He’d wanted to spend more time with Aurora, but his days and free time seemed to disappear. Besides, Aurora had been avoiding him, despite letting the band jam in the bar on Sundays, when she was closed. He assumed she was tired of hearing him ask her to play music with him. Just as he was tired of hearing about buying a damn horse.
Aurora pulled up behind him in her red SUV. She opened the door, then leaned back in to retrieve a bag of groceries.
“Hey,” he said, hurrying over, “let me help.”
“Thanks.” She dumped it into his arms. “It’s for the party. My contribution.”
He looked in the bag and saw containers of cut-up fruit and bottles of lemonade. “Healthy.”
“Lucia’s instructions,” she replied, getting her large purse out of the passenger seat. “I’d suggested beer and potato chips.”
He laughed. “I owe you an apology.”
“For what?”
“Bothering you about playing in the band.” She started walking toward the back of the house, where the door to the summer kitchen was propped open. “Winter wants a horse,” he added abruptly.
“There’s a connection there?”
“Yeah. I’m pretty tired of hearing about that horse.”
They walked in silence to the back of the house, until Jake spoke again.
“Look,” he said. “I’m attracted to you. Really attracted to you.”
He moved to block her from going inside. “Aurora, will you go out with me?”
“When?”
“Tomorrow night. We’ll go to Lewistown for dinner. Or Billings, even.”
She took her time thinking it over and then after a long moment he heard her say, “All right.”
Jake stared down at her. She was totally composed, her silver hair pulled back in a ponytail that made her look younger. She wore jeans and old boots, but her T-shirt was bright blue under a denim shirt and her earrings were shaped like guitars. “You’re actually going to go out with me?”
“You actually asked?” She smiled. “I thought you only wanted me for my fiddle.”
“Well,” he said, “I haven’t given up the dream for that particular life highlight.”
“As long as you don’t ask me to play Orange Blossom Special or The Devil Went Down to Georgia.” She groaned. “They’re such clichés.”
“A man can dream.” He dropped a daring kiss on her lips before she could protest. “I’ve missed you.”
“I’ve missed you, too.”
“Have you been avoiding me?”
She looked surprised. “I’ve been busy.”
He stepped aside to let her enter. He could hear Meg and Lucia talking, heard Sam’s deep laughter and the clanking of dishes. Outside in the barn, horses whinnied and children laughed in excited, high voices.
He could get used to this, he told himself. There was more to life than playing music and touring the world. There was this, he realized. At least for now. But could it be enough?
Right now, at this moment, he didn’t know why not.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“LORALEE’S KNEE is acting up,” Meg said, tossing salad in a bright red bowl. “And I don’t know what to do about the café. Al doesn’t want to work longer hours and Shelly is already working as much as she can with the baby.”
Aurora sat next to Jake at the kitchen table and listened. Jake’s knee rested against hers under the table, which made her want to giggle.
And she had never giggled in her entire life.
“Can you hire a manager?” asked Sam, who sipped iced tea and looked at home in the informal, old-fashioned kitchen.
“I’m not sure I can afford to,” she said. “I’d hate to give up the restaurant, but it’s getting hard running back and forth between the ranch and town. There’s so much we want to do out here, and yet the café is the only place in town to get a meal. I can’t close it.”
“And when the babies come...” Lucia finished arranging sugar cookies on a platter and set it in the middle of the table. “Go ahead and help yourselves. You’re all old enough not to spoil your dinner.”
“That’s why I love her,” Sam told Jake, reaching for a cookie. “Did I tell you that she made me fall in love with her by bribing me with food?”
“Don’t believe a word of it,” Lucia said, pretending to move the cookies out of his reach. “That was Davey bribing him, not me. I played hard to get.”
Aurora took a cookie. “Yes, you certainly did.”
Sam turned to Jake. “Watch out for the women in this town,” he said, his mouth full. “They’re dangerous. In many ways. They lure you with cookies and bacon and pancakes and pie.”
Aurora held up her hands in surrender. “Don’t look at me! I can’t cook.”
“But you play the violin,” Jake murmured. “And that’s better than food.”
“You play the violin?” Meg stopped what she was doing to stare at her friend. “I didn’t know that. Did you play when you were a kid? Do you still play? Isn’t it really hard?”
“Yes, yes and yes,” Aurora replied, laughing again. “And it’s just a hobby and I’m not very good.”
“Right, not very good,” Jake said, rolling his eyes. “I want her to play with the Judiths, but she’s too shy.”
“Shy?” Meg spoke the word as if she’d never heard it before.
“You’re really good,” Lucia protested, then turned to Meg. “Jake played for us and he talked Aurora into bringing her violin and playing, too.”
“Where was I?”
“Out here on the ranch, with your new husband.”
“Mom!”
A commotion at the back door put a halt to any more revelations, which Aurora appreciated...until she heard the intensity of the Swallow boys’ voices.
Owen had followed the boys into the kitchen. “Jake?” He had his arms around Winter’s waist. The girl was pale but silent. Her large eyes searched for Jake, and the second her eyes fixed on him she let out a low moan.
