Chapter 6
“I need to get to my phone,”
she managed breathlessly, while her heart threatened to choke her.
One dark eyebrow went up.
“You need to what?” he asked.
“Get to my phone,”
she repeated.
“Why?”
“I haven’t gotten to that chapter yet.”
He blinked.
“I don’t know what to do next,”
she said huskily.
“It’s in chapter five of my new book I bought. I haven’t read it . . .”
He cocked his head.
“And what kind of book would this be?”
“It just came out,”
she said.
“It’s an adventure novel.”
“An adventure novel.”
He nodded.
“Yes, and the hero is very worldly and he gets mixed up with this elegant woman who turns out to be working for a gangster . . . !”
He was staring at her.
“What does this have to do with that?”
he asked, trying to maintain his composure. Because he knew that story very well. Very well. Too well.
“The next chapter is where she pushes him down and does things to him,”
she explained.
“I only skimmed a little ahead. I haven’t actually read it yet, so I don’t know what comes next.”
He burst out laughing. He rolled over beside her, onto his back, and absolutely roared.
She hit him.
“We aren’t born knowing these things,”
she pointed out.
“I was too busy at home to go running around with men, learning how to do intimate stuff. And television is useless. It’s all messed up with people doing unspeakable things to other people . . . Honestly, I was better off mucking out the stable!”
He could barely get his breath. She had no idea that he knew exactly what came next in that book, and for a good reason.
“Will you stop laughing?”
she chided, sitting up.
“I’ll bet you weren’t born knowing all that stuff, either!”
“I wasn’t,”
he managed, and finally sat up, shaking his head as he studied her.
“You are a breath of spring.”
“I’m a what?”
“Sara, I don’t think there’s another woman alive, even in Raven Springs, who doesn’t know what comes next.”
“They probably didn’t have an alcoholic father, and a little baby to take care of, either,”
she reasoned.
“Probably not,”
he agreed, his eyes kind.
“The sort of women in my life wouldn’t have wasted an hour on a sick woman or a child.”
She looked at him for a long time.
“Why would you pick women like that?”
she asked gently.
“Avoiding responsibility,”
he mused, his eyes on a hawk flying above.
“I never wanted mundane things like marriage and kids. I wanted adventure. Excitement. I wanted exotic places and dangerous people.”
Her heart sank. She’d known that already at some level. But hearing it was like having a door slammed in her face. He was a worldly man and she was a backwoods girl, with no real knowledge of the outside world other than what she’d learned on her two trips to Denver.
“I’ve never been out of our county in my life,”
she mused.
“Except when I went to Denver with you.”
He gaped at her. “What?”
“I had too much responsibility at home to do anything else,”
she reminded him.
“And I never had any money.”
“Didn’t you want to travel, to see new places, meet new people?”
he wondered.
“Of course, but I had no money and I couldn’t leave Mama, and then Ed,”
she said simply.
“So I got my adventure from reading Cyrus Truman’s novels.”
His heart jumped. He had to be careful. So he looked bewildered and asked, “Who?”
“Cyrus Truman,”
she repeated.
“He’s really famous. He writes those big adventure novels about espionage and foreign agents and gangsters all mixed up with politics and black ops,”
she explained.
“Nobody knows where he gets his information. He knows about new things that haven’t even been talked about in public.”
She laughed.
“You should read one of his books. Honestly, they’re all that kept me sane in the past few months when Daddy went on his last rampages. He was my hero.”
She lowered her eyes.
“I guess that sounds stupid and na?ve to you.”
It sounded anything but. He hadn’t thought of her as the sort of person who’d be interested in such things. He was surprised. She was a kindred spirit that he hadn’t discovered until now.
“It doesn’t sound stupid. Sometimes books are all we have to keep us sane,”
he agreed, and there was a faraway look on his face.
She cocked her head.
“Our sheriff was overseas in the Middle East. They said you were, too, but not in the army, like Jeff.”
His head turned slowly. He looked into her eyes. His were darker, almost black, as the memories hit him. Hard.
She reached out a small hand and put it on his forearm.
