Redemption Road (Jackson Falls #5) (23 page)

“Harley,
stop.” She feared she was conveying her anxiety to him, and that was the last
thing she wanted to do. “I had a lovely evening, the most lovely evening of my
life.” She took a step forward, gave him a gentle kiss. “And now I have to go
home. We both have to work in the morning.”

He
wrapped a warm hand around the back of her neck, drew her to him, and kissed
her properly. “You are a maddening woman. You’re aware of that, aren’t you?”

“If
I didn’t keep you on your toes, you’d lose interest.”

He
brushed her jaw line with his thumb. “So, will you still respect me in the
morning?”

She
kissed the inside of his wrist and escaped his hold. Opening the door, she flipped
the end of her scarf over her shoulder and said, “What makes you think I ever
respected you?”

And
she shut the door behind her.

Colleen

She didn’t know why she’d agreed to this. It was her sister’s idea
to become a sheep farmer, and Colleen wasn’t even sure how Casey had managed to
drag her into the ordeal. But here they were, chugging down the road in the
Vega, headed for A Fleece of Heaven, where her sister had finagled an
invitation to tour the facility. The name was stupid. The whole idea was stupid.
It wasn’t as though Casey needed to start a new business for the money. She was
loaded, and most new businesses didn’t make a profit for the first couple of
years, anyway. Instead, she’d be sinking money into this puppy, money she would
probably never recover. Besides, between taking care of Paige and Emma, running
the household, and working with Rob in the studio, her sister was already so
busy she barely had time to go to the bathroom. Emma was showing signs that
she’d be walking soon, and there’d be a new baby next fall. How the hell was Casey
supposed to take on another responsibility? Especially one as involved as this?
There was no way she’d be able to pull it off by herself. As if mucking out
stalls for a herd of sheep wasn’t enough, was her sister also planning to learn
shearing? Spinning? Dyeing? Packaging and marketing and merchandising? All of
those took time and energy. Did she plan to sell her product direct to the
consumer, or try to place it on store shelves? If she did go the store shelf
route, would she be prepared to ship orders in bulk? The more she thought about
it, the more mind-boggling the whole thing became. Casey couldn’t do it alone,
not if she intended to produce in bulk. She’d need help. A worker drone or
three. At a bare minimum, she’d need a business manager.

A niggling suspicion gnawed at the periphery of her consciousness.
Colleen glanced over at her sister, but Casey was sitting comfortably, her
hands folded in her lap, her eyes focused on the passing scenery, as if she
didn’t have a care in the world. If she did have an ulterior motive, she wasn’t
divulging it.

Frowning, Colleen turned her attention back to the road. As if
touring a smelly sheep ranch wasn’t enough, they were capping off the day with
a visit to Aunt Hilda. That, too, had been her sister’s idea, to kill two birds
with one stone, since A Fleece of Heaven and Aunt Hilda’s house were located in
the same general area. Rob and the girls could survive dinner without her,
Casey had declared, and she’d gone ahead and accepted Hilda’s dinner invitation
for both of them. Gripping the steering wheel, Colleen sighed. Casey was a
powerhouse, and once she got an idea in her head, there was no talking her out
of it.

“I’m surprised Rob didn’t squawk about you being gone for dinner,”
she said.

Her sister turned to look at her, eyebrows raised. “He’s capable
of cooking dinner. He lived alone for years. You should try his
moo goo gai
pan
sometime. Out of this world. And I’m a grown woman. He knows better
than to try to put his thumb on me.”

Colleen didn’t respond. The picture her sister painted of her man
cooking dinner brought back images of Harley taking those chicken breasts out
of the oven. Which led to other, less G-rated images that heated her skin and
made her tingle in places she’d just as soon not think about.

As Rob liked to say,
Jesus Christ on a popsicle stick
.

A Fleece of Heaven was located about twelve miles out on a
two-lane blacktop highway that meandered cross-country toward Rangeley. They
were greeted warmly by Elsa Lundqvist, a sixtyish woman in overalls and a
shapeless brown barn coat. The woman looked as if she hadn’t combed her long,
graying tresses in weeks. But her operation was modern and clean and impressive.
She gave them an hour-long tour of the production facilities, explaining
everything and answering questions along the way. To Colleen’s surprise, her
sister had clearly done her homework. The questions she asked were intelligent
and on-topic. So this wasn’t just some impetuous idea Casey had picked up
somewhere and blindly run with. She was serious.

