Lorraine Heath (7 page)

Loree stumbled back, her heart racing. “What?”

“There’s a rope dangling from the rafters in the barn.”

She had to give Austin Leigh credit. He didn’t miss much. Dewayne had cut her brother down. Until last night, she’d never found the courage to return to the barn, much less remove the rope that had taken her brother’s life. “My brother. He dragged us to the barn, tied us up, and hanged my brother before shooting the rest of us.”

Horror delved into the depths of his eyes. “He shot you?”

Oddly enough, his reaction told her more about him than anything else. He wasn’t a man who would hurt a woman.

“Yes, but he didn’t check to make certain I was dead. I guess since I’m so small, he assumed one bullet would be sufficient.”

“Did the law find him?”

“No.”

He laughed derisively. “Ain’t that the way of it. They send me to prison, and they let a man who murdered three people go free. You gotta wonder about the justice system sometimes.”

She had wondered about justice a lot in the passing years, wondered if it even existed.

“Is that why you let the barn go to ruin?”

Once again, his insight surprised her. She nodded. “I can’t stand to go inside.”

“You went inside last night, looking for me.”

She felt the warmth suffuse her cheeks. “Because I was worried about you. My mother always got after me because I worry more about others than I do about myself. She said it would get me into trouble someday. I’ve thought about burning the barn, but I’m afraid I’d set the whole hillside ablaze.”

“Imagine your brother’s friend would have helped you with that.”

“Dewayne is sweet and he means well, but sometimes he does or says things without thinking of the consequences.”

“He seems to care for you.”

“He was the one who found us. I’d probably be dead if not for him.” She turned away, the bitter memories bringing forth images of soul-searing pain. A warm, gentle hand came to rest on her shoulder.

“I’m sorry.”

She looked into blue eyes that reflected not only a pain equal to hers, but an absence of dreams. Each had suffered as the result of a killing, and she couldn’t help but believe that he was as much a victim as she was. Neither had escaped unscathed. “It wasn’t your doing.”

“No, it wasn’t, but making you remember was.” He removed his hand from her shoulder and heaved a sigh. “So now I owe you more than I did before. There’s gotta be something around here that I can do for you.”

“Actually I do need something done.”

“Tell me what it is and I’ll do it. I pay my debts.”

He paid his debts. Loree wondered if that was the reason he didn’t seem overly bitter that he’d spent time in prison. He had killed someone. He’d given up a portion of his life. He’d paid his debt.

Now he wanted to repay her. She didn’t think his pride would accept that his company was payment enough. No, he needed a chore. Smiling, she began to walk away, trusting him to follow. She knew the perfect chore for those beautiful long fingers of his.

F
ollowing the woman as she walked past the house, Austin admired more than the gentle sway of her hips. He admired the courage that had allowed her to put her fears and ugly memories aside to come to his aid last night.

More than that, she had overlooked what she knew of his past. He hadn’t received so fine a gift in a good while. Little wonder he had wept in her bed. She possessed a heart that was as pure as the gold of her eyes.

Hell, once he found the man who had stolen five years of his life, maybe he’d search for the man who had killed her family and see him brought to justice.

She came to a halt and flung her arm toward the garden. “Your chore.”

The chore turned out to be no chore at all: plucking red ripe strawberries from her garden and placing them gently in the bucket so they wouldn’t bruise. She had told him that she couldn’t abide the fruit when it was bruised. Based on the fact that she had devoted over half her garden to growing strawberries, Austin figured she had a fondness for them.

Near dusk, she set a quilt beneath a tree and brought out two large bowls. One was filled with washed strawberries. The other with sugar.

She plopped onto the quilt, took a strawberry out of the bowl, rolled it around in the sugar, and popped it into her mouth. She closed her eyes and released a low throaty moan that made Austin want to groan.

Against his better judgment, he stretched out on the quilt beside her and raised up on an elbow. She opened her eyes and smiled at him. “There is nothing finer than the first strawberry in spring.”

He disagreed. He could have named a hundred things: her smile, her sun-kissed cheeks, the strands of her hair that had escaped her braid and framed her face like the petals of a dandelion. As a boy, he’d often taken a deep breath before blasting the dandelion petals onto the breeze. Right now, he wanted to blow softly, gently, his breath as quiet as a whisper while it fanned across the nape of her neck.

Digger barreled around the corner of the house. Loree grabbed a strawberry and tossed it into the air. The dog leapt up, his jaws clamping around the ripe fruit. The animal hit the ground and rolled over. Loree laughed joyfully, reminding Austin of the first time he had placed a bow on the strings of a violin. The music had sounded just as sweet because it had been unexpected: something he had created. He found himself wishing he’d been the one to make Loree laugh. Not the stupid dog.

“Help yourself to the strawberries,” she said as she tossed another one to the dog before taking one for herself.

Austin brought a strawberry to his lips and bit into the succulent fruit. The sweetness filled his mouth. It didn’t need sugar. It amused him to watch Loree carefully coat each strawberry with sugar before she ate it. He grew warm as her tongue darted out to slowly, meticulously capture each errant grain of sugar that clung to her lips. He imagined her kiss would taste of strawberries and sugar.

