Without a Past
"Those Sullivan Sisters", Book 2
January 2003
ISBN 0373711042
Andrea—the middle Sullivan triplet—is intrigued by the mysterious stranger working on her brother-in-law's ranch. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that Harley Forester's no cowboy. He doesn't talk like one, and he doesn't know the first thing about horses. So who is he?
Even more perplexing, why is Andi so attracted to a man without a past?
"Debra Salonen introduces readers to another bewitching Sullivan Sister in a story that has a dusting of humor, a dollop of suspense and a whole lot of fire. The issues Andi faces with her aging aunt are sadly realistic, yet heighten the story’s emotional impact."
"Debra Salonen gives her fans another emotional tale with some surprising twists and turns. I definitely recommend it!"
—Tami Sutton, The Best Review
Chapter 1
Andrea Sullivan hoisted herself to the top plank of the roofing contractor’s
scaffolding and looked around. Heights didn’t bother her, but she hated
the slight quiver in her biceps after the minuscule workout.
"Deskitus flabosis," she muttered, bending over to touch her toes. Her calves—exposed by the black crop pants she wore—quivered from the climb, which amounted to scaling a three-story tall ladder.
She let out a long hiss of disgust and shook her head. The upside down perspective made her a little dizzy. Slowly returning to an upright position, she moved closer to the roof to see for herself just how bad it was.
Using the toe of her running shoe, she nudged the blunt edge of a moss-covered shake. The thing practically disintegrated. The up-close perspective also revealed a build-up of petrified acorns beneath certain shingles—deposits left by generations of birds planning for that rainy day. Andi grimly scanned the length of the roof. The facia around the building’s tower was as pockmarked as some of the road signs in the county. In this case, a product of woodpeckers not kids with birdshot in their guns.
"Your aunt should have replaced the roof ten years ago." Bart McCloskey, Gold Creek’s only roofing contractor, delivered the bad news yesterday. "I told my mother to warn Ida Jane. But once those garden club ladies get together, all they do is gossip."
Bart’s mother, Linda McCloskey, was a retired nurse who never hesitated to remind Andi and her sisters about the role she’d played in their births. Andrea, Jennifer and Kristin Sullivan had come into the world twenty-nine years earlier on the heels of tragedy. Their parent’s Volkswagen bus went off the road in a snowstorm, and only through the courageous efforts of the Gold Creek rescue team and hospital staff were the triplets saved. Since neither of their parents survived the ordeal, the triplets became the wards of their great-aunt Ida Jane Montgomery, a fifty-three year old spinster and town icon. Residents of Gold Creek pitched in to help raise the triplets, and many still seemed inclined to give the girls motherly or fatherly guidance at will.
Especially generous with unsolicited advice was the retinue of Garden Club ladies. Bart’s mother was also the current president of the Gold Creek Garden Club.
Ida Jane Montgomery was still a member, although her attendance had dropped off since her broken hip and convalescence at the Rocking M ranch. But Ida was scheduled to return home to what was fondly—or not so fondly in some cases—referred to as the old bordello. A two-story, turn-of-the-century, poor-man’s Victorian, the modern white elephant was once the town’s house of ill repute.
By the time Ida’s father bought the building, which sat on a quarter acre lot near the—thenedge of town, the ladies of the evening were long gone. The house had been converted to a boarding house for a few years then sat empty until Ida Jane’s father—Andi’s grandfather—restored it to a residence. He’d filled the front parlors with the furniture his wife had inherited. Ida Jane capitalized on her family’s pack-rat tendencies and opened the Old Bordello Antique Shop.
At one time a successful endeavor, the shop had fallen on hard times. Andi was still trying to figure out what happened.
Andi had fond memories of the moldering old place, but she’d left Gold Creek after two years of junior college with no intention of making a life for herself in the small town located in the heart of the Gold Rush corridor.
But Jenny, an accomplished arm-twister, had something else in mind. "When your hitch is up, would it kill you to come home for a few months? Ida Jane would do it for you."
Jenny knew just how to work the guilt angle.
"We both need you, Andi," Jenny had begged a year and a half ago, when Andi had returned home for Thanksgiving. "Ida Jane won’t consider selling out, and I simply don’t have the time or energy to help her. And in nine months, I’ll have the baby to consider."
Andi had vacillated until a sonogram showed two babies, then not long after that Jenny’s husband, Josh, started having health problems.
By the time Andi completed her discharge from the Marines, Josh discovered that what he thought was a lingering bout of allergies was something much more serious—cancer.
Sadly, her brother-in-law had passed away last August, mere hours after Jenny gave birth to Tucker and Lara. Even seven months later, on a bright spring morning like this, Andi felt a pang of sadness for her family’s loss.
