Читать книгу Montana Match - Merrillee Whren - Страница 12

Chapter Four

On Sunday evening, following an afternoon of skiing, Parker sat at the dinner table with his family. Although the sunny day had turned into a clear, cold night, the conversation and laughter around the table warmed Parker’s heart. If he could capture this slice of happiness and take it home, maybe he could put the past behind him. That’s the way he felt every year during this get-together, but the feeling soon faded. He hadn’t learned to let go of the heartache or bitterness associated with his unfair treatment.

Parker looked across the table. Rose and Jasmine were laughing with Brittany and Heather. Their interaction reminded him that Saturday and Sunday’s flurry of activities had never given him a chance to talk to Brittany. The whole weekend he’d watched her having fun not only with Rose and Jasmine, but also with the rest of his relatives. Brittany had charmed them all, including him.

Was that a good thing when he wanted to offer her a job? Doubts and questions floated through his mind.

As Parker finished eating, the jangling sound of a cell phone echoed through the room and interrupted his thoughts. He knew immediately who was receiving a call. That distinctive ringtone belonged to Brittany.

“Excuse me.” Brittany jumped up from the table and grabbed her phone and a jacket. She answered the phone as she went out on the deck at the back of the house.

Picking up his plate, Parker tried not to appear interested in what Brittany was doing. “Delia, thanks for the great meal.”

“Thanks. It was nothing.” Delia waved a hand in his direction.

“Rose, Jasmine, let’s help clean up.” Parker motioned for them to follow.

Without protest, the little girls helped carry the dishes into the kitchen while the rest of the family also pitched in. As Parker loaded dishes into the dishwasher, he tried to ignore Heather. Every time he looked up she was staring at him.

Heather came up behind him and nodded her head toward the door leading to the deck. “Time’s running out. I’ll keep an eye on the girls so you can ask Brittany about the job.”

Parker glanced out the window. Brittany paced back and forth across the deck as she talked on the phone. Her breath formed a cloud in the cold air—a cloud that matched the cloud of doubt forming in his mind. He wasn’t sure about this, but he needed a nanny now so he could meet the deadline for his latest project. He needed someone to take care of his girls. “I can’t interrupt her phone call.”

“I didn’t say you should. But as soon as she’s finished—”

“I’ll talk to her when she comes inside.” Parker turned and looked out the window again as Brittany slipped her phone into her jacket pocket. She leaned her forearms on the railing and made no move toward the house.

“Looks like she doesn’t intend to come in right now.”

“Maybe she wants some time alone.”

“No excuses.” Heather smiled wryly. “I’ll get your jacket, so you can join her.”

Heather headed to the closet. Since she was on a mission, trying to stop her was pointless. After she returned, she handed him the jacket, then ushered Rose and Jasmine into the family room for a game.

Brittany continued to lean against the railing. Even in the dim light, her coppery hair shimmered. Putting on his jacket, he took a deep breath, then opened the sliding door. It made a whooshing sound as he closed it.

Brittany turned as he stepped toward her. “Hi. Sorry. I didn’t mean to skip out on the cleanup.”

“You don’t need to apologize.” Should he ask her about her phone call, or jump into the reason he was standing here in the cold? He shouldn’t have let Heather push him into this until he was ready.

“That was my parents. They wanted to know how things were going.” Brittany lowered her gaze and kicked at a chunk of ice that stuck to the floorboards of the deck. “I was hoping my dad had some good news about a job, but he found out that the position he’d mentioned to me last week has been filled.”

“That’s too bad. Do you have any other prospects?”

She looked up but faced away, her shoulders sagging. “No.”

He shouldn’t have been worried about how to approach his job offer. Her responses practically begged for him to ask her, but doubt made him hesitate.

“Did you want me for something?” She looked up at him, moonlight reflected in her eyes.

His pulse ricocheted in his head as he tried to figure out what to say. “Yeah, actually, I do.”

“What?”

He could do this. “I need a nanny for Rose and Jasmine. Would you be interested?”

A little frown knit her eyebrows. Without saying anything, she turned away from him and placed her gloved hands on the deck railing.

Had he totally insulted her with the offer? He joined her at the railing and looked out on the moonlit landscape. “Hey, I know this probably isn’t what you’re looking for, but—”

She turned abruptly. “I don’t know what to say.”

“Don’t say anything until I explain what the job entails, and all the circumstances surrounding my girls and me. I know Heather told you some of the story.”

“She did.”

“I couldn’t help their mother have a better life, but I intend to do everything in my power to make sure her daughters have a good life.”

“Okay.”