He’d been too long without a woman, and he was having one hell of a time taming his thoughts. Watching the wind whip strands of her hair around her face, he wanted to play with it as well. He wanted to touch her rounded cheeks with his fingers and the upturned tip of her nose with his lips. He’d known too few women in his life, and even though one had torn out his heart and shredded it to pieces, he couldn’t bring himself to hate women.

He figured women were like men. Some good. Some bad. Some fickle. He’d latched onto a fickle one the first time and it had cost him dearly. But in spite of the steep price he’d paid, he couldn’t see himself spending his remaining days without the comfort of a woman. Once he’d cleared his name, he’d take a wife. He wanted what his older brothers had. Neither had gained their wives without paying a price.

The comforting silence eased in around them as the shadows lengthened. The dog loped to the edge of the clearing, barked, and raced back to catch another strawberry. Austin was beginning to doubt the dog’s ability to protect Loree. Other than last evening when the dog had growled at him, he had seen no signs of aggressiveness. The dog reminded him of an overgrown puppy.

“Why are you out here, Miss Grant?”

She jerked her head around to stare at him. “I like watching the sunset, I enjoy eating strawberries—”

“No. I mean why do you live out here alone? Why not move into town? I can’t see that this is a working farm. What keeps you here?”

“Memories. We were happy here. I guess I feel that if I left, I’d be abandoning my family.”

In the distance, he saw a white picket fence surrounding three granite headstones. “How old were you?”

“Seventeen. How old were you when you went to prison?”

“Twenty-one.”

“That sounds so young.”

“Not as young as seventeen.”

She dug another strawberry into the sugar. “You mentioned a brother …”

He nodded. “Houston.”

Her eyes widened as she bit into the strawberry. She laughed as the red juice dribbled down her chin. He clenched his hands to stop his fingers from gathering the juice and carrying it back to her lips, or better yet to his own. She wiped her face with her apron. “Another town?”

“Yep. My parents lived there for a while.”

“Have you been to Houston?”

“Nah, they lived there before I was born.”

She sighed wistfully and gazed toward the trees. “I used to dream of traveling the world and looking at the stars from different cities.” She shifted her gaze to him. “Do you think the stars look different on the other side of the world?”

“I don’t know. Never thought about it. Never dreamed that big.”

“What did you dream of?”

Marrying Becky. Raising a family. But before that … a distant memory flickered at the back of his mind of standing at the edge of a gorge, yelling out his dream … and listening as the echo carried it back to him. Then the memory died like a flame snuffed out because there wasn’t enough air to keep it burning. “I don’t recall.”

“My father used to tell me that I had to put my heart into my dream if I wanted it to come true. How do you put your heart into something?”

Austin hadn’t a clue. He’d watched his brothers pour their hearts into the women they loved, thought he’d done the same with Becky, but if he had, she would have waited for him. He was convinced of that. Whatever their love had been, it hadn’t been strong enough to endure separation, and he couldn’t help but wonder what else it might not have endured.

The dog came charging back from the edge of twilight, dropped low to the ground, and growled, baring his teeth. Worry etched over her face, Loree rose to her knees. “Digger, what is it?”

The dog barked and bounded back for the trees, disappearing in the brush. A high-pitched shriek rented the air.

“Bobcat!” Loree cried as she jumped to her feet. “Digger!”

The dog barked and the ear-splitting feline cry came again, followed by a yelp echoing pain.

“No!” Loree yelled as she began running toward the trees.

Austin surged to his feet, ran after her, and grabbed her arm, halting her frantic race to the trees. “Where’s my rifle?”

“In the corner of the front room, by the hearth.”

“Come with me while I get it.”

She shook her head vigorously. “I’ll wait here but hurry.”

He didn’t trust her to stay, but he heard the dog’s wounded cry, the cat’s victorious screech, and knew he had no time to argue. With his heart thundering, he raced inside the house. He grabbed his rifle, loaded it, and shoved a handful of bullets into his pocket. Then he tore back outside, rounded the corner, and staggered to a stop in the clearing.

The woman was gone!

“Loree!” Fear for her edged any rational thoughts aside. He stalked toward the trees where the dog had disappeared. “Loree!”

He no longer heard the thrashing of battle. An eerie silence settled over the woods. He tread carefully between the trees, his heart hammering. When he found the woman he planned to shake her every way but loose for scaring the holy hell out of him. How dare she risk her life for a stupid dog.

He found her kneeling between two mighty oak trees, rocking back and forth, silent tears streaming down her cheeks, her arms wrapped around her dog. Austin knelt beside her. “Loree?”

She opened her eyes, the golden depths revealing her ravaged grief. “He was all I had left,” she whispered hoarsely. “He was just a dog, but I loved him.”

“I know,” he said quietly. “You take the rifle and I’ll carry him to the house.”

