Trouble in Paradise (9 page)

The telephone company installed Shayla’s phone the next afternoon. Needing to get her thoughts off of Ian and onto something else, she dialed Portland, certain her family could be counted on to succeed where she had failed.

“Oh, honey,” her mother said, “it’s good to hear your voice. You didn’t call last week, and we were getting worried.”

“Sorry, Mom. I’ve been busy. But my phone’s in now. Let me give you my number.”

Reba Vincent repeated the number as she wrote it down. When she finished, she said, “Now tell me what’s kept you so busy you couldn’t call home sooner.”

“My writing mostly.”

“And what else?”

Shayla felt a sting of disappointment. She’d harbored a secret hope that her mother would ask how the book was going, that she would express interest—as Ian did yesterday.

Heat rushed through her as she recalled for about the hundredth time the tender way he’d kissed her, the way standing so close to him had caused her heart to thrum. How it had weakened her knees…not to mention her brain.

“Shayla dear, are you still there?”

She gave her head a quick shake. “Yes, Mom, I’m here. What did you say?”

“I asked what you’ve been doing with all your free time. There’s nothing to do in Rainbow Valley, as I remember. Not even a movie theater.”

“Well, for one thing, I’ve got a job.”

“A job? Doing what?”

“I’m working part-time as a housekeeper for a neighbor. And he’s going to make some repairs to the cabin.”

“A housekeeper?” Reba let out a long sigh. “That’s a horrible waste of your skills. I do wish you’d come back to Portland. I know you could find
decent employment if you would only try. Besides, I can’t bear to think of you living in that horrible cabin.”

“But it isn’t horrible, Mom. It’s wonderful. And yesterday, I went for a horseback ride with a neighbor and saw a herd of elk and—”

“Sis!” an excited voice interrupted. Olivia had picked up the extension. “Is that you?”

“It’s me.”

“You’ll never guess who asked me out on a date. Go on. Try. You’ll never guess.”

By the time Shayla hung up the phone twenty minutes later, she’d learned the answer to Olivia’s question—she’d been asked out by the high school’s star quarterback. She’d also learned that her youngest sister, Crystal, had garnered a spot on the junior high swim team, her brother Dwight had been promoted at work, her sister Anne had been asked to oversee a church fund-raiser, her brother Ken had moved into an apartment with one of his college buddies, and her youngest brother, George, was now bagging groceries at the nearby supermarket.

But no one asked Shayla about her novel.

She sat on the sofa, staring at the telephone in its cradle, resentment flooding her chest. She knew they missed her. Everyone said so. Yet not one of them seemed to care about what mattered so very much to her.

Ian cared enough to ask.

She groaned. Yes, Ian cared. Perhaps too much. And after that kiss yesterday, she realized he was also
the greatest threat to her realizing her dream of becoming a published novelist. Falling in love would be a great distraction from her purpose. And marriage? She didn’t see that in her immediate future, either.

Wasn’t it the Apostle Paul who wrote that extra problems came with marriage, that when a woman was single she could be more devoted to the Lord? Yes, Shayla was certain the Bible said that. Of course, it also said that marriage was a good thing and that children were a blessing.

Releasing another groan, she rose from the sofa and walked to the mirror at the end of the hall. “You need to focus,” she told her reflection. “Ian O’Connell is a kind and caring individual. God didn’t bring you here for romance. Remember that. Forget Ian and think about your writing.”

Much easier said than done.

L
eigh called again the following Sunday.

“Mom said to tell you she’ll come and stay at the ranch for the month of October. Do you think you can get along with the girls on your own until then?”

“Of course.” He sounded more confident than he felt. “How hard can it be?”

Her soft laughter didn’t do much to reassure him.

“Listen, there are plenty of folks around the valley who’ll be glad to give me advice if I need it.” He thought of Shayla. “My neighbor, the one living in the old Erickson place, is the oldest of seven kids. I can always ask her what to do if I don’t know.”

