Читать книгу Cowboy Under the Mistletoe - Линда Гуднайт, Линда Гуднайт - Страница 10
ОглавлениеHe’d rather tangle with the meanest bull in the pasture than try to drive a wheelchair.
Jake yanked the folded bunch of canvas and metal from the bed of the pickup and shook it.
“How is this thing supposed to work anyway?” he said to exactly nobody.
Metal rattled against metal but the chair didn’t open. He wished he’d paid more attention when the nurse—a puny little ninety-pound woman no bigger than Allison—folded the chair and tossed it into the back of his truck with ease. Getting the thing open and functioning couldn’t be that difficult.
A hot summer sun roasted the back of his neck while Granny Pat waited patiently inside the cab with the AC running. She wasn’t happy because he’d driven the truck right up next to the porch. She had fussed and complained that he’d leave ruts with those massive tires and ruin her yard. As if that wasn’t enough, she’d been telling all this to Grandpa, a man who’d been dead for twenty years.
Jake’s day had been lousy, and his head hurt. Last night, he’d barely slept after the meeting with Allison. He kept seeing her smile, her bounce, her determined kindness.
He didn’t want to remember how much he’d missed her.
Then today, he’d made the trip to the convalescent center, a place that would depress Mary Poppins. If that and Granny’s running conversations with Grandpa weren’t enough to make his head pound, he’d stopped at Gabriel’s Crossing Pharmacy to fill an endless number of prescriptions, and who should he see crossing the street? Brady Buchanon. Big, hot-tempered Brady.
Seeing a Buchanon brother was inevitable, but he planned to put off the moment as long as possible. So like a shamefaced secret agent, he’d pulled his hat low and hustled inside the drugstore before Brady caught a glimpse of him.
He hated feeling like an outcast, like the nasty fly in the pleasant soup of Gabriel’s Crossing, but he was here, at least through the holidays, and the Buchanons would have to deal with it. So would everyone else who remembered the golden opportunity Jake had stolen from Quinn Buchanon and this small town with big dreams.
Then why did he feel like a criminal in his own hometown?
Granny Pat popped open the truck door and leaned out, her white hair as poufy as cotton candy. “Grandpa wants to know if you need help?”
Jake rolled his eyes heavenward. The sun nearly blinded him. “Be right there, Granny. Don’t fall out.”
At under five feet and shrinking, Granny Pat didn’t have the strength to pull the heavy truck door closed and it edged further and further open. She was slowly being stretched from the cab.
Jake dropped the wheelchair and sprinted to her side, catching her a second before she tumbled out onto the grass. “Easy there. That door is heavy.”
“I know it!” Fragile or not, she was still spit-and-vinegar Pat and clearly aggravated at her weakness. “I’m useless. Makes me so mad.”
“Let’s get you in the house. You’ll feel better there.”
“Get my wheelchair.”
“The chair can wait.” Forever as far as he was concerned.
With an ease that made him sad, Jake lifted his grandmother from the seat and carried her inside the house.
“Where to, madame?” he teased, though his heart ached. Granny Pat had been his mama, his daddy and his home all rolled into one strong, vital woman. She’d endured his wild teenage years and the scandal he’d caused that rocked Gabriel’s Crossing. For her body to fail all because of one broken bone was unfair.
But when had life ever been fair?
“Put me in the recliner.” She pointed toward one of two recliners in the living room—the blue one with a yellow-and-orange afghan tossed across the back.
He did as she asked.
Granny Pat tilted her head against the plush corduroy and gazed around the room with pleasure. “It’s good to finally be home. I’ll get my strength back here.”
Her pleasure erased the sorrow of seeing Brady Buchanon and the nagging worry over finances. Granny Pat needed this, needed him, and he’d find a way to deal with the Buchanons and his empty pockets.
“You want some water or anything before I unload the truck?”
“Nothing but fresh air. Open some windows, Jacob. This house stinks. I don’t know how you slept here in this must and dust.”
As he threw open windows, Jake noticed the dirt and dead insects piled on the windowsills. “Maybe I can find a housekeeper?” His wallet would scream, but he’d figure out a way.
