Birthright by Nora Roberts
“Name it.”
“Look after my woman and her kid while I’m gone?”
“Happy to.”
“Just a minute.” Flustered, Lana shut the file. “Jake has enough to do without worrying about me, and I’m not sure how I feel about being referred to as ‘your woman.’ ”
“You started it. She’s the one who asked me out.”
“To dinner. For God’s sake.”
“Then she just kept reeling me in.” Doug bit into a hot dog, talked around it. “Now she’s hooked me, she doesn’t know what to do about it.”
“Reeling you in.” Speechless, Lana picked up Callie’s beer and drank.
“Anyway, I’d feel better knowing you’re looking out for her and Ty while I’m gone. When I get back,” he added, “maybe you’ll have figured out what to do with me.”
“Oh, I’m getting some pretty good ideas right now.”
“Kind of cute, aren’t they?” Callie swooped a finger through icing, licked it off. “You lovebirds are really perking me up.”
“Then I’m really sorry I can’t stay until you’re rolling with laughter and cheer, but I need to get home to Ty. The updates are in the file. If you have any questions, call.”
“I’ll follow you home.” Doug rose, then offered a hand to help Lana to her feet.
As if surprised to find it in her hand, Lana handed the beer back to Callie. “How long will the two of you be here tonight?”
“Matt and Digger relieve us at two.”
Lana looked toward the mounds of dirt, the holes and trenches, the pond, the trees. “I can’t say I’d enjoy spending the best part of the night out here. Whatever the circumstances.”
“I can’t say I’d enjoy spending the best part of the day in Saks. Whatever the circumstances.” Callie lifted her beer. “We all have our little phobias.”
Doug waited while Lana settled Tyler in for the night. He spent the time studying the photographs she had scattered over her bookshelves. Particularly one of Lana leaning back against a fair-haired man with his arms snug around her waist.
Steven Campbell, he thought. They looked good together. Relaxed, easy, happy.
The kid had his father’s eyes, Doug decided, and slid his hands into his pockets to stop himself from picking the photograph up. And the way he was grinning, the way he rested his chin on the top of Lana’s head transmitted fun and affection, and intimacy.
“He was a terrific guy,” Lana said quietly. She walked to the shelf, took down the picture. “His brother took this. We were visiting his family and had just announced that I was pregnant. It was one of the most perfect moments of my life.”
She set the picture down gently.
“I was just thinking how good you look together. And that Ty’s got a little of both of you. Your mouth, his eyes.”
“Steve’s charm, my temper. He made so many plans when Ty was born. Ball games and bicycles. Steve loved being a father, and was so much more immediately tuned to parenthood than I was. Sometimes, I think, because he was only going to be given such a short time to be one, he was somehow able to pack years into those short months with Ty.”
“He loved you both. You can see it right here, in the way he’s holding you both.”
“Yes.” She turned away, surprised and shaken that Doug could see and understand that from a snapshot.
“I’m not looking to take his place with you, Lana. Or with Ty. I know a lot about how impossible it is to step into a hole that’s been left behind. When I was a kid I thought I could, even that I should. Instead, all I could do was watch my parents break apart, and that hole grow deeper and wider. I had a lot of anger because of that, anger I didn’t even recognize. So I moved away from the source of the anger, geographically, emotionally. Stayed away for longer and longer periods.”
“It must’ve been so hard for you.”
“Harder now that she’s back, because it makes me look at my whole life differently. I didn’t stand by my parents, or anyone else for that matter.”
“Doug, that’s not true.”
“It’s absolutely true.” It was important she knew that, he realized, understood that. And understood he was ready to change. “I walked away from them because I couldn’t—wouldn’t live with a ghost. Because I figured I wasn’t important enough to keep them together—and I blamed them for it. I blamed them,” he admitted. “I walked away from every potential relationship since. I’ve never, as an adult, had a real home or tried to make one. I never wanted children because that meant responsibility and worry.”
He stepped to her now, took her hands. “I don’t want to take his place. But I want a chance to make a place with you, and with Ty.”
“Doug—”
“I’m going to ask you to give me that chance. I’m going to ask you to think about that while I’m gone.”
“I don’t know if I can let myself love someone like that again.” Her fingers gripped his, but they weren’t steady. “I don’t know if I have the courage.”
“I look at you, at this place, at that boy sleeping upstairs, and I don’t have any doubts about your courage.” He kissed her forehead, her cheeks, her lips. “Take some time and think about it. We’ll talk when I get back.”
