Rachel Lee (4 page)

But maybe she'd had enough. He could hardly blame her. He knew he hadn't lived up to her dreams for him. There was the accident with Karen's death, which had certainly hurt her, too, and then his refusal to date anyone, though she kept encouraging him to. She wanted grand babies she said, but he couldn't bear the thought of caring like that again.

So maybe she was just fed up. Her life had been one major disappointment after another.

And the thoughts running through his brain were doing nothing at all to ease his panic.

When he stepped blindly out of the I.

C.

U, he bumped into someone. It took him a moment to recognize Joni.

"What are you doing here?" he demanded roughly. It was a question he had no right to ask, and he realized it almost as soon as the words came out of his mouth.

But she didn't take it amiss. "I was worrying about you and your mother. How is she?"

"Pretty bad," he admitted reluctantly. "We probably won't know anything till morning."

"I'm sorry."

He gave her a short nod.

She reached out tentatively and touched his forearm briefly. "Let me buy you a cocoa?"

He looked down at her and shook his head. "Joni, you're courting disaster. You know what Witt thinks of me."

"Yeah. But I happen to disagree, and I'm over twenty-one. Cocoa?"

"The cafeteria's closed."

She gave him a wink that made him feel strangely light-headed. Lack of sleep, he told himself.

"Hey," she said, grabbing his hand, "I work here, remember? I know where the good stuff is hidden."

She took him away from the I.

C.

U toward the reception area, then steered him through a door that said Employees Only.

Inside was a staff lounge. A nurse was sitting on an easy chair with her shoes kicked off, eating a snack. A man in scrubs was stretched out on a couch with a cushion over his face.

Joni waved at the nurse, then put her finger over her lips as she looked at Hardy and pointed to the sleeping man. He nodded.

She made two mugs of instant cocoa, passed him one, then indicated he should follow her. They left the lounge and went to sit in the reception area.

"See?" she said. "Insider knowledge."

"Thanks." He hoped it didn't sound as grudging as it felt, because the cocoa was hot and delicious and contained the first calories he'd put in his system since a sandwich at noon. "You look awful," she told him.

She hadn't changed a bit, he realized. She was still the mouthy fourteen-year-old who'd pestered the living be jesus out of him and Karen sometimes. Even back then, he'd tried to be understanding. A kid who'd lost her daddy and moved to a town that didn't easily make room for new arrivals--yeah, she'd had a reason to be a pest.

Everybody else in the world had kind of ignored her.

"Have you slept within recent memory?" she asked.

"I've dozed here and there. Don't give me hell, Joni. I'm not up for it."

"Okay." She sipped her cocoa and looked at him from those amazing blue eyes.

"Don't you need to get home and get some sleep yourself?"

She shrugged. "I'm not on duty tomorrow. Day off."

"Even with the epidemic?"

"I might be called in," she admitted.

"Then go get some sleep."

"Are you trying to get rid of me?"

They stared at each other, letting her words hang in the air between them. Neither of them wanted to mention Karen, he realized, but she lay between them as surely as if she were there.

"I'm trying to keep you out of trouble with your uncle," he said finally.

"My problem, not yours."

He cocked an eye at her. "What put you in such a feisty mood?"

"I don't know. Maybe it's realizing that age doesn't necessarily make a person wise."

He sipped his cocoa, wondering what she was getting at, and almost afraid to ask. He didn't know Joni at all anymore, he reminded himself. Since Karen's death, until today, they hadn't passed more than a dozen words.

"Can you keep a secret?" she asked finally.

"Sure. But you shouldn't be telling them to me."

"I've got a reason."

She always had a reason. He remembered that from way back when.

According to Joni, she never did a thing without good reason. He had his own thoughts about that.

"Witt won the lottery," she told him. "But don't tell anyone else."

"Yeah?" He felt a mild interest. "That's neat. You all going to take a vacation in Hawaii?" His mother had always wanted to do that. It pained him that he hadn't yet been able to make that dream come true for her. This year, he promised himself. Somehow, if she made it through this pneumonia, he was going to get her to Hawaii, if he had to move heaven and earth.

