The Ranch She Left Behind (22 page)

He was Rowena’s father.

* * *

M
AX
WAS
IN
the basement in Mexico, but he was screaming. That was how he always knew he was dreaming. He hadn’t ever really screamed in Mexico. They would have killed him, and he had to stay alive. He had to get home to Ellen, no matter what it took.

But in his dreams he screamed. In his dreams, he always thought someone was nearby, someone who might hear him and call the police.

He woke himself up with the noise, even though Lydia told him that the sound he made didn’t really qualify as a scream. It was more like a choking, with a high-pitched something deep in his throat.

It was really more like a gagged person
trying
to scream, she’d said with a faint thread of distaste. After a couple of months, she’d slept in the guest room. It was just too disturbing, she said, especially since he wouldn’t ever talk to her about it afterward.

It drove her crazy that he wouldn’t talk about it. But it would have driven him crazy if he did.

Max slept in sweatpants, but he rarely wore a T-shirt over them, because he always soaked it through on the nights he dreamed about the basement. It was easier just to keep one by the bed and drag it on if he had to go check on Ellen.

Tonight, he didn’t bother. He pulled himself out of bed. He poked his head through Ellie’s doorway, saw that she was out cold, then wandered onto the back deck shirtless and shoeless. At three in the morning, he wasn’t likely to run into anyone but owls and possums, who really didn’t give a damn how he was dressed.

After the dreams of the musty, unventilated basement, he welcomed the sting of cold air against his skin. He went to the railing and put the heels of his hands on it, stretching his torso up, as high as it would go. He breathed deeply. In through his nose. Hold. Then out through his mouth. Over and over, until his lungs believed there really was enough air, and his muscles believed it was safe for them to relax.

The wind moved through the trees briskly, as if it had a timetable to meet and somewhere to be. The shifting branches winked silver, then olive-green, then silver again in the moonlight. He bent over, hands still gripping the railing, and stretched his torso.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw movement on Penny’s porch—but when he looked, it was only the gazing balls, reflecting back his own strange stretches and bends. When he inhaled deeply, light fractured in half a dozen balls, all of which were aimed at him from one angle or another.

It should have been eerie, but it wasn’t. It was oddly comforting, as if they were conscious things, aware of his distress and sending him a signal that he was not alone.

He smiled, appreciating the irony. A few mirror-covered bowling balls were a heck of a lot more company than Lydia had ever been.

“Max, are you okay?”

For a minute, he wondered if his imagination had truly run away with his sanity, and he had let the gazing balls start talking. But then he glanced back at Penny’s kitchen door. She stood there, wrapped in a blanket, her new haircut mussed and spiky.

“I’m fine,” he said. “Just getting some fresh air.”

She blinked, then reached up with one blanket-covered fist and rubbed at her eyes. “It’s just that—you called out. You sounded…upset.”

Hell.

He moved toward the railing that separated their two decks. “I’m sorry,” he said. “You heard me all the way over there? I can be a pretty noisy sleeper, but I had no idea I was that bad.”

“No, no. Not bad.” She frowned. “Sad.”

“I’m not sad,” he said, trying to keep it simple. “Just noisy.”

She looked unconvinced, but sleepy enough that she was more confused than skeptical. “Do you have bad dreams?”

He thought about lying. But then he realized he simply didn’t want to lie to her.

“Yes,” he said. “Often, I do. Luckily, Ellen sleeps like a rock, so I don’t disturb her much. I’m really sorry I disturbed you.”

“I don’t mind.” Her eyes were more focused now. Apparently the night air was clearing her head. “I have bad dreams sometimes, too. About my mother.” She said it quite matter-of-factly, as if it were only natural that some tragedies would live on in the subconscious.

She moved a couple of steps toward him. She was barefoot, too. “Would it help to talk about it, do you think?”

For one crazy second, he actually considered it.

He’d never had the urge to share his story with anyone. His company had sent him to a psychiatrist, but he’d hated the whole process, and eventually he’d just resigned from psychiatrist and company all in one fell swoop.

Instead, he struck out on his own as he’d always dreamed of doing. Why wait? If Mexico had taught him anything, it was that everything you knew could end in an instant. If death was around every corner, then freedom, satisfaction and courage had better be right here, right now.

