The Widow and the Wildcatter: A Loveswept Classic Romance (5 page)

He could have sworn he smelled it now, the acrid sting of sulfur. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, waiting for the noxious fumes to set his nostrils and lungs afire.

The red wind blew, dusting his hair and clothes and dulling the shine on his boots. A giant tum-bleweed, dry and gnarled, rolled ahead of it. For all he noticed, it could have been the calmest day since Creation.

He opened his eyes and exhaled on a savage curse, still not certain. This had never happened to him before. But then, he’d never been this close to grabbing the brass ring before either.

Maybe he was too uptight. Too eager to prove his grandfather right. Maybe the map was wrong. That was a real possibility. Maybe he should cut
his losses and hit the road before he made a costly mistake.

A red-tailed hawk drifted through the sky in ever-widening circles. He watched it for a moment and then he made his decision. Screw the money, he was going for it. For himself, for two old men who’d dared to dream, and for …

Joni. He turned on his heel and headed back to the house. She wasn’t his type, so just why the hell did he want her?

Lord love a duck, she’d forgotten her slip!

Joni’s face turned as red as her hair when she found her half slip lying on her bed. She’d run upstairs to close the windows, wanting to keep the dust from blowing in, and …

Looking down, she realized she could see right through her skirt. No wonder Chance had smiled at her like that.

She snatched up her slip and stepped into it, remembering now how she’d happened to forget it.

Just after daybreak she’d gone out to weed and water her tomatoes. Then she’d hosed off and come in to cook breakfast and make her buttermilk pie. Grandpa had been talky as a jaybird, partly due to the prednisone he was taking and partly due to the excitement of having company, so she’d lingered with him over a second cup of coffee.

When all was said and done, she’d barely had enough time for a shower and shampoo. In fact,
she’d been standing in the upstairs bathroom in her underwear and sandals, putting the finishing touches on her hair, when she’d heard Chance pull into their gravel driveway. Rather than make Grandpa get up and go to the door, she’d grabbed her dress on the run, buttoning it up as she dashed downstairs to greet him.

Now, drawn by something beyond her ken, she went back to the window and saw Chance coming toward the house. She started to turn away, then changed her mind and stood there for a moment.

Lean and light on his feet, he moved with the quick confidence of a man who was used to taking charge. Watching from above, she couldn’t help but remember how Larry had always plodded in from the fields as though he were carrying the weight of the world on his back.

Another difference loomed large in her mind. The thought brought an immediate backlash of guilt, but there was no ignoring it. Chance’s arms had made her feel secure in a way that Larry’s never had. Maybe it was because Larry had always been a little awkward about showing physical affection. More likely yet, it was all those years of frustration and fear catching up with her.

Confusing feelings welled up inside her as she turned away from the window. She didn’t need to see the two men side by side to realize they were exact opposites in every respect but one. Larry had built up her hopes, then broken her heart. If she let him, Chance would too.

• • •

“Now, this is what I call larrupin’ good,” Grandpa declared as he reached for another biscuit.

That he’d managed to make it to the kitchen table on his own had been miracle enough for Joni. But to see him take a second helping when he normally only picked at the first one brought a new and happy stinging to her eyes.

She blinked to keep the tears at bay and looked at Chance, who sat across the table from her. “You don’t like okra?”

Truth was, he wasn’t overly fond of fuzzy food. He didn’t want to seem impolite, though, so he forked up one of the lightly seasoned, dark green pods and put it in his mouth. Amazingly, he found it both tender and tasty.

He swallowed and shot her a surprised grin. “I guess I do.”

“Pass the gravy, please.” Grandpa grabbed the top and bottom of his biscuit with gnarled hands, gave it a gentle tug, and pulled it apart. A haze of buttermilk-scented steam rose from each ragged half as he placed them on his plate.

Joni and Chance reached for the gravy boat at the same time. Their fingers coupled in the china crook, their gazes connected, and she felt as if she’d just received a billion-volt shock. Yanking her hand away, she let him have the gravy boat and picked up the empty meat platter instead.

