Then, still energized, Erin began breaking down the boxes she'd emptied. Now that was satisfying work! Whacking away at big pieces of heavy-duty cardboard was the best thing she'd done all day. She was going at it with relish when the door separating the kitchen from The Spa opened, and Celie Tucker poked her head in.
"What on earth are you doing? It sounds like you're dismantling the kitchen!"
"I'm cleaning," Erin said, straightening up and stretching, feeling those twinges again. She bent and went at the cardboard with renewed vigor.
"There's cleaning," Celie said, "and there's cleaning. What you're doing sounds distinctly like a major overhaul. I didn't think I left the place that dirty."
Celie had moved back in here after she'd quit her job on the ship and returned to marry Jace.
"You didn't. It has nothing to do with you. It's me." She wasn't going to explain about Deke. If anyone had noticed his truck here, they would think what they wanted, but she wasn't going to add to the gossip. So she just said, "I woke up this morning and realized I've been drifting ever since I got back to Elmer. I decided it's time to start."
"So you're spring cleaning in, what? November?"
"Yes."
But it wasn't the house Erin was spring cleaning. It was her life.
"I'm getting ready for Christmas," she told Celie as she finished whacking apart the last box and laid the pieces in a stack to take outside. She stood up and took a deep breath. "And I'm getting on with my life."
Celie grinned broadly. "I understand completely." And there was such fervency in her voice that Erin blinked.
Then she remembered that Celie had kick-started her own life not that many months ago by bidding on Sloan Gallagher at Elmer's charity cowboy auction. She'd actually won him, too, though it was her sister Polly who had married Sloan a few months later.
His marrying her sister hadn't seemed to bother Celie at all, though, from what Erin had heard people in Elmer say. Sloan had been the catalyst that had made her move on—not the goal she'd moved toward.
It would be the same for Erin with Deke.
The bells on The Spa door jingled.
"Ah," Celie said. "That'll be Alice, here for her perm. Catch you later. Don't work too hard."
But Erin fully intended to. She had to.
By the time she was done, the house was sparkling, the extra bedrooms were cleaned and ready to paint or paper, the boxes of slides were stacked on her desk to go through when she could bring herself to sit still. Soup simmered on the stove, bread cooled on the counter. And the kids would be thrilled that she'd made each of them their favorite cookies.
And because it was that time of year, she'd managed to locate the Christmas ornaments they'd brought from Paris among the various boxes they'd stored in the attic. She lugged the boxes downstairs and put them in the closet in the front hall where they would be handy when they brought in the tree.
She glanced at her watch. It was nearly six. The kids would be home soon. She went back to the kitchen and tossed a salad to go with the soup. Then she set the table and lit a candle to go in the center of it.
Stepping back, she surveyed her accomplishments. Yes, things looked better. Less haphazard, more under control, more settled, stable. As if she had finally begun to put down roots.
Yesterday the house had looked as if any strong wind might blow them away. Today it looked like a home. Maybe the kids wouldn't notice. Maybe they'd never noticed that it hadn't. But Erin had felt it.
She considered pouring herself a glass of the wine she and Deke had drunk last night, to toast the future. She was ready to face it now—whatever it might bring.
Outside she heard a truck pull up and she smiled and turned at the sound of footsteps on the porch. But instead of the door opening, there was a knock.
Puzzled, Erin went to answer it.
Deke stood there, white-faced, with Zack in his arms. "It's my dad. He had a heart attack last night."
"He isn't gonna die," Deke said fiercely.
He'd been saying it for hours, trying desperately to believe it, trying to be strong, upbeat and positive for his mother, for Milly, for everyone else.
"He's not going to die," he'd said over and over, willing it to be true, for them and—he had to face it—for himself.
"Of course he isn't," Erin said promptly, wrapping her arms around both of them, hugging Deke tightly while Zack wriggled in their embrace.
