Now and Forever (11 page)

She shook her controlled fury, tears burning her eyes, her heart breaking, breaking…

“Tish, I'm sorry,” Frank said gently. “Really sorry.”

“Oh, Frank, so am I,” she whispered through the tears.

 

“He'll be back tonight, you know,” Baker said the next afternoon, when he figured she'd had the sanctuary of her room at home long enough. “And before he gets here, I want to know what's going on between you and my son, Lutecia Peacock.”

Her cheeks were suddenly unusually pink, like the inside of a seashell. “Nothing's going on. We just argue a little more than we used to,” she said.

“Don't hand me that,” Baker returned with narrowed eyes. “Russell's lost his temper so much since I've been home, I forget that he used to control it. He walks around with a sore head, and every time I ask him a question he turns red and starts cussing. Is it because of that Tyler boy? Has my son suddenly opened his eyes and noticed that
you've grown into a very attractive young woman, Tish?”

“Russell never lets anyone know how he feels, you know that,” she said, toying with the wide edge of the pretty yellow-flowered sheet.

“Does he know that you're in love with him?” he asked quietly.

She gasped. “I'm…I'm not! Baker, he's always been like…like a brother to me!”

He shook his head. “That damned Peacock pride,” he grumbled. “You'd die before you'd admit it, wouldn't you?”

“There's nothing to admit.”

“The hell there isn't. Eileen told me,” he said flatly.

Her eyes came up, and her cheeks burned. “Oh, how could she?” she wailed.

“Because it's something I've prayed for all these years,” he said softly, “and now that you've been away from him long enough to let him see that you've grown up…”

“Oh, he knows,” she said shortly. “But if he feels anything, it's only physical. And right now, he feels sorry for me because I got hurt and he thinks it's because I saw him
in the barn with Belle Tyler. Anyway,” she added sharply, “there's Lisa, remember?”

“What does she have to do with anything between you and Russell?” he asked, both eyebrows raised.

“Everything! I won't share him with a…with a…one of those women!” she finished impotently, gesturing wildly.

Understanding flooded Baker's eyes, and, amazingly, he began to smile. “Who told you about her?” he asked absently.

She shrugged. “Eileen overheard Russell talking to you one night about how much he loved her and all. Eileen thought it was wildly romantic. Why won't he marry her?”

“Sweetheart, I think I'll wait to let you see for yourself. Maybe it'll teach you a lesson about jumping to conclusions,” he said mysteriously.

“Baker, I wish I knew what you were talking about,” she told him.

“Wait until they get home.”

“You…you don't mind her coming here?” she asked.

He shook his head. “I love her, too,” he said gently.

She turned her face toward the window,
more puzzled than ever. “Why…why
is
he bringing her home?”

“Because her aunt's getting married and there won't be anyone to look after her, and that's all the information you're getting out of me.” He stood up and left her with a smile and a wink.

 

Tish was really and truly puzzled by Baker's parting remark, and it dawned on her that something must be wrong with the woman. Blind, perhaps, or unable to walk. And she went through new tortures, thinking about how it would be to have to watch Russell walk with her and hold her, seeing him with love in his dark eyes. She wanted to cry.

The waiting was the worst part. She watched the portable color television without really seeing any of the programs. She tried listening to the radio, and that was worse. She couldn't read because her mind was wandering. Eileen came in to talk, but all she did was make vague replies to the teenager's remarks.

“Tish, you aren't even listening to me!” Eileen said finally.

“I know.” She sighed miserably.

“What's wrong? Is it Lisa?” she asked quietly.

Tish nodded.

“I wish there were something I could say. You aren't mad at me for telling Baker, are you? He's awful when he wants to know something. In that, my father and my brother are a lot alike.”

She smiled uneasily. “I know that, too.”

There were voices in the hall suddenly, and Russell's was one of them. Tish froze, stiffened; her eyes looked wild and trapped.

“It's all right,” Eileen said comfortingly. “I'll go out and stall them and give you a minute to get yourself together, okay?”

All she could do was nod, her heart threatening to burst as her dilated eyes locked on the door as if she expected a vampire to come through it.