"I suggested Tahiti." She gave him a smile that struck him as uneasy and sad. Despite all his overwhelming emotional exhaustion because of the last twenty-four desperate hours, he still managed to feel a pang for Joni.

"What's wrong?"

"Not a thing," she said. "It's a lot of money."

"Well, that's a good thing," he said generously. "Witt's worked hard in the mine all his life. You can't begrudge him an early retirement."

"I'd never do that. No, I'm really pleased for him."

"So, is he going to Tahiti?"

She shook her head. "No."

"Seems a shame. But maybe it wasn't enough for the trip."

She looked at him sideways. "How about eleven million dollars?"

That set him back on his heels. Numbers like that were usually attached to major construction jobs, none of which he'd so far managed to garner for his company. "Wow," he said after a moment. "Wow. But it doesn't pay out in a lump sum."

"No, but even with the payout schedule it's a lot of money."

"I guess he will retire."

"Actually..." She hesitated. "He's thinking about a career change."

"That's cool." Like he cared.

"He'sum ... thinking about building a resort on that property he owns west of town."

And suddenly Hardy understood why she was mentioning this to him. He looked straight at her and felt the entire world hold its breath for a few seconds. Then he said slowly, "Joni... are you sure you know what you're doing?"

Her mouth tightened, and she looked away. When she faced him again, her eyes were moist. "When Karen died, I didn't just lose my best friend. I lost my other best friend, too."

In spite of himself, he felt his throat tighten a little, and he cleared it. "Joni..."

She shook her head, silencing him. "It's been twelve years, Hardy.

Twelve years! And ever since we talked this afternoon, I've been thinking about how much Wilt's anger has cost me. And you, too. Karen would never have had to sneak out with you that night if Witt hadn't thought you weren't good enough for her. And you and I could still have been friends except for Witt. Damn it, Hardy, it's not right. And Karen had the guts not to let it keep her away from you. Maybe I've got the same guts, finally."

"Joni ... Joni, it's not a matter of guts. It's a matter of not raking up a whole lot of unpleasantness. Not at this late date. After all this time, Witt's not going to change his mind about me. It'll just open old wounds for everyone."

"Maybe they need to be opened." A tear spilled down her cheek. "This money's a bad thing, Hardy. I've been feeling it ever since Witt told me about it. The only way to avoid the bad things is to turn it to some good. You could build that lodge better than anybody."

"You don't know that. There's no way you can know that."

"I believe it."

He knew what she was offering him. Witt would never, ever, have asked him to bid on the project, would never even have let him know it was up for bid. But if he could just give Witt the best bid. maybe he'd get the job anyway. And it was exactly the kind of job he knew how to do, the kind of job he was constantly looking for. It could benefit them both.

He shook his head. "Witt will never agree, no matter how good the bid is."

"I have some influence, Hardy."

"That may be. But you don't want to get crosswise with your uncle, Joni. He and your mom are the only family you have."

"Well, you do what you think best. But I'll tell you right now, the next time you cross a street when you see me coming, I'm going to cross it, too." She drew a tremulous breath. "It's like ... it's like I can feel Karen telling me to do this. I know that's crazy, but it's what I feel. I'm not going to let Witt tell me who I can be friends with anymore. And neither should you."

He looked at her, wondering if she were getting sick or slipping a cog.

All this time. Yeah, all this time. He suddenly remembered that it hadn't been Joni who'd been avoiding him. No, he'd been the one avoiding her. Because of Witt. Because he was scared to look into that abyss yet again. Because he'd managed to put his guilt on the back burner finally, and getting involved with the Matlocks was only going to make him face it all over again.

He closed his eyes, the memories surging in him, filling him with blackness. "It won't work, Joni."

"You don't know until you try."