"Down!" he insisted. "Ge' down!" and wriggled some more so that Deke let him slide to the floor and toddle happily away while his father, as always, drew strength from Erin and, for the first time today, felt the terrible tension ease.
He was running on adrenaline and caffeine, hadn't slept since he'd got up yesterday. The past twenty-four hours alone had become a roller coaster—from the high of the opening to the low of his father's walking out to the high of making love with Erin to the low of coming back to Milly's shortly after three in the morning, hoping to slip in without waking anyone and discovering the whole house ablaze with light and Milly scrambling around to get dressed and rush to the hospital because their father had had a heart attack.
Now Erin pulled off his jacket and pushed him into a chair. "Tell me," she commanded. "What happened? When? How bad is he?"
And Deke tried to explain it—as much as he knew.
He'd driven back to Milly's, still dazed by what had happened between him and Erin, regretting that he'd had to go, yet knowing there was nothing else to do.
And he'd seen all the lights and been sure Zack had awakened and started screaming because his dad wasn't there. Deke had jumped out of the truck and hurried up the steps, prepared to apologize.
But when he opened the door, Milly practically flew at him. "Thank God you're back! I didn't know where to reach you. Mom just called. Dad's in the hospital. He had a heart attack!"
Deke felt as if he'd been punched.
Their father had had a heart attack a few years ago. It had been serious, and Deke knew it had been touch-and-go for a while. Milly and Dori had wanted him to come home then, but he had declined, insisting—probably correctly—that the shock of seeing him would be enough to kill the old man. But he was here now, and even after last night, he knew he had to go.
"Which hospital?" he asked Milly.
"Livingston." She was still in her nightgown, looking for her shoes. C.J. was crying. Zack was looking bewildered. Cash was getting dressed.
"Don't. You stay here," Deke said to them. "I'll go—"
Milly protested. "We can all go."
"They don't need all of us there." He managed a faint grin. "Hell, we'd give the whole staff heart attacks." He took hold of his sister's shoulders. "I'll call you. I'll go and see how he's doing, take care of Mom and I'll get back to you. If she wants you there now, I'll say so. But it won't do any good being there, dragging the kids. If you'll keep Zack…"
Milly hesitated, but CJ.'s crying apparently got to her and she was looking a little pale. Morning sickness kicking in early, he imagined. Finally she nodded. "You'll call?"
"I promise."
He found his mother pacing in the corridor outside the ICU.
She ran to Deke the minute she saw him. "He didn't come home!"
"What?"
She clutched at his arm. "He went back to the store when he left the gallery. Said he still had work to do. He didn't come home and I … I went to bed! I didn't know! When I woke up just before two, he w-wasn't there! I called the store and he didn't answer. I got in the car and went over there. He was l-lying on the f-floor!"
She sobbed then, and Deke wrapped her in his arms and held her tight and said what he hoped were the right things. "But you found him, Ma. You got to him in time. It's gonna be okay. He isn't going to die."
They paced the corridor together the rest of the night. Nurses and doctors went in and came out. "So far so good," one told them.
Finally, just before dawn the doctor stopped to talk. "He's holding his own," he told them, patti
ng Deke's mother's hand.
"He's not—" but she couldn't even ask the question.
The doctor smiled his best professional, encouraging smile. "We'll know more when we can run some tests. The next twenty-four hours are critical."
"Can we see him?" Deke asked.
"Five minutes."
His mother might have known what to expect. She'd seen this before. Deke hadn't. It was a hell of a shock. His father lay, gray and lifeless looking, shrunken under the sheet. With his eyes closed and his mouth open, he looked a hundred years old. He looked dead.
Deke stopped abruptly, but his mother moved forward resolutely, going to stand by the bed. She reached for her husband's hand and folded it in hers.
His eyelids flickered, then opened. His mouth moved, but Deke heard no words.
"I love you," Carol told him, through her tears. "We'll beat this," she promised. "We beat it before." She squeezed his hand. "See, John. Deke's here."
