Wishes and Dreams (4 page)
Authors: Lurlene McDaniel
“I’ll be back tomorrow.” Jon backed to the door and moved quickly down the hall to the hospital’s bank of elevators. Deep in thought, he waited for the doors to open, moved and shaken by Dec’s sobering message.
Don’t end up like me
.…
Hours later, Jon sat alone in the fairground stands. That day these bleachers had been filled with cheering, adoring fans. Now all was quiet. Without the noise and smells of horses and leather and sweat, the whole place felt desolate and lonely. Although it was late, he hadn’t been able to sleep. He couldn’t stop thinking about Ciana. From that first night he’d laid eyes on her until the day he’d driven away, he’d been unable to get the girl off his mind and out of his system. When he closed his eyes, he could conjure up the heady scent of her—a blend of strawberries and fresh-mown grass. A girl who loved horses, the rich dirt of farmland; a woman with a fierce spirit to protect her friends, her family name, her land, her dreams. Strong-willed, hot-tempered,
but also soft and sensuous. She was the real deal.
He remembered the night she come to him when he’d had to put down his horse. He’d been drunk. And sick with hurt. But then Ciana was there in his room, holding his hand, all kindness and concern. And when he’d lost control and taken her into his arms— The memory swamped him with the need to hold her one more time.
He leaned back on his elbows, stared up at thousands of stars spilling across the heavens. He spun his memory back to the day he’d left, to how he’d kissed her and how she’d returned his kiss. Hungry, passionate … final? When he thought about it now, there had been
nothing
final in that kiss. Nothing was finished between them. Not a damn thing.
All at once a meteor blazed a trail across the arc of the sky. Mesmerized by the streak of white fire, Jon sat straighter. Wasn’t seeing a falling star supposed to be a good omen? If so, he’d just watched a magnificent one!
Thoughtfully he stared at the star-studded canopy, suddenly very sure of what he wanted and what he was going to do about it. After the finals, he’d load up his horse and gear, return to Texas to see his mother and grandparents. Granddad was in poor health, and Jon needed to visit with his family while the man who had helped shape his character was still alive. But afterward, he was heading straight to Tennessee. He’d ask Bill for another job, and if he wasn’t hired there, he’d find work around the area.
He would go back for the one thing worth giving up his rodeo lifestyle for, the one thing worth fighting for, worth wanting.
Ciana
. Jon grinned, and aloud, with no one to hear but the stars, said, “Get ready, because I’m coming for you, Ciana Beauchamp.”
And this time he wouldn’t walk away from the fight to keep her—regardless of past mistakes and the pain that separated them. He loved her.
Loved her!
And he was determined to win her.
Come hell or high water.
This inspirational novel in the vein of
Eat, Pray, Love
is set in Tennessee horse country, as well as the historic cities and picturesque countryside of Italy. As the story unfolds, three girls, recently graduated from high school, plan the next phase of their lives while dealing with complicated issues. Author Lurlene McDaniel subtly explores the many types of love—including love for one’s family and friends and intimate love—and the sacrifices the girls face.
Excerpt copyright © 2013 by Lurlene McDaniel. Published by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.
Something was wrong.
Ciana Beauchamp bolted upright in bed, her heart pounding and fear closing off her throat. What had she heard that had awakened her out of a sound sleep? Something was wrong. The noise came again, from outside, in the distance. She heard the horses locked in the stables neighing in alarm.
Her bedside clock read 2:00 a.m. The horses should be asleep. What was spooking them? She tossed off her covers and fumbled around for her jeans, which she had discarded in a heap on her floor before she had fallen into bed that night. Ciana tugged the cold denim on over her pajama bottoms, grabbed an old sweatshirt, and padded to her door. She opened it carefully, stepped into the hall, and listened for sounds from her mother’s room at the far end of the hall. She heard Alice Faye snoring and knew that the horses’ distress hadn’t disturbed her mother. But then, how could it have? When Alice Faye fell into bed dead drunk every night, she could sleep through anything.
Ciana hurried through the house, through the kitchen, and into the mudroom. There she pulled out her work boots from beneath the old timber bench where she’d stashed them after feeding the horses and locking down the house for the night. She removed a rain slicker from a peg beside the door, slipped it on, and reached for the doorknob. She hesitated, then turned, opened a cabinet door, and took out the doublebarreled shotgun. No telling what she might run into—a marauding coyote, a rabid raccoon, something more dangerous. She opened the cabinet over the bench and took down a box of shells and quickly loaded the pump shotgun. She went out the door, moving quickly, stepping through puddles left from yesterday’s cold April rain. Her boots made a sucking sound.
The closer she got to the stables, the louder the shuffling of the two horses in their stalls. She squinted as she approached the door and saw that it was standing ajar. Fear prickled up her spine. No animal except the two-legged variety could have unlatched the door.
