The Widow and the Wildcatter: A Loveswept Classic Romance Read online

  Wednesday he’d spent the whole afternoon tinkering with the old tin lizzie. She’d been doing both her bookwork and her darnedest to ignore him. Try as she might, though, she couldn’t ignore the constant clanging in the machine shed. And when she found herself adding the same column of figures three times and coming up with three different answers, she’d put her ledgers away.

  Last night Chance and Grandpa had stayed up until all hours, laughing and talking and playing pitch. Joni had excused herself and gone to bed with a farm journal. But instead of reading for a while and then turning off the light as she normally did, she’d lain alone in her double bed wishing she’d joined in on the fun.

  Fun. She couldn’t really remember the last time she’d had any. Not that she was feeling sorry for herself, for heaven’s sake. She’d chosen to continue the fight after Larry died, and hard times or no, she didn’t regret her decision.

  She loved this land, and she lived for the challenge of planting a seed and watching it grow, nurturing it through inclement weather and ruinous clouds of insects as she might have nursed a child through minor colds and the painful throes of adolescence.

  Even if the corn no longer marched as straight and tall as a row of soldiers toward the horizon, she still had her tomato beds and a contract with that food broker in Oklahoma City who shipped fresh vegetables nationwide. Next year maybe she’d even have enough revenue from her oil wells to experiment with that new variety of seed she’d seen advertised.

  But now, with a week of hard work behind her and Saturday night looming up like—

  “Joni?”

  “Chance!” Her heart slammed against her rib cage as she spun away from the porch railing, and she didn’t know whether it was because he’d startled her or because he looked good enough to eat in his clean white shirt and neatly pressed jeans. “I thought you were going to town with the guys tonight.”

  He eased the screen door shut behind him so as not to wake Grandpa and closed the gap between them in two long strides. “I was planning to until Tex mentioned something about a dance out at the crossroads—whatever the hell that is.”

  Remembering what had happened the last time they were alone out there, Joni edged toward the safety of the swing. “It means just what it says.”

  Picking up on her discomfiture, Chance leaned a shoulder indolently against the porch support. “You mean it’s an intersection? A real live crossroads?”

  “About two miles west of here,” she said, and sat.

  He looked in that direction, and twilight limned the rugged lines of his forehead, nose, and lips. “Have you ever been there before?”

  “My girlfriend, Loretta West, and I used to go every Saturday night.” She folded her hands in her lap and laced her fingers tightly together. For reasons she couldn’t define, she felt terribly restless tonight.

  “What about you and Larry?”

  “He didn’t like to dance.”

  His eyes found hers in the dusk. “Wanna go again?”

  “What?” Joni couldn’t have been more surprised if he’d asked her to sprout wings and fly.

  “You heard me.” Chance took a cigarette and a silver lighter inlaid with turquoise out of his shirt pocket. He never smoked in the house, in deference to Grandpa’s condition. But if he didn’t keep his hands busy right now, he wasn’t sure he could keep them off of her.

  She studied his unsmiling face in the red-gold flame from his lighter, unaware that he harbored some serious doubts about their living arrangement himself.

  He was too old to be spinning his wheels like this. That first morning, when she’d barged in on him in the bathroom, auburn hair a-tangle and blue eyes still dewy from sleep, it’d been all he could do not to lay her down right then and there.

  They had agreed to take turns in the bathroom after that. He used it first in the morning since he had to leave, and she used it first at night since she liked to go to bed with the chickens. Yet every time he remembered how she’d looked in her short pink nightgown with its pretty lace trim, he went as hard as his hat.

  And then there was that business of her leaving a room whenever he entered it. She was always casual about it, and she always had an excuse. But it was obvious to him, if not to Grandpa, that she was going out of her way to avoid him.

  Grandpa. Now, there was a survivor if he’d ever met one. The poor old guy had lost his wife in childbirth, his son and daughter-in-law in a tragic accident, and over half his breathing capacity to a freak of nature. One thing he hadn’t lost was his fighting spirit, and he’d passed that along to his granddaughter.

