The Marriage Maker

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The Marriage Maker Page 9

by Christie Ridgway


  He hungered for her in a way that was at once familiar and terrifying. He’d experienced that single-minded focus at work before. It was a hunger that reminded him too much of the anger that had been his father’s driving force.

  An anger that led him to hit and rage…all in the name of love.

  Ethan’s gaze snagged on Jonah’s portable crib, tucked away in the far corner of Cleo’s office. A corduroy elephant stared at him down his long, long nose, and a yellow bunny sat up on its fluffy tail. Ethan sighed.

  He wasn’t afraid he’d ever physically hurt Cleo. God, he knew he could never raise his hand to her, or any woman or child.

  But there were other ways to cause her pain. If they became intimate, she would have every right to demand from him the depth of caring that she herself was capable of. And Ethan just didn’t have that to offer. He had a sick feeling that he had nothing to offer Cleo.

  Because growing up with a man such as Jack Redford hadn’t shown Ethan how to be a husband and father. Only how not to be one.

  When Cleo walked into the house with Jonah that evening, she was met by the delicious smell of pizza. Relief mingled with the awkwardness of seeing Ethan again after this afternoon’s mind-blowing kisses. She’d managed to avoid the whole cooking issue so far in their marriage. And today of all days, she didn’t think she would have been able to pull off a meal even the least bit palatable.

  Not when the only thing she could think of was the heady sensations of his hands in her hair and on her skin, of his mouth so soft one minute and so greedy the next.

  She shivered as Ethan walked out of the kitchen. To smooth over the moment, she held up Jonah. “Here he is! My mother was sorry to have caused you to miss him.” After their…interlude, Ethan had quickly left Bean sprouts and told her he’d meet her at home.

  Cleo approached Ethan and lifted Jonah toward him. Instead of taking the proffered baby, Ethan slipped the over stuffed diaper bag off her shoulder. “Let me get this,” he said.

  Her eyebrows rose, but she didn’t say anything as Ethan set the bag on a nearby table. When he turned, she tried for a natural smile. “Pizza, huh? Shall I serve us while you entertain Jonah for a bit?”

  Ethan’s gaze shifted away from the baby. “Let me serve you,” he said quickly.

  Cleo narrowed her eyes. Ethan needed to spend time with Jonah and vice versa. If they were going to build a family, that is. And with the memory of those kisses as incentive, she was determined that they both give this marriage a real go.

  Without giving him a chance to get away, she walked to Ethan and thrust the baby into his arms. He automatically grabbed hold of him, thank goodness, though he appeared as if he didn’t want to. Without a backward look, Cleo headed into the kitchen.

  Ethan trailed behind. “What do I, uh, do, exactly, to entertain him?”

  Cleo slid him a glance. He stared down at the baby as if Jonah were a piece of fruit Ethan couldn’t quite figure out how to peel. She almost relented and took the baby from him, but then she remembered how happy he’d been to tell her that Jonah’s grandparents were giving up their custody battle. Ethan wanted the little boy in his life, no doubt about that.

  “Cleo?”

  She ignored the tiny note of panic in his voice. “You can keep me company in the kitchen. Jonah will let you know if he finds it boring.” At the sink, she washed her hands and then tied on an apron.

  She slid another look at Ethan. He still held the baby stiffly, a couple of inches away from his body, as if he wanted some distance between them. Pursing her lips, she breathed out a silent, frustrated sigh.

  Distance was the problem. Ethan’s job allowed for plenty of physical distance between the three of them, and she’d known from the start that Ethan liked to keep an emotional distance, too.

  She didn’t know why.

  When they’d met months ago he’d been the same. Then, he’d talk to her, the conversation easy and charming, but he’d share nothing of himself. Now, despite the fact they were married, he was as reticent. Even during their nightly phone calls, the subject matter had never been anything personal.

  Cleo took silverware from the drawer and began setting the table. Ethan leaned against a nearby countertop, looking uncomfortable. She ached to tell him to hold Jonah against the warmth of his body. She ached to ask him to hold her against him again.

