The Year of Chasing Dreams (19 page)

Later that day, the sheriff showed up with a deputy and took Ciana’s statement about her wreck. She was groggy on pain pills but was determined to answer his questions. Trouble was, she couldn’t help much with the investigation. She could only describe the truck as “big and black,” but was unable to give either a make or model. “I never saw the driver either. I was too busy trying to get out of his way.”

The sheriff filled out a report as she spoke, prodded her for details, but she wasn’t able to tell him more. Finally, he closed his notebook and said, “If anything else comes to you, call me. You handled things real smart, Ciana. This could have ended a whole lot different.”

Once he left, she drifted off to sleep and dreamed of a large, dark beast chasing her, trying to devour her. When she woke, Alice Faye brought her lunch on a tray, offered to feed her. Ciana declined. “Mom, I’ll be okay. How’s Jon doing?”

He had visited her first thing after breakfast, still livid. He’d eased onto her bed, gathered her into his arms, held her, rocked her gently, then left the room without a word.

“Upset. We’re both crazy upset,” Alice Faye said, answering Ciana’s question.

In spite of the mellowing effect of the pain pills, Ciana felt anxious. “Where is he?”

“Working the horses now, but he went out to the field earlier, to the scene.” Her mother’s eyes went shiny with
unshed tears. “This has gone too far. I’m not dumb, Ciana. I see what’s happened around here. The fences. Now your accident. Someone’s trying to run us off Bellmeade. It isn’t right. I know I wanted to sell, but I never expected things to go this way. I never thought it would come to—to hurting
you
.”

“Mom … we don’t know for sure. I don’t know why—”

“What other reason could there be for you to crash? Someone’s trying to scare you … us … away. Most everyone’s on board for Hastings’s project. You’re the holdout, Ciana. And so they came after you.”

Ciana dropped her gaze because the naked pain on her mother’s face had put her on the verge of tears. “We can’t let this get to us. This is our land, and no one’s going to chase us off it.”

“Right,” Alice Faye said, her chin high. “They won’t.”

And just like that, Ciana realized that their wills had merged. They were of one mind about keeping their land, no longer a house divided.

When it was time for supper, Ciana wanted to come to the kitchen, but neither Alice Faye nor Jon would allow it. So Jon carried both his and Ciana’s plates into her room while she remained in bed. “I feel silly,” she grumbled, but not without some gratitude. She hurt all over.

He ignored her complaint, looked around, and in his best drawl, said, “Never thought I’d be invited into your bedroom. I know I just barged in this morning, but I had to see you, make sure you were really here.”

She gave a little laugh, groaned because it pressed against her ribs. “Would have given you a tour if you’d asked.”

“I wouldn’t have trusted myself to tour and leave.”

She found having Jon in her bedroom incredibly sexy. Not that she could offer to do anything about it just now.

He dragged a chair to her bedside, set the tray across her lap. “You look wonderful.”

“I’ve seen a mirror, cowboy. I know what I look like, and ‘wonderful’ is a huge exaggeration.”

“You’re alive. That’s what’s wonderful.” He set his own tray on his lap. “I saw your truck. Sheriff had what’s left of it towed to impound. Maybe a paint sample from the other truck is on the bumper. That could help pin down a brand.”

“Is my poor blue beast toast?”

He nodded. “I can’t believe you walked away from it.”

“Rolled away like a ball,” she said for clarification, and pushed her fork through the gravy on her mashed potatoes. She had no appetite. “I was afraid it might blow up.”

Jon’s face darkened. “When I catch up to the guy,
he’ll
be toast.”

“Not sure he’ll ever be caught. Probably part of the same gang that’s breaking our fences.”

Jon blew out a lungful of air. “Let’s drop it for now.”

He ate, and while he did, she nibbled a few bites. “And I’ve lost my truck too. That really burns me. I’ve had that truck—”

“Way too long.” Jon completed her sentence with a wry smile. “Sort of a piece of junk, you know.”

“It was running,” she said defensively. “Now I have nothing to drive except Mom’s Lincoln and my tractor.”

He grinned. “You can drive my truck.”

“I accept your offer.” She knew he’d worked all day without much sleep, so she let him eat in peace. When he was finished, he set his tray on the floor. She poked her tray. “I’m through. Tell Mom it was delicious, but it hurts to chew.”

He set her tray beside his, scooted onto her mattress, and facing her, took her hand. “I don’t know what I would have done if—”

The anguish in his voice and on his face stabbed at her heart. “But I’m all right. Really. I’ll be out there plowing up the fields real soon and planting a new crop.” Spring alfalfa was generally planted anywhere between early March and May. “I’m going to put in a field of corn too. And then there’s the garden out back.”

“I get it. You can’t keep a good girl down.” He started to stand, but she caught his hand.

“And you’re going to train horses here.”

“What?”

The words had slipped out, and until that moment she hadn’t realized she’d even been harboring such an idea. But now that she’d said them, resolve set in, and she knew it was what she wanted. She didn’t want Jon to leave, try to buy other land for a business, or decide to return to the rodeo circuit. “You heard me. This place is going to pay off, and you’re going to be a part of it.”

