Never Let Go

  “You’ve got the spunk of a blind ant tryin’ to move an elephant. Take it easy.”

  She looked across the cab at him and said softly, “After you hold Katie in your arms, you’ll understand.”

  His green eyes burned into her blue ones for a moment. “Katherine Ann,” he murmured pensively. “All right. I’m gonna believe in her.”

  Rucker put his shoulder against the door frame and shoved the truck into motion.

  The farmhouse was small, weathered, and inviting. It sat back from the road with towering mountains for a background and a maple grove for close company. A barn and other outbuildings surrounded it. A dozen red-and-white Hereford cattle grazed in a pasture nearby.

  By the time they pushed the truck up the rutted gravel driveway, Dinah was panting and sweat ran down Rucker’s face despite the day’s cool temperature.

  A small, golden-haired woman walked out on the front porch of the house, smiling shyly. She wore a heavy beige sweater under a blue jumper. The jumper ballooned over what must surely be an advanced pregnancy. An anxious, aching emptiness stirred under Dinah’s rib cage. When she looked at the pregnant woman’s face, she knew that she wasn’t much more than a child herself.

  “Hi, folks,” the blonde said in a sweet voice laced with an accent that made Rucker’s sound cosmopolitan. “Can I help y’all?”

  Rucker cleared his throat and spoke politely. “Ma’am, I’m Abe MacLane and this is my wife … Bethesda. We’re headed home from visitin’ a sick relative in Nashville, and we’ve got engine trouble. Would you have a toolbox I could borrow?”

  “Sure!”

  Dinah cocked a brow at him. Lurleen. Edna. Bethesda. He was enjoying himself.

  With a friendliness honed by rural self-reliance, the young woman stepped gracefully down the porch steps and headed toward a work shed. “Come on. I’ll show you where my husband keeps things. Sam had to go to Nashville to buy some cattle and he won’t be back until tomorrow. Sam Chase. And I’m Laurie. Nice to meet you. ’Scuse me if I waddle. I’m due in about two weeks.”

  Dinah and Rucker shared a strained look as they followed her. “Aren’t you nervous way out here alone, with your baby about to be born?” Dinah asked.

  Laurie used the toe of her tennis shoe to nudge a fat red hen out of their way. “Nah. Doctor says I shouldn’t have any trouble.”

  “Aren’t you goin’ to a hospital?” Rucker asked.

  “We’re a little short of money for that. Besides, the hospital’s two hours from here. My husband was born in this house. It’s got sentiment to it.”

  They went into a small, neatly kept shed. She pointed to a tool chest. “There you go,” she told Rucker.

  “Thank you, ma’am.”

  He hoisted the chest and carried it outside. Guileless and curious, Laurie Chase smiled at Dinah. “If y’all want to stay awhile, I’ll fix you a meal.”

  “We can pay,” Dinah said quickly. “We don’t want to impose.”

  “Hush. I’m happy to have company. Let’s go in the house while your man works on the truck. You can help me cook.”

  She held out a hand, her eyes honest and sweet. Such innocence, Dinah thought sadly. She took the girl’s hand and squeezed it. “That sounds good.”

  “I warn you, all I talk about is my baby.”

  Dinah smiled at her. “Me, too.”

  They sat by a window in the Chase’s big, homey kitchen and peeled potatoes. Dinah watched Rucker work on the truck’s engine. He occasionally took a swig from the cup of coffee she’d taken out to him.

  “That’s a good-lookin’ stud hoss you got there,” Laurie observed. “Bet he gave you a good baby.”

  Dinah bit her lip to keep from smiling at the girl’s earthy description of Rucker. “He certainly did.”

  “Bet you hated to leave her with a sitter. I bet you miss her. Even for a few days. I bet you can’t hardly stand it.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m sorry. I can see from your face that I upset you. Ouch!”

  Dinah looked up quickly. “Are you all right?”

  The girl put a hand on her lower back. Her eyes widened. “That’s the fourth time that’s happened today. Like a weird kind of cramp. I shouldn’t have carried so much firewood this morning.”

