Читать книгу Three Kids And A Cowboy - Natalie Patrick - Страница 8

Six Weeks Later

“Mom! Daddy? Time to kill the fatted calf. Your prodigal daughter is home.” Miranda Robbins Sykes kicked open the front door of her parents’ farmhouse with one upraised knee. It swung fully open, cracking against the empty pegs of the coatrack on the entry wall—just as it always had when she came whooshing in from school as a child.

She shut her eyes and inhaled the musky scent of old wood and lavender. Smiling, she dropped her purse, and the one small suitcase she’d brought from her car. She shut her eyes and sighed. Home at last.

Miranda shook back her dark hair and caught a glimpse of movement just to her right. “Mom?”

Turning to face her own reflection in the hallway mirror, Miranda gasped in surprise. The long trip from Tulsa had certainly taken its toll on her. Who’d have guessed that road-weary face had once belonged to the former Cameron County pioneer princess, the Lost River Rodeo Roundup queen and the second runner up to Miss Texas?

Miranda batted her wispy bangs from her forehead with the back of her hand and wrinkled her nose at the image staring back at her. Those days of big hair and big hopes seemed as distant to her now as her childhood here in this house. Her worldly-wise deep green eyes seemed to belong to someone she didn’t quite recognize anymore.

She had come back to Lost River to face her past and force him—no, it, she corrected mentally—to let her forge a future for herself.

She glanced again at the mirror, looked away, then fixed her gaze firmly again on the woman she had become. “Miranda Jean Robbins Sykes, you are a liar.”

She tried to smooth down the windblown mane that framed her face and tangled around her suntanned shoulders. Tugging at the waistband of her jeans, which fit even more snugly than they had a few weeks ago, she said, “You didn’t come here to face your past. You came to confront him.”

Closing one eye like a gunfighter calling out a coward, she set her lips in a hard line. “You’ll never be able to go through with this, girl, if you don’t admit right now that you’re here to look Brodie Sykes dead in the eye and tell him your marriage is…”

Over. She couldn’t make herself say it, even though the word rang loud and clear in her mind. She inhaled the familiar scents around her and dropped her gaze to the faded needlepoint rug at her feet. Through the dull but persistent pain throbbing in her being, she forced herself to admit it, even if only in silence. She had come here to make official what a year of loneliness and self-scrutiny had already taught her—her marriage was over.

The marriage had been over ever since the day she found out she could not give Brodie the thing he wanted most in life, a child of his own. Miranda ran one hand down her sleeveless cotton shirt, letting her palm rest atop the cool buttons over her flat stomach. Even after all this time, the cold reality still cut like a blade twisting in her belly.

When they first learned of her infertility, she had believed that she and Brodie could move beyond it. It wasn’t as though they didn’t love each other. If they worked together…

Brodie Sykes, she had learned during the year it took for their relationship to unravel to the point that she felt she had no choice but to leave, was not the work-it-out-together kind. It simply wasn’t in his nature.

She must have known that before, she realized now. Brodie never pretended to be anything but the man his life’s experience made him. The same Brodie who had stepped in to take charge of his younger brother, had applied the same determination to build a first-class cattle operation and then to cope with her infertility.

Books, specialists, treatments. Brodie had been relentless in his quest to create a child. With each new failure, another brick had formed in the wall between them. The passion that had once burned so hot that a look could set their hearts afire at a shared glance had been reduced to something calculated and clinical. The long talks about hopes and dreams and the future had slowly changed into discussions about odds and statistics and new procedures to aid conception. In the weeks before she left, they’d hardly spoken at all. Still, Brodie had persisted. One more theory, one more medical opinion.

Miranda shook her head at the irony. The very things she loved most about Brodie, his untamable animal passion, his mule-in-the-mud stubbornness, even his scruffydog sense of loyalty, made it impossible for her to stay married to him.

Divorce. The very word sank like stone in the pit of her stomach.

She’d found a lawyer—or, in truth, he’d found her. Conrad Harmon III was a Dallas attorney whose work brought him to Tulsa frequently. One rainy morning in the diner where she had waited tables for the past year, she’d shared a cup of coffee and an earful of her troubles with the young man.

He’d patted her hand, dried her tears and promptly offered to handle her divorce free of charge, provided she could assure him that her husband would not contest it. Once she had that assurance from Brodie, the wheels would be set in motion. And even though those wheels would run right over her heart in the process, she knew this was the right thing to do. Brodie would be free.

