Charmed by His Love (14 page)

Duncan sensed Peg go as still as a stone, and he used his eyes to motion to Robbie—who immediately pushed away from his boulder and opened his arms to Pete.

“I could also give you a lift,” Robbie offered.

Pete immediately walked into his embrace; Jacob stepping into Alec’s in the very next heartbeat so that both men stood up with the boys in their arms. And Duncan nearly did drop to his knees when he saw tears welling in Peg’s eyes despite her grateful smile. She gently pressed the badge to his shirt and carefully pinned it on him with trembling fingers, then cleared her throat. “Um, this badge is to honor Duncan MacKeage,” she said thickly, “for rescuing Jacob Thompson.”

Duncan tried to say something but found he had to clear his own throat again, so he patted the badge on his chest, turned to Jacob, and smiled. “I will treasure it always, Mr. Thompson.”

“And you gotta
wear
it always,” Pete added. “So everybody will know you’re a rescue hero, like on TV.”

Well, hell; that was going to be a problem.

Peg gave a sputtered laugh and patted her son’s leg. “I think Mr. MacKeage should carry it in his wallet just like the policemen do on TV.” She turned to Alec to get Jacob’s approval. “That way it won’t get torn or wrinkled, and he can pull out his wallet and show it to anyone who needs rescuing.”

“But I’ll probably wait until
after
I rescue them,” Duncan offered. “Okay, Jacob? Pete?” he asked, turning to include him.

“Okay,” Pete said. He looked down at the ground then at Robbie, his deep blue eyes widening. “You’re even higher than Uncle Galen.”

“Mom,” Isabel said, pushing her way inside the circle of people to tug on the hem of Peg’s sweatshirt. “What’s the big deal? Jacob swims like a fish, so he wouldn’t have drowned. You call all of us your little trout.”

“The deal is,” Peg said, taking Isabel’s hand and leading her away, “Jacob fell in ice-cold seawater, not the warm water of our old swimming hole.”

Alec started to lower Jacob to the ground, but stopped when the boy suddenly reached his arms out to Duncan. “I got som’fin else to give you,” he whispered, darting a glance at his mother walking away, and then at Pete, who was running after her when Robbie set him down. Jacob wrapped an arm around Duncan’s neck when Alec transferred him over before also wisely walking away.

“My mom gave it to me and I want to give it to you,” Jacob said, opening his tiny fist to expose a small rock. “It’s a worry stone,” he explained reverently, the arm around Duncan’s neck nudging him. “Go on, take it,” he instructed, dropping the rock into Duncan’s palm when he held up his hand. “You’re s’pose to carry it in your pocket, and when you get worried or scared or sad, you take it out and rub it.” He leaned his head closer. “But you gotta remember to
take it out
to rub it, or people will think you’re playing pocket pool. And Mama says only unservalized men do that.”

Fighting back laughter, Duncan stared down at the tiny rock and nodded gravely. “I will definitely remember to take it out of my pocket first.” He ran his thumb across the stone. “Are you sure you want to give this to me, Jacob, seeing how your mama gave it to you? It must be very special.”

The boy folded Duncan’s finger over the stone. “No, you
keep it. Mom’s got a whole bowl on the counter ’cause I keep losing them.” He pressed his tiny hand to the badge pinned on Duncan’s chest. “Do you think if you didn’t catch me this morning I coulda saved myself? Or if Pete was drownding I coulda saved him?”

“I do,” Duncan said with a nod, “if you swim like a trout.”

“My daddy didn’t save hisself and Mama says he was big and strong like I’m going to be when I grow up.”

Okay; apparently Jacob was over his shyness. Duncan turned to look behind him and sat down on the nearest boulder, then glanced across the fire to see Peg staring at them, both her hands clutching her throat. “Well, Jacob,” he said slowly, trying to find the right words, “sometimes it’s impossible to save ourselves, just like sometimes it’s impossible to save someone else. And … well, the way I understand it, your dad found himself in an icy river that had a very powerful current. It’s likely he hit his head and wasn’t even … awake when he hit the water.”

