“It did to me, too,” Ace admitted. “She didn’t see it that way.”
“She still thinking she’s snatching at her sister’s husband?”
Ace shrugged. “Who knows what she thinks? Who knows what any woman thinks?”
Trey snorted. “You got that right.”
“She just couldn’t see it,” Ace confessed morosely
“Couldn’t see what?” Jack asked.
“How right we are together. I tried to show her, but...”
Jack snorted. “With a woman like her, you’d probably have been better off daring her to marry you instead of asking her. You know she can’t resist a challenge.”
Ace would have bet that nothing could make him laugh, but he found himself chuckling at Jack’s suggestion. “I can’t wait till you fall. I wanna be there to see you dare some woman to marry you. And here I thought you were on my side.”
“Hey, I’m on my side. The happier you are, the easier you are to get along with.”
“See my bet or fold, Jack.”
“I still say sweet talk won’t do it with Belinda. She’s too damn contrary.”
“You want me to marry a contrary woman?”
“She’ll keep you on your toes.”
“She’s gone, Jack.”
“Maybe you should have told her you wouldn’t marry her if she begged you.”
“Yeah, right,” Ace muttered. “You gonna finish this hand, or you wanna open up the new hot line—Jack’s Advice to the Lovelorn?”
Trey whooped with laughter.
Jack sneered. Then, with a curse, he folded.
Trey’s laughter trailed off as his brothers stared at him. All he had to beat was a pair of aces. “Hell. I fold.”
Well, Ace thought after his brothers left, at least he hadn’t lost his luck with cards. But he wished they had stuck to playing poker instead of talking. Talking about Belinda just made him think about her that much more, miss her that much more. Made him pull out, one more time, each minute they’d spent with each other. He searched his memory for every word, every smile, every cocky smirk she’d given him.
By morning he decided he’d had enough. She loved him. He knew she loved him. How dare she walk away and leave him in pieces this way?
Hell, whose damn fool idea was it for him to fall in love again, anyway? The last time around hadn’t been nearly this painful. Hadn’t been painful at all, as a matter of fact. Until the end, when it had nearly killed him.
He couldn’t believe he’d come this close to complete happiness again, only to have it end this way. Not as devastating as watching Cathy die in his arms, to be sure. But that had been out of his control. This didn’t have to be.
Belinda Randall was not going to get away with this.
Every Sunday afternoon since Belinda had left her parents’ nest, she had gone to their house for dinner. Her first Sunday home from Wyoming was no exception. Her father grilled steaks on the patio, and afterward, when the kitchen was cleaned up, the three of them sat around the den, which overlooked the patio at the back of the house, complaining about having overeaten.
“It was the brownies and ice cream that did it,” Belinda moaned as she lounged in her father’s recliner while he lay on the couch with his head in Elaine’s lap, acting as if he were dying.
“The bread,” he said with a pitiful groan. “Too much French bread.”
“You’re both right,” Elaine proclaimed. “We’ll never have either again.”
“Now, Mother,” Howard said cautiously. “Let’s don’t make any hasty decisions. We might recover, you know.”
“You might,” Belinda claimed. “I’m done for. You’ll need a wheelbarrow to get me out of here.”
The doorbell rang.
Howard groaned again. “Who would dare?”
“You poor thing.” Elaine patted his shoulder and slid out from beneath his head. “I’ll get it.”
When she left the room, Belinda smiled at her father. “I’m proud of you, Daddy.”
“Why, thanks. I’m proud of you, too. What are you proud of me for?”
Belinda chuckled. “You let her walk all the way to the front door by herself.”
Howard grimaced. “I’m trying.”
“And you’re doing very well.”
“It’s no secret that she scared the dickens out of me with that pneumonia,” he said, pushing himself up until he sat upright on the couch.
“I know.” Belinda swallowed at the memory of how sick her mother had been. “She scared me, too. If you hadn’t been here to take care of her, I never could have gone to Wyoming.”
“I hear voices,” he warned. “Sounds like we’ve got company.”
Assuming it was a neighbor, Belinda lowered the footrest of the recliner and raised the back until she could sit up straight.
Elaine burst into the room. “Look who’s here!”
Belinda turned toward the door with a smile of greeting—and froze. “Ace.” By some miracle of physiology, her heart jumped up into her throat and started quivering. Belinda bolted from the chair and stood, hands clenched at her sides, wishing she could run and hide, but knowing her feet were nailed to the floor. Oh, God. What was he doing here? Why had he come?
She nearly ate him alive with her eyes, but she couldn’t help it. He was the absolute last person she ever expected to see anytime in the near future. But there he stood, big and bold as life—bigger. Bolder. He looked so good, she wanted to weep.
But he looked tired, too, as though he hadn’t been sleeping. Belinda tried not to be thrilled by that, but her heart gave a little leap, anyway.