But life went on. The twins were growing like weeds, and Jenny would soon wed Josh’s brother, Sam, in what some people were calling a "marriage of convenience." Andi knew otherwise.
Sam and Jenny loved each other. And the twins—while conceived in spirit by Josh—were actually Sam’s genetically, since Josh’s childhood bout with cancer had left him sterile. Tucker and Lara were not only miracles of science, but also true gifts of the heart.
The portable phone that she’d clipped to the waistband of her pants chirped like a strangled bird. Andi hooked one knee over the cross support rail and balanced her butt cheek on the sun-warmed metal. Flab there, too, she thought.
"Yeah," she snarled.
"Oh, that’s a pleasant greeting," her sister complained. "What happened to, ‘Good morning, the Old Bordello Antique store and Coffee Shop’?"
"I reserve that for customers."
"I could have been a customer," Jenny argued.
Andi looked toward Main Street. Only three cars traveled the thoroughfare. Sunday mornings were a slow, placid time. That was why, historically, Ida Jane never opened the shop until one o’clock on Sundays. When the triplets were little, she’d dress them up in matching outfits and take them to the Methodist Church for Sunday school, and then the four of them would walk to The Golden Corral for brunch.
"I know your ring. It’s bossy. Like you."
Her sister made a huffing sound. "That’s not true. You and Kristin always claimed I was bossy, but somebody had to keep you two flakes in line."
"Flakes?" Andi cleared her throat imperiously. "Kris was the dreamer, not me. Ask anybody. Ask Gloria. In fact, I’ll have you know I received an almost favorable mention in her column last week. Did you see it?"
Jenny’s hoot of amusement produced a funny twinge in Andi’s chest. After all the grief and pain Jenny, Josh and Sam had suffered, it was good to hear her sister laugh. "What planet are you living on? I happen to have the Ledger right here. Should I read it aloud in case those six years in the military compromised your ability to interpret a slam?"
Andi rubbed her knuckle against the sudden pain in the center of her forehead. "No, that’s okay…"
But her sister plunged ahead, " ‘In other news, or should I say old news, Ida Jane Montgomery’s great- niece Andrea is at it again. It’s been four months since she introduced her ambitious espresso bar, and while some locals seem to find it as addictive as Starbucks, the tourist trade seems to have forgotten that the Old Bordello exists.’"
Andi made a face. She didn’t know how the big-mouthed gossip hit the nail on the head every time, but Gloria Harrison Hughes apparently was more observant than Andi would have guessed. Jenny went on. "She also says that a face lift at the bordello’s age is like removing a section of barnacles from the Titanic. Why bother?"
"And we thought she didn’t have a sense of humor," Andi said dryly.
The Sullivan triplet’s war of wills with the acid-tongued Gold Creek Ledger gossip columnist had its genesis in 1990—the year Andi, Jenny and Kristin turned eighteen. Gloria’s son, Tyler, was a classmate. Unfortunately, he was part of an ugly scandal involving Kristin and her old boyfriend, Donnie Grimaldo. As a result, Tyler had dropped out of school and left town. Gloria held the triplets responsible and the girls’ had paid the price in bad press ever since.
Andi turned her chin to locate the roof of the Ledger a few blocks away on Second Street. Two overgrown bushes bearing early spring plumage bracketed the building’s entrance. "So, why’d you call? I told you I wasn’t doing brunch this morning."
Ever since Jenny and Sam had announced their engagement at Christmas, Andi and, occasionally, Kristin, who lived in Oregon but came to visit at least twice a month, would get together on Sunday morning to catch up on the week’s business and plan the wedding. The nuptials were scheduled to take place this coming Saturday—St. Patrick’s Day. Although Andi knew Jenny could use her help this morning, she’d needed the time to prepare, mentally and physically, for Ida Jane’s imminent return.
Their beloved aunt had served notice of her intention to move home. "I’m moving back to the bordello once you get married," she’d informed them months earlier. "A newly married couple doesn’t need an old woman hanging around. Besides, now that I’m up and around, Andi can use my help."
That would have been the truth ten years ago, Andi thought. But Ida Jane had changed dramatically in recent years. Almost anything—especially anything Andi said—could send Ida Jane on an emotional roller coaster ride. Huge gaps in memory, sudden bursts of anger and bouts of depression were new and unwelcome aspects of their aunt’s personality.
"All part of the aging process," Ida’s doctor insisted.
And Ida had shown improvement while living with Jenny, but Andi wasn’t Jenny. Jenny was patient, understanding. She could bite her tongue or look the other way when Ida said something outrageous. Andi tried, but much as she loved her great-aunt, she wasn’t looking forward to Ida’s homecoming.