Parker turned back to the moonlit landscape. “Stop me if I repeat what Heather has already told you.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

He gripped the railing and took in the snowcapped mountains barely visible in the distance. “Sydney, Rose and Jasmine’s mother, was a smart young woman, but she came from a troubled home. I saw her potential when she was in one of my classes and wanted to help her, so I started tutoring her.”

“Heather mentioned that.”

“I thought if she did well, she could probably get a college scholarship, get away from her difficult family situation and have a chance in life.”

“But she got pregnant.”

“Yeah. She came to me at the beginning of her senior year and told me that she wanted an abortion, but I talked her out of it.” Parker sighed. When he looked at those precious girls, he knew he’d been right to do so. But the heartaches that came with Sydney’s pregnancy still troubled him.

“What about the father?”

“Not in the picture.” Parker slowly shook his head. “She pretty much indicated to me that she didn’t know who the father was.”

Brittany’s eyes widened. “You mean Sydney was sleeping with more than one guy at the same time?”

“Probably.” Parker nodded. “Her mother and stepfather used to be on the rodeo circuit, and their place was a flophouse for itinerant cowboys all the time. Who knows what went on there? Sydney didn’t talk about her home life much. I always thought she did well in her studies because they were her refuge from the chaos in the rest of her life.”

“Was there any cause to report the family situation to authorities?”

“There were never any signs of physical abuse, and I felt I would lose her trust if I meddled in her family life.” Parker grimaced and shook his head. “I was hoping Sydney might confide in someone other than me, so I mentioned my concerns to a couple of her female teachers. But Sydney never opened up to anyone.”

“Did you try to fight the school board’s decision?”

Brittany’s belief in him touched Parker’s heart. “Yeah, in the beginning, but they’d made up their minds. I was tried and convicted without much of a chance to defend myself. The fact that I wasn’t the father of her children didn’t quell the rumors or the speculation, because Sydney couldn’t name the man who had fathered her children. Everyone still concluded that I’d been sleeping with her.”

“So what did you do?”

“Decided to quit fighting it and kept to myself on the ranch. I still stay away from Stockton, where I used to live and work. And I very seldom venture into Billings.” Parker couldn’t keep the resentment out of his voice. “Stockton’s not that far from Billings, and I don’t want to run into any of those people again.”

“How did you come to adopt the girls?”

Parker took in Brittany’s expectant expression and almost wished that Heather could have explained the whole story. But Heather didn’t know everything. He had to do this himself.

Parker remembered the day Sydney had come to him for help. Looking at Brittany, he took a deep breath. “When Rose and Jasmine were almost a year old, Sydney brought them to the ranch and begged me to keep them there. She was afraid that her stepfather would harm them.”

“Is that when you got them?”

“No. I tried to persuade her to let me take her and the girls to a women’s shelter in Billings, but she wouldn’t go. She told me she was afraid to leave her mother alone with her stepfather.”

“Had she mentioned this problem before?”

Parker shook his head. “I knew people were coming and going at all hours of the day and night and that Sydney lived in a circus atmosphere, but I had no idea she was afraid of her stepfather or that he was violent.”

“What happened then?”

“She shoved an envelope into my hand, then ran to her car and left. I couldn’t stop her.”

“What was in the envelope?”

“Her last will and testament—the kind you can make on the internet. She’d named me as the girls’ guardian. It was quite a shock.”

“So that’s how you came to adopt Rose and Jasmine?”

Parker nodded. “But right then, I wasn’t thinking about that. I was worried about her and those little girls. I immediately called the sheriff’s office and asked them to check things at her house. A deputy went out there, but they found nothing wrong. So they couldn’t do anything. Two days later Sydney’s stepfather shot her as she attempted to wrestle the gun away from him. She was trying to protect her mother.”

Brittany said nothing, only stared at him with sadness in her eyes. Laughter sounding from inside the house belied the solemn discussion outside.

“Of course, when I took in Rose and Jasmine and eventually adopted them, the rumors started again.” Telling this story made him shiver more than the cold night air. “As I said, that’s why I don’t go into town.”

“Don’t people have other things to occupy their minds by now?”

“Maybe, but I don’t want to take the chance that Rose and Jasmine might hear any unkind remarks.” Brittany sounded like Heather and his family. They expected him to be over the thing that had turned his world upside down and inside out. But they’d never had to deal with the looks of contempt and derision he’d endured. He was in no hurry to interact with the people who had made that time of his life so difficult. Still, despite the troubles, he’d adopt the girls again in a nanosecond. “Rose and Jasmine mean everything to me.”