Marriage By Necessity

by Christine Rimmer

  Nate had just begun to contemplate the idea of marching in there and dragging Meggie out, when she emerged on her own. She had a shopping bag in her hand and a sweet, happy smile on her face.

  He knew for sure then: Cotes had been buttering her up.

  She spotted the GMC and shuffled over to it, then pulled open the passenger door and dragged herself up into the seat. She shut the door and turned her smile on him—not on purpose, just because he happened to be sitting there. “Thanks for waiting for me.”

  He glared at her. Her smile faded to nothing. He shoved the old pickup into reverse, making it lurch when he let off the clutch. Beside him, Meggie buckled her seat belt and looked straight ahead.

  She didn’t speak the whole way home—and neither did he. When they got to the house, he carried her groceries in without saying a word, then changed into work clothes, tacked up the bay mare he’d been using and set out to join Sonny in the South Pasture.

  For the next week, Nate avoided even minimal conversation with Meggie. He knew if he ever said more than a few words to her, he would say too much—about Cotes, as well as about the way she refused to take care of herself. Avoidance seemed to work pretty well. They shared a few testy exchanges, but somehow he managed to keep from losing it so bad they had a full-blown fight.

  Then on Wednesday, the sixteenth, a spring blizzard blew in. It came in fast, rolling down from the Big Horns, turning the world blind white in a matter of hours. All Nate, Sonny and Farrah could do was find their way back to the buildings and wait inside for it to below over.

  For the whole of that afternoon, they were stuck in the houses. Since Meggie had been handling most of the cooking lately, they gathered at her house until after dinner, playing checkers and double-deck pinochle, while the wind screamed outside and, beyond the windows, it looked like midnight in the middle of the day.

  The power went off around four, but it wasn’t a big problem. Sonny fought his way around the side of the house through the driving snow and got the generator going. Both houses and the outbuildings had electricity again by four-thirty. And there was plenty of wood in the lean-tos built against Meggie’s house and the bunkhouse. They could last indefinitely, cozy and warm inside, no matter how brutal the weather outside.

  But the calves were another story. A calf didn’t take the cold well. It’s short coat would quickly soak through. Unless it could huddle against its mother or find a sheltered spot out of the wind, a calf out on the range could freeze to death quickly in a bad spring storm.

  And Meggie was worried about how many of them this storm would take from her. She tried not to show it, since she was a practical woman and didn’t go around moaning when moaning would do no good anyway. But Nate felt her worry as if it were his own. He watched her, the way she would glance toward the windows when she thought no one was looking, as if she might at last see something beyond them but a wall of whirling white.

  She could usually wipe up the table with her opponents at pinochle—which was why Nate liked to partner up with her. But that day, she forgot which cards had been played and she got caught reneging twice.

  By the time evening rolled around and Sonny and his family had struggled across the yard to their own house, Nate was starting to think that he would go nuts watching her try to pretend she wasn’t half-crazed with anxiety. He found the whiskey bottle she kept in the pantry and poured himself a couple of fingers, just to settle his nerves a little.

  But then, when he went out to the living room and sat down to enjoy his drink, she was standing at the window, looking out at the darkness, and at the snow driving against the panes. His nerves started singing all over again, just looking at her.

  “You won’t. make it stop by staring at it,” he said, maybe a little too harshly.

  She turned, saw his drink and frowned.

  He dropped to the sofa and took himself a warming sip. Then he shrugged. “What?”

  She sighed. “I just don’t think you should start drinking now, that’s all.”

  “It’s one drink, Meggie. That’s all it is. One drink is not starting drinking.”

  She pressed her lips together and sighed again. “Fine. Whatever.” She turned and headed for the stairs.

  He raised his glass to her. “Right. Run off.”

  She stopped, smoothed her hand down her belly. She looked so frustrated and sweet and ripe he wanted to strangle her—or kiss her. Or both. “Let’s not get into it, Nate.”