Jacob sat up, his eyes widening. “Nobody never said that before.” He looked directly into Duncan’s eyes. “When we swimmed in our swimming hole before it got covered up with water, I tried holding my breath a long time like I thought my daddy did, but it always hurt something fierce and …” He dropped his gaze with a shudder. “And I don’t want him to hurt like that when he drownded.” He looked up. “You really think he was asleep?”

Duncan pressed the boy to his shoulder. “I’m willing to bet my bulldozer
and
my excavator that he was, Jacob. Your daddy didn’t hurt.”

“I’m glad,” the boy murmured, relaxing against him. “I’m gonna tell Mama what you said, so she won’t worry about it, neither.” He tilted his head back to look up. “And Pete and the girls. We gotta tell all of them.”

“We can tell them together, if you’d like.”

Jacob settled back against him again. “How come you learned I’m not Pete so fast? Everyone always mixes us up.”

“Well, I do believe you have your mama’s smile and that Pete’s got her scowl,” Duncan said with a chuckle, shooting Peg a wink across the fire when he saw that though she was listening to what Olivia was saying, her eyes were glued on
him and Jacob. “What about your sisters?” he asked. “Do you have any thoughts on how I can tell them apart?”

Jacob sat up and turned to him in surprise. “They’re not twins. They wasn’t borned together like me and Pete.”

“Repeat,” Pete called out, running over to them. “Mama said we can only have one more s’more and then we gotta go in and have baths.” He looked at Duncan. “You coming back tomorrow? Mr. Alec said you got a giant bulldozer.”

“We’ll be here when you wake up, and so will the bulldozer.”

“Come on, Repeat,” Pete said, grabbing his brother’s arm and dragging him off Duncan’s lap. “You gotta help me sneak the snails in our bath.”

Jacob broke free and, after giving Pete a push to keep going, he turned around. “Mr. Ma—Mr. Duncan?”

“Yes, Jacob?”

“You don’t forget to take the worry stone out of your pocket to rub it, okay?”

“I won’t forget.”

He started off again, but as was his mother’s habit, he suddenly stopped and turned and walked back to Duncan. “And thank you for telling me about my daddy being asleep when he drownded.” He shrugged his tiny shoulders. “I think it’s gonna make my belly not hurt so bad when I’m trying to remember him.”

Duncan ran a finger over his cheek. “I’m glad, Jacob. And if ye want, we can tell your brother and sisters about it when we go up the mountain on Sunday for our picnic.”

His eyes widened. “We’re going on a picnic?” he yelped, looking over his shoulder at Peg, then back at him. “On the mountain? Sunday?”

Duncan snapped his head up at Peg’s gasp, and then dropped it into his hands with a silent curse. Dammit to hell; he’d thought she’d told them.

“We’re going on a picnic?” Peter shouted. “Mom? Are we?”

“I guess so,” Duncan heard her say, a decided edge in her voice.

“That’s keeping an eye on her, Boss,” Alec said, sitting down beside him.

“Is it going to be a company picnic or a private … affair?”
Robbie asked, shoving a bottle of ale under Duncan’s nose, then sitting down once he took it.

“I do admire a man who backs his word with action,” Mac said as he dropped down next to Robbie, his soft grunt of discomfort making Duncan smile into his bottle as he downed half the kick-in-the-ass in one gulp.

Oh yeah; day one on the job and he felt like he’d worked an entire season—and the day still wasn’t over.

Peg stared out her bedroom window at the moon-bathed hillside and hugged herself on a shiver. If she lived to be a hundred and two, she would never forget turning around to see Jacob in Duncan’s arms, then watching him sitting on Duncan’s lap having an honest to God, everyday conversation with a virtual stranger who also happened to be a big, strong hero.

She could have killed Mac and Olivia for pushing her to pin that badge on him, but had quickly decided it was her chance to pay Duncan back for worrying her to death by diving into the frigid water of the pit. That is, until she saw him silently signal Robbie to pick up Peter so that Jacob would allow Alec to pick him up. Her heart had risen into her throat then stayed there for Jacob’s entire conversation with Duncan afterward, and hadn’t fallen back into place until Duncan had mentioned their Sunday picnic.

