Dakota Love (46 page)

“Nope.” Walt stopped and surveyed the hotel portion of his land before focusing on the barren fields surrounding it. The solitude of this place saved him after the war, giving him his peace of mind back. He knew that Bible verse Lil’s quilt was named after. It was how he felt about Nancy. “I had my own Rose of Sharon before my number came up, but then when I came home…” Walt paused, but not for dramatic effect. He’d said too much already. That was it—no more pain medication for him.

Lil placed a soft hand over his. “She didn’t wait for you?”

The look of caring in Lil’s green eyes melted his heart. “Not like you think. It’d have been easier if she’d fallen for another man. Instead she fell in with the turbulent time. She protested the war and everything about it, including me. I thought she’d be proud of me when I came home, but I was wrong. She acted like I started that war, not went to do my duty….”

Walt stopped talking when something unreadable crossed through Lil’s eyes and her touch stiffened on his hand. She was probably as shocked as he was that someone could be that cruel to a wounded soldier.

“We’d better get in the house.” Lil pulled her hand away and crossed her arms over her chest as she walked. Her lawn chair dangled haphazardly from the crook of her elbow.

They walked the rest of the gravel driveway in silence. As they started up the sidewalk, Walt glanced at Lil. She looked ahead, but he was sure she was seeing the past. Maybe she’d lost a love in Vietnam. He’d put her in this funk; he’d try to get her out of it.

“So, Lil, you called your sister the good girl. Does that make you a bad girl?” He raised his brows and lilted his voice.

Lil turned wide eyes to him. “I just meant that she did what all girls were supposed to do back then—marry, start a family, and, well, I didn’t.” The rush of Lil’s words matched her nervous dance from foot to foot.

His attempt at humor had obviously backfired, but now he needed to know just who was taking care of him.

“Well then, why did you imply you were bad?”

I
didn’t say I was bad,” Lil snapped at Walt. Now, after his confession about the girl who jilted him and the reason she did, Lil couldn’t tell him why she’d hinted that she was bad. “I said I was different.”

Back in the day, Lil and Walt’s ex-fiancée were cut from the same cloth. Waiting at airports, spouting out insults, showing contempt for America’s finest.

Lil’s opinion of the war never changed, but her thoughts about the servicemen did when she’d met Larry. The soldiers returning from Vietnam had tried to do the right thing by their country, just like any other soldier returning from war.

Walt tilted his head a little as he studied her. His hazel eyes penetrated, as if they could read her heart and know what shame hid there.

“Were you a women’s libber marching for equal rights?”

Not exactly
. Lil bit her bottom lip as her eyes welled up. “It’s time to go inside.”

No matter how hard she tried to live down those rebellious years, they just kept coming back to haunt her. She had to get Walt nursed back to health in record time and get out of here. She’d been in this dangerous territory one other time in her life and never planned to return to it. Ever.

Once inside the house, Walt removed his jacket and hung it over the back of a kitchen chair. “That wore me out. Think I’ll go lay down awhile.”

“Okay.” Lil studied the scuffed toe of her shoe, afraid if she made eye contact with Walt, her brimming tears might spill down her cheeks.

The whir of the refrigerator motor as it cycled on seemed magnified in the silence of the room.

Walt sighed. Then the creak and rattle of the walker announced his departure.

Sniffing, she lifted Walt’s handkerchief to her nose.
Worn out and a sigh. Lil, what kind of a nurse are you?
“Walt, do you need my assistance?” Keeping her head down, Lil lifted her eyes to check his progress. He stopped at the bedroom door, started to turn his walker, then hesitated.

“Look, Lil.” His back remained to her. “I didn’t mean anything by what I said. I was just teasing. Being career-minded doesn’t make you a bad girl, just an independent one. I’m sorry if I upset you.”

Lil’s chest rattled like the walker as she sucked in a ragged breath, intending to tell Walt how she vehemently protested the war all four years of college. How she organized rallies. How she treated the returning soldiers.

After all, confession was good for the soul, but would her admission be good for
his
soul? His recuperation was going nicely. That fact, coupled with the slouch of his shoulders and earnest apology, changed her mind. What would it hurt to let him think it was something else?

“And the truth will set you free.”

It was obvious Walt was going to stand there with his back to her until she said something. Lil cleared the emotion from her throat and God’s nagging reminder from her thoughts.

“It’s okay, Walt. I know you were teasing. I’m just a little emotional today, I guess.”

She saw his silent nod while he turned the walker and entered the bedroom. The latch softly clicked as the door closed.

Lil slumped onto the kitchen chair that held Walt’s jacket. She put her elbows on the table and her face in her palms. Soft curls fell forward, lightly brushing her knuckles. Her favorite fragrance wafted from her wrists, torturing her nose, the sweet, flowery scent hanging like the acrid smell of a dead skunk.

She was a skunk, too, for not telling Walt the truth, but the last time she owned up to her past, it ended in disaster. And for some unknown reason the thought of Walt thinking badly of her pierced her heart.

A storm front moved through, bringing gloomy, drizzly days with it that matched the mood inside Walt’s home. Between his nervous pacing and window peering and Lil trying to keep everything on a professional level, the tension inside the house was as thick as the rainy haze outside.

Walt gazed out the kitchen window in the direction of her camper. “I thought you were going to bring your sewing machine in to work on your quilt. You can’t be getting too much done on it at night.”

That was true. Each evening, after making sure Walt took his medications and had everything he needed in his room, she headed back to her camper and tried to cut out the quilt blocks, but her heavy eyelids didn’t cooperate. Nor her patient.

“That would be your fault.” Lil drummed her fingers on the kitchen table.

Turning from the window, Walt scowled at her. “How’s it my fault?”

“Wasn’t it your idea to use your hunting walkie-talkies?”