“I don’t want some stranger in my house poking around.”
“Nobody’s a stranger in Gabriel’s Crossing, Granny.”
“Grandpa says something will turn up. Don’t worry.”
A bit of breeze drifted through the window, stirring dust in the sunlight.
“Granny Pat, you know Grandpa—”
“Yes, Jacob, I know.” Her tone was patient as if he was the one with the mental lapses. “Now go on and bring in my belongings. I want my Sudoku book.”
Jake jogged out to the truck, eyeing the pain-in-the-neck wheelchair he’d left against the back bumper. Granny Pat needed wheels to be mobile, and as much as he wanted to haul the chair to the nearest landfill, he was a man and he was determined to make the thing work.
He was wrestling the wheels apart when a Camaro rumbled to the stop sign on the corner. Precisely what he did not need. Allison Buchanon. He refused to look in her direction, hoping she’d roll on down the street. She didn’t.
Allison, tenacious as a terrier, rolled down her window. “Having trouble?”
He looked up and his stomach tumbled down into his boots. The soft brown eyes he’d never forgotten snagged his. A sizzle of connection raised the hairs on his arms. “No.”
Go away.
As if he wasn’t the least interested in the wheelchair, he leaned the contraption against the truck and reached inside the bed for one of Granny Pat’s suitcases.
The Camaro engine still rumbled next to the curb. Why didn’t she mosey on down the road?
“You can’t fool me,” she hollered. “I remember.”
And that was nearly his undoing. He could never fool Allison. No matter what he said or how hard he tried to pretend not to care that he was the town pariah, Allison saw through him. She’d even called him her hero.
“Go home, Allison.” He didn’t want her to remember any more than he wanted her feeling sorry for him.
She gunned the engine but instead of leaving, she pulled into the driveway and hopped out.
Hands deep in her back jeans pockets, she wore a sweater the color of a pumpkin that set off her dark hair. He didn’t want to notice the changes in her, from the sweet-faced teenager to a beautiful woman, but he’d have to be dead not to.
Her fluffy, flyaway hair bounced as she approached the truck, took hold of the wheelchair and attempted to open it. When the chair didn’t budge, she scowled. “What’s wrong with this?”
Determined not to be friendly, Jake hefted a suitcase in each hand and started toward the house. He was here in Gabriel’s Crossing because of Granny Pat. No other reason. Allison Buchanon didn’t affect him in the least.
And bulls could fly.
Something pinged him in the back. A pebble thudded to the grass at his feet. He spun around. “Hey! Did you just hit me with a rock?”
She gave him a grin that was anything but friendly. “I figured out what’s wrong with the chair.”
He dropped the suitcases. “You did?”
“Come here and see for yourself. Unless you’re scared of a girl.”
He was scared of her all right. Allison Buchanon had the power to hurt him—or cause him to hurt himself. But intrigued by her claim, he went back to the chair.
A car chugged by the intersection going in the opposite direction. Across the street a dog barked, and down the block, some guy mowed his lawn, shooting the grassy smell all over the neighborhood. Normal activities in Gabriel’s Crossing, though there was nothing normal about him standing in Granny Pat’s yard with a Buchanon.
Man, his death wish must be worse than most.
He crossed his arms over his chest, careful not to get close enough to touch her. He didn’t need reminders of her soft skin and flowery scent. “What?”
She went into a crouch, one hand holding up the chair. Her shoes were open toed and someone had painted her toenails orange and green like tiny pumpkins.
“That piece is bent and caught on the gear. See?”
He had no choice but to crouch beside her. There it was. Her sweet scent. Honeysuckle, he thought. Exactly the same as she’d worn in high school. Sweet and clean and pure.
Jake cleared his throat and gripped the chair. He needed to get a grip, all right.
“I got it,” he said, thinking she’d leave now. She didn’t.
He reached in and straightened the metal piece with his fingers, using more effort than he’d expected. A deep rut whitened along his index finger.
“Pliers would have been easier,” she said. Then she grabbed the oversize wheels and popped open the stubborn wheelchair. “There. Ready to roll.”