  Dinah excused herself and went outside. Rucker bent under the truck’s hood, an array of hand tools spread around him. He was immediately aware of her; she could tell from the subtle tightening of his body. His wariness was both physical and emotional.

  Gusting wind from a cloud-covered sky ruffled his hair, and his hands were greasy. His face was drawn with fatigue, and beard stubble covered his jaw, but somehow those things only made him more appealing. She knew that the rugged exterior hid depths of tenderness and passion. This was a man who would never let her see him cry over his own pain but who had once cried bitterly over hers.

  Dinah stood beside him a second, watching him hungrily, inhaling the not unpleasant scents of oil, mountain air, and masculine sweat.

  He finally glanced at her. “I’m hurryin’, but it’ll be a while.”

  “We can’t leave right away. The girl’s going into labor.”

  Rucker whacked his head on the truck’s hood as he straightened up. “What?”

  “I think she’s going into labor. So don’t hurry to fix the truck.”

  He gazed at her with a mixture of bewilderment and something else, something that made her chest swell with hope. “Rucker, I’m still the person who moves turtles out of the road so they won’t get run over. I haven’t become an ogre.”

  “You look exhausted. You gonna take on a stranger’s problems, too?”

  “Just this one’s.” Dinah gestured vaguely and glanced away, frowning. “If she’s really going into labor … well, it’s no fun to give birth alone.”

  “Were you alone?” he asked grimly, and his expression told her that the thought upset him.

  “Basically, yes.”

  “Where … no. You can’t tell me. I won’t even bother to ask.”

  She nodded and faced him stoically, her heart twisting as she remembered how much she had needed him. “It’s no fun,” Dinah repeated.

  “What’s your schedule? Have we got time to stay and help?” he asked. His tone was softer, and there was grudging admiration in his eyes.

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, then. It’s gonna take me all afternoon to fix the truck, anyway.” He paused, studying her. “Didn’t anybody tell you that lady spies are supposed to be wicked and heartless? Don’t you watch the movies?”

  Dinah smiled wryly and nodded. She hugged herself against the cool wind and the shivering urge to lean forward and kiss him. “They’re not supposed to love their husbands, either.”

  He flinched and started to lift his hands toward her. Dinah urged him with her gaze. His restraint was almost palpable, a force that conflicted with every beautiful memory she saw replayed in his eyes. After a tense second, the warmth faded from them. He lowered his hands wearily. “Spies can still love their husbands?”

  “Yes.”

  “But then leave them without lookin’ back? That takes pure meanness.”

  She felt his rejection as if he’d shoved her physically. “I looked back,” she whispered. “Every step of the way.” Dinah turned from the searing disbelief in his eyes and numbly went to the house.

  A grandfather clock ticked in one corner of the Chase living room and fading afternoon light made the room shadowy. Good smells drifted from the stove in the kitchen. Laurie’s monopoly on the conversation suited Dinah.

  The girl rocked next to her, stroking a big orange cat that purred in her lap. Dinah let her own rocking chair remain still.

  “Do you know who your husband reminds me of?” Laurie asked abruptly. “That writer. Rucker McClure.”

  Dinah jumped. She gathered her wits quickly and replied, “We’ve heard that before. He does look a little like him.”

  “I’ve got all his books. Wait, I’ll show
you.”

  Dinah straightened fearfully, searching her memory as the girl hoisted herself from the rocker and went to a nearby bookcase. How much did Rucker’s publicity photograph resemble him? Laurie withdrew a slender hardback.

  “This is the last one he wrote. It’s my favorite. Hot Grits and Honeysuckle. About bein’ married. It’s got a lot of funny stuff about marriage in it, but you can tell that he really loves his wife.”

  The girl handed the open book to her and pointed at a photograph on the inside cover flap. “He’s older lookin’ than your husband and a little heavier. Plus he wears glasses. Look at that tailored jacket. Bet that tie’s made of silk. He’s a slick-lookin’ devil. Not like your husband. I mean, that’s a compliment.”

  Dinah sighed with relief and tried to smile. “I understand.” Thankfully, she’d encouraged Rucker to dress up for the photograph. The glasses, which he used only for reading, were a last-minute addition. “Now I look like a man who likes poetry instead of Sports Illustrated,” he’d grumbled.

