Til Death Do Us Part (19 page)

Returning her hug, Joseph looked over her shoulder at J.T., who glared back at him. Joanna withdrew from Joseph, grabbed J.T.'s hand and smiled at him. Reaching out, he tenderly wiped the happy tears from her cheeks.

“Come inside and tell us everything,” Joanna said. “Have coffee with us.”

Joseph hesitated until J.T. said, “Join us for breakfast, cousin.”

Joseph followed them into his aunt Mary's house, through the living room and into the small, neat kitchen.

“How did Claire escape from Lenny Plott?” Joanna asked as she set out earthenware mugs for the three of them.

“Plott never had her,” Joseph said.

“What?” Joanna and J.T. said in unison.

“Seems she panicked and ran away without telling her boyfriend or anyone else. When she'd had a chance to calm down and think clearly, she realized what her parents, her boyfriend and everyone would think. She called her mother to let her know she's all right. Her mother told the FBI that Claire is in California, but she doesn't want anyone to know exactly where.”

“But Lenny Plott will find her. She needs protection. Doesn't she realize that?” Joanna lifted the coffeepot and poured the hot black liquid into their mugs.

“If Plott can find her, the FBI can find her.” J.T. ran the back of his hand across Joanna's cheek.

“Let's just hope that the FBI finds her first.” Closing her eyes, Joanna pressed the side of her face against J.T.'s caressing hand.

He knew what she was thinking and wished he could erase the fear from her heart. But all he could do was guard her and wait. Wait for the FBI to apprehend Plott or for Plott to make a move on Joanna. Perhaps it would be easier on Joanna if the FBI found Plott and returned him to prison, but on a very primitive level, J.T. longed for a confrontation with the monster who had brutalized her.

J.T.
CAME UP
behind Joanna, slipped his arms around her and drew her up against his chest.
“Ayoigo shil hózhó.”

Leaning backward, she tilted her head. He nuzzled her neck, then kissed her on the jaw. “What did you just say to me?” she whispered.

“I thought Eddie was giving us both
Saad
lessons. Haven't you been paying attention in class? I just told you that I'm happy.” J.T. gazed down at the sleeping child resting in the baby bed. Joey Whitehorn's fat little thumb lay in the corner of his open mouth. A pang of something unfamiliar hit J.T. square in the stomach. He had never thought much about having children of his own, hadn't really wanted any. But recently, since getting to know Kate and Ed's children and seeing the way Joanna acted around them, J.T. had begun to think about a family of his own. What sort of father would he be? He'd had no example set for him, hadn't known his real father and despised the kind of parental figure his grandfather had been.

“While Eddie has been giving you daily
Saad
lessons, I've been painting, or had you forgotten?”

“How could I forget, when I'm the guy who's posing for the damned thing?”

Taking his hand, Joanna led him quietly from the room, closing the door only halfway behind them. Once in the living room, she slipped her arm around his waist.

“Joseph offered to pose for me,” she said. “If you don't want to continue as my model, I can ask him.”

“Forget it, honey.” J.T. jerked her around and into his arms, smothering her face and neck with quick, warm kisses. “I'm going to be the only naked Navajo brave you ever paint.”

“You're painting J.T. without his clothes on?” Eddie Whitehorn stood in the kitchen doorway, his wide-eyed sister at his side.

Little Eddie had been appalled when he'd learned J.T. couldn't speak
Saad
and had made a point of coming by every day for the past four days to give him a lesson. When Joanna had volunteered for them to spend the day at the Whitehorns' taking care of all three children so Ed and Kate could spend their Saturday alone in Gallup, J.T. had opposed the idea. When he had reminded her of exactly why they were hiding away on the reservation, she pointed out that it was highly unlikely that Lenny Plott could discover their whereabouts, at least not this soon. So, J.T. had reluctantly agreed to help babysit. After all, he had thought, how much trouble could three little kids be?

J.T. groaned. “I thought you two were outside playing.”

“We were, but Summer got thirsty and I had to bring her in for a glass of water.” Eddie led Summer into the living room, then stopped and stared up at J.T. “If Joanna gets to see you without your clothes on, do you get to see her without hers on?”

Joanna covered her mouth, smothering a laugh behind her hand. J.T. cleared his throat. He didn't know anything about kids, had never been around any until he brought Joanna to the reservation a few days ago. How was he supposed to reply to Eddie's question? He had no idea how to handle this situation.

