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An investment broker. And Caroline had never finished high school.
“You sure don’t expect to lose a spouse in your early thirties.” The words sounded inane to her, but she didn’t know what else to say.
“Here we go, folks. Sorry this took so long.” The young man who’d taken their order appeared at their booth, carrying two plates of salmon and steamed vegetables. Caroline sat back, napkin on her lap as he placed the food before her. Other than that night in Frankfort, she’d never eaten anywhere fancier than the diner in Grainville. And was scared to death that she’d forget some of the rules of etiquette she’d learned on the Internet so she could educate her son. There wasn’t a lot of opportunity for practice with proper forks and bread plates on a farm like hers. She and Randy had never even owned a set of matching silverware.
She was, however, thankful to have had the interruption before John could ask the next obvious question—about her and Randy’s plans for a family. She had a feeling John assumed she had no family, since she’d told him, in December, that she lived alone.
And to have a child old enough to leave home, she’d’ve had to be pregnant at sixteen.
John was quiet while he ate, other than to inquire politely about the suitability of her food. And to make sure she had everything she needed. Caroline felt relieved; not only was she spared the worry of where conversation might lead, but the food was so much more luxurious than anything she’d ever tasted before that she was completely engrossed in enjoying it.
She looked longingly at the desert menu as it was presented, but declined. She was stuffed.
“Shall we go?” He laid a couple of twenties on the table and stood, then gestured for her to pass in front of him. And suddenly, Caroline wanted to stay. At least in the restaurant there were other people around, the possibility of interruption.
BACK IN THE CAR she waited for him to say whatever he’d taken her to dinner to say. Obviously something about the baby. And she steeled herself to listen with an open mind. The child growing in her body was half his. It was a point she couldn’t argue.
“This is a lovely car,” she ventured when it appeared that they might be making the hour-long trip back to Shelter Valley in complete silence.
“Thanks.”
“What kind is it?”
“A Cadillac.”
That would explain why she’d never been in anything like it. The plush leather seats were contoured and adjustable in a variety of ways. And she didn’t even try to decipher what all the buttons and lights and controls on the dash were for. But if she wasn’t mistaken, that screen above the radio was one of those computerized map things she’d read about on a pop-up on the Internet last winter.
If she wasn’t so afraid of looking like a fool, she might’ve asked him about it.
He kept up his end of the conversation after that, mostly telling her about life in Arizona. He talked about the summer heat. And the wildlife. Scorpions and black widow spiders. She didn’t need to be afraid of scorpions, he said. While they were ugly, only the really small kind was lethal enough to make you sick—and then, only if you were already vulnerable. With all the others, their sting hurt and could cause temporary numbness in the affected limb, but there was no lasting damage.
“Don’t worry,” she assured him, with a slight smile in the darkness. “You can’t live on a farm and be afraid of spiders. I learned to use a fly swatter long before I learned to read and write.”
He grinned over at her, then quickly returned his attention to the highway. “I’ll bet you’re pretty good with a rifle, too, huh?”
“Mmm-hmm.” When she had to be.
“I’ve never fired one.”
As far as she knew, he was the first man she’d ever met who’d never fired a gun.
“We had a bear on our property once,” she told him, more to direct the conversation away from things he might bring up than because she really wanted to share her past with him. She never knew if what she said would make her seem too strange to someone like him.
“Randy was in town getting seed and the bear came right up to the barn. I saw him out there getting close to my henhouse and I didn’t even think.” Without egg money she’d have had no groceries. “I just grabbed the gun and marched outside—as if that black bear was going to see me as some kind of threat and head back the way he’d come.”
She’d been young then. And still sure that life had happily-ever-after in store for her.
“What did you do?” His eyes were wide, revealed by the light from the dash as he stole another glance.
“When I realized he wasn’t nearly as impressed by me as I’d expected him to be, I did the only thing I could do, cocked the gun and brought it to my shoulder.”
“You shot a bear?”
For a second there, hearing the incredulity in his voice, she wished she had.
“No, I aimed for the ground by his feet. And then on either side of him.”
“You scared him off.”
Well, yes, but… “It was stupid, really. He could just as easily have gotten angry and attacked.”
John shook his head, grinning, one hand on the wheel and the other resting casually over the armrest next to him. “Is there anything you’re afraid of, woman?” Somehow the admiration hadn’t disappeared from his tone.
Which was why she just shrugged and looked out into the night. She couldn’t bear to tell him that right now—with him, in Shelter Valley, at Montford—there was very little that didn’t scare her.
“HERE’S THE THING,” John said when he pulled up in front of her house.
Hand on the door handle, thankful that she’d made it through the evening without whatever horrible conversation she imagined he wanted, Caroline turned, every muscle tense and waiting.