This way, twenty years from now, she wouldn’t wonder if the man she loved with all her being secretly resented her for cheating him out of something another woman might easily have given him. This way, he could find a woman who could love him and be the mother of his children.

She glanced around the entryway, not seeing anything in particular through her fog of sadness and resignation. Once she was out of the way, Brodie could marry again, buy a big house like this, and start filling it up with energetic, happy children. She could almost hear them now, squealing and thundering through the halls.

“I ain’t taking a bath, and you can’t make me!”

Miranda jerked her head up and glared through narrowed eyes at the still staircase in front of her. “What the—?”

A series of thumps and bumps shook the ceiling over her head. The ancient hinges of the upstairs bathroom door squawked unmercifully as it banged open.

“Catch Katie! Catch Katie!” two young voices chimed in unison.

“Who’s Katie?” Miranda murmured to no one.

“I’ve got her by a wingbone,” a rusty-throated older man hollered.

A wingbone? Maybe she should ask, “What’s Katie?” The image of her parents wrestling an angel popped into her mind. Miranda moved toward the foot of the steps, her head tilted upward. “Mom? Daddy? What’s going on up there?”

“Yeeeoooww!” The older man let out a long howl that drowned out her question even in her own ears. “That little bas—er, darlin’, bit me.”

Obviously, Katie was no angel. Miranda blinked. She pressed her hand to her chest and edged warily onto the first step. She drew a deep breath to call out again, but the sound of bare feet slapping on the floor upstairs, followed by a commotion of voices, cut her off.

“She’s headed for the bedroom!” a child cried out.

“Get her, get her!” another child screeched.

“Grab aholt and hang on,” the older man said encouragingly. “Jest stay clear of them chompers of her’n.”

What had happened here in her absence? Miranda batted her eyes, trying to comprehend what she was hearing. Had her parents started a day-care center, or could they be looking after neighbors’ children?

She hadn’t spoken to her folks in almost three months. She hadn’t dared, because she’d known they would either try to talk her out of her plan or let Brodie in on it. The last thing she wanted was a set of disapproving parents and a forewarned husband lying in wait for her when she rolled into town.

Not that this hubbub was much better. She gripped the smooth, polished wood of the oak banister, deciding the best thing to do was to go upstairs’and see for herself what was going on. Her foot had barely touched the second step when the frantic cries started again over her head.

“She’s too slippery to hold on to, Mr. Crispy,” a child complained at top volume.

Mr. Crispy? Miranda cocked her head. That sounded more like a fried-chicken franchise than someone who belonged in her parents’ home.

“She’s getting away,” the child said again. “Look out, she’s heading for—”

The stairs. Miranda raised her gaze in time to see a chubby cherub—a chubby naked cherub—with a frothy halo of white bubbles encircling wet blond hair flying straight at her. The child’s feet hardly seemed to skim the steps as she streaked down the stairs and away from the two children and one old man running after her.

For an instant, Miranda considered nabbing the fleeing child, but in the flurry of confusion, she couldn’t act fast enough. The little girl whisked past in a blur of arms, legs and suds, leaving a soapy imprint on Miranda’s jeans as she did.

The old man came pounding down the stairs with his knobby knees and elbows poking out at odd angles from his thin body. He pointed to the quivering plops of bubbles that left a trail into the formal living room to the right of the stairway. “She went that-a-way.”

The two children, a young boy and an even younger girl, both dressed in what in Texas would be called their “Sunday best,” stomped down the stairs behind the man. The girl clutched a faded red robe that Miranda recognized as her own, left in her bedroom closet years ago. None of them seemed aware of her presence on the stairs until they were almost on top of her.

Miranda held up one hand, keeping her voice steady as she tried to get the situation under control. “Excuse me, but who are you, and what are you doing in my parents’ house?”

“Whoa!” the old man bellowed, practically in her face. He stopped short one step up from her.

When the two children stumbled into the man’s bony back, Miranda grimaced, but she held on to her composure. “Just what is going on here?”

“It’s her.” A blush of pure awe colored the words whispered by the young girl, who was peering up at her from behind one of the old man’s legs.

“Her who?” the boy asked. He crossed his arms over his chest, and his tortoise-shell glasses bobbled as he crinkled his nose at her.

The old man reared back his head and clamped his hands on his hips. “Well, tuck a feather in my shirt and call me tickled, it is her.”