Jake stepped around to take the handles. Allison climbed up on the truck bumper and started unloading Granny Pat’s belongings.
“I can get those.”
“I came to see Miss Pat.” She handed him a plastic sack of clothes. Granny had collected a dozen shopping bags filled with clothes along with her suitcases and medical supplies. Where a woman in a convalescent center acquired so much remained a puzzle. But then, women in general were a puzzle to most of the male species and Jake was no exception.
“You shouldn’t have come.”
“Let her be the judge of that.”
“You know what I mean, Allison. Don’t be muleheaded.”
She hopped off the bumper, plopped a bag of plastic medical supplies into the wheelchair and went back for another. When he saw she wasn’t leaving no matter what he said, he joined her, unloading the items, much of which fit in the wheelchair.
“So, how have you been?” she asked, her tone all spunky and cute as if no bad blood ran between her brothers and him.
“Good.”
“What does that mean?”
He squinted at her over the tailgate. “You’re not going to give up, are you?”
“We were friends once, Jake. I believe in second chances.”
Friends? Yes, they’d been friends, but toward the end, he’d been falling in love with his best friend’s sister.
He shook off the random thought. Whatever had been budding between two teenagers was long dead and buried.
“How’s Quinn?”
He hadn’t meant to ask, hadn’t intended to open that door, but he held his breath, praying for something he couldn’t name.
“He’s the architect for Buchanon Construction now.”
“Granny Pat told me he went to Tech with Brady.” He didn’t say the other; that Quinn’s full-ride football scholarship had disappeared on a bloody October morning. “Does he ever talk about—”
“No, and I don’t want to either.” She glanced away, toward a pair of puppies galloping around the neighbor’s front yard, her eyebrows drawn together in a worried frown. “Quinn has a decent life here in Gabriel’s Crossing. Maybe the path wasn’t the one he’d expected to take, but he survived.”
Jake slowly exhaled. “That’s good. Real good.”
Quinn was okay. The accident happened long ago. Maybe Jake was no longer the hated pariah. People moved on. Everyone except him and he’d been stuck in the past so long, he didn’t know how to move off high-center. “What about you? Why aren’t you married with a house full of kids?”
He hadn’t meant to ask that either.
She shrugged. The pumpkin sweater bunched up around her white neck. “I’ve had my chances.”
He was sure she had, and he wondered why she hadn’t taken them. “Still working for your dad?”
“In the offices with Jayla.”
“Little sister grew up?”
“We all do, Jake.” She smiled a little. “I keep the books, do payroll, billing. All the fun numbers stuff.”
“Put that high school accounting award to good use, didn’t you?”
Her eyes crinkled at the corners. “You remember that?”
He remembered everything about her, his cheerleader and champion when life had been too difficult to live. “Hard to forget. You wore that medal around your neck for months.”
“Fun times.”
Yes, they were. Before he’d destroyed everything with one stupid decision.
“Faith’s getting married,” she said.
Faith Evans, her sidekick. The long and the short, as the guys had called them. Faith had grown to nearly six feet tall by sixth grade, and Allison had barely been tall enough to reach the gas pedal when she’d turned sixteen. “Yeah? Who’s the lucky guy?”
“They met in college. Derrick Cantelli. I’m coordinating her wedding.” She tilted back on the heels of her sandals, her warm brown eyes searching his. “Granny Pat told me you live in Stephenville now.”
“Land of the rodeo cowboys.”
“Do you like it there?”
“Sure.” He glanced away, afraid she’d read the truth in his eyes. “We better get this in the house before Granny Pat starts hollering.”
He gave the wheels a nudge with his boot.
“Unlock it,” Allison said.
“It has a lock?” He poked around and found the lever, released the device with a snap, and incredibly, the chair rolled a few inches. “How did you know that?”
“Brady had knee surgery his last year at Tech.”
Just that quick, the elephant was back in the room. “I watched him play on TV a few times. He was good.”
But not as good as Quinn. No one in the state had been as good at football as Quinn Buchanon. Quinn, with the golden arm that had turned to blood.
He gave the wheelchair a shove and rolled toward the front door.
