One Summer (39 page)

Elisabeth looked first at Rachel and then at Johnny. “I see,” she said slowly.

Rachel could see her mother turning the news over in her mind.

“May I be excused, Mom?” Loren piped up, pushing back her chair without waiting for an answer.

“Me, too, Mom,” Lisa said, following suit.

“Don’t you two want dessert?” Elisabeth, roused from her thoughts, smiled approvingly at her granddaughters. She had good reason, Rachel thought. They’d really been very well behaved, and with Katie upstairs napping, the meal had been as calm as any they’d enjoyed for some time. Since Becky and her brood’s advent, to be exact.

“I’m too full,” Loren complained.

“We’ll have some later.” Lisa looked at her mother. “Please, Mom?”

“It’s fine with me,” Becky said, while Elisabeth nodded. The girls left the room. Rachel could hear them running up the stairs. Their Nintendo had arrived along with boxes of other possessions, and Becky had had a man hook it up just the day before. Undoubtedly the girls planned to play video games to work off their lunch.

“That was delicious, Mrs. Grant,” Johnny said, sitting back in his chair and placing his napkin beside his plate. Rachel, reminded of how impressed she was with his table manners, smiled at him.

“Thank you.” Elisabeth smiled at him, too. Rachel noticed how much more cordial she was to Johnny now than
at the beginning of the meal and was amused. Her mother was a sucker for two things: ambition and education. By laying claim to both, Johnny had gained a bushelful of stature in Elisabeth’s eyes.

“Dessert?” Rachel asked. “Mother made cherry cobbler.”

“Like your nieces, I think I’m going to have to wait till later.”

“Coffee?”

Johnny shook his head.

“Rachel, if you all are done, why don’t you take Johnny outside and show him around? I’ll help Mother clean up.”

“Thanks, Beck,” Rachel said with real gratitude, and stood up. She was dying to get Johnny alone. She was holding back a question so hot that it was practically burning a hole in her tongue.

Johnny stood up too, complimented Elisabeth again on the meal, and followed Rachel from the room.

44

“D
id you mean it, or did you just say it to shock Mother?” Rachel asked without preamble as soon as she was sure she had him alone. They were outside, walking down the same path along which she had pushed Stan earlier. Her hand clung tightly to Johnny’s. Just how it had gotten there, or when, she couldn’t have said.

“Mean what?”

“About law school.”

“Oh.” There was a pause. “Yeah. I meant it.”

“Really?” Pleasure colored her voice.

“Can’t you see me as a lawyer?” He laughed. “Don’t answer that. But it’s not so farfetched, you know. I got to know a lot about the law, and lawyers, while I was in the joint. I think I’d make a hell of a good public defender.”

Rachel was dazzled. “Oh, so do I!”

“Like the idea, do you?” His eyes gleamed at her.

Rachel floundered. She had no reason, no concrete reason, to think that his future plans would have any impact on her. But her heart still beat faster as she contemplated life as Mrs. Johnny—no, Mrs. John Harris, Esquire.

“What
is
your middle name?” she asked, frowning.

He cast her a quick glance. “W. Why?”

“The letter W is not a name.”

“If I tell you what the W stands for, you’ll laugh.”

“I won’t. Anyway, I probably already know it. I’m sure it was on your school records, only I can’t quite remember.”

“Wayne.”

Rachel’s forehead knit. “Wayne? Why, that’s a perfectly good name. What’s wrong with John Wayne—” She broke off, and started to smile. Recollecting his warning abruptly, she turned her head away.

“Told you you’d laugh.”

“I’m not laughing. Cowboy.”

“There you go. That’s what always happens. That’s why I keep it to myself.”

“I think it’s charming. John Wayne Harris.” She giggled, then covered her mouth with her hand as he shot her a mock-warning look. He pulled her off the path toward the woods that marched alongside the yard.

