Their Other Mother

by Janis Reams Hudson

  He slammed the pickup door and ran.

  “Daddy! Daddy!” Jason raced out of the house and down the drive toward Ace. “Daddy, Aunt Binda left!”

  Ace skidded to a halt before his son. An invisible vise tightened around his chest. Jason had been crying. “When? Where did she go?”

  “She went home. How come she went home, Daddy?” Jason leaned against Ace’s legs and sniffed. “We wanted her to stay.”

  Ace closed his eyes for a second and sought the strength he knew he was going to need. Then he knelt and took his tearful son into his arms. “I know you did, Jason. We all wanted her to stay. Did she say why she...had to leave?”

  Jason sniffed again. “No. She just said it was time to go home, and to tell you goodbye.”

  Equal parts of pain and fury held Ace speechless. Damn her. Damn her to hell for hurting his sons. For tearing his heart out and tossing it away in the dust of her departure. If last night hadn’t convinced her how right they were together, Ace didn’t know what would. But for her to just up and leave, to walk out like a coward without facing him, that didn’t sound like the woman he knew.

  So maybe, a voice in his head suggested, you don’t know her as well as you think you do.

  “When’s she coming back, Daddy?”

  “I don’t know, son.” Maybe never. If she can just walk out this way, she might not ever come back. The thought nearly crippled him. “I don’t know.”

  Jason let out a small sob. “Can we call her and ask her?”

  “Sure.” But Ace wasn’t sure at all. Wasn’t sure he could bear to hear the sound of her voice. “After she’s had time to get home. Or you could send her an e-mail,” he added, hoping the thought of getting on the computer would cheer the boy up.

  Jason sniffed again. “Maybe.”

  “Come on.” Ace rose and took Jason by the hand. “Let’s go to the house. You can introduce me to our new housekeeper.”

  Donna Harris took one look at the face of the man before her and knew that her first instinct this morning when she’d arrived at the Flying Ace had been correct—something about this entire situation was not as it should be. The man—Ace Wilder, her boss, she presumed, by the way young Jason clung to his hand—looked positively devastated by her presence in his home.

  “Jason,” the man said. “Why don’t you take your brothers into the living room and watch TV for a few minutes,”

  “Aw, Dad.” Jason looked up at his father and held on even tighter to the big hand that to him meant safety and security. He didn’t want to let go. He wanted Aunt Binda to come back. He wanted his daddy to smile and not look so sad. He didn’t want to feel so sad himself.

  “Go on, now.” His daddy smiled at him, but to Jason it wasn’t a real smile. It was one of those smiles grown-ups used when they didn’t want you to know something bad was happening. As if a kid couldn’t figure it out for himself. Grown-ups could be so dumb sometimes.

  “I want to talk to Mrs. Harris,” his daddy told him.

  Jason sniffed. Crying made his nose all runny. If Aunt Binda was here, she’d give him a tissue and make him blow. “You gonna talk about Aunt Binda?”

  His daddy ruffled his hair. “We’re gonna talk about scrubbing toilets. You don’t want to stick around for that.”

  Jason frowned. Grown-ups could come up with the dumbest excuses to get rid of kids. But on the outside chance that his daddy and Mrs. Harris really were going to talk about scrubbing toilets, Jason hurried his brothers out of the kitchen. He was just a little kid, after all. Gathering eggs and making his bed and that kind of stuff was okay. But even a little kid had to draw the line somewhere. Jason figured he would draw his at toilets. Aunt Binda wouldn’t have made little boys scrub toilets.

  Ace watched his eldest son herd his younger brothers down the hall toward the living room. He kept his gaze on the hall until he heard the television come on—anything to postpone the moment when he would have to face the woman in his kitchen.

  But now the moment, as well as the woman, was at hand. He turned and faced her. Holding out his hand, he said, “Hi, I’m Ace Wilder.”

  Donna shook his hand. “Donna Harris. I’m glad to meet you. I assume you weren’t expecting me today.”

  Ace cleared his throat. “Ah, not exactly.”

