by A Western Family Christmas Christmas Eve; Season of Bounty; Cowboy Scrooge
During Joe Junior’s tirades, Sophie had remained silent. Apparently her reverence for her parent’s memories had given way to necessity. Ivy had only managed to lure them onto the stage out of Otis by assuring them that there would plenty to eat at their uncle’s. Finally even Joe Junior had put his stomach before his pride.
She could well understand why. She was feeling famished now herself. She hadn’t had a square meal in days and days. The thought that she would have to rely on Justin Murphy to feed her was irksome, though.
What could he have done to those kids’ mother? Something terrible, she bet, to cause so much animosity between two brothers.
Or maybe Justin was just a foul woman-hater. “If Mr. Murphy is unmarried,” she piped up to Wink, “who takes care of his home? Who cooks?”
“That would be John. He takes care of the house.” He cast a dubious glance at Ivy. “He probably won’t take none to you hornin’ in on his territory, neither.”
“I won’t be staying long enough to trouble anyone,” she assured Wink. The last thing she needed now was to start making enemies. “I’m just delivering Mr. Murphy’s children to the ranch.”
Wink shook his head but said nothing until a group of buildings came into view in the distance sometime later.
“That there’s the Bar M,” he announced.
Despite the fact that she hadn’t wanted to go there, Ivy perked up curiously. She’d been a city girl from the day she was born—nature was a lucky, infrequent stroll through a park to her—and she was curious. The ranch was vast, she discovered, and consisted of several buildings. The main house was a rambling structure made of wide wood beams and stone, and there was a smaller bunkhouse attached to it. But the barn behind the main house seemed larger than any she had seen, the real showplace. Its white painted boards stood out against the horizon like a beacon. Running alongside the buildings was a line of trees, tall and impressively stark in their present naked state.
And all around the buildings was land dotted with grazing cattle and horses. She saw pigs—huge ones— milling about the side of the barn, and in the dusty yard in front of the house, chickens idly pecked the ground. She felt her stomach do a flip of anticipation as she looked at the houses, the property. One man owned all of this? It was inconceivable!
She glanced back at the children, who had tossed off their blankets to get a clear view of their new home. When the wagon stopped, the worried yet intensely curious looks on their young faces probably mirrored her own expression.
“You better get yourself inside and see to feedin’ them young ’uns,” Wink told her. “They look about ready to start chewing on the buckboards.”
Ivy laughed, especially when her own stomach growled greedily. Food—maybe a whole plate of it!
She never imagined the day when just a simple meal would seem like an unbelievable luxury.
She herded the children, who for once were surprisingly obedient, following where Wink’s gesture had directed them. She knocked tentatively at the back door, not sure whether to barge right in. In the next moment, the heavy door was jerked open and she stood chest high to a tall, unsmiling, gray-haired Indian!
Shocked at having at least one half of her nightmare about the West standing not one foot away from her, his black glittering eyes glaring down at her, Ivy barely managed to gulp down a reflexive screech.
“You have brought children here,” the Indian said.
Ivy wasn’t sure whether it was a statement of fact or an accusation or a question. She nodded mutely, then swallowed again, trying to find her voice. It came out as a squeak. “Wink sent us.”
She might as well have said Open sesame. The tall, imposing figure stood aside, allowing them entrance. Ivy scooted by quickly, but the children didn’t seem to see anything strange about having a hulking old Indian manning a kitchen. All they seemed to care about were the delectable smells emanating from the warm house. Without being told, they settled expectantly at the long narrow table that dominated the room.
The meal the Indian had fixed for them was better than anything Ivy had prepared for. Within moments, thick steaks were piled on a platter in the middle of the table, along with potatoes dripping with butter. In addition, a heaping bowl of beans cooked in onions was placed before them, along with cornmeal muffins and honey. The children’s wide blue eyes looked almost as if they would pop at the sight of so much food, so easily obtained.
All four of them attacked the meal as if they hadn’t eaten for weeks…and, in the case of the children, they probably hadn’t. All Ivy had offered them so far today had been some jerky she’d bought at the store in Otis. Now they ate until they couldn’t stuff in another forkful. Ivy had never tasted food so wonderful.
“Delicious!” Finished, Ivy leaned back and slumped in a decidedly unladylike fashion.
The cook, who had stood mutely watching them gorge, now regarded them with an expression of pleasure and disdain. “White people enjoy eating like this.”
Ivy shifted uncomfortably, feeling as if she had been vaguely insulted. John looked at them almost as if they were…savages.
“You must go talk to Mr. Murphy now,” he told her. “He asked it.”
She frowned, looking at the children. The moment of reckoning had arrived. She needed to prepare them to meet their dreaded uncle. “Is there a place where the children can wash their faces and hands?”
Linus, especially, needed work. Grease from his steak dripped through the dirt coating his chin, and his hands looked sticky with honey.
John eyed her steadily. “Not the children. Just you.”
Ivy felt doubly uneasy now. Didn’t Justin at least want to meet the children? Or was he going to tell her, now that she was sated and sluggish from her heavy meal, that she could take his nephews and niece and be on her way?
