Still facing the window, he said, “And whatever it takes to make sure they stay safe with me until their mother gets back is what’s going to happen,” he said, his words measured and blunt. There was no mistaking his meaning.
Martha felt her patience thin at his tone. What did he take her for? “They’re safe with me, too,” she began stiffly. “I’ll admit I was wrong to take Daisy to Pine Ridge without checking with you. I won’t do it again. I think that should be the end of it.”
When he said nothing, her patience snapped. “You’re making far too big a deal of this.” He turned slowly toward her, and she met his gaze, chin up. She felt distinctly annoyed at the implication that she’d jeopardize the safety of the girls in her charge. She made an abrupt sound, a half laugh of disbelief. “For Pete’s sake, you’d think I was trying to kidnap them or something!”
He looked away, but not quickly enough. Martha was out of her chair in a flash. She grabbed his sleeve.
“You did, didn’t you?” she cried. She hauled on his arm with one hand when he refused to look at her. He gazed stonily out the window, still refusing to meet her eyes, but she could feel his muscles tense, hard as steel, under her grip. “You thought I was going to take them away, turn them over to some government agency…”
He turned. Her voice died at the look in his eye.
“You did, didn’t you?” she whispered. “You really did.”
He was so close to her, so large, his presence so male and so overwhelming that, instinctively, she wanted to step back. To protect herself. From what?
But she didn’t. She wanted to take her hand away from his arm but discovered she couldn’t. She felt numb, frozen. A doe in the headlights of a car at mid-
night, stunned and waiting for something terrible to happen.
His face was poker straight. He nodded ever so slightly. “You’re right. I did.”
“How could you?” Her voice was no more than a cracked whisper. “How could you even dream I’d do such a thing?” Her hand tightened on his arm, and she felt him stiffen. But he didn’t pull away. “Don’t you know I care about those two kids? I believe you’re doing the right thing by keeping them here or I never would’ve stayed. I’ve seen you with them. I know how much you care about them. I don’t want to see them hurt any more than you do.”
“You’ve only been here a week—how could you care that much?” he said harshly, breaking away from her grip. He stepped back and turned to face her completely. “And don’t get any wrong ideas here. They’re not mine. They’re my neighbor’s kids. Of course I care for them—I’m responsible for them, aren’t I? But that’s all.”
Martha stepped closer and looked up at him. She put her hand back on his arm, ignoring the way he stiffened, ignoring the hurt she felt in her heart that he should be so repelled by her. It didn’t matter; she had something she needed to say to him.
“Listen here, Fraser McKenna,” she said, her voice low. “You’re wrong. You don’t just care about those girls, you love them as if they were your own daughters, your own family—”
“What in hell are you talking about?” he growled, his eyes flashing fire.
“You say you don’t really care, you tell yourself you’re just doing this for Brenda,” Martha went on, “but you’re not. You’re doing this for you. For Fraser McKenna. This means life and death to you for some godforsaken reason I don’t understand, maybe you don’t even underst—”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“Maybe not,” Martha said softly, steeling herself not to flinch as he grabbed her shoulders. “But I know I’m right. And so do you.”
His grip was hard; it hurt her, but she didn’t lower her gaze for an instant, didn’t dare. His eyes darkened; she saw the glow of anger in them, the slight flare of his nostrils as he took a deep breath. Her legs felt weak. If he hadn’t held her she’d have fallen right there at his feet.
Suddenly his hands were on her face, one on each side of her head, his long fingers buried deep in her hair, trapping her, his thumbs near her mouth. His body was up against hers, hard and hot and lean. She felt the drumming of—what?—his heart, against the thunder of hers. She gasped. His face was close, so close she couldn’t get her breath and when she did, her lungs filled with the scent of him. Cold, snow, wood smoke, leather. She saw the glint of perspiration on his top lip, unshaven and rough, a tiny scar she hadn’t noticed before at the bridge of his nose. He moved one thumb slowly, ever so slowly, so that it grazed her lips, and she felt a shiver rack her body from her crown to her toes. The other thumb lightly stroked the skin of her throat, just at the line of her jaw. Just beneath the bone.
