Wait Until Dark, page 35
The conversation drifted from the best breed of sheep for wool - they all agreed that rambouillet was the finest - to the need to diversify beyond sheep and cattle to make the ranch more self-sufficient.
Val had settled in and sipped at her coffee, savoring the night and the conversation and the sense of belonging that had always seeped inside her when she was under this roof.
"Val, if you need something to read, I have a few books upstairs I've recently finished that you might enjoy," CeCe offered.
"Thanks. That's one thing I didn't think to bring with me. I'd appreciate a loan." Val smiled gratefully at the thoughtful gesture.
"I'll run upstairs and get them for you while I'm thinking of it" CeCe excused herself to seek out the books.
Evan and Eric, Cale's twin sons, ran noisily up the steps with mason jars filled with lightning bugs, which they brought to their aunt Val to admire.
"Look at 'em all." Eric held the jar up in front of her face. "We never find this many in Maryland."
"I've got more than you do." Evan held his jar up to compare.
"No, you don't," Eric protested.
"Yes, I do."
"Boys, it seems to me that you both have more than enough," Val told them. "Now, why don't you just set those jars on the railing there and open the lids so the lightning bugs can fly away?"
"It's too early. I want to catch more."
"It's almost time for your showers, guys," Quinn told them from the doorway. "Do as Aunt Val said, then come in to get cleaned up for the night."
"Gramma and Aunt CeCe let us stay up till eight... nine o'clock." Eric told his stepmother pointedly.
"Well, Gramma and Aunt CeCe are much nicer than I am. Let's go, buckos." Quinn stepped onto the deck, her arms crossed over her chest. "And besides, we need to have a little talk about the two of you going off up into the hills by yourselves."
"We knew where we were going," Evan told her. "Honest. We weren't lost."
"Lost is not the issue, guys." Sky sat down in the chair next to Val. "No one thought you'd get lost. Don't either of you remember what I told you about what you might come across up in the hills this time of year?"
"Mountain lions," Eric said. "Rattlesnakes."
"Wolves and bears," Evan added.
"Guys, you have to take this seriously. The momma bears are very protective of their babies." Trevor joined the conversation, leaning against the deck railing and lifting a jar of lightning bugs as if inspecting them.
"We know what to do if we see a bear, Uncle Trev," Evan assured him. "You make lots of noise to scare them away, or you run up the nearest tree.”
"And if you can't get to a tree, you fall on the ground like this." Eric dropped to the deck and curled into a ball, clasped his hands behind his neck, and played dead.
"All well and good, but you really don't want to be in that situation. A bear can take an arm or a leg with one swipe of that big paw, whether you've rolled into a ball or not," Sky reminded them.
"Did you ever see one, Uncle Sky?" Eric asked as he uncurled himself. "Did you ever see a real bear?"
"Several times. I was very lucky that I was never chased by one."
"Sunny was chased by one once," CeCe said, referring to their sister, Susannah, as she eased around Quinn, who stood in the doorway. "Elizabeth saved her."
"Elizabeth is a ghost," Eric told Val, as if she didn't know, though of course she'd heard the legend. How Elizabeth Dunham, Catherine Hollister's great-great-great-grandmother, a full-blooded Cherokee, had lived in a tiny cabin for years after her beloved husband Stephen had died and was said to still walk the hills.
"How did she save Aunt Sunny?" The boys sat at her feet.
"She stood in front of Sunny so that the bear couldn't see her."
"Didn't the bear see Elizabeth?" Eric asked.
"Apparently not."
"Is Elizabeth a real ghost or not?" Evan asked, his eyes narrowing, adding, "My teacher says there are no ghosts."
"She's sort of what we think of as a ghost" Quinn answered. "But not a scary one. And she only comes around when someone in the family is in trouble. And whether or not ghosts really exist, well, all I can tell you is that I saw her with my own eyes."
"You did?" The boys were wide-eyed.
"I did," Quinn nodded solemnly.
"What did she look like?" Evan leaned forward.
"She had black hair that she wore in one long braid over her shoulder. It reached almost to her waist. And she had a blanket around her." Quinn gazed out across the landscape, remembering.
"What did she do, the time you saw her?" Eric asked.
"She led me through a terrible snowstorm to Jedidiah's cabin once. That was the day I met you boys, remember?"
"You didn't tell us you came there with a ghost." Eric scowled. "Why didn't you let us see her?"
"I think you were sleeping when I got there."
"You should have called her back."
"She doesn't come when she's called. She just appears when she thinks someone needs help."
"You're making that up," Evan accused.
"No, she's not," Catherine Hollister joined the conversation. "I've seen Elizabeth more times than I can count."
"I've seen her, too," CeCe added. "One time when Liza was little, I took her swimming in Golden Lake. On the way home, a mountain lion started following us. We were so scared, I just didn't know what to do. Then, the next thing we knew, Elizabeth was there. We followed her down to the stream and crossed it where she did, but the mountain lion didn't follow us."
"Wow. A real ghost in the hills." Eric nodded to his brother. "Cool."
"So even if a bear did try to follow us, Elizabeth would know that we were in danger and come and save us." Evan turned to Quinn. "So what's the problem?"
