Blue Willow (28 page)

Artemas looked unfazed, but his eyes narrowed. He dropped his hand to his side. “I’ve got a problem with
anyone except a MacKenzie living there. It’s nothing personal. But that land has always belonged to the MacKenzies, and it should remain in their hands.”

Lily interjected quickly, “Mr. Estes, I’ve come to ask you if you’ll sell it back to me. I can return your down payment. Please. You can find another place for Joe.”

Mr. Estes stared at her, his mouth working silently. “How’d you get the money to do that?” he retorted.

“I’m helping her,” Artemas said.

“You? Why? You want to add the MacKenzie place to your land? Yeah, that’s it. You just want to close up the peephole in a Colebrook door, have miles of land without a little clan of strangers in the middle of it.”

“He’s going to
loan
me the money,” Lily said. “He’s not trying to buy the place back for himself.”

“I don’t care what he’s aimin’ to do. Joe wants your place, and I got it for him. I can’t sell it back. I’m sorry, but I can’t, and that’s all there is to it.”

“You’re a friend of my family’s,” she said, dragging her hands toward her chest. “This isn’t some stranger asking you to do what’s right. You know how much the place means to me.”

“Yes, I do,” he said, nodding, his face set in hard lines. “But I’ve got Joe to think about, and his mother”—his mouth trembled—“she’s dyin’ by slow inches.” Suddenly his voice rose. “And I don’t have time to waste on this! You made a deal, and now it can’t be undone! We have to make do the best way we can, with what life gives us! That’s a hard lesson, but you might as well learn it like the rest of us!”

Artemas stepped forward. His expression had a kind of restrained deadliness to it. “I’ll give you twice what you paid. In cash. By tomorrow. And I’ll have a real estate broker find your son a new place.”

Lily gasped. The deal he was offering was so reckless, so heedless of good sense, that she felt like crying in surprise and gratitude. He hadn’t become head of his family’s businesses because of wild decisions like this one. He was doing this for her sake.

She flung an arm across him as he started forward again. He halted, his jaw clenched, looking as if he might strike Mr. Estes at any second. “People call you a good, decent man, Mr. Estes,” she said, turning, blocking Artemas with her body. “I know you are. My folks respected you.”

Mr. Estes craned his head and looked from her to Artemas proudly. He was shaking with emotion. “You get this straight. I’m keeping your place for Joe.” He slung a leathery hand toward Artemas. “I don’t care if this young, cocky bull offers me a dozen times the price and a herd of real estate people.” Slamming his notepad on the counter, he added, “That’s all I’ve got to say about it.”

Lily held out her hands, beseeching him, despair creeping into her voice. “You can’t keep it. Please.
Please
. This doesn’t make any sense.”

Artemas gripped her shoulders and pushed her aside. Leaning toward Mr. Estes, he said, “I won’t let you reduce Lily to begging for what’s hers. I’m sorry if I made you angry. If I can apologize, if there’s anything I can do—”

“Get out.” Mr. Estes advanced on them, shaking his fists. “I don’t want
nobody
begging me. It won’t do any good.” Tears slid down his craggy face. “I know how useless beggin’ is. I’ve done plenty of it with Joe, trying to get him to stay out of trouble and settle down. Now, I’ve got him a good piece of land and a good house to live in, and he’s excited about it, and I’m not goin’ to ruin it for him. I said
git
. And don’t come back with more offers. It’s over. I’ve done what I had to. Go on.”

The sight of him crying astonished Lily. There was no way around his decision. “This isn’t fair,” she said desperately.

“Nothin’s fair!”

She pivoted and walked out of the building, her vision blurring with tears. She dimly heard Artemas following her. Outside on the steps he grasped her arm gently. She halted and turned her head away, knowing that she’d sob if she looked at him. Crying wasn’t worth a damn.

“It’s not over,” he told her.

“That’s your sense of guilt talking. Forget it. You’ve
done everything you could. You came back to help me. You offered him a lot more money than my place could ever be worth to him.” She pulled away from him and went to the Jeep. Her hands were shaking. She climbed into the driver’s seat and gripped the steering wheel, staring blindly ahead as he threw himself into the seat beside her. “It is over,” she said, her shoulders squared.

