Hallie's Destiny (The Donovans of the Delta) (11 page)

He watched her intently as she talked. He could almost see her unfolding her guardian angel wings. It was the one thing he wouldn’t allow.

“Hallie . . .”

Caught up in her plans, she paid him no mind. “There are many different ways to help people. Maybe…”

“Hallie!”

“What is it, Josh?” She had her chin tilted at such a stubborn angle he almost laughed. The sobering thought was that his dysfunctional family was certainly no laughing matter.

He cupped her face. “I didn’t mean to yell at you, sweet.” His thumbs caressed her chin. “It’s not your concern. I won’t let you be involved.”

She stood very still. What he was telling her, she thought, was that there were lines she couldn’t cross. Lovers had boundaries. Their only common ground was the bedroom. Everything else was separate, divided into territories—hers and his. She’d grown up in a family where there were almost no boundaries. Everybody, including the in-laws and the cousins, would do almost anything, make almost any sacrifice, to help a family member. That Josh didn’t have that saddened her almost beyond enduring.

“I understand, Josh.” She reached up and covered his hands with hers. “Truly, I do.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

Josh stayed the weekend.

Sunday afternoon while she did some work on her long-neglected thesis, he disappeared on a mysterious errand. He had a paper bag in his hand when he came back, and he was grinning.

She greeted him with an enormous hug, crushing the bag between them. “Hmmm, it feels as if you’ve been gone for years.”

He rubbed his cheek against hers. “Same here.”

She leaned back and looked up at him. “What’s in the bag?”

“A present.”

“Is it big as a bread box or small as a thimble?”

“You’ll have to wait and see, Hallie.”

“I love presents. How long do I have to wait? Not ‘til Christmas, I hope.”

He laughed. “You remind me of a child.”

With a wicked gleam in her eye, she stood on tiptoe and kissed him in a most adult fashion. “I do, do I?”

“Only sometimes. Other times . . .” He waggled his eyebrows at her. “Give me five minutes.” He started toward the bedroom.”

“Josh. . .”

“I’ll call you when I’m ready.”

It was one of the longest five minutes of her life. She’d always loved presents, but she’d always been impatient to get them. Her brothers used to say that if they wanted to know what Santa was bringing, all they had to do was follow her around the week before Christmas. She’d sleuthed out every hiding place her parents could think of. She’d become an expert at guessing what was inside by the way a package rattled.

She paced up and down the room, glancing at her watch every five seconds. After two minutes, she sat down and tried to work on her thesis, but it was useless. Finally, heaving a big sigh, she sat on the edge of the sofa, propped her hands on her knees and waited.

Josh stuck his head around the bedroom door.”I’m ready, Hallie.”

She hurried to the door. “Where is it?”

For an answer, he took her arm, pulled her inside and shut the door. He’d undressed and was wearing his robe. Slowly, he began unbuttoning her blouse.

“We had a conversation once. In a tree.” He tossed the blouse to a nearby chair and reached around her to unhook her bra. “Do you remember?”

“I remember almost everything you’ve ever said to me.”

He smiled. “And?”

“You said if you wanted me, nothing could keep you away.”

Still smiling, he unsnapped her jeans and pulled them down her hips. “True.” He tossed the jeans aside. “I also told you I was a man of many talents.” His voice became thick as he reached for her panties. “And you said—”

Suddenly Hallie grinned. “You didn’t!”

“I did.”

She untied his belt and opened the robe. His talents were wrapped in gold foil and tied with a big floppy red Christmas bow.

“How did you. . .”

“. . . With great care and lots of concentration. The mind is capable of wonderful things.”

She reached for the red bow. “I know something else that is capable of wonderful things.”

 o0o

He left Memphis at midnight, heading back to Florence and what he’d come to think of as the real world. He watched Hallie, standing on the street, softly illuminated by the streetlamp, waving until he was out of sight. Already she was like a sweet dream who would only be a part of his memory, not his life. His hands clenched on the wheel. He would never subject to his broken-beyond-repair family.

 o0o

The next weekend when he came to Memphis, Hallie broached the subject of coming to see him in Florence.

“No.”

“I don’t see why not.” They were sitting on the carpet, a bowl of popcorn between them, watching a rerun of
Psycho
. “It’s nearly a three-hour drive, and you have to be at work on Monday morning. I have only my thesis to work on.”

