Kids ran wild across the yard, climbing trees, running down hills and adding high-pitched shrieks of delight to the hysteria brought on by being together. While their mothers picked the bounteous overflow from her garden, Toni sat on the front-porch swing. She kept one eye on her nieces and nephews' riotous behavior, and another on the youngest member of the Hatfield clan, three-month-old Lucy, who belonged to Justin and Judy.
The baby’s tiny head was covered with a downy layer of soft, brown curls. Her small nose wrinkled in sleep, and her rosebud lips pouted, then sucked in a reflex motion as Toni shifted her from one shoulder to the other.
Toni inhaled the sweet scent of baby powder and line-dried clothes as she patted Lucy’s diapered bottom in rhythm to the rocking of the swing. With children in the yard, and one in her arms, her life seemed nearly complete.
And then, Lane Monday walked out of the barn and started toward the house. The absence of a limp was noticeable, as was the length and breadth of the man himself. Toni clutched Lucy a little tighter and tried not to notice, or even care, that his big body moved like a well-oiled machine.
A ball rolled near Lane’s feet. He laughed, and tossed it back to the children at play, and for a moment, Toni pretended that this was her world, and the man coming toward her was a permanent fixture in it.
The baby whimpered, and without missing a beat, Toni set the swing back in motion with the tip of her toe, pushing off like a bird taking flight.
Pat, pat on the baby’s bottom. Back and forth in the old porch swing. The rhythm felt right, and as old as Time. A mother rocking a child to sleep.
And then Judy Hatfield came around the house with a weary smile and a bushel of peas, and set it near the porch. Her sister-in-law, Laura, followed with her bushel.
“We're through,” Laura called. “Hey, kids, put away the toys and go wash. We've got to go home.”
Grumbles and groans could be heard all around, but the children did as they were told.
“Bet you thought I would never get done,” Judy said, and lifted the baby from Toni’s arms, missing the empty look that swept over Toni’s face as she did. “The peas are great. I'll put the kids to shelling when we get home, and Justin can baby-sit later while I put them up.”
Toni’s heart felt as empty as her arms. She looked down at the sleeping baby and wanted to cry. “I could keep Lucy longer if you needed to—”
“No way,” Judy said. “Laura and I have already imposed upon you long enough by asking you to watch this wild bunch.”
“It wasn’t an imposition,” Toni said softly, unaware that Lane saw all of what she felt and was trying to hide. “I like taking care of the kids, especially the babies,” she said, and brushed a baby curl behind Lucy’s ear, just so she could feel the silky softness one more time.
“Judy’s right,” Laura said. “Every time we have a family get-together, you wind up playing nursemaid to all the little Hatfields, instead of enjoying the day with the rest of us.” Then she groaned and rolled her neck. “Tonight, I will ache in places I didn’t know I had.”
Laura batted her eyes and giggled as she tucked a loose blond curl beneath her headband where it belonged. She was small and plump and David Hatfield doted on her.
You don’t understand what a real ache is, Toni thought. The children are why I enjoy the day. But she kept the thought to herself, as she did everything that was dear to her heart.
Lane stood to one side and watched. He didn’t understand Toni’s pain, but it was obvious to him that she was hurting. And because it hurt him to see her sad, he took the opportunity to break into the conversation.
“Ladies, if you would tell me where to put your baskets, I'll set them in your cars.”
Judy and Laura gave Lane a considering look, as if trying to imagine this man and their socially inept sister-in-law together.
“I'll get them,” Toni said, and ran to the edge of the house where the women had set them down.
She picked one up and was about to drag the other, when Lane walked up behind her, took them out of her arms and hefted one onto each hip.
“No you don’t. You do too much and lift too much as it is. I'll do it,” Lane said, and ignored Toni’s frown.
Two at one time would have been more than a normal-size man could have handled. Lane had them balanced on his hips, one beneath each long arm as if they were nothing.
“If you can find an empty spot in the car, you can put mine anywhere,” Laura said, giggling, and headed for her car to open the trunk with Lane right behind her. Her less-than-subtle reference pointed to the fact that four of the six children loading into cars were hers.
“Be careful,” Toni called. “Remember your stitches.”
Lane loaded the baskets, then turned. There was a soft smile on his face and a deeper one in his eyes. “My hands and arms do not have stitches, Antonette. And after tomorrow, neither will my leg. You fuss too much. I'm fine.”
