Her father hadn’t believed in throwing things away, she’d told Ethan, and this spare bedroom was testament to the truth in that statement. She started with the nearest box and began building two piles near the stairs—to give away and to throw away. She couldn’t imagine that she might conceivably need a third pile for things to keep. She wanted nothing of Jed’s for herself, certainly not for her baby.
She was seated on the bed and making serious headway on the mess when she lifted out an old mixer from the box in front of her. The plastic housing was badly melted, the cord neatly cut off, the warranty and instruction manual taped to the side.
“It’s amazing what a person thinks is worth saving.”
She glanced at Ethan, standing in the doorway with a glass of ice water. She’d been so lost in the junk that she hadn’t heard him pass, hadn’t heard his footsteps on the stairs that always creaked. “My mother was making a cake one day—devil’s food. That was his favorite.” She smiled thinly at the appropriateness of that. “She mixed the batter, then set the mixer aside while she got the cake in the oven and took care of some other things. Somehow the mixer fell onto the stove, near a burner that was on. Before long, she smelled the melting plastic. She didn’t even try to hide it from him. When he came home from work, it was sitting at his place at the table. He took one look at it, then took a knife from his pocket, cut off the cord and beat her with it. It couldn’t have cost ten or twelve dollars new—hell, he sold them in the store—but he beat her for damaging it.”
“Where were you?”
“I ran to my room and hid in the closet. I used to hold my fingers in my ears and sing really loud to drown out their voices. The first time he got angry with me after she left, I hid there, and when he found me, we came to an understanding that I wouldn’t do that again.”
“What kind of understanding?” Ethan’s voice sounded dark, threatening, but she didn’t feel threatened. She felt…safe, in a way she’d never been before. Maybe it was because she knew she would never have to hide in fear from another man again.
Or maybe it had something to do with him.
“He didn’t hit me. He’d never needed to. I’d learned enough watching and listening to him beat my mother that I never gave him cause to hit me—at least, not until that day in the store. We just had a talk. He told me how I would act, what I would think, what I would do, what I would say and what would happen if I didn’t. And I agreed.”
“That’s a hell of a way to grow up.”
“Yes, it is,” she murmured, and for a moment, her fingers tightened around the mixer. She wanted to throw it, to hear it smack hard against something. But when Ethan took hold of it and pulled, she let him slide it from her grip. She wasn’t the throwing, smacking-hard type. She didn’t want to be.
He tossed it into the trash pile in the hall, then came back to crouch in front of her. “I’ve never hit a woman in my life, Grace. I don’t have much of a temper, and when I do get angry, I usually go off by myself until I cool down.”
She had never considered herself a terrific judge of character, mostly because she’d never been allowed much contact with people, but she believed him—and not just because Nadine Harris had raised her boys right. Some men were violent. Most weren’t. She would bet everything she’d learned in the last seven months that Ethan was in the latter group.
“If I’d thought you were like him, I never would have gone near you,” she said awkwardly. Looking away from him, she glanced at the rest of the contents of the box—all junk—then folded the flaps and lifted it onto her lap. She couldn’t stand up, though, because he remained where he was.
“Why did you?”
Her fingers tightened around the box. “I told you…”
“You told me why you were in the bar. It was the first time you’d been free of Jed’s control and you wanted to experience everything you could. But why me? You knew who I was. You knew my reputation. There were plenty of other guys in the bar who would have been more than happy to buy you a drink, dance with you and make love with you. Why me?”
She scooted around, preparing to ease onto her feet and into the small space left open to her, then past him and out of the room. He stopped her, though, by taking a secure hold on the box, blocking her exit.
With nothing but the smallish box between them, she looked up at him. She’d never seen him look bad a day in his life, and that day was no exception. His blond hair was a little shaggy, but a little shaggy was as flattering to him as any style could be. She supposed most people would consider his eyes to be an average blue, but to her they were exactly the shade of her favorite blue. She liked the stubborn line of his jaw, the shape of his mouth, the cockiness of his grin, the straight perfection of his nose, the golden-brown hue of his skin.
