скачать книгу бесплатно
A pair of solemn silver eyes, aglow in the flickering firelight, met hers.
Her heart gave a strange and altogether inappropriate lurch of pleasure.
Jesse was here.
Jesse stared into Lindsey’s delighted eyes and wished he was anywhere but here. From the minute he’d left the farm, he had struggled with a rising desire not to return. Except for his promise to Jade, he wouldn’t have. He no more belonged with Lindsey and her holy church friends than he belonged in Buckingham Palace with the queen.
Jade gripped his leg, eyes wide as she watched children running in wild circles outside the perimeter of the firelight.
“You didn’t think we were coming, did you?” he said to Lindsey.
She handed him a roasting stick, eyebrows lifted in an unspoken question. “I was beginning to wonder if something had happened.”
The open-ended statement gave him the opportunity to explain, but he let the moment pass. His life was his business. Lindsey’s gentle way of pulling him in, including him, was already giving him enough trouble.
“We brought marshmallows.” Jade’s announcement filled the gap in conversation. She thrust the bag toward Lindsey.
“Cool. Let’s eat a hotdog first and then we’ll dig into these.” Lindsey placed the bag on the table and took a wiener from a pack. “Do you want to roast your own?”
Jade pulled back, shaking her head. “Uh-uh. The fire might burn me.”
“How about if I help you?” Lindsey slid the hotdog onto the stick and held it out.
Jesse could feel the tension in his child’s small fingers. Her anxiety over every new experience worried him. He squatted down in front of her. “It’s okay. Lindsey won’t let you get hurt.”
Indecision laced with worry played over his daughter’s face. Lindsey, with her innate kindness, saw the dilemma. Jade wanted the fun of roasting the hotdog, but couldn’t bring herself to trust anyone other than him. Jesse hid a sigh.
“This hotdog will taste better if Daddy cooks it. Isn’t that right, sugar?” Lindsey said, handing him the loaded stick. “I’ll grab another.”
Squatting beside Lindsey with Jade balanced between his knees, Jesse thrust the franks into the flames. Jade rested a tentative hand just behind his.
More than anything Jesse longed to see Jade as confident and fearless as other six-year-olds. Deep inside, he was convinced that regaining his inheritance, giving her a stable home environment and surrounding her with familiar people and places would solve Jade’s problem. Tonight he hoped to take another step in that direction.
Letting his gaze drift around the campfire, Jesse studied the unfamiliar faces. Somebody here must have known Lindsey’s grandparents and probably even his stepfather. Some self-righteous churchgoer standing out there in the half darkness sucking down a hotdog might have even been involved in the shady deal that had left him a homeless orphan.
“Everyone here is anxious to meet you,” Lindsey said, her voice as smoky and warm as the hickory fire.
Given the train of his thoughts, Jesse shifted uncomfortably. “Checking out the new guy to make sure you’re safe with me?”
The remark came out harsher, more defensive than he’d planned.
Serene brown eyes probing, Lindsey said, “Don’t take offense, Jesse. This is a small town. They only want to get acquainted, to be neighborly.”
He blamed the fire and not his pinch of guilt for the sudden warmth in his face. She was too kind and he wished he’d followed his gut instinct and stayed at the cramped little trailer.
“Here you go, Butterbean.” Taking the hotdog from the flames, he went to the table for buns and mustard. Lindsey and Jade followed.
One of the biggest men he’d ever seen handed him a paper plate. “You must be Jesse.”
Lindsey made the introductions. “This is my pastor, Cliff Wilson.”
Jesse’s surprise must have shown because the clergyman bellowed a cheerful laugh. “If you were out killing preachers, you’d pass me right up, wouldn’t you?”
Cliff looked more like a pro wrestler than a preacher. A blond lumberjack of a man in casual work clothes and tennis shoes with blue eyes as gentle and guileless as a child’s and a face filled with laughter.
“Good to meet you, sir,” Jesse said stiffly, not sure how to react to the unorthodox minister.
“Everyone calls me Pastor Cliff or just plain Cliff.” The preacher offered a beefy hand which Jesse shook. “You from around this area?”
“Enid.” Giving his stock answer, Jesse concentrated on squirting mustard onto Jade’s hotdog. No way he’d tell any of them the truth—that he’d roamed this very land as a youth.
“Lindsey says you’re heaven-sent, a real help to her.”
“I’m glad for the work.” He handed the hotdog to Jade, along with a napkin. “Lindsey’s a fair boss.”
By now at least a half dozen other men had sidled up to the table for introductions and food refills. Jesse felt like a bug under a magnifying glass, but if he allowed his prickly feelings to show, people might get suspicious. He needed their trust, though he didn’t want to consider how he’d eventually use that trust against one of their own.