  Chance inhaled a goodly portion of smoke, wondering how in the hell he’d gotten himself into such a stupid predicament. Then he exhaled, thinking he’d just cancel the invitation and tell Joni that he was moving back to the trailer tomorrow morning.

  She beat him to the punch. “Thanks for asking me, but I haven’t been dancing in so long, I’m afraid I’ve forgotten how.”

  Why he didn’t grab the out she’d offered him and run with it, he couldn’t say. But he found himself trying to persuade her to go with him. “Dancing is a lot like riding a bicycle. Once you learn, you never really forget how.”

  “I don’t know.…” Part of her wanted to jump at the opportunity to get out of the house for a while, but the other part of her was afraid that accepting was the same as waving a red flag in front of a bull.

  “C’mon,” he cajoled her, his eyes gleaming their lazy way down her gingham blouse and blue jeans. “Get your glad rags on and go with me.”

  The cicadas chirped anxiously, echoing her heartbeat. But still, she hesitated. “What if Grandpa wakes up and needs something?”

  “While you’re getting dressed,” he said, “I’ll call and ask Skinny to come over and stay with him.”

  Joni glanced toward the cornfield. Floodlights illuminated the newly raised drilling rig and the trailer where the roughnecks were bunking. “He’s not going to the crossroads?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  Chance chuckled. “Because the last woman he danced with charged him with assault and battery.”

  “What happened?” she asked, shocked.

  “He attacked her with his two left feet.”

  She groaned and rolled her eyes in mock hopelessness. “What can I say?”

  He took a last drag on his cigarette, then stubbed it out. “Try yes.”

  The shimmering silver of her laughter lit up the darkening sky. “All right already, yes.”

  He held the screen door open for her. “I’ll check on Grandpa, and then I’ll call Skinny.”

  She caught a drift of his pine soap as she slipped past him. “Meet you on the porch in twenty minutes?”

  “I’ll be there with bells on,” he assured her.

  Joni started up the staircase, then stopped and turned back to him. “By the way, did I tell you that Dr. Rayburn paid you quite a compliment yesterday?”

  “Really?” Chance paused in the living room doorway. “What’d he say?”

  She smiled. “That you’re the best dose of medicine Grandpa’s had in a long time.”

  “Hey, that’s great,” he said, flexing his shoulders and his dimples in heart-melting harmony.

  Those dimples made her panic, and she wondered if it was too late to break their— She shied away from the word date, but she couldn’t think of another to substitute.

  He saw the shadow of doubt dimming her eyes and knew he’d better distract her before she tried to back out on him. “You never did tell me what happened at the bank.”

  “The bank?” Her tone implied it was the furthest thing from her mind. “What about the bank?”

  He shrugged, sending all sorts of muscles into play. “I was just wondering how Jesse James reacted when you made your mortgage payment almost two weeks early.”

  “Oh.” She couldn’t suppress a small smile at the memory. “Well, when he finished picking himself up off the floor, he agreed to extend our
other notes until our oil well comes in.”

  This talk about the loan started Joni thinking again about the farm.

  Like most farmers, they were in debt up to their ears. During the boom years, inflation at home and a weak dollar abroad had sent crop prices and land values skyrocketing. At the urging of economists and government officials alike, they’d planted fencerow to fencerow, borrowing money to buy seeds and fertilizer and diesel fuel on land that had been in the family since the opening of the Cherokee Strip.

  She remembered how the bust had caught them completely off guard. One day the banker was telling them the sky was the limit, and the next, he was calling in their loans. She’d never forget that day.

  Grandpa, while shaken, had taken it pretty much in stride. Joni had taken it better than she’d thought possible. But Larry … Larry had taken it hard.

  To keep the bank from foreclosing, they’d sold off two hundred acres and all their livestock. Each sale was like an amputation. But the money helped reduce their debt, which in turn made them eligible for an emergency loan that allowed them to start planting.

