A Home Of His Own

The job? To get in and get out as soon as possible with the kind of drill samples that could send a syndicate’s shares soaring on the exchange or crashing through the basement. If the news wasn’t good, it wasn’t unusual for the principals or the good friends and wives of the principals to bail out before the news spread. It was illegal, of course—insider trading, or the nearest thing to it—but that couldn’t always be proved. Nothing grabbed an oilman’s blood like the fever for black gold.

A tight hole meant approved personnel only on the site. Other companies, competitors, were not above sending in spies. A tight hole meant a security check on each and every pickup that drove in. Every delivery. Every visitor. The big sign out front at the secondary road, where the raw, freshly bulldozed and graveled rig road led to the site, meant exactly what it said: Tight hole. No admittance. That means YOU.

Tight holes and the security that went with them were Lewis Hardin’s particular specialty. No one got into a site, drilled and got out faster than Lewis Hardin’s crews. He’d begun as a roughneck on the drilling platform, the roughest, meanest, dirtiest job in the business. He’d moved his way up to tool-push, the captain of the project. His rise had been spectacular, and he had men on his crew—men who respected him—who were nearly twice his age. The partners who owned F&B were urging him to join them as a full partner, sweat-equity. Other companies had been courting him, too, incessantly, annoying him more than anything.

But Lewis wasn’t sure that partnership—or switching to another drilling outfit—was a move he wanted to make.

He was twenty-seven and getting restless. He’d never stayed at one job as long as he had this time with F&B, which was the hottest medium-size drilling company in the province. He sure wasn’t going back to ranching—not until he had the stake to set up his own place—but he was getting tired of the oilfield. Two, sometimes three weeks on the job, twenty-four hours on call, then a week or two off, if you had an assistant push. If not, you stayed until the job was done. It was a cowboy, Dodge City kind of life: work your guts out, then spend your paycheck in town and start all over again, broke. For most single guys, the money made it all worthwhile.

But after a while, even the toys began to pall—the brand-new four-wheel-drive vehicles, the snowmobiles in winter, the prize shotguns and the best dogs in duck season, the dirt bikes and ATVs in summer. Lewis used to enjoy it, but the last few times he’d taken time off, he’d driven five straight hours to do some fishing by himself down in Glory country, back where he’d been born and brought up. He spent a few days helping Billy and Ma, fixed a squeaky door, spaded a new garden patch, tacked down some roof shingles. Keeping up the fence alone was a mammoth task, and he’d almost decided not to bother. What was the point? The Hardins had no animals but the few sheep they kept in the derelict orchard. A dozen or so scrawny chickens in the henhouse. There was no haying or farming going on. Never had been, in Lewis’s memory. But the two women who’d raised him, his mother and his sister, wouldn’t hear of giving up the homestead. Last time he’d been home he’d convinced them to lease some of their grown-over pasture to a neighbor. At least that meant a little money coming in monthly, besides what Lewis sent them.

How did they live? Lewis really had no idea. Of course, they had no mortgage. No debts.

No expectations. No hope.

They kept a garden and had a few eggs from their chickens. The only cash they needed was to pay their electric bill each month and their taxes once a year. Mercy sold the quilts she made, several a winter, to a craft store in town. Billy sold garden produce at a roadside stand, but mostly, she just gave it away. They bought tea and flour and sugar. Dog food. Feed for the sheep. Ma and Billy both wore secondhand clothes, and their Ford pickup was ancient. It shouldn’t have been running at all, but somehow Ma kept the old wreck going with a little haywire and a lot of luck.

Glory.

The town was like a great big bad dream. He’d thought he’d left the place behind him for good when he’d quit Adam Garrick’s place that first terrible summer after he’d gotten out of jail. But maybe he hadn’t. Something always seemed to pull him back like an invisible line, especially lately. A thin, taut line, a strand of twisted steel that never let him go. A yoke. The farm itself, he supposed, was one thing. It had been in Ma’s family forever. The Rockies, the foothills? Maybe. He loved the wide-open country. It was a place where you could breathe. Something pulled him back.

Phoebe Longquist? Ha. He’d never forgotten her, but she wasn’t much more than a fuzzy memory now, just a kid dressed in shorts and a home-knit sweater. Some hot kisses. A few quick gropes in her uncle’s hay field. The kind of heart-to-heart midnight talk that had embarrassed him the next day, in the hard light of noon. Girl talk.

