by Arlene James
Jean Marie looked her straight in the eye. “You mean Daddy doesn’t love you?”
Mattie had to look away. “I don’t know,” she said honestly and got up before an even more disturbing question could be asked. “I have to start dinner.”
She went out of the room and down the hall toward the living room, but at the last moment, she opened the door to Orren’s room. He jerked and rolled over, struggling up on one elbow. Mattie quickly slipped inside and closed the door.
“Go back to sleep,” she whispered. “I’ll wake you when dinner’s ready.”
“Mattie,” he said. Wiping both eyes, he eased back down and looked her over. “You look good. Never seen you in a real dress before.”
She looked down at the simple tea-length cotton print dress, blushing. And to think of all the revealing outfits she’d put together for his benefit! “Thanks. It’s just a Sunday dress, nothing special.”
He ignored that, saying, “You put me to bed last night.”
Her heart sped up just a little bit. She hugged the wall with the palms of both hands. “Do you remember much about it?”
“Enough,” he said, holding her gaze for long moments.
She could hardly breathe. She had to swallow before she could speak. “Rest a little longer. I’m going to change and start dinner. I’ll wake you when it’s ready.”
“Kids okay?”
“They’re fine,” she said. “I think they enjoyed church. They behaved beautifully.”
He smiled. “Good.” He eased over onto his side and tucked both hands beneath his cheek. He didn’t look at all innocent in that pose. Mattie gulped again and went out the door.
Oddly, she wondered if Bolton Charles could be praying for her that very moment. She pictured him at the dinner table with his family, their hands joined, heads bowed. “From your lips to God’s ear,” she whispered, but in the back of her mind she was hearing Jean Marie ask again, “Doesn’t Daddy love you?”
She closed her eyes. “Oh, please,” she whispered. “Please. Please.”
Chapter Six
“Or-r-ren.”
The sound of his own name flowed over him with the silky caress of an ocean breeze. He looked down into Mattie’s pixyish face, feeling again the impact of her exotically tilted eyes, so green they seemed unreal. Hair like dark satin framed her head and waved in glossy rumples about her neck and shoulders. Her gently pointed chin was lifted in determination, her wide, pink lips curved in a serene smile.
“Or-r-ren.”
He wondered, as he lowered his head to kiss her, how she could speak his name without moving her lips, then lost the thought in the feel of her body against his. She felt wonderful beneath him, her long slender legs tangled with his, her lower body cradling him, her firm breasts pillowing his chest, her arms holding him securely. She seemed both unbelievably delicate and comfortingly substantial. He was aware of her as never before, as a woman, very much a woman.
“Or-r-ren. Orren.”
Her voice held a quiet, awesome love, the kind for which he had longed but never believed he could find. She was the mother his mother ought to have been, the sister who had never existed, his best friend, his wife. She was himself, complete. He deepened the kiss, luxuriated in it, but a nagging thought persisted. How could she call his name while kissing him?
“Orren. Wake up. Orren. Orren.”
He opened his eyes and looked up into Mattie’s pixyish face. Her sleek, dark hair flowed around her face and over her shoulders smoothly. Her exotic green eyes sparkled at him. Her chin tilted inquiringly. Her rose pink mouth curved into a loving smile. He remembered the taste of her, vividly, and forgot all the reasons he should not taste her again. It was a simple matter to arrange it. He merely sat up, took her in his arms and put his mouth to hers. Her smile parted for him, fitting itself to his lips, allowing the teasing forays of his tongue as he sought to taste her mouth. Her hands smooth and lightly calloused, surprisingly strong clutched at his bare back. He folded her closer, seeking and finding the firm mounds of her breasts against his chest. The world shifted a little, skewing and yet somehow righting itself. Her hands slipped around to his shoulders, pressing him back as she pulled away.
She laughed softly. “Dinner’s ready. The kids are hungry. Time to get up.”
He balanced himself on his elbows. Dinner? Get up? “What time is it?”
“After one.”
