Sandcastles Page 16

  He put her hands to his lips and kissed them. “Well, anyway, there it is. I love you; I don’t deserve you, and I wouldn’t blame you if you ran away and never looked back.”

  “Are you kidding?” she cried. “After all I’ve been through, finishing this stupid book? I’m going to need a first-class editor. No one that Lyle Porter comes up with could ever be as good as you. Why settle for hamburger when I’m used to steak, as the saying goes?”

  “Maybe, but Gerry Ramsey’s not likely to paddle you for the typos you miss.”

  “I can probably get used to that,” she said, sweetly. She sighed. “That’s the really scary part, though, Josh. You’ve kept me going through this one—made me finish it. What if I find out that I can’t write a book all by myself.”

  “Sure you can,” Josh said. “You wrote the first one by yourself, whether you know it or not. But you still can’t spell worth a damn.”

  * * * * *

  They rented a small sailboat at Hadley’s Cove, and as the long afternoon faded into twilight on the open ocean, Josh opened the box containing Susannah’s ashes, and holding his hand over the side while Gwen inexpertly manned the tiller, he trailed the box over the side and let Susannah’s ashes drift slowly down into the endless green ocean she had loved so deeply. Moved by the moment, Gwen suddenly recalled the lines from Shakespeare she had always loved, and changing them just slightly—for Susannah—she repeated them softly.

  “Full fathom five thy beloved lies

  Of her bones are coral made.

  Those are pearls that were her eyes;

  Nothing of her doth fade

  But does suffer a sea change

  Into something rich and strange.”

  Josh slipped his arms around her, and together they watched the final grains of what looked like white sand on a summer beach slip beneath the surface and disappear. Tomorrow they would fly home—to another ocean and another shore.

  Epilogue:

  One month after they returned to Big Sur, Gwen and Joshua Denning were married in the charming ocean-side community of Pacific Grove and honeymooned briefly in San Francisco. Gwen was working via e-mail with her editor in New York, spending much of her day in the refurbished studio and was so busy each day that she barely had time to follow Josh’s own daily ritual. Thus, when she picked up the mail in town and found a letter from Lyle Porter, she naturally assumed that the letter was meant for her, which was why she had torn it open and read most of its contents before she realized that the letter was actually meant for Josh. (This, by the way, was the story she concocted for Josh and bore no relation whatever to the truth. Snooping or probing or perhaps investigating, as she had come to think of this small compulsion, was a difficult habit to break. )

  Although she tried to repair the envelope as well as she could, the results were not good, and she was of course found out and her perfidy exposed—which was when she tried the, “I thought it was for me,” defense.

  Josh Denning had grown accustomed to his wife’s curiosity and to her impatience about waiting for information that she could so much more readily uncover by stealth. Still, since lying or its near-cousins prevarication and misrepresentation were clearly punishable offenses in the Denning home and since the same mail delivery had brought news of Gwen’s second unpaid traffic ticket and resulting warrant Gwen defended herself rather half-heartedly when confronted with the evidence of her several crimes.

  “I guess I’m going to get spanked for this, right?” she grumbled.

  “Good guess,” he replied simply. He tossed a couple of cushions on the couch and pointed. “Pants down over the cushions.”

  Facedown on the living room couch, with her jeans and underwear down around her knees and her ass conveniently poised over two fat sofa cushions, Gwen waited irritably while Josh went to the den and returned with the big wooden ruler that she had come to dread almost as much as the homemade paddle. He wasted no time lowering her jeans and panties the rest of the way to her ankles and then pulling them off completely. That was never a good sign, usually meaning he needed a totally clear field. Once she was naked from the waist down, Denning began to swat her raised buttocks and exposed thighs with unusual energy. It had been a while since her last spanking and consequently this one seemed very long and very painful and very unfair. Which is why Gwen lost her temper fairly early into the spanking and began to call him a lot of unpleasant names before she took the time to consider possible consequences.

  She remembered with amazing clarity the last time she had called him obscene names, because he had carried her to the bathroom like a naughty child and washed her mouth out with a bar of soap before spanking the holy hell out of her bared buttocks with a plastic bath brush. He had threatened at that time something so monstrously disagreeable that she hadn’t really believed he’d ever actually so it. So today, when Josh also lost his temper and informed her that she was “going to regret” her insults, Gwen had excellent reason to believe him and attempt an apology.

  “I didn’t mean that, Josh, I promise! I just... Ow! Oh God! No! Ow!” Although her apology obviously hadn’t been accepted, Gwen was very relieved to see that he held no bar of soap in his hand.

