Not that J. D. Turner wanted the details of her excruciatingly boring love life. Not that he wanted to even think why the flatness of her statement made him feel an unwanted stab of sympathy coupled with a desire to kiss her all over again.
“I want the truth. A hard concept for you and your sister, I know, but I’m not settling for anything less.”
“Please don’t say anything bad about my sister.”
The sudden ache in her voice, the tenderness nearly undid him more than her emotionless announcement of her upcoming marriage.
“Elana was sick,” she said quietly.
Ah, the truth, finally. “Well, you said she died. I assumed she was sick first.”
“No. She died in a car accident. She was sick all her life. She had a mental disorder.”
“Elana?” he said incredulously.
“Sometimes she hurt the people who loved her. She didn’t mean to.”
“Elana?” he said, again.
Tally nodded. “You probably met her in an upswing. Lots of energy? Incredible enthusiasm? Unbelievable zest for life?”
He was staring at her, openmouthed.
“Everybody loved her when she was like that,” Tally said, almost gently.
“I never said I loved her,” he said fiercely.
“I think you did, though.” No glow to her ears and nose, no color blooming at the base of her slender throat now, when he most needed it!
“That’s ridiculous. Why would you think that?”
“Because of the picture I found.” She faltered. “And because of the way you kissed me when you thought it was her.”
If he’d been a really smart man, he would have hung his Gone Fishin’ sign on the shop door after Stan’s phone call this morning and taken off for a week or two. All this would have blown over by the time he got back.
But he had not done that, and now he bulldozed on, determined to get to the truth, more determined than ever to see Tally Smith riding off into the sunset.
“You still seem to be dodging around the question. Let me put this very simply. What is Tally Smith doing in Dancer, North Dakota?”
“I wanted to find out some things about the man my sister loved.”
He snorted. “She didn’t love me.”
“I think she did. That’s probably why she left you. She started to go down. Loved you enough that she didn’t want you to see it.”
He looked at her closely. Little tears were shining behind her eyes. He wasn’t the only one Elana Smith had caused pain to. Tally had said everyone loved her sister when she was up. He suspected very few people had loved her when she was down.
The last thing he wanted to do was see Tally in a sympathetic light because it blurred his resolve. On the other hand, her man wasn’t chasing her trying to get her hair down, and she had coped with a sick sister.
“I’m sorry she was sick,” he heard himself saying. “I really am, Tally.”
She blinked rapidly, and then said, way too brightly, “Anyway, I’ve found out all I wanted to know. You’ll be happy to know I’m leaving first thing tomorrow morning. No more questions.”
“I am happy to know that,” he said, but he didn’t feel completely happy or completely convinced, either.
“Goodbye, J.D.,” she said. She stuck out her hand.
He made the mistake of taking it. He felt a little shiver of desire for her, the smallest regret it was over before it ever started.
He yanked his hand away and went back down Mrs. Saddlechild’s walk more troubled than when he had gone up it. Something was wrong here.
But he’d gotten what he wanted, an assurance she was leaving. He went home and went back to work. He ate supper and showered, no singing. Unease niggled at the back of his mind, as if he had missed a piece of the puzzle, as if he should know something that he didn’t. He felt as if she had never given him the real answer to why she was here, but that if he just thought hard enough, he would figure it out.
When no answer came, he ordered himself over and over to forget it. But as soon as he let down his guard, the unanswered question filled his mind again.
He went to sleep nursing it.
J.D. woke deep in the night, moonlight painting a wide stripe across his bedroom floor, the cry of a coyote still echoing in the air, lonesome and haunting. He lay still, aware of the deep rise and fall of his own chest, feeling momentarily content.
But then the question he had gone to sleep pondering swept back into his mind, and the contentment was gone, like dust before a broom.
Why was Tally Smith really here? Beyond driving him crazy? And beyond getting the citizenry of Dancer worked up into a nice gossiping frenzy, the likes of which had not been seen since Mary Elizabeth Goodwin, prom queen, had gotten pregnant without the benefit of marriage almost a half-dozen summers ago.
All this nonsense about Tally wanting to see who her sister had loved, about being intrigued by a photograph, just did not add up. Elana might have been compulsive, but her little sister looked cautious, organized, responsible.
The person least likely to act on an impulse.
For some reason Tally Smith was lying, or at the very best, not telling him the full truth. He could see it in her eyes—and in her ears and nose and throat, come to that. In the darkness of his room, he allowed himself the luxury he had not allowed himself during the day. J.D. contemplated the color of her eyes.
They were astounding, shifting from indigo to violet, sending out beacons when she felt guilty and troubled. He thought of that one moment when she had smiled, and a brief light had chased the somberness from her eyes.
The coyote howled again, and the sound shivered in the night, and that shiver went up and down J.D.’s spine, and stopped at the base of his neck. It tickled there, a premonition that his life was about to change in ways he could have never imagined.
Why was she asking people if he liked children?
Had there been the tiniest bit of truth threaded through her statement that Elana had left him an inheritance?
And then he knew. With that clarity that comes in the night sometimes, in those moments partway between sleep and waking, he knew.
He sat up, his heart racing crazily.
He tried to tell himself it couldn’t be, that it was not even possible, but he failed utterly to convince himself. A sense of urgency overcame him, and he tossed back the tangle of sheets and blankets and put his feet on the floor. He hoped the cold would slam him back into reality, but the sense of urgency did not abate.
Cursing, he pulled his jeans from a heap on the floor and yanked them on. He shoved his arms in the sleeves of his shirt as he ran for the truck, not stopping for shoes, barely aware of the rocks digging into his bare feet.
What if she hadn’t waited until morning? What if she was gone already? He didn’t know one single thing about her, except that she was Elana’s sister and that she was from north of the border. How many Smiths would there be?
It wouldn’t matter. If he’d missed her, if she had folded up her tent and slunk away in the night, he would track down every last Smith in Canada, until he had confirmed the truth that had unfolded in his heart and his head a few minutes ago.
He didn’t bother to button the shirt, just started the truck and barreled toward town. Not much law enforcement out this way at the best of times. None at—he