Someone Like You (17 page)

Suddenly Susannah shoved him.

Tate took another step toward her, but the Reverend Pettigrew put a detaining hand on his shoulder. He and Tate talked for a minute. Then Tate turned angrily away.

Reed smiled.

Violette took a deep breath—one Reed identified as a sigh of relief. “Well, I think I’ll be moseying on into church now. This is your last chance. Are you sure you don’t want to join us?”

“No, I think I’ll do a little meditating out here.”

Violette looked around and tilted her head back to gaze at the sky. “You picked a mighty fine day for it. This is cloud-gazing weather.”

He glanced heavenward. “Maybe I’ll do a little cloud gazing, then.”

“Couldn’t hurt you none.”

He laughed. “No, not as long as I remember a man gazing at clouds is at the mercy of puddles in the road.”

Violette patted him on the back. “Don’t worry yourself none. Puddles are few and far between in these parts.”

He gave her his arm and walked her inside.

He was returning to the buggy when he heard a horse nicker. He looked up and glanced in the direction the sound had come from. To his complete surprise, he saw his dapple-gray mare tied to a tree next to the graveyard. The same mare that had been stolen from him that day when he was robbed.

Gray Girl whinnied again and began pawing the ground as she tossed her head up and down. Reed couldn’t help smiling, but he wasn’t surprised that his mare had recognized him. Besides being a very beautiful animal with a refined head and long, sleek body, Gray Girl was probably the smartest horse he had ever owned, or at least the best trained. She could count, do tricks, and give him kisses. She was fond of grabbing the hat off his head, and never missed an opportunity to pull the saddle blanket off before he could get the saddle on.

He walked up to the mare and scratched her between the eyes, pulling his head back when she tried to reach for his hat. “Oh, no you don’t! You haven’t been gone so long that I’ve forgotten all your bad habits,” he said as he gave her the once-over.

He had bought her a little over two years ago from a man who raised and trained horses for the circus. At the time Reed hadn’t been looking for a show pony, but he was in the middle of nowhere and needed a horse, and she was the only one around. Even then, it took a lot of persuasion to convince the owner to part with her, and he made Reed pay dearly. But she was more than worth the money, and it wasn’t long until Reed was so attached to her that he wouldn’t have parted with her for any sum of money.

Reed started to untie her, but when he reached for the reins something made him stop.

He would bide his time until church was over, when the thieving bastard came back to claim her.

Gray Girl nickered at him again when Reed left. He walked back to the buggy and climbed in. He looked down at the Bible in his hands. Without knowing why, he opened it to the book of
Job
and began to read.

The sound of singing reached his ears, and he closed his eyes as he listened to the words of
Amazing Grace
.

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see. ‘Twas grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved…

When the song ended, tears slipped down Reed’s face. He knew now that there was more at stake here than just Susannah. He prayed for the first time in five years. When he finished, he knew that next Sunday he would be in church.

Half an hour later, the service was over. Tate Trahern was one of the first to leave. Reed watched him come down the steps and walk across the grass to where Gray Girl was tied. He unfastened the mare and managed to get one foot in the saddle before Reed rushed over to him and grabbed the bridle. Gray Girl stopped and wheeled. That sudden move left Tate unbalanced enough that Reed easily pulled him from the saddle. The mare bucked a few times, then stood with her front legs far apart, switching her tail.

“I think you’ve gotten on the wrong horse,” Reed said.

Tate had his fists doubled when he turned to look at Reed. “I think you’d better mind your own business.” He started to mount again, but Reed stopped him. This time Tate took a swing at him, but Reed ducked.

About that same time, Sheriff Jonah Carter was leaving church. He saw the confrontation and came over at a trot. “Now, hold on here just a gol-darned minute. Looks to me like you two fellas left church a mite early. Maybe you didn’t stay long enough to let any of the preacher’s sermon soak in. What seems to be the problem?”

“This good-for-nothing doesn’t want me to get on my horse,” Tate said.

The sheriff looked at Reed as if he expected an answer.

Reed gave him one. “I don’t have a problem with him getting on his horse. It’s getting on
my
horse that I mind.”

“You trying to tell me that this is your horse?” The sheriff pushed his hat back and scratched his head as he looked from Reed to Tate and then to the gray mare. “Tie the horse until we get this solved,” he said and one of the men nearby obeyed.

“This horse belongs to the Double T,” Tate said.

“So, both of you are laying claim to this horse—is that right?”

Tate nodded. “The horse is mine.”

“The horse was stolen from me,” Reed said.

“You got any papers that prove the horse is yours?” Jonah asked Reed.

“No.”

“How about you, Tate? You got any papers?”

“The horse was born on Double T land. We don’t have papers on horses we raise.”

“Seems to me there ought to be a way to prove who this horse belongs to without having to fight over it,” the sheriff said, “but I don’t rightly know what that would be.”

