Delilah's Weakness (21 page)

I won’t read Luke’s mail. I won’t.
No matter how badly she wanted answers, she wouldn’t stoop so low.

The envelope was addressed, in a bold, masculine scrawl, to Luke MacGregor, care of Delilah Beaumont. Just a business letter—nothing unusual or mysterious about that. But why had he carried it around in his jacket pocket for nearly two weeks, unopened and unanswered?

She lost track of the number of times she picked the still–damp sheet of paper up and put it back down. And finally, feeling colder than ever and sick inside, she sat down at the table, pressed her knuckles against her mouth, pulled the limp page toward her with trembling fingers, and began to read.

** ** **

It was midmorning by the time Luke got home. Feeling in critical need of a shower and shave, he went to the house first, even though he knew that at that hour Delilah would most likely be in the barn.

Something had crystallized in his soul during his night in jail, and it had nothing to do with the wisdom of nonviolence. His shocking reaction to Amos’s sophomoric remarks about Delilah had knocked the blinders off, but it had taken the long, lonely night to make things absolutely clear. That was the last night he ever wanted to spend separated from Delilah, at least in the foreseeable future, and just possibly for the rest of his life.

He wasn’t about to break that news to her looking and smelling like a hard night on the town. He’d never in his life had a moment’s uncertainty about a woman before, but with Delilah, the only thing he could be certain of was her unpredictability. He felt like a twelve–year–old trying to work up courage to ask the angel down the street to a junior–high dance. He needed the psychological armor of scrubbed hands and face and slicked–back hair, and a bouquet of hand–picked daisies.

When he saw Pete’s letter lying on the kitchen table he felt as if someone had pulled his plug. The power that warmed and moved him was disconnected. He went still and cold. When he could move again he found that the cold hadn’t left him, but had settled in his belly and in his heart, a blank gray fog.

It was too much to hope she hadn’t read it. From the letter’s position it was obvious she had.

But he hadn’t read it himself, yet. Maybe, just maybe, it was nothing. Maybe Pete hadn’t said anything at all about the hearing, or Judge Beaumont, or Delilah, the judge’s black–sheep daughter.

"Mac, old buddy," the letter began, printed in bold black, with the clumsy innocence of a child. Pete, the big, lovable jerk, had the brain of an electronic wizard and the heart of
Huckleberry Finn.

"Everything around here is fine. What have you been up to? Must be going okay, or I guess I would’ve heard something, right? Just wanted to let you know, I talked to the lawyers, and Friedman thinks we have a good shot at getting Beaumont off the case. He says any ‘close’ relationship with Beaumont’s daughter ought to be enough for a bias charge, so, good news: You don’t have to marry the girl! It would be a good idea for you to call in once in a while, don’t you think? When are you coming home? Sure could use a strategy session before the hearing.
Call me!
"
(Double underlined.)

The letter concluded jovially, "Hang In there, Samson!" and was signed with the abstract squiggle that stood for "Pete."

"It will work," Delilah said levelly from behind him. She had come from the bedroom, he supposed. He turned and saw she was carrying his flight bag in her hand. "My father will almost certainly disqualify himself when he hears you’ve been living with me. Sleeping—"

"You read this? You opened and read my mail?"

"I wish I hadn’t," she said in that same flat, emotionless voice. "I really wish I didn’t have to feel guilty about finding out what a rat you are."

The pain hit him then, like slivers of ice that punctured every cell in his body. He hoped he’d stay frozen forever, because when the thaw came he knew he would disintegrate, like a frostbitten blossom. "‘Lilah," he began, but she shrugged her shoulders in a defensive gesture and set his flight bag on the couch beside his plastic suit carrier.

"It wasn’t really necessary for you to go that far, you know," she said in a hard, tight voice. "My father is loaded with scruples. It was probably enough that you worked for me." She kept looking around the room as if searching for something, looking anywhere but at him.

He watched her in silence, wanting to go to her and shake her, and then wrap her in his arms and make it right again, but knowing he couldn’t. He had blown it, utterly and completely, broken beyond repair something precious and irreplaceable. He was overwhelmed, suddenly, by heartsick despair and a kind of shocked repudiation.
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men…

If she’d been anybody but Delilah, he might have tried to explain. But she was Delilah, the proudest, most stubborn, bullheaded woman he’d ever met. Still, he made one effort.