He’d had half a dozen girlfriends—maybe a dozen—in the years since he’d last seen Phoebe, the late-summer night she’d come out of nowhere to spend her hard-earned money on him in a charity auction. What a disaster that had been. He hoped the experience had cured her of any romantic notions, if she’d needed curing. She didn’t need a guy like him in her life, and he was pretty sure she’d got the message that night.

He’d balked at joining the other cowboys in the auction right from the start. Publicity of any kind was the last thing he wanted, either to remind the town of him and his prison record or of his long-suffering crazy family living out there on Bearberry Hill. Adam Garrick, who’d hired him when he got out of jail, had told him the auction was for a good cause. Not that a good cause normally would have pulled any weight with Lewis, but he owed Adam and this was as good a way as any of repaying him. Adam had taken him on at the Double O, albeit reluctantly, when few other ranchers would even look at him. A cowboy who’d gone to jail for stealing his boss’s steers had few prospects of employment in ranch country, no matter how shorthanded an outfit might be. Country people had long memories.

YES, GLORY WAS on his mind, but damned if he was going back there this time. It was a good three-hour drive to Edmonton, with an eye out for radar traps, and he intended to spend the first couple of days in the province’s capital city. He kept a studio in an apartment-hotel, right downtown on Ninety-Eighth Avenue. Bed, table, stove, fridge. He never cooked, but the fridge was handy for beer and leftover pizza. He wasn’t sure why he rented the apartment, since it was expensive for the use he got out of it—maybe a week a month, if that. But Lewis liked having his own place, no matter how barren and impersonal. Ma’s run-down homestead, a cell in the lockup at Fort Saskatchewan, cowboy bunkhouses, mattresses on the floor at various friends’ places in town—most of his life had been spent under someone else’s roof.

One day Lewis intended to change all that. The apartment was a start.

This weekend was the big event that Bethany had been waiting for. He’d known Bethany Cook for six months. They’d been lovers for four, although Lewis was aware that the relationship was cooling off. Bethany, he knew, saw other guys when he was out of town. Which was okay by him. When you were contemplating a split, it was always easier when the other person had been no saint, either.

He’d offered to help Bethany with her deliveries and setups this afternoon for the big riverboat event. She ran a small florist shop on Whyte Avenue— Bethany’s Blooms—and this reception on the Alberta Queen for the new dean of science at the University of Alberta was a huge coup for her, one she hoped would lead to more university business.

Miles of lonely muskeg and thickets of black spruce swept by on either side of the highway. It was a grim landscape, but Lewis barely noticed. He was used to it. Once in a while he’d catch sight of a coyote skittering off into the ditch. Or a deer or moose. Sometimes he’d see a black bear browsing in the lush grass beside the road; it wouldn’t even look up as he drove by. He’d driven this road a thousand times, it seemed, in the past few years.

As he got closer to Edmonton, the scruffy forests gave way to cleared land, first bare-knuckle little farms and ranches, scraped out of the muskeg and trees, then more verdant hay and grainfields, fenced pastures with cows. There was no cattle ranching here on the scale of southern Alberta, but the district grew plenty of grain and hay to supply the ranchers and feedlot managers. Wheat, too. Some of the fields showed tall stands of winter wheat, almost ready for harvest. Lewis noted the mallards and pintails that had already raised their families in the weedy shallow sloughs that lay in the hollows of the hills; they were still hanging around, resting up, building reserves for the long flight south.

Summer made him restless. The truth was, every change of season had that effect on him. Closer to the provincial capital was plentiful evidence of Alberta’s new emphasis on agribusiness. Telltale clutches of feed silos marked the windowless, vented barns of broiler and hog operations nearby.

Poor trapped creatures, Lewis thought. Never even glimpsed that high blue sky. Just scrapping for their share of chop, chewing on each others’ tails and ears out of boredom, then the short one-way ride to the slaughterhouse.

Nothing like old Molly Baskins, the black-and-white Berkshire sow he remembered Ma keeping when he was a child. Old Molly Baskins had just lain down in the orchard one day with a great sigh and never got up again. They’d had to dig a hole right there and roll her in and cover her up, Ma bawling her head off the whole time. That sow had had the best possible life a pig could have. Table scraps, rotten apples, oats and barley chop, pleasant afternoons spent rooting through the orchard for succulent roots and smelly old fungi. An ancient collie for a pal in her last years. A mud puddle to lie in on a hot day in August.

