Читать книгу Weddings Do Come True - Cara Colter - Страница 9

Chapter One

Ethan Black gazed out the window above the kitchen sink. He was buried up to his elbows in suds. The last light was fading from the sky; leafless trees and snow-capped evergreens were stark black silhouettes against the sunset’s final streaks of orange and pink. A cow lowed, the sound deep and melodious.

Slivers of light still illuminated the tops of the rolling hills that stretched to the far horizon. He could no longer see the lonely ribbon of road that wound from miles away, down over Sheep Creek Ridge, through the shadowed valley and up here to his home on Black’s Bluff, but at night like this, he could see headlights coming from four miles off.

But there were no pinpoints of light heralding the arrival of the cavalry.

He frowned. His aging hired hand, Gumpy, should have been back from Calgary by now. With the reinforcements.

Reinforcement. Mrs. Betty-Anne Bishop.

Tearing his hopeful gaze from the place the headlights would first appear crowning the crest of the ridge, he looked down at the contents of the sink with disgust. He was doing dishes. Lots and lots of dishes. Once upon a time, doing dishes had meant turning on the hot water tap and giving a single plate a quick swish through it. Two plates, if Gumpy joined him.

Once upon a time. Only two weeks ago. How could two weeks seem so long?

Peals of shrill laughter erupted from down the hall, and he closed his eyes. That was how.

He leaned back from the sink, trying not to drip too many suds, and peered down the darkened hallway. A light was on in his bedroom at the end of the passageway.

The two children were jumping up and down on his bed, squealing with hyenalike glee.

They were twins, and though not identical, the resemblance between them was strong and striking. Both had short dark hair, though not nearly as dark as his and not as heavy. Doreen’s eyes were blue; Danny’s were the Black eyes, gray as slate. Both of them had cheekbones that only hinted at their grandmother‘s—his mother’s—Sarcee Indian blood. Tsuu-T’ina, Gumpy’s voice corrected him inside his head. Gumpy would be disgusted to know Ethan was relieved his niece and nephew would not be taunted through their school years as he had been. Called half-breed and worse. Driven, later on, to prove himself. To prove that he was just as good as anybody else. No, better. Stronger. Tougher. Wilder. More fearless.

He watched the children for a moment longer, thinking either of them was going to bounce one of their stocky little bodies right off the bed. He should tell them to settle down.

On the other hand, they weren’t fighting.

He turned back to the chore at hand. The morning and lunch dishes finally done, he shook his hands over the sink. Reminding himself the end was in sight, he went and cleared the supper dishes off the table.

“I hate this, Unca,” his five-year-old niece, Doreen, had told him a half hour ago.

“Eat it anyway.”

Her huge cornflower-blue eyes had filled with silent tears. They had the oddest way of filling, from the bottom, like a clear glass fish bowl filling up. Or maybe everybody’s eyes filled up that way before they bawled and he’d just never had a chance to see it up close before.

Thank God.

Needless to say, she had not eaten one bite of the prime T-bone on the plate. Or the baked potato, which admittedly had not been cooked all the way through. She had nibbled a single leaf of lettuce, which, from the level of energy she was now demonstrating on his bed, had sufficiently nourished her.

He dropped the dishes in the sink. He had to bend in an awkward way, right from the small of his back, to get at the dishes, and he was starting to ache from it. Of course, his aching back might also have a little something to do with a long-ago bull named Desire. His aches and scars—and there were many of them considering he had barely broken thirty—were mostly named after bulls he’d met over a seven-year stint as a pro-rodeo cowboy.

Not one moment of which had been as frightening as the moment Doreen and her twin brother, Danny, had stepped into the airport waiting area, holding hands, their names pinned to their coats, their eyes huge and frightened.

He heard a thud as one of them tumbled off the bed. He waited for the howl and felt his muscles actually unbunching when it didn’t come. A moment later the springs were again squeakily protesting each jump.

They weren’t frightened anymore. Maybe they never had been. Maybe that had just been his own fear reflected in their eyes. Imagine a man who had spent most of his youth and much of his adult life on top of two thousand pounds of writhing, raging bull getting an attack of nerves when confronted with two small scraps of humanity who couldn’t weigh more than eighty pounds combined. It was humiliating.