“Is that the woman who answered your phone last week when I called?”

“Yes, that’s her.”

“Hmm.”

He could almost see the wheels turning in his sister’s head.

“Anything I should know about her?” she asked, sounding both curious and amused.

“Not at the moment. No.” But he hoped there would be.

Not that he was having a great deal of luck in that department. Ever since the day he kissed her, Shayla had avoided him like the plague. It was obvious that she didn’t want to be alone with him. It would have been plenty easy to assume she disliked him.

Only he hadn’t imagined her response to his kisses. Whatever the reason was that she wanted to avoid him, it wasn’t because she wasn’t attracted to him.

Now all he had to do was figure out what obstacle he had to overcome, and then overcome it. And he
would
succeed.

“Hello? Ian? Jim, I think I’ve been disconnected. Ian, are you there?”

“I’m here, Leigh,” he answered. “Sorry. I got distracted by something. Tell me again what you were saying.”

“Well, please listen this time.”

“I’m listening. You’ve got my full attention. Honest.”

“Write this down so you don’t forget. We’ll be arriving in Boise on the twenty-ninth. That’s a Tuesday.” She gave him the airline, flight number and arrival time. “Jim and I won’t be able to go up to the ranch with you and the girls like we’d planned. We have to fly over to Seattle the next morning. The company has accelerated everything. We’ll ship most
of the girls’ things to the ranch, but we’ll pack enough for them to get by until the rest is delivered.”

“Won’t need much until school starts. Boots, jeans, shorts, swimsuits. It’s summer, Leigh. You know what summers are like up here. Lazy, hazy, crazy, like the song says.”

“Oh, I do wish we could stay with you for a few days. At least until they settle in and begin to feel comfortable. It’s going to be such a change for them, and they barely remember you from your last visit to Florida.”

He tipped his chair back on its hind legs until his shoulders touched the wall. “You gotta quit worrying. Cathy and Angie and I will get along fine. They’ll miss you, but I won’t let them have much time to stew over it.”

“They’re only six years old.”

“When you and I were six, we helped Dad round up cattle. You could catch and clean a brook trout all by yourself.”

“They’re city kids, Ian.”

“That’ll change.”

There was a slightly choked sound in her voice as she said, “I’m going to miss them. They grow up so fast. Maybe I shouldn’t go. Maybe I should stay in the States and—”

“Leigh, you know you want to be with Jim. This will be an experience of a lifetime for you both. Will you just trust me to keep those kids safe and happy? They’ll be loved and cared for. You’ve got my word on it.”

Somehow, by the time they rang off, he managed
to convince his sister everything would be okay. Now if only he was as confident as he’d sounded.

Things would be plenty different at the ranch once the twins came to stay. He’d been living alone a long time now. He was settled in his ways, used to fending for himself. He couldn’t say he knew much about raising little girls. Maybe he shouldn’t have—

Shayla knows.

A smile curved the corners of his mouth as he pictured her in his mind. Yes, Shayla knew plenty about raising little girls. She was the eldest in a large family. She could give him a few pointers on how to care for his nieces.

Ian’s thoughts shifted and his smile faded. He’d allowed her to avoid him in the days since their ride to Elk Flat. He thought he was doing the right thing, giving her time and space to get used to the idea of him caring for her. Then again, maybe it was the wrong thing to do. It felt wrong. He missed her. He missed seeing her wild curls and the sparkle in her eyes. He missed the sound of her voice. He wanted to see more of her, not less.

“I’m not
falling
in love with her. I’ve already fallen.” He closed his eyes.
Lord, is Shayla part of the plan You’ve got for me? If not, I sure hope You’ll let me know before I make a fool of myself.

“You might as well be straight with me.” Ty tipped his hat back on his head and stared at Shayla with a piercing gaze. “Won’t go no further than here.”

She looked down at the glass of lemonade in her
hand. “Of course I like Ian. He’s been a great neighbor. Very helpful.” She motioned toward the cabin. “Look at all he’s accomplished.”