Talking about the past just kept it alive.

But all of a sudden, he thought that he might like to tell Penny about it. Maybe it would make the whole thing seem less poisonous. Maybe it would be like opening windows in a mildewed room.

That innocence he had noticed wasn’t just superficial—it was without question a profound part of her essence. But it wasn’t the innocence that drew him toward her right now. Sometimes, when he looked into her eyes, he could tell she knew every bit as much about grief and pain as he did. He had that click of recognition, as if she wouldn’t think it strange that he had to steel himself to walk into a basement, or that the sound of a car backfiring could drop him to his knees.

A shudder passed through him.

“You’re cold.” She shrugged the moonlight-blue blanket from her shoulders and held it out. “Here. Take this.”

Under the blanket, she wore a T-shirt, gray and shapeless. Across her breasts, letters sparkled in the moonlight, spelling out Keep Calm and Paint Something. For a helpless fraction of a second, he couldn’t take his eyes off the soft swelling beneath the cotton.

Then, below the words, the curve of her hip, and then the pale gleam of her naked legs, like the slim stalks that held a flower.

Oh, he was in trouble. Big trouble. He wanted her. Every nerve ending in his body had caught fire. He didn’t want to talk to her, confide in her, turn her into his psychiatrist. He wanted to lower her to the deck and make love to her in the moonlight, until neither of them had room for words, or ghosts, or pain.

The wool of the blanket brushed against his shoulder as she nudged it toward him. He lifted his forearm, an instinctive blocking motion, as if he had to protect himself against the force of her beauty, slamming into his awareness without warning.

“I’m fine.” He put his arm down, but the rest of him remained clenched. “Penny, listen to me. You can’t be so naive that you don’t see how risky this is. If we’re going to stick to the promises we made the other night, you need to put that back on.”

She didn’t feign confusion. She was so breathtakingly honest, sometimes… Their gazes met.

“And what if we decided to break the promises?”

For a split second, the possibilities glimmered in front of him. Break the promises. Yes, of course. Wasn’t that what the cliche said that promises were actually
made
to be broken?

And who would it hurt, really? Couldn’t they just indulge these powerful urges once? Just once, with no one the wiser? They were consenting adults, unmarried. They would be careful. He hadn’t taken a lover in almost a year, not since Lydia died.

And he hadn’t
made love
for a long, long time before that. Sex, yes. Empty, ugly nights of pity sex, or duty sex, or last-hope sex, with the wife he tried and tried to make himself love.

Didn’t he deserve this? Penny was kind, and honest, and pure in a way that had nothing to do with her sexual experience and everything to do with her soul. She could have had a hundred lovers, or none, and it would make no difference to Max. He just wanted to rest himself beside her. Inside her. He wanted to drink from that pure spring of gentle kindness, and be restored.

What was the harm? He heard the phrase in his head, over and over. What was the harm? He wouldn’t take more than she was willing to give. He wouldn’t leave her sick, or pregnant, or betrayed, or in any way diminished….

He felt like an addict, trying to rationalize one fix, just one. What could one night hurt?

But like an addict, he wouldn’t be able to stop with just one. The remaining sliver of honesty inside his hungry body knew that.

And yet…

Then, like a life raft floating by, he remembered the one reason he couldn’t ignore.
Wouldn’t
ignore.

“Ellen is just inside,” he said.

Penny bit her lower lip. “Of course,” she answered softly, obviously embarrassed. “I wasn’t thinking.”

She took the edges of the blanket and folded them across herself, so that she once again looked like a tired little girl.

“Besides…you know you would regret it,” he said, unsure whether he was convincing her, or himself. See? He had already hurt her. She felt unwanted. He cursed himself and tried again.

“Penny, you’re determined to prove something to yourself, and I respect that. More than you can possibly know. I don’t want to get in the way. I don’t want to be a mistake you regret whenever you remember me. I would like to think that, when I’m gone—”

“You’re right.” She broke in, as if she didn’t want him to finish the sentence. As if the phrase, “when I’m gone” had somehow slapped her into clarity.