“The past is just a memory. We can’t go back and change anything. It’s dangerous to try and live there,”
she added softly.
“You have to move on and leave the nightmares behind.”
His eyes took on a glitter.
“You don’t know a damned thing about my past,”
he said in a dangerously soft voice.
“I know that it haunts you,”
she said simply, and her heart was in her eyes.
“And that it shouldn’t. Things happen for reasons . . .”
He rolled his eyes.
“And here we go with the sermon,”
he growled.
“No sermons,”
she said with a quiet smile.
“The difference between you and me is that I put one foot in front of the other and go forward, every day, even if it’s just one step. I’m no good for Ed if I live in the misery of my past. I have to think of him and how I can give him a better life than I’ve had.”
His face was like stone. He stared at the horizon.
“You have no idea what my past was like, what I’ve done . . .”
He stopped abruptly.
Her fingers were caressing on his sleeve.
“I don’t need to,”
she said.
“It’s a part of you that you keep hidden deep inside, like a chest with no key. Maybe that’s the best way to deal with it, for some people. No solution fits every situation.”
He made a rough sound and pulled at a blade of grass.
“I had a counselor who was furious that I wouldn’t open up, as he called it, and tell him everything.”
“There are good counselors and bad ones. And sometimes there are mismatched ones, who’ve never been in combat and have no understanding of what men survive in the field.”
He frowned, staring at her.
“How do you know that?”
“I couldn’t travel, so I read. Book after book on spec ops, on Green Berets, on the SAS in England, on Army Rangers and the French Foreign Legion. Personal stories from men who’d been in combat.”
Her eyes were far away.
“I learned so much. I learned about personal courage, and that being afraid is part of heroism. Everybody’s afraid in combat; they all said that. But they take that fear and use it and go right through battles because they have to, because other men’s lives depend on them.”
She smiled.
“I read Cyrus Truman’s books also,”
she added.
“He’s like all those special forces guys rolled into one author. Plus he has to have been all over the world, the way he describes all those exotic locales, like Tangier and Paris and Rome and Africa.”
Her eyes were dreamy.
“I’ll never see those places, or have to carry a gun and go up against armed men. But I feel like I walked right beside him into all those desperate situations. He was my greatest inspiration while Daddy was at his worst. Cyrus Truman saved me from giving up and . . .”
She stopped abruptly and moved her hand away from his arm.
He glanced at her.
“Giving up, and what?” he asked.
Her shoulders rose and fell. She grimaced.
“Taking my own life,”
she said simply, looking up into his dark eyes.
“Daddy had knocked me down and hit me with the buckle on his belt, over and over until I was bleeding and screaming. When he’d worn himself out, he left my room. I locked the door. I had some of Mama’s pills that the doctor had given her before she died, pills for pain. I’d saved them. I went into the bathroom . . .”
The horror of what she’d almost done made her sick. She took a steadying breath.
“I thought I could do it. But then I thought about a scene in one of Truman’s books—Red Vengeance, I think. He was cornered in this seedy little bar in Tangier. He’d just survived a gunfight that left two very nasty men dead in a nearby building. He was on the run, but there were too many people after the shooter, so he had to find a way to leave the area. Plus the local police, who were very efficient, tracked the shooter to the seedy bar. It was very exciting,”
she added.
“They came in the door, half a dozen of them, dressed in camo, carrying AK-47s. He could have tried to run, but he didn’t. He sat right there, cool as ice, as they looked around for some desperate, sweating man who’d give himself away. They didn’t know who they were looking for, but he’d just shot two men and they were sure that their quarry would look like a hunted, desperate man.
“But all they saw was several men drinking and having a good time. The hero had pulled the waitress down on his lap and put his arm around her. She knew what was going on, and cooperated. He was very handsome,”
she added with a grin.
“So the police wandered past his table, and he just smiled at them and nonchalantly raised a glass. They gave him hardly a glance and kept walking. He bluffed them into leaving, because he kept his head.”
She laughed.
“He got out of the bar and took a cab to the airport, just that easily. And I thought if he could do it, if he could survive against impossible odds like that, I can do it. At least, there weren’t dozens of armed men hunting me. Just one mean, alcoholic father.”
