“Well, Mr. Monday, I’d say you're as good as new. Your bruises are nearly gone and your leg is healing on schedule. I’d say you're about ready to fly the coop.”
“Oh, hell, Doc. Smile when you say the word fly,“ Lane said, and surprised himself by being able to poke fun at what had happened to him.
From her seat in the waiting room, Toni heard Lane’s laughter. She didn’t know what had amused him, because nothing was funny to her. The loss of his stitches had finally cut the strings connecting him to her. Now there was no longer a reason for him to stay, and facing that fact was getting harder and harder for Toni to accept.
Why did I have to like him? Toni thought, and blinked back tears as she looked at her lap rather than let anyone see how she felt. It isn’t fair.
She sighed. Her dream of having Lane’s child was exactly that, a dream. How was she possibly going to set her plan in motion? All I have is tonight. Short of throwing myself into his bed like a fool, it’s over.
The weight around her heart settled a little heavier. She knew that he was anxious to get home, and why shouldn’t he be? He’d left his home over a week ago, expecting to be back that same day, and instead, wound up the sole survivor of a devastating plane crash.
While she was trying to regain a sense of self and dignity, the door to the examining room opened, and Toni instinctively looked up as Lane and Dr. Bennett emerged.
All they had done was remove some stitches, but Lane Monday walked out as if someone had removed the weight of the world from his shoulders. He moved with the confidence of a man who could whip snakes, fight bears and love a woman to the point of insanity. At that moment, Toni hated him for not loving her.
The smile on Lane’s face froze as he looked at Toni. Her eyes were shimmering with unshed tears.
All of his joy at being pronounced fit and whole slowly died as he realized it also meant leaving her. Yes, he wanted to be well. And yes, he needed to be back in full swing in the department. He was good at what he did and took pride in that fact. But he hadn’t counted on becoming attracted to the woman who had saved his life. Grateful, yes. In lust and near love, no.
“Take care, Mr. Monday,” Dr. Bennett said, shaking Lane’s hand.
“If you're ever in Tallahassee, give me a call. I'll save you a place beneath a palm tree and an extra-cold long-neck to go with it,” Lane told the man.
The doctor grinned and gave him a thumbs-up before disappearing into the next examining room as Lane turned back to Toni. She looked like a child ready to cry. He would have liked nothing better than to put his arms around her and hug the sadness away, but the little he knew about women told him not to react to her mood unless she gave him permission.
“I'm ready when you are,” he said.
Toni stood. Ready? I will never be ready to tell you goodbye.
When she walked past him and out the door without giving him time to play the gentleman, Lane suffered the slight in quiet. If he wasn’t mistaken, he’d just received permission to react. He caught the door before it slammed shut in his face.
“Just what I like, a woman who speaks her mind,” he said under his breath, and followed her to the sidewalk.
“Do you want to talk about it?” he asked as they neared her pickup.
When she would have ignored him, he grabbed her arm and then stopped, halting her momentum while he waited patiently for her to respond. Finally she had nowhere to look but at him.
“About what?” she asked.
“About whatever it is that’s bothering you.”
“Why, Marshal, whatever makes you think anything is bothering me?”
The sarcasm in her voice was impossible to miss. If he let himself, he could remember other times during the past week when he knew she would have let their relationship go farther than friendship. Lane had always been the one to call a halt, or refuse to take the next step toward changing it. And yet, for him, there was no other way. If Toni was resentful, he would have to live with that fact, because he couldn’t live with himself knowing that he’d lied to a good woman by making promises he had no intention of keeping. And that was what moving their relationship beyond friendship would be. A lie.
“I don’t know,” he drawled. “Maybe it was the frown on your face, or it could have been the tears in your eyes that gave you away.”
If someone had dropped a rock down her throat and into her stomach, it wouldn’t have made any bigger impact than his accusation had.
“I wasn’t crying,” she muttered, and yanked her arm from his grasp.
“I didn’t say you were crying, Antonette. I said that you had tears in your eyes. If you want, we can pretend they were never there.”
She looked up at him and smiled wryly. “Just like a man. It’s easier to ignore things than to confront them, isn’t it, Lane?”
