Chapter Two
Delaney stood on the porch
staring into the night sky where a full moon shone so brightly the
trees cast shadows. A cool breeze had her turning up the collar of
her jacket. She felt she should be doing something, but there was
nothing more to do. There’d be no more feverish searching for one
more treatment that could save James’s life. He no longer needed
her to sit at his bedside reading to him. Over the past few months,
she’d read to him the classic tales he’d loved as a boy and wanted
to hear one more time: Treasure Island,
The Hobbit, Johnny Tremain. All the while,
there’d been the persistent awareness he was growing ever weaker.
In the past few weeks, he’d slept more and had hardly
eaten.
Then a scant four hours ago there’d
been a change in the air that made her think a storm was brewing
over the mountains. She’d looked up from the words on the page to
find the big man standing in the doorway. Her heart felt like it
stopped, then jolted to life again.
She’d known he was coming, but still
shock held her frozen. It took only a few brief seconds to absorb
the changes in Walker’s appearance. The shirt drawn tight across
the broadly muscled chest, the wide shoulders that seemed like they
carried the weight of the world, the long straight legs that looked
as strong as tree trunks. But the biggest change was the hardened
features of his face that made him look older than his thirty-three
years. Under the dark beard now sprinkled with gray, his jaw
appeared locked in place, his expression about as unforgiving as
the granite peaks of the Sierras.
His gaze had zeroed in on hers, dark
and unreadable, then with a too-easy flick of dismissal he’d
shifted his focus to his grandfather.
When Walker moved to the bed to take
the frail hand James lifted, Delaney had stood to leave to give
them time alone. The image of the old man’s blue-veined hand
dwarfed in Walker’s wide, square palm had seared onto her
brain.
Sawyer stood near the door and he’d
dropped a hand on Delaney’s shoulder to stop her retreat, murmuring
in her ear, “Stay. It’ll be soon.”
“No, not yet.”
Her friend’s gaze had remained steady
on hers. She didn’t want it to be time, not yet. She wasn’t ready.
But Sawyer was intuitive, always seeming to know what would happen
before it did, always knowing what to do.
“Pop’s been waiting for
him. It won’t be long now.”
She’d stayed. Her grandmother had come
in, Clara’s grief had her gripping Delaney’s hand in a rare show of
comfort before moving to the seat she’d rarely been absent from
since they’d brought James home for good.
If for nothing else, Delaney was
grateful the people who loved James most were at his bedside. She’d
tolerate Walker’s presence because that’s what James would want.
Well, he’d want her to do more than tolerate his grandson, but some
things were impossible.
Now James was dead. Already Clara had
announced there’d be a graveside service within the week, and James
would be buried in the sleepy cemetery that had served the
community for nearly two hundred years. Delaney found some comfort
in her grandmother declaring James would be laid to rest in the
Bryant family plot.
After the funeral, people would come
back to the big house. That’s the way things were done. There’d be
food and visiting, and Delaney would have to play nice. Clara had
already laid down the law. Her granddaughter was to dress and
behave appropriately.
To Clara that meant a dress, makeup,
and having actual conversations with people. Her pronouncement had
been delivered with a severe look that said Delaney was not allowed
to try to escape.
She sighed. It shouldn’t be such a big
deal, and she knew damn well James wouldn’t’ve wanted a big deal.
There’d been plenty of times when they’d both escaped events at the
farm. They’d head to his workshop where she’d sit on a stool,
sometimes in the hated dress, and watch as he’d operate the lathe
or belt sander, working his magic on a piece of wood until it fit
perfectly with another to form a chest of drawers or a display
table for the store.
The beautifully crafted mule chest
he’d made of quartersawn oak and gifted her on her sixteenth
birthday was her most prized possession.
But this time it would be her
coconspirator who’d be dead and in the ground.
Taking a shuddering breath, she wiped
her cheeks.
James had taken his last breath with
his grandsons holding his hands, and Delaney was intensely grateful
he’d died peacefully at home. Then Clara had climbed the stairs to
the second floor, and Delaney had heard the decisive click of the
bedroom door as her grandmother had closeted herself alone with her
grief.
Delaney had sat with Sawyer and waited
with his grandfather’s body until the mortuary had come to collect
him. Walker had already slipped out, and a short while later she’d
seen the taillights of his old pickup heading down the road. He was
probably halfway back to Alaska by now. Either that, or he was on
his way to Easy Money, a bar and local hangout in town.
Maybe he’d become an alcoholic and was
working on drowning his sorrows. Then she remembered the sharp
intelligence coupled with that look of iron control when he’d stood
in the doorway and couldn’t reconcile that man with being a
drunk.
The swell of anger that’d risen when
she’d seen him shouldn’t’ve surprised her, but at least she hadn’t
gone with the urge to haul off and slug him. That would’ve been a
nice release to eight years of pent-up anger. She’d reminded
herself she was an adult and instead kept the fury bottled
up.
She would’ve thought what with Walker
being gone for so long, her feelings for him would’ve faded. But
they hadn’t, not even a little bit. Her sigh was ripe with
frustration.
She wandered the yard in the silvery
moonlight.
James had taught her to make a plan to
deal with problems, so she’d make a plan to deal with
Walker.
Step one was keeping all those hot
emotions in check. If she didn’t, they’d burn to the surface and
incinerate her like the wildfires that were all too common in the
mountains around her home.
Slugging him might work in the moment,
but it wasn’t a long-term solution.
Step two was realizing Walker didn’t
owe her a damn thing. Years ago, they’d been together, and while it
had taken her a stupidly long time to realize his feelings had
never matched hers, she got it now.
