Medicine Man. Cheryl Reavis
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her love or her faithfulness or her willingness to believe in him far beyond what anyone with any sense would have done.
Even so, she could truthfully say that she hadn’t been a complete idiot where Scott was concerned, regardless of what her sisters and everyone else might think. There was no denying that she had loved him, loved his wildness and his charm, so much so that she had been willing to ignore her growing lack of respect for him for a long time. But the day eventually came when she couldn’t pretend anymore, when she couldn’t let her emotions get dragged back and forth with every promise made and every promise broken. She had to walk away—for her son’s sake, if nothing else. She had managed to do it—permanently—in spite of Scott’s renewed “repentance” when he realized that, for once, he was going to suffer the consequences of his behavior.
“Arley!” someone called behind her—her uncle Patrick.
“You’re not leaving already, are you—and without a goodbye for your old uncle?”
“I’m ready for hearth and home, Uncle Patrick.”
“Well, I know the feeling. It was a fine wedding, wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” she said, feeling a ridiculous urge to cry.
“You hug that darling boy for me—and mind how you go.”
“I’m a careful driver, Uncle Patrick.”
“It’s not the driving I was meaning.”
She looked into his kind blue eyes. “You’ve been talking to Grace.”
“Have not,” he said. “I’ve been using my God-given eyes. And I’m not liking what I see, my girl. You and I both know Scott McGowan can get himself up to no good.”
She sighed heavily. “Well, I am on the high side of suspicious,” she said, and her uncle laughed.
“And that’s a definite improvement—if you don’t mind my saying so.”
She didn’t. The remark coming from him didn’t bother her nearly as much as it would have if it had come from one of her sisters.
A large number of guests seemed to be making their way back into the pub.
“No rest for the wicked,” Uncle Patrick said. “Are you sure you don’t want to rejoin the festivities?”
“I’m sure. I’ll bring Scottie to see you soon. He’s got some new additions to his rock collection he wants to show you.”
“The sooner, the better,” he said, giving her one of his bear hugs, the kind that always made her feel better but this time brought her even closer to tears.
“Tell Grace and Gwen I’ve gone, if—when—they ask, will you?”
He looked at her a long moment. “I will.”
She forced a smile and walked away. A group of soldiers walked ahead of her, laughing, talking and harassing each other the way soldiers always seemed to do. Will Baron wasn’t among them. It annoyed Arley a great deal that Grace thought Arley might be using Will to get back at Scott. She wasn’t. She just welcomed a little diversion. She was so tired of being worried and scared.
And lonely.
Scottie was nearly asleep when she picked him up at the great-aunts’ house. He managed to walk to the car under his own power, but he was too sleepy to buckle himself into his safety seat.
“Mommy?” he murmured as she secured the belt and slipped his favorite pillow next to his head—a beagle dog pillow he’d named Dot, his threadbare sleeping, waking, stress and anxiety companion. She stood for a moment, then caressed his cheek before she closed the car door. There was nothing she wouldn’t do for her son.
Nothing.
It began to rain when she was halfway home. She drove carefully along the back roads leading to Fayetteville. Traffic was heavier than she expected. The countryside was illuminated by lightning from time to time, but there were no strong winds or heavy downpours. Scottie was afraid of thunder; she was glad he was sleeping. He had too many things to be afraid of these days, most of all that his father didn’t love him. He was so eager whenever Scott deigned to come around, trying to impress him with his rock collection, his drawings and papers from school, or how fast he could run and how high he could jump—anything that might elicit some indication that he had his father’s undivided attention, just for a moment. That was sad enough, and what was even sadder was that, for a time, Arley had been just like him.
She was better now, though. Surprisingly better. Even before the wedding reception, she had felt more comfortable about things than she had in a long time. All in all, her life was going…reasonably well. She hadn’t caused any embarrassing moments for Kate—thanks to Will Baron—and it was much more apparent to her now that she was no longer afraid that she couldn’t live without Scott McGowan. Regardless of her sisters’ misgivings, she was actually managing—except with money. She needed a better and permanent job instead of being sent pillar to post by the temp agency, and she was going to keep taking courses at the community college and filling out applications until she got one.
She smiled to herself. Scottie liked that; as soon as school started, both of them would have to do homework at the kitchen table.
Her mind suddenly wandered to the summer afternoon when she’d met Will Baron. She had hardly been at her best that day. She had been frantic to find Kate because of something Scott had or hadn’t done, and because Scottie had misbehaved at the private kindergarten Scott was still paying for him to attend. She had felt totally overwhelmed by it all. She went looking for Kate at home and then at Mrs. Bee’s house next door, and she found Will Baron in the sweltering upstairs hallway on an errand of his own. He may or may not have recognized the degree of her distress, but he had definitely recognized Scottie’s. As they were leaving, he had taken a blue-green stone out of his pocket—a piece of turquoise—and had given it to Scottie for his collection.
He was kind to her son.
And that was the reason she remembered him. Yes, he was nice-looking. Yes, his eyes smiled long before his face did, and he smelled good. But it was because of Scottie that she’d asked Kate later about the paratrooper in Mrs. Bee’s upstairs hallway. There was something intriguing about him, something that made her willing to brave Grace’s criticism and the embarrassment Scott had caused her at the reception in order to talk to him again.
But that’s all it was. A little conversation. She had told her sisters the truth when she said that Will Baron was an interesting person. He was, and it had been a long time since Arley had had any social interaction with anyone beyond her immediate family. There was no harm in it. None. The fact that Kate had invited him to the wedding in the first place should be recommendation enough for Gwen and the ever-suspicious Grace.
But Arley had no expectations that she would see Will Baron again. She rarely went on post—except for futile job interviews, and those were few and far between. She rarely went anywhere, for that matter, except to work at whatever paying position the temp agency found for her, and to the grocery store and to Scottie’s school—and a fast-food restaurant as a treat for him as often as she could afford it. She had met Kate for lunch once or twice, taken Scottie to the post hospital, to the ward where Kate worked when the “get well” dogs were coming to visit, and she hadn’t seen Will Baron any of those times. It wasn’t likely that she’d run into him—unless she did something to make it happen. Which she wouldn’t. She didn’t need Grace’s input to be concerned about Scott and his possible long-range plans where his son was concerned. It was just that Scottie had never been his priority—he thought nothing of skipping a visitation if it conflicted with his social plans—and she knew Scott McGowan well enough to know that actually wanting to be a real father might have nothing to do with his trying to get custody.
She reached to turn on the car radio for company. After a while, she drove out of a rain shower and then right back into another one—the story of her life, thus far. She didn’t regret staying for the wedding reception, in spite of Grace’s