Shadows of Yesterday
Page 22

* * *
Sunday morning was clear, but achingly cold. The wind whistled in from the northwest. Leigh and Sarah were both dressed and ready when Chad rang the bell.
He was standing on the porch, stamping his feet and hunched against the cold despite his shearling coat. “Good morning.”
“Hi,” Leigh said curtly, though her heart turned over at the sight of him. His eyes were as brilliant as the sky. Under the heavy coat was a sport jacket and open-collared sport shirt. His jeans were evidently new and designer cut. “We’re ready, but I need to bundle Sarah up.” Leigh was already wearing her coat.
He stepped inside. “Does this go?” he asked of the enormous diaper bag packed to capacity.
“Yes,” she answered over her shoulder as she wrapped Sarah in a voluminous blanket.
“How long were you planning on staying?” he teased. Leigh straightened, holding the squirming bundle in her arms, and met his laughing eyes. She tried not to, but couldn’t help returning his smile. “Ready?” she nodded. “Let’s go. I’ll lock the door.”
Leigh came to a halt halfway down the sidewalk when she saw a sleek midnight-blue Ferrari parked at her curb. She turned to Chad and looked at him sardonically.
“Don’t tell me. You traded in your truck.” Saccharine oozed from each word she spoke.
His brows lowered into a scowl. “No, I didn’t trade in my truck.” He grasped her elbow and ushered her toward the car, the engine of which had been left running.
It wasn’t easy, but they managed to squeeze into the low-slung seats with Sarah and her necessary trappings. “You took care not to drive this car the day you came to take me to lunch, didn’t you? You deliberately drove the truck because you were afraid if I saw the Ferrari I would ask embarrassing questions. Isn’t that so? Isn’t it?”
“Yes,” he answered defiantly.
“And you told George and the other men not to tell me anything about you. Right?”
“Yes.” He rammed the car into gear and peeled away from the curb. For the next few minutes they rode in silence. It wouldn’t do for them to arrive at the Dillons’ angry with each other. Leigh made an effort to alleviate the residual hostility.
“Where do your parents live?” Chad had taken a highway going north out of town.
“They have some acreage. Dad runs a cattle ranch now.”
“Now?”
“He used to be with Flameco.”
“Oh,” she said.
Good intentions went awry. The rest of the trip was made in silence. Sarah cooperated by going to sleep against Leigh’s breast. She had placed an absorbent pad between Sarah’s drooling mouth and her new blouse. The tension fairly crackled between Chad, who kept his eyes resolutely on the stretch of highway, and Leigh, who did likewise.
“Warm enough?” he asked her.
“Yes.”
“Mind if I turn down the thermostat a little?”
“No.”
That was the extent of their conversation as the powerful car ate up the twenty miles or so to the estate Chad had modestly termed “some acreage.” He turned the car onto the private road. On either side of it, Hereford cattle grazed on bales of hay scattered across sprawling pastures now brown with winter. Leigh’s awe increased. She lost count after they had passed the tenth oil well pumping in steady cadence.
The house was another mild shock. It stood in stately serenity in a grove of mulberry and pecan trees beside a shallow creek. It was built of white-painted brick. Four square columns connected a wide front porch to the second-story balcony. Dark green shutters flanked six tall, multi-paned windows across the front.
“Here we are,” Chad said, avoiding Leigh’s eyes as he climbed out of the car carrying the diaper bag. He came around to assist her and Sarah.
“And to think I felt bad when you bought me flowers because I thought you were indigent and out of work,” she said out of the corner of her mouth. His lips thinned in irritation, but he didn’t have time to respond before the wide front door was thrown open and Amelia Dillon bustled out, wiping her hands on an apron.
“Hurry in out of this wind. Get that baby inside before she catches a cold. Welcome, welcome, Leigh. Hello, son.” Amelia placed a protective arm around Leigh’s back and shooed her into the house. “Get in there by the fire,” she said, steering Leigh out of a hallway that ran the length of the house into a comfortable living room. A blazing fire was burning in the huge fireplace that took up one wall. “Daddy, they’re here,” Amelia called toward the back of the house. “Chad, put the baby’s things in that chair. Nothing can hurt that old thing. Leigh, let me take your coat. No, you can’t take it off while you’re holding Sarah. Let me”
“Mother,” Chad intervened, catching her on the shoulders with his large hands. “Mother, we’ll be here all day, but you’ll never survive it if you don’t calm down. This is Leigh Bransom.”
Amelia laughed nervously. “I’m chattering, aren’t I? I’m sorry. It’s just that I was so excited about meeting you,” she said. “Hello, Leigh.”
If Leigh had predicted that she would like Amelia Dillon, she knew it now. The woman was small, with a compact, matronly figure. Her hair was silvered, but showed evidence of at one time having been the same dark brown as Chad’s. Her eyes, too, were a radiant blue. “Hello, Mrs. Dillon. Thank you for inviting us. We’re very glad to be here.”
“Leigh, let me take Sarah while you get out of your coat,” Chad suggested. He took the blanket-swathed baby, who was beginning to come to life.
“Oh, let me see her, Chad,” Amelia said, crowding against him. “Now isn’t that the sweetest thing you’ve ever seen? Look at her dress, Chad. How precious. Will she cry if I hold her?”
“I don’t think so,” Leigh said, shaking off her heavy coat. After handing Sarah to his mother, Chad took her coat and, with Sarah’s blanket, hung it on a hall tree. When he turned back, he caught Leigh’s eye and they smiled at each other over his mother’s croonings to Sarah. Leigh felt her heart expanding, reaching out, finding his.
Her anger evaporated. She read the softening in his eyes and knew that he, too, had found the antipathy between them tiresome. In light of her history and his career, their problems seemed insurmountable, but underlying all this was an attraction she neither could, nor wanted to deny. It was happening too fast, too quickly to be safe, but who could stop an avalanche?