Читать книгу Burke's Christmas Surprise - Sandra Steffen, Sandra Steffen - Страница 9

Chapter One

Outwardly, not much had changed in Jasper Gulch, South Dakota. But then, it wasn’t the outward changes Burke Kin-caid was concerned about. He pulled in to the last available parking space on Main Street, pushing his car door open before he’d even cut the engine and lights. Snow flurries stung his face as he made a beeline for the diner across the street. He stopped a foot short of the door, one hand on the handle, the other deep in the pocket of his black overcoat. This was it. The moment of truth. The moment he’d been waiting for for two and a half years.

God. Two and a half years.

His arrival was going to be a surprise. Hell, it was going to be a shock. He’d spent many a sleepless night trying to decide how to handle it. He could have called or written. But what could he have said? “Hi, Lily. This is Burke. Burke Kincaid. I don’t know if you remember me or not, but you and I spent one incredibly passionate night together a few years ago, and I was hoping—”

What was he hoping? That she wanted to take up where they’d left off? That she remembered?

He remembered.

Lily’s gray eyes had been filled with dreams, her pale skin prone to blushes that night when he’d hiked into town after running out of gas near the village limits. He’d had every intention of simply using her telephone to call for a lift and a gas can, then continuing on his way to Oklahoma City where he’d planned to visit his half brother. But Lily had smiled at him, and he’d lost all sense of direction, all sense, period. He’d followed her into her tiny kitchen where she was brewing a pot of tea. He supposed that first kiss had been inevitable, being near her in such a tight space. The second had thrown him for a loop, but it was nothing compared to how he’d felt when he’d discovered he was her first lover. She had a body a man could lose himself in, lose his mind over. He would have been back sooner. If only...

No. He’d already spent too much time on “if only.” He couldn’t change the past any more than he could control it. Today was what mattered. Today, and what happened in the next ten minutes.

The bell jingled over the door when he stepped inside the diner. The lights were on, and more than a dozen cowboy hats hung on pegs near the door, but the tables and booths were empty. Following the noise to an open door in the back, Burke entered a room that was nearly bursting with ranchers and cowboys. His gaze immediately searched the handful of women. None was Lily.

A short man with thinning gray hair and intelligent blue eyes rushed over. “Glad you could make it,” Doc Masey said, shaking Burke’s hand.. “Have a good trip?”

“Uneventful,” Burke answered, continuing to search the crowd.

“Good, good.” The old doctor removed his wire-rimmed glasses and painstakingly cleaned them on a white handkerchief he took from his pocket. Holding them up to the light, he said, “My wife used to insist that if she couldn’t see in, I couldn’t see out. Wise woman, God rest her soul.”

Before Burke could do more than nod, the doctor rushed on. “Isn’t usually this much of a hubbub before our town meetings, but tonight our very own rodeo champion is gonna ask one of our local gals to marry him, and a lot of folks have turned out to watch.”

Burke’s second nod was interrupted by a commotion in the front of the room. A man with a limping cowboy swagger strolled to a podium and called, “Folks, would you take your seats so I can get this show on the road?”

Boots thudded and metal chairs creaked as the men and women of Jasper Gulch moseyed to their places. Taking a seat next to Doc Masey, Burke scanned the crowd. There was a lot of whisker stubble, a lot of flannel and faded denim, a lot of indentations in hair where a cowboy hat normally sat. Five rows up and a dozen seats over, a woman with wavy brown hair turned her head slightly.

Lily.

The noise receded and Burke’s thoughts froze. In some far corner of his mind he heard Doc Masey explaining how the town had been dying due to the shortage of women, and how the town council had decided to advertise for women three years ago. The names of some of the gals who had answered that ad meant nothing to Burke; his attention was trained on a woman who had grown up here.

He’d almost convinced himself that his memories had enhanced Lily’s beauty. In reality, his memories hadn’t done her justice. Her skin was as pale as he remembered, her hair was slightly shorter, waving to her shoulders instead of halfway down her back. Her smile was serene, regal. How had so much beauty gone undetected all these years? Were these ranchers and cowboys blind?

