Debbie Macomber - Dakota Born

Dennis placed his arm around her shoulder and she rested her head against his side. It felt good to be with him, protected. Sheltered. She shouldn’t feel this way, shouldn’t allow herself the luxury of depending on Dennis, but she was afraid—for Calla and herself. Back when she was eighteen, Sarah couldn’t wait to leave Buffalo Valley and find her own way in the world. She’d moved to Minneapolis and found a job paying minimum wage in a fabric store. A second job as cashier in an all-night service station had helped pay the rent. It was there, late one night, that she’d met Willie Stern.

He was a crazy kind of guy—impulsive, unpredictable—and she’d fallen for him hard. Within a month, they were living together and not much after that Sarah was pregnant. The only person she’d told was her younger brother, and Jeb had driven to Minneapolis and insisted Willie marry her. If it hadn’t been for her brother, Sarah was convinced Willie would have left her high and dry. Perhaps that would have been for the best.

Later, after Calla was born, Willie didn’t want her working. Sarah had learned about quilting from her mother and from her experience in the fabric store. She’d started making quilts and selling them out of their apartment. Willie never did understand why anyone would pay her for them, but he didn’t complain about the extra money. In addition to his part-time job as a shoe salesman, he played back-up guitar in a couple of bar bands—initially part of his appeal for Sarah—and his earnings were erratic.

It didn’t take long for her marriage to fall apart—and for her husband to bring them to the edge of bankruptcy. Sarah saw an attorney when she learned Willie had gotten another woman pregnant. Beaten down, discouraged and with a four-year-old daughter in tow, Sarah had returned to Buffalo Valley, to her childhood home. She still lived with her father. She’d continued to make quilts and was passionate about the work she did. Her love for the creative process of blending textures and color, adapting traditional patterns and forming her own designs, had grown over the years. So had her talent, if not her income.

She rarely heard from Willie these days, and that was how she preferred it.

Dennis ran his index finger down the side of her face and coaxed her mouth open with his. “It’s been a while,” he whispered, his hand cupping her breast.

“I know.” She hadn’t called him in six weeks. It was cruel of her to rely on him, to reach out to him with her concerns, when she didn’t believe they had a future, but Dennis Urlacher was her greatest weakness. As often as she told herself it was necessary to break free, she couldn’t seem to do it.

“Why did you wait so long?” he asked.

Sarah didn’t want to answer and hung her head, wishing now that she’d resisted the urge to call him. He’d come without the least hesitation. Any time, night or day, she could phone and he’d drop whatever he was doing and come to her. It’d been that way for nearly two years.

She was no good for Dennis. There were things he didn’t know about her. Things she couldn’t tell him or anyone, not even her father or Jeb. Things not even Calla knew. She and Dennis should never have become involved, should never have crossed the physical barrier. He was five years younger, and her brother’s best friend.

She’d known for a long time how he felt about her, and discouraged him, rejected his efforts to date her. For a number of years she was able to ignore her own growing attraction to him. Then Jeb had nearly been killed in a farming accident and while her brother lay in a hospital fighting for his life, Dennis had joined the family in their vigil. He’d been there, so strong and confident, so reassuring.

That was when she’d lowered her guard and they’d become lovers. After that, it was impossible to go back. Impossible to pretend she had no feelings for him, and impossible to deny their physical need for each other.

And yet she insisted their relationship remain private. Not because she was ashamed of Dennis, but because she was ashamed of herself.

Sometimes Sarah suspected her father knew about her and Dennis, but if so, he never said a word. Calla was completely oblivious, and for that Sarah was grateful. Jeb had always known, but the subject of Dennis and her had never been discussed.

Dennis wove his hands into her thick, dark hair and angled her face to his. He kissed her again, slow and deep. “Come home with me.” His voice was slurred with longing.

“No …”

He didn’t argue with her, didn’t try to persuade her; instead, he kissed her until she moaned softly and turned more fully in his arms, wrapping herself in his embrace.

After a while Dennis lifted his head and held her gaze. His love shone on her, poured over her like sunshine. It’d been six weeks since they were last together. Six weeks filled with long, lonely nights in which she’d hungered for him and denied them both. Even now, if she insisted, he’d release her and drive away without a word.

Unable to refuse herself or him, she raised her fingertips to the pulse in his neck and smiled softly back. Dennis’s brown eyes darkened with desire.

Their kisses took on a renewed urgency then, and when his tongue found hers, she welcomed it; at the same time she wanted to weep in abject frustration.

It was going to happen, the way it always did, because she was too weak to tell him no. Too weak to deny herself his love. And too weak to tell him the truth.

“Are you going to sleep your life away?” Lindsay chided as she set a plastic cup of steaming coffee on Maddy’s nightstand.

Her friend rolled over and stared up at Lindsay through half-closed eyes. “What time is it?” she mumbled. She sat up slowly and reached for the coffee.

“It’s eight o’clock,” Lindsay told her. Sitting on the bed opposite Maddy’s, she crossed her legs and sipped her own coffee. They’d arrived in Minneapolis the day before, and after finding a motel, had gone straight to the Mall of America. Savannah had its share of shopping malls, but nothing that compared to the four-hundred plus stores and amusement park inside this one. After they’d checked out the stores, they’d screamed their way through a couple of the more spectacular rides, visited Camp Snoopy and bought souvenirs for their nieces and nephews. Their excursion had ended with dinner and a movie, and all without leaving the massive mall.

“It’s eight already? Can’t be,” Maddy protested.

“Sure is.” Lindsay had always liked mornings—even as a teenager. It was a trait she didn’t share with her best friend. Maddy woke up one brain cell at a time, as her mother always said. But she had far more energy in the evenings than Lindsay did. Maybe it was in their genes, she thought, since she was descended from farmers—on her dad’s side, anyway—and Maddy from city folk.

“Will we make Buffalo Valley today?” Maddy asked, finally tossing aside the bedspread and heading toward the bathroom.

“We will if you get a move on.” Her own bags were not only packed but loaded in the car. She’d awakened at six and sat out in the morning sunshine by the motel pool, drinking a first cup of coffee and mulling over the things her grandfather had told her about North Dakota and Buffalo Valley. When he’d arrived in Savannah, he’d been confused and unhappy. In time, he’d adjusted somewhat but it seemed to help to talk about home, and Lindsay had been a willing listener.

Her grandfather had spoken endlessly of fertile land and abundant crops, showed her photographs of a land with a huge expanse of sky above it and fields that stretched to the far horizon. What Lindsay remembered most were his stories of blizzards and his descriptions of the wind. He’d told her more than once that nowhere else in the lower forty-eight states did the wind blow as strong or as fierce as it did in the Dakotas.