by Cara North
After walking down the hall to their room, she opened the door. Both children were sound asleep, safe, and happy. She nodded. She was doing the right thing for them. Except it didn’t feel right anymore. Savannah had memories, real ones, undeniable ones, and there was nothing she could do to stop that. Brice was still too little, but she worried he too would recall moments of his life before Montana. Everyone agreed this was the best way, to leave and go where no one knew them. Layla barely knew herself anymore, so she supposed the theory worked. Returning to her room she thought to shower, then decided against it as she pulled her clothes off and distinctly smelled Rafe on her arms, her chest. His warm and spicy scent on her skin was too much to part with tonight. It would have to wait until morning.
* * *
Rafe cursed a frustrated blue streak all the way back to his house. He opened the door and took a good look around. He didn’t know when he started renovating that he was going to make so many changes in so short of a time. The kitchen was all his, the living room, most of the large spaces, but he took the rooms upstairs and turned them into children’s rooms, one for Savannah and one for Brice. The master bedroom he took care to add things he thought Layla would appreciate. What the hell is that woman hiding?
He paced around the house for an hour then surrendered to sleep.
* * *
“Rafe, can you…?” Jan, his sister, started.
“No, dammit. I can’t. I can’t okay. Whatever it is I can’t do it today.” Rafe tossed the clipboard on the desk in the large supply closet and folded his arms. He didn’t look at her; he was afraid to. Jan was his little sister, and in the twenty years of her life, he had never talked to her like that. He wasn’t sure why he was talking to her like that now.
“Fine.” Jan physically pushed her way into the space beside him and stretched out her arm to grab the bottle of water on the far end of the desk.
He felt like an ass. He was an ass. “Jan, I…”
“Hey, whatever.” She shrugged as she began walking away.
“Shit!” He started after her, caught up to her long legged strides, and grabbed her by the arm effectively swinging her around to face him. “I’m sorry.”
His heart broke as he watched tears fall from his tough little sister’s eyes. He made that happen, and he fought to hold back his own at the realization.
“I don’t know you anymore.” She shook her head and tried to be strong.
“Yes, you do. I’m Rafe, your big brother, your best buddy, the one who always came back and let you out of the closet when Heath and Jack locked you in to escape. I played Barbie’s with you, and taught you how to fish and ride horses. I picked bee-bee’s out of your husband’s ass so he could marry you.” She smiled at the memory then shook her head. He sighed. “I know I haven’t been coming to dinner. I haven’t been to game night, but Layla needs me.”
“Layla.” Jan took in a deep breath, and he knew Layla was a sore topic for her. Jan had told him over and over again the woman was weird, that she was hiding something, and that she was using him as a babysitter.
He nodded.
“Rafe, you are my best big brother. My favorite by far, but it is because of that I must say this to you. You’ve changed. You’re short with all of us, now that includes me. You never eat a meal with anyone, and I’m not talking about the regular game night with Buck and me. Jack said he only sees you for lunch here at the ranch. Heath confirmed it. You leave work earlier and earlier and come in later and later. This is affecting your life now, all of it, family, work, everything. What the hell is happening to you?” Her brows drew together, and she looked very much like their oldest brother, Heath.
Aside from getting an earful of stuff he knew but wasn’t really eager to admit to, he didn’t like the fact that it was coming from Jan. He could curse at Jack or Heath. He could cowboy up and fight with them but not Jan. He wouldn’t, couldn’t, let his little sister who thought the world of him, down. “I’m going to ask Layla to marry me. If she says no, then I’ll quit pursuing her. If she says yes, you will support my decision like I supported yours. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“Am I forgiven?”
“For now.” Jan smiled and hugged him a little too tightly. “I worry about you. Be careful okay?”
“Promise.” Rafe shook his head as Jan walked off. Did she think he was so blind?