  Wondering if she really had this job, Donna offered a nervous smile. “Belinda said she left a note for you in your office. I’ll just...get lunch on the table. We can talk after that, if you want.”

  A note. Relieved, yet sick at heart, Ace gave Mrs. Harris a nod and made his way to his office.

  He’d given Belinda his heart. She’d left him with a hand-scribbled sheet of yellow legal paper stuffed inside an envelope with the ranch’s return address on it.

  “Ace,” it said.

  Hell. He didn’t even rate a Dear Ace....

  “I’m sorry. It’s cowardly of me, but I couldn’t stay.”

  And that was the sum total of her personal message. Everything else in her note concerned Donna Harris and the arrangements Belinda made with the woman on Ace’s behalf. Duties, salary, etc. Not one additional word of a personal nature.

  “Damn you, Belinda. Damn you.”

  Belinda felt damned. Never had she committed such a cowardly act in her life as sneaking away while Ace was gone and leaving his sons with a stranger. He would hate her now.

  If it was any comfort to him, she wished he knew how utterly miserable she was. She wished he knew how badly she hurt. How hard it had been to leave him, to leave the boys, the ranch, not knowing if she would ever see any of them again. How empty and barren—no, don’t use that word!—her apartment felt as she stepped inside late that night and flipped on the light.

  The drive had been the longest of her life. Not a mile had gone by that she hadn’t remembered one of those three precious faces looking up at her tearfully, asking why she had to leave. She hadn’t had the slightest idea how to make them understand a woman’s doubts and fears, but she had been determined to put a good face on the situation and not break down and cry with them.

  In that, she had failed. When Jason had hugged her legs and said, “But, Aunt Binda, we want you to be our other mother,” she’d lost control. She had dropped to her knees and wrapped her arms around all three boys and held them tight, not caring that the new housekeeper could see her silent tears.

  Oh, babies, she thought now. I’m so sorry I made you cry. I miss you so much already. You and your daddy.

  By the time she’d made it twenty miles from the house, she thought she’d had herself under control. Then she remembered little Grant, face red and puffy with tears, patting her on the shoulder and saying,

  “Don’t cwy, Aunt Binda. We still wuv you.”

  With that memory, she’d had to pull off the road. There she had buried her face in her hands and let the tears come freely. It took a long time to pull herself together.

  And then she’d thought of Ace, and the tears had come again.

  Someday, she hoped, Ace would realize that her leaving had been for the best. He would never have been happy married to her. She would have let him down time and time again, in so many, many ways.

  As for herself, she would have lived in constant fear of the day he woke and realized that marriage to her was nothing more than a bad joke.

  In a stupor of exhaustion and tangled emotions, Belinda left her computer bag on the sofa and staggered toward her bedroom. On the way she paused and looked down at the phone. The message light on her answering machine blinked its little red eye at her.

  A shudder of dread made its way down her spine. If she pushed the button, would Ace’s voice play back at her?

  Maybe in a year or so she would work up the nerve to find out.

  Feeling as if the weight of the world were on her shoulders, she turned away, realizing Ace’s voice wasn’t the only one she had to dread. She would have to call her mother tomorrow and tell her she was home.

  No, her mother wouldn’t settle for a
phone call. If Belinda didn’t go in person, her mother would come to her, and Belinda didn’t want that. She would have to go herself. She wondered how little she would be able to get away with saying.

  At her bedroom door she turned on the light. Her double bed looked small and cold, completely uninviting. Lonely. She would sleep there alone. For the rest of her life.

  Suddenly the walls of her small apartment, which she had always considered comfortable and roomy, seemed to close in on her. She tried to shake off the feeling. After all, she had the entire apartment to herself. There was no man to trip over, no little boys to watch out for....

  Oh, God, she thought, the pain in her heart nearly stealing her breath.

  There was no Ace. No strong arms to hold her in the night, no teasing laughter to lift her spirits. No little carbon copies of him, with their million questions and their heart-stealing smiles. No Jack and Trey—the brothers she’d never had. No Frank or Stoney or Jerry. No goofy dog, no prancing horses, no cows or elk, or moose or coyotes. No wide front porch. No vast, open range to embrace her and soothe her soul.

