When they reached the corral, Sloan swung down from his horse. After Rose dismounted he took her reins. As much as he wanted to rush to the house to see Emily, he knew his grandmother was tired, even if she wouldn’t admit it.
“I’ll see to your horse,” he told her.
“Thank you, Grandson.” She patted his cheek. “I’m ready for a shower, and maybe even a nap, but if you repeat the latter, I’ll deny it.”
He blinked. “Repeat what?”
“You always were a good boy.”
Since Rose was going to be in the house with Emily, Sloan decided it would be wise if he kept his distance. He wasn’t ready for another lecture on the virtues of their temporary housekeeper. He feared he knew them all too well.
He wanted her.
There. He had actually let the words form in his brain. The big question was, what was he going to do about it?
While cooling down and grooming his mount and his grandmother’s, he considered the possibilities.
The first was that Emily was not interested in anything beyond that one kiss they’d already shared. In which case, his wants were moot.
But she had said she was attracted to him, too. That meant something, didn’t it? Of course it did. He could act on that, go after her. That’s what he wanted to do. He remembered the day he met her, that slow, graceful dance she’d performed while gliding from table to table. Remembered wondering if she moved that slowly, that gracefully in bed. He still wondered it, and the wondering heated his blood.
Would it be worth it to have her, then stand back and watch her drive away?
And she would drive away. She would have to, because she wasn’t cut out for life on a ranch. She had no business even being a housekeeper. Earline was as hefty as a linebacker, and the job wore her to a frazzle.
Memories of his mother surfaced, warm, loving, sad. She’d been delicate and dainty, too, like Emily. And in the end, life on this ranch had killed her. He’d been nine, and devastated.
His mother, he knew, was why he always fell for damsels in distress. Women who needed him to help them. His mother had needed a man to help her through her daily life, but his father had been consumed by the ranch, and the bottle.
Sloan had stepped in to fill the void, but he’d been a kid. He hadn’t been able to take care of his mother the way she needed, the way she deserved.
These days, it seemed, he made up for his youthful inabilities by helping any woman he thought needed him.
It was a hell of a thing, to realize all of that, and still fall in the same old trap. Because he could never, in good conscience, tie himself to a woman like his mother. He couldn’t stand to watch a woman he loved work herself to the bone and wither away before his eyes. Would never forgive himself if he did that to a woman.
So what the hell was he even thinking of, to consider getting involved with Emily? She wasn’t the type for a brief, hot fling. She had home and hearth written all over her.
Why couldn’t he gravitate, just once in his life, toward loose and wild?
In the end Sloan dallied so long in the tack room in the barn that their two part-time men came and left for home, and his brothers rode in and beat him to the shower.
Everyone was just sitting down at the table by the time he’d gotten himself cleaned up and made it to the kitchen.
Janie and Libby were bubbling over, chomping at the bit to be able to tell everyone about their day.
“And then I fell and skinned my elbow. See my owie?” Libby held up the elbow for all to see.
“That’s a beaut, all right,” Justin said.
“Did it hurt?” Sloan asked.
“It was awful,” she said. “But then I forgot about it when the washing machine broke and water went everywhere. That was cool. But it was okay, because Miss Melanie was here to help Mommy take care of it.”
Sloan inwardly winced. First because Emily had been confronted with a problem she shouldn’t have had to deal with. Second, “Mel was here?”
Emily passed the sliced tomatoes to Rose. “You call her Mel?”
He shrugged. “Sometimes. Is the washer okay now, or do we need to take a look at it?”
“No, it’s fine. It just needed a new hose for the cold water.”
Rose took a slice of tomato and passed the plate along. “I thought the porch floor looked unusually clean.”
Emily smiled. “Oh, it got a good mopping, all right.”
Sloan told himself it was no big deal that Mel had to replace the hose while she was here. Most women didn’t know squat about plumbing; Mel was the exception. He couldn’t think less of Emily for needing the help. He doubted his grandmother could have handled it on her own, and she could do damn near anything, although she tended to turn her nose up at plumbing.
