CHAPTER SIX

IN HIS ROOM at the Starlite Motel at the north end of town, Rob stared at the silent telephone while his gut churned with regrets. Twyla McCabe had tried her best to do the honorable thing, to let him off the hook, and he’d blown his chance to escape. He ought to call her right now and tell her she was right—it would never work out.

But it wasn’t tomorrow yet. Hell, it wasn’t even ten o’clock yet. He couldn’t call her. He should probably phone Lauren and explain the outrageous proposal the old ladies had cooked up.

The blue glow of the neon star on the motel sign flickered sporadically through the slatted blinds. The almost forgotten hum of the wilderness that lay beyond the parking lot crept past the thin walls of the building—the whir of crickets, the chorus of chirrups from frogs, the occasional cry of an owl.

With idle curiosity, he leafed through the papers and brochures Mrs. Duckworth had handed him. They were in a manila folder labeled Twyla’s Ten-Year Reunion.

The ladies had left no fantasy unfulfilled. They’d booked seats on a commuter flight from Casper to Jackson and rented a sport utility vehicle for the weekend of the reunion. The accommodations, according to the brochure, were unbelievably deluxe—a handcrafted fishing lodge called the Laughing Water Lodge on the banks of the river, with two bedrooms, a spa and sauna. It was adjacent to a riding stable on the outskirts of Hell Creek and it belonged to a wealthy Jackson developer who used it as a model home to entice world-weary Californians and rich Texans to put down roots in the area. “Your Wild West Wonderland,” the ad copy proclaimed, with a photo of a guy in a cowboy hat toting a bucket of feed across a pristine paddock.

Rob tossed the brochure on the table. He didn’t mind an occasional ride on horseback, but he’d never found barn chores particularly fulfilling.

When Mrs. Duckworth had handed him the folder, she’d fixed him with the steely stare perfected by all third-grade teachers. “You have to understand, young man—this has to be wonderful for Twyla.”

In case he lacked ideas, she and Mrs. Spinelli had included a laundry list of things he was supposed to do to make Twyla McCabe feel special. She needed a gift—a corsage or even an item of jewelry. He was supposed to dance with her. Take her on a picnic, ride horses with her. They suggested a candlelight dinner, a walk in the moonlight, a glass of wine on the hearth rug in front of the fireplace, breakfast in bed.

“We’ve done our part,” Mrs. Spinelli said. “You have to do yours. No man has made her feel special in years. It’s up to you.”

No pressure there, Rob thought wryly.

He reached out to pull the drape shut against the flickering neon light. Through the slats of the blinds, he saw a pickup truck with running lights and chrome detailing drive by, probably headed for Roadkill Grill down the street. With one last glance at the phone, he grabbed his key and went outside. It was too late to call Lauren, anyway. He might as well join the guys for a beer at the town’s only watering hole.

“Hey, Doc.” Chance Cartwright waved at him from the thick plank bar when he walked in. Chance poured a beer from a pitcher and handed it to Rob. “Are we having fun yet?”

“You guys tell me.”

“Hey,” said Rex Trowbridge, grinning crookedly, “we raised a fortune for the ranch today. Now it’s time to raise some hell.”

Someone punched in a vintage tune on the jukebox. Jerry Jeff Walker’s voice filled the barroom, and the guys got busy thumping one another on the back and teasing one another about the auction. Rob hadn’t paid much attention to the other deals that had been cut, but it didn’t surprise him to learn that not all the bidding was done out of a sense of fun and philanthropy. Russ Hall was stuck being a daddy for a weekend. Cody Davis was being dragged back to his hometown to be the grand master of a parade, and another poor sucker had to serve as some widow woman’s ranch hand.

“So how about you?” Stanley Fish, the reporter, pulled up a barstool. “Let’s talk about your hot date.” Studying Rob’s expression, he added, “Off the record, pal. I’m just being nosy.”

“What I want to know is why you weren’t up there on that stage today.”

