Black Heat (13 page)

Roan blushed, knowing Regina must know all about her history with the ranch, including the break-in. "When I was little, Daddy had a rule that I couldn't come over here to the bunkhouse and bother the hands. But every year after harvest, when they moved on, Mama and I would come over here and clean. She called it a spring cleaning even though we did it in the fall. This time of year, actually," she added wistfully. "Anyway, these same couches and that television, the table in the kitchen and the dishes and pots and pans—it's so funny to see them again, with, you know, all you guys."

"It must have been wonderful to grow up here," Regina said. "I grew up in Chicago. I never got to go out in the country. I can't believe I missed so much."

Of course Regina was from the city, Roan thought, with her polished style and sophisticated manners. Roan had been on road trips to Chicago a couple of times with friends, back in high school. Lake Shore Drive had been beautiful, with its twinkling lights and the black, black horizon where the moon shone down on the lake. But she'd always been happy to get back home.

"Which room is Chase's?" she asked, trying to get her mind off its wistful track.

"Last one on the end, with the window that looks out to the shed."

"Oh! Have you found the hidey-hole yet?"

"The what?"

"Every room has one. When my great-grandpa built the bunkhouse he put one in every room so the hands could keep their valuables hidden away. It was just a little thing he did to make it nice for them. Daddy showed me almost all of them. He told me it was an important secret that I would have to keep—"

Her voice broke off.
After I'm gone
, he'd said, way back when he was healthy and strong and Roan was sure he would live forever.

Regina clapped her hands. "Oh, can you show me?"

"Well, sure, I guess."

Regina picked up the pitcher of cocktails and led Roan down the hall, past the kitchen full of laughing voices, to Chase's room. She held open the door and Roan stepped into the memory.

Golden pine paneling that she and her mother had waxed and buffed to a shine. Heart pine floors covered with the same throw rugs she'd beaten over the porch rail. Eyelet curtains in the windows, a quilt on the bed made by her mother's aunt, red and blue patches stitched together in a pattern of overlapping squares.

Roan put her hand to her mouth, momentarily unable to breathe. So Mimi hadn't gotten rid of everything after all. Her zeal to replace all the evidence of her husband's old life hadn't stretched to the bunkhouse.

"You all right, honey?" Regina asked.

"Yes. Yes, it's just..." Roan picked up the edge of the quilt, rubbed the old cotton between her fingers. "I remember this quilt. My great-aunt made it. And that sampler on the wall—" She pointed to the cross-stitched framed piece. "Mom found it in a box in the attic, and she thought my daddy's mother must have made it."

"Oh!" Regina looked stricken. "Roan, I'm sorry, we'll have to get these things back to you as soon as possible. It isn't right for you not to have them."

"No, no, I live in a tiny apartment, I wouldn't have room for them. Just knowing they're here...that they're safe, that makes me feel better." An uncomfortable thought struck Roan. She looked from the pearl gray satin dress hanging from the closet door, to the expensive bottles and creams on the dresser. Regina's taste was far more sophisticated than these simple handmade decorations. "Unless you would prefer to replace them?" she asked, swallowing.

"Are you kidding? I love them. They're irreplaceable, and I promise I'll make sure they are well taken care of until the day comes when you have room for them. Now show me that hidey-hole."

Roan dipped her head to hide the relief. She was surprised how much she liked Regina, and how easy it was to trust her to care for her family's treasures.

She knelt down in front of the closet and tugged the short piece of floorboard right inside the closet door, and it slid smoothly out of its fitted joint. Behind was a cavity about a foot long and six inches deep. Roan felt around with her hand and touched something silky.

"Oh!" She exclaimed, pulling out an old Barbie doll. "Nadia! She was one of my favorites."

She showed the doll to Regina, who laughed. "You kept your treasures in here...I love that. I would have done exactly the same thing."

