“Wolfie?” Miranda felt as if she’d stepped into another reality.
“Yep. Wait’ll you see the cool caves the kid showed us. Wolfie has one of the chambers fixed up as a regular hideout. The middle room is warm and dry. He’s stashed food, blankets, even lanterns. Said he snuck supplies out from under George Tucker’s nose. That’s why he has beer. Tucker kept a well-stocked fridge. He drank dark malt— Eric’s favorite. Not mine.” She made a face.
“Jenny, I wish you hadn’t told me. We have no idea when Mrs. Bishop is liable to show up. If she finds us with beer, you know what that would do to Linc’s license. She’d pull it so fast his head would swim.”
“That’s what’s so sweet about the caves,” Eric said, butting into their conversation. “Parker doesn’t know they exist. Once he and the kids hit the sack, we’ll move our party on out there and you’ll see how cool a setup it is.”
“Eric, I don’t know.” Miranda looked and sounded worried.
“Don’t be an old poop,” Jenny said. “Who’re we gonna hurt? That old broad’s not gonna show up tonight.”
Another song exploded from the player before Miranda could admonish them a second time. Greg went back to pounding his drum pad. Eric grabbed Jenny and twirled her into the middle of the floor to dance. A moment later, Shawn set his plate aside and reached for Miranda. But she noticed the envy and longing that crossed Cassie’s thin face. And she realized Wolfie was attempting to teach Hana how to dance.
“Uh, Shawn, thanks for the dance, but why don’t I cut the cake while you give Cassie a spin around the room?” She nudged him hard.
“Cassie? But…but…” the boy sputtered.
“Tilt her chair back on two wheels and hold on to the steel arms. Just circle the floor a few times. I imagine she’s left out of most activities at school. It must be really rough at her age. I’d do it, but I think it’d mean more if you took her.”
Greg, who tended to see the world with more compassion than his companions, dropped his drumsticks and stood. He soon had Cassie smiling and giggling as loudly as Hana. From her vantage point behind the refreshment table, Miranda was able to stand back and enjoy the pleasure on all their faces. What a difference, she thought, between this night and the night they’d arrived at the ranch. The little kids had been sad, frightened and unkempt. The teens, exhausted and half-starved.
If only Linc could see them now. Even a man as cynical as he was would have to break an arm patting himself on the back. She smiled, imagining how pleased he’d be.
A sudden movement near the door caught her attention, pulling her eyes from the dancers. There stood the man she’d been daydreaming about, and he looked anything but pleased. His mouth formed an angry slash below flared nostrils as he bellowed, “Turn off that hideous crap.” Grasping both sides of his head, he lost his hold on the gifts Miranda had painstakingly wrapped earlier.
Eric whirled. It was Jenny who leapt to switch off the sound. Shawn stiffened, moving closer to Miranda. Greg eased Cassie’s wheelchair to the ground, while Wolfie hugged Hana protectively under one arm.
All the good things Miranda had reflected on only seconds ago fled in a single unhappy heartbeat.
“I didn’t sink my hard-earned money into this bunkhouse to give you kids a stage for this…this outrageous music. I thought I made my rules clear from the get-go.” Linc’s hard eyes sought out and impaled Miranda from across the room. “I expected better of you, Randi. You, who said I’d erected a meaningless shrine to my sister. Shrine denotes someone died. She did. And why? Because I never had the guts to say she didn’t have talent. But I am telling all of you. You sound worse than…than the mating call of a hundred bull moose combined with two dozen banshees. Not one of you has what it takes to succeed. So pack it in. Go to bed. You can thank me for my honesty tomorrow when we give thanks for having a roof over our heads to block out the snow.”
“It’s snowing?” All except Miranda and Cassie made a mad dash for the door.
“It is!” Jenny squealed. “Wow, I’ve never seen snow coming down before.”
Randi bent to pick up the gifts Linc had dropped. She handed them to Cassie and Wolfie. As she went to call the others back to watch the kids open their presents, she heard the door to the main house slam and realized Linc had gone. She was so angry at him she wanted to shake him by his ears. “You know, Linc’s wrong. I heard you guys. You have talent.”