Lewis grinned. Quite the life, all right! Then he frowned—why the hell had they called her Molly Baskins? Probably one of Billy’s crazy ideas. Who ever heard of a pig with a last name?

Finally Edmonton loomed on the skyline—a spread-out prairie city located on the wide winding valley of the North Saskatchewan river.

Was this home? It didn’t feel like it. Somehow he’d never felt really comfortable living anywhere he couldn’t see the Rocky Mountains.

BETHANY AND HER PART-TIME helper had really outdone themselves. By the time Lewis got there, ready to help load and deliver the flowers, the floor of the small shop was crowded with arrangements and loose, freshly cut flowers in buckets, ready to go to the riverboat where the reception was being held. The Alberta Queen was a recently launched tribute to the old-time riverboats that had once plied the North Saskatchewan from York Factory to Edmonton, delivering freight and passengers. This modern riverboat delivered Dixieland jazz and passengers up and down the river on scenic cruises, for a price.

“Oh, Lew!” Bethany flew into his arms and kissed him. “Thank goodness you’re here. I just said to Reg—” Reg was her assistant “—that it’d be just like you to get here two minutes before the reception—”

“I told you I’d be here,” Lewis said firmly, with a smile at the overwrought Bethany and a nod to Reg. “And here I am. Ready to help.”

Bethany kissed him again in a frenzy of new energy, and Lewis grimaced as he stepped back and removed his jacket. Bethany Cook in this mood was, well, hard to take. She was a fine woman, but her constant and varied enthusiasms wore him out. He liked a little more quiet in his social life, a little less excitement. Reg, nineteen and a floral-arts student at the local community college, fed Bethany’s flames with his constant reminders of potential disaster. His what ifs and his did you remember to…s drove Lewis nuts. They were quite a pair.

Lewis loaded the van without saying anything else. He took the map Bethany had drawn and studied it for a moment or two before getting into the driver’s seat. Then he dropped it on the passenger seat beside him; he knew where the riverboat dock was.

The reception, Bethany had told him, was scheduled for four o’clock. Apparently the high-up civic muck-a-mucks and the university crowd were going to munch and nibble during a river cruise. Speeches, probably. Smoked salmon. White wine. He could imagine the type of thing. B-O-R-I-N-G.

It was two o’clock now. Plenty of time for Bethany to get set up. She and Reg were coming behind him, in her little car, with some of the other arrangements. He, Lewis, had instructions to unload the flowers. Period. Bethany and Reg would do the arranging.

Which was fine by him. Flower arranging wasn’t one of his specialties.

He had the flowers unloaded by half-past two. Where was Bethany? He waited for her in the van, watching as a few early birds pulled into the riverboat parking lot and got out for the short walk through the trees to the actual dock. The nervous types, worried they’d be late. He watched them go, women in fluffy jackets, short skirts and pearls, men in navy blazers and gray flannel pants. All laughing. All merry. All looking forward to a pleasant outing on the river.

Lewis idly wondered what could shake up their worlds. Losing a job? A call from Revenue Canada? A botched dry-cleaning job? A daughter caught stealing lipstick at the local drugstore?

“Lew!” Bethany jumped out of the small red car that had just pulled up beside him. “Omigosh! We’re late. We couldn’t find the new carton of floral clay I’d ordered and—can you hang around and help us, Lew? I really need your help!”

How could he say no? So Lewis got out of the van, locked it and helped Reg and Bethany cart the special arrangements down to the boat. These were small arrangements that she apparently wanted on each table. The loose flowers were to be arranged in large vases on the decks and under the canvas awnings.

Lewis wasn’t happy. This was typical Bethany Cook. Bad planning. Lousy logistics. It was the kind of thing that bugged him because organization was so critical to his own job. What if he forgot to order some crucial element on a two-week drilling job? Say, dynamite. Or grease guns. Or extra chewing tobacco in case the men ran short. He’d be out of a job so fast he’d have a headache.

But he knew Bethany—somehow she’d muddle through and it would all come off just fine in the end. He had to admit he admired her grit and persistence.

