Читать книгу Rodeo Rancher - Mary Sullivan - Страница 12
ОглавлениеAbruptly, Michael turned away, jittery and resisting this woman with all his might.
He didn’t even know Samantha. She was a stranger and yet she was turning him inside out.
“I need to put that living room together. Who knows how much more time we have? Better to do it now than when we lose power. With the strength of this storm, we’ll lose it for sure.” Now he was the one babbling.
“Put the room together? What do you mean?”
“I’ll blow up air mattresses and haul out all of our quilts and extra bedding. We might be sleeping in front of the fire tonight.”
“May I ask you to do something first? Or I can do it.”
She was doing enough already. Her industriousness surprised him.
Why? What had he expected? That because she was beautiful, she’d be spoiled and temperamental? Well, yeah. That had been his experience.
He stopped and turned to face her.
“What is it?” he asked, wary.
“Can you vacuum before you put all of that on the floor?”
So she didn’t like his housekeeping. Michael stiffened. Tough.
Samantha placed slim fingers on his forearm. At her soft touch, he stiffened further and she dropped her hand.
“I don’t mean to criticize. It’s just that Jason has asthma. He’s growing out of it, but it still affects him. I don’t want to risk an attack when we’re stuck so far out here.”
Out here in the back of beyond, she means, he thought bitterly.
She must have guessed what he was thinking because she clarified, “In this storm it would take forever to get him to the hospital. It’s terrifying when he can’t breathe.”
“Fair enough.” He dropped what he was doing and got out the vacuum cleaner. Where a child’s health was concerned, he didn’t take chances.
In the living room, he started to pick up all of the children’s toys, but she interrupted him.
“Can we do something else first?”
He stilled, wary again. “What?”
“Follow me.”
Going into Lily’s room, she picked up an empty laundry basket.
“Children,” she hollered like a drill sergeant, startling him. The woman had a healthy set of lungs. “We need you in the living room.”
They ran after her. In front of the fireplace, she plopped the basket onto the floor.
“You see all of these toys, books and clothes?”
They nodded.
“They all—every single last one—are going into this basket. Who do you think is going to pick them up?”
Colt emitted a long-suffering sigh. Michael watched Samantha bite her cheek so she wouldn’t laugh. Her kids knew her well.
“Us?” Colt asked.
“Yep,” she affirmed. “But there will be a reward.”
She turned to Michael.
“Do you have any cookies?”
He nodded. “A box of Oreos.”
Samantha clapped her hands. “Good! When you’re finished picking up everything, Michael will carry the basket to the back room and you’ll each get a couple of cookies.”
The kids jumped to the task.
Michael turned to her with one brow raised. “Bribery?”
“Works every time.” She grinned and returned to the kitchen.
All right. Again, fair. She’d gotten the kids to clean the room to allow him to vacuum for her boy.
Michael carried the full basket to the playroom, returned with another basket that they also filled, and gave the children their cookies.
He went back to the living room to vacuum.
While he did that, another new scent emanated from the kitchen. It smelled like biscuits baking in the oven. His stomach grumbled.
Samantha made a couple of dozen biscuits that came out as light and airy as any Michael had ever tasted, including Vy’s at the Summertime Diner in town, and that was really saying something.
For dinner, she insisted that they have a second vegetable with the meat loaf along with potatoes. She heated frozen corn in the microwave. She also added some to her bean-and-barley soup.
Michael called the children to the table.
“This is a huge table,” she said, running her hand along the oak grain.
“It’s a farm kitchen. Used to be the ranch hands ate in here with us.”
“Ranch hands? Where are they?”
“Slow time of year. Any who wanted to were allowed to go home for a month of holidays. The rest opted to ride out the storm in town. Violet at the Summertime Diner will find a way to cook meals even without power. They’ll be a lot tastier than mine.” His laugh sounded rusty.
Lily and Mick took their usual spots at the table. Michael directed Jason and Colt to the other seats on either side of the table and offered Samantha the one at the other end.
“You have your choice of food.” He outlined the menu for the kids.
“Can I have a little bit of everything?” Jason asked. “I want meat loaf, but I really like Mom’s soups.”
“In this house, you can have whatever you want and as much of it as you can shovel into your faces.”
The younger children giggled. Jason took him seriously.
It turned out Samantha’s children ate a lot.
She seemed embarrassed by it. Maybe because of his less-than-gracious welcome when they arrived? He didn’t like that their appetites bothered her, but at least she didn’t stop them from eating.
After dinner, they got out his air mattresses and inflated them. Jason manned the electric pump while Michael carted in wood and lined the walls beside the fireplace.
He sent Samantha to the linen closet for sheets and plenty of blankets. She made up the two double air mattresses into beds and added extra blankets to Michael’s quilt on the sofa just in case.
Michael built up a fire so there would be warm ashes in the grate if the power went out overnight.
Jason followed him to the basement to retrieve his camping equipment. He was a good kid, helpful and uncomplaining. Samantha had done all right with him.
They carried up his old pots and pans. Battered, they’d seen a lot of campfires and had stood in during power outages many times over the years.
