Authors: Sandra Chastain
Andrea held onto her rising temper until she could speak calmly. “ ‘Future governor’s wife’? Look, I’m sorry about those two. They were out of line.”
Sam almost laughed. It wasn’t the vigilantes who disturbed him. He was already disturbed,
and the woman standing in front of him was the reason.
Andrea Fleming didn’t look like a future governor’s wife. She was tall, built like some kind of pioneer woman, with a slim waist, large breasts that rose and fell in evidence of her aggravation with him, and hips that would deliver children with ease. Her skin was tanned and glowed with the warmth of the sun. Her dark, rich hair had already begun to slide from the knot she’d pinned at the back of her neck. This time her blue eyes were shooting fire instead of lightning. She was controlled but very angry.
Sam should tell her that Otis had returned the lost wallet with the identification and paperwork that proved he was Mamie’s grandson. He surmised that the stout, balding man on crutches who’d identified himself as Andrea’s father, Buck, had probably already gone through his wallet, for he’d asked only what Sam’s intentions were.
Rather than cause a problem, Sam had walked outside and explained quietly that Andrea had only made certain that he was all right. He admitted that he should have checked in at the police station in town, but it had been raining and he’d been tired. He’d said he was sorry if he’d caused any trouble.
Finally the man looked up at him with squinted eyes and said, “All right, Sam Farley. Since you’re Mamie’s grandson, I’ll let it go—for now. But you’d better watch your step, or you’ll end up in jail.”
Buck Fleming couldn’t have known how effective the threat had been. Jail? He’d been down that road before. No way was Sam Farley going to
jail over a wish to see his grandmother’s house or the overwhelming desire to hold Andrea Fleming in his arms.
He’d decided he’d leave, but he’d found himself delaying his departure. Only at this moment did he admit it was because he’d hoped she would return. Now she was standing at his door, her wide eyes a dark blue in the shadows. She’d visited him this morning out of friendship, nothing more.
Sam had the feeling that if he did what he wanted and kissed her again, she’d arrest him, apologizing in her slow, sensual drawl all the way to town.
He liked to hear her speak. The honeyed tones of her voice made him think of sunshine and cornfields. He’d heard another voice like that long ago, a voice that had painted comforting pictures of a white house and a swing, in a town where everybody was worth knowing. Unconsciously he’d been searching for that voice. Now that he’d found it, what he was feeling scared the hell out of him. Abruptly Sam unlatched the screen. “Come in. I’ve never had the future governor’s wife come to call.”
Future governor’s wife! Buck! She was going to have to talk to her father about that boast. Andrea was embarassed and a little uneasy. She didn’t like that. In Arcadia everybody was as at-home in a neighbor’s house as they were in their own.
Andrea’s first inclination was to tell Sam that she hadn’t accepted anybody’s proposal. Ed Pinyon was her father’s choice—not hers. But she didn’t. Her personal life was … personal. Her business with him was just that—business.
She realized that she’d been staring at him in silence for a long moment. The skeptical lift of his eyebrow and the crinkling of the corners of his mouth signaled the fact that he recognized her confusion. Andrea blushed. He was getting to her again, without even trying. His chin was covered with an even heavier stubble now, stubble that would soon be a luxurious beard covering a face that was lined from being outdoors a lot. His smile was full now as he waited for her decision.
“No thanks. If you’re not interested in my help, I’ll be on my way. But I’ll need that identification, sooner or later.”
He knew he’d been testing her. Subtly, without being aware, he’d allowed himself to slip from behind the wall of impersonal banter he’d learned to erect between himself and the women he met along the way. Suddenly he wanted to know this woman. He didn’t want her to go.
“Wait, there is one thing you can help with,” he said slowly. “My grandmother managed to live here without a shower, and there doesn’t seem to be any water. I’d like to take a bath. Have any suggestions?”
Andrea considered her answer. She could tell him of the pool up the hill beyond the trees. Miss Mamie had shared it with her once. “Jed damned it up for Millie,” Miss Mamie had said, the only time she’d ever mentioned the daughter who’d run away. But Andrea didn’t feel right about sharing that information—not yet. If Sam found it, then it was his.
Instead she answered his question. “If you look around, I think you’ll find a galvanized washtub
somewhere in the barn, Sam. I’d fill it with water from that well in the corner of the porch.”
