CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
THE NIGHT HAD aged into silent sleep when Lauren pulled on her windbreaker and walked out onto the deck of Pop’s lake house. This was the place she always went to think. It was quiet, peaceful. For a lonely, only child, this was her safe haven.
She watched the full moon dance along the water. Unlike Indigo Lake, out in the country, this hold of water was man-made. In the early years, a creek had been dammed up to act as the town’s alternate water supply, but now it was simply a small lake community, where most residents fished the long days of summer away.
This time of year she always thought of the lake as hibernating until spring. People bought a lake house for the summer months, but Lauren loved the winter here. Most of the homes were empty now, resting, but come March there would be boats on the water.
She played with the key around her neck. Lucas had given it to her the last time she saw him in the jail. It felt cold on her skin, almost like it was branding her with ice. Somehow, he had said, the key held his future and she had to keep it safe. Lucas had said to tell no one she had it, and that was exactly what she’d do.
For the first time, she knew how much she meant to him. He’d trusted her. According to Pearly, people had been coming and going from the jail cell all day, but he’d trusted her. If her dad frisked him when he went into jail, then someone had to have brought him the key, hidden it in a pocket of something brought up to the jail. Pop would have checked each piece of clothing coming in, but Pearly might not have.
Keep it safe, he’d said, as if she was saving his life, his future.
She’d spent her day doing research about the Bar W, collecting information and thinking about the key.
First, she researched the history of the Collins ranch.
D.R. Collins, Reid’s father, was the third generation to own the Bar W ranch. His grandfather—generation one—had built it up during the late years of the cattle drives. He hadn’t married until his fifties, but his young bride gave him three children. Two girls and a boy. He’d left the entire ranch to his son.
The second Collins to have the ranch had two sons. But the will left it all to one, D.R. Collins, Reid’s father. No one seemed to know what happened to the other son.
Reid’s father always went by D.R. Some said it was because his mother’s grandfathers had been Davis and Randell. She couldn’t make up her mind which name to use, so she just gave her son the initials of both. Like most family trees in the area, there were a few Davises or Kirklands or Wagners or O’Gradys or Randells mixed into the branches.
But the Collinses didn’t want any close relatives. Like the two generations before, D.R. Collins made it plain he was leaving the ranch to only one of his children. When Charley messed up, Reid became generation four. Like his father, Reid had never really run the ranch. Foremen like Lucas’s father did.
Lauren had spent the day checking out every public record. She even found pictures of the last three weddings of D.R. Collins, now in his fifties. With each marriage, D.R. grew older and the brides grew younger. The last two nuptials had happened in Europe and to her knowledge, no one from Crossroads, including his sons, had been invited.
She had no idea how any of this could help her pop solve his case. There had to be trouble somewhere. Collins didn’t get along with many of the locals. Reid Collins must have needed money fast or been sick of waking up every morning smelling cattle.
Lauren wasn’t sure her father knew much about what had happened on the ranch for years. He’d once been invited out now and then, when Reid’s father still owned the place, but D.R. was never home long enough to keep even a polite friendship going.
Walking out to the water’s edge, Lauren saw a light on at Tim O’Grady’s place. He was probably working late. He lived the glamorous life of a writer that she only dreamed about.
If it wasn’t so late, she’d stop in and visit with him. They must have talked a thousand hours growing up. About nothing. About everything. They might not solve all the world’s problems, but she’d always found it comforting to know one other person was as confused as she was.
She drifted toward the light, even though she knew she wouldn’t interrupt him. Not tonight. There was too much on her mind.
Lauren had forgotten all about their dinner date last night and so had he, obviously. There was too much in the wind. Tim would call her in a few days and they’d laugh about it, and then they’d probably go to Dorothy’s Café and talk.
As she circled the bend of the lake and looked up, she saw a man sitting on the rock Tim and she used to meet on when they were kids.
Only tonight it wasn’t Tim’s, but Lucas’s outline she saw.