“Yeah, right!” Eric flung his guitar back into the case.
Greg slid his drum pad into his backpack. “Even if we do, it’s a cinch we ain’t gonna improve if we can’t practice. The man couldn’t have spoken any plainer. We’ve gotta figure out which we want more—a career, or food and shelter.”
Miranda raked a hand through her short hair. “He’s hurt, remember. He’s not even aware that you finished planting the last field. Tomorrow he might change his mind.”
“Hardnoses like Parker never back down,” Eric spat.
Miranda gave up. “Come on, Hana and Cassie. I have to get up early to put a turkey in the oven. I’ll come over here tomorrow afternoon and help with cleanup.”
Jenny’s cheeks were pink, and snowflakes still sparkled in her long dark hair. “Felicity didn’t die because she lacked talent. She was insecure because she could never measure up to Parker’s expectations. I say we show him we’re tougher than that. So we can’t practice in his bunkhouse. We can sing and play at the cave.”
“Yeah!” Eric shouted. “Let’s go.”
The others rallied, except for Miranda. She watched them pack up and trudge off into the already snowy hills, declining their invitation to follow. Her hands tightened on Cassie’s wheelchair. “Kids, lying is never wise. Lies nearly always come back to haunt you. About this cave, though—maybe we’d better keep it our secret for now.”
“Until Mr. Parker’s in a better mood?” Cassie whispered.
“Maybe longer,” Miranda said with a sigh.
Back at the house, she helped the girls into their pajamas, then sat between their cots and read, as had become a nightly ritual. Tonight she chose a silly story about birthday clowns. It had stunned her to learn that no one had ever read to Hana. Neither she nor Cassie had owned a book until Miranda began buying Golden Books at the grocery store. Hana loved storytime. Already she recognized simple words like cat and fish. The hardest thing had been making her understand that there wasn’t any need to sleep with the books under her pillow. That no one would steal them while she slept.
Tonight, both girls yawned profusely before Miranda closed the book and turned out the light. Almost immediately, they nodded off, and Miranda tucked the covers around their shoulders. The excitement of the party had taken its toll.
On them, but not on her. She worried about Linc, and wondered if she ought to look in on him. She also worried about the teens who’d gone to the cave. She wasn’t their keeper, and yet if anything happened to one of them while they tramped around out there in the storm, she’d blame herself.
Reclining against her pillows, she tried composing lines for a new song that had been kicking around in her head. But she hit a snag. In the middle of fluffing her pillows for about the hundredth time, she thought she heard a door open and close. Were Jenny and the boys back this soon? She tucked an arm under her head, deciding she’d pretend to sleep.
A minute or two slipped by without the bedroom door opening. Her restlessness made Cassie stir and moan. Climbing out of bed, Miranda covered the girl again. Then she felt around the dresser and found a book she’d checked out of the library. A guide to social services in California. She’d fix a cup of tea and read until she got drowsy. With luck, the dry nature of the material would do the trick.
There was a light on in the kitchen. Miranda thought she’d shut them all off. Entering the room, juggling her book while tugging up red fuzzy slipper socks that she wore with her San Francisco Giants nightshirt, Miranda skidded to a dead stop.
Linc Parker sat at the kitchen table holding a
raw sirloin steak over one eye. He reared back guiltily and offered a self-conscious grin. “You were absolutely correct in your prediction. I have a doozy of a black eye.” He let the steak slide down to rest on his cheekbone, exposing a puffy, purple eyelid. All around his eye were interesting rainbow shades of pink, violet and chartreuse.
“Does meat really work?” Miranda bent down for a closer inspection. “Isn’t ice the treatment doctors recommend?”
Linc shrugged carelessly. “This is my first black eye. I remember reading somewhere that football players use raw steak.”
Dropping her book, she went straight to the freezer and pulled out a blue ice pack. She removed the ruined steak. “What a waste. Or maybe I can cook it and feed it to Scraps.”
“He was just here looking hopeful. By the way, why are you up and roaming around this time of night? Or did you hear me and come to claim a piece of my hide?”