  Never before had passion risen so hot and so fast inside her. If he’d asked, she’d have made love to him right there in her office! Well, maybe she was a little too sensible for that, but she’d have gone somewhere with him. Gone anyplace they could be alone and indulge in touching and kissing and—

  Cleo had to shove her hands into the apron pockets so he wouldn’t see them shaking. Only a fool wouldn’t realize there could be something special between her and Ethan. But their marriage wouldn’t go anywhere if she couldn’t get him to open up to her.

  She didn’t want to be married to a stranger, no matter how passion ate that marriage could be.

  The pizza took only a moment to serve. When they sat at the table, with Jonah in his infant seat as a centerpiece, Cleo bit into her slice with relish. “Nothing beats pizza,” she said after swallowing the first mouthful.

  Ethan cocked an eyebrow her way. “Pizza’s number one with you? That surprises me.”

  “Why?”

  He shrugged. At some point before she’d come home he’d changed from a suit to jeans and a T-shirt. Ethan without his Armani always took a little getting used to. “I would have thought you’d like something…I don’t know, more sophisticated, maybe.”

  Cleo set her slice down on her plate. “Sophisticated? Me?”

  He shrugged again. “You forget. I’ve eaten a lot of meals at the B and B. It’s the kind of fare a person could get used to. You’ve been around that for quite some time.”

  “It’s Jasmine who’s in charge of the food. Not just the break fasts for the guests. She’s always experimenting. So most of what I’ve eaten has been Jasmine’s choice and Jasmine’s cooking.” Someday Cleo was going to have to admit to Ethan that not only was delivery pizza the best dinner she could imagine, but the best dinner she herself knew how to prepare.

  “Do you, uh, like sophisticated food best?” she asked. If he answered in the affirmative, she would definitely have to break the news that all that kind of cooking was going to have to be done by him.

  “Mmm. I don’t know.”

  Cleo frowned, tamping down a little spurt of irritation. See, even in the littlest things he wouldn’t open up to her. If Mr. Armani had grown up on foie gras and imported truffles, what was the harm in telling her?

  She picked up her pizza slice again and then looked him straight in the eye. “What’s the best meal you’ve ever eaten?” she asked.

  “Easy,” he answered promptly. “October 1998. The Field House in St. Helena, California. It’s a small restaurant in the wine country.” He smiled. “I ate lunch there and then I offered to make them rich.”

  Cleo wondered if he’d shared that special lunch with a woman. “Rich, how?”

  “I offered them the capital to open a place in New York or San Francisco.” Ethan chuckled. “I begged them to do something in Houston so I could eat there more regularly. But they turned me down flat.”

  “They?” she asked.

  “A husband and wife team. But the two of them liked St. Helena. They liked raising their children in a small town.”

  “Like White horn,” Cleo found herself saying.

  Ethan lifted his water glass in a little toast. “Like White horn.”

  Cleo gave her attention back to her pizza.

  “How about you?” he said. “What’s the best meal you ever had?”

  Cleo pursed her lips, then lowered her voice to a whisper. “You have to promise never to tell my mother.”

  Ethan’s mouth twitched. “Why?”

  She shook her head. “Promise first.”

  He smiled now. “I promise.”

  Cle
o leaned over her plate and whispered, “My cousin Summer, Jasmine and I had a party at the house once.”

  Amusement lit Ethan’s eyes. “So?”

  “I can’t remember where the adults were—my mother, my aunt and uncle—but they thought we were old enough to stay over night alone. We invited just a few girl friends over, but…” She gave him a knowing look.

  His eyebrows rose and he sat back in his chair. “I’m guessing you had a few more guests than you expected.”

  She nodded sagely. “And they were boys.”

  “Cleo,” Ethan said, amusement in his voice, but his expression harder to read, “have you been a man magnet since the day you were born?”

  “’Man magnet’?” She waved the idea away. “Yeah, right. When you are sandwiched between two beauties like Summer and Jasmine, you get real used to being the ordinary one.”

  “The ‘ordinary one’?” Ethan echoed. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  She appreciated how surprised he sounded, she really did, but she was the practical, sensible, capable one, correct?