  With their hearts in their throats, they’d prayed the worst was behind them. It wasn’t. The dollar was growing stronger, drying up the foreign markets. When food originally meant to be shipped overseas began to flood American stores, crop prices dropped through the floor. At the same time, the interest rate on their remaining loans climbed to twenty-two percent.

  Although she couldn’t discuss this with Chance, Joni couldn’t keep the thoughts at bay. There was the day Grandpa had gone on the warpath, writing blistering letters to everyone from the president of the bank to the President of the United States. Then she had gone to work as a waitress at the local truck stop, making minimum wage plus tips. But Larry … Larry had gone off the deep end.

  Now, three years after her husband had let her have it with both barrels, Joni had Chance to thank for renewing her faith in the future. And it was for that reason—and that reason alone, she told herself sternly—that she owed him her company tonight.

  “Well,” she said, breaking this stream of consciousness that had transported her back to unhappy times, “I guess I’d better get moving.” And leave the past behind, she silently added.

  “Guess so,” he agreed, relieved to see the shadows leave her eyes and the light return. He hated it when she retreated into herself like that. Not only did it make him feel helpless as hell, but it twisted something deep inside his gut. And no woman had ever done that to him before.

  Chance crossed to the bottom of the stairs and called up after her. “Joni?”

  She pivoted, her youthful ponytail coming to rest over her left shoulder. “Yes?”

  He tossed her a summer-wine smile that made her thirsty for more. “Leave your hair down tonight.”

  Five

  Five minutes to shower, ten minues to dry her hair and put on her makeup, and five minutes to get dressed. That left her no time to think about what she was doing, which was all for the better. Because if she’d stopped to think about it, she couldn’t have gone through with it.

  But as she descended the stairs exactly twenty minutes later, Joni got a full-blown case of the jitters. What if Chance didn’t like her dress? Maybe applying makeup had been going too far. And an emery board and hand lotion. Why had she used them tonight when she hadn’t used them in months? Months? Years!

  She paused on the bottom step and wet her lips with the tip of her tongue, whether from dread or anticipation she couldn’t honestly say. Then, drawing a deep breath in the hope of stilling her butterflies, she went to the screen door and peered out, looking for Chance.

  He wasn’t there.

  She knew it. He’d changed his mind and gone to the crossroads without her. Blinking dangerously fast now, she turned away from the door.

  And saw the light in the kitchen.

  The sound of laughter, Chance’s as smooth as hot syrup and Grandpa’s as gravelly as the driveway, lured her into that warm, inviting room. As she should have guessed, they were sitting at the table, finishing a game of pitch.

  Joni hovered in the doorway as nervous as a squirrel’s tail, while they gave her the once-over.

  Her dress, a voile bouquet of lavender and blue, recaptured the romantic spirit of a bygone era. A lacy collar adorned the jewel neckline in front, then followed it on around to a plunging V-back. The slim self belt cinched her wisp of a waist, while the circle skirt swirled graciously to her shapely calves.

  In keeping with Chance’s request, she’d left her hair swinging free in a fiery cascade. And on her feet were the strappy white sandals he’d seen before.

  “Whistle me ‘Dixie’!” Grandpa exclaimed, laying his winning hand of cards aside. “Don’t you look like summer’s just around the corner.”

  Chance slapped his loser’s quarter on the table and smiled. “I couldn’t have said it better myself.”

  Not until her lungs began to hurt did Joni realize she’d forgotten to breathe. Drawing in a deep gulp of air, she looked at Chance. “I’m ready whenever you are.”

  Grandpa scratched his sagging jaw. “Haven’t I seen that dress somewhere before?”

  “It belonged to Grandma.” Joni had found it in the cedar chest in the attic when she’d gone up there to get the recipe card. She’d fallen in love with it on the spot. Perfectly preserved in blue tissue paper, it had needed only a few tucks in the bodice to make it fit her to a T.

  Sadness tugged his face into strange folds. “Now I remember … Ruthann was wearing it the night that I proposed to her.”

  A prickle of guilt traced through Joni’s veins. “If you’d rather I not wear it, just say so.”

