This Love Will Go On (15 page)

“Is that what you think I am? Narrow-minded?”

“If I were a man, you'd hire me without a second thought.”

"If you were a man, I wouldn't have to worry about sending you out on the range overnight with a bunch of randy cowboys.”

“I can take care of myself.”

“Yeah.  The way a snowflake takes care of itself on a hot stove.”

“This conversation is pointless,” Raine said, and hung up. Half expecting the phone to ring again immediately, she got up from the chair, went into the back room, and picked up the kettle to hold it under the faucet. The phone stayed silent, and in the silence, she seethed. Why did he think she would melt in any man's arms?

Because you did in his.

The kettle overflowed. She jerked it away and slammed it down on the little two-burner stove so hard that the table holding the stove rocked. He didn't care if she fell into another man's arms, not really. He hadn't given her a job because he didn't want her to stay in Verylon.  He wanted her to leave.  Why? Because she was getting too close to Tate or because she reminded him of Michele?  Once he had kissed her and held her in his arms.  But that had been so long ago.  He hadn't touched her since the day of the picnic.  It was obvious he no longer wanted her, even in a physical way.  He didn’t want or need a woman at all.  He hadn't been seeing Natalie.  Sandy had mentioned that she thought Natalie's husband wanted a reconciliation. If what Marc said was true, Jade was living the life of a monk, his days taken up with work on the ranch and caring for Tate.  While she lived without the ease her body craved.  During the day she managed to forget, but at night, her heart still remembered the touch of his hand.  She decided to put off talking to Julia for another week.

On Tuesday, she had a surprise visitor.  She hadn't seen Doug in months, but he didn't seem self-conscious about the length of time that had passed. Within minutes, he was perched on the corner of her desk, talking as if he’d never been away.

“Ad business still bad?'”

“Non-existent.”

“Maybe you ought to do what this other editor of a small town paper did. He created his own want-ad business.” Doug waited, watching her. She leaned back in her chair and said in a measured voice, “And how, she asked with bated breath, did he do that?”

Doug grinned.  “Went out one night and opened all the stock gates. The next day the roads were full of cattle and the telephone in the newspaper office rang off the wall with calls from ranchers wanting to place notices in the lost and found column.”

Raine grimaced.  “I don't think that would go over too well here.”

“Why not? You could start with Kincaid's gate. His pasture is close to town. With a little help in the middle of the night, Verylon could be another Pamplona.”

“With young bulls running rampant through the streets? No, thank you. Doesn't sound like fun. Besides, Jade doesn't have any young bulls. He only raises steers and heifers.”

“Too bad. This town needs something to liven it up.”

“Maybe, but cattle on the loose wouldn't be my first choice.”

Doug slid off the desk and cast an eye over her hands. She had picked up a pen and was toying with it for lack of anything else to do.

“Somehow, I thought I'd see a ring on your finger by now.”

The pen slipped from her fingers. She fought the urge to laugh hysterically. Where were all these rings she was supposed to be wearing?  “Why did you think that?”

He shrugged. “Kincaid isn't exactly an invisible man. He's known around the territory. Scuttlebutt in Canton says he's winding up his divorce.”

“How could you possibly hear something like that?”

“Several ladies over there have been following the proceedings with, shall we say, an interested eye?”

The thought that Jade was no longer legally tied to Michele, that he was free to be with any woman he wanted and marry her if he chose to do so, jolted her.  “A mercenary eye perhaps?”

“From what I've heard, Kincaid has more than just his money to make him attractive to women.” His leg stopped swinging as he twisted to face her.  “You seemed rather 'interested' yourself last summer.”

She swiveled in her chair and the protesting creak of old wood filled the quiet in the shop. She kept her eyes on her hands, on the bare finger that would never wear Jade's ring.  “That was almost a year ago and it didn't mean anything.  There's nothing between us.”

“I guess seeing isn't believing then.  The way he was leaning over you here in the shop, I thought I'd walked into the middle of a seduction scene.”