“I loved my wife.”
She nodded. That much was obvious.
“Too much, probably.”
She turned away from the door handle, facing the car’s interior. “How can you love someone too much?”
He’d shut off the engine, leaving them in darkness except for the light coming from the streetlamp half a block away and the dim glow from the front window of Mrs. Howard’s house.
“I can’t love anyone else.”
Ironically, with those words, Caroline relaxed. “You’re trying to warn me not to get any crazy ideas.”
His head cocked slightly to the side, John shrugged. “It wasn’t so much a warning as an explanation. I don’t want you to think it’s you….”
“John.” She almost laid her hand on his arm, and restrained herself just in time. Grainville familiarities might not be recognized here. “You have nothing to worry about from me. I meant it when I said I wanted nothing from you. Nothing. I married once, for a lifetime. And found out that fate had other ideas in mind. There was nothing I could do—it was out of my hands. I can’t go through that again.”
“You warning me off?” he asked, with a wry grin.
“Just explaining.”
Leaning back against the corner of the door, he was quiet for a moment. “I’m not afraid of the commitment,” he said. “Not afraid of loving again. I just can’t get beyond her.”
“Have you tried?”
“I was engaged to the women’s softball coach at Montford until a week before I came to Kentucky.”
No wonder he’d seemed as emotionally raw as she’d been, so needy and yet willing to settle for nothing but escape.
“What happened?”
“I couldn’t let go of Meredith.”
“Do you have to?” she asked, frowning. Randy would always be part of her, no matter what. They’d spent nineteen years together.
“I…talk to her.”
She talked to Randy, too, but hadn’t thought the habit would last for years—just until she got used to living alone. “About what?”
“Everything,” he said, his voice soft. “I shot a hole-in-one over Thanksgiving, playing in a tournament with some of Shelter Valley’s best golfers. The only person I even considered telling was Meredith. Not Lauren.”
For one absurd second, Caroline was jealous of a dead woman.
CHAPTER FOUR
PHYLLIS LANGFORD SHEFFIELD COULDN’T stop herself from taking one last backward glance as she accompanied her closest friend, Tory Sanders, down the walk of Tory’s small home. Their neighborhood was perfectly safe, featuring quiet stucco houses with desert landscaping in the yards.
“Let’s just do this block,” she said, her feet moving in place as she geared up for the jog Tory had planned for them.
Tory’s soft blue eyes glinted with an unusual confidence as she, too, glanced back at the house. “There are only eight houses on this street,” she said, grinning. “You gotta establish a rhythm and get into the groove if you’re going to tolerate jogging.” She’d taken both of them shopping the previous day for top-of-the-line running shoes, leggings and soft cotton zip-up jackets. Phyllis’s was black. Tory’s was pink, which complemented her short dark hair and expertly lined eyes.
Bouncing some more, Phyllis nodded. “A groove. Okay…” She didn’t move from her spot.
“They’re going to be fine,” Tory said gently, with the strange mixture of neediness and confidence that had first drawn Phyllis to the younger sister of her murdered best friend. “Alex is great with all the kids. You know that.”
Alex. The eleven-year-old adopted daughter of Tory’s husband, Ben. The little girl had been abused by her biological father and mother and come to live with Ben, her stepfather, at about the same time Tory—also an abused child and then abused wife—had found refuge in Shelter Valley. If all went well, Tory would soon be adopting Alex. “I know,” Phyllis said. She was ready to head up the street. Really. As soon as her feet felt warm. “But she’s never been left alone with my two,” she said, on the off chance Tory hadn’t already heard Phyllis’s worries on that score. The jogging was Tory’s idea—to help Phyllis keep off the weight she’d had trouble losing after having her twins two and a half years before.
“But she has been alone with Chrissie,” Tory reminded her. Chrissie—Phyllis Christine—was the four-year-old daughter Tory and Ben had together. “Calvin and Clarissa won’t be a problem for her,” she added. “They’re just like their mother, too analytical for their own good sometimes, but practically perfect in every way. They’ll have Alex reading to them the entire time we’re gone.”
“Unless Chrissie gets bored…” Tory’s daughter was at that age.
“As long as she’s sitting in her big sister’s lap, she’ll be completely content.” Tory started jogging slowly down the sidewalk. “Come on, we aren’t going to be away very long…”
“I HAD A LETTER from Brad.” Doing as she’d been told, Phyllis concentrated on the rhythm of her breathing in conjunction with the sound of her feet hitting the pavement. So far, jogging still felt like an endurance contest. Only Tory—the sister she’d never had—could’ve managed to get her to do this.
“Why would your jerk of an ex-husband be writing to you after all this time?” Tory, not even a little out of breath, glanced over. “When did it come?”
