The Widow and the Wildcatter: A Loveswept Classic Romance (12 page)

She opened her mouth to tell him that she really didn’t care about the oil, that she’d rather have him than all the crude in Oklahoma, when the mud pump throbbed and drilling got under way again.

“I’d better get back to work,” Chance said, and turned to climb the steps that led to the rig floor.

“What time will you be home tonight?” Joni knew she sounded like a clinging vine, but she couldn’t help herself.

Halfway up the steps he stopped and turned back, casting a long shadow over her. “I think it’s best for both of us if I just live in the trailer from now on.”

She clomped up after him until she stood nose to chest with him. “What about the Fourth of July parade?”

“What about it?”

“You promised Grandpa he could ride in your convertible.”

“That was before—” He broke off in mid-sentence and made a taut, thin line of his lips to seal the unsaid words inside.

Her body strained toward his. She loved the
smell of his skin—the scent of honest labor mixed with his healthy man odor. “Before what?”

“Forget it.”

“Before what?”

Chance didn’t want to hurt her, but she’d left him no choice. “Before I realized that I can’t hang on to anything and you can’t let go of anything.”

Joni recoiled as if he’d struck her, then rallied on the strength of her love. “You hung on to your grandfather’s hat.”

“A stupid sentimental gesture on my part.” He rebuffed her attempt to read any significance into it.

She grabbed handfuls of his T-shirt. “Why is it so damned difficult for you to admit you care?”

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.” He clutched her wrists so hard they hurt.

She held on as tenaciously as a bulldog, grinding her knuckles into the solid wall of his chest. “Does it make you any less a man to admit that you kept the hat because you loved your grandfather?”

“No more than it makes you any less of a woman to admit that you had no control over Larry’s actions.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I mean I know that Larry killed himself.”

Shock made her grip go slack. “Who told you?”

He forced her hands down. “I also know that you found him in the barn when you got home from work, and—”

“Who told you?” she repeated tautly.

He ignored this inquiry too. “That you’re still
blaming yourself because you weren’t there to stop him.”

“Dr. Rayburn talks too much for his own good.” She remembered the men standing out in the driveway the night of the dance and put two and two together.

“And you talk too little for yours,” he said harshly.

She wrenched her wrists free of his bruising hold. “What right do you have to go snooping around behind my back, anyway?”

“You took me for twenty thousand dol—”

“I did no such thing!”

“You knew I wanted to drill where—”

“I was desperate!”

“You couldn’t collect on Larry’s life ins—”

“I had nowhere to go, no one to turn to.”

“Your loan application was rej—”

“I thought you were the answer to our prayers.”

He nailed her in place with a hard stare. “You’re getting pretty good at leading me around by the nose, aren’t you?”

She turned the full blue blaze of her eyes on him. “I don’t deserve that!”

“A kiss here, a feel there.” He made it sound so calculated on her part, she felt sick. “If it weren’t for Grandpa, I’d have to wonder who drew the map.”

She looked at him, stunned. That he could think her capable of such a terrible betrayal after all she’d been through … Somehow, the past and the present became tangled in her mind. And something inside of her snapped.

“Damn you, Larry Fletcher!” Joni swung blindly, the stinging crack of her palm hitting a chiseled cheek. She was striking back the only way she knew how. “If you weren’t already dead, I’d kill you myself!”

But it was Chance who wore the dark red imprint of her deep-pent rage. Chance who raised his hand in retaliation, then dropped it. Worse yet, it was Chance who left her standing on the steps in a welter of guilt and confusion, calling over his shoulder from the rig floor, “Go home, Joni, before I hurt you worse than Larry did.”

Sad to say, he already had.

The Fourth of July dawned as faultless and clear as a perfect diamond.

Joni spent the better part of the morning packing a basket for the picnic supper that would follow the parade and precede the fireworks display. She fried chicken just the way Grandpa liked it, with lots of crispy brown crust, then deviled a dozen eggs and iced an angel food cake for dessert.

That done, she went outside and picked some ripe red tomatoes to slice and chill. With the bread and butter sandwiches she’d already made, they would round out the meal.

