The phone rang, sharply, insistently.
“Don't answer it,” Truck murmured. He had her; he really had her and they were on the edge of something deep and profound, and he wasn't going to let her go for anything.
But she felt the familiar tense excitement; she couldn't stand not to answer it, and she eased free of Truck's arms and darted into the house, while he followed angrily.
“Carrie, it's me, Jeannie. Listen, I'm with Old Man. I had it out tonight with Eddie, and I left him. He's so furious...”
“Whoa, Jeannie, whoaâ” Carrie shook her head to try to take in what Jeannie was saying. But it was too far a step from the emotion of Truck's revelations to Jeannie's overwrought announcement.
She motioned to Truck. “It's Jeannie. She says she's at your houseâ” She held up the phone between them so he could hear what Jeannie was saying as well.
“Jeannie, did I hear you say you
left
Eddie? What happened?”
“I had it out with him, Carrie, and now I don't know what he's going to do. He wouldn't listen to me, he wouldn't listen to reason... and worst of all, he's blaming it all on you...”
This, on top of everything else. Carrie put the phone down slowly, her expression stricken. “I did this. Eddie's right I'm the catalyst...If I hadn't come back, if I hadn'tâ”
She got no further; Truck buried her face against his chest, murmuring, “Don't, Carrie. Don't do that to yourself. It's been coming on for years, don't... don't... We all told herâdon'tâ”
She cried. She didn't know whether she was crying for Jeannie or for herself, or her mother, but she cried, and Truck held her and smoothed her hair, and she couldn't stop. It all welled up from someplace she wasn't even aware of, all the anguish, all the lost opportunities, all her sorrow over the failure of Jeannie's marriage, all her conflicted emotions about Truck.
But she couldn't allow herself the luxury of tears, not for long. She pulled away from Truck and went to the kitchen to splash cold water on her face.
“Come on, we'll go up to my house,” Truck said.
Which was exactly what she needed to do.
But, after all that emotion, and all that pain, Carrie felt
very strange walking into Old Man's house in the dead of the night, because she would be seeing it with new eyes and, after the evening's home truths, she didn't want to know what it was like, what she could have had, what she had missed.
It was a big comfortable house with an enclosed porch, a spacious living room with shelves and shelves of books, magazines, music, games, cushiony chairs and couches, tables of several heights and lamps conveniently placed for reading.
“So, Carrie,” Old Man said, “you've finally come.”
Home
. It hung in the air even though he didn't say it
“I'm worried about Jeannie,” she said.
“She'll be fine,” he said reassuringly. “We've called our lawyer. We'll get an injunction. It looks worse than it is.”
“But Eddie saidâhe asked me what kind of voodoo I was working on Jeannie.”
“No law against that,” Old Man said. “Sit down, Carrie. You look wiped out.”
“Yeah, I am.” She sank onto the couch. Jeannie was in the kitchen, conferring with Truck, who was on the phone.
They didn't need her here, she thought And Eddie wasn't going to do anything drastic, like come after her. He was all bluff and bluster, he always had been. But he'd scared Jeannie to death. And there was that part of him that always seemed to be a little bit out of control. And now that Jeannie had, to all intents and purposes, taken everything away from him, what wouldn't he do?
“Jeannie's going to stay here,” Old Man said. “You're welcome to stay too, Carrie, until this shakes out.”
“Or I'll stay with her,” Truck said, coming back into the room. “In fact, that might be the best solution.”
“I wouldn't mind if someone asked me,” Carrie put in irritably.
“You've already proven you're in no shape to make a coherent decision,” Truck said. “I think we should all stay here tonight, and see what happens in the morning.”
Jeannie made coffee, and they huddled around the game table in the far corner of the living room.
“I don't know where I got the nerve,” Jeannie said, holding her cup tightly in her hands. “I think it was watching Carrie just steam ahead, making things happen in places you'd think there weren't any opportunities.
“I thought, I've been wasting opportunities. All the nights I wait up for Eddie. All the days I just get through, waiting for something to happen. And nothing ever does. Everything is the same. We're roommates, Eddie and L I'm a piece of furniture. I'm something he put in his house to enhance his comfort.