He wanted to call her name, imagined smiling as he watched recognition settle across her features. Before he could do more than lean ahead in his chair, the man at the front of the room said, “Louetta, come on up here, darlin’.”

Burke was a little surprised when Lily rose to her feet. By the time she’d wended her way to the front of the room, realization had dawned and any thought he might have had of smiling slid away.

“What’s going on?”

“That’s Wes Stryker,” Doc Masey explained. “He won the national rodeo championship two years running. The last broken bone brought him hobbling home for good. Can’t say I blame him. Trophies and awards aren’t worth a lick compared to the love of a good woman.”

“What does that have to do with Lily?”

“Who?”

Half the crowd shushed the other half. And then Wes Stryker lowered himself stiffly to one knee. Holding his hat over his heart, the former rodeo champion reached for Lily’s hand. Through the roaring din in Burke’s ears, he heard the other man say, “I know I haven’t been around much since we were kids, and I’ve got more aches and pains than men twice my age, but I’m hardworkin’, and I’d be honored if you’d agree to be my wife. What do you say? Will you marry me, Louetta?”

Why was that cowboy calling Lily “Louetta”? Burke swallowed hard and slowly rose to his feet. “That’s going to be difficult,” he called, his voice carrying over the sudden hubbub as all eyes turned to see who had spoken.

“What did he say?”

“Who is that?”

“What does he mean, it’s gonna be difficult?”

Burke’s gaze met Lily’s, and his voice faded, losing its steely edge. “It’s going to be difficult,” he repeated, “because you already promised to marry me.”

“Did he say what I think he said?” one of the old-timers asked.

“Shh,” someone called.

“Shh, yourself.”

Louetta Graham recognized the voices of people she’d known all her life, but she couldn’t drag her gaze from the man in the back of the room. White shirt, wool pants, windblown hair. Burke. With her heart beating against her chest like a sledgehammer on cement, she said, “What are you doing here?”

He stepped sideways into the aisle, his eyes never leaving her face. “I told you I’d be back.”

In two months, Louetta thought, one hand going to her neck. That’s what he’d said two and a half years ago.

“Do you keep your promises?” Burke asked quietly.

Something soft and warm nudged Louetta from inside, something she might have called hope a long, long time ago. Her heart rate quickened, her face grew hot and a traitorous softness drew her attention to the very core of her body. In her mind she saw Burke as he’d been that April night, winded from his trek into town, devastatingly rugged and handsome. She’d slipped into his hazel eyes that night, had fallen into the warmth of his rare smiles. It was happening again. She was losing herself in him, one slow inch at a time.

“What do you say?” Wes Stryker asked, rising stiffly to his feet.

“Yes,” Burke said. “What do you say?”

Louetta couldn’t believe this was happening. She’d known Wes Stryker was going to ask her to marry him tonight. She’d been rehearsing what she was going to say. He was quite a catch for a woman like her. Everyone thought so. He’d returned to Jasper Gulch a few times each year since joining the rodeo circuit when he was fresh out of school. The last set of broken ribs and the dislocated shoulder and sprained ankle he’d gotten after being bucked off and trampled by an ornery bronco had brought him home for good. At thirty-five, he said he was too old, too tired, too worn for the rodeo circuit. Rumor had it that he was looking for a wholesome woman to grow old with, one who wouldn’t run out on him the first time something better came along. Louetta had been as surprised as everyone else when he’d come a-callin’ on her. Wes Stryker didn’t make her heart chug to life, but she was pretty sure he wouldn’t break it, either.

Burke Kincaid had already broken it clean in two.

“Are you gonna marry me?” Wes’s voice finally drew her gaze. Tears blurred her vision and thickened her throat as she stared into his blue eyes. “Are you?” he repeated.

“I—I mean—I thought. But now I d-don’t—” Since stammering was getting her nowhere, she clamped her mouth shut and shrugged helplessly.

“Are you gonna marry him?” Wes asked.

Her gaze shifted from one man to the other. Burke was watching her. His eyes appeared dark from here, his hair mussed, his features striking and strong. Certain her face was beet red, she shrugged all over again.