“A person tries to be nice.” Walt moved from the window, carrying the walker with him.

After Lil leveled him with a look, he put the legs of the walker back on the floor.

“I didn’t say it wasn’t a nice suggestion, but you’re not using them for emergency purposes only.”

“I’m just testing them to make sure they’d work in an emergency.” Walt sat down at the table.

In theory, Walt’s idea seemed brilliant, so she had agreed since the man didn’t own a cell phone. In practice the idea lost some of its dazzle.

He used the walkie-talkies for everything but an emergency. He insisted he talk to her from the time she closed his back door until she was locked securely in her camper. Just in case something might happen, like a rabid animal darting out from under her camper or her falling down. Then if he couldn’t sleep, he used the device to carry on entire conversations until drowsiness overtook him. It was sweet of him to be concerned about her; however, it also increased the emotional attachment that she was trying to break.

“You don’t want all that mess over here,” Lil argued, but in reality she could use a diversion as Walt stood and moved to another window.

The green quilted-flannel shirt he wore today accented his hazel eyes. Lil shook her head. She had too many thoughts like that lately. Another reason she needed to focus on something else.

“Won’t bother me. You can sit at the table and sew while I practice walking and building stamina.”

That’s what you call it. I call it bored, nervous pacing
. Lil harrumphed at his statement and earned a pulled face from Walt.

“I’ll go get it,” she said, rising from the chair, “but you’re helping me with it.”

“I told you sewing—”

Lil cleared her throat loudly. “Don’t you even say it.”

Walt snorted. “How’d I get stuck with a women’s libber?”

“Lucky, I guess.” Without thinking Lil looked right into Walt’s eyes, which seemed to shine with appreciation directed at her. Her heart answered by quick-stepping around in her chest. Her heart’s happy dancing weakened her limbs. Just the reaction she didn’t need. She dropped her gaze to the floor.

“Turn your eyes from me; they overwhelm me.”
Song of Songs verses kept popping into her thoughts since she’d started that Rose of Sharon quilt, which certainly didn’t help her situation. With her eyes still averted, Lil scurried out into the crisp fall air.

The breeze’s icy fingers crept into the neck of her sweatshirt, trailing down her back in a cat-scratch pattern. As flushed as she felt, she was certain steam would rise from her collared fleece at any moment.

She wasn’t letting this happen again to her
or
Walt. First, it wasn’t professional on her part. Second, they were too old for these types of feelings. Yet Walt’s short-cropped white hair not only offset his hazel eyes but emphasized his olive skin tone. It was hard to tell the shape of his lips with a bushy mustache covering the top one, but she wagered they’d favor Mark’s.

Lil’s eyes grew wide. What was she doing? Crushing on Walt like a schoolgirl. Clenching her fists, she sorted her feelings into the appropriate compartments in her heart and mind. In order to keep those emotions in place, she concentrated on finding excuses for why she shouldn’t feel this way. Maybe if she barred the doors on those emotional containers, it would hold them in place, at least until her assignment was complete.

She dawdled as she gathered her quilting supplies, hoping the additional time away from Walt would calm her erratic behavior. Although her feelings didn’t seem fickle, Lil guessed her and Walt’s close proximity drove their feelings of attraction.

Walt’s two-week follow-up doctor’s appointment was tomorrow. He was getting around pretty well. Maybe he’d get a good enough report that he wouldn’t need a full-time nurse and her agency could reassign his case.

She removed her cell phone from the case clipped to the waistband of her blue jeans, pressed the code for her preset numbers, and hit the S
END
button before her heart could talk her out of this.

Her hand trembled as the call rolled into voice mail. Nerves caused her to speed talk so she didn’t change her mind. Lil left a message requesting dismissal from Walt’s case. Her heart dropped as she disconnected the call. Didn’t matter. She’d done what was best for the both of them, even if her heart sagged at the thought.

After snapping and locking the plastic cover onto her portable sewing machine, she hefted the machine off of her table and headed back to Walt’s house.

A mud-caked pickup slowly drove by on the blacktop highway in front of the RV park. The driver peered through the windshield, then the passenger window, studying her and the hotel as he idled past.
Must be a local wondering if Walt’s home yet
. Since her hands were full, Lil smiled as she jerked her head in a greeting. The man lifted his hand and continued down the road.

Lil squeezed her shoulders toward her ears. No longer under the fever of her blush, she found the air was chilly. She hurried up the sidewalk to find Walt waiting by the storm door.

Standing as far to the side as the walker allowed, Walt opened the door enough for Lil to wedge into the narrow space then use her body to fully open the door.

“Wish I could carry that for you.”

Her dancing heart kicked up its heels again. “Well, you can’t.” Lil snapped the words, angry with her pattering heart, not Walt.

Walt sucked his pursed lips in and out as if he were stopping his retort. Hurt clouded his mesmerizing eyes.

“I’m sorry I snapped like that.” Lil lifted the sewing machine to the table, never taking her eyes off of Walt. “The cold is bone chilling; the machine is heavy.”
Keep heaping excuses, Lil, to keep those false emotions in line
.

His dejected look twisted her heart. He really was a big help opening the door for her when her hands were full. “It was very nice of you to want to help me. Thank you for opening the door. I don’t know how I’d have managed.”

The coffeemaker releasing a burp as the last gurgle of water cycled through it woke up her nose to the fact there was fresh-brewed coffee. She glanced at Walt before turning to the table, intending to stash her bags of fabric on the top.

A gasp escaped Lil as the bag’s plastic handles slid down her arm. She let them drop to the floor.

Two gold-rimmed cups covered with a lilac pattern sat on matching saucers. Dark chocolate Milano cookies, arranged in alignment with the third saucer’s ripple design, sat between the two cups.