Toni was at a loss for what to do or say while he loaded the baskets into the cars. All she could do was watch while the joy in her morning disappeared.
Because Lane and the children had otherwise occupied her thoughts, she missed seeing the all-knowing look that Judy and Laura exchanged. It was an “Aha!” look if ever there was one.
As Lane deposited the last basket in her car, Judy apologized. “Toni is right. We forgot that you've been through so much. You seem so strong and healthy, we just—”
“I'm fine,” Lane said. “Toni’s just trying to keep me in one piece long enough to ship me out.”
“Oh, wait,” Toni said, then darted back into the house. Seconds later she was back with a half-empty bottle in her hand. “Lucy’s milk. She went to sleep before she finished it all.”
Judy smiled as Toni stuck the bottle into the baby’s bag. “The little squirt’s been doing that lately, then waking up an hour or so later squawking for more. I swear she’s going to be as hardheaded as her daddy.”
“We're off. Thanks for the peas,” Laura shouted, waving as she drove away.
Judy echoed the sentiment, then drove away, leaving Toni and Lane alone in the yard.
“I always feel like I've been in the eye of a whirlwind when the kids leave,” Toni said, and didn’t know that her chin quivered as she watched them drive away. “But I wouldn’t trade them for anything. I would keep them all if their mothers would let me.”
“Toni?”
“What?” she asked, still lost in the memory of what it had felt like to hold the baby against her breast.
“Why aren’t you married?”
Pain, followed by anger, made her lash out. “Why aren’t you?” she countered, satisfied by the startled expression on his face.
“I was,” Lane said, and wished he’d never started this.
“Don’t you ever want to remarry? Maybe raise a family?”
The expression on Lane’s face went blank. Toni didn’t know what she’d said, but something had struck a serious nerve in him.
“I will not father any children, and that’s a damned fact,” he said bitterly.
Toni was shocked. She would never have believed Lane to be the type to dislike children. Matching his defiant answer with a defiance of her own, she spoke before she thought. “If I could, I would have a hundred. Children are wonderful. They're the most loving, honest people I know.”
Lane grew cold, from the inside out. He didn’t see the angry tears in her eyes, or hear the tremble in her voice. Memories as painful as the wounds healing on his body were making him sick. He saw nothing but the memory of Sharla in a pool of blood and the way she’d looked when the life had gone out of her eyes.
“Then you should have gotten married and had a dozen,” he muttered, wishing to hell that this conversation had never started.
Hurt and angry at learning that he held disdain for what she most wanted out of life, she spoke the truth before she thought. “No one ever asked me,” she said, and then paled and walked away before she saw the sympathy on his face, hating him for making her admit the fact.
The shock of her statement yanked him out of his bitter memories. He knew by the set of her shoulders that his thoughtless statement had hurt her as deeply as if he’d struck a blow to her heart. He would give anything to be able to take back what he’d said. But it was too late. The damage had already been done.
“What in hell is wrong with the men around here, anyway?” he muttered, and followed her into the house, unwilling to let what he’d said fester between them. “Toni?”
He was not surprised when she didn’t answer. She’d probably had enough of men and their stupidity to last her a lifetime. But Lane wasn’t the type to give up, so he went from room to room until he found her in the kitchen...ignoring him.
It took everything he had not to focus on her long bare legs and shapely backside, encased in frayed denim cutoffs. Her pink T-shirt was soft and old, and he knew that if she turned around, the outline of her bra and the defiant push of her breasts beneath could make a man forget his manners. And while he would have liked to undo her braid and dig his fingers into the tangles so deep that he would be forever caught, he knew that it wasn’t smart to let lust get in the way of why he’d come in search of her.
“Look,” he began, “I've never been good at saying I'm sorry, but that doesn’t mean I can’t admit when I'm wrong. I was way out of line out there. I would like to think you'll forgive me and just chalk it up to a bad day.”
Toni turned. His apology was welcome, and oddly, unexpected. She should have been happy to know that he’d cared about her enough to at least clear the air between them. But she was too upset about something else to do much more than nod.
“It’s fine,” she said. “Forget it.”
Lane took a deep breath and resisted the urge to shake her. “It’s not fine, Antonette, and we both know it. I said some things I shouldn’t have and I—”
“My pie is gone.”
