Promises to Keep (10 page)

If Jessie Driesen had been a surprise, Daniel Leeds was a revelation. He awaited them in the living room at the back of the house where he was seated in a wing chair with one foot propped on a hassock, his face reflecting the ruddy glow of the flames leaping in the fireplace nearby. He was a burly, barrel-chested man in his mid-sixties with hair made more sandy than red by the gray in it and all-seeing bright blue eyes. His gingery eyebrows were heavy and extended upward in tufts at the peaks, giving him an appearance of constant wonder.

"You'll have to pardon me for not getting up," he said when Jessie had introduced Garth. He indicated the crutches beside his chair. "It's nothing serious, merely painful—an attack of gout."

"Too much of the good life," Jessie interposed.

In the brightly lighted room, Julie was able to see that Jessie's hair, eyes, and complexion were varying shades of tan. She was plain-faced as well as plain-spoken, but she was nevertheless lovely in her tranquillity.

"Come here, Julie, and let me get a good look at you," Dan requested. His voice was beautifully modulated and richly textured. When Julie stood shyly before him, he took one of her hands in his. "We'll have to see if we can't restore that tricky memory of yours while you're here." He gave her hand an encouraging squeeze. "With the four of us working on it, that shouldn't be too laborious a task."

His smile was indulgent as it rested on her. He turned to Garth and he became frankly amused. "Do you know," he confided with disarming candor, "I've never seen myself as a dirty old man, but I wouldn't mind being a sex symbol, so when Jessie told me you'd formed the opinion that I'd alienated Julie's affections, I didn't know whether to be offended or flattered."

"It made me damned angry," Jessie said astringently, "but I suppose you must have had good reason to believe such a thing. And Dan made me even angrier when he led you on the way he did when you called earlier this evening. How was he to know you might not do something drastic?"

"I could tell he wasn't the kind who'd go off the deep end," Dan said, defending himself.

"You know more than I do, then," Garth said wryly. He glanced uncertainly at Julie. "You don't know how close I came to doing just that! Especially when you admitted flat out that you love Julie and in the next breath said you were married."

"But we're not," Jessie denied. "Not legally anyway."

"You're my wife, Jessie, in every way that really matters." Dan was adamant. "And I do love Julie. She's like the daughter we never had."

"I won't argue with that," Jessie agreed. "I love her too. And I love you, Daniel Leeds, even if you are an old fool!"

There was a closeness between these two that was touching to see, Julie thought, in spite of Dan's raised eyebrows that seemed to ask Garth, What can you do with such a woman?

Dan and Jessie urged them to check out of their motel and spend the night. Because she felt a sense of kinship with them, Julie found the idea appealing, and Garth seemed happy enough to go along with the plan. He made the trip into Jackson to collect their luggage and when he returned, he found a defiant Julie waiting for him in the room they were to share.

"I'm not going to sleep in this room with you," she announced. The tender curve of her mouth was set in a rebellious line.

"Why not?" Garth asked. "We shared a room last night."

"That was different. There were two beds." A wave of her hand called his attention to the double bed with which this room was furnished.

Garth sighed wearily and shook his head. "Julie, I've no intention of moving into another room."

"Then I will!" She made a move toward the hallway.

"No, you won't." He stationed himself directly in front of the door and although his stance was nonchalant, his smoldering expression warned her that, should it become necessary, he would use force to prevent her leaving. "You're my wife, Julie," he said softly.

"I don't
feel
as if we're married."

"But we are and you'll only find it more difficult to adjust to the fact if you continually postpone the normal husband-and-wife intimacies."

Her shoulders slumped dispiritedly and he re-minded her, "I gave you my word I wouldn't make any demands."

"You also said you're not very good at resisting temptation."

"Don't flatter yourself," he retorted coldly. "It's been a long day—a long
three
days since I left California. Hell, it seems more like three years! After chasing you over half the country, all I'm interested in is a good night's sleep."

Garth turned on his heel and stalked out of the room and, left alone, Julie sank numbly onto the side of the offending bed and buried her face in her hands.

It was disquieting to reckon with the fact that, aside from one brief and minor skirmish, she would offer no opposition to sharing both a room and a bed with him. Part of her had wanted the controversy to end this way—with Garth imposing his will on her. Did he know that? Was that why he was so confident she would comply with his edict that he could simply walk away from her?

Something cold and damp nudged her hand away from her face and she looked up and saw that Buck had wandered into the room. The dog was sitting as close as possible to her and his fine intelligent eyes conveyed the message that he sensed her confusion and that he sympathized with her.

Still weighed down by the burden of her thoughts, Julie absently reached out to scratch Buck behind the ears and pet the fawn and sable coat over his neck and shoulders. His tail thumped the floor, and when she would have stopped, he nudged her hand with his nose to set it moving again.

"All right, Bucky," Julie said, laughing. "You win." She rose and together they went downstairs to the living room.

