Wisconsin - With a Little Luck (Americana 49 - Wisconsin)

CHAPTER ONE

"ARE YOU SURE you wouldn't like a ride home?" the Reverend Mr. Johnson inquired. "If you don't mind waiting a few minutes, I would be happy to drive you."

Mr. Johnson didn't look like a minister in his plaid shirt and khaki-colored pants. In his mid-forties, he resembled a fisherman who had strayed into church by mistake. In fact, he was an ardent angler, overjoyed that his Wisconsin parish was situated in an area with so many lakes, streams and rivers. He loved to state that while he was a "fisher of men" like the Lord, he was also a fisherman, an occupation and an avocation that he felt were ideally suited to one another.

"No, thank you, Reverend. It's a lovely evening and I'll enjoy the walk," Eve Rowland insisted as she slipped on her summer-weight coat of brown. "Besides, it isn't that far, really."

"Yes, but I don't like the idea of your walking alone after dark."

"Cable isn't Minneapolis or Milwaukee," she laughed. There were times when she even forgot to lock the front door of her parents' house, but she didn't worry unduly on those occasions.

"My city background is showing, isn't it?" he smiled at himself. "Thanks for filling in for Mrs. Alstrom at the organ tonight." She was the regular church organist. A minor crisis at home had kept her from attending choir practice and Eve had been asked to substitute for her. "I hope it didn't upset any of your plans for the evening."

"I didn't have any plans," she said, and didn't go any further in her reply. It was rare for her ever to have plans for an evening -- social plans, that is.

"That's a pity." The minister's eyes darkened with sympathy, even as he changed his expression to give her an encouraging smile. "You are a warm and generous woman. Maybe I should whisper in the ears of the eligible male members of my congregation."

He meant to be kind but his offer had a demoralizing effect. Eve fixed a quick smile in place to hide her reaction. "That's a nice thought, but most of them are already semi-attached to someone else. You might as well save your matchmaking talents for another time." She started to leave, "Good night. And I'm glad I could help out."

"I'll see you in church on Sunday." Mr. Johnson lifted his hand in a saluting wave.

"Not this Sunday," she said. "We're opening the summer cottage on the lake, so neither my parents nor I will be in church."

"Oh? Which lake?" His fishing curiosity was awakened.

"Namekagon." Which was only a few miles east of town. "Marvelous fishing there," he stated.

"I know. It's dad's favorite." She glanced at her wristwatch, a utilitarian piece with a plain leather band that made no pretense of being decorative. "I'd better be going. Good night, Reverend Johnson."

"Good night."

Leaving the church, Eve buttoned her coat against the invading night air. Although it was officially summer, the temperature in the Northwoods dipped to the cool range in the evening hours. The sky was crystal bright with stars, hundreds of thousands of them lighting the heavens. A moon, big and fat, competed with the stars; its silver globe was nearly a spotlight shining down on the earth. The streetlights along the main thoroughfare were almost unneeded.

As she walked along the sidewalk, her mind kept echoing the matchmaking offer the minister had made. Having lived in Cable for all of her twenty-six years -- with the exception of four years spent at college in Madison -- Eve knew virtually every single man in the area. Those she might have been interested in never noticed her; and those that noticed her she wasn't interested in. She was almost convinced she was too particular.

Her mother despaired that Eve would ever find a man who could satisfy her, and kept reminding her that with each passing year she was becoming more set in her ways. Eve had given up hope long ago that Prince Charming would ever come this far north, but she wasn't going to get married just for the sake of being married, no matter how nice and respectable a suitor might be. She didn't intend to marry unless she had, at least, a deep affection for the man. So far, no one had aroused even that. There had been boyfriends now and then. Most of them she genuinely liked, but not with any depth. It seemed she was always attracted to men who weren't attracted to her.

It wasn't because she was homely. She was attractive, in a plain sort of way. With brown hair and eyes, she had a flawless complexion, but her features were unassuming. Her figure was average, neither thin nor plump. She wasn't too tall or too short. She simply didn't stand out in a crowd. In a sea of pretty faces, hers would be the last to be noticed.