“Men’s work,” she had always said. “Plumbing and electricity and car engines.” Anything else, to her way of thinking, was fair game, but women shouldn’t be bothered by any of those three pesky chores. Scrubbing toilets, she’d said, was bad enough.
No, he shouldn’t feel disappointed that Emily had needed Mel’s help. He was only sorry that he hadn’t been here himself to take care of the problem for her.
“What did Melanie want?” Caleb asked Emily.
“She brought dessert.”
“No fooling?” Justin straightened and looked around the room. “What’d she bring?”
“Listen to you,” Rose scolded. “You sound like you never get dessert. And after that wonderful banana pudding Emily made yesterday.”
Emily took no offense at Justin’s remark. “She said their blackberries were out of control. She brought pies.”
“Awright,” Justin cried. “Hot? With ice cream?”
Sloan snorted. “Heat your own pie. Emily doesn’t need to be doing extra work like heating a piece of pie for a nitwit. Next thing, you’ll be asking her to cut your meat and tie your shoes.”
Justin winked at Emily. “Don’t mind him. He’s probably just worried about whatever Mel might have told you about him.”
Sloan nearly choked on a sip of iced tea.
Emily grinned. “You mean like the fact that she had a bad crush on him for most of her life?”
Sloan’s face turned an interesting shade of red.
Justin chuckled. “That’s our Mel.”
“Did you run a count when we moved those cattle?” Maybe changing the subject, Sloan thought, would save him the serious razzing he feared was coming.
“Sixty-three,” Justin replied, “all present and accounted for.”
“You’re sure. We didn’t miss any down in that draw?”
“We didn’t miss any. I counted two-hundred-and-fifty-two legs, and divided by four.”
“Not without a calculator, you didn’t,” Sloan taunted. “Math never was your strong suit.”
“Hey,” Justin protested. “I can count just fine.”
“I seem to remember a D in math your junior year in high school.”
“Yes,” Caleb joined in. “I remember that, too. But be fair, Sloan. That D had nothing to do with his inability to add or subtract, but with the fact that Beverly Anniston of the tight-fitting, low-necked sweaters sat beside him.” He grinned. “Speaking of Ds.”
“That’s right,” Justin proclaimed. “How’s a guy supposed to concentrate with all that—”
“Watch out, Grandson,” Rose warned, a twinkle in her eye as she used her fork to cut a piece from her tomato slice.
“I was going to say distraction,” Justin claimed.
“How very diplomatic of you,” his grandmother said.
Chapter Seven
“It occurs to me,” Sloan said to Emily after supper, “that you’ve been here several days and we haven’t got you or your girls up on horseback yet. Most kids would have been clamoring for a ride by now. Don’t they like horses?”
Emily gave the kitchen countertop a final swipe with the dishrag. “They’ve never been around horses before.”
“Meaning?”
She draped the wet dishrag over the sink divider and turned to face him. “Meaning I think they’re probably dying to ride, but because I told them not to ask, they haven’t.”
Sloan’s eyes widened. “Why would you tell them not to ask? Kids, horses, wide-open spaces, it’s a nobrainer.”
She gave him a small, tight smile. “For summer camp, maybe. But we’re not here for a vacation, we’re here for me to work. I didn’t think it was appropriate.”
“Well, stuff that.” He took her by the hand and headed for the back door. “Here to work,” he muttered. “What do you think this is, the salt mines?”
Janie held her little sister’s hand tightly. The two of them stood well back from the garage, as ordered. Mr. Caleb and Mr. Justin had brought in this big thing they called an A-frame and stood it over the car engine. Now they had huge, long chains, as big around as Janie’s arm, hanging from the crossbar. The other ends of the chains were hooked onto the engine, and they were turning this handle thing, like a crank, and lifting the engine up. They said they weren’t going to pull it clear up in the air, just high enough that they could get to that thing underneath that they needed to get to. Something called an oil pan, she thought. Whatever that was.
