So no one came to interrupt her. No one would until the kids got here—unless Spence showed up. But he didn’t.
She got hungry, of course. The cardigans generally brought home-baked bread and saffron cake. Marcus could be counted on to share a convenience-store pizza with her. Martha knew she should have remembered to pack a lunch. She didn’t want to stop and go out to get something. Once she got up the ladder, she didn’t want to climb down again.
But while the pregnancy limited her ability to climb up and down ladders and maneuver on the scaffolding, it didn’t seem to limit her appetite. In fact she wanted to eat more—enough for ten—the second she felt hungry. And waiting made her both light-headed and ravenous. With luck the kids would come in early. They always brought food.
“Or I could send you,” she said to Ted, who didn’t bother to look up from the pillow where he was napping.
Somewhere after two, finally the downstairs door opened and footsteps sounded on the stairs. Too heavy for the kids. And not noisy enough either.
Spence! Martha thought hopefully. Or possibly Marcus. No matter. She would get lunch.
“Don’t come up here unless you’ve brought food! I’m starving!” she yelled down.
The footsteps hesitated, then began to climb again.
“Truly! I mean it,” she shouted. “I’m perishing!”
Silence. Then at last she heard them turn and head back down the stairs. The door at the bottom opened and shut again. Excellent.
“We won’t starve,” she told Ted happily. Conserving his energy, he barely opened one eye. When he didn’t see any food, he went back to sleep again.
Twenty minutes later when the door opened once more, Ted’s head came up at once. The sound of footsteps was preceded by the smell of pasties, the meat pie staple of the thousands of Cornish miners who had brought it to Butte.
Martha’s mouth began to water. Ted was drooling.
She turned toward the sound of the footsteps. “Boy, am I glad to see you,” she said, beaming.
“Boy, am I glad to hear that.” The tone was amused.
Martha was not.
Theo stood looking up at her from the door.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“YOU!” The scaffolding seemed to teeter at the same time the color drained right out of Martha’s face.
Theo was pretty sure the color was draining out of his, too.
He’d gone to get her food because she’d said she was perishing from hunger. One look at her precarious perch and he thought it wasn’t hunger she was most likely to die from.
“For God’s sake, get down from there!”
He started to stalk toward her across the room, when out of nowhere a small enraged black piece of fur with huge ears hurtled toward him and planted itself in front of him, baring very white teeth and making odd sort of guttural noise that only vaguely resembled a bark.
Theo stopped and eyed it warily. “What the hell is that?”
“That,” Martha said acidly, “is my dog. Don’t you dare hurt him!”
“A dog? Well, if you say so.” Theo looked from the animal eyeing him with undisguised hostility to Martha, still standing way too far above the floor to suit him and said, “I don’t think I’m going to be hurting him. Who’s attacking who?”
“He’s not attacking you,” she denied. “He’s defending me.”
“Explain the difference.”
“He’s keeping you at bay.”
“Well, call him off. I’m not hurting you.”
Yet. He’d like to throttle her for doing something so stupid as teetering around up on that scaffolding. She was huge!
Well, maybe not huge, but considerably bigger than when he’d seen her just over two weeks ago at the wedding. Or maybe it was his perspective, staring up at her from below.
He started to move toward her again. But the little low-pitched gruff noises continued along with an undercurrent of something that sounded like a growl. But at the same time, Theo noticed that the animal’s gaze darted from him to the steaming package he held in his hands.
He raised a brow. “Want some?” he asked and rattled the bag.
“No, he does not want some!” Martha said sharply. But when the dog began looking more at the bag than at Theo’s kneecaps, she muttered, “Well, yes, he does. But he can’t have any,” she added firmly.
“Why not? I bet you’d like some, wouldn’t you, fella?” Theo lowered the bag slightly.
The dog’s gaze followed it. The low odd noises had stopped. He made another noise this time, a curious hopeful rather hungry cough.
“Ted! Stop it!”
