Font Size:  

“I get the message,” Dani said, returning to the house and grabbing three more Cokes. She took them to the back porch and was relieved that the boys’ thirst had apparently slackened. Cody, Jake and Jonathon were content to sip from their bottles.

“I’m gonna get the mail,” Cody said, while the two older boys sat on the rail finishing their drinks.

Dani felt her heart twist in pain. Cody never gave up thinking that his dad would write him again. “All right.”

Cody whistled to Runt and ran around the corner of the house. Dani’s shoulders slumped in defeat and she took a long swallow of the cold cola. Every day this summer Cody had run to the mailbox expecting a letter from his father and it had never come. Dani didn’t think this day would be any different. Nor would the days that followed. If only Blake hadn’t written the one friendly letter and buoyed Cody’s spirits.

If I ever get my hands on him, I’ll strangle him, she thought angrily, her fingers tightening around her bottle.

While the two brothers talked, Dani leaned against a post supporting the roof of the porch and stared across the fence to Caleb Johnson’s property and Grizzly Creek. Things had changed in the past week.

The day after Chase had come to her house, heavy equipment had rolled over Johnson’s land. Not only had there been dredging in the creek, but several loads of gravel had been carefully spread in the water, and a few fallen fir trees had been strategically placed along the banks of the stream.

While Dani had been bucking hay, she’d observed Chase, stripped to his jeans, as he supervised the operation. He was always at the creek at sunrise, carefully studying and working in the clear water. He supervised the placement of the gravel and boulders as well as the digging of deeper pools in the channel of the stream.

She couldn’t help but notice the rippling strength of his muscles as he’d helped pull a log into position, or the way his shoulders would bunch when things weren’t going just as he’d planned. The bright sun had begun to bleach his blond hair and his skin had darkened with each day. From her position driving the tractor, Dani had been able to observe him covertly and she’d begun to recognize his gestures; the way he would rake his fingers through his hair in disgust, his habit of chewing on his thumbnail when he was tense, or the manner in which he would set his palms on his hips when he was angry.

Several times she’d found him looking her way, and each time that he’d caught her eye, he’d offered a lazy, mocking grin. One time he’d even had the nerve to wave to her, and Dani, her cheeks burning unexpectedly, had responded by quickly stepping on the throttle of the tractor and turning her full attention to the task of getting the hay into the barn.

“What’s goin’ on over there?” Jake asked when he noticed Dani staring at the heavy machinery on the adjoining property. “I think Johnson’s hired someone to clean up the creek—make it more livable for trout.” Actually she knew it for a fact. Just to make sure that Chase had been straight with her, she’d called the Better Business Bureau in Boise and found out that Relive Incorporated was, indeed, a business owned by Chase McEnroe and Caleb Johnson.

“So he’s cleaning up Grizzly Creek for that resort, Summer Ridge or whatever it’s called, right?”

“Right.” Dani’s back stiffened slightly.

“Is it named after you?”

Dani smiled at the irony of the question and shook her head. “No. I’m really a Hawthorne,” she explained. “This land is Hawthorne land and the piece next to it, the land where the equipment is parked, used to belong to the Summers family.”

“But not you?”

“No . . . it was owned by my husband’s family,” she said, feeling rankled again when she thought about Blake and how he had sold his family’s homestead only to gamble away the money.

“My pa can’t wait for the resort,” Jake said. “He says it will put Martinville on the map.”

“No doubt about it,” Dani replied with a frown.

“Pa says that his business is bound to double over the next year or two, with all the workers Johnson will have to hire. And then, once the resort is open, Pa expects to make a bundle!”

“Nobody’s ever made a bundle selling groceries,” Jake’s younger brother, Jonathon, commented with all the knowledge of a fifteen-year-old.

“Just you wait!”

“Mom! Hey, Mom!” Cody screamed at the top of his lungs as he raced around the corner of the house. His boyish face was flushed with excitement and he was nearly out of breath.

Dani’s heart constricted.

“He wrote again! Look! There’s a letter from Dad!” Cody was jumping up and down with his exhilaration and Runt was barking wildly at the boy’s heels.

Dani nearly fell through the weathered boards of the porch. Damn you, Blake! She managed to force a tender smile for her son. “What did he say?”

“That he’s comin’ home!” Cody looked from one of the Anders brothers to the other. “You hear that, my pa is comin’ home!”

“Home? Here?” Dani asked.

“Yep! To see us and Uncle Bob!” Cody was holding the letter triumphantly and Dani guessed from the way that Cody was acting that Jake and Jonathon were two of the kids who had given him trouble about his absentee father. The brothers had the decency to look sheepish and Dani had to bite her tongue in order to refrain from giving the boys a lecture on the cruelty of gossip. At nine years of age, Cody would have to fight most of his own battles. And this time, at least for the moment, he’d won.

“I think we’d better be goin’,” Jake said, handing Dani his empty bottle.

Source: www.allfreenovel.com
Articles you may like