"I didn’t call about brunch. Or the wedding," Jenny said, pulling Andi back into the present. "Actually..."
Her sister was obviously stalling.
"Just tell me." Andi felt off balance. She gripped the rusty metal. Its heat reminded her that she had to make a decision about the roof soon. Maybe I could borrow on my insurance.
"Ida Jane’s coming home,"
"Yeah, I know. Next Sunday."
"Today."
"What?" Andi’s stomach almost ejected the orange juice she’d chugged for breakfast. "No, Jen. Not today."
"I’m afraid so."
"Who’s bringing her?" Their aunt no longer drove, and Jenny wouldn’t have been talking this freely if Ida were in the car with her. Just to reassure herself, Andi rose up on her tiptoes to check on Rosemarie, Ida’s 1972 pink Cadillac. In the parking lot. Right where Andi had left it. The triplets had convinced Ida Jane that she’d arrived at a time in her life when she deserved to be chauffeured from place to place rather than risk life and limb behind the wheel.
"She got a ride," Jenny said. "She arranged it herself. When the twins and I came downstairs for breakfast, we found her bed stripped, bags packed and Harley Forester waiting to carry her stuff to the truck."
Andi let out a small squawk—partly because of her aunt’s premature move and partly because the name Harley brought to mind the image of a lanky, too-handsome-for-his-own-good cowboy, who was, in Andi’s opinion, absolutely, positively not a cowboy.
She forced her mind away from the memory of his trim behind in faded jeans, and the dish-shaped scar on his high, well-sculpted forehead. Why did she care if he was content to hide out from society on Sam’s ranch when it was patently obvious to everyone who met him that Harley Forester was an impostor?
"He...I mean, she..." Andi started over. "Does she know I’m not ready for her?"
"I begged her to stay, Andi. The wedding’s not until Saturday. She’s our chaperone."
Andi laughed at her sister’s wail. Nobody in town believed that Jenny and Sam hadn’t consummated their relationship.
"I know what you’re thinking and you’re wrong," Jenny vowed, her voice low and angry.
Andi would have rolled her eyes but the ache building behind her eyes changed her mind. "I was thinking I really wanted to have the new roof on before she came home. She wouldn’t have even known the difference, but now the place is surrounded by scaffolding and they’re moving in a fleet of Dumpsters to catch the rotting shingles."
For reasons Andi couldn’t fathom, Ida had turned a blind eye to the house’s steady decline since before her nieces headed off in their own directions. Neither Andi nor her sisters had paid much attention to the house’s state of disrepair in high school. They were far too absorbed in their high drama of tragic relationships and unrequited love. Then right after graduation, Kristin went to Ireland to live with an aunt and uncle on their father’s side; Jenny moved to Fresno to attend college, and Andi did her thing—two years of junior college with summers spent in Yosemite’s high country, then the marines.
Ida stayed in Gold Creek and peddled antiques from the front half of the old bordello, but she hadn’t spent a dime on upkeep. Now, Andi was working against the clock—and a dwindling checkbook—to save the building.
She plopped down on her bottom, letting her legs hang over the edge of the thick plank. She hadn’t been rock climbing in years and had forgotten how much she loved the feeling of being above the rest of the world.
"Are you sure you can’t talk her into staying a little longer?" Andi asked. "Maybe if Kristin called her..."
"I stalled for as long as I could. I offered to feed them breakfast, but she couldn’t sit still. You know what Ida Jane is like when she gets a bee in her bonnet."
Andi smiled at the Ida Jane-ism.
"Where is she now?" Andi asked.
"They just pulled out of the driveway."
The Rocking M was thirty minutes north of town. Too late to hide and nowhere to run. Might as well go move the boxes of coffee and paper cups.
"What about her furniture?"
"Harley managed to load the bed and dresser with Hank’s help, but Hank and Greta were just leaving for her nephew’s son’s christening. Ida told Harley you would help him unload. I believe her exact words were ‘Andrea has better muscles than most men. She can lift anything.’"
Andi would have groaned but she didn’t want her sister to get the wrong idea. Jenny had been known to play matchmaker a time or two—usually with disastrous consequences. "Great. Maybe I can challenge Harley to a bench press competition."
"My money’s on you, sis," Jenny said, her tone ripe with humor.
"Gee, thanks." Andi sighed. "Well, I’d better go air out her room. I’ve been storing coffee shop supplies in there. She’s gotten a little finicky lately." At least where I’m concerned.
"Make sure you place her bed by the window. She insists she can’t sleep without fresh air," Jenny advised.
