Forgotten Son Read online

  “I think you mean have sex with me.” His eyes held hers and she stared back at him with everything she was feeling.

  “No. I don’t.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Caroline…”

  She held up a hand, stopping him. “Just go away.”

  He stood, but other than that he didn’t move. She looked up to find his eyes on her.

  “What?” she asked at the unspoken question there.

  “I have a feeling you could break my heart—badly.”

  “Is that what you’re afraid of?”

  “After Ginny, I swore I’d never get involved like that again and I haven’t. It’s called protection and I’m good at protecting my heart. It’s easier that way, but it’s not so easy for me to hurt you.”

  Her gaze delved into his. “I’m a little afraid myself. I’ve never had these kinds of feelings so fast before. Grace says it’s just gratitude, but I don’t know.”

  That wistfulness in her voice got to him. She needed someone. He was here now and he could keep things on an even keel without compromising his ethics. He’d helped people before and he could help her. He just had to guard against letting a situation get too intimate, like last night.

  He saw her camera bag on the table. “Do you have plans for this afternoon?”

  She blinked in confusion. “I was going out with my camera again.”

  “I know where you can get some great shots.”

  “Where?”

  “Tuck is away and I have to go out to the ranch and feed the animals. It’s very tranquil and scenic.”

  “Are you asking me to go with you?”

  He took a deep breath. “Yes.”

  Suddenly the world took on a brighter glow, and Caroline knew she was starting to have strong feelings for Eli. He’d said that she could break his heart, but that worked both ways. He could hurt her like she’d never been hurt before. Could she handle that? Could she handle it if Eli never loved her the way he’d loved Ginny?

  The word no hovered on her lips. Things were too intense, too emotional, and she needed space and time. On the other hand, she wanted to spend time with him to see if what she was feeling was real or a result of gratitude, as Grace had said.

  Caroline got to her feet. “You don’t have to do this,” she said.

  “I know, Caroline. What’s your answer?”

  “Yes. I’d love to go. I’ll just get my camera and purse.” She headed for the bedroom, knowing that any time spent with him was better than being alone. Maybe he felt the same way. He was a loner, a rebel, and in many ways she was, too. This time together could be what she needed to discover why she felt about him the way she did. It was probably just a result of the trauma she’d been through.

  But she didn’t feel it was.

  CHAPTER TEN

  DRIVING OUT OF AUSTIN, they headed toward Round Rock, turning onto a hardtop country road. Neither said much during the drive. Caroline was enjoying the rolling, sunlit countryside of live oak trees and green grasses, small farms and ranches. The wildflowers were all gone now and soon the heat of summer would dull the lush landscape.

  Eli turned off the road and crossed a cattle guard. White board fences lined both sides of the drive, running all the way to the rambling farmhouse and around it. A barn and a couple of outbuildings were visible in back of the house. He drove into a two-vehicle carport and parked beside a silver pickup truck.

  “That’s Tuck’s,” Eli said. “Pa bought it for him when he graduated from high school. It’s his pride and joy. The truck has some years and miles on it, but it runs like brand-new. Tuck takes very good care of it.”

  “Did you get a truck, too?”

  “Oh, yeah,” he answered, opening the door. “It’s in the barn. We use it to haul hay and feed. I’m not as particular as Tuck.”

  Caroline got out and walked around the front of the car, gazing at the neatly cut grass and flower beds. Roses were vining on a fence—bright red, pink and yellow roses. They were beautiful.

  Eli was watching her face. “Those were Ma’s. She loved those roses.”

  “Don’t tell me,” Caroline said, laughter bubbling inside her. “Tuck takes care of them.”

  “You bet.”

  “I think Tuck should meet my sister. They have a lot in common.”

  “He already has,” he remarked dryly.

  “Oh, yeah.” Caroline grimaced. “I almost forgot. Bad idea.”

  A frenzy of barking broke the abrupt silence and a small, mixed-breed white dog with brown spots hurled himself at Eli. He looked like a terrier.