  He leaned forward and set his glass on the coffee table in front of him. “Get into what?” he asked, as if he didn’t know.

  She shook her head. “There’s no point in talking to you.” She took another step toward the stairs.

  “Wait.”

  She glared at him—but she did stop. “I mean it, Nate. I don’t want to fight with you.”

  He rose. She looked so vulnerable, even with that angry frown on her face. He wanted to touch her. He wanted to—

  Her eyes widened. “Nate, don’t.”

  He’d moved to within a few feet of her. And out of nowhere, he heard himself asking the question that had been eating at him for days. “Last Friday, in town. Was Cotes there when you went in his store?”

  She shook her head and sighed. “Oh, Nate...”

  “Was he there? Just tell me.”

  She studied him for a moment, then admitted, “Yes.”

  “I knew it.”

  “Why are you looking at me that way? There’s nothing between Barnaby and me.”

  “Tell that to Barnaby.”

  “This is ridiculous.”

  “The hell it is. He’ll be after you, you know that, once I’m out of the picture. He’s going to think he’s got a chance with you, that you’re going to need a husband to help you raise our kid.”

  “Nate, stop it.”

  “I’m just telling you.”

  “Fine. I heard you. Now, let’s drop it.”

  “Will you say yes to him?”

  She made a low, incredulous sound in her throat. “I can’t believe you’re asking that. You have no right in the world to ask that.”

  She was right; he knew it. He’d let himself get completely out of hand here. The storm, her fear for the calves, all the damn tension caused by having to be near her and not being able to touch her, was finally pushing him over the edge.

  He made himself lift his shoulders in a lazy shrug. “Consider the question retracted.”

  She studied him for a long, bleak moment. Then she nodded. “Can I go to bed now?”

  “Go.”

  She turned and left him there, with his half-empty drink and the howling, lonely sound of the wind.

  By the next morning, the storm had blown on by. They woke to a white and silent world. The power had come on again, so Nate went out and turned off the generator. Then Meggie served him breakfast.

  Nate, Sonny and Farrah rode out with the sun, which shone harshly on the new snow, blinding them with its reflected glare. They found calves weak, sick and dying in the pastures, stretched out and stiff the way they got when the cold took them.

  Right away, they got three warming huts set up—sheds with propane heaters in them—in the pastures farthest from the home place. All day they loaded calves into the GMC and Meggie’s pickup and carried them to where they could get them warm.

  In the barn and the corral shed closest to the house, they had heaters going steadily. Meggie worked as hard as the others, tending the calves they brought in to her.

  By the end of the day, they were all about to drop from exhaustion. But the situation with the calves didn’t look as bad as they had thought at first. Most of the them were at least a week or two old, ready and able to suck again as soon as they got warmed up. In general, it turned out that if a calf was still breathing when they got to it, it survived. After they warmed it up, it could be turned right back to its mother—given that its mother could be found, which wasn’t always the case.

  Orphaned calves meant more hand feedi
ng, at least until they found a cow that would take on the motherless one. And though the season had started to wind down, there were still a few day- and two-day-old calves. Even after they’d been next to a propane heater for a while, some of them wouldn’t suck.

  Which meant that at nine-thirty that night, Meggie was still out in the shed. She had her fingers down the throat of a big newborn Charolais-cross, trying to get him to take a little nourishment.

  Nate worked right beside her, feeding another of the calves, one that seemed to be doing pretty well. Once the calf Nate was tending had finished eating, he took a minute to make it comfortable in the straw under one of the heat lamps.

  Then he went to stand above Meggie. “It’s time to turn in.”

  She looked up at him, her eyes flat with exhaustion. “You go on.”

  “Meggie—”

  “I won’t be but a few minutes. Really.”

  He didn’t believe her. She’d stay out here all damn night, more than likely. But he was too tired himself to argue with her.

  “Come in soon. Or I’ll come out and get you.”