He was handsome. Incredibly, perfectly so.
And she was so imperfectly plain.
Why me? he wanted to know. She gave a soft sigh. “Because I knew who you were. I remembered you from grade school, middle school, high school. You didn’t remember me at all, not as Melissa, not as Grace, but you were coming on to me, anyway. After sixteen years of not even registering in your consciousness, I liked that you had not only noticed me, but you…” She moistened her lips, but couldn’t bring herself to finish.
“Wanted you,” he supplied, his voice huskier than it had been a moment ago. Raising his hand, he touched her hair so lightly she wasn’t sure she felt it, then let the tips of his fingers skim along her jaw. “I wanted you.”
The desire to close her eyes and turn her cheek against his hand, to rub back and forth and purr like a besotted cat, was almost too great to resist. But she managed, and managed to shake her head, too, dislodging his fingers. “You wanted Melissa, and she—she doesn’t exist.”
His mouth quirked in a grin that was gently teasing. “Someone was there, darlin’, kissing me and rubbing against me and making me hot everywhere she touched. If Melissa doesn’t exist, then it must have been you.”
The furnace had been running too long. Suddenly, in one instant, the temperature in the bedroom had become almost unbearable. Grace couldn’t remember ever getting so warm so fast.
At least, not since last summer.
“Grace, it doesn’t matter what name you called yourself, or that you fixed your hair differently or wore someone else’s clothes. It was still you in that motel room with me. It was you in that bed. We have proof of that.” He rested his hand gently on her stomach, then pulled away. It wasn’t long enough to get more than a vague sensation of pressure, of warmth, but it felt like so much more. It felt momentous. Significant. Incredible.
“The woman in bed with me that night… That’s who I wanted. And that was you. You can’t deny it—” His expression shifted, became grimmer. “Well, you can, but not to me. Everyone else would believe you, but I know better.”
For a moment, he held her gaze, and though she wanted very much to look away, she couldn’t. Finally, though, he broke the contact, then tugged the box away from her. “Trash?”
All she could do was bob her head in response.
He didn’t settle for taking it into the hall, but instead carried it downstairs and outside. A moment later he returned, but he didn’t head back to work. Once again he stopped in the doorway, looking decidedly uncomfortable. “If that’s what you want to do…it’s okay.”
“If what…?”
His discomfort level increased a degree. “Deny it. If you want to tell people that we know each other from school or that you hired me to do some work around here. If you want to tell them…” He breathed deeply, then continued in a rushed, taut voice. “If you want to tell them they’re wrong when they ask if I’m the baby’s father. If you want to deny it for her sake, for your sake. It’s—it’s all right. I understand.”
Before she could respond, he disappeared from the doorway, returning to the other room to work again.
Grace sank down on the mattress once more, feeling ashamed and relieved and gratef
ul and—and so damn ashamed. He’d lied. He would understand, but it wouldn’t be all right. It would hurt him to know that she thought so little of him, but he would let her do it, would even support her in her lies.
And he would never forget it. Whether he stayed forever or left next week, he would never forget that she’d been so ashamed of who he was that she’d denied her child a father rather than acknowledge him. He would be entirely justified in never forgiving her.
But was she ready to tell everyone the truth? Could she look them in the eye and admit that her daughter, her precious, innocent daughter who’d never done anyone a moment’s harm, was also Ethan James’s daughter? Could she face the reactions such news was bound to bring?
Aw, hell, this one won’t be any better than its daddy, and he wasn’t any better than his daddy. None of those Jameses ever amounted to anything. They’ve got trouble in their blood. Bunch of no-good liars and cheats, and she won’t be any different.
Did you hear about Grace and that James boy? He must’ve been drunk out of his head. Why, no sober man would’ve gone to bed with her…though they all kinda look alike with the lights out, you know.