He smiled slowly. He remembered the trip that had inspired that novel. The experience had been more nerve-racking than he’d remembered. As he listened to her, he relived it.
Funny, he’d never considered what his readers felt when they read his books. Sara was giving him a whole new perspective on what readers thought about his adventures. He felt vaguely proud that he could inspire her enough to actually save her life.
“I never thought about readers’ reactions to novels,”
he murmured.
“I don’t imagine the author did, either,”
she said, oblivious to who he really was.
“But he saved my life.”
He smiled slowly.
“Good for him.”
She smiled back.
“Books have been my only escape,”
she confessed.
“The more adventurous, the better. I wanted to read things that would take me far away from my own problems.”
She looked up at him.
“Isn’t that what they call living vicariously?”
He nodded.
“Have you ever done that?”
she wondered aloud.
“I do it a lot,”
he said, but, of course, he was writing from his own experiences. She didn’t know that.
She sighed.
“So many brave men,”
she mused.
“And nobody even knows who they are. They’re like shadows that pass us in the night and fade away.”
“Nice description.”
He chuckled.
“You should write books.”
“Not me. I’m not smart enough, or experienced enough, or traveled enough. I’ll let other people do those things and I’ll buy books that tell about them,”
she said with a grin.
He studied her quietly.
“How many of Truman’s books do you have?”
he wondered.
“Oh, all of them,”
she said.
“Of course, I used to have to wait for the paperbacks to come out before I could afford them. I’d check them out at the library in hardcover and then I’d buy the paperbacks several months later. But I get them on e-book these days.”
She grinned.
“Except now I can afford the hardcovers. I’ll have my own collection. Those books are keepers.”
“I’m sure Mr. Truman would be gratified to know that he had such an ardent fan,”
he told her.
“He’s so famous that he doesn’t need any more adulation than he already gets,”
she mused.
“They said when he goes on tour, he has to have a bodyguard along to toss the women out of his room. Some of them actually bribed people to get them into his room when he was speaking at writers’ conferences.”
“Do tell.”
He could have told her some stories about that!
“It must be nice, being famous,”
she said, picking up a twig.
“I don’t know, though. I don’t like crowds and I value my privacy. I’m not sure I’d like being notorious and having to have people chased out of my hotel room.”
She brightened.
“But artists aren’t quite so public as authors. Bestselling authors are like movie stars and TV personalities. Their faces are well-known. Artists are different. I like being a hermit.”
“Most authors would like it, too. But publishers want their authors to go on tour. It sells more books. They also do media tours.”
“Media tours?”
“Yes. They go to big studios, like in New York City, and the interviews are done with just a producer, a cameraman and a sound guy, and whatever host they’re invited by. They’re connected to TV shows all over the country.”
“Wow. That sounds very exciting.”
“Excitement, over time, turns tedious.”
She sighed.
“I guess it would. But if you’re really famous, it sort of goes with the turf, doesn’t it?”
She stared at her drawn-up knees.
“I wouldn’t want to be that famous. But then, I just paint.”
She grinned at him.
“Just paint.”
He rolled his eyes.
“Your work is genius. They told you that and it’s the truth.”
She smiled from ear to ear.
“Thanks. But I can’t really take credit for it. It’s a gift. Something that comes through me more than it comes from me,”
she tried to explain.
“Like writing,”
he agreed at once.
“One author described it as being on autopilot. She said she just typed the books. She had no idea what was coming next until she saw it on her computer screen.”
“That’s how I feel, too.”
His eyes narrowed on her face.
“You’re wiser than your years.”
“Shucks,”
she scoffed.
“’T’ain’t nothin’.”
She grinned widely.
He burst out laughing.
“You got that from old man Riley Barnes.”
“He doesn’t mind. Everybody mimics him. He’s a sweetheart.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“Am I a sweetheart?”
he teased.
She cocked her head.
“You’re a barracuda in a tuna suit.”
He chuckled.
“You’ll need to read the next chapter,” he said.
She blinked, having forgotten their earlier conversation.