He absorbed the natural daylight flooding his room. One o’clock in the afternoon! He threw off the bed covers and jackknifed to his feet. Mattie took one look, popped up off the side of his bed and whirled around. Suddenly he recalled every slow, heavy detail of how she’d put him to bed the night before. He felt her hands push his shirt from his shoulders, felt his pants skimming down his legs, the pillow beneath his head, the covers sliding up over his bare skin. In the very same instant, he realized he was standing there in nothing but his briefs. He grabbed the bedcovers and yanked them in front of him, croaking, “Gimme a minute.”
Nodding, she escaped the room. Orren stood there with his heart pounding. For a long moment, confusion clouded his mind, but then a certain thought formed. Mattie Kincaid was young, but she was no child. The world had indeed shifted, and he couldn’t fight the mental adjustment to the new perspective. The current shape of his body clearly demonstrated that it was well ahead of whatever passed for his mind in this matter. His man’s body knew a real woman when it sensed her. What, he wondered, was he going to do with her now that he could no longer pretend she didn’t exist?
What he did, eventually, was pull on jeans, socks, a T-shirt and athletic shoes, then make a quick trip to the bathroom for some basic preparation before joining his family at the dinner table. Mattie had found a tablecloth somewhere. He vaguely remembered seeing it before. The table was laid with precise elegance, even though no single place setting matched another, and his children sat in their places with smiling faces and hands folded over the napkins in their laps. That in itself was enough to make him wonder if he’d wandered into the wrong house. The faces that turned up for his kisses were pleasant and not in the least demanding. Even his Sweetums failed to latch on to him like the proverbial leech she invariably became after his prolonged absence. Instead, she giggled in greeting and smacked him on the cheek, giggling some more.
Yancy was talking. “We wents to Sunny school, an’ they was bunches of kids an’ songs an’ stories an’ paper dolls an’ a girl name Eva an’ the tall man said Mattie is our mommy.”
“Was like our mommy,” Red put in.
“Could be our mommy,” Chaz clarified at the same time.
Orren looked up in shock to find Mattie’s cheeks turning a beguiling shade of pink, but she held his gaze steadily for a moment before switching it to the baby.
“Candy, why don’t you tell Daddy what you did in Sunday school?”
Candy Sue pointed a damp finger at Mattie and said, “I sits in you lap.”
“And why did you do that?”
Candy Sue gave her an odd look. “I luv you.”
Mattie smiled. “No, sweetheart, I mean, why didn’t you stay and play with the children your own age?”
“’Cause I luv you.”
Mattie leaned across the table and cupped a hand under Candy’s pudgy chin, eliciting another giggle. “I love you, too.” She straightened and looked at Orren, shrugging. “I took her to class and worship service with me because she wouldn’t let go of me when I tried to leave her in her classroom.”
He looked at Candy Sue with a lifted eyebrow. “Sometimes she grows little suckers and attaches herself but good. I think she took lessons from an octopus.”
“Well, she promised me that next time she’ll go in and play with the other children. Isn’t that right, Candy Sue?”
Candy Sue nodded vigorously. Chaz and Jean Marie groaned. “She won’t do it,” Jean Marie said.
“Yes, she will,” Mattie said, leaving no doubt that she’d enforce that promise whether Candy Sue
meant to keep it or not. Candy Sue’s head came up a little higher, and she traded a look with Jean Marie that said, “Whoops! Got myself in it now.” Seeing the exchange, Yancy laughed. Candy Sue put her chin down in the center of her plate. Orren decided that it was time to change the subject. It wasn’t hard to find another topic with his stomach pitching a fit for food.
“Dinner looks good. What is that?”
“Chicken and dumplings.”
“Oh, yeah.” He pulled out his chair and sat down, then could have kicked himself. He bounced right back up again and stepped around to pull out Mattie’s chair for her. He’d have done better to let it go. The kids all looked at one another with silent comment, and Mattie suddenly looked at him with misty eyes. He felt heat climbing his throat. By the time Mattie took her seat and he’d helped her scoot the chair up under the table sufficiently, the heat was pulsing in his face. He hurried around to his own chair and dropped into it, bowing his head without preliminary and rushing into the blessing.
