Garden of Dreams (21 page)

The smooth-tongued con man spoke again, but Nina needed to hear those words, to feel them deep down inside her. She had little or no confidence on her own. JD gave her what she needed. With a small smile of thanks, she escaped his hold and went to meet the mother she had never known.

“Yeah, I really like computers. My mom won't let me have wifi, but JD promised to let me surf the Internet when we get home. He says there's no net access here and we can't run up Miss Toon's phone bills right now.”

Jackie's voice carried down the hall, and Nina smiled at his enthusiasm. She hoped JD and the boy's mother worked out their differences so Jackie could have the father he so obviously needed. Whatever JD might be, he would make a good father. She didn't know how she knew that. Motorcycle bums and con artists weren't her idea of good fathers.

Her mother's gaze instantly traveled to Nina as she entered the room. Nina gave Jackie's long hair a quick brush and smiled at the boy's flush. “JD's bringing out the tea. Why don't you go see if there's anything to eat? You must be starved after camping out all night.”

Jackie popped out of the chair with alacrity. “I'm about to die. Laddie ate all the peanut butter.”

Nina felt a tug of dismay at the affection she felt for the boy. She'd always wanted children. She'd just never wanted them enough to marry. She turned her attention back to the woman sitting on the upholstered armchair.

“You could have written,” she said as she lowered herself into Hattie's rocker. She needed the reassurance of that rocker right now.

The woman looked uncomfortable. “What would have been the point? I had no intention of coming back here, ever. And the situation I was in, I couldn't take you with me. It just seemed better that way.”

“So what brings you back now?” Nina asked as JD appeared carrying the glasses of tea. She noticed he didn't bring one for himself. She supposed he had the right to stay out of a family argument. He wasn't family, after all.

Her mother glanced nervously at JD as she accepted the tea. “Shouldn't you introduce us, dear?”

“JD Smith, my mother. I don't know what her name is these days.” That was a low blow, and Nina saw her mother flinch. It didn't give her much satisfaction.

“Helen Mclntyre, Mr. Smith. How do you do?”

The easy charm and the gracious smile made Nina's hands twitch. Her mother knew how to seduce men with her femininity, even with the difference in their ages. JD looked completely taken in by the act. It would have been nice if she'd had a mother to teach her those things instead of Hattie, who hated men and wouldn't dream of seducing them. But Nina refused to lose the battle on the grounds of ignorance. She rocked the chair until it squeaked and JD turned to her.

“Thank you for the tea. We won't keep you from your work,” Nina said as he handed her the icy glass.

JD shot her a look she couldn't interpret. She thought she discerned a predatory gleam in his eyes behind that hawklike nose, but she wouldn't acknowledge it. She'd lost her head briefly, but that didn't mean he owned her.

“Invite your mother to dinner. I make a mean taco.” He leaned over and kissed her cheek as if he had every right to the gesture.

Nina almost kicked him, but JD beat a strategic retreat. He had no right behaving that way, but her mother didn't know that. She rather liked the sense of power she felt as the woman across the room regarded her with curiosity and a certain amount of jealousy. She felt a little less incompetent, as if she could attract a man like JD without any of her mother's artifices.

“Your Mr. Smith is a handsome man,” her mother acknowledged, sipping her tea. “I thought I understood from gossip in town that he was just a boarder.”

“I assume the gossip in town didn't bring you here.” Nina dismissed the subject. She might not have her mother's Southern charm, but she had a head on her shoulders. She could turn a conversation around.

Helen nervously slid her fingers up and down the perspiring glass. “I almost didn't come. I probably shouldn't have. I just didn't know what else to do. This was my home once. It's the only home I know. I heard Hattie's still alive.”

Ten years ago, Nina might have fallen for those short, breathless sentences, the sense of desperation attached to them. Perhaps she was still a trifle naive. The people of Madrid in general treated each other with honesty. Nina didn't associate much with the kind of people who used others and threw them away.

“Hattie's almost ninety and senile. She was ill for years before she went into the nursing home. I cared for her myself. I visit her every week. I don't think she misses you.” Even as she said it, Nina realized she lied. The mysterious “she” that Hattie mumbled about could only be Helen, the niece she had adored to the extent of providing her a house and home, then taking in her daughter when that hadn't been enough.

“I'm sorry again. I should have realized. Hattie was always the strong one. I just never thought anything could happen to her. She was good to me when no one else was.”

Nina waited impatiently for the “but.” She found it difficult believing that her mother had returned after twenty years to tell her she loved her and had made a huge mistake leaving her behind. If this were a TV movie, Nina might believe her mother had returned with a millionaire husband prepared to right all wrongs. But real life didn't work that way.

“Well, I'm taking care of her now, so you don't have to worry,” Nina finally replied in hopes of dragging out the real motive for her mother's return.

Helen lifted her chin and removed her hat. A flash of defiance crossed her features. “I'll do it now. After all, I'm Hattie's heir. I should be the one looking after her and seeing to her property. Is my old room still vacant?”

Numbly, Nina wondered where she'd put the shotgun.

Leaving the heavy traffic of the interstate behind, the Geo flew past the golden rubble of wheat fields and dusty fence rows of blooming honeysuckle and wild roses. Nancy Walker glanced uncertainly at the gangly man in patched eyeglasses beside her. He had been a true gentleman from the moment they'd thrown their hastily packed travel bags into the trunk and left LA. But after two days of almost nonstop travel, she had begun to wonder about his obsessiveness. Perhaps it took a man with this kind of driving compulsion to accomplish the goals James MacTavish had conquered. She didn't know too much about men like that. JD was the only other one she'd known, and he'd only been sixteen at the time, scarcely a comparison for this man in his thirties.