“Golly,” Libby said beside her, her eyes wide.
Janie squeezed Libby’s hand. It was kind of scary, what the men were doing. Mr. Justin said she and Libby had to stand way back out of the way in case something broke and the engine fell.
“That big ol’ thing would squash you like a bug, and we sure don’t want that to happen,” he’d said.
Half of what Mr. Justin said, Janie knew, was teasing. But this time, she believed him.
“We have to do something,” Janie murmured.
“What do you mean?” Libby asked.
“About the car.” She pushed her glasses up on her nose. “If Mr. Caleb fixes the car, we’ll have to leave and go to Fort Smith.”
“We can’t leave,” Libby protested. “What about the survey? Mr. Sloan has to be our new daddy.”
“Shh. I know. That’s why we have to do something.”
But what could they do? Janie wondered as she watched the two men point and gesture toward the engine. Mr. Caleb would repair whatever was wrong with the car, then put it back together, and it would be fixed.
Then an idea occurred to her. It made her heart pound and her hands got slick with sweat. “I know what we’ll do,” she whispered.
“What?” Libby whispered back.
“Shh. They might hear us, and it has to be a secret.”
After dragging Emily out of the house Sloan spotted the girls watching Caleb and Justin pull the car engine. He should have been out here helping them, but, damn it, some things—like talking with Emily—were more important than helping fix the car that would take her away from him.
“There they are,” he said unnecessarily. “Hey, girls, whatcha doing?”
“Look.” Libby pointed at the A-frame standing over the car.
“Oh, my.” Emily stared. “Well, that’s progress.”
“Yes,” Sloan murmured, none too pleased with the idea. Then, with a sigh, he strode toward his brothers. “If you’d told me you were doing this now, I’d have helped.”
“Did we say we needed any help?” Caleb asked.
“No, as a matter of fact,” Sloan admitted, his good mood restored. “You didn’t. We’re out of here. Ladies, if you please.” He swept his arm toward the barn and corrals.
Libby gave a little hop and skip. “Where we goin’?”
“Oh,” he said casually. “I don’t know. Maybe we’ll go saddle up a horse and ride around for a while.”
Libby squealed and clapped her hands.
Janie sucked in a sharp breath, her eyes widening. “Really? A horseback ride?”
“Would you like that?” Sloan asked, with a quick wink at Emily.
“Yes, sir!”
“You guys have fun,” Sloan called to his brothers. “We’re going riding.”
“They’re naturals,” Rose said. “Both of them.” She had come out to watch and now stood beside Emily at the corral fence watching Sloan lead their gentlest mare, Suzie Q, around the corral. Janie and Libby grinned from astride the mare’s bare back.
“This is the thrill of their lives,” Emily said. She could clearly remember the thrill of her first childhood horseback ride, of feeling as if she were the tallest person in the world while she was up there on the back of that magnificent steed.
She hadn’t cared that that magnificent steed was a thirty-year-old nag who refused to move at any pace faster than cold molasses. She’d been riding. On a horse.
She’d been seven, and Michael had made it all possible, since the horse belonged to his cousin. If she hadn’t already been in love with him, she would have fallen for him that day.
“Look, Mommy, look at us!” Libby called.
“I see you,” Emily called back. “You look wonderful, both of you. How does it feel?”
“I’m so tall,” she crowed.
Emily laughed, so grateful to Sloan for this moment, for suggesting it. She wanted her daughters to ride horses, swing on old tire swings, suck on lollipops. She wanted them to have a happy, normal childhood. Leaving Pueblo had been the first step toward that goal, away from the sadness of the past, away from struggling to put food on the table.
This interlude at the Cherokee Rose, with Sloan and his family, was something her girls would always remember, and something for which Emily would always be grateful.
“I don’t know who’s having more fun,” Rose said. “The girls or Sloan.”
It was true, Emily realized. She’d been so focused on Janie and Libby that she hadn’t noticed the look of sheer pleasure on Sloan’s face. He should have children, she thought. He would be such a good father, with his kindness and patience and good humor.