"The problem is that you can't rely on a spirit showing up," Quinn told them.
"And here's another thing you need to know about." Trevor joined them. "The rattlesnakes are really bad this year. I've seen dozens of them. I can't recall ever seeing so many. Last week I'll bet there were a dozen or so sunning themselves on that outcrop of rock up there beyond Jed's cabin."
"That makes me about as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs." Eric nodded solemnly.
"Now where did you hear that expression?" Sky laughed.
"From Charlie," Eric admitted.
"It figures. Charlie's from Texas. And that sounds like Texas to me." Trevor got up and lifted one small boy under each arm. "Come on, fellows, I'll carry you in for your momma."
"We don't want to... " The boys' wails trailed behind them all the way through the house.
"So much for the tranquillity of the hills." Quinn laughed as she followed them inside.
"Oh, I almost forgot." CeCe glanced at her watch. "I was supposed to call my cousin Alexa at eight. I need to let her know what time to be at the dressmaker's on Saturday for the fitting of her bridesmaid dress."
CeCe excused herself.
"I swear there should be a ban on more than one family wedding in any given year." Catherine shook her head. "First my nephew, Christian - he was married last month - then my niece Selena announced that she was getting married at the end of July. And then CeCe and Dalton in September... my nerves can't take it all."
Catherine paused for a moment, then sighed, "I forgot to tell CeCe that the caterer called this morning. Excuse me," she said somewhat absently and she, too, went into the house and closed the door.
"Tired?" Sky leaned over and stroked the back of Val's hand.
"A little." She nodded.
"Come on, then." He helped her to her feet. "I'll take you back to the cabin."
Sky's battered old pickup was parked out near the barn. Cautioning her to watch her step, Sky took Val's hand and led her across the uneven ground behind the house, where years of ranch equipment and trucks of various weights had rutted the earth. He opened her door and gave her a gentle assist up into the cab, then climbed into the driver's side without comment. The radio came on with the ignition, spewing static. He turned it off with one hand while he backed the truck from its parking place.
The moon was high, and generously shed its soft glow across the hills. A golden stream of pale light led from the Hollisters' barn to the old dirt road that led to the McAllister cabin. Sky drove slowly, making small talk, until they reached the cabin.
"You can just let me off here," Val told him as he parked along the side of the dirt road.
"I'll walk you up," he said, turning off the ignition and hopping out before she could protest.
He was there to offer his hand even as she opened the door. She took it and hopped down, landing in the circle of his arms, where she stayed for a very long minute. Then, as if following a script she'd known by heart all her life, she raised her face to his, inviting his kiss.
Sky leaned down and met her mouth with his own, softly, so softly, as if fearful of causing her yet more pain. Holding onto his collar, Val pulled him closer still, and this time he responded to her demand with a kiss that all but took her breath away.
Later, after she'd gotten into bed and pulled the thin cotton blanket around her, she closed her eyes and tried to recall what it had felt like to have him kiss her like he really meant it. She marveled at how just the mere pressure of his lips on hers had caused such heat to spread down to the soles of her feet. She had fallen asleep thinking about how good it had felt, how it was about time that they finally began to explore exactly what had been hanging between them for the past few years, and how maybe just this once, reality had a good chance of proving to be better than fantasy.
8
SKY SLOWLY MANEUVERED THE PICKUP up the hill, humming along with the tape that played almost inaudibly. Basically a shy man, he was comfortable with silence surrounding him. But he knew that everyone did not share his ease, and wondered if Val had been hoping for a livelier conversation the night before. The last time he and Val had spent any amount of time together alone, there had seemed to be so much more to say. But that was almost two years ago, before her face had appeared on so many of those magazine covers. How much might she have changed since then? He hadn't spent enough time alone with her these past days to call it.
But last night, just about the time he'd started wondering about it, she'd rolled down her window and reached her right arm into the night, raising her open hand as if to catch the moonlight, much as a child might do, and said, "Remember the time Liza and I went camping up near the lake and you and Cale and your buddies dressed up in sheets and came up to scare us?"
And in her laughter, he'd heard the same girl he'd known most of his life, that same girl who'd caught his eye the year she'd turned eighteen. And he remembered that same girl who had, the following year, come home for that first visit since she'd moved to New York. Beneath her big city polish and new, designer clothes, he'd sensed both restlessness and vulnerability, and in her smile, he'd found none of the confidence one would have expected from a young woman who was clearly going places. She'd seemed less excited about her new life than resigned to it, almost reluctant to discuss it, appearing more interested in Liza's experiences as a college freshman than in her own as an up-and-coming cover girl who'd already been photographed in some of the world's most exotic locales. She'd seemed vaguely disconnected from her success, as if baffled by it. The thin layer of fear hidden beneath her insecurity had touched him then, and it touched him now.
Sky'd known about the poverty that the McAllisters' had endured as children. Hadn't Cale once confessed, in the mist of his best year as a professional baseball player, that despite his success, he was never without the fear it could all be taken from him in a heartbeat? In Val, Sky recognized that same hesitancy, that reluctance to believe that all might, in the end, be well. In the tentative eighteen-year-old just trying her hand at a very sophisticated game, it had not been unexpected. In the woman, a ten-year veteran of that game, it came as a surprise.