A dozen questions came to mind. She knew Pop had moved him away from the county jail, but it seemed odd the sheriff would come out and set him on a rock. Maybe he was hiding in the trees around the lake or staying in one of the cabins abandoned in winter. It was so late Lucas may have thought it would be safe to come outside.
She slowly moved toward him, her tennis shoes sinking an inch into the wet sand as she walked. Her father had said Lucas was safe and maybe he was. No one would think to look for him two miles from town.
If he’d tell her the details of what happened in the jail cell, everyone in Crossroads could read it in the morning. If they had a chance to talk, he might explain the key. It simply looked like an ordinary key. Maybe he’d tell her why he seemed to want people to believe he was involved in the fires on the Collins ranch. But he couldn’t have been. He’d been with her when the first one lit the night. Nothing made sense right now.
She didn’t say a word as she crawled up on the rock and took her seat beside him.
“I saw you coming,” he whispered as he moved so his body circled behind her for warmth. “I thought of yelling for you to go back. I meant what I said about no one knowing we’re even friends. Tim, you and me might be remembered for the Gypsy House incident years ago, but folks think we’ve all gone our separate ways. You should stay away from me.”
“I’m not leaving. This is my rock.”
“Oh, yeah, you own it?”
“Well, no, but I claimed it when I was five. I’ll let you sit on it, but you need to know that it is mine.”
“Then it’s your rock. Thanks for sharing.” He tugged an old blanket around them both, then hugged her tightly. “You know, every time I get near you it’s like I have to absorb this pleasant blow to my gut before I can relax and simply enjoy you being close. No one’s ever affected me like that but you.”
She turned to face him and wrapped her arms around his neck. This was the Lucas she knew. Not the lawyer. Not the boy in a hurry to grow up. “You’ve never told me that.” She smiled, wondering if he had any idea how good it felt to hear him talk of such things. He’d always been so serious. Even when they were in high school he was the grown-up, the voice of reason. There were times they talked that she thought he had to be far more than her.
“Remember when Kirkland gave us both cell phones?” She felt his laughter.
“Yeah, I wonder if he knew we’d just use them to call each other.”
“I don’t think so, but if he did guess, he never told Pop.”
Lucas rubbed his jaw against her cheek, tickling her with his stubble. “I spent a thousand more hours thinking about what I’d say to you than ever talking to you. Looking back, I wish I’d been brave enough to make a few more of those midnight calls.”
They were silent for a few minutes, both lost in what might have been.
Finally, she pulled away and faced him, wishing she could see his eyes, wishing he could read her thoughts. The words they never said hung heavy between them.
“Kiss me, Lucas. Like nothing exists in the world right now except me and you. Kiss me like you did once beneath a tree outside my dorm. Like it was something you had to do. Like it was more important than breathing.”
“Bossy. That’s a side I haven’t seen.” He touched her cheek.
“I just want to feel something tonight. For a few more seconds I’d like to believe a dream I once had isn’t completely dead. Pearly said the other day that I’m in the spring of my life, but inside it feels like winter. It has for a long time.”
He kissed her gently. As if it were a first kiss. A hesitant kiss. A hopeful kiss. When she didn’t react, he pulled an inch away. “Aren’t you going to kiss me back?”
“No.” She stared at him, loving and hating this man all at the same time. “For once, I’d like just to feel you kissing me. I don’t want to think about anything for a while except that you are here with me. Before everything in your life becomes more important, let me have your total attention, Lucas. Make me believe I’m the center of your world and not just some girl who lives on the fringes.”
He kissed her again and when she didn’t react he moved down to her throat and then kissed his way back up to the tip of her nose. Once, he stopped and looked at her. Even in the moonlight she could see confusion in his face. “You’re in a strange place tonight, mi cielo.” Then he whispered very low in her ear. “My sky. My world.”
She grinned. “I’m floating between planets, you know. I’m not even sure where I am but I’ll let you know where I land.”
“So, what do I do while you’re floating, gentle beauty?”
“Make me feel. I’ve been sleepwalking through life, and I’d like to wake up.”
