The Widow and the Wildcatter: A Loveswept Classic Romance (8 page)

Loretta gave a throaty chuckle. “That’s not a bad way to go.”

Joni snatched her hand away. “Forget I even said anything, okay?”

The blonde sat back, not the least bit offended, and stared at her with disconcertingly candid blue eyes. “I see you’ve finally decided to let your hair down.”

“Only for tonight.”

“One small step in the right direction.”

Joni looked around the circle, not liking the drift of the conversation, but she’d lost Chance in the crowd. “Did I tell you that Grandpa is taking some new medicine?”

“There he is.”

“Who?” But her casual response didn’t fool Loretta.

“Your wildcatter.”

Joni felt a spurt of jealousy when she saw Chance laughing at something the brunette was saying. “I told you—”

“ ‘He’s not my wildcatter,’ ” Loretta finished for her.

The music ended then, and the dancers milled about the circle while commercials for everything from herbicide to hairspray jammed the airwaves.

Chance broke away from the brunette and headed for the community beer keg, where a woman in a billowy blue dress gave him the glad eye.

His words came back to haunt Joni. As much as she hated to admit it, he was right on target. But how did she go about divorcing herself from a ghost, not to mention the guilt?

The dulcet-voiced deejay announced the final number before he signed off for the night. It was a romantic ballad, one of Joni’s favorites.

“Last dance is ladies’ choice,” Loretta reminded her.

“If he’d wanted to dance with me, he would have asked me,” Joni answered stiffly.

Loretta had never married, but what she didn’t know about men wasn’t worth knowing. “Maybe he’s waiting for you to make up your mind.”

Joni looked as if she’d just swallowed one of the June bugs attracted by the headlights. “You saw us in the car?”

“And out of it.”

The music started, casting a magic spell over the circle, and Joni realized she’d come to a crossroads of her own. She had to risk caring again.

She stood, her mind made up. “Thanks, Loretta.”

The blonde winked a lacy eyelid. “Go get him, tiger.”

Joni plunged into the crowd, dodging a dangerous elbow here and skirting a passionately embracing couple there.

Chance saw her working her way across the circle and met her in the middle. “I thought you’d never ask.”

Her heart did a two-step when he put his arms around her. “Don’t play so hard to get.”

“Where you’re concerned,” he said as he molded her body to his, “I’m as easy as they come.”

The beat surrounded them and permeated them, and starlight served as their personal strobe.

Joni danced with her eyes closed and her cheek against his chest, lost in the very life of him. She felt his hard thighs and warm hands. Heard the strong drum of his heart. Drank in the clean, woodsy smell of him. And she knew she was in the right place.

Their steps grew smaller as they drew closer. Joni wrapped her arms tightly around his neck, holding him as if she’d never let him go. Chance caressed her lower back, sensitizing her to his touch and spreading a slow, honeyed heat through the thin voile of her dress.

She whispered his name when his mouth brushed her temple, and they sealed their exquisite awareness
of each other with a kiss that didn’t end with the music.

“Good nights” and “good-byes” filled the air. Motors coughed to life. Bright yellow headlights turned into tiny red taillights. Silence fell as softly as a lover’s sigh, but the moon and the stars held back the night.

Joni and Chance stood alone at the crossroads, each of them wondering where they went from there.

She knew he wanted to take her to bed.

He realized she wasn’t ready yet.

But if one or the other of them didn’t say or do something to break the spell that held them in thrall, bed was exactly where they were going to wind up.

The wind sang in the tall grass and the trees as Chance slipped his arm around Joni’s reed of a waist and steered her toward the red convertible, saying softly, “Let’s go home.”

“Oh, no!” Guilt punched Joni in the stomach when she saw Dr. Rayburn’s car parked in front of the house. “Something happened to Grandpa while we were gone.”

She flung Chance’s arm off her shoulder and slid over to the passenger side of the convertible. Before he could even brake to a complete stop, she opened her door and hit the ground at a run.

Pieces of gravel became embedded in her sandals and her toes, nicking her skin unmercifully as she tore across the driveway. Tears of frustration,
not pain, filled her eyes when she tripped while going up the porch steps.

“Here.” Chance came up beside her and grabbed hold of her arm, which kept her from falling flat on her face.