Theo’s brows lifted. “Ted?”
“It was his name when I got him. He’s a French bulldog. He belonged to some ancient Boston Red Sox fan who died. Ted Williams was his hero. Don’t take it personally,” she warned him.
But if the sudden flush on her cheeks was anything to go by, Theo would take it very personally indeed. And as it was the only hopeful thing he had going for him at the moment, he was grateful.
“Here you go, Ted.” He opened the bag, then fumbled inside it, still keeping one careful eye on the dog until he was able to break off a piece of crust and toss it to him. The dog inhaled it—and was back eyeing him again hopefully an instant later.
“Stop that,” Martha commanded as Theo reached for another piece. She wasn’t talking to the dog this time.
“Get down, then,” Theo countered.
She didn’t. She stood there, still clutching her pencil. Theo just looked at her, smiled blandly, then plucked off another bit of crust and tossed it to the dog.
“Damn it!” She fumed. But at least she finally began to descend the ladder. He didn’t breathe easier, though, until she was on the floor, glaring at him.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded, hands on hips.
“Where else should I be?”
“Out on an ocean somewhere.” She gave a wave of her arm that encompassed most of the world. “Not here.”
“You’re here,” he said simply.
“That doesn’t—”
“It does. You’re here. So I am, too.”
If he could pick her up and take her away from here, he would do it in a minute. But knowing Martha, she would kick him in the shins. And that would be the least of it. So he would take his time. Make her see reason.
But right now all he wanted was for her to sit down and eat something before her dog, who had his head almost in the bag, ate it all.
He no sooner thought it than Martha swept the bag out of his hands, delving in and taking out a foil-wrapped package.
“It’s called a pasty,” Theo said doubtfully. “I got it at the place down the street. They don’t do take-out but—”
“I know what it is,” Martha said, breathing deeply and sighing the way she used to sigh when he made love to her! “It’s great. Thank you.”
“No problem,” Theo said gruffly, watching as she opened the foil, picked off a piece of the crust and nibbled it. She used to nibble his fingers that way. She licked her lips. She used to run her tongue lightly over his.
The dog coughed and whined hopefully.
“Yes, you’ll get some,” she said to him. “I just need to sit down.”
Theo started to help her, but her blasted dog stayed between them, his eyes darting from Theo to the foil packet in Martha’s hands as she sat on a battered, paint-spattered, old futon pushed up against the far wall.
Ted bounded up onto the futon, put his back to Martha, faced Theo squarely and showed a number of pearly white teeth.
“I brought the food,” Theo reminded him.
But the dog obviously knew who had it now—and who he was defending. So fine, he wouldn’t sit next to her. He could still look at her. He jammed his hands into his pockets and watched as she tucked into the pasty hungrily, breaking off bits and eating as if she hadn’t eaten in a week.
He began to wonder if she had. Now that she was close, he could see that w
hile the baby had grown, Martha looked slimmer than ever. The bones in her face seemed more pronounced, her hands smaller, her fingers more slender.
“What the hell have you been doing to yourself?” he demanded, glaring down at her.
She looked up, wide-eyed. “What are you talking about?”
“You’re skinny as a stick! The parts that are you,” he amended, dismissing for the moment the bump that was their child.
She scowled at him and pressed her lips together. “Well, thank you very much.”
He raked fingers through his hair. “You don’t look bad exactly.”
“I’m so glad to hear it,” she said acidly.
“Just…tired. Worn-out. You’re all baby!” No, he couldn’t ignore it. “And the rest of you is skin and bones. You obviously don’t eat! And you climb around like a monkey! You could fall off there at any moment. And you moved to Montana, for God’s sake! What the hell were you doing?” He was almost shouting now, furious and exasperated and at the end of a two-week-long tether that had seen him flying halfway round the world and back to get his life sorted out before he could ever follow her here.
Now Martha didn’t even look at him. She just calmly licked her fingers then said, “So nice to see you again, too, Theo.”