  “Hey, Sam.” Eli knelt down and rubbed the dog’s head with affection. “Are you hungry?”

  Sam barked louder and jumped up and down in excitement, obviously understanding what Eli meant.

  “Okay. Okay. I’ll get your food.”

  Eli opened a side door and they went through a utility room into a large kitchen with a big oak table. He flipped on a light, revealing that everything inside the house was kept as neat and clean as the yard.

  “I like this farmhouse,” she said. “Lots of space and room and ambiance. It’s really homey and comfortable.”

  “There’s a long porch with cedar columns in the front and in the back. When you sit outside, you can smell the cedar.” Eli took down some canned dog food and two cans of cat food from a high shelf. “There are two bedrooms upstairs and two downstairs. Tuck and I shared a room and the beds upstairs were used for the kids who needed help.”

  “It takes a special kind of person to reach out to others like that.”

  “Ma and Pa had very big hearts. They made every kid that came here feel special. Some stayed overnight until relatives could be located, some stayed a week, others months. Tuck and I were here for the long haul.”

  She could hear the love in his voice when he talked about his foster parents—it was the same kind of love he radiated when he talked about Ginny. That kind of love was everlasting.

  “Is there a cat, too?” she asked, eyeing the cat food, that Eli was spooning into a dish.

  “Oh, yes. Her name is Delilah and she appears when least expected.”

  “Come on, boy.” Eli led Sam outside and Caroline followed. He placed the food by some water bowls. Sam immediately dug into his. Suddenly something leaped from the roof to the ground, and Caroline jumped back in alarm.

  “It’s okay,” Eli said. “It’s only Dee.”

  “Oh. I think my heart stopped beating for a moment.”

  “Dee always makes a dramatic appearance.”

  Caroline looked closely at the cat that was crouched over her food bowl. “It’s a Siamese. She’s gorgeous.”

  “She just showed up one day and Tuck’s been feeding her ever since. She’s great company for Samson.”

  “They’re Samson and Delilah?”

  “Yes, they’re very close. Watch.”

  Both animals were now eating out of Dee’s bowl, then they quickly turned together to finish off Sam’s food. Caroline expected a growling fight to start, but it didn’t. Sam curled up on the grass and Dee rubbed against him, finally resting on the dog’s back.

  “I have to get a picture of this,” she said, and ran to the car. She grabbed her camera and was back in a minute. She squatted down, looked through the lens and started snapping. Finding something beautiful and meaningful to photograph had suddenly become so easy. Why had it been so hard before?

  Pausing for a moment, she sank back on the grass and stared up at Eli. Her stomach tightened at the look in his blue eyes. For a second neither spoke.

  He cleared his throat. “I’ve got to feed the horses. Want to come with me?”

  “Sure.” Scrambling to her feet, she followed him to the barn. Caroline took numerous pictures of him dumping feed into a trough. Horses fretted around him and he rubbed them with a cajoling hand. They whickered in response. He was so caring, so gentle. She captured it all through her lens—once she started she couldn’t seem to stop. Eli made a very good sub
ject.

  Later they walked down to the pond, Sam and Dee tagging along. She captured the ducks frolicking in the water. A couple of deer came to the edge to drink and she snapped as many shots as she could, trying to capture every facet of the beautiful creatures. When the deer ran into the woods, Caroline sat in the grass beside Eli in comfortable silence.

  “Thank you,” she said. “This is what I needed. It’s very tranquil and picturesque, like you said.”

  “Yes. It is,” he replied, his eyes locked on her face.

  The sun began to go down and they slowly made their way back to the barn. Eli closed the door to the storage shed and Caroline sat on a bale of hay watching him. Sam barked frantically at the hayloft and she looked up to see Dee strutting around on the rafters.

  Caroline patted Sam’s head. “It’s all right, she’ll come down.”

  “Sam gets upset because he can’t go after her,” Eli said.

  “We had a ladder to the loft but Tuck took it down ’cause Sam tried to climb it. Tuck was afraid he’d break his legs.”

