Woman On the Run (11 page)

The youngster stopped and stared after Julia and Cooper as they passed by. “Hey, Sis,” he called out, loud enough to be heard, “who’s the bodacious babe?”

Julia winced. She could see how Matt Pedersen could be a real handful.

Outside, a gelid wind had sprung up. Julia stopped in the middle of the empty street and huddled in on herself, rubbing her arms. The day was much colder than she had anticipated, and her light jacket was no match for the icy wind. She felt cold and lost.
What am I doing here?
she thought suddenly.

She was almost paralyzed with depression and anxiety. Here she was, about to go out to an isolated ranch with a man she barely knew…however sexy she found his thighs…to discuss the psychological problems of a little boy, something she had absolutely no training for. And all on an empty stomach with just some bad coffee to fuel her. What was she doing?

Escaping a murderer, that was what.

Julia shivered again, then almost jumped when something heavy and warm was dropped around her shoulders. It was Cooper’s black leather jacket, which hung to her knees. She put down her briefcase and slipped her arms into the sleeves, savoring the warmth for a moment. She looked up. Way, way up.

“Thanks.” She tried to smile but her teeth were chattering. “I didn’t think it would be this cold. But what about you?” She awkwardly waved the heavy leather sleeve at him. Only her fingertips showed.

“Don’t mind the cold,” he rumbled. He was probably lying but Julia wasn’t about to relinquish that warm jacket. “Where’s your car?”

Julia froze and tried to quell the sudden onset of panic. “My…my car?”

He wanted her to
drive
out? Memories of her botched trip to Rupert flooded her senses like jagged shards of ice. Not a good driver at the best of times, just the idea of getting behind the steering wheel and driving out into the wilderness had her heart thrumming in her chest, even though she knew she’d be following him.

But then when they’d finished talking about Rafael, she’d have to drive all the way back. Alone.

Of course, she couldn’t show how horrified she felt at the thought. It would make her appear like a Martian. Kids out here learned to drive practically before they could walk. There was no other option in this enormous, empty land. Julia longed once more for the city. Any city. With trams and subways and buses. And taxis. And people. And not these endless stretches of emptiness.

Julia attempted a smile and licked dry lips. “I—I left my car behind the house. If you’ll just wait a minute, I’ll go get it—” She stopped suddenly at his hand on her arm.

“Just wanted to know where it was,” Cooper said. “I’m coming back into town later,” he said, though she was sure he was lying again. “I can drive you back.” He bent to pick up her briefcase then walked off.

Julia stared after him for a moment then ran to catch up with his long strides, filled with relief.

* * * * *

“Er, how’s Rafael?” she asked, more to hear the sound of a human being’s voice than to hear the answer.

“Fine,” Cooper replied. It was his third word in twenty minutes. The other two had been “yes”, and “no”, in answer to direct questions. Julia gave up and looked at the scenery. It was either that or look at Cooper and she found to her astonishment that looking at him was very disturbing so she tried to keep her eyes away.

He was a superb driver.

Julia really admired good driving, mainly because she was such a lousy driver herself. However much she tried to concentrate, after about five minutes there was always something much more interesting to think about than green lights, red lights and who had the right of way. But Cooper was concentrated and relaxed, playing the gearshift like a musical instrument. The Beethoven of Blazers, she thought wryly.

Maybe not much of a talker, but a real ace behind the wheel.

It was unusual for Julia to notice whether a man was a good driver or not, or whether he had strong hands or long legs. Yet she was stirringly aware of the tall dark silent—though certainly not handsome—man sitting next to her and, for the life of her, she couldn’t figure out why.

Certainly not for his brilliant conversation, which was what usually attracted her in a man. Up to now, she would have sworn that all her sex hormones were in her head. Her three affairs had started because she’d found that the man shared her taste in literature or had interesting reasons why not, or because he was a witty conversationalist or because he made her laugh.

Definitely not because his large, strong hands, which had a light dusting of black hairs on the backs, rested with easy, elegant competence on the wheel, or because the muscles in his forearm did a fascinating dance every time he shifted gears or because when he popped the clutch, thick muscles played under the jeans from his knees to his groin… Julia whipped her head around and stared blindly out the window.

Something was definitely wrong with her. Stress was driving her crazy. Either that or the silence was driving her crazy. She wasn’t used to silence. Maybe if she talked to him, this weird spell she was under would be broken.

“Is it far?”

Cooper’s gaze flicked briefly over to her. “We’re here.”

Julia stared. “We are?” She took a good look around. She couldn’t see anything but what had been there for the past half hour, trees, grass, trees, grass then more trees.

“We’ve been on Double C land for over ten minutes now,” Cooper said. Sure enough, now that he mentioned it, she could see fences neatly laid out, running parallel to the road and in the far distance abutting a range of hills. The fencing enclosed land that looked exactly like the terrain they’d been traversing for half an hour. Julia couldn’t see the difference between the fenced-in part and the free range part.

“Hey,” she said suddenly, excitedly pressing her nose against the Blazer’s window. “Horses!” She turned to Cooper, romantic visions dancing through her head. “Do you think they’re mustangs?”

“No,” Cooper said as he started to slow the vehicle. “They’re mine.”

“Oh.” Julia watched the beautiful animals. There were at least forty of them, gracefully loping in the field and she felt an odd pang of disappointment. “I suppose mustangs only exist in the movies.”

“Actually,” Cooper said, turning into a wide driveway, “they mainly exist in Nevada and New Mexico. Here we are.”

There was so much to see, and all of it foreign to her, that it took Julia a few moments to sort her impressions out. The fencing was white now and enclosed large, freshly painted buildings and circular areas full of sand. Julia had read enough Dick Francis novels to recognize stables and paddocks. Or were they corrals out West?