“I’m glad you like it.” He was ahead of her, dragging her along behind him as he entered the woods via a well-worn path that she and Becky, and now her nieces, had used in their games. It led clear to the other side of the woods, a distance of perhaps two miles. But Johnny only went perhaps two hundred yards to the big climbing tree where, long ago, Stan had built his daughters a treehouse. It was scarcely more than a platform with sides, accessible by one-by-fours nailed ladderlike into the trunk of the huge oak. As children, Rachel and Becky had played there endlessly, and as a teenager Rachel had spent many a summer afternoon lying on the wooden floor, lost in a book. Now the leafy canopy that spread overhead was just beginning to turn gold. As Rachel looked up, a single yellow leaf floated slowly down to earth, twisting hither and yon with the whims of the wind.

“How did you know about our climbing tree?” Rachel asked as it became clear that this was the destination he had had in mind all along.

“Do you think I never explored these woods? Heck, Grady and I even watched you and Becky playing here
once or twice. Sometimes, when no one was around, we played pirates conquering an enemy ship, and your treehouse was the ship.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“You were too old for us to play with then, so we left you alone.”

“I’m probably still too old for you to play with.” Rachel’s voice was rueful. Johnny glanced at her, leaned back against the tree, and pulled her against his chest.

“You’re just perfect for me. If it was the other way around, if I were five years older, people would think that the difference in our ages was just right. How old is your pharmacist friend? Forty, isn’t he? That’s even more of a difference than between you and me, but did you ever think that he was too old for you? No, you didn’t. You’re guilty of sexism, Miss Grant.”

His arms were around her, her body was pressed against his, and his voice poured over her with the seductive sweetness of warm honey. Rachel listened to the rumbling timbre of it with her eyes half closed and a small smile curving her mouth. When he wanted to, Johnny could charm the quills off a porcupine.

“Besides, I’m mature for my age,” he whispered in her ear when it became clear that she wasn’t really listening, and kissed the side of her neck.

“You were great with Mother,” Rachel murmured as he kissed his way down her neck to the open collar of her dress.

“She still scares me to death, but I guess I’ll get over it.” Johnny tipped her chin back and kissed the hollow of her throat. Rachel, clinging to his shoulders beneath the sophisticated suit coat, closed her eyes and gave herself over to the pleasure of being made love to. The smoothness of the expensive dress shirt covering his muscles felt different enough beneath her fingers to act as a mild aphrodisiac. Rachel pressed closer against him as her toes curled in her Sunday pumps.

“Rachel.”

“Hmmm?”

“Do you suppose you can climb this tree in that dress and those shoes?”

“Climb the tree?” Bewildered at his request, which was rather different from what she had expected, Rachel opened her eyes to frown at him. He dropped a soothing kiss on her turned-down lips.

“You heard me. Do you?”

Rachel looked at the makeshift ladder that led high into the tree. She followed its path with her eyes to the small hole in the floor of the platform that she would have to wriggle through. She glanced down at her pristine yellow dress with its tiny waist and full skirt, and the champagne-colored pumps below it.

“If you’ll go first,” she said.

“Surely you don’t think I’d be so crude as to look up your dress?” Johnny set her on her own two feet and clapped his hands to his cheeks in mock distress.

“Yes, I do.”

“You know me so well,” he said, and grinned. As Rachel watched, he turned, reached up, grabbed a one-by-four, and headed upward with the agility of a teenager. Rachel followed, though a little more carefully. She really did not want to ruin her dress.

“Drat, I forgot about my pantyhose.” She was frowning as she levered herself through the opening to sit with legs dangling down the hole. A large rip in the nylon was already sending half a dozen runners snaking out in both directions.