Oh, damn, I think that I was right. She does hold it against me for being the one to hold back. But before he could think of how to respond, Sheriff Holley shouted at them from across the street.
“Hey, you two, wait up.”
Toni sighed, uncertain whether she felt relief or aggravation for the interruption. It was probably just as well that they’d been interrupted. Their conversation had nowhere to go but down.
“Don’t think you're off the hook. This isn’t finished between us,” Lane growled as the sheriff jumped the curb and came huffing to a halt in front of them.
Finished? That’s where you're wrong, Lane Monday. You can’t finish something that never got started.
Toni did the best she could to hide her despair, but it was difficult. The feeling she had of impending doom was overwhelming. She wasn’t off the hook and knew that better than he did. She was intent upon taking a part of this man from him, and keeping it when he left. That thought, and the fact that she didn’t know how to make it happen, were killing her. She was dying by degrees; she just didn’t know it yet.
And then the sheriff spoke up and ended her mental suicide. “Hey, Toni, I'm glad I saw you two coming out of the doctor’s office,” he said. “It saves me a trip out to your place.”
“Why?” she asked. “Have you learned something new about my calf?”
Holley shrugged. “It’s all in how you want to look at it.”
“How about from every angle?” Lane said, then knew when Toni glared at him that he’d probably overstepped his bounds by insinuating that the sheriff hadn’t done a thorough job.
Holley responded with a whoop of laughter. “Man, I like your style,” he said. “You don’t mess around, do you, boy?”
Lane had to grin. It had been years since anyone had had the nerve to call him boy. He’d outgrown the title long before he should have, simply because of his size.
“No, sir, I don’t suppose I do,” he replied. “So, what’s up? Why were you coming to Toni’s?”
It might have been the way Dan Holley didn’t quite look her in the eye when he spoke, but Toni got the distinct impression that he wasn’t entirely comfortable with what he was about to say.
“I talked to Livvie Sumter about her boys.”
Before Toni could comment, Lane, as usual, took over the conversation and set her impatience on simmer all over again.
“Well, thank God,” Lane muttered. “I hope to hell you told her to keep them off of other people’s property, and I hope you told them the next time they think about frightening someone like they did Toni, they'll have to answer to an authority other than their mother.”
Dan pursed his mouth as he worried the day-old whiskers on his chin. “That’s just it,” he said. “Those three oldest boys of hers, the ones who usually commit all the thievery, are gone. Livvie says they're in Nashville on a construction job.” He shrugged, then looked Lane straight in the eye. “That part of her story checks out.”
Toni watched a nerve jumping in Lane’s cheek. Why did he keep worrying this thing to death? Unfortunately for all concerned, Samuel Sumter’s children were not the only ones in the area capable of stealing.
“And?” Lane urged.
“She says Samuel’s missing.”
This time, Toni took the lead in the conversation and threw her hands up in disgust. “But, Dan, that’s not news. He leaves her each time she has a baby, and we all know it. So it was probably Samuel who killed my calf, and not his boys. I'll bet if you look real hard, you'll find where he’s camping. He’s probably sulking because Livvie has to devote her attention to a new baby and not him. I think the man’s a skunk.”
Dan grinned. “I know what you think, Toni. You've made that perfectly clear more than once to anyone who will listen.”
Her eyes flashed, then darkened, while the sheriff smiled. Above everything else, she despised condescension. And when Lane’s hand slid across her shoulder in companionable silence, he might as well have patted her on the head and said “good dog,” while he was at it, because that was exactly how she took it. It was, for Toni, the spark that lit her fuse.
“What’s that for?” she said, pushing his hand from her shoulder. “And don’t pretend to be on my side about anything, okay? I don’t need to be babied. I can take care of myself. If I tell you Samuel Sumter probably stole my calf, then why can’t I be right? Do you have any other suggestions that make more sense?”
His surprise turned to hurt, but was hidden by the lowering of his lashes. Then a flash of how unfair she was being to him turned it all to anger as he resisted the urge to shake her silly.