Roan stroked the doll's long red hair. She was wearing a puff-sleeved gingham dress in shades of yellow and pink. Roan's mother had made it for her ninth birthday, along with a matching one for Roan. They'd had a party out behind the house, with lemonade and cake. Her daddy gave all the kids tractor rides, and everyone got to feed apples to Renegade, who was the grandfather of Patch, the mule who currently roamed the ranch, the one animal Mimi had allowed to stay.

"I love it," Regina said firmly. "You know, Chase and I've been talking about finding a place of our own. Sometimes it's hard, all these people under one roof, and I sure could use some extra closet space, but..." She looked around the room thoughtfully. "I don't know. I guess I've gotten used to it. I'm not in a hurry to let all of this go."

For a moment neither woman spoke, each lost in her own thoughts.

"Well, I guess we should go back and join the party," Regina finally said. "You want to take a peek in Cal's room?"

"Oh, I—wouldn't want to—I mean, that would be—" Roan stammered, her face heating.

"Come on, you know you do." Regina gave her a mischievous grin. "He wouldn't mind—we have an open-door policy around here. It's like a boy's dorm, they go in and out of each other's rooms all the time borrowing things. Seriously, I think they're all in arrested development."

"Well..."

But when Regina showed her which room was Cal's, she couldn't resist. It was the smallest room, the one tucked under the sloping west roof, so that you'd have to be careful getting up out of bed or you'd hit your head on the ceiling. It had two narrow dormer windows looking out over the pasture down to the creek. Each had a little ledge that had been Roan's responsibility to dust. Long ago, she'd thought that if it were her room, she would use the ledges for all her treasures: the smooth pebbles she found in the bottom of the creek, the perfect leaves her mother helped her flatten between the pages of a book, the paper-wrapped soaps her mother brought back from a hotel when she went to see her childhood friend in Montana.

Regina watched her from the doorway. The room held Cal's scent, citrus-y and smoky and masculine, and it brought back such a strong memory of lying in his arms that Roan forgot to breathe.

Regina came into the room and sat down on the bed, setting their drinks on the night stand. Cal kept things tidy; he'd left few personal possessions lying out. A couple of books were stacked on the window ledge. His phone and watch were lined up next to his alarm clock—why hadn't he taken them with him tonight? Clothes hung neatly in the closet, a gym bag hung from a hook, skis leaned in the corner. Simple, masculine possessions, that gave no clues as to who he was.

"So where's the secret compartment in this room?" Regina asked, freshening Roan's drink from the pitcher.

"This is the one room where we never found the hiding place," Roan said, shaking herself free of her reverie. "Daddy says his father never showed him, and he didn't know if it was because it didn't have one when it was built, or it was just so well hidden that everyone forgot about it." She shrugged. "I certainly spent a lot of time in here looking."

"That's so intriguing! How funny—I think that would have made me all that more determined to find it."

"I know. That's what happened." Roan smiled. "It got so Mama knew exactly where to find me, because I'd pretend to clean in here even when all the other rooms were still dirty."

"Listen, sweetie, I need to pop into the ladies' room," Regina said, standing. "And by 'ladies' room,' of course I mean the tiny bathroom I have to share with two disgusting men. A word to the wise, if you need to visit the powder room tonight I would use Jayne and Matthew's—at least Matthew knows how to use a toilet brush. See you in the madhouse?" She tilted her head toward the kitchen, from which delicious smells and raucous singing were drifting.

Roan was about to follow Regina out of the room when she noticed one book on the ledge that wasn't like the others: old and frayed, it had a soft leather cover and dog-eared pages.

She waited until she heard the bathroom door close. Then she picked up the book, carefully noting where it had been placed so she could put it back in exactly the same spot. Her heart beat faster: she was spying on Cal, there was no other word for it.

A sheaf of papers fell out of the book. She flipped the pages, seeing row after row of neat, painstaking handwriting in blue and black ink. She scanned the dates above the entries and calculated that Cal would have been a teenager when he wrote in the journal. She read a few phrases: "get so God damn angry sometimes"..."looks at me like I'm nothing"...