The seconds ticked away like hours until the voices faded and the door opened. Russell came in and left the door ajar. His hands were in his pockets as he studied the slender form under the covers with a brief, careless scrutiny. His face had the look of a stone
carving, and there was only contempt in his narrowed eyes.

She remembered the last words between them, the anger, the hurt. “Better her than you,” he'd said, and now the time had come, and there was an ache inside her that had nothing to do with broken ribs.

“Hello,” she said quietly, hesitantly. All the fight was gone out of her, and she only wanted to run. But there was no place to go, and the resignation was in her eyes.

“Hello,” he returned coolly. “Are you better?”

“A little.”

“I want you to meet her,” he said deliberately. He turned. “Lisa, come in here, honey.”

Tish steeled herself for some sophisticated, ultra-feminine siren on the order of Belle Tyler. She didn't want to see the woman whose affection would soften Russell's face, as it was softening now as he looked out the door. The door opened a little more, and Lisa walked in.

She was very small, a little china doll with long, dark hair that curled down to her waist, and a peachy complexion, and eyes that
were big and frightened and very brown. And she couldn't have been more than eight years old. A child! And she was the image of Russell….

Tish felt tears prick at her eyes. Tears of shame, of self-contempt; it was all she could do to dam them.

“My daughter,” Russell said quietly, his big hand ruffling the soft waves of her hair, an affection in his face that made him seem younger, less formidable. “Her name is Lisa Marie.”

“Hello, Lisa Marie,” Tish said in a voice husky with emotion and with a tentative smile. “You look very like your Papa.”

Russell's eyes searched her face with an intensity she tried not to see, a black scowl bringing his heavy brows together. “You knew, of course?” he asked.

And what could she do except nod? Admitting the truth would have been a dead giveaway. She might as well have shouted from the roof that she loved him, that she'd been unbearably jealous of what she thought was another woman.

“Of course,” she said, in a strangled
whisper, and her eyes never left Lisa. “Do you like horses?” she asked her.

Lisa Marie smiled shyly, her hand clinging to Russell's. “Oh yes. We couldn't have one because we lived in an apartment and we didn't have any hay,” she explained seriously. “But Papa says that I can have a pony if I promise to take care of it. Do you like to ride?”

Tish smiled wanly. “Not very much anymore, I'm afraid. I…fell off,” she said, and her mind blocked out the impact, the terror…“I hurt myself, but I'm better now.”

“You aren't going to ride anymore?” Lisa asked.

“You'll ride again,” Russell said in a tone that didn't encourage argument. His dark eyes touched her hair, her cheeks, her mouth. “You'll ride with me.”

She swallowed hard, her heart racing wildly under the cotton gown. Her eyes met his, held, caressed, and all the angry words fell away, all the years fell away, and she loved him so….

“Your eyes are talking to me, little girl,” he said gently, his voice deep and slow.

She blushed, dragging her gaze back to
Lisa, who was watching her curiously. “Do you like to fish, Lisa?” Tish asked.

“Oh, yes,” Lisa said, “except I don't like to kill the worms.”

“I'll kill them for you,” Tish volunteered. “We'll go one day when I get back on my feet. Would you like that?”

Lisa nodded. “Can Papa come too?” she asked, wide-eyed.

“Papa's only going,” Russell commented smoothly, “if Tish promises not to talk for two solid hours and scare the fish away.”

She looked indignant, sitting up straighter in bed. “I never talk for two solid hours and scare the fish away!”

“The hell you don't,” he retorted. “Remember the last time we went out and you told me the life story of your friend Lillian who roomed with you at school?”

“I never!” Tish protested. “I only told you about the super Jaguar XKE that her father bought her.”

“And about her father's doughnut chain, and her brother who sold electronics equipment for Western Engineering, and…”

“You listened, didn't you?” she flung
back, exasperated. “You didn't say ‘shut up, Tish,' did you?”