“Damn it, Toni, there is no my side or your side. You're the most aggravating, irritable female I've met in years. You would fry the hair off a cat and then wonder where it had gone. I touched your shoulder, not your butt. And believe me, it won’t happen again.”
He turned away without giving her time to argue as he refocused his attention on the sheriff.
Toni was furious with herself and with Lane. She was taking all of her disappointment out on a man who didn’t deserve it, but for the life of her, she couldn’t seem to stop.
“Darn man,” she muttered. Unwilling to stay and listen while they continued to ignore her presence, she went to the pickup and missed hearing the rest of the conversation.
Lane heard her mumble, and would have liked nothing better than to bend her over his knee. It took everything he had to concentrate on what he needed to ask. He wouldn’t—couldn’t—leave Toni alone on her farm without knowing all there was to know.
It was that instinct alone that made him a good lawman and a formidable enemy. Willing himself not to watch her walk away, he gave the sheriff his full attention.
“Reese and Palmer left this morning, so I'm out of touch with the downriver search for Emmit Rice’s body. Are there any reports?” Lane asked.
Holley frowned. “No. But I assure you that when and if I get one, you'll be one of the first to know what it says.” He squinted slightly as he tilted his head to get a better look at Lane’s face. “You know what?”
“What?” Lane asked.
“I think something’s going through that bulldog mind of yours that you aren’t telling me. Are you of a mind to share?”
Lane shrugged. Saying anything before all the facts were in was not his way. “There’s nothing to tell,” he said. “I'm just checking every aspect of this mess before I leave.”
“And when would that be?” he asked.
“Tomorrow,” Lane said, squinting his eyes to gaze at the jet trail in the sky overhead. It was easier than facing what he’d just said.
“So if you hear anything, give me a call,” Lane continued. “You have my number at the office.”
“I'll do just that,” the sheriff said, then walked away.
Lane crawled into the passenger side of the pickup and slammed the door behind him. A long, silent minute passed without any sound or movement from either one of them. And then they both chose the same instant to say their piece.
“I'm sorry...”
They spoke in unison, then stopped at the same time. The coincidence of their mutual apology was too odd to ignore. Toni sighed and leaned back in the seat while Lane grinned.
“You first,” she said, and tried to ignore how small the interior of the cab felt with him taking up over half the seat.
“Lady, you won’t catch me in that again,” Lane told her with a chuckle. “No way. Ladies first.”
She grinned in spite of her determination not to give him an inch. Oh, damn you, Lane Monday. How can I stay mad and protect my heart if you keep behaving like this?
“I overreacted. I'm sorry,” she said, and knew it sounded grudging, but it was the best that she could do without throwing her arms around him and begging him to stay.
“Apology accepted,” he replied, wanting her to look at him, but he could tell by the way she kept biting her lower lip that she wasn’t about to do that. “I shouldn’t have yelled at you. And I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings about anything.”
Toni wanted to cry. Her feelings were so miserable that an apology was never going to be enough to take away the pain. But from Lane, it was all she was going to get.
“You're forgiven, too,” she said.
“Well, thank God,” Lane muttered, and tried not to resent her halfhearted apology. That was his thanks for behaving like a gentleman, a sore-as-a-boil woman who wouldn’t give him the time of day.
But when she neither moved nor made an effort to start the engine, he didn’t have the guts to ask her why. If she had another purpose for coming to town besides bringing him to see the doctor, she was going to have to reveal it herself.
Toni was sick with anxiety. The thought of tomorrow was agonizing. Lane had consumed exactly seven days of her life, and when he left, he would be taking her heart with him. And while she had faced his rejection too many times to hope that he might actually care for her, she was having difficulty giving up her dream of bearing this man’s child.
How do I ask him? How does a woman say...sleep with me and give me a baby.
Toni groaned, then hit the steering wheel with the flat of her hand, aware that as she did, Lane visibly jerked in reflex to the action.
“So, how does your leg feel?” she asked as if she hadn’t just made her frustration clear.
Lane gawked. That was, without doubt, the most inane question she’d asked him since they’d met. He knew good and well that the state of his leg was not what was on her mind at the moment.