Eve was just as realistic in her assessment of her personality traits. She was intelligent, basically good-natured and possessed a good sense of humor. As a music teacher, she appreciated music and the arts. But she tended to be quiet and not quick to make friends. Her early years as a wallflower had lessened her inclination for parties. She preferred celebrating with a few close friends to attending a large social function. By nature she wasn't aggressive, although she wouldn't allow herself to be walked on.

There were some who suggested that, at twenty-six, she was too old to be living at home. When Eve considered the cost of living alone versus her salary, it became a matter of sheer practicality. Besides, she and her parents were good friends. She was just as independent as she would have been living in an apartment.

With all her thoughts focused inward, Eve didn't notice the tavern she was approaching. A window was open to let out the smoke and let in fresh air. Inside, a jukebox was loudly playing a popular song. Eve didn't hear it or the laughter and spirited voices. Her gaze was on the sidewalk in front of her feet.

Suddenly a man stepped directly in front of her. Eve didn't have time to stop or step aside. Her hands came up to absorb the shock of the collision. He evidently didn't see her, either, as he took a step forward and collided head-on. In a reflex action his arms went around to catch her, while his forward progress carried her backward two steps.

Dazed by the total unexpectedness of the accident, Eve lifted her head. She wasn't certain that the fault belonged entirely to either one of them. Too stunned yet to speak, she stared at the stranger she'd bumped into -- or vice versa.

The light from the neon tavern sign fully illuminated his face. Nearly a head taller than she was, he had dark hair that waved in thick strands to fall at a rakish angle across his forehead. His eyes were blue, with a perpetual glint of humor in them. Tanned skin was stretched across very masculine features. He was handsome in a tough rakehell sort of way. A reckless smile showed the white of his teeth.

"What's this I've caught?" His mocking voice was matched by the laughing glint in his eyes as they traveled over her, taking in the brown of her hair and eyes and the brown coat. "I believe it's a brown mouse."

The teasing remark did not go down well, considering the earlier demoralizing remark by the minister. Her gaze dropped to the cream-colored pullover and the thin-striped blue-and-cream color of his shirt collar. Since he had obviously just left the tavern, Eve wasn't surprised that there was liquor on his breath. He'd been drinking, but he wasn't drunk. He was steady on his feet, and there was no glaze of alcohol in the rich blue of his eyes.

"I'm sorry," Eve apologized stiffly. "I wasn't paying attention to where I was going." Then she realized his arms were still holding her and her hands were flattened against his chest -- a very solid chest. Her heart began to beat unevenly.

"I wasn't looking where I was going, so it seems we were both to blame, brown mouse. Did I hurt you?" It was more disturbing to listen to the low pitch of his voice without seeing his face, so Eve looked up. His half-closed eyes were difficult to meet squarely.

"No, you didn't." When he showed no inclination to release her, she stated, "I'm all right. You can let go of me now."

"Must I?" he sighed deeply. His hands moved, but not away from her. Instead they began roaming over her shoulders and spine in an exploring fashion, as if testing the way she felt in his arms. "Do you know how long it's been since I held a woman in my arms?"

The well-shaped line of his mouth held a latent sensuality as his question confirmed the direction that Eve had suspected his thoughts were taking. His hands were exerting a slight pressure to inch her closer to him. They were standing on the sidewalk of a main street a few feet away from a tavern full of people.

Surely he wouldn't try to accost her in such a place? She wanted to struggle, but she was afraid he might view it as provocation rather than resistance. Yet she recognized the inherent danger in the situation. She kept her body rigid.

"Would you please let me go?" she requested.

"I'm frightening you, aren't I?" He tipped his head to one side, regarding her lazily, while his hands stopped their movement.

"Yes," Eve admitted, because her heart was beating a mile a minute and there was a choked sensation in her throat.

He let his hands slide away to let her stand free. She had expected an argument. It was a full second before she realized he was no longer holding her. She brushed past him and was a step beyond him when his hand snaked out to catch her arm.