He took out his battery-operated emergency lamps.
Fascinated by all of it, Jason asked question after question about how things were done around the house during a snowstorm.
“What about your animals? You have cows and horses, right?”
“The horses and some of my cattle are safe in my barn and stable. The rest are in pens around the property. I went out first thing this morning and gave them plenty of food and water to get them through the night.”
Arms loaded, they mounted the stairs to the main floor. Michael closed and locked the door behind him to keep the younger children out. “In the morning, if weather permits, I’ll go out and take care of them.”
Excitement lit Jason’s face. “Can I come?” he blurted, and then looked contrite. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have invited myself. It’s just that I like animals.”
“You can come,” Michael said quietly. The kid’s interest should be honored.
“Thanks.” The boy’s smile lit up his intelligent face. Michael guessed there was a lot going on under Jason’s polite exterior, more than met the eye. He needed a chance to grow and develop in his own ways.
Shortly after eight, Samantha sat on the sofa and rummaged in her big bag for something.
Lily, in Michael’s arms, wriggled to be put down and went over to her. Apparently, the ice had really and truly been broken with that hair trick, because Lily leaned against Samantha’s thigh to look inside. “Want to see what I’m carrying, do you?”
Samantha dumped the contents onto a sofa cushion. “There you go. I have everything in here but the kitchen sink.”
At that moment, the phone rang.
Michael answered. “Hello?”
“Michael. You’re there.” It was Karen Enright and she sounded anxious.
Michael bit back a sigh. Karen had been Lillian’s best friend. After Lillian’s death, Karen had become proprietorial where Michael was concerned. Her boundless earnest concern for him and his children smothered him. He’d never given her one iota of encouragement.
“I’ve been worried.” Her breathless voice irritated him.
The only woman he’d ever loved was dead. He wasn’t about to start loving someone else. Karen should understand that.
He’d loved Lillian from the first moment he’d met her in high school. It had deepened when they’d begun dating at sixteen.
Lightning had struck him once. It wasn’t likely to strike him a second time.
“How are you and the children?” she asked. “Would you like me to come over and help take care of them?”
Her deep earnestness chafed him.
“In this weather? For God’s sake, Karen, stay put.” Honestly, he just wanted her to stop. “Like I said earlier, the kids and I will be fine.”
“But what if the power goes out?”
“We’ll do what we’ve always done. We’ll get by. Do not come over. It would be a fool’s errand.”
Suddenly, the phone went dead and the lights went out.
They’d lost their power, just as he’d thought they would.
The living room had been plunged into darkness, save for the fire he’d been feeding before the phone rang.
Damned cordless phone. He should have stuck with his old landline.
Lily patted his leg. “Daddy? Okay?”
“Yep. We’re good.”
“We’ve got systems,” Mick said. “See, Lily? Right, Dad?” In the light of the fire, he pointed to the logs and the camping equipment.
“We’ll be fine,” Michael said. “In the morning, I’ll start up the generator. We won’t need it for the night. Might as well head to bed.” Reluctant to give in to the intimacy of sleeping in the same room with strangers, he thought the bedrooms might stay warm enough until morning. He led the way down the hall with one of the lamps and tucked in his daughter and kissed his son.
Samantha did the same with her two boys and then they were alone in the hallway.
Her fingers twisted nervously.
He stuck his hands into his pockets and raised his shoulders, not sure what to do with her. It was only nine o’clock and too early for bed.
“You want a coffee or something?” he asked. “We can boil the water over the fire.”
“Too much caffeine. Do you have herbal tea?”
“Think so.”
They wandered to the kitchen. The urge to keep his distance from her was stronger now that the house was hushed and felt even more intimate.
She started to chatter again. He did his best to block it out. He couldn’t.
“You don’t have to do that,” he said.
She stilled. “Do what?”
“Fill the silence.”
For a moment she went deeply silent. He wondered whether he’d been too blunt. Again.
She didn’t laugh this time. “It’s a habit of mine.”
“I noticed.” He smiled to soften things in case he really had hurt her feelings.
He found the herbal tea in the cupboard, Lillian’s chamomile. Toward the end it was the only thing that would settle her stomach.
Lost in memories, he didn’t realize he was staring at the box, immobile until a light touch warmed his arm.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah.” He sighed. “It was my wife’s tea.”
“Is she—? Did she—?”
“She’s gone.” He hated uttering the word dead. Every time he did, it made it real all over again.
Samantha didn’t ask questions, but said, “You don’t have to give me her tea.”
But he did. Lillian had been generous to everyone. She would have liked nothing better than to sit down with Samantha and talk about their kids or anything under the sun that caught her fancy.
She would have wanted Samantha to enjoy what was left of the tea now.
“Let me make you a cup. I want to.”
She nodded and stepped away.
They settled in the living room, her on the sofa and Michael keeping his distance in the armchair.
He didn’t know what to say.
Apparently, neither did she.
She wasn’t rushing to fill the void even though her fingers moved constantly. Why was she so nervous? Sure, he was a stranger, but he thought he’d shown he was trustworthy. He wasn’t going to jump her. Maybe if he told her the truth about Lillian, she wouldn’t be afraid to be alone with him.
