Rancher's Double Dilemma

by Pamela Browning

  “Thanks, Lacey.”

  “I’m going up to bed. Are you sure you’ll be all right?”

  He smiled slightly. “I’m a big boy. I can take care of myself.”

  “If you need anything, holler.”

  “I’ll be sure to do that.”

  “And don’t get up with the girls if you hear them. I’ll do it.”

  “Okay.”

  “Good night.”

  “Good night.”

  She turned to go and she felt his eyes following her all the way out of the room.

  A few minutes later as she lay in bed thumbing through the magazine, she thought about him asleep below her. His bedroom was right underneath the small attic room, and if he called, she was pretty sure she would hear him. She turned slightly toward the light, and the bedsprings creaked. Maybe he could hear her, too.

  She didn’t read long. She was much too tired for that. But as she fell asleep, she couldn’t help thinking about Garth and wondering if he was as aware of her as she was of him.

  “GARTH DIDN’T HAVE chicken pox when we were kids, but I did,” said Cody over breakfast the next day. He was wolfing down grits and sausage patties and red-eye gravy as though he’d never had the luxury of eating breakfast before.

  “How could that happen? Usually all the kids in the house get it.”

  “I got chicken pox when I was visiting my cousins in Tulsa one spring vacation. Garth was already in high school at the time, so he stayed home to help Dad around the ranch, and after I got sick, it was decided that I wasn’t well enough to travel, so I stayed in Tulsa until I got better.”

  Lacey rolled her eyes. “So he’s wrong if he thinks he had it.”

  “I remember that Mama said he’d had mumps and measles, but never chicken pox. I had measles and chicken pox, but never mumps. We were so far apart in age—ten years—that we didn’t get childhood diseases at the same time.”

  Lacey arranged Garth’s breakfast tray, the eggs on a green Fiesta Ware plate, the grapefruit on an orange one, and adorned it with one of the yellow roses she’d plucked from the climbing vine next to the porch. “He seems to feel pretty miserable,” she said.

  “Getting childhood diseases as an adult isn’t much fun. And this won’t be much of a picnic for me, either. I’ll have to carry the full weight of the ranch until he feels better.” Cody got up and carried his plate to the sink, which Lacey noticed with satisfaction he placed in the dishwasher. She hadn’t thought that either of the Colquitt men was trainable, but apparently there was hope.

  “I haven’t heard you say anything about Wichita Falls for a while, Cody,” she said.

  “Kim says enough for both of us.”

  “You don’t have to make up your mind right away, do you?”

  “I can’t decide anything until Garth gets over the chicken pox.” He sighed. “If it’s not one thing, it’s another. Kim’s not going to like this.”

  “You can’t help it that Garth needs you right now,” Lacey said.

  “Tell that to Kim. I love that woman, but she’s set on going to Wichita Falls to live. She doesn’t know what ranch life would be like. She lives right in the middle of Mosquito, where the most exciting thing to do is watch the chrome rust on the pickup trucks along Main Street and wait to see whose yard His Honor, the mayor, is going to fertilize next.”

  Lacey could only laugh. She picked up the tray. “I’d better get this up to Garth, Cody. Tell Kim to come see me sometime. She hasn’t been by in a while.”

  Cody snorted. “First I’ll make sure she’s had the chicken pox. She wouldn’t thank any of us if she caught it, too.”

  Cody left, and Lacey carried the tray upstairs. The girls had eaten a good breakfast and were now playing peacefully together in the nursery.

  “Garth?” She knocked at the door, though it wasn’t closed. The room was gloomy, with heavy chintz draperies drawn against the sun.

  “Uhhh,” he said, more a moan than a word. He rolled over, and she saw that the sheets were tangled around his legs. She set the tray down on the bedside table and fought the urge to unwind the sheets, which would no doubt expose her to more of his body than she wanted to see.

  “I guess you’re not feeling better,” she ventured.

