Читать книгу True Heart - Peggy Nicholson - Страница 8

One month later

FEARFUL OF FALLING ASLEEP at the wheel, Kaley opened the car window to the cold rushing air. Now she stretched her gritty eyes wide and said softly, “Kaley Cotter.”

No. That sounded apologetic, and she owed apologies to no man. “Kaley Cotter,” she proclaimed, lifting her chin. The night wind sucked her name through the open window, sent it spinning and tumbling across the desert behind her humming wheels.

“Cotter, Cotter, Cotter,” she chanted, squinting into the headlights of an oncoming truck, the first vehicle she’d encountered for twenty miles or more. “My name is Kaley Cotter.” Again. After eight years as Kaley Bosworth. It would take practice before it sounded right. Her car shuddered in the truck’s slipstream, then surged on through the dark.

Roughly two hours to go. She’d reach Four Corners, where the southwest border of Colorado touched the borders of three other states, by dawn. “Then home before eight,” she comforted herself. She could make it. “Kaley Cotter’s coming home.”

Where she should have stayed all along.

“Kaley Cotter and daughter are coming home,” she amended, one hand slipping off the wheel to cup her flat—still utterly flat—belly.

Or possibly Cotter and son.

But something told her this baby would be a girl. “Love you either way,” she murmured, lashes drifting lower. Boy or girl, healthy or damaged, her baby would be welcome.

As she would be welcome at the Cotter family ranch. “Home,” she half whispered, stroking her stomach, “is where, when you’ve got no place else to go, they have to take you in.”

Suddenly, her head dropped forward with a sickening jolt. She gasped and jerked upright just as the off wheel bit into the roadside gravel. The car swerved wildly, then straightened to the road.

“Whew!” Kaley shuddered, rubbed a hand along a thigh roughened with goose bumps, and shook her head to clear it. That had been closer than close! If there had been an oncoming car… “Not good.” Las Vegas, where she’d obtained her quickie divorce this afternoon, was five hundred miles behind her. She should have stopped in Page for the night, but like a wounded rabbit intent on reaching its own burrow, she’d found that no intermediate bolt-hole had looked safe enough. She’d sped past every possible motel until there was nothing left but rock and sand and stars and the pale road beckoning her eastward, home to Trueheart, then the ranch in the foothills above it.

KALEY MADE IT into Four Corners without further mishap, and pulled in at a truck stop for a cup of coffee to go.

Coffee. She frowned down at her stomach as she turned away from the cash register. She’d sworn that no matter how she craved it, she wouldn’t drink another cup for eight months. Her baby had taken enough abuse already in the first four weeks of life, without having to put up with her mother’s caffeine habit.

On the other hand, any sensible baby would agree that sharing one last cup of stale brew beat running off the road at seventy miles an hour any day. Last one, I promise you. Let’s just limp on home, then I swear I’ll never touch another—

“Um, excuse me?” A woman loomed at Kaley’s elbow as she stiff-armed the exit door. She was tall and blond, with a rueful smile. “I saw you pull in and I noticed you seem to be heading east and I was wondering if…”

THE BLONDE’S NAME was Michelle Something; Kaley hadn’t caught the last half. Her car radiator had sprung a leak, she’d explained, forty miles back down the reservation road, and rather than stop in the middle of nowhere, she’d crept on to the truck stop, pausing to let it cool off each time the needle on her temperature gauge kissed red. She didn’t dare push on to Trueheart, but she had a restaurant there, customers who’d be expecting their breakfast, so if Kaley would be so kind? She could send somebody back to collect her car once the morning rush was over.

Kaley was glad for the company. “I’ve been driving on snooze control for the past hour. Just talk to me and it’s you who’ll be doing the favor.”

“Where are you headed,” Michelle asked as they swung out onto the highway. “Durango?”

“No, Trueheart. At least, that’s where I turn north. The Cotter ranch.” It warmed Kaley just to say the words. Four generations of Cotters had held that patch of upland valley and now her baby would make the fifth. Heading home. Once she was home, she could face anything. Let go of the protective numbness that had carried her this far, and collapse.

“You’re a friend of Jim Cotter’s?” Michelle turned to prop one elbow on the dash.

“His sister,” Kaley admitted. “So you know him?”

“Two eggs over easy with a double order of hash browns, half a bottle of ketchup, and if I were a cradle robber…”

Kaley stole a glance at her smiling passenger. Elegant rather than cowgirl-pretty like Jim’s usual sweethearts, the blonde was perhaps five years older than his twenty-seven. But there was a certain level of…sophistication? Experience? Whatever, the cool, wry confidence beneath Michelle’s surface warmth made her seem half a generation older than Kaley’s younger brother.