“So when I started looking different, I threw him off balance. It was like I'd changed the furniture without asking him, and he suddenly didn't know where things were. He couldn't use them in the same way, because they were different and he wasn't used to it.
“He really liked Jeannie the farm woman. I was a glowing advertisement for the benefits of rural living. A woman on the farm is not one who spends a lot of money on
female
things, you know. And there's a certain kind of man that's really attracted to that idea.
“So, I started by buying new clothes, and you saw what happened at the dance. He was baffled. I was the same, and I was different in a way that I stood out suddenly. We fought a lot about that. He really wanted me
to be like his mother. To be the person who created his comfort zone, and not question anything he ever did.
“And I did that for a long time. And when we didn't have babies, well, I made another comfort zoneâfor him. He didn't want to adopt. He wanted his kids or no kids.”
“That must have been so hard for you,” Carrie murmured, reaching out and grasping Jeannie's hand. “That was so mean. So thoughtless.”
“Well, it's over,” Jeannie said. “I finally found some attitude, some backbone. I found that men liked me just as I am now and that Eddie isn't the be-all and end-all in my life. But that was what I thought I thought no one else could ever love me.” Her voice crumpled. “The sad part is, he never really did.”
Her eyes brimming with tears, Carrie looked up at Truck as if to say,
You see
?
You see
?
“You loved him for a long time,” Truck said. “You tried.” He looked right into Carrie's teary eyes. “It would have been sadder if you'd never tried.”
They all managed to get a little sleep; Jeannie took the guest room, and Carrie curled up on the couch. In the morning, Truck took her back home so she could change, and she refused his offer to take her into town.
How dangerous could Eddie be? He was volatile but he wasn't stupid. Jeannie would go to work as usual and the lawyer would take care of the matter.
Nothing was going to happen.
Carrie was disabused of that notion very fast when she found the tires on her cycle viciously slashed that afternoon after she'd finished up at Longford's. It couldn't be ignored: Eddie meant business. He was coming after
those he felt were responsible for uprooting his comfortable life.
He was coming after
her
.
Â
TRUCK TOOK HER HOME. It was the last thing Carrie wanted, but he'd been the first person Henry Longford had called.
“Well, I told him to call me in case of trouble,” Truck said, tuning out her tirade. “Just be quiet.”
“I don't need you,” Carrie said through gritted teeth. “I can deal with this on my own.”
“Well, hell, I need you, and if Eddie Gerardo's turned into an ax murderer, I don't want to be the last to know. Just cool it, Carrie, until we make sure everything's okay at the house.”
“You think he knows Jeannie's staying with you?”
“He probably thinks she's with you.”
Uh oh. For the first time, Carrie felt a little frisson of fear.
“She didn't go to work today, by the way.”
Worse and worse...and she'd left early: seven-thirty. It was almost two-thirty in the afternoon now.
Truck eased his van down the dirt track and came to a jolting halt.
SomeoneâEddieâhad been there.
Carrie sat there frozen, unable to grasp the scope of the wanton destruction. He had broken all the windows in the front of the house. He'd chopped up all the porch furniture, her makeshift desk, the birdfeeder hanging on a nearby tree. He'd dumped the plants she'd had hanging from the eaves of the porch, and shoveled manure all over the floor. And he'd cut the phone line.
Truck paged his father. A minute later, his cell phone rang.
“Carrie's place is a mess. I need Alden over here for emergency window repair, standard cottage double
hungsâtwelve sheets. And the sheriff. I can handle the rest. Yeah, I think it was Eddie. And someone slashed her tires.” He flicked off the phone. “Old Man's got a cb. He'll catch the sheriff quicker wherever he is. We can't do anything until he comes anyway.”
But he thought of ten violent things he wanted to do, all of them centering around the primitive urge to beat the hell out of Eddie Gerardo, and rub his nose in the muck on Carrie's porch.
She hadn't said a word. What was there to say? They all misjudged the depth of Eddie's resentment and fury. And he'd picked the most convenient target today. Who was to say tomorrow he wouldn't find and attack Jeannie?
She felt sick. Ill. Violated. There were no words for that.