“So you know what to do.”
“What to . . .”
She stopped and flushed at the look in his dark eyes.
He moved closer and in a lightning move, had her flat on her back.
“But I can give you a few pointers . . .”
She opened her mouth to answer him and his lips came down on hers.
Soft at first, tender, brushing and lifting in sweet little touches that made her body sing.
She caught her breath as the fever began to burn in her, a new fever that was frightening in its intensity.
She shivered as his mouth became suddenly insistent.
He smoothed his strong, hard body over hers, one long leg insinuating itself between both of hers.
While his mouth ravaged hers, his hands smoothed up and down her rib cage, his thumbs lightly brushing her small, taut breasts with every sweep.
She was shocked when she felt him move again, so that he was right against her in a greater intimacy than she’d ever experienced in her life.
His mouth became more insistent.
His body moved roughly on hers, and she felt something she’d only read about before.
Her small hands pushed unsteadily at his chest.
But he was in over his head.
She was warm and sweet and heaven to kiss.
He’d been months without a woman, and he was losing his self-control. He barely felt the protest.
She managed to drag her mouth away, shivering with need, not wanting to stop, but afraid to let it continue.
She wasn’t a casual lover and she wasn’t going to be a convenience for any man, especially this one, who’d already made his views about permanence crystal clear.
“You have . . . to stop,”
she said brokenly. “I can’t!”
“You can.”
His mouth was more insistent now, like the hips moving sensuously against her own.
“No,”
she said in a loud voice, and she dragged herself away from him and sat up, shivering.
He took deep breaths. He’d never felt such a loss of control. He didn’t understand it, and he was furious. She was playing him for a fool. Why hadn’t he realized? He sat up too, glaring at her. “Why not?”
he asked curtly.
“Everybody does it.”
“Not everybody,”
she said with what was left of her dignity.
“I’m sorry. I was playing earlier. I didn’t mean to sound . . .”
“But that’s how women play the game,”
he said in a cold, sarcastic tone.
“Come closer, come closer, stop, no, I can’t do that. Go away, but if you offer me a new Ferrari or some diamonds, I’ll probably change my mind.”
She turned her head and looked at him with sheer horror.
“They do that to you?”
she asked, shocked.
“Every woman does,”
he said. He got to his feet.
“And you’re no different,”
he added coldly.
“What do you want?”
She got slowly to her feet and looked up at him.
“I have everything I want,”
she said with quiet dignity.
“And what I don’t have, I work for.”
He was breathing heavily. He was furious and trying to control it. His fists were clenched at his sides as he glared at her.
“Teasing me about fishing, taking such interest in my past, in my nightmares.”
He laughed coldly.
“Who told you?”
She blinked and frowned.
“Told me what?”
she asked, her face totally without guile.
Even in his fury, he recognized her lack of understanding.
“It’s a small town. People gossip. How can you not know about me?”
“Nobody gossips about you,”
she replied.
“They’re afraid to. Jeff warned them.”
“Did he tell you?”
he persisted.
“I don’t know the sheriff that well,”
she replied. She drew in a breath. What had seemed like a quiet, wonderful fishing trip had turned into a disaster.
“Can you drive me home, please?”
she asked softly.
“Hell, yes.”
He got his tackle together, along with his one fish.
She was in the truck, belted in and waiting, until he got in beside her.
He started the truck and pulled out into the highway.
Even furious, his control was absolute. He didn’t speed or even scratch off.
Sara realized then that he’d only been kind to her because he needed a woman.
She didn’t understand much of what went on between men and women, except for what she’d read, but she’d made the mistake of taking Ty’s kindness seriously.
She’d thought he really did like her and wanted to get to know her.
She should have had better sense. She wasn’t really pretty, or sophisticated like they said his ex-girlfriend had been. She was only a body to him. Just that. It made her want to cry.
He pulled up at her steps.
With her dignity just barely intact, she smiled at him.
“Thanks for the fishing trip. It was nice.”
“Liar.”
He said it coldly, and with a glittery glare.
She kept the smile. “Goodbye.”
