Nighthawk & The Return of Luke McGuire (7 page)

As the woman drove away, Esther saw Nighthawk’s horse and dog, tethered to the fence post, and no Craig in evidence. There were a lot of scenarios that might be drawn, but she had a strong feeling which connection Verna had made. By tomorrow evening it was probably going to be all over Conard County that Craig Nighthawk and Esther Jackson were romancing.

Inwardly Esther shrugged. Considering that she was a recluse, she hardly cared what anyone thought. Then she looked down at the envelope in her hand. It was addressed in a spidery scrawl that she didn’t recognize, without a return address.

Suddenly her heart was hammering so loudly that it filled her ears. With shaking hands, she ripped the envelope open and pulled out a yellow sheet of paper. Her eyes skipped over everything, down to the signature.

Dad.

“Esther? Esther, what’s wrong?”

She heard Craig Nighthawk’s voice. It seemed to come from far away, from an entirely different planet than the one on which she stood holding a letter from the man who had shattered her body and her life.

“Esther?” Tentatively he touched her shoulder.

Jerkily she turned her head to look at him, and felt a shudder pass through her as shock released its grip. She couldn’t find her voice, but there was mute appeal in every cell of her body.

He hesitated visibly, then reached out for her, wrapping her tightly in his arms and holding her close to his chest. “What happened?” he asked gently. “Did that woman say something to you?”

Some corner of her mind registered that this was the way a man’s touch was supposed to feel—safe and caring. Part of her was stunned that she was even allowing herself to be held, but the rest of her reached out for the comfort she had never before known. No one had ever held her caringly. Never.

“Is it the letter?” Craig asked. “Is there anything I can do?”

She ought to straighten, ought to pull away. She couldn’t afford to depend on anyone, certainly not a man she hardly knew. But she needed what he was offering, and with every fiber of her being she wanted to cling to him.

Holding her tightly with one arm, he took the letter from her hand and read it.

“What’s wrong?” he asked. “All he says is he wants a chance to apologize to you. Is that what upset you?”

She tried to pull away, but his hold tightened. Her cheek was pressed to his chest and she could hear the steady thud of his heart. He felt so hard, so strong. What could he possibly understand about her terror?

“Esther, please. I can’t help if I don’t know what’s wrong.”

“I don’t want his apology!” Anger was beginning to come to her rescue, swift and hot. She’d cowered enough in her life and despised herself for it. Her entire psyche was a tangled web of scars, shame and guilt. It no longer mattered which scars were rational and which fears were unfounded. It no longer mattered that none of it had really been her fault. She was wounded, permanently warped, and none of those feelings would ever go away. And that made her angry.

“Why not?”

“He killed my mother! He hurt us both for years! And he wants to hurt me again!”

Craig never slackened his hold on her shoulders, keeping her tucked to his chest even though she was trying to yank away. “That isn’t what he says.”

“Well, I don’t believe him! I stopped believing him before I was five. He lies about everything.”

“Okay. He lies about everything. Did he really kill your mother?”

This time when she pushed away from him he let her go. With clenched fists she glared up at him. “Do you think I’m lying? The man went to prison for second degree murder! Now he’s out and wants to find
me.
He’s going to kill me. I know it!”

“But maybe he’s learned something, Esther. Maybe he really
is
sorry now.”

“No. No way.”

“But why would he want to kill you? It’s been a long time.”

She shook her head almost wildly, her hair flying. “Not long enough. It’ll never be long enough. It was my testimony that sent him to prison!”

C
raig forgot about his horse and dog tethered to the fence post. He forgot about sheep and ranching and his sister and her kids and all his financial worries. All that mattered was this small, emotionally battered woman and her fear that her own father wanted to kill her.

He didn’t doubt her. The man was a convicted murderer so it was obvious he was capable of it. And if her testimony had been what put the man away, he might well be harboring a grudge.

He coaxed Esther back into the kitchen and got her settled at the table. “I’ll put the groceries away while you talk,” he told her. “Just tell me where everything goes.”

It was nuts, he thought, but it was the only safe thing to do right now because he’d made the mistake of holding her. Now he knew how she felt in his arms—and how very much he wanted to hold her even closer. How very much he wanted to taste her and touch her. His reaction embarrassed him a little because it was so inappropriate. He had thought he’d gotten himself under control a long time ago.

Her directions about where to put things were mechanical, as if she had withdrawn and only a superficial part of her mind was involved in the task. Guinevere, still hitched to the newel post, whined as if she sensed her mistress’s distress, but Esther didn’t seem to hear her.

Craig began to feel uneasy. He’d had his share of hard times, but nothing had prepared him to deal with an emotional crisis of this type. There wasn’t a thing he could possibly say to her that would ease her fears. All he knew was he couldn’t leave her alone.

“I was going to get a gun,” Esther said suddenly.

Craig turned from putting the last of the food away and waited expectantly.

“I figured that if I got a gun I could protect myself. Sheriff Tate talked me out of it.”

That was probably wise, he thought. He didn’t know this woman at all, but somehow he couldn’t imagine her as Annie Oakley.

