Conquer the Memories (4 page)

Craig half smiled for his old friend. Charlie Adams had more wrinkles than a raisin, habitually looked cranky, and had been thirty-nine for more than a dozen years. Still, anyone who judged Charlie only by his tiny stature was a fool. Behind those puppy-brown eyes was a loyalty that could move mountains and victory over the alcoholism that had nearly destroyed his life—until Craig came along. For the past eight years or so, Charlie had managed Craig’s ranch and his house and, since the marriage, occasionally Sonia.

“I suppose I should ask you how you’re feeling,” Charlie remarked, clearly bored with the thought.

“Don’t bother.” Craig shifted up against the pillows, wincing in a way he never would have in front of Sonia. “You should have woken me when you came in.”

“Like hell.” Charlie drew a cigar from his pocket, looked at it and disgustedly put it back in his pocket after reading the No Smoking sign over the door. He stuck his hands in his pockets, staring worriedly at Craig. “You need some things? I mean, don’t tell me you dragged me all this way to talk business. You know I’ve got everything taken care of, and you’ll be in here at least a few more days.”

“I’ll be out of here by tomorrow,” Craig corrected, and took a painful breath, leaning back against the head of the metal bed. “I need some help here, though, first.”

They’d taken the phone out of his room. He wanted to know if the incident was going to be in the press, and if it was, he wanted the papers kept from Sonia. He didn’t want her reminded of what had happened, and he wanted to ensure that no one bombarded her with questions about it, either.

The police were supposed to be in later that day. Craig was already afraid of how that was going to go. In a city of three million people, tracking down five rather nondescript hoodlums wasn’t going to be duck soup. Not to mention that Chicago’s Finest probably had bigger priorities than hunting for petty muggers.

“So?”

“So…I want the bastard caught,” Craig said flatly. “The whole gang, forget it. But I want the leader found. Hire someone, Charlie—get him out to the park today, and then bring him back to me. I can give him an exact description.”

Charlie shook his head, not liking the idea at all. “That’s crazy. At least give the police a chance.”

“Every chance,” Craig agreed. “But do it, Charlie.” An almost mischievous smile creased his lips. “I’m sick. You have to cater to me.”

“You should be so sick.” But Charlie nodded reluctantly.

Craig had other requests. He wanted Charlie to check them out of the hotel, gather their clothes, arrange for plane reservations and transportation to the airport.

“You have something against following the doctor’s orders?” Charlie wondered idly. “What exactly is so wrong with room and board here for the week?”

“I want Sonia home.” Away from every memory of the night before, away before the story could break in the newspapers. In the country, at home, he could ensure that she would forget the horror of their
Walpurgisnacht.
And back in Cold Creek, he would try to make up to her for what he had
let
happen…

The color had drained from his face; his friend apparently noticed. Charlie’s hands left his pockets, and he buttoned his old cord jacket. “I got orders only to stay in here for no more than fifteen minutes. I’ve already been here more than an hour. I’ll come back for visiting hours tonight.”

“Don’t go yet,” Craig said wanly, and hated that weak sound in his voice. Dammit, how long was the headache going to last? “There’s a man. Peter Farling.”

“Never heard of him.”

Charlie worried about Craig dealing with people Charlie didn’t know.

“He’s a jewelry designer. I need a necklace.”

“Today?” Charlie said blandly. “Sure you do. Now be a good boy and lock the door so no one else sees you looking like a punching bag.”

“Charlie.”

He would do it. Craig relaxed when his friend left, and closed his eyes again. Peter Farling had designed the original opal-and-onyx necklace. And Charlie was the kind of man who didn’t ask why Craig needed a necklace in a hurry.

For a long time, Craig lay with his eyes closed. Sleep wouldn’t come. The new necklace would make up for nothing. Oh, in his rational mind, he knew Sonia would be all right. She was resilient and optimistic by nature, and he knew that, given time, she really would forget the details of the incident. Once he had her home with him, around places and things they both loved, away from pressures, he would see to it that the open wound scarred over quickly.

Whether
he
could forget it—and forgive himself—was another thing. The irrational part of him was well on the way to becoming obsessed with a memory.

