Country Brides

  She stopped playing. “What about Whitney Houston?”

  Skip repeated the name a couple of times before his eyes lit up with recognition. “Hasn’t she done Coke commercials?”

  “Right,” Rorie said, laughing. “She ’s had several big hits.”

  Kate slowly shook her head. “Sorry, I don’t think I can remember the words to her songs.”

  “Barbra Streisand?”

  “I thought she was an actress,” Skip said with a puzzled frown. “You mean she sings, too?”

  Reluctantly Rorie rose from the piano seat. “Kate, you’ll have to take over. It seems you three are a whole lot country and I’m a little bit rock and roll.”

  “We’ll make you into a country girl yet!” Skip insisted, sliding the harmonica across his mouth with an ease Rorie envied.

  Clay glanced at his watch. “We aren’t going to be able to convert Rorie within the next twelve hours.”

  A gloom settled over them as Kate took Rorie’s place at the piano.

  “Are you sure we can’t talk you into staying a few extra days?” Skip asked. “We ’re just getting to know each other.”

  Rorie shook her head, more determined than ever to leave as soon as she could.

  “It would be a shame for you to miss the county fair next weekend. Maybe you could stop here on your way back through Oregon, after your trip to Canada,” Kate added. “Clay and I are singing, and we’re scheduled for the square dance competition, too.”

  “Yeah,” Skip cried. “And we’ve got pig races planned again this year.”

  “Pig races?” Rorie echoed faintly.

  “I know it sounds silly, but it’s really fun. We take the ten fastest pigs in the area and let them race toward a bowl of Oreos. No joke—cookies! Everyone bets on who’ll win and we all have a lot of fun.” Skip’s eyes shone with eagerness. “Please think about it, anyway, Rorie.”

  “Mary’s entering her apple pie again,” Clay put in. “She’s been after that blue ribbon for six years.”

  A hundred reasons to fade out of their lives flew across Rorie’s mind like particles of dust in the wind. And yet the offer was tempting. She tried, unsuccessfully, to read Clay’s eyes, her own filled with a silent appeal. This was a decision she needed help making. But Clay wasn’t helping. The thought of never seeing him again was like pouring salt onto an open wound; still, it was a reality she’d have to face sooner or later.

  So Rorie volunteered the only excuse she could come up with at the moment. “I don’t have the time. I’m sorry, but I’d be cutting it too close to get back to San Francisco for work Monday morning.”

  “Not if you canceled part of your trip to Canada and came back on Friday,” Skip pointed out. “You didn’t think you’d have a good time at the square dance, either, but you did, remember?”

  It wasn’t a matter of having a good time. So much more was involved…though the pig races actually sounded like fun. The very idea of such an activity would have astounded her only a week before, Rorie reflected. She could just imagine what Dan would say.

  “Rorie?” Skip pressed. “What do you think?”

  “I…I don’t know.”

  “The county fair is about as good as it gets around Nightingale.”

  “I don’t want to impose on your hospitality again.” Clay still wasn’t giving her any help with this decision.

  “But having you stay with us isn’t a problem,” Skip insisted. “As long as you promise to stay out of the kitchen, you’re welcome to stick around all summer. Isn’t that right, Clay?”

  His hesitation was so slight that Rorie doubted anyone else had noticed it. “Naturally Rorie’s welcome to visit us any time she wants.”

  “If staying with these two drives you crazy,” Kate inserted, “you could stay at my house. In fact, I’d love it if you did.”

  Rorie dropped her gaze, fearing what she might see in Clay’s eyes. She sensed his indecision as she struggled with her own. She had to leave. Yet she wanted to stay….

  “I think I should take the rest of my vacation in Victoria,” she finally told them.

  “I know you’re worried about getting back in time for work, but Skip’s right. If you left Victoria one day early, then you could be here for the fair,” Kate suggested again, but her offer didn’t sound as sincere as it had earlier.

  “Rorie said she doesn’t have the time,” Clay said after an awkward silence. “I think we should respect her decision.”

  “You sound as if you don’t want her to come back,” Skip accused.

