Nightway (21 page)

Then Hawk was straightening, an impersonal hand pressing her shoulders against the high sofa back, forcing her into a relaxed position. A shudder ran through her as she let her head roll back on the firm cushion, her neck muscles no longer responsible for supporting its heaviness. Giving into a surge of weakness, she let her eyes close. The breath she took trembled on a sobbing note. She knew if she really relaxed, she would break out into tears. When she opened her eyes, she found Hawk was still standing above her.

“The woman across the hall—your neighbor—would you want her to come over to sit with you, too?”

Lanna’s immediate response was to lift her head from the sofa in a tired shake and comb the hair away from her forehead with her fingers. “No. I don’t think I could take one of her well-meaning lectures right now.” Then, the phrasing of his question penetrated her mind: “sit with you, too”—meaning as well as himself. “You don’t have to stay,” she said to his back as he turned to retrieve his cup from the table and sit in the armchair near the sofa, smoothly folding his long frame into the cushioned seat. “I can manage.”

His eyes glinted with a doubt which wasn’t expressed. “But when time goes by and you don’t hear from Chad for whatever reason, you will want to call the hospital.
It might be difficult to explain who the young woman is on the telephone if the question is ever asked. I can inquire without arousing anyone’s curiosity.”

“I see,” Lanna murmured. “That’s why you’re staying.” She should have realized he wasn’t trying to make it easier for her—only for the family. “I saw you arrive with Mrs. Faulkner.”

“Yes.” Hawk was relaxed in the chair, his long legs stretched in front of him, but his opaque eyes were on her.

“John said she was away,” Lanna recalled, “on a ranch somewhere up north. You brought his wife here?”

“Yes. When the hospital notified her, she asked me to fly her down,” he admitted.

That meant he was a pilot. “The ranch—John owns it?” Part of her still hadn’t made the adjustment from thinking of John as a night watchman to realizing he was one of the wealthiest men in the state.

“Yes.”

“Was it originally his home? He mentioned once that he was raised in the north—around the Four Corners.” It was surprising now to discover how few details she actually knew about John.

“Yes. He hasn’t lived there for years. They come back for a visit a couple of times during the summer.” Hawk showed more interest in his coffee than the conversation.

Lanna was learning things she wanted to know, satisfying a vague curiosity and diverting her thoughts. “Do you manage the ranch for John?”

“Tom Rawlins is in charge.”

“That is where you live, isn’t it, Hawk?” It was strange how naturally his name came to her.

“I … live there.” His hesitation was so slight, Lanna wondered if she had imagined it.

“You don’t work there?” A tiny crease etched into her forehead.

“Sometimes.” Which was hardly a precise answer. He looked up. “Drink your coffee before it gets cold.”

His low-pitched voice was softly steady, its tone not at all the kind that would demand obedience. Yet a fine thread of steel ran through it and asserted his will on her. Lanna took the cup from the end table and held it in both her hands while she sipped at its steaming contents. Its wet warmth briefly steadied her nerves.

“Where do you work?” Hawk asked after she had taken another swallow.

After Lanna began talking about herself, she realized Hawk had deliberately steered the conversation away from any discussion of him. By then, she didn’t care. It would have required too much effort to bring the subject back. Instead, she drifted into remembrances of the places she’d gone with John, the things they had done, and the quiet evenings they had spent together. There were so many good memories in recalling how their friendship had developed over the months.

Lanna wasn’t even aware of the tears that filled her eyes until one trickled down her cheek. She brushed it away, suddenly self-conscious.

“I’m boring you with all this. I’m sorry.” She set her empty cup on the end table, absently surprised that she had drunk it all.

One shoulder lifted in an indifferent shrug. “You needed to talk about it.”

“John and I were friends, good friends,” she asserted.

“I believe that,” he replied calmly.

“You didn’t before.” A sharp glance accompanied her stiff reminder.

“Is that surprising?” He raked her figure with a dry look.

“No, I suppose not.” An utter weariness crept into her voice and expression, her shoulders dropping. Her gaze was pulled to the silent telephone on the kitchen wall. “Why hasn’t he called?”

