An Unexpected Addition

by Terese Ramin

  About Megan pleading to be allowed to go with her to collect the motherless boy—even though Kate was not taking Tai, Li or Mike with her. Megan pacing anxiously on the wide front porch the day Kate and Bele arrived home. Megan hiding in a corner where Bele wouldn’t see her, weeping over the little boy’s losing his parents, his probable fears about coming to a place so far from his home, her empathy over his injuries. Megan fierce and protective while the Anden family doctor tried to check Bele over and treat him; Megan coaxing and gentle, luring Bele into his first bath when he’d been too afraid of possible crocodiles in the open water to go in on his own.

  Megan insisting on going with the rest of the family on Bele’s first trip to the prosthetist who’d fitted his leg. Megan asking questions and demanding to be taught how to care for Bele’s leg—then supervising to make sure Kate would do the job properly whenever Megan wasn’t there to see to it personally.

  Megan needy, giving, sheltering, loving.

  Megan being all the things she refused to let Hank see.

  It was a lot for a father who’d long been given only a view of the punk-haired-rebel side of his daughter to digest all at once.

  It also made him even more afraid every time he wondered what must have happened the night she’d driven Zevo’s car home and come into the house high. What his instincts told him had to be true: she’d been protecting someone, but he couldn’t begin to imagine who or why.

  When they arrived to admire Bele’s and Mike’s bone, he was reeling and ready for distraction.

  After ascertaining that the bone was not from anything human, Hank surprised himself by letting his guard drop and getting into the spirit of the thing, delicately turning the bone over in his hands, brushing off the remaining dirt, using his brief stint in forensics to offer scientific speculation on what it was. It was almost certainly from a long dead cow or deer, but the boys were happier with other potential explanations: coyote, wolf, miniature horse or, of course, eohippus.

  Ignored in the face of more learned counsel—pure bull, Hank assured her later—Kate watched him and the boys with interest. This was a side of Hank Mathison she’d doubted existed and could not have anticipated. The boys’ reaction to him, their eagerness to drink up his attention, was something else for which she was not prepared.

  She’d considered the necessity of an adult male example in the lives of her children, and especially her boys, only fleetingly. When she’d first adopted Tai and Li, her brother was still alive. Since he and his wife had died and left Mike to her when he was barely fifteen months old, she hadn’t had time to doubt her abilities to be father as well as mother. The other boys had arrived in rapid succession and voilà! Here they all were.

  Oh, there were men around Stone House during every treecutting and shipping season—hardworking and friendly, surly and sour, itinerants as well as family men—but she’d never noticed any of the children behaving then the way Mike and Bele hung onto Mathison’s attention now. Curious. Maybe she’d simply been too busy with each harvesting season’s madness to notice a difference in the kids. And maybe Megan’s father was simply as different from other men where her kids were concerned as he seemed—felt—to Kate herself.

  The vague flavor of jealousy on her tongue that Hank should so easily win their regard and the more powerful surge of pleasure she found in their excitement to hold his attention also took her off guard. Mr. Mathison was not the only one getting an education here. Her own private education hadn’t even been on the list of things she’d imagined happening this summer, because she, unlike Hank, already knew everything she needed to know about raising kids.

  Sort of.

  She glanced at her boys, then to their intriguingly open and unforeseen teacher. But the unexpected was okay—within bounds.

  Maybe.

  Again she felt that curious flash of something she couldn’t identify low in her belly, the fluttery, flirty tightening in her lungs. It was, she’d decided the moment he’d called, her job to unbalance Hank Mathison this summer, to be the one to make him sit up and take notice of his daughter. His unbalancing her was not part of the bargain she’d made either with Hank or herself.

  And yet...the foreign sensations trickling through her bloodstream were not unpleasant. Anxious, yes, but not awful. Not even bad. Just restless. Like being a kid and waiting for something wonderful-dreadful to happen that might just be so good you’ll get sick to your stomach if it doesn’t turn out the way you’re afraid to want it to. Similar to, but not quite the same as the way she’d felt waiting for the courts to decide she would be a suitable adoptive parent even without a husband.

