Ransom Canyon (9 page)

“I’m not going anywhere. Tell me what still hurts you after twenty years.” He kissed her cheek. “I wish I could take your sorrow away. I’ve seen you cry before but never like this. If I could, I would put all your troubles on my shoulders right now. Just tell me, Quinn.”

She shook her head. She couldn’t. How could she mix such ugliness into what they had? What if it changed the way he looked at her? What if her memories destroyed them? Staten’s pain that first night had opened her heart to him. She’d let him into her world like she’d never let another man. She loved the way he always hesitated, always waited for her to make the first move.

He waited now. She knew he was wondering how the mention of a name could be so painful.

She rested her head against his heart and listened to the beat.

Finally, gulping back a cry, she began. “In my last year at the academy I was assigned to a master for private lessons. He would get me ready for my first professional recital. Lloyd deBellome was hard on me from the beginning, telling me I didn’t have the talent, pointing out everything that I did wrong and never encouraging me.

“I took the lessons, thinking somehow he was making me stronger, but I hated every minute I had to spend in that little practice room. He was about ten years older than me, and, when he wasn’t yelling at me, he was asking me out. Correction, ordering me to go out with him. I was half afraid of him and always said no.

“Finally he insisted, and I went out with him once just to prove that we could never be a couple. I drank too much because of nerves. We ended up in his apartment. We must have had sex, but I don’t remember much, only that the next morning I was bruised all over. I collected my clothes and left before he woke.

She took another calming breath before continuing. What was Staten thinking?

“Later, he said I got drunk and fell on the stairs, but I knew he lied.

“At rehearsal he was cold and took every opportunity to touch me. With each hard pat on the shoulder I remembered a little more of what the night before had been like. Sex had been there in the fog, but it was the pain, the times I cried out, that brought him pleasure.

“The next day he told me we would be staying at his place that night, and I said no. He argued through most of my lesson and then seemed to let the subject drop. As I was leaving he said something about how he would give me his special wine again, and I wouldn’t care what he did to me. He even laughed and said that in time I wouldn’t mind being slapped around or tied down. I might even like it.

“When I shook my head, he laughed and called me a fool for not knowing that pain is only the other side of passion, and I obviously needed both to break out of my shell. He said I would beg to come back to him. I’d beg to be taught how to enjoy the pain.”

Quinn felt the muscles in Staten’s body tighten, but his hand remained gentle along her back as she continued.

“But I did mind being hurt. I hated him even after the bruises on my body faded. My memory of the night was more like a vague nightmare that still wakes me sometimes.

“One afternoon a month later, he made a pass while he was supposed to be teaching me. He demanded I respond. When I wouldn’t, he started shaking me. I’m not sure what would have happened if someone hadn’t accidentally opened the wrong door. He was like an insane man, claiming no one but an idiot would turn him down.

“Once the student who’d interrupted us apologized and left, Lloyd demanded I play an impossible piece even for my level of training. I tried, but I was too angry, too frightened. All I wanted to do was get out of that room. While I tried to play, he threatened me not to ever tell anyone what I’d made him do. He said he’d just deny it, and I’d be laughed at. He said, homely girls always are. Again and again he kept yelling for me to play faster. Nothing I did was right.”

She shook as if freezing, and Staten held her more closely, but he didn’t speak. He seemed to understand that she had to tell her story all at once or she’d never finish.

“I was crying and playing and shaking from fear. Suddenly, he slammed the piano cover on my hands and swore I’d never learn to play correctly. I wasn’t worth his time.

“I stood and ran from the room. He’d broken three of my fingers.” She shook as if her sobs were too deep inside to come out.

Staten waited.

She could feel the rage building in him, but his touch was still soft and loving. In a forced whisper, he asked, “Then what happened?”

“I went to the emergency room and waited hours before I saw a doctor. Then, they kept me overnight before letting me return to the dorm. When I got back, my roommate had packed my things, and my parents were on their way to get me. Lloyd had made up some story about me being too mentally fragile to take criticism and I’d been suspended. I never finished college, and I never played again in public.”

“I’ll kill him,” Staten whispered as he pulled her against his chest.

To her surprise, Quinn laughed. “You can’t. That happened twenty years ago. He was right about me never wanting or being able to play in public. Maybe he did me a favor by breaking those fingers. I came home and got to spend ten years with my parents before they died. I got to be with my best friend until the day she passed. I’ve built a good life here. He was wrong about my not playing. I play for you. That’s enough.”

Staten kissed her hands. He kissed the thin scars on her middle fingers. “But you missed having a career.”

She shook her head. “My parents always wanted that for me, and I wanted to please them. If I’d had my choice I would have stayed home, but they’d saved since the day I was born to be able to send me to some grand school. I couldn’t disappoint them, but it was never my dream.”

“Why were they so set on sending you?” He gently encouraged her to keep talking.

“My great-grandmother had been the best pianist in London in her day. My grandmother always wanted my mother to play, but she didn’t have the talent. In me, she thought the family gift would come out. Every teacher, including Miss Abernathy from the chamber of commerce, thought I could make it. Only, no one ever asked me if it’s what I wanted.”