Flopping the steak into a frying pan, which she then put in the fridge, she eyed Linc darkly. “Why would I do that?” she asked as she wrapped the blue ice pack in a kitchen towel and carried it to him. “Hmm, maybe a kiss will make it all better. That works with the kids.” Grinning, she brushed a feather-light kiss across his swollen lid before gently closing off his vision with the ice.
“I can’t believe you’d kiss me after I acted like a first-rate jackass tonight.”
She loved his groveling. “You don’t look like a donkey—no pointy ears. A toad, maybe? I’ve kissed a few of those in my time. But…you don’t fit that description, either. I’ve got it! Not a toad, a frog.” Flopping down opposite him so their knees touched, she rested her elbows on the table and delivered a sexy growl. “I dub you a princely frog, Lincoln Parker. My princely frog.”
Miranda leaned forward as she waited to see if he’d play along and kiss her, as she’d so often dreamt.
The old kitchen wall clock ticked off the seconds. Miranda was afraid he’d leave her sitting there like a fool. And maybe she was a fool to be so charmed by this complicated man. After all, he had acted like an ass earlier, just as he’d said.
As the fingers of his right hand turned icy from holding the pack, Linc’s heart thumped like a landing helicopter. His one good eye made a heated circuit of Randi’s tense compact body, and he had to swallow the saliva gathering in his mouth. Even with her tousled blond curls, silly red socks and totally unsexy flannel nightshirt, she was a huge turn-on. X-rated pictures began to flip through his aching swollen head. And other parts of his body swelled to match, taking his mind off his injury.
Damn, wasn’t the woman aware of the effect she had on him? Linc didn’t know and he didn’t care. Wanting to be her princely frog and definitely not wanting her to kiss any more toads, he wrapped his free hand around the back of her sweet, sweet neck and closed the distance between their mouths.
She sighed contentedly as their lips met. The kiss was hot and long and satisfying.
After the kiss ended, they rose by tacit agreement, hand in hand, and she turned off the lights. And in the darkness, while snowflakes built outside on his windowsill, together they found warmth and passion in his bed.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
MIRANDA STIRRED, and in the greenish glow of the digital clock on Linc’s nightstand, she smiled at his relaxed features. Surprising, since their lovemaking had been a lot like riding out a typhoon in a rowboat.
His eye didn’t look so bad in the semidarkness. With both arms flung above his head, he slept like a carefree child. Although, with his sculpted arms and deep chest muscles, grown harder in the past weeks of backbreaking ranch work, he was all man. Definitely all man.
She hated leaving the warm cocoon of his bed, and she shivered in the cold room the instant she slipped from beneath the covers. Miranda wished with all her heart that she could burrow into Linc’s side and stay until morning. Their stolen moments had been all she’d dreamt of and more.
Linc could have taken what she offered in the slam-bam-thank-you-ma’am method of her last experience, with someone who’d professed to love her. Linc didn’t lie about that part, either. And yet, he’d certainly made her feel cherished. For one thing, he’d looked after the practical matter of protection. For all her sophistication, she hadn’t given it a thought. Linc remembered. And he’d had to dig through his dresser drawer to find a buried box of condoms.
Miranda tugged her nightshirt over her head, then was moved to kiss her fingertips and brush them softly over his lips. Even in sleep, he sighed and nibbled at them. The fact that he only belatedly remembered having condoms and wasn’t readily able to lay his hands on them said a lot about the man.
The singers she knew, and their band members, carried suitcases full of economy packs along on tours. She used to shake her head over their lack of emotion, of real caring. With Linc, she’d felt cared for. He hadn’t rushed. He’d given her ample opportunity to say no. And as they’d cuddled afterward, he’d shared a rare piece of himself. He said that working with ambitious rising actresses had left him jaded and not altogether trusting of women. Despite Miranda’s secrets, he felt she was principled.
She spared a last longing glance at his motionless form as she hurried from the bedroom, refusing to think about where they went from here. Or if they went from here. This might be their one and only time together, and she’d put it in her storehouse of wonderful memories.