  “Definitely not.” His voice was thick, but despite the fact that he was sick and looked it, in some ways he had never seemed more attractive. To mask her amazement that she should think so, she said brusquely, “I’ll take your temperature.”

  “No need. I already did. Donna says—”

  “You called her?” The words came out more sharply than Lacey intended.

  “Yes, first thing this morning. Had to catch her before she began rounds at the hospital, you know. She says it’s not unusual for an adult to be way sicker than a kid. So I don’t have much to look forward to.” He sat up a little more. “How’s Ashley?”

  “She’s fine. Both girls are rarin’ to go. It’s such a pretty day that I thought I’d set their playpen out on the back porch where they can get some fresh air. Well, it’s Michele’s playpen, really. I brought it over from the Winnebago so we’d have an extra. Anyway, if I put it on the porch, I can watch them right out the kitchen window.”

  “Good. I’m planning to sleep for a while and tackle some office paperwork later.”

  “I’ll be back to pick up the tray after you’ve eaten.” She turned to go.

  “Lacey?” His voice was so arresting that she turned quickly only to see that he was pulling the sheet up higher. Out of a sense of modesty? She wasn’t sure.

  “I—well, I appreciate all you’re doing for me. All you’ve done for Ashley.”

  “You hired me to take care of her,” she said. She didn’t feel like any angel of mercy or anything. She felt like herself, only under a strain.

  “I hired you to take care of Ashley, that’s true. I didn’t expect you to have to take care of me.”

  “It’s all part of the job.” She turned to go again.

  No, it isn’t, she thought he said as she left the room, but she didn’t turn around again.

  Lordy, she thought as she went into the nursery and began changing crib sheets. A few more times of seeing him without clothes and I’m a goner.

  Only she’d better not start thinking like that, she cautioned herself. The last time she’d gotten hung up on the look of a man’s body, she’d ended up marrying Bunny.

  But that was in her stupider days. She was a lot smarter now.

  THE NEXT DAY as Garth lay in bed, his whole body burning up with fever, he listened to Lacey talking to the girls in the nursery.

  “Ashley, you only have one little scab left, and, Michele, you’ve got but two. That means you’re almost home free, I’d say. This morning I’ll set up your playpen outside, and you can play and listen to the birds sing in the trees. There’s a big blue jay I’ve seen around, and maybe he’ll fly up and say hello. And Al and Tipper will be right there to keep you company, won’t that be nice? Now I’ll take the playpen downstairs and come right back for you.” He heard a few clunks and clicks, and then he saw Lacey lugging the folded playpen past his door. He felt awful that he couldn’t help her with it, but he knew that Lacey was stronger than she looked. She could tote the two girls around and not even look strained. That was a feat worthy of note, all right.

  Funny how she had reacted when he’d mentioned calling Donna this morning. You wouldn’t think Lacey would be jealous of Donna. If he thought about it, and he’d had lots of time to think between naps today, he couldn’t imagine why Lacey didn’t know that she was a sight more attractive than Donna, whose spindliness and spare wholesomeness didn’t appeal to him at all.

  But Lacey, now there was a woman. She was all woman, and he liked looking at her. That funny little hairdo she had, piling all her hair on top of her head and letting strands of it escape the band that held it, the way she pursed her lips when she disapproved of something, the way she walked, setting each foot down so all-fired deliberately
with the toes angled out. Maybe it was the distinctive way she walked that made her derriere quiver so attractively. The thought of that movement was arousing for sure, even as sick as he was.

  Lacey came back upstairs again and, on her way downstairs, she paused in his doorway with the babies in her arms so that Ashley could wave at him. Michele waved, too.

  That reminded him again that they were headed toward a bad patch eventually, he and Lacey, and he rolled over and closed his eyes.

  He slept fitfully, waking up when Lacey ran upstairs to get something from the nursery, vaguely aware of her chatter to the babies as he tried to go back to sleep. His mouth was dry. He was too hot, then too cold. His bones ached deep in the marrow. He hated feeling so miserable, and he wished he’d never heard of chicken pox. He, who hardly ever even caught a cold, was ill prepared to be laid up like this.