“I'm an artist,” Joanna said. “You already know that, don't you, Eddie?”

The child nodded his head. “So?”

“Well, I went to school, to a college in Virginia, and took classes in art. Sometimes all the art students drew pictures of models who didn't have on any clothes. That's the way we learned how to draw the human body.”

“Yeah?” Eddie twisted his mouth into a frown, scratched his head and blew out a huffing breath. “If I go to the Navajo Community College in Tsaile and take art classes, will I get to see people naked?”

Smiling, J.T. looked at Joanna as if to say, “You started this, honey. Finish it.”

The sound of Joey whimpering saved Joanna from thinking of an appropriate reply. “I'll go get him,” she told J.T.

“I'm hungry,” Summer whined. “When are we gonna eat supper?”

“Go get Joey,” J.T. said. “I'll handle this.”

“Could we have some ice cream?” Eddie asked. “Mama's got some in the freezer.”

“Fruit,” Joanna called out from the hallway. “One apple each, but no ice cream until after supper.”

“Ah,” both children groaned in unison.

After Joanna changed Joey's diaper, she brought him into the living room, sat down in the rocker near the window and began singing to him. His little eyelids fluttered, but every time he heard his older siblings' voices, his eyes opened wide and he tried to sit up.

Coming out of the kitchen, J.T. tossed Eddie and Summer an apple apiece, then motioned for them to follow him out onto the porch. When J.T. sat down on the steps, Summer crawled up in his lap and Eddie sat down beside him.

“Tell us a story, J.T.,” Summer said, looking up at him with big brown eyes he found impossible to resist.

“I'm afraid I don't know any stories,” J.T admitted. “What about you, Eddie, do you know a story you could tell Summer and me?”

“What do you mean you don't know any stories?” Eddie asked. “Surely you know about
Asdzá Na'adleehe
and her two sons?”

“Who was this
Asdzá
—?”

“Changing Woman, the mother-creator of our people. J.T. you don't know anything, do you? You can't speak our language and you never heard of Changing Woman.”

“Why don't you tell me about her?”

Eddie eagerly recited the myth of Changing Woman, her husband, the sun, and their offspring—the story his parents had taught him since early childhood. J.T. listened with great interest, realizing that he truly wanted to know more about the Navajo legends. The truth of the matter was, deny it all he wanted, he
was
half Navajo; a part of his mother and a part of these people.

Hours later, after the sun had set and the two younger Whitehorn children were asleep, Eddie and J.T. checked on the animals before Eddie went to bed. Then, alone in the living room, J.T. and Joanna slumped down on the sofa and stared at each other.

“I don't remember the last time I've been this tired,” J.T. said. “Kids can wear you out, can't they?”

“They certainly can,” Joanna agreed. “I suppose that's why it's a good idea to have them while you're still young.”

“I feel as if I've been playing twenty questions all day. They want the answers to everything immediately. How on earth do Kate and Ed cope?”

“I suppose they do what all parents have done since the
beginning of time,” Joanna said. “They do the best they can and pray their best is good enough.”

Kicking off her shoes, Joanna scooted to one end of the sofa, lifted her feet and put them in J.T.'s lap. He massaged her insteps. She sighed.

“I want children of my own someday,” she said.

“Do you?” He caressed her ankles.

“Uh-huh. Have you ever thought about it? About having children?”

“I'd probably make a lousy father.”

“Why do you say—” The ringing telephone interrupted Joanna midsentence. Gasping, she shuddered.

“It's okay, honey. It's just my phone.” He lifted her feet so he could stand, then rested them back down on the sofa.

He picked up his cellular phone from where he'd laid it on the knickknack shelf filled with Kate's pottery collection. “Blackwood. Yeah. When did it happen? Is she all right? What about Plott?”

Joanna jumped up from the sofa and rushed over to J.T. Tugging on his arm, she mouthed the words, “Who is it?”

“Hold on a minute,” he told the person at the other end of the line. “It's Dane Carmichael,” he said to Joanna.

J.T. slid his arm around her waist, drawing her to his side as he finished his brief conversation. He punched the off button on his phone and laid it down on the shelf, then kissed Joanna on the forehead.

“What's wrong?” she asked.

“Plott found Libby Felton.”

Joanna gasped. “No. Please, J.T., what happened? Did he—”

“She's all right, just badly shaken. Libby's husband and an FBI agent were both shot, but they saved Libby from Plott.”