He wanted to grab her and shake her. He wanted to haul her into his arms and kiss her senseless. He wanted to throw her down on the damn futon, kick her dog out and make fierce passionate love to her.
She was driving him insane!
It didn’t help, of course, that he was exhausted after a flight from Auckland to L.A. and from L.A. to Denver and from Denver to Bozeman because there was nothing going into Butte from there. It didn’t help that he didn’t know the first thing about driving in snow and he’d driven almost a hundred miles in it, the last few over a terrifying mountain pass where he’d needed chains, for God’s sake, just to stay on the road!
He dragged in a desperate breath and tried to get a grip. Yelling and shouting wasn’t going to get him anywhere and he knew it. But damn it to hell—!
He closed his eyes, prayed for control and tried again. “Why Montana?” There. At least he wasn’t shouting at her.
“I like it here.”
“You’d never been here before!” he retorted sharply. Her brother Lukas had told him that.
“So? I’m here now.”
“Yes, but why?” It didn’t make any sense.
She finished the mouthful of pasty and swallowed, but still didn’t speak for a moment. Then she looked up, smiled, and said brightly, “No ocean?”
Theo’s jaw locked.
She shook her head and shrugged lightly. “Actually, Theo, it had nothing to do with you. I just…needed a fresh start. Somewhere without a horde of helpful relatives all trying to help me live my life.”
Theo could understand that because he’d felt it himself. But from the things she’d told him on Santorini, he’d always thought Martha had a much greater tolerance of family interference than he had. He rubbed a hand against the back of his neck.
“You mean because of…” He gestured toward her midsection, unwilling to say the word since it seemed to set her off.
But she shook her head. “Not at all. It had nothing to do with the baby. I didn’t even know I was pregnant when I came out here. I came because I thought it was time I stood on my own two feet. And Spence said if I was ever in Montana—”
“Who’s Spence?” The words snapped out of him before he could stop them.
Martha’s brows lifted at his tone. “A friend.”
“What sort of friend?”
“What business is it of yours?” she snapped back at him.
He opened his mouth—and shut it again. Because there was nothing he could say that wouldn’t make him sound as if he were jealous of whoever this Spence guy was. And he was not jealous.
He was…concerned. After all, she’d made an idiot of herself about bloody Julian, hadn’t she? Maybe this Spence was equally useless. But saying so didn’t promise a friendly response, so Theo changed his approach.
“So, this Spence…invited you?”
“No. He just said I should come and see him if I was ever out this way.” She gave a vague wave of a hand containing a bit of pasty which Ted took care of before Martha even noticed. “And I was. By design,” she admitted unrepentantly, not appearing the least abashed to have pursued some jerk more than halfway across the United States. Theo’s jaw tightened. He did his best to keep his temper in check.
“So that’s why you said no.” He tried not to even make it a question.
“Said no?” Martha looked blank.
“No, you wouldn’t marry me.” He bit off the words with a ferocity that he couldn’t disguise. The words still felt like a knife in the gut every time he contemplated them, much less said them out loud.
But Martha just shook her head. “Not at all.” She took another bite of the pasty, as if that were explanation enough.
It wasn’t. Not even close!
“I told you why I wasn’t marrying you,” she said almost casually, as if it didn’t matter in the least.
It mattered, damn it! Theo gritted his teeth. Yes, she’d told him. She wanted to marry for love and she didn’t love him!
The memory still had the power to infuriate him. He wanted to do the Cossack thing and fling her over his saddle and ride off into the wilderness. Or something. It was hell being a modern man. Especially in the face of a thoroughly modern—thoroughly infuriating—woman.
What had become of the amenable Martha he’d known on Santorini?
Well, come to think of it, that Martha had had a stubborn streak, too. If she hadn’t, they’d never have had their “affair.” But she’d been all over him there. Touching him, kissing him. An eager lover.