Dan had certainly developed the gift of his expressive voice to the fullest, Julie thought sometime later as she listened to him telling Garth how he'd happened to settle in Jackson Hole. It was after midnight and Jessie had long since excused herself and retired, but Dan had held Garth so spellbound that he'd forgotten how ready he was for "a good night's sleep."

As for her, she was too contented to move from her cozy spot near the hearth. She was half lying against a floor cushion, watching shadows cast by the fire dancing on the ceiling. Buck had curled up beside her and his head was a comforting weight on her lap, while the sound of the men's talking wove its magic around her.

"My father and I first came west in the early thirties," Dan recounted. "Dad fought in the trenches in World War One and he'd been a victim of mustard gas. He never recovered from that, and we were riding the rails, heading for New Mexico. We thought the desert climate might help his lungs, but by the time we got to Jackson Hole, he was too sick to travel any farther."

"It goes without saying that we were poor—and I don't mean just temporarily short of funds. Lots of people like to tell about how, during the Depression, they lived in a cold-water flat or a tarpaper shack in some shantytown, maybe even under a bridge or in a railroad tile. But hell's bells!"—Dan snorted derisively—"they don't know what
poor
is. Now my dad and I were really hard up against it. We were so poor, we were living in a
bush
!"

Garth's quick smile showed that he was not gullible enough to accept this claim at face value.

"Dad got to cadging drinks that winter. It was one of the coldest on record," Dan added, digressing, "but the winters here are always cold. To the natives, spring is just two weeks of bad skiing! Then one night when he'd gotten more than moderately blitzed, Dad crawled into the backseat of Bert Ransome's Model A to keep warm. The trouble was, old Bert wasn't any too sober himself and he drove all the way home without noticing anything unusual. To make a long story short, the exhaust on the car was faulty, and Dad was asphyxiated."

Dan shook his head sadly. "Poor old man," he said, sighing. "But I guess maybe he was better off out of it."

"What did you do then?" Garth asked. "You couldn't have been much more than—"

"I was fifteen. A homely, scrawny kid with nothing at all to recommend me to anyone. I was like some wild creature. I trusted no one and I lived by the rule of the jungle."

Dan stared ruminatively into the fire for a few moments. "That was when I met Julie's grandparents," he continued. "I never knew a finer man than Jim Ayers. He never turned anyone away from his door. Every hobo in the state knew where he lived and most of 'em stopped by for a free meal at one time or another. Jim used to say they might be angels in disguise." Dan paused to clear his throat. "When they made Jim Ayers, they broke the mold. And in her own fashion Elizabeth was a good woman. They were newly married, but they took me in when nobody else would have a thing to do with me and they put up with all my shenanigans till I got myself straightened out."

"Now, the reason I've told you all of this is so Julie can appreciate that her grandmother had her fine points. In some ways she was more charitable than most, but the truth is, she wasn't cut out for motherhood. Not for marriage either." Dan chuckled. "Jessie put it in a nutshell one time when she said Elizabeth was happy as a spinster, damned miserable as a wife, and the merriest widow you ever saw."

"By 'merry' do you mean that she liked to play the field?" asked Garth.

"Lord, no!" Dan's eyebrows shot up. "Elizabeth had no use whatsoever for men. I never could figure out how she and Jim got together long enough to produce Julie's mother. No," he repeated, "by 'merry' I mean only that she found her own company more rewarding than anyone else's. She had impossibly high standards, you see, and she was the only one capable of meeting them. She had no tolerance at all for human failings and since she was the only 'saint' around, that kind of tended to put a crimp in her social life."

Garth glanced at Julie. "I think I see what you mean," he said thoughtfully.

The fire had burned down to ash-covered embers, but an errant gust of wind caused a sudden shower of sparks to fly up the chimney. Buck raised his head and whined, got to his feet, stretched and yawned prodigiously. He ambled toward the back door, his nails clicking on the polished wood of the floorboards.

"Should I take him out?" Julie asked.

"You can let him out on his own," Dan replied. "He'll come back as soon as he's made his nightly rounds."

Julie opened the door and Buck lifted his nose and sniffed the night air before he trotted outside.

"He's a fine animal," Garth observed as he watched the dog standing in the doorway.

"He's getting on in years," Dan said. "Julie and Bucky kind of grew up together."

Garth stifled a yawn with his hand and Dan looked at the mantel clock. "Look at the time!" he exclaimed. "You're too good an audience, Garth. Jessie will tell you, you shouldn't give me so much encouragement, or I'm apt to go on all night."

Dan turned to study Julie, who was leaning against the newel while she waited for Buck to return. The light from the fixture directly over her head shadowed her features and revealed that she was pale with fatigue.

"Why don't you and Julie go on up to bed," Dan suggested. "We'll have plenty of time to talk tomorrow. You do plan to stay on awhile, don't you?"

Garth had also turned to study Julie. After some deliberation he replied, "Yes, if it's all right with you and Jessie, I think we will stay a few days."