She felt a boundless sense of accomplishment as she checked the rest of her beautiful tomatoes. Next spring, she planned to expand her acreage and branch out into other vegetable crops. The food broker she was dealing with in Oklahoma City had told her there was a growing market for
specialty produce. Asparagus, beets, baby carrots, broccoli, spinach … The possibilities were endless.

It might not be farming as Grandpa had known it, but small-scale intensive operations like this could improve farm income and diversify the economic base in rural areas. Better yet, it might well be the way to keep the homestead in the family.

The steady rhythm of the drill reminded her of the more immediate problem. Chance had neither called nor come by the house since the day she’d slapped him, and she could only assume that he wasn’t going to the parade. That left her to drive the pickup, which suited her fine, but Grandpa had really been looking forward to riding in the convertible.

In all honesty, Joni wasn’t sorry she’d slapped Chance. Not that she believed physical violence ever solved anything, but he’d asked for it with that insulting remark about the map. What she regretted more than anything was that Grandpa had to suffer as a result of her actions.

As she reached to pluck another tomato, a clang of the dinner bell drifted from the porch. One ring meant that Grandpa needed to talk to her, but it wasn’t an emergency. Anymore than that meant that he was having trouble breathing and she should run like a cat with her tail on fire. They’d devised this system because his voice wasn’t strong enough to carry over the noise from the rig, and so far, it had worked real well.

She waved to signal she’d heard the bell, then headed back to the house.

“Chance just called.” Grandpa looked as happy as a heifer in the corncrib, which was a welcome change from the hangdog expression he’d been wearing all week.

“What did he want?” Joni tried to keep her voice on an even keel, but a note of excitement jiggled it nonetheless.

“He wanted to know what time the parade started.”

She grabbed hold of the porch railing for support. “And?”

“When I told him three o’clock, he said he’d pick us up at two.”

Her heart did handstands, knowing he hadn’t left them in the lurch. She linked her arm through Grandpa’s and, laughing, led him toward the screen door. “What are we standing around here jawing for? Time’s a-wasting.”

Joni fed Grandpa a light dinner, then helped him into the tub in the downstairs bathroom and scrubbed him up one side and down the other. He decided to take a short nap before he put on his suit, which left her free to shower and shampoo and get dressed.

They were ready and waiting when Chance turned into the driveway a few minutes before two. He looked so handsome in creased jeans, a mint-green polo shirt with the collar unbuttoned, and that gorgeous raw silk jacket, Joni’s stomach pulled all sorts of crazy shenanigans when she opened the screen door for him.

“Hi,” she said shyly, wishing she had something a bit more eloquent in the way of a greeting.

“Hi,” he returned, his mobile mouth splitting into a smile as he surveyed her outfit with obvious relish.

Joni had taken Grandpa at his word and raided the cedar chest in the attic again. Her grandmother’s dress, a drop-waisted delicacy of ivory chiffon and intricate lacework, had required only the mandatory tucks in the bodice to fit as if it were made for her. With it she wore matching stockings as sheer as a spider’s web and a pair of low-heeled pumps she’d bought on sale several years back.

But it was what she wasn’t wearing that most intrigued Chance.

She wasn’t wearing her wedding ring on her left hand anymore.

His glance flicked from her bare left hand to her right, where the plain gold band now claimed its proper place. Then his eyes sought hers and he wanted to drown in the fathomless depths of her.

“You’ve come a long way, baby,” he quipped, but his expression told her he wanted to take her the rest of the way.

“I’m taking it a step at a time,” she whispered, and her expression begged him not to rush her.

But time was their enemy, flying by on Mercury’s wings without regard for their hearts’ wishes.

As if they needed a reminder, the long-case clock in the entryway chimed out the musical prelude to the hour, and then the hour itself. One … two.

“If we don’t get moving pretty soon,” Grandpa prodded as he tottered out of the living room in
his shiny blue serge suit and old straw boater, “I’m going to be sneezing dust.”