“Leave me alone.” Joni swatted at his supporting hand almost hysterically.

“Dammit, I’m trying to help!”

“Haven’t you done enough?”

Before he could ask her what she meant by that, she pulled out of his grasp and stumbled unaided up the remaining porch steps.

Dr. Rayburn opened the screen door for her.

“How’s Grandpa?” she demanded.

“He’s going to be fine.” With his chaotic mop of hair, walrus mustache and rumpled white suit, Dr. Rayburn reminded Joni of Mark Twain.

“Thank God.” Her legs went limp with relief, and this time she was grateful for Chance’s hand at her elbow. “What happened, anyway?”

Dr. Rayburn pursed his lips. “Near as I can figure, Bat got to coughing so hard he couldn’t catch his breath.” He looked at Chance. “When your young roughneck called me, he sounded pretty shook up, so I said I’d come over and give him a shot to help him sleep.”

“Where is Skinny?” Chance asked.

“I sent him home,” the physician answered.

Confusion pinched Joni’s small features. “How did he know to call you?”

“I left his number by the telephone,” Chance said.

She bowed her head, ashamed that she hadn’t thought of that herself, and whispered a heartfelt, “Thank you.”

“How about a cup of coffee?” Chance offered.

Dr. Rayburn nodded. “Coffee sounds great.”

In the kitchen Joni made the coffee and Chance cut three squares of her homemade gingerbread, topping them with fresh whipped cream. She refused to let herself think about how right it felt to be working side by side with him.

When he’d finished his late-night snack, Dr. Rayburn wrote out two new prescriptions for Grandpa. “I’m going to lower the dosage on his prednisone, which seems to be keeping him awake, and give him some sleeping pills to help him relax at the end of the day.”

Chance pocketed the prescriptions. When Joni opened her mouth in protest, he shrugged and said, “I have to pick up some casing in town on Monday anyway, so I might as well get them filled while I’m there.”

“I’ll write you a check for whatever it costs.” She realized she would be reimbursing him with his own money, but she wasn’t about to accept his charity.

“Speaking of casing …” Dr. Rayburn eyed Chance over the rim of his coffee cup. “Bat tells me you’ll be ready to start drilling next week.”

“Good Lord willing and the creek don’t rise,” Chance confirmed.

The physician smiled at Joni. “What are you going to do with all that money when your oil well comes in?”

She grinned. “Pay you.”

He set his empty cup in the saucer, his expression turning serious. “I told you last month that I was willing to settle for what Medicare pays.”

“That’s not enough.” She rued the day they’d had to drop their health insurance, but like most rural families, they simply couldn’t afford the premiums.

He shook his shaggy head. “There’s no Brink’s trucks in funeral processions.”

Chance reached for Dr. Rayburn’s cup. “Would you like some more coffee?”

“No thanks,” he declined. “Two’s my limit this time of night.”

Joni glanced at the cuckoo clock over the stove, surprised to see that it was nearly midnight. “Gosh, I didn’t realize it was so late.”

“Time flies when you’re having fun,” Chance quipped.

“Anything special happen out at the crossroads tonight?” Dr. Rayburn asked casually.

Her startled eyes met his wise ones. “What do you mean by special?”

“Oh …” He tugged thoughtfully at his mustache. “You know, did anybody start a fight or kiss and make up. Did anybody fall in or out of love? The usual kind of special.”

“Can’t think of a thing,” she said, and felt a twinge at the evasion.

The kitchen clock cuckooed, its timing perfect.

Joni yawned and stretched. “I’m afraid it’s way past my bedtime.”

“Mine too.” Dr. Rayburn brushed gingerbread
crumbs off the front of his wrinkled white suit onto the table. “I’m glad to see you’re starting to get out among ’em again.”

“Starting and stopping in one fell swoop,” she stated emphatically.

“Your being here wouldn’t have prevented Bat’s spell,” the physician said.

“I know, but—” She looked away, a cauldron of guilt and rage suddenly roiling inside her.

Dr. Rayburn leaned over and gave her a perceptive pat on the shoulder. “It wouldn’t have prevented that either.”

She put a lid on her emotions and stood. “We’ll never know for sure, will we?”

Mustache fluttering, the physician followed suit. “I guess not.”