His eyes, black and fathomless and burning, followed the movement of his thumb, and she saw his lashes descend to shadow his tanned unshaven cheek. He seemed in the grip of some emotion he could barely control, and Martha felt every tremor of his body as her own. A tide of longing rose in her veins, beat against her eardrums.
“I don’t pay you to care, Martha Thomas,” he whispered, his voice harsh, his breath hot. “I pay you to get the job done. I pay you to leave me the hell out of it.”
In another instant he would have kissed her. Would have torn the clothes from her and taken her right there on the floor of the kitchen. She knew it in her bones, in her skin, in the relentless rush of her blood.
But in the same instant he lowered his hard mouth to hers, he cursed savagely and twisted his head and pushed her away. Two strides and he’d ripped his jacket from its peg and slammed open the door. The chill of the storm and a few flakes of snow melting on her skin told her he’d gone.
She was left in the warmth of his kitchen, arms wrapped around herself, thinking she’d never felt colder.
CHAPTER SIX
HAD SHE IMAGINED everything?
Fraser made no reference to what had—or hadn’t— happened between them the night of the storm. Martha didn’t dare even think about it.
If anything, he was more remote than ever. More polite. More silent, if that was possible. Sometimes, though, during meals, or in the morning as she passed him in the hall, or in the evening as he read aloud to Daisy, and Martha helped Anne with her homework, or they played a simple board game with the girls, Martha would catch him looking at her.
He’d instantly look away; so would she. But she knew he hadn’t forgotten, either. What had happened in the kitchen hadn’t been a figment of her imagination. He knew, as did she, that if he’d made angry passionate love to her right there on the kitchen floor she wouldn’t have stopped him, wouldn’t even have tried.
If he was wary of her, the knowledge of what might have happened made her even warier of him.
And what did it mean, anyway? Unknowingly, she seemed to have stepped into some darkness, some mystery, that involved her employer, the girls, this very house they all lived in. It was as though the four walls around her harbored some other element, the missing piece to a puzzle, if she could only see it. All she’d done that night ten days ago—all she thought she’d done— was point out that perhaps Fraser wasn’t as indifferent to the girls as he seemed to think.
Hadn’t she?
THE FOLLOWING FRIDAY was Halloween. Birdie LeBlanc arrived in the morning to help Martha and Daisy get the costumes ready. Martha had taken an instant liking to the spare bright-eyed housekeeper, her busy person an apt reflection of her name. It was really Alberta, she’d confided to Martha the first time they met, the day Martha and Daisy had gone to Pine Ridge. Alberta Bernice. But no one had ever called her anything but Birdie.
Yes, she was a registered nurse, she told Martha. But no, she hadn’t worked full-time since the boys took over the ranch. She and Hugh had stayed on in their place, semiretired, while the boys built two more houses on the property. Now Hugh occasionally gave his three sons a hand on the Triple V or, more often, worked for wages for Fraser. And Birdie, apart from her weekly housekeeping at Fraser’s, did the occasional pnvate-nursing job, but mostly fille
d in at the Pine Ridge Hospital when needed.
Martha had realized the second time she’d met the woman—when a dozen half-completed projects for her upcoming Christmas church bazaar had spilled from her large canvas carryall—that Birdie LeBlanc wasn’t a woman to waste time.
She hadn’t wasted any with Martha, either. Martha had soon found herself telling the older woman all about her former life, why she’d left Wisconsin, and why she’d taken the job with Fraser McKenna. Birdie had reciprocated, filling Martha in on the identities of all the neighbors, tipping her off about the best deals to be had in Pine Ridge, and giving her the calendar of upcoming events at the local community hall.
Birdie hadn’t been nearly as forthcoming about Martha’s employer, though. The few questions Martha had ventured to ask had been met with a speculative look, and Birdie had seemed to consider her answers carefully. Then she’d invariably changed the direction of the conversation, pursing her lips, saying only, “He’s a good man, Fraser McKenna is. Don’t you forget it, Martha, no matter what you hear. A good man.”