Phyllis moved aside to avoid a parked car as the two women jogged side by side along the road. “Yesterday.”
“What did he want?”
“He made a pie-in-the-sky investment when we were married—had to do with satellites.” She paused to breathe. “During the divorce…he got his broker to claim a potential value for it that far exceeded its worth at the time.” More breath. In and out. She had to think about the rhythm of her feet against the pavement. That was here and now. “The judge allowed the value to stand…. Brad magnanimously gave that investment to me in exchange for our more liquid assets.”
It smarted even to talk about those days.
“And in an effort to keep the peace, you let him get away with it.”
By now, Tory knew all the sordid details of Phyllis’s marriage to her egotistical, unfaithful and completely selfish first husband.
“I was fighting for my self-esteem. Money paled in comparison.”
“And part of you hoped that if you were generous and cooperative, he’d suddenly realize that your intelligence wasn’t a threat to him and he’d find you desirable again.”
“Which only goes to show that I wasn’t nearly as smart as he thought I was,” Phyllis said, slowing as they approached a corner with a stoplight. The blue sky above, glistening with sunshine that gave a cheery brightness to everything around them, reminded Phyllis that none of it mattered anymore. She was a different woman than the one who’d gained weight after her husband’s numerous affairs and the emotional torment he’d caused her. Married to a man she adored, working in a job she loved, mothering the two most precious children ever and jogging with the sweetest friend a woman could want in sixty-degree weather on the second Wednesday in January, she bore absolutely no resemblance to that other Phyllis at all.
Except that occasionally, like now, she still felt the sting.
“So why was he writing to you?”
She’d known Tory would get back to that.
“The worthless investment suddenly become a windfall?”
“As a matter of fact—” Phyllis jogged across the deserted street beside Tory “—it did. Apparently I’m sitting on a quarter of a million dollars, minus taxes.”
Tory stopped in the middle of the street. “A quarter of a million dollars?”
“Before taxes.” Phyllis met her friend’s incredulous stare before grabbing her arm and pulling her to the opposite corner.
“And why do I get the feeling that Brad wasn’t writing out of the goodness of his heart to tell you about this?”
“Maybe because you know what he’s like,” Phyllis said with a humorless chuckle.
“He wants part of it,” Tory guessed, walking now as they approached her road again.
“He wants all of it. The original investment was his, and his name’s still on some of the documents. I didn’t think it was worth the couple of hundred dollars it would cost in legal fees to have it changed.”
“What does Matt say about all this?”
“I haven’t told him yet….”
JOHN HAD DECIDED to stay away from her. On the golf course early Wednesday morning with Will Parsons and Matt Sheffield, he’d spent the entire front nine feeling guilty and given up his usual first-place ranking for last. The back nine had gone better. In the guilt department at least. When the baby was born, he’d do his part. Until then, he had nothing to contribute. He certainly didn’t owe Caroline Prater anything.
He’d come in last on the back nine, as well.
She picked up her cell on the first ring. And agreed to take a walk in the desert with him before dinner. He hadn’t even tried to talk her into sharing another meal. Finishing up early at the office on Wednesday afternoon, knowing he’d be working late that night, John stopped at home only long enough to put on his jeans and walking shoes. Then he picked her up at Mrs. Howard’s place before she could change her mind.
“Are you sure it’s safe out here?” she asked when he stopped the Cadillac on a dirt path Will had shown him. As a kid, Will had roamed this desert as though it were a ball field in the middle of town. It hadn’t taken John an hour to fall prey to its wonder.
“Safe how?” he asked, looking over at the woman who was still such a stranger to him. And had his baby growing inside her. “As in, are we going to get mugged, or robbed by a gold-panning squatter, or taken captive by an Indian warrior?”
“Indian warrior?” Caroline asked with an arched brow. “I was talking about the nonhuman variety of danger.” Her boots barely made a sound as she trod slowly down the path that led to a rocky ledge. It overlooked a surprisingly green ravine up ahead.
Careful to keep enough distance between them so he wouldn’t be inhaling the fresh lilac scent of her hair—he supposed it was the kind of shampoo she used—John shoved his hands into his jeans pockets and shrugged. “Yeah, the desert can be dangerous, but not if you’re careful.”
She slowed, glanced over her shoulder at him. “So those javelina I read about on the Internet, are they around here? Or only up in the mountains?”
“They’re here,” John said, focusing on both sides of the path—playing a game of name that plant. Cholla. Prickly pear. Palo verde. It was either that or look at her nicely rounded butt moving back and forth in those threadbare jeans. “But javelinas usually stay out of sight. Mostly you want to watch for rattlesnakes. As long as you don’t step on one, they’ll leave you alone. And you never, ever, want to be out here without water. Something as simple as a sprained ankle could leave you out in the desert for hours or days.”