And yet, for as long as Sky had known Val, he'd never known her to be consciously aware of her beauty, perhaps because it had taken so many years to assert itself.
His earliest memories of her were as a very spindly eight- or nine-year-old who, in worn shorts and bare feet, had sat on the top bleacher at the ball field, watching as her big brother played little league baseball. Her presence there had been a constant, he couldn't recall that she'd ever missed a game. And afterward, Cale would walk her home in the dark to their tiny house across town before returning to the ball field to celebrate a win or commiserate a loss with his teammates. But always, Cale's skinny little sister came first.
Sky could recall in perfect detail the exact minute when he'd noticed that Val wasn't a skinny little kid anymore.
It had been the summer before her senior year in high school. Sky had been a junior in college and reluctant to come home anymore than he'd had to, college life offering so much more than what was to be found at the High Meadow. He'd been hoping to get a job on the rodeo circuit like several of his friends were planning on doing, but there was no end to the work that had to be done on the ranch, and his father had other plans for him. Up until that summer, Sky had never thought of Valerie as much more than his friend's little sister or his own little sister's best friend. He'd had no way of knowing that while he was off at college, she'd been busy growing up.
And grow up, she had, and done a damned fine job of it, too.
There'd been a party for Liza's eighteenth birthday, a sleep-over with all her friends from town. The plan had been for the girls to picnic and swim in the afternoon, and return to the High Meadow for a barbecue. The girls were due back at the ranch by five, but when, at six-thirty, they still had not arrived, Mrs. Hollister had sent Sky up to bring them back. When he arrived at the lake, the girls were all still swimming, and he'd stood on a rock and with two fingers to his lips, whistled to his sister to get her attention, then signaled that their mother wanted her and her friends to start on home. Liza had waved to let Sky know she'd gotten the message and would comply. He'd turned to walk back to his truck just as the girl closest to shore had stepped out of the water and onto the grassy slope. She'd reminded him of that painting, the one where the woman was walking out of the sea, and he'd stood staring, mesmerized by her beauty and her natural grace, his mouth growing dry.
His face flushed crimson when she'd waved and smiled, and he'd realized that the rush of lust had been inspired by Valerie McAllister. He hadn't had one thought of her since then that had not been accompanied by that same stab of heat. There was something about her, her physical beauty aside, that had captivated him then and there and had never really let go. Oh, there'd been plenty of women in his life, all right. Especially those years he'd spent roping cattle and playing at being a rodeo hero back before he'd had to take his part running the ranch. The young ladies sure did go for that cowboy mystique.
But ever since Val had come back to renovate old Jedidiah's cabin, he'd found less and less of what interested him in the bars down in town or up in Lewiston. She'd come again for Cale and Quinn's wedding, and the time they spent together that week had seemed like a promise given, though no such words had been exchanged. There had just been an air of certainty about them when they were together, and he'd known then that when she was finished doing what she'd been doing, she'd be coming back home. And he'd be waiting for her.
He'd just never figured that she'd be coming back like this, wounded and afraid, the victim of some random act of violence, the kind that had never seemed to hit so close to home, until now. He'd been sickened at the news that she'd been attacked, sickened at the thought of anyone harming her in any way. It had been all he could do when he'd gotten back from two weeks on the Dunham farm not to take off for California as soon as he'd heard, find the person who had hurt her, and beat the living stuffing out of him. But of course, by the time Sky'd heard, Val was but two days away from being flown back with Quinn, and Cale had asked him to wait.
And so he waited at the High Meadow for his sister to bring Val home. Quinn had warned them all that Valerie was most self-conscious of the cut on her face, but even that had not prepared him for the viciousness of the wound. For her own sake, Sky had decided that the direct approach would serve best, and so he'd forced her to let him look at the cut, made her see that he did not flinch nor was he repulsed by the way she looked, as her eyes had told him so plainly that she feared he might be.
How anyone could have done that to her was beyond Sky's comprehension.
But what had all but broken his heart was her fragility. One look at her face and Sky knew that Valerie would not be leaving the hills to return to her old life even once the healing process was complete. She'd come back there to lick her wounds, literally and figuratively, because it was home. It was where she belonged.
But beyond all that, Sky knew - had known for years - that she belonged with him. He hated that her retirement had been forced upon her, that the choice had been taken from her but that was the hand she'd been dealt. It would be up to her now, how she'd play it out.
Sky parked the truck along a row of aspen trees and rolled up the window despite the heat. The bugs had been fierce this summer, and he hated the thought of getting back into the car later this afternoon and finding the cabin filled with all manner of flying devils. He took the picnic basket by the handle and swung it out, slammed the door behind him as he made his way to the front of the cabin.
"Val," Sky called through the open screened door.
"Come on in," Val answered from the kitchen. "I was just starting to make some iced tea to take along with us."
Sky held up a Thermos jug and grinned. "My mother made some this morning."
"And lunch, too, dare I ask?" Val pointed to the picnic basket.