Andi wedged the phone under one ear and started to climb down the skinny rungs of metal tubing. "Whatever."
"Oh, wait," Jenny cried with such volume Andi almost lost her footing.
"What?" Her knuckles whitened as she regained her balance.
"I wanted to ask your advice about birth control," Jenny said with a hushed whisper.
Andi looped her arm under the rung for better leverage then moved the phone to the opposite ear. She imagined she looked like a monkey with a cell phone. "It’s not a problem for me. I don’t a sex life. And, anyway, Jen, aren’t you getting into the birth control game a little late?"
"I told you, Andi, Sam and I haven’t made love. He’s got it in his head that he wants to be able to tell the kids that as improbable as it sounds we didn’t sleep together before we were married."
The only reason Andi believed that was because she knew Sam O’Neal. He was truly an honorable man.
"Whatever," Andi returned. "I just meant that you should have started on the Pill a month ago to be safe."
Jenny groaned. "I don’t like taking anything when I’m nursing."
"So, stop nursing. The twins are six months old. You did good, Jenny Perfect." Jenny hated her childhood nickname. "By the way, why are you whispering?"
"The twins are watching me. Tucker can almost pull himself up. He’s going to be walking long before his first birthday."
Andi grinned for real. She loved her niece and nephew. But they made her all too aware of what she lacked in her own life—a husband, children and a home with her name on the deed. Andi felt as though her whole life had been spent in transition, but where she was going she didn’t have a clue.
"Gotta run, sis. Thanks for the head’s up. Maybe if I’m lucky, she won’t notice the scaffolding."
"The roof has to be replaced, Andi. We’ve all tried to explain that to her. Nothing stays the same—even though she wants to believe otherwise."
Andi dropped to the ground and let out a deep sigh. Too true, sister dear. Change is coming.
Andi had been selected to fill Ida’s seat on the Chamber of Commerce Board, and rumors were flying about big development companies with big plans for her little town. Who knew what kind of changes were coming to Gold Creek?
* * *
"Let’s take the long way back to town," the woman to Harley’s right suggested.
He might have taken the hint to mean something else if his passenger wasn’t in her eighties. He cranked the steering wheel of the rattletrap flatbed to the left. "Sure thing, Miss Ida. My pleasure."
Harley was happy at the chance to escort Ida Jane Montgomery back to the town of Gold Creek. He liked spending time with the talkative old woman. Of all the people he’d met, Ida Jane struck him as the most accepting of his limitations. Of course, her forgetfulness was a result of age and very different from the huge gap in his memory caused by the accident. But Harley felt comfortable around her.
"Tell me more about the triplets when they were growing up," he said, as the truck started to climb. At the summit, a turn-out provided a vista of the Rocking M, the ranch where he worked and where Ida Jane had been living with her great-niece, Jenny Sullivan O’Neal for the past six months.
Ida shifted on the dusty bench seat. The morning sun streaming through the window made Ida’s thin bonnet of silver hair glow like a halo. "Believe you me, there’s nothing easy about triplets, but my three were treasures. Each one an individual from the very beginning." Her smile was poignantly sweet, and Harley felt nostalgic for something he didn’t understand. Did he have family somewhere thinking kind thoughts about him?
He brushed aside the disturbing thought as the old woman continued. "Jenny was the little mother. People called her Jenny Perfect growing up. Andi was the worrier. And Kristin..." Her look turned wistful. "She used to be happy-go-lucky and carefree, but she isn’t anymore. People change, you know."
Harley tried to imagine what it must have been like for a single woman in her fifties to take on three orphaned infants. "You must have had your hands full," he said.
She shrugged elaborately. "Everybody in Gold Creek pitched in—from the minister to the school bus driver. It wasn’t so bad. For the first few months, we worked in shifts."
The rutted pavement, which had returned to gravel in some spots, meandered around Carson Peak, a minor pinnacle in the Central Sierras. The Rocking M occupied six hundred acres of scrub bush, bull pines and grassy meadows on the mountain’s shoulder. Harley couldn’t say for certain whether or not he’d ever seen a more peaceful setting, but the foothills in spring were something to behold. The lush effusion of green that covered the hillsides was dotted with patches of a tiny white wildflower the locals called popcorn. California poppies and blue dicks swayed in the morning breeze.
He eased the creaky old truck to the side of the road. "Isn’t this view something? I can’t imagine wanting to live any place else."
Ida Jane’s fluttery sigh sounded sad. "I grew up here, you know. Too many years to count."
"On the Rocking M?" Harley asked, wondering for a second if she were confused about the facts.
"Where do you suppose the M came from?" she asked with a gamin wink. "My daddy. Penrod Montgomery."