"Don't scurry off into the dark, brown mouse." His voice chided her for running. "Stay a minute."

"No." His hand forced her to stop, but she lifted her arm in protest of his grip, straining against the unyielding strength of his fingers.

"What's your hurry? Are you meeting someone?"

The questions were curious, interested.

"No." Eve was confused and wary. He wouldn't release her, but he was making no move to do more than keep her there.

"Where are you going in such a rush?" Shadows fell across his face to throw the angles and planes of his features into harsh relief. They enhanced his rough virility, adding to the aura of dangerous attraction.

"I'm going home," she stated.

"I don't have any place to go but home, either," he said. "So why don't we go some place together? Then we won't have to go home."

"I want to go home," Eve insisted firmly, despite the faint quiver that was spreading up her arm from the restraining touch of his hand.

"Why? It's lonely there."

She had difficulty imagining a man like him ever being lonely. It was obviously a line. She wasn't going to be strung along by it.

"Let me put it another way: I don't want to go with you."

"I think I'm giving you the wrong impression." A half smile slanted his mouth, casually disarming. "I want to go someplace where we can talk."

Another line, Eve guessed. "I doubt that you're interested in talking," she returned with a tinge of sarcasm.

"It's true," he insisted, and moved to stand more to the front of her, without letting go of her arm.

Eve stared straight ahead in an effort to ignore him and the strange leaping of her pulse. His other hand moved to touch the side of her silky brown hair. Instinctively she jerked away from the soft caress, preferring force to his present means of intimidating her. She turned her head to stare at him.

When she met his gaze, Eve realized he was a man who communicated by touching -- with his hands or his gaze... or his mouth and his body. Unbidden, her mind had added the last. She didn't doubt his expertise in any area. Her composure began to splinter a little, undermined by her unexpectedly wayward imagination.

"It is true," he repeated. "Don't you know that a man can talk to a brown mouse?"

Which was hardly flattering in the light of her own low opinion of her sex appeal.

"Would you please not call me that?" Irritation flashed through her as she refused to comment on his observation.

"I always wondered if a brown mouse would retaliate when it was backed into a corner. There is some spirit there, behind that apparent timidity." It was obvious by the look of satisfaction on his face that she had heightened his interest. Eve wished she had kept her mouth shut. "A brown mouse. That's what you are, you know. With your brown hair and your brown eyes and your brown coat."

He was baiting her, but this time she ignored him. "I am a brown mouse who is anxious to go home, so would you let me go?" She injected a weary note in her voice, as if she were finding him quite tiresome. Fleetingly it occurred to her that she wouldn't be in this situation if she had accepted the Reverend Mr. Johnson's offer of a ride home.

"If you insist that's what you want to do, I'll walk with you to make sure you arrive safely and no cat pounces on you on the way home."

"I can think of only one 'cat' that might pounce on me and that's you," Eve retorted.

"Touché!" he laughed, and she was upset with herself for liking the sound of it.

She faced him directly. "If you don't leave me alone, I'm going to have to scream."

"Mice squeak," he corrected, but his gaze had narrowed on her, judging to see how serious she was about her threat.

"This brown mouse screams," she insisted.

She could, and if she felt sufficiently threatened, she would. It hadn't reached that point yet, but this conversation had gone on long enough.

"I believe she does," he agreed after a second had passed. He released her arm and lifted his hands in a mocking indication that he wouldn't touch her again.

"Thank you." Eve wasn't sure why she said that. Immediately she began walking away, trying not to walk too fast. She could feel him watching her with those magnetic blue eyes. It was an unnerving sensation.

"Good night, brown mouse." His low voice called after her, a hint of regret in its tone.

She didn't answer him. For another ten feet, Eve wondered if he would start following her. She forced herself not to look back. A few seconds later she heard the tavern door open and close. She glanced over her shoulder, but he wasn't in sight. Since no customer had come out, he had obviously gone back inside. She didn't have to wonder anymore whether he would come after her. Instead Eve found herself wondering who he was.