She snapped the book closed. This was too private. She had not been invited here, into Calvin's private thoughts, his history. For a moment she felt the leather warming under her hands, and then she peeked at the front page. In a beautiful florid script was written "For Calvin, Happy Birthday, Love, Grandma."

Regina was setting the book back on the ledge when she remembered the loose papers, and picked them up off the floor. They were brittle with age, and she unfolded them carefully.

It took her a few minutes to understand what they were: arrest records, summons to appear in court, probation documents. All with Cal's name on them. Over and over, the incriminating words:
vandalism, petty theft, simple assault.

Quickly, Roan refolded the sheets and placed them between the pages of the diary. Her heart was pounding. For a moment she wondered if the pages were some sort of a joke, a complicated practical joke that some friend of Cal's had played on him...but there was no way anyone would be able to produce such detailed fake documents.

She hurried out of the room carrying her glass and the now-empty cocktail pitcher, her heart in her throat, feeling dizzy. She shouldn't have had so much to drink. Or maybe she should have had even more. Enough to dull her emotions, so that it wouldn't be such a shock to learn that the man she thought she was falling in love with could never be hers. That the man who'd held her, walked Angel for her, rescued her from disaster, was not who she thought he'd been.

After all, there was a perfectly good reason he hadn't minded lying to help her get away, why he'd covered for her afterward.

Calvin Dixon could not be her hero, for the simple reason that he was even more damaged than she was.

#

"
You better sit down, son."

Chief Byrd had been headed out the door, on his way home to the family Cal imagined was waiting for him: a pretty wife, a couple teenagers, a hot dinner and some much-deserved relaxation in front of the TV.

Byrd had taken one look at Cal, who had been trying to talk the night desk sergeant into a moment of the chief's time, and taken off the coat he'd just put on.

Cal sat down in the spare chair in the chief's office as Byrd hung his coat back up. He looked Cal over carefully, raised one eyebrow at his sodden, dirty clothes, and opened his desk drawer. He reached in and came up with a dusty bottle, which he held up to the light.

"Fifteen-year-old Laphroaig," he said. "This was a gift from the chief before me, when I came on the job. He told me to bring it out when a man needed a reminder that he was one of the good guys. I've only opened this bottle twice before, and—I'll tell you what, Abe Lawrence was as wise as hell."

"You better save it then, Chief," Cal muttered. "You're not going to think I'm one of the good guys when I'm done."

The chief sat down slowly, wincing as if some old injury was bothering him. He reached in the drawer a second time and added a couple of shot glasses to the desk. Then he sat back in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest, and regarded Cal frankly.

"You're wet through and through, son," he said. "And you'll pardon me for saying so, but that handsome face of yours isn't winning any awards tonight. You look like you haven't been eating and you haven't got on your knees lately to thank the good Lord for getting you this far. No, hold on now," he said, holding up a hand when Cal started to object. "I haven't started judging yet. You'll know when I do. Just calling it like I see it."

"Yes sir," Cal said. He was dripping water on the chief's floor, and he wished he had a towel to mop up the mess. He felt cold and clammy all over. A change of clothes would have been a smart thing to pack. But this wasn't exactly Cal's smartest moment.

"You came in here a few months ago and asked me for a chance to earn a place in my department," Byrd said. "You had to know I would have called the boys where you came from." It wasn't a question, and Cal didn't answer, but yes, he'd known that Chief Byrd would have called the Red Fork Police Department to check for references. He would have gotten an earful, too, along with the faxed record containing all of Cal's juvenile arrests and complaints. He had hoped that the Red Fork chief would have, in the interest of fairness, also sent along Cal's academy records, the ones that put him at the top of his class.

Byrd opened the bottle and took a sniff of the amber liquid. The scent traveled to Cal. Hard stuff, for a hard man.