  “Go ahead and read some. I’ll check on supper,” Laurie told her.

  As she left the room, Dinah lovingly smoothed a hand over Rucker’s book. When she’d first met him, he wanted to write about her, but she was distrustful and frightened. Her past contained secrets that he might expose. It had taken a long time for her to understand that Rucker wanted to erase the past and give her a future.

  Now she had to do the same, for him.

  “Bethesda?”

  She glanced around. “Hmmm?” Laurie Chase stood in the kitchen door, clutching the frame.

  “My water broke.”

  Rucker rarely looked clumsy or ill at ease, regardless of the situation. “I feel about as graceful as a rhinoceros on a bicycle,” he muttered tensely, as he bumped furniture and caught his boot toe on a braided rug.

  “Relax, Abe. Everything’s under control. Just put that floor lamp close to the bed.” Dinah looked down at Laurie and patted her hand. “So the doctor says you have a wide pelvis. Good. Me, too. And I didn’t have any trouble.”

  The girl’s eyes fluttered shut. “I wish Sam was here to hold my hand.”

  Rucker set the lamp down and plugged it in. “I’m good at hand holdin’.”

  “I’d like that, Abe.”

  He gingerly sat down by her pillow and grasped the small, calloused hand she raised. “You just hang on to my big ol’ paw and everything’ll be all right, missy.”

  Dinah’s chest tightened at the gentleness in his voice and face. She cleared her throat and smiled at Laurie. “I used to … I call him the human tranquilizer. If you close your eyes and listen to his voice, all your worries will float away.”

  “He has a moose voice,” Laurie observed solemnly. “If a moose could talk, he’d sound like Abe.”

  “Stop. I’m shy,” Rucker protested.

  The girl winced as a new contraction hit her. “Talk to me, Abe. I know, tell me how you and Bethesda met. I love stories about stuff like that.”

  Rucker’s gaze rose to Dinah’s. They shared a strangling look of sorrow. “I’ll go put supper away,” Dinah said quickly. “And clean up the kitchen. And I’ll, hmmm, feed the cat and the chickens. Abe can tell you all about us.”

  She hurried out of the room.

  They leaned against the back of the garden bench, kissing each other slowly and thoroughly.

  He held her and she nestled her head into the crook of his neck. Rucker rested his cheek against hers, his mustache brushing her skin. Under her cool, intellectual exterior was a woman who secretly wanted to have someone rough up her smooth edges, he realized. And he was the perfect man to do the roughing.

  “This is a helluva fantastic first date,” he told her in a low, teasing voice.

  “This isn’t a date,” she argued. “It’s … I don’t know what it is.”

  “But you know what it’s gonna lead to if I hang around your town a few more days.”

  “I have a vague idea. I make no guarantees.”

  But he heard a yearning tone in her protest. Rucker mustered all his restraint to keep from tilting her head back and kissing her longer, deeper, and slower than before.

  “Want me to leave?” he asked.

  “Would you leave if I asked you to?”

  “Of course not.”

  She laughed, sounding resigned but not very upset. “Then I might as well not ask.”

  “I sure am glad you’re so smart.”

  “There’s nothing smart about this. Two people who barely know each other, who are so different—”

  “Who need each other,” he countered. “Who fit together like two spoons in a tray. Who knew that the first night they laid eyes on each other.”

  “I laid eyes on a man with a possum on his head.”

  Rucker sighed confidently. “I’m just perfect. I admit it.” He chuckled, loving the exasperated sigh his comment provoked from her. After a second she began to laugh, too.

  “I think ‘unique’ would be a better description, Mr. McClure.” She paused, then slid one hand across his chest and patted the area over his heart. “Special,” she amended softly.

  Rucker shook off the memory of that night as Laurie’s whimpering cries of pain became louder. He hadn’t told her anything remotely true about his and Dinah’s early courtship. He made up a story, and because he was a master storyteller, she listened and believed. Rucker smoothed a hand over the girl’s damp forehead. Where was Dinah? She’d been outside for more than thirty minutes.

  “Were you with Bethesda when she had y’all’s baby?” Laurie asked in a weak tone.