Chance hadn’t said a word during this last exchange. But on seeing that closed expression on Joni’s face—an expression he’d become all too familiar with these past two weeks—he decided to find out what the hell was behind it.

Toward that end, he got to his feet and picked up the doctor’s black leather bag. “I need to put the top up on my car, so I’ll see the doctor out.”

“Fine.” Joni stacked their few dishes and carried them to the sink.

“Your grandpa should sleep all night with no problem after that shot I gave him,” Dr. Rayburn said in parting.

Joni made short work of the dishes, then went to the dining room to check on Grandpa before going upstairs to bed herself.

One set of shutters was folded back, and a lump
the size of an egg lodged in her throat as she studied his sleeping face in the moonlight. His cheeks were sunken, and the skin that stretched across the bones seemed transparent. But the meter of his breathing, if not entirely normal, was relaxed.

His dog, a bluetick hound he’d named Sooner because it would “sooner chase rabbits than stay home,” lay curled at his side. It raised alert eyes to her now, as if to assure her that it would stay put while she slept.

She reached across Grandpa’s peaceful form to cup the bluetick’s trusty muzzle in a caress, then turned and ran from the room before she lost it completely.

Upstairs, she washed her face and brushed her teeth in record time, not wanting to risk a confrontation with Chance. She’d been on an emotional elevator ever since she’d met him, and she really wasn’t up to answering any of the questions she’d seen in his eyes when he’d left the kitchen.

Turning away from the bathroom mirror to keep from being devoured by the hunger in her own eyes, she beat a hasty retreat to her bedroom. She undressed in the dark, then lay alone in her double bed as she had a thousand nights before.

But sleep didn’t come with its usual ease. The soft wind wafting through her screen seemed to whisper his name. Chance … Chance … Chance. And the memory of his strong arms and sensual mouth awakened needs in her that no amount of tossing and turning could exhaust.

Deeply pitched masculine voices rode a windflaw.

Car doors slammed. The convertible top purred up, and Dr. Rayburn’s tires crunched down the gravel driveway. But she waited in vain for the opening squeak and closing slap of the screen door and the steady thud of boot steps coming up the stairs.

Finally, overcome by curiosity about what could be keeping Chance, she flung herself out of her inhospitable bed and went to the window. She knelt and crossed her arms on the sill, watching him, unseen, as he paced the driveway, smoking.

Moonlight poured over him like cream from a pitcher, running down those broad shoulders and that marvelously symmetrical back. The rolled-up sleeves of his white shirt contrasted starkly with his dusky skin.

He took a deep drag on his cigarette, then dropped it and crushed it underfoot. Much as a lover’s fingers would, the wind mussed his thick hair. She fought a madcap urge to run down the stairs and out the door and rumple it properly.

Muttering obscene curses that would have given a mule skinner cause for pause, he continued to pace. Once, he stopped and looked long and hard up at her darkened window. She dodged sideways, horrified to realize he might have caught her spying on him. But the instant she heard the regular crunch of gravel under his impatient feet, she went back to her post.

Joni took no comfort in knowing that he felt as restless as she did. For him, this was just a detour on the road to satisfaction. But for her, it was as devastating as a head-on collision.

She didn’t move again until he turned to come inside. Then she hurried back to bed before the creaky old floorboards could betray her. Lying there in the dark, her body tense as a bow, she listened to the muffled bang of the screen door and the mounting thump of his boot steps.

A sigh of relief tinged with regret escaped her lips when she heard his bedroom door click closed. She told herself that the nights were always the hardest, but it seemed they were harder than ever now that Chance was living under the same roof.

The barn doors were open
.

Impatience surged inside her as she parked the pickup and climbed out
.

The wind caught the doors and slammed them against the side of the barn
.

Damn Larry’s hide, anyway! She knew he’d been depressed lately about their financial situation, but that didn’t excuse his carelessness. Yanking off the hairnet she wore for her waitressing job, she started across the farmyard on aching feet that had just finished a double shift. Did she have to do everything around here?

The doors swung wildly, eluding her grasp
.

She struggled with one door, pushing it closed with her weight, but the other one creaked elusively. Grandpa was in no shape to oil the hinges, and Larry just ignored the horrible noise they made. She’d just have to do it herself
.