He chuckled softly. “God, if you could see yourself,” he said gently, “with your eyes like a stormy day and the color burning your cheeks pink….” The smile faded, and there was something quite dangerous in the look he turned on her. “Will you listen to me if I tell you about Lisa?”

“I'd…I'd like very much to hear about her,” she managed weakly.

He started to say something else, but the intercom beside the bed buzzed and Tish pressed the “talk” button.

“Miss Peacock's boudoir,” she said in a pretentious voice, and Lisa giggled.

“Chawmed, I'm sure,” Eileen husked over the line. “Dahling, pick up the phone, it's your loved one, Fascinating Frank from the fahm down the road, dahling.”

Lisa giggled again, but Russell's eyes exploded. He turned. “We'll see you later. Lisa, time to go.”

“But, Papa…” she protested.

“You heard me.”

“Good night, Tish,” Lisa called from the doorway.

“Good night, Lisa Marie,” she replied, picking up the phone to turn away from the sudden anger and ice in Russell's dark eyes. As Tish put the receiver to her ear, he went out the door behind Lisa, without a word.

F
rank came to see her the next day with a bouquet of perfect yellow and white daisy mums that obviously came from the florist. They were lovely and lifted her drooping spirits, but she'd rather have had a sprig of bitter old coffeeweed from Russell than a bower of roses from Frank. Russell hadn't come near her since the night before. She began to wonder if he ever would again. Even Lisa had been conspicuously absent, as if Russell didn't want any contact between them.

Frank left, and she was lying back in a blue depression when Baker came in.

“Is that young scalawag who just left the reason my son's walking around breathing brimstone, young Tish?” Baker asked with a gleam of laughter in his dark eyes. “He gets worse by the day, in case you haven't noticed.”

“I've noticed,” she said miserably. “All he does lately is blow up like a puff adder at me. But no, Frank isn't the reason. I am. It's what I said about Lisa….”

“You didn't know,” Baker said, pausing by the bed to give her shoulder a rough squeeze. “How could you? Russell doesn't talk about that child, he never does. Tell him, Tish.”

She smiled wanly. “I might as well tell him how much I…” She broke off. “I can't, Baker.”

“Coward.”

“I sure am,” she replied. “I'm afraid of him. I always have been, a little. He's so…abrasively masculine, Baker. He makes me churn inside.”

One dark eyebrow went up with a corner of Baker's thin mouth. “That's what it's all
about,” he said. “That's what a woman should feel with a man.”

She let her eyes fall to the pretty patterned coverlet. “Even if it weren't for the things I said about Lisa, he still thinks I'm too young. He…he said something about it once,” she added, blushing as she remembered exactly when he had said it, that night in the kitchen.

“Fourteen years isn't all that much,” Baker said quietly. “I'm seventeen years older than Mindy, and it works for us.”

She sighed. “Maybe so. Oh, Baker, I feel so bad. Neither one of them have been in today, did you notice?”

“He saw Tyler coming up the stairs with the flowers,” Baker told her.

She shrugged. “So?”

“So he went out and gave the hands hell, from what I gather. Grover was in here a few minutes ago in a lather, with his face as red as a ripe melon, and he told me if Russell blamed him for not getting the cattle sprayed for grubs, it wouldn't be his fault.” Baker chuckled. “You see, Russell told him last week to finish the haying first, then spray the cattle. Well, this morning Russell wanted to
know why the hell he was finding grubs in the hides.”

“Did he forget?”

“I'm not through,” Baker interrupted. “When he finished raking Grover over the coals, he took one of the Apps out to be loaded in the trailer. The horse was to service that brood mare of Jace Coleman's for root stock. And when Grover started to tie it in the trailer, he noticed that it was the only gelding on the place—Navajo. Although,” he added, “I will admit he resembles Currie's Finest a bit.”

“A gelding?” Tish asked incredulously. “Russell was going to send a gelding to service a brood mare?”

Baker grinned. “Doesn't sound quite normal, does it?”

“What doesn't sound normal?”

They both looked up as they heard the deep, tight voice that came from the doorway. Russell was standing there, unsmiling, his hat pulled low over his head.