And that’s when Aurora saw the strange, sickening, bent angle of Winter’s left arm.
“Jake, I’m sorry,” Owen said, his voice low. “She just slipped off the horse and must have landed right on her arm.”
“Icicle sort of stopped and I fell off.” Winter’s voice quavered, though she lifted her chin and attempted to look brave.
Jake was on his feet in microseconds, kneeling in front of his trembling daughter. “Oh, honey,” was all he could say.
“I’ll get a blanket,” Meg offered.
“I’ll drive,” Aurora heard herself say. “You and Winter sit in the back. I can get you to town in record time.”
“That’s true,” Lucia said, her eyes filling with tears. The boys gathered around her and Sam for reassurance. “No one drives faster than Aurora. We’ll stop at the house and get your things and then we’ll meet you at the hospital.”
“Hospital?” Winter’s eyes grew larger. “Hospital?”
“I think your arm is broken,” Aurora said gently, taking the blanket from Meg. “You’ve had a riding accident. Now you really are a Montana girl.”
Winter dared a smile. “I’m right-handed. That’s good. I can still email.”
“And use a fork.”
“I’ll carry you,” Jake said, but Winter backed up.
“No, you can’t touch my arm.”
Davey peered at the broken area. “Does it hurt?”
“Not yet,” she said, but she winced and looked away.
“You need pillows,” Meg realized, running out of the kitchen again. “I’ll meet you at the car!”
Aurora had never been so thankful for her oversize and comfortable SUV in her life. With Jake and Winter settled in the backseat, she drove as fast as she safely
could manage. It was still a long drive, and by the time they reached the clinic in Lewistown, Winter had begun to weep large, silent tears. The shock was abating and the pain had begun to set in.
“I’m an awful father,” Jake moaned, after Winter’s arm had been encased in a cast. They were keeping her overnight to make sure she hadn’t hit her head.
Owen and Sam had kept them company for an hour, but they’d sent them home. Owen felt terrible, promising to do whatever he could to make Winter feel better. Sam had sat wringing his hands and telling horrendous stories about near-death experiences in the Amazon.
Aurora had had to beg him to stop.
“I’m going to have nightmares,” she’d told him. “Go home and tell Lucia that Winter is going to be fine.”
“I’ve already called her. Three times.” But Sam left, after patting his brother on the back. “Believe me,” he said. “I feel your pain. We lost Davey in a snowstorm last year and it just about killed me.”
“You lost Davey?” Jake looked as if he couldn’t fathom such a thing.
“He was next door,” his brother explained, turning pale at the memory. “With a dying woman. The one who... Don’t ask.”
“All right,” he said.
Aurora once again ordered him to go home. She managed to get Owen to leave, too, once the gift shop closed. He’d bought two pink stuffed bears, a fistful of candy bars and three gossip magazines for Winter.
“Women are particularly fertile during times of high, emotional stress,” she’d whispered so only he could hear. After all, how could one little lie hurt?
“Tea,” she said, turning to the distraught father sitting next to her in the waiting area. “Or something stronger?”
He looked up. “What are you talking about?”
“Would you rather have a Coke or a cup of tea? You’re in shock. You need sugar.”
“Why did I let her ride a horse? Do you realize how big those animals are? I had a bad feeling about this. I should have listened to my gut. Maybe Merry knew what she was doing, after all. She wouldn’t let Winter ride. Did you know that?”
“Your daughter is fine,” she said, making sure her voice was confident. What did she know about children? “Kids fall off horses all the time.”
“And you know this how?”
Obviously he needed more convincing.
Aurora shrugged. “I’m assuming,” she admitted. “Given the fact that everyone in the radius of five hundred miles seems to own a horse or two. And the odds are high that people sometimes fall off them.”
He lifted his head from his hands. “Aurora,” he said, his voice low, “have you ever fallen off a horse?”
“Of course not! I wasn’t allowed to do anything that would hurt my arms or shoulders or hands.” She put her arm around him. “Look, Daddy, she’s going to be fine. Two doctors, two nurses, the woman at the desk and the guy with the bloody face we sat next to in the waiting room have told you that.”
There was silence for a long moment. And Aurora had a horrifying thought.
“She’s never been musical, has she?” she asked. It was her left arm, the fingering hand. The fingering hand.
“No,” he snapped. “I don’t know.” He leaned forward again and propped his head with his hands, his elbows on his knees. “I think she might be tone-deaf.”
“Thank God.” Aurora could breathe again.
“I’ve only been a father for a month and she’s already in the hospital. She’s already broken.”
“She’s fixed up nicely,” Aurora assured him, patting his back again. “Come on, let’s go see if she’s awake. Or, hopefully, sleeping like a little cowgirl angel.”
Since Winter was, after all, sleeping peacefully, they ended up spending the night. Jake stretched out in a blocky vinyl chair in Winter’s room and Aurora curled up on the love seat in the waiting room. They would need a ride home in the morning, she told herself, which was why she had to stay.
Besides, they needed her. And no one had needed her in a very long time.
