Daughter on His Doorstep

by Janis Reams Hudson

  By the time Trey left for home it was nearly lunchtime, and he was in a foul mood. Thinking about cattle rustlers would do that to a rancher, but most of his irritability came from Jack’s crack about Trey being in love with Laurie.

  Of course he wasn’t in love with her.

  In lust, yeah. He would have to admit that—but not to his brothers, by damn.

  He liked her, certainly. Respected and admired her. Adored her daughters. And the thought of them leaving in a couple of weeks left him feeling as if he were staring into a gaping black tunnel that was his future.

  But that wasn’t love. He’d been there, done that and had the scars to prove it. He wasn’t any good at love, and if he was going to be honest with himself, the thought of opening up to Laurie and taking the chance that she didn’t return his feelings left his stomach in icy knots.

  No way. He wouldn’t do that to himself again.

  He supposed it was perverse of him that when he got home for lunch, he was almost glad Laurie didn’t seem to be in any better mood than he was.

  Nothing much seemed to have changed by the time supper rolled around. She didn’t seem angry. She was fine with the girls. But she wouldn’t look at him. Not in the eye. He wondered why, but figured maybe he was better off not knowing.

  Coward.

  Yeah, well…maybe.

  Yet, despite his own inner demons and whatever was eating at Laurie, they ended up together in Katy’s room after Carrie and Amy went to bed.

  “I’m just changing her,” Laurie said when he stopped in the doorway.

  “Way to go, sweet pea,” Trey said to his daughter. “I just changed you a half hour ago, now you’re making Laurie do it.”

  “Yeah, well,” Laurie said. “Just tell your daddy that that’s what babies are supposed to do.”

  “Supposed to?” Trey asked, feeling some of the tension of the day ease out of his shoulders. Part of the easing, he knew, was caused by being with Katy. But another part was Laurie. He wondered what that meant.

  “Of course, Daddy,” Laurie said on Katy’s behalf. “Say, that’s my job. I’m supposed to go through as many diapers as I can before you potty train me. It’s a rule.”

  “A rule, huh?”

  “Yep. A baby rule. There you go, young lady.” Laurie stuck the last tab in place, then rearranged Katy’s pajamas. “All set to say good night?”

  Katy’s answer was a big yawn.

  Trey grinned. “That’s my girl.”

  “Obedient little thing, isn’t she,” Laurie said.

  Laurie turned to leave, while Trey kissed his daughter good-night. “Sweet dreams, sweet pea.”

  He wondered, when he stepped into the living room, if Laurie would be there, of if she had gone on to bed. Alone.

  She was there. Just standing there in the middle of the room, with her back to him. Waiting for him? He hoped so.

  “Laurie?”

  She turned, and for the first time since that morning, when he’d left her with a blistering kiss, she looked him in the eye.

  He couldn’t ask. He didn’t have the words. So instead, he simply held out his hand and uttered a silent prayer that she would know how much he wanted her. That she wouldn’t notice his hand wasn’t quite steady.

  When he held out his hand, Laurie nearly sagged with relief. He’d been so distant tonight—but then, so had she, she admitted—that she’d wondered if he would want her again. The slight tremor in his hand and the question in his eyes gave her the answer she needed. She took his hand and walked with him down the hall to his bed.

  They made love that night, and the nights that followed, with an intensity bordering on desperation. Each time they came together, it was as if they knew their time was running out and they were trying to hold on to this magic for as long as they could.

  But they never talked about it. They simply held on to each other as tightly as possible during the night, and went on about their business during the day.

  Every night Trey could feel her slipping a little bit farther away from him, as if her mind had already turned toward Utah.

  “Dammit all to hell.” He was in the shed making some adjustments to the bailer he would use next week after he swathed the alfalfa and let it cure. At the thought of Laurie going back to Utah, he swore and threw his wrench at the wall.

  She was really going to do it. She was really going to just pack up and leave at the end of next week. Never mind that he still needed her to take care of Katy. Never mind that he still wanted her, desperately.

  He could offer her the job permanently. The thought had danced around in his head a time or two lately. But would she take it?

  Why should she? She had that teaching job that started soon. She must have worked damn hard for her teaching degree, going to college while raising two little girls. And they were about to move into their first house, right near the school where she would teach and her girls would attend classes. She was supposed to give that up for him?

  He tried to put himself in her place, but found he couldn’t. Not really. He didn’t know how a woman would feel about living with a man not her husband, raising her daughters in his house. Would people in town talk? Would she care if they did?

  He would care, dammit. He didn’t want people saying bad things about her, didn’t want Carrie and Amy gossiped about.

  And what if she did stay, and what if some man came along and asked her to marry him?

  There it was, the M word.

  Trey picked up a screwdriver and sent it the way of the wrench.

  By damn, if there was going to be any marrying going on around here, it was going to be him and—

  Good God. That was it. That was the answer. They could get married.

  Oh, yeah, like she’s going to say yes to you?

  Well, why wouldn’t she? She must care about him or she wouldn’t come so willingly to his bed every night, wouldn’t respond so sweetly and fiercely in his arms.