The congregation, including the reverend, had gathered around. “Ask him if the mare has any marks or scars that he can identify,” Reed said to the sheriff.

Tate scoffed at the idea of being asked anything. “It’s pretty obvious there are no marks on the mare. Her hide is as smooth as a baby’s cheek.”

Jonah bore down on him. “So what you’re saying is there are no marks you can identify on the mare?”

“That’s what I’m saying.”

Jonah looked at Reed. “How about you? Can you identify anything special?”

Reed began to describe a long scar on the underside of the mare’s belly. “Why don’t you take a look?” he asked the sheriff.

Sheriff Carter had no more than bent to examine the mare’s belly over when he righted himself. “There’s a scar there, all right. Just the way he described it.”

A gasp went up from the crowd, which was followed by a sudden buzz. Reed paid that no mind but went on to validate his ownership even further. This time he directed his question to Tate. “I don’t suppose you know of any special training this mare has received?”

Tate looked at Reed as if he was speaking Greek. “Special training? She’s broke to ride, if that’s what you mean.”

“It’s not.”

Tate seemed uncomfortable, and Reed knew he had struck gold. He turned around and whistled. Gray Girl’s head jerked up, and her ears pricked forward. “Untie her,” he said to a young sandy-haired boy standing nearby, “and let her go.”

“You mean turn her loose?” the boy asked.

“Yes.”

The boy threw the reins over the mare’s neck and released his hold on the cheek piece.

Reed whistled again.

Gray Girl snorted and tossed her head, then trotted toward him. When she reached him, Reed stroked her and scratched her beneath the chin, talking to her as he did. Gray Girl tossed her head a couple of times, and began nibbling at his face.

When five-year-old Jessica Suiter said, “Mommy, that horse is kissing him,” everyone began to laugh.

Everyone, that is, save Dahlia, who did not look amused when she said to Violette, “I knew it! I knew he was a deadbeat the moment I saw him. He worked for a circus.”

“Oh, for crying out loud! Dally, have you taken complete loss of your senses?”

“He’s a circus worker and you can’t trust them. They’ll steal you blind.”

Distracted by the laughter and shouts, Reed was down on his guard. It was just the opening Gray Girl needed, and she yanked his hat from his head and began shaking it. Whenever he reached for it, she would yank her head back or turn it one way or the other. Everyone was rolling with laughter. It took Reed a solid five minutes to get his hat back.

He asked the mare how old she was. Gray Girl pawed the ground five times. Children began laughing and clapping their hands. “I want a horse like that one!” someone shouted.

It was Sam Smith who called out, “That’s the first female I’ve ever seen who would tell her age.”

Everyone laughed and the sheriff stepped forward. “Well, I think I’ve seen enough.” He turned to Reed. “Take your horse.”

“The saddle is mine,” Tate protested.

“The saddle goes with the mare,” the sheriff said. “According to my way of thinking, you can either go to jail for horse stealing, or you can forfeit your saddle.” He looked at Reed as he said, “You may have to do both, if Mr. Garrett wants to press charges.”

“I only want what belongs to me,” Reed said. “I’ll forget about the rest.” He removed the saddle and placed it on the ground. “I don’t want Trahern’s saddle.”

“Keep the saddle,” Tate said. “I don’t accept charity.” He turned and walked away. It was obvious that Tate was angry. Very angry.

Chapter Fifteen

Susannah was sitting near an old swing down by the creek, thinking about Reed, when suddenly he appeared. She could tell by the surprised look on his face and his abrupt stop that it had been accidental.

“Sorry for the intrusion. I didn’t see you here. I hope I didn’t interrupt anything.”

He was such a nice, decent person, Susannah observed. Why couldn’t she be herself around him? Why did she think of her mother and a scarlet satin dress when she saw him these days? She cleared her throat. “It’s all right,” she said. “I wasn’t doing anything. I just come here out of habit mostly. I used to love this place when I was a little girl. In the summertime Daisy and I would swing far out over the creek, then bail out, landing in the water. It frightened my aunts to death. They forbade me to do it.” She leaned back a bit and gave the swing a push. “It seems like it was a million years ago.”

He sat on a tree stump nearby. “I didn’t realize you and Daisy were close friends.”

“I don’t suppose you would call us close friends anymore, but we were very close at one time. She was my first friend in school.”

“What happened? Did you have a falling out?”

She thought about that and shook her head. “No. It wasn’t any particular thing that caused it. It was a gradual thing, like erosion. As we grew older, our differences became more noticeable.”

“What differences?”

“The things we wanted out of life. Daisy was interested in boys and always had a beau.”

“And that didn’t interest you?”

