Читать книгу Fortune's Second-Chance Cowboy - Marie Ferrarella - Страница 12

Chapter Three

Chloe eased the baby ever so slowly into the crib. She held her breath the entire time until she was able to successfully withdraw her hands from around the baby’s little body.

Sydney made a little noise, then sighed before settling back to sleep.

Success! Chloe silently congratulated herself.

She took a step back and almost gasped as she bumped up right against Chance.

“Oh, sorry,” he whispered, immediately moving aside. He wasn’t sure if he was apologizing for being in her way or for feeling that sudden zip of electricity surging through his body when it made contact with hers. Granted the contact wasn’t of the intimate variety that he was normally accustomed to, but there was still just enough to get him going.

Chloe instantly turned around and nearly caused another, far more dead-on collision between them. At the very last minute, because Chance had moved back so quickly, the one-on-one collision between their two bodies was avoided.

She wasn’t really sure if she was relieved—or perhaps just a little disappointed.

Again? What is the matter with you? she silently demanded.

Yes, the man was attractive, she acknowledged, but lots of men were attractive and she hadn’t been drawn to them. So why was this man, this cowboy, different from the others?

He’s not. Get a grip, Chloe, she ordered herself angrily.

“Um, that’s okay.” She flushed, absolving him of any guilt in what had just transpired. “I shouldn’t have moved so suddenly.” She looked down at the sleeping infant. “I just didn’t want to take a chance on saying something too loud and waking up the baby.”

Since the room was relatively small, Roger had kept back, standing almost out in the hallway. He peered in now at the sleeping infant.

“She sure is a pretty little thing, ain’t she?” The whispered rhetorical question was steeped in complete admiration. And then he looked from Chance to Chloe. “You got any kids?” he asked Chance.

The cowboy looked surprised by the question. “No.”

“You already told me that you don’t have any,” Roger said to Chloe. And then he laughed to himself, as if he knew something they weren’t privy to yet. “Well, you two are young yet. You’ve got time.”

Time—that was what Donnie had thought. They had time. Time to be together, time to enjoy one another before they took that step to become parents. Again she wished with all her heart she had insisted on getting pregnant before he had left for overseas. At least she would have had Donnie’s child to hold in her arms instead of all that emptiness that he left behind.

“But once you’ve got ’em,” Roger was saying, “there’s just nothing like it in the world. Makes you realize just what you were put down here on earth for, what makes everything else all worthwhile.” Rousing himself, he beckoned them out into the hallway. “C’mon, we’d better slip out before I forget myself and start talking loud again.”

Roger put a hand on each of their shoulders—he had to stretch in order to reach Chance’s—and he guided them both out ahead of him.

The hallway was too narrow to accommodate all three of them. Roger fell behind them again.

As she and Chance fell in step beside each other, he glanced her way. “You want kids?” he asked her out of the blue as they made their way back down the stairs ahead of their unofficial escort.

“Right now, I just want a job,” she told him honestly. The next second, she realized that he might think she was trying to guilt him out of competing for the position he was here for. “I mean, if I turn out to be more qualified for it. But if it turns out that you are, well then, I’ll just have to keep on looking for something,” she concluded.

Chance caught himself studying her. Something just wasn’t adding up for him.

“Just how much do you know about ranching?” he finally asked her.

Reaching the bottom of the stairs, she stared at him, confused. Why would he ask her such a strange question? “Not much. Why?”

Something’s really not adding up, Chance told himself. “Well, because that’s the job I’m here about. The one I’m interviewing for. Graham wanted someone to run the ranch. Someone who was good with horses,” he finally said when she just kept looking at him.

“Run the ranch?” Chloe repeated, confused. She’d gotten the impression from Graham that she and Chance were here about the same job. She looked at him now. “You’re here about ranching?”

“Funny, I thought I just said that,” Chance answered. Judging by the expression on her face, she wasn’t here to apply for that job the way she’d made it sound earlier. “What are you here about?”

“Why, counseling, of course,” Chloe replied in no uncertain terms.

“Counseling what?” Chance asked, clearly surprised by her answer. And then it suddenly occurred to him what the sexy-looking blonde was saying. He had to admit that what he’d just asked made him feel like an idiot. “You mean the boys?”

Her smile was a natural reflex. “I kind of have to. Horses don’t listen to me.”

Chloe’s sense of humor tickled him and he laughed. Now it all made sense. They were here about two different positions. “I could teach you how to make them listen to you.”