Everyone at the ranch thought Layla was using him, that she had no interest in him other than watching her kids. They never saw Layla the way he did. A single mother working overtime to make ends meet. A proud woman who didn’t like to take handouts or help from others. It took a while for her to warm up to him, much less leave her kids with him, and now he was becoming a part of their routine. They expected him, all of them. He hadn’t forgotten his family, but he was building a new one. Unlike his brothers, his bride wasn’t going to fall into his lap. He had to work to get her affection, and that was something he had never really done before. Women were always easy to come by, and they loved him. Layla, hell he didn’t know what else to do to earn her love.
Jan was right. He had sacrificed his family and his job, which again effected his family since it was their dude ranch collectively he worked at. Maybe he had been chasing Layla too hard for too long. Maybe she needed to miss him.
* * *
“Where’s Rafe?” Brice asked as they sat down for dinner.
“He had work to do.” Layla scooped macaroni and cheese onto the child’s plate.
“This is lunch food.” Savannah wrinkled her nose at the hot dog and bun.
“Well, it’s dinner food tonight.” Layla tried for a smile. Rafe always stocked their refrigerator no matter how many times she told him not to. There was “dinner food” in there, but she didn’t know much about cooking it or what exactly they would eat. Rafe normally fed them dinner, and she ate her sandwich at work. When he was there with all of them, he cooked. The kids would eat anything he made. As Brice tested the macaroni, she knew she was not their favorite chef.
“Will he come over tonight?” Brice asked after reluctantly eating the food.
“I don’t know. I don’t think so.” Layla realized in that instant he hadn’t said. He always told her where he was or what he was doing. She didn’t realize how much she had grown accustomed to knowing. Now she too began to wonder.
“Can we call him?” Savannah asked.
Layla thought about it for a moment. It wasn’t her business where he was or what he was doing. Then the previous night flashed before her eyes. Horror stuck her core, and she began to worry that he took their moment of passion and her rejection at what was obviously a mercy proposal too seriously. “After dinner.”
They ate every bite.
* * *
Rafe sat at Jack’s house around the big country kitchen table with all of his family there. They were in the middle of setting up a game of monopoly when his cell phone vibrated. He looked at the number and excused himself. He ignored the long faces of disappointment from each one of them. He wasn’t leaving unless it was an emergency. “Hello?”
“Hi Rafe!” Savannah giggled. “Are you coming over?”
“Not tonight, baby-girl.” He forced a smile. It was like telling his own kids he wasn’t coming home.
“Brice, don’t pull.” Savannah was obviously struggling to keep the phone.
“Let me talk to him.” Rafe smiled.
“Hello?” The little monster got on the phone.
“How are you supposed to treat your sister, young man?” he asked.
“Be nice to her. She is the only sister I got, and it’s my job to protect her,” he droned out the lesson.
‘That’s right.”
“We miss you. We had hot dogs and macaroni; that’s lunch foods,” Brice complained.
“Well, all food is good food any time of day.”
“Are you coming over tomorrow?” Brice asked.
“I’ll be there, cowboy. Now let me talk to your sister.”
<
br /> “I… okay.” Brice handed the phone to Savannah.
“I will be there tomorrow all right? Be good for your mother, okay?”
“Do we have to?” the little imp asked honestly.
“Yes.” He held back the laugh. He knew they gave Layla hell when he wasn’t around, but really, the woman lacked common sense when it came to managing two kids.
“Oh all right,” she said. “Good night.”
“Good night.” He waited for Savannah to hang up, laughed because Layla was asking for the phone when she did it, and went back to the kitchen. If she really wanted to talk to him, she would call back.
“We know, you gotta go,” Heath, his older overbearing brother, rolled his eyes as he said it.
