Here With Me (11 page)

“Where’s your husband?” Louis asked Melody,
before he tipped his beer up and drained it.

“Getting acquainted with the horses,” she
said.

Tilly sat in the chair opposite the couch.
“That’s so convenient, isn’t it, that he’s had experience with
them?”

Coming from someone else, it would have been
casual conversation. From Tilly, Melody knew it was the prelude to
a full-blown inquisition.

“Your grandmother mentioned that the two of
you dated a few years ago. I don’t believe I ever heard you mention
him before.”

Bingo.

She’d never been good at party games. She
stood up. “I’m sure I must have mentioned him,” she said. Before
the next question came, she turned to her grandmother. “I’ve still
got unpacking to do. I’ll see you at dinner.”

“Of course, darling. By the way, we’re having
a guest. It’s Rebecca Fields of cookbook and cable television
fame.”

“Louis mentioned it earlier.”

Her grandmother smiled. “I thought it was the
least we could do. She’s really lovely on television and Bessie’s
even tried some of her recipes. I think that speaks to her powers
of persuasion.”

Bessie didn’t like admitting that anybody
knew anything about cooking that she hadn’t already forgotten. “It
should be fun to meet her,” Melody said. “Do you still eat at
seven?”

“Absolutely.”

On her way out of the room, Melody heard
Tilly ask Grandmother if she wanted her to rub her back.
Grandmother answered with a grateful-sounding yes. It made Melody
less irritated with her aunt. Whatever else Tilly had ever been,
she’d always been kind to her mother.

Melody stopped at the desk in the foyer and
grabbed the telephone book out of the top drawer. She did need to
unpack but she also needed to find an obstetrician. She’d seen her
own doctor three times. He’d listened to the baby’s heart,
pronounced Melody sound, and sent her on her way with prenatal
vitamins big enough that they looked remarkably like the horse
pills her grandmother kept in the stable cupboards. But every day
she forced one down, followed by at least six crackers and a glass
of milk.

Once she got to her room, she sat on the edge
of her bed, opened the phone book to the yellow pages and ran her
finger down the list of physicians. Fortunately, she had a name.
Her friend, who had owned the restaurant where she’d been working,
had a sister in Napa who’d had a baby the previous year. She’d
raved about her obstetrician.

Melody found the name she was looking for and
dialed the office on her cell phone. When the receptionist
answered, she explained her situation and waited while the woman
checked availability. She had expected to have to wait a couple
weeks but was delighted when the woman said that she could take a
cancellation the day after tomorrow. She ended the call just before
there was a light knock on the door.

Thinking it could be Tilly, she debated
feigning sleep but decided it was an okay short-term but a darn
poor long-term solution. She couldn’t stay in her room forever.
Jingle had gotten used to eating every three hours. There’d be some
serious consequences if she missed dinner. “Come in,” she said.

The door opened slowly and George stood
there. His hair was messed and his cheeks had a hint of pink from
the sun. He carried an old straw cowboy hat in his hand.
Grandmother had always kept extra in the barn. “Your grandmother
said you were likely unpacking,” he said. He made no move to come
in.

“Just started,” she said. She was glad she
was sitting. George Tyler did the windblown cowboy look very well.
She could smell the sweet mix of horse and fresh grass tangled up
with the scents of budding wisteria and wild mustard. He’d been in
the meadow. “Enjoy the horses?” she asked.

“I did,” he said and for a minute, his eyes
didn’t look so serious. “I’m grateful to your grandmother for
letting me ride.”

“I think she thinks
you’re
the one
doing her a favor. I don’t have to tell you how lucky you are to
have landed that particular job. I’ll be getting carpal tunnel
while you’re galloping across the valley.” She said it so that he’d
know she was teasing.

“Carpal tunnel?” he repeated. If anything, he
looked even more serious.

Had no one in the sheriff’s office ever had a
worker’s compensation injury? “Never mind,” she said.

He continued to stand in the doorway.

“George, come in. It is your room, too,” she
whispered.

