Her mouth lifted a little at the edges. “Guff didn’t keep secrets from me. Don’t you know better than that? He used to say whatever he couldn’t tell me, he would rather not know himself.”
Jo’s voice changed when she talked about her late husband. The tone was softer, more rounded, and her love sounded in every word.
He squeezed her fingers. What a blessing for both Guff and Jo that they had found each other, even if it had been too late in life for the children they had both always wanted. Though they married in their forties, they had figured out a way to build the family they wanted by taking in foster children who had nowhere else to go.
“I suppose that’s as good a philosophy for a marriage as any,” he said.
“Yes. That and the advice of Lyndon B. Johnson. Only two things are necessary to keep one’s wife happy, Guff used to say. One is to let her think she is having her own way. The other, to let her have it.”
He laughed, just as he knew she intended. Jo smiled along with him and lifted her face to the late-morning sunshine. He checked to make sure the colorful throw was still tucked across her lap, though it was a beautiful autumn day, warmer than usual for October.
They sat on Adirondack chairs canted just so in the back garden of Winder Ranch for a spectacular view of the west slope of the Tetons. Surrounding them were mums and yarrow and a few other hardy plants still hanging on. Most of the trees were nearly bare but a few still clung tightly to their leaves. As he remembered, the stubborn elms liked to hang on to theirs until the most messy, inconvenient time, like just before the first hard snowfall, when it became a nightmare trying to rake them up.
Mindful of Tess’s advice, he was keeping a careful eye on Jo and her stamina level. So far, she seemed to be managing her pain. She seemed content to sit in her garden and bask in the unusual warmth.
He wasn’t used to merely sitting. In Seattle, he always had someone clamoring for his attention. His assistant, his board of directors, his top-level executives. Someone always wanted a slice of his time.
Quinn couldn’t quite ascertain whether he found a few hours of enforced inactivity soothing or frustrating. But he did know he savored this chance to store away a few more precious memories of Jo.
She lifted her thin face to the sunshine. “We won’t have too many more days like this, will we? Before we know it, winter will be knocking on the door.”
That latent awareness that she probably wouldn’t make it even to Thanksgiving—her favorite holiday—pierced him.
He tried to hide his reaction but Jo had eyes like a red-tailed hawk and was twice as focused.
“Stop that,” she ordered, her mouth suddenly stern.
“What?”
“Feeling sorry for me, son.”
He folded her hand in his, struck again by the frailty of it, the pale skin and the thin bones and the tiny blue veins pulsing beneath the papery surface.
“You want the truth, I’m feeling more sorry for myself than you.”
Her laugh startled a couple of sparrows from the bird feeder hanging in the aspens. “You always did have a bit of a selfish streak, didn’t you?”
“Damn right.” He managed a tiny grin in response to her teasing. “And I’m selfish enough to wish you could stick around forever.”
“For your sake and the others, I’m sorry for that. But don’t be sad on my account, my dear. I have missed my husband sorely every single, solitary moment of the past three years. Soon I’ll be with him again and won’t have to miss him anymore. Why would anyone possibly pity me?”
He would have given a great deal for even a tiny measure of her faith. He hadn’t believed much in a just and loving God since the nightmare day his parents died.
“I only have one regret,” Jo went on.
He made a face. “Only one?” He could have come up with a couple dozen of his own regrets, sitting here in the sunshine on a quiet Cold Creek morning.
“Yes. I’m sorry my children—and that’s what you all are, you know—have never found the kind of joy and love Guff and I had.”
“I don’t think many people have,” he answered. “What is it they say? Often imitated, never duplicated? What the two of you had was something special. Unique.”
“Special, yes. Unique, not at all. A good marriage just takes lots of effort on both parts.” She tilted her head and studied him carefully. “You’ve never even been serious about a woman, have you? I know you date plenty of beautiful women up there in Seattle. What’s wrong with them all?”
He gave a rough laugh. “Not a thing, other than I have no desire to get married.”
“Ever?”
“Marriage isn’t for me, Jo. Not with my family history.”
“Oh, poof.”
He laughed at the unexpectedness of the word.
“Poof?”
“You heard me. You’re just making excuses. Never thought I raised any of my boys to be cowards.”
“I’m not a coward,” he exclaimed.
“What else would you call it?”
He didn’t answer, though a couple of words that came immediately to mind were more along the lines of smart and self-protective.
“Yes, you had things rough,” Jo said after a moment. “I’m not saying you didn’t. It breaks my heart what some people do to their families in the name of love. But plenty of other people have things rough and it doesn’t stop them from living their life. Why, take Tess, for instance.”
He gave a mental groan. Bad enough that he couldn’t seem to stop thinking about her all morning. He didn’t need Jo bringing her up now. Just the sound of her name stirred up those weird, conflicting emotions inside him all over again. Anger and that subtle, insistent, frustrating attraction.
He pushed them all away. “What do you mean, take Tess?”
“That girl. Now she has an excuse to lock her heart away and mope around feeling sorry for herself for the rest of her life. But does she? No. You’ll never find a happier soul in all your days. Why, what she’s been through would have crushed most women. Not our Tess.”
What could she possibly have been through that Jo deemed so traumatic? She was a pampered princess, daughter of one of the wealthiest men in town, the town’s bank president, apparently adored by everyone.
She couldn’t know what it was like to have to call the police on your own father or hold your mother as she breathed her last.
Before he could ask Jo to explain, she began to cough—raspy, wet hacking that made his own chest hurt just listening to it.
She covered her mouth with a folded handkerchief from her pocket as the coughing fit went on for what seemed an eon. When she pulled the cloth away, he didn’t miss the red spots speckling the white linen.
“I’m going to carry you inside and call Easton.”
Jo shook her head. “No,” she choked out. “Will pass. Just…minute.”
He gave her thirty more seconds, then reached for his cell phone. He started to hit Redial to reach Easton when he realized Jo’s coughs were dwindling.
“Told you…would pass,” she said after a moment. During the coughing attack, what little color there was in her features had seeped out and she looked as if she might blow away if the wind picked up even a knot or two.
“Let’s get you inside.”
She