He lifted her right hand and licked the butter off the tips of her fingers. “Part of the magic in seeing you, Hallie, is in getting away. You’re my escape hatch.”

“Have I replaced trucking?”

“You could say that.”

“Do you know what you’ve replaced for me?”

“No.”

“Rodeoing.” She took the bowl of popcorn and set it aside.

“Can you be more specific?” He lay back and pulled her on top of him.

“Riding the bull.” Slowly, she began to undo his shirt buttons.

He grinned. “We’re going to miss the best part of the show.”

“Oh, no, we’re not.” She pressed the remote control switch and the TV went dark. “The best part’s just beginning.”

The best part lasted until dawn.

 o0o

As the summer days passed, Hallie felt as if she were caught in a time warp. For her nothing existed except Josh and her thesis. Although she stayed in touch with her family by phone, the calls seemed to come from another time, another place. She was free-floating and happy, living for the moment, letting each day take care of itself.

Dr. Bluett, her thesis adviser, brought her off her cloud.

“Your work is superb, Hallie. So good, in fact, that I’ve taken the trouble to call an old friend and former colleague of mine. He’s very interested in talking to you about a job.”

“That was kind of you, Dr. Bluett.”

“My pleasure. He’s from California.”

“California’?”

Dr. Bluett smiled. “You say that as if California is another planet.”

It almost is.
. More than a thousand miles away from Josh. Reality hit Hallie with a bang. It settled like a lump of sourdough in the middle of her stomach. She actually felt sick.

“I’m sorry, Dr. Bluett. You caught me off guard.” She drew up her shoulders and smiled. “Please tell me about this job.”

“After Ray Jones left Memphis State, he returned to his home state, established a small school for the educable mentally retarded in Carmel. He’s doing some wonderfully innovative work out there. A woman of your intelligence and imagination would fit right in. I’ve taken the liberty of giving him your phone number. He’ll call, then the two of you can decide whether you’ll be flying out for an interview.”

“Thank you, Dr. Bluett. I appreciate your interest.”

He pulled off his glasses and tapped her thesis with them. “You’re too good to waste. You’ll be leaving soon, and I want to see you well placed.”

After Hallie left Dr. Bluett’s office, she went straight back to her apartment. Her first instinct was to call Josh at work. She picked up the phone and dialed the first three digits, then she replaced the receiver. They didn’t call each other. It was one of those unspoken rules in their relationship, another of the barriers they didn’t cross. She didn’t intrude on his work, and he didn’t intrude on hers. The arrangement gave her a wonderful freedom, but it was as lonely as Christmas on a Texas range.

 o0o

Every morning the first thing Josh did on arriving at his office was check his calendar. He walked to his desk and flipped open his appointment book. July 30. The date struck him like a blow. The summer was half over. The end of summer meant the end of Hallie’s schooling. And then what? She’d be gone. Somebody somewhere would offer her a job. She’d leave the apartment in Memphis. He felt a sudden aching emptiness. Images crowded his mind—Hallie lying on the red robe, honeysuckle cloying the air; Hallie in the Stetson, grinning like a nymph; Hallie in her cowboy boots, laughing at something he’d said. It should have ended for them at the lake—and at the rodeo. But it hadn’t. Logically they should part at the end of summer. He knew that as surely as he knew his name. But he couldn’t let her go.

What to do? He damned sure couldn’t ask her to marry him. Cold sweat popped out on his brow just thinking about it. Impatient with himself, he jerked open his desk drawer and pulled out a pad and pencil. He’d set the facts down in black and white. That always helped him to make decisions. And he’d focus on Hallie. What did she want? She’d been very frank about her visions for the future. Theater, he scrawled across the top of the page. Under that, special children. His excitement mounted as he worked.

Thirty minutes later he buzzed his secretary. “Sadie, reschedule my one o’clock staff meeting. I’ll be out for the rest of the day. This afternoon at four-thirty we’ll take a look at my appointments for the rest of the week to see if I need to make changes.”

