Into His Keeping Read Online Free PDF Page B

same as Jill remembered.
     
    Jill pulled her Taurus into the parking space in front of the last room. Holdin’s big Dodge king cab had been on her bumper and he pulled in right beside her. He was at her car door before she could put her feet down on the cracked pavement. Her head was pounding and she smiled tightly as he took her elbow as if to steady her.
     
    Drifter was already at the room door, opening it. They’d all heard Holdin instruct the motel owner to leave it open. “Any bags to bring in?” Holdin asked Drifter as he gently steered Jill to the bed along the far wall.
     
    “Sure, I’ll get them,” Drifter answered automatically, unaware the man was directing them all.
     
    Holdin flung the spread back and Jill sank down on the cool sheets. Her eyes closed immediately. “I’d have lain down without the strong-arm treatment, Holdin.”
     
    “Yeah, but I feel better now,” he answered her mild protest as Drifter came back in with two small bags. “You guys weren’t planning on staying long.” Holdin accusingly eyed the bags.
     
    Jill could hear it in his tone. “We don’t have much time.”
     
    Neither male had flipped on the lights nor opened the drapes. As Drifter kicked the door shut, the room was suddenly plunged into a murky twilight. Jill opened her eyes a crack to find Holdin looming in the narrow space between the two double beds, hands on hips, frowning down at her.
     
    “You just going to stand there?” she asked.
     
    “Yeah, I think so.” Holdin ran a hand through his hair and shut his eyes briefly in a squeezing motion then he was gazing down at her again. “If I take my eyes off you again, you might disappear. So I can’t.”
     
    What he’d really been doing was resisting the urge to wrap his body around her in some useless effort to protect, shield, somehow take the weight he could feel her carrying. The emotions that this encounter had generated were all fierce. Anger was pushed to the bottom of the pile because he couldn’t afford it right now. The two he was having trouble suppressing were possessiveness and protection. Those were the ones she’d always triggered in him. Not the gentle civilized versions that would have been acceptable either. These were primal responses to Jill. They always had been.
     
    Drifter flopped down at the end of the other bed, his long legs dangling over the end as the huge yellow mums on the orange bedspread seemed to explode around him. Even in the dim light, the mums glowed. His hands stacked behind his head as he stared at the ceiling. “Are you two going to fight?” he asked in a deceptively disinterested tone.
     
    Holdin sat down on the yellow and orange bed behind his knees and relaxed back in the same position. The two of them only fit on the thing because they were at right angles to each other. “No.” Holdin sighed. “This isn’t fighting. This is issues. Fears. All that junk.”
     
    “You have fears?” Drifter asked in the same bored tone.
     
    “Yep. I was in love with your mother. One evening she was gone and I couldn’t find her. It hurt me bad. Now she’s back and I’ve met you. I guess I’m sorta terrified that if I let you guys out of my sight, I’ll not be able to find you again. Does that make sense?” Holdin asked his son conversationally.
     
    Drifter grunted a male sound then after a few minutes’ silence asked, “So you minded that she left?”
     
    “Big time,” Holdin confirmed. “Hired a private detective once. All I found out was that whatever her real name was, I didn’t know it. Made me mad as hell. But I always wanted to find her.”
     
    Jill listened in silence as Holdin exposed his soul to their son in fearless honesty. The abbreviated sentences and blunt expressions males used with each other were so stark. It was a nakedness women always wanted to dress up with explanations.
     
    She suspected Holdin was doing it deliberately. Letting Drifter ask whatever he wanted was not only