“Actually, I don’t.” Rafe sat back down and felt six sets of eyes on him. He looked around the table at them. Jack and Bethany sat close together. Jack had met Bethany in Las Vegas, and they married each other on a dare. They were now expecting a little one. Not to be outdone, Heath and his wife Chance had not only reconciled but also conceived upon that reconciliation. Chance absolutely glowed. Heath for all of his machismo could only find tenderness for one woman, the one at his side. The only woman willing to put up with him. Then he moved to the happiest faces in the room. Jan and Buck were the youngest couple there and the ones who missed him the most. When Jan and Buck got married, Jack and Heath thought that by shutting them out they would bring them to their senses. Heath had even shot Buck with a bee-bee gun when he came to ask for Jan’s hand in marriage. Rafe had snuck down to their house once a week for dinner and family game night. He always went back to let her out of the closet when they wanted to escape the little sister, and he always went down to see her and her husband once a week when she was married and banned from the family.
His grandfather had told him when Jan came along that Heath was too old to be the big brother she needed, Jack was too wild and losing his spot as the baby wasn’t fun either, so it fell to the middle child to pick up the slack. Rafe understood this. He had been compensating one way or the other all his life as the middle brother.
Six surprised faces still looked at him. “What?”
“Nothing,” Jan said and quickly directed the attention back to the game. “You can be on our team.”
“I’ll be on my own team, thank you.” He grabbed the horse piece he had custom created from a piece of wood and placed it at the start. Of course, he was the odd man out. He always was.
* * *
Squeals, shrieks, and laughter cracked through the air. Two kids were not behaving. They had stripped the sheets off their beds, dumped out all of their toys, and were currently running around the small apartment like wild dogs.
“Both of you stop it!” Layla yelled. They stopped. “Go to bed!”
Their faces looked shocked, hurt, and disappointed all at the same time.
“Now.” She pointed to their room.
They marched in silence until they got to the door. Brice looked back. “But the sheets.”
“I don’t care.” Layla’s hands shook from her frazzled nerves.
“I’ll fix it.” Savannah gave her the cold look she always gave her and put her arm around her brother.
Layla swore that child knew everything. All of it. There was no way she could know, no way could she remember it, but when she gave her that look… she knew, somehow that child knew everything. The counselors said she wouldn’t remember, that it would seem natural, but they were wrong. Nothing was natural. A bond between a mother and her children was the most natural thing on the planet, and she did not have that bond with either of these children. She didn’t know how to force that bond either.
Layla went to her own bedroom and pulled the shoebox from the top of the closet. She could hear them in their room making up the beds. At least they were quiet. She took out a photograph and looked at it for a long while. The girl in the picture looked exactly like her. Well almost. Layla had lost a lot of weight since then, stress, pinching pennies, and dealing with the emotional strain on a regular basis in addition to time itself left her a shadow of the woman she once was though she was never like the woman in the photo who wore a painstakingly detailed bridal gown. The man next to her looked like an older version of Brice.
“This isn’t fair. I let you have everything. Now look at me. What do I have? Nothing. Not you, not a career, I don’t even have myself. I wasn’t the strong one, remember? How am I going to take care of them and not let them down?”
Layla began to cry, and the picture crinkled in her hand. She heard Savannah’s footsteps and quickly put it back in the box. She wiped her eyes and stood. Savannah reached the foot of the bed as she was placing the box back in the closet. “Mom, Brice wants you to tuck him in like Rafe does.”
The word always sent a chill up her back. Layla nodded and tried for a smile. It was easier when they were smaller. She didn’t have to be so perfect. Now they had expectations, and she knew she was falling short of all of them. They lived in a dump, clean but tiny, and they would be too old to share a room soon. Rafe bought most of their groceries, and though she hated to admit it, she was thankful. The kids had gained weight and got sick less often since she allowed him to baby-sit for them. Both a curse and a blessing, the day her babysitter got the flu and sent her boyfriend to take care of them.
“How does Rafe tuck you in?” She looked down at the sweet faced boy and tried not to beat herself up with guilt. She should know this stuff. She should have a special way of tucking them in and not him.