He began unbraiding her hair. “No one in my family ever had talent for anything but yelling and ranching. While your great-grandmother was entertaining royalty, my great-grandfather was trading a watch for his wife a few miles away in Ransom Canyon. Legend is she didn’t speak to him until their third child was born. Family history claims he was from English blue bloods who had disowned him, and she was a captive, part Indian, part crazy.”

Quinn laughed. “You Kirklands are a wild bunch. Lucky your father doesn’t have to buy his wives or he’d run out of money, or watches.”

Staten tickled her, then kissed her. When he pulled away she fought begging him not to leave. She wanted him to hold her until she fell asleep. But he slipped from her bed, then pulled off his clothes and floated a quilt over them both as he climbed back in beside her.

“Mind if I stay awhile, Quinn?”

“Only if you’ll hold me.” She cuddled against him. She’d told him her worst secret, and he had stayed by her side. For the first time in twenty years the pain of what she’d suffered seemed to be cut in half.

Much later, in the darkness just before dawn, she turned to him, hungry with need. He undressed her and made love to her slowly, with more gentleness than she thought he possessed.

When they finished she cried softly and whispered a thank you.

“You’re welcome,” he answered. “Thanks for playing for me last night. You’re so beautiful when you’re lost in the music.”

“No.”

“Yes, Quinn. You are.”

A wind raged outside, but it didn’t matter.

“Can we make love again?” she whispered.

“We can,” he whispered back. “You make me wish I knew how to be gentle.”

“You are, Staten. You always are with me.”

He rose above her and stared down at her as if really seeing her for the first time in his life. Then slowly, he smiled and kissed her.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Yancy

S
UNDAYS
WERE
ALWAYS
strange days for Yancy. Most of the old folks went to church or off to visit their kids. The few who stayed around seemed to think Sunday was a day for napping. It was also Yancy’s only day off.

When he’d first started, the eight old dwarves told him to take the weekend off, but he didn’t have anywhere to go, or a car to go anywhere in. After the first weekend in Crossroads, he talked them into letting him work half a day on both Friday and Saturday instead. That way the weekend didn’t seem so long.

The first few Sundays he’d been busy working on his boxcar-size apartment behind the office. He’d painted the walls, put new linoleum down on the four-feet square of a bathroom, and built a shelf for his hot plate and cans of soup.

Yancy bought every kind of soup the store had. It was nice to know that any time he got hungry he could eat, and there was always a selection. The shelf also had room for a box of crackers and two boxes of cereal. Whenever he ate alone, he made dinner in his room, not the front office. If the old folks saw him eating alone, they’d come over to keep him company, and he’d had all the noisy meals he wanted for a lifetime.

But, on Sundays, he couldn’t just stay in his room all day, so he usually went for long walks in the morning, then over to the café midafternoon. The lunch crowd was long gone by then, and the families having dinner there wouldn’t be in until later.

Sunday was the only day the café wasn’t open for breakfast. Which had turned out to be a good thing, since if it had been, Yancy would have never met the residents of the Evening Shadows Retirement Community that first day.

He made a point to dress in his cleanest clothes. He now had three pairs of jeans and four shirts. The morning had been cold, but by three o’clock it was warm enough to walk across the street without a coat, which he didn’t want to get dirty, or a jacket, which he didn’t have. The heavy shirt he’d found at the secondhand shop was warm enough.

Taking his usual seat at the end of the counter, he smiled at the petite waitress who worked Sundays. He never asked her name, and Dorothy, the owner of the place, would never waste money on name tags in a town where everyone pretty much knew everyone else. The little waitress was probably about twenty, cute, with a rounded belly that looked like she was stealing a basketball.

If he sat at the end, Yancy could talk to her when she wasn’t busy. In a way he felt like a foreigner practicing English. She might not know it, but he was learning to speak.

“Afternoon.” She smiled. “I saved you a slice of cherry pie. Figured we’d be out by one if I didn’t set one back.”

He nodded his thank you. “How’d you know it was my favorite?”

“’Cause when we have it, you always eat two slices.”

He glanced at the menu. “I’ll have the turkey and dressing plate and one slice of the pie to start, ma’am.”

She made out the ticket. “You don’t have to ‘ma’am’ me. You’re in here enough to be a regular by now. My name’s Sissy. Call me that.”

“Sissy,” he said with a nod. “I’m Yancy.”

“I know. Mr. Halls told me when he came in last week with his granddaughter. Told me you do a great job.”

Sissy went to welcome two truckers coming in.

Yancy acted as if he was reading the menu. He noticed she didn’t have a wedding ring on, but she wasn’t flirting with him, just being polite. He had five years of catching up to do. If he was going straight, he had to learn how to talk to people. Not too bold. Not too shy.

The café was perfect. On the slow afternoons he could hear every conversation going on in the place. He’d met the owner, Dorothy, when she’d delivered a cake for Miss Bees to take to her Sunday School potluck. Dorothy had told him she did all the cooking at the café, so if he didn’t like something he needed to come straight to her.