“Howard.” With his gaze locked on Belinda, Ace greeted her father. He transferred his white Stetson to his left hand and shook hands with Howard.
The tension in the room was palpable. No one spoke. No one, it seemed, breathed.
Then Ace took a single step toward Belinda. “Look me in the eye,” he demanded, “and tell me you don’t love me.”
Howard jerked once, then stilled.
Elaine quietly held her breath.
Belinda sucked hers in. She opened her mouth to speak, to deny the statement, but the lie wouldn’t come.
Ace gave a sharp nod. “That’s what I thought.” He took another step and reached for her.
Belinda panicked. “I can’t have children,” she blurted. An instant later heat flamed across her face. She could have bitten her tongue off.
Slowly Ace lowered his hand to his side. “What?”
Belinda squeezed her eyes shut. “God, don’t ask me to say it again.”
“Slim, I... didn’t know. Does it have to do with your miscarriage?”
Stricken, Belinda opened her eyes and looked at him. “You know about that?”
He gave her a half smile. “You know Cathy couldn’t keep a secret. Not usually, anyway,” he amended. They both knew he was referring to her keeping her own pregnancy a secret from him that last time.
“Well, then,” Belinda managed. “Now you know the truth.”
“Okay.” When she didn’t say anything else, he frowned. “I don’t mean to make light of the fact that you can’t have children, but—what does that have to do with whether or not you love me?”
“Ace,” she cried, gaping at him. “Pay attention here. You didn’t know about this when you asked me to marry you.”
“What? You think this makes a difference to me? For your sake, I’m sorry you can’t have children. But hell, Slim, after what happened to Cathy, do you think I could actually survive another pregnancy by a woman I love? If children are important to you, I’ve got three who took a vote and decided they wanted you for their new mom. They may not be of your body, but aren’t they the next best thing?”
Staggered, Belinda placed a hand over her chest to keep her heart from pounding its way out. “I don’t believe this. The man who breeds things for a living, who always said he wanted four children, doesn’t care that the woman he’s asked to marry him can’t get pregnant? You c
an’t be serious.”
“I’ve never been more serious. I love you. You love me. I want to spend the rest of my life with you.”
“Yeah, well, that’s what my ex said, too.”
“Yeah, well,” Ace said, “take a good look, Slim. I’m not your ex. When you figure that out and decide you want to marry me, you know where to find me. The next move is yours.”
Then, incredibly, he turned away and said goodbye to her parents. Then he walked straight out of the house. A second later she heard the sound of an engine revving, then fading away down the street.
“Well,” Elaine said, letting out her breath.
Howard looked from his wife to his daughter and back again. “I guess maybe there’s a little something the two of you haven’t told me?”
“He left,” Belinda said, stunned. “He came all the way to Denver, stayed five minutes, then...just left.”
“Looks that way,” Howard said, stuffing his hands into the front pockets of his slacks.
Something inside Belinda, something that had been frozen for days, broke free. Suddenly her vision cleared, as if a fog had just lifted. The world had been off kilter, but was now back on its axis the way it should be.
And she was furious. “How dare that rotten, hayseed cowboy come here this way and get me all stirred up again, get me to admit my darkest secret—” The secret that for years had nearly crippled her, that, until Ace, had made her feel less than a whole woman “—then just walk out? How dare he.”
“Hmm. Yes,” Elaine murmured. “Indeed.”
“If he thinks I’m going to let him get away with this, he’s dead wrong, oh, yes, he is.”
“Whatever you say, honey.”
Looking lost and confused, Howard flopped back down onto the couch. “I’d just be happy if somebody would tell me what the dickens was going on and why I’ve been kept in the dark.”
Almost as fast as it had come, Belinda’s anger drained away. She stood there in the middle of the room suddenly feeling as lost and confused as her father looked. “What am I going to do?”
“Do you really love him?” her mother asked quietly.
“More than anything,” Belinda answered with all her heart. “More than anything.”
It was barely a hundred miles up I-25 from Denver to Cheyenne. Ace knew, because he counted every one of them as he kept one eye on the traffic and the other on the rearview mirror. She would have to go home and pack, he told himself. That’s why she hadn’t caught up with him yet. She just hadn’t had time.
From Cheyenne across I-80 to the state highway that cut through Wyatt County, it was three hundred and fifty miles. He kept his speed down to seventy to give her a chance, but five hours after leaving Cheyenne, when he turned off I-80 for the last hundred-mile stretch, there was still no little red sports car riding his tail.
She was trying to scare him, that was it. She was going to let him stew all the way home, then she’d show up tomorrow and give him holy hell.
But tomorrow came, and Belinda didn’t. Neither did she come, or call, the next day, nor the day after that. Each day, Ace found it harder to keep his hope alive that she would come back to him.
It was four days before he admitted to himself that she wasn’t coming. He’d blown it. He shouldn’t have driven all the way down there with a chip on his shoulder. He shouldn’t have put her on the spot like he had. And in front of her parents.