“No, and before you ask, it still does not interest me. Daisy is a natural mother. She comes from a large family, and she is very good with children. She would like nothing more than to be married with a house full of children…” Susannah’s voice dwindled off to nothing. She took a deep breath and said, “Poor Daisy. Since her father’s illness she has worked hard to support her family. It just doesn’t seem fair. Wealthy people seem to have all the advantages.”

“Not always,” he said softly.

She wondered what cross he had to bear, what dark secrets he kept locked away, the same as she. “What happened to cause you to lose your faith?” She could not help asking, “Or did it go away gradually…eroding like my friendship with Daisy?”

He leaned forward and gave the swing another push and did not answer her question.

The two of them sat in silence, each of them watching the swing move back and forth. At last he said, “I can almost picture you as a little girl down here swinging and giving your aunts an attack of apoplexy.”

“I am certain there were times when they came close. Now that I’m older, I see how my coming down here probably frightened them to death. Neither of them had ever spent much time around children. They must have worried greatly.”

“But you didn’t let that stop you.”

She couldn’t resist smiling. “No, of course I didn’t. Not because I was willfully disobedient. It was more out of ignorance. I knew my aunts were terribly soft when it came to me. They let me get away with far more than a mother would have.”

She did not tell him, however, the reason why her aunts were so easy on her—that they were trying, in their own way, to make up for the life she’d had before she came to live with them, a life that was anything but easy.

“I take it your mother died when you were young. Was that why you came to live with your aunts?”

She could feel a tightening in her muscles. He was encroaching upon forbidden territory, causing her past to rise up before her like a monster surfacing from the deep. Anticipation reached her extremities and left the tips of her fingers tingling. She had known for some time that this moment was coming. She had prepared herself for it. Yet when he asked the question, she was totally unsure how to answer it. After a lengthy pause, she said softly, “Yes, she died.”

“How old were you?”

“Nine…almost ten.”
No more questions, please.

“And your father? What about him?”

She stared coldly at him, then said, quite frankly, “I don’t know who my father was. That makes me illegitimate, doesn’t it? Are you shocked?”

“No. Should I be?”

She shrugged, trying to show him it did not matter what he thought. But it did matter. It mattered a lot.

“When your mother died, you were nine or ten. You came to live with your aunts immediately after that?”

“My mother wrote them when she realized how sick she really was. They came after me as soon as they received word of her illness. Unfortunately, she was dead by the time they arrived.”

“They are your great-aunts?”

“Yes, they are my mother’s aunts, so that makes them my great-aunts.”

She stopped the swing. “You know something? You ask too many questions, and I’m tired of answering them.” She left the swing and started to walk away. He stepped forward as if to block her, though she was not at all hemmed in. Something made her pause to see what he would say, what he would do. Part of her wanted to run, to retreat as she had always done, and yet there was a part of her that wanted him to know, to understand, to offer comfort. She had been denied the love of a mother and father, the affection, the tenderness, the loving pats. Her aunts loved her and nurtured her in the only way they knew, but there were times when she yearned to have someone put his arms around her, to hold her and tell her everything would be all right.

“Don’t go.”

She looked around, calculating, trying to decide the best way to handle this. Should she simply tell him their talk was finished, or walk off and leave him standing there with no explanation whatsoever?

He must have anticipated that, for he stepped closer. Instinctively, she countered with a step back. He took a step forward. She stepped back and felt herself against a tree. She recalled another time when he’d had her in such a position, and she remembered what happened. She could not let him kiss her again. She could not.

While her heart beat with fright, his arms went around her to rest against the tree, leaving her trapped between them. He did not touch her but simply leaned forward, bringing his mouth to hers.

“Trust me,” he whispered. “Trust me like you did your aunts.”

“My aunts were family. They loved me.”

“Are you certain that I don’t?”

“Yes…” His kiss stopped what she was going to say.

The touch of his lips against hers was soft, gentle, inquisitive, as if he wanted to show her there was another way to do this sort of thing, a way that was neither sordid nor rough. She felt consumed by a force that sapped the strength, the readiness from her muscles to escape. She tried to fight the lethargy that swept over her, the feeling that she wanted to see what else he could show her.

His gentleness undid her, as it had from the beginning, and now the attraction that had been growing took control. She could not fight him any longer. She remembered the things she saw as a child, the couplings, the sounds of lovemaking, and she knew she wanted those things, that she wanted him to do all of those things to her, over and over, until she cried out. She wanted him to make love to her. God help her, but she did.

“You don’t have to be afraid of me. I would never do anything to hurt you, anything you did not want me to do.”

How could she tell him that was precisely what she was afraid of? He was speaking softly to her, the words no more than whispers against her skin, and she knew she had needed, wanted this for so very long. All her adult life she had yearned to know what it felt like to be loved, to be desired, but she was afraid to allow it to happen. How very well she knew the price. Now she was weak against what she knew, against the warning in her mind. She melted against him.