  Rucker inhaled raggedly and was glad that Laurie had her eyes shut. He was sure that his expression would puzzle and frighten her. “No, I wasn’t.”

  “W-why? She loves you so much, and you’re so s-sweet.”

  Rucker squeezed the girl’s hand and thought bitterly, I don’t know if she loves me or not. She didn’t want me to be with her.

  He heard a door open elsewhere in the house. “I’ll be right back, missy,” he promised.

  “H-hurry.”

  Rucker walked quickly down a hall to the kitchen. Dinah closed the door to the back porch and looked up as he stepped into the room. She frowned comically and pointed to a speck of blood on her wrist.

  “I’ve just had my first encounter with hungry chickens. No one told me that chickens are carnivorous.”

  “Something’s happenin’ with Laurie,” he told her. “Come on. I’m no good at this. I watched my dog have puppies once, and I nearly fainted.”

  Dinah threw her wool poncho on a chair, then ran to the kitchen sink and began scrubbing her hands. She smiled. “But you’re a grown man now.”

  “Hell, I was thirty-two then.”

  The look she gave him was both amused and reassuring. “Go help Laurie sit up. Let her brace her back against you. I’ll be there in a second.”

  He turned to leave, then hesitated. “Dee?”

  “Yes?”

  The anger inside him wouldn’t let the thought rest. “I wish to God I’d been with you when Katie was born.”

  The understanding and sorrow that flooded her eyes shook him to the core. “My darling, I wanted you there more than you can ever imagine.”

  A little stunned, he simply nodded.

  Samuel Chase Jr., was born that evening just after ten o’clock. Both mother and son fared well, and by eleven young Sam was cleaned, fed, and wrapped in a blue baby blanket that had belonged to several generations of the family.

  Dinah and Rucker left him asleep by his mother’s side. They walked wearily to the kitchen and slumped at the table. Dinah put her head on her folded hands.

  Abruptly she felt Rucker’s strong, supple fingers on the back of her neck. “Good work, gal,” he murmured. “I was a great coach, but you were a star quarterback.”

  His touch produced incredible sensations in her tired muscles. “We make a terrific team,” she agreed groggily, then chuckled. “Even if you did keep sayin
g shove instead of push.”

  He laughed too. “Push didn’t do the trick. Not tough enough.”

  “Wasn’t it wonderful?”

  Rucker laughed again. “Different from puppies.” His laughter trailed off and his voice became serious. “Yeah. Even when you know all the biology about it, it still seems like a miracle—that little life growin’ from the love two people share.”

  “When I held Katie the first time, right after she was born, I kept thinking, ‘Rucker and I are together inside this tiny person. Nothing can ever change that. We created a new life that will always hold a part of us.’ It was a miracle, because I felt so close to you even though you were thousands of miles away.”

  She shut her eyes in a grimace of remorse as his fingers quivered against her skin. She sensed all his anguish and unanswered questions. Both she and he were silent for a few seconds. His voice came to her, low and troubled. “Did you hurt as bad as Laurie did?”

  “I’ve forgotten how much. Mother Nature has a way of erasing the memory. But yes, it hurt.”

  “You didn’t have any painkillers?”

  “No.”

  “A doctor?”

  “In the Suradoran jungle? No. A midwife. An Indian woman who’d been trained in nursing.”

  Rucker’s voice became tense. “Wasn’t that a risky way to have our baby?”

  “I didn’t have any choice.”

  She heard his harsh intake of breath. “Because of Valdivia?”

  “Yes.”

  Rucker withdrew his hand. “So you always let him tell you what’s best?” he asked in disgust.

  Dinah struggled for a moment. What else could she say? “Yes.”

  “That’s a helluva cowardly way to live. I’m not sure which I hate worse—you bein’ a traitor to your country or bein’ a slave to a man like Valdivia.”

  Dinah flinched. Their momentary truce had left her open and vulnerable to his attack. She was so tired. So tired of the fear, the loneliness, the worrying about Katie, the hurting for Rucker, the hurting for herself, so tired of the stomach-wrenching frustration from hiding the truth. She couldn’t take anymore of Rucker’s painful insinuations, deserved or not.