  “I told you. A few minutes, that’s all.”

  He decided to take her word for it and left her there, with that half-dead calf. It seemed as if it took every ounce of energy he had left to drag himself into the house and trudge upstairs, where he stripped and stood under the shower for a while.

  When he came out, all he wanted to do was fall across a bed and not get up for a year or two.

  But he knew that woman too well. He hadn’t heard her come in. Because she hadn’t come in.

  Muttering crude things to himself, he pulled on his boots and yanked on his jacket and went out across the frozen yard to drag her bodily back to the house, where she belonged.

  He found her sitting in the straw, the calf’s limp head on her knees.

  She looked up at him. “He died,” she said. “He just gave a big, tired breath and that was it. His eyes rolled back.” She looked down at the sprawled body, then put her hand against the neck, as if some flutter of pulse might still beat there. “Such a waste.” She shook her head, stroking the smooth hide. “A waste of a fine animal.”

  Nate understood. It wasn’t the death so much. A rancher lived with death, day in, day out. In the end, a rancher fought for the lives of his animals—in order to take those lives.

  But Meggie had a good touch and a powerful will. She had put her mind and heart and hands into saving this animal. For nothing.

  He dropped to his haunches beside her in the straw. “You’re beat. It seems worse than it is, you’re so tired.”

  She just went on slowly stroking the calf’s neck.

  “Meggie.”

  Still, she kept up that stroking, dried milk gleaming like snail tracks along her arm. Raising her other hand, she waved absently at the air. “Leave me alone. I’m okay. I’ll be in soon.”

  “Meggie...”

  “I mean it. Go.”

  “No. You’re coming in.”

  Her hand stopped its stroking for a fraction of a second. And then she shrugged. The stroking began again, a total dismissal of him and his demand.

  His anger, always right beneath the surface lately, rose up. His blood felt hot in his veins. He controlled the heat, channeling it into determination.

  Damn her, she would do his will in this.

  Slowly, deliberately, he reached out and put his hand on the back of her neck, below where she’d anchored her hair out of the way.

  She stiffened. He held on.

  The smoothness and warmth of her skin stunned him. The little hairs at her nape felt like the softest strands of purest silk.

  God. How long had he kept himself from touching her?

  Too damn long.

  She batted at his hand. “Don’t.”

  He kept his hand right where it was. His blood pounded in his veins, a primitive, possessive rhythm. “Come inside. Now.”

  She looked up at him then, her eyes widening, the flat, defeated exhaustion turning to something else. Something that burned him even as it surrendered to him.

  “Nate...”

  “Now.”

  “I don’t want—”

  “Now.”

  He felt her shudder—and then give in completely, the stiffness leaving her as she relaxed under his hand. Carefully, tenderly, she eased the calf’s head from her knees and onto the bed of straw beneath them. The cow she’d milked to do the feeding shifted nervously nearby. She gave it a look. “Easy,” she whispered. “It’s okay, now.”

  “Meggie.” He rubbed his thumb on her nape.

  She turned her big eyes on him. “What?”

  “At some point, you’ve got to let it go.”

  “I know.”

  He gave a tug, to pull her close. She sighed and drooped against him, her head fitting into his shoulder, her arm finding its way around his waist.

  “So tired,” she murmured.

  He stroked her hair. “It’s all right. All right....” He kissed her forehead. “Come on, now. Let’s go in.”

  He helped her to stand. Once on her feet, she leaned heavily on him and glanced blankly around her at the heat lamps suspended from the roof of the shed, at the three other calves still recovering from the effects of the blizzard the night before—all orphans, as far as they knew now.

  “Everything’s fine,” Nate told her.

  She looked down at the sprawled, lifeless body of the Charolais calf. “We should—”

  “I’ll see that it’s taken care of. In the morning.”

  “I just wish—”

  “Shh. Let’s go.”

