Judith Bowen - A Home Of His Own

Phoebe reached up and put her hand on Lewis’s chest. She touched his throat, bare and warm in the cold night air. “I’d better go, Lewis. I— I’m glad you talked to me. I really hope things work out for you—”

“You mean that, don’t you, Phoebe?” His voice was raw.

She nodded. “I do.”

“Kiss me, Phoebe. Kiss me one more time before I leave. I’m going to start walking toward town. Someone will pick me up— I’m not worried about that. And tomorrow, I’m going to turn myself in to the cops. Finish my sentence.”

“No more sneaking out in laundry trucks?” she asked, running her fingertips along the line of his throat, where his T-shirt met his neck. She felt him shiver.

“Nope. I’m gonna do my time, put it behind me. Start looking after Ma and Billy again. They need me. They got nobody else. And, Phoebe, I want you to…” He paused and turned to her, fingering one of her braids. “Ah, hell, never mind. Just kiss me!”

Phoebe kissed him. She was hoping he’d ask. She wanted to lose herself in the luxury of his arms, his warmth, the skill of his kiss. Lewis was no rank beginner at the art of love, as she was.

He pressed her close against him and she could feel the bulge of his erection in his jeans. He made no attempt to conceal it. Her pulse shot into overdrive, but she knew they had to stop. This…this wasn’t right. She pushed back, gently.

“What…what were you going to say?” she managed, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. Her breath was out of control, her breasts were swollen and aching.

“What about?” he murmured, kissing her neck and throat.

“When you said…something you wanted me to do…” She lay back in the hammock, every nerve in her body singing, every muscle mad with need.

“I wanted to say…” He kissed her deeply, reverently, then raised his head and stared down into her eyes. Phoebe could see him clearly, since the moon had emerged from behind the clouds. “I wanted to say that I wish you’d wait for me. But I know that’s crazy.” His voice was deep, every word he said so…so tender! Just like in the movies. “You’ve got your own life to live. There’s no future for the two of us. You and me. We’re…we’re just…I don’t know—accidental friends, I guess. If you’d never come out to the farm with your mother…” He shrugged.

“You gave me a frog,” she told him softly.

“I did?” He sounded amazed.

“Yes. Remember that first time, when I was up in the hayloft at your place? You threw a wooden frog up to me.”

He grinned. “That’s it, kid. I’m the frog and you’re the princess. Like I said, no future.”

He sat up and swung his legs over the side of the hammock. Then he climbed out and helped her down. Phoebe felt cold now that she was separated from him. She was still wearing shorts, although she’d put on a long-sleeved shirt before she’d left.

He shrugged on Ben’s windbreaker and picked up the paper sack with the fruit in it. They walked toward her house, hand in hand. Phoebe noticed that her father’s truck was parked outside the garage. Which meant Trevor was home. She hadn’t heard him drive up.

“You’re a good influence on me already, Phoebe. You know that?” He stopped and pulled her into his arms and brought her hips close against his. Phoebe was glad of the darkness, because she knew she was blushing.

“Oh? In what way?”

“If I wasn’t trying to turn over a new leaf, I’d be tempted to hotwire that truck over there and drive it to town. Maybe get another six months tacked onto my sentence.”

Phoebe was shocked. How naive was she? Of course. Lewis Hardin had been on his own, looking after himself all his life. These were the kinds of things he did.

“As it is, I’ll just walk out to the main road like a decent, law-abiding citizen and hitch a ride.”

Phoebe laughed. “You’re sure you’ll be all right?” She wondered if she should offer to give him a lift. But if she started the truck, someone would be sure to come out and see what all the activity was about.

Lewis drew her close and kissed her again, one last, lingering kiss. Then he grinned at her. “I’ll be fine—now.” Phoebe thought she’d weep at the sweetness of his farewell. It was so romantic.…

Then he stepped away from her and started walking down the dirt road that led to the farm. It was only half a mile or so to the paved secondary highway. He turned once and raised his hand in farewell.

Her highwayman was leaving her.

Phoebe felt her lower lip tremble, then realized her face was wet with tears. She raised her hand in return. “Goodbye,” she murmured, catching back the “godspeed” that had trembled on her lips. She realized she’d read too many novels. “Don’t worry, I— I’ll wait for you, Lewis Hardin. Forever. I promise.”

FOREVER WAS a very long time.

That summer Phoebe started dating one of the boys who’d graduated the year before but returned to Glory to work for the summer in the town office. His kisses weren’t anything like Lewis’s, but on the other hand, he was ambitious and smart, and everyone said he was bound to go far.

Go far. That was what Phoebe wanted.

She worked hard in her senior year and graduated at the top of her class. Her parents were ecstatic. Two scholars in the family! Ben, her brother, hadn’t achieved marks as spectacular as hers, but he was doing well at his course in university, working part-time during the school year and saving every penny he made in the summers to put himself through.

Phoebe got a scholarship from Cross-Canada Pipelines—their big scholarship, which they awarded to only one student in each Western province. She wouldn’t have to worry about money. All she’d have to do was keep up her average…and the future was hers.

In Glory, her path only crossed Lewis Hardin’s again once. After grade twelve, she gave in to curiosity about Lewis, and what he was like now, and bid on him at a bachelor auction in town. He was out of jail by then and working at a ranch west of Glory. She didn’t know what had possessed her to do such a crazy thing.

Phoebe shuddered when she remembered the disastrous evening she’d spent with him. Any silly romantic dreams she might have had about Lewis Hardin had died a swift death. How could she have been so wrong about anyone?

She never heard from him again while she lived at home. Then, in her first year of university, she got a letter forwarded by her mother, with a note attached expressing her amazement that Phoebe was corresponding with “that Hardin boy.” Phoebe had never talked about her feelings, had only confided a few girlish yearnings to her brother Ben. She knew now that what she’d felt for Lewis was nothing more than a crush. The note told her, with many misspellings and scratched-out phrases, that Lewis had given up ranching and taken a job on a wildcat rig up north. Somewhere up by Fort Chipewyan.

A long way from Glory. A long way from the University of Alberta in Edmonton, where she’d begun her science degree, specializing in organic chemistry. Phoebe had reread the letter, alarmed that her first sense of relief had given way to something else. An ache. A yearning. A wondering—what was he like now? Had he ever changed…for the better?

She’d never know. And she had too much to think about these days to wonder for long about the life and prospects of Lewis Hardin, ex-convict. Lewis—along with the wooden frog, which she’d left at Swallowbank Farm at the very back of the closet in her room, taken over now by Jilly—was part of the past, of her childhood.

Phoebe was twenty now. And she had serious prospects of her own.

Three years later, the present…