True Heart. Peggy Nicholson

and there already gleaming golden—getting late. Too late. Jim will have ridden out by now. But maybe Whitey would still be puttering around the kitchen. He’d have some harsh things to say about Richard; he’d never approved of her marrying a lawyer. Harsh things to say to her, too. Kaley smiled. Coming home.

      “And here we are,” she informed her tiny passenger as a line of barbed wire slanted down the hill to define the border of Cotter land. She frowned—a post leaning badly there, hadn’t Jim noticed? At least now he’ll have some help. She ought to be able to ride and work till Christmas, anyway, as long as she was careful. She certainly meant to pull her weight—her lips curved in a rueful grin. Guess that’ll just get harder and harder, for a while. Still, though she was claiming sanctuary, she had no intention of being a burden.

      At last she came to the private road to the ranch. The house wasn’t visible yet, but after her car topped the second low rise, she looked down into the valley and let out an audible sigh. Home at last!

      IT WAS EIGHT BY THE CLOCK in her car when Kaley stepped out, stretched her aching limbs and trudged to the kitchen door. Suddenly she was just as glad Jim would likely not be home. She was too tired to explain anything. Tonight, after she’d slept, would be soon enough.

      She entered via the back door and walked through the mudroom, then stopped in the kitchen doorway. “Jim!” Dressed, not in his usual Wranglers and boots, but in a pair of town-going trousers and, wonder of wonders, an ironed shirt. His hair not as shaggy as usual, but clipped close to his head.

      “Kaley! You got my—” Her brother paused, frowning, to set the mug of coffee he’d been drinking on the counter. “You can’t have gotten it yet.”

      “Gotten what?” She stood blinking stupidly, still waiting for the whoop and a hug that should be coming.

      Jim made no move to close the gap between them. “My letter. But there’s no way, when I only mailed it yest—” The scowl on his tanned face deepened. “Whitey called you! Why, that old mule-headed, son of a—”

      “Nobody called me. What’s going on?” She nodded at his clothes. “Somebody died?” A funeral. That could be the only explanation for such attire on a workday.

      “No.” At last he moved toward her, to brush the skin under her lashes with one work-hardened fingertip. “You look done in, sis. Come sit down. Want a cup of coffee?” He guided her toward the kitchen table, swung a chair out for her.

      She stared at the battered canvas duffel bag that rested on the floor beside it. Their father’s air force bag. It had survived Vietnam along with him, then come home to be bequeathed, years later, to his son.

      The bag looked stuffed full. Her eyes skated along the scarred linoleum from the bag to Jim’s unbooted feet. “Jim, what’s— You sent me a letter about…what?”

      “Here. Sit.” He pressed her into the chair, moved his bag out to the mudroom—as if she’d forget about it!—then busied himself, avoiding her searching gaze, fixing her a mug of coffee from the pot on the stove. “Guess you missed it. My letter’s probably hitting your mailbox today. But what are you doing here?”

      Apparently she’d have to talk first. She let out a long-suffering sigh and propped her face in her hands. “That’s not my mailbox anymore, Jim. Not my address. I’ve left Richard. Divorced him yesterday in Vegas.”

      The mug Jim had been offering her dropped from his fingers—smashed on the floor, hot coffee spattering their feet and ankles. He stood gaping, then closed his eyes, shook his head and said softly, fervently, “Crap… Crap, crap, tell me you’re joking!”

      “No joke.” She could understand surprise—she was still in shock herself—but horror? “You never liked him anyway, so— Jim, what’s wrong?”

      He crunched through the bits of pottery to yank out the chair opposite hers and collapse into it. “Crap.” He broke into bitter laughter, then stopped abruptly. “Who says Cotters never have any luck? It’s just that it’s all the wrong kind of—”

      She smacked the table flat-handed. “Tell…me…what…was in that letter?” He lost that black smile; his dark eyebrows flew together, and she added hastily, “Please? What did you want to tell me?”

      His eyes stopped flashing and dropped to the table. He reached for the sugar bowl, lifted the lid and clinked it aimlessly back into place. “Monday after next, Kaley, what date is that?”

      “Hey, I’ve driven all night. I’m too tired for guessing games.”

      “It’s my birthday. My twenty-eighth.”

      She studied his face, the same dark-lashed, navy-blue eyes as her own, meeting hers half in pain, half in angry challenge. What was she missing here? “Yes. I’d forgotten.”

      “I’ll be twenty-eight, Kaley.” He scowled when she still didn’t get it. “You can’t join the air force any older than that.”

      “Oh…Jim!” He hadn’t mentioned that ambition in years, not since she went away to college. She’d assumed it was simply a teenager’s dream, long left behind. He’d grown up on their father’s tales of his flying adventures in the war. Hadn’t Jim noticed, as she had, how carefully those tales had been edited? Their father had told them of the good times—the wonderful friendships forged in wartime, the sun on snowy clouds like castles in the air, the feel of a jet answering as sweetly to the yoke as the best cutting horse to the rein, the thrill of night landings on an aircraft carrier in the open sea.

      But Kaley had seen her father’s face when Jim had asked him what it was like to loose a clip of bombs on a peasant village—the instant change of subject and mood. Hadn’t Jim once stopped to think that their father had left that all behind as quick as he could? He hadn’t stayed in the service; he’d done his duty, then come straight home to Colorado, back to what mattered. “I didn’t realize,” she said carefully as Jim continued to glare his defiance. “I thought—”

      “That I’d grown out of all that? Changed my mind, decided I’d rather punch cows the rest of my life than pilot a jet? You’ve always believed what you want to believe. Dad needed somebody and it wasn’t going to be you—you’d already run off to college and married your city slicker. So who did that leave holding the bag?”

      “But Dad couldn’t do it alone.” The illness that had finally claimed him had sapped his strength for years before the end. “There was no way he could have kept the ranch going without your help.”

      “I know that.” Jim rubbed a big hand tiredly up his face. “And I didn’t begrudge it while he was here. But he’s gone now, so what about my dreams?”

      What could she say to that? “If I’d known you had any—” She stopped at his harsh laughter. “I mean any apart from ranching. But you didn’t tell me, Jim. I thought you loved it here.”

      “You thought I felt the way you do,” he said flatly. “Just because I didn’t whine didn’t mean I was happy.”

      She let out a slow breath. Another thing she hadn’t seen, just as she’d missed Richard’s true feelings about children. Was she that selfish and blind?

      “I tried to make a go of it,” Jim continued, lifting the lid to the sugar bowl once more and dropping it, raising it and clinking it down again. “Tried hard since Dad was gone. I don’t want to lose this place any more than you do. But I don’t want to be chained to it, Kaley. Looking up when the jets fly over from Colorado Springs, wishing I was up there, not stuck down here with a jar full of pink-eye ointment and an irrigation ditch to muck out.”

      She put her knuckles to her mouth and bit down, thinking hard. “Will it help any now that I’m back? That should free up some of your time. Maybe we could go halves on the chores…” At least, once her baby was delivered they could, if Jim would be patient that long. “If you took private flying lessons, maybe rented a plane?” But that could hardly be cheap and money had been tight around the ranch for years; they