  She was pretty sure the anticipation of impending motherhood had made her feel as nauseated and expectant as any pregnant woman in her first trimester. But this, although she had no way of actually knowing personally, didn’t feel like that at all This felt a lot more like...

  Well, probably a lot more like pregnant women might feel just before. they got pregnant

  Oops.

  Kate’s jaw dropped; she stared at Hank, confirming the fizzle in her pulse, the constriction in her lungs, the sensation of...quickening that ran through her at the mere sight of him with Bele and Mike.

  The mere sight of him anywhere.

  Horrified at herself, she turned her back and covered her mouth. Jiminy Pete, of all the stupid, disgusting—Llamas were more civilized. Independent creatures that the girls were, they didn’t get hot simply because some studly boy with the right length wool or the cutest little patch on his nose walked by unless they wanted to.

  If her llamas could be adult about how they felt and when they felt it, it was ridiculous to think she couldn’t.

  But she couldn’t.

  Stunned by the suddenly duplicitous nature of a body that had never—as far as she recalled—betrayed her before, she turned to find some other distraction to think about. Instead she found Hank striding toward her, looking younger than she’d ever seen him, smiling back over his shoulder at something Bele was excitedly telling Mike.

  Not that she’d seen him a lot before this morning, but still—

  “Fly catching, Ms. Anden?” Hank asked, eyeing the mud on the end of her nose. So scrupulously clean as she always was around him, he found the mud both oddly comforting and mightily amusing.

  Kate stared askance, too aware of him and the hamster running its squeaky wheel through her veins and arteries to comprehend his pointed glance.

  A laughter he’d not experienced in years rumbled silently through him. A wicked grin tipped his mouth.

  Hands on her hips, Kate glared at him. “Is something wrong, Mr. Mathison?”

  “Not at all, Ms. Anden.”

  Hank’s lips compressed; he glanced skyward trying not to laugh. He’d no idea what had happened to him in the few minutes he’d spent in the dig with Mike and Bele, but he hadn’t felt so much himself in, well, an incredibly too long time.

  A wayward sputter of humor escaped Hank. He took a deep breath and did his best to stifle it.

  Kate’s glare grew solicitous, mildly wary. “Are you certain you’re all right, Mr. Mathison? You look like you’re about to explode.”

  “Never felt better, Ms. Anden,” he assured her, then bent double and howled when she rubbed her cheek and another streak of mud appeared.

  “Mr. Mathison, what is the problem?”

  There was an element of schoolteacher getting pissed in her voice that made Hank laugh harder. He couldn’t help himself. He’d finally met someone on whom he’d have said there were truly no flies, a parent with seemingly perfect children to whom he’d often felt somewhat inferior. And the first time he spent longer than five minutes in her company, his competition wore mud on her face.

  Competition. The word sobered him the instant it formed. Was that really what he felt? That this was a contest, a winner-take-all battle—and all was Megan?

  He straightened. He’d never seen his attitude toward Kate in such sere light before. It wasn�
�t a pretty picture.

  “Hank?” Concerned. Not stilted with formality.

  Real.

  It was the first time she’d used the familiar form of his name. It sounded odd coming from her mouth. As if it didn’t belong there.

  Or as if it belonged there a lot. Breathy. Breathless. Against his mouth. Close to his ear.

  His jaw tightened, his gaze slid over her face. Pale freckles and sun glow; laugh lines beside her eyes; small mouth, full lips.

  Kissable.

  Damn, he didn’t want her. Couldn’t.

  Wouldn’t.

  Did.

  The mud was no longer funny, a mar on the landscape. He moved a deceptively lazy hand, brushed her face suddenly and the smudge was gone.

  He’d always had fast hands—except where he wanted to make them slow.

  Shocked, Kate gaped at him “Mr. Mathison!” The outraged schoolteacher was back in her voice full force.

  Hank grinned, but there was flint in it this time. This was neither the time nor the place to resurrect his hormones. They were, after all, his hormones. He was their boss; he controlled them, not vice versa.