  “Hey,” she said. “I accepted it long ago and I don’t mind, honest. I’m the girl that was every guy’s buddy. You know, the one who’d introduce them to the girl they didn’t have enough nerve to strike up a conversation with. The one they’d take to a dance because they didn’t need to impress me. If a guy got in a jam, he knew he could turn to me for advice or…whatever.”

  Ethan’s brows came together. “What’s ‘whatever’?”

  “Maybe he needed the notes from biology class. Maybe an idea for the perfect gift for his girl friend.” She shot him a look. “Maybe he needed a wife.”

  Ethan straightened. “Cleo—”

  “But anyway, back to my party and the best meal I’ve ever eaten. So about a zillion kids show up, and we don’t know how to turn them away. Or maybe we didn’t try that hard, I don’t know. But we paid, believe me. We spent the entire night turning the stereo down and rescuing furniture from irreparable damage and shutting the refrigerator and kitchen cabinets after the latest forage.

  “It was 2:00 a.m. before the last partygoer was gone and we’d finished filling four trash bags. Summer drove off to find a place to dump them so Mama wouldn’t find out. Jasmine and I sat in the kitchen and ate the only food left in the house. I was so relieved and so hungry that it is indelibly etched on my brain as the best meal of my life.”

  Ethan looked amused again. “And it was…?”

  “Cap’n Crunch cereal. Brownies that weren’t fully cooked—we couldn’t wait that long to eat them. And pizza. The kind that comes frozen in a box and isn’t much more than a saltine cracker with tomato sauce and a sprinkle of cheese.”

  “That’s disgusting.” He pushed his plate away.

  “Hey, don’t knock it until you’re that hungry and have been that terrified your friends are going to break a lamp or something.”

  “It’s still disgusting.” He gave her a mock frown. “And promise or no promise, I just might tell your mother on you. You girls could have gotten yourselves in a bad situation.”

  “Don’t go holier than thou on me now.” Cleo wagged a finger at him. “You can’t tell me you didn’t crash a few girls’ parties in your time.” She tried imagining him as a teenager. Blond, and with that devastating smile. No girls would have hesitated to welcome him in.

  Ethan was quiet for a moment, his gaze distant. “I crashed a few parties, all right,” he said slowly, as if he wasn’t aware he was speaking. “The kind thrown by untouchable girls who loved the darkest corners and the daring idea of taking the dirt-poor boy from the wrong side of town into them.”

  “What?” Cleo tried putting it together. Dirt poor. The boy from the wrong side of town. No. Not Ethan. Not the man who wore European suits the way other men wore baseball caps.

  “I wouldn’t have come to your party, though, Cleo.”

  She was still grappling with the first insight he’d ever given her into his past. Ethan hadn’t grown up rich, as she’d always thought. He’d been poor, dirt poor. “You wouldn’t have come to my party?” she echoed stupidly. “Why not?”

  “Because I would have known you weren’t ordinary. Not ordinary at all.” He pushed away from the table. “And I wouldn’t have wanted to taint that.”

  Cleo just stared at him, her jaw agape. “You’re not— You’re not—” What did she want to ask? He didn’t think she was ordinary? He was afraid he might taint her? “You’re not going anywhere, are you?” she finally finished lamely.

  “Not until I apologize.”

  Again, she stared at him dumbly.

  “Listen. I grew up with a rough, brutal man. I’d cut off my right arm before I was ever either one to you, Cleo.” He looked away, out the window, where it was just beginning to go dark. “So I’m sorry for the way I…kissed you today. So very, very sorry.”

  Before she could say anything in return, he was gone.

  Cleo might have sat there all night, stunned, if it hadn’t been for Jonah. He began to fuss and she left the dishes where they were to fetch his bottle, feed him, and then get him ready for bed.

  Once he was finally tucked into his crib and asleep, Cleo let herself think about Ethan again.

  Dirt poor. Wrong side of town. Father was a rough and brutal man.

  She didn’t know Ethan Redford. She didn’t know him at all.

  She’d married a stranger. A stranger who might have very good reasons for the distance he liked to keep. And one who felt he needed to apologize for the most passionate, most exciting kisses of her life.

  Cleo wanted her mother.