His sister, Nancy, and her husband, Andrew, were medical missionaries in a country called Rotanbonga. He still couldn’t pronounce it correctly. The twins had been born there, and he’d been quite satisfied to monitor their progress from a distance. His chief duty as uncle had been to remember to get their Christmas parcel in the mail by the end of September. Every year he sent a teddy bear and a doll, thanking God for the Sears catalogue, so that he didn’t have to shop for these highly embarrassing items in person.

But a few weeks ago he’d gotten an extremely panicky call from his usually unflappable sister. The connection was terrible, but he understood her to say that an epidemic, the name of which he could not pronounce, was sweeping the towns of their adopted homeland. It wasn’t safe for the kids to stay, but Nancy and Andrew felt they couldn’t possibly leave when so many lives now relied on their medical expertise.

What was an uncle supposed to say in those circumstances? I’ve got a ranch to run?

Of course, at the time when he’d said yes, he’d had no idea two five-year-olds were going to keep him from running his ranch. Keep him so busy and exhausted, he fell into bed at night feeling as if he’d wrestled, branded and inoculated several thousand head of cattle singlehandedly.

“Come on, Gumpy,” he implored the dark road.

He hoped the old truck hadn’t given out somewhere along the way. Gumpy always kept a roll of electrical tape and spare parts on hand and could bring about major miracles on that old heap of junk, but still, it wouldn’t make a good first impression on Mrs. Bishop.

She might not be happy standing in the dark on the side of the road in the biting November cold watching Gumpy cheerfully gluing his pride and joy back together.

And he wanted nothing more than for Mrs. Bishop to be happy.

Mrs. Betty-Anne Bishop was his neighbor’s cousin. Her name had come to him after he’d put out some panicky feelers to friends and neighbors.

That was three days after the twins had arrived. The laundry seemed to be multiplying on its own on the laundry room floor, the cattle needed to be dewormed, and Danny and Doreen had not yet revealed to him if they understood English.

He’d interviewed Mrs. Bishop by telephone. She was fifty-seven and had raised four children of her own.

None of whom were in jail.

Which was good enough for him.

It hadn’t fazed him that she lived in Ottawa, fifteen hundred miles away, either. He’d paid the short-notice, no-discount airfare to Calgary without blinking.

“It’s mine!” Doreen screamed.

“Isn’t!” Danny yelled back.

Ethan sighed and closed his eyes.

Now they were fighting. In some ways he’d liked it better before they decided to let him know they spoke English.

He leaned back from the sink again and looked down the hall to his bedroom. They were still smack-dab in the middle of his bed, engaged in a furious tug-of-war over his cowboy hat. Didn’t they know a man’s hat was sacred?

“Hey!” he hollered.

Doreen started, and dropped her hold on the hat. She fell on her plump bottom and looked accusingly down the hall at him. Even from here he could see her large blue eyes filling up with tears.

Wringing out the dishcloth with a little more vigor than was absolutely necessary, he said a word that would have given his sister a heart attack, and headed down the hall.

A few minutes later, Doreen tucked under one arm and Danny under the other, Ethan settled on the couch. They snuggled into him, and the opening credits of Toy Story came on.

“How many times have we watched this, Unca?” Doreen asked him happily.

“Twenty-seven,” he informed her grimly.

She sighed blissfully. Danny sang the opening song robustly. Ethan felt his eyelids growing heavier and heavier.

It seemed like only minutes later he jerked awake. But the TV was now playing plain blue, and Danny and Doreen were fast asleep, their heads on his chest, Danny snoring softly and Doreen drooling a little pool of saliva all over the front of his shirt.

If it hadn’t been for the drool, he might have thought he was dreaming.

Because there was an angel in the room with them.

She was absolutely beautiful. Her hair was thick and long, as golden as liquid honey, half piled on top of her head, and half falling around her face and shoulders. She had beautiful dark brown eyes, high cheekbones, a shapely nose, a mouth from which the lipstick had long ago worn off, but that still looked luscious.

Lipstick? Since when did angels wear lipstick?

He blinked, and gave his head a shake.

Since when did angels wear little pink silk suits, the color of cotton candy? The skirt showed Ethan enough long, shapely leg to make his mouth go dry.

“Honey, we’re home,” Gumpy said with a familiar cackle.