  “No,” Clay murmured, his eyes meeting hers. “I want her here, but Rorie should try to salvage some of the vacation she planned. She has to do what she think’s best.”

  Rorie could feel his eyes moving over her hair and her face in loving appraisal. She tensed and prayed that Kate and Skip weren’t aware of it.

  During the next hour, Skip tried repeatedly to convince Rorie to visit on her way back or even to stay until the fair. As far as Skip could see, there wasn’t much reason to go to Canada now, anyway. But Rorie resisted. Walking away from Clay once was going to be painful enough. Rorie didn’t know if she could do it twice.

  Skip was yawning by the time they decided to call an end to the evening. With little more than a mumbled good night, he hurried up the stairs, abandoning the others.

  Rorie and Kate took a few extra minutes to straighten the living room, while Clay drove his pickup around to the front of the house. “I ’d better burn the evidence before Mary sees these pizza boxes,” Rorie joked. “She ’ll have my hide once she hears about dinner.”

  Kate laughed good-naturedly as she collected her belongings. When they heard Clay’s truck, she put down her bags and ran to Rorie. “You’ll call me before you leave tomorrow?”

  Rorie nodded and hugged her back.

  “If something happens and you change your mind about the fair, please know that you’re welcome to stay with me and Dad—we’d enjoy the company.”

  “Thank you, Kate.”

  The house felt empty and silent once Kate had left with Clay. Rorie knew it would be useless to go upstairs and try to sleep. Instead she went out to the front porch, where she’d sat in the swing with Clay that first night. She sank down on the steps, one arm wrapped around a post, and gazed upward. The skies were glittered with the light of countless stars—stars that shone with a clarity and brightness one couldn’t see in the city.

  Clay belonged to this land, this farm, this small town. Rorie was a city girl to the marrow of her bones. This evening had proved the hopelessness of any dream that she and Clay might have of finding happiness together. There was his commitment to Kate. And there was the fact that he and Rorie were too different, their tastes too dissimilar. She certainly couldn’t picture him making a life away from Elk Run.

  Clay had accepted the hopelessness of it, too. That was the reason he agreed she should travel to Canada. This evening Rorie had sensed a desperation in him that rivaled her own.

  It was a night filled with insights. Sitting under the heavens, she was beginning to understand some important things about life. For perhaps the first time, she’d fallen in love. During the past six days she’d tried to deny what she was feeling, but on the eve of her departure it seemed silly to lie to herself any longer. Rorie couldn’t believe something like this had actually happened to her. Meeting someone and falling in love with him in the space of a few days was an experience reserved for novels and movies. This wasn’t like her normal sane, sensible self at all. Rorie had always thought she was too levelheaded to fall so easily in love.

  Until she met Clay Franklin.

  On the wings of one soul-searching realization came another. Love wasn’t what she’d expected. She’d assumed it meant a strong sensual passion that overwhelmed the lovers and left them powerless before it. But in the past few days, she’d learned that love marked the soul as well as the body.

  Clay would forever be a part of her. Since that first night when Nightson
g was born, her heart had never felt more alive. Yet within a few hours she would walk away from the man she loved and consider herself blessed to have shared these days with him.

  A tear rolled down the side of her face, surprising her. This wasn’t a time for sadness, but joy. She’d discovered a deep inner strength she hadn’t known she possessed. She wiped the moisture away and rested her head against the post, her eyes fixed on the heavens.

  The footsteps behind Rorie didn’t startle her. She’d known Clay would come to her this one last time.

  Eleven

  Clay draped his arm over Rorie’s shoulders and joined her in gazing up at the sky. Neither spoke for several minutes, as though they feared words would destroy the tranquil mood. Rorie stared, transfixed by the glittering display. Like her love for this man, the stars would remain forever distant, unattainable, but certain and unchanging.

  A ragged sigh escaped her lips. “All my life I’ve believed that everything that befalls us has a purpose.”

  “I’ve always thought that, too,” Clay whispered.

  “Everything in life is deliberate.”

  “Our final hours together you’re going to become philosophical?” He rested his chin on her head, gently ruffling her hair. “Are you sad, Rorie?”