He shook his head. “This is your land. Not mine.”

“But I can do whatever I want with it. And I want you to get some of those mustangs and train them, and sell them, just like you did for Bill Pickins.”

“How’s that help you?” He looked somewhat amused.

“I’ll take a cut of your profits,” she said, realizing she was acting on pure emotion with no clue about his business. “I—I mean, if you want to work out the details, we can.”

He studied her. “We’ll talk when the drugs wear off.”

Fighting sudden exhaustion, she closed her eyes and rested against her pillow. When she opened her eyes, he was still
staring at her, his look so tender that an intense physical desire stirred inside her. “I have a lot of boo-boos, cowboy.”

“Maybe I should kiss them.” He leaned forward, brushed his lips against her forehead, just above the stitches over her eyebrow.

She held up her arm where there was an abrasion. “Hurts here too.”

He kissed the spot.

“And here.” She pointed to her mouth.

He kissed her with a pressure as light as the brush of a butterfly’s wing.

She thought of a hundred places on her body she wanted him to kiss. “I hurt all over.”

He stroked the swell of her breast above her bedclothes, making her ache to have him kiss her there. But he pulled away and said, “Rain check.”

Reluctantly, she watched him rise. “I’ll probably need more therapy tomorrow.”

Love for her spilled out of his intense green eyes. He said, “Count on it.”

Visitors, flowers, and a dozen cards came during the week Ciana was recovering, taking her by surprise. Maybe everybody in the town didn’t hate her after all. Patricia and Abbie came to visit, as well as some friends who had once ridden with her in the flag corps. The ones away at college texted her get-well wishes. One good thing that happened after her wreck was that the vandalism to her property ceased. “Maybe almost killing me scared them off,” she told her mother.

During her recovery, she received a long email from Eden that read like a continuous run-on sentence, saying she was coming home and that Garret was coming with her and could he have a place to stay and, oh, she was crazy in love with the guy and they were going to eventually work their way across the country so they could see America together but really wanted to hang in Windemere for a while if that was okay.

Ciana told her, “Of course,” and didn’t mention the accident. She also wrote about Enzo’s coming and going and about her finally-out-in-the-open-for-all-the-world-to-see
feelings for Jon. She ended by writing,
Hurry home. The garden needs planting
.

Ciana also had two other visitors. One she knew; the other she’d heard about but had never met. She was snapping green beans on the veranda a few days after her wreck—the farthest Alice Faye would allow her to migrate from her bed—when a red sports car turned into Bellmeade. She watched it come slowly up the tree-lined drive toward her, and with the afternoon sun in her eyes was unable to make out the driver. She set down the bowl of fresh beans as the car stopped a few feet in front of the steps. When the door opened and the driver emerged, her back stiffened. “Hello, Mr. Hastings.”

Gerald Hastings came closer but stayed off the steps. “Miss Beauchamp.”

Ciana wondered where her dog was, and while she didn’t want Soldier to bite the man, it would have been nice to have the animal terrify him. “To what do I owe your visit?”

Hastings looked distressed. “I’m just in from Chicago and heard of your accident. I’m sorry.”

“I’ll be just fine.”

“I’m hearing that it may have been more deliberate than accidental.”

“The sheriff has my statement.”

“Miss Beauchamp. Ciana—”

The front door opened and Alice Faye walked quickly onto the porch. “We have nothing to say to you, so turn around and go away.”

“Alice Faye …” He stopped, regrouped. “Are you against me too?”

With effort, Ciana stood, teetered slightly, hating to have him watch her struggle. “You heard my mother. Leave.”

Hastings stepped backward, his gaze darting between the
two women. “Are you implying that
I
had something to do with the accident? I told you, I’ve been in Chicago.”

“I don’t have to imply it, but it can’t help me from thinking it,” Alice Faye said, her brow knitted.

“Now listen here, I’m a businessman with projects all over the country. I’m sorry about what happened, but I had nothing to do with it.”

“Your offer to buy out my farmland most likely had everything to do with it,” Ciana countered, holding her anger like a tight wad in her chest.

The sound of Jon’s pickup turning into the drive and hurtling toward them stopped any argument Hastings was about to give. The truck screeched to a halt, but when the door opened Soldier beat Jon out of the vehicle. “Stay!” Jon commanded. The dog stood at attention, a low growl in his throat, eyes trained on Gerald Hastings, now pale as a ghost, and standing stock-still.

Jon sauntered forward, a rifle against his thigh.

Hastings’s gaze moved from the dog to the rifle. “Now hold on. I just came to say how sorry I am Ciana was hurt.”

Soldier’s growl deepened. Jon touched the dog’s head and he sat obediently. “And don’t think we’re not grateful for your visit, but it’s over now. Best if you left.”

“The accident was
not
my doing,” Hastings said in a raised voice that caused Soldier to stand again. Hastings went rigid.