“Let me hold him for just a minute … while he’s still warm.”

She buried her face in Digger’s thick fur. Austin scanned the trees, his ears alert. He didn’t like the thought of Loree living out here alone with wild animals. The deer he didn’t mind, but a bobcat was another story.

Gently, he touched Loree’s shoulder. “We need to get back before it’s too dark.”

She lifted her head, sniffed, and nodded. Blood had stained the front of her dress and panic surged through him. “You’re hurt.”

She glanced down before lifting a vacant gaze to his. “No, it’s Digger’s blood. The cat was gone by the time I got here.”

“You should have stayed by the house like I told you.”

“I was worried about Digger. He never backs—backed—away from a fight.”

“Christ, your mother was right. You put a dog before yourself—”

“I’d put anyone, anything I loved before myself. I don’t see that as a fault.”

He didn’t mean to sound harsh, didn’t want to lecture her, but the thought that she might have been the cat’s next victim had him shaking clear down to his boots. “Take the rifle.”

She grabbed it, and he slipped his arms beneath the dog. He ignored the pain shooting through his back as he strained to lift the heavy beast. With the darkness closing in around them, they walked in silence to the house, his boots breaking dried twigs, her feet scattering the fragile leaves that had died last autumn.

“Will you bury him near the garden? That’s where he liked to dig,” she said quietly as they neared the house.

“Sure will. You got a shovel?”

“In the barn.”

“I’ll get it. Why don’t you go inside and wash up?”

Nodding, she leaned over and pressed a kiss to the top of the dog’s head. “Bye, Digger.”

Austin watched her run to the front of the house, leaving him feeling useless. Giving comfort had never been his strong suit, was something he hadn’t even known existed until Amelia had come into their lives.

He laid the dog on the ground. He walked to the quilt where he had shared a few peaceful moments with Loree. In her rush to get to the dog, she’d knocked over the bowl, spilling sugar over the quilt. Ants were having a picnic. Austin picked up the bowl and shook out the rest of the sugar, wishing he knew how to ease Loree’s grief as easily.

Loree had lit a lamp to ward off the darkness and the constant fears that surrounded her. She had warmed a bucket of water, removed her bloodstained clothes, bundled them up, and shoved them into a corner of her bedroom. Now she stood before her dresser, stripped to the waist, wearing nothing but her linen drawers, scrubbing, scrubbing the blood from her chest, her hands, her arms. So much blood.

She lifted her gaze to the mirror and caught the reflection of Austin Leigh standing in her doorway, watching her with an intensity in his gaze that she thought might have frightened her under ordinary circumstances.

But tonight wasn’t ordinary. She’d just had the last bit of love she’d ever known torn from her life. She turned to face the man who had given her beloved Digger a final resting place. “I can’t get his blood off.”

She watched his throat muscles work as he swallowed, saw his hands clench and unclench before he quietly walked across the room in bare feet. In a distant part of her mind, she realized he must have left his soiled boots outside.

In silence, he took the cloth from her hand, dipped it into the bucket of water, wrung it out, and gently, slowly wiped the cloth over her face, his deep blue gaze touching her as sunshine greeted the dawn, warming her when only moments before she’d been chilled.

He wiped her throat, her shoulders, and brought the cloth lower. He touched his thumb to the scar just above her left breast. “Is this where he shot you?” he asked hoarsely.

She could do little more than nod, knowing he needed no answer as his mouth replaced his thumb.

“How could he have hurt you?”

Another question for which she had no answer. She felt him tremble as his knuckles skimmed the inside swell of her breast. He shook his head slightly.

“There’s no more blood,” he rasped as he stepped back.

She grabbed his hand. “There’s blood on you.”

He glanced down at his shirt. Of their own accord, her fingers began to undo his buttons. She heard his breath hitch. She had never been so bold, never bared her body to a man. The embarrassment she had anticipated was drowned out by need. A need she didn’t fully understand, but knew existed because it beckoned to her from the farthest reaches of her heart and soul.

She removed his shirt and bloodstained bandage. Taking the cloth from his hand, she wiped it across his chest even though she saw no blood.

With one roughened palm, he cradled her cheek and tilted her face until their gazes met and held. She heard his uneven breathing. Beneath the hand she had rested on his chest, she felt the rapid, steady pounding of his heart.

She had long ago accepted the fact that she would live out the remaining days of her life alone. She hadn’t realized how much she missed the scent, sight, sounds, and touch created by another person. She thought she had effectively warded off the loneliness.

Now, she knew it had only been in hiding, gathering strength, waiting until her defenses were down to attack. All the days of silence and nights alone suddenly loomed before her. A lifetime’s worth. And she hated them. She hated every one of them and the man whose actions had condemned her to the loneliness.

She suddenly felt plain and poor, longing for things she would never know: a husband’s smile, the laughter of children.

Austin’s gaze drifted to her lips, the blue of his eyes darkening until she felt the warmth of a fire, burning hot and bright, creating even as it consumed. He lowered his head slightly and her lips parted.