Janet Tronstad – Alaskan Sweethearts (страница 8)

Her vision was still a touch blurry and she licked her lips for the moisture. She put her hand up to her forehead. She’d had too much heat as well as too little food. No one had told her that the only car left on the lot in Billings was the last to be rented because the air conditioner didn’t work. Of course, it would not have made any difference if she had known. She would have taken it; she’d had to get here and she would have traveled in an ox cart to do it if necessary.

They were quiet for another moment and Scarlett told herself she was okay. She felt better out in the open air instead of inside the café.

“My grandfather is a cheat,” Hunter finally confessed as he stood there looking down the street with her again. “I don’t like it, but there you have it.”

He turned sideways to look at her, faint embarrassment on his face. He was obviously reluctant to admit what he had told her.

“And you?”

“People treat us like we all are crooks. The whole family,” he added. “But my brothers and I aren’t.”

She tried to answer, but she couldn’t. Her mouth wouldn’t work.

“I thought you should know,” he added, and she saw his eyes suddenly narrow.

Scarlett swayed then and the porch started to spin. She tried to blink the fuzziness away, but it didn’t leave. She reached out to steady herself but there was nothing there again except the man’s arm. She clutched him.

“You’re sure you’re okay?” Hunter asked as he moved in to catch her.

It took her some time to catch her breath.

“Of course I am,” she finally managed to say. She still held his arm, but she told herself it wasn’t necessary. “I’m a Murphy.”

She had gladly taken back her maiden name after her divorce.

Hunter’s cotton shirtsleeve hid hard cords of muscle in his forearm and he kept her upright with no visible effort. She felt the muscles flex as he moved to better support her.

“How hot was it in that car of yours?”

She kept herself upright long enough to glare at him.

“I’m fine.”

He grunted in disbelief, turning her slightly and guiding her toward a weathered wooden stool that sat on the edge of the porch. She hadn’t noticed the paint-spattered thing until now, it blended so well with everything around it. For a moment she saw the legendary Jacobson charm her grandmother had spoken about. Hunter had a fine growth of black whiskers on his chiseled face. His scars were lighter when not in the direct sun. His eyes held a knowing sympathy. His lips were smiling. His manner beckoned her toward him.

She sat and he went to his pickup, coming back with a bottle of water and a nut bar of some kind. “Here. Drink and eat.”

She did so and she felt better.

“You need water in this kind of heat,” he said.

She nodded.

“Soda doesn’t work,” he added.

A few minutes later she stood. She wasn’t going to lose out on the chance to claim this land for her family just because she had a little problem with dizziness. Hunter kept looking at her anxiously, though, and he had his hand out to catch her if she should fall.

“Careful now,” he said.

“I’m fine. Strong, too. I’ll be able to work that farm your grandfather has for us.”

“I’ll admit I think you could do it,” he said, facing her and then taking a breath. “But you won’t have the chance. My grandfather can’t be trusted with a contract. Something is wrong with it even if we don’t know what it is yet.”

He kept his voice so low she had to lean closer to hear. She half thought he’d said that about her being able to do it just to sweeten her up for the rest. His dark eyes looked serious in the shadow of his hat brim.

He could be lying, though.

“If your grandfather is such a cheat, why isn’t he in jail?” she asked.

“One of these days he’s going to step over the line and I won’t be able to bail him out. Then he will be. I don’t know what we’ll do then.”

Something about the tone of his voice made her suspect he was telling the truth. She heard his reluctance and his shame. This was hard for him.

“It could even be today,” Hunter added.

Scarlett pondered that for a moment. “I don’t see how. I’m not paying him anything for the land. I read the contract he sent. It sounded solid. I even had my baby sister, Carly, who’s a paralegal—well, almost a paralegal—take a look at it and she thought it was fine. My other sister, Fiona, thought it looked good, too. She’s taken over my wilderness guide business, so she knows contracts. It’s hard to cheat when everything is laid out in black-and-white. Besides, I don’t trust anyone these days, so I can’t be taken in.”