  He must have slept, because the next thing he knew Lacey was peering down at him. His first thought was the sheet and whether it covered him well enough after all his tossings and turnings.

  She grinned. “Brought you some ice cream. And don’t worry, I can’t see anything.” And then she was gone, but once he started eating the ice cream, liking the way it slid down his hot throat, he was grateful that she’d thought of bringing it.

  Later, after he’d slept again, she stopped in after putting the babies down for a nap in the nursery and offered to bring his paperwork up from the office.

  He looked at her balefully. “I don’t feel up to working,” he said heavily.

  Her expression was one of concern. “Is there anything I could do to help? While the girls are napping?”

  He started to say that there wasn’t, but then he thought of Cody and how overburdened he was. “You could make phone calls,” Garth said reluctantly, and before he could tell her what he wanted her to do, she had brought his phone directory and was sitting beside the bed taking notes efficiently and with great precision. Afterward he heard her calling the vet, the tractor maintenance people, the feed lot. She sounded so businesslike that she could have passed for his personal assistant, if he’d had one. He dozed off while she was patiently explaining to the bank that they hadn’t properly credited his last deposit, and he couldn’t help thinking that he couldn’t have done a better job of those phone calls himself.

  NOW THAT THE BABIES were feeling better, sleeping through the night and not requiring so much of her, Lacey had extra time on her hands when they were napping. The curtains she intended to sew were on her mind a lot, and finally, a day or so after Garth started breaking out in itchy blisters, she decided that she’d waited long enough to get that sewing machine out of his closet.

  Garth was swearing softly under his breath when she walked in his room.

  “Excuse me,” she said, folding her hands in front of her in a demure fashion. She did her best to think chaste thoughts around Garth, which hadn’t been all that easy since she’d been treated on a daily basis to the sight of his bare torso.

  “Excuse what?” he shot back. He sounded irritated, but then he didn’t look so good today with scabs forming on his face, his neck, his chest—and below for all she knew.

  “The interruption.”

  “You’re not interrupting anything except a whole lot of misery,” he said.

  “And I’m as sorry as I can be about that, but I was wondering if you’d mind if I get the sewing machine out of your closet.”

  “Sure, go ahead,” he said. He pushed himself up on one elbow. “Is that a new blouse?”

  Lacey looked down at the one she wore, sleeveless with tiny yellow daisies on a coral background. It was slightly too small, having been added to her wardrobe before she got pregnant, and it pulled across the bust. She fought the urge to fold her arms defensively across her breasts so he couldn’t see them. If she did that, she would only be calling attention to them, and Garth Colquitt was paying much too much attention already.

  “No. It’s just that I haven’t worn it since I’ve been here.” She marched into the closet and hauled out the sewing machine in its plastic case. She had a sudden thought as she set it on the floor near the foot of Garth’s bed. “I don’t know where to set this up. Anywhere I put it, I’ll be dropping pins, and with the babies crawling around and putting everything in their mouths, that could be kind of dangerous.”

  “Joan always sewed under the window in here. She set up a little sewing table there.”

  “Sewing table?”

  “It’s folded up in the back of the closet. Here, I’ll get it for you.” He started to get out of bed, then pulled back. “Maybe I’d better not,” he said sheepishly.

  “I’ll get it.” And she went back into the closet and emerged with the table. It was small with folding legs, made especially for sewing. The window alcove was the perfect size to accommodate the table and a chair.

  “Do you know how to manage unfolding the table legs?”

  “I think so. I can’t sew in here, though, Garth. It will disturb you too much.”

  “Disturb me? Distract me is more like it, which would be a good thing. These chicken pox spots itch like crazy, I can’t concentrate enough to read anything, and I’ve already had one baking-soda bath today. Can’t say it helped a lot. If you’d sit and talk to me…” He let the words taper off as he noted the skeptical expression on Lacey’s face.

  “Not a good idea,” she said tartly.