“You think too much, you know that:”

“Mans be thinking too much?” he quipped.

To divert him, she asked, “Would you like to come to the house for lunch?  Julia just made one her famous ice-water chocolate cakes.”

For a moment, he looked tempted. Then he shook his head.  “I'd better not.  I've got to finish the rest of my run.”  He gazed at her for a moment. “I really came to say goodbye. I'm being transferred to a route in the Minneapolis, St. Paul area.”

Her sense of loss surprised her.  “That will be a promotion for you, won't it?”

“Yes.”  He stood with his hand on the doorknob, his eyes locked with hers.  “Raine, you’re at a dead end here. There are more job opportunities in the city. If I asked you to come with me, would you consider it?”

She shook her head.  “Don't.  Please.  You've been a good friend, but…”

“Spare me the good friend routine, Raine. Listen to me. There's nothing here for you. You should leave this place, come to the city with me...live your own life for a change instead of being a surrogate mother to your sister’s boy.”

The phone rang once, twice, three times.  Raine thought she would ignore it, but Doug gave the instrument an irritated look and in a rare burst of impatience, said, “Well, answer the damn thing.”

“I may have to cancel my trip,” Jade said immediately into her ear, and the strangely unsettled tone took away the shock of hearing his voice and made her focus her concentration on what he was saying.

“What's wrong?” Her worried tone betrayed her.  Doug shot her a curious look.

“It's Tate. He can't understand why I'm leaving him with you tomorrow instead of Saturday. I had trouble getting him to go to school today and he's determined not to go tomorrow. He wants to go to Canton with me.”

“Don't give in to him.”

“I don't want to, but the kid does know how to push my buttons.”

She could almost see the twist of his mouth, the frustrated look in his eyes.  “He probably thinks you're going to leave him for longer than a day.”

“I've told him I'll be back.”

“He doesn't believe you. He needs something to take his mind off worrying about you, something he can look forward to in school. Wait, Jade, I have an idea.  Let me work on it and I'll call you back.”

She hung up the phone, and began to dial again, almost forgetting that Doug was still there. But his cool voice stopped her hand in midair.  “So Kincaid's not interested in you, huh? I must say I admire his technique.  He strings you along with a few kisses and gets free babysitting.”

“That's not true.  You’re mistaken.”

“I guess I was wrong to think he’d do the decent thing and marry you. Well, what the hell. I might as well make another mistake.”  Resolutely, he walked around the desk, bent his head and kissed her soundly on the lips.  “That's for good luck,” he said softly.  “You're going to need it.”

He went out, leaving the door jangling along with her nerves. Was Doug right? Did Jade see her as a convenient babysitter? No, that was ridiculous. It had been her idea to keep Tate one day a week, not his.

She shook her head and marshaled her thoughts. She had another problem to solve right now.  She reached for the phone to call the school.

She wasn't able to contact Tate's teacher immediately, but she left a message for the woman to call her and in twenty minutes, the phone rang.

She explained to Mrs. Calhoon, the lively woman who taught second grade, what she had in mind. Mrs. Calhoon was delighted.

“That's a wonderful idea. I'd love to bring the class down to the print shop tomorrow. Could we come in the morning, say around ten-thirty? The children are always fresher then.”

“Ten-thirty is fine.”

Later, after supper, when Julia had gone to bed and she sat alone in Julia's living room watching TV, the kitchen phone jangled.

“I want to thank you.” Jade's voice had that deep, husky sound that was so familiar to her. “I don't know what you did, but it worked. Tate wants to go to school tomorrow.”

“I'm glad.”

“I’ll be bringing him in to the shop around eight.”

“Fine.  I’ll be here.”

She waited for him to ring off, but he didn't.  After a second or two of silence, he said softly, “Is anything wrong?”

“No.”  She said the word too quickly.

“Raine.” It was a soft protest, an invitation to tell him the truth. Even though their communication in the last several months had been minimal, he knew instantly that she was prevaricating.  “Have you been working too hard?”