His father's gaze flickered toward the doorway and found him. Their gazes met—which was more than they'd done last night, Deke thought. He also thought, Throw me out, I dare you. But of course he didn't say it.
His father's gaze slid away, back toward his mother. "Store?"
Deke ground his teeth. Naturally. What else would he be thinking about?
Carol patted his hand. "Don't worry. Milly will open."
"No, she won't," Deke said flatly.
At his words, both his parents' gazes swiveled toward him, their expressions shocked.
"Milly's home puking her guts out," he went on. "She's morning sick, in case you didn't know. Besides that, she's got C.J. and the job at Poppy's and more than enough to worry about without the damn store."
"Oh, dear!" His mother looked shocked at the news, and then censorious for the way he'd broken it. "Well then, I can—"
"You can't, Mom," Deke said. "You don't know the first thing about it." She'd taken care of the house. His father's life had been the store. "Besides, you should be here where the doc can talk to you if he needs to."
"Dori…" his father said faintly.
"Probably just got home after having driven most of the night. She isn't turning around and coming back."
"Then I—"
"Oh, yeah, right," Deke said. "You're just going to get up out of your hospital bed and open the doors at eight o'clock." He met his father's glare with a defiant one of his own. "I'll open the store."
"You?" His father's voice might have been weak, but it dripped disbelief.
"I think I know how," he said with an edge to his voice.
"Well, of course, dear," his mother said nervously. "But … are you sure?"
"I'm sure."
"Thought you were leaving," his father said.
"I was. I'm not now."
"But you hated the store," his mother began.
"I hated being told it was going to be my life's work." Deke's eyes never left his father's. "No one had a right to make that decision for me. But I can work there for a while. Until you're ready to come back."
Tell me no now, he said silently, and I'm gone and I'm never coming back.
But his father didn't say no. He said, "Why?"
Their gazes locked, dueled. Deke jammed his hands into his pockets and glared. "Think about it," he said finally. "Maybe you'll figure it out."
He turned on his heel and walked out then. He went to the store and opened it, wondering what the hell task he'd set himself even as he was fiercely determined to do it. He expected to feel the same oppressive revulsion he'd felt all those years ago the minute he set foot inside it.
In fact, he didn't. The store seemed smaller. More quaint. Less formidable. And he felt confident. Determined. And capable. Not powerless as he'd often felt all those years ago.
Which just went to show what growing up could do.
He prowled around, checking things out, discovering that little had changed. His dad being basically a traditionalist, there wasn't any newfangled, computer-driven cash register to figure out. No one scanned bar codes in Malone's Grocery.
He got cash from the bank, filled the meat counter from the cold storage, then swept the floor as his dad had always done every day before opening. Evelyn Richards, who had worked as the checker since Deke was a boy, arrived on time and was shocked to see him. He explained about his father. That shocked her, too.
"And you're going to run things?" she asked over and over.
"I'm going to run things, Evie."
It was two minutes to eight when he flipped the sign in the door to Open. Minutes later Old Lady Larrimer came in. "Why, Deke Malone? My heavenly days! Is that you?"
He grinned crookedly, "It's me, Mrs. Larrimer."
Deke coped all day. And when Milly finally dropped in with C.J. and Zack at five, he was still coping, cutting pork chops for a customer as if he'd done it every day of his life.
"I came to see if you'd survived," she said.
"I survived." Deke handed the man the package of chops.
She eyed him warily. "What about Monday? What about next week? Should we find someone?"
"We'll hire someone to help," Deke said. Because his father would need that, regardless, when he recovered enough to go back to work. "But I'm staying."
He sat in Erin's kitchen an hour later and said it again. "I'm staying," he told her. "To help out. To run the store. I ran it today."
At least Erin didn't doubt. She didn't say, "You?" in an astonished tone of voice, even though she probably had more right to than anyone.
"Of course you're staying," she said. "Of course you'll help." As if it were a given. "And it will be easy. You'll be right there nearby, at your folks."