“I thought you didn't know where to find them?” she inquired cautiously. They'd scarcely left the interstate in the past two days. The fact that they now traveled country roads made her suspicious. This wasn't Myrtle Beach.

“I don't. I just know where to start. I wish I'd brought the adapter for that lousy laptop. JD might have e-mailed me by now. Keep an eye out for computer stores. Maybe I can find a battery out here.”

Nancy glanced at the emerald bean fields whipping past the car window and grinned to herself. “You had a better chance in Vegas, unless rabbits have taken to using laptops.”

“I didn't know the battery was dead in Vegas. I can't believe there's so much empty countryside out here. Doesn't anyone build cities anymore?” Hitting a straight stretch of two-lane, he accelerated to a dangerous speed.

“The interstates were designed to bypass cities,” she replied pragmatically. “You have to get off them to find stores.”

“Whose stupid idea was that, anyway?” Crossly, he slowed down as a farm truck loaded with round bales of hay pulled into the lane in front of him. “Damn idiot is asking to get run over,” he muttered.

“Not by this little bitty car.” Amused despite herself, Nancy turned off the static of the country music station and turned on the CD player. In the past two days, she had learned Jimmy MacTavish had a decidedly warped vision of the world. She suspected he had spent his entire life in LA, and the rest of the country was a foreign planet to him. His observations on the changing countryside around them had thoroughly tickled her, distracting her somewhat from her concern about Jackie. At least she didn't have to worry about her husband coming after her. He'd never find her out here, and the divorce lawyers could handle everything just as well without her. For the first time in her life, she felt free as a bird.

“What are we going to do when we find Jackie? I don't think he'll fit in the backseat,” she asked, just to keep the conversation going.

“JD can buy you both plane tickets anywhere you want to go. And if you're smart, you won't argue with him. He's a rich man. You could do worse.”

“I have done worse,” she answered wryly. “But I couldn't live with a man like JD. I want someone who knows I exist.”

The man beside her shot her a startled look. “How could any man in his right mind not know you exist?”

She thought he almost blushed before he returned to watching the road. Realizing that was a compliment, Nancy warmed with pleasure. She hadn't heard a man's compliments in a long time. “Some men think of me as more or less an appliance, like their televisions or toasters. People don't generally notice appliances until they need to use them.”

Jimmy made a rude noise and leaned over the steering wheel in a vain attempt to see around the farm truck. “People notice appliances that rattle and clank. I figured that was why most women talk so much.”

“Are you saying I talk too much?” she asked, surprised. He hadn't said anything vaguely personal in two solid days. Now he'd made two entirely different observations.

“Not you.” Satisfied he could see far enough ahead, he hit the accelerator and practically pumped the four-cylinder engine around the truck, barely avoiding collision with an RV traveling in the other direction. “Any other woman would have whined and complained and worried the whole way out here. You've been a good sport. I can't believe JD let you go.”

“You know the wrong kind of women.” Releasing her breath and her grip on the door handle, Nancy turned to observe her companion. He wasn't a bad-looking man once she mentally removed those impossible wire-rimmed glasses. He had a kind face. “And I let JD go, not the other way around. I let my father annul our marriage, and I never answered his letters or phone calls. I was much too young, and he was much too old.”

Jimmy frowned. “I thought the two of you were almost the same age.”

Nancy shrugged. “In terms of years, maybe, not in any other way. JD was born old. Any other kid in his situation would have turned into a hoodlum. JD joined the marines. He could have released all his anger by shooting people. JD built computer programs that shoot people. We were together less than a week, and he had found two jobs and an apartment without cockroaches that we could afford on his pay. This is not normal teenage behavior.”

Jimmy looked as if he were trying to digest this information. “And what did you do?”

“I stayed in the apartment and cried and polished my fingernails. Like I said, I was too young. I don't know what he saw in me.”

The look he gave her was definitely complimentary. Nancy acknowledged a thrill when he focused on her legs. She wore shorts because she knew she had nice legs.

“I can guess,” was all he said before diverting his attention back to the road.

Just that dry statement excited her. She trod dangerous waters here. She directed the conversation to safer ground. “Where are we going?”

“Madrid, Kentucky. That's where JD wrecked my truck.”

***

Nina sat on top of Hattie's Hill, gazing at the view. She had spent her entire life on this farm. She had built her dreams and her future around this land. Her friends were here. Her job was here. She didn't know anything beyond those waving fields of soybeans. Oh, she'd visited the city a time or two, gone to Opryland with the class on trips, poked around Paducah, and once, even traveled as far as St. Louis. She'd never had any inclination to live in those places. She liked it here, with familiar surroundings, where she felt safe.

And now the woman making herself comfortable back at the farmhouse, the same one who had torn her life in two at the tender age of nine, threatened to rip it in two a second time. If Helen Mclntyre was Hattie's heir, she could let the cell phone company install whatever it liked. She could sell the land and the house. She could leave Nina homeless; all the work and toil she'd put into this place over the years would become nothing. Nina simply couldn't believe life could be so cruel.

She didn't cry. She was still in too much shock to cry. Had that damn Matt Home known this all along? He must have. He was Hattie's attorney. No wonder he was so confident about the phone company. Maybe he'd even written Helen and told her what was happening. She couldn't believe that lousy turd of an attorney would have known where her mother was all this time and never once mentioned it to her. It didn't make sense. Everyone thought her mother dead. Why should Matt Home know differently?

Because Hattie would have told him. That betrayal hurt more than any other. Hattie had known where to find her mother. It couldn't have hurt worse had her aunt stuck a knife in her gullet and twisted it.