Her remark was so unexpected that Lane forgot what he’d been about to say. “What do you mean, your pie is gone?”
She shrugged and pointed. “Just what I mean. I took an apple pie out of the oven just before Judy and Laura arrived, and put it out back to cool. It’s gone.” She sighed. “The boys probably took it and ate it while their mothers weren’t looking. I don’t really care, but I would like to know where my pie pan is. It’s one of my favorites.”
“I could look around for you,” Lane offered. “They couldn’t have gone far with it. Maybe it’s in the barn or out behind your machine shed.”
Toni sighed and dropped into a chair. “It doesn’t matter to me,” she said. “It’s just that you won’t have dessert today, and I would lay odds that three little boys will have a bellyache before the afternoon is over.”
Lane grinned, aware that what he was about to say would get a rise out of Toni. “I can give up dessert for a day, even several if I have to, but why are you blaming the boys? There were several little girls out there, too.”
“Because the girls don’t like to get dirty. They wouldn’t have eaten a pie with their fingers even if someone had tried to make them. I know my nieces...and my nephews. Believe me, it was the boys.”
“Are you going to call their mothers?” Lane asked.
Toni looked up, then quickly away. There was too much tenderness in his expression to face. “No way. Favorite aunties do not snitch. At least, not over missing pies.”
Lane bent down and covered her hands with his own. “Toni, look at me.”
The touch of his hands was bittersweet. He gave so little, and she wanted so much more. But she bit her lip and complied. She had, after all, no other choice. There was no way she could let him know how much she’d come to count on his daily presence in her life.
“What?”
Lane sighed. Her name was Antonette, but someone should have called her Defiance instead. “Are you going to say it?” he asked.
“Say what?” It was a dumb question. She knew what he wanted to hear. It was just so hard to say the words, because acknowledging what he’d said about children was like the death of a dream.
“That I'm forgiven for hurting your feelings.”
Toni sighed. “You're forgiven.”
Lane laughed, but it was a harsh, unhappy sound. “Damn, Toni, don’t overdo the sentimentality on my account.”
Her gaze was level, her voice calm. “I can’t afford sentimentality, Lane. I am a self-assured woman, remember?”
What I remember is the pain in your voice, lady. I hear what you say. But do you hear yourself saying it?
The thought was impossible to voice, because however badly he might wish to do so, he was in no position to change one single aspect of Toni Hatfield’s personal life. He’d already given happiness a try and been cut off at the heart for the effort. He didn’t have enough guts to repeat the pain.
“So, what are you going to do?” he asked.
Toni pushed herself up from the chair. “Call the doctor and confirm your appointment.”
“Appointment?”
“You've got a checkup coming and stitches to be removed.”
“Trying to get rid of me, are you?” It was a poor joke that fell flat between them.
Toni paused in the doorway, looking strangely elegant in spite of her T-shirt and shorts. Her chin tilted and her eyes darkened with defiance.
“Does that mean you're not anxious to leave?” she asked.
He flushed. How could he answer that and not hurt her worse than he’d already done? He chose to remain silent.
Unbeknownst to him, his silence hurt her even more. But she would be damned if she let him know that.
“That’s what I thought,” Toni said. “There’s a casserole in the refrigerator. Heat what you want in the microwave. I'm not hungry anymore.”
All six feet six inches of his body went numb. He knew he kept breathing, though, because the pain around his heart had not gone away. But he couldn’t have moved or spoken to save his life. If he didn’t get the hell out of Tennessee soon, he was going to ruin both their lives.
* * *
There was a note on the table, and Toni was nowhere to be found. If he hadn’t sat down on that sofa, he wouldn’t have dozed off. He hated this lingering weakness and would be heartily glad when his full strength finally returned.
“How could she disappear without my hearing her leave?” Lane muttered, picking up the note and then frowning. “Eleven o'clock tomorrow. Not even a 'Dear Sir' or 'go to hell.'”
He tossed the note back onto the table. That, he supposed, was the confirmation of his appointment time; the lack of everything else had to be the sum of what his departure meant to her. Absolutely nothing.
He sighed and ran a hand through his hair in frustration. How did she expect him to act? They’d known each other less than a week. Granted, the circumstances surrounding their meeting had been more dramatic than most. And it was true that you get to know a person real fast when you spend the night handcuffed together. That was a fact that Toni could claim. His situation was a little bit different, though. He had the feeling that if he could remember it, too, then he would be a lot better off.