“Hey, I’m doing my part. This article will be great publicity for the ranch. Donations’ll come rolling in when they see all you fine young men doing your civic duty.” Stan took a sip of his beer. “So spill.”

Rob took a deep breath. “I’m supposed to take some woman to her high school reunion.”

Stan rolled his eyes. “You’re kidding.”

“I wish I was.”

“Jeez, why don’t you just spend an evening watching paint dry? It’d be more interesting.”

“No shit.” Rob drank more beer, thinking about a poorly ventilated gymnasium filled with people he didn’t know, overdressed and hugging one another, sucking in their guts, squinting at name tags and talking about the past ten years. Trying, in a way that was so achingly human, to make those years seem better, more important than they really had been.

“Do you know why she’d want to drag you along to a reunion?” Stan asked.

“It wasn’t her idea,” Rob said. He explained about Mrs. Spinelli and Mrs. Duckworth. He thought about the tacky pink-and-white salon next door. It would be so damned easy to help her. Her friends from the salon were making it easy. “They think they’re doing her a favor. They want her to waltz back to her hometown with her head held high and her pride intact.”

“Sounds like a B movie.” Stan eyed Rob critically. “And she needs you in order to do that?”

“Nope. She doesn’t need anything. She’s fine.”

“Then why?”

“The old biddies, I guess. They want everyone to see Twyla as a big success, even in the marriage department.”

“Twyla? Her name is Twyla?” Stan swallowed hard, apparently trying not to spew his beer.

“Yeah, Twyla. You got a problem with that?” Rob asked, annoyed by the third degree. “It’s a scheme cooked up by these cute little old ladies.”

“It’s not too late to blow the whole thing off.”

“No. I said I’d do it.”

“Damn. This Twyla must be something else.”

He shrugged.

“What’s she like?” Stan persisted.

Rob pictured her big misty eyes, and the way her hand stroked her son’s head with unconscious affection. He’d be better off not remembering what it had been like to put his hands on her waist and lower her down from that tree, but he couldn’t help it. Though brief, the contact had made a vivid impression on him. She’d felt young and firm, pleasantly damp with sweat. And she’d blushed as only a redhead could blush.

“Let’s just say she’s no mongrel.”

Stan signaled for a refill of their beer mugs. “I suppose there’s no harm in being some woman’s trophy date for a night, if that would fix things for this Twyla. Let’s go have a game of darts.”

All the rest of the evening, Rob thought about being a trophy date. Stan was still as smart as he’d been during their school days here. Still knew how to get to the heart of the matter. The truth was, Rob did like fixing things. In his practice, he never let go of a case until he figured out the right answer. If it meant pacing the floors all night, reading huge tomes in the medical library or online, he doggedly looked for answers.

Lauren liked to boast about his deep commitment to his profession, but that always made Rob feel like a fraud. Because deep down, he knew what motivated him, and it didn’t have anything to do with high principles and a commitment to the greater good of mankind.

It was as simple as a boyhood memory and a vow to put security first. As simple as his last glimpse of his mother, a pale, pretty woman with tears in her eyes and a bruised jaw. With eerie clarity, he recalled standing in the ranch director’s office, intimidated by the big overstuffed leather chairs and the Bierstadt and Remington prints on the walls.

With a schoolgirl scrawl, his mother signed her name to a long document. “You’ll be better off this way,” she’d said, and three decades later Rob could still feel the dry, warm touch of her hand on his cheek. “I can’t give you no kind of life, not now. Maybe later…”

“Maybe later” had haunted him for years afterward. Sundays at the ranch were family day, and Rob used to show up at twelve o’clock on the dot, hair combed and shoes shined, wearing his best jeans. “In case she comes today,” he used to tell Mr. Duncan. But she never did.

Even after Mr. Duncan gently suggested that Rob find some other Sunday activity, he kept showing up, kept hoping. He’d sit unobtrusively in the Spruce Room of the main lodge, watching as boys got hugs from families that couldn’t keep them yet still cared enough to show up every now and then with a box of chocolates and some comic books.