  Josh had something else in mind. A moment later, he flipped her over onto her back, and leaving her well-spanked butt still propped on the cushions, raised her legs above her head. In this unlikely and humiliating “diaper” position everything about his wife was vulnerable to Josh’s excellent aim and Gwen feared the worst. Although the threatened bar of soap hadn’t appeared the detested paddle had. In the sort of uncomfortable position she could never have maintained without his strong arm pressing her knees firmly up and back Gwen howled and squirmed her way through what she would later declare the absolutely worst and most embarrassing spanking of her entire life. (Since Gwen seemed to have a very short memory, she generally applied this superlative to virtually any spanking she received.) Still, as each scalding swat cracked across her spread cheeks or between her opened legs or across the backs of her scorched thighs or simply across the round apple-red expanse of her flaming buttocks, it seemed possible that this time she was right.

  The spanking was over and they had both returned to work (he on the final chapters of The Bread of Sorrow, the long-awaited sequel to Jezreel) before they both realized that today was their one-month anniversary.

  The coincidence occurred first to Gwen, who tapped on the door to his den to show him the circled date on the calendar.

  “I suppose that was a memorable celebration,” she said sweetly, “but you know, darling, a simple card would have been fine with me, honestly.”

  The End.

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  April Hill

  April Hill is a best-selling author of women’s romance, known for her wry humor, sensitive character development and of course, the love.

  Don’t miss these exciting titles by April Hill and Blushing Books!

  Vengeance Creek

  Pleasance and the Pirate

  Falconer’s Prey

  Sandcastles

  Moonchild

  Scarlet Fever

  Please enjoy Chapter One of Vengeance Creek by April Hill!

  Vengeance Creek

  Chapter One

  Claire Parkins walked slowly through the spacious rooms of the once-grand old house, noting with sadness the glassless windows and the rotted floorboards that creaked and groaned beneath her step. Outside in the barren front yard, bright flowerbeds had once bloomed every spring. But now the ground was baked dry, dotted sparsely with dry clumps of brown weeds and strewn with splintered slit-wood shingles that had fallen from the sagging roof. The only remaining signs of the thriving vegetable garden she remembered from her childhood were shallow furrows in the parched clay. Yes, repairing the house was going to be a problem, but not the biggest problem. The biggest problem would still be Thacker, as it always had been. Claire slipped her hand in her pocket and touched the bank check again, comforted by the reality of it, but conscious of just how small it really was and how far it had to go.

  Twenty years ago, when the house belonged to her grandfather, Noah Parkins, the Circle P ranch was the largest spread in the valley, and its elegant longhorn bulls were siring much of the quality beef in the territory. Claire was a small girl then, trailing behind the old man wherever he went and dreaming of the day when she would be a real rancher like the grandfather she adored. But that had been before the long years of drought came—years that brought financial ruin and made Grandpa old before his time. For Claire the saddest part was that Noah Parkins had died knowing that the spread he’d carved out of the wilderness and spent forty years building to greatness had crumbled into neglect. He’d lived just long enough to see the Circle P’s vast herds sold off to strangers and its expansive lands auctioned off for pennies on the dollar. Most of it had gone to neighboring rancher Linus Thacker, of course, whose fortunes had soared as rapidly as her grandfather’s had failed.

  And that’s why Claire had come back. Her dream was to rebuild not just the melancholy old house but the ranch itself—to reclaim it from the dust and make it great again. Maybe not as big as it had been in Grandpa’s day—that would take more money than she had or ever would have, but as close to Grandpa’s dream as she could. A place with the sturdiest breeding stock with the finest bloodlines—steers that would provide the beef a growing nation needed as its borders expanded westward. Beef to feed its children and its rail workers, and ….

  She smiled to herself. Even her daydreams sounded like Grandpa’s. Big words and bigger dreams, she thought, brushing off enough dust to sit down on the steps of her badly leaning porch. Unrealistic dreams, probably. Here she sat, an inexperienced woman, alone in the middle of hundreds of acres of empty grassland with only a ramshackle house and the bank’s one-thousand-dollar loan check in her pocket. Grandpa would have made the effort, though, however impossible it seemed. Her father would have done it, too, if he hadn’t died in the war. Now, with every last penny she had to her name tied up in a rundown ranch, Claire looked out across the barren plain and sighed. Her future looked a lot bleaker than it had three weeks ago, when she had left Chicago and a life of ease and comfort.

  She’d been sitting on the hot porch for close to an hour when a lone horseman appeared on the top of the ridge and stopped, obviously watching her. Moments later, horse and rider came down the hill at a full gallop and skidded to a stop in a cloud of dust in what had once been the vegetable garden.

  “There ain’t no goddamned squatters allowed here, lady,” he shouted. “You need to move along. Didn’t you see them no trespassin’ signs over there? The ones posted along the fence, yonder, and on the damn gate?”

  “I tore them down,” she said simply.

  “Tore ’em down? Why the fuck would you do a fool thing like ...?”