Ethan snapped his gaze to him. Gumpy, his wispy white hair framing his wrinkled copper-colored face, looked inordinately pleased with himself.

Ethan lifted the children’s heads off his chest and slipped out from under them. Stepping over the coffee table, he ignored Gumpy, and stared down at the beautiful intruder.

“Who the hell are you?” he asked, his voice rougher than it needed to be in defense against those legs.

Lacey McCade stared up at the cowboy with awe. He was at least three inches taller than her own five feet nine inches. There was pure power in the strong lines of his face, in the high cut of his cheekbones, in the faint cleft of his chin, the straight line of his nose. His hair was thick and black as night and cut very short. His lips were full and faintly parted, and his eyelashes were long and sooty. His skin glowed with faint copper tones, and she knew he must be at least partly Native American.

His build was lean and hard. He had his shirtsleeves rolled up, and she could see the sinewy muscle of his lower arms, the strength in his large wrists. He flexed a hand impatiently, and her eyes were drawn momentarily to a thick scar that snaked around the base of his thumb.

He was wearing a denim shirt, and his shoulders and chest were broad beneath it.

Two ax handles wide, Lacey remembered her secretary saying once, giggling at a carpenter’s shoulders, as they passed a construction site on their way to an office luncheon.

Lacey remembered thinking at the time, Who in Los Angeles would know the first thing about ax handles? But she was a long way from Los Angeles now, and looking at those enormously broad shoulders, it fit.

His legs were very long, encased in old denim that looked as soft as felt, and clung to the large muscles of his thighs.

His eyes were astonishing, even in anger. They were gray and clear as cold mountain water. Not that anybody in Los Angeles would know anything about that, either.

“Hi,” she said nervously.

“Who the hell are you?” he repeated.

He had every right to be angry. Lacey shot a look at her rescuer, Gumpy. Or was she rescuing him? It had all seemed so simple at the airport.

She had just gotten off the phone to Keith who had not taken the news she was canceling the wedding very well. In fact, he had said he would get on the next flight and they would “talk.”

She hadn’t been in the mood for talking, and had decided to hide out in a hotel room. But after thirty-two phone calls, it was apparent to her that every hotel room in the whole city of Calgary was being used for an international convention of plumbers. Who would have known plumbers had conventions?

And then this wonderful old man had been standing in front of her, in faded jeans and a denim jacket. He was Native American, his skin warm and wrinkled copper, his eyes black as coal, his hair long and free and wispy as white smoke.

She had liked his eyes, because despite the nervous twisting of his hat in his hands, his eyes had been utterly calm, peaceful. In his eyes had been a deep knowing.

About everything. The secrets of life and the universe. Her secrets.

“Are you the nanny?” he’d asked shyly, revealing a gap where his two front teeth should have been.

She’d contemplated that for a moment. What she was, was a lawyer, one who had never had an impulsive moment before today. Today when, instead of driving to her law firm’s office in downtown Los Angeles after a particularly brutal session with a difficult client, she had taken the off-ramp to the airport, surveyed the flights out and chosen Calgary.

For no reason at all, really.

Unless you counted the fact that once, as a little girl, she had wanted very badly to go there for their world-famous rodeo, the Calgary Stampede.

And then some complete stranger with lovable eyes had asked her if she was a nanny, and some deep warmth had spread within her. Of course, she would have said no if he hadn’t spoken again.

“If you’re not the nanny, I guess I’m in a heap of trouble,” the old man had said sadly.

But his eyes had said no such thing. They twinkled at her as if they were about to share a wonderful joke. They invited her to say yes to the adventure. He knew she was not a nanny.

It felt as though Lacey was in a “heap of trouble” herself. Still, her utterly responsible voice ordered her indignantly not to do anything crazy. Anything else crazy. She shushed it.

The truth was she wanted, for once in her very ordinary life, to be crazy. She wanted to be impetuous and spontaneous. She wanted life to at least have the possibility of something wonderful and unpredictable happening.

And after she’d had that, her small taste of life on the wild side, a breath or two of pure freedom, she would probably be perfectly content to go home and marry Keith. Perfectly.

“I am a nanny,” she told her unlikely angel, holding out her hand to him.

He took it, and any doubt she had was gone instantly. His grip was strong and warm and reassuring. “I lost the paper with your name on it, miss.”