  Once she drove to the B and B and located Celeste reading in the den off the kitchen, Cleo found herself tongue-tied. Maybe it was because of the love seat—where she’d first encountered the power of what Ethan could do to her. Maybe it was because she couldn’t explain how someone as capable as herself was married to a man who ran from emotional entanglements.

  But she had to say something about why she was there. So despite the fact that a phone call would have served the purpose, she smiled and said she’d come by to share some interesting news she’d heard at the day care center. One of the Beansprouts’s fathers worked on a construction crew at the Laughing Horse casino and resort project.

  Cleo settled beside Celeste on the cushions. “So, Mama. You’ll never guess,” she said lightly. “Whitehorn has another mystery.”

  “What kind of mystery?” Celeste turned her way. With the light of a nearby lamp falling on her mother’s face, Cleo could see the signs of more sleepless nights. She hadn’t noticed it earlier in the day, when her mother’s delight in Jonah hid so much.

  Cleo’s stomach clenched with worry, but she gamely continued. “They halted construction on the resort today.” She widened her eyes in mock alarm. “Because they found a skeleton.”

  “What?” Celeste’s book slid off her knees and thumped to the floor. “Did you say a skeleton?”

  Cleo nodded.

  Her mother leaned over to pick up her book, her wavy hair hiding her face. “You mean, like an animal’s, or a dinosaur or something?”

  “Nope. A human skeleton. And what’s more, they found a bullet lodged in one of the ribs.”

  Celeste didn’t immediately straighten, though it still took Cleo a couple of seconds to realize her mother was frozen with…with what?

  “Mama?” She put her arm around Celeste’s back and eased her to a sitting position. Thump. The book Celeste had retrieved fell again, out of her fingers this time, and Cleo kicked it aside and edged closer to her mother. “Mama?” She reached for Celeste’s hands.

  They were icy. The kind of cold that comes with shock…or terror.

  Cleo pulled at the afghan tossed over the arm of the love seat and wrapped it around her mother. “What’s wrong? Are you ill?”

  When her mother didn’t answer, Cleo jumped up. “I’m calling nine-one-one.”

  “No!” Celeste suddenly came to life, her gaze
jumping to Cleo’s face. “I’m all right, sweetie.” She inhaled a shuddering breath. “Just a…just a goose…walking over my grave.”

  But to Cleo, Celeste looked as though she was going to be sick. “Mama—”

  Her mother held up a hand. Cleo thought it was trembling. “Some tea, sweetie. I’ll be fine after some hot, sweet tea.”

  “Are you sure?” At her mother’s nod, Cleo backed toward the kitchen. “Lucky for you, tea is the one thing I don’t burn.” She was relieved when her mother smiled, and then even added a rusty chuckle.

  The teakettle couldn’t sing fast enough. Cleo checked on her mother fourteen times before the scent of steeping cinnamon and orange tea filled the kitchen and she was able to bring in a tray with the pot, two mugs, and a plate of Jasmine’s heavenly tasting thumb print cookies.

  After a few sips from her mug, and one of the cookies, Celeste did appear better. Her color was back to normal and her hands seemed perfectly steady.

  Cleo cradled her own mug and decided it was time to get tough with her mother. First it was the nightmares, and now this. “Mama,” she said, her voice brooking no nonsense. “Mama, you must tell me what’s wrong.”

  But another sip of tea seemed to infuse Celeste with a backbone even steelier than Cleo’s. She pinned her daughter with the sharpest of gazes. “Cleo, sweetie, it’s past dinner. Your baby’s asleep and your husband just returned from a long trip away. But instead of being at home with him, you’re visiting your mother. ‘Tell me what’s wrong’? I think that’s my line.”

  Seven

  Cleo stared into her mug of tea. Even though she’d come to her mother hoping Celeste would show her a way through this mess, it wasn’t easy to admit to making a mistake. Especially when her family had taken her decision to marry Ethan with such aplomb. They’d been surprised, sure, but their faith in her good sense and practicality had reassured them she was making the right decision.

  Instead, good sense hadn’t played into her decision at all. She’d followed her heart—a heart that had done something as silly as falling in love at first sight.

 

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