Sonia set down the watering can and wiped her damp, grimy hands on the seat of her cutoffs. Tight velvet buds were just starting to form on the rose stems. Her favorite was the rich apricot-colored one, the one she had grafted herself and the one she had never really believed would work.

Absently, she brushed the trail of moisture from her forehead with her sleeve. Her shoulder just slightly protested the movement with a twinge of stiffness, but not much. Two weeks had made a difference.

Just being home had made the real difference.

Even with the slanted windows open, it was unbelievably hot in the narrow greenhouse. As much as she loved her roses, they refused to thrive under Wyoming’s baking sun and endless, driving winds. Charlie and Craig had put the building up two years before, over her repeated protests that she and Craig were away too much for her to spend the time with her favorite hobby. The two men had ignored her—their favorite pastime—and now they were both clearly to blame for the dirt under her fingernails, the hair curling wildly around her cheeks and the luxurious relaxation she felt after digging in the rich black dirt for the past two hours. Bending down, she scooped up the puppy that had cheerfully untied her shoestrings twice.

The tawny golden retriever pup stared at her with limpid eyes. “You’re a disgrace,” Sonia informed him affectionately. “All wrinkles. Clumsy. Your paws are just about bigger than your whole body. And I’m supposed to sell you as the pick of the litter?”

The pup’s soft pink tongue lapped lovingly at her neck. “And I’m never going to be able to give you up. Craig
did
remark that I was the last person alive who should try to raise dogs.” She set the pup down, tying her canvas shoes for the third time. With help.

From the open windows, Sonia could just barely hear the sound of voices from the yard. Smiling, she put away the trowel and small spade, then rinsed her hands. A burst of feminine laughter outside made her chuckle.

Some husbands disliked their mothers-in-law. Perhaps because Craig had lost his mother so young, he had taken on Sonia’s mother like a second chance. The Rawlingses had lived in Cold Creek for generations, and though Sonia and Craig had spent the past few years more or less hopping around with his work, Cold Creek was where they’d built their home. Both valued those roots, and her parents had become his adopted ones.

With the pup in her arms, Sonia checked the temperature in the greenhouse and pushed open the door. Forest smells assaulted her nostrils. Craig’s land was nestled at the fingertips of the massive Tetons. The really high peaks were miles away, but most of Craig’s ranch sprawled out in a valley nestled among the foothills, verdant and green and rolling. “Their” river was also a gift from the mountains, clear and always cold, winding lazily in and around the property like a silver ribbon.

South of them was a much more arid rolling prairie, where most of the ranchers around Cold Creek made their living. And many miles farther southeast was the Green River Basin, where some fifteen years ago the government had gotten all excited about shale oil. Craig’s ranch worked horses, not oil, but the south end held some of that shale. Enough for one brash young man with a faint mustache to experiment with, as pretty much everyone else in the area had rushed to experiment. The kid in oversized cowboy boots had had the sense to patent his oil extraction process, and the rest of his story was the history of one bankrupt ranch’s evolution into a successful enterprise dominated by a man who expected to work hard for everything he had. Those boots more than fit him these days.

The ranch was still home to both of them, no matter how far they traveled. Sonia knew exactly what the land meant to Craig. Roots, privacy, quiet, the memory of just how hard he’d fought to save it…She drew strength from their home as he did, was renewed by it as he was.

Except—not this time. The phone hadn’t stopped ringing since they’d arrived. The rest Craig needed so badly hadn’t been given to him. After the weeks of trying to browbeat him into taking it easy and still feeling foolishly jumpy herself whenever she heard a strange sound, Sonia had capitulated that afternoon and called in the troops.

June Rawlings was a very capable one-woman army, a trim, attractive woman in white slacks and top, with her daughter’s dark hair and long legs. She grinned as Sonia approached. “Good Lord. Look what the pup dragged home this time,” she drawled to Craig.

“Thanks,” Sonia told her mother wryly, and made her way to Craig’s side. She was delighted to see her overworked husband stretched out on a chaise longue. Just an hour and a half of sitting still had put the mischief back in his dark eyes. Not that she particularly appreciated their focus at the moment. His eyes skimmed deliberately over the smudged dirt on her knees, noted the way her halter top stuck provocatively to her slim curves, and sparkled at the errant curls full of their own ideas about hairstyle. “And you can just stop looking at me that way. I’ll take a shower just as soon as I’ve had a drink,” she scolded him.