He cradled her in the crook of his arm and kissed her again. Harder, longer, with less control. “You taste so good,” he whispered. “Like home and Christmas and first love all mixed into one.”
Pushing the windbreaker away, he moved his hand over her flannel shirt. “You feel so good this close. So often I think of you as a dream I can’t quite reach.”
Her only response was a low sigh of pleasure.
He grew bolder. One button tumbled open, then another as his lips slid along her skin. Maybe he needed to float awhile tonight also. Maybe they both needed to just feel for a change and not think.
“I’ve wanted to touch you like this since I first saw you.” He laughed. “That night we were walking home when we were all in high school, I wouldn’t have been there if you hadn’t said you were going to walk home in the dark with Reid and Tim. I was there to be with you.”
She closed her eyes, remembering how he’d walked beside her, talked to her, while the boys talked football. Then, when the floor of the old house began to crumble, he’d held her safe. He’d been her knight, her hero, her dream lover. Someone not quite real. Someone she could never reach for.
Slowly, his hand pushed beneath the cotton of her T-shirt and covered her breast. He held it tightly and her breath came faster. “Tell me you want this, Lauren, because I’m finished waiting for the right time. If all we have is tonight, I want you to know how I feel about you.”
“I want to be with you, but you should know, I don’t think that I’m able to feel as deeply as other people. Something is wrong with me. I’ve tried intimacy and it didn’t move me.” Now wasn’t the time to tell him that every time she’d tried sex, it was just an act, not a feeling. Maybe she wasn’t built for passion. Her mother had told her once that it was something she could do without in her life. Maybe being frigid was inherited.
That might be the reason she hadn’t dated much or run after Lucas. A tiny hope had always whispered in her heart that Lucas might be able to fix her, but now, if he couldn’t, if he wouldn’t, then she’d know she was broken.
“I find it impossible to believe that passion doesn’t flow in your veins. I’ve thought of you like this in my arms even when I was more kid than man.”
She lay back on the cold rock as he moved above her, slowly undressing her until his hand moved over her bare skin from throat to just below her waist. When she didn’t say a word, he unbuttoned her jeans and slid them low on her hips so he could spread his hand out over her abdomen.
“You’re deep-water beautiful. When the time is right passion will flow out of you like an endless ocean.” He kissed her as he lowered his body over her. “I want to be the one with you when that happens.”
Everywhere his fingers moved, her skin warmed, and wherever he wasn’t touching felt cold, dead.
She couldn’t help but move to his touch. He made her forget the entire world. There was nothing but him. Feel, she almost whispered. Now was the time to crack the shell that always surrounded her. This was Lucas. She could relax and just feel. She didn’t have to be afraid.
“You’re so beautiful in the moonlight,” he said against her ear. “You really don’t know how lovely you are or what it does to me inside just to be near to you. You’ve got a power over me.”
When he kissed her with a hunger that surprised her, she didn’t return his kiss. She wouldn’t pretend with him, not Lucas. It had to be real or nothing at all.
A tear ran across her cheek. She could feel his passion, but not her own. She couldn’t let go.
“Are you going to make love to me?” she asked, waiting for him to go further. Loving him would be perfect. Knowing that he loved her would make all the splintered parts of her life fit together.
He didn’t answer for a few minutes as he learned the curves of her body. He was touching her with loving care, but passion seemed to be slipping away.
She floated between the world she wanted and reality.
“No,” he finally said with a laugh that held no humor. “I want you to want me as much as I want you. Then we’ll make love together. I feel like I’m about to lose control with you, and when I do I’d like you to make the jump with me.”
Lauren closed her eyes so tightly tears dripped out. He might be talking about a time that would never come. Couldn’t she just love him? Why did it have to be so complicated? Why couldn’t she pretend and maybe it would come true?
But she couldn’t. Not with him. No matter how much she wished for this, she would never lie to Lucas.