Peg released a heavy sigh at the realization that Olivia was right; little girls did need a man’s perspective of things, and so did little boys. Why hadn’t she ever thought to assure her children that their daddy’s death hadn’t been painful? But worse, why hadn’t she known it had been worrying Jacob? And even worse again, why had her youngest son discussed that worry with Duncan instead of her?

When she’d casually asked Jacob while giving the twins their baths what he and Duncan had talked about, the boy had shot his brother a glance and said he’d tell her later. A bit alarmed that he was keeping secrets from her with a virtual stranger, Peg had made later come sooner by drying Peter off and sending him to go put on his pajamas.

That’s when Jacob had told her he’d given Duncan one of his worry stones and then asked if he thought he could have saved himself or his brother. Peg’s heart rose right back into her throat again when he’d gone on to say that he’d also asked how come his big strong daddy hadn’t been able to save himself. Jacob had then told her that on their picnic, Mr. Duncan was going to help him explain to everyone that his dad had bumped his head when his excavator had fallen in the river, and it hadn’t hurt him to drown because he’d been asleep.

Jacob had been nineteen months old when Billy had died, but apparently being too young to remember his father hadn’t stopped him from worrying about him hurting.

Why hadn’t she known that?

Nearly every day that first summer after Billy’s death, Peg had taken her children down to the spring-fed, two-acre pond in their pit to teach them to swim, being careful—or maybe foolish, she now realized—not to reveal that their daddy had swam about as well as a rock. By the end of the summer she’d been calling the four of them her little trout, and by the next spring they’d been dragging her down to the swimming hole every day to test the water temperature with their toes, declaring by early June that is was warm enough to resume their daily outdoor baths. Peg had watched from shore until at least the Fourth of July, claiming she was a warm-water bass, not a trout.

Oh yeah, she owed Duncan MacKeage big-time for assuring Jacob that his daddy hadn’t hurt. And for saving her from prostitution by giving her a fair price for her gravel. And for helping butcher her deer, making her beach safe, rescuing her son, loaning her his truck, and … and for being a good man.

Except she didn’t want Duncan to be good, or big and strong and quick, or sexy, dammit, because she really didn’t want to start liking him. But mostly she didn’t want to ever fall in love with him because she didn’t want to kill him.

Peg started to turn away from the window with another sigh, only to catch a flash out of the corner of her eye. She stepped to the edge of the window and strained to see into the woods to the east, holding her breath when she thought she heard something. And there it was again: the distinct sound of tires going slowly on gravel.

She ran out to the living room and opened the front door a crack just in time to see the moonlight reflect off the bumper of a vehicle—without any headlights—pulling up the narrow tote road along the east side of her property, and worried that whoever it was wouldn’t realize the road had washed away when the fiord had poured into the pit.

She waited, holding her breath again until she saw a set of brake lights come on then go off just as she heard the engine quit. She stepped out onto the porch, squinting to see through the trees as she hugged her nightgown around her. Dammit, she thought she’d made it clear that the Thompson pit was no longer the local gathering place for teenagers looking to party.

Doors opened and closed, and she frowned when she heard voices whispering, because in her experience teenagers never whispered. Unless it wasn’t kids, but— Peg snapped her gaze to the hillside, just barely able to see the excavator and harvester parked inside the back tree line. Diesel fuel, at today’s prices, was liquid gold! She didn’t know the size of a harvester’s tank, but an excavator held over a hundred gallons.

Yeah, well, nobody was siphoning fuel from any equipment on
her
property.

She quietly stepped back in the house and softly closed the door before heading to her bedroom. Oh, she’d love to call the sheriff to come catch the idiots red-handed; only problem was the closest deputy was over fifty miles away—assuming he wasn’t answering a call on the other side of the county.

She pulled her jeans on under her nightgown, then pulled off the gown and plucked her sweatshirt out of the laundry, slipping it on over her head before hunting through the basket for some socks. If those yahoos out there hadn’t heard she didn’t tolerate trespassers, they were about to hear it tonight, she thought as she shoved her socks in her sweatshirt pocket. She walked over and pulled her shotgun out of the closet, then took the small strongbox off the top shelf and carried it to the
window. Not wanting to turn on the light, she held it up to the moonlight and worked the combination, then set it on her bureau to take out the shotgun shells and shove them in her pocket.