She pushed herself to get out of the van just as the man from Alden's came strolling down the track.
“I think we're going to have to carry the glass down piecemeal,” he said to Truck.
“So we'll carry it,” Truck said as the sheriff's car drew up and he got out.
“Brad.”
“Hey, Truck. This is something. Know who did it?”
“We think so, but there's no hard evidence.”
“All right. Tell me what you know, we'll take some pictures and get on it from there.”
Truck gave the sheriff the details and walked him over to the van where Carrie was standing. “Carrie, this is Sheriff Brad Hillis.”
Carrie shook herself. Another face from the past, another one-two picture flashing in her mind, the young face superimposed on the older one.
“I remember you,” she said.
“Sorry about this.” He turned to Truck. “You think Old Man would mind if I dropped by and talked to Jeannie?”
“He probably expects you.”
“Okay. I'll get a couple of pictures, and then you can clean up.”
While he did that, Truck and the glazier brought down some of the fragile panes of glass and leaned them against the side of the porch.
Then Truck tackled the cleanup in earnest, a knighterrant to Carrie's benumbed princess until she could safely enter the castle.
Truck was right behind her. “He didn't get as far as transgressing in here obviously.”
“He could've.” She walked into the kitchen. “He could have been in every room. He could have
touched
things. I feel as if everything is tainted.”
“Only if you let it...” Truck reached for her. “Only if you give him that power...”
Carrie clenched her fists.
The bastard.
It would be so easy to let herself wallow in shock and let Truck pick up the pieces. And that was the last thing she wanted him to do.
“Don't let him in your house, Carrie.” His voice was soft in her ear, his arm sliding around her unobtrusively, and instinctively she leaned against him. Just for a moment Just for one small solid reassuring minute, she let him comfort her. “Don't let him in your life.”
She felt so secure when he held her, so safe. And she felt the danger from him, too.
If she gave in, if she let Truck do everything, if she let him in her life, he would have the power...and she would have...?
Love? Commitment? Family?
She didn't want to go there.
The only antidote was action. She pulled away from him abruptly, grabbed a broom and some garbage bags and, without a word, she went outside.
11
I
T TOOK ALL DAY and into the evening for the windows to be replaced and to scrub the stench of manure from the floorboards of the porch. Everything else they'd piled in a heap at the side of the house to be loaded into a small Dumpster that would be delivered tomorrow. By that time, it was almost nine o'clock. Alden's men had finally left and Carrie was foraging for something to eat. Not that she was hungry but Truck surely had to be; all he'd had was four cups of coffee in the interim.
“I can make you a fast pasta,” she offered.
“Don't rush on my account.”
She prickled instantly. “Oh yeah? What does that mean?”
“It means I'm not going anywhere. And I'm especially not going anywhere if you're staying here.”
Carrie slammed the pantry door. “I just lost my appetite.”
“And I'm ravenous.”
Carrie stamped out of the room. He had a hell of a nerve, she fumed, assuming...things...just because they'd worked so efficiently together all day.
She stood on the porch and rubbed her hands over her face. What a day!
Jeannie had come over in the late afternoon to see what Eddie had done and she'd been horrified.
“He thought you were here,” Truck had told her. “He
probably thought he'd fix you
and
Carrie but good. But look, Brad's handling it now. And the lawyer. So you just stay with Old Man until things clear up.”
“But what about Carrie? What about you?”
“Jeannie...don't be naive.”
Her mouth had rounded. “Oh.
Oh...”
Although Jeannie had insisted that she wanted to stay and help, both Carrie and Truck had insisted that they had things under control and it would be best for Jeannie to go back to Truck's. Reluctantly, Jeannie had agreed.
Were it so easy to convince Truck that she could take care of herself. But Truck wasn't going anywhere. He had followed her out to the porch. “I don't need a nursemaid,” she hissed, throwing up her hands.
“Fine.” Truck squared off in front of her. “Throw me out.”
“You're not going to convince me of anything by staying, you know,” she said.
“I wouldn't bet on it,” he murmured.
There was nothing he could say or do, she was immune to him now, Carrie thought. And all the things he'd told her last night washed every other feeling away.