Now she seemed perfectly content to eat the food he brought while she kept her “guard dog” firmly between them. Theo scowled at the dog who scowled right back at him. Martha finished the pasty and started on the coleslaw, ignoring him completely.
“I didn’t come all this way for you to pretend I’m part of the furniture,” Theo bit out.
“That’s too bad,” Martha said, not sounding regretful in the least.
Theo ground his teeth. It was a good thing he’d had the forethought to clear the decks of his life during the past two weeks. Obviously she’d had no change of heart and wasn’t about to fall into his arms.
Well, fine. He would just have to convince her.
But how? By arguing with her? Starting an argument with a woman whose entire focus was on eating coleslaw didn’t seem the most productive idea. He cracked his knuckles and paced the room, noticing it for the first time.
It was obviously a small theater. A stage jutted out from the back wall. Heavy dark velvet curtains masked most of it. The other walls were in various stages of being covered by a mural. Or murals. There were probably fifteen separate pieces that seemed to flow one into another. A couple appeared to be completed. They were vivid portraits of a group of miners hard at work and what looked like several families descending from a railroad car and being swept into the arms of waiting men. But other vignettes were half-finished. And the one she’d been working on when he came in seemed to be barely begun. He couldn’t understand why she had left some of them half-finished and had moved on to another. Boredom?
Maybe he could play on that.
“What is all this?” he asked, aiming for a neutral tone that would get her talking.
Martha stopped on her way across the room. “It’s the history of Butte,” she replied. “Bits and pieces based on old photos. Each of my students is doing one. And I’m bringing it all together.”
“Students?” Theo stared at her. “What students?” She’d never mentioned teaching when she was in Santorini.
“I teach art at the high school three mornings a week. Just part-time, but I have a couple of really good classes. Some of my students are excellent graffiti artists.” She didn’t even crack a sm
ile.
Theo stared. “You’re joking.”
“I’m not. It’s a deal we have going—the school, the probation department and I—to get them interested in ‘socially approved creativity.’ Like the mural.” She waved a hand toward the wall opposite where there was a drawing of several gallus frames perched on the hillside. “That one there, of the mines in Centerville is Jeremy’s. He’s a past master with a spray can. But he’s pretty good with brushes, too, isn’t he?”
He was, but Theo didn’t give a rat’s ass about Jeremy the juvenile delinquent or his ability to paint. But as she talked Theo heard for the first time something in Martha’s voice that reminded him of the woman he had known on Santorini.
There was a zestful eagerness in her now. She was less guarded, less remote.
“Yeah,” he said, mustering all the enthusiasm he could manage. “He’s done a good job.”
“He has,” Martha agreed. “I’m hoping he’ll do some paintings that we can exhibit during some of the art walks during the summer. Maybe we can even show some of his work in the gallery downstairs. But—” she sighed “—that’s getting a little ambitious. We just have to keep him out of jail for now.” Then she turned her back and began to climb back up the ladder.
“Hey!” Theo moved to stop her, but Ted planted himself at the foot of the ladder and displayed his teeth again.
Theo glared back. “Damn it. I brought you food.”
“Don’t be rude,” Martha said without turning around. “If you don’t like him, go away.”
“I’m not going away, Martha.”
She could turn her back all she wanted. She could draw all afternoon. She could sit up there until the snow melted in the spring. When she came back down, Theo was still going to be there.
He saw her back stiffen, but she just said, “Suit yourself,” without looking his way. But she left the vignette she’d been sketching in earlier and went to work painting at the far end of the scaffolding as if she were trying to get as far away from him as possible.
Good luck, sweetheart, he thought, and flung himself down on the futon to watch her work.
It wasn’t much of a hardship. Not counting the wedding, it had been almost seven months since he’d feasted his gaze on Martha Antonides. In his mind’s eye he had seen her often enough. Even when he’d been trying to forget her, it had been impossible not to remember the days on the beach, the afternoons on the boat, the nights in his bed.
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