He was smiling when he left the office.

 o0o

When he arrived in Memphis the following Saturday, the first thing Josh noticed was Hallie’s greeting. She usually launched herself at him with a cowboy’s whoop, or sometimes she surprised him with an outrageous costume. Last week she’d met him at the door wearing three yellow roses, one on each nipple and one suspended around her hips by a gold cord. The week before that she’d greeted him wearing a creamy silk and lace teddy that looked as if it had been made from moonbeams. This day her greeting was reserved, almost sedate.

“How are you, Josh?”

He pulled her close and rubbed his cheek against her soft hair. “Great now that I have you in my arms.” Leaning back, he looked down at her. “How about you? Tough week?”

Hallie couldn’t believe what she was hearing. The summer was half over, and it looked as if soon she’d be heading for California or heaven knew where, and Josh was acting as if it were just another weekend tryst. If he was feeling any of the panic she felt, it didn’t show. She bristled.

“If it had been a tough week, you would never have known. We don’t call. We don’t talk. I’m just a weekend lover.”

“Dammit, Hallie, you’re more than that and you know it.”

“Do I, Josh?” She pulled out of his arms and stalked to the sofa. “What am I?”

“You’re my friend. I . . . care for you.”

She hadn’t missed his slight hesitation. She didn’t know what she wanted to hear, what she wanted him to say, but it sure as heck wasn’t that.

“The summer will be over in a month.” She made the pronouncement in a voice as black as doom. She even threw in a dramatic sigh. Her brothers used to say that nobody could act upset better than she could.

The sigh wasn’t lost on Josh. He hurried to her side and sat down. His voice was gentle as he put his arm around her. “Don’t you think I’m aware of that? I don’t want our relationship to end any more than you do.”

Hallie had always had a hard time staying mad. She immediately forgot her anger at him and rested her head against his broad shoulder. He felt so good, so solid, so secure. For an instant she closed her eyes, imagining what it would be like to have Josh to come home to every day. “We knew it would be a summer affair when we started.”

“It doesn’t have to end here, Hallie.” Pulling back, he took her shoulders so she was facing him. “I’d meant to save this surprise until later, but I think now is the best time to tell you.”

“Unless your surprise is a magic carpet to Never Never Land, it won’t work. I’m grumpy today.”

He laughed. “I like you anyway. I’d be suspicious if you were Miss Sunshine every time I saw you.”

“I’ll have to remember that the next time I see you—if I ever see you again.”

“I’ve made certain you will.” He took both her hands in his. “Remember the day in the meadow when you told me you wanted to work with a special children’s theater?”

“Yes. Someday I hope I can.”

“It doesn’t have to be someday. It can be as soon as you finish your degree. Early this week I bought a wonderful old theater in Florence. It’s on a cobblestone street lined with maple trees. You’ll love it.”

Alarm bells rang in her head. For an instant she saw the dreadful fence Robert had built around their estate, saw the smirks on the faces of his bodyguards the first time they’d refused to let her leave. She felt panic. “You bought a theater?”

“Yes. I’ve also set up an endowment fund to finance your project.”

“You did all this without asking me?”

“That’s not the reaction I’d hoped to hear.”

She jumped up and began to pace the room. “What had you hoped to hear? You’re about to lose your lover, so you make other arrangements. You’re buying me, Josh. The price is steep and your motives are good, but you’re buying me, nonetheless. Just like Robert did.”

“What in the hell does Robert have to do with this?”

She continued to roam the room as she talked, her fists batting the air for emphasis. “He took everything from me. He had the power and the money to do it. While I was romping in his bed—”

“Hallie!”

“. . . he was going behind my back buying off my contract with the modeling agency, shutting down my accounts so I couldn’t finish my degree, buying a great big house with fences and bodyguards. He made me so inaccessible, even my friends couldn’t get to me.” She whirled to face him, her eyes blazing. “I was his possession. I won’t be any man’s possession, Josh.”

Josh strode across the room and took her shoulders in a firm grip. “I’m not Robert.” With one hand he caught her face and turned it to his. “Dammit, look at me, Hallie.
I’m not Robert
!”

She looked at him, the golden man who had brought her a drooping bouquet of bluebonnets, the noble man who had sacrificed his own happiness to care for his father and his brother, the fierce, passionate man who had loved her as no other man had. Suddenly she knew. She was in love with Josh Butler. In spite of her many avowals to remain free, she’d fallen in love with him. He was every bit as powerful as Robert, probably more so. He had the means to control her as surely as her first husband had.