“Lord, thank you for this food and for letting me earn that extra money.” He opened his mouth to add an Amen and heard himself saying, “A-and thank you for my kids.” He figured after that he might as well go whole hog. “And thank you for our home, too. I didn’t have a proper home or a real family when I was a boy, so You know they mean the world to me now.” Once more, he thought he was finished, but then he felt compelled to add just one more line. It took considerably more breath than the others, so he paused to fill his lungs before saying, “And thank you for Mattie for what she’s meant to all of us and because she made this meal for us with her own hands.” That felt right, finally, so he closed with, “Amen.”
Chaz echoed his Amen with one of his own. Orren figured it was something he’d heard done at church that morning, but for some reason it kind of choked him up. He cleared his throat and opened his napkin over his lap. When he looked up, it was to find the kids staring at Mattie. Her head was still bowed. She appeared to be wiping a tear from her eye with the tip of her little finger. He wasn’t sure why he did it, but he slid his foot forward until it touched hers beneath the table. She turned and lifted her head. He knew right then, looking into her clear green eyes, that more had changed than he’d realized. Somehow Mattie Kincaid had worked her way into his heart.
To his surprise, the moment passed smoothly. Mattie turned her head and lifted the spoon out of a bowl of sweet corn, reaching for Candy Sue’s plate. Orren followed her lead, reaching for Jean Marie’s plate and spooning chicken and white doughy dumplings in rich cream gravy onto it. Working together they got the kids’ plates filled and attended to their own in only minutes. For a time everyone concentrated on eating, then Chaz put down his fork, wiped his mouth and said, “Dad, would it be all right if I went over to Paul Dotson’s house tomorrow? He doesn’t live far, and his mom said it would be okay.”
Orren resisted the urge to look at Mattie. “Is Paul someone you met at church this morning, son?”
“Well, I knew him before from school, but this morning was when he asked me over.”
“I see.” He made himself eat another bite before speaking to Mattie. “You know these folks, Mattie?”
“Yes. They’ve been longtime members of the church. I’ve sat with the kids. They live about two miles west.”
“You reckon it’d be okay for Chaz to go over to play for a while?”
“I’m sure it would be just fine. In fact, I’ll call tomorrow and arrange a time, if you like.”
He could sense her satisfaction. Well, she was due it. “That’ll be just fine. Thanks. So, Chaz, if it all works out, you can go.”
Chaz beamed, his excitement palpable, so much so that Jean Marie caught a strong whiff of it. “I want to go, too!” she exclaimed. “Why can’t I go, too?”
Orren shook his head lightly. “This is Chaz’s friend, Red. He didn’t demand to go along with you to the birthday party.”
“Actually,” Mattie said, “we girls could plan a trip to the park while Chaz is at Paul’s if that suits everyone.”
Yancy sat up straight and clapped her hands. Candy Sue’s beetled brow clearly indicated that she wished she’d been paying better attention. Red bit her lip. Orren could see that she was fighting a battle with herself. He decided to help her along. “That sounds real fine to me. Wish I could go. How ‘bout you, Sweetums? You want to go to the park to play tomorrow? They’ve got those great swings and a big merry-go-round.”
Candy Sue finally got it. She dropped her fork in her eagerness to add her clapping to Yancy’s. Jean Marie caved in.
“Okay,” she said, making it clear that she knew she was being manipulated but had decided to be magnanimous anyway.
Orren winked at Chaz, who grinned ear to ear. Orren smiled and went back to his meal, but his mind wasn’t on the melt-in-his-mouth chicken. He couldn’t help thinking that Matilda Kincaid was awfully good for the Ellis family…all of them. He’d obviously been wrong: she wasn’t too young at all.
Mattie began gathering the dishes and carrying them to the sink. Orren and the kids got up to help her, making short work of it, but when she began running hot water into the sink, Orren casually walked over and shut off the spigot.
“Hold on now, everyone,” he said to the room at large. “We need a family conference.”
The children paused in various stages of the cleanup. Candy Sue was trying to push her chair up under the table and out of the way. Yancy stood holding a clump of wadded paper napkins over the trash can, while Jean Marie closed the cabinet door after returning the salt and pepper shakers to their designated places. Chaz was washing down the table with a wet paper towel. He looked over his shoulder at his father, paused and turned his back to the table. “Want we should sit down at the table again, Dad?”