If anything, his cheeks took on a slightly
pinker hue. But he came in—far enough that he could shut the door
behind him. He leaned his very fine rear end against the edge of
the dresser.

When he didn’t say anything, she got nervous.
Like a fool, she held up her cell phone. “I got a referral from a
friend. You know, for an OB-GYN. I. . .uh. . .just called him and
set up an appointment.”

He chewed on the corner of his bottom lip.
“An O. B. G. Y. N?”

He said each letter like it was a separate
word. Good grief. The man had said he was married. Surely his wife
had had an occasional doctor’s visit. “An
obstetrician-gynecologist. You know, somebody who delivers
babies.”

His head jerked up. “Did I grab you too hard
earlier?”

“No. I’m fine,” she said and tried to squelch
the rush of heat that started to spread outward from her belly
button. He acted like he really cared, that it wasn’t just a job
for him.

“I’m sorry about that,” he said.

“Not your fault. Just some kind of crazy
accident.”

He crumpled up the brim of his cowboy hat.
“Maybe. Maybe not.”

What? “George, you were there. You saw what
happened.”

He shook his head. “I don’t want to upset you
or to worry you needlessly. But just a few minutes ago, when I came
into the house, I heard your aunt and your uncle talking. They
weren’t in the room with the piano or the dining room. It was the
room off to the left.”

“That’s a little sitting area,” she said.

“Yeah, well, they were sitting in there and
talking about you. I heard your aunt tell her husband that it might
have been nice if the wine barrel had hit you—that their problems
would all be taken care of.”

“Oh.” After a minute, she said it again.
“Oh.” Then she felt stupid that that was the only word she could
think of. It was just such a hateful thing for Tilly to have said.
“What did Louis have to say?” she asked, rather inanely. What did
it matter?

“He told his wife not to worry about you.
That he had it under control.”

“I see. You know, if you hurry, you’ve got
time to shower before dinner,” she said.

“What?” He looked at her like she was crazy.
“Did you hear what I said?”

She shrugged her shoulders. “First of all,
what happened in the wine shed was an accident. There’s no way that
Louis and Tilly could have known that I was going to be in the shed
at the exact moment that Montai was moving barrels. And second of
all, it’s not news that Tilly and Louis can’t stand me. But they
aren’t going to hurt me. That’s too crazy, even for them.”

“People do crazy things. Bad things,” he
added.

His voice was hard and he said it like he’d
had some experience with bad people or bad things, or maybe
both.

“They can’t hurt me with words. I’m not
thirteen anymore,” she added, before she thought better of it.

He moved a step closer to the bed. “What
happened when you were thirteen?” he asked. His green eyes were
narrowed and his jaw set.

She played with the zipper on her suitcase.
She did not want to get into this—it was ancient history. But she
thought it quite possible that if she didn’t, George would go find
Louis and keep at him until the man told him what George wanted to
know. “Oh, fine. Shortly after my parents died he told me that it
was my fault that my parents were killed.”

“That’s ridiculous,” George said. “You were
just a child.”

“Well, true. I mean part of what he said was
right. He said that they’d have never been on that particular
stretch of road, that particular night, if it wasn’t for me.”

“I don’t understand.”

“We lived about a hundred miles north of Los
Angeles. The summer I turned thirteen, my best friend moved to Los
Angeles and we’d made plans for me to go spend a couple weeks with
her in the summer. They’d dropped me off at her house and were on
their way back, when they crashed over the side of the road.”

“But you weren’t even there. You had nothing
to do with it.”

She so didn’t want to talk about this. “Look,
it was a stormy night and my parents didn’t really want to make the
drive there and back. But I begged and begged. I missed my friend
and I’d waited months to see her. I didn’t want to wait another
night.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” he said again, like
he was determined to convince her.

“What I’ve come to realize over the years is
that it doesn’t really matter whose fault it was. What matters is
that my grandmother lost a daughter, Tilly lost a sister, and the
world lost two really wonderful people.”