When he’d said he liked everything, she smiled with pride. She was a woman built to withstand a storm, he thought. She reminded him of a tugboat he saw once. Solid, wide-bottomed and steady moving, with hair that stood straight up, reminding him of a porcupine. Her smile was broad and warm.

As if his thoughts materialized, Dorothy yelled across the pass-through for Sissy to come quick.

The waitress dropped the menus on the counter and bolted into the kitchen. Yancy could hear water rushing. He thought about it a few seconds before standing and catching the swinging door between swings. His thin body slipped into the kitchen.

A pipe was shooting out hot water in an arc as high as his head.

“Need some help?” he said as he moved to the big sink that looked almost exactly like the prison one. Most of the water was tumbling over dirty dishes stacked in soapy water. Before Sissy or Dorothy said a word, he slid under the wash station and turned off the water.

Dorothy looked down at him, her face red from fighting off hot water. “Oh, thank you!” She turned to Sissy. “We might as well close down. We’ll never get a plumber from Bailee on a Sunday, and getting one from Lubbock would cost a fortune.”

“I can fix it,” Yancy said as he stood, very aware that he was dripping wet.

Dorothy glared at him as if about to call him a liar. “If you can, mister, you’ll have a month of Sunday dinners coming.”

“With pie?”

The cook grinned. “Sure, with pie.”

Yancy ran across the street and got the box of tools Cap had put together for him. When he got back he was shivering in his wet shirt, but he didn’t want to take time to change. The kitchen was warm. He’d dry.

An hour later the pipe was fixed, and Yancy was starving. He washed his hands and turned to Dorothy. “You think I could have that first meal today since you’re still open?” It was almost the end of the month, and he’d had to count his ones to make sure he had enough money to eat today.

“Sure. You’ve got four coming. To tell the truth it would have cost me a lot more to call the plumber in Bailee. He charges me seventy-five for just driving over.”

Yancy went back out to the dining room, took his seat at the end of the counter and ate his meal. Pie first and last. Sissy told everyone who came in that the café almost had to close, but Yancy had saved the day. Several stopped by to shake his hand. For the first time in his life, Yancy felt like a hero.

When he was leaving, he opened the door for a sturdy woman in a long blue cape. He’d seen her before.

She looked up at him and frowned without bothering to say thank you for opening the door. Her eyes flashed across him as if she were taking mental notes in case she had to identify him later.

“I ain’t taking advantage of these people, either, Miss Ellie.” He winked. “I did, however, eat all the cherry pie if you’re looking for something to yell at me about, and I didn’t pay for my meal.”

Almost-a-nurse Ellie glared at him. “Folks pay for what they eat around this town. Don’t think you can just walk out.”

Sissy wiggled her round pregnant belly between them. “He don’t have to pay, Ellie. He’s got a month of Sunday dinners free for fixing the plumbing.”

The nurse settled, but as usual, she didn’t apologize. She straightened her back, and Yancy forced himself not to look at her chest. He’d like to see what was under that navy blue cape, but asking her to strip didn’t sound like a good idea.

“You here for supper?” Sissy asked the other woman.

“No. I dropped by to bring your vitamins. You left them in the clinic.”

“Thanks. I was going to send Harry over to get them.”

Ellie glanced at Yancy, as if making sure he wasn’t sneaking closer, and then gave her attention to Sissy. “Don’t send your brother into the clinic unless he’s burning or bleeding. He frightens the patients.”

Sissy laughed. “He frightens me half the time. Since he was twelve I make him yell before he enters the house because if he don’t, one of the family is likely to mistake him for a bear. I think he’s the only sixth grader in town who could grow a full beard.”

Yancy wasn’t a part of their conversation, but they were standing in the exit. He was afraid to bump into Sissy. She looked like she was about to pop. Though he wouldn’t mind brushing Nurse Ellie, he wasn’t sure she’d take to the idea. She’d already made up her mind that he was some kind of outlaw. He didn’t want to fall into the category of pervert, too.

Finally Ellie turned her fiery green eyes on him and announced, “I’ll be watching you. Don’t you forget it.”

“I’m not likely to forget your threat. It seems to be echoing.” He moved closer to her. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to be leaving.”

Ellie backed against the door to allow him to leave, but he still couldn’t keep from brushing her cape. He was as close to a woman as he’d been in five years.

“You smell good,” he said without thinking.

“You don’t.” She wrinkled her nose. “You smell like dirty dishwater.”

Yancy hurried out and didn’t look back. It occurred to him that maybe she’d been in prison and didn’t know what was proper to say, either. Or maybe she’d just taken an instant dislike to him. Or, who knows, maybe she was simply the meanest woman in town. Someone had to be, and, to his knowledge, she was definitely in the running.

Either way, he would be wise to avoid her. At the rate he was going, he wouldn’t have to worry about getting involved with any woman in Crossroads, Texas. All the ones he’d met were either old, pregnant or mean as snakes.