  Dee jumped down onto the hay and curled up. Sam barked at her a couple of times, then lay beside her.

  “It must have been wonderful to grow up here.” Caroline could envision two young boys enjoying the outdoors and learning about life from two incredible people.

  Eli eased down onto the bale of hay and once more, like the night they went out to dinner, opened up to her about his past. “It was unlike any place I’d ever been. I didn’t know what discipline or rules were. My mother let me do whatever I wanted, and I did. She had no control over me. Here there were rules and I resisted them with everything I had in me.”

  “You did?”

  “That first night I planned to run away. As soon as Uncle Jess and Aunt Amalie—that’s what I called them then—went to bed I was going to steal some money and leave. No one could tell me what I had to do. I was thirteen years old, with a big chip on my shoulder.”

  “But you didn’t leave?”

  “No.” He looked down at his hands. “At supper that night I didn’t say thank you, or please, or yes ma’am, or no sir, and Pa said that in his house table manners were observed. I told him to go to hell and that he couldn’t keep me here.”

  Eli had a faraway look on his face. “I can still hear his chair scraping back as he got to his feet, saying in that deep voice, ‘To the barn.’ I told him to go to hell again and that I was leaving. He caught my arm and dragged me out the door. Tuck looked horrified and Ma was wringing her hands.”

  “What happened?”

  “See those boxing gloves on the wall?”

  She followed his gaze and saw them hanging from a nail. “Yes.”

  “Once we got out here, he yanked them off the wall and threw a set at me. He said if I wanted to leave so bad that I’d have to fight my way out. I asked what he meant. He said since I like to fight so much, all I had to do was knock him out and I was free to do whatever I wanted. I thought, hell, he’s an old man, and I could put his lights out with one punch. I was big for my age and thought I was ten feet tall and bulletproof, so I agreed. Then he told me that if he won, I would abide by the rules and give them a chance. I don’t think I really heard that part because there was no way that old man was going to beat me.”

  She waited with bated breath for him to continue. “I quickly put my gloves on and we danced around each other. I couldn’t wait to show him how tough I was. I didn’t even see his right coming. The next thing I knew I was on my ass looking up at him. I jerked to my feet, thinking he’d got in a lucky punch, but again I was on my ass before I knew it.

  “Again and again I went down. I got so angry that I just ran at him, trying to drive my fists into his stomach. He wrapped his arms around me and held me. I buried my face against his chest and started to cry. I never let anyone see me cry, but that night I sobbed like a baby. He just held me and told me everything was going to be all right. Then I dried my tears and we sat out here and talked for a long time. He told me about the rules and what was expected of me. He said a man always keeps his word. He told me I was a man and he would trust me to keep my word and not run away.”

  “Did you run away?”

  He rubbed his hands together. “Whenever I thought about it, I could hear Pa saying he trusted me and that I was a man. I always put off running until another day. I wanted him to know I could keep my word, and I wanted him to be proud of me. By then Ma had started to work her magic with her sweetness and gentleness and, oh, could she cook. I teased her when I was older that the reason I never ran away was because I loved her cooking. She’d say it was them that I loved, and she was right. No one had ever loved or cared about me before, and as days passed I never wanted to leave.”

  “Since Tuck was their only child, did you get along with him at first?”

  Eli looked at her with a puzzled frown. “Ma and Pa didn’t have any kids. Tuck was adopted. He was left in a cardboard container at their mailbox.”

  “Oh, my. And Jess Tucker gave him his name?”

  “Yeah. Ma told me that when the adoption was final, Pa said, ‘We now have a little Tucker.’ They called him little Tucker for a long time, then shortened it when he got older to just Tuck.”

  “Knowing that, I can’t believe he was so nice about Grace’s reaction to his name.”

  “He just brushed it off.”

  “Still, Grace should apologize again.”

  Eli glanced at her. “Let it drop—that’s what Tuck would want.”

  “Okay,” she replied, feeling a little giddy from the warm look in his eyes.

  “Then Tuck doesn’t know who his parents are?”

  “No, and as he gets older it bothers him.”