  There was only this small apartment with its thin walls and its emptiness. There would be no soothing of her soul here. This was what she had chosen. She would have to find a way to live with it.

  Ace stood on the front porch of his house and looked out across the vast black emptiness that was the range that supported his family. Cool air moved across his skin. Overhead, millions of stars dotted the sky. It was, he supposed, a beautiful night, but he found no pleasure in it.

  It was late. Nearly midnight, and he had to get up at four-thirty. It was past the time to go upstairs and face the bed that still smelled of Belinda and their lovemaking.

  Had he pushed too hard, too fast? Probably. Obviously. Why else would she have run?

  It was plain to him that he’d lost his head. Falling for Belinda had taken him totally by surprise. He hadn’t been looking for a woman to fill a void in his life, but when he’d realized he was attracted to her and she to him, that void had opened dark and wide and threatened to swallow him hole. Only Belinda seemed able to save him.

  God, he’d fallen fast. And hard. He hadn’t known a man could love a woman this way, to the point where he lost all good sense.

  Perhaps if he’d kept his head he would have realized that it was more than reluctance to tie herself down that had caused Belinda to refuse his proposal. Only one thing could have sent a tough lady like her sneaking off without a word, and that was terror.

  He didn’t get it. The Belinda he knew should have stood toe-to-toe with him and argued her point until he saw things her way or convinced her she was wrong. She might have told him bluntly that marriage was a stupid idea and only morons would consider it.

  But she hadn’t done or said anything like that. She had hired a housekeeper for him without his approval—it was his housekeeper, after all; shouldn’t he at least have met the woman before she moved into his house? Belinda had packed her belongings, loaded her car, and taken off with nothing more than a scribbled note for the man whose heart she had just ripped to shreds.

  “I thought I might find you out here.”

  At the sound of Jack’s voice, Ace heaved a sigh and leaned against the porch post. The same post where Belinda had leaned that first night they’d made love.

  Damn, he wished he hadn’t remembered that.

  “Go away, Jack.”

  Jack paused in the act of propping a foot on the bottom porch step. Ace was in worse shape than he’d realized. He never told anyone to go away, no matter what. The man was obviously too raw to talk yet. “All right,” he offered quietly. “You wanna talk, you know where to find me.”

  Ace swallowed. “Thanks. Maybe later.”

  It went against Jack’s nature to let Ace suffer alone. Maybe Ace hadn’t welcomed him with open arms that day twenty years ago when Jack’s aunt had dropped him at the Flying Ace and left him. But once the two boys had fought things out, they had been there for each other. From the day their father died five years later, they had been more than close. All of them, Trey and Rachel included.

  Still, Jack had a deep respect for a man’s need for privacy. Sometimes. For now he would leave Ace with his. He said a quiet good-night, then turned and walked back toward his house.

  Watching Jack leave, Ace let out a relieved breath. He knew Jack meant well. Jack nearly always meant well, even if Ace didn’t always like his brother’s methods. But on this night, Ace needed time to himself. To lick his wounds.

  Belinda would have postponed letting her parents know she was home, but she was afraid Ace would call them. It didn’t seem quite fair for them to find out from him that she was only across town instead of still in Wyoming.

  She had spent a miserable night staring with burning eyes at the ceiling over her bed. She’d been afraid to close her eyes, for every time she did, she saw the two of them, Ace and her, reflected in the mirror over his dresser, his hands on her body, making her burn, driving her toward a shattering climax.

  That vision was going to drive her insane.

  But with her eyes open, her mind was too alert. It insisted on replaying every moment she’d spent with Ace. Even their arguments made her miss him.

  And the boys. Oh, those precious, beautiful boys she’d come to love as her own. She missed them terribly.

  Had she made a mistake in leaving? Who would love Ace and hold him through the night, if not her? Who would help him raise his sons?