“It feels fine,” he said. Unlike you, I might add. But he wisely kept the postscript to himself.
She gritted her teeth, then nodded. “Good. That’s really good, I'm glad.”
Lane turned to face her. “Toni...”
It was more a warning than a question. She knew he wasn’t buying her conversational feint any more than she was.
“If you're through here, we may as well head back home. I've got all sorts of chores,” she told him.
He sighed, then turned to look out the window. She wouldn’t say what she was thinking, and he’d already made up his mind to keep his feelings for her to himself, so there was no point in dwelling on what each of them was unwilling to say.
“Fine. It'll give me time to pack,” he said. “I hope when Reese and Palmer took off this morning, they left me their rental car as they’d promised. Otherwise, I'll have to beg another ride from you tomorrow when it’s time for me to leave.”
It was the wrong thing for him to have said.
Damn you! Damn you, Lane Monday. All you can think about is leaving!
With an angry twist of her wrist, Toni turned the ignition key and brought the engine to life, gunning it, backing up and then slamming the gears into drive before Lane had time to react. When they turned the corner that led out of town on less than four wheels, he braced himself with his hands against the dashboard and growled.
“I hadn’t planned on being airborne quite this soon.”
Toni reacted, but not in the way he’d expected. No sooner had he said the words than her foot hit the brake. She pulled over to the side of the road, got out of the pickup and walked around to the passenger’s side without looking up. She opened his door.
“You drive,” she said quietly. “I don’t think I feel so good.”
“Damn it, Antonette, don’t do this. Not to me, or to yourself.”
It was then that she looked up. Her expression was bland, her voice low and controlled. Only her eyes, dark and nearly blinded from pain, gave her away.
“I don’t know what the hell you're talking about,” she said quietly. “I'm doing nothing except asking you to drive.”
He swore and scooted across the seat. When she crawled into the spot he’d just vacated, he would have sworn that he saw her hand linger on the place where he’d just sat. But when he looked again, he decided he must have been mistaken. She was busy buckling up her seat belt and digging into her purse.
They made the rest of the drive home in total silence.
* * *
Toni went about her chores like a woman in mourning. Lane watched from a distance as she checked on the livestock, then wisely gave her space when they’d returned to the house. While he suspected that she harbored feelings for him, he had no way of knowing that.
And that was the death of her dream for a child. It was, for Toni, over. She didn’t know how to flirt, and she knew that she didn’t have the guts to just ask him for sex. There would be no time left for happenstance to intervene because tomorrow he would be gone.
By nightfall, she had slipped into an “ignore the devastation and it will go away” mood.
She might be fooling herself, but she wasn’t fooling Lane. Her misery, like his, was visible. One had only to look at the set of her jaw, or the stance that she took when she believed no one was around, as if she were bracing herself for a mortal blow, to know that she was hurting.
As for Lane, his agony was of a different sort. He’d already faced the fact that he was drawn by more than debt to the woman who’d saved his life. He’d held her and kissed her. He’d tasted woman and wanted more.
Tonight would be their last night together. While it was only their second night alone in the old farmhouse, it was going to be the longest eight hours of his life.
Sleeping wasn’t an option. He needed to maintain his determination to leave her as intact as the day that they had met. The thought of pursuing intimacy with her was overshadowed by his admiration for her as a woman. He could not take what she offered and give nothing back. And nothing was all that he had to give.
And so they sidestepped each other all evening, and laughed uneasily at things that were not funny, and when it came time to go to bed, they parted without saying good-night. It was far too close to saying goodbye.
* * *
Toni lay on her side, dry-eyed and aching, and clutched the sheet beneath her chin as she rolled herself into a ball.
I will not cry. I will not cry.
When she tried to smooth out the sheet and get some sleep, she realized that it was nothing but a wad, and yanked it off of the bed in a fit of anger, throwing it onto the floor before falling flat on her stomach across the bed, daring herself to rest.
In spite of the air conditioner humming in the window, her nightgown felt hot and stuck to her skin in limp persistence. She untwisted it, then flopped around some more, trying to find a comfortable spot.