Feeling as if he were gargling metal filings, he protested, "I didn’t even open the damn letter. Doesn’t that tell you anything?"

She tilted her head thoughtfully. "You know, I wondered about that a little. It’s one of a lot of things I’ve wondered about, Luke, and you know what? I bet you’d have some dandy answers for all my questions. You’re very good at coming up with plausible–sounding stories and explanations."

"‘Lilah…" he breathed on a long, anguished exhalation. But he had his pride too. He wouldn’t plead and grovel, not for anyone.

Damn it, he’d lived with the woman for three weeks. They’d shared so much, intimacies of body, mind, and soul. He’d given her the very best of himself, and she could so easily and so quickly believe the worst. All right, he’d blown it all to hell. He had no one but himself to blame. But how could she forget everything that had been between them?
Everything …

She took a deep, shivery breath and lifted a hand to forestall the denials he had no intention of making. He saw how shattered she was, and how unreliable the glue that held her together. He felt himself breaking up and flying apart, and knew that he wasn’t ever going to be able to retrieve all the pieces.

"I’m not unreasonable," she said. "I’ll give you until noon tomorrow to get yourself and your airplane off my land. That’s more than twenty–four hours. In the meantime, if you have any decency in you at all, please don’t let me see you, or hear your voice."

The moment stretched and finally splintered, and he nodded and reached for his flight bag.

"You know, what’s funny," she said softly as he paused in the doorway, "is that it wasn’t even necessary. My father would have given you a fair and unbiased hearing. Andrew Beaumont may be a lousy father, but he’s a damn fine judge."

She knew she was being unreasonable. There was no way it was going to be humanly possible for one man to get that airplane out of the pasture. He was going to need men and equipment, and that was going to take more than twenty–four hours, especially since he would have to go to town to call for help.

That didn’t keep Luke from attacking the problem with a determination that bordered on obsession. As Delilah watched with grim fascination from the barn, he took the jack from the pickup and loaded the wheelbarrow with cement blocks left over from the construction of the barn. Could it really be just pride that was driving him, making him wrestle that wheelbarrow up the hill through rough pasture stubble, arm and shoulder muscles straining and bulging, the tendons in his neck standing out like ropes? He had to be the most arrogant, stubborn, bullheaded man she’d ever met. Lord, how he hated to lose!

By midafternoon he had the plane on blocks, an arrangement that looked to Delilah to be precarious at best, because of the slope of the pasture. As she watched him from a distance, tinkering and banging around the landing gear, she began to feel a creeping uneasiness. She’d hurled an ultimatum at Luke that she’d known very well he couldn’t meet. He’d taken it as a personal challenge. What lengths would he go to, just to save his stupid macho pride?

At about three o’clock, he got into the pickup and went rocketing down the mountain in a cloud of dust. When he came back at chore time with an acetylene torch and an assortment of tools, Delilah’s fears hardened into dreadful certainty. It was obvious Luke intended to try to fly the airplane out of her pasture.

She flew through the evening chores on the crest of a wave of nervous energy that made her feel jangled and shaken. She didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t very well march up there and tell him to knock it off. She was the one who’d given him a deadline. If she backed down and released him from it—Well, she had her pride, too. But if he tried to take off from that rough little pasture, with patched–up landing gear…

Suppose he was injured… or killed…

It was almost dusk. She carried the milk buckets to the house and then, in an emotional turmoil unlike anything she’d ever experienced, trudged up the hill to the pasture gate. She stood for a moment biting her lower lip and listening to the steady whoosh of the welding torch. Then, with shaking hands, she untwisted the wires that held the gate shut.

Luke was on his back under the plane, engrossed in his work. The blue welding flame flickered and darted across the reflecting safety shield that covered his face, making him seem more than ever like some strange, alien being. She waited for a moment, then swallowed hard, jammed her hands into the pockets of her windbreaker, and nudged his tennis shoe with her toe. He flipped up the visor of his shield and squinted at her.