Settling the puppy on his lap, she leaned over for a kiss. Under her mother’s watchful eye, a mere peck was protocol, but there was enough time for a solicitous inventory. The bruises and swelling were gone from his face; the bump on his nose wasn’t, but she was growing very fond of that odd bump. Bumps didn’t matter; it was that tense broodiness she caught too often on his face that worried her. She relaxed. Even her most critical eye could see he was for once relaxed. In fact, Craig was looking a ton healthier each day. He also tasted delicious.

Sonia was suddenly hungry.

“I hope you didn’t take that outfit with you when you went to Chicago,” her mother said wryly.

Between the two chaise longues was a small metal table with a pitcher of iced tea. Sonia poured herself a glass. “You
could
ask me how the roses are going,” she suggested to her mother. In several long gulps, she finished half the tea, and lazily collapsed in the grass between the two lawn chairs. Immediately, the pup bounded down from Craig’s lap to pounce on her, causing the glass to tilt and iced tea to dribble on Sonia’s knee, in no way contributing to her dignity.

“That’s her father’s daughter, you know,” June told Craig. “I can’t tell you how often we thank God you took her off our hands. I never could figure out what you saw in her.”

“The legs, Mom.”

June shook her head at him. “Those knees are her father’s, too. Not mine.” She catalogued the parts of Sonia’s body, dividing them up genetically and blaming all physical and character deficiencies on her father’s genes. What her mother failed to point out, Craig inevitably discovered. Used to such teasing, Sonia ignored both of them. And weary of retying her tennis shoes, she simply pulled them off and arched her hot feet in the soft, cool mat of grass. The puppy promptly lost interest in shoestrings and decided to teethe on her toes.

Before long, a half dozen more wrinkled, scampering puppies attacked her. Their dam, Tawny Lady, having led out her brood, trotted briskly to Craig’s side. His arm went around her, stroking her fur, while Sonia was assaulted unmercifully by their champion retriever’s offspring.

“Come over here and do your own babysitting,” she ordered Tawny Lady, laughing.

The dog turned her head and closed her eyes, clearly uninterested in leaving Craig’s side. Though she was basically obedient and gentle, there was still no question she was Craig’s dog.

“You could always keep them penned,” her mother suggested dryly. “Particularly since they’re going to be sold eventually—they’re not just pets.”

“They like to be free,” Sonia protested.

June exchanged a look with Craig. “You’re to blame for this, you know. You encouraged her to breed this litter. I couldn’t believe it at the time.”

The pup did a somersault trying to get into Sonia’s lap, upsetting the last of the iced tea over her. Shaking her head in despair, she stood up and set the empty glass on the table. “I’m being
driven
to take a shower,” she complained.

Her mother chuckled, standing up as well. “I’ll go with you as far as the greenhouse to see how your roses are coming, but then I have to go home. Your father will be wondering where I am. No—” she motioned Craig back down “—don’t get up. We’ve worked too hard being lazy this afternoon to spoil it now.”

Craig half closed his eyes. “Tell your daughter to put on something sexy after her shower.”

“I’ll do that,” June agreed.

Mother and daughter exchanged glances on the sloped walk back to the greenhouse. Sonia opened the door, and the two of them disappeared inside. “So that’s how you do it, is it?” she asked her mother wryly. “By accusing him of being lazy? If I’d suggested he sit still for a minute, he would have tried to jog forty miles.”

“Men.” Her mother grinned. The two of them shared a chuckle of mutual understanding. Though they’d seemed at loggerheads when Sonia was growing up, a special closeness had developed as she matured and learned to relate to her mother woman-to-woman.

“The farm going okay?” she asked.

“Mmm. Fine. Need a rain, but then we always need a rain in June.” Sonia had inherited her love of roses from her mother, who now studied her daughter’s plants with a critical eye, poking a hand into the soil to rub the texture between two fingers. Both knew, though, that the visit to the greenhouse was only an excuse to steal a few minutes together. “He’s fine, Sonia,” June said absently. “Or he will be. I can see his ribs still hurt him when he moves, but that’s to be expected.”