He looked mad. “That’s a heavy burden for a
thirteen-year-old. Your family should have been the ones telling
you that it wasn’t your fault. Not the other way around. Did you
ever tell you grandmother what Louis had said?”

She shook her head quickly. “No. I knew it
would cause trouble between Louis and Grandmother, which would have
ultimately caused trouble between Tilly and Grandmother. Tilly and
Louis had been living here for about two years when this happened.
Within twenty-four months, my grandmother had lost her husband and
a daughter and son-in-law. I didn’t want to do something that would
cause her to have a rift with her only living child.”

“That was pretty grown-up of you.”

It felt good to hear him say that. “Losing
both your parents at one time forces you to be mature, whether
you’re ready or not. When you love someone and they die, it changes
you.”

He sucked in a breath, almost like he’d taken
a blow to the stomach. Had he lost someone special? “Did I say
something wrong?” she asked, feeling bad.

“It’s fine,” he said.

She knew it wasn’t. Could tell by the stiff
way he held his shoulders. She waited for him to say something else
but he didn’t seem inclined to tell her any more.

The need to touch him, to comfort him, was
strong. She got up off the bed and walked over to him. Reaching up,
she tucked a piece of his wayward hair behind his ear. She let her
hand trail down the length of his strong jaw. His skin was warm
against the tips of her fingers.

“I’m sorry, George, if what I said makes you
think about things you’d rather forget. I’d like to think I’m not
normally so careless or hurtful with my words.”

He stood as still as a statue. “You’re
neither careless nor hurtful, Melody,” he said. “But you’re right.
Losing someone you love does change you.”

His voice was soft but she could sense the
underlying tension in his big body. She didn’t know what to say to
him, what would make it better. All she knew is that she didn’t
want this man whom she’d known for less than a day, to hurt.

The overwhelming urge to help him surprised
her. Was it as simple as the innate need of one human to comfort
another human in his time of need? Was it something more? How was
that possible? They barely knew each other.

He stared at her. They stood close. So close
that she could see that he had a small white scar at his hairline
and another one, an inch long but barely a hair wide, running
horizontal under his full lower lip. She moved her hand from his
chin and ran her index finger across both. “What happened
here?”

He closed his eyes and took two deep breaths.
Then, very deliberately, he reached up, gently circled her wrist
with his fingers, and lowered her hand back to her side. In the
process, the back of his hand brushed against her slightly-rounded
belly.

He looked startled. “I didn’t mean to. . .”
His voice trailed off.

It was the first time she’d heard him grasp
for words, and it made him seem unsure and vulnerable at the same
time. It was an appealing combination and before she did something
absolutely stupid, like touch him again, when he so clearly didn’t
want that, she took a step back. She felt warm and off balance and
she knew she needed to get out of the room. “I’m going to leave so
you can get showered,” she said.

He nodded. “That’s probably a good idea,” he
said, his own voice sounding a little strained. He reached for the
hat he’d put on the dresser and held it in front of him,
waist-high, his hands gripping the brim so tightly that the tips of
his fingers were white.

“We need to finish our conversation, Melody.
I’m not going to let your uncle cause you any trouble. It’s not
right.”

In one short day, she’d realized that George
Tyler had a very strong sense of what was right and what was wrong.
“Just ignore him. It’s what I do.”

“I’m going to watch him,” he said.

“Well, that shouldn’t be too difficult. If I
know Louis, he’s going to be doing the same to you.”

“Why is that?” His words were quick, like he
didn’t like the idea of Louis studying him.

“For one thing, Louis likes to think he’s in
charge. That’s why he and Bernard don’t get along. Louis thinks
that since he’s family, he should have more to say about how things
get done. I heard him say once that he hates it that Bernard acts
like the place is his.”

“I’m not going to be acting like this place
is mine,” he said. “I wouldn’t do that.”

He almost sounded hurt. She wanted to tell
him that while Louis was a lot of things, he wasn’t a fool, and
that the man had no doubt already figured out that George wasn’t
going to be easily dismissed. There was a rock-solid quality about
the man.

But she couldn’t tell him that. It was too
personal.