“A fair boss? Now that’s a good ’un.” A short, round older man in a camouflage jacket offered the joking comment. “That girl works herself into the ground just like her grandpa did. I figure she expects the same from her hired help.”
Jesse stilled, attention riveted. This fellow knew Lindsey’s grandparents and was old enough to have been around Winding Stair for some time. He just might know the details Jesse needed to begin searching the courthouse records.
“Now Clarence.” Eyes twinkling a becoming gold in the flickering light, Lindsey pointed a potato chip at the speaker. “You stop that before you scare off the only steady worker I’ve ever had.”
“Ah, he knows I’m only kidding.” Clarence aimed a grin toward Jesse. “Don’t you, son?” Before Jesse could respond, the man stuck out his hand. “Name’s Clarence Stone. I live back up the mountain a ways. If you ever need anything, give me a holler.”
A chuckle came from the man in a cowboy hat standing next to Clarence. His black mustache quivered on the corners. “That’s right, Jesse. Give Clarence a holler. He’ll come down and talk your ears off while you do all the work.”
Clarence didn’t seem the least bit offended. He grinned widely.
“This here wise guy is Mick Thompson,” he said with affection. “Mick has a ranch east of town, though if it wasn’t for that sweet little wife of his, he’d have gone under a long time ago.”
Mick laughed, teeth white in his dark face. “I have to agree with you there, Clarence, even if Clare is your daughter. I wouldn’t be much without her.”
Jesse’s mind registered the relationship along with the fact that Mick owned a ranch. Now that was something Jesse understood.
“You raise horses on that ranch of yours?” he asked, making casual conversation while hoping to turn the conversation back to Lindsey’s grandparents.
“Sure do. You know horses?” Mick sipped at his plastic cup.
“I’ve done a little rodeo. Bronc-riding mostly.”
“No kidding?” Mick’s eyebrows lifted in interest. “Ever break any colts?”
“Used to do a lot of that sort of work.” Before Erin died. But he wouldn’t share that with Mick.
“Would you like to do it again?”
“I wouldn’t mind it.” He missed working with rough stock, and breaking horses on the side would put some much-needed extra money in his pocket.
“Don’t be trying to hire him away from Lindsey, Mick,” the jovial Clarence put in. “She’ll shoot you. And I’ll be left to support your wife and kids.”
“You’d shoot me yourself if you thought Clare and the kids would move back up in those woods with you and Loraine.”
Both men chuckled, and despite himself, Jesse enjoyed their good-natured ribbing.
Lindsey, having drifted off in conversation with a red-haired woman, missed the teasing remark. Without her present, Jesse wanted to turn the conversation back to her grandfather, but wasn’t sure how to go about it without causing suspicion.
“Tell you what, Jesse,” Mick said, stroking his mustache with thumb and forefinger. “When you have some time, give me a call. I have a couple of young geldings that need breaking, and I can’t do it anymore. Bad back.”
Were all the people of Winding Stair this trusting that they’d offer a man a job without ever seeing him work?
“How do you know I can handle the job?”
Mick’s mustache quirked. “Figure you’d say so if you didn’t think you could.”
“I can.”
“See?” Mick clapped him on the back and clasped his hand in a brief squeeze. “My number’s in the book. And I pay the going rate.”
“Appreciate the offer, but I doubt I can get loose from here until after the holidays.”
The familiar sense of dread crawled through his belly. He’d much rather be tossed in the dirt by a bucking horse than spend one minute in Lindsey’s tree lot. He’d counted on the old adage that familiarity breeds indifference. So far, that hadn’t proven true. If anything, he dreaded the coming weeks more than ever.
Mick sipped at his soda before saying, “After Christmas is fine with me. Those colts aren’t going anywhere. Meantime, if you need help hauling these trees, let me know. I got a flatbed settin’ over there in my barn rustin’.”
“He sure does,” Clarence teased. “And it would do him good to put in a full day’s work for a change.”
An unbidden warmth crept through Jesse. Offers of help from friends didn’t come too often, but this offhand generosity of strangers was downright unsettling.
“Jade, Jade.” Two little girls about Jade’s age came running up and interrupted the conversation. One on each side, they grabbed her hands and pulled. “Come play tag.”
She looked to Jesse for approval. “Can I, Daddy?”
“Don’t you want to finish your hotdog?”
“I’m full.” She handed him the last bite of the squeezed and flattened sandwich.
He downed the remains and wiped the mustard off her face. “Go on and play.”
She grabbed his hand and tugged. “Come with me.”