They ended their tour in the barn, where dozens of sheep milled
about their enclosures, curious about these unfamiliar humans who had come to
visit. The animals were as clean as could be expected, given the fact that they
lived in a barn and slept on a bed of hay. The smells weren’t particularly
offensive to a woman who’d grown up on a dairy farm and was well acquainted with
the fragrance of freshly spread cow manure on a hot summer day. At one end of
the building, a pen held a half-dozen ewes with their lambs. “Oh, they’re so
precious!” Casey said. “Can I hold one?”

Colleen held her sister’s dress coat over her arm while Casey sat
on a wooden box and held a squirming, bleating lamb in her arms. Her sister
buried her face in soft, springy fur, then glanced up at Colleen in wonderment.
Casey was the most maternal person she’d ever known. She mothered everyone,
from lambs to babies to grown men. The woman had a true knack for recognizing
neediness, then emanating mega doses of love and healing. She’d tried to do it
with Colleen when they were motherless teenagers, but Colleen had rebelled. Hurt
and angry, still reeling from Mama’s death, she hadn’t wanted her older sister
trying to run her life. All she’d wanted was to be left alone, so she’d spurned
her sister’s advances every time Casey tried to close the gap between them. She’d
eventually gotten what she wanted. Casey had left with no warning, had run off
to marry Danny Fiore without ever looking back. Her sister had abandoned her,
and what was left of her world had crashed down on top of her head.

It was dusk by the time they left, and the roads were slick. It
had been a warm, sunny day, and the wet melt had started to freeze back up. When
they got to Hilda’s house, Casey called Rob to let him know that they might be
home later than she’d planned, because the roads were icy and they would need
to take their time. Hearing her sister’s end of the conversation, Colleen could
tell that he wasn’t pleased. Besides, she knew her brother-in-law well enough
by now to know how protective he was of her sister. But it couldn’t be helped. They
were here now, and they couldn’t very well walk out on their aunt, who’d
prepared a sumptuous feast for her only nieces.

The visit went better than Colleen had anticipated, reminding her,
not for the first time, that dread was often ten times more painful than the
thing that was dreaded. So she ate her aunt’s food, endured Hilda’s questions,
and actually returned the woman’s hug when the visit was over. “See?” Casey
said, as Colleen backed the car around and pulled out of Hilda’s driveway. “I
told you it wouldn’t be that bad.”

“Oh, shut up.”

They drove in silence for a time before Casey said, “So? What do
you think?”

“About?”

“What did you think of A Fleece of Heaven?”

Her fingers tightened on the steering wheel. “I think the facility
was impressive. And to tell you the truth, I’d forgotten how adorable lambs
could be.”

“I hear a ‘but’ in there.”

“But…if you think you’re going to build something like that in
your back yard…first of all, Rob is going to have a conniption.”

“Rob’s good with this. We’ve already talked it over.”

“Rob would rope the moon and reel it in like a large-mouth bass if
you asked. That doesn’t mean he’s good with it.”

“I can handle my husband. Let’s just leave him out of it.”

“Okay. I think it’s a very ambitious undertaking.”

“Nobody said it would be easy. Life isn’t easy. Most things, if
they’re worth having, aren’t easy. I’m not sure I understand your point.”

“I think you’re not realizing how much goes into something like
that. This isn’t just some little cottage industry, something you can do in
your spare time from your sewing room. We’re talking a serious business here. We’re
talking business licenses and expensive equipment and reams of tax paperwork. Providing
benefits for your employees. Putting up at least one building, maybe more. Sales
and marketing. A massive learning curve. You don’t know thing one about
shearing sheep, about spinning fleece or dyeing yarn. How are you going to
learn that? And then, there are the animals. Animals that have to be kept warm
and clean and fed every day, no matter what else is going on in your life, no
matter how lousy you’re feeling or how dismal the weather is.”

“Do you think I don’t know that? Come on, Coll, we grew up
together on that farm. We both did 4-H. We both raised heifers. We both won
blue ribbons.”

“Okay, so the animal part is second nature to you. What about the
rest of it?”