"Don’t look at the flame," was all he said, yelling above the roaring of the torch. "It’ll damage your eyes."

She shifted her gaze angrily to his vulnerable midsection, and for some inexplicable reason felt herself fill up with tears. Rage, she told herself, fighting hard for control. She’d concentrate on the rage, the betrayal. She’d never let him know how he’d hurt her. Never.

"What do you think you’re doing?" she shouted finally.

"What does it look like?" he shouted back without pausing in his work.

"You can’t—You’re not thinking off flying this thing out of here!"

He turned off the torch and lifted his visor. His eyes slammed into her like high–caliber bullets. Then he shuttered them and shrugged. "Why not? It’s the only way I know of to get it out."

She threw her arms wide in an angry gesture of repudiation, and accidentally struck the wing with a resounding thump. The plane settled on its blocks with an ominous crunching sound. "You could cut it up. Use that torch to cut off the wings and—and drive it out."

"Over my dead body."

"If you try to fly this thing out of here, it probably will be!"

"Do you care?" he asked bitterly, and she yelled violently, "No!"

He jerked himself upright. They stared at each other like angry children, breathing hard, eyes glittering, brimful of fire and water. And then, in the echoing silence, they both heard a grating noise.

Luke’s eyes snapped upward to the plane’s underbelly. He swore, and grabbed at the struts of the landing gear.

Delilah stood like a stone, frozen in an expression of horror and rejection of the situation, while inside her icy shell her scream echoed and reverberated:
No! Luke!

But the plane’s slow–motion slide was forward, downhill, onto its nose and directly toward Delilah. She heard Luke’s shout above the nerve–shattering screech of metal on concrete.

"‘Lilah!
Move!"

But she couldn’t seem to make anything work. She stared with incredulous eyes and wide–open mouth at the yellow monster bearing down upon her.

Something kicked her in the ankle, then hooked and yanked it out from under her. She fell backward, landing with a thud that drove the air from her lungs. With a noise like the dying scream of some huge prehistoric beast, the plane toppled slowly onto its nose.

I
t probably should
have crushed her head and chest like precious, fragile shells. But because Luke had knocked her backward it was only the propeller that caught her. It pinned her left leg to the ground like a twig broken under a sheep’s hoof.

She didn’t lose consciousness, though she seemed to be protected by some kind of shock. She knew something bad had happened, but it had an unreal quality about it, like a nightmare. There wasn’t even very much pain. The worst of it was hearing Luke’s agonized voice calling her, and not being able to answer him, to tell him she was all right. She opened her mouth and thought loving reassurances with all her might, but though she could feel the strain in her throat and chest, no sound came out. By the time he dropped to his knees on the grass beside her, she was on the edge of panic. She’d just discovered she couldn’t breathe, either.

"‘Lilah," Luke said raggedly. "Thank God." His fingers briefly explored her face, her hair.

He grasped her waist and gently lifted; lowered, then lifted again. Air screamed through her lungs.

"Easy, easy," he murmured soothingly, laying a calming hand on her forehead. "It’s all right, love, don’t panic. You had the wind knocked out of you. Okay now? Feeling better?" His hand smoothed the hair back from her face, then slipped under her neck and gently lifted. His eyes swam above her, very dark, and creased around with concern.

"No," she said, testing her voice. It sounded strange to her—distant and tinny. "My leg is stuck. I think it’s broken."

Luke carefully lowered her head to the ground. Vexed, she instantly raised herself on her elbows so she could see him as he knelt beside her legs. His back was toward her. "Luke? How bad is it?" She saw him drop his hands to the ground and lean forward, supporting himself on them. He lowered his head and became very, very still.

Delilah shifted uneasily and croaked, "Luke, don’t you dare pass out on me. I swear, if you leave me—"

He threw her one terrible look and left her. Before she even had time to worry about that, he had returned with the jack and was working in grim and feverish silence.

Mercifully, when the weight of the plane came off her leg, she fainted. When awareness returned, her leg was encased from the hip down with what looked and felt like an air mattress, and she was being lifted with infinite care, as if she were a newborn baby.