  And she liked him well enough, didn’t she? And the girls, well, he just plain adored them, and he figured they liked him okay. They’d been living as a family, all of them, for weeks. Why should that stop?

  From across the yard he heard the girls laughing, taking turns in the swing he’d hung for them in the old elm, to give them something to do around the tree besides climb it.

  Laurie must be in the house.

  With a rag from his hip pocket, he started wiping the grease off his fingers and strode toward the backdoor.

  He found her in the living room. She was seated in the rocker, feeding Katy.

  “How’s she doing?” he asked.

  “Gobbling it up, as usual,” Laurie said. “She’s growing like a weed, this girl is.”

  “Yeah, I know.” He dragged the ottoman over and sat down and watched his daughter nurse from her bottle.

  “Something on your mind?” Laurie asked.

  Trey wiped his palms down the thighs of his jeans. “Yeah. There is.”

  “She’ll be through in a few minutes, if you want to wait until I put her down.”

  “No, that’s okay. I can talk while she eats.” This was better, Trey thought. This way, with her arms full of baby, she couldn’t easily throw something at him if he messed this up and it came out all wrong.

  Laurie cocked her head. “Trey, what is it?”

  He pulled the ball cap from his head and stared at it for a long minute before looking back at her. “I’ve got a proposition for you.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  “This sounds serious,” Laurie said. In fact, he looked serious. Nerves started dancing along her spine.

  “It is.” He fiddled with his hat again. “And I want you to hear me out before you answer.”

  Now he was starting to worry her. “All right.”

  He rested his forearms on his thighs and let the hat dangle between his knees. He turned it this way, then that way, studying it as if it contained the answers to world hunger.

  “You’re going home soon,”
he finally said.

  Laurie felt her chest tighten. “That’s right.”

  He looked up at her. “What if you don’t?”

  She blinked. “What do you mean?”

  “You could stay, you know. I don’t mean as my housekeeper. That wouldn’t work for long. There’d be too much talk about you and the girls living with me, and I don’t want that for you or Carrie and Amy.”

  Laurie’s mouth dried out. “No. That wouldn’t be good for any of us.”

  “We could get married.”

  Laurie feared very much that she’d lost the thread of the conversation. She could have sworn he’d just said— “What?”

  “You know, the M word. Married.”

  She opened her mouth, but nothing came out.

  “Hear me out before you say anything,” he said in a rush. “Look. I know we’re not madly in love with each other or anything.”

  Something cold and hard settled in the pit of Laurie’s stomach. She thought maybe it was what was left of her heart.

  “But we’ve both been in love before, and it was a disaster, right? We like each other, respect each other, and God knows I worship Carrie and Amy like they were my own. I’d be willing to have more children if you were.”

  Again her mouth opened. She had to stop this madness somehow. But her voice refused to work.

  “Your daughters need a full-time father, Laurie, and Katy needs a mother. I don’t mean that’s the only reason we should get married, but it’s something to think about. And we’re good together, you and I. Even out of bed,” he added with a crooked smile. “But in bed, I told you the first time we made love that you’ve spoiled me for other women. I wasn’t joking. And no,” he said holding up his hand, “I don’t think we should get married just so we can sleep together. It’s all of it, don’t you see? Us, the kids, we’d be a family. There’s a hole in my life every bit as big as the hole in yours. We could fill that for each other. So that’s my proposition. That we get married.”

  “Trey, I—”

  “No.” Trey held up a hand to stop her. He couldn’t let her answer him yet. “Don’t say anything right now.” He could see in her eyes that if she answered now, she would say no. “Just think about it. You said you’d think about it.”

  He could see something else in her eyes, too. It was tears, gathering and getting ready to overflow, and if they did it would tear him to pieces.

  He pushed himself to his feet. “I’m going back out to the shed. See you at supper.”

  Laurie gaped at his back as he walked away. See you at supper? See you at supper? He just turned her entire world upside down, and he’d see her at supper?

  She let her head fall against the back of the rocker and closed her eyes, feeling the tears slide down her cheeks. “Katy, what am I going to do about that daddy of yours? He knew I was about to cry. The coward took off, that’s what he did.”

  And if she thought about it for half a second, she was grateful.

  Married. He thought they should get married. And if it wasn’t the oddest marriage proposal she’d ever heard of, she didn’t know what was.

  But he was being honest with her. That was his way. He could easily have told her he loved her, and she would have fallen all over him. She wondered if he knew that.

  God, she hoped not. She hoped the secrets of her heart were safe from those brilliant blue eyes.

  He wanted them to get married. He’d been serious. She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry—she’d just done that, hadn’t she?—or scream and throw something pricey and breakable.

  What he wanted was a companion, sex, hot meals and a baby-sitter.

  “Katy,” she said, sniffing the last of her tears away, “your daddy is a jerk.”

  Laurie did her best to nurse her irritation and outrage, although privately, throughout the afternoon and evening. The alternative was to curl up into a tight ball of pain and weep her eyes out.

  I know we’re not madly in love with each other or anything.

  “Speak for yourself,” she muttered.

  “Did you say something, Mama?”