He was on his way back to his own place before he realized what she’d said to her. Not “so long”
o.
“see you later.”
She’d said, very firmly, “goodbye.”
It should have made him happy.
He was getting in too deep with her.
He, who wanted no serious ties ever again.
Well, he’d ensured that there would never be anything serious with Sara.
She’d assumed that all he’d wanted was a few nights in bed with her.
Because that was what she’d inferred from his behavior.
Actually, it wasn’t clear in his mind what he wanted, beyond kissing Sara until he couldn’t stand up.
Her mouth was soft and sweet.
She was kind and caring.
He was a man with a past, a dark past that haunted him, and Sara was an innocent.
He should be grateful that he’d found her out in time, before he was hooked.
She knew too much about him.
He didn’t believe it was perception.
Probably Jeff had told her about his past and she’d let him think she had mental powers or something.
She thought he only wanted her body.
He wasn’t sure what he wanted.
He missed her when he was at home alone.
He thought about her, far too much.
He couldn’t get the memory of her soft body in his arms out of his mind.
She wasn’t like any of the women who’d passed through his life.
The last one, his ex-fiancée, had been a hard-nosed opportunist.
He knew she’d slept with Danny Hartman, who’d been delighted to share the experience with Ty, whom he despised.
It had been the last straw for Ty, who’d raged at the woman for her disloyalty.
That was when she’d laughed and told him about the rich accountant who’d proposed to her.
He was far richer than Ty.
His parents were very rich and he was an only child.
Besides that, he didn’t live on a ramshackle ranch in the middle of nowhere.
She wanted glitter and high society and lots and lots of money to spend.
Ty had been so besotted with her at first that he hadn’t minded her flaws.
But as time went by, she was more dissatisfied, more belligerent, more demanding.
He did have money, but it was tied up in stocks and bonds and land and charitable foundations.
He had little ready cash.
She didn’t know just how rich he was.
She’d heard that he wrote novels, and she’d asked him about it.
But he’d told her it was only category stuff, just for men. He’d wanted her to want him for who he was, not what he had. She was great in bed. Not much out of it. She took him at face value, unaware of who he really was, and she’d let the accountant sweet-talk her into running away with him.
Meanwhile, since she’d left him and married the accountant, somebody had told her who Ty Blakeney really was—a powerhouse of a bestselling, world-class author.
Now she’d lost her husband to a smarter woman and she was between men.
She was trying to come back.
Weeks ago, he might have been stupid enough to let her.
But now, after Sara’s gentle influence, he was a different man.
The past had retreated without him realizing it.
He was looking ahead, not back.
He liked just being with Sara.
She was more than a possible conquest.
She was fun to be with.
She had a huge heart.
She took care of her little brother with great care, when a less principled woman might have just given him up to the protective services and led her own life. But that wasn’t Sara. She was loyal. Self-sacrificing. Loving.
He felt those thoughts like a body blow.
She’d had feelings for him.
He knew it, but hadn’t shamed her by throwing it at her.
She wanted him, too, although she didn’t seem to understand that, either.
She was a green girl, totally na?ve and clueless about modern life.
She was the sort of woman his late mother would have taken in and loved without a single doubt.
She would have loved Sara.
When he got home, he just sat in the truck for a few minutes, thinking about what he’d done.
It began to sink in that Sara would never let him near her now.
She’d be polite if they met, but she’d never allow him close enough to hurt her again.
He’d ridiculed her, cheapened her, shredded her pride.
She wouldn’t forget that.
He remembered what she’d told him about wanting to die after her father had beaten her, that his book had brought her back from the brink of disaster.
She’d idolized him.
And what had he done? Made fun of her attraction to him, shamed her with his idea of why she’d teased him.
He’d humbled her, in the worst way, because she’d been attracted to him.
And for what?
Fear.
That was why he’d pushed her away.
He’d been thrown out like garbage by a woman he loved.
He was determined that he’d never let that happen again.
Not registering that Sara was as unlike his former fiancée as the moon was from Mars, he’d found a way to push her out of his life before he went in headfirst and couldn’t save himself.
He wasn’t going to be sucked into her life.
