One True Heart (15 page)

They were playing baseball with huge bats and softballs, and every player had to be in the saddle. Unfortunately, the donkeys didn't get the point of the game. They refused to move or ran the wrong direction or on several occasions bucked their rider off. Once the batter's donkey got hit with the ball and ran the bases in reverse order. One Methodist couldn't get his animal to move and played left field while his own team batted. The Baptists offered to baptize him on the spot.

The general chaos was hilarious. Millanie almost toppled off her bench seat so many times Drew permanently kept his arm behind her as a brace. By the fourth inning both sides agreed to call the annual game a tie. The players were starting to look the worse for wear and the donkeys appeared bothered by the whole game.

Drew made no move to leave as they watched all the families pack up and go. When the field lights went out, the heavens seemed to open up with a show of stars. She looked up, remembering all the times she'd watched the night sky in other lands. Sometimes she'd stare at the moon and remind herself it was the same moon that shined in Harmony.

“This was fun,” she whispered as she leaned into him.

He kissed her cheek and tightened his arms around her. “When I came here to live, this was one of the first public events I attended. It's crazy, playing a game that makes no sense with teams that don't care who wins, but somehow I felt like all was not as mixed-up in the world as I thought.”

She realized he was right. The laughter had helped.

Ten minutes later, when the wind kicked up, he stood and helped her to her feet. Side by side, with him carrying one crutch while she leaned against his ribs, they moved back toward the car.

“Evening, Drew,” a voice whispered in the darkness as they passed the tents.

She tensed, but Drew didn't. “Evening, Pastor. I thought everyone was gone.”

“They are. My wife packed up the kids and the food and left. She forgot me. When she realizes it, she'll come back.”

“We could give you a lift.”

The shadow moved a little closer. “No, thanks. I see her car lights turning off the road heading this way. I'll walk with you two to the parking lot.”

As his wife neared, the pastor added, “Thanks, Drew, for sponsoring this again this year.”

“Don't mention it,” Drew said. “It was nothing.”

The shadow waved and climbed into an old station wagon loaded down with kids.

Millanie waved good-bye, though she doubted anyone in the car could see them. “You sponsored this?” she asked in a low voice.

“It wasn't that expensive. Flyers, and donkey rental. A farmer used to offer them free, but then he found out people would pay to make fools of themselves.”

They were at the Jeep, but he didn't open the door. He leaned her against the fender and took both her crutches. While he loaded them in the back, she started to ask another question. Drew didn't add up. How does a man who only works one day a week afford to sponsor anything? All she got out was “How does—”

He swung around and pushed her against the car, leaning into her body. “No more questions,” he whispered as his mouth found hers.

This was no friendly kiss. This was full-out need, and for a moment she just hung on and rocked with the wave of passion. If she'd been able to reason she would have said she could have easily stopped his advance. Even with her leg in a cast, he would be no match for her in a fight. But reason deserted her and pushing him away couldn't have been further from her mind.

His hands moved over her body, making it obvious that he needed to touch her. Once, he pulled away and let her slow her breathing. The air blew cool between them. As she calmed her rapid heart, he leaned against her once more, letting her body feel the lean warmth of him.

“I can't—” The rest of his thought was lost as he lowered his mouth once more and his hand slid under her blouse and spread out along her warm skin.

A few minutes later when he threaded his fingers into her hair and deepened the kiss, she wasn't sure if she'd been about to say that she couldn't keep doing this or that she couldn't stop. The need to have him touch her like this had been growing all night with every brush of his arm and every slight contact between them.

Raindrops seemed to sizzle off their skin for a few minutes before they both realized it was raining. He helped her to the passenger seat, covered her cast with an old jacket he pulled from the backseat, and ran around the Jeep putting up the top. When he finally made it inside, he shook like a shaggy dog and she laughed so hard she got the hiccups.

He combed his hair back with his fingers and smiled at her.

Millanie couldn't breathe. With his hair back, not half covering his eyes, Drew Cunningham just might be the handsomest man she'd ever seen. She'd never noticed that behind his glasses were crystal blue eyes. The small scar on his jaw left just the right imperfection.

He leaned over and buried his face in the hollow of her neck. “You look great covered in wet silk, Millie.”

She glanced down, realizing her blouse was plastered against her like a second skin. Closing her eyes in horror, she didn't move as he kissed his way up her throat and opened her mouth to a slow, deep kiss.

Other than kissing her, he didn't touch her. Maybe he knew if he did they'd be taking the relationship to another level and both of them probably didn't want their first time together to be in an old Jeep that smelled even more like dead fish when it rained.

When he finally straightened, he kissed the tip of her nose and whispered, “I could so get used to this dating thing with you.”

Millanie simply smiled. She was getting to know Drew in more ways than one.

All the way back to the inn they shivered because of the drafty ride and laughed at all the funny things that somehow had made the evening perfect.

A man was sitting on the front porch when they returned. Millanie introduced him to Drew as Beau. Martha Q hadn't said his last name. She'd simply tagged him as just a drifter passing by, but Drew took the time to talk to the inn's other guest.