“That’ll work,” Orren said. Chaz quickly finished scrubbing the table and put the paper towel in the trash. Yancy dropped her clump and went back to her place. Candy Sue climbed back up into her chair. Only Jean Marie stood where she was, her narrowed gaze on Mattie.
“I’ll just finish these,” Mattie began, reaching for the dish soap, but Orren stopped her once more, his hand clamped firmly around her wrist.
“I’ll help you later,” he said. “Right now I want your opinion on something.”
Mattie glanced at Jean Marie. For once, she couldn’t tell what the girl was thinking. Her face was carefully blank as she walked to her place, pulled out her chair and dropped down on its edge. Something was brewing there, but Mattie had no idea what. Neither did she suspect what Orren was up to.
Once everyone had resumed their places, Orren cleared his throat, reached into his pocket and tossed a fat wad of bills into the center of the table. A hushed chorus of wows! went up. Mattie tilted her head at Orren inquiringly. He folded his hands and nodded at the roll of bills.
“So what’re we going to do with it?” he asked.
Chaz and Jean Marie looked at each other. Chaz opened his mouth, but Jean Marie beat him to it. “Put it up for Christmas!”
“Finish my room!”
“You mean my room, don’t you, son?” Orren said with a smile. “That’s a given.” He peeled off several bills and set them aside. “Now then, Christmas is a good idea, Red, but I’ve already got a savings account for that. They deduct a little bit out of my pay each week especially for Santa Claus.” Yancy and Candy Sue exchanged excited glances over that, then turned their gazes back to the money in the center of the table. “What I’ve been thinking,” Orren said, “is that we ought to put this to work for us. The question is how?”
“You could go rodeoing again, Daddy,” Chaz said without much enthusiasm.
Orren chuckled at that. “Son, my rodeoing days ended a long time ago. I don’t want to go off and leave my family. Besides, I’ve got a good job.”
“You could open your own garage on the side,” Jean Marie volunteered.
“No need, Red. I already get work on the side, and my boss lets me use the shop when I n
eed to. No, what I’ve been thinking is that I ought to buy a few head of cattle.”
“You mean we’re not going to sell the land?” Chaz asked, an undercurrent of excitement in his voice.
“I’ve been wondering about that For Sale sign,” Mattie said, looking to Orren.
Orren shrugged. “After I had to sell off the cattle last time,” he said, “I figured there wasn’t any need to just sit on the land. But no one seems to want to buy.”
“Did you list it with a Realtor?”
“For a time,” Orren said. “He did bring me a couple of offers, but they were on the low side, and I figured we could sit tight for a spell longer.”
“You didn’t really want to let it go, did you?” Mattie asked, smiling.
Orren tilted his head. “Guess not. Before Gracie—Before my divorce, we were doing pretty good, and I had this idea that we could breed some stock, sell it off to buy more land and eventually have a profitable little ranch going on the side. But the house was really too small, especially when our little Sweetums came along, so I diverted the profits, such as they were at that point, into building. Then the divorce came and things got tight, what with the cost of the divorce and some other things, not to mention child care and all that.”
“And you sold off what cattle you’d been able to acquire.”
“And put the land up for sale,” he confirmed. “But then you came along and this rush diesel job fell in my lap.”
“Me!” Mattie said, surprised. “I should think I’ve been a liability.”
Orren let his mouth part in an obvious show of surprise. “Are you kidding? Not only are you cheaper than day care, you’ve cut the grocery bill by two-thirds, and we’re eating better than we ever have. Besides that, all the little incidentals have gone down. We don’t even use as much laundry soap as we used to! And the clothes are always clean, not to mention the house.”
“But you work so much,” she protested in confusion.
“I have to get ready for the school year,” he explained. “Yancy and Sweetums will have to go into full-time nursery school, and then there’s after-school care for Red and Chaz and all the important stuff that takes extra money and keeps me from being able to work these long hours, stuff like ball games and band instruments and PTA meetings…. Mattie, you don’t realize it, but you’ve given me my first chance to get ahead since I started doing this all on my own. That’s why I want your advice now. What do you think? It’s a long-term project, you know. Because of the cost of the bull, we’d only be able to buy a single heifer to start.”