Which had only made Martha more curious. One particular mystery that had begun to plague her was the identity of the young woman in the silver frame Fraser kept on his dresser. Once, heart thumping and feeling guilty as heck, Martha had stolen into his room when Anne was at school and Daisy was out in the barn with Fraser and studied the photograph. It showed a young, pretty woman in her late twenties or so, jet black hair aswirl, dark eyes flashing, smiling impishly as she peered around the trunk of a birch tree. His sister? A girlfriend? Fraser had never said anything about his personal life or his family, if, indeed, he even had family still living. She hadn’t dared come right out and ask Birdie. Somehow, as his employee, she felt it wasn’t her place.
“Bet you’re wishing you’d kept right on track to California,” Birdie said when she came in that morning, stamping the snow from her boots and bearing a large box that Martha and Daisy were delighted to find was filled with fresh molasses cookies. “Ain’t this weather aggravating?”
“Mmm, these are delicious,” Martha mumbled through cookie crumbs. She gestured mutely to the window, where the brilliance of the morning sun was magnified a thousand times by the winter wonderland they’d found themselves in after the blizzard a week and a half ago. Temperatures had remained very low, and the foot of fresh snow had stayed. Winter was definitely here.
“No way. I wouldn’t have missed this for anything,” she continued, after swallowing. She smiled at the older woman. “Have you ever seen anything more glorious?”
The Wind River Mountains rose stark and hard and white against the fresh blue Wyoming sky. Martha thought Fraser’s ranch had about the most perfect setting she could ever have imagined.
“No need to tell me, Martha,” Birdie replied. “Lived here all my life and never got tired of it yet. Don’t suppose I will now. The boys thought us old folks would head for warmer parts once we retired. Arizona, maybe. Huh!” She laughed. “Feet first, that’s the only way we’ll be leaving, I told ‘em.” She turned to Daisy. “All right, young lady, hold still now and let’s try these wings on.”
Daisy giggled as Birdie eased the bumblebee wings she’d contrived out of gauze and wire coat hangers over her head and fastened the elastic strips that anchored the contraption securely around her small chest.
“There. How’s that?” Birdie adjusted one of the wings by squeezing and reshaping it, then stepped back, hands on hips to admire her work.
Martha clapped her hands, delighted. “Oh, Birdie, it’s perfect! Wait’ll your sister sees you, Daisy.”
School let out early today, and the girls planned to spend the afternoon getting themselves ready for trickor-treating. Daisy had promised to wait until Anne got home before painting black bumblebee legs on her yellow tights if Anne would agree to let her try on the princess outfit.
MARTHA HAD DECIDED the trickor-treating should start before it grew too dark. Fraser, to her surprise, had offered to take the children around to the various neighboring ranches, while she stayed home to answer the door to any little goblins who ventured up the long road to the McKenna ranch.
By midafternoon, Birdie had gone home, and Anne and Daisy had tried on their costumes so many times Martha had lost count. Fraser came by briefly to fill his thermos with hot coffee, promising to be back by half-past four for an early meal. Martha put a casserole of lasagna in the oven and set the girls to stuffing “goodie bags” for the children who might arrive at their door that night. Into the brown paper sacks went popcorn balls tied up in plastic wrap—Daisy and Martha had made a big batch the previous day—some of Birdie’s molasses cookies and a handful of candy. Anne wrote the name of the ranch and the phone number on the outside of each bag, so that careful parents would know where the homemade candy had come from.
By the time Fraser walked in at twenty past four, Martha felt nearly as excited as the girls.
“Look at me! Look at me!” Daisy twirled for Fraser’s appraisal.
“Very scary,” Fraser said good-humoredly when Daisy ran at him with her fingers pinching the air, her version of a bumblebee about to sting. Anne curtsied and he smiled, his eyes warm. “You look beautiful, Anne. Just like a real princess.”