Chance got Grandpa settled in the Thunderbird and put their picnic basket in the trunk while Joni ran to get the posterboard-sized signs she planned to display during the parade.

“I was going to tape them to the doors of my pickup,” she explained when Chance asked to see the signs. “But now that we’re going to ride in the convertible, Grandpa and I can just hold them in the air.”

Chance thought he came a little closer to understanding what made Joni tick when he read what she’d printed in red and blue Magic Marker on the white posterboard.

The first sign declared:
AS LONG AS WE HAVE ONE SEED LEFT, WE
’
LL PLANT
.

And the second proclaimed:
AS LONG AS WE HAVE ONCE OUNCE OF STRENGTH, WE
’
LL PLOW
.

“Those are old sayings around here,” she told him, never dreaming he’d find them as meaningful as she did.

“Well, I can think of a lot better use for your arms than wearing them out waving signs.” His expression was altogether too sexy for her not to know what he was talking about. “Go get the masking tape so we can show them off properly.”

“But the finish on your car—”

“The tape marks will rub off.”

She loved him so much, she ached with it. “I’ll be right back.”

They taped one sign to the passenger door and one to the driver’s, then got into the convertible.

Chance told Grandpa to hang on to his hat and away they went.

Grandpa had been elected grand marshal by the parade committee because he was the oldest and best loved resident of Redemption County, so Chance steered the Thunderbird into line directly ahead of the mayor’s long black Lincoln and right behind the high school band.

The majorette raised her baton. The band struck up an off-key rendition of “Yankee Doodle Boy.” And the parade started down a Main Street straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting.

All across America people celebrated the nation’s birthday. Veterans marched with flags and heads held high. Backyard chefs in funny hats and burlap aprons fired up their grills. Umpires shouted “Play ball!” and families converged for their annual reunions. But nowhere in the Land of the Free did the patriotic fever burn brighter than it did in Redemption.

Sure, farmers were hurting. In addition to the always capricious weather, they were faced with specific problems, including their own overproductivity. A surplus of food had caused prices to fall. Shrinking foreign markets, tumbling land values, and increasing debt had fueled bankruptcies and foreclosures galore.

But farmers fought, bought, and thought American. And one day a year they showed the world that they believed they lived in the greatest country on God’s green earth.

The way Grandpa waved his boater, a body would have thought he was running for governor. Nobody
waved back because everybody was in the parade. That didn’t bother him. He just waved to the people behind him.

No sooner had the high school band gotten the hang of George M. Cohan’s classic song than the parade turned in to the city park and began dispersing. Several participants stopped by to congratulate Grandpa on a job well done, and more than a few of them commented favorably on Joni’s signs.

Chance parked the convertible in the shade of a big old cottonwood tree and got Grandpa situated at a picnic table while Joni took their basket from the trunk.

She flagged Dr. Rayburn down and invited him to join them when supper was served. His wife had died a couple of winters ago and he depended on the largess of his patients at occasions like these.

“Are you sure you’ve got enough to go around?” Mustache fluttering, the physician eyed her cake carrier with what could only be termed a gluttonous gleam.

“I’m sure,” she said.

“You know how Joni is,” Grandpa added as an incentive. “She always cooks enough to feed Coxey’s Army.”

Dr. Rayburn hooked his thumbs in the bright red suspenders that held up his rumpled white pants. “In that case, I’d be pleased to join you.”

Supper was scheduled for six o’clock, which left almost two hours for fun and games.

But first, the formalities.

The band played “The Star-Spangled Banner,” making up with heart what they lacked in harmony. Everybody stood and everybody sang.

Then the mayor made his usual long-winded speech. And as usual, nobody listened.

Finally, the potato sacks came out, and the ropes for the three-legged races, and the horseshoes appeared for pitching.

The hot sun had the picnickers begging for their next breath.

Chance shrugged out of his jacket and went in search of something cold to wet his whistle.

Joni saw Loretta West sitting by herself on a blanket on the ground and wandered over that way.

“Two small steps in the right direction,” Loretta said when she noticed that Joni had moved her wedding ring.