He’d won.
She got out of the truck as she got out of his life.
It wasn’t that she didn’t forgive.
It was that she pulled into her shell like a turtle and stayed there to avoid being hurt.
She was the kindest woman he’d ever known.
And he’d treated her like a streetwalker who didn’t want to take his money.
He leaned his head against the steering wheel.
It felt cool and comforting while he contemplated what was left of his life.
The road ahead would be empty and without color.
The one person who made it beautiful was now gone, and it was his own fault.
He’d always said he was better, and safer, alone.
Now he had a chance to prove it.
He’d removed the one obstacle that could have taken him beyond his agony, into the light.
He should be throwing confetti and sending up fireworks.
Hooray, no more Sara to threaten his solitude.
He got out of the truck and walked slowly up the path to his cabin.
The sky looked angry and cold.
So did his future.
He felt a chill that had nothing to do with weather, like icy footprints on his heart.
Sara spent a miserable day smiling and pretending that everything was all right.
She thanked Mrs.
Grimes for babysitting the puppy, gave her a check, and left her and Ed, when Sara brought him home, playing video games while she worked in the kitchen making them lunch.
“It’s tuna fish sandwiches with homemade french fries,”
she announced.
“And vanilla pudding for dessert.”
“Sounds lovely,”
Mrs. Grimes said.
“I have to finish this battle before I can quit,”
Ed said, glancing worriedly at his sister.
She just smiled.
“Go ahead, it will keep.”
She went back into the kitchen, where she’d confined Goose to keep him from helping himself to the sandwiches on the coffee table.
Later, after she’d put Ed to bed, she climbed in under the covers in her own bed, the one she’d had since she was ten years old. It was comforting somehow. She’d always run in here to hide when her father went on his rampages. Most of the time, she could get the door locked before he could hit her. Most of the time.
She thought about what Ty had told her, about the little baby who’d died and sent her father almost crazy with guilt and grief. She could understand a little more why he drank. But the way he took out his guilt on his two remaining children had been terrible. Her poor sick mother had lived in terror, like her son and daughter. The sheriff would lock up her father infrequently, and that gave her mother and Ed and Sara just a little respite until he came home again. Those few peaceful days and nights were like diamonds in mud.
She put the dirty dishes in the dishwasher and cleaned the kitchen. It gave her something to do to take her mind off her disastrous date with Ty. She could never face him again. It would be too humiliating. His opinion of her stung like a wasp.
Mrs. Grimes came into the kitchen directly with plates and glasses that had held milk.
“Can I help?”
she asked gently.
Sara smiled.
“No, but thank you. I’m almost through in here.”
“That wasn’t what I meant,”
the older woman said, putting her burden in the sink. She straightened back up and looked at Sara with quiet sympathy.
“I said I had a nice shoulder, you know,”
she added softly.
Sara went into her arms and cried like a child.
“I told you about Ty,”
she said, her voice comforting.
“It’s always the worst men we set our hearts on. My first boyfriend was in a motorcycle gang, one of the really mean ones. I found all sorts of excuses for him until he ran over a little girl and laughed when her legs were broken. It opened my eyes.”
Sara drew back and wiped her eyes on the hem of her T-shirt.
“I should have known better,”
she said.
“I thought he liked being with me. I never dreamed that it was all a means to an end . . .”
She broke off, embarrassed.
”Same thing happened to me with a man,”
Mrs. Grimes said, not even shocked.
“I thought he liked me, too.”
She sighed.
“And that was almost forty years ago, but I still remember how crazy I was about him. I would have done anything for him. But what he did opened my eyes, just in time. Why do we always love the bad boys?”
“If you can find out, please tell me. I’m so na?ve, I belong in the twentieth century!”
“I know the feeling, believe me. When you’re my age, you look around and realize it’s not your world anymore. You’ll understand better one day, when you’re older.”
“I already understand it.”
She sighed.
“Ty has lived through some bad times. Worse than I can even tell you.”
She indicated the bookshelves, which were full of first-person accounts of great battles, of special forces, of international politics and their repercussions.