He shouldn’t have walked away from her.
He should have asked her to sit and talk with him. He should have asked her to please come home with him, please marry him. He should have gone down on his knees and begged, if that’s what it took to get her back. Offered to live with her if she wouldn’t marry him.
Maybe he should call her. He gave his horse a final pat and turned him out into the corral. Hoisting the saddle, blanket and bridle over his shoulder, he turned toward the barn, figuring he would have to wait until the boys were in bed tonight before he would have the privacy to make the call.
From the corner of his eye, he saw a rooster tail of dust shooting up off the road from the highway. As the dust shot closer toward the house, he mentally tallied the location of everyone on the ranch and knew they were all here. This wasn’t someone returning home.
He couldn’t make out the vehicle, but it was too small to be a pickup, even one of those little jobs.
Slowly, with his heart speeding up, he eased the saddle and gear back onto the top rail of the corral.
He was too relieved to grin when he made out the little red sports car, but it was tempting. So was throwing his hat in the air and letting out a whoop of sheer joy at seeing his future speed up that damned ol’ dirt road.
She didn’t stop at the house, but barreled straight for him so fast that for a minute he thought she planned to run him down. He’d be damned before he would back up. A smart man didn’t show fear in front of this woman.
Behind him he heard several of the men coming out of the barn. He ignored them and kept his eyes on the car.
At the last possible second, she slammed on the brakes. The car skidded sideways to a halt six feet from the toes of his boots and sent a cloud of dust boiling into the air. When the dust cleared, she opened the door, climbed out and marched around to stand at the front of the growling little vehicle.
Tension coiled in Ace’s belly. “Tell me you’re not lost,” he said tightly. “Tell me you came here on purpose.”
She didn’t want him to see her wipe her nerve-dampened palms on her jeans, so Belinda stuffed her hands into her back pockets. She tried for a casual pose, but inside she was quaking. “I came here on purpose,” she stated.
“Thank God,” Ace whispered.
When he held out his arms, Belinda let out a glad cry and gratefully fell into them. He hugged her so hard she thought her ribs might crack, but she didn’t care. Never had anything felt so right as being wrapped in Ace Wilder’s embrace. Finally, Belinda was exactly where she belonged.
He kissed her ear, her neck. “I was afraid you weren’t coming.”
“I couldn’t stay away,” she whispered. “You knew I couldn’t. Kiss me, Ace. Kiss me.”
Ace didn’t need a second invitation. He took her mouth greedily, starved for the taste of her. Footsteps crunched on gravel. He barely heard them, easily ignored them. He could have ignored an earthquake just then, as long as Belinda went on kissing him.
He had questions. Dozens of them, that he was almost afraid to ask. But as his initial hunger was assuaged and the kiss turned gentle, he knew he had to ask. “Are you staying? Tell me you’re staying.”
Belinda pulled back slightly and met his gaze. With a slightly wobbly smile, she said, “I guess I’ll have to. I put all my belongings in storage and vacated my apartment. I, uh, understand you have an opening here.”
Ace eyed her carefully. “You want to be my housekeeper?” he asked warily.
Belinda arched a brow. “Me? You must be joking. I know for a fact that you already have a housekeeper, and if I have anything to say about it, she’ll be staying. I was talking about the position as wife to one Ace Wilder.”
His smile came slowly and made her heart race. “Oh, yeah? You’re gonna marry me?”
“Oh, cowboy.” She tugged his hat off and tossed it over her shoulder onto the hood of her car, then wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him close again. “Am I ever gonna marry you.”
It was the nearby voices that broke their heated kiss.
“What do you think, Number Three?” Jack said.
Trey chuckled. “I think it’s about damn time.”
“Ah,” Belinda said to Ace. “That would be the prospective brothers-in-law.”
Up the driveway, the back door of the house slammed, and childish shrieks split the air. “It’s Aunt Binda! Aunt Binda’s back!”
“And that,” Ace told her, smiling warmly, “would be the prospective sons.”
Belinda stepped from Ace’s embrace and turned in time to kneel in t
he gravel and catch the three little bodies who launched themselves at her. As she hugged Jason, Clay, and Grant to her chest, her vision blurred. She had everything now. The man she loved, two new brothers, a new sister off at college and the children of her heart.
A soft feeling of warmth swept over like a summer breeze, and suddenly Belinda knew that Cathy, wherever she was, was smiling.
Meet Ace, Jack and Trey’s younger sister,
Rachel Wilder, when her former love,
Grady Lewis, comes home to Wyatt County.
Coming to Special Edition in the
spring of 2000.
ISBN : 978-1-4592-6028-3
THEIR OTHER MOTHER
Copyright © 1999 by Janis Reams Hudson
All rights reserved Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography. photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the editorial office. Silhouette Books, 300 East 42nd Street, New York, NY 10017 U S A.
All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.
This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
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