“Hot dang, Stryker,” Boomer Brown declared from the second row. “It looks like your competin’ days ain’t over after all.”

“That’s right,” someone else declared.

“Yee-haw! Who said nothin’ ever happens in small towns? This has all the makings of a mighty interesting season.”

The dazed expression Wes usually wore these days broke for an instant, a smile spreading across his tired features as he faced the Jasper Gents. “I’m beginning to think this might just be exactly what the doctor ordered.”

“Well, what do ya know about that,” somebody else murmured loud enough for Louetta to hear. “The girl voted most likely not to by her graduating class has two—count ’em—two suitors.”

“Oh, my,” Louetta whispered, searching frantically for a place to sit down while she still had control of her feet.

“Oh, dear,” Isabell Pruitt called in her shrill, nasal voice. “I do believe Louetta is going to faint. Jed, let her have your chair. Hurry.”

Louetta sank into the chair and immediately bent over, placing her head between her knees. “There, there,” Isabell assured her, patting her arm. “That’s it. Take a deep breath. Now another. Oh, I wish your mother were here. She’d have her smelling salts with her. Doc Masey!”

Louetta felt the usual stab of pain at the mention of her mother, but since Isabell missed Opal as much as she did, Louetta tipped her head to one side and said, “I’m pretty sure Mother took her smelling salts with her to heaven. It’s all right, Isabell, I think the worst is over.”

Louetta’s voice sounded distant in her own ears, but her vision was starting to clear and she could feel her heart rate returning to normal. She sat up tentatively, and wavered Isabell a feeble smile.

That’s it, Louetta told herself. You can make it through this without causing a bigger scene.

Mind reeling, she vowed to hold herself together until the meeting ended. Then she would take the time to have the nervous breakdown she deserved. First, she would have to find the strength to send Burke on his way. Maybe then things would get back to normal. She would run her newly purchased diner, spend time with her friends, attend Ladies Aid Society meetings, organize the annual Christmas pageant and consider marrying a man she didn’t love.

That’s it. Take a deep breath. Now another. As soon as this meeting was over, she would tell Burke what she thought of him and his unannounced visit. After that, she would make her way up to her apartment. She would close the door, turn out the lights and pull the blankets over her head.

Luckily, Jasper Gulch town meetings rarely took long. Luke Carson was calling for order right now. Just as she’d thought, old business was taken care of in a matter of minutes. An argument broke out between Bonnie Trumble, who owned Bonnie’s Clip & Curl, and Edith Ferguson, who thought the town should adopt an ordinance concerning the use of certain colors of paint on the buildings lining Main Street. “The beauty parlor is neon green!” Edith exclaimed. “Why, it’s despicable.”

Personally, Louetta liked the new color. It had punch. It had pizzazz. It had personality. It got a person’s attention without saying a word. As a woman who had been a wallflower her entire life, Louetta liked those qualities, even if the beauty shop did stick out like a sore thumb. Thankfully, the issue was tabled until the following month, which meant that the meeting was nearly over.

“Now,” Luke Carson called from the front of the room, “before we adjourn, Doc Masey has something he’d like to say. Doc?”

Chairs creaked as folks folded their arms at their chests and shifted their positions. Louetta stifled a moan, because as much as she loved the old doctor, the man was notorious for making a long story unbearable. She hoped he decided to make an exception tonight. Taking his white handkerchief from his pocket, he began polishing his wire-rimmed spectacles. When he started in about how he’d been a doctor in this town for nigh on fifty years, Louetta closed her eyes and sighed.

Before he’d gotten halfway into his tale of how he’d brought Neil Anderson into the world during a blizzard in ’58, Cletus McCully interrupted. “Doc, I swear you could talk the ears off a deaf man. I ain’t necessarily gonna live forever, ya know. Would you get to the point?”

Another time Louetta might have smiled, but she glanced over her shoulder, straight into Burke’s eyes, and she couldn’t have smiled if her life had depended upon it.

“Burke,” Doc called. “Come on up here, would ya?”