  “Because the fence and the gate belong to me, along with this house and what’s left of the porch I’m sitting on. And now that I think about it, mister whoever you are, you’re trespassing on my front yard. And I’ll thank you to move that horse of yours. He’s standing right smack in the middle of my vegetable garden.”

  “The hell I will! You’re fuckin’ trespassin’!” he bellowed. “This here’s Mr. Linus Thacker’s place, all the ways past the creek and a damn far piece beyond that! Now, just get your ass movin, or ....”

  Claire stood up. “The county records will show that this property belongs to me, including that stretch of the creek,” she said firmly. “If you or Linus Thacker or anyone else would care to see a copy of my grant deed, you’re welcome to ride into town and look it up. Meanwhile, get your damned horse out of my turnips.”

  The man looked down at the bare dirt. “I don’t see no fuckin’ turnips.”

  Claire smiled. “You’re not one of Mr. Linus Thacker’s brightest hands, are you?”

  Suddenly unsure of himself, the man backed his horse off a little. “Well, I reckon as how it’d be all right with Mr. Thacker if you was to just squat here for tonight, if you’ve a mind to—if you ain’t got somewheres else to sleep. But if you know what’s good for you, you’d best be gone come mornin’. Just get your tail outta’ here by then and I won’t tell nobody I seen you.”

  “You may tell anyone you wish, and please tell them my name, as well. It’s Claire Parkins Maitland. My grandfather was Colonel Noah Parkins, and I fully intend to stay right where I am—in my house, on my land. Tell Mr. Thacker if he’d like to ride over and have a cup of coffee with me to discuss removing his illegally posted signs and boundary fences, I’ll be here in the morning—and every morning from here on, until hell freezes over. Now, get your damned horse out of my string beans!”

  The man grumbled and swore mightily but finally rode off, spurring his horse mercilessly up the hill. Claire knew it wouldn’t be much longer before Linus Thacker or one of his henchmen paid her a visit.

  As the afternoon wore on, Claire kept herself busy sweeping the years of accumulated debris from the interior of the house and into the yard, all the while keeping a cautious eye open for unwelcome company. She’d sleep here tonight, but go back into town tomorrow to buy what provisions she needed—and try to find out why the ranch hand she’d hired hadn’t arrived. When she saw another rider approaching at some distance, she went inside and loaded the ancient rifle her father had carried at Appomattox Station. He’d died there on April 8, 1865, during General Custer’s raid on the Confederate supply trains. Claire was two years old when the news came, and the only real memory she had of Daniel Parkins wasn’t really a memory at all, but a photograph— a handsome face in a cracked and fading tintype left to her when her mother died. Carefully, she leaned the rifle just inside the doorway and sat on the crippled porch rocker to watch as the rider approached.

  When he reached the fence—or what remained of it—the stranger leaned down from the saddle and opened the broken gate, then rode on through and up to the house. He was tall, lean and blond, and he looked vaguely familiar.

  “Afternoon, ma’am,” he said, touching the front brim of his hat. “Can I trouble you for some fresh water for my horse?”

  She nodded to the cistern, which she’d filled that morning with buckets of water carried from the creek below the house. “The pump doesn’t work. If that’s not enough, you’ll find plenty of water just down the slope, there.” She pointed in the direction of the wide creek that flowed through the property thirty yards from the back porch.

  �
��Thanks,” he replied, patting the horse’s damp neck as he dismounted. “I’ll just walk him on down there and not use up what you’ve carried. That’s mighty hot work on a day like this.”

  Claire got up and followed behind him as he walked down the hill to water his horse at the creek. The stranger was well muscled, with broad shoulders and strong, calloused hands—a man accustomed to hard work. His hair was longer than fashionable and tied at the back of his neck with a strip of rawhide, but he was dressed in the familiar worn jeans and faded shirt favored by local cowhands. This stranger was no cowhand, though. There were no spurs on his boots and no coiled rope over his saddle horn. A Winchester rifle in a beaded leather case hung alongside his saddle, and he wore a holstered Colt .45 low on one hip.

  He knelt on the creek bed to inspect the horse’s feet. “This place has been deserted for quite a while,” he observed, pointing back to the house. “It kind of’ surprised me, finding someone living out here.”

  “I inherited it,” Claire replied, watching his tanned, sun-lined face for a reaction. “The house, and several hundred acres around it, anyway. This creek’s mine, too. What is it you wanted, here?”

  He looked up at her and smiled. “Just the water, for now.”

  “Are you from around here?”

  He stood up. “Nope, just passing through.”

  “And your business?”

  “Well, now, ma’am, I figure that’s pretty much my business, wouldn’t you say?” he asked, loosening the horse’s bit to clean it in the cool creek water.