He slipped the shoulders of her dress down to her waist. “You are so beautiful.” Still kissing her, he touched her breasts, kissed her there. Her head fell back against the tree, and a moan escaped her lips, a moan that took her back to another time, another place…until she remembered. She saw herself as she had been that day so long ago—the first time she watched and learned just what it was that her mother did—a little girl observing her mother with a John from a curtained-off alcove.

It was raining outside and dreary for such a warm, sultry afternoon. Because of the rain, Susannah could not play in the courtyard, so she came inside to play with her doll. Before long a customer called on her mother, and Susannah was sent from the room. Unable to find a place to play, she carried her doll into the alcove behind a portiere, but soon it was not the doll who commanded her attention but her mother.

Susannah could never rid herself of the memory imprinted upon her mind that day, of the stranger and the way he looked with his pants off, or the look on her mother’s beautiful face as she removed her clothes in front of him.

It wasn’t the movement or the moaning that Susannah remembered most, or even the way the John’s face was twisted with passion, but the way her mother’s face was turned toward her with an impassive expression. Not once since that day had Susannah seen anyone with a face so devoid of emotion. It was not the face of her mother, but that of a stranger—detached beyond recognition, bereft of tenderness or love.

And all that was left behind was a child who possessed a peculiar mixture of innocence and knowledge. A child robbed of her freshness, her purity. Susannah squeezed her eyes closed, wanting to shut out the vision of what happened next, of the John slumped over her mother and the way he rolled off and walked to the curtain. He paused only a moment before he jerked back the curtain, and Susannah’s life was changed forever.

“Well, lookey what we got here. You’re mighty curious, for such a little tyke. How old are you, kid? Six? Seven?”

Susannah could not speak.

“It doesn’t matter, I suppose. If you are old enough to be curious, you are old enough to participate. Come here.” He picked up a washcloth. “Come here and wash me.”

Susannah squeezed her eyes tighter against the pain that throbbed in her head. She could not breathe.

“Leave my daughter out of this,” her mother had said.

The man had laughed. “A daughter should help her mother.” He held out the cloth. “Come here.”

Come here…come here…come here…

Again and again it reverberated in her head. At night she could not sleep for hearing the words over and over.
It will never leave me
, she thought. Too long ago something had crept inside her and poisoned her, and, like poison, it was something that was killing her slowly. With the image of her lovely mother before her, Susannah wondered what would happen when Reed left. What if, after Reed, there was another? And another? And another?

“No!” she screamed, and shoved him. “Stay away from me!”

With he dropped his arms, she took a side step, struggling to get her dress up and refastened. She wiped the back of her hand across her mouth.

“Don’t…” He reached for her hand with his, but she slapped it away.

She saw the pain in his eyes and knew she must look wild, even desperate. Her breathing was shallow, rapid. The voice that spoke was not hers, for it sounded foreign even to her, and the words that came felt strange upon her lips. “You can’t seduce me. No matter how hard you try, you can’t, because I know men. I know what you want in the end. First you try to divert me with a few soft words and a kiss. Then you will touch me here and there until I cannot resist. The next thing I know you’ll be trying to put your prick inside me.”

She wanted to cry at the expression she saw upon his face. If she lived to be an old, old woman, she would never forget the look of utter disbelief, the breathtaking gasp of surprise, the disappointment that seemed to gush up from somewhere deep within him. Well, let him be shocked. Let him gasp at her vulgarity. Let him know, once and for all, just what she was and who she was. Maybe now he would leave her alone. His look of utter devastation only hardened her and gave her the strength to say the words that drove the stake home. “Don’t look so shocked. You know that’s what you want. That’s what you all want.”

She turned and ran, knowing that this time the righteous Reed Garrett would not lift a finger to stop her.

Reed was so stunned he couldn’t move. He couldn’t have heard correctly. It was a mistake. A terrible mistake.

But he knew in his heart that there had been no mistake, that the words she said were the words he heard. He remembered another time when she had shocked him with the phrase “turn a trick”—something no lady would know or say. And yet she
was
a lady in every sense of the word. Still he could not fathom where she learned to talk like she did.

Suddenly and without warning, the shock, the utter disbelief, vanished and in its place was a surge of anger. No, he didn’t know where she learned to talk like that, but he damn sure was going to find out. He had a lot of questions that needed answers and he wanted them now.

“Susannah!” he called out, going after her. He looked for quite some time and was on the verge of giving up his search when he found her a mile or so farther down the creek. She was standing waist-deep in water beside a thin stretch of sand.

Rarely traveled, this stretch of the creek had bushes and vines that grew taller and were more thickly entwined. An ancient, uncommonly large cottonwood curved out over the water; its fluttering leaves filtered the sunlight to dapple the earth and spangle the water. He paused only long enough to catch his breath, unable to do more than hoarsely whisper her name, “Susannah,” unable to believe the abundance of emotion eight simple letters could carry.