Jack's Heart, page 5
“Dave—”
“Dave’s permission, and Ed’s, and Donna’s, and Matty’s for the Flying W. Oh! And even Lisa’s — she called while we were all visiting at the house earlier. The Slash-C home ranch they call it. When I dropped Addie off for a little play time with Dave and Matty’s son. Anyway, Dave’s sister Lisa called from New York while I was there, because she and her husband are coming for a visit next month. She’s really excited about my blogging about giving birth to Addie here on the Slash-C, despite your lack of interest or cooperation. About my coming back to where it all began. She’s even talking about designing a piece of jewelry to commemorate it. And we’re going to link from her website to my blog and — What?”
Apparently his expression had stopped the flow of her words, but he had no clue how to keep the flow stopped. The flow of her words and her ideas and her energy and … her.
He stood towering over her. Big and unmoved and silent. Like a mountain to her burbling stream.
“Are you going to say anything or just keep glaring at me?”
“Both.”
She laughed.
The sound did something to him. He felt it, down deep.
He’d seen what burbling streams could do to mountains. Looking all small and sparking, but cutting through the outer crust like a laser until the mountain’s core was exposed and raw.
Unless the mountain stayed so strong that it forced the burbling stream to change course. That’s what the mountain needed to do in order to survive.
Her smile faded. “You’re still glaring and you’re still not saying anything.”
“You said you wanted to go back to where it all began.”
“Right. Right here.”
“You should have gone back to wherever you met Addie’s father. Or at least back to where you were when he walked out on you. I suppose that was when you told him you were pregnant.”
Her face scrunched. Not like she was going to cry, but like she was absolutely determined not to cry. He felt like he’d captured a lightning bug in a jar. One of those jars with colored glass, so not only was the glow captured, but it was dulled by its prison. And you knew you were killing it, even as you marveled at the light. Maybe if you relented and put in air holes—
“Yeah, that’s about when he walked out,” she said, the lightning bug still making light, but growing weaker. Then she rallied. “But that wasn’t when things really began for me. That was when Addie was born. He was long gone by then. But you weren’t, Jack. You were there.”
The lightning bug had escaped its prison, shining fiercely now. Hell, it seemed to have grown a stinger no lightning bug had ever possessed, and it sliced right into his skin.
She lifted the camera and snapped a picture.
“Dammit, I told you—”
“I didn’t take a picture of you. Just your horse. What’s her name?”
“Him. Storm.”
“Storm. What happened to him?”
Her gesture took in a criss-cross of scars on his flank. “An idiot who shouldn’t be allowed near horseflesh happened to him.”
“But he’s better now?”
“Yes.”
“And he’s yours.”
She made it a statement, He said “Yes” anyway.
“Where are you from?” she asked abruptly.
“Here.”
She turned and tipped her head. “Really? You grew up here?”
“No.”
“I didn’t think so. There’s a touch of a different accent. A rhythm to how you talk. I picked up a feel for voices when I worked in radio. Midwest somewhere, right? No. Mid-Atlantic.”
He said nothing.
“You never talk about where you’re from?”
“No.”
“Is that part of the general not-talking shtick, or something in particular?”
“Shtick?”
The head tip deepened. “Sidetrack,” she accused.
“What?”
“One of your tricks to avoid talking. I’d imagine it works really well, especially with people like me who talk a lot. You’d probably get away with it with me, too, if it weren’t for El. See, it’s like me having older siblings. I see I’ve confused you, but it’s true. Being the youngest, I’d try some fib or some misbehavior or something and my parents would nod and say, Good try. But Anthony and Joe tried that at your age, too. Or No luck there, Valerie. We’re on to that one ever since Karen used that line.
“You’re in the same situation, because my cousin El is a lot like you. Well, not so much anymore, but she used to be. All closed off, and careful, and never taking a chance on people. I had to push her and push her and push her when she was falling in love with Cahill, or she would have sensibled her way right out of marrying this great guy who thinks she’s the best thing ever.”
She eyed him, and he forced himself to look back steadily under her scrutiny. What was going on in that head of hers?
She stood, brushing off the seat of her jeans. He tried not to watch. He tried hard. No luck. Not until he cued back in to what she was saying.
“…so you can try not talking, and you can try to sidetrack me when you do talk, but for all the jobs I had, nobody could say I gave up because it was hard. I only left after I cracked them. And I’m going to succeed with you, too.”
“By cracking me?”
She grinned, but it didn’t make him want to grin back. “Like a walnut shell.”
“You have no right to rip apart my privacy because I helped you.”
Her lips parted, but he went on.
“If you put me in this blog or whatever it is you’re doing, if you use my name or my picture or describe me in any way that people could know who I am, I’ll get Taylor to come after you with everything the law’s got. But that won’t do any good, because you would have already done it. Already have ripped everything apart. Is that the kind of person you are, Valerie Trimarco? Is that how you thank someone you say you’re grateful to?”
“I think that’s the most I’ve ever heard you say.” She shook her head, but he thought it was at herself. “I don’t understand why you—”
“It’s not your business to understand. Tell me if you’re going to do that. So I can start packing.”
“Packing? Why on earth would you pack?”