She hesitated, knowing when she said her name he was going to realize his error. And the adventure would be over just like that. She’d get on the next plane and go home.

She had been aware of holding her breath as she said, “Lacey. My name’s Lacey McCade.”

But his smile had nearly swallowed his face. “Nelson,” he’d told her, “Nelson Go-Up-the-Mountain.” When she told him she had never heard such a beautiful name, he had ducked his head with endearing shyness. “Shucks, just call me Gumpy.”

Lacey had never heard anyone say “Shucks” before. She wanted to ask him all about the children, but remembered she was likely supposed to know.

“Your luggage?” he’d asked her.

“Lost.” She felt guilty lying to him, but really that one word could mean just about anything. And it suddenly occurred to her that the turnoff to the airport earlier had been very much about things lost. Some part of herself was lost.

“We’ll find it,” he’d said reassuringly.

And looking at him, she’d believed it. And knew he was not talking about luggage any more than she was.

Now, facing the man in front of her, her choice seemed silly rather than adventurous.

Even sleeping, with those two adorable children nestled trustingly into him, there had been nothing vulnerable about this man. He had looked rugged and 100 percent pure male.

“Mind your manners, Ethan,” Gumpy told him mildly, which earned the older man a look that might have sent a lesser man scuttling for cover. “This is our new nanny.”

“The hell she is.”

Certainly she was glancing around for a place to hide.

But with one more dismissive look to her, Ethan turned to Gumpy. “What have you gone and done?”

“Just what you told me,” Gumpy said, “gone to the airport and picked up the nanny.”

“Fifty-seven. I told you Betty-Anne was fifty-seven years old. Nobody fifty-seven looks like this. This girl isn’t a day over—” cool gray eyes scanned her “—twenty-five.”

“Woman,” she corrected him. “Thirty.”

He glared at her briefly, then shifted his attention away from her again.

“Gumpy, start talking.” The cowboy’s voice was low and lethal. Just like the rest of him, there was barely leashed power in that voice. “Where’s Mrs. Bishop?”

Behind him the children stirred on the couch. She watched them, in their sleep, reach out for and find each other. She felt a stab of tenderness for them.

“This is the only nanny I could find at the airport,” Gumpy said, not intimidated. “And believe you me, I looked.”

“Anybody looking at her can see she’s not a nanny. We need somebody who can cook and clean and look after kids, Gumpy, not an expert in shades of fingernail polish.”

She looked at the fingernails in question, rather than meet the steady, stripping look in his eyes when he glanced back her way. Her nails were quite long, the very same shade as her suit, a fact she had taken some pleasure in this morning.

When she had been a completely different person.

“Doreen and Danny will like her,” Gumpy said.

“I hope you’re not suggesting she stay.”

She looked up from her fingernails to see Gumpy nod, once, with grave dignity.

The cool, angry note in Ethan’s voice as he bit out a single word woke the children. They struggled to sit up, rubbing their eyes, taking her in with only mild curiosity. Then they slipped off the couch and disappeared down the hall.

“Don’t touch my hat,” Ethan called over his shoulder, though he did not turn around.

The children giggled and broke into a run that did not bode well for his hat, though at the moment she could not imagine anyone who valued their lives defying him.

But Gumpy did defy him. “I think she should stay.”

“You crazy old coot! She is not staying. You are putting her back in that truck and taking her back wherever you found her.”

“So,” Gumpy said softly, “now I’m a crazy old coot. But when you want something, it’s Grandfather.”

“You’re his grandfather?” Lacey asked Gumpy with surprise.

“No!” Ethan snapped.

“For the People, Grandfather is a term that denotes respect,” Gumpy said softly, his dark eyes locked on the gray ones of the younger man.

To her immense surprise, Ethan looked down first. A small muscle jerked angrily in his jaw. But when he looked up again at Gumpy, the flash of fury was gone from his eyes, though they were as cool and as unnervingly steady as ever.

“She can’t stay,” he said quietly.

“He’s right,” Lacey said, moving to Gumpy and putting her hand on his sleeve. “Of course I can’t stay. I’ve made a dreadful mistake. I’ll go. Really.”

Gumpy studied her face, saw the resolve in it and sighed.