* * *
He’d gone quiet on her again. When Allison thought they’d moved past that awkward stage, past his determination to be the rude, don’t-care cowboy, he had clammed up again. Between his reluctance and her brothers’ animosity, she wondered why she kept trying.
But she knew why. Though she was a Buchanon with every cell in her body, her brothers were wrong to hold a grudge. Anger would not restore Quinn’s arm to normal. Anger would not regain his chance at an NFL career. All bitterness had ever done was make them miserable.
Like now. If they knew she was here, her brothers would have a fit. Just as they would have a fit if they’d known about the other thing. They’d have done something crazy.
But she was as drawn to Jake Hamilton today as she had been in high school. He was her buddy, her first love, and foolish though she might be, she yearned to help him, to be his friend again, to repay a debt of love and loyalty.
If he’d revealed her secret nine years ago, maybe her family wouldn’t despise Jake so much. But he’d kept silent because she had begged him to. And he’d suffered for his loyalty.
He could walk off and leave her in the yard every time she visited, but she wouldn’t stop trying. He meant too much to her.
If that was pathetic, so be it.
Grabbing a small black suitcase Jake had left behind, she followed him into the house. Her stomach sank like a brick in a pond when she spotted Miss Pat in the big blue corduroy recliner. The once vital, high-energy woman had shriveled to child-size in the months since her hip surgery. She looked a hundred instead of in her early seventies.
“Hi, Miss Pat.”
“Look here, Ralph, it’s little Allison. Isn’t she pretty as a picture?”
Ralph? Who was Ralph? She looked to Jake for help but he’d moved around behind his grandmother and simply shook his head at her. Allison got the message and didn’t press the subject.
She pulled a worn leather ottoman close to the recliner and plopped down. “How you feeling, Miss Pat? Can I do anything for you?”
“You sure can, sweetie. I am useless as a newborn.” Her strong voice didn’t match her body. “Get my purse over there on the table where Jacob stuck it, and then find my Sudoku book in all that mess of sacks.”
“I can do that.” Allison hopped up, amused but pleased that Miss Pat’s personality hadn’t faded like her body, a good sign she had the grit to stage a fourth quarter comeback. “Would you like for me to unpack and put everything away? I’d be pleased to do it.”
“Now, there’s a fine idea. See, Jacob.” She tilted her head back to gaze up at her grandson. “Your grandpa said something would turn up and here she is. Allison will help get this place in order. Won’t you, Allison?”
“Well, sure I will, if that’s what you need.”
“Good. This house needs a cleaning from top to bottom.”
“I can do that.” Never mind that her brothers would go ballistic to know she was in the Hamilton house with Jake. She was here for Miss Pat. Helping a friend was the Buchanon way. And yes, she admitted, she wanted to get to know Jake again. He was a memory that wouldn’t go away. “I can’t tonight, but I’ll come by tomorrow after work. How’s that sound?”
“She’s a jewel, isn’t she, Jacob? Just like in high school when she was sweet on you.”
Jake looked as if he’d swallowed a bug. Allison’s face heated, but she grinned. Miss Pat never minced words.
“Come on, Jacob,” she said, teasing him about the seldom-used name. “Help me find that puzzle book.”
Reluctantly, and with his expression shuttered, he started crinkling plastic sacks. Allison fetched the handbag, handed it off to Miss Pat and joined Jake in the hunt for that all-important puzzle book.
Each time she looked up, their eyes met. Every bit as quickly, one of them would look away. She was acutely aware of his masculine presence, his cowboy swagger, his manly, outdoors scent. Aware in a way that disturbed her thinking.
She found the thick Sudoku pad in the bottom of an ugly brown plastic washbasin.
“Here’s your puzzle book, Miss Pat. Need a pencil?”
“Got one in my purse.” Miss Pat had already extracted a cell phone and was scrolling the contacts. “No, Ralph, it’s not time for my meds.”
Jake glanced at a square wall clock hanging next to an outdated calendar, a sad reminder that no one had lived here for several months. “Another hour, Granny.”
“That’s what I told Ralph. I’ve got to text Mae at the prison and let her know I survived the ride home.”