Jesse shook his head, standing his ground for once. “I haven’t finished my own hotdog. I’ll be here when you get back. Promise.”
After a moment of uncertainty, the desire to play with her friends won out.
Jesse’s heart gladdened to see his little girl race away with the other children for once instead of clinging to his leg like a barnacle.
Biting into his smoky hotdog, Jesse watched and listened, hoping for an opportunity to casually probe for information. His attention strayed to the gregarious preacher.
Pastor Cliff seemed to be everywhere, laughing, joking and making sure everyone had a great time. The teenagers flocked around him as though he was some football star, begging him to join their games, occasionally pelting him with a marshmallow to gain his attention. Punctuating the air with a few too many “praise the Lords” for Jesse’s comfort, the preacher nonetheless came across like a regular guy. He’d even overheard Cliff promise to help repair someone’s leaky roof next week. The big man sure wasn’t like any minister Jesse had ever encountered.
“When are we taking that wagon ride, Lindsey?” Cliff bellowed, indicating a small boy perched on his shoulders. “Nathaniel says he’s ready when you are.”
“Do you kids want the tractor or the horse to pull us?” Lindsey called back.
“The horse. The horse,” came a chorus of replies from all but the preacher.
Jesse knew the big, powerful horse stood nearby inside a fenced lot, his oversized head hanging over the rails, waiting his opportunity. The animal liked people and was gentle as a baby.
“How about you, Cliff? What’s your preference?” A man called, his face wreathed in mischief.
The oversized preacher waved his upraised hands in mock terror. “Now, Tom, you know I don’t mess with any creature that’s bigger than me.”
“Which wouldn’t be too many, Cliff,” came the teasing answer.
Everyone laughed, including Cliff, though the joke was on him. Grudgingly, Jesse admired that. The minister he’d known would have seen the joke as an offense to his lofty position.
“You’re out-voted, preacher,” Lindsey called, starting toward the gate. “I’ll get Puddin’.”
Shoving his hands into the pockets of his jean jacket, Jesse fell into step beside her. Though mingling with the church crowd provided opportunities to gather information, he needed some distance. He hadn’t expected their friendliness, the ease with which they accepted him, and most of all, he’d not expected them to be such everyday, normal people. Lindsey’s church family, as she called them, was fast destroying his long-held view of Christians as either stiff and distant or pushy and judgmental.
“Need any help?” he asked.
She withdrew a small flashlight from inside her jacket, aimed the beam toward the gate, and whistled softly. “I put his harness on earlier. All I need to do is hook the traces to the wagon.”
Jesse stepped into the light and raised the latch. In seconds the big horse lumbered up to nuzzle at his owner while she snapped a lead rope onto his halter. Together they led him toward the waiting wagon.
“He’s a nice animal.” Jesse ran a hand over the smooth, warm horseflesh, enjoying the feel again after too much time away from the rodeo. “What breed is he?”
“Percheron mostly.” She smiled at the horse with affection. “Although I’m not sure he’s a full-blood since I have no papers on him, but he has the sweet temperament and muscular body the breed is known for. And he loves to work.”
“Percheron.” Jesse rolled the word over in his head. He knew enough about horses to know the name, but that was about it. “Different from the quarter horses I’m used to.”
“Certainly different from the wild broncs. Puddin’ doesn’t have a buck anywhere in him.” One on each side of the massive horse, they headed back toward the heat and light of the bonfire. “Every kid within a ten-mile radius has ridden him, walked under him, crawled over him, and he doesn’t mind at all.” She turned toward him, her face shadowed and pale in the bright moonlight. “What about you? Do you still have horses?”
He shook his head. “No. After Erin died, I—” He stopped, not wanting to revisit the horrible devastation when he’d sold everything and hit the road, trying to run from the pain and guilt. He’d told Lindsey more about his past than he’d ever intended to, but talking about Erin was taboo. “I’d better find Jade.”
He stalked off toward the circle of squealing children, aware that he’d been abrupt with Lindsey and trying not to let that bother him. He’d intentionally sought her company, and now he was walking away.
Ruefully, he shook his head. What a guy.
In the distance he spotted Jade, her long hair flying out behind her as she ran, laughing. With a hitch beneath his rib cage, he watched his daughter, grateful for the rare display of playful abandon. Letting the shadows absorb him, he stood along the perimeter of children, hoping this place would ultimately heal them both.
“Hey, Jesse.” A hand bigger than Puddin’s hoof landed on his shoulder. The preacher. “Great party, huh?”
“Yeah.” Though he didn’t belong here, he had to admit the party was a success. Just seeing Jade carefree was worth a few hours discomfort on his part.
“Lindsey’s a great gal.”