She looked at him from hazel eyes that had gone flat and empty. “So how do I protect myself?” she asked him. “Just what am I supposed to do? Wait for him to show up in the middle of the night and strangle me? Or shove me down the stairs the way he used to?”

“He shoved you down the stairs?”

She nodded. “Once he even threw me.” She touched her leg. “That’s when my leg got messed up.”

“The doctors couldn’t do anything?”

“I didn’t get to them soon enough. He was on a binge and wouldn’t let my mother take me. Or maybe she didn’t want to take me.” She shrugged. “They didn’t have any money, so they probably couldn’t afford it.”

“And no one investigated? No one tried to take you away from them?”

She shook her head slowly. “This was over twenty years ago. Twenty-five years ago. Nobody interfered in a family. My parents said I fell down the stairs, and I didn’t dare say otherwise.”

“My God.”

“But I remember. I was just four, and he picked me up and threw me as hard as he could.” She shrugged a shoulder. “I was crying about something. I don’t remember what. What I
do
remember is him saying he wouldn’t have thrown me if I had just shut up.”

“So it was
your
fault?”

“It was always my fault.” She shook herself then, and some of the life came back to her eyes. “Sorry. You don’t want to hear this, and I certainly don’t want to repeat it. I must be boring you.”

“Boring isn’t the word I’d choose.” Folding his arms, he looked down at her, taking in the way she was almost huddled as if she expected a blow. “You really think he’s after you?”

She bit her lower lip and shook her head. “I can’t say for certain. Who could? But…yes, I think it’s a definite possibility.”

“Are you sure your testimony convicted him?”

“How can I be sure? I was fifteen at the time and I can barely remember getting on the stand. But I know he told the police that he and my mother had gone out to a bar together, that she’d gotten into a fight with someone in the parking lot, and that he’d intervened and brought her home where she tripped and fell down the stairs.”

She lifted her head and looked up at him. “They’d gone to a bar all right. But she was fine when they got home. Maybe a little drunk, but not as drunk as he was. They got into a fight, he beat her up pretty bad, then knocked her down the stairs. I saw the whole thing.”

“But maybe they had other evidence, too.”

“I don’t know. I
do
know that he said he’d kill me if I ever told anyone what he’d done.”

“But you did anyway.”

“He killed my mother!”

He unfolded his arms and spread his hands. “I’m not criticizing you, Esther. I’m just thinking how brave you were.”

“I wasn’t brave, I was mad. As furious as I’ve ever been. But I don’t want to talk about it. Damn it, I don’t even want to think about it! Why couldn’t
he
have been the one to fall down the stairs?”

But he hadn’t been, and Craig felt a genuine concern for Esther’s safety. There was absolutely no way anyone could predict what her father might do. All these years in prison might simply have turned him into a very angry, very vindictive man.

Although the letter didn’t sound that way. Of course, it was brief, so brief that it wouldn’t be safe to reach any conclusions based on it.

“I’m sorry,” she said abruptly. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

“Why not? I can understand why you wish he’d fallen down those stairs.”

“But it’s wrong to wish that on anyone.”

Craig shook his head and expelled a long breath. “So, let me see. It’s not enough that he hurt you and terrorized you throughout your childhood. It’s not enough that he’s terrifying you right now. You have to feel guilty as well for wanting him out of your life?”

“I don’t feel guilty for wanting him out of my life! I just shouldn’t wish him dead.”

“Why the hell not? It’s apparent he won’t stay out of your life any other way!”

The stark words hung on the air, and Esther seemed to shrink as if from a blow. He felt like a crud, a complete and total crud. But why should he feel bad for stating an obvious truth? Damn, this woman was an emotional mess. All twisted up in the barbed wire of guilt and fear. He wondered how she managed to laugh as easily as she did. He also wondered how she was going to handle this. And he felt about as useful as teats on a bull.

“Have you talked to the sheriff?”

“He said he’d keep an eye out, but there isn’t a whole lot he can do unless my father does something.”

“I guess that makes sense. Unfortunately.”

She astonished him then with a small smile. “Unfortunately. No, I can understand it. He’s served his time. Theoretically he’s learned his lesson.”

“Rehabilitated unless proved otherwise.”

She nodded. “That’s it.”

“So…” He shook his head again and looked around.

“Would you mind if I made some coffee?”

“I’ll do it.”

Before he could stop her, she rose and limped toward the coffeepot and sink. He watched her move, taking no pains to conceal his stare, thinking it was a damn shame what people did to each other sometimes. He’d seen plenty of intolerance and hatred in his day, but he figured there ought to be a special place in hell for parents who hurt their kids. After all, a parent was the one person on earth that a kid ought to be able to trust.

“What are you going to do?” he asked her. The breeze must have changed direction because suddenly the yellow café curtains over the sink were billowing as warm, dry air blew into the kitchen, carrying with it the scent of sage and grass.

“I don’t know. I’m thinking about moving again.”

“Can you afford to?”

“Not really.” She finished adding coffee and water to the coffeemaker, turned it on, and limped back to her seat. “Besides, there’s no guarantee he wouldn’t just find me again. If he’s really determined, how could I possibly hide?”