“A galvanized washtub?” He looked at her in disbelief.
Andrea tilted her head slightly as she added, “Of course. But this is Friday, and I thought cow-boys always took their weekly baths on Saturday night.”
Sam suppressed a smile. “But I’m not a cowboy, remember?” He took an envelope of papers from the table and placed the material in Andrea’s hand. “Just be certain to return those when you’re finished.”
Andrea glanced woodenly down at the papers and the rough, callused hand that had not only placed the envelope in her grasp but was now holding
her
hand. The sandpaper texture of his thumb rubbed the underside of her wrist, and she felt her pulse jump as she stared at them.
“You found them.” She pulled her hand away and forced herself to look up at him.
“No. Otis did. In the back of his truck.” He was close enough now to see the blue in her eyes change color as they widened. Sam felt the tension flare between them.
Oh, no you don’t, Stormy
, he told himself.
You’re not feeding my flame again
. But she was, standing there with that smoldering light in her eyes. He had to fight the strong urge to pull her inside the house and into his arms.
Sam frowned. This lack of control was new to him. He took a deep breath, lifted her hand uneasily, and forced a smile on his face. “Don’t suppose you’d like to stick around and scrub my back,
would you, darlin’? Wouldn’t that be considered the neighborly thing to do?”
Andrea let out a deep breath. “But you don’t want to be a neighbor, Sam Farley. Better relock this door if you’re going to bathe on the porch,” she advised briskly. “It’s likely that welcoming neighbors will continue to visit you until they learn that you aren’t interested in being friends.” She lifted the envelope. “I’ll get your papers back to you as soon as I’ve checked them over.”
“Whatever you say, Chief Fleming. You’re the boss.”
This time Andrea didn’t answer. She simply turned on her heel and strode down the over-grown drive.
Sam watched the suggestive roll of her hips as she walked. A real earth mother, he though, remembering the firmness of her breast beneath his touch when he’d first discovered that she was a woman. She was a nearly irresistible challenge if he were inclined to take the risk. He’s always thrived on danger, and he’d never made love to a policewoman. Still, this was one time he wasn’t sure he wanted to get involved. This woman wasn’t into fun and games. This woman was the church-on-Sunday, till-death-do-us-part type. This woman could land him in jail.
He swore and turned back inside, wondering what the hell he was doing in a boarded-up old house with no electricity and no food.
Sam walked barefoot through the house and stood on the front porch. He watched until Andrea drove away. He should have thanked her for her concern, but maybe being nice to her was a
mistake. He couldn’t afford to let her know that she’d gotten under his skin and made him crave something he didn’t trust, something he’d never have.
Sam spotted a fruit tree, heavy with fat golden plums. He smiled. He liked looking out and not seeing another house or person anywhere. He liked the privacy. He wished he could believe that people were so trusting here that they never locked their doors.
Sam stuck his hands in his jean pockets and glanced around at the dilapidated old house. It was a lot like him—abandoned and falling apart. Well, hell, it wouldn’t hurt to leave his grandmother’s home a little better off than he’d found it. Maybe he’d clear the drive before Andrea came back. Maybe he’d check out the attic and the barn out back.
Could be, he’d find that porch swing.
Buck was sitting with his plastered leg propped on the desk with the last of the breakfast coffee in one hand and a chocolate-chip cookie in the other. “Where’ve you been, Andy—it’s almost ten o’clock?”
“A better question might be where have
you
been, Buck?”
“What makes you think I’ve been anywhere?”
“For one thing you’re eating chocolate-chip cookies. For another, I went back out to the Hines place to check on Sam Farley. He told me that you and Otis had been out. How
dare
you go there and threaten Sam Farley, as if I couldn’t take care of myself!”
“I wasn’t checking up on you, Andy.” He looked sheepish as she glared at him. “Oh, all right. Yes, I was,” he admitted. “I heard you tossing and turning in your bed after you got home last night. You’ve been doing that a lot lately. Louise thinks … I mean, I was just worried.”
“You talked with Louise Roberts about me? Great!” Andrea slapped her desktop and turned away from Buck’s puzzled expression while she tried to calm herself. Why shouldn’t Buck talk to Louise about her? Why was she getting so angry?