“That’s it?” They were finally done. A few more couples had arrived and were standing around in small knots, talking and laughing. Lewis knew Bethany was a little embarrassed because she’d intended to have all the floral arrangements in place before the guests showed up.

“I think so. I need to talk to the steward for a minute…” Bethany and Reg moved off, and Lewis stepped behind a large fake potted palm that was part of the boat’s everyday decor.

His heart stopped. That woman—that woman in the black dress. The one with legs that went on forever and russet hair that brushed her shoulder blades on her very bare back. Her very bare freckled back. Lewis had only caught her profile for a flash before she’d turned away from him.

He watched her accept a glass of something that a tall, weedy blond type had plucked off a tray and handed to her with a smile. The guy wore glasses, the old-fashioned horn-rim kind, but they were probably cutting-edge fashion now—with a certain type of man.

Lewis’s heart started to beat again. Nah, couldn’t be.…

But hadn’t he heard that she’d won some big science scholarship? That she was studying pond scum or fish or bugs or some damn thing at the university? Who could have mentioned it to him— Ma? Billy? He knew that his mother and sister thought highly of the entire Longquist family.

She turned again, this time straight toward him. Lewis’s heart lodged in his throat. Yep. Same nose, same eyes…same freckles everywhere. It was Phoebe Longquist.

Had she seen him? He hoped not, but then he noticed that her hand had tightened on her drink and her companion had turned in Lewis’s direction, too, as if aware that his date’s attention was suddenly elsewhere.

“Lew!” Bethany rushed up to him. Thank the Lord for small mercies.

“What is it, Beth?” Lewis couldn’t keep the irritation out of his voice. It was one crisis after another with this woman.

“You’ve got to go back to the shop—here, take the key!” She thrust a key on a chain attached to a wooden daisy at him. “I forgot the most important arrangement, the one for the buffet table.”

“What about Reg?” All Lewis wanted was to go back to his apartment and turn on a baseball game. He was tired of the florist business. Tired of everything.

He didn’t dare look toward Phoebe Longquist. His brain was still churning, trying to think of what he’d say if she approached him. If he couldn’t avoid her entirely.

“Reg can’t drive and I’ve got to finish up here. Pleeease!” Bethany had tears in her pretty blue eyes.

“Hey, of course I will,” Lewis said soothingly, taking the key chain and feeling a little foolish for even thinking he’d rather be watching a baseball game. He’d intended to help her all along. Trust Bethany to hire an assistant who couldn’t drive.

“I’ll be right here, Lew.” She glanced at her watch. “You’re going to have to hurry. The boat’s due to leave in less than half an hour. We’ve got to be finished and out of here by ten to—”

“Don’t worry.” Lewis impulsively dropped a kiss on her nose. She smiled and looked slightly relieved. Lewis desperately wanted to see if Phoebe had noticed. Why had he done that—kissed Bethany? Except to hope that Phoebe noticed.

All the way back to Whyte Avenue, Lewis cursed himself for a fool. Phoebe Longquist was long out of his life. And he was long out of hers. But he could still see her tender smile, her shining eyes the night she’d raided her mom’s kitchen for him and they’d talked until past midnight on her uncle’s hammock in the backyard. He’d felt her genuine goodness warming him through and through. He’d believed that she really, truly cared for him—a stranger—the way no one had ever cared for him before. Not Ma—who’d always been old and preoccupied, as long as Lewis could remember. Not Billy—who kept to herself and was so much older than he was. She was kind, but he sometimes felt he barely knew her. She never talked to anyone if she could help it, anyone except Ma.

Lewis had a hard time getting the key in the front door of Bethany’s Blooms. And then when he did, it wouldn’t turn. Cursing, he tried the old Yale lock on the back door. It fit—just. Naturally Bethany hadn’t mentioned which door the key was supposed to open. Once in the small shop, he looked wildly around for what might be the missing arrangement. There were all kinds of small stock arrangements in the front of her store. Potted baskets. Violets with ribbons. The sort of thing people took to hospital patients.

The cooler.

That made sense. There was a huge, spread-out arrangement of fall flowers in the cooler. That had to be it. And if it wasn’t—tough.

Lewis loaded the arrangement into the van, taking care not to bruise or break any of the stems. He checked his watch. Still fifteen minutes before the boat sailed.