  “Oh, is it a better idea to strew pins all over the house so the girls can swallow them?”

  “I’ll be careful. Maybe I could set up in your office. You’re not using it much.”

  “That’s all Cody needs to make him set off for Wichita Falls immediately—somebody in the office when he’s trying to catch up with all that needs doing.” Garth eyed her with annoyance, and for a moment the look of him got her back up.

  “The attic room, then.”

  “It’s too small. There’s not any space to set up that table at all.”

  Lacey had to admit that Garth was right. The attic room was cramped as it was, with her belongings that she had brought over from the Winnebago stored haphazardly here and there. This room would work better than any other. And the babies didn’t crawl around in here. Ashley came in to say good morning and good-night, but she was always carried in and out by either Cody or Lacey.

  “Well,” Lacey said, not sure about spending time with Garth.

  “Suit yourself,” he said dismissively before turning his back on her in the bed.

  She thought about it for a few moments, but her responsibility as a mother caught up with her. She would not put anything that would hurt either of those girls in their way, including pins and needles. Silently she went to the window and began to pull the legs out on the table.

  “Changed your mind?” Garth said mildly.

  “I never made it up,” she pointed out.

  “You can sit in that small vanity chair,” he said, gesturing with his head toward the one between the bathroom and closet doors.

  She put the sewing machine on the table, took off the case lid, and drew the chair up close. “Nice machine,” she said.

  “Top of the line,” Garth replied. He sat up now and rubbed at the scabs forming on his arm.

  Lacey set about threading the machine. She spared him a glance. “You ought to put ointment on those.”

  “I did. It’s rubbed off.”

  “Put on some more.”

  “I can’t reach all of them. The ones on my arms feel a sight better than the ones on my back that I couldn’t reach.”

  Lacey thought about this. He didn’t sound as if he were hinting around, but on the other hand, maybe he was. However, Garth tended to be direct when he had a request. He didn’t hem and haw, didn’t beat around the bush.

  She cleared her throat. “I…um, well, I could put some of that stuff on your back. If you’d like, that is.”

  He didn’t hesitate. “I’d like that just fine,” he told her. “If you wouldn’t mind.” He sounded elaboratel
y courteous, which she figured meant that he felt as uneasy about this as she did.

  He rolled over on his stomach, revealing more chicken pox than Lacey had ever seen in one place in her whole life.

  “Oh, my. No wonder you’re miserable,” she said.

  He said something into the pillow that she couldn’t make out. “Well, we’ll get some of this ointment on these right away,” she said, reaching for the tube.

  He didn’t reply, so she said, “I doubt whether either Ashley or Michele had this many on either of their whole bodies. This must be the worst case of chicken pox that there ever was.”

  “I wouldn’t go that far,” Garth allowed, turning his head to one side and eyeballing her. He even had chicken pox in the crease of his eyelid. Her heart filled with sympathy for him in that moment. She hated to see people suffer.

  “Lie still,” she said, bending her head to her task. The sunlight from the window fell across his skin, striping it with light. It was an odd sight, the spots and stripes together, and the corners of her mouth turned up before she thought.

  “You don’t have to look so happy about it,” he growled.

  She afforded him a blank look. “I’m not happy. I was thinking that it looks weird, that’s all.”

  “Weird, huh? You really know how to make a guy feel better,” he said.

  “I didn’t mean—oh, well.” She shrugged and concentrated on what she was doing.

  She had started applying the ointment at the back of his neck, but as she moved lower, working carefully and methodically, she thought the muscles in his back tensed.

  This is what I did for the babies, nothing more, she told herself, but below the sheet lay his bare derriere, and she wondered what would happen when she reached the point where she’d have to lift the sheet back—or not.

  “You know, this is mighty good of you,” Garth said after a time.

  “I am sure you’d do the same for me,” she said, and then, realizing what she’d said, she started to blush. She felt the warmth spreading up from her throat, across her cheeks to her ears, right up to her forehead.