It was after ten when she reached her home. Both her parents were in the living room when she walked in. Neither of them was particularly striking in his appearance. Her father was a tall spare man with hazel eyes and thinning brown hair, while her mother was petitely built, with graying brown hair and brown eyes. It was a toss-up from whom Eve had inherited her common looks.

"Choir practice must have run late," her mother observed. It was a statement of conversation, not a remark about Eve's lateness in getting home.

"A little." She shrugged out of her brown coat and wondered if she would ever wear it again without thinking of herself as a brown mouse. "Mr. Johnson offered me a ride home, but it was such a lovely evening I decided to walk. So it took a little longer."

She didn't mention the stranger outside the tavern. They were still her parents. Eve didn't want to cause them needless concern. It had been a harmless incident anyway, not worth recounting.

IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT Toby McClure rolled onto his side. His long, little boy lashes fluttered, his sleep disturbed by a faint sound. He slowly let them come open, his sleepy blue eyes focusing on the door to his bedroom, which stood ajar. Listening, he heard hushed movement in another part of the house. A smile touched the corners of his mouth and deepened when he heard the person bump into a chair and curse beneath his breath.

Throwing back the covers, Toby slipped out of his single bed and walked to the hall door. His bare feet made no sound on the carpeted floor. He opened the door wide and waited until he saw the towering frame of his father separate from the darkness. He was walking unsteadily, trying so hard to be quiet.

The light from the full moon streamed through the window at the end of the hallway where Toby stood, including him in its path. The instant he saw the boy, his father, Luck McClure, stopped abruptly and swayed, bracing a hand against the wall to steady himself. A frown gathered on his forehead as he eyed the boy.

"What are you doing out of bed? You're supposed to be asleep," he accused in a growling voice that had a trace of a slur.

"You woke me up," Toby replied. "You always do when you try to sneak in."

"I wasn't sneaking." He emphatically denied that suggestion and glanced around. "Where's Mrs. Jackson, the lady who is supposed to be sitting with you?"

"She was going to charge double after midnight, so I paid her off and sent her home. You owe me twelve dollars."

"You--" Luck McClure clamped his mouth shut on the explosion of anger and carefully raised a hand to cradle his forehead. "We'll talk about this in the morning, Toby," he declared in heavy warning.

"Yes, sir. I'll remind you if you forget," he promised. A mischievous light danced in his eyes. "You owe me twelve dollars."

"That's another thing we'll discuss in the morning." But it was a weak facsimile of his previous warning, as a wave of tiredness washed over him. "Right now, I'm going to bed."

Luck pushed away from the wall and used that impetus to carry him to the bedroom door opposite his son's. Toby watched him open the door to the darkened room and head in the general direction of the bed. Without a light to see the exact location of his destination, Luck stubbed his toe on an end post. He started to swear and stopped sharply when Toby crossed the hall to flip the switch, turning on the overhead light.

"Why aren't you back in bed where you belong?" Luck hobbled around to the side of the bed and half sat, half fell onto the mattress.

"I figured you'd need help getting ready for bed." Toby walked to the bed with all the weary patience of an adult and helped finish tugging the pullover sweater over his father's head.

"For an eight-year-old kid, you figure a lot of things," Luck observed with a wry sort of affection. While he unbuttoned the cuffs of his shirt, Toby unfastened the buttons on his shirtfront.

"You've gotta admit, dad, I did you a favor tonight," Toby said as he helped pull his arms free of the shirt. "How would it have looked if Mrs. Jackson had seen you come home drunk?"

"I'm not drunk," Luck protested, unfastening his pants and standing long enough to slip them down his hips. Toby pulled them the rest of the way off. "I just had a few drinks, that's all."

"Sure, dad." He reached over and pulled down the bedcovers. It didn't take much persuasion to get his father under them.

"It feels so good to lie down," Luck groaned, and started to shut his eyes when Toby tucked the covers around him. He opened them to give his son a bleary-eyed look. "Did I tell you I talked to a brown mouse?" The question was barely out before he rolled onto his side, burrowing into the pillow. "You'd better get some sleep, son," he mumbled.