“I just wanted to tell you I love you.” Brice held open his arms, and she hugged him. It took everything she had to keep from crying.
“I love you, too.” And she did. She loved them both. “Savannah, do you want me to tuck you in? Rafe said you like the bear and to be tucked all the way down your sides.”
Savannah grabbed her teddy bear, and though she had a sour expression allowed Layla to tuck her in. “I love you, Savannah.”
“Will Rafe be here tomorrow?”
* * *
Today was different. Layla knew she looked at him a lot, but today she really couldn’t stop memorizing details. She wanted to touch him a million times when they walked down to the stables. The children loved being out here on his ranch. She liked it, too, with the exception of his family. She knew they weren’t fond of her. She didn’t blame them, but it still made for awkward moments. They tried to be polite, kind, and inclusive, yet she never quite fit. Like today, they were having a picnic, and a picnic for a dude ranch means at least sixty people. How the man got all his work done and still made time for the children was beyond her. She struggled to work full time at the shelter, and she had been working overtime since they lost funding. She didn’t want to tell Rafe her job was in jeopardy. Instead, she kept her hopes up that the grant proposal would go through.
He walked toward her with a soda can in each hand. His jeans fit him so well, hugging his hips, showcasing his groin. Stop looking at him like that.
“Hey,” he said as he tipped his cowboy hat with an uncurled finger and winked at her. She could feel the muscles in her throat tighten as she looked away feeling more than the sun heating her cheeks. “I brought you a drink.”
“Thanks.” She took the offered can of cola and drank in the cool liquid.
Rafe sat next to her under the tree and leaned back against the trunk as he crossed two long legs. “So.”
“So the kids look like they are enjoying themselves.” She tried for small talk.
“They do. What about you?” He was looking at her; she could feel it.
“It’s always nice to be out here. It has a real sense of family, of freedom.” She nodded. “It smells clean. The flowers over there travel on the air well.”
“Why did you kick me out the other night?” He wouldn’t let her evade him for long.
“It’s complicated,” she said honestly. “I don’t want you to pity me. I don’t want you to offer me a mercy proposal because you
like the kids. You don’t know me. You think you do, but you don’t. You can’t.”
“I think I know you better than you know yourself. I know you didn’t hate me the night before last, but you put me out anyways.” He stroked a finger down her spine and every muscle in her body tensed. She wanted him. She wanted to turn around and lean right in to kiss his full lips, to taste his tongue, and to feel him all over.
“I had to.” She gulped. “I can’t let my body rule my brain.”
“So you still want me?” He sat up. His breath stroked her ear like a caress. “Because I want you.”
She didn’t have time to answer. He pushed up off the ground and called for Brice who was chasing Savannah with a bug. She watched him approach the children and she wanted. She wanted him to be their father, she wanted them to be their children, and she wanted everything he would offer her and more. She couldn’t have it all, but she could have another night with Rafe.
* * *
She wanted him all right. Rafe addressed the problem at hand with the two children, but he knew Layla had changed today. Normally she could hide her perusal of him, yet today she looked at him as if he were a slab of meat. He was anxious to be with her forever, but he might have to take it one night at a time. He started to wonder what she could be hiding that caused her so much pain.
“Yes sir.” Brice held his head down, and Savannah finally forgave him. Once she did, he explained himself, “I just wanted her to see it.”
Rafe knew what it was like to tag after an older sibling and want their attention desperately. Heath was his older brother, and until Jack came along, Heath was the best thing since sliced bread in Rafe’s mind. Then Jack made him the big brother, and Heath was only partly special. As an older brother, he could also understand Savannah’s role. She liked her little brother, only sometimes she wanted to do her own thing. He imagined bugs were not a favorite of regular little girls. Jan, his little sister, was so much younger than him, Heath, and Jack that she would have eaten the bug if she thought her brothers would give her attention. “Well, buddy, most girls don’t like bugs. So let’s see if you can find something else.”