“Well, if you’ve read those books, you already know what he’s been through.”
Sara gaped at her, her mouth falling open in surprise.
Mrs. Grimes nodded.
“He was in one of those black ops programs. Don’t ask. That’s all I really know for sure. He has a cousin who’s in the Russian mafia, and contacts in some really bad places. I don’t think he works outside the law, but even if he does, he has pull in the Capitol. People who cross him, or his bosses, end badly.”
“But he’s not like that,”
Sara protested.
“He’s a good man.”
Mrs. Grimes smiled.
“Yes, he is. He has a conscience, despite the fact that they did their best to beat him out of it. He interrupted a mission that would have resulted in the deaths of several children, and threatened to go in front of a Senate investigating committee and tell the whole story. Naturally, they did nothing. He can be fearful when he wants to, and that time he had proof.”
“I noticed that he hates injustice,”
Sara said, averting her eyes.
“He’s not too keen on women right now, either,”
Mrs. Grimes added.
“So keep that in mind if you have any more dealings with him.”
“That’s unlikely,”
Sara said, without elaborating.
“I don’t think he’ll ever come near me again.”
“And you’ll never even whisper the reason why.”
Sara just nodded.
Mrs. Grimes picked up a shirt she’d been mending for Ed.
“Well, sometimes things seem to be at a dead end. And then the hero finds a piece of twine and a paper clip and lets himself out of his cell just before he’s due to be executed.”
“Really?”
Sara exclaimed.
“Really. I’ll tell you the story one day. Right now,”
she said, putting down the mended shirt.
“I’m going home to get some housework done. Something you might like to do also,”
she added gently.
“Staying busy helps.”
Sara smiled wearily.
“You know, that’s the best idea I’ve heard today!”
Mrs. Grimes smiled.
“Everything will be all right,”
she said.
“You have to believe that.”
Sara sighed.
“I’ll do my best.”
“That’s all anyone can promise,”
the other woman said, turning back to the living room to get her things together.
Days went by. Sara buried herself in her art, painting new canvases that were stormy and chaotic, ones that mirrored the pain and distance inside her that could find no safe harbor. She did her best not to think about the cause of them.
Meanwhile, she took Ed on field trips around the county, and to parties with other children at the church they attended. It kept her mind off things. Sort of.
The object of her misery was doing the same thing. He was working, for the first time in months. This novel was about a bad man who got himself involved with a small-town girl who was innocent and caring. He hadn’t planned to write any such thing, but the words kept coming. It was one of those books that literally wrote itself. All he had to do was sit at the computer and put his fingers on the keys. The book unfolded page by page.
He saw Sara at a distance in town from time to time. At the bank. At the pharmacy. Once he saw her coming out of the coffee shop. She saw him as well. She only smiled and nodded and went about her business. He had no idea how difficult it was for her to do that, and look normal, when inside she was wilting like a flower that had not been watered.
He was pretending as well. Pretending that Sara was still part of his life, that he could take her fishing or just riding around. That he could sit and talk to her.
Once, she had to go to Denver on business. But rather than ask Ty, she bought a small compact car and drove herself. It was a harrowing experience, driving in traffic, but she managed to do it without wrecking the car.
Once, when she ran into the sheriff at the local diner, he walked out with her and asked if she knew about her father’s connection with Ty Blakeney. She hadn’t. It turned out that they were in the same combat area overseas. Although Ty was much younger, Sara’s father had been the officer in charge of an army company stationed where Ty was involved in black ops. Ty had saved her father’s life.
It was a shock. She hadn’t known there was any connection. The sheriff, who’d also been in the army unit with her father, explained that a lot of her father’s problems could be blamed on the things he’d seen and done in combat. It changed men, he told her. Changed them in terrible ways sometimes. She was grateful for the information. It helped explain a lot.
Life rocked on. Spring came and went, with new clothes and toys for Ed and new clothes and some new calves for Sara. They gave Mrs. Grimes a gift card for her birthday. Sara was still mourning Ty and trying to shut him out of her mind. He hadn’t come near her for months. She never expected him to again, either. As time passed, things got a little easier. But only a little.