  “Oh, no,” she denied quickly. “I can’t be…I feel strange, but I don’t know if I can find the words to explain it. I’m leaving tomorrow and I realize we’ll probably never see each other again. I have no regrets—not a single one—and yet I think my heart is breaking.”

  His hand tightened on her shoulder in silent protest as if he found the idea of relinquishing her more than he could bear.

  “We can’t defy reality,” she told him. “Nothing ’s going to change in the next few hours. The water pump on the car will be replaced, and I’ll go back to my life. The way you’ll go back to yours.”

  “I have this gut feeling there’s going to be a hole the size of the Grand Canyon in mine the minute you drive away.” He dropped his arm and moved away from her. His eyes held a weary sadness, but Rorie found an acceptance there, too.

  “I’m an uncomplicated man,” he said evenly. “I’m probably nothing like the sophisticated man you’re dating in San Francisco.”

  Her thoughts flew to Dan, so cosmopolitan and…superficial, and she recognized the truth in Clay’s words. The two men were poles apart. Dan’s interests revolved around his career and his car, but he was genuinely kind, and it was that quality that had attracted Rorie.

  “Elk Run’s given me a good deal of satisfaction over the years. My life’s work is here and, God willing, some day my son will carry on the breeding programs I’ve started. Everything I’ve ever dreamed of has always been within my grasp.” He paused, holding in a long sigh and releasing it slowly. “And then you came,” he whispered, and a brief smile crossed his lips, “and, within a matter of days, I’m reeling from the effects. Suddenly I’m left doubting what’s really important in my life.”

  Rorie lowered her eyes. “Who ’d have believed a silly water pump would be responsible for all this wretched soul-searching?”

  “I’ve always been the type of man who’s known what he wants, but you make me feel like a schoolboy no older than Skip. I don’t know what to do anymore, Rorie. In a few hours, you’ll be leaving and part of me says if you do, I’ll regret it the rest of my life.”

  “I can’t stay.” Their little dinner party had shown her how different their worlds actually were. She wouldn’t fit into his life and he’d be an alien in hers. But Kate…Kate belonged to his world.

  Clay rubbed his hands across his eyes and harshly drew in a breath. “I know you feel you should leave, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.”

  “The pull to stay is there for me, too,” she whispered.

  “And it’s tearing both of us apart.”

  Rorie shook her head. “Don’t you see? So much good has come out of meeting you, Clay.” Her voice was strong. She had to make him understand that she’d always be grateful for the things he’d taught her. “In some ways I grew up tonight. I feel I’m doing what’s right for both of us, although it’s more painful than anything I’ve ever known.”

  He looked at her with such undisguised love that she ached.

  “Let me hold you once more,” he said softly. “Give me that, at least.”

  Rorie shook her head. “I can’t…I’m sorry, Clay, but this is how it has to be with us. I’m so weak where you’re concerned. I couldn’t bear to let you touch me now and then leave tomorrow.”

  His eyes drifted shut as he yielded to her wisdom. “I don’t know that I could, either.”

  They were only a few feet apart, but it seemed vast worlds stood between them.

  “More than anything I want you to remember me fondly, without any bitterness,” Rorie told him, discovering as she spoke the words how much she meant them.

  Clay nodded. “Be happy, Rorie, for my sake.”

  Rorie realized that contentment would be a long time coming without this man in her life, but she would find it eventually. She prayed that he’d marry Kate the way he’d planned. The other woman was the perfect wife for him—unlike herself. A thread of agony twisted around Rorie’s heart.

  She turned to leave him, afraid she’d dissolve into tears if she remained much longer. “Goodbye, Clay.”

  “Goodbye, Rorie.”

  She rushed past him and hurried up the stairs.

  The following morning, both Clay and Skip had left the house by the time Rorie entered the kitchen.

  “Good morning, Mary,” she said with a note of false cheer in her voice. “How did the visit with your sister go?”

  “Fine.”

  Rorie stepped around the housekeeper to reach the coffeepot and poured herself a cup. A plume of steam rose enticingly to her nostrils and she took a tentative sip.