He made the trip back to the dock in record time and leapt out of the van. It was difficult carrying the awkward arrangement with any speed along the footpath, but somehow he managed, sweating and cursing the entire way. It would be a long time before Bethany Cook roped him into something like this again.

So where was she? Lewis hadn’t thought to look for Bethany’s car in the parking lot and now, aboard the Alberta Queen, she was nowhere in sight. Nor was Reg.

Lewis slammed the floral arrangement down on the buffet table in the space that had obviously been left for it, ignoring the scowl of the steward. Or whoever the dandy was, outfitted in a penguin suit and visor cap and looking as if he was in charge. Lewis ripped off the cellophane covering the flowers and thrust it at him.

“Any sign of the flower lady?” he asked, noting that the steward had speedily handed off the plastic wrap to a surprised underling, who stuffed it in the nearby trash container without comment. There was obviously a chain of command here.

“Flower lady?” The steward gave him an icy stare.

“Oh, never mind.” Lewis stalked off. He headed toward the open foredeck, screened from the afternoon sunshine by a big blue-and-white canvas awning. He scanned the deck. Lots of guests, chatting and sipping their wine, but no sign of Bethany or Reg.

Lewis wheeled, intending to leave the boat and give Bethany a piece of his mind as soon as he located her. He stopped.

Phoebe Longquist was standing right in front of him, with the worried-looking blond man at her side.

“Lewis…”

Lewis took a step back. “Hey,” he said, taking a deep breath and nodding. “Phoebe.”

“I…I thought I saw you earlier, bringing in the flowers…” Her eyebrows rose delicately over green-blue eyes. The color of a mountain lake at sunset. God, she was beautiful!

“Yeah, that was me, all right,” he admitted. “Helping a friend.” He looked around and frowned, saw the light in Phoebe’s eyes dim slightly. Man, he could be an unsociable jerk sometimes. Where were his manners? “So, uh, how are you?”

“Fine. And you?”

“Great. I see you’ve still got your freckles.”

Her eyes flashed dangerously. “And I see you’ve still got your bad attitude. Lewis, this is a friend of mine. Boyd Paterson. Boyd— Lewis Hardin.”

Against his will, Lewis found himself shaking hands with the weedy academic type.

“Professor Paterson,” corrected the blond man, nodding vigorously. “Ha-ha. Just recently appointed to the department.” He turned to Phoebe. “Old friend of yours?”

“You could say so,” Phoebe murmured. Lewis saw that she was ruminating over the word friend. “We’re from the same district in southern Alberta.”

Yeah, well. Lewis glanced toward the open deck. He wanted out of here. Fast.

“Are you in the sciences, too, Mr. Hardin?” the professor asked, the sun glinting off his lenses as he inspected Lewis’s casual attire. He’d obviously missed Phoebe’s comment about the flower delivery earlier. “Freshwater algae, perhaps, like our Phoebe here?” He laughed. A rather stupid laugh, Lewis decided. Our Phoebe. What did she see in a goof like that?

“No, I’m in oil,” he said abruptly. “Oil and water don’t mix, as you know.” The date hooted with laughter.

Just then Lewis realized that the sound of the boat’s big diesels had changed. The boat was moving. Damn it! He looked around.

“Lose something?” Phoebe muttered, adding just for him. “Something with, er, long black hair in designer jeans?”

Lewis cast her a sharp glance. She’d noticed that he and Bethany were together. “You could say that,” he replied smoothly. “How long is this cruise supposed to go on, anyway?”

“Four hours,” she said, tipping up her glass to finish the champagne, then handing it to the professor with a charming smile. He moved off with the empty glass. She knew damn well Lewis hadn’t planned to sail with the boat. “The dean is over there.” She pointed to a middle-aged man in the middle of the deck, looking very flushed. This was his big day.

“They docking anywhere else?” He could hope.

“Not as far as I know,” she replied, still smiling. She seemed delighted to see him in this predicament.

Lewis stepped over to the side of the boat. He hadn’t made it as far as he had in a tough business by letting petty details stop him. They were only seventy yards or so from the dock, upstream. It was doable. And the south bank of the river was even closer.

“Lewis!”

He grinned. He’d shocked her, after all, right out of her creamy smooth, Phoebe Longquist, algae-specialist self by stripping off his T-shirt and tossing it to her. She caught it by reflex. He kicked off his sneakers. He’d buy a new pair.