“Grover came to see me this morning,” Baker volunteered. “He's ready to quit, and it's your fault.”

“My fault?” Russell asked.

“Says he's not sure he wants to work for a man who doesn't know the difference between a stud and a gelding,” Baker chuckled.

“Well, hell, I haven't got time to look under every horse I own,” Russell growled. “If you've got a minute, I want to go over the production records on those cows we're thinking about culling. While we're at it,” he added, shoving his hat back over his sweaty hair, “I think I'll call John Matthews about that option they offered us on the Florida herd. I want to see if he's got official vaccination certificates from the state veterinarian. I'm not risking a bout with Bang's.”

Tish was frowning in confusion. Baker grinned. “Brucellosis,” he reminded her. “Jace Coleman lost a hell of a lot of money because he bought some cows without those vaccination certificates and contaminated his herd.”

“Oh,” she said intelligently.

“Got the haying done?” Baker asked as he moved toward the door. “If you need some help getting those cattle sprayed…”

“Why bother?” Russell asked with com
pressed lips. “I thought we'd mash the damned things out by hand.”

Baker's eyebrows went up. “On 5,000 head of cattle?” he asked innocently.

“Grover's got so damned much free time to complain about the way I run things,” Russell said darkly, “I thought we'd let him do it.”

“Now, son…”

“Don't you ‘now, son,' me,” the younger man growled. He looked past Baker at Tish, who was listening with laughter in every line of her face. “What the hell are you grinning about?”

“Me?” she asked innocently. “Nothing at all!”

“Lover boy didn't stay long,” he commented, his eyes narrowed on the flowers by her bedside.

“Oh, but the fragrance lingers,” she said dramatically, her fingers caressing the blossoms. “You didn't even send me a dandelion,” she reminded him, with her face lifted haughtily.

“What the hell for?” he demanded. “They just die.”

“So do people,” she reminded him.

Something flashed in his eyes, and for a fraction of a second she saw how he must have looked when his mother died so many years ago. Without a word, he left the room with Baker at his heels.

Late that afternoon, Mindy came in the room with a single yellow dandelion, a monster of a blossom, in a cut crystal bud vase.

“I don't know what's the matter with Russell,” Mindy said on a gentle sigh as she placed the lovely thing by Tish's bedside on the table next to Frank's gaudy bouquet. “He said to give this to you and tell you that sometimes a single dandelion could mean more than a bouquet and that he picked it himself and it was a hard choice because they were all lovely.”

Tish tried to laugh, to return the banter, but she couldn't get the words past her throat. Tears rolled down her cheeks. It was the most beautiful flower she'd ever seen.

 

It had been two days since she'd seen Lisa when the little girl sneaked into her room one night before bedtime. Fresh from her bath with her hair still a little damp, she came shyly up to the bed.

“Papa keeps telling me I'm not to bother you,” she whispered to Tish, “but I want to draw a pony, and I don't know how.” She produced a pad and pencil. “Tish…?”

“I'm not very good at it, you know,” Tish whispered back with a smile. “Are you sure you want me to mess up your paper?”

“Please.”

“All right. Would you like to sit up here?” she asked, and moved over to let the child under the covers with her. “It goes like this…”

“That's very good,” Lisa said when Tish put the finishing touches on the long-maned pony. “I'm going to name my pony Windy, because he goes so fast.”

“What does he look like?”

“He's yellow and with a mane and very pretty, like a collie,” the little girl said with big, bright dark eyes. “He's a melomino.”

“A palomino,” Tish laughed.

“Yes, that's it,” Lisa agreed. “I wanted an all-colors pony, but Papa said nobody was ever going to ride one of those ponies again, and then he said a bad word. Why can't I have an all-colors pony, Tish?” she asked.

“I…I don't know,” Tish said quietly. Could it be that it was because she had been riding a pinto when she got hurt? Could it have affected Russell so much?

“Look, I can draw a rabbit,” Lisa said. “Look, Tish!” And she drew a circle with ears and whiskers and giggled.

