Homestands (Chicago Wind #1) (29 page)

“With you?” As if.

“Yes.”

He stretched to his full height, and Meg tipped her head back so he could see her glare.

It didn’t seem to faze him. “Look. I knew you’d say no if—”

“Hi, Dad.” Terrell barreled into the room, skidding to a stop between them and hugging Mike.

“You all set?” Mike asked.

Terrell nodded. “I’ll see you tonight, right?”

Anger colored her voice. “You know about this?”

Terrell’s smile faded. He looked back and forth between them. “It was my secret,” he said. “You didn’t guess, did you?”

“No, she didn’t. You did a good job, Terrell. Why don’t you head over to Jill’s? I’ll be there in a minute.”

What was he doing, rearranging her plans, telling her son where to go and what to do? “Terrell, you wait outside.
I
will be there in a minute.”

Meg waited until the kitchen door closed behind him before she shook her finger. “Michael Connor, I am not going
anywhere
with you—”

“Whoa.” He laughed and backed up a step, hands up. “No one’s called me Michael in years.”

“You listen, Mike.” She struggled to control her voice. “I have been looking forward to this day. You are dead wrong if you think I’m going anywhere with you.”

“Calm down, Meg.”

“Don’t tell me to—”

“I have something for you. Will you listen?”

He would regret this. She crossed her arms and looked out the windows. He would so regret this.

“I knew if I asked, like a gentleman, you’d pull this. So yes, I’m resorting to kidnapping. You
are
going with me if I have to buckle your seatbelt myself, and if I have to go that far, Jill will be helping me.”

“Jill is in on this?”

Mike nodded.

How could her best friend betray her like that? How had Mike convinced everybody that he was the good guy?

“Unbelievable.” She snatched her purse from the counter. Shoving her way past him, she yanked open the back door, startling Terrell who jumped, tangled his feet, and fell to the ground.

Meg helped him up.

Behind her Mike closed the door.

She glowered over her shoulder. “Is there anything else I should know?”

“Nope. Wait and see. You’ll like it.”

That was highly doubtful. She marched toward Jill’s yard, dragging Terrell beside her.

“Were you surprised, Mommy?” he asked.

“Very,” she snapped.

Meg didn’t calm down until they reached Aurora. The combination of sunshine and air conditioning made her drowsy and too tired to keep up her anger level.

Buildings flew by as they drove west on Interstate 88.

And Mike still refused to tell her where they were going.

“How much longer?” she asked again.

He glanced in his rearview mirror as if the light traffic was more important than she was. “You’re worse than Terrell. Have patience.”

“Kidnapping doesn’t leave me in a good frame of mind.”

“I’ll remember that.”

She’d make sure he would.

He tuned the radio to a sports station.

Fine. She could play bored too. She rested her head against the leather seat and let her drowsiness take over.

When she woke, the buildings of Aurora were gone. Farms dotted either side of the highway—silos rising behind barns and farmhouses and growing corn filling the landscape.

“Where are we?” She cleared her throat to get rid of the sleepy sound.

He ignored her question. “You slept awhile. Feel better?”

“You mean am I still angry? Yes. Are we almost there?”

A smile tugged at his mouth. “Almost.”

“Still no hints?”

“Look around.”

She studied the scenery. Farm after farm slipped by before she realized they looked familiar.

Then the toll sign flew past.

They were outside the town they’d met in.

“We’re going to Dixon?” What did he hope to accomplish with this? Just because she’d let him hold her last night—

“Figure it out?”

Was he taking her back to that high school lab table they’d shared just to pass her another note? She could see it now.
Please forgive me,
it would read in some high school rhyme that would have been cute if she were sixteen. She shook her head. “The high school.”

“Nope. Strike one.”

“If I get three strikes, will you turn around and go home?”

He slowed through the IPASS lane. “Funny. Come on, Meg. Think.”

“I am. My mind’s still sleeping.”

“Where else would we go?”

While Mike drove north, she tried to remember the places that had meant something to them. “That little restaurant where we all used to hang out. What was it called?”

“Phillip’s? Wrong again.”

She named a few more places with Mike shaking his head and smiling broader at each one.

Then he turned east.

Meg sat up in her seat. “The farm.”

He grinned.

Former neighbors’ farms flew by before the last hill, and her childhood home appeared, three silos rising behind it, the other buildings hidden from view. Meg stared as the house grew larger.

They were almost to the gravel drive before she could form a thought. “Why are we here?”

“I guess you could say I rented the farm. For you. For today.”

She sat back to absorb the news. “Why?”

“Because you lost a lot because of me.” Tires crunched on the gravel as he drove between cornfields. “I know this is probably too late to mean much, but I wanted to bring you back for a day so you could see it one more time.”

The Range Rover rolled to a stop in front of the farmhouse, and Meg craned her neck to take it in. She’d never had a chance to say goodbye.

Coming back meant more than he knew.

She swallowed the emotion in her throat. “What are we going to do?”

“Whatever you want. Luke Wagner is the owner now. Remember him?”

She shook her head.

“I played high school ball with his younger brother. Luke will be around, working of course, but you can go in the barns and wherever else you want, reminisce as much as you’d like.”

“And the fields?” She’d loved riding her bike along the dirt paths.

“We can’t go in the fields. I promised him we wouldn’t do that, but I did ask about the calves, since you liked them so much, and he said you could see them. His wife and kids are here so we won’t go in the house. I hope that’s okay.”

“I don’t think I’d want to see someone else’s things in it anyway.” The gray house looked the same on the outside.

“I brought lunch so we don’t have to go into town. Just go explore, do whatever you want. I’ll wait here until you’re ready to leave.”