“That’s not what I meant and you know it.”

She gave a helpless shrug.

“Look, I don’t reckon there’s any man I like and respect more’n Ian. He’s my friend. And I know he’s got a hankerin’ for you—”

“A hankerin’?” she interrupted, amused by his word choice but not the meaning.

“Unless I miss my guess, you’re feeling the same way about him. So I want to know if I need to clear out. No point standin’ in the way of two folks who want the same thing. Now is there?”

“No, I don’t suppose there is.” She met his gaze again. “But you’re wrong about it being more than friendship between Ian and me.”

He glanced down the road leading from the highway. “Am I?” A grin curved his mouth.

She followed his gaze and saw the teal pickup, followed by a rising cloud of dust.

“Looks like Ian wouldn’t agree with you.”

Conflicting emotions—joy, despair, hope, disappointment—raged in her chest. She’d evaded him all week just so she wouldn’t have to feel these things. And now he’d come to see her.

Ty set aside the glass of lemonade she’d given him a few minutes before. “I think I’ll be heading into town.” He bent his hat brim in her direction. “You take care, Shayla. You hear?”

He went to his Jeep, waiting beside it until Ian
pulled into the drive and brought his rig to a halt. Then Ty called out a greeting to his friend before getting into his own vehicle and driving away.

With her heart tattooing in her chest, Shayla watched as Ian strode toward the cabin, his expression grim.

When their gazes met, he asked, “Did I interrupt something?”

“No.”

He glanced over his shoulder. “Ty’s got too much free time.”

He almost sounded jealous—which was about the most ridiculous notion she’d ever had.

“Shayla, we need to talk.” He came up the steps. “About what happened last week. Up at Elk Flat.”

“I’d rather not.”

“Well, I think we should.”

With a sigh escaping her lips, she crossed to the opposite side of the deck.

He wasn’t deterred. “Look, we’re both adults. Why are we acting like a couple of teenagers with their first crush?”

Good question.

“I like you, Shayla. More than like you, as a matter of fact.”

That caused her to turn around.

He took a step toward her. He held his hat in his hands. “I’d just like to know if you might feel a bit of the same way about me. If not, then we’ll forget I kissed you. But if you do, then I’d like to see where this thing might lead.”

What did she feel? Where could this lead? She didn’t know. It was all too confusing. Her heart. Her head. They seemed to war within her. Nothing made sense, the way it had before he rode into her life.

“I’d like to take you to supper tomorrow night, if you’d be kind enough to accept my invitation. There’s a nice Italian restaurant in McCall. We can dine on the deck overlooking the lake. It’s nice this time of year. Not too hot and still early in the season for the mosquitoes to be bothersome. I reckon I’ll have you home by eleven.”

How did words like
reckon
and
dine
fit in the same guy’s vocabulary? One minute he sounded as if he was straight out of some old dime novel and the next he sounded as cosmopolitan as any man she’d met in a corporate setting.

So who was Ian O’Connell anyway, and why was he attracted to her? She wanted to know. More than anything, she wanted to know.

“Is that a yes, Miss Vincent?”

Helplessly she nodded.

“I’ll come for you at five o’clock.”

Another nod.

“Evening, Shayla.” He brushed her cheek with a chaste kiss, then strode away.

“You’ve got it bad for her,” Ty said the next morning as he and Ian stretched a new section of barbed wire between the fence posts.

Ian didn’t deny it.

“I’d about given up hope you’d find somebody who made you feel this way.”

“Me, too. It seems the good Lord had other plans.”

He sure hoped he was hearing God right. Shayla didn’t know squat about ranch work or cattle or horses. Oh, sure, she could learn. She was nobody’s fool. But she’d spent her whole life in a big city and was like a fish out of water in Rainbow Valley. Let that first hard winter roll around when they wouldn’t be able to get out of the ranch for weeks at time. Let her get fed up with the limited selection of items at the small grocery store in town. Let her want to go back to Portland for a visit with her family and have to endure the long drive to Boise, just to catch a plane, a plane that could be grounded for any number of reasons. Let her be dying to see the hot new movie and have to wait for weeks or months before it made it to the nearest theater where movies were only shown on Fridays and Saturdays for most of the year.