“My wife didn’t leave us,” he blurted. “She died.”
She gasped. “I’m sorry for your loss.” She looked it. “It must be hard for you and the children.”
The unspoken question hung in the air until he answered it. “Cancer.”
“So...not sudden.”
“No. Might have been better if it had been.” Okay, enough. He couldn’t talk about it. It hurt. He didn’t often haul out his intestines without anesthesia and put them on display.
A log popped on the fire and she startled.
“The boys’ father?” he asked to change the subject. “Is he around?”
“We’re divorced. Last I heard, he was in the Himalayas somewhere.”
He raised his brows, but she didn’t expand.
Her expressive face had gone blank. Was she angry? Sad? Glad?
“How could he leave his children behind?” He hadn’t meant to say it out loud, but anger had surged through him. Lillian hadn’t had a choice, but if she had, she would have stayed. It sounded like Sammy’s husband had run out on her. He would be angry. He would seethe.
“That’s a good question,” she answered. “I’ve wondered that many times.” Yes. There was the anger.
“Must be hard on the boys.” He echoed her earlier sentiment, because it was true. All of this was difficult enough for the two of them as adults, but what were children equipped to handle?
“Yes, it has been hard. Jason felt abandoned when his dad left. He’s my little protector. He thinks he needs to be the man of the family. I wish he could relax and just have fun like Colt does.”
Michael nodded. He’d already noticed Jason’s love for his mother. The boy had stood up to him, a big strapping adult, to defend her from implied criticism.
Gutsy kid.
“He wants to come out with me in the morning to see the animals. I said yes. That okay with you?”
She seemed to ponder the implications...a man alone with her child. She must have sensed his honesty.
She nodded. “It’s hard, isn’t it? Trying to keep our children safe?”
“Yeah. It is.” And he didn’t always get it right. Some people in town thought he kept his children too isolated, but how could he not?
What if something happened to one of them? It was his job to make sure they reached adulthood unscathed. He hadn’t been able to save Lillian, but he could save his children.
* * *
SAMANTHA AWOKE IN the middle of the night to tapping on her forehead.
For a minute, she thought there was a drip from the ceiling, but the tapping was dry.
A hand!
She startled awake and took in a lungful of air, ready to scream. No! Not here. Not in rural Montana where she and her sons were supposed to be safe.
Prepared to protect her children, she opened her eyes.
The person hovering over her in the darkness was tiny. A child.
Sammy’s disorientation cleared and she remembered where she was.
Her breath whooshed out of her. She glanced to her right. Both of her boys slept soundly. Who was patting her hair?
She mumbled, “What is it?”
“I’m cold,” Lily whispered not an inch from Sammy’s face.
Oh! Michael’s little girl.
Sammy realized she was cold, too. The house had lost its heat pretty quickly. No wonder. The storm still raged outside.
Good thing Michael had lent her his sweat suit. She’d be chilled without the fleece.
Without further thought, she said, “Climb in. We’ll cuddle together. Okay?”
Samantha snuggled Lily and spooned around her, while Colt poked his elbow into Sammy’s back. Jason slept soundly on his brother’s far side. Thank goodness for Michael’s huge bed.
Lily backed right up against her. Sammy pulled the blankets up snugly around all of them. She wrapped her arms around the child.
“Better? Warm enough?”
“Warm.” Lily sighed and dozed off right away.
Her sweet little weight against Samantha melted a path to Sammy’s heart.
“I always wanted a little girl,” she murmured, and yawned.
Despite her exhaustion, sleep didn’t come easily. She touched each of her boys, relieved to feel their healthy, slightly sweaty heat. It took a while for her heart to stop racing.
She didn’t want to, but she thought about Manny d’Onofrio and his associates.
In his letter from jail, her former employer had promised he’d called off his men. He’d written that he no longer sought revenge against her for sending him to prison. In his words, I found God and I want peace. I won’t bother you no more for ratting me out.
God, didn’t that sound like a bad movie script? But it had been all too real for Sammy, starting with getting a job in Manny’s Las Vegas casino as part of his accounting team and ending with her testifying against him for embezzling funds from his partners.
He’d vowed revenge, but she believed he’d changed. In his letter, he’d sounded sincere. Who would have thought?
But sometimes, late at night, she worried. Nightfall brought terror.
It was over. It was all finally over. Why couldn’t she stop jumping at every late-night sound?
Travis had bought the house here for her and the boys as a sanctuary, away from crooks and city crimes. Hence, her trip in a snowstorm to Rodeo.
She’d gone back to her own name, dropping her married name, and had given it to her boys, too, and no one was supposed to know where she was. Manny’s letter had reached her through their lawyers. He couldn’t find her, but Travis’s former girlfriend, Vivian, had tracked him here.
Vivian used to work for Manny.
Manny might guess she would follow Travis here, but he’d sworn he wouldn’t bother her again. Even so, she’d decided to leave the sanctuary they’d found after Las Vegas, in California, and follow Travis to the house he’d bought for her.