What could Burke possibly have to do with Doc Masey?

Like the quiet before the storm, silence filled the room. Surely Louetta’s heart wasn’t the only one thumping a little wildly at the way Burke carried himself, at the width of his shoulders, the fit of his black pants. However, it was highly likely that she was the only woman who averted her eyes.

“As you all know,” Doc Masey declared, “I’ve been searching for a replacement for a few years now. I’m pleased to say I’ve found one. Looks like he got the jump on me, but I like a man who knows his own mind. Folks, I’d like you to meet my new partner, Dr. Burke Kincaid.”

Louetta’s head came up, her heart rising to her throat. “What did Doc say?” she asked Lisa McCully, the young woman sitting next to her.

“It looks like Doc Masey’s taken on one of your fiancés as a new partner,” Lisa whispered.

“One of my—”

A freight train sounded in Louetta’s ears. The lights went dim, her muscles turned to liquid. And she keeled over in a deep faint.

Louetta came to amid a blur of faces and a whir of voices.

“She fainted, you say?”

“Is she gonna be all right?”

“How would I know? I ain’t no doctor.”

“There’s no need to snap my head off.”

“Boys, would you give me a little room?”

Louetta recognized Doc Masey’s voice. Although she couldn’t quite make out the two cowboys who were stepping out of the way, she could see Isabell hovering over her right shoulder, Doc Masey over her left. Burke’s and Wes’s faces were inches apart, and someone—a quick glance at the masculine hand touching her wrist told her it was Burke—was taking her pulse.

“Are you all right?” His voice was edged in velvet, just as it had been that night two and a half years ago.

“Of course she’s all right. You are all right, aren’t you?” Wes asked.

Louetta nodded and tried to sit up. Had she really fainted before a roomful of people? Lord, her humiliation was nearly complete.

“I’m fine. I’d really like to go up to my apartment now.”

Suddenly Burke was bending down, gliding his arms underneath her, lifting her up. No, she thought, her dark purple skirt hitched up around her thighs, her white sweater askew, her face inches away from his, now her humiliation was complete.

“Please,” she protested, “I can walk.”

“For heaven’s sake,” Isabell sputtered, “put her down this instant. Haven’t you done enough?”

Burke eyed the old biddy over the top of Louetta’s head. As far as he was concerned, he hadn’t done nearly enough. He hadn’t kissed Lily or Louetta or whatever the hell her name was. He hadn’t explained. He had yet to see her smile.

Wes Stryker’s voice cut into Burke’s thoughts. “She said she can walk.”

Reading the challenge in Stryker’s eyes, Burke tightened his grip around Louetta. Wes took a step closer and held Burke’s stare.

“Come on, you two,” insisted a woman with large brown eyes, a sultry voice and a protruding stomach that indicated a baby was due in a month or two. “Why don’t you go shoot some bottles off a fence or duke it out over at the Crazy Horse or do whatever else men do to compete for a woman’s hand. Melody, Jillian and I can take it from here. That okay with you, Louetta?”

As a doctor, Burke supposed the blush on Lily’s cheeks was a good sign. As a man, he didn’t want to let her out of his arms, let alone out of his sight. Since she nodded at the pregnant woman, he didn’t see what choice he had. He lowered her feet to the floor, slowly stepping aside as two women each slid an arm around Lily’s back.

There was a lot of noise all around him as people spoke amongst themselves. Burke stayed where he was, watching Lily walk away, regal even now.

He’d imagined her reaction to his return a hundred times. He would have liked her to welcome him with open arms. He would have settled for a small smile and a shy hello. He supposed he should have known this wasn’t going to be easy. Nothing about the past two and a half years had been easy.

She stopped suddenly in the doorway and glanced over her shoulder, bravely meeting his eyes. Her lips trembled. Although she didn’t smile, a look passed between them. He swallowed, but it only made him aware of the pulsing sensation in his throat and the growing pressure much lower.

Burke could feel all eyes on him, and he knew that this wasn’t the time or the place to say what he’d come here to say. Meeting her serious expression with a serious expression of his own, he said, “We’ll talk later.”