Millanie had studied him earlier when he joined her on the porch for tea. Drifters don't take the most expensive room or drive rented cars. His hair was way too long, but well cut. His clothes were wrinkled but well made, and he played his guitar like a master.

Drew said hello to Beau as if he knew of him but didn't talk long, telling her the two men didn't know one another well.

Without waiting to be invited, Drew followed her into the kitchen, where Mrs. Biggs had left instant hot chocolate and brownies. Without discussing it, they sat down at the kitchen table. Neither seemed to want the night to end. After two cups of hot chocolate, they moved to the cluttered front
room that Martha Q called the parlor and sat on either end of the couch while they listened to Beau playing his guitar out on the porch.

Drew talked about a book he was working on as his hand rested on her cast, which she'd stretched between them. He wanted to record the history of this northernmost part of the state before the stories of the first settlers vanished. She tried to pay attention, but the music drifted through her thoughts as she watched his fingers moving along the cast.

Funny how the man wouldn't talk about himself, but he loved telling her details of history. She couldn't stop smiling, knowing that he must be a very gifted teacher even if he only taught one class.

Sometime while they talked the rain stopped. She thought she heard Beau open the front door and set something inside the entry, but Millanie was far too interested in watching Drew's eyes as he told her about a legend he'd heard from several people in the area. A rancher sold his herd and took payment in gold. On his way home with two of his men as guards, he disappeared along with the two men and the gold. Some said the men killed him and ran for Mexico. Others claimed one guard killed the other, then the old man. Maybe an Apache band got all three.

When Millanie demanded to hear the end of the story, Drew laughed and said she didn't understand the concept of legends at all.

Martha Q and her Mr. Carleon came in while Millanie was pouting. Drew said good night and planted a kiss on her cheek.

“I'll see you soon, Millie,” he whispered, then disappeared before she could ask him to name exactly when
soon
was.

Millanie lay awake most of the night remembering the way his hand had brushed along her cast as if he were touching her. She couldn't feel his fingers caressing her, but she could see them and reacted as if no cast separated them.

One of Beau's songs about catching first love in the
midnight wind kept drifting in her mind as sleep called. The idea of finding first love at her age was ridiculous. She was thirty-two. Long past dreaming of love. What she felt for Drew was simply attraction. Pure and simple.

Yet the song kept circling as she finally fell asleep.

T
UESDAY

H
ARMONY
C
OUNTY
J
AIL

After a sleepless night, Johnny Wheeler sat in his cell eating breakfast and worrying.

The food wasn't bad, but then he'd been eating his own cooking for six months. Apparently when Scarlet moved out of his bedroom she also left the kitchen. Some nights when he came in too late from work to drive into town, his choices were peanut butter and jelly on toast or on stale bread. Scarlet lived on diet food. One night he found her high-fiber-no-sugar bars and ate the whole box of compressed cereal sprinkled with seeds. The stuff tasted like it should be used in bird feeders.

Johnny's philosophy about food was simply two rules: If it didn't crawl off the plate fast, he ate it, and everything tasted better with ketchup on it. He'd seriously considered the possibility that some small country somewhere, one that hated Americans, made and shipped those tiny little packs of ketchup that every fast-food place used. He could almost
see them stuffing three drops in every impossible-to-open pack as they giggled about all the trouble they were causing.

Only this morning he didn't have time to worry about that conspiracy theory; he had to worry about Kare. His fairy was going to get herself in big trouble and he couldn't do a thing to help.

Johnny wasn't sure how she became
his
own personal fairy. After over a week in jail with two charges that could keep him locked up for the next hundred years, he was starting to wonder what he'd done wrong. But not Kare; she was telling everyone he was innocent and should be let out immediately.

If he'd done something bad to cause karma to dump this trouble on him, he must have also done a few things right to have Kare believe in him.

He grinned, thinking about how she talked Deputy Rogers into staking out his farm. If Scarlet really was the one who'd stashed the drugs in his barn, which he doubted, she'd be real surprised to find two hundred pounds of deputy waiting for her.

Johnny couldn't imagine her handling anything as smelly as drugs, but Max might. There was a great deal about the man that he didn't know. Obviously wearing buckled-up sandals and silk shirts didn't mean he was gay. In truth, Johnny could never remember talking to the man for longer than two minutes. Max didn't talk the language of farming or ranching, and Johnny didn't know about anything else. The few times he'd been forced to say a few words, the silk-wearing, bootless guy had talked about wine and said things like
The smellier the cheese, the better it tastes
.

“Deputy Rogers,” Johnny yelled, knowing that the deputy was sleeping at his desk ten feet farther down the hallway.

“Yes,” Rogers answered, sounding groggy.

“You know anything about wine?”

If Rogers thought the question was a strange thing for a man facing death row to ask, he didn't comment. “I know you don't drink it with breakfast.”

“Everybody knows that. What else you know?”

Rogers walked into sight. “I know that you should always look for the twist-off caps 'cause those corks are more trouble than they're worth to mess with.”

Johnny nodded. “What do you think of a full-bodied Cabernet?”