“You’re a teacher over in Phoenix, I think he told me. Married to—um—a lawyer?” Michelle continued.

Kaley winced. “Was…” Might as well say it. There was no keeping your life private in a small town like Trueheart. Still, she hadn’t expected to have to fess up so soon, or to a stranger; had yet to shape her explanation or polish her delivery. Gray as the fading night, a wave of desolation washed over her. Richard was history now, a story to be told, not a man to wait up for, supper cooling on the table night after night. Not always a considerate man, maybe, but still, her man. Was.

“Oops!” Michelle said lightly, though a ready sympathy lurked under her humor. “Was a teacher? Or was married to a lawyer? I’m sorry, don’t answer that. Either way, it’s none of my biz. Me and my runaway mouth!”

“No, it’s okay. I was married, but that’s all over now. I passed through Las Vegas yesterday.”

“Wham, bam, we’ll be happy to stamp that paper for you, ma’am,” Michelle said, “God bless them. And good for you. Once you decide to yank the bandage off, it’s best to do it fast.”

“Yes…” Kaley supposed it was. In her case, it certainly was, once Richard had given his ultimatum.

Abort it, Kaley, and let’s forget about this. We don’t want a defective child.

Or any child at all, Richard. Why had it taken her so long to see that?

Because I didn’t want to see. I was happier blind, living in hope. But once Richard had made it clear that no matter how she pleaded or argued, there’d be no marriage counseling, no compromise and no reprieve, that it was his way or the highway, she’d had only one choice. She’d chosen the road home to Colorado.

“So is this a short visit, to regroup and decide what next, or…?”

Kaley shook her head decisively, her straight dark auburn hair swinging from shoulder to shoulder. “No, I’m home for good.” Never should have left. “I own half the ranch, though Jim’s the active partner and I’m the silent one.” Despite Richard’s complaints, she’d contributed half her salary as a high-school English teacher these past eight years to keep the ranch operating. Jim had supplied the manpower and all the daily decisions; she, the vital cash. That was the very least she could do if she wanted the ranch to stay in the family. Jim had had the hard part after their father passed away, running a five-thousand-acre spread with little help. Not like the old days, when a ranch was a family enterprise and families were extended and capable.

She’d always assumed that if they could hang on through just a few hard years, Jim would choose one of his local sweethearts, a mate with ranching in her veins, and they’d start raising their own brood of cowhands. And when at last she and Richard started a family, she’d have sons and daughters to contribute to the tribe. Sons and daughters who’d happily summer at the family spread, learning to ride and rope and round ’em up as had so many Cotters before them.

So much for blithe assumptions. So much for dreams. Kaley grimaced.

Finally she’d had to face the reality that her husband didn’t want children. Never had. Never would. As Richard pictured the universe, he was the sun, and she the adoring planet that spun around him. Any lesser satellites would be, at best, distractions; at worst, costly and tragic nuisances.

“I see,” murmured Michelle into the bleak silence. “Well, to be perfectly selfish, I’m glad. I think Jim could use the help. Whenever I’ve seen him this past summer, he’s been looking frazzled. That hand of his is an absolute sweetheart, but he reminds me of a pet tortoise a roommate of mine had years ago—sort of dried up and deliberate. I have a hard time picturing him getting his boot up into a stirrup, much less catching a calf.”

Kaley glanced at her in surprise. “You’ve met Whitey, too? How long have you lived in Trueheart?” She’d tried to make it back for two or three weeks every summer. Alone, since Richard always begged off. But these past two years, she’d been working on the master’s degree she needed to maintain her teaching accreditation and her schedule of classes had prevented her visiting. Haven’t been home since Dad’s funeral, she realized with a pang of guilt. A lot could change in eighteen months.

“Just over a year,” Michelle said. “I bought Simpson’s café down on Main Street. It’s Michelle’s Place now—best breakfast in southwest Colorado, if I do say so. Gourmet suppers on Friday and Saturday nights, with plans to expand to six nights if I can ever find a decent sous chef.”

“Just what the town needs,” Kaley said approvingly. “A serious restaurant. When I lived here, a hot date was steakburgers for two at Mo’s Truckstop out on the highway.”

“Still is, for the older crowd,” Michelle admitted. “And most of the truckers and cowboys. But some of the younger set are giving me a chance. Then there are the yuppie commuters moving up from Durango, plus the dudes and the tourists.”

Whenever Kaley and Jim spoke on the phone, Jim complained about the way southwestern Colorado was changing. Five-acre ranchettes replacing working cattle ranches. Outsiders moving in with money that the locals couldn’t hope to match. Values they didn’t want to match. Ideas of ways to “improve” a country that the natives liked just the way it was and always had been.