“I’m sorry,” she said, her voice artificially chipper. “It’s easy to lose track of common sense, when I’m only half-awake…in the middle of the night like this.”

She turned back toward her kitchen door, moving in her moonlight cocoon of wool. At the last minute, she paused, looked over her shoulder at him and smiled. “Guess that’s why they put all those infomercials for expensive Fountain of Youth exercise machines on at 3:00 a.m, huh?”

“Maybe.” He gripped the railing hard. “But just for the record…”

He took a breath and somehow managed a smile of his own. “You probably should know I don’t find you all that easy to resist in broad daylight, either.”

CHAPTER TEN

T
HE
DAY
OF
Bree’s nuptials couldn’t have been more perfect. By the time the sun began heading westward, turning Cupcake Creek amazing shades of violet and copper, Penny leaned against the garland-festooned trunk of a loblolly pine and watched the reception get underway with a sense of happy satisfaction.

The wedding itself had been simple, but heartbreakingly beautiful. Performed on the banks of Cupcake Creek, next to the “glamping” tent where Gray had lived when he first came to work for Bell River—and where he and Bree had fallen in love—the tone had been informal. And yet, somehow, the depth of love these two people felt for each other, and which came through in their personally written vows, had been absolutely magical.

“Glamorous camping” wasn’t an exaggeration for this large, elegant tent, which overlooked the sweet creek, and was right now about to become the setting for the happiest feast and dance the world had ever seen, with Barton James and the Rockin’ Geezers providing the music.

Penny sipped her champagne, savoring the lull in the excitement. It wouldn’t be a long one. She could already hear the band tuning up for “Red River Valley,” which would be the newly married couple’s first dance.

“Congratulations, Penny. This has been a day your sister won’t ever forget.”

She turned, recognizing Max’s voice, and her heart leaped up in her chest. Silly to react so intensely, but she couldn’t help it.

He’d arrived early to be sure Ellen was here on time, so he’d been around for hours. But Penny had been so busy she hadn’t been able to do much more than exchange the most basic questions and answers—like, “Have you seen the preacher?” and, “Would you mind helping Mrs. Marvell find a seat?”

Now she registered once again how elegant he looked in his beautifully cut business suit. Most of the other men were wearing cowboy casual, which she liked just fine. But Max’s crisp white dress shirt and blue rep tie were so…elegant.

And yet, beneath the elegance, lay those amazing abs, that muscled, tapering back. Aunt Ruth used to say “it’s better to leave something to the imagination,” but Penny had assumed she was, as usual, being a spinster prude.

Now Penny understood.

“You’re not leaving already, are you?” She tried not to sound too upset. “No one should miss the Rockin’ Geezers.”

He looked toward the dance floor. Just a couple of hours ago, the bride and groom had stood on that spot, exchanged vows and rings and kisses. But now half a dozen couples already stood there, waiting for the Geezers to get the party started.

“I’m not sure I’d have the heart to drag Ellen away,” he said with a smile.

Penny spotted the little girl in the crowd, clutching her garland headdress, and had to admit it would take a fairly hard heart to do that. Ellen was clearly having the time of her life.

Penny herself had taken the official preceremony photographs, but since Penny was one of the bridesmaids, Bree had hired Selena Sanchez from town to take the rest of the pictures

Selena was good, but she couldn’t be everywhere. So disposable cameras had been provided at every table, encouraging the guests to take candid shots. Those had been a big hit, especially with Ellen and Alec, who were running around getting everyone to pose for them.

They were so adorable in their fancy clothes that no one could resist the request. Alec’s yellow-aster boutonniere had long since come off and, no doubt, been trampled in the grass, but Ellen guarded her lovely blue-and-yellow wildflower crown as if it had been gilded with twenty-four-karat gold.

“She’s been practicing the electric slide all week,” Max said wryly. “Same song. Over and over. If they play ‘Born to Boogie’ tonight, I may start twitching.”

Penny grinned. “I’ve been practicing all week, too. I haven’t danced since I was her age, though, and I think I’ve already demonstrated what a klutz I am. I’m hoping I can check ‘dancing’ off the Risk-it List tonight, but we’ll see.”