“To leave. Or I can follow the old cowboy tradition.”
“What tradition?”
“Sell his horse, hand out everything else, take his saddle and go. Or leave his saddle, too, if he’s selling up for good.”
She stared up at him. Intent. Determined to understand. And smart enough to do it. If he hadn’t known it from those intense hours in the back of her old station wagon, he’d learned it from watching her on his computer screen.
That’s what made her so dangerous.
“You won’t leave. You’ve been here years.”
“Curricks are good employers.”
“Oh, c’mon, Jack. This means more to you than that. The ranch, the area, this place” she said, still weighing matters. Weighing him.
“It’s a place to hang my hat. For now.”
No longer light, no longer scoffing, she scowled at him. “This is your home.”
He didn’t respond.
“You know why I was out in that snowstorm that day you rescued me? Because I wanted — I needed to get home. Home to the people who love me. To the people I knew would love Addie no matter what. That’s what home is.”
“I wouldn’t know.” He regretted the words instantly. Felt only deep relief when she didn’t seem to hear them.
“You wouldn’t leave,” she repeated, but in a different tone.
He didn’t answer with words. But she clearly read the answer in his face.
“I—” She shook her head. “I will not be responsible for driving you out of your home.”
“Thank you.”
He’d meant it to be nothing more than a rote answer, but her dark eyes came up quickly to his face, as if she’d heard something in the two quick words.
“You’re welcome, Jack.”
She was watching him. And he didn’t like it. “So, you’re leaving?” he prodded her.
“No.”
She was the Curricks’ guest. How much could he push? “There’s no cause for you to stay.”
“I am going to take pictures of this place — no, I won’t take any of you — but I have the Curricks’ permission to take shots of the ranch and use them, and I’m going to. I’m also going to write about what happened here three-and-a-half years ago. It’s a major event — no, it’s the major event in my life. It’s changed everything. I’ll have to write around you. Though it’ll be like writing around the Grand Canyon, for Pete’s sake. Not to mention that if someone ever came here and started asking questions based on what I’ve already said about Addie and me, anyone in town could figure out it was you.”
“They already know. Thanks to your ambush yesterday.”
“Surprise party.”
He ignored her correction. “I’m not worried about that. The people here might give me hell, but they wouldn’t ever tell an outsider anything.”
She tipped her head, still watching him. Far too closely. Far too intelligently for his comfort. “And I’m an outsider?”
“Yes.”
“But they’re the ones who got you to come to the café. They’re the ones who listened to this outsider, and organized the surprise party.”
“They didn’t understand then. Didn’t know what you intended.”
“You mean they didn’t understand how you would react, because they knew exactly what I intended.”
He said nothing.
“Isn’t it interesting that these people you’ve known for years had no idea how you would react to this. They were totally taken aback. Why is that, Jack?”
He shifted the reins in his hand, stepped to his horse’s side, and mounted smoothly.
It would have been more effective if he hadn’t wheeled Storm back around when another thought hit him.
She’d returned to looking through the viewfinder.
“There’s no place for you to stay.” It was a statement of fact, yet it came out like an accusation, and knew that wasn’t entirely reasonable.
“Sure there is.”
“Where?”
He thought her lips quirked. “Same place Addie and I have been staying for several days. Though now I don’t need to keep the rental car hidden so the object of a surprise party wouldn’t get suspicious.”
“Where?” he repeated, downright grim now, because he had a bad feeling—
“The foreman’s cottage at the Flying W.”
He said something he shouldn’t have. Said it under his breath, but she must have heard, because she looked up quickly with those brown eyes that were as deep as they were wide. Deep and wide and dangerous with intelligence and curiosity and—
He repeated the word then said in a harsh voice, “There’s no story for you here, Valerie Trimarco.”
He pivoted the horse, and trotted away.
CHAPTER FOUR
There’s no story for you here, Valerie Trimarco.
Certainly not the kind of story she’d intended to tell her blog readers. Not with Jack refusing to cooperate.
She hadn’t known precisely what that story would have been, because it would have depended on what she learned about and from the man she’d encountered when she most needed someone three and a half years ago.
But she’d had a feeling about it. A mood. A direction.
She could have accepted it if he’d told her it had been a mere bump in the road to him. Barely more memorable than any other day on the ranch. There was no reason it had to be a major event in his life, because it was in hers and Addie’s.
She could have written about that. About how sometimes people pass through your life at the right time and how you take that gift and move on, and do your best to pay it forward.
Or if he’d turned out to be nothing like the knight in shining armor her memory had created.
She could have written about that, too. Could have made the point that ordinary people often rise to an occasion, then reassume their cloak of ordinariness until the next time called on for more.
Yeah, she’d had thoughts about writing about any number of scenarios.
Yeah, yeah, all right, including the one where he was ecstatic to see her, overcome by seeing Addie, tears streaming down his lean cheeks as he held the little girl and said he’d prayed every day that he would find them once more.
But she hadn’t thought that one had a shot.
Not really. Not when she was awake.
What hadn’t been included in the mental deck of scenarios that had kept shuffling through her head in the weeks before standing in the Knighton Café, watching that oddly familiar figure walk in, had been seeing the depthless dark of pain in his eyes.
