“Sure thing,” Jake said just before he took off.
He waited until he was sure the boy was out of earshot and then he spoke. “I don’t want you to feel you have to come next Saturday if you don’t want to.”
She laughed, amused. “Funny, I was going to tell you that you shouldn’t feel pressured into inviting us over next Saturday if you’d rather not.”
He looked at her in confusion. “What gave you the idea that I feel pressured?”
She would have thought that that was self-evident. “Well, for one thing, Jake didn’t exactly leave you any leeway.”
He nodded his head, giving her the point. And then raising one of his own. “I could point out the same thing in your case.”
That surprised her. “I don’t feel any pressure.”
“Neither do I,” he replied—and then found himself getting lost in her smile.
“Then I guess we’ll see each other Saturday,” Marina told him.
Anderson nodded his head ever so slightly. “I guess so.”
Had Jake not popped up just then, Sydney’s hat in his hand, Anderson would have given in to the sudden impulse that came over him to kiss Marina.
Lucky for him, Jake did pop up just then, Anderson thought.
The thing was, he didn’t exactly feel all that lucky about it.
Chapter Eleven
It was getting to be a habit, coming to Anderson’s ranch, Marina thought as she watched Jake play peekaboo with Sydney. A habit she had to admit that she looked forward to, maybe even a little more each time than the last.
She told herself not to, that she shouldn’t—but that didn’t change things. The rest of the week couldn’t go by fast enough for her.
This was their third weekend here—the invitation had been extended from just one day to two. In order to keep everything light and friendly, she and Sydney went home each Saturday night, only to return the following morning, even though Jake had innocently pointed out that it would be easier on her if she and her daughter just stayed on the ranch and spent the night.
And, she also had to admit, they were becoming closer. All of them. Although she had always tried to keep her professional life separated from her personal one, there was no way she could deny that she and Jake were getting closer.
As far as she and Jake’s father went, well, nothing was said but she could feel the barriers between them disintegrating. Despite all her promises to herself never to allow another man to get close enough to touch her soul, she knew it was happening with Anderson. Seeing his kindness to her daughter and watching the way he acted toward his son had done that—penetrated her once-impenetrable shield without so much as firing a single shot at it.
“Ms. Laramie.” The way Jake said her name made her realize that he’d already said it more than once and was now trying very hard to get her attention.
“Sorry,” Marina apologized. “I was thinking about something and I guess I just didn’t hear you. My mistake. What did I miss?”
“That’s okay, Ms. Laramie.” The look on the boy’s face told her that he would forgive her anything. “I just wanted to know if it was okay with you to give Sydney a ride in my wagon.” He indicated the bright red, shiny wagon that Anderson had brought out to the corral earlier. “I’ll prop her up in her car seat and I’ll go real slow,” Jake promised.
“Let me secure the car seat first,” Anderson interjected, taking part in the negotiations. “I’ve got some rope in the barn—if it’s all right with you,” he qualified, looking at Marina.
She had to admit that the prospect of what Jake was suggesting made her a little nervous, but she also knew that she couldn’t allow her overprotectiveness to get in the way of Sydney experiencing things.
“And you’re sure you’ll go slowly?” Marina asked the boy.
Jake nodded his head so hard, it looked as if it was bobbing. “Like a poky old turtle,” he told her, drawing a cross over his heart.
Marina laughed. She knew he was saying that for her benefit. “That doesn’t sound like it’ll be all that much fun for you.”
The corners of Jake’s eyes crinkled. “Oh, it will be,” he assured her, then confided, “I like hearing Sydney laugh.”
Marina smiled and tousled his hair fondly. “So do I, Jake, so do I.” It was little details like this that had allowed Jake to seep into her heart. “There’s nothing sweeter than the sound of innocent laughter.”
Anderson came out carrying what looked to be a leather harness instead of the rope he’d gone to fetch.
“I think this’ll work better in the long run,” he told Marina and then proceeded to secure Sydney’s car seat to his son’s wagon with the leather straps. Testing it to make sure that it wouldn’t suddenly come loose or that the wagon wouldn’t wind up tipping over if Jake pulled on the leather too hard, Anderson stepped back and looked at his handiwork, a satisfied expression on his face.
“You’re good to go, Jake,” he informed his son.
In response, Jake looked down at the infant in his wagon. “Here we go, Sydney. Hang on!” And then he looked up in Marina’s direction and lowered his voice in order to tell her, “I just said that to get her excited. I’ll go slowly, like I promised.”
The moment he began to pull the wagon, Sydney squealed with what sounded like sheer delight.
The whole scene completely warmed Marina’s heart.
She moved back, standing beside Anderson to watch her daughter being pulled along by her student.
Sydney made another happy noise.
“You know,” Marina said to the man beside her, thinking of the way her daughter had lit up this morning when she’d put her in her car seat and began to head out to the Dalton ranch, “if I didn’t know any better, I’d have to say that Sydney really looks forward to these outings on your ranch.”