To Martha’s amazement, Anne burst into tears, which only lasted a few seconds before she scrubbed them away in an agony of embarrassment. She ran to Fraser and threw her arms around his neck, burying her face in his shirt. Martha heard her whisper something to him. He nodded, glanced quickly at Martha and patted the girl’s back in an awkward gesture of comfort. He put his other arm around her and hugged her tight, then released her.
“Come on now, darlin’,” he said gruffly. “Let’s eat.”
“Yes. Supper’s ready,” Martha said, turning to pull the casserole out of the oven. Poor Anne! She’d probably never been told she looked like a princess before. Or that she was beautiful. Martha had to admit that with Anne’s flyaway black hair and too-often angry face, her scrawny arms and legs usually sporting T-shirt and scruffy jeans, she hadn’t glimpsed the princess inside, either. But Fraser had. He’d touched Anne’s heart. A proud father’s comment, for a girl who’d never known a father. Martha felt her own heart brim with emotion.
In no time the meal was over, and the girls were putting final touches on their costumes—lipstick for Anne, black stripes on cheeks and forehead for Daisy, as well as precariously poised coat-hanger antennae for her head. The children didn’t seem to notice—neither Fraser nor Martha pointed it out—that the dazzling costumes were nearly hidden beneath their bulky winter coats.
“Whoopee!” Anne and Daisy raced out the door, accompanied by the madly barking Spook. What would Halloween be without a genuine honest-togoodness Spook? Martha smiled to herself.
“What’s that all about?”
Fraser’s voice broke into her reverie. He’d found his gloves and was putting them on, his eyes steady on Martha.
“What’s what about?”
“The smile.”
“Oh.” She laughed and made a faint gesture with her hand. “Just thinking about Spook. You know, the Halloween dog.”
“Listen, Martha.” Fraser’s voice turned gruff. “I want you to know I appreciate what you’re doing with the girls.” He cleared his throat. “All this Halloween stuff. They’re having a good time.”
“I hope so,” Martha said dreamily, thinking of many happy Halloweens in her own life. “It’s fun for me, too.”
He reached for the doorknob. “We’ll be back in a couple of hours. You probably won’t get too many kids at the door. Too far for them to come all the way down to the end of the road here.”
The horn of the pickup sounded then, obviously one of the girls trying to hurry him along. Martha smiled again and went to the window as he left in a swirl of cold air.
A stranger dropping by would have viewed this as just one more happy-family scene, she thought. One in a long series of such scenes between the birth of a child and leaving hom
e. But it wasn’t what it seemed to be, not at all—she and Fraser weren’t husband and wife, never mind mother and father to these children. These children had been abandoned by their natural mother. They’d never known a father.
Martha’s heart contracted painfully and she let the curtain drop. She began to gather up the supper dishes. All the more reason to make the most of every day spent here in Wyoming. It wouldn’t last, but it was hers to cherish now. Lay down some happy memories, for the girls and for herself. Do the best she possibly could for these two motherless children who needed her—and Fraser—so much. Play her part in this pretend family, this charade of the real family she’d wanted for so long.
The ranch house felt lonely without the girls or Fraser around. The wind howled. Martha shivered as the old house creaked and groaned. A dog barked somewhere in the distance. Probably one of the sheepdogs Tom kept down at the bunkhouse. She was being silly. After all, there were several hands in the bunkhouse, only steps away. It wasn’t as though there was any danger being alone in the house.
Just that she wasn’t used to it anymore. She’d lived alone for many years in one apartment or another. Once she’d rented a house for a while with another single woman, a friend she’d made at the television station where she’d done her celebrity food show. Afternoon programing, lots of chat, some cooking, a few recipes from the rich and famous, local variety. The show had been fun.
Martha let her mind drift. She waited for the familiar sense of loss and longing to settle on her. For her part-time television job, for her newspaper column. It didn’t happen. She realized that she didn’t miss her former life much. In fact, she barely thought about it anymore. Strange as her new life was, her days at Westbank Ranch felt more real, than the past she remembered. All she missed was her old cat, Mr. Herbert, whom she’d left with a friend. She wondered how he was making out. Probably already had all the toms in his new neighborhood terrorized.
Judith Bowen Page 8