After a few more minutes Sloan lifted each of the girls down, then came to stand before Emily. “Your turn,” he said.
Emily smiled. “All right, but I want a saddle.”
“Have you ever ridden?”
“Yes, but it’s been years and years ago. I think Suzie Q here is just about my speed.”
“With a saddle.”
“Yes, please.”
“Mommy, mommy!”
“Mother, it was so fun!” Janie’s face glowed with excitement.
Emily’s heart clenched. Thank you, Sloan, for putting that look on my oh-so-serious daughter’s face. Emily put an arm around each girl and hugged them both. “I’m so glad you liked it.”
“When can we do it again?” Libby wanted to know.
Emily laughed. “I don’t know. We’ll see.”
“Did you see, Miss Rose?” the little one asked. “We rode a horse.”
“I saw. You looked good up there. We’ll make horsewomen out of you two yet.”
Libby scrunched up her face. “What’s a horse swimmin’?”
Rose laughed. “Horse women. Women who ride horses.”
“Oh. But we’re not women, we’re just little girls. Can we be cowgirls?”
Emily wasn’t sure how it had happened, but Sloan had brought Suzie Q to her, saddled and ready to ride, and she’d ridden her around the corral. He’d pronounced her proficient enough for a trip through the pasture to the north pond—wherever that was—and Rose asked if she could give the girls ice cream to celebrate their ride. Now, here Emily was, riding across the grassy acres with Sloan riding next to her, the evening sun in her eyes, the south wind in her hair. He kept the horses to a walk, which she greatly appreciated.
She looked over at Sloan and found him watching her, a small smile on his lips. “Thank you,” she told him.
He looked surprised. “For what?”
“For this. I haven’t ridden since I was a kid. I love it. And for the girls. You’re their hero now. Thank you for giving them this evening.”
“Your girls.” He let out a breath and shook his head slightly, as if
in wonder. “They’re so special, Emily. It’s a real kick to see the world through their eyes. A privilege to be part of their world. I’m the one who should be thanking you, for sharing them with me.”
Emily sniffed. “You’re trying to make me cry.”
He looked so suddenly horrified that she laughed.
Then he looked sheepish. “I’m trying to make you like me. Not that I didn’t mean what I said—I meant every word of it.”
“Sloan, I already like you.”
He gave her an exaggerated leer. “You do?”
She laughed again. “I’m not saying another word. Where are we going?”
“Just over this rise we’ll turn north toward the pond. It’s a pretty spot. I thought you might like it.”
How could she not like it? she thought. The greens in their varying shades were so vivid, from the dark oak leaves to the blue-green of the grass to the emerald of the cottonwoods and the paler shade of the narrow willow leaves. The sky was a sharp, breathless blue. The wind was a warm caress. It was all like a dream.
Then there was the man at her side, whose lips had touched hers. Would he try to kiss her again? Would she let him?
Ha. Let him? If he didn’t make a move soon, she thought she might just beg him.
They topped the low rise and the land stretched out ahead of them forever toward the lowering sun. Sloan angled them to the right toward a gleaming spot of water surrounded by a thin scattering of trees. The pond was maybe a half acre in size. As they rode near, a dozen or more mallard ducks flapped their wings and, with a flutter of noise, lifted toward the sky.
Emily nudged her horse to follow Sloan to the shade of a towering cottonwood beside the pond.
“Stay put,” he said as he swung down from the saddle. “I’ll help you down.”
“That’s all right.” Shifting her weight into the left stirrup, she swung her right leg over the back of the horse and slid to the ground. Right into Sloan’s waiting arms.
“I said I’d help.” His voice, as well as his arms, wrapped around her from behind.
For an instant, Emily melted. This was what she had wanted, wasn’t it? From the moment he’d kissed her, she had wanted to feel his touch, his nearness again. Wanted to find out if she had only imagined the warm tingling sensation deep inside, the goose-flesh on her arms.
The Daddy Survey Page 11