Her throat convulsed on a swallow. Neither nodding nor shaking her head, she allowed the other women to lead her away.

“For a doctor, you have lousy timing.”

Burke glanced at the man who had spoken. Wes Stryker looked the way a person would expect an ex-rodeo champion to look, all cheekbones and squint lines and stiff joints, rugged and haggard at the same time. Burke wondered if Lily was in love with the man. While he was at it, he wondered if it was possible that she was still in love with him. Releasing a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding, Burke squared off opposite the other man. “Maybe, but I’m told I have a good bedside manner.”

Stryker’s eyes narrowed. “I’m more concerned about your in-bed manner.”

“Sorry. I don’t kiss and tell.”

The other man’s eyebrows rose slightly, and Burke sensed a grudging respect in Wes Stryker’s expression.

“You gonna step aside, Wes,” somebody called from behind, “and let the new doctor run roughshod over you?”

Wes shook his head. “It looks like Boomer was right. My competin’ days aren’t over after all.”

Burke accepted the challenge, along with the hand Wes held out to him. Wes’s knuckles were bony, his palm callused, his grip bordering on painful. Squaring his jaw, Burke squeezed the other man’s hand in return.

Wes grunted. “May the best man win.”

Burke nodded stiffly, tightening his own grip. “Believe me,” he said, wondering whose bones would crack first, “I intend to.”

Bets were made among the other men. The old biddy who’d helped Lily earlier insisted that this was exactly the kind of thing the Ladies Aid Society had been afraid would happen. A few old-timers grumbled that folks needed a little fun and excitement now and then, and the meeting was finally adjourned. Burke and Wes might have gone on shaking hands all night if Doc Masey and another old man with white whiskers and tattered suspenders hadn’t broken them up.

The man on the right snapped one suspender and rocked back on the heels of worn cowboy boots. “Name’s Cletus McCully. Looks like you and Wes are evenly matched. That’s gonna make things more interesting, that’s for sure. Tell us, boy, where are you from?”

Refusing to give in to the impulse to cradle his right hand in his left one, Burke met the old codger’s inquisitive stare. “I grew up in northern Washington. My practice was in Seattle.”

“Ah, you must have met our Louetta when she went with her mother to that cancer research hospital last year. Didn’t do much good. Opal died right on schedule. She raised Louetta by herself, you know.”

No, Burke hadn’t known. And that wasn’t where he’d met Louetta. Since Cletus McCully didn’t need to know that, Burke held the old man’s piercing stare a few seconds longer, then strode out to the sidewalk with the country doctor.

The snowflakes were getting bigger, the air colder. Several men jaywalked across the street and disappeared inside what appeared to be the town’s only bar. Burke glanced up at the lighted window in the small apartment over the diner.

Following the course of Burke’s gaze, Doc Masey said, “Looks like you have more reasons than one for taking this job.”

Burke nodded, but didn’t elaborate.

The ensuing silence didn’t deter Doc Masey in the least. “No matter what the boys say, I don’t like the looks of this. It has trouble written all over it. Two men. One woman. Nope. Don’t like the looks of it one bit.”

“She’s not just any woman,” Burke said quietly.

“You love her.”

It was a statement, not a question, but Burke found himself nodding anyway. “Until I met her, I didn’t know I was capable. But yes, I love her. I have since the day I met her.”

“There’ll be hell to pay if you hurt her.”

Inhaling a deep breath of cold November air, Burke could hardly blame the old doctor for the warning. Miles Masey wasn’t stupid. Everyone had seen how Lily had reacted to Burke’s arrival. A person didn’t faint for no reason. Although they obviously didn’t know the circumstances, Burke had already hurt her. Oh, he’d had good reasons. The question was, would she be able to forgive him?

Tucking his chin inside the collar of his black overcoat, he accepted the key from Doc Masey’s outstretched hand and turned down the old man’s offer to escort him to his new residence. He was perfectly capable of getting settled into his new place by himself. Once he was settled, he would find Lily, or Louetta, or whatever folks around here called her. And he would try to explain.