“Her who?” the boy demanded again. Then, suddenly, his blue eyes seemed to grow huge behind the brown circular frames. “Oh, m’gosh,” he murmured. “It’s the lady whose picture is on the wall in the den.”

“Howdy-do, Miz Sykes,” the man said in a soft voice.

Miranda pursed her lips and cocked her head. How did this odd fellow know her name? Had they met before?

“Who are you?” she asked again. “And what are you doing in my parents’ home?”

“Whur’s my manners?” He let out a quiet clucking laugh. “My name is Curtis Holloman, ma’am, but just every-danged-body calls me Crispy.”

The man dipped his head, his hand raising automatically to his head, as though to tip a hat that wasn’t there.

Miranda noticed something else that wasn’t there—two of the man’s fingers. She made a quick study of him, from his thin gray hair to his bowed legs, and felt certain that if she had ever met this man before, she would not have forgotten it.

She nodded stiffly and said, “Nice to meet you, Mr.—”

“Call me Crispy, ma’am.” He pressed a hand to his chest.

Miranda realized he probably did that because there were people who felt uncomfortable about shaking hands with him. Sighing, she wished she could smack some sense into whoever had made him feel he had to shelter them from his injury. She thrust her own hand out. “Nice to meet you, Crispy.”

He glanced down at her hand, then into her eyes, and then he seized her hand with outright enthusiasm. “Pleasure to meet you, too, Miz Sykes. Been mighty curious to make your acquaintance, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

Curious. Now there was a word for the moment. Miranda returned the hearty shake Crispy gave and held his hand a bit longer as she asked, “I don’t mind your saying so if you don’t mind explaining why you’re in my parents’ house and what—”

“Sorry, ma’am, but I make it a strict personal policy not to mix into other folks’s bidness. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I got to ketch little Katie.”

“B-but—” Miranda grasped air as she tried to keep Crispy in the handshake.

He slipped past her, only pausing in the doorway of the living room to say over his.shoulder, “Got someone from the dee-partment of social services coming ’round today. And it jest wouldn’t do for her to find one of the children runnin’ through the house all wild and nekkid, now would it?”

“I…suppose…not.” Miranda wound her arms over her churning stomach as she watched the old fellow lumber out of sight. Twisting around, she suddenly became aware of two blond heads close together, with two sets of big blue eyes focused on her.

“I don’t suppose either of you can tell me what’s going on here?” she asked, leaning against the banister.

The pair looked at one another, but said nothing.

“Can’t you at least tell me where the owners of this house are?”

The little boy narrowed his eyes and moved one step closer to her, puffing out his chest as he said firmly, “We’re not allowed to talk to strangers, and even if we did we can’t tell ’em important stuff like where the owner of the house is.”

“She’s not a stranger, Bubba.” The girl wadded Miranda’s robe into a ball and used it to nudge the boy out of the way as she moved to share the second stair with Miranda. “She’s the princess on the wall.”

Miranda had to smile at the idea that this girl thought her a princess. The child must have seen the photos of her in full beauty-queen regalia in her father’s den and drawn that conclusion. She smiled down at the innocent admiration and placed one hand under the girl’s pudgy chin. “I’m not really—”

“You’re pretty, just like in your pictures, Your Highness,” the girl whispered before Miranda could finish. “Everybody thinks so, especially Brodie, ‘cause he spends a lots of time looking at—”

“Brodie?” Miranda dropped her hand, a wave of apprehension rolled from her thudding heart to her weakened knees at the mention of the name. “Brodie Sykes? Why would Brodie Sykes be in this house, looking at my trophy wall?”

“’Cause he lives here, silly.” The girl giggled, hugging the bunched up robe tightly to her body.

The child’s happy laughter sounded tinny and distant to Miranda. Everything seemed to disappear in a dark swirl of incomprehension as she tried to sort out what the child had told her. “Brodie lives here? In this house? I…I don’t believe it”

“Well, you don’t have to believe it, lady,” the boy said, his chin set in confident defiance. “You can see it for yourself, on account of here he comes.”

Miranda scarcely had time to pivot on her heel before the door swept open to crash again against the coatrack.

“Brodie.” The name tingled on her lips, even as her body went numb.

He stepped up to fill the doorway with his broad shoulders and black hat. The bright sunlight behind him put his face in shadow, so that Miranda could not see what emotion showed in his eyes.