Heat seeped into the Range Rover, but Meg’s arms prickled in excitement. “Thank you, Mike. This means a lot.”

“Aren’t you glad you came?” he teased.

She flushed as it dawned on her how close she’d come to missing this. “You could have told me where we were going. I can be reasonable.”

“And miss this look on your face?”

“Well, thank you.”

He nodded, his smile saying he was pleased with himself. “You’re welcome.”

“I want you to come too,” she blurted.

He studied her. “Meg…”

“As much as I want to, I can’t separate you from the farm. We had too much fun here.” She hesitated. She shouldn’t say more. She should keep her mouth shut— “Despite… things, we were good together, once.”

His voice was soft. “Yeah, we were.”

“Maybe, today, we could remember that?”

“You’re sure you want me with you?”

Perhaps it was a mistake, but it felt right. She sent him a smile as big as the one she’d woken with that morning. “I’m sure.”

Gravel skittered down the slope as they walked toward the farm buildings. The original barn, the one her great-great-grandfather Caldwell had built, sat before the three silos, still gray, and beyond them sat the milking barn. To the left, cows milled across the pasture, and to the right of the buildings stood the large metal tractor shed her dad had built. Surrounding it all were green, healthy plants.

“It looks the same,” she whispered. “It doesn’t seem real.”

“That’s what I thought.”

“You’ve been here already?”

“I didn’t want to bring you if it had been run down.”

There he went again, treating her so well. “Thank you.” He might have come out here, seen the place in bad shape, and never said a word. She’d never have known how thoughtful he’d been.

His footsteps followed her to the old barn’s first floor. Decades ago this had been where all the cows lived, but for as long as she could remember, it was home to the calves.

The door was open, and Meg stepped inside, stopping to let her eyes adjust to the dark interior. The smell told her the calves were still there.

Mike ducked beneath the doorframe. “I should have known you’d come here first.”

“I miss these guys.” She walked between the pens and counted the summer calves. Six. “They’re like big, friendly dogs.”

“Just dirtier. And stinkier.”

“‘Stinkier’?” she teased. She reached for the nearest calf and rubbed its nose. The calf’s long pink tongue, rough and damp, licked her wrist. She rubbed its eager head some more and looked back to find Mike standing in the walkway, swinging at a fly.

She grinned at the calf.

She made friends with each calf while Mike walked around the room, apparently studying the barn’s structure between trips outside for fresh air. She waited for him to urge her on, but he said nothing, eventually disappearing completely.

When she’d had her fill, she walked outside.

Mike leaned against the barn’s white side and again waited for her to lead the way. She walked up the slope and around the barn to the second level.

On this side, an earthen ramp had been built for wagon access to the oversized double doors. The old tack room still stood inside the entrance, former horse stalls filled with hay bales. Above them, the three-sided loft was filled with more bales, as it had been years ago.

Mike moved past her to the open center of the floor. “This was my favorite part.”

“I didn’t know you liked anything about the farm.”

“I liked our hay fights.” He grinned at her. “You’d start it, thinking you’d get the best of me, but you always lost.”

She contained her smile. “You were mean.”

“I was flirting.”

The hay fights
had
been fun. She meandered around the main floor, touching posts and walls, remembering rainy afternoons and cold winter days burrowed among the bales. She climbed the wooden ladder and explored the loft—only one batch of mewing kittens—before sitting on the edge and dangling her legs into open space as she’d done so often.

Below, Mike looked into the ancient tack room.

She watched him. What did this day mean? Was it a true change on his part, this gesture of giving back some of what he’d taken? Or was it another attempt to win her over?

And why again was that wrong?

She grabbed a handful of loose hay and watched it slide through her fingers to the main floor.

From the tack room doorway, Mike turned as if reading her thoughts. His gaze landed on her.

Meg fought back a smile. “Are you coming up?”

He shrugged. “I can.”

He climbed the ladder, his progress slow with one arm. He took his time reaching her, then sat down beside her, surveying the room below. “I think the last time we came out here was around graduation.”

She gave in to the impulse. “You mean it’s been a dozen years since our last hay fight?”

A smile tugged at his mouth. “I may have one arm, but you’d still get the worst of it.”

“Wouldn’t it be awful if hay went down your cast?”

“I’d like to see you try.”

She grinned back. “It’s tempting.”

He brushed a piece of hay from his shorts, his eyes still averted as if he were too shy to look at her. “And I’d feel terrible if your hair got messed up.”

“Oh, really?” She laughed, and Mike faced her at last, surprise and humor in his brown eyes. “If I remember right, it seemed that the worse I looked, the happier you were.”

“I wasn’t a Christian then.”

“Neither was I.” She stuffed a handful of hay down his back.

“Meg!” He scrambled to his feet and shook his shirt. Hay fell to the ground. “You know you won’t win.”

Laughter bubbled from her.

Mike tried to scowl. “You’re in trouble.”

“But you have to let me win, Mike. You’ve won every single fight, and this will be the last time we’ll do this. A real gentleman would let me win.”

“You’re asking me to throw a hay fight?”

“I’ll never tell. It can be our secret.”

He gave her the evil eye before sitting on the floor. “Don’t you dare touch my cast.”

With a grin, Meg circled him. “I may have to bury you just to get even.” She dumped another handful on his head.

“Doesn’t the Bible say”—he spit hay and rubbed his mouth with the back of his wrist—“something about not taking revenge?”

Not today. She bent to gather more hay. “It also says an eye for an eye, a tooth for a—”

Mike shot a load of hay in her face.

Meg sputtered at pieces on her tongue. Before she could react, he cornered her against a bale and shoved handfuls of hay down her back and dumped more on top of her, rubbing it into her hair.