“I’ll get some more pork steaks.” It was a perfectly ordinary statement, yet her voice sounded strange—as if her vocal cords had begun fraying. Scraping her chair back, she stood and crossed to
the stove, acutely aware of those magnetic green eyes following her every move.

At least he couldn’t see through her skirt, she told herself smugly as she opened the oven and dished up the rest of the meat. But she couldn’t help wondering what he’d thought of her legs.

Her red hair and long legs were her best features, and while she appreciated them now, she’d hated them with a passion when she was growing up. Like most children, she’d placed a high premium on conformity. She’d been different enough, having lost her parents in that car wreck with a drunken driver. Being an orphan with carroty hair and matchstick legs had seemed triply unfair.

And her freckles … lordy, as a teenager she’d tried everything from bleaching agents to lemon wedges to teas applied with a cotton pad to get rid of them. Nothing had worked, of course. And now, at twenty-nine and holding, she simply considered them good camouflage for any fine lines she’d begun collecting.

Closing the oven door, Joni turned back to the table feeling uncomfortable under the impact of Chance’s stare. He’d been studying her from behind, his green eyes as unblinking as a great cat’s, and she knew that he knew she was wearing her slip.

“Here you go.” She handed the meat platter to Grandpa in order to avoid a repeat performance with Chance and resumed her chair.

“I think I’ll pass.” Grandpa gave the platter to Chance. “After that last biscuit, I’ll be lucky if I can do justice to a piece of that buttermilk pie.”

She laughed and placed an affectionate palm against his leathery cheek. “You have eaten better than usual today.”

Chance speared his second crispy-tender pork steak, then offered the platter to Joni. When she shook her head no, he set it in the middle of the table and took another biscuit.

“More okra?” she asked teasingly.

It was hard to say whom he surprised the most, himself or her, when he answered, “Don’t mind if I do.”

She passed him the vegetable bowl and they smiled at each other as if they’d just shared some silly private joke.

“This is the best meal I’ve had in a month of Sundays,” he proclaimed as he ladled thick creamy gravy over the cleaved biscuit.

“Joni won three blue ribbons at the county fair for her cooking,” Grandpa remembered proudly.

She squirmed uncomfortably in her chair. “That was a long time ago.”

“The summer you and Larry got married, as I recall,” he went on musingly.

A lifetime ago. She stood, spurred to action by a sudden burst of anger, and began clearing the table. Before she realized what she was doing, she’d even snatched Chance’s plate right out from under his nose.

“Joni!” Grandpa’s jarring reprimand served to clear the fog of fury and confusion that had enveloped her.

She stopped just short of scraping everything into the dog’s dish, whirled away from the sink,
and met Chance’s somber expression. He’d taken off his jacket before joining them at the table, and his pale shirt played up his perfectly bronzed skin and powerful build.

“I’m sorry,” she said as her rage ebbed away and embarrassment flooded in to fill the void. It certainly wasn’t his fault that she’d only just begun to deal with her feelings of having been betrayed. “Would you like your plate back?”

He eyed the lopsided mess she’d made of his dinner and shook his head. “Go ahead and give it to the dog.”

“Tell you what,” she said, setting his ruined plate aside and reaching for a paper sack to fill with the untouched leftovers, “I’ll fix you a people bag.”

He smiled, pleased. “Now that’s one offer I won’t refuse. I eat out most of the time, so it’s liable to be a cold day in July before I get biscuits like that again.”

“Not necessarily,” Grandpa refuted.

Two pairs of puzzled eyes veered in the old man’s direction.

A grin plied the gullies at the corners of his mouth. “I was just thinking, now that Chance has decided to drill, we can put him up.”

“What are you—a mind reader?” Chance hadn’t said word one about his plans and was surprised by the old codger’s perception.

By tacit agreement they’d deferred their business discussion until dinner was over and done with, but Joni could see that dessert would have to wait.

“Put him up?” she repeated, staring at Grandpa as though he were crazy. “You mean have him move in here?”

“It’s the least we can do, considering what he’s going to do for us.” His grin widened and the gullies changed courses. “And now that I’m sleeping downstairs, he can have my room.”

Which was directly across the hall from
her
room.

Grandpa eyed her expectantly, his skeletal face more animated than she’d seen it in months. “So what do you say?”