Before she knew it, she’d rolled from her bed and torn the offending gown over her head, sending it to the same place that she’d sent her sheet. The floor. But the moment cool air hit her skin, she shuddered. It was too much like a man’s breath upon her body to bear.
“Damn you, Lane Monday,” she groaned, and threw herself back onto the bed, naked as the day she was born. “Damn you for not being worthless enough to use me. Damn you for having morals. Any other man would have been at this door days ago, whether he liked me or not, just because he could.”
She closed her eyes, doubled her fists and resisted the urge to cross the hall on her own. But she would not stand naked before a man who did not want her, no matter what. Bearing the rejection from that encounter—and she was certain that there was bound to be one—would be impossible for her to endure.
And so she lay, and finally slept while Lane fought devils of his own.
Since the crash, his body had healed in so many ways. Seven days had passed and he was almost as good as new. And yet the scars he still bore from his first wife’s death were as sore as they’d been five years ago. He couldn’t get past the thought of loving like that, then losing again. It had nearly destroyed him. Lane knew himself well enough to realize that he would not survive a similar loss a second time.
And while common sense might dictate that falling in love did not go hand in hand with dying, Lane’s heart was too scarred to trust what his mind might say. All he could do was hope to hell that morning came before he lost all sense of reason and took what he knew Toni would give.
* * *
The sun was up, which was more than could be said for Lane or Toni. It was the telephone that woke them, and sent them dashing into the hall on reflex to answer.
It was hard to say who was more stunned, Lane for seeing her wearing nothing more than a robe that she held together with the clutch of one hand, or Toni for having to endure one last sight of all that man wearing nothing but a pair of white cotton briefs.
“The phone’s ringing,” Lane said as he realized that answering a phone in a house that didn’t belong to him was overstepping his bounds.
Toni’s voice shook as she turned away. “I hear it,” she muttered, and yanked the receiver on the fifth ring.
“Hello!”
“Toni, this is Dan Holley. Did I wake you?”
She didn’t answer, couldn’t answer, because Lane was on his way back into his room, probably to get a pair of pants, and she was too busy watching him leave.
“Toni?”
She jerked, and then stared at the receiver. She’d forgotten that it was in her hand. “What?” she asked.
“If Lane is up, I would like to speak to him. I have some news he’s been waiting for.”
Toni pressed a finger across her lips to keep them from trembling before she spoke. She took a deep breath, and when she was certain that she had her emotions well under control, she spoke. “He’s up. Hang on.” She let the phone drop on the table without saying goodbye to Dan.
“It’s for you,” she shouted in the direction of Lane’s room, and then went back into her room, slamming the door behind her.
Lane left his room and grabbed the phone, then balanced it against his ear with his shoulder as he finished buttoning his jeans. He didn’t have the guts to get caught that near-naked around Toni Hatfield again. The next time, he would not be able to walk away.
“This is Monday,” he said.
Dan Holley spoke. “They pulled a rather badly decomposed body out of the Pigeon River right after daylight this morning.”
Lane felt a grin coming. He’d waited a week to hear this news. And the fear that he’d refused to name began to disappear. At least this part of his worry was over.
“Thank God,” Lane said, and leaned against the wall.
“They're doing an autopsy as soon as possible,” Dan told him. “Although down here, that may take anywhere from a week to a month. But it was a white male, and he was big. Really big.”
“It’s Rice. It has to be. He’s the only whale we have on the missing-persons list.”
Dan laughed aloud. “There sure wasn’t any love lost between you two, was there?”
Lane closed his eyes, and thought of the hatred that he’d seen on Rice’s face. “No. He was bad all the way through. I can’t say I'm sorry he’s dead.” He paused, pushing himself away from the wall to stare at the door between him and Toni before he thought to add, “Sheriff, thank you for calling. And when you get it, I’d like a copy of the autopsy report to close out my file.”
“It’s already yours,” Dan said. “Have a safe flight.”
Lane nodded as the line went dead. The sheriff hadn’t needed a response to his request for Lane to have a safe flight. They both knew all too well how difficult it would be for Lane to take that first step onto a plane, and how much Lane was counting on a smooth, uneventful trip.