“You’re talking about the horses, right?” she asked, a hint of mischief dancing in her eyes.

He found himself being pulled in and mesmerized by those deep pools of blue. It took effort to tear his gaze away. “Right,” he finally replied. “I’ve got no trouble getting horses to listen to me. Most people, though, just ignore me like I wasn’t there.”

“I don’t believe that for a minute,” she told him with feeling. How could anyone, male or female—especially female—not notice this man? His presence seemed to just fill up the very space around him. Heaven knew he certainly did that for her.

The way he was looking at her right now made her feel like nervously shifting from foot to foot. The butterflies in her stomach were multiplying at a phenomenal rate. It was hard to gather her thoughts together to answer him.

“For one thing, you’re really tall.” She knew that wasn’t much of an answer, so she searched for a better one. “And you have this commanding air about you. If you were a counselor, I’m sure that the boys here would listen to whatever you had to say.”

“Good thing we won’t have to put that to the test,” Chance answered, then confessed, “I’m not much when it comes to giving orders. I had enough of that when I was over in Afghanistan.”

The mention of the place that had seen Donnie die had her quietly saying, “At least you got to come back.”

The words slipped out before she could think to stop them. Any hope that Chance might not have heard her died the second she looked up into his eyes. He’d heard. There was curiosity mingled with a touch of pity in his blue orbs.

The moment grew more uncomfortable for her.

“Did you lose someone?” Chance asked kindly.

Her first impulse was to deny his assumption. But that would be like denying Donnie had ever existed, and she couldn’t bring herself to do that.

So after a couple of beats had gone by, she answered him. “Yes.”

“Brother? Father? Husband?” Chance kept guessing when she made no acknowledgment that he had guessed correctly. By the time he’d reached the word husband, with no visible response from her, Chance shook his head. “No, never mind. Don’t tell me. It’s none of my business. Sorry I asked,” he apologized. “It’s just that sometimes it feels like some kind of exclusive veterans club—the kind you really don’t want membership to,” he added ruefully.

“Does that mean you wish you hadn’t gone?” she asked, curious.

How many times had she lain awake at night, wondering if Donnie ever regretted enlisting before the war had taken him from her. Even now, after all this time, she hadn’t really come to any sort of a satisfactory conclusion.

“No,” he told her honestly. “I went to fight for my country, and I’m proud of that part. I just wish I hadn’t seen what I’d seen. Nobody should see that kind of thing,” he said quietly. “Nobody should have to live through it, either.”

Then, as if he replayed his own words in his head, Chance blew out a breath, mystified. “How’d I get started on that?” he asked. The question was meant more for him than for her. Clearing his throat, he abruptly changed the subject. “Anyway, at least now we know that we’re not out for the same job.”

Roger, who had been hanging back quietly this whole time, finally spoke up.

“Well, glad that’s been cleared up—and just in time, too.” His attention was immediately redirected to the sound of the front door being opened. “Looks like your future bosses are back,” he told Chloe and Chance with a broad wink.

They turned toward the front door in time to see Graham and Sasha walking in, along with a little girl. With her straight blond hair and her delicate features, she looked like a miniature version of her mother. All except for the arm that was in a cast and held by a sling around her neck.

Chloe winced in sympathy. That had to be Maddie, she thought, her heart immediately going out to the little girl. She hoped that Maddie wasn’t in too much pain.

“Well, we made it back,” Sasha announced. “Sorry for the wait.” She looked around. “Uncle Roger, where’s the baby?”

Roger pointed to Chloe. “This one got her to go to sleep just like that.” He snapped his fingers to illustrate just how fast Chloe had performed what was clearly a magic trick to him.

Sasha smiled warmly at Chloe.

“Well, I’m won over. You’ve got the job,” Sasha quipped.

“You’re not serious, are you?” Chloe asked uncertainly.

“No, she’s not,” Graham agreed. “But almost,” he told Chloe. “Sasha goes on gut instincts, same as me,” he told her.

“Hey, kiddo, you want to go upstairs and lie down?” Roger asked his grandniece, who had momentarily gotten lost in this verbal exchange between the adults.

“No,” Maddie cried, protesting the very idea. “They had me lying down forever when I was in the hospital, getting all those pictures took of my arm.” She looked at her cast. “What I want is you to sign my cast,” she declared, pointing to the newly applied cast with her other hand. Barely an hour old, the cast already had a handful of autographs and well-wishes written on it. “I got these from the nurses. And that’s from that doctor who put it on,” she told her granduncle, pointing out the different signatures. “Isn’t it neat?”