“He still gets these terrible headaches,” Sonia worried.

“But that was no small concussion. Two weeks isn’t so very long.”

“If I could get him to stay off his feet more…”

They closed the door on the greenhouse, and Sonia walked her mother to the car. “He’s just like your father,” June commiserated. “Men are sheer nuisances when they’re ill.” She paused. “Every blasted last one of them, I believe.” She gave her daughter an affectionate, if gingerly, peck on her smudged cheek. “Your roses are doing beautifully. Coffee grounds, Sonia, just a few grains sprinkled around them a few times a week. The plants like that acid. And
stop
worrying. You two are such a pair! He’s worse than you are, grilling me four times over the minute you’re out of sight about whether you’re
really
feeling all right. Now it’s time both of you put the incident behind you.”

“Hmm.”

“Smile,” her mother ordered.

Sonia smiled. “Go away. I hate good advice.” Laughing, June got into the car. Sonia leaned through the window to hug her mother. “Give Dad a kiss for me, would you?”

***

Charlie, with a fork poised over a sizzling frying pan, shot Sonia a sardonic look. “It’s going to rain, you know.”

“It is not.” The tray was already on the kitchen counter.

She drew out two Cornish hens from the refrigerator and put them on the tray, then added silverware, salt and pepper, a chilled bottle of wine, and two glasses. “Now what else do we need?” she asked absently.

“A night with no wind. That is, if you plan to cook those outdoors over a fire. If you plan to eat them raw, won’t make no difference.”

“The wind is going to die down, the minute we go outside,” Sonia informed him.

“Oh. That’s different, then.” Charlie nodded sagely.

“You’re just angling for an invitation.”

“Are you joking? I got a pan-fried steak and
CSI,
coming on. Besides, the minute I saw the wine on the tray I had you figured for being ‘in the mood.’ Sure do hope Craig had a nap this afternoon.”

Sonia picked up the tray. In spite of herself, she felt color rising in her cheeks. She opened her mouth to make a fitting retort, then closed it. Charlie burst out laughing.

She went outside and closed the sliding glass doors on him, balancing the tray precariously on one arm. Charlie was…irrepressible. If she didn’t love him so much, she’d be inclined to muzzle him.

He didn’t, at least, live in the house; he just cooked there. Not that Charlie’s bunkhouse didn’t have a fully equipped kitchen, but he and Craig had been talking “ranch” over meals for so long that Charlie was more than half family, and besides, she had learned a great many secrets about her husband while chopping onions with Charlie.

Occasionally, he had the misguided notion that he could outthink her, which was totally untrue. Sonia set the tray on the patio table and anchored the napkins with the silverware against the puffing breeze.

Warm fingers of air ruffled her dark curls and teased at the open throat of her white satin blouse. The full sleeves billowed above the tight cuffs, and she could feel that most impertinent wind sneaking beneath the smooth material to her bare skin.

Craig loved her “pirate blouse.” When they were alone.

It was one of several garments in her closet that he preferred she not wear in public. At the moment, it was cinched at her waist with a scarlet scarf, above her favorite jeans and her bare feet. The wind was whipping away her perfume, she thought irritably, as she picked up the tray again.

Charlie could think what he liked. She’d only worn the blouse because it was a favorite. Lots of times she felt like dressing as if she were a wanton Gypsy.

***

Craig could see his wanton Gypsy approaching as he spread the blanket out on the riverbank. The sunset was behind her. The mountains were behind her. Their house, a wandering design of glass and stone, was behind her. Sonia was part of all of it. The soft flame and fire in the sunset was very like her: she had that fresh, untamed core, that soaring ever upward quality that was intrinsically part of the mountains; and she’d fussed over every stone in the house, just as he had, when they’d built it together.

She could have looked more beautiful; he just didn’t see how. Curls were bouncing wildly around her cheeks; she was flushed and smiling, and there was a devil-spark of laughter in her eyes as she set the tray down on the ground near him. “I suppose you don’t believe we’re going to be able to cook anything in this wind.”

“Did I say that?” He’d managed to start the fire through sheer willpower. By some miracle, it was holding on to life, its flames licking high in the air, sparks flying toward the river.