In a slow, effortless move, Hawk got to his feet, pausing there when he was certain of Lanna’s attention. “Do you want another cup of coffee?”

“No,” she refused, irritated that he could think she would be so easily distracted.

“I’m going to have another cup.” He started toward the kitchen.

“Can’t you call?” Her flaring temper released frustration that had no other outlet.

She received no answer as he continued to the kitchen. With calm deliberation, he set the kettle on the burner and spooned instant coffee into his cup. Certain that Hawk intended to ignore her request, Lanna’s hands tightened into desperate fists. But while he waited for the water to heat, he reached for the telephone and dialed a number. Lanna waited anxiously for the results.

“Nothing,” was the word he passed on to her, then turned to fix his coffee.

“That’s impossible!” she burst out. “All this time could not go by without
some
developments,
some
change!”

“You are the nurse. Perhaps there have been changes.” He admitted the possibility. “Only they weren’t conclusive.”

Lanna was forced to accede to his logic. John’s condition probably had fluctuated without the doctors being able to determine which course it would take. Tiredly, she wiped at the tautness of her forehead.

“You need some rest,” Hawk observed. “Why don’t you go to bed? In the morning—”

“No!” She rejected his suggestion out of hand. She revealed her agitation in the short, jerky movements of her hands. “I can’t go to bed without knowing. I wouldn’t sleep. You don’t understand. You obviously weren’t as close to John as I have been.”

“His friends and family generally call him J. B.,” he remarked subtly, implying that she didn’t really know him.

“They didn’t know him the way I did,” Lanna defended.

“If you know him so well, then you must realize that J. B. takes from a relationship and gives very little in return.” Hawk resumed his former position in the chair, regarding her over his steaming cup of hot coffee.

“That’s not true,” she denied. “John was very generous.”

A jet brow arched. “Generous? Yes, in a material sense—but selfish when it comes to giving of himself.”

“No.” Lanna refused to believe that.

“Look at you. You trusted him, took him at face value. How did he repay you?” he mocked.

“How can you talk about him like this?” she accused. “He’s in the hospital fighting for his life, and here you are running him down.”

“I’m only speaking the truth, which shouldn’t hurt anyone. As for J. B. fighting for his life … “—Hawk paused, his mouth twisting wryly—” … right now, whether unconscious or not, he’s paying an expensive medical staff to do that for him.”

“Why do you dislike him?”

“It isn’t a question of dislike, Miss Marshall. It’s merely a matter of recognizing faults. We all have them.”

“Do you have to be so intolerant, then?” she accused.

“Me?” A white smile of humor spread rashly across his face. “You would be amazed at what I’ve tolerated.” With the atmosphere lightened by his expression, he glided on to another subject. “Where are you from originally? Not Arizona.”

Again she allowed him to shift the conversation to something safer. She glossed briefly over her childhood in Colorado, her mother’s death after she had left grade school, and her father’s subsequent marriage when she was in college. But not in this man could she confide the affair with a married man that had left her scarred, but recovering. He wasn’t John.

But there had been such an emptiness in her life until she had met John. She guessed that she and John had been drawn together by a mutual sense of loneliness. Her blurring eyes made a slow study of her apartment. It had begun to seem like a home after she’d met John. When her gaze came to rest on Hawk, so contained and so unaffected by the torment she was feeling, a surge of irritation brought her to her feet. The momentum carried her several steps from the sofa before she stopped to hug her arms around her waist.

“You make me feel so damned weak!” Lanna hurled the remark as she rubbed her elbows. “So damned guilty for being weak!”

The tears spilled through her blinking lashes to run down her cheeks. Her lips were pressed tightly together to keep from releasing the sobs that were shaking her shoulders. She lowered her head, letting the brown curtain of hair swing forward to hide her face.

A hand touched her arm and she tried to draw away from its pressure. But it took little effort to turn her and fold his arms around her until she was resting against the flat muscles of his chest. His body absorbed
the shudders that vibrated through her. His strength offered silent comfort as he held her stiff form close to his. Her tears dampened his shirt where she rested her head. Even as she wept, Lanna struggled to control herself.

“I’ll bet you are the type who hates weeping females,” she declared in a wavering voice.