“I’m sorry, Andy. I just think sometimes that I haven’t done a very good job raising you. A woman might understand certain things … better.”
“You’ve done fine, Buck. We’ve done fine, just the two of us. I didn’t mean to worry you. I thought it was my duty,” she said slowly, “to go back and check on Sam Farley’s identification, after you
disappeared
.”
“I didn’t ‘disappear.’ I was having coffee with Otis and Mamie’s lawyer, Stuart Traylor.”
Buck’s injured tone didn’t soothe Andrea for a moment, not even when he added proudly, “Stuart says that Mamie’s will is on file over at the courthouse in Cottonboro. Judge Thomas is having a copy made up for us.”
Mamie’s will. Andrea hadn’t thought of that. But then she hadn’t thought about anything except a stranger with a heart-shaped tattoo who was sentimental about his mother. “I guess it wouldn’t hurt to check it out,” she snapped. “But in the future, stop taking care of me.”
Andrea could tell that Buck was surprised at her outburst. As the phone rang and he answered
it with unusual irritation, she realized that he too had had a steady trickle of citizens who just happened by the café to hear about the “wild-looking” stranger.
“All right, Andy,” he agreed as he was hanging up the phone. “I just don’t want to see you hurt. Sam may be all right. In fact he kinda reminds me of myself when I was his age. But a man like Ed, a man from Meredith County, is the kind of man you belong with.”
“Buck, I’m twenty-six years old—a woman, not some teenager to be protected and supervised. I’m not going to marry Ed Pinyon. I’ll pick out the man I want.”
“But not this man, Andy. He’s not one of us.” Buck pleaded with a glazed look in his eyes that said he was thinking of her mother. He added hesitantly, “I know you’re not a child anymore. I just get in the habit of acting like a father, and I charge ahead without thinking. We know Ed. We don’t know this boy, even if he does have a claim here. Be careful.”
Andrea sighed and leaned over to kiss his bald head. “Oh, Pop, I’m overreacting too. He’s just passing through, and I understand what you’re saying. He’ll soon be gone, you’ll be mobile again, and life will be back to normal.”
And you’ll have to find some other explanation for my tossing and turning at night, because I haven’t
.
“No, you’re right,” Buck was saying. “It was a father who went over to Mamie’s place, Andy, not a police officer. Sam Farley comes from good stock. I ought to give him a chance. But we still need Mamie’s will.”
“Fine. Here are his records. You look them over. I’ll drive over to the courthouse and pick up the will before lunch.”
Andrea didn’t tell Buck that she intended to send off an inquiry to the state-patrol headquarters. She didn’t doubt what Sam Farley said about himself. She just wanted to know what the world said about Sam Farley.
Andrea drove slowly down Main Street, nodding at Mrs. Bryan overseeing her gardener as he pushed a mower across a perfectly manicured, postage-size front yard. She passed the mayor’s two-story white mansion with the little balcony over the front door and paused while a dump truck backed into the new subdivision at the edge of the city limits. Her town was growing, and she had mixed feelings about the alterations.
She kept to the old highway going to Cottonboro, the same highway that had brought Sam Farley to Arcadia. Everything was green and fresh, droplets of water still glistening on the rich green leaves of corn standing thigh-high. The unofficial start of summer was still a month away, but spring had come early this year, and the wheatfields on her left were already ankle-high. In a few weeks they’d be cut and shaped into great rolls like huge yellow-brown jelly rolls.
There was a continuity about her county, a continuity on which she could depend. She couldn’t understand “dropping by” a place. She’d attended the same elementary and high schools that her father had attended, and her children would follow her. Tradition was important because it made a mark by which each new generation would be
measured. More than that, it kept her from worrying about the future.
She was about two miles out of town when she saw the man walking up the road. It was the boots and the whipcord-tight body that gave him away. Sam Farley, clean-shaven and wearing a sweat-stained tan Stetson, was walking lazily up the highway with one hand out, his thumb stuck casually into the air. He was leaving. No, she realized, he wasn’t wearing a backpack. She stopped the patrol car beside him as he turned.
“Enjoying the scenery, Mr. Farley?”
A peculiar expression crossed his face. She had the idea that he wasn’t pleased to see her, though his words indicated the opposite.