  Yeah, right. Who was he kidding? “Relax, Ms. Anden.” He shoved her chin up with the tip of one forefinger, closing her mouth, and showed her the mud in his other hand. “It’s dirt, not an assault.”

  Then he dusted off his hands and stalked away.

  Too dumbfounded for a moment to react, Kate stared after him, then at the muddy dust on her left boot, then once more at his receding back. Not a bad view, she decided without meaning to. He exuded power and grace in every loose-hipped movement, the impression of muscles bunching and smoothing even through the relaxed fit of his clothes. The phrase nice tush floated through her mind; her lips twitched. For a woman who’d felt totally furious less than two and a half minutes ago, it was not exactly the most outraged thought she’d ever had.

  So, then, shut ma mouth, she told herself derisively. Laughter bubbled in her throat. He certainly had. Right after he’d taken the filth she’d never even realized was on her off her nose.

  There’d been mud on her nose.

  Because she’d been too busy staring at Hank Mathison’s meadamber eyes, tawny blond hair, pretty face and musculature to notice it.

  And Tai’s favorite sarcastic adolescent phrase—the one that was now the family’s favorite complaint—had always been, “Gee, Mom, no flies on you, are there?”

  The laughter in her throat broke free on a whoop. No wonder Mathison nearly rolled in mirth. She, who all too often thought—smugly, yes, be honest—of herself as far too smart to be caught unaware had been caught unaware. By the mud she was always telling her kids to wash off their faces.

  She doubled over and laughed until her sides hurt and the tears ran. God always did find a way to give her a poke when she was being too smarty-pantsed for her own good.

  “Mum, are you all right?”

  Mike and Bele bounded up beside her, full of concern—and curiosity.

  “Fine,” she wheezed, trying to contain the chuckles, but failing.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “Mr. Mathison—” She snorted laughter, swiped a hand across her face on a chuckling sigh. “Mr. Mathison told me a joke.”

  “Tell us,” they begged. “Tell us.”

  “I can’t—” A chortle got in the way. She cleared it out of her throat. “I can’t.” She shook her head, grinning. “It—you had to be there. It doesn’t translate.”

  They were at an age where bad jokes and magic tricks were a major part of life. “Aw, Mom. Please?”

  She shook her head again. Such a lot to have learned—mostly about herself, only some about Hank—in a morning and gee, wouldn’t you know, the summer’s dance had barely begun. “Sorry, guys, you know how bad I am with jokes.”

  Bele gave her a disgusted look. “Yeah, you always get the punch line in the wrong place.”

  “Sorry.” She shrugged an unrepentant apology. “Nobody’s perfect.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Bele agreed, still disgusted.

  He was, Kate reflected with amusement, a long way from the frightened child she’d brought home from Zaire.

  “Hey, I know!” Mike of the big ideas. “We can get Hank to tell us.”

  “Hank?” Kate asked, surprised. He hadn’t invited her to call him Hank. ’Course now that she thought about it, she hadn’t invited him to call her Kate, either. Probably ought to remedy that. Especially if she was going to have a crush on the man. And it appeared, she discovered with amusement and consternation, that she had one whether she wanted to or not It’d make the daydreaming she didn’t have time for so much easier, if they called each other by their first names.

  “He said to call him that,” Bele yelled, already starting away. “C’mon, Mike, let’s go find him before he forgets the joke.”

  “Yeah, old guys, bad memories,” Mike agreed, dashing after him.

  Kate’s lips compressed painfully on a snort, holding back guffaws. A thought occurred to her. “Hey, wait a minute. You guys know where Meg is? I need to talk to her.” Needed to confront her—gently, of course—and ask her just what the dickens she thought this morning was about Tell her to at least mention where she was going to her father before she snuck up to Li’s room in the middle of the night, to make sure Li didn’t mind the intrusion on her privacy and to quit yanking her and Hank’s chains.

  “Upstairs, cleaning out the shower.”