For a heartbeat, she wondered if he saw her standing there. Then the paper of the grocery sacks he carried crackled, like a jolt of tension suddenly filling the dry air around them. He had seen her.

She tried to swallow. Tried to blink. Tried to think of what to say after all this time. Her mind went blank, her ability to speak as shrouded as the figure looming in the doorway. It was Brodie’s move.

Randi. Brodie felt his lips move, heard the once affectionate nickname rip through his entire body, yet knew he hadn’t said a thing. He couldn’t say a thing. He just stood in the doorway, the Texas sun warming his back, the sight of his wife standing before him searing his soul. Still, he had to fight off the urge to shudder as if chilled to the core of his being.

Miranda had come home. To him? Could he hope for such a miracle? Could time have healed the wounds he’d inflicted on the woman he loved—the woman whose love he had so battered that she felt she had to run away from him, instead of trusting him enough to work it out?

If Brodie thought for one moment that Miranda had actually come home to him, he wouldn’t have hesitated. He’d have fallen down on his knees and beg her forgiveness. Then, after he thanked God, all the angels and whatever mode of transportation brought her back to him, he’d have stood, scooped her up in his arms, and headed for the nearest bedroom. There, they’d have made love until they could hardly breathe anymore, until they’d loved away all the cold lonely nights of this past year, until they both knew they could never sleep alone ever again.

If she had come home to him. But the look in Miranda’s eyes made it clear that she had come here thinking to find her parents, not her husband. After a year away, the first contact she wanted to make had been with her family—and that no longer included him.

That realization, wrenched loose the past year’s full measure of pain, anger and loneliness from the depths of his soul. It welled up in his chest, almost stifling him. He inhaled the hint of Miranda’s perfume that lingered in the still air, and with it the memory of her betrayal, which sliced through his body like bits of jagged glass.

How could he love someone so much he thought her leaving would near about kill him and yet, seeing her again, want nothing more than to push right past her as though she didn’t even exist for him anymore? By instinct, his hand went to his hat brim, tipping it downward, not in greeting, but to keep her from seeing the potent mix of love and heartache in his face.

If she did see his pain, she did not react. Instead, she just stood there, her face paled by the surprise of his entrance, her breathing shallow, her whole body tensed, as though she might bolt at the slightest provocation.

He narrowed his eyes and studied her for a moment. Though only a year had passed since he last laid eyes on her, he could see a definite change, but he was hardpressed to pinpoint it. She seemed softer somehow, more womanly, but with a confidence tested by fire.

Hellfire, he mused. That was certainly where he felt he’d spent most of this past year—in hell. And it had changed him, too. But would Miranda give him a chance to prove that? Would she even believe it? And why should he give a damn whether she believed it or not, after what she’d put him through…after what they’d put each other through?

A year ago, he’d run her off by proclaiming he couldn’t care for someone else’s children. Now Miranda had come back to find that his house was teeming with them. Brodie felt his lips tug into a sad smile. His gaze flicked over Bubba and Grace, whose faces were filled with excitement and wonder at the situation.

He didn’t know how the children would affect Miranda’s opinion of him, didn’t know if there was any chance that they could work things out or if they should try. He only knew that the first time he and Miranda spoke again, they did not need an audience.

Slowly, he slid the filled grocery sacks to the floor beside his feet. With his eyes always on the three people in front of him, he only heard the paper crunch as the sacks settled on the wooden floor. Too late, he realized he’d set one on the toe of his boot, and it toppled, spilling apples and sending several cans rolling across the entryway. Ignoring them, he stepped forward.

“Bubba, Grace, where’s Crispy?” he asked

“He’s chasing Katie,” Grace said matter-of-factly as she smoothed one small hand over the faded fabric lumped over her arm. “She got out of her bath and ran off when he accidentally got soap in her eyes.”

“Then maybe you two should help him get her and get her hair rinsed off.” Brodie was surprised at the even, natural tone of his voice, given the white-hot emotional brew roiling in his belly. Hoping he could maintain that facade of control, he raised his gaze from the two children to meet Miranda’s shock-filled eyes.

He swallowed hard and clamped his hands on his hips. The fabric of his freshly laundered jeans rasped against his damp palms as he lowered his voice and spoke to his wife for the first time in a year. “Randi…I mean, Mrs. Sykes and I…need a few moments alone.”