He’d never meant the words he’d
uttered when he’d been her first lover, words whispered in the
night that she was his, and he was hers, forever.
She’d been crushed by the heartbreak,
but the rejection was made even worse because not only had he
determined they were no longer together, he’d also decided they
weren’t friends.
He hadn’t wanted her to stand up for
him when he’d been accused of a heinous crime. He’d never once
responded to the letters she’d sent while he was in prison, and
he’d refused to call her, even though he’d called James and Sawyer
regularly.
Regardless, she’d worked with his
grandfather and her grandmother to go through the slow, grinding
process of having the DNA reexamined, and then having the lawyer
file the motions and deal with the DA before finally, a judge
issued a dismissal and cleared Walker of all charges as if they’d
never existed.
He’d been released from prison, and
then he’d taken off, leaving her behind with the rest of his past.
Understanding his feelings hadn’t run as deep as hers helped keep
her mind clear and focused on her plan.
Step three was to wait him out. With
apple season following soon after the looming berry season, God
knew she had enough to do to occupy her brain. She’d keep busy and
wait until he took off again, then she’d settle down to her life,
one that would hold a bit less shine without James.
Thinking about Walker wasn’t easy, but
it was a diversion from her grief.
She’d figure out a way to deal with
him while he was home. The current situation should be easier to
bear because, to a degree, she got it.
As a teenager and young man, he had
embraced the freedom and wildness of the outdoors, and being
restricted to a prison cell must’ve been a blow to everything that
made him who he was.
She guessed hitting the road had been
a way of reclaiming his life. In the same circumstances, maybe
she’d have done the same. He’d kept in touch with James and Sawyer,
and both men had visited him, one time traveling to Wyoming when
Walker had been working at an oil field, and another time to Oregon
when he’d been at a logging camp.
What she didn’t get was why he’d
decided she was no longer his friend. Whatever he’d felt for her
during that one summer they’d been together hadn’t been strong
enough to withstand the hard blow fate had struck him. His way of
dealing with it had been to cut out her and everyone else in his
life, except his immediate family.
Fine, he hadn’t wanted to continue a
relationship with her. He was entitled to his feelings. But that he
could barely bring himself to look at her made her want to give him
a solid kick in the ass. Angry he’d so carelessly discarded her
felt better than grief. He’d hurt her, but she’d be damned if she’d
let him see that.
A great horned owl called from the
branches of the huge stone pine standing sentinel near the long
driveway at the front of the house. The quiet hoo-hoo sounded
mournful and she wondered if he was another lonely heart looking
for a mate.
With her hands shoved in her jacket
pockets, she stepped off the stairs, Callie a comforting presence
at her side.
Walker and Sawyer had come to live
with James when she was eight. Walker was two years older than her,
and Sawyer older still, but she’d never been made to feel like she
wasn’t welcome. It wasn’t so much they’d let her tag along, but
that without question, she was part of the group.
Then sometime in high school things
changed. She’d developed an all-consuming, spine-tingling crush on
Walker and hadn’t known what to do with herself. On top of that,
they’d started butting heads, constantly bickering, arguing over
the smallest things.
Where once they’d been able to talk
about anything under the sun, suddenly she was sharp tongued while
he treated her like a pain in the ass.
Even with that, during her senior year
when he’d been attending the local community college, he’d always
made sure he was there to pick her up from school. He’d also
managed to be around if any boy who liked her showed up at the
farm.
She’d come home for summer break after
her sophomore year of college and had decided to take the bull by
the horns and ask him out. She still remembered him giving her that
long look, his dark hair tousled and green eyes glittering. Then
he’d lifted her to her toes and kissed her and there’d been no
going back. For that one glorious summer he’d broken through his
self-imposed restraints and they’d been together.
Until their world had
imploded.
Shaking off the memories, she zipped
up the front of her jacket and wandered down the driveway, pulling
her grief around her like a shroud. Callie ignored the rabbit
darting under the fence as if the dog sensed Delaney needed her
close.
Instinctively she followed the loop in
the driveway to the dirt road curving up the slope, skirting the
orchards behind the big house. She didn’t want to think about the
work that needed doing on the farm, or preparations for the
funeral, or how she was going to avoid Walker.
Weighing more heavily was figuring out
how she would live her life without James McGrath in it.
The road went through the north
orchards planted with Gravensteins before it split, the right fork
leading to the tidy cabin where James had lived for as long as she
could remember, where he’d brought his grandsons after their
parents had died. Where Walker would stay if staying was his
plan.
She chose the left path that would
take her to the workshop. Years ago, and over James’s protests,
Clara had deeded him the cabin and workshop and the entire north
orchard. Delaney had never been prouder of her grandmother, because
in that act Clara had righted a century-old wrong that had to do
with disputed land claims. She’d moved James from being an employee
to part owner of Cider Mill Farm.
Delaney was so caught up in her
thoughts she was almost at the door of the workshop before she
realized light shone through the windows. An irrational burst of
hope had her grabbing the wood railing for balance, a hope that
somehow the past eight months had been a dream, that she would once
again walk through the door to find James running the saw, his
silver hair shining under the overhead lights, and he’d flash her
that lightning grin that both his grandsons had
inherited.
But James was gone and no one should
be in the shop at nearly midnight. She hadn’t noticed a vehicle,
but it could’ve been parked in the back where she wouldn’t’ve seen
it.
She had her hand on the door, ready to
investigate, then she paused.
The thought occurred that maybe she
should show some caution. Crime was pretty much nonexistent in
their corner of Payback Valley, but that didn’t mean she should be
foolish.
She put her other hand on Callie’s
head, ready to back away and reconsider, when the knob was jerked
from her grasp and the door swung open.