“I’ll learn about shearing and spinning and dyeing. I’m not an
idiot. I learn quickly.”

“And what if this turns out to be a very expensive hobby? What if,
after you’ve invested all this time and money, you decide you’re not interested
in it anymore?”

“For the love of God, I’m not a six-year-old with a new puppy she
got for Christmas!”

“You don’t know a damn thing about running a business!”

“That’s why I need you! Damn it, Colleen, that’s why I asked you
to come with me to that place with its idiotic name! I wanted you to see it,
too. If I do this, I’ll need a business partner. One who knows what the hell
she’s doing!”

The silence between them was so thick, so dense, she could taste
it. “How did I know that was coming?”

“I keep waiting,” Casey said. “Waiting for you to realize this is
where you belong. With me. For years now, I’ve felt as though something was
missing. Some part of me, and I couldn’t figure out what it was. Until you
showed up at my house, driving this god-awful car and without a penny to your
name. The missing part of me. My sister. The one I used to climb trees with,
and play cars and trucks in the dirt with. The one who dyed my favorite doll’s
hair purple with Mama’s food coloring. The one I used to fight with, the one I
used to sing with. The one that, no matter how much we squabbled, always had my
back. The one I shared a room with until I was twelve, when Bill got married
and moved out, and I got his room. And those first few weeks, we were so lost without
each other that you used to sneak across the hall and climb into bed with me. I
want my sister back!”

“That’s precious, considering that you’re the one who left. Goddamn
it, Casey, you were the only solid thing in my life after Mama died, and you ran
off with Danny and got married, and just never came back. You abandoned me! Do
you have any idea how that made me feel?”

“Quite frankly, I didn’t think you cared. For three years, all you
did was push me away.”

“I cared! You have no idea what it was like for me. After Mama
died, Dad was so wrapped up in his grief that he forgot I even existed. Travis
left, and Bill was starting his own family. I was so damn lost, and you were
all I had. And then you left, and I thought I might drown. You didn’t care. You
didn’t even think about me. I might as well have been invisible.”

“I was eighteen years old! Just a kid myself! I was in love. It
had nothing to do with you. It wasn’t that you were invisible. It was that I
couldn’t see anything or anyone but him!”

“And that’s supposed to make me feel better?”

“I don’t know how it’s supposed to make you feel. It’s all I have
to offer you. It’s the truth!”

If she’d been paying attention, she might have seen the patch of
black ice ahead of her. Beneath her hands, she felt the tug of the steering as the
car moved in a direction she wasn’t intending to go. “Oh, shit,” she said.

Abruptly silent, her sister grabbed hold of the dash, while she
fought the steering wheel. The car went left, then right, while she tried to
remember whether she was supposed to steer into the skid or away from it. They
took a leisurely stroll sideways down the highway, then spun around. The car
gathered momentum and skidded backwards off the shoulder. It landed ass-first
in the ditch, with a solid thunk that nearly shook the teeth from her head.

It all happened so quickly that it took her a moment to catch up. “Jesus
Christ,” she said. And looked over at her sister. Casey’s eyes were closed, and
her face had gone the color of cottage cheese. Frightened, she said, “Are you
okay?”

“Just a little…
déjà vu
.”

“
Déjà
—oh, damn, Casey, I’m sorry.” Her sister’s first
husband had been killed on a snowy Connecticut highway after he lost control as
they were driving back from Washington, D.C. “Are you sure you’re okay? The
baby? We hit pretty hard.”

“I’m fine.” Her sister took a couple of deep breaths. Said, “Why
didn’t you tell me? How was I supposed to know if you never told me?”

“I guess it was easier to hold it inside. That way, I still had
justification to be furious with you.”

“Idiots. Both of us, idiots.”

“Speak for yourself. I’m not an idiot. I’m just—”

“A bitch?”

She leaned her head back against the seat, not sure whether she
should laugh or cry. “That would probably be an accurate assessment.”  She
looked over at her sister, saw the merriment in her eyes, and snorted. Then
they were off, in gales of laughter, some of it due to delayed hysterical
reaction, some of it simply relief because they were still alive.

“Oh, boy,” Casey said, wiping a tear from her eye. “How bad do you
suppose we’re mired?”