Rob knew the Duncans kept trying to locate his mother. At the very least, they wanted her to relinquish her guardianship of him so a family could adopt him. But they never found her, and Rob won awards for being at Lost Springs the longest.

As he got older, he tried to reconstruct what Peggy Jean Carter’s life had been like. A runaway, she’d had no family to speak of, no education. Jerked around by an abusive man, mishandled by social service agencies. Finally, desperate and broke, she had handed her son over to strangers and walked out of his life.

Maybe if someone had done one kind thing for his mother, she wouldn’t have left him all those years ago. She might have found the pride and self-respect to pull herself together and meet life head-on rather than running scared all the time.

Kindness made a difference in the world—that was the enduring lesson of Lost Springs. Maybe that was why he was going to talk Twyla into going to her reunion with him.

* * *

ROB AWAKENED TO a medley of church bells. He stepped outside his motel room, taking a deep breath. The sky was a brilliant blue, with a brittle intensity that was rare outside this area of Wyoming. It was like being on top of the world or on another planet. The air was so clear, the light so strong.

Going back inside, he showered and shaved and got dressed in jeans and a golf shirt, then stuck his shades in his pocket. Twyla had said to phone her, but that didn’t seem right. He needed to see her in person.

After breakfast at the Grill, he started off for the old McCabe place. That was how Reilly, at the feed store, referred to it. “The old McCabe place” sounded quaint, Rob thought, picturing a graceful Victorian house and a manicured lawn.

As he drove up the pitted gravel drive, he shouldn’t have been surprised to discover that he was wrong. The mere sight of the property gave him an ominous feeling.

The 1920s wood-frame house was falling apart. Set on the brow of a hill, the place looked worn, the rickety porch rail giving it the aspect of a face in need of dental work. Weathered wood, peeling paint, shutters hanging awry. The only color came from hedges and flower boxes filled with geraniums.

As Rob got out of his car, a small boy and a large dog came racing down the hill at a rough-and-tumble run. The dog gave a sharp, protective bark, but Brian hushed him. “It’s okay, Shep. Hiya, Rob.”

“Hey, Brian. I came to see your mother. Is she busy?”

“Nope. Me and Mom just got back from church. C’mon in.” Brian stomped up the dusty walk.

The porch steps creaked ominously beneath Rob’s tread.

“Hey, Mo-om!” Brian called. “Rob’s here—that guy Mrs. Spinelli bought for you yesterday.” Whistling for his dog, the kid went back outside, the screen door slamming in its frame and creating a shudder that reverberated through the house.

Rob found himself standing in the middle of an old-fashioned vestibule. The place smelled of lemon oil polish and cinnamon and coffee—some would call it the smells of home, but of someone else’s home, never his.

He rested his hand on the newel post, dark with age, and the wooden ornament came off in his hand. He swore softly under his breath and was trying to replace it as Twyla came from the back of the house.

“Hi,” she said, her expression slightly quizzical. “I wasn’t expecting—” She spotted the newel post in his hand.

“Sorry,” he said.

“Happens all the time.” She fit the peg in place and smiled up at him. “I keep meaning to fix it, but I’ve never been much good at that sort of thing. Give me a head of hair any day, but home improvement is a complete mystery.”

A long, awkward pause stretched out between them. Rob noticed that she was wearing a nice yellow dress—for church, he guessed. He wondered if guys in church stared at her because, damn, she was a knockout with all that red hair and those legs. He tried to think of something else. Like what the hell he was doing here. She had all but let him off the hook yesterday, yet something had driven him to find her, to convince her that they ought to give it a shot. Now that he was here, standing like an intruder in her house, he had no idea what that something was.

A small, white-haired woman came in. She wore a flowered apron over her dress, an unorthodox-looking pair of red tennis shoes and a pleasant smile.

“Mom, this is Rob Carter. Rob, my mother, Gwen.”