And then Toni’s door opened. She stood, waiting for him to confirm the bits and pieces of what she’d overheard. But he was looking at her too intently for her peace of mind, and so she spoke first.
“They found him, didn’t they?”
Lane nodded. “It looks like it,” he replied.
“That’s good,” Toni said. “It’s been bothering you, hasn’t it?” And when she saw the way he was studying her face and the way her clothes fit her body, she prodded him back to the conversation at hand. “Not finding Emmit Rice, I mean.”
Lane nodded again, and thought that if he looked hard enough, he would remember how long her legs were, hidden beneath her well-worn jeans, or how the fullness of her breasts coerced the knit on her shirt to give way.
The nervous swipe of her hand across her hair made him remember how thick and soft the curls were to the touch. And when she gave him a nervous look, he got the full force of eyes so dark that they seemed black.
“A lot of things have been bothering me since the crash. That was one of them.”
Now! Say something now! But Toni couldn’t find the words. Lane walked back into his room to finish dressing, and the moment was lost.
“Stupid,” she muttered beneath her breath, and stalked toward the kitchen to prepare breakfast. “It was a stupid thought. I can’t ask it, and that’s that.”
But the idea wouldn’t go away, and Toni had to face the fact that her dream hadn’t died a full death. It was still lingering in her mind. Obviously, she was reluctant to give up what life it still had.
* * *
Lane was halfway through his second cup of coffee when Toni put down her spoon, replaced the lid on the jelly and pinned him with a bottomless gaze and a question he couldn’t ignore.
“Are you packed?” she asked.
He froze with the cup against his lip. It hurt to hear the words, but the look on her face was more difficult to bear. He set the cup down without taking a drink, then folded his hands in his lap to hide the fact that they shook. It was nearly time to leave and he hadn’t reconciled himself with the knowledge that when he awoke tomorrow, he would be thousands of miles away from Toni Hatfield and Chaney Creek.
“No,” he said.
“You don’t want to miss your plane,” she reminded him, and began stacking dishes into the sink.
Oh, yes, I do. But he didn’t say it. Instead, he stood and walked from the room without further comment. He didn’t have it in him to debate.
When she could no longer hear his footsteps, she went limp and grabbed on to the sink for support.
“Oh, God,” she pleaded. “Just get me through this.”
Half an hour later, she was still saying prayers and begging for a reprieve that hadn’t come. And Lane was walking toward the door with suitcase in hand, a well and whole man compared to the one she’d dragged into her house during the night of the storm.
“Take care,” she said. “Drive safely.”
He turned at the doorway, almost hating her for being able to maintain composure now when his was nearly nonexistent. And then he looked into her eyes and saw that her misery so nearly matched his own that it made no difference.
“Come here,” he said, and held out his arms.
She didn’t mean to, but resisting his offer was too difficult. With a soft sob, and then a quiet sigh, she walked into his embrace and settled her cheek against his chest. It was like being wrapped in steel, then cushioned by the promise of gentleness waiting.
“I will miss you, even though you are one bossy man,” Toni said, trying to make a joke out of it, but failing miserably.
Lane tightened his embrace and felt her willingly readjust herself to the lack of space. Just as with everything else she did, she gave without asking for anything in return. And yet, if she were to ask a favor, he knew what it would be. Just don’t say it, love. Don’t say what I see in your eyes.
“I'll miss you, too,” he told her. “More than you'll ever know. And I don’t know how I'll ever be able to thank you for saving my life.”
Toni went still. Even her heart forgot to beat. This was it. He’d given her an opportunity that she couldn’t ignore. What he did when she asked was another thing entirely. But at least, she told herself, she would have made the effort.
“I do,” she said.
He grinned and moved back far enough to see her expression. He should have known that she would still be trying to take control. It was the Toni he knew and loved.
Loved? Impossible! Where had that thought come from? I haven’t fallen in love with her, damn it! he thought. But the shock of his realization was nothing compared to what she said next.
“You could make love to me. Just once. Just for fun.”