Anderson was trying his best to concentrate on watching the children and blocking out his acute awareness of just how close he was standing to Marina.
He was also trying to block out the scent of her disturbingly arousing perfume before it completely undid him. He was also trying to deal with recurring, rather urgent thoughts that kept insisting on popping up in his head. Thoughts that had absolutely nothing to do with either his child or hers.
Just her.
He had to get a tighter rein on himself, Anderson thought impatiently, silently upbraiding himself.
“She’s not the only one,” Anderson replied, focusing strictly on what she had just said.
The next moment, when Marina looked at him quizzically, he realized what his words must have sounded like to her. He didn’t want Marina thinking he was coming on to her, especially when he was busy fighting those very inclinations.
“I mean Jake.” He cleared his throat, then continued, “I was talking about Jake’s looking forward to you and Sydney coming over.”
She’d been wrong, Marina thought, thinking that Anderson might actually have some small, budding feelings for her. She’d misread each and every sign.
Marina felt like an idiot. She searched for a way to save a little face, as well as a shred of her own self-esteem.
“You’re a good father,” she told him, doing her best to sound natural, yet somewhat removed, “putting up with things just to make Jake happy.”
“Things?” Anderson echoed. She’d lost him again. He was getting better at understanding female-speak, but right now, he wasn’t following her train of thought. Just what was she talking about?
“Well, yes.” When she saw that Anderson still didn’t seem to understand her subtle reference, she patiently spelled it out for him. “Sydney and me.”
It took Anderson a couple of seconds to put two and two together. She thought he didn’t want her here, he thought, astonished.
“What makes you think
I’m ‘putting up’ with you?” He knew that he wasn’t exactly the warm, outgoing type, but he was fairly certain that he hadn’t said anything to offend her—or at least, he hadn’t meant to offend her.
Marina looked at him. Did the man actually need it spelled out for him, or was he just pretending to be clueless? Since men could very easily be clueless, she gave him the benefit of the doubt.
“Well, you just went to some great lengths to make it clear that it was Jake who was looking forward to our visits. What that implies is that you aren’t looking forward to them.” She looked at him, daring Anderson to contradict that.
For his part, Anderson could only stare at her incredulously. How the hell had she arrived at that conclusion? Especially since the exact opposite was true—and that in itself was what really worried him. He had caught himself looking forward to Marina’s visits—and he knew that ultimately wasn’t good.
“You’re putting words into my mouth,” he told her with a touch of annoyance—then softened his tone just a tad. He didn’t want her thinking he was some surly ogre, easily offended by the use of the wrong word. “Trust me, if I didn’t want you here, I would have said so—and you wouldn’t have been here.”
Marina looked at him, trying to comprehend what Anderson was actually telling her. She was getting some very mixed signals.
A small frown curved the corners of her mouth as Marina tried to get what was going on straight in her mind.
“So you’re not not looking forward to our visits?” she concluded. She watched his expression to see if she’d guessed correctly.
“Isn’t that some kind of a double negative? Those are supposed to cancel each other out, right?” he asked, then went on to confess almost a little sheepishly, “Grammar wasn’t exactly my best subject in school.”
That had to have been hard for him to admit, Marina realized. The man had a great deal of pride. She did what she could to put him at ease.
“It usually isn’t anybody’s best subject,” she told her host. “But yes, to answer your question, a double negative does cancel itself out, making the answer a positive one.”
He nodded, appreciating that she hadn’t talked down to him when it could have been so easy for her to do that, given her educational background.
“I thought so,” Anderson murmured, then went on to say a little more audibly, “And for the record, I do like having you come by with the baby. I enjoy watching her light up and respond to riding on Fury and the dozen and a half other things she’s been encountering.”
He looked a little wistful. “I missed all that with Jake,” he told Marina, not entirely realizing that he was allowing the sadness he felt over that to come through. “Missed watching him grow, watching him respond to things for the first time.” His expression grew even more wistful as he spoke. “All the things that parents wind up taking for granted I never got to experience. I guess I’m trying to recapture that by watching Sydney do all those ‘firsts.’”
Anderson paused for a moment, as if weighing whether or not to say what he wanted to say next. “And I guess that I really feel as if I’d been cheated,” he admitted bluntly.
His words touched her. She knew how she’d feel if for some reason, her daughter had been withheld from her and she’d been unable to take part in Sydney’s formative years.
Her empathy for what Anderson had to be going through grew.
As she watched Jake slowly make his way to the far end of the corral, she lightly touched Anderson’s arm to get his attention—and just maybe to form a little more of a bond.
When he turned his head to look at her, Marina said, “I know it won’t begin to make up for it, but feel free to experience as much as you can with Sydney.”
He had no idea what made him do what he did next. Maybe it was motivated by what Marina had just said, or maybe it was the look in her eyes, a mixture of sympathy and understanding.
