Summer of Fire - Linda Jacobs [93]
“I’ll be there first thing in the morning.”
As she placed the phone back in the cradle, Steve called from down the hall, “I’ll bed down on the sofa.” The hard note in his voice said the evening was over.
With a sigh, she picked up the picture of his wife. When Clare was ten, her mother had insisted on piano lessons. Although Miss Bryan had been diligent at teaching the perfect arch and placement of the hands, Clare had never really had any talent.
Susan Sandlin Haywood’s sinewy fingers looked perfect.
In the corner of the frame was a miniature of a newborn, the kind they took in hospitals. Christa’s tiny pink face crinkled, her mouth open in a yawn.
Tears pricked Clare’s eyelids. Here she’d been thinking of going to Steve, when he wasn’t over the loss of his wife. Wasn’t that her damned luck this summer? Coming to Yellowstone had seemed a grand escape; fight the big fires that made the national news while clearing her head. Instead, she’d screwed up big time. Tried to lead the troops and ended up in a tiny silver shelter fighting for her life.
She climbed into Steve’s bed and reluctantly admitted that had things been different she might have shared it with him.
Tossing until three, she fell into a sleep tormented by crimson light, the strobe effect of the flapping shelter, and the charred smell of burnt flesh.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
September 5
Clare awoke with the fear she’d already missed Devon’s plane. She dressed and hurried down the hall to find rose light coming in the window over Steve’s kitchen sink.
He stood barefoot at the counter in a faded cotton shirt and jeans, putting coffee beans into a grinder. His sleep-tossed hair looked somehow intimate. He gave her a glance and bent to his task, pressing a button and sending up a delicious aroma of fresh ground. The high-pitched whine prevented her from speaking.
When he released the control, silence fell.
“Morning already,” she ventured.
He dumped the grounds into a glass pot without ceremony.
After all that had happened between them, she’d been hoping he’d be over Deering’s middle-of-the-night call.
The copper kettle on the stove whistled.
Turning his back, Steve poured boiling water. The kettle went back on the stove with a clank. When he moved the coffee pot on the tile-topped counter, it clinked. She wondered if he’d cracked it.
Last night his coughing from the smoke he’d inhaled had interrupted her fitful sleep. Knowing he was awake had made it worse, the two of them separated by fifteen feet and the infinite gulf that Susan’s picture and Deering’s call had created.
Steve finally looked at her. Leaning back against the counter, he folded his arms across his chest. “What did he want?”
Quick anger shot through her. She’d left Deering to come home with Steve. She’d gone to his bedroom, her heart beating hard . . . and found a dead woman with the power to keep them apart.
Clare crossed her arms over her own yellow-shirted chest. “I told you I have to be in Jackson to meet Devon. The south entrance is closed, so he’s flying me down.”
“I could have driven you through Idaho.” His voice rose.
“I’m not sure we could make it on time,” Clare excused. “He’ll be here in a few minutes.” Now that she knew Steve was this upset, she wished she could change her mind and let him take her.
He slammed his fist on the tiles. “Dammit, Clare, he’s a married man.”
Her face went hot and the ancient linoleum seemed to tilt.
What else have you lied to me about? Deering had not answered when she’d asked that at West Yellowstone Airport. “If he is . . . “
“Count on it.”
“I was going to ask . . . “ She controlled herself with an effort. “What business is it of yours? Last night you preferred to sleep with your memories.”
He crossed to her in three swift steps and his hands came down hard on her shoulders. “What business of mine? Nothing, except that I was a damned fool . . . sitting on that mountain dreaming. And all the time that S.O.B. was on the make, married or not.”
A faint ‘whump whump’ came through the open kitchen window.
Steve let her go and busied