Watching her, studying that elfin beauty, it suddenly struck Tish that the child had to have had a mother. Russell had to be her father; she was the image of him. But…he'd never been married, she was sure of that. An illegitimate child might be routine for some men, but Russell had too great a sense of responsibility to refuse a marriage to a woman who was bearing a child. She remembered the long-ago rumors, when he was in Vietnam, about a woman he was engaged to.

“So there you are, young lady,” Mindy said with a smile as she peeked in the door. “Time for bed. Say good-night to Tish.”

“Must I, grandmama?” She sighed. “Oh, very well. But you mustn't tell Papa I've been in here, all right, because he doesn't want me to bother Tish, and he'll be mad.”

“All right, darling,” Mindy laughed. “Come on.”

“Good night, Tish, thank you for my pony,” Lisa said.

“You're very welcome, sweet,” Tish replied, and a wave of affection rushed over her. “Good night.”

With a sense of disappointment she watched the little girl follow Mindy into the hall. Why didn't Russell want them together? Remembering her own harsh contempt for the “woman” named Lisa she suddenly understood.

From then on, Lisa Marie made a habit of visiting Tish when Papa was out on the farm and just before bedtime. The two of them were conspirators, keeping their friendship a tight secret from Russell. To Tish, it was like being a child again herself, as she gave the little girl all the love she wanted to give to Russell.

At the breakfast table, when Tish was beginning to get around again, Russell casually mentioned that he was taking Lisa fishing that afternoon.

“Care to tag along?” he asked Tish carelessly as he sipped his coffee and smoked a
cigarette. “We'll keep close to the road so you won't have to walk far.”

Her heart skipped. “I…I'd like that,” she murmured.

“You might as well get in one more bit of fishing before you leave.”

Her head came up. “Leave?”

One dark eyebrow went up. “You do remember what you told me the day I left to bring Lisa home?” he asked coolly.

She flushed to the roots of her hair as she remembered herself saying, “I won't stay under the same roof with her!” God forgive her, she remembered all too well. How could she tell him?

“Baker, you and Mindy are going back to Miami pretty soon, aren't you?” she asked the older man, who was watching the clash with silent interest.

“We are,” Baker said with a smiling glance at Mindy. “This weekend, in fact, although we'll be back at Christmas.”

“Then, how are you going to manage to look after Lisa Marie and the farm with your busiest time coming up?” Tish asked Russell. “Eileen will be in school, and Mattie
goes home at six. Sometimes you don't even get in until eight or nine o'clock.”

Something in Russell's eyes began to glow, but it might have been the reflection of the chandelier, because nothing showed in his face.

“If you want to go ahead and stay until after Christmas, that's up to you,” Russell told her through a haze of exhaled smoke. “It's only a few weeks.”

She looked down at her plate. “The dorms are all empty for Thanksgiving right now. It's tomorrow.”

“Two turkeys in the refrigerator, but I didn't notice that,” Baker teased.

Tish managed a wan smile as she sipped her coffee.

“Do you want to come fishing or not?” Russell asked.

“Tish, please come,” Lisa pleaded with eyes that could have melted a far colder heart than Tish's.

She felt herself being carried along. “All right, if you want me to,” she said gently.

Lisa beamed. “Can we go dig worms, like you told me you used to do when you and Papa went fishing?”

Tish averted her face from Russell's scowling curiosity.

“Of course we can,” she told Lisa. “You'll have to do most of the digging, though. I'm still a little sore.”

“I'm a little girl,” Lisa said and burst into giggles.

“Listen to that,” Tish teased. “Eight years old and already she's a threat to Bob Hope.”

“Who?” Lisa asked, wide-eyed.

Tish laughed. “Never mind.”

Russell sat back in his chair, watching them as Baker eased himself away from the table and began to recount old fish stories.

 

The wind was blowing cold when Lisa and Tish went out behind the stables with a bait can and a shovel.

“Be very quiet,” Tish cautioned in a loud whisper. “We'll have to sneak up on them.”

“Worms can hear?” Lisa whispered back curiously.

Tish shook her head. “No, we have to listen very carefully so we can hear them sneeze. That's how we find them!”