How, he wondered, did that old Chinese proverb go? If you save a man’s life, then he will be in your debt forever?
That didn’t help his guilt. So he owed her his life, but that didn’t mean he had to give up the rest of it for her, did it? Surely she hadn’t expected him to just toss off fifteen years of law enforcement and try farming, Tennessee-style.
“What the hell am I doing?” Lane asked himself. “She hasn’t asked a damned thing of me. Why am I reading so much into what she doesn’t say?” But there were no answers forthcoming, and no tall, dark-eyed woman to deny what he thought.
Lane walked outside to the back porch and looked up into the hills beyond the house. A haze hung above the treetops, filtering the heat of the sun just enough to give the less cautious a dangerous burn. He stood at the edge of the top step, gazing intently into the tree line, watching for something, anything, that might tell him where Toni had gone. He heard nothing, and saw nothing but a lone turkey buzzard riding the air currents far above the house.
As he watched, it dawned on him that this was part of her everyday life. She came and went to suit herself, and she knew that when she came home, no one would be standing on the porch watching and waiting for her to arrive.
A slow, sick feeling settled near the center of his belly. Now that he’d met her, how could he leave, knowing that she would be alone? He’d seen the longing in her eyes for more than life had seen fit to give her. He’d sensed the emptiness with which she lived, although she would have been the first to deny it, especially to him.
“Ah, lady, why did this have to happen? You deserve a whole man, not one who’s been crippled by life.”
But admitting that he wanted to stay would be admitting the reason why. And Lane Monday wasn’t ready to face the fact that he was falling for the woman who had saved his life.
“I'll get back to Tallahassee and this thing that I feel between us will fade,” he told himself.
Relieved to see her coming out of the trees, Lane knew that he’d been lying. To himself, and to her, ever since the day that they’d met. He didn’t want to leave Toni Hatfield, but he would. And it would be one of the hardest things he’d ever had to do. Maybe even harder than the day he’d buried his wife.
And then he realized that Toni was running and he forgot to breathe. He could tell by the way she was moving that something was wrong.
* * *
The last thing Toni had expected to find when she left the house was a dead calf. And she knew that she wouldn’t have found it for days if the mama cow had not kept bawling.
She’d heard it earlier when Laura and Judy were in the garden and she was on the porch with the baby, but she’d thought little of it. Cows bawled all the time.
But later, after confirming Lane’s appointment, she’d stepped outside to get a breath of fresh air, hoping to clear away the misery of knowing that he would soon be gone. The first thing she’d noticed was the distant, but steady, bawl of a cow. Without thought, she’d struck out across the back lot, heading for the repetitive sound.
She’d gone farther than she’d meant to on foot. If she’d known she was going to go this far away from the house, she would have taken the ATV. But the longer she’d walked, the sillier it would have been to turn around and go back to get the vehicle. Any minute now, she expected to find the cow and see that she’d worried for nothing.
But that hadn’t been the case.
When she walked into the clearing and saw the cow in the corral on the opposite side, she sighed.
“Well, bossy, how did you get yourself stuck in there?” she muttered.
And then the cow lifted her head and bawled again. Toni could see that her udder was tight and swollen with milk. It was clear that the calf hadn’t nursed at all during the day. It was then that Toni had started to worry. It was odd that the cow had gotten herself caught inside the corral, but even stranger that the calf was not right there, on the other side of the fence, bawling to get in to its mama.
“I'm coming, girl,” Toni said softly, and started walking across the pasture.
The cow lowed again. Toni imagined she heard sadness in the cry, although she knew that it was just her sympathetic heart working overtime again.
“Do you hurt, girl?” Toni asked as she neared the cow. “It'll be all right. We'll get you out of there and find your baby for you, and you'll be good as gold.”
Her hand was on the gate when she saw the calf at the edge of the trees. She’d expected it to be nearby. But she hadn’t expected to find it dead, or in its present condition.
The left hind leg was gone from the carcass. She knelt and held her breath against the gory sight, needing to see, yet unwilling to touch.
It hadn’t been dead for long. The blood was still red and fairly fresh, although the edges of the wound were already starting to curl and dry. If she could only see the...
“Oh, God!”
She jumped to her feet and staggered backward before slowly turning in place. She searched the surrounding tree line with a sharp gaze. The calf’s throat had been cut. Someone, rather than something, had killed it. And it was then that she realized the leg hadn’t been torn from the body; it had been butchered instead.