She closed her eyes now, remembering the day Addie was born, remembering Jack, examining the mental recording of each moment. Not what she — or even Addie — needed from him. Not how they interacted. But just him.
Yes. The pain had been there then.
The recognition made her stomach drop. How had she missed it?
Maybe because it had mostly been overridden by his determination to do what he had to do, sometimes masked by the calm she’d so desperately needed, once in a while even lightened by his amusement at one of her cracks. But there, definitely there.
Didn’t take off on you.
No, he didn’t. He’d stuck with her. He’d given her Addie. Whole and strong and crazy-making and delightful.
There’s no story for you here, Valerie Trimarco.
Did that mean there was nothing she could do to help him?
*
To the people I knew would love Addie no matter what. That’s what home is.
I wouldn’t know.
He’d thought he’d known. Once. Thought he’d found people who would be home to him. Family.
His mistake.
He swore under his breath, causing Storm to flicker his ears. He leaned forward and patted the powerful neck, reassuring the animal that neither word nor mood were directed at him.
He looked out over the land, noting and planning at one level of his mind, while another heard those words again in his head.
To the people I knew would love Addie no matter what. That’s what home is.
I wouldn’t know.
Maybe Val hadn’t been all wrong. Maybe the land did mean something to him.
But people? No. There was no such thing as people who would love him no matter what. He’d learned that lesson.
*
Since Addie was still on East Coast time, they were up and over to the Slash-C ranch early by most people’s standards. Still, the young man, followed by the Curricks’ compact dog, who walked nearby as Val got out of the car said “Good morning,” then added — without being asked — that he was sorry, she’d missed Jack. He’d already ridden out.
“Thanks, but I was looking for Matty.” She smiled to soften any edge in his voice.
“Oh.”
She raised her eyebrows a bit at that syllable. — What was that tone? Chagrin? Surprise? Disappointment? — Which sharpened her focus on the guy, as she opened the back door to get Addie out of her car seat. Maybe college age, a little older. And something about him … “You were at the party at the café, weren’t you?”
“Yes, ma’am. Everyone was.”
She smiled back at his clear pleasure. But there was something else about him … Something she associated with…
“Bryan. Right? You drove the truck. Got us to the ambulance. The day this one arrived.” She hoisted Addie up on her hip, and his focus shifted to the girl. He smiled. “You were the first one to come help us.”
“Yes, ma’am. Imagine you remembering that all this time later and with what you went through.”
“Damsels don’t forget any of our knights in shining armor, do we, Addison Rose?” She jounced the girl lightly. “We say thank you very much, and it’s a pleasure to meet you officially.”
“Miss Addie,” he said, drawing a giggle from her. He tugged his hat brim again. “You, too, ma’am.”
“But if you don’t stop calling me ma’am, I’m going to have to run our knight through with his own lance. It’s Val.”
He grinned. “Yes, ma’a—”
“Uh-huh, you almost ruined this fine morning, Bryan. Redeem yourself by telling me where I can find Matty.”
Following his directions to what he called “the house office,” Val knocked on a door that opened onto the back porch of the main ranch house. The house was solid and good-sized with no pretensions. What set it apart from a lot of other houses she’d seen were, first, the setting and, second, that it was not alone.
Along with what appeared to be barns, sheds, storage buildings, corrals, and other structures whose purpose she couldn’t guess, there were three buildings that looked like houses. And a fourth that appeared nearly completed.
“Come in.” Matty’s voice commanded from the other side of the door, and Val obeyed.
“Val, how are you. And Addie,” she added, stretching out her arms, “don’t you look sweet this morning.”
Addie went right to her, clearly agreeing with that assessment. The two of them settled back in an oversized and well-padded leather chair behind the large desk.
“Bryan said you were in the office. I don’t want to interrupt your work, Matty.”
“Not a problem. Have a seat, while I cuddle your daughter.” She gestured to a worn leather couch under the windows to the left of the door. Across the room another door was opened to a hallway, with a glimpse of what appeared to be a comfortable family room beyond it. “Glad you ran into Bryan to get directions. It can get confusing with all the buildings.”
“It’s quite a complex. I don’t know what half the buildings are for. Just like the ones outside that adorable cottage you have me staying in.”
Matty chuckled. “Don’t let Cal hear you call it adorable or a cottage. Cal’s Taylor’s husband. You met him at the party, didn’t you?” Barely waiting for Val’s nod, she continued, “Where you’re staying was the foreman’s house when Cal was foreman of the Flying W. As for the buildings here, most are for ranch operations, but we have added a couple places — one for Dave’s folks when they want to stay at the ranch for a while. We realized a while back that they were keeping their visits short because they worried about intruding on us in the main house and we couldn’t budge them an inch about it. So we built them their own little place. Then we added another one for when more family visits. That made the foreman’s house look shabby. We offered to fix it up and expand it for Jack, but he chose to live in the main house at the Flying W, even though it’s awfully solitary during the winter. We renovated the foreman’s house here for even more family. And we’re about finished with updating a separate ranch office, so we can use this room for a bedroom for our next production.”
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