“Is Libby's husband dead? And the FBI agent?”

“No. They're both in the hospital. Libby's husband is in stable condition and the agent is in critical condition, but he's expected to live.”

“When—when did all this happen?” Joanna asked.

“Before daybreak this morning.”

“Plott escaped, didn't he?”

“Yeah, honey, he did.”

“He won't go back to Texas after Libby anytime soon after what happened,” Joanna said. “And it'll take him a while to find out where Claire is, so that means…that means he'll come to New Mexico. He'll go to the ranch.”

“Only a handful of people know where we are and none of them are about to tell Plott.”

“He'll find out. Somehow, he'll figure out a way to find out where I am and when he does, he'll come after me.”

J.T. grabbed her by the shoulders. “Dane is calling in more agents. The FBI will be in full force in Trinidad. No way will Plott get past them.”

“I hope you're right. Dear God, I hope you're right.” J.T. hoped so, too, but any doubts he had, he intended to keep to himself. While reassuring Joanna and keeping things as normal as possible for her, he planned to prepare himself for the worst.

 

L
ENNY
P
LOTT SEEMED
to have vanished from the face of the earth since attempting to kidnap Libby. No one had any idea where he was or what he was plotting, but Joanna knew it was only a matter of time before he resurfaced.

Minutes had turned into hours and hours into days as Joanna and J.T. fell into a flexible routine. They went horseback riding every day, exploring the land nearby and becoming acquainted with the neighbors, all members of
Mary's Bitter Water clan. And every day, Eddie gave J.T. a
Saad
lesson.

Joanna's portrait of J.T. had begun taking shape, but she had refused to let him look at it. She had no idea how he would react when he saw the way she had depicted him. All primitive naked male, as rugged and wild as the landscape surrounding him.

And they made love. In the mornings when they first awoke. In the middle of the day when they couldn't go another minute without touching each other. And at night after Joanna covered J.T.'s portrait and the ghosts of their great-grandparents hovered in the darkness.

Each night Joanna read to J.T. from Annabelle Beaumont's diary, and the more they shared their ancestors' love story, the more they became a part of Annabelle and Benjamin's doomed affair.

Tonight they sat on the threadbare sofa, as they did every night, Joanna nestled between J.T.'s legs, while she read to him. He wore nothing except his jeans, and she her striped caftan. The side of his face rested against hers, and from time to time, he kissed her temple.

Joanna's shoulders quivered. J.T. reached around her, closed Annabelle's diary and lifted it out of her hands.

He couldn't bear to see her cry and yet her tender, romantic heart was part of what made her so special. He would change nothing about her. She was as close to perfect as he would ever want a woman to be.

He laid the diary on the end table and turned off the table lamp, leaving only the dim light from their bedroom casting a shadowy glow into the living room. Cradling her in his arms, he hugged her fiercely and kissed her neck.

“Why do you do this to yourself, honey? You've already read that diary from beginning to end more than once. I don't see why you want to read aloud from it every night.”

Resting her head against his chest, she closed her eyes
and sighed. “If I didn't read it to you, you'd never read all of it, and I want you to know Benjamin and Annabelle's story. I want you to feel about them the way I do.”

“Honey, I've already admitted that I was wrong about them.” J.T. lifted her clasped hands to his lips. “What happened to them was tragic, but nothing we say or do can change the past. Annabelle and Benjamin are dead and buried, and their great love with them.”

How could she ever make J.T. understand the way she felt and what she believed? Yes, Annabelle and Benjamin were dead, but not their love. Didn't he realize that love never dies, especially the kind of love their great-grandparents had shared? Annabelle's and Benjamin's spirits were together, forever; their love was still alive. It was a part of J.T. A part of Joanna. And a part of what they felt for each other.

In her heart of hearts, Joanna believed that Annabelle had sent her to New Mexico, that her great-grandmother had opened her heart to the hope and dream of love at a time when she had thought there was nothing left worth living for. She had been destined to meet J.T., to love him and to heal his troubled soul. He belonged here in New Mexico, where both his mother's people and his father's had fought and died to claim this land. His birthright was here, and if he could ever embrace his mixed heritage, he could find peace in his soul. He could be both Navajo and Scotsman, both cowboy and Indian. Why couldn't he accept the fact that he did not have to choose, that indeed he couldn't choose between the two? He was a unique man, and she loved him as she would never love another. He was, as Benjamin had been to Annabelle, the other half of her.