She didn’t want to be the subject of gossip. Didn’t want people to look at her and wonder what Ethan had seen in her, what game he’d been playing, just how desperate he’d been to choose her. Didn’t want people whispering behind her back, feeling so sorry for poor Grace who’d been desperate for a man’s attention—any man, obviously, since she’d settled for that disreputable James boy.
But who was she kidding? She’d been the subject of gossip, whispers and poor Graces all her life. Poor Grace, abandoned by her mother and mistreated by her father. Poor Grace, without a friend in the world, treated like a slave and afraid of her own shadow. Poor Grace, used and cast off by the father of her baby, then thrown out on the streets by her own father. She could live with gossip, snickering, pity, disbelief and skepticism.
But she could not let her baby grow up with them.
Even if it meant lying about the baby’s father.
Maybe someday he would forgive her. More likely he wouldn’t. But either way, she couldn’t worry about it. All she could do was the right thing for her baby.
And acknowledging Ethan James as the father didn’t come close.
When Ethan turned onto the overgrown lane that led to the cabin late Sunday afternoon, the first thing he noticed was Guthrie standing on the porch. In a better world, he wouldn’t feel the tightening in his gut, wouldn’t feel that he had to prepare himself for battle. He would invite his brother inside, offer him a beer, kick back and talk about nothing. He wouldn’t worry that Guthrie had come for one of only two reasons—to make accusations or to throw him off the property.
If he’d found out that Ethan was involved with Grace, this time it could be both.
He parked out front and climbed the steps to the porch. Guthrie stepped back to allow him room to open the screen door. “You’ve been out all day,” he said as a greeting.
Who was keeping tabs on him? Ethan wondered. Guthrie or Olivia? Had Guthrie’s curiosity gotten the better of him today? Had he come over to check the cabin, to go through Ethan’s things, searching for…hell, for anything that could justify asking him to leave?
But the door was locked until he turned his key, and the only thing in Guthrie’s hand was a folded piece of paper. And it didn’t matter if he did want to search Ethan’s belongings, because the only thing he had of any interest was the photograph of Grace, and it was tucked in his wallet in his hip pocket.
“I had some things to do,” he said at last. He hoped Guthrie wouldn’t ask what things, because he didn’t want to lie to him, but he also didn’t want to listen to a lecture about how he needed to stay hell and gone away from Grace.
For a moment it looked as if Guthrie would ask. Then he gave a shake of his head and, instead, offered the note. “This is from Elly.”
As Ethan unfolded the paper, he went inside. “Come on in,” he said casually, as if it weren’t difficult to ask Guthrie into his temporarily private space where he more likely than not would find reason to criticize. Without waiting to see if he would accept, Ethan switched on a lamp, then went on into the kitchen. “Want a Coke?” he called.
“Sure.”
It wasn’t the friendliest response, either in tone or brevity, but it wasn’t hostile. In fact, Guthrie sounded the way Ethan felt—wary. Unsure.
He returned to the living room with two cans of pop, handed one to Guthrie, then sat on the arm of the easy chair to study Elly’s handiwork. The note wasn’t written at all, but rather was drawings that combined to spell out a message. The stick figure standing outside a brown house he recognized as himself from the yellow hair and blue eyes. The white house on the opposite side of the picture, with two adult sticks, one obviously pregnant, and two small ones, was easy, too. Shapes, unrecognizable but uniform, stretched from the cabin to the house, and forming a border across the bottom were a number of smaller drawings. There was a circle of blue flowers with a fork at one side, a small black-and-white creature with a red X over it, what appeared to be an apple surrounded by small white mountains outlined in black, a rectangle holding five circles, and a bird as tall as the house wearing a watch on one wing with two arrows pointed straight down.
“She’s eating flowers with a giant bird?” he asked skeptically.
Guthrie’s chuckle wasn’t at all strained. It had been years—at least thirteen—since Ethan had heard his brother laugh, and a whole lot longer since he’d been the one to make him laugh. “You’re not much good at this kid stuff, are you?”