So far the cattlemen north of Trueheart were holding their own, with most of the changes confined to the town, Jim had reported. Suntop Ranch, the largest outfit in this part of the state, seemed to exert some sort of gravitational pull, holding the smaller ranches like Kaley and Jim’s Circle C safe in its orbit. So far.

Still, as the land folded itself into deeper and greener valleys, steeper ridges that lifted toward massive peaks, looming dark against a rosy sky, Kaley looked fearfully for signs of change. She ticked off each familiar landmark as she came to it with a sigh of relief. On her left the sign to the Ribbon River Dude Ranch—guests still Welcome. Then to her right, the turnoff to the private airport with its bluff overlooking the distant town, where courting couples parked on summer nights to “watch the planes take off.” Then they were coasting down the foothills into Trueheart, past Mo’s Truckstop, past the tiny Congregationalist church with its modest white steeple, where, once upon a time, so long ago it almost seemed like a fairy tale, Kaley had planned to be married.

And if Tripp McGraw had really wanted to marry me? She touched her stomach and tipped up her chin. Well, he hadn’t. And if he had, she wouldn’t be carrying this precious passenger. Much as they’d hurt at the time, things worked out for the best. Would do so again, she told herself firmly.

Michelle glanced at her watch as they turned onto Main Street. “Speaking of breakfast, I hope you’ll let me feed you a magnificent one. Eggs Benedict maybe? Or buckwheat pancakes with native berries?”

“Some other time I would love that,” Kaley assured her. “But I want to catch Jim before he rides out for the day, so…”

Michelle made a ticking sound with her tongue. “He doesn’t know you’re coming?”

“No.” Kaley had hoped till the last day—till the very last hour—that she and Richard could work things out. She’d have felt disloyal airing their differences—temporary differences, she’d been so sure—before her younger brother. Especially since Jim had never, in all these years, quite warmed to his brother-in-law. Why give him further reasons to disapprove, when what she wanted was a larger, happier family, not a family divided?

“No, I didn’t tell him, but it doesn’t matter.” There’d always be a place for her and hers at the ranch. A wave of weary gratitude washed over her as she braked the car before Michelle’s Place. She was luckier than so many single mothers. Because no matter how desperately lonely she’d been this past month, she wasn’t alone. She could count on her brother, count on her welcome, count on her bedroom being there, bed made and pillows fluffed, her favorite childhood books lined up on her shelves, her great-grandmother’s old pine wardrobe standing ready for her clothes. Whether she deserved it or not, she had a place in the world, reserved in her name. While such a sanctuary waited, she’d count herself among the lucky.

“Well, if it turns out you miss him,” said Michelle, opening her door before the car had stopped, “don’t hesitate to come back into town and let me feed you.”

“Thanks.” Though if she missed Jim, it was bread, butter and milk, then she’d crawl upstairs for a hot shower and a round-the-clock collapse.

Michelle gathered up her purse and overnight bag, swung her long legs out of the car, slammed the door and leaned back in the open window. “Thanks again, Kaley.” She glanced aside as a red pickup tooted its horn and turned into her parking lot. “And here comes Sam Kerner, riding point. I’m going to get no end of grief that there’s no coffee waiting.”

The local vet, a big-animal specialist. Likely as not, Sam was stopping in to Michelle’s on his way home from tending a sick cow. Kaley smiled wearily. Her landmarks were all holding true.

“And Sheriff Naley,” Michelle added as a gray pickup followed the red into her lot. “Kaley, if you ever want to just…talk. About anything at all? Breakups are tough—I should know. Anyway…” She shrugged and smiled her wide, rueful smile. “I live upstairs here and the coffeepot’s always on. Stop by any ol’ time.” She glanced back the way they’d come. “Oh, now, here comes a customer to die for. Do you know Tripp McGraw?”

“Vaguely. Well, guess I should let you get cooking.” Kaley revved the engine, lifted a hand in farewell as Michelle hastily straightened. “See you!” She had barely time to swing out from the curb before Tripp’s oncoming truck. It loomed up in her rearview mirror, its driver a dim, wide-shouldered shape beyond the glass. He was towing a horse trailer behind, she noted, as she accelerated and he slowed for his turn. But no—oh, no—he’d only slowed to wave to Michelle and now he was driving on.

He followed her for a block or two, and Kaley drove with hunched shoulders, hands clenching her wheel, though she was being silly. There was no way Tripp could know this car was hers. She’d been dodging him successfully for years.

Still, she averted her face as she made her turn north toward the mountains, and she let out a pent breath when he drove toward the east. “Whew!” she whispered, and drew in a shaky breath. Downhearted and tired as she was this morning, he would have been one local landmark too many.