He grunted. “You should have your attorney look at something like that. People can twist things and still be legal. You need to protect yourself.”

She didn’t say anything.

“You mentioned that you had an attorney,” he reminded her. “At least you said you’d sue.”

“I was bluffing.”

“You need to get one, then.”

“Attorneys cost money.” Scarlett felt her cheeks warm. She hadn’t meant to tell him she was broke, but she supposed she had.

“I don’t want you to be disappointed,” Hunter replied and then looked down. “Things like this never turn out good with my grandfather involved.”

“He seems like a nice old man,” she said. “Looks a lot like Santa Claus.”

“He could look like the Easter bunny,” Hunter agreed, his voice sounding tired, but at least he was making eye contact with her again. “Doesn’t mean he can hop worth beans. He is a nice man, but he should stay home and...and play solitaire or something. He’s past ninety. What’s he doing things like this for?”

Scarlett suddenly felt a jolt of empathy for Hunter. He was worried about his grandfather doing himself harm. She knew how that felt after her concerns about her grandmother. The older woman no longer listened to reason, either, but Scarlett had to try. When children lost their parents and were raised by their grandparents, the older ones were everything to them. She would have reached over and touched Hunter’s arm in understanding, but he was staring past her, down the road again.

“My granny told me to watch my step around your grandfather,” she said to comfort him. “That if he couldn’t sweet-talk me out of something, he’d trick me into giving it to him. But I’m not going to let him have a chance to do either. A person has to trust the con man before she can be swindled and I don’t trust anyone but my grandmother—and maybe my two sisters.”

Hunter looked at her for a moment, his eyes changing from caution to astonishment.

“You have to trust more people than that,” he finally said. “Believe me, I’ve tried—” He stopped and took a breath. “What I mean is that you have neighbors. Friends. A woman needs—”

She shook her head. “Being a woman has nothing to do with it. I don’t see why I need to trust anyone.”

“Being a mother means you do, though,” he said. Then he paused for a minute, just looking at her.

“I’m surprised you don’t have Joey accompanied by more than a teddy bear,” he added finally, shaking his head. “I’d think you’d have guard dogs.”

She acknowledged his words. “Don’t think I haven’t thought about it.”

“Surely your grandmother...” he began.

“She’s the reason I haven’t gathered those guard dogs,” Scarlett said, relieved to tell the man what kind of a person he was up against. “She believes no one is so bad that they can’t change. It agitates her if I say otherwise.”

“I know a woman who says the same—that with the good Lord’s help any of us can start over.”

“Hallelujah,” Scarlett said drily. So he had a woman. She should have known.

“She taught me in Sunday school when I was a boy,” Hunter added. “Mrs. Hargrove is her name. I stopped going to church for years, but I always remembered what she told me and a year ago I made my peace with God and started going again. My grandfather and I both did.”

Scarlett tried hard not to be pleased that Mrs. Hargrove wasn’t a romantic interest. Still, she didn’t want any misunderstandings.

“I’m not much on church myself,” she said. “I still believe in God, but it just doesn’t add up right. God does let people down. And, sometimes, He refuses to help those who ask. I know. It’s happened to me. What kind of God is that?”

Hunter smiled wryly. “He’s not a celestial vending machine, if that’s what you mean. I know that much. You don’t just put in a prayer and wait for the request you ordered to come shooting out. Life is more difficult than that. God is more complex. We are more flawed.”

He said the last in a whisper, as though it pained him.

“What do you mean?”

He shrugged. “Just that sometimes we mess up and there’s no going back to fix it.”

“Oh.” Scarlett waited for him to say more, but he didn’t. “I’m just saying it would be nice to have help sometimes.”

She still felt she was a Christian, which was the cruel part of all this. She couldn’t help believing in Him. But she no longer trusted that He was there to help when she needed Him. She wasn’t going to tell that to Hunter, though. Not if he wasn’t going to tell her what had happened to put that look on his face. Anyway, she had to live in the real world if she was going to protect her son. She couldn’t rely on anyone, and especially not a God who never seemed to show up.