Carrie strode past, and back inside the house. He wanted to stay, so let him! She was immune to him now, wasn't she?
Yet the intimacy of having him in the house was stunning. This was way different than his subtle sensual entrances and exits during their nights of phantom love. This was Truck, sitting in her living room, expanding the space, filling it to the point that she felt as if she were suffocating.
It became a contest of wills. Carrie wasn't going to bed
until he left. He wasn't leaving and she might just as well go to bed.
Neither of them had to say a word. It was in the air. Her temper. His determination. And shimmering under that, a galvanic awareness of each other that hadn't diminished under the onslaught of revelations.
It was almost too much for her. She was spent, physically and emotionally. Nonetheless she was so keyed up she thought she'd never sleep again.
“It's okay,” he said at one point “I'm not going anywhere.”
“It's
not
okay. And stop saying things like that.”
“Fine, but you'd better understand something. I'm staying with you until this thing with Eddie is cleared up. And even then I may never go home.”
She let out her breath in a huff. “I didn't hear that.”
“I haven't spared you anything, Carrie. You've
gotten
everything.”
I haven't gotten you out of my system,
she thought. As much as she kept telling herself she was immune to Truck, the heat between them was still there.
She bolted out of her chair. “I'm going to bed.”
But it wasn't any easier blocking out his presence when she couldn't see him, because he was so aggressively
there
, and he was still the phantom lover of her dreams.
Â
HE DROVE HER TO WORK, he brought her back home.
“Don't
you
have any work to do?”
“I delegated. Come on, Carrie. This isn't so terrible.”
“When I get my cycle back...”
Well, he'd managed to delay that, at least. Dooley, the Harley mechanic in Portland, had called to say they had to order the tires. It would be a week, maybe less.
Carrie gritted her teeth. A week of him living with her.
Living with her!
After all her fuss about what people would think if he took her out to dinner. She couldn't believe it. He just wasn't going home. Period.
He made dinner for her the following evening.
She swallowed it down. This was too cozy, too intimate, too much like...like...she couldn't even think the words.
“Have the police seen any sign of Eddie?”
“No. He wasn't at the house, he never came in to the office. He's got a girl working there who's been fielding phone calls because he had a couple of contracts pending. But no closings, thank God.”
Jeannie had taken some vacation time, confessing to Carrie over the phone that she hadn't had a vacation in years. “Eddie was always working, never wanted to go anywhere. Don't get me started. Being up here with Old Man is like being in a private resort where nobody bothers you and you can rest and relax to your heart's content.”
And Jeannie did look less peaked, Carrie thought when she and Truck went up to Old Man's the following night for dinner. And if it weren't for the circumstances, it would be just like a Sunday-night family gathering.
What is happening here?
Jolley had made a big pot of stew, and Truck had picked up some French bread from Verity's, and fresh butter from the farm up on Hill Road. There was cider and lemonade and iced tea, and Jeannie had baked a carrot cake for dessert.
About a half hour into the meal, Brad Hillis dropped by to update them on the fact that Eddie was still missing. They invited him to dinner. And Tom appeared to see how Jeannie was getting on.
Suddenly it was a party. Old Man got out some music. They pulled away the tables and chairs. Tom and Jeannie started dancing. The whole thing caught Carrie by surprise.
“Come on, Carrie.” Truck took her arm.
“Oh, no. No,” she protested. “This is how the whole thing started.”
“What thing?”
“The night thing. The slow-dancing thing.”
“Carrie, it's only a dance. And damn, I know I've said that line before.” He pulled her into his arms; she was stiff as a board. She wasn't getting any closer to the seductive movement of his body than she had to. She wasn't going to let anything happen between them ever again.
“Carrie, you are not a fool, and you are fooling yourself so badly, it's painful to watch.”
“Then
don't.”
“Hell, I have a front-row seat,” he muttered, “and I'm not giving it up to anybody.”
Later still, they played some of the old board games that Old Man had stashed on the shelves, and finally near midnight, Truck took Carrie home.
“Don't you worry none, Miz Carrie,” he drawled as they walked through the door of her house. “I'm right here to protect you.”
