“Hello?”
Mack’s voice shot through her thoughts, and she realized he’d spoken to her several times.
“Sorry. Daydreaming.” She poured one more cup of water over Ashleigh and hit the drain, standing and grabbing Ashleigh’s slippery body under her arms and lifting her out.
“Must have been quite a dream,” Mack said, wrapping the towel completely around the giggling preschooler and rubbing while making not-scary growling sounds.
“You’ll make a good dad,” Angela said. She wasn’t really thinking, but they weren’t words that she thought were out of place. Just an observation.
But Mack froze.
The body wrapped in the towel continued to wiggle and giggle, but his eyes looked at her, maybe like seeing her for the first time. Or like he didn’t really know her.
Had her face suddenly turned green? She wanted to tap her head to make sure a pointy black hat hadn’t suddenly landed on it. The guys in the diner tonight had called her a witch.
She wasn’t one, she knew it.
But Mack was looking at her like he didn’t.
She didn’t like the feeling that gave her.
Clenching her jaw, she pulled her eyes away and knelt back down at the tub, wringing out the washcloth. “You would. And there’s nothing wrong with me saying so.”
There. She wasn’t backing down, but she didn’t have to look at him, either.
“You’d make a good mom,” he said softly before he turned and carried Ashleigh out.
Chapter 12
Angela walked down the stairs, her hand trailing on the banister, feeling like a kid who’d run in the church sanctuary and was about to be reprimanded.
She supposed if there was ever a time for her to put the pastor’s-daughter fakeness she’d learned in her childhood to good use, it was now.
Closing her eyes and taking a slow breath through her nose, she stood at the bottom of the steps and hoped with all her heart that she could handle whatever her parents said.
She opened her eyes and looked straight through the living room doorway to Mack, who was already seated on the settee with his parents on the couch and Mr. Swanson in his recliner. The tv was on low, and Angela couldn’t tell if they were watching it or talking.
Mack was staring at her.
She wanted to tell him that she knew she hadn’t suddenly developed a green complexion, nor was she wearing a pointed hat, since she’d just checked her reflection in the bathroom mirror, just to joke and have something to laugh together about, but the distance between them was too great, physically and emotionally, for more than a smile and wave, of which she did neither.
She swallowed past her closed throat, and with a hand on her stomach, as though that alone could calm the sweep and swirl in it, she donned her very best pastor’s-daughter persona and glided down the hall and into the kitchen.
Normally at this time in the evening, she’d have put on a comfortable pair of yoga pants and a soft old sweatshirt, but she wore a jean skirt that passed her ankles and brushed the floor, along with a fitted turtleneck sweater. Something she might wear to Wednesday night worship and Bible study.
Dressy enough for a confrontation with her parents, but casual enough that she could run if she needed to.
She didn’t actually think she would need to run.
But it was nice to keep the option open.
“Mother.” She walked in, bending to kiss her mother’s cheek. “Daddy.” She twisted, kissing her father’s rough cheek as well.
Interestingly, her mother sat at the head of the table.
It was the way their family was run. Behind the scenes, of course.
“You’ve kept us waiting a long time, darling,” her mother stated in her cultured voice.
“I’m sorry. The children needed baths, and I already explained to you—”
“They’re not your kids,” her dad interrupted. “Why are you taking care of them?”
“I think you know the answer to that, Daddy. You raised me. Aren’t we supposed to serve wherever we are?”
“Not when your parents are waiting,” her mother said.
Angela allowed a gentle smile to turn her lips up and tried to get a handle on her lungs that wanted to pump like bellows.
She moved around to the other side of the table, ignoring the part of her that wanted to get flour and shortening out and start making enough pie dough to feed Thanksgiving dessert to a platoon of hungry soldiers.
But she did give in to the part that wanted to put an entire table between herself and her parents.
She pulled a chair out and sat as gracefully as a ballerina at the barre.
“I’m so surprised to see you.” She hoped that sounded very much like “It’s so nice to see you” which would have been a total lie, and she couldn’t utter it, but she didn’t want to be obvious about not being happy that her parents had showed up.
Where were they when she called and told them her husband had blackened her eye and given her a bloody nose before shoving a metal chair at her and gashing her calf?
“Well, we thought you would see reason and go back to your husband,” her mother began.
“We thought you’d run out of money,” her dad stated flatly.
She almost had.
She had enough money saved from her childhood to buy the junky car she drove and pay for the first month’s rent. Thankfully Patty paid on a weekly basis and didn’t hold a week’s pay.
Baking goods on the side would never make her rich, but she’d been doing well enough to make rent and buy groceries.
Roxie had paid to have her car fixed. Otherwise she might have been in a pickle. Although, since Mack had moved in, she’d ridden more in his pickup than in her car.
“I haven’t,” she said, since her parents seemed to be waiting for her to say something.
“We also thought you’d come to your senses.” Her mother’s nose tilted slightly in the air.
“In what way?” Angela figured they’d give her a hard time about not moving back in with them, but she wanted them to say it.
“Your place is with your husband,” her mother said in a fake-gentle way.
