattle could have gotten out.”

Angelina nodded. “Follow close behind me. It’ll only take me a minute to tell them.”

She opened the door and stepped down to the ground. Without the shade of the cab, the sun beat strong on her. She started walking to the house and, just before she arrived at the side porch, she turned to look back at Tyler. She remembered how difficult it had been to come to the Stone ranch when she first arrived in Dry Creek. If only she had waited to tell everyone that Tyler had been declared dead, she wouldn’t have put his family through the grief of it all.

She squared her shoulders as she knocked at the door.

Lord, help me do this right this time, she prayed as she stood there waiting for someone to answer.

Mrs. Hargrove had assured her she could pray to God about any of the struggles in her day. Prayer was new to Angelina, but she had started asking God to guide her even when she didn’t know how to pray.

Angelina heard footsteps and took a second to motion for Tyler to come. She was sure his family would want to see him the very minute that she announced he was alive.

It would be like Lazarus bursting forth from his tomb, she assured herself, recalling the story she’d just read with Mrs. Hargrove in the Gospel of John. Then she heard someone start to turn the knob on the door. They were all happy to see Lazarus, weren’t they, Lord? Help me to do this the right way.

She was certainly happy Tyler was alive.