Jake rolled his eyes. “Carson Convalescence was not a prison.”
“A lot you’d know about it.” Using an index finger, she tapped a message on the phone’s keyboard. “Ah, there we go. Poor Mae. Stuck in that prison through Christmas.”
With a resigned shake of his head, Jake grabbed two suitcases and lugged them through a doorway. Allison followed with an armful of crinkling Walmart sacks.
“Do you know where everything goes?” she asked.
“No.”
“We’ll figure it out.” Allison opened the closet and took out some empty hangers and then started unpacking the mishmash of belongings.
Jake edged around her, looking uncertain and a little thunderous. “You don’t have to do this.”
“Yes, I do.”
“Why?” He paused in hanging up a dress to stare at her across Miss Pat’s dusty dresser.
Every nerve ending reacted to that green gaze, but Allison refused to let her jumbled feelings show. “Because Ralph said I would.”
He grinned. Finally. He had a killer grin beneath olive eyes that had driven more than one girl to doodle his name on the edge of her spiral notebook. Including Allison. But that was in high school. That was before the insanity of a football-focused town had heaped so much condemnation and hurt onto a teenage boy that he’d run away with the rodeo.
“Ralph was my grandpa. She talks to him a lot.”
“Did the doctors say anything?” Allison folded a blue fleece throw into a neat square. “About her mental state, I mean?”
“No. I’m worried, though. I wonder if she’ll be able to live alone again.”
“You’re not planning to stay?”
“Not long. Maybe until after Christmas.” He jerked one shoulder. “I gotta make a living.”
A massive wave of disappointment drenched her good mood. A short stay was better, safer, sensible, but Allison didn’t like it.
A stack of nighties in her hand, she pondered her reaction. She was an adult now, not a dewy-eyed teenager in love with the only boy who’d ever kissed her.
Like that made one bit of difference when it came to Jake Hamilton.
* * *
Jake saw a range of emotions flicker across Allison’s face. Disappointment, worry, relief. He latched on to the last one. She wanted him gone. Out of sight, out of mind. Away from the town that revered Buchanons and loathed Jake Hamilton.
Then why was she here? Why did she insist on pushing past his caution when absolutely nothing good could come of it?
He zipped open a tired blue suitcase, a throwback to the sixties, to find a stack of underwear. Not his favorite thing to unpack with Allison in the room.
His brain had a sudden flashback, a suppressed memory of pink and lace he never should have seen.
He glanced at her. Did she remember, too?
Allison was beside him in a second. “Let me do that.”
She grabbed the stack from his hands as he crouched toward the opened drawer. They knocked heads.
“Ow!” Allison sat back on her haunches and laughed. “Hard head.”
“I was about to say the same thing.” In truth, her head was harder on the inside than on the outside. The woman never gave up, a trait that would leave her disappointed and hurt.
They were a foot apart in front of Granny Pat’s oak dresser, on their toes, both holding to a stack of ladies’ lingerie, and Jake wished for the thousandth time he could erase one terrible day from their lives. He was comfortable with Allison, liked her, a dangerous thing, then and now. She made him smile. She even made him believe in himself. Or she once had. With everything in him he wanted to know this grown-up Allison, a dangerous, troubling proposition.
“You’ve grown up.” Stupid thing to say, but better than yanking her into his arms—an errant, radical thought worthy of a beating from the Buchanon brothers.
She tilted her head, smile quizzical. “Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”
For him? Very bad. But instead of admitting the truth, he tweaked her flyaway hair and pushed to a stand, distancing himself from the cute temptation of Quinn Buchanon’s sister. “I’ll drag in more of Granny Pat’s stuff while you put this away. Okay?”
As if he wasn’t already struggling not to touch her, Allison reached out a hand. What could he do except take hold and help her up?
A mistake, of course.
Her skin was a thousand times softer than he remembered and smooth as silk. His rough cowboy hand engulfed her small one. He was nowhere near as tall as her brothers, but he towered above Allison. What man wouldn’t understand this protective ferocity that roared in his veins?
Allison had definitely grown up.
And Jake Hamilton was in major trouble.