Angela stopped with her mouth open. Maybe she should have expected that, but it did surprise her. “You think I should go back to Logan?” she asked, just to be sure.
“That’s your husband, and you promised before God and man to honor and obey.” Her father wasn’t standing behind the pulpit, but his voice still held a ring of authority.
“He has a girlfriend.”
“That doesn’t matter,” her father said immediately.
“I know you have the Bible on your phone, Daddy.”
“Sure do, baby.”
“I know you said we’re to live by it.”
“That’s right.” There was a gleam in his eye that said, clear as day, that he was proud of her. She knew he loved her. Even though they disagreed and she wasn’t doing what he wanted, he still loved her. Maybe it didn’t even seem like it, but he was her dad.
“So, I’m claiming Matthew 19:9.” She folded her hands carefully on the table in front of her. She could win this argument by using Scripture. She didn’t have any argument for spousal abuse, male or female, which is the real reason she left. She might have been able to put up with the girlfriend. It wasn’t her fairy tale romance, but lots of women had stood by philandering men. Jackie Kennedy. Hillary Clinton. She didn’t necessarily admire those women, and she wouldn’t have liked it, but she didn’t love Logan. Honestly, him having a girlfriend would have kept him out of her bedroom. She might have been able to convince herself it was a win-win.
But she wouldn’t stay with a man who used his fist on her. She couldn’t. Because they could have children. And he would do the same to their kids.
That was an argument that might convince her parents, but she couldn’t back it up with the Bible.
Her father had gotten his phone out and looked up her verse.
He read it, be
cause she could see his eyes move back and forth across the lines. Then his eyes stopped moving, and he stared at it.
She knew he knew the verse. Probably he was trying to think if there was a backdoor argument. Something he could say that would negate the teaching given in that verse, but there wasn’t. She knew it. He did too.
When someone went outside the bonds of marriage, the vow was broken. God wouldn’t hold her to a vow that had been shattered. He was the righteous judge and just. Not unreasonable.
Her dad couldn’t deny it.
“You’re right, honey.”
Her chest felt lighter immediately.
“But you need to come home.”
It tightened again.
She didn’t want to argue about this. She also didn’t want to go home. She’d done everything her parents ever wanted her to do. The reason she was now living in North Dakota, alone, with an almost-final divorce in her near past was because she’d done what they wanted her to do. Her actions had saved their finances.
Now, it was her turn. Not that she wanted to live for herself, necessarily, because she didn’t believe that was the way to true happiness, either.
“I have a ministry here. I can’t just leave it. I’m working on the Christmas festival, I teach Sunday School, I have a job, and I’m selling baked goods. There are people here who need me, and I’m doing good. Right here in Sweet Water.”
She thought her parents would argue. That there would be a discussion that lasted into the wee hours of the night and ended with one or all of them crying and angry.
Rather, her dad looked at her, then looked back down at his phone. He tapped it on the table and lifted his head. “I guess we just miss you.”
Her mother opened her mouth. Her dad put his hand up. “We miss you. But we have to let you go. We did it as a show at your wedding—where I ‘gave’ you away. I can’t...take something back that isn’t mine anymore.”
He swallowed. A possible cloudiness in his eyes could have been a mist of tears.
Angela hadn’t been expecting that. Not at all. She pushed out of her chair and walked around the table, putting her arm around her dad and bending down to hug him.
“Maybe I’ll be back.” She was almost sure she wouldn’t be. To visit, yes. If she ever got to the place where she could afford it. To live. No. Never.
“You’re welcome anytime.”
“I know that, Dad.”
Her mother patted her arm awkwardly. Like she wanted to be included in the family circle, but not if she had to get messy in order to do it.
Angela put her other arm around her. Her mother remained stiff, but these were her parents. If she wanted them to love her however she was, she supposed she needed to do the same. Love didn’t need to mean agreement.
Eventually Angela sat back down at the table, and they talked until much, much later than her parents usually went to bed.
They’d come to the diner for breakfast and to see her at work, but they’d be leaving afterwards since her dad preached the next day.
It made Angela a little sad to think of them leaving and a little guilty that she’d talked about her ministries here, because she still had every intention in the world of leaving after the Christmas festival.
So when they excused themselves to head upstairs to bed, she hugged them both, said she’d expect to see them at the diner in the morning, and explained that she’d be up as soon as she tidied the kitchen.
There wasn’t much to tidy. A couple coffee cups and plates where they’d eaten a piece of her pie.
Mack and his parents and Mr. Swanson had gone to bed an hour or so before—she’d heard them, not seen them—and she was alone as she worked in the kitchen. Feeling restless.
So she turned the lights out, grabbed her heavy coat, hat, and gloves, shoved her feet in her winter boots, and stepped out into the clear, white night.
Christmas lights still glowed on a few houses along the street, and the new sign for Patty’s Diner blinked blue and red, even though it was closed.
The white church steeple stood out against the dark night at the end of Main Street.
The snow squeaked under her boots, and the cold rushed up under her skirt, giving her goosebumps despite the leggings she’d put on when she dressed.