Her laugh was not amused.  “Not particularly.”

“Is Julia all right?”

“She seemed a little tired and she went to bed early, but other than that, she's fine.” 
Stop probing.  I don't want your concern.

“You sound as if you could use some rest, too.”

“I suppose I could.”

Another long pause.  “Is that a polite request for me to let you go?”

“If you haven't anything more to say.”

“Goodnight, Raine.”  His voice was several degrees cooler.

She hung up, knowing why she had been short with him.  She had rejected Doug's words intellectually, but they had gone below the surface of her mind and lodged there. Jade was free now, free to love again, marry again. How long could she go on loving him and receiving nothing in return but telephone calls about his son and brief glimpses of him when he dropped off Tate? How could she bear to watch him go out with other women?  A few minutes later in her room, she undressed and got ready for bed, knowing she couldn't put off a decision about her future any longer. If she decided to buy the print shop equipment from Julia on time, she was committing herself to several years stay in Verylon. But if Jade married another woman, she couldn't bear to stay. And if he married someone after she had committed herself to a large loan for the Linotype and the press, she would be caught here until she found someone to buy the ancient equipment and take over the payments.  She could end up trapped in Verylon, with no way to escape to look for a job in Canton or Sioux Falls or anywhere else.

She lay down and fell into an uneasy sleep. Endless, ridiculous dreams chased round in her head, dreams of Tate and Jade and cattle on the loose.

A soft April rain began and ended in the early morning hours. Through her restless sleep, she heard it drumming on the roof. She didn't think of the consequences of that rain then, but later, it came to her very clearly when there were fifteen pairs of rubbers and boots to be unbuckled, unzipped, and loosened when the second grade class descended on the front step of the print shop promptly at ten-thirty.

Raine went from one youngster to another, offering help. Some of the children were quite self-sufficient, while others clearly needed assistance.  Tate quietly took off his own boots and shrugged out of his yellow raincoat. When the slickers were piled on the old-fashioned coat rack near the door, Mrs. Calhoon shepherded her class into a semicircle around the Linotype machine.

Raine settled into the chair and swiveled around to look at the kids, whose curious eyes were on the same level as hers.  Tate stood directly behind her and the expression in his dark eyes might have been Jade's.  She tore her eyes away from Tate and began.   “Before printers had machines like this one, they set type by hand on a composing stick.”  She held up the ruler length piece of wood made with a back and a movable brace to keep the letters in place.  “Mrs.  Taylor and I don't do that.  We use the Linotype to make the words your parents read in the paper.”  She smiled at them.  Their eyes were bright and wide as they looked at the Linotype machine.  “Today I'm going to make lead slugs of the most important words in the world.  What do you think those words are?”

“Our names.” Kevin Harson shouted with an exuberance that won him a quick, sharp look from his teacher.  Raine smiled. “That's right, Kevin. And do you know what I'm going to do with those lead slugs when they're finished?”

“Give them to us,” Samantha Black shouted.

Behind her Mrs. Calhoon murmured, “It's really better not to ask them too many questions.”

Raine smiled and nodded, and immediately asked another question.  “Can everybody see the keyboard?”

Choruses of yes, yes, answered her.

“I'll use a key from this side,” she pointed to the right side “for the first letter of your name, Kevin, and I’ll use these letters,” she pointed to the left, “for the rest of the letters. You probably call the ones over here capitals. Once, long ago, when printers set type by hand, the capital letters were kept in the upper part of a case like a pyramid.”  She touched her fingertips together to demonstrate the shape of the case.  “A printer would call out to his apprentice, ‘upper case E’ and that meant he wanted a capital letter. We still call capital letters 'upper case' and small letters 'lower case,' even though we don't use cases to keep our letters in any more.  Kevin's name starts with this letter here,” she located the capital K in the fourth row down, second from the right on the keyboard.  Kevin beamed. “Once I turn the machine on, it will be too noisy for me to talk. Do you have any questions?”