Rogers shrugged. “I married a full-bodied Debra and I like her just fine.”

Both men laughed as the deputy collected Johnny's tray.

Ten minutes later he was back telling Johnny that he had another visitor.

“They don't let me have visitors this early,” Johnny argued as he tried to get his hair to stay down. He needed a cut badly, but he wasn't about to settle for a prison cut. He'd seen a few of those on TV. If the days kept passing behind bars he'd be braiding his mud-colored locks before long.

Rogers was all business. “They do when it's your wife.”

Johnny felt like a bolt of electricity had jumped through his body and they'd forgotten to wet his head. He slowly turned around far enough to see the deputy. “My wife? The one everyone thinks I killed?”

Rogers shrugged. “I think the department's pretty much given up on that theory.”

Johnny tossed the comb in the sink. “Well, look on the bright side. You finally found her body and I can bet she's talking.”

The deputy unlocked the cell and didn't bother with the handcuffs. “Now don't get mad and hit her, Johnny, or you'll be in trouble. All it takes is a few bruises and the judge will give her everything when the divorce comes up.”

“I'm not going to hit her,” Johnny answered. “I'm going to ask her how she liked her vacation with Max. Then she can go right back to him because she's never coming home with me.”

“She could get half your farm, John.”

Johnny smiled. “To do that, she'd have to marry and then divorce my grandpa. The farm is still in his name. Or it was
the last time I saw him playing poker. Who knows, the old man might have bet the farm up against a stack of cheese balls.”

As usual the deputy didn't know what he was talking about and, worse, didn't seem to care.

Rogers opened the door and Johnny walked into the visitation area, well aware that something could come flying at him at any moment. His wife had a good pitching arm and she loved to toss things like their wedding picture, or food, bowl included, at him.

But Scarlet was sitting calmly on the table. Her favorite weapon, her purse, rested beside her. She looked pretty in a dress he'd never seen and heels so tall she would be almost his height if she stood. Only he figured she wouldn't stand, because if she did, she wouldn't be showing near as much leg, and Scarlet liked to show skin when she felt an argument coming on. It used to give her the advantage, but Johnny wasn't falling for it this time. She could be standing nude in a six-foot bottle of beer and he wouldn't be thirsty.

He might have yelled at her, but when she looked up she was crying those big alligator tears he could never take. In fact, that was why he proposed. They were dating and she cried when he brought her candy and not a ring for Valentine's Day. He felt so bad he got down on one knee.

That wasn't happening again, but he couldn't yell at her when tears were running down her cheeks. “What's the matter? You and Max run out of money?”

“Oh, Johnny, don't be mean. You know I needed a break. What's so wrong with taking a vacation? Max got a great deal online.”

Since the vacation seemed to have been planned as they ran, putting their clothes on in flight, from the house to Max's car, Johnny wasn't as sympathetic as he might have been. He'd never forget how Max had made it to the car first and Scarlet had to bang on the passenger window several times before he unlocked her door.

“Go back to Max, Scarlet. It's where you belong. We're finished. We were over a long time ago. There's no need to
fight. I'll see you in court.” He'd said all he needed to say. Johnny turned to walk away.

She screamed so loud Rogers jumped up, but Johnny stood the length of the room away from her. The deputy looked annoyed, then he just shook his head and sat back down.

She calmed now that she had everyone's attention. “I can't go back to him, you idiot. They arrested Max while we were at the farm and it's all your fault.”

Now both the deputy and Johnny stared at Scarlet.

“And how is that my fault?” For three years everything had always been his fault. But since he was in jail, he had a hard time believing it this time.

She pointed her finger like it was a weapon. “When we got to the farm, Max wanted to pull his car into the barn; it's a seventy-thousand-dollar Lexus, you know, so it needed to be out of the sun while I was looking for my things. During the time I was inside the house, he got to looking around the barn and found some bags. Naturally he thought they were my things you'd hidden in the barn, so he started stuffing them in the trunk fast, fearing that you might be coming back soon.”

She was huffing like a boxer in the ninth round. “The sheriff showed up and arrested him for drug possession. You tricked us, didn't you? You put those drugs in there hoping we'd think they were clothes and take them by mistake, but it won't work. Max and I have never seen the drugs.”

Johnny fought to keep from smiling. He looked over at Rogers and the deputy was grinning from ear to ear.

“Looks like you'll be buying me a beer, Johnny,” he said.

“No, he won't,” Scarlet screamed, and stomped her high heel. “He's not going anywhere. Johnny, it's your farm and you've got to tell them the drugs are yours. I tried to tell them but they wouldn't listen. Half the people I run into in this town tell me I'm dead. This is all your doing, Johnny Wheeler. Those bags were on your land and therefore the drugs are your problem.”

Johnny shrugged. “Well, Scarlet, you were on my land
and you're not my problem. However, I will say I'm very glad you're alive.”

She stormed toward him with such rage he wouldn't have been surprised to see flying monkeys circling her. Any love he had left for the woman died.

If Deputy Rogers hadn't stopped her Scarlet would have killed him right there in the visitation room of the Harmony County Jail.