She stood still for a moment, taking deep breaths to slow her heartbeat. She missed her grandmother with an ache that made her knees weak. Olivia should have been handling this, just as she’d handled all the Beauchamp family issues over the years.
Suck it up!
Ciana told herself. Olivia couldn’t help. The ball was in Ciana’s court now.
She eased inside carefully, knowing that the hinges needed oiling and their squeaking would give her away. Another thing to put on her to-do list. The scent of her caused the horses to calm somewhat. Still, Firecracker, her favorite riding horse, snorted and moved against the side of the stall, making the old boards creak. She commanded silently,
Don’t give me away
.
She stood stock-still, listening for noise. Shuffling sounds
came from the tack room. She heard the lid lifting on the oak chest where blankets were kept and heard the thump of a saddle as it hit the floor. Her heart squeezed as she remembered Granddad Charles’s antique Mexican saddle with the sterling silver trim. Whoever was inside could steal it. The tack room needed a better lock. Maybe the whole barn needed a security system. There was so much for her to do. Too much.
Ciana swallowed against the lump in her throat formed partly from fear and partly from being overwhelmed. She stole to the door and saw a candle flickering and a man kneeling in front of the trunk, tossing out the contents, his back to her. The guy had lit the way for her and presented a broad target.
The shotgun had grown heavy in Ciana’s hands. She’d shot it many times growing up and knew the damage it could do. But she’d never aimed it at a human being before.
“Don’t ever raise a gun unless you’re prepared to use it.”
Olivia’s words came back to Ciana. Was she prepared to shoot? What if the man was high on meth? She’d heard stories that such people could charge like raging bulls. She raised the gun, pumped it, and with a bravado that came from holding the weapon, said, “What are you doing in my barn?”
The man spun, but the unmistakable sound of the shells being chambered kept him on his knees. The whites of his eyes were glowing in the light of the candle. “Don’t shoot. Please.”
Emboldened by his fear, Ciana aimed at his chest, her hands rock steady. “You stealing from me?”
He stared wide-eyed at the twin barrels. “Please, I’ll go.”
Now she had a dilemma. Fumble for a phone and call the cops? What phone? She fumbled for her cell and realized she’d left it in her bedroom. Let him run? He was a thief. “Cops in this part of Tennessee don’t prosecute landowners for
defending their property, you know.” That wasn’t quite true, since the man had no weapon she could see, but she wanted to keep him very afraid.
The man was shaking all over. “You empty out anything you’ve already put in your pockets,” she commanded, nudging the gun toward his open coat.
He hurriedly obeyed, dropping a handful of coins she kept in a mason jar on the old scarred desk against the wall. He dropped matches and a few candle stubs. Had he been planning to burn her barn before he left, trapping her helpless horses and sentencing them to certain death? The thought focused her anger, melting away all fear. “I should shoot you!”
“No, no, please!”
She stood her ground for a minute, then finally backed out of the doorway and motioned with the barrel of the gun for the vagrant to stand and exit the small room. She stood far back, out of reach but with the gun still aimed at him. “Don’t you ever set foot on my property again,” she said in as menacing a voice as she could muster. “Because I will shoot you dead.” She motioned with the barrel of the gun. “Now get out!” The man seemed frozen to the ground. “I said, out!”
He didn’t need another prod. He sprinted through the barn door like a squirrel chased by a fox. Ciana took a deep breath and lowered the shotgun, for it had grown unbearably heavy in her suddenly trembling hands. She figured she should call the police and report what had happened, but she realized she couldn’t cope with waiting for them to get out to the farm and fill out a report. She went to the stalls to calm the restless horses. She gave each a cup of oats, picked up the gun, and returned to the house.
She scraped off her boots in the mudroom, rehung her slicker, removed the shells from the shotgun and shoved them
into her jeans pocket, and took the gun with her to her room. Once inside, she leaned against the wall, her legs rubbery, too quivery to hold her up. She sank to the floor, grasping the gun in her lap. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Olivia was supposed to be in charge. Ever since Ciana had been six and her father and grandfather had died in the crash of Granddad’s single-engine Cessna, Olivia had been the backbone of the family. She had taken care of Bellmeade, the family farmland that traced its origins to before the Civil War.
No more.
Dementia and old-age frailty had claimed Ciana’s beloved grandmother. She was in a continuous-care facility in downtown Windemere, fifteen miles away. As for Alice Faye, Olivia’s daughter, well, she lived inside a gin bottle, unwilling and unable to take the reins. Ciana longed to talk to her friends, Arie and Eden, but it was almost three in the morning. She couldn’t call them now.
Ciana began to weep as the tension of the night’s confrontation began to leak out of her body. She might have killed or severely wounded the intruder. She muffled her sobs with her fist, her shoulders shaking hard with each racking breath. Just weeks before high school graduation, everything had fallen on her shoulders—the farm, the debt, caring for her mother and grandmother. It was all hers.