He shook hands. “Pleased to meet you. I don’t mean to intrude on your Sunday—”

“Oh, heavens, Sundays were made for company, weren’t they, Twyla dear? We absolutely love having people over. Can I get you some coffee? I’ve got some cinnamon rolls just out of the oven.”

“I’d be a fool to turn down that offer,” he said. “Smells delicious.”

“I’ll give you a hand, Mom.”

“Don’t you dare. I’ll just be a minute.”

The two women shared a smile. Sometimes when he saw a parent and child, he felt a raw burning inside him that had no antidote. Long ago he had made a mental list of the things he could never have, like a mother and a father. He had dedicated his life to acquiring the things he could have—a good education, a meaningful career, friends he enjoyed. Since meeting Lauren DeVane, he had begun to think a wife was even a possibility.

“Your mom’s nice.”

“The best.” A shadow darkened her face and her smile dissolved, then reappeared quickly. “She lives with us—there’s a mother-in-law apartment in the back—and watches Brian when I’m at the salon. She did a lot of the work on that quilt you won.”

Twyla led the way into an old-fashioned parlor. The room had a high ceiling outlined by fancy molding and tall windows hung with lace curtains. The furniture wasn’t grand, certainly not priceless antiques, but it seemed to fit. Between the two windows was a small upright piano, polished to a high sheen. Built-in bookshelves were crammed with an eclectic mix of titles. Scanning them, Rob noted a heavy concentration of psychology texts and self-help books on everything from panic attacks to holistic grief recovery. Not what one would expect of a hairdresser. Maybe her mother was the reader.

Deciding it was impolite to speculate on people’s reading choices, he turned his attention to the collection of family pictures. Framed photos hung everywhere or stood propped on every available surface. Seizing on a way to fill the silence, Rob said, “So give me the grand tour. These photos don’t have captions.”

“It’s just family stuff. Boring, really,” she said.

He picked one up. The photo featured Twyla as a girl, playing outside a double-wide mobile home. “I’ll be the judge of that. Humor me.”

“Lord, I was a skinny thing, wasn’t I?” she said. “That’s the Lazy Acres Mobile Home Court, where I spent most of my childhood. Classy place.” With a wry smile, she gave a shake of her head. “Here I am with my father on the miniature golf course he built. He spent all his savings on it.”

“Quite the place.”

She set down the framed photo. “I’m sorry to say it failed despite the marvelous innovation of sound effects. Bells and whistles when the ball went in the hole.”

“He must’ve been way ahead of his time.”

“He was a dreamer,” Gwen said, not unkindly. She had entered the room with a tray of coffee and rolls. “And a bit of a dabbler, never settling on one project.” She stared fondly at the golf course photo, then wiped her hands on her apron. “I’ll leave you two, then.”

“No, please, join us—”

She held up a hand. “I promised Brian I’d sugar down those blackberries he picked. We’ll have a cobbler tonight.”

Rob grinned, watching her go. “Don’t tell me. She’s in on the matchmaking along with the other two.”

Twyla nodded. “I swear, I get tired of it sometimes. They’re so convinced I need someone. They’ve tried to set me up with a tractor mechanic, a cow buyer, a rough-stock rider, the sheriff’s deputy…and a bunch of others.” She smiled a little shyly. “This is the first time they’ve actually paid for a man to match me up with.”

“The pressure’s killing me.” Rob poured coffee and helped himself to a roll, savoring the fresh-baked taste of it. “Keep going. I want the rest of the tour.”

The photos of Twyla chronicled a life that probably should have added up to something different than it had. At the age of thirteen, she stood proudly beside an adjudicator, having won her first local piano competition. She was the cutest cheerleader he’d ever seen, and valedictorian of her high school class. The prom picture was a classic—the oversize corsage, the nervous smiles, the stiff poses. She had learned to speak French by correspondence course and was accepted at no fewer than four private colleges.

“And did you go?” he asked.

A faraway look softened her face. “I sure wanted to, but things didn’t work out.”

“Would it be getting too personal to ask what those ‘things’ were?”