He pulled her into his hug and held her for a while, then whispered, “Passion starts in the blood, not just the brain, Lauren. You can’t talk yourself into this. I’m not sure you really know who I am and, with all that’s going on, it’s probably not the best time for me to be thinking of anything but staying alive. When we get together, I want it to be just you and me. I may not be the hero you think I am. And maybe you’re not the perfect sheriff’s daughter you think you have to be.”
She wanted to scream No. He was wrong. She needed to feel something now. She wanted to know that she was real inside, full, alive.
She lay still as he buttoned her pants, then her shirt, then the windbreaker. When she was fully dressed, he pulled her to her feet. “We’ll try this again sometime. We’ll go dancing. We’ll drink wine. We’ll take our time.”
Anger built like a slow burn in her gut. “Lucas, we’re not children. You can make love to me.” She felt like she was offering him a gift that he didn’t want.
He kissed the top of her head as he had ten years ago when she turned sixteen. “I don’t want to just have sex, Lauren. I want to be in love with you so deeply that you’re in my every thought.” He caught the chain around her neck and pulled the key up. “But now is not the time or the place.”
She pushed away, realizing he was stepping back from her again. She’d heard those words before. “It never is the right time with you, Lucas.” All the other times he’d walk out avalanched through her mind. He’d even said they’d be together tonight and then he’d stopped when he’d heard her confession. She wasn’t perfect, either. She couldn’t feel.
He might say she wanted him to be perfect, more than he was, but he wanted the same.
She felt like they were mannequins, an aisle apart, always admiring one another but never moving a step closer. Perfection in wax and plastic.
“You don’t understand, do you?” He sounded tired.
“You’re right. I don’t understand. I’m trying to love you when you’re not ready to love me back. I’m sick of wanting you, or comparing every man to you and having none quite measure up. I’m through with waiting. Tonight was your one chance and you blew it.” Being mad at him was easier than looking too deeply inside herself.
She was off the rock and running toward the one light along the shoreline before he could say a word. Part of her knew she was being unfair, but she’d waited so long to feel alive. All she’d wanted tonight was to feel, and Lucas was the only man who might have made that happen.
She veered off the shoreline and into the trees. She knew the path by heart even in the darkness, but she didn’t know herself. She was drifting again, floating between planets.
A few minutes later she slid through the patio door of the O’Grady lake house and went straight to Tim’s bedroom. She didn’t know if she was shaking with cold or with anger. All she knew was that she hurt inside and couldn’t be alone.
Tim was sitting in the middle of his bed with papers scattered around him and a laptop on his crossed knees. When she stepped in the doorway he didn’t look surprised. “I guess you know Lucas is hiding out here. He sort of broke out of jail, with your Pop’s help, and came here—can you believe it?”
She just stared at Tim. She had no idea what to say. For once she didn’t want to talk.
Tim didn’t seem to have the same problem. “He’s probably sleeping. If you’re here to see him, go down the hallway to the room that used to be my parents’.”
She just kept standing in the doorway. The numbness she often felt was seeping back into her bones. She wouldn’t allow her heart to break. “I didn’t come to see Lucas. I came to ask if you’d hold me for a while. I’m cold.”
Tim pushed the manuscript aside and opened the covers. “Want to sleep with me, L? You know you’re always welcome.”
She nodded, tugged off her jacket and wet shoes, then crawled into his bed.
He flipped off the light and drew her under his arm. “Want to have sex?” he asked. “I’m happy to put that on the menu too.”
“No.”
Tim laughed. “Of course not. How about we just cuddle?”
“Sounds good.”
His hand moved along her arm, warming her. “You know, L, if I wrote this scene in a novel no one would believe it. I’m not sure it’s normal for a grown man and woman to sleep together and not sleep together, if you know what I mean.”
She rested her cheek against his sweatshirt and cried softly.
He pushed her damp hair off her cheek. “It’s all right, L. You can come sleep with me for as long as you want to. If I get married someday, I’ll just tell my wife to move over enough to make room for my best friend. I’m sure she won’t mind.”
Lauren laughed and pushed her tears away with her palm. “I love you, Tim.”
“Yeah, I love you too. Go to sleep. We’ll figure out the world over coffee in the morning.”