No, but he was going to learn. It was a good thing he was a quick study when he wanted to be, since he had only two months to get the basics down perfectly.
Guthrie came to stand beside him and gestured with the pop can. “That’s you and the cabin. This is us and our house. These—” he pointed to the flowers “—are Mom’s dishes. Remember? They’re white with blue flowers? This rectangle is the dining table, set for five. This is apple pie with whipped cream—Liv’s latest craving. The big bird is the chicken she’s frying, and his watch says six-thirty, which is when we eat.”
“What about this animal with the X?”
“I’m not sure. Either it means Skip, their dog, won’t be joining us for dinner, which would please their mother immensely, or…” He grinned suddenly. “It means ‘no beef.’ I’m raising mostly black baldies now. See? His face is white, and he’s got long ears. Damn, Elly’s gonna be a hell of a rancher someday.”
As a teenager, Ethan had learned more about cattle than he’d ever wanted to know, and as an adult, he’d managed to forget most of it. Obviously it was significant that Elly’s baldy had long ears, but not to him. If ranching was ever going to get into his blood, it would have happened by now. He’d rather keep his acquaintance with beef on the same footing it was now—through restaurants and grocery stores.
“Okay, hotshot, so what’re these?” Ethan pointed to the shapes that crossed the lawn, then recognized them half a second before Guthrie replied.
“Footsteps. They match the shape of the stick’s feet, see.”
He did, now that he knew.
“So? Will you come?”
Ethan’s first impulse was to make excuses. He was tired. He wanted to consider everything that had happened with Grace that day, from the conversation with Barnett in the store to the way he’d caught himself watching her move, to the instant dislike he’d felt for whatever was between her and the sheriff. Jealousy, some might call it, and though he’d rather not, considering some of the feelings he’d been feeling—remembering how easily she’d aroused him last summer, the unaccustomed protectiveness, the need there in the guest room to touch her, even just for an instant—he might have to give in and admit it.
But he would have plenty of time for all that. It wouldn’t hurt him to have dinner with Guthrie’s family, and it could hurt if he didn’t.
He glanced
at his watch and saw that it was a quarter after six. “Tell Elly I’ll be over as soon as I clean up.”
That made Guthrie give him a closer look, his eyes narrowing. “What have you been doing today? Painting?”
Ethan swallowed hard, feeling as guilty as if Guthrie had caught him sneaking back from a wild night of drinking and partying. “Why would you think—”
“Because you’ve got pink paint in your hair.” He peeled a glob of latex out, taking a few hairs with it, and dropped it on Elly’s note. “What are you up to, Ethan?”
Ethan searched his voice for some hint of suspicion or distrust. He wasn’t sure if he didn’t find it, or he didn’t want to find it. “N-nothing. Honest.”
As recently as a year ago, such a response would have earned him a dry, mocking retort. You’ve never been honest a day in your life. Or What do you know about honesty? This time Guthrie just looked at him, then walked to the door to gaze out. In a voice that he probably used with Elly and Emma, he asked, “If it’s nothing, then why can’t you tell me?”
Swallowing hard again, Ethan laid Elly’s note aside and stood up, then wiped his hands on his jeans to dry his palms. “It’s no big deal. I—I was doing some work for—for someone.”
Guthrie turned to give him a surprised look. “Work? You mean, like a real job?”
He was completely justified in being surprised, Ethan admitted. Still, it hurt. “I’ve held a few real jobs,” he said quietly. “I worked at the same place from the time I left here last summer until I came back. I didn’t get into trouble, didn’t get arrested—just worked, paid my bills and saved what I could.” Just like you, he wanted to add, but he didn’t. The last thing Guthrie deserved was to be compared as equals with him.
Guthrie looked as if there were about a dozen questions he wanted to ask. Instead, he simply said, “That’s good.” He opened the door, then turned back. “By the way, Elly’s going to ask if you figured out her message. Do me a favor and lie about it. After all—”
“That’s one of the few things I do well.”
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