She glanced at them again and felt a prick of foreboding. The meal had been a rare moment of calm for the three of them, but now they showed signs of the fuel beginning to stoke their natural tempers. Joe Junior was kicking Sophie under the table. Linus was bouncing absently and peeking at the back door with interest. There was no telling the amount of mischief he could get into on this vast ranch.
Maybe she wouldn’t have to find out, however. Maybe Justin would be calmer now and realize that he owed it to her to give her the money she needed to make a new start. After all, what else could he do?
“Very well,” she said, bucking herself up.
Joe Junior scraped his chair back. “Be careful!” he said. “Remember he’s a bad man.”
“Very baaad!” Linus seconded.
Sophie looked worried for completely different reasons. “What are we supposed to do while you’re gone? What if you don’t come back?”
Ivy stared at them, dumbfounded. They were worried about her? About what they would do without her? She shook her head, then looked numbly up at John.
“I will take care of them,” he said.
She shook her head. “You don’t know—Joe Junior can disappear in an instant and Linus gets into everything and—”
“There will be no problems,” the cook said. “They will do as I say.”
Sophie giggled, then was quieted by a glare from the Indian.
“They will do as I say because I have a great big apple pie to give them if they sit quietly at this table.”
The three, who had been stirring restlessly, suddenly went still all at once.
The old Indian smiled smugly and then led a stunned Ivy out of the kitchen. From the kitchen they passed a large open sitting room with an iron stove smack in the center of it. There were plenty of simple wood chairs lining one wall and a small desk at the other end of the room. But other than a large braided rug on the floor, the room was completely without adornment. It was also without Justin.
The Indian cook escorted her down a dark hallway lined with closed doors on either side. Then he stopped, rapped sharply on one and left her standing there.
“Come in!”
&n
bsp; Outside the door Ivy patted her hair and straightened her dusty clothing. Her pulse sped, but she couldn’t say whether it was in anticipation of seeing Justin again, or the idea that she might be on the verge of getting some money to be on her way. In fact, if she played her cards right, she might be in San Francisco by Christmas!
She entered the room quickly, before she lost her nerve and wound up standing out in the hallway all day long. She was shocked to find herself in a bedroom. She’d assumed this would be a kind of study or library. Justin was standing in front of a high bureau with a shaving mirror atop it, his face covered with lather. More shocking still, he wasn’t fully dressed; just pants over his gray undershirt.
Embarrassed, she began stammering apologies and backing out the door.
“No, stay,” he barked at her. “I need to talk to you.”
“Oh. Well, I’m sure it could wait until you’re…”
“I don’t like to put things off.”
She couldn’t help staring at his chest. Ogling it, actually. Back in the store in Wishbone, she’d noticed right away that Justin was a handsome man. She just hadn’t known how handsome. His chest was broad, and muscles bulged beneath the thin woolen material of his undershirt. He seemed to be built like a statue of a man rather than real flesh and blood.
She felt her heart flutter uneasily in her chest, then upbraided herself for being so foolish. A handsome face had gotten the better of her once before. “I’d better come back later,” she said.
“Miss Ryan!” His voice came out in a bellow of displeasure. “Hours ago you were telling me I was derelict in my duty to my young relatives, and now you seem to want to avoid the issue altogether.”
She couldn’t say that it wasn’t the issue but his masculinity that she wanted to avoid. Justin had a strange effect on her. He made her skin feel flushed, made her want to cross him. Which was probably as wise as crossing a rattlesnake!
“You’ll be happy to know that I’ve changed my mind about my niece and nephews,” he said. “You win. They can stay.”
Relief rushed through her. A happy ending. The children had a home. She’d rarely done good in her life, and the satisfaction she felt sat strangely in her. “I’m glad!”
“I thought you would be.” She detected a hint of mockery in his expression. “Aren’t you curious about what I’ve decided about you?”
Her chin jerked up, and suddenly she was all ears. Her heart beat double time. If he’d suddenly turned generous toward the children, maybe he was going to be generous with her, too. “Well, yes, I suppose so,” she replied, not wanting to sound too eager for her reward. “But of course I’m most happy that you have decided to reunite with your niece and nephews.”
His lips twisted up. “Naturally! You’re all heart.”
She frowned and tilted a glance at him. Crossing her arms, she said, “All right, what is it you’ve decided?”
He turned back to the mirror and dragged the razor carefully down his cheek. When he had cleared a pathway of skin and rinsed the blade in the bowl in front of him, he smiled and announced, ‘ ‘My taking in the children depends on taking you as well.”
Justin looked in the mirror to catch Ivy’s reaction, expecting fireworks. He wasn’t disappointed.
The little woman blinked her green eyes at him in surprise. “What?” Her voice arced up an octave.
“I want you as part of the bargain,” he said.
Her cheeks bloomed red. “I’ve never been so insulted!”
He chuckled and turned back to the mirror, wiping his face clean with a towel as he kept an eye on her. He’d never known a woman to get prettier when she was in a fit of anger, but Ivy was. Her whole body was stiff and her head was shaking so that her riot of curls fairly jangled around her face. “You mean to tell me that you were plenty willing to marry a man sight unseen, but you’re offended at a proposition that you take care of three children you already know?”