  “Thanks.” Grinning she turned and headed for the house. If she couldn’t straighten out the father without total distraction setting in, she’d go to the child. It was high time somebody quit walking on eggs and got a few things straight with Megan.

  Bottle of glass cleaner in one hand, used paper towels in the other, Megan peered out the newly spotless octagonal window of the upstairs bathroom and watched Kate arrive.

  Even if the windows hadn’t been open and she hadn’t overheard Kate ask the little boys about her whereabouts, she’d been around long enough to recognize the look on her favorite mentor’s face, to diagnose the purpose in her stride. Someone was in for what was known around the Anden household as a “chat.”

  Chats weren’t necessarily bad things, but they were often a bit more revealing to the person on the receiving end than the chatee might prefer. In the eleven years she’d been hanging around with Li, Megan had been chatted with on more than one occasion. As uncomfortable as it might feel at the time, she didn’t mind Kate’s chats. Kate never chatted with anyone she didn’t care about, rarely chatted without a reason and almost always expected and accepted back chat. She also always treated everybody the same, and unlike some of Megan’s other friends’ parents, and especially unlike Megan’s own dad, neither Megan nor anyone else ever had to wonder where they stood with Kate. There was a certain comfort and security in that.

  Still...

  Quickly she gave the back of the toilet a final swipe, dumped the paper towels in the basket and put the glass cleaner under the sink. Now all she needed was someplace to hide. Because even if she hadn’t heard Kate ask where she was, Megan knew with the dread of a guilty conscience that she was the one in for it. And security or no, it didn’t mean she particularly wanted to be chatted with today. Particularly since she couldn’t see where she’d really done anything to warrant one. And even if she had, she felt too mixed up inside to really want to discuss it now. Not until she figured out what exactly she’d done, why she’d done it and how to defend herself from it.

  She’d hoped coming to live with Kate and Li and the llamas—sometimes especially the llamas, whose constant expression of stoicism and serenity, whose five-thousand-year connection with humans often made them appear wiser and more connected to people than their human partners could ever be—would just magically make all this insanity running around inside her head come clear and go away. It scared her some that so far it wasn’t, but it was early hours yet and she still hoped.

  She was also still afraidr />
  Because, damn it, she couldn’t even tell Li this, but it was really getting just so freaking hard some days to keep track of who she was.

  Chapter 4

  So she had a crush on Hank Mathison. After all these years of judging him...well, not one of God’s greater creations, who woulda thunk it?

  Not her, that was sure. She was way too old for this nonsense. She hadn’t had a crush on a boy since...oh, probably Steve Heckerling in the tenth grade. And she’d gotten over that quick—crushed, yeah, but over it—the minute he’d told her to quit dreaming that the star of the track team would ever want to go out with a red-haired, bucktoothed, goody-two-shoes like her who wasn’t going to put out.

  Her braces had been off for six months at the time, her mouth not nearly as horsy as it had been. But the boys she’d gone to high school with were stupid about things like that. She’d called him a hormonal jerk who wasn’t even strong enough to be in charge of his own mind. The insult had gone over his head and made her wonder how she could ever have been attracted to him in the first place. But the youthful heart made the eyes see what it wanted them to see: sensitivity, smarts and strength, where there wasn’t any. Within the next year she’d felt the call to join the convent and that had been that for boys.

  She hadn’t missed feeling giddy and stupid and tongue-tied at all. Even if the mature part of her brain thought it was funny as all get out.

  “Phweet! Hey-up! Come on, boys, granola time!”

  Whistling and clapping, Kate leaned on a four-by-four fence post and called the studs and geldings in from the west pasture. Fanned out along the length of woven wire fencing designed to prevent stray dogs from bothering the herd rather than to keep the herd in, Ilya, Mike, Bele, Jamal and some of the 4-H-ers rattled Ziploc bags full of llama treats, adding encouragement. The three-legged rottweiler, Taz, ran up and down the fence line, slobbering and grinning. When the cloven footed got cookies, so did she. Part of her training, Ilya said.