Those things drove the flatlanders crazy. They might drive Shayla crazy, too.

That didn’t seem to matter to him. He’d lost his heart to her, and there was no going back now. Come to think of it, he’d probably started falling in love the first time he saw her, marching around on the cabin deck with that trick knife in her hand.

If he was wrong, if she wasn’t the woman God wanted for him, it was going to hurt and hurt plenty when he found out. But it was too late to change how he felt now. He’d have to ride it out.

A sense of peace and certainty stole over him. He
wasn’t wrong to love her. He wasn’t wrong to try to win her heart.

“So what’re you gonna do about it?” Ty asked, dragging Ian from his private thoughts. “About how you feel about her.”

He straightened, met the younger cowboy’s gaze and grinned. “Everything I can.”

“I got a feelin’ it won’t take much.”

“Sure hope you’re right, Ty.”

“Believe me, if she’d given me the time of day, I wouldn’t’ve given up so easy. There’s something special about that one.”

Ian laughed as he pulled off his work gloves. “Don’t I know it.”

“Reckon you do.” Ty swept off his hat and wiped the sweat from his brow with his shirtsleeve. “It’s gonna be a scorcher today. Let’s get that next section done before it gets any hotter.”

The words hadn’t come right all day long. Crinkled paper surrounded Shayla’s chair. Sheets and sheets of twenty-pound bond. The printer spewed them forth, then Shayla decided they weren’t good enough to line the bottom of a birdcage.

The problem was with True Barry. She was supposed to be the next murder victim, but suddenly, Chet had developed more than a passing interest in the woman. Maybe True wasn’t such a liar. Maybe she wasn’t deserving of death. Maybe she should have the chance to fall in love with a good and decent guy like Chet Morrison.

Shayla pressed her forehead against the computer screen and released a groan. “I’m not writing a romance. This is a mystery, for crying out loud.”

But who said there couldn’t be love in a mystery novel?

“Focus,” she muttered. “I’ve got to focus.”

She should concentrate on red herrings, believable motivations and hidden clues. Instead, she had written about how pretty True looked in that little red number and how much Chet wanted to kiss her.

“Oh, for pity’s sake!” She rolled her chair back from her desk and got up, kicking at the pile of papers around her feet. “At this rate I’ll never get the book written.”

Still muttering to herself, she walked toward the kitchen, thinking it might help if she fixed herself a sandwich. Her stomach had been growling for at least half an hour. She’d better have some lunch.

Then her gaze fell on the clock above the stove, and she nearly had heart failure—4:50 p.m.? But it couldn’t be! The last time she’d checked it hadn’t even been noon.

“No, no, no!”

She rushed to the bedroom. She didn’t dare glance at the mirror as she whisked her T-shirt over her head and dropped it, alongside her cutoffs, onto the floor. She wished there was time to take a shower and do something special with her hair, but it was too late for that.

Oh, how had she let this happen to her? She’d wanted to look her best for this date.

Although why it should matter so much, she
couldn’t say. She wasn’t fooling herself. Ian’s attraction for her was a temporary thing. He might not realize it yet, but she did. He was lonely. Ty had as much as told her so. Lonely men were willing to spend time with women like Shayla until someone prettier or smarter or more successful came along. Then they weren’t lonely anymore.

But still… What if this was God’s will? What if Ian was different? What if…

She dressed in a loose-flowing, sleeveless summer dress. Then she ran a quick brush through her hair before twisting it into a roll and catching it with a hair claw at the back of her head. Finally she applied a bit of makeup, despairing that it would not make one shred of difference.

She wished she was tall and beautiful like True Barry. But True was a fictional character and could be changed with a bit of typing on the keyboard. Shayla was stuck with who and what she was.