Harley had heard a slew of family sagas since arriving at the ranch. He had no way of discerning truth from fabrication, but he knew this: cowboys were great storytellers.
"I must have missed that story. Wanna tell me about it while we drive?"
Ida Jane folded her withered hands in her lap. "My mother and father took over the ranch after her folks passed in a bad flu epidemic. Daddy wasn’t much of a rancher. When he knew he was going to come up short paying the taxes, he threw the deed on the line in a game of poker. And lost."
Harley couldn’t help but flinch. That sounded like a pretty risky proposition. Would he be that brave? He doubted it. Maybe before he lost his memory. Now, he was content to follow Hank’s directives and collect a regular paycheck.
Occasionally he questioned this lack of ambition, but not often. Questions brought worries, worries brought dreams. Bad dreams.
"Daddy never forgave the fella who won it. A neighbor named Bill Scott." She made a soft snickering sound. "Made things pretty uncomfortable when my younger sister, Suzy, married the man."
The connection didn’t surprise Harley. After listening to bunkhouse gossip, he decided everyone in Gold Creek was either related to or had close ties to nearly everyone else in town. Except him. "One night the house burned down with Bill in it. Just an awful tragedy. Suzy sold the place soon after that. She took Lorena—her little girl—and went traveling." Ida sighed. "I didn’t see either one for nearly ten years. When they finally came back, my sister was sick. She died just after Lori graduated from high school. Tragedy seems overly fond of my family, I fear. You heard about Lori’s accident, right?"
Harley nodded. The first night he’d spent in the bunkhouse, in fact. He’d casually asked about the pretty girl he’d met when Lars Gunderson, the old miner who’d saved his life, dropped Harley off at the ranch. Petey, a sixty-ish ranch hand, wound up relating the tragic tale of the Sullivan triplets’ birth.
A monumental blizzard combined with a car accident, heroic rescue and the sad deaths of two young parents made for a good, solid legend even without adding the miraculous birth of three tiny baby girls. As far as Harley could tell, Jenny, Andi and Kristin Sullivan had been the center of talk around Gold Creek for every one of their twenty-nine years.
And they still are. He glanced at the newspaper on the seat beside him. Under a column labeled Glory’s World was the headline: Sullivan Triplet At It Again.
For some reason, Harley was tempted to snatch it up and read the story. Instead, he made himself ask, "So who owned the ranch before Sam bought it?"
Ida hoisted a fabric carryall to her lap and started digging in it. "A couple from back east. Reno, I believe. They were going to raise those funny looking sheep with long hair. Can’t remember what they’re called."
"Alpaca?"
She looked at him sharply, her blue eyes narrowing. "Sounds right." Her thin lips pursed. "You don’t talk like any cowboy I ever knew."
Feeling uncomfortable with her scrutiny, Harley stepped on the gas. The old truck sputtered for a second then surged forward.
"How come Jenny didn’t give you a ride into town this morning?" he asked to change the subject.
"Oh...she has her hands full taking care of Josh."
Josh? Although Harley hadn’t been living at the ranch at the time, he’d heard the whole sad story of Josh O’Neal’s death. Josh—Sam’s younger brother and Jenny’s husband—had died of cancer shortly after Jenny gave birth to the twins. "You mean she’s busy with Tucker and Lara, right? Josh has been gone almost seven months, I believe."
Ida Jane looked momentarily baffled then frowned. "That’s what I said."
Harley let it go. He knew how unnerving it felt when your memory betrayed you. "How are the wedding plans coming?" he asked, more to be polite than out of curiosity.
Of the seven-member crew that shared Sam’s bunkhouse, two felt it was wrong for Sam to marry his deceased brother’s wife. Three thought it was noble of Sam to want to provide for Jenny and the twins. One—an itinerant rodeo hound looking for a stake—didn’t give a damn one way or the other. And Harley had no opinion.
The trouble with amnesia, he thought, is that you have no history upon which to base an opinion. From his observations, he believed that Sam and Jenny were genuinely kind to each other and seemed happiest when they were together. Was that enough to make a good marriage? Something told him not to bet on it.
"Oh, fine. I think. They don’t tell me much."
Harley found that odd. Jenny didn’t seem the type to exclude her aunt. "Why is that?" he asked.
She shrugged. "Because my mind is going to hell in a handbasket."
Harley had overheard Sam and Jenny discussing Ida’s increasing forgetfulness, but the woman seemed pretty sharp to him—especially given her age.
"Maybe they don’t want you to overdo," he suggested. "Is that why you’re moving back to town? To rest up for the festivities?"
"Maybe."