“Damn, damn, damn,” she muttered, thinking of the Sumter family and the missing father. This was worse than before. She could understand starvation, but she could not suffer wanton waste. If they were hungry, then why on earth hadn’t they taken the entire calf?
A sense of profound violation crept into her soul. Someone had come onto her property and taken something belonging to her, something that had depended upon her for food and care. Rage for that injustice overwhelmed her. She doubled her fists and resisted the urge to scream. And the moment she thought it, she felt a different sense of urgency. What if they were still here? That might explain why the calf was dismembered. Maybe they’d heard her coming and been frightened away from finishing the job.
The cow lowed and moved toward the back of its pen. Toni paused in the act of turning around and cocked her head just a bit toward the tree line.
But she saw and heard nothing. And that was when her anxiety turned to fear. Subconsciously, she’d noticed what her conscious self had not; there was a complete and overwhelming absence of sound. Not a bird. Not a bug. Not one thing was moving, not even the cow she’d just put in the pen. It stood, with its head lifted and ears up, looking into the woods behind her. The flesh crawled beneath her hair. It felt as though someone were blowing on her neck. She shuddered and clenched her fists, trying to regain some of her earlier anger.
She told herself that she was imagining things. Then something popped behind her, a familiar sound she’d heard all of her life. It was the sound of twigs breaking beneath the steps of someone’s feet.
“Oh, no, they're still here,” she gasped, and remembered that Samuel Sumter’s three oldest boys were in their twenties and nearly as big and worthless as their daddy.
She turned in the direction of her house. Lane was near. Only minutes away. But she had the terrible feeling that he would still be too far to help her.
Without looking back, she bolted from the corral, ran across the clearing and deeper into the woods, dodging trees and jumping rocks as if her life depended upon it, certain that they were coming after her.
She ran until her legs were shaking and her heart hammered in her eardrums. She ran until the stitch in her side was in danger of becoming a real pain, and she never looked back to see if she was being followed.
She was out of the trees and coming down the hillside toward the house when she saw Lane moving toward her. Unaware that he’d already sensed she was in trouble, Toni wanted to shout, to somehow warn him that someone might be in pursuit, but there was no breath left in her body to talk, only enough to run. Until she ran straight into his arms.
Lane caught her in midstep, bracing himself against the impact of her flight. He wrapped his arms around her shoulders and held her fast against him. Even through the pounding of his heart, he felt her trembling and heard her trying to catch her breath enough to speak.
“Back there...in the woods...dead.”
“Shh,” he whispered, soothing her gently with the touch of his hand until he sensed that she was calm enough to make sense.
And then he realized what she’d said. Dead!
“Toni, calm down, honey. I've got you. Whatever it is, you're safe now. Take deep breaths and calm down so you can tell me what’s wrong.”
The pain in her side ripped across her belly. “Oh, Lord,” she moaned, and jerked out of his arms before she doubled over, grasping her knees to keep from passing out.
Seeing her in this condition made him crazy. He needed to know what was wrong, and she was in such bad shape that she could scarcely breathe, let alone talk.
“Are you all right?”
She groaned and nodded, and as she realized that she really was all right, she began to feel foolish. She’d reacted like a silly female, jumping to conclusions just because she might have heard footsteps in the woods. She hadn’t even looked to see. She’d simply assumed. Embarrassed by her behavior, there was no way she could tell Lane what she’d feared.
“Thank God,” Lane muttered. Ignoring the dry pull of healing stitches beneath his blue jeans, he knelt at her side and cupped her face, brushing her hair away from her forehead and out of her eyes with one hand, while he cradled the back of her head with the other. The sight of tiny scratches swiftly turning red across her cheeks angered him. “Toni, sweetheart, listen to me. Did someone try to hurt you?”
“No,” she gasped, leaning her forehead on her knees, intent on not passing out. “Just mad,” she said, and then motioned for him to be patient. When she could, she would get it all out.
But Lane was not a patient man. “Mad at who?”
She shrugged. How could she say who when she hadn’t really seen anyone, only heard what she thought to be footsteps in the woods behind her?
“Wait. Wait a minute. Then I'll talk,” she said, still gasping.
Lane had no choice but to wait, all the while seething at the thought of what had made Toni so angry.