“Stay here tonight.” She wrapped her arms around him and held on. “Stay tonight.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. Yes, I’m sure.”
Callie worked on her laptop until dark, then stretched out to stare up at the stars and plot out her next workday in her mind. She would complete the excavation of the woman’s skeleton, then supervise its transfer to the lab. She’d continue to work horizontally in that sector.
Leo was due in, so she would pass all film and reports on to him.
She and Jake needed to do another survey and update the plotting.
She’d have to take a look at the long-range weather forecast and prepare accordingly.
Right now it looked to continue warm and clear for the next few days. Perfect digging weather, with temps rarely getting past the low eighties and the humidity returning to civilized levels.
She let herself drift, automatically tuning out the country music Jake had playing on low and concentrating on the night sounds. A quiet whoosh of a car on the road to the north of the field, the occasional plop of a frog or fish in the waters of the pond to the south.
The beagle from the farm just west was beginning to bay at the rising moon.
Lana didn’t know what she was missing, Callie thought, enjoying the cool fingers of air tickling her cheeks. There was an utter peace here, in the night, in the open, that couldn’t be found anywhere within walls.
She was stretched out on ground where others had slept. Year by century by era. And beneath her, the earth held more secrets than civilization would ever find.
But what they did find would always fascinate.
She could hear the faint scratch of Jake’s pencil over paper. He’d sketch by the light of his Coleman lantern, she thought, sometimes late into the night. She often wondered why he hadn’t pursued art rather than science. What had caused him to choose to study man instead of translating him onto canvas?
And why had she never asked?
She opened one eye, studying him in the lamplight.
He was relaxed, she thought. She could tell by the line of his jaw, his mouth. He’d taken off his hat, and that light breeze danced his hair back from his face as he sketched.
“Why didn’t you make a living out of that? Out of, you know, art?”
“Not good enough.”
She rolled over on her stomach. “Art wasn’t good enough, or you weren’t?”
“Both. Painting, if that’s what you mean, didn’t interest me enough to give it the time and study it required. Not to mention it wouldn’t have been macho enough for me when I started college. Bad enough I never intended to work the family ranch, but then to work at becoming a painter? Jesus, my old man would’ve died of embarrassment.”
Jake glanced over, then flipped a page on his sketch pad and started another. “He wouldn’t have stopped me, or tried to. But he wouldn’t have understood it. I wouldn’t have either. Men in my family work the land, or with horses, with cattle. We don’t work in offices or the arts. I was the first in my family to earn a college degree.”
“I never knew that.”
He shrugged. “Just the way it is. I got interested in anthropology when I was a kid. To keep me out of trouble, my parents let me go to a couple of knap-ins in the summer. It was a big gift because they needed me on the ranch. And sending me to college because I wanted to go was a big sacrifice, even with the scholarships.”
“Are they proud of you?”
He was silent for a moment. “The last time I was home, I guess about five, six months ago, I just swung by. Didn’t let them know I was coming. My mother put an extra plate on the table. Well, two, one for Digger. My father came in, shook my hand. We ate, talked about the ranch, the family, what I’d been doing. I hadn’t seen them in nearly a year, but it was just like I’d been there the day before. No fatted calf, if you get me. But later on, I happened to glance at the shelf in the living room. There were two books on anthropology there, mixed in with my father’s Louis L’Amours. It meant a lot to me to see that, to know they’d been reading about what I do.”
She brushed a hand over his ankle. “That’s the nicest story you’ve ever told me about them.”
“Here.” He turned the pad over so she could see. “It’s rough, but it’s pretty close to what they look like.”
She saw a sketch of a woman with a long face, quiet eyes with lines dug at the corners, and a mouth just barely curved into a smile. Her hair was long, straight, streaked with gray. The man had strong cheekbones, a straight nose and a serious mouth. His eyes were deep-set and his face weathered as if from sun and time.
“You look like him.”
“Some.”
“If you sent this to them, they’d frame it and hang it on the wall.”
“Get out.”
She glanced up in time to catch the baffled embarrassment on his face, and in time to jerk the pad out of his reach. “Bet. A hundred bucks says if you send this to them, it’s framed and on the wall the next time you go home. You can mail it in the morning. Any water in the cooler?”
“Probably.” He scowled at her, then shifted to open it. He stayed turned away for so long, she kicked him in the ankle.
“Is there or not?”
“Yeah. Found some.” He turned back. “Somebody’s in the woods with a flashlight.” He spoke in the same casual tone as he handed her the water.
