The Daddy Survey

by Janis Reams Hudson

  “Mother, no,” Janie cried.

  “We can’t leave,” Libby said, a definite whine in her voice. “We have to stay here.”

  “Baby.” Emily smoothed her hand over Libby’s hair. “We have to get to Fort Smith so I can get that new job.”

  “No,” she cried. “We have to stay here. Mr. Sloan won the survey.”

  Emily blinked. “What?”

  “You can’t win a survey,” Janie said with a note of superiority in her voice. To her mother, she said, “He scored the highest out of everyone.”

  At the foot of the table, Sloan coughed into his hand.

  “What survey?” Emily asked. “What are you talking about?”

  “The Daddy Survey,” Libby said. “We have to stay here, ’cause Mr. Sloan has to be our new daddy.”

  Shock stuck Emily’s tongue to the roof of her mouth. Everyone else at the table seemed to have the same problem.

  Finally Emily found her voice. She looked at Sloan. “You knew about this? You took this survey?”

  He pursed his lips and folded his arms across his chest. “I think this would be a good time for me to invoke my Fifth Amendment privilege.”

  Never had she felt such dismay. She looked back to her girls. “I thought you were taking a survey on customer satisfaction.”

  Janie stared down at her plate. “We did that one, too.” She looked up at her mother. “That was for you. This one was for us. You’re not mad, are you?”

  “I…don’t know,” Emily said truthfully. She was shocked. She ached for her children, feeling as though she had somehow let them down, failed to provide for them in a way that would make them feel as if their family was complete. Heaven help her, what was she going to do? “After supper we’ll talk about it, and you can show me this survey.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the girls said quietly.

  Chapter Ten

  How well do you like little girls?

  Emily’s heart clenched as she stared at the childish handwriting in the spiral-bound notebook.

  The girls were in bed, as was the rest of the household. She had waited for privacy and now sat at the kitchen table, alone, reading the secret wishes of two little girls who missed their daddy. She didn’t notice her own tears until one fell on the page before her. She blotted it away with the edge of her hand.

  Spanking. Liver and onions. Ice cream.

  “Dear God.” She pressed her fingers over her mouth.

  Does Santa Claus know where you live?

  “My babies,” she whispered. “My poor babies.”

  How well do you like puppies? Kittens?

  Devastated, she stared at the questions. Questions of her own haunted her. What was she to do? How was she supposed to make up for their lack of a father? She had tried to be everything to them. They had never let on that they wanted a man in their lives. Surely there had been signs, but she had missed them.

  They wanted a daddy. She’d known they missed Michael for a long time after he died, but during the past several months they had rarely talked about him.

  Now this. “Oh, babies, what can I do?” she whispered.

  A moment later she heard soft footsteps coming down the stairs. With a sniff, she wiped her face dry and closed the notebook.

  “I thought you might still be up.” Rose stood in the doorway, her pink robe belted loosely at the waist, her long braid uncoiled from her head and draping over one shoulder to hang to her waist. “I wanted a glass of water.”

  They both knew that Rose had her own bathroom upstairs. There was no need for her to come down to the kitchen to get a drink, but neither one of them mentioned that small fact.

  Rose got herself a tall glass of water and sat in the chair at the end of the table. “Part of an old woman’s job, it seems to me, is to poke her nose into other people’s business.”

  Emily laughed, and realized she hadn’t laughed or even smiled in hours. “Is it?”

  “Of course,” Rose said. “Did you find out about this survey?”

  Emily flipped open the notebook. “‘On a scale of one to five, with one being not at all and five being very, very much, do you believe in spanking?”’

  “Oh, that’s clever. They wouldn’t want a new father who might spank them. You have smart daughters.”

  “Too smart,” Emily said ruefully. “They did all this without my knowing anything about it.”

  “And it makes you sad, this survey?”

  Emily looked down at the page of questions her babies had devised and smoothed her hand over it. “It breaks my heart.”

  “Because you think if you’d been a better mother, they wouldn’t need anyone but you?”

  Emily looked up and smiled sadly. “You’re not only nosy, you’re also smart.”

  Rose reached over and patted Emily’s hand. “I raised three boys after their parents died. I know something of what you’re feeling. Trust me on this, child. That your daughters want a new father is not a criticism of you. It’s a tribute to the father they lost. He was a good father, wasn’t he?”

  “He was the best,” Emily said. “He adored them, and they worshipped him.”

  “Which explains why they want a new father.”

  “I don’t follow you.”

  “If they hadn’t enjoyed having a father, they wouldn’t be in a hurry to find a new one. But they loved having your husband in their lives. It was a positive experience for them, so they want to repeat it. It’s the highest compliment they could pay to the father they lost.”

  Emily’s vision blurred. She blinked to clear away the moisture. “I still feel so bad for them.”

  “Well, that’s easily remedied.” Rose took a sip of her water. When she set her glass down again, her lips curved up. “Find them a new father.”

  “Rose,” Emily said, half laughing, half outraged.

  “You don’t believe it’s disloyal of them to want a new father, do you?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Would it be disloyal of you to find a new husband?”

  Emily opened her mouth to speak, then shut it. This was a little too close to home as far as she was concerned.