She flinched, pain darkening her eyes. “I got married right out of school to a guy who was a junior in college. We were too young, of course. Every couple that’s too young believes they’ll be the exception to the statistics—ever notice that?”

“Never really thought about it.”

“Have you ever been married, Rob?”

“No.” He didn’t bring up Lauren. They weren’t married or even engaged. They just…were. He finished his coffee, gulping it too fast. “Why do you ask?”

“No reason.” She bit her lip, and a troubling emotion glittered in her eyes.

“Hey, you don’t have to explain,” Rob said quickly. This was exactly why he practiced medicine in a laboratory. He didn’t have the patience and compassion to deal with people getting emotional, baring their souls.

“No, I don’t mind talking about the past, really.”

Great. Rob reminded himself that she had offered him a chance to back out. Instead, like an idiot, he’d shown up at her house. Her poor, decrepit house that smelled of baking bread and furniture polish and rang with the laughter of a little boy.

Her eyes, hazy with remembrance, looked unseeing out the window. “Sorry. I don’t mean to be melodramatic. But what happened was big stuff for a small town like Hell Creek.”

She took a sip of her coffee and visibly tried to compose herself. She had a great face, Rob thought, watching her. She had the subtle freckles and fair coloring of a natural redhead, eyes that said too much, a mouth that smiled too easily.

Agitated, she stood up, rubbing her hands up and down her arms as if she felt a sudden chill. “To make a long story short, my father died suddenly and my mother—” she glanced at the doorway and dropped her voice “—was left pretty devastated, emotionally and financially.”

Rob suddenly wished he was far away. Very far. “Twyla, are you sure you want to talk about this?”

She stopped rubbing her arms. “Does all this emotional baggage bother you?”

“No,” he lied.

“Let me know if it does, and I’ll stop.”

“You mean there’s more?”

She took a sip of coffee. “Stay tuned. Where were we? Oh, yeah. It didn’t help that my husband was dumping me right about the time of my father’s death. So much for my own plans. I couldn’t go away and leave my mother twisting in the wind. Since I already knew how to do hair, I looked for a salon to buy so we could stay together as a family. Practically overnight, I had my own business.”

“Twyla’s Tease ‘n’ Tweeze.”

A smile curved her mouth as she took a seat. “Call it a moment of mad whimsy. Mom and I were hitting the zinfandel that night.”

Family, Rob realized, was a tender trap. When he had graduated from high school, there was no one to stand in the way of his plans. No parent in need or sibling in trouble or lover making demands. He had to wonder if he would have given up his future for the sake of a family member who needed him.

Rob glanced down. In her lap, Twyla had torn a napkin to shreds. “Hey,” he said, “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

She noticed the napkin and shook her head. “Don’t worry. In a town like Lightning Creek, no one has any secrets. I expect the entire membership of the Quilt Quorum knows you’re here right now.”

“And is that a problem?”

“No, not at all. But I absolve you of your obligation to go through with this reunion thing.”

“That’s what I came to talk about.”

“Good. I’m glad you agree—”

“We’re going.”

She laughed, an easy laugh that was indulgent and the slightest bit condescending. He imagined her laughing that way in her salon as her customers enumerated their husbands’ quirks.

“Rob, really. That’s a nice gesture. But I know how boring it would be for you.”

“I mean it. We’re going to your reunion.”

“Why?” She seemed astonished, vaguely suspicious. “Why are you being such a good guy about this?”

“You have something against good guys?”

“No, I’m just amazed that you’re one of them. Most rich doctors wouldn’t bother.”

“Thanks for reducing me to a stereotype,” Rob said. “Look, your little old ladies planned this thing down to the last detail. If we go through with it, maybe the town matchmakers will back off for a while.”

She sat in pensive silence. Rob wondered what it would be like to know her, to be privy to the thoughts behind her light, expressive eyes.