“Lily, goddammit, I—”

“There are things I want from you that you don’t want to give. That’s just bare bad luck on my part, like what happened to the farm. So don’t give me any lectures, and don’t tell me to keep hoping.”

“
Listen
to me.” He took her by the shoulders and pulled her half out of her seat. She braced her hands against his chest. His face was flushed; his gray eyes glittered. “I’m not free.
Understand
? I made a decision a long time ago to do whatever it took to give my family something to be proud of again. Without that, I’m no good to you or anyone else. I’m no good to myself.”

“And there’s no room for somebody who doesn’t help your plans? People have to be useful to you, or they’re a waste of time?”

“Not a waste—a luxury I can’t afford right now.”

The sordid suspicion she’d harbored all along now chilled her. “That woman you’re going to marry—
she
must be useful.”

“Don’t try to analyze a part of my life you know nothing about.”

“What’s her place in your plans? She’s got connections? An important name?”

“There are different ways to love someone. It doesn’t have to be as sentimental as the poem on a goddamned Hallmark card.”

“You’re going to marry her because you’re
obligated
to.”

“Don’t throw wild accusations at me.”

“A second ago I practically announced to your face that I’m crazy about you. If you’re really in love with your woman, you’d have said so then. You wouldn’t have gone
off on a tangent about not being free, or about what you have to do for your family. You’ve got yourself chained to some kind of promise, but it’s
not
love.”

“I think you’re one step away from calling me a whore.”

“Closer than that. I’m right on top of it. You
are
a whore.”

He slapped her. It was only a slight clap on the chin with his fingertips, a shock rather than painful, but she drew back in alarm, for once in her life too stunned to hit back. Artemas lowered his hands slowly. She watched the anger drain out of his face and an expression of agonized disbelief replace it. “That’s a first,” he said. “And it makes me sick.” The raw whisper destroyed her defenses.

She sagged back on the seat. “I’d hate any other man who did it.” She bent her head to her splayed hands. “But all I want is for you to say I have a place in your plans too. There’s nothing left for me here. I’d go to New York with you. I’d share you with her. That’s how crazy I am.”

His portentous silence throbbed in her ears. “If I had the morals of a whore, I’d ask you to go,” he said in a low, tortured tone. “Eventually you
would
hate me for it.”

Dignity crawled into her shattered thoughts. He did want her. That was a jewel she could keep. But he was right about the outcome. She lifted her head and studied him with a sense of defeat and loss so deep it robbed her of the ability to tell him. “You better get yourself on a plane this afternoon,” she told him. “The longer we spend together, the worse this is going to be.”

“I’ll leave tomorrow morning. We don’t have to pretend this is easy, but I want something good to remember, just as you do. Will you try to make peace with me?”

The answer shimmered in her mind before she realized what she intended. The fragment of thought running through her mind suddenly became clear.

Artemas was hers, until tomorrow. He wasn’t the gallant fantasy she’d cultivated, but a complicated, driven, brutally fallible young man. The last vestige of her
childhood daydreams disappeared. He and she had one last day. And one last night. “I’ll do it,” she told him.

He didn’t have to know exactly what she meant.

Night had closed in with a moonless, cloudless sky. “I’d forgotten that the stars were so bright,” Artemas said. He hadn’t spoken for a long time, and his voice startled Lily. His effect on her had an ebb and flow; she would calm down a little, the pain and hunger and unforgiving anger at him temporarily ignored, then suddenly vivid again.

Sitting beside him on the creek bank, she pretended to study the sky too. The Big Dipper could have been upside down and backward, but she wouldn’t have noticed. Her mind whirled with secret anticipation and fear.

He’d tried to talk to her all day about her future. College. Guilt and anger over what had happened with Mr. Estes was eating him up. She didn’t tell him not to blame himself; she let him suffer. Her losing the farm wasn’t his fault, not directly But she was hurt and angry about so much else, she couldn’t let go of the feeling.

They’d spent the past few hours out here. Peanut-butter-and-banana sandwiches had passed for dinner.

He told her more about his parents, brutal stories that made her frantic with confusion. There was so much he’d never written about—ugly, demeaning episodes that had changed him. She decided he told her those stories to repulse her, so she’d be relieved when he left.