Shaking his head, Toby walked to the door and paused to look at his already snoring father. He reached up to flip off the light.

"A brown mouse," he repeated. "That's another thing we'll discuss in the morning."

Back in his moonlit room, Toby crawled into bed. He glanced at the framed photograph on the table beside his bed. The picture was a twin to the one on his father's bureau. From it, a tawny-haired blonde with green eyes smiled back at him -- his mother, and easily the most beautiful woman Toby had ever seen. Not that he remembered her. He had been a baby when she died -- six years ago today. His gaze strayed in the direction of his father's bedroom. Sighing, he closed his eyes.

SHORTLY AFTER EIGHT the next morning, Toby woke up. He lay there for several minutes before he finally yawned and climbed out of bed to stretch. Twenty minutes later he had brushed his teeth and washed, combed his hair and found a clean pair of jeans and a yellow T-shirt to wear.

Leaving his bedroom, he paused in the hallway to look in on his father. Luck McClure was sprawled across the bed, the spare pillow clutched by an encircling arm. Toby quietly closed the door, although he doubted his father would be disturbed by any noise he made.

In the kitchen, he put a fresh pot of coffee on to perk, then pushed the step stool to the counter and climbed it to reach the juice glasses and a cereal bowl in the cupboard. Positioning the stool in front of another cupboard, he mounted it to take down a box of cornflakes. With orange juice and milk from the refrigerator, Toby sat down to the kitchen table to eat his breakfast of cereal and orange juice.

By the time he'd finished, the coffee was done. He glanced from it to the pitcher of orange juice, hesitated, and walked to the refrigerator to take out a pitcher of tomato juice. Climbing back up the step stool, he took down a tall glass and filled it three-quarters full with tomato juice. When he returned the pitcher to the refrigerator, he took out an egg, cracked it, and added it to the tomato juice. He stirred that mixture hard, then added garlic and Tabasco to it. Sniffing the end result, he wrinkled his nose in distaste.

Taking the glass, he left the kitchen and walked down the hallway to his father's room. He hadn't changed position in bed. Toby leaned over, taking great care not to spill the contents of the glass, and shook his father's shoulder with his free hand.

"It's nine o'clock, dad. Time to get up." His statement drew a groan of protest. "Come on, dad."

With great reluctance, Luck rolled onto his back, flinging an arm across his eyes to shield them from the brightness of the sunlight shining in his window. Toby waited in patient silence until he sat up.

"Oh, my head," Luck mumbled, and held it in both his hands, the bedcovers falling around his waist to leave his torso bare.

Toby climbed onto the bed, balancing on his knees while he offered his father the concoction he'd made. "Drink this. It'll make you feel better."

Lowering his hands part way from his head, Luck looked at it skeptically. "What is it?"

"Don't ask," Toby advised, and reached out to pinch his father's nose closed while he tipped the glass to his lips. He managed to pour a mouthful down before his father choked and took the glass out of his hand.

"What is this?" Luck coughed and frowned as he studied the glass.

"It's a hangover remedy." And Toby became the recipient of the glowering frown and a raised eyebrow.

"And when did you become an expert on hangover remedies?" Luck challenged.

"I saw it on television once," Toby shrugged.

Luck shook his head in quiet exasperation. "I should make you drink this, you know that, don't you?" he sighed.

"There's fresh coffee in the kitchen." Toby hopped off the bed, just in case his father intended to carry out that threat.

"Go pour me a cup. And take this with you." A smile curved slowly, forming attractive grooves on either side of his mouth -- male dimples -- as he handed the glass back to Toby. "I'll be there as soon as I get some clothes on."

"I'll pour you some orange juice, too," Toby volunteered.

"Just straight orange juice. Don't put anything else in it."

"I won't." A wide grin split Toby's face before he turned to walk swiftly from the room.

With a wry shake of his head, Luck threw back the covers and climbed slowly out of bed. He paused beside the bureau to glance at the photograph. Well, pretty lady, do you see what kind of boy your son has grown into? The blue of his eyes had a pensive look as he walked to the bathroom.

Copyright © 1981 by Janet Dailey