  “Ah,” Rose said. “So I was right.”

  “About what?”

  “About the way you look at my eldest grandson. The way he looks at you.”

  “Rose—”

  “Tell me this,” Rose said, interrupting. “When your second child was born, did you love your first one any less?”

  “Of course not.”

  “There, then. Falling in love with a new man takes nothing away from what you had with your first husband. Different man, different you, different love.”

  “Sloan isn’t in love with me,” Emily protested.

  Rose smiled. “If you recall, we’re talking about your feelings, not his.”

  “I don’t…I mean…” Emily shut her mouth, deciding that was the wisest course at the moment. “What about you? You never remarried?”

  A faraway look came into Rose’s eyes. “No, I didn’t. I never found another man to tempt me after my John died.”

  The two women were silent for a moment, then Rose spoke. “What else did they ask on their survey?”

  If someone had told her thirty minutes ago that she would be glad to read her daughters’ survey, Emily would have adamantly disagreed. Now, however, she was relieved to change the subject. Gratefully she read the list of questions, and when Rose laughed at some of them, Emily found herself laughing along with her.

  Rose got up from the table and carried her glass to the sink. “I’m going back to bed. You have a good night, Emily, and don’t worry about Libby and Janie. They’re good girls, and they’re smart, and any fool can see they’re happy children.”

  Emily stood and placed a hand on Rose’s arm. “Thank you.”

  Upstairs, Sloan silently laughed at himself, although there was little humor in it. He wondered just how many years it had been since he’d stood in his room with his ear pressed to the door,
waiting to hear his grandmother go to her room and close her door.

  He’d wanted to talk to Emily earlier, but there had been no chance for privacy before she and the girls went to their room. He had hung around downstairs waiting for her to come out, but she hadn’t, and Grandmother had been watching him. Outlasting him. He had given up and gone upstairs.

  Then he’d heard his grandmother leave her room and go downstairs. The quiet hum of female voices drifted up the stairs, but not loud enough for him to make out what they were saying, even when he cracked open his door.

  He felt like a jerk for trying to eavesdrop. He really didn’t care what they were saying to each other, he just wanted to know when they were finished so he could go down and talk to Emily. He shouldn’t have worried about his grandmother knowing he wanted to talk to Emily.

  Definitely jerklike. He’d acted like a randy teenager earlier in the day, and now here he was, engaged in more juvenile behavior. But he couldn’t put this day to rest without seeing Emily, talking to her.

  He heard his grandmother’s door close and waited for a count of ten, then slipped out of his room and down the stairs. He probably wasn’t fooling anybody. He had visions of his grandmother and both brothers standing at their respective doors, each with an ear pressed there, snickering over his sneaking downstairs late at night to see a woman.

  Well, at least if that was true, it meant he wasn’t the only jerk in the house.

  The living room was dark, but a light shone from the kitchen. He found Emily seated at the table. Before her lay the spiral-bound notebook Janie had used for her survey.

  “They know what they want,” he said.

  Emily had heard someone coming and assumed it was Sloan, so the sound of his voice did not surprise her. His words, however, did. “What?”

  He shrugged and leaned a shoulder against the doorjamb. “They put a lot of thought into their questions. They know what they want, how they want to be treated. Like the question about spanking. If you can get past the heartache of it, it’s not only funny, it’s damn clever.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Her face, her voice spoke of pain and dismay.

  He straightened and strolled to the table, where he took a seat across from her. “I probably should have, but I didn’t know you. For all I knew, you knew all about it.”

  Her eyes flew wide. “You thought I would let my daughters interview prospective fathers?”

  “Like I said, I didn’t know you. I didn’t really think you knew what was going on, but the girls, well, hell, they trusted me. I didn’t want to betray that trust. I realize that probably wasn’t smart, that you needed to know what was going on. But when you came here with me I knew they couldn’t do it anymore. If it helps any, I was planning to do something about it when you left here.”

  “Do something? You were going to tell me about it?”

  He gave her a wry grin. “I knew I should, but I probably would have talked to the girls instead, told them not to survey any more men.”

  “Why would they need to?” She threw her hands in the air. “They’ve already decided you’re the one. I have never been so embarrassed in my life.”

  He cocked his head. “Embarrassed for who?”

  Emily let out a sigh. “I’m tired of thinking about this. Let’s talk about something else.”

  “Okay.” He leaned back in his chair and drummed his fingers on the table. A grin came quickly to his mouth. “Wanna pay a late-night visit to the barn with me?”

  Emily groaned, rolled her eyes and dropped her forehead to the table.

  “Hey,” he said. “It wasn’t that bad, was it?”

  Emily raised her head and met his gaze. “It wasn’t bad at all.”

  The look in her eyes sent the blood rushing from his brain to points south. Slowly he rose from his chair. “I’m glad you liked it.” He rounded the end of the table and stood next to her. Taking her hand in his, he tugged gently until she stood before him. “But before we leave the subject of surveys, how are you, really?”