Ten or twelve men were working industriously, some raking the grounds, several leading horses by what looked like a single long rein, a few on horseback. The impression was of a busy, prosperous business.

Then Cooper slowed the Blazer and they drove by what Julia at first took for a geological formation. Then she looked again. No geological formation she knew of was rectangular and made of wood. “What’s that?” she breathed and waved her hand at the…the thing they were driving by.

“The house.” Cooper turned a corner and brought the Blazer to a halt in a carport as large as a normal building. The house itself must have been designed by NASA. Julia wondered if it was one of those buildings with its own weather.

“Who built the house?” She tore her eyes away from the huge building and looked at Cooper. “God?”

“My great-great-grandfather.” He circled the truck and came to open Julia’s door, cupping her elbow until she was safely on the cement floor of the carport.

Julia smiled up at him. “Looks like he had to fell a forest to build this thing.”

His eyes were dark, fathomless. “My great-great-granddad believed in elbow room.”

“No kidding. You can probably see it from outer space, like the Great Wall of China.”

Julia stepped out from under the carport roof for a moment and looked around. She had to move her head to take the building all in since close up, it was bigger than her field of vision. “Good thing he built it before the EPA was around or they would have arrested him for destroying an ecosystem. Why’d he need so much room?”

Cooper shrugged. “When my great-great-grandfather emigrated from Ireland as a boy, he was dirt poor. He swore he would found a dynasty when he made his fortune. He was the twelfth of twelve and he wanted twelve children and each child to have twelve children of his or her own. And he wanted them all to live under the same roof.”

“Why that would be 144 people in your grandfather’s generation,” Julia said, trying to do the calculations in her head. “And by your time, that would be, that would be…”

“Twenty thousand, seven hundred and thirty six.”

“Well…” Julia looked at the house consideringly, “maybe a few of the distant cousins would have to stay in a hotel. Good thing they invented birth control before then. So, how many Coopers actually live here?”

“Just me,” Cooper said.

“Just
you
?”

She saw him stifle a sigh. “Yeah.”

“Not even an odd cousin or two lost somewhere in the house?”

“Nope.” Cooper shifted his weight from one boot to another. That must be cowboy body language for embarrassment. “My great-great-grandfather had one child, a son, my great-grandfather had one child, a son, my grandfather had one child, a son, my father—”

“Wait,” Julia said. “Let me guess. One child, a son. You.”

“Bingo.” He took her elbow. “Let’s go.”

They walked through a kitchen which was every bit as big as the baronial hall in the Errol Flynn version of
Robin Hood
.

It was a perfect example of the dictum that if something was worth doing, it was worth doing twice. There were two fireplaces big enough to roast whole oxen and two ovens that could roast entire kids. A trestle table long enough to rollerblade on ran the length of the kitchen. Julia barely had time to take it in because Cooper had her arm in an iron grip again and he seemed to want to march her through the house, through long, dark musty corridors where she caught glimpses of long, dark musty rooms. After a few miles, Cooper finally stopped to open a big oak door and put a hand to the small of her back.

Julia peeked around the door then walked into the big room warily, not too sure what to expect.

Like Carly’s Diner, the room could have done with some major interior decorating. All the furniture was massive and dark and arranged around the walls, leaving an empty space in the middle that just sat there, doing nothing. Maybe Cooper held concerts there in the summer or something.

Then Julia’s eyes slowly adjusted to the gloom and she felt herself relax.

Cooper was a reader.

In that instant she forgave him his communication problems and his crazy-making thighs and forearms.

Cooper belonged to her tribe. The tribe of readers.

Books lay everywhere, on every available surface and lining the walls. Real books, read books, not decorator ones. Julia’s hands itched to go over and look at the covers, maybe rub her face in a few and inhale the smell. But then she might start crying and get Cooper’s books all waterlogged, so she restrained herself.

The only note of warmth was a fire blazing in a huge hearth. Massive oak chairs were grouped around it. Julia could make out the forms of a man and a little boy. The man was black-haired and dressed in black, just like Cooper. Julia wondered if she had missed out on some new fad—ninja cowboys.

“Miss Anderson!” Rafael leapt out of his seat and came running to her. He lifted a small, anxious face. “Why are you here, Miss Anderson? I didn’t do nothing wrong, did I?”

“No, honey,” Julia said gently, ruffling his hair. “Of course you didn’t do anything wrong. I just came for a visit and to let your daddy know what a good little boy you are.” Some of Rafael’s anxiety eased but Julia could still see tension on his face.

Cooper took her arm again and they walked over to the fireplace. “Sally Anderson, I’d like to introduce you to Bernaldo Martinez, Rafael’s father and my foreman.”

The man gave no sign that he heard the words. He sat slumped in the big chair, his head in his hands.

“Bernie…” Cooper’s deep low voice was a threatening growl.

Slowly Bernaldo Martinez turned his head. He stood up as if he were a thousand years old.

Julia winced when she saw his eyes, the color of the many stoplights she’d distractedly run through in her life. She wondered if it hurt to look out of eyes that red.

The man was haggard, with a few days’ worth of stubble on his lean, good-looking face. It wasn’t designer stubble, achieved with the use of a special electric razor, but real stubble that came from not shaving for many days. Probably the same number of days he hadn’t been sleeping.

“Bernie…” Cooper’s voice was, if possible, lower and more threatening than before.

Martinez ran a hand through his black hair, and then nodded at Julia. “Miss Anderson.” His voice was scratchy and rough.

“Mr. Martinez.” Julia inclined her head.

“Listen, Sport.” Cooper hunkered down until he was eye level with Rafael. His voice was gentle again. “Southern Star gave birth last night. Why don’t you ask Sandy to take you to see the foal?”