  Some other woman.

  She couldn’t bear to think about that.

  Or maybe no one. Ever again.

  That thought, that he might always be alone now, gave her less peace than the thought of him with another woman.

  But to give in to him, to marry him...her hands turned to ice at the very idea. Marriage meant being open and honest with each other in all things—at least all things that mattered. It meant adjustments and compromise, and she was lousy at both. It meant putting someone else’s needs above her own. She’d never been any good at that, either.

  No, she had done the right thing in leaving.

  Now, she had to do the right thing and tell her parents she was home. If she didn’t give them the gory details, well, a grown daughter had a right to keep some things private from her parents.

  Or so she’d always thought. Until she went to her parents’ house. The first words out of her mother’s mouth, after Belinda told her that Ace had a wonderful new housekeeper who would take good care of the boys, were “What aren’t you telling me?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.” Belinda whirled toward the pantry door and opened it. “Got anything to snack on? My cupboards are bare. I didn’t have anything for breakfast.”

  “Belinda Jean,” her mother said in that tone all mothers use now and then to shame their children into confessing something.

  “Mom,” Belinda said, in that whiny tone all children use to try to avoid answering.

  “Come on, dear, sit down at the table. I’ll pour you a cup of coffee and scramble you a couple of eggs while you tell me what’s wrong.”

  “You shouldn’t be cooking for me,” Belinda protested, grasping at any handy excuse to divert her mother’s attention. “You should be—”

  “If you use the R word on me, so help me, I’ll scream.”

  “The R word?”

  “Resting,” Elaine enunciated with obvious distaste.

  “Oh-ho. Sounds like Daddy’s been cracking the whip.”

  “He’s been treating me like an invalid, is what he’s been doing.”

  “Mom.” Belinda rested a hand lightly on her mother’s arm. “You were so sick, you scared us both.”

  “I know, honey.” Elaine patted her daughter’s hand. “I’m sorry you were so worried for me, but I’m fully recovered now. Even your father agrees, and that’s saying something. So you sit down and let me mother you with cooking. While you spill the beans,” she added sternly.

  “Oh, Mama.” In def
eat, Belinda sank to the chair at the table and buried her face in her hands. “I made such a mess of everything.”

  Elaine paused, fighting the urge to take her daughter into her arms and hold her tight. Belinda had not called her Mama more than a handful of times since the age of eight, when she’d decided she was all grown up, and Mama was a baby’s word.

  Were it Cathy sitting in her kitchen, obviously devastated, Elaine would not have hesitated to offer comfort. But comfort had never comforted Belinda, it only made her feel worse.

  Elaine turned toward the refrigerator and took out the package of bacon and the carton of eggs. “What have you made a mess of, honey?”

  What the hell, Belinda thought. She scrubbed her hands over her face, then let them fall to the spotless glass tabletop. “It’s pathetic, really. And you’re not going to like it.”

  “Do I need to like it?”

  “There you go. Why do I always forget how much common sense you have? No, I guess you don’t need to like it. But I think it’s going to upset you, and I don’t want that.”

  The first strip of bacon started sizzling the minute it hit the skillet. “I have just as much right to get upset now and then as the next person.”

  “Okay.” Belinda took a deep breath and tried to order her thoughts. Maybe if she said it all out loud she could make sense of it. “I discovered something about myself recently that I’m not very proud of.”

  “That happens to the best of us.” When the fourth slice of bacon was in the skillet, Elaine put the package back in the refrigerator. “What did you discover?” she prodded.

  In fits and starts Belinda told her. Over scrambled eggs, bacon, toast and her mother’s homemade grape jelly, she appalled herself by even admitting that she and Ace had made love.

  “Why, the nerve of the man,” Elaine stated with a deadpan expression. “Wanting to marry you just because the two of you happen to be in love. How dare the cad.”

  “But, Mama, I can’t marry him, don’t you see?”

  “No, actually,” Elaine said, carrying dirty dishes to the sink. She refilled Belinda’s coffee. “I don’t see at all, honey ”