She tilted her head skeptically. “Take care of children? That’s all?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Oh!” If possible, her face turned redder than before. “I didn’t know…I mean, I thought…”
He laughed inwardly at her embarrassment. But the idea of her thinking he wanted to bed her…that wasn’t so risible. In fact, it was too damn close to the truth for his comfort. He didn’t want anything to do with her or any woman, but the fact was, he’d never been around children and he didn’t have a burning interest to start now. He might take responsibility for these orphans of Josiah’s; that didn’t mean he wanted to take an active interest in their lives.
“All I ask is that they don’t get in the way,” he said. So that I don’t have to look into those blue eyes of theirs, he could have added.
She lifted her head. “But I’m not, I mean I can’t—”
He cut her off. “I don’t want them bothering my men at work.” I don’t want them reminding me of the woman who betrayed me….
“But I’m going to San Francisco!” she blurted out.
He frowned. “What would you do there?”
“Start a new life,” she answered. “Is that a crime?”
“That depends on how you intend to come by the money to get there.”
“But I thought you…” Her voice trailed off, but her meaning was clear. She thought that on further reflection he would joyfully embrace his new responsibilities and be so grateful to her that he would ship her wherever she wanted to go.
Unfortunately, he couldn’t do that. Though he didn’t particularly want her here, he needed her. “I’ll give you a dollar a week, plus board. That should allow you to raise enough money…eventually.”
Within moments she was quivering mad again. “Eventually is an understatement. It would take me years to earn enough to get anywhere! I’d practically be your indentured servant!”
“I wouldn’t turn the offer down so quickly, Miss Ryan. Jobs here are scarce.”
He could see acknowledgment of that fact in her expression during the heated silence that followed. He had her cornered, just as she had cornered him at the store.
“I’m a bachelor,” he explained. “I have a ranch to run. I don’t have time to raise children.”
She sputtered incoherently for a few moments. “But I am not a nanny!”
“What are you?”
She blinked. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, what do you do?”
“Well…nothing, at the moment. I was a maid.”
“Then you could be a children’s nanny. You certainly proved yourself a worthy advocate for the children this afternoon.”
“Sure, but—”
He grinned and turned to her, crossing his arms. “But what?” When she hesitated, eyeing him resentfully, he finished for her, “But that was just be cause you were so eager to get rid of them? To get a little reward money?”
She glared at him some more, then stubbed her toe angrily against the puncheon floor. “I didn’t come out here to take care of children!”
“No, you came out here to marry a chiseler, as I understand it.”
“At a dollar a week you’re a fine one to talk about chiselers!” she shot back.
He couldn’t help it. He laughed aloud. Ivy Ryan was a piece of work, and he wasn’t sure he actually wanted to have her around. A woman like her could wreak havoc on a ranch full of cowpokes. But what he’d told her was true. He needed someone to look after the children, and Wishbone wasn’t full of other candidates for the job. She was in a better bargaining position than he was though, thank heavens, she didn’t know it.
What winding path of misfortune had brought a woman like Ivy Ryan to Wishbone? Poor she might be, but she was pretty enough that she should have been able to marry well back at home. Unless something bad had happened to her. He didn’t want to think too hard about what that bad thing could be, but it must have been considerable to make her willing to marry a man like Josiah sight unseen.
Which probably meant that sh
e was more trouble than he had reckoned on. He looked into Ivy’s face, which was torn with misery, and felt a little like a cat teasing a mouse. “Do you want the job or don’t you?”
For a split second she agonized. Then she relented. “Yes, damn it!”
He nodded. “Good.” Then he opened his bureau, pulled out a clean shirt and began to dress.
Ivy stood awkwardly behind him. After a few moments, he heard her clear her throat.
“Well?” he asked.
She blinked in surprise and blushed again. “Don’t you have any instructions?”
He nodded. “Just keep those children out of my sight.”
“That’s not as easy as it sounds,” she huffed.
“I didn’t think it would be, or I wouldn’t have hired you.”
She glowered at him, obviously still wishing that he hadn’t hired her. “And nothing else?”
“Oh, yes…”
She raised her brows.
“You might try to watch your language, Miss Ryan. From hearing you, anyone would think you’d lived around ruffians.”
Her cheeks burned red, and she threw a final glare at him. “Fiend!” she spat, just before turning and slamming the door behind her.
Chapter Four
It was easy for Justin to command her to keep the children out of mischief. Actually following up on that order was another matter entirely.
Though to be truthful, no one minded the children’s high jinks like Justin did. Wink was patient to the point of saintliness with them. The other two hands, Arnie and Sam, even appeared flattered by the attention and admiration the children gave them. Arnie, an old-timer who seemed to have been through everything from the Mexican War to the first big cattle drive, was a born musician and loved their repeated requests for songs. And wiry Sam, who at nineteen seemed barely more than a boy himself, watched the children with interest, as if looking for something of his own family he’d left behind somewhere. None of the three men had much time to spare, but they spoke to the children and were kind to them even though Ivy tried to keep them out of the way.