Or maybe it was just the woman, standing beside him at the right time, the right place.
Most likely, it was a combination of all of that plus the ache of loneliness that seemed to have taken up permanent residence in his chest. Surrounded by his siblings, his son and the rest of his extended family, not to mention being involved with more physical labor than he could shake a proverbial stick at, by evening’s end he still felt very much alone—with the prospect of remaining that way.
It wasn’t a prospect that filled him with any sort of even mild joy.
Most of the time, he could put up with it, block it from his mind or ignore it outright. But right now, at this moment, it was different. Right now, that loneliness ate up his oxygen and punched holes in his resolve.
And before he knew what he was doing, that loneliness was making him do it. Making him take Marina into his arms and bring his mouth down to her very tempting one.
It was, he realized, as if he had no choice in the matter. As if somewhere, in some giant book in the sky, this was written down as being inevitable, as needing to happen in order for the rest of the world to go on spinning on its axis.
Because if he didn’t do this, if he didn’t kiss her, then the world as it existed, as everyone knew it, would cease to be.
Anderson truthfully didn’t know who was more caught off guard and surprised by the action—him, or Marina.
What he was even more surprised at was that Marina didn’t pull away. On the contrary, she seemed to melt right into him, as if she had been waiting for this, as if she had known, once it happened, that it had to happen.
The second their lips touched, he was completely undone. Marina tasted exactly as he knew she would. She tasted of everything wondrous, spellbinding and life-affirming. And something akin to strawberries.
And he wanted more.
So very much more than he could have right at this moment.
Anderson heard her moan against his lips and excitement shot up through the roof, going from high up to completely immeasurable.
All he knew was that it was completely off the charts and far more disturbing and yet more wonderful than anything he had ever experienced or even could possibly anticipate experiencing.
He knew he should stop. A grown man would have called a halt to this even before it had begun—or at the very least, a moment after it had started.
But all he wanted to do was hang in there—hang on for dear life and savor the completely uncharted territory he had fallen, headfirst, into.
The thought gave him no peace. He had to stop. Now, before it got out of hand. Before his son made it back to where he had started his journey and saw him lip-locked with his teacher. He knew how Jake felt about his teacher—the boy had a huge crush on her—and he didn’t want to be the source of heartache for his son.
A second longer, Anderson told himself, just one tiny second longer.
He wanted to remain lost in her kiss for just a second longer and then he’d pull away. No harm in letting this continue just a couple of heartbeats longer, right?
Or maybe longer than that?
“Dad, are you and Ms. Laramie getting married?” Jake asked excitedly.
And just like that, the question shattered the exquisite moment he had been sharing with Marina.
Chapter Twelve
He didn’t remember doing it, didn’t remember separating himself from the woman he’d just been kissing. One moment his lips were firmly pressed against hers, the next, with his son’s voice ringing in his head, Anderson found himself suddenly springing away from her as if he’d just been poked—hard—by a cattle prod.
Flushing, struggling to regain his bearings, Anderson looked down at his son.
“What?” And then the boy’s question replayed itself in his head. “No,” he cried with feeling.
The word vibrated with such intensity that Marina felt as if she’d just been roughly
slapped by the man who had just seconds earlier stirred such a wondrous kaleidoscope of feelings in her head. Feelings and sensations that caused her, just for that single instant, to actually forget all the promises that she’d made to herself regarding ever, ever letting her guard down.
She’d forgot that she wasn’t supposed to.
But the abrupt coldness in Anderson’s heartfelt denial that there was anything remotely in the offing as far as their future went swiftly brought reality crashing down all around her.
Marina felt as if she was suddenly standing in a field of ashes.
Somehow, she managed to recover, not for her own sake, but for Jake’s. She’d heard the note of hope in the boy’s voice. She didn’t want him crushed—or led astray.
“Your father’s right, dear,” she assured the boy, sounding a little formal in order to keep her hurt from breaking through.
“Then why was he kissing you?” Jake wanted to know, regarding them suspiciously, as if he wasn’t sure whether or not his father was telling him the truth.
“People kiss without getting married, Jake,” she told him, her voice deliberately breezy. “It happens all the time.” She spared Anderson a look. “It doesn’t mean a thing.”
Anderson couldn’t tell if she was letting him off the hook because of Jake, or if she was really being serious and putting him on notice that the kiss had meant less than nothing to her.
Either way, he knew he should be relieved—except he wasn’t. He felt guilty because he was fairly certain that there were still hurt feelings involved. He was really sorry if there were, but there was nothing he could do about that—at least not without compromising himself in front of his son.
This was getting way too complicated. He had more than he could handle just trying to navigate these new turbulent fatherhood waters. He had no room for the kind of baggage having a girlfriend created. Never mind that she could be something more than that, that somewhere in his misbegotten soul he might even want her to be more than that.
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