  “I found those pizza boxes you were trying so hard to hide from me,” Mary grumbled as she wiped her hands on her apron. “You fed these good men restaurant pizza?”

  Unable to stop herself, Rorie chuckled at the housekeeper’s indignation. “Guilty as charged. Mary, you should’ve known better than to leave their fate in my evil hands.”

  “Near as I can figure, the closest pizza parlour is a half-hour away. Did you drive over and get it yourself or did you send Skip?”

  “Actually he volunteered,” she admitted reluctantly. “Dinner didn’t exactly turn out the way I’d hoped.”

  The housekeeper snickered. “I should’ve guessed. You city slickers don’t know nothing about serving up a decent meal to your menfolk.”

  Rorie gave a hefty sigh of agreement. “The only thing for me to do is stay on another couple of months and have you teach me.” As she expected, the housekeeper opened her mouth to protest. “Unfortunately,” Rorie continued, cutting Mary off before she could launch into her arguments, “I’m hoping to be gone by this afternoon.”

  Mary’s response was a surprise. The older woman’s expression grew troubled and intense.

  “I suspected you’d be going soon enough,” she said in a tight voice, pulling out a chair. She sat down heavily and brushed wisps of gray hair from her forehead. Her weathered face was thoughtful. “It ’s for the best, you know.”

  “I knew you’d be glad to get rid of me.”

  Mary shrugged. “It ’s other reasons that make it right for you to leave. You know what I’m talking about, even if you don’t want to admit it to me. As a person you tend to grow on folks. Like I said before, for a city girl, you ain’t half bad.”

  Rorie took a banana from the fruit bowl in the center of the table. “For a stud farm, stuck out here in the middle of nowhere, this place isn’t half bad, either,” she said, trying to lighten the mood, which had taken an unexpected turn toward the serious. “The people are friendly and the apple pie’s been exceptional.”

  Mary ignored the compliment on her pie. “By people, I suppose you’re referring to Clay. You’re going to miss him, ar
en’t you, girl?”

  The banana found its way back into the bowl and with it went her cheerful facade. “Yes. I’ll miss Clay.”

  The older woman’s frown deepened. “From the things I’ve been noticing, he’s going to be yearning for you, as well. But it’s for the best,” she said again. “For the best.”

  Rorie nodded and her voice wavered. “Yes…but it isn’t easy.”

  The housekeeper gave her a lopsided smile as she gently patted Rorie’s hand. “I know that, too, but you’re doing the right thing. You’ll forget him soon enough.”

  A strong protest rose in her breast, closing off her throat. She wouldn’t forget Clay. Ever. How could she forget the man who had so unselfishly taught her such valuable lessons about life and love? Lessons about herself.

  “Kate Logan’s the right woman for Clay,” Mary said abruptly.

  Those few words cut Rorie to the quick. Hearing another person voice the truth made it almost unbearably painful.

  “I…hope they’re very happy.”

  “Kate loves him. She has from the time she was knee-high to a June bug. And there’s something you don’t know. Years back, when Clay was in college, he fell in love with a girl from Seattle. She’d been born and raised in the city. Clay loved her, wanted to marry her, even brought her to Elk Run to meet the family. She stayed a couple of days, and the whole time, she was as restless as water on a hot skillet. Apparently she had words with Clay because the next thing I knew, she’d packed her bags and headed home. Clay never said much about her after that, but she hurt him bad. It wasn’t until Kate got home from college that Clay thought seriously about marriage again.”

  Mary’s story explained a lot about Clay.

  “Now, I know I’m just an old woman who likes her soaps and Saturday-night bingo. Most folks don’t think I’ve got a lick of sense, and that’s all right. What others choose to assume don’t bother me much.” She paused, and shook her head. “But Kate Logan’s about the kindest, dearest person this town has ever seen. People like her—they can’t help themselves. She’s always got a kind word and there’s no one in this world she’s too good for. She cares about the people in this community. Those kids she teaches over at the grade school love her like nothing you’ve ever seen. And she loves them. When it came to building that fancy library, it was Kate who worked so hard convincing folks they’d be doing what was best for Nightingale by voting for that bond issue.”