“It sure is,” Roger agreed with the kind of enthusiasm that appealed to young children. “Neatest thing I’ve ever seen. What do you say you and me go get us a sandwich in the kitchen and I’ll see if I can come up with something real good to put on that cast?”

Maddie perked up visibly. “Can I have anything I want to eat?” she asked eagerly.

“You can have anything that’s in the refrigerator,” Roger qualified with a wink.

Maddie’s grin all but split her face. “Cool!”

Roger pretended to misunderstand her declaration. “Cool or hot. Whatever’s there, is yours.”

Sasha exchanged looks with her amused husband. “I think maybe I should go supervise,” Sasha said, following her uncle.

Wanting to be as accommodating as possible, Chloe called out after Sasha’s departing back, “I’ll just sit right here until you get back.”

“You can if you want to, but feel free to move around if you like. You’ve already got the job,” Sasha called back over her shoulder, accompanying her injured daughter to the kitchen.

Chloe looked at Graham. Sasha hadn’t asked her a single question that had to do with the job she was applying for. Just what had gotten the woman to decide in her favor?

“I’m confused,” Chloe confessed.

He laughed. “Sasha’ll do that to you,” he said in a completely understanding voice. “I feel like my head’s been spinning ever since I first met her. But since she’s a better judge than I am when it comes to this position, I’ve made up my mind. You do have the job.” And then he grew more serious. “Do you mind being left alone for a few minutes?” he asked. “I’d like to ask Chance some questions in private.”

Then, before she could answer him, he made a suggestion. “Feel free to look around the house, or to join Sasha, Maddie and Uncle Roger in the kitchen.”

Chloe shook her head, declining both offers. Right now, she just wanted to sit exactly where she was and absorb what had just happened.

And, in her opinion, what had just happened amounted to being given a job, a rather important job in her estimation, practically sight unseen.

Well, she’d been seen, Chloe amended, but obviously a great deal had just been read into whatever Sasha Fortune Robinson thought she saw in her.

“I’m good, thank you,” she told Graham, turning down his offer.

In response, her half brother smiled at her and nodded. “I won’t be long,” he promised.

Her half brother.

It was still hard to think of him that way, Chloe thought as she watched him take Chance into what appeared to be a den that was directly off the living room.

Hard to think of herself as being anyone’s half sister.

Or a half sister to what amounted to practically a legion of other half siblings, she added silently. She’d grown up thinking she had no family at all beyond her mother and now she had more family than she could shake that proverbial stick at.

And one of those half siblings had just given her a job.

Not just any job but the kind of job she had set her heart on before she’d ever sent in her application to college. So far, she’d been stitching together a living taking anything she could get—even working at a local coffee shop on weekends to help pay her rent. She felt as if she’d finally crossed a threshold into her field.

Talk about luck.

Glancing around to make sure no one could see her, Chloe pinched herself. And then, just to make certain, she pinched herself again because she had to admit this all seemed like some sort of dream. A dream that she was going to wake up from at any minute now.

Except for the part about Donnie, she thought grimly. If this was a dream, he’d be right here beside her.

But he wasn’t.

She was sitting in this big old living room all by herself, waiting for her half brother to come back in and tell her all the details she needed to know about this job she was going to be starting. She was convinced that she’d gotten this position strictly because she was “family” despite all of Graham’s talk about instincts and gut feelings.

No matter, she was determined to prove to them that they hadn’t made a mistake in hiring her. She was going to work really, really hard and be the best counselor they could have possibly hoped for. She owed it to them.

Most of all, she owed it to herself—and to the memory of her husband, who had always encouraged her and told her she could be absolutely anything she wanted to be once she set her mind to it.

She glanced toward the door that Graham had closed behind him and Chance. She wondered how the interview was going.

She really hoped that Chance was going to get the job. She’d gotten the impression that although Chance wasn’t down on his luck, landing this position at Peter’s Place was really important to him.

Without realizing it, Chloe crossed her fingers for him, wishing that she was one of those people who actually believed in sending good vibes. Because if she was, she’d be sending them right now.

She watched the door intently.

And when it finally opened, only a few minutes later, she popped to her feet like a newly refurbished jack-in-the-box. Fingers still crossed, her eyes immediately went to the taller of the two men emerging from the room.

Chance was smiling.

She was confident that she knew the results before he said a word.