  It took little urging, just a slight nudge to get Emily to step into his arms and lay her head on his shoulder. Did it make her weak, she wondered, to feel relief at having someone to lean on, if only for a few minutes? If so, then she was weak, and that was that. She could not bring herself to turn away from the comfort Sloan offered.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “I’m getting there.” She slipped her arms around his waist. “Your grandmother helped.”

  He smoothed his hands up and down her back. “She’s good at that sort of thing.”

  Emily chuckled and rubbed her cheek against his shoulder. “With you and your brothers, I’m sure she’s had a lot of practice at getting to the heart of a problem.”

  His answering chuckle rumbled through her chest. “You can say that again.”

  They stood that way, their arms around each other in the silent kitchen, for a long moment. Then Sloan trailed a string of kisses from her temple to her jaw. Emily turned her head to meet his mouth with hers. The potent mixture of comfort and arousal weakened her bones. She tightened her arms around his waist and hung on, welcoming his deepening of the kiss.

  In seconds her breathing was harsh, her heartbeat racing. Heat pooled between her legs. She arched her body to get closer to him. A tiny whimper escaped her throat.

  The sound drove Sloan wild. He drank in the flavor of her, inhaled her scent. He wanted to gobble her up in three quick bites. There was no way he could stop himself from slipping a hand to her breast and squeezing gently.

  It felt, Emily thought hazily, as if her breast swelled to fill his hand. Her whimper this time came out as a deep moan.

  Sloan tore his mouth from hers and covered the side of her neck with his teeth and open mouth. “I want you.”

  She could feel the hard evidence of that want pressing against her. Her hips surged against him in pure reflex.

  “That damn barn,” he said, his breath coming in sharp gasps, “is looking better and better. We can take a blanket, and we won’t have to worry about anyone walking in on us.” He kissed his way back up to her mouth, where he nibbled, teasing her with the promise of more. “We can take our time.”

  Just the thought of what they could do together, how it would be, tempted her to grab his hand and race out the door into the night.

  But responsibility and common sense reared their ugly little heads. “I can’t.”

  “Em.”

  “I want to.” She pulled back and held his face in her hands, forcing him to look her in the eye. “I want to. You have no idea how much I want to. But I can’t go off and leave the girls.”

  He let out a breath and lowered his forehead to rest against hers. “I guess I knew that.”

  “And, Sloan?” She waited until he raised his head and met her gaze again. “I still have to leave by next weekend.”

  Sloan felt as if he’d been kicked in the gut. Why, he didn’t understand. They still had more than a week. He’d known from the beginning that she would soon be leaving. He had accepted that. No problem.

  But that was before he had held her, kissed her, sank into her hot sweet depths and burned himself alive inside her. For a time, he’d forgotten she wasn’t his.

  But that wasn’t right. She was his, no matter where she went. He knew that, felt it in his bones. Yet she would leave. She had a life to build for herself and her daughters. He couldn’t fault her for that, and wouldn’t try to stand in her way. That didn’t mean he wouldn’t grab for all she would give him while she was here.

  “If you’re not staying,” he said solemnly, “shouldn’t we make the most of what little time we have?”

  Emily didn’t know what to say. He was acknowledging that she would soon leave. He respected her enough to refrain from trying to interfere in her plans.

  He was not asking her to stay.

  Had she hoped he would? Had that faint hope lived inside her unvoiced? That couldn’t be. She had risked everything
, her and her daughters’ futures, on this move to Arkansas. She couldn’t, wouldn’t turn away from it. She owed her daughters a solid future, and this was the only way she knew to provide it. The only way she could want him to interfere in that would be if she was in love with him. And of course, she wasn’t.

  But if she wasn’t in love with him, why did it feel as if she was tearing out her own heart when she thought of leaving him?

  “Em?” He gave her a small, gentle shake.

  “I have to think about it, Sloan.”

  “Okay,” he said. “That’s fair. But don’t think too long. According to you, we don’t have much time to spend together. Think fast, Em.”

  Then he gave her something to think about. He kissed her. It was long and hard and all-consuming. It left her head spinning and her heart reeling.

  “Think about me,” he said.

  And Emily thought. About Sloan, about his kisses, his lovemaking. About her daughters. About Arkansas. She thought about leaving the Cherokee Rose, leaving Sloan. And she thought about the fact that he did not ask her to stay.

  Yet hadn’t he said if she was leaving? Did that not indicate he thought she might change her mind and stay?

  But he hadn’t asked her to say. Announcing that she might stay would be to assume that he would welcome such a decision. The height of presumption on her part, it seemed to her.

  No, she could not stay. So was there any point in getting any closer to him, in risking her heart?

  She was no closer to an answer after a sleepless night, nor when she saw Sloan at breakfast the next morning. She put a smile on her face for her daughters and for the Chisholms, and she went about her daily chores. She met the family with calm efficiency and a hearty meal when they came in at lunch, and again a few hours later when the family gathered for supper.

  After she had cleaned up the kitchen for a final time that day, she turned to find Sloan standing behind her.

  “Can I get you something?” she asked. “There’s pie left. Would you like another slice?” She reached for a plate in the cabinet.

  “No.” He grasped her hand and threaded his fingers through hers. “Thank you, but no, I don’t want any more pie, as good as it was.”