  She acquiesced to be led by him, out into the icy spring night, across the yard and into her house.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Inside, he helped her out of her jacket and hung it by the door, shrugging out of his own and hooking it there, too. He sat her down and took her dirty boots from her. Then he led her up to the room they had shared in the summer.

  In the bathroom there, he removed the rest of her clothes, peeling them off swiftly, letting them fall to the tiles at her feet. Her eyes had gone blank on him again. She looked down at her big belly and her swollen breasts and then up at him, as if she wondered how she’d gotten there, in the bathroom with him, naked.

  He turned to the tub and worked the faucets, getting the water running and hot, then pulling the lever that would engage the shower nozzle. He tested the temperature and stepped back. “Get in.”

  She turned obediently to do as he’d told her.

  “Wait.”

  She stopped. He pulled her close to him and worked at the big tortoiseshell clip that held up her hair. The clip opened. The heavy, red-shot brown waves dropped to her shoulders. He couldn’t stop himself. He buried his face in the strands. They smelled of hay and milk, of dust and sweat. Of Meggie in her most elemental form.

  She made a small, questioning sound. He raised his head from the silky mass and smoothed it on her shoulders. “Go on. Get in. Wash your hair, too. Wash everything. You’ll feel better once you do.”

  She got in under the shower spray, pulling the curtain closed behind her. He leaned against the wall, watching her blurred shape through the semiopaque curtain. She took a long time. The room filled up with fragrant steam, warm and wet and soothing. He was there, holding her towel, when she pushed back the curtain and stepped, dripping wet, from the tub.

  He handed her the towel. As she dried herself, he got her heavy winter robe from the back of the door and held it up for her. She handed him the towel and slipped her arms into the sleeves of the robe. He moved behind her and began drying her hair.

  “Hungry?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “Just tired.”

  He dropped the towel atop the pile of discarded clothes. “Come on.”

  But she resisted.

  “What?” he asked.

  “My hair’s too wet. If I go to bed with it this way...” Her voice trailed off, as if she’d forgotten in
midsentence what she’d set out to say.

  “All right.” He got her blow-dryer from the little cabinet under the sink, feeling a strange kind of elation that he knew where it was, that he had been a true husband, at least for a while. One who knew the things a husband knows: where she kept her hair brush and her aspirin, her blow-dryer and the lipstick she so seldom wore.

  He plugged in the dryer and handed it to her.

  A few minutes later, he took it from her and put it away. Then he led her into the bedroom, where he switched on the lamp beside the bed.

  He pulled back the covers, smoothing them down. Once all was in readiness, he turned to her, untied the robe and took it away from her.

  Totally unconcerned about her own ungainly, pregnant nakedness—and so incredibly beautiful to him—she took a pillow from the pile at the head of the bed. He watched as she climbed in and curled up on her side, tucking the pillow under the heavy bulge of her stomach—for support, he realized.

  “Comfortable?” he asked.

  She made a low noise in the affirmative.

  He settled the covers around her. And that was it. The moment when he should leave her.

  But he couldn’t leave her.

  He backed up and dropped into the small armchair a few feet away. By the light of the lamp between them, he looked at her soft face. Her eyes seemed bruised, she was so tired. And her clean hair shone against the white pillowcase.

  Those bruised eyes held a deep sadness. “I don’t want to go on like this,” she whispered. “It hurts, Nate. And it makes me so tired.”

  He knew exactly what she meant. It hurt him, too. This forced closeness they lived in, the armed camp each inhabited in the same house, the hostility that grew between them, filling the echoing, lonely space left by the intimacy they had once shared.

  “I just want...to lie down with you.” The low words came out of him all by themselves. “Let me, Meggie. Let me do that. Tonight.” Some tiny part of him that still had scruples felt shame to ask such a thing of her.

  But not enough shame to keep him from asking.

  She sighed.

  “Meggie.”

  She closed her eyes—and then opened them again.