  “Wear it, and anything else of hers you want, in good health, darlin’.” His voice crackled like a dry leaf. “I think she’d be pleased as punch to know you’re enjoying it.”

  “Thank you, Grandpa.” Joni crossed to the kitchen table and kissed his wrinkled cheek.

  He cleared his throat and picked up the playing cards. “Go on now, the both of you, and have fun.”

  “Sorry I woke you earlier,” Chance said as he stood.

  The old man shrugged. “I’ve got an eternity to sleep.”

  Chance gripped his shoulder with a gentle hand. “Skinny should be here in a few minutes.”

  Grandpa began stacking the deck, his milky blue eyes gleaming expectantly. “I’ll be watching for him.”

  After extracting the old cardsharp’s promise that he wouldn’t take the young roughneck for too many quarters, Chance led Joni out to his car, a ’56 Thunderbird convertible he’d restored to mint condition. Its hand-rubbed chrome stood out in shiny relief against its Fiesta Red body.

  “Do you want me to put the top up?” he asked as he held the passenger door open for her.

  “Not really.” She tipped her head back and shook it. “I’ve never ridden in a convertible before.”

  Chance got in on the driver’s side, his eyes crinkling in appreciation of the entrancing portrait she made in the brief flare of the floor light. “There’s a scarf in the glove compartment if it gets too windy for you.”

  Joni kept her face to the night sky, telling herself it was ridiculous to feel jealous of all those other women who might have taken him up on the offer. One date, and she was ready to hogtie the guy! “I love the wind.”

  He inserted the key in the ignition. But instead of turning the engine on, he turned to her. “C’mere.”

  She rolled her head sideways in surprise. “What?”

  He slid his right arm along the back of the seat and wrapped a wayward strand of her silky hair around his finger, pulling on it playfully. “No damn doorhuggers allowed in my car.”

  “You mean you want me to—”

  “Haul your buns over here.”

  “But—”

  “No buts, just buns.”

  “That’s bad,” she groaned, scooching over to sit hip to hip beside him.

  “That’s better,” he declared, re
leasing her only long enough to start the engine and shift gears before draping his arm around her shoulders again.

  Joni gave directions to the crossroads and Chance steered the convertible onto the highway, controlling it with one hand as well as most drivers control their cars with two.

  The wind wreaked havoc with their hair and made conversation impossible. But each was so mindful of the other’s presence, words would have been difficult to come by.

  Chance kept his eyes on the road, but it was all he could do to keep his free hand from straying to her small breast, his fingers from strumming her slender neck. He wanted to find out for himself if that sweet mound of flesh felt as firm as it looked, if her skin was as soft and satiny as he imagined it … all over.

  Joni sat primly, hands folded in her lap and knees together, but her thoughts ran wild and free. Every time he took a curve, causing her to lean closer to him, she wondered what it would be like to have that muscular torso crushing her into the mattress. Whenever the wind whipped her freshly shampooed hair across her eyes, she remembered the luscious curly hair on his chest.

  The air smelled of life in all its glory. Roadside wildflowers filled the highway with their heady scent. The moon topped redbuds and dogwoods in full bloom.

  Spring was right in the middle of resurrecting flora and feeling, while Joni and Chance were completing a cycle begun by their grandfathers. Once he hit pay dirt, he’d pack up and leave. She knew that as well as she knew her own name. And she wondered what sort of winter would follow on the heels of his departure.

  “We must be getting close,” Chance said, his thigh muscles rippling under his jeans as he began applying the brakes. “I hear music.”

  Joni heard it too. She forced herself to ignore his leg rubbing against hers and looked straight ahead. “It’s just around the bend. Turn left at the service road and follow it until you get to the circle of headlights.”

  Back when cattle was king and railroad was queen, the crossroads had been an important link to the outside world. Ranchers had come from miles around, bringing their livestock to be loaded and shipped all over the country. The low three-toned wail of the train whistle had carried the guarantee of prime beef raised by hardworking individuals rather than heartless corporations.