Her eyes stayed locked with his for a beat, then shifted over his shoulder. Even as her heart kicked in her chest, she unscrewed the cap on the bottle, lifted it for a drink as she watched the beam of light move through the silhouettes of trees.
“Could be kids, or your general species of assholes.”
“Could be. Why don’t you go in the trailer, call the sheriff?”
“Why?” Slowly, Callie capped the bottle again. “Because if I do, you’ll head out there without me. And if it turns out to be a couple of Bubbas in training hoping to spook the flatlanders, I’m the one who’ll look like the idiot. We’ll check it out first. Both of us.”
“The last time you went into the woods, you came out with a concussion.”
Like Jake, she continued to follow the progress of the beam of light. “And you dodged bullets. We keep sitting here like this, they could shoot us like ducks in a pond if that’s the goal.” She slid her hand into her pack, closed her fingers over the handle of a trowel. “We go to the trailer and make the call together, or we go into the woods and check it out together.”
He looked down at her hand. “I see which has your vote.”
“Dolan and Bill were both alone. If whoever’s out there is looking to repeat the performance, he’ll have to deal with two of us.”
“All right.” He reached down, pulled a knife out of his boot and had Callie’s eyes widening.
“Jesus Christ, Graystone, when did you start carrying?”
“Right after somebody shot at me. We stay together. Agreed?”
“Absolutely.”
He picked up a flashlight as they rose. “Got your cell phone on you?”
“Yeah, in my pocket.”
“Keep it handy. He’s moving east. Let’s give him something to think about.”
Jake switched on the light, aimed it at the oncoming beam. As that beam turned fast and wide to the west, both he and Callie rushed forward. They swung around the edge of the dig, toward the bank of the pond where the trees began their stand.
“He’s heading toward the road.” Instinctively Callie veered in the same direction. “We can cut him off.”
They plunged into the trees, following the bounce of the beam. She leaped over a fallen log, pumped her legs to match Jake’s longer stride.
Then cursed as he did as the beam they chased switched off.
He held up a hand to signal silence.
She closed her eyes, concentrated on sounds. And heard the fast slap of feet on ground. “He changed directions again.” She pointed.
“We’ll never catch him. He’s got too much of a lead.”
“So we just let him go?”
“We made our point.” Still, Jake shone his light back and forth. “Stupid for him to be out here with a light to begin with. A moron could figure one of us would spot it.”
Even as he said the words, the import of them struck both of them. “Oh shit,” was all Callie said as she spun on her heel and began to race back.
Seconds later, the first explosion split the air.
“The trailer.” Jake watched the tongue of flame shoot skyward. “Son of a bitch.”
Callie came out of the trees at a dead run, thinking only of reaching the fire extinguisher in her car. Her body hit the ground with an impact that jarred bones as Jake fell on top of her.
Even as she tried to lift her head, Jake shoved it down again, shielded it with his arms. “Propane!” he shouted.
And the world exploded.
Heat swooped over her, a burning hand that seared her skin and stole her breath. Through the ringing of her ears she heard something scream by and crash into the ground. Tiny points of flame showered down like rain.
Debris followed, spraying the air like shrapnel, thudding to the ground in twisted, flaming balls.
Her mind, gone numb, snapped back to alert when she felt Jake’s body jerk.
“Get off, get off, get off!” She bucked, rolled, shoved, and still he kept her trapped under him.
“Stay down. Just stay down.” His voice was raw and terrified her more than the explosion or the burning rain.
When he finally rolled away, she shoved up to her knees. Smoldering wreckage lay scattered around them, and what was left of the trailer burned madly. She leaped toward Jake as he tore off his smoking shirt.
“You’re bleeding. Let me see how bad. Are you burned? Jesus, are you burned?”
“Not much.” Though he wasn’t entirely sure of that. But the searing pain in his arm was from a gash, not from burns. “Better call nine-one-one.”
“You call.” She wrenched the phone out of her back pocket. Put it in his hand. “Where’s the flashlight? Where’s the fucking flashlight?”
But by the red light of the fire, she could see the wound in his arm would need medical attention. She crawled around him to study his back, running her trembling fingers over it.
Scratches, she told herself. Just some scratches and some minor burns. “I’ll get the first-aid kit out of the Rover.”
She scrambled up, tore off in a run. Calm, she ordered herself as she yanked the door open. She had to be calm, stop the bleeding, give the wound a field dressing, get him to the ER.