Her answer—instead of coming off coy—sounded confused. Harley’s heart went out to her. He didn’t always understand why he did certain things, either. Starting with what he was doing on a remote mountain road in the middle of a storm. All he knew for certain was he woke up in a miner’s shack with a raging headache—his only possession a scuffed leather Harley Davidson jacket, which provided the root for his name. But not a single memory of his life before that moment survived what both Lars, the miner who rescued him, and Donnie Grimaldo, the sheriff’s deputy who took down his report, figured was a motorcycle accident.
The bike he presumably was riding had disappeared into one of the many steeply walled ravines common to the mountainous terrain near Lars’ Blue Lupine mine.
"The twins are getting big," Ida said apropos to nothing.
She opened her canvas bag and poked around a minute. "I have the article. About the birth. Quite the event, you know." She pulled a crinkled clipping from the bag. "See here? ‘Jenny Sullivan O’Neal won’t be returning to town any time soon. Caring for twin toddlers and an aging aunt—" Ida Jane snorted indignantly. "Big Mouth Gloria Hughes. Who’s she calling aged? She’s no spring chicken herself."
Harley bit down on a smile.
She cleared her throat and started reading again. "...aging aunt must be a handful. But Glory’s pleased to see a smile on sweet Jenny’s face the past couple of months and we hope she’s found a bit of happiness after her grievous loss. We know she misses Josh—just like the rest of us, but life does march on."
"Grievous," Ida muttered. "Pretentious old biddy."
Harley swallowed his chuckle. "Jenny and Sam do seem to get along well," he said sincerely. "What does Andi think about the wedding?"
Harley didn’t doubt for a minute that the real reason he’d volunteered to give Ida Jane a ride home was the likelihood of seeing Andi Sullivan. Which was both a good thing and bad.
Good because a little verbal joust stimulated his mind; bad because stimulation of any kind kept him awake at night with a sickening headache caused by dreams he couldn’t even remember in the morning.
He’d bumped into Andi the night before last when he’d joined two of the younger ranch hands in town for a beer. Andi had been at the SlowPoke Saloon with a group of friends when Harley arrived. To his surprise, she’d asked him to dance when the jukebox played a mellow tune. He’d enjoyed every moment of holding her in his arms, but later—alone in his bunk—he’d had to claw his way past blistering pain. He’d awoken in a pool of sweat and had barely made it to the bathroom before losing the contents of his stomach.
Do all amnesiacs have bad dreams? Or just me? Maybe my past is bad, I’m afraid to remember it. Unconsciously, Harley reached up to run his fingers over the irregular scar at his temple.
"That still bothering you?" Ida Jane asked.
He glanced sideways. Ida Jane appeared the quintessential grandmother—silver hair cut short and functional, her glossy skin marred with irregular brown age spots. Harley wondered, not for the first time, whether or not he might have a grandmother somewhere in the world. He hoped not. He didn’t want to think he might be worrying the old lady by having dropped out of her life so suddenly.
"No, ma’am. Itched like heck for awhile. Now, I rub it out of habit."
"I’ve always felt a scar lends a person character. It seems to say you weren’t afraid to take risks." He could feel her staring at his profile. "You have a nice, handsome face, but this will keep it from being too...perfect."
Harley bit down on a smile. He’d spent a good deal of time the past three months staring at his face in a mirror trying to find some clue to who he was, and although he was satisfied that his looks weren’t going to frighten young children, he didn’t think he was beauty-contest material, either. He classified his nose as too pugnacious—and was a bit amazed he knew the word; his chin was solid and strong, but the line of his jaw seemed too short. He didn’t mind his eyes—a nice shade of blue, but they struck him as a bit squinty. As far as he could determine, his hair was his best feature. Thick and wavy. A medium brown now laced with gold—thanks to his recent stint at mending fences.
"No worry there, Miss Ida. I’m a long way from perfect. Especially when it comes to fixing fences. Look at these cuts." He held up his right hand to prove it. Three bandage strips adorned his thumb and index finger; two more were on the heel of his hand.
"Could be you’re in the wrong trade. You have a fine way with words. Maybe you were a teacher," she suggested.
Ida Jane wasn’t the first person to comment on his performance as a cowboy. At his doctor’s suggestion, Harley had poured over lists of other professions to see if anything jumped out at him. So far, nothing had.
"I don’t think I have the patience to work with kids," Harley told her. "But I do like to write. The doctor I saw at the Gold Creek Clinic when Lars first brought me into town suggested I keep a journal. She said sometimes the mind heals so slowly we can overlook signs because we become comfortable with the way our lives are—not what they could be."
"My, my," Ida Jane said. "A local doctor told you that? Most of the ones I’ve known couldn’t prescribe their way out of a paper bag without directions."