"Well, actually, that's the thing," he said awkwardly, rubbing a hand through his hair. He'd given it a lot of thought all the way up here. "I don't want to stay at my folks. While he's still in the hospital my mother will need to be there and I won't have any place for Zack. And when he comes home, I can't see it working—not me there with my dad, not to mention having a toddler around."
Erin nodded. "Yes," she said. "I see your point."
"I could stay at Milly's but the house is really small. We've been on the sofa, Zack and I, since we got there. And Milly's been so morning sick…"
"Right, I forgot about that. Poor Milly."
"Exactly." He waited, smiling optimistically, hoping the penny would drop. But Erin just stood there silent as a post, and finally he had to ask, "So what if we stayed with you?"
* * *
Chapter 7
« ^ »
No!
The word screamed inside Erin's head. In fact, she was so stunned by his request that her lips seemed welded shut.
The news of his father's heart attack had shocked her. Deke's decision to stay and run the store, while certainly admirable, brought her up short. She'd been convinced he was leaving today, that's why she'd dared make love with him last night. And now he was going to stick around?
And he wanted to stay with her?
Good God Almighty!
"I'll be happy to pay you for rooms," he said when she didn't speak.
As if that was the problem!
"I'm not—you don't—we're not a B and B!" she managed, stumbling over her words.
"I know that. But you've got extra rooms, and you said you were thinking about it the other night."
"I said that?" Well, yes, she probably had. "But it's not official! We don't even have an extra upstairs bathroom."
Deke shrugged. "I'm used to sharing."
There were other reasons—lots of reasons!—not to agree. But before she could articulate any of them, there was real pounding of feet on the steps outside this time. And the back door flew open and Gabriel, Sophie and Nicolas burst into the room.
"Zack!" Sophie was clearly thrilled, swooping down on the little boy who beamed just as happily at her. "What are you doing here? I thought you left."
"Change of plans. We're going to be here awhile," Deke answer
ed for him. "My dad had a heart attack. He's in the hospital and I'm going to be running the grocery store."
Sophie looked dismayed. "I'm sorry about your dad. But I'm glad you're going to be here. Maybe I can baby-sit Zack sometime?"
Oh, don't. Don't do this, Erin pleaded silently with her daughter. But it was clearly too late.
"Maybe you can," Deke said. "I was talking to your mother about staying here."
Unfair, Deke. And from the speculative look on his face, Erin knew he knew it, too.
"Here?" Sophie's eyes were like saucers, and Erin could almost see the wheels spinning in her brain.
"And I was explaining how I'm really not prepared for bed-and-breakfast guests at the moment," Erin said firmly.
"But he wouldn't be a guest," Sophie protested. "He's a friend."
"We have one bathroom upstairs," Erin reminded her. "Who is it who's always yelling at her brothers to hurry up?"
"Well," Sophie said with a toss of her head, "they should. And when Deke and Zack stay, they'll have to. Besides, they could go downstairs and use the one down here."
"Or we could," Deke offered.
"Or you could," Erin said pointedly to her daughter.
"And I will if I have to while Deke and Zack are here." Sophie was all accommodation now. "So, great. It's settled!"
"I don't—" Erin began.
"Then we can watch the Raiders stunt video," Gabriel said suddenly, and he actually sounded eager to do so.
Nicolas's eyes lit up. "Do you like it, too?" he asked Deke just as eagerly. "It's my favorite."
"Cool," Nicolas cheered. "So, he can stay then, right, Mama?"
Erin could feel the ground sliding away beneath her. She hadn't seen Gabriel look so eager for anything since the day Jean-Yves took him sailing. And Nicolas and Sophie were clearly for it. But they hadn't once been in love with him. He hadn't spent last night in their beds!
She made one last-ditch attempt. "The rooms aren't ready. I stripped the wallpaper off today. I scrubbed the walls. They're still wet. They smell like paste. The rooms are bare."
"We can move in furniture," Nicolas said.
The Cowboy's Christmas Miracle Page 10