  They were silent for a moment. “To answer your question, at first I hated him—but then I hated everybody so that wasn’t unusual. But it was hard to keep hating someone who’s so nice. That’s Tuck—those first few days I said some hurtful things to him, but it didn’t phase him. He kept trying to help me. Tuck was a scrawny kid, small for his age, and I found myself becoming his protector. No one picked on him when I was around. At fourteen he shot up and filled out. He’s still tall and lanky, while I have more muscle. I could always take him in a fight—”

  “Let me guess,” she interrupted. “Every fight had to be settled with those boxing gloves.”

  Eli smiled. “Yep. Sometimes I let him win, though. Tuck and I know everything about each other and we’re closer than most brothers.”

  He became thoughtful and she knew he was thinking about his real brothers. “I talked to Caleb today,” he blurted out.

  She caught his arm. “Oh, Eli, that’s wonderful.”

  He stared down at her hand for a moment before telling her what he and Caleb had discussed.

  “So Joe McCain didn’t claim him, either?”

  “No, and all of a sudden I felt a kinship to him. We were the unwanted sons, the forgotten ones, and that threw me. I thought I was the only one who lived through that kind of pain.”

  “But Caleb understood.”

  “I suppose.”

  “Now you can talk to Jake and Beau and get to know one another as brothers.”

  “It’s not that easy,” he mumbled.

  “Why isn’t it?”

  “I can’t just wipe out the past.”

  Her fingers tightened, and in an uncanny way she knew what his problem was. “Are you afraid if you accept the McCains as family that you will somehow lose the feelings you have for Ma, Pa and Tuck?”

  He didn’t answer. He just kept staring at her hand.

  “Eli, you will lose nothing, and you won’t tarnish your foster parents’ memory by accepting the McCains as your family. They will just be an extension of what and who you are. A relationship with your brothers might ease the heart-ache you’ve felt for so long and give the wounds inside you a chance to heal.”

  He took a deep breath. “I don’t know if I can do it.”

  “Sure you can.”
>
  “Caroline…”

  She got up and went to the boxing gloves and removed them from the nail. She carried them to him and handed him a pair.

  “If I can knock you down, you have to talk to your brothers.”

  Eli raised an eyebrow in disbelief. “You can’t knock me down. I’m much stronger than you! And I’m not fighting a woman.”

  She put the gloves on. “Are you chicken, Eli?”

  He stood. “I’m not fighting you.”

  “Didn’t Pa settle all your fights and disagreements this way?”

  “Mostly.”

  “Then that’s what we’ll do.” She hopped around in front of him. “If I can knock you down, you’ll speak with your brothers. Deal?”

  “No.”

  She stopped hopping and glared at him. “I’m not asking you to fight me. You’re big and strong even with your hurt arm, but if little old me can knock you on your butt then that’s a sure sign that Ma and Pa would want you to embrace your brothers. Deal?”

  “This is crazy.” But she felt his resolve weakening.

  “Deal?”

  “Deal,” he growled.

  “Put the gloves on.” She hopped around him again.

  He shoved his hands into the gloves and held them up with a complacent expression. She danced in and out, taking jabs at his stomach, but he didn’t move or respond. This was going to be so easy. She moved close to him, her body touching his. He still didn’t respond.

  Glancing up into his stubborn blue eyes, she placed her right foot between his feet, then wrapped her arms around his waist. He tensed. She raised her right foot, turned it and hooked his left leg, then jerked. His leg slid out from under him and he was on his butt in a split second.

  He burst into laughter, the sound filling the barn. She fell down beside him, laughing, too.

  “That was a trick,” he said, catching his breath while removing his gloves. “You knew exactly what you were doing.”

  “You made it so easy. You should have fought back.” She slipped her hands out of the gloves.

  He sobered. “Not on your life. I would never hurt one hair on your head.”

  They stared at each other for endless seconds, then he cupped her face and drew her toward him, kissing her long and deep. Her arms encircling his neck, she gave herself up to whatever he wanted.