Harley chuckled. Dr. Franklin had been gentle and kind, but in the end there wasn’t much she could do. She was a general practitioner who said her lone brush with amnesia had come on a psych rotation in medical school some twenty years earlier. Although curious and concerned, the best she could say was that he was in overall good health, and there was a chance his memory would return.
"Dr. Franklin wanted to run some tests and consult a specialist, but I don’t have the cash," Harley admitted.
"Doesn’t Sam give you health insurance?"
He nodded. "It works if you break a leg. But the lady at the clinic said most plans would consider this a pre-existing condition and would probably deny coverage."
Ida Jane was silent for a few miles then said, "You know, you don’t talk like any cowboy I’ve ever known."
She wasn’t the first to tell him that. In fact, her grandniece had expressed the same opinion the day they met.
"He’s not a cowboy," Andi had said moments after being introduced to him. She’d looked at Jenny and Sam as if waiting for the punch line to a joke.
When Sam confirmed that Harley was indeed his newest employee, Andi had remained unconvinced. "No offense, guy, but you walk like an accountant, talk like a politician and smell like a pothead," she’d told Harley.
Harley had been offended. At first. But then he realized her observation was amazingly accurate. He hadn’t taken the job at the Rocking M out of any sense of familiarity. He didn’t know a halter from a heifer, but he’d felt even less affinity with mining. Closed spaces made him uncomfortable and he’d been almost sick to his stomach the first time Lars tried to get him to climb down a twenty-foot ladder.
When the old miner suggested ranch work as a possible source of employment, Harley had jumped at the chance.
His peculiar body odor could be attributed to his recuperation period in a tiny cabin shared with a pot-smoking loner named Lars Gunderson. Brusque. Isolationist. A renegade from society, Lars smoked ten to twelve joints a day and still managed to work his gold mine by hand.
"Well, you may be right," Harley had told Andi—impressed by her straight-from-the-hip manner. She didn’t cut him any slack, but she didn’t treat him like an invalid, either. "My past is a closed door, the future a blank slate and I’ve chosen to be a cowboy. Do you have a problem with that?"
Harley couldn’t say how much of his macho swagger came from leftover personality traits and how much came from listening to Lars’ non-stop anti-establishment preaching, but his lack of memory made one thing clear—the only person Harley could depend on was himself.
She’d met his challenge with a grin that seemed to call his bluff. The tilt of her lips had sent a tangible jolt of awareness right through the center of him. Harley would have sworn nothing like that had ever happened to him before, but he had no way knowing for certain. "There’s home," Ida Jane said, cutting into his reverie.
The road curved tightly to the right in preparation for a downward switchback. From this point, one could take in the whole view—from the copper-shingled steeple of the Catholic Church to the rounded dome of the courthouse in the center of town. Businesses lined both sides of Main Street for four blocks, giving way to a natural gap where two tributaries drained into Gold Creek. Several gas stations, motels and a couple of fast food shops were grouped at a fork in the road where travelers decided if they were going downhill—into the Central Valley or uphill toward Yosemite National Park.
"Gold Creek’s a nice little town," Harley said.
"It’s a good place to raise a family, but the young people don’t stay. My girls left home right out of high school. Jenny went to college. Andi joined the Marines. And Kristin went off to Europe to be a nanny."
Harley had only met the elusive Kristin once. Sam mentioned that she lived in Oregon. Harley had gotten the feeling she was slightly estranged from her sisters and aunt.
"I miss those girls," Ida Jane said with a heavy sigh.
A shiver of disquiet passed through him. Miss? Or missed?
"Andi’s going to be at the old bordello when we get there, isn’t she?"
Ida looked as puzzled by his question as Harley felt. One of the problems with amnesia, Harley decided, was not being able to decipher social nuances. Was Ida Jane’s apparent forgetfulness something he should mention to her nieces?
He’d found it odd that Ida Jane suddenly moved up the date of her move. Hank had next Sunday circled on the calendar in the barn. Ida Jane’s moving day. Jenny hadn’t seemed overly perturbed by her aunt’s change of plan, but Harley doubted Andi would be quite as calm.
Andi’s fiery temperament was just one of the things he liked about her. Which might explain why, on his only day off, he’d jumped at the chance to play taxi driver.
* * *
Andi stowed the last of the boxes in the basement storage room then brushed off her hands and looked around. She’d forgotten about the spacious and surprisingly snug area. As children Andi and her sisters had avoided the cellar because of the threat of spiders, but now she evaluated it through the eyes of a businesswoman.
"If we made that window into an egress..." She peered out the cloudy glass. Maybe just one business with two or three rooms.
