She shook her head. “But I’m to blame this time. If I had let you know about the farm, none of this would have happened.” She narrowed her eyes. “I would have told you if you had bothered to write, that is.”
Johnny swore. “Keeping that land for me was a foolish mistake.”
“I suppose me caring about you is foolish, too?”
Johnny ignored the question. “Virgil says you’re going to be in a financial squeeze if you don’t sell off your fields or start making a profit from them. You should be putting your money to better use than wasting it on that worthless farm on the hill.”
“Virgil’s got a big mouth. And speaking of old Big Mouth, how come you wrote to him and not me? It wouldn’t have hurt you to write me a few lines every other year, would it?” She looked him squarely in his eyes. “You didn’t have to leave, you know. Henry and me were prepared to take you in when your mother died. You could have lived here with us instead of run off like you did.”
Yes, he knew she would have taken him in. And that’s what had scared him the most. The people who had cared about him had never stayed very long in his life. It wasn’t rational thinking, but he’d been scared to death to depend on Mae and Henry after his mother had died. It had been easier just to run away. To leave all his problems behind and start over where no one looked at him twice because his name happened to be Bernard.
“What did you tell Griffin?” she asked.
“He’s offering a fair price. Besides, what do I need with a piece of land when I’ll be gone in four months?”
“Do me a favor. Wait to make your decision until the end of the summer.”
“It won’t make any difference,” Johnny insisted. “As soon as my parole is up, I’ll be going back to Lafayette.”
When she didn’t argue with him, Johnny leaned against a nearby oak and turned his attention on the house. Ready to discuss the repairs on the porch, the sight of Nicole crossing the front yard in a black skimpy top distracted him. He let his gaze wander, his eyes fastening on her cutoff jeans, noticing once more how they hugged her backside like an overcharged magnet. “How come I never knew about that?” he asked without thinking the question through, a moment later wishing he had.
The old lady followed his line of interest. “Nicki? That would be Alice’s fault. She was a stingy woman, my daughter-in-law. She didn’t like sharing my son Nicholas, or my granddaughter. Henry and I were visited a few holidays a year, and we got Nicki one week each summer. It wasn’t enough, but it was better than nothing.”
Johnny heard the bitterness in the old lady’s voice. “She says she’s staying. That her idea or yours?” He glanced back just in time to catch the old lady arch both white eyebrows.
“It was my suggestion, but Nicki’s decision.”
Johnny followed Nicole’s progress as she crossed the road. “So what’s her story?”
“If and when she thinks you should know, I’m sure she’ll tell you.”
Johnny had hoped the old lady would feel generous and offer a little free information. But it looked like she wasn’t going to. Instead, for the next half hour they talked about how hot the summer was expected to be, the repairs on the house, and who had died since he’d been away.
Johnny didn’t mention Nicole again, or the fact that he’d been in her bedroom that morning. It might be perverse, but he liked knowing something the old lady didn’t. Liked keeping the memory of the slender blonde in her robe all to himself.
After a time, the conversation waned, and he shoved away from the gnarly oak. “I’ll see you later.” He took a step toward the gate.
“Not so fast. Will the boathouse do? You could never get enough of the bayou.”
“Still can’t,” he admitted. “I fixed the dock yesterday. That’s why I was late making it up to the house last night. You’d gone to bed. Guess I forgot you old people turn in early,” he teased.
When he turned around to give her one last look, he caught her smiling. “You always had a smart mouth. But it’s a good-looking one, to be sure,” she conceded. “Join me for supper?”
Somehow, arriving on the back doorstep like a stray dog looking for a handout didn’t sit too well. Johnny shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
She grunted, and she, too, shook her head, which sent the loose skin on her cheek into a slight tremor. “The more things change, the more things stay the same. Supper’s at seven. Come through the front door, and put on a shirt.”
A bar of soap jammed in his back pocket, Johnny left the boathouse and headed for Oakhaven’s swimming hole. He didn’t have to think twice how to find his way. He hung a left off the trail, ducked under a familiar leafy hickory, and the swimming hole came into plain view. Small and secluded, the pond still looked like a well-kept secret in the middle of nowhere.
Johnny pulled off his boots, stripped his socks and unzipped his jeans. He was just seconds away from sending them to the ground when he heard a loud splash. He gave his jeans a tug back to his hips, yanked his zipper upward, then moved to the water’s edge.
So this is where she’d gone.
Johnny watched as Nicole surfaced, then rolled onto her back and began kicking her way to the middle of the pond. Something blue caught his eyes along the shore. He slipped through the foliage and found her towel and cutoffs draped over a downed hickory limb. A pair of canvas sling-back shoes were perched on a stump.
She had no idea someone was there, and he could have sat and watched her all afternoon—something he would have enjoyed doing if he weren’t so annoyed by the fact that she was so unobservant. He scanned the bank until he found two flat stones. Then, gauging the distance, he dropped down on one knee and let the first rock fly. It entered the water like a shot out of a gun, sailing past Nicole’s pretty nose with deadly accuracy. By the time he’d sent the second rock zooming on its way, her feet had found the bottom of the pond, and she was searching the bank with alarm in her wide eyes.
When she spied him, her alarm turned to anger. “Are you crazy! You missed me by less than an inch.” Her voice was shrill, irritation evident in the straining pitch.
“No, it was more like four,” Johnny quipped.
She waded toward him, her breasts swaying gently in her swimsuit. She left the pond behind and kept coming up the grassy bank. “One inch or four—I don’t see much difference, Mr. Bernard. It was too close and—”
“Johnny.”
She stopped a few feet away and met his eyes disparagingly. “What?”
“You keep forgetting my name.”
She glared down at him where he still knelt in the grass. “We’ve been all through that,” she snapped.
“Yes, we have.” He glanced around as if looking for something, or someone. “You haven’t seen old One Eye around, have you?”
“One Eye?” She tipped her head to one side and began squeezing the water from the ends of her hair. “What’s a ‘one eye’?”
Johnny stood and hung his hands loosely on his hips. “One Eye’s a gator. He used to take his afternoon nap in this here swimming hole years ago.”
Her hands stilled. “An alligator? Here?”
Johnny told the lie easily. One Eye had always favored the privacy of the black bog deeper in the swamp. And he might still be there. But more than likely, the aging gator had been turned into a purse or a sturdy pair of boots by now.
He let his gaze travel the length of her delicate curves. Outlined in the skimpy, two-piece swimsuit, she was definitely hot. He wanted to stay in control of the situation, but his imagination was working overtime, and right now he would have liked nothing better than to run