She bit her tongue. Why start with him, when she'd had such a good time?
When had she enjoyed an evening out so much? She tried to picture pulling in the neighbors in her New York apartment building for an evening of music, games and talk. Not possible. They'd have filled their datebooks months in advance because there was no greater sin than not having somewhere to go and something to do.
She slammed the bedroom door. This whole bodyguard business was getting on her nerves. There was a look in his eyes she did not like, and body language she did not trust.
You didn't turn off wants, needs and desires like a faucet. They bubbled just beneath the surface, potent and hot, and sometimes, when she looked at Truck, when she remembered...her body swelled, unfurling toward his heat, with the confidence he knew all her dark secrets and he was waiting for her.
It was exactly what she didn't want, she thought as she yanked off her clothes and got ready for bed. They were poised, all of them, waiting for something, someone, or some explosive moment that would define the thing between them for once and for all.
Â
CARRIE AND TRUCK WENT to see Old Man on Thursday night, normal stuff, real-life stuff. He and Jeannie were on the porch playing hearts.
There was nothing new. Old Man was certain Eddie had skipped the county. The house was empty, the office closed. The police couldn't do much else but issue an APB, but Brad Hillis was certain Eddie had gone into hiding somewhere in town.
“He could be waiting for Jeannie to return to the house,” Old Man theorized. “For all we know, he's somewhere on the pond. He could be watching us now.”
Carrie shivered. There were deep woods surrounding the pond. And the abandoned camp with no one to oversee it but a caretaker who walked the grounds daily but probably didn't go about at night.
“That was the first place Brad thought to look,” Truck said. “There wasn't any sign of him.”
“I'll make some coffee,” Jeannie offered. Carrie followed her into the kitchen.
“This must be killing you,” Carrie said, as she helped Jeannie wash the pot and the mugs.
“I thought it would be over by now,” Jeannie said. “It's been almost a week since he trashed your place. I'm beginning to feel like I'm in jail” She got the coffee tin out of the refrigerator. “I think there's some leftover cookies or something in there. I'm really glad you came by. How's it going with Truck?”
“It's going. He won't leave, and I don't want him to stay.”
“That's my Trucker. Stubborn as ever. How many cups should I make?”
“Is Tom going toâ”
Blam! A gunshot reverberated through the woods, shattering glass. Jeannie shrieked.
“Get down!” Truck shouted from just outside the kitchen door.
Blam! They dived for the floor as the fixture above them exploded into a thousand pieces.
Blam! The bullet ricocheted off something in the kitchen. Close. Too close. Damn dose.
And Old Man...?
“Put down your gun.” They heard a metallic voice, speaking through a bullhorn, in the distance. “Put...down...the...gun.”
Another shot fired nicked the window. And another, going off wildly and fracturing the roof just outside the kitchen door.
Shouts. More shots. A keening howl far away.
There was Truck crouching beside them in the kitchen. “It's Eddie. They've been waiting for him. I
think they got him. Brad was right. He never went away.”
Â
THEY STAYED with Old Man that night, Carrie on the couch again, Jeannie in the guest room, weeping. Eddie, who had been wounded, had been taken to the hospital, and Brad Hillis took their statements, and asked Jeannie to come to the station in the morning.
“How can I ever go back home?” Jeannie asked tearfully.
“You can always go back home,” Old Man said.
Truck drove them both into town in the morning, taking Carrie over to Longford's first before he and Jeannie went to the police station.
No one in town had yet heard about the ruckus, at least as much as Carrie could determine that morning. No one mentioned it, which surprised her. She thought the news about Eddie would have gone through town like wildfire.
Later that morning, however, she heard that Eddie might have to go away for long-term treatment
By two o'clock, Carrie was really ready to go home. It wasn't that the day had been onerous. It was just that she felt edgy, fragile and needed to be home.
What she didn't need was Truck coming to pick her up.
“When did you say those tires would be coming in for my cycle?”
“Any day now,” Truck said, depressing the power locks as she belted herself into the front seat of the van.
“I think it's time I got a car.”
“Good idea.”
“I think it's time you got a life,” she added irritably.
“I have one, thank you, and I like it very much.”