“I …” Joni realized the bind she was in. Grandpa was starved for companionship, and the groundwork for a lasting friendship between the two men had already been laid. But she didn’t want to spend every night just a hop, skip, and a jump away from Chance McCoy. He was much too virile, and she was much too vulnerable.

She couldn’t say that, of course, so she passed the buck to Chance, hoping against hope it would stop right there. “I thought you lived in your trailer.”

Grandpa snorted in disgust. “That boar’s nest?”

“Boar’s nest!” Chance looked at her, affronted. “Is that how you described my trailer—a boar’s nest?”

Her face turned bright red, but she refused to back down. “Would you rather I’d have said pigsty?”

“Six of one, half dozen of the other,” Grandpa noted.

“That bad, huh?” Chance asked her abashedly.

Joni nodded solemnly. “That bad.”

“Well, now that that’s settled,” Grandpa said, “I’d like a piece of pie and a cup of coffee.”

But it wasn’t settled. Not by a long shot. And as Joni cut the pie and poured the coffee, she wondered if it was too late to call a locksmith.

Chance glanced at the sky, surprised to see how dark it had gotten, then stuck his sunglasses into his jacket pocket. “Guess I won’t be needing them after all.”

Joni wrapped her arms around the wooden porch support that ran from railing to roof and laid her cheek against its cool surface. “Thanks for helping me get Grandpa into bed. He likes you a lot.”

“Listen—” He stopped on the second step down and turned back, at eye level with her now. “I’m sorry for what I said this afternoon about putting him in a nursing home. He’s lucky to have you.”

“Kin-keeping is sort of a family tradition.” She smiled to see how his hair blended with the backdrop of sky. “He raised me after my folks died, so I’m just returning the favor.”

It was a windless night—a rare blessing in Redemption—and the land was so full of silence that there was no room for sound. The moon, aided by a million stars, spilled silvery light over the barren fields that stretched to the horizon.

But were they really barren, Joni wondered now, or did they hold a bellyful of crude? She wouldn’t know the answer to that until Chance drilled a test well, something he planned to do as soon as
he put the well he’d brought in the other day on pump.

She almost laughed out loud, remembering how Grandpa’s jaw had dropped open when Chance said he was going to send them a check for twenty thousand dollars along with a lease agreement requiring their notarized signatures.

They’d been sitting out here, Grandpa and she in the swing and Chance in the wicker rocker, talking about the oil witch and discussing the various aspects of the drilling schedule. On hearing about the money, Grandpa had gotten so excited that she’d thought sure he was going to fall out of the swing and onto the floor.

Unfortunately, he’d gotten too excited for his own good. And the memory of him bowing forward suddenly and hammering at the early evening air with a cough reminiscent of machine-gun fire turned her smile upside down.

“He’ll be fine by morning,” Chance said in the moonlit silence, thinking her face was so lovely and so expressive. He hated seeing her frown.

“I hope so.” Joni cleared her throat and broached the subject that had been bothering her since dinner. “He’s bound and determined that you’re going to move in here, you know.”

That cynical eyebrow shot up like an inky caret mark. “And you’re bound and determined to keep me out.”

“Yes,” she answered truthfully, “I am.”

“Why?” He planted a booted foot on the porch floor and crossed his forearm over his thigh, leaning toward her.

“I’m afraid you’ll hurt him.” She let go of the wooden post and took a step backward, feeling a need to put some distance between them. “I’m afraid he’ll come to depend on you … maybe even to love you. And when you leave—”

“You can go to hell for lying same as you can for stealing, Joni.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You’re not afraid I’ll hurt your grandfather.” Chance stepped all the way up onto the porch now, enveloping her in his moonshadow. “You’re afraid I’ll hurt you.”

“That’s ridiculous!” She put up a brave front, but she was a regular bundle of nerves.

“Is it?” He moved forward slowly, like an animal sensing the presence of his quarry.

Her back was to the screen door now, and the light shining out from the ceiling fixture in the hallway burnished his copper skin with gold. “Wh-what are you going to do?”

“What do you think I’m going to do?” He stopped and braced his hands on the wooden doorframe, leaving her no avenue of escape.