He did know, though. He knew in his deepest heart that Witt would never give him the job. But he also knew in his deepest heart that he wouldn't be able to live with himself if he didn't try.

Why, he wondered, did nearly every damn thing in his life have to be just beyond his grasp? It seemed to him that life had always been teasing and tantalizing him with promises it snatched away before they were barely fulfilled. And, God, he hoped his mother wasn't another one of them.

When he looked at Joni again, his eyes felt swollen and hot, and his heart hurt almost too much to bear. "What's the point? It won't happen."

"Maybe, maybe not," she said. "But you'll never know if you don't try."

A great philosophy, but words were cheap. Hardy had absolutely no doubt that he was going to find himself disappointed once again.

But what the hell, he thought. After a while you got used to being kicked.

But all that faded away at four-thirty in the morning when Barbara Wingate awoke, her fever gone and her gaze once again aware.

So maybe, Hardy thought gratefully, you didn't always have to get kicked.

It was a thought that kept him smiling the rest of the day.

Wind whipped the snow into a whiteness that erased the world as Joni drove home from work on a chilly January afternoon. A blizzard was moving through the mountains, and she was beginning to wonder if she'd stayed a little too late at the hospital. She didn't have all that far to drive, though, and she reminded herself that she would be driving through this kind of weather at least a dozen more times before winter blew its last white breath over the Colorado Rockies. Heck, some years she drove through this until June.

It was two days after New Year's, and she was feeling as good as it was possible to feel in the wake of the holidays. She wondered if she would have her usual letdown or if she was finally old enough not to get so high on anticipation that she would inevitably crash after New Year's.

Probably not, she decided. Nor was she sure she really wanted to outgrow the magical, excited feeling that always preceded Christmas for her.

When she got home and had left her outerwear in the mudroom, she went to find her mother. Hannah was sitting in the living room, reading.

"Miserable out there," she remarked to her daughter. "Did you have trouble getting up the hill?"

"No. But I wouldn't want to try it in an hour." The stack of mail was on the table by the door, and she flipped through it, pulling out her credit card bill and the utility bill that she paid as part of her share of the household costs. Then she came to a thick manila envelope that wasn't addressed to anyone.

"What's this?" she asked.

"Witt left it. He said it's the request for bids he had a lawyer draw up." Hannah smiled. "He was as excited as a kid. Apparently he's sent a bunch of them out to firms in Denver, and now he can't wait for the replies."

"So why did we get a copy?"

Hannah laughed. "I think he wanted to show off a little."

Witt liked to show off for her mother, Joni thought. She often wondered why the two of them had never gotten together. They were both widowed, after all. But . sometimes she sensed there was an invisible wall between them. Some kind of barrier the two refused to cross.

Silly, she told herself. She was imagining things. "I guess he won't mind if I look at it."

"I guess he was hoping you might," Hannah replied. "Witt's like any other man. He wants to hear how brilliant he is."

The statement carried the warmth of affection, and Joni laughed. She tucked the envelope under her arm and headed upstairs.

"Trust me," Hannah called after her, "it'll put you to sleep."

But Joni had other thoughts in mind, and she eagerly pried the envelope open when she reached her room. A stapled stack of papers came out, and a quick scan told her most of it was boilerplate, establishing rules such as how the bid should be presented. But there was a specification, too, one that she was able to determine required an architectural proposal for a thirty-room lodge. The other details didn't matter to her. What did matter was the due date on the request: January tenth.

She was jolted by the nearness of the date. Witt must have sent these out early last month or even in November to the firms in Denver. They would need at least a month to respond.

The due date was only a week away. And Hardy probably hadn't even seen this yet.

She checked the date again to be sure she wasn't mistaken. This was fast, awfully fast, but maybe it had to be, so construction could start as early as possible in the spring.

But why had it taken Witt so long to drop this copy off for her mother?

Had he deliberately done this so it wouldn't fall into Hardy's hands?

But why would he even suspect it would? No, it must be that he'd only now gotten a spare copy from his attorney.