She hadn’t been here very long, but she was kind of partial to the North Dakota sky. The cold was uncomfortable in a way, but it had also become familiar. And she loved the people. Hardy and resilient, they were practical but big-hearted in a way she couldn’t even begin to describe.
She realized with a start that she would miss North Dakota, even more than she missed the little town she’d grown up in.
“Deep thoughts?” Mack’s voice came from behind her. She hadn’t heard the snow squeak as he’d walked up the path from the back of the house to the front sidewalk where she stood with her head lifted to the sky, watching the light skiff of clouds float across the almost-full moon.
“No. It’s just really pretty the way snow reflects the glow of the moon and makes everything bright. Not like day, but like...”
“Like a night with snow and moon.”
She laughed. “You can act like you don’t admire it, but you love it too.”
“I was teasing you. Yeah. It’s beautiful, and I don’t have a problem admitting it. It’s also dangerous. You should tell someone before you go outside and wander around.”
“How do you know I didn’t?”
“I was standing in the living room, listening.”
“You were eavesdropping?”
“Sure.” His shoulders went up and down inside his heavy coat. “You gonna tell me there’s a Bible verse to say that’s wrong?”
“You were listening!” She whirled to face him.
“Mighta been.” His teeth flashed. Then just one shoulder lifted. “Not really. I’d just gotten up to go out and grab some pie for my parents and Mr. Swanson, but you guys sounded pretty serious, and my parents aren’t leaving until tomorrow.”
“Too bad. We ate all the pie.”
“I’ll do your shift at the diner if you make pie in the morning.” He stomped his feet. “Guess you’d have to watch the girls when you get up. Forgot about that. Although my parents are here. Maybe they’d help.”
She studied his face in the moonlight. “How’d that go? I assume that’s why they were here? Because of the girls and your sister?”
“Yeah. She left a message for them yesterday. Said she thought she’d be in Europe indefinitely.”
“Just like that? She moves across the ocean?”
His breath huffed out in a cloud of white. “I guess. Whatever it takes. Sounded to me like she’s living with her boyfriend and his girlfriend.”
Her eyes had run down his square jaw, over the stubble to the cleft in his chin. But his words jerked her thoughts back to their conversation. “Sounds like the girls are better off here, maybe.”
“Pretty sad when someone makes me, a single dude with no home and a slightly skewered moral compass, look like a good parent.”
“I meant what I said tonight.” She spoke softly, but in the cold, crisp air, her words sounded loud. Ringing, almost.
“I did too.” He took a step closer to her and touched her cheek.
“You’re not wearing gloves.”
“No.” His eyes followed his fingers as they trailed down her cheek to her neck. “I’ve been wanting to feel this for a long time. Thought I might get a chance tonight. Rather lose my fingers to frostbite than miss it.”
His words made her lips turn up, but she couldn’t get her lungs to work and her arms tingled.
Her brain didn’t seem to have a problem reconciling the idea that he didn’t like her but still wanted to touch her. She knew it was possible. Maybe if she didn’t like him so much, she’d be offended.
“I didn’t have that much foresight,” she whispered instead.
His brows twitched, like her words surprised him. “You don’t have to wait for an opportunity.
You can just make it.”
She’d kissed her husband, of course, in the week she’d lived with him. And she’d kissed Clay. She hadn’t really wanted to kiss either man; both of them had been for her parents. There was a really big part of her that was sure that kissing Mack would be a lot different. There was an even bigger part of her that wanted to find out.
She took a step closer and tilted her head up even more. “You’re too tall.”
He smiled a little. “That’s where you take your glove off and reach your hand up. You can do it.”
She smiled her smile that had nothing to do with Sunday School. “But I don’t want to use my fingers.”
His fingers had reached the side of her neck, just under her head. They stopped. His chest stopped, too, before it went in and out deeply.
In the back of her mind, she remembered her text and how it hadn’t been answered and her assumption that he’d not wanted to kiss her and her promise to herself that she wouldn’t go there again.
But she had, and she wouldn’t take the words back, because if she were leaving, she wanted to take the knowledge of Mack’s kiss with her.
But he didn’t bend down.
Time hung suspended, surrounded by shimmering moonlight on snow and frigid cold and the vast North Dakota sky, but none of it mattered because the man standing in front of her had rejected her twice.
Her ribs seemed to wither in her chest, but her backbone wouldn’t let her slump. She wouldn’t back away. But she did speak.
“You ignored my text.”
“Yeah.” He still hadn’t moved, and she itched to run away.
“It was inappropriate. I’m sorry I sent it.”
“I’m not.”
Her eyes had lowered to his chin, but they snapped back to his face. Questions formed in her throat.
“Because you thought my embarrassment was funny?” She sounded bitter, and she couldn’t help it.
“No.”
She finally asked the question that had eaten at her since she sent it. “Why didn’t you answer?”
“I didn’t know what to say.”
“That’s funny. I didn’t realize a man had to think that hard to figure out whether he wanted to kiss a girl or not.”
Cowboys Don't Stand Under the Mistletoe (Sweet Water Ranch Western Cowboy Romance Book 10) Page 10