  “What, Carrie? Oh. No. Just talking to myself.” And I’d better stop it. She’d been so involved with her own problems she’d completely forgotten for a moment that it was time for supper and the girls were setting the table.

  Somehow they made it through the meal. Laurie was even able to eat, although why she didn’t choke on her food she didn’t know. Her throat was so tight it was a wonder that anything went down.

  I know we’re not madly in love with each other or anything.

  Those words kept playing over and over in her head like the refrain of a well-known song.

  After the girls were asleep and Katy was down for the night, Laurie wanted to curl up in her bed alone and cry herself to sleep. But Trey stood there in the hall, waiting for her, holding out his hand. She wanted him so much, loved him so much, that she didn’t know which would hurt more, to walk away or to go with him to his bed.

  “I didn’t mean to make you angry,” he said quietly. “I just thought…hell, Laurie, the way you give yourself to me every night, you have to care something for me, don’t you?”

  Care for him? She nearly laughed. Care was such a pale word for what she felt. But could she spend the rest of her life with a man who didn’t love her and perhaps never would? And the more immediate question, could she spend another night in his arms?

  She wanted so much more for them than to simply fill a need in each other’s lives. More than to provide a family for their children. More than to ease the terrible loneliness she had lived with for longer than she cared to remember.

  She wanted him to love her. Wanted to be able to trust him, rely on him, give herself to him completely, body, heart and soul, and know that her trust was well placed and returned. She wanted to bask confidently in the love of the man she cherished.

  “Come.” Trey spoke gently and took her by the hand. He could see the struggle on her face, and it ate at him. She must care for him or her decision wouldn’t be this hard on her. So if she cared for him, what was holding her back? “Sit with me and talk.” He led her toward his room, but for once he didn’t have sex on his mind. Other parts of his body would just have to wait.

  “Talk?” she asked.

  “Talk.” In his room he closed the door and pulled her over to the bed. He sat and piled the pillows up behind him and pulled her down to rest in his arms. “Tell me what hurts so much.”

  “What makes you think anything hurts?”

  “Honey.” He used one finger beneath her chin to turn her face up to his. “You should see your face. You look like your best friend just died. Since you were fine before I asked you to marry me, I have to figure that’s causing you a problem.”

  “You don’t really want to get married, do you.” She made it a statement rather than a question.

  “I thought I didn’t. I came close once, and after that didn’t work out, I just figured marriage wasn’t for me.”

  “Do you realize that’s the most personal thing you’ve ever told me about yourself?”

  “It is?” He shrugged. “I don’t talk much about myself.”

  “Not even to the woman you say you want to marry?”

  She had him there. “Good point. Okay, what do you want to know?”

  “I’ve learned more about you from people at the grocery store in town than I have from you.”

  Trey narrowed his eyes. “What people?”

  “Mrs. Biddle, for one.”

  He chuckled. “I suppose she told you about the time I used my mother’s lipstick to draw a pair of big red lips on all the grapefruit.”

  “No, actually, she only told me about the trail of croutons you left. But I was supposed to ask you about the grapefruit. She’ll be proud that you confessed.”

  “All right, so you’ve heard about my misspent youth. What else do you want to know about?”

  Her gaze lowered, flicked up, then away. “Cindy.”


  That one took him by surprise. A nasty surprise. “Where’d you hear that name?”

  “That’s what Dane called the tall redhead who accosted me in Biddle’s the other day.”

  “Accosted you?” He sat up straight and nearly dumped her off the bed. “What do you mean, accosted you? If that—”

  “It was nothing physical, and I took care of it. But she informed me in no uncertain terms that…something about my never getting my hooks in you, or something. She said I’d never get you to marry me.”

  “Won’t she be surprised.”

  “Don’t change the subject.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Who is she to you, Trey?”

  He let out a long breath. “Okay. I’m not very good at this communication stuff. Cindy and I dated for a while.”

  “She indicated it was a lot more than that.”

  “I’m getting to it. We dated, and, jeez, this is embarrassing. I fell for her, okay? We decided to get married. Everything was going fine until about a month before the wedding when she started talking about places like Las Vegas and Acapulco and New York. I figured, sure, we could probably visit one of those places a year.”

  “Ah.”

  “Ah?”

  “Never mind. Keep going.”

  “Well, it turned out that she didn’t want to visit those places, she wanted to live in one or more of them. Expected me to sell my share of the ranch. Somewhere she got the idea that if I did, we’d have enough money to live on—in style—for the rest of our lives.”

  “And you said no.”

  “I said no.” Suddenly alarmed, he leaned sideways and looked at her. “Is that part of what’s bothering you? You don’t want to live out here in the middle of nowhere? Damn.” He sat up and buried his face in his hands. “I hadn’t thought of that. Damn.”

  “Trey, no. The ranch is not a problem. I love it here, you must know that.”

  “You do?”

  “Of course I do. So do the girls.”

  Trey let out a sigh of relief and lay down again, pulling her back against his side. In about a year his heart rate might settle down to normal. He didn’t even want to consider what he might have done if Laurie hadn’t wanted to live on the Flying Ace.