“You could always take them off,” Johnny said with a suggestive gleam. Rachel turned to look at him. He was sitting with his back against the opposite wall, watching her with a wicked expression that told her more clearly than words could have what he had in mind. The entire platform couldn’t have been larger than eight by ten feet, and the walls surrounding it were perhaps three feet high.
There was no roof except the twining branches overhead and the thick canopy of leaves that blocked out most of the bright blue sky. Up so high—they were perhaps twenty feet off the ground—the breeze was stronger. Though the walls of the treehouse provided wind protection for its interior, branches swayed and creaked and leaves rustled, then gave up their tenuous hold on summer one by one to be borne whirling to the ground. The effect reminded Rachel of being caught inside a snow globe, only with golden leaves instead of crystalline flakes. Though the temperature was warm, the indefinable scent of approaching fall was in the air.

Rachel’s eyes wandered over Johnny. He was watching her, his eyes a brighter blue than the barely glimpsed sky, a half-smile curling his mouth. The walls of the treehouse rose no higher than his shoulders, and behind him leafy green-gold branches made a backdrop so lovely, it was slightly unreal. The wind ruffled the blue-black waves of his hair. Rachel thought how much the more conservative cut became him. Now the planes and angles of his face, with its firm chin and high cheekbones and intelligent forehead, were more readily apparent, making him handsomer than ever. He looked a far different creature from the hard-bitten man who had stepped from the bus just a few short weeks before.

If she had known then how he would change her world, she would have run straight into his arms—and probably scared him right back into prison.

At the thought of how he would have reacted to such a greeting, Rachel smiled.

“Something funny?” he asked, cocking an eyebrow at her.

Rachel shook her head. “It’s just that I’m happy.”

“Are you? So am I. But I’d be happier if you’d come over here and sit beside me. I think we need to talk.”

“Talk?”

“Why, did you think I had something else in mind?”

“I hoped.”

Johnny laughed and held out his hand to her. “Come here, Rachel, and feel in my pocket. I brought you a present.”

“Really?” She smiled at him in delight. The idea that Johnny had brought her something pleased her enormously. His first gift to her—besides himself. She would treasure it.

“Feel in my pockets,” he said again when she was sitting beside him.

“I feel silly,” she protested, laughing as she obeyed. The first pocket she checked was empty, but the second contained a tiny wrapped box. Drawing it forth, Rachel stared at it for a long time as it rested in the palm of her hand. Wrapped in silver foil and done up with white ribbons, it was exquisite. She glanced at Johnny.

“It’s lovely.”

“Open it.”

He sounded slightly tense, and Rachel felt her heartbeat speed up as she slid the ribbons off and began to unwrap the box. She was almost sure she knew what it contained, but still, she might be wrong. She didn’t want to get her hopes up too high.

The box was of shiny red cardboard, perfectly plain. Pulling off the lid, she discovered a jeweler’s box inside.

Her hands were shaking as she withdrew the hard plastic case from the cardboard box and flipped back the lid.

Inside was a diamond ring, a gorgeous solitaire that was at least a half-carat in weight, set in white gold.

“Johnny! Wherever did you get the money?”

“Is that all you can say? I didn’t steal it, if that’s what’s worrying you. The railway company offered Sue Ann and Buck and me seventy-five thousand dollars as compensation for my dad’s death. They wanted to take it, so I agreed.” The merest flicker of humor touched his eyes as
he nodded at the ring. “There sits approximately one-fifth of my share.”

“You shouldn’t have! It’s beautiful!”

“Would you please look at the damned thing?”

The edginess of his voice surprised her, but then she took a closer look at the ring. A tiny gift enclosure card was tied to the shank with a slender strip of white ribbon. Johnny’s flowing black handwriting was on the card. Tilting the box so that she could see the words, Rachel read the inscription: “Marry me?”

She looked up at Johnny, who was regarding her with an odd, endearing mix of tenderness and anxiety.

“Well?” he said when she said nothing.

Rachel withdrew the ring from the box, slipped it, tag and all, on the ring finger of her left hand, then wrapped her arms around his neck.

“Maybe.” She kissed his mouth.

“Maybe?” He sounded affronted, but as he was kissing her back very thoroughly at the same time, she couldn’t be sure.

“You don’t think you’re going to get away with that measly excuse for a proposal, do you? If you want me to marry you, then you’re going to have to ask me properly.”