Her mind started to spin ideas the way the window’s current residents had constructed their webbed homes. By investing a few bucks, she could probably pull down six or seven hundred dollars a month. Maybe more.
A few bucks. A hurdle taller than the surrounding mountain peaks, she thought grimly. She’d invested nearly all the money she’d saved while in the military, but no amount of venture capital seemed enough to stem the steady drain on their resources. Sooner or later, she’d have to admit that the old bordello was a losing proposition.
So why am I fighting so hard to save it? She didn’t know the answer.
She was about to head back upstairs when the phone at her waist rang. Jenny again, no doubt.
"What now?"
"Andi? Why are you always so grumpy?"
Wrong sister. This was Kristin. "I thought you were Jenny. Again. I’m busy getting ready for Ida Jane. A week ahead of schedule."
Instead of walking up the open wooden steps, Andi sat down, plopping her elbows on her knees. She wanted to whine to somebody. Why not Kristin?
"I just heard,’ Kris said. "Why the change? Can you believe Jenny sent our eighty-five year old aunt off with a stranger?"
Andi smiled to herself. Kristin’s take on any given subject was usually a hundred and eighty degrees opposite of Andi’s. Always had been.
"Harley Forester isn’t exactly a stranger. He’s been working at the Rocking M for three months."
"Am I supposed to find comfort in that?" Kristin asked facetiously. "The man is an amnesiac. What if he suddenly remembers he’s a serial killer?"
Andi chuckled. She couldn’t help herself. She was no great judge of men
* * *
as evidenced by some of her boyfriends over the years, but she’d bet the deed to the old bordello that Harley Forester was decent human being with a past no more repugnant than Andi’s or her sister’s.
"Hey, this wasn’t my idea, but it’s a done deal. They’ll be here any minute." Unable to resist teasing her sister, Andi added, "Unless he’s dissecting Ida’s body as we speak."
Kristin hissed with outrage. "You’re impossible. I only called because Jenny told me to tell you that we need to be especially gentle with Ida. Apparently she’s been restless and unhappy all week. Jen said she found her crying a couple of times."
Andi closed her eyes and frowned. Sweet and gentle was Kris’s thing. Kind and understanding was Jenny’s thing. Andi was pretty sure none of her things—whatever they were—would prove beneficial to Ida Jane’s emotional well being.
"Could be she’s homesick," Kristin suggested.
Andi wished it were that simple, but she’d witnessed a steady decline in her aunt’s mental acuity over the past year. Neither of her sisters believed it was serious, but Andi feared otherwise.
"I’d better go," Andi had told her. "If Ida’s feeling depressed, she’ll really flip out when she sees the For Rent signs. We’d planned to talk to her about that when you got here, remember?"
Kristin, who was due back in town Friday to participate in Jenny’s wedding, said, "You’re right. Sorry. I can’t talk to her right now. I was just leaving the house. I have to go to a...I’ll call later. As soon as I get back."
Typical, Andi thought sourly. Kris always seemed to be gone when there was an emotional confrontation of any kind. She’d been running since high school and hadn’t stopped. "Don’t worry. I’ll handle it—provided Harley gets her home in one piece."
"You like him, don’t you?"
Andi jumped to her feet. "No."
"Yes, you do. I could always tell when you liked a boy."
Andi made a rude sound and started up the stairs. "Nu-uh," she returned, purposely trying to sound like one of the teen-age girls who frequented the coffee bar. Double mocha freezes were all the rage at the moment.
Kristin snickered. "You’re attracted to him. But who wouldn’t be? He looks like that actor who played in Ever After with Drew Barrymore. Do you know who I mean?"
Just as she reached the basement door, Andi heard the sound of truck engine turn into the parking lot. Her heart rate went up a notch.
"Never saw it," Andi lied. She’d rented it twice—for that very reason. And it irritated her to no end that her sister—her beautiful sister—saw Harley as an attractive, sexy man.
"You should. He’s a cutie. Wish I could remember his name. Oh, well. Gotta go. Good luck with Ida Jane. Tell her I love her, and I’ll call later."
Andi quickly entered the kitchen, closing the door securely behind her. She tried to shake off the building sense of anticipation at the thought of seeing Harley Forester, as he called himself. A man who—while not a serial killer—was no cowboy, either.
He was an enigmatic stranger playing at being a ranch hand when anyone could tell he knew nothing about the business. Her attraction to him was just a silly diversion—probably the result of too much worry and not enough social contact.
"I need to get out more," she muttered—as she dashed to the porch. She didn’t want to miss her chance to watch Harley getting out of the truck. He might not be a cowboy, but, damn, he looked good in Wranglers.