But the stories only showed her why he’d become so merciless about getting what he wanted. She had to accept that fact. He did what was best for his family’s future. He always would.

He didn’t tell her—and she didn’t want to know—about that creature she now thought of as
the woman
. Lily despised her and dismissed her as unimportant. There was no way she’d believe she’d been wrong about her intuition—he needed that woman for some reason, but he didn’t love her. She wished she could believe that he’d change, but she couldn’t.

Absolute loyalty. That was Artemas. He made up his
mind, and he stuck to it. She loved him for that, but she’d never forgive him for it.

Lily gave up on pretending to look at the stars. It was time. He owed her for what he’d done, and she wanted him to pay. She wanted him. Confused, her nerves crackling with a need to fight and win, she got up and slapped at bits of dirt on her jeans. “It’s gettin’ late,” she told him. “Why won’t you sleep in my bed at night? What’s wrong with it?”

He rose slowly, a dark, large form in the starlight. She had the feeling he was surprised and wary. “Nothing.”

“It’s too short for your long legs, I know. Put the mattress on the floor, if you want to.”

“I will.” He stepped toward her. “Don’t go yet.” It sounded like more of an order than a request. “I’ve done most of the talking. I don’t usually.”

“Yeah, you’re not exactly a chatterbox. But I like hearing you talk about yourself. You ought to practice more.”

“I want to talk to you about your future. About college. I have so many questions—”

“I’ve already told you all there is. I got accepted at Agnes Scott a couple of weeks ago. It’s a private college for women. Aunt Maude’s cousin is a professor there. Great academics. I’ll study biology, major in botany. I’ll work with plants. What else is there to say?”

“That you believe me when I tell you I’ll buy this place back for you.”

“I believe you.”

“Don’t say it like that—just to end the discussion.
Mean
it.”

“I know you’ll try. I’ll try too. But it’s water under the bridge for now.”

Even in the dark she could feel his gaze piercing her. “I’m not going back to New York and forget about you, Lily. I want to be part of your life—be the friend I’ve always been.”

“Then you will be. Good.” She touched his cheek. He flinched, and she dropped her hand quickly. What else could she say that hadn’t been said before, and foolishly?
If she tried to tell him how bereft she felt, it would only make him feel worse. “You better try to get some sleep,” she said. She turned and walked up the hill to the barn. Her heart was pounding, and she felt disoriented. She wasn’t done with him tonight, and he’d see that soon enough.

Artemas stood in her dark bedroom, looking at the mattress he’d thrown on the floor. He was filled with unquenchable anger—at himself, at the circumstances he couldn’t change, at Lily for knowing how to push every button. She could do it better than anyone he’d ever known.

He stripped to his briefs and lay down, jerking a quilt over his legs and belly. Her scent was everywhere—the feminine subtleties of makeup and some brand of light perfume sitting in a small basket on the otherwise cleared dresser, the faint fragrance of her clothes. The first night, when she’d left him alone in the house, he’d roamed into her bedroom and belligerently opened her closet door, brushing his fingers over print dresses, a blazer, a straight skirt. He had wondered about the textures and colors of her lingerie, too, but the idea of opening a dresser drawer in search of such things made him feel like an addict looking for a fix.

His mouth was dry; ordinarily he would have smoked a cigarette, but tonight even that distraction seemed hopeless. What he needed couldn’t be had, not tonight, probably not ever.

The distinct rattle of the front door opening made him rise to one elbow and listen. He’d left the door to Lily’s bedroom half-open, and he stared into the dark hall beyond. The front door closed, and the floor of the main room spoke in soft, rhythmic groans as feet crossed it at a measured pace, growing louder and headed in his direction.

Not expecting Lily and unwilling to let surprises creep up on him in the darkness, he vaulted to his feet and slung the bedroom door open. Lily halted. He could barely
see her. Without saying a word, she stood there, watching him in the blackness. His body reacted with wariness coiled around the raw current between them, shooting heat through him and bringing a primal thrust between his thighs.

He held the quilt in a fist. Pulling it in front of himself, he reached outside the door and found a light switch. The dim illumination of a low wall sconce brought her into stunning clarity.