No, he didn’t want to know. They’d best remain polite strangers. He wouldn’t see her again after the reunion, so there was no need to mess things up with rambling heart-to-heart talks. No need to wonder what might happen if—He reeled with the thought. People complicated each other’s lives. Twyla McCabe was living proof of that. He didn’t need any part of it.

“Would you like to take a walk?” she asked suddenly.

Caught off guard, he said, “Sure.”

They walked outside and up the sun-warmed slope at the back of the house. Bees grumbled indolently through the daisies and blue lupine and Indian paintbrush that covered the hill, but Rob found his gaze straying to Twyla.

He kept telling himself to keep his distance, but it wasn’t working. He noticed everything about her—the way the breeze lifted her hair, the fact that she wasn’t wearing any panty hose, the way her face softened when she looked down the hill and spied Brian and her mother, sorting berries on the railed back porch. There was a certain way a woman had of looking at those she loved. Rob had noticed this during his pediatric rotation. It was the most subtle, soft and tender look he could imagine. Twyla did it so naturally.

She showed him around with the mock formality of a tour guide, and he discovered a shed filled with a treasure trove of tools, a handyman’s dream. “The former owner had a woodworking shop,” she explained. “Have you ever done any woodworking?”

“Carpentry was part of the program at Lost Springs. I liked it.” Rob surprised himself with the comment. He had liked the work, but he hadn’t worked with his hands in years.

“I think the owner before him was even more interesting,” Twyla said, pointing out an abandoned chicken coop that had concealed a whiskey still in the twenties. She went on to show him a stream trickling from a crack in the rocks on the hillside and a half-buried thresher so rusted and ancient that she had planted it with morning glories and called it a yard ornament.

As he checked out the place with her, he told himself he was looking forward to getting this over with.

But as the moments wore on, soft and drowsy with the flavor of a summer afternoon, Rob felt something happening to him. Against all good sense, against the central tenet of his life’s plan, he felt drawn to her.

Drawn to this girl who grew up in a trailer park, nurtured on grand dreams that had no chance of ever coming true. This girl who dyed hair for a living.

As they walked along a beaten earth path that bordered her property, he kept trying to focus on Denver, his plans, his ambitions… Lauren. But his attention kept getting tugged in a different direction altogether. It was nuts. A basic animal attraction. Twyla had the most amazing looks. No guy with eyes in his head could help himself.

And Brian was simply an added distraction. He reminded Rob painfully of himself at six—abandoned at Lost Springs, hungry for a connection, showing up in the Spruce Room every Sunday during family hour, “just in case.”

He eyed the weary-looking, paint-thirsty house. There was something sorry and neglected about the property, an air of thwarted plans, aborted possibilities.

This was bad, he told himself. He barely knew this woman yet he wanted to know everything.

He had spent his whole life trying to forget and escape small towns, small farms, small people and their small dreams. So what was he doing back here, finding himself more concerned about Twyla’s broken porch rail than anything else in the world?

“We need a game plan,” he said, walking to his car.

“What do you mean?”

“For your reunion.”

“But I never said I’d—”

“I never asked. I’m telling you.”

“Just like a doctor,” she said. “Arrogant.”

“Now, look. People are going to ask how we met, all that stuff. It would probably be a good idea to coordinate our stories.”

She burst out laughing. “Oh, this is so insane, and it’s going to be so much fun!”

He looked down into her laughing face, her merry eyes. “You need more fun in your life.”

“You’re beginning to sound like one of my clients.”

“Just stay away from me with your scissors.” He grinned. “I’ll be up sometime Friday on a flight to Casper. I’ll call you during the week. Mrs. Spinelli’s travel agent took care of all the bookings to Jackson.”

“Oh, God. We’re really going to do this, aren’t we?”

“Are we ever.” He hesitated. Instinct made him want to say goodbye with a kiss. Instead, he handed her a business card. “All my numbers are there.”

“Thanks. See you on Friday, then.”

As he drove away from the farm, a plume of dust obscuring the view, Rob had a feeling that he had just done something he shouldn’t have.