“They are usually more Chad’s style,” Hawk admitted, but she thought she detected a note of amusement rather than criticism.

“It’s just that it’s been so long.” Lanna wiped at the tears with a weak, scrubbing motion while she kept her head downcast. “I keep telling myself that no news is good news, but—”

The ring of the telephone was shrill. A cry broke from her throat as she pivoted within the circle of Hawk’s arms, but they tightened to stop her.

“I’ll answer it.” The pressure of his hands ordered her to stay where she was.

Lanna didn’t have the strength to move as his long, rolling stride quickly covered the distance to the telephone. He lifted the receiver in mid-ring, silencing it abruptly. It had to be Chad calling from the hospital as he had promised. No one else would phone her at this hour of the night.

Hawk faced her as he put the receiver to his ear and spoke into the mouthpiece. Lanna was motionless, every nerve, muscle, and sense straining toward him. His monosyllabic responses told her nothing of what was being told to him. She searched his face, trying to read a reaction in his expression, but she could read nothing there. There wasn’t even a flicker of change in the set of his features. Tension coiled through her until she wanted to scream. She held her breath when he turned to hang up the phone, then swung back to face her.

“Where do you keep the whiskey?” he asked.

“Whiskey?” Lanna released the word with the breath she had been holding. What did that have to do with anything? “That was Chad, wasn’t it? What did he say? How’s John? Has his condition stabilized?”

“If J. B. had dinner here as often as you said, there must be some whiskey. He always liked a shot before dinner,” Hawk persisted. “Where is it?”

“In the cupboard to the left of the sink,” Lanna answered, because she knew he would tell her nothing until she did. “I want to know about John. Is he going to be all right?”

Hawk opened the cupboard and took down the half-empty bottle of whiskey and a glass, not responding. He walked toward her, carrying the glass and bottle in one hand. They clinked together, making a flat sound. “He’s gone,” he said bluntly, not cushioning the announcement with soothing words. “He died at one-twenty-two this morning.”

Lanna sucked in a breath and covered her mouth with her hand. All the color drained from her face and she felt sick, her head reeling. Her stricken gaze couldn’t leave Hawk’s emotionless blue eyes as she silently waited for him to tell her it was all some kind of cruel joke. But it wasn’t.

A violent trembling began in her shoulders and spread quickly to her legs. Before her knees buckled, Hawk was there to curve a supporting arm around her and guide her to a chair. Lanna sank into its cushions in a huddled mass of numbed disbelief. Balancing on the balls of his feet, Hawk crouched beside the chair to uncap the whiskey bottle and fill the glass.

“It isn’t true. He isn’t dead,” her thin, wavering voice insisted.

“Drink this.”

He pressed the cold, smooth rim of the glass to her
lips, forcing them apart. She inhaled the smell of pure whiskey before the tepid liquid was poured into her mouth. The fiery whiskey paralyzed her throat muscles for an instant, then racked them with spasmodic coughs. Lanna tried to push away the hand that kept the glass hovering near her mouth, but she had no strength.

“Drink some more,” Hawk ordered and refused to let her disobey.

The whiskey burned away all her numbness to expose the raw pain. She began to cry and buried her face in her hands to catch the tears that streamed from her eyes. Unconsciously, Lanna rocked back and forth. She had no awareness of the man crouched beside the arm of her chair, staring at the partially full glass of whiskey he swirled in his hand. He bolted it down and then refilled the glass.

Lanna cried until the storm of grief was spent and only a few acid-hot tears were falling. Knotting her fingers together, she lifted her head to gaze sightlessly around the room. She trembled at the frightening emptiness she felt inside. The world had never seemed so bleak and lonely.

“Here.” The glass of whiskey was being proffered to her lips again, held by the same set of strong, sunbrowned fingers.

With a faint tremor, she lifted her hand to touch his and guide the glass the few inches to her mouth. This time Lanna was prepared for the whiskey’s fiery taste. She choked slightly as the muscles of her throat constricted, but she didn’t cough. The glass was moved away to the periphery of her sight. She leaned back in the chair and stared at the ceiling, feeling the backlash of whiskey befuddling her senses.