* * *
“I WILL RIDE AGAIN,” Winter told her father when she woke up the next morning. He was stretched out in a chair and drinking coffee from a foam cup. A half-eaten bagel sat on a napkin on the wide windowsill. She didn’t like the grim look on his unshaven face or his frown when she said the word ride.
“That isn’t something we need to talk about now,” Jake said, running his hand through his hair. “But we will. Horses are dangerous. I didn’t know how dangerous, but I should have guessed. I had a bad feeling from the start.”
“You should take a shower or something,” she said. Her arm ached, and so did her legs. Lots of stuff hurt, but her arm hurt more than anything else. “Aurora can help me get dressed.”
“Lucia sent clean clothes.”
“Cool.” Her jeans probably smelled like horse manure. And she didn’t want to smell that all the way home.
He stood and looked out the window. “You were safer at boarding school.”
She stared at his back. “Are you kidding me?”
He turned. “What?”
“You’re not sending me back,” she declared, very close to tears. She blinked hard, willing them away, but the tears overflowed and ran down her cheeks. “I won’t go!”
He was at her side in two steps.
“Sweetheart,” he said, gathering her carefully against his chest as he sat down on the edge of the bed. “It’s okay.”
“No—” she sniffed “—it’s not. You’re going to send me back and I won’t go, I just won’t.”
She felt his chest heave as he sighed. “No, you don’t have to go. I admit, it did cross my mind, but you and me?” He drew away from her so she could see his face. “We’ve got to stick together.”
“I—I know,” Winter managed to tell him. “Because we don’t have anyone else.”
“That’s not exactly true.” But he hugged her against him again and she went willingly, her cheek resting against his plaid-shirted chest.
* * *
THE WILD JUDITHS played their Saturday-night gig at the Dahl without their star. He was tending to his daughter in their apartment, thankfully furnished by Mike’s sister before she and her husband moved to Spokane, Washington, last year. The sister had left behind everything she didn’t want to bother to move, which was a good thing for Jake.
He had quickly invested in new mattresses and a television, thus declaring it to be home, before the accident. Lucia had contributed sheets and blankets until he could get his own, and Mama Marie filled the freezer compartment above the refrigerator with individual servings of lasagna and meatballs.
Aurora, overwhelmed with tourists and the almost constant questions from the contractor, wondered why she’d ever thought that attracting people to Willing was a good idea.
“The tourists are everywhere,” she told Jake, who had stopped by to thank her for her help at the hospital as if he hadn’t thanked her fifty times since Friday night.
“Your mayor must be ecstatic. Isn’t this what the town wanted?”
“Yes. Business is booming everywhere. Iris sold out of T-shirts and is printing more maps. The Judiths are playing Mondays, Fridays and Saturdays. Karaoke nights are standing room only and Meg has hired Marie to cook three nights a week.”
She would open at five o’clock for week five of Willing to Wed, which aired at eight. Tonight was the show filmed at the MacGregor barn and was sure to be a highlight, as most of the town had been there to participate. “I don’t open until one o’clock on most days just because I’d have people in here taking pictures and posing with that bear all day long.”
“I wouldn’t mind a picture with him myself,” Jake said, glancing over at the grizzly. For some reason it wasn’t wearing a hat.
“How’s
your cowgirl?”
“Anxious to ‘get on with her life,’ she told me.”
Aurora laughed. “And what does that mean?”
“She sent me out of the apartment so she could watch Downton Abbey in peace, without my asking questions. I guess Downton is less stressful than a hovering father.”
Aurora agreed. She had brought the DVDs of seasons one and two to Winter, along with a bag of Al’s special scones. The girl had been thrilled, but Aurora could tell she was in pain. But that was Saturday, and Aurora hoped the last couple of days had seen improvement.
“I’ll stop in later to check on her,” she said. “If that’s okay.”
“Sure, but what about the show?”
“Theo and Hip Porterman are helping out tonight. They’ll be here any minute.”
“Ah, I see.” He hesitated. “I came to ask a favor. A big one.”
“How big?”
“Huge.” He grinned.
“If this has anything to do with the band—” Not that she would admit she’d been practicing, because she wouldn’t. Just because she liked playing his songs, and had been curious about the difficulty of “Orange Blossom,” didn’t mean she was going to bounce up onstage with her violin and make a complete fool of herself.
“It doesn’t,” he promised. “I need help making Winter a blue bedroom.”
She immediately relaxed, letting out a sigh of relief. “I can do that.”
“Good. She said you would be the right person to ask.”
“I am. I am a world-class shopper. And I can do it all online and have it here in two or three days.”
“You’re bragging.”
“You got that right.”
“And,” he said, smiling at her with those hazel eyes, “after you’re done decorating, we’ll play a few tunes.”
* * *
THE PARTICULAR RIFF she’d chosen worked.
She could tell by the look on his face as she spun the notes faster and faster in triplets, then brought the tempo down to join with the melody. Jake nodded and picked it up, singing the third verse to one of his old songs.
The Husband Show Page 18