He couldn’t imagine that it was impossible to hide. There were a couple of TV shows that wouldn’t be on the air if it were all that easy to find an individual. “How did he find you?”

“Through my agent. She has a policy of not releasing addresses or phone numbers, but one of her new employees apparently couldn’t see anything wrong with giving my address to my father.”

“I guess it never crossed the twerp’s mind that if your father didn’t already have your address there might be a good reason.”

“I guess not.”

“Makes you wonder, don’t it?”

She smiled then, a more relaxed expression that told him she was beginning to unwind from her fear. That gladdened him more than he wanted to think about. “They say it takes all kinds.”

“Yeah, but there oughtta be a special law against turkeys and total idiots.”

“I rather like turkey for dinner.”

He chuckled, truly liking her and her sense of humor. “It sure beats eating crow.”

She laughed, visibly relaxing.

“Don’t leave town, lady. I like your sense of humor.”

She flushed a little and looked away. “It wouldn’t pay to leave, I guess. I have to maintain some kind of contact with the rest of the world—assuming I don’t want to give up my career—and as long as I do, sooner or later he’ll find me.”

The coffee finished brewing and Craig found the cups in the cabinet by the sink, filling one for each of them and joining her at the table. Esther wrapped her hands around her mug as if they were cold, although the day was plenty warm, and the breeze coming through the open windows of the kitchen did little to cool things down.

She spoke. “You know, I never realized how depressing rain is until I got away from it.”

“Where are you from?”

“The Pacific Northwest. Portland and Seattle and assorted small towns. We moved a lot, probably because my father was always in trouble. Anyway, it rains a lot there. Most of the time, in fact. There’s an old joke that Oregon is thirty-eight million umbrellas with feet.”

Obliging her, he cracked a smile. “Not my kind of place.”

“I never really thought much about it. That’s the way it was. I just pulled on a raincoat or picked up an umbrella and did what I needed to. But since I moved here—one of the very first things I noticed is how dry it is. Believe it or not, the dryness is invigorating. After I’d been here a week, I felt like I was coming out of a long, dark tunnel.”

She shrugged, smiling faintly, and turned her head to look out the window as if she couldn’t bear to meet his gaze. “Of course, that may have had something to do with a change in circumstances.”

“Maybe. But there
is
a difference between dry and humid climates. Now maybe I’m prejudiced because I grew up not too far from here, but I prefer a dry climate.”

“Two percent humidity may be a little extreme, though. In the winter my skin cracks.”

She was trying to draw the conversation away from her worries, he realized. Maybe that was a good thing, maybe that was even a healthy thing, but it wasn’t the way he was programmed. As a rule he didn’t like to let go of a problem until he’d come up with some kind of solution—although in this case there didn’t appear to be any solution in sight.

Well, if she was going to shore up her defenses and close him out, then she didn’t need him anymore, and he might just as well get back to his work. The fence sure as hell had to be down somewhere, and he needed to find it before he lost more than a lovesick sheepdog and a batty ewe. He ought to ride over and check on how the flock was doing, too, before he headed back to the house and got to work on the new flooring for the shearing shed. There was always something that needed doing and he didn’t have a whole lot of time to spend gabbing over coffee.

On the other hand, his spirit rebelled at leaving this woman alone with her fear. Her quite justifiable fear. “Listen,” he said on impulse, “why don’t you come stay at my place. My sister would probably be thrilled to have some company.”

She looked startled. “That’s…very kind of you. But I’m afraid I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“I have a deadline to meet. I need to work, and to do that I need my studio. No, I really couldn’t stay with you, but thank you for offering.”

“Well, it’s up to you. If you change your mind, give me a call. I’m in the phone book.”

And then he was left with no alternative but to go. He couldn’t just plant himself in her kitchen for the rest of the day making aimless conversation, leaving her to wonder if he ever planned to let her get on with her life. And he
did
have things he needed to do. He rose, and she rose with him.

“I can find my way out,” he assured her. “If you need anything, just call my place. If I’m not there, Paula or Enoch will be, and they’ll be over lickety-split.”

“Thank you.”

He waved away her thanks. “That’s what neighbors are for.”

She walked him to the door anyway. “I’ll keep Guinevere on a leash until she’s out of heat.”

He flashed her a sudden grin. “We may not be able to defeat the call of the wild.”

She pursed her lips almost primly. “My Guinevere will stay indoors so your Studley Dooright might as well just stay home.”

Something crazy must have possessed him then, because just before he stepped out onto the porch he turned to face her, looking straight down into her wide, beautiful hazel eyes. “He may not be the only Studley who comes calling. Have a nice day.”

He touched a finger to the brim of his hat and hightailed it out of there before she could reply. He was definitely losing his marbles, but man, it sure felt good. It had been too damn long since he’d done something outrageous just for the sheer fun of it.

But nothing was ever that easy or uncomplicated. Nope. That night while everyone watched TV, Craig found himself standing out on the porch looking up at the stars like some lonesome coyote. If he’d had the vocal cords for it, he would probably have howled at the moon.

He’d always thought of himself as a loner, believing himself to be content. Sometimes he got downright chapped when he spent too much time with people. But here he was, walking around and feeling lonely all the time.