The little girl danced into the room. “Gumpy, I flushed your keys down the toilet.”

Ethan said that word again, so that Lacey just barely heard it. Not a very nice word at all.

“Don’t you just love flush toilets?” the little girl asked, looking right up at her.

She had the most beautiful blue eyes, Lacey thought, and exquisite bone structure, very like her uncle’s. Short dark hair scattered around a cherubic face. Out of the corner of her eye, Lacey saw Gumpy struggling to suppress his laughter. His thin shoulders were shaking.

“I do,” Lacey said, though she had to admit she had never given the topic a single thought in her entire life. “I like flush toilets very much.”

The other little imp materialized, and looked up at her with eyes amazingly like his uncle’s. “I’m Danny.”

“Hi,” Lacey said.

“And I’m Doreen,” the other one said.

Ethan was not being sidetracked by introductions. “You can take my truck,” he said grimly to Gumpy. “You’ll be back in plenty of time for us to use it to feed cattle.”

Lacey looked at Gumpy with concern. Surely he would not be expected to drive back and forth all night and then feed cattle in the morning?

“Never mind,” Ethan said, evidently reaching the same conclusion. For a moment in his eyes a barrier came down, and she could see his affectionate concern for the old man outweigh his substantial irritation. “I’ll take her.”

He strode out of the room, and it was as if something went with him. Energy. Light. Lacey realized his physical nearness had made her edgy, aware of something beating, pulsing, deep within her.

Danny and Doreen raced around the room and then disappeared down the hallway.

Lacey studied the living room. It was only slightly homier than the kitchen she had come through earlier. The couch looked worn but comfortable. A bright scatter rug was underneath it, no doubt to keep feet warm on icy winter nights. The coffee table, a beautiful old scarred wooden trunk, held a cup of coffee, half-full, and a well-thumbed book that looked like a medical manual on cattle. There were no pictures on the walls.

Keith, she knew, would hate this room. His taste ran to authentic Persian rugs and antique oriental vases. But she found herself drawn to it, to the lack of clutter, to the simplicity.

She glanced, covertly, at the four movies lined up under the televison, wondering what they would tell her of the man who lived here. Toy Story, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Dances with Wolves and Chris Irwin, Horse Whispering Demystified. Gumpy shuffled over and sat on the couch, looking peaceful and unperturbed, but she felt driven to apologize anyway.

“I’m sorry, Gumpy,” she said softly, “I never should have let it go this far.”

He just smiled, that wise and knowing smile she had come to like very much.

They heard a drawer slam in the kitchen.

“Where the hell are my keys?”

From a different part of the house, Lacey heard breathless giggles.

Ethan must have heard them, too. Because the silence was suddenly very silent. She could hear the fridge motor.

“Doreen?” he called. “Danny?”

Silence.

“Where are my keys?”

Hushed giggles.

Lacey turned to Gumpy and widened her eyes. She mouthed, “The toilet?”

He nodded and she waited for an explosion, but none came.

Ethan came back into the living room. He sank down on the couch and closed his eyes for a long moment. He looked tired and discouraged, much, she thought, how she must have looked when Gumpy found her at the airport.

“You probably can’t even cook,” he muttered in her direction.

“You haven’t eaten until you’ve had my vegetarian chili,” she told him proudly.

“Vegetarian?” he said with flat dislike.

Even loyal Gumpy was looking at her with distress. “Vegetarian?”

They heard a toilet flush and then flush again, followed by childish laughter.

“My life,” Ethan said, slowly and deliberately, “could not possibly get any worse than it is at this moment.”

She felt it was wise to say nothing. Apparently so did Gumpy.

“Miss?” Ethan said, opening one gray eye and looking at her.

“Ms.,” she corrected him.

His sigh of long suffering said his life had just gotten worse. “You’re on a cattle ranch,” he told her, reclosing his eyes. “As in beef. We promote the edibility of red meat.”

“Oh.”

The phone rang, and for a long time it seemed as if both men planned to ignore it.

“You know who that is, don’t you?” Ethan asked Gumpy.

“Not a clue.”

“It’s a hopping-mad fifty-seven-year-old woman who has successfully raised four children on a diet of meat and potatoes.” Except for the hopping-mad part, he sounded distinctly wistful.

He unfolded himself from the couch and went and got the phone.