Outside the door to the bedroom she shared with Hana, Cassie and Jenny, Miranda hesitated before entering. According to Linc’s bedside clock, it was scarcely past midnight—the witching hour, she thought with a smile. Had Jenny returned from her outing? Miranda doubted it, or else the younger girl would’ve gone searching for her missing roommate.
Indeed, Jenny’s bed hadn’t been slept in.
The little girls were fast asleep, though. Scraps’s nose peeked out from under Cassie’s comforter.
Miranda padded softly across the room and pressed her nose to the window. The snow had stopped falling, although the clouds still hung low. The only light visible shone from a bulb Linc had installed at the peak of the barn gable. It cast gray murky shadows over the blanket covering the ground.
Pleasantly tired but still not sleepy, Miranda debated between going back for the tea she’d never had a chance to drink or taking a shower. Either would give her reason to wait up for Jenny. The shower won. The only problem with it was that her flowery soap washed away Linc’s scent. She took a deep breath and shut off the water, superstitiously hoping this didn’t mean she’d washed him out of her life forever.
It was the first time Miranda had let herself think about the future. Yes, tomorrow was Thanksgiving. Yes, they’d all seemed excited over the prospect of experiencing their first traditional holiday in a long time. The very first time for some, like Hana, Shawn and Greg. Others, herself included, had some good memories. Suddenly Miranda found herself wondering how she and Linc would act around each other at breakfast. The morning after…
Partially wrapped in a towel but struggling to shove damp legs into sweatpants she’d dragged from her closet in the dark, Miranda heard a light tap on the door. Linc coming to see where she’d gone?
It wasn’t Linc but Jenny. “Whatcha doin’?” the girl asked, bringing in the cold. In fact, her sneakers were wet and muddy, as were the bottoms of her jeans.
Miranda finished pulling on her sweats. “I couldn’t sleep and I was thinking about coming to find you. Is everything okay?” She leaned close and sniffed, trying to detect if Jenny smelled like beer.
“We didn’t drink. Randi, the cave is incredible. We jammed the whole time. The acoustics there are…magic.” She hugged herself. “You should hear how great we sounded. I can’t explain. Oh, but you don’t know anything about music. Forget it. I’m going to bed.”
Miranda watched her trundle off, humming happily. Wouldn’t they be surprised by how much she did know about music?
Changing her mind about staying up, she went to bed thinking about the cave. No sooner did she lie down
than dreams of Linc replaced all conscious thought.
Too soon her alarm blared in the still-black room, eliciting groans and complaints from the others. “It’s okay,” she said groggily. “Go back to sleep. I have to get the turkey ready and put it in to roast.”
Jenny sat up. “I have to go feed the livestock.”
“Isn’t it Eric’s turn?” Miranda lowered her voice so as not to disturb the kids.
“I said I’d trade with him.” Jenny yawned. “Last night he was fired up to write. The notes just flowed. It’s the best stuff he’s ever done.”
“I wasn’t aware he wrote songs.”
“Not words. Just melody. He hears it in his head. I wish I could put words to his music, but I don’t know how.”
“Songs are poetry. Hey, I noticed there’s a poetry class at the college beginning in January. Why not sign up for it?”
“How do you know that?” By now they’d dressed and left the bedroom.
“I picked up a course catalog. Actually, I’m planning to take two classes. I want to find out what it’d be like to help kids like Wolfie and the girls. So I’m taking Intro to Child Psychology and Beginning Sociology.”
“How will you get there? The college is miles away.”
Miranda screwed up her face. “I’ve decided to ask Linc if I can take the driving test. Then maybe he’ll let me use the SUV in the evenings. If you had a class on the same night, I’m sure he’d agree.”
“But…to get a license you have to, uh, like give your full name and address.”
“I have a name, Jenny. And I’ll use this address. What do you say?”
“I’ll ask Eric. He’s afraid if anyone in authority knows our last names, the cops might show up and ship us home.”
“That’s why Linc started this refuge, Jenny. To help kids who couldn’t go home again. You know, you’ll have to supply a name to the Social Services director.”
“I’ll think about it, okay? Is Randi your real name, then?”
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