Nighthawk & The Return of Luke McGuire by Justine Davis, Rachel Lee Read Free Book Online

needed another coat.
    He and Enoch had done some work inside the barn, making it more useful to their needs, but the outside looked weathered and even a little dilapidated. They were going to have to do something about that before much longer or buy the paint several times over in repairs. The roof was sound, though. They’d seen to that last fall.
    Around back of the house, Paula was raising an extensive vegetable garden, canning whatever they didn’t immediately need for the coming winter. Her henhouse was making more eggs than they needed, and she’d begun to sell them here and there for less than the supermarket wanted. With those proceeds she bought clothes for the children.
    They were doing as well as could be expected, and considering that he owned the spread free and clear, they were doing better than most people.
    So what the hell was he feeling gloomy for? Because he wasn’t driving a truck any longer?
    Nah. He wasn’t drowning in self-pity. He’d done what was necessary to take care of the people he cared about, and that wasn’t something to pine over.
    But for some reason today he just felt…glum. Lonely, actually, which was ridiculous considering his house was full of people, and that he generally preferred to be alone anyway. But being alone and being lonely were two different things, he guessed, and right now he was feeling lonely.
    Turning to go back into the house to work on the books, he paused and looked around him.
    In the evening light, the place still looked as beautiful as it had the first time he laid eyes on it. Maybe even better because back then it had been run down and left to go to pot. Now there was a lawn and a garden and signs of life everywhere, like that swing hanging from the limb of the big old cottonwood beside the house. It was a home.
    For an instant, just one uneasy instant, he wondered what Esther Jackson would think of it.
    Then he brushed the thought aside like an annoying fly and went inside to deal with the other part of ranching.
     
     
    It wasn’t until she was about to go to bed that Esther remembered the letter from her agent. She’d shoved it into her pocket when Verna gave it to her, and later had dropped it onto her desk, meaning to get back to it after dinner.
    It probably wasn’t all that important—Jo generally called when something significant was up—but now that she’d remembered it she knew she wouldn’t be able to forget about it until morning. As long as she was busy, she could ignore her curiosity, but not when she was trying to go to sleep.
    Sighing, she pulled her flannel nightgown over her head and limped barefoot down the stairs. Without her brace on she had to be exceptionally careful because her knee and ankle were so unstable, but she leaned heavily on the railing and negotiated the steps successfully.
    When she’d considered buying this house, she had hesitated because of the stairs, but everything else was so perfect that she had assured herself that one or two trips a day up and down these stairs was something she could manage. And so far she had.
    With care she crossed to the small room she used as a study. The letter was waiting for her on the blotter, glowing whitely in the near-dark. She hesitated to reach for it, however, suddenly feeling strangely reluctant.
    Instead she went to the window and looked out at the night. No city dweller, as she had been most of her life, could possibly imagine how dark the night was out here. Stars sprinkled the sky in breathtaking profusion, and with only their gentle light the world appeared to vanish in the black of night.
    She could see the hulking shape of the tree at the corner of the house, and the dark shadow of the barn silhouetted against the star-spangled sky. She could dimly see the edge of the porch but little was visible beyond it. From a distance she heard the lonely hoot of an owl, carried on the soft sigh of the breeze.
    She might have stayed there for hours, admiring the perfection of