“In about a hundred years, maybe.”
There was the sound of crying from the porch and they turned to see Felicity standing there with two wriggling bundles in her arms.
Taggart thrust the pitchfork at Becky. “Finish this, will you, pard?” He started toward the house, then turned back. “Just remember: you’ve done all the messin’ you’re going to. So behave yourself or else.”
Becky, feeling reckless, and just a little annoyed at being handed the pitchfork, said, “Or else what?”
Taggart’s brows rose. “Or you could feel my hand on your derriere.” Then he turned and loped toward Felicity and the babies.
Becky watched him go, watched Felicity smile and hand him one of the babies, watched the four of them go into the house together.
She stabbed the pitchfork into the hay and sighed mightily. That was what you got for trying to be helpful.
Who’d have thought her father knew that much French?
*
It was the finest sermon Reverend Wilson ever gave.
Jenny didn’t hear a word of it.
The children’s choir had never sounded better.
Jenny didn’t even realize they were there.
The men’s benevolent society was selling chances on a Harley-Davidson motorcycle.
She bought all they had left.
“You must really want to win,” Tuck McCall said admiringly. “If you win will you give me a ride?”
“Of course,” Jenny said. She was walking on air. All around her parishioners chatted and smiled, said, “Good morning,” and, “Hope all is well.” For weeks she’d put on her best pained smile and had assured them it was.
Now she was—for real—smiling all over her face.
She wouldn’t even have come this morning if she hadn’t had to teach Sunday school. It had been too late to get a substitute when she woke up this morning to find herself still snugly wrapped in Mace’s arms.
But oh, would she have loved to.
Still, she had some prayers of thanksgiving to say. And then she could go home to Mace.
“So was Mace all right?”
Jenny turned as she realized the words were directed at her. Tom was standing behind her looking at her curiously. “Oh, um, yes. Yes, he is, as a matter of fact.”
“I’m glad,” Tom said. “I thought . . .”
He didn’t say what he’d thought. He just let his voice trail off, as if Jenny would finish his sentence for him.
She didn’t. She knew she ought to explain. She knew she owed him at least that much. Hadn’t she practically thrown him out of her house last night in her haste over Rooster’s phone call? Hadn’t she been promising a threat of mayhem in the tone of her voice?
“He was . . . unwell,” she said, picking her words carefully. “A friend called from Bozeman to tell me. I had to go down and pick him up.”
“But he’s all right now?”
“Fine.”
More than fine. He was home!
Jenny had told herself she was being a fool last night as she slid beneath the quilt next to Mace in bed. She’d told herself she was only going to hurt worse in the morning after she’d spent the night lying next to him, wishing for things to be the way they once had been.
And as she lay there, stiff and aching, the minutes stretched out and so did the pain. She thought at last she would have to get up and leave.
And then he touched her.
He moved back against her. At first she’d thought he was asleep, thought that the slow steady inching of his body toward hers was nothing more than the natural movement of a man in a drunken slumber.
But then he’d turned and burrowed closer. He’d slipped his arms around her, drew her into an embrace she’d wondered if she’d ever know again.
And he’d loved her.
She’d relived every moment of it all night long—the urgent touch of his hands on her body, the desperate search of his mouth for hers. It was a stronger, sweeter, by far headier experience than the wine she’d drunk with Tom.
“So, it’s not a problem then?”
Jenny jerked back to the moment to see Tom’s smiling face looking at her hopefully. She knew what he was asking.
“Well, I-I—” She didn’t know what to say.
What could she say that wouldn’t sound as if she’d only been using Tom as long as Mace wasn’t around?
It hadn’t been like that. Not really. She’d enjoyed Tom’s company. If Mace weren’t her husband, she thought she might well be able to fall in love with a man like Tom. But Mace was and . . .
Her stuttering stop brought out a ruefulness in Tom’s smile. “I know,” he said. “It takes time.” He reached out and gave her hand a squeeze. “I’ll call you later in the week. Maybe we can go ride fence or something.”
She should say no. She didn’t want to lead him on. But she didn’t quite know how to explain things. So she just gave a little shrug and smiled. She couldn’t help it. She didn’t want to hurt his feelings.
Maybe, she dared hope, he and Mace could learn to be friends.
*
When Mace woke up he felt like he’d had the nightmare to end all nightmares.
He dreamed that he and Jenny were getting a divorce, that he left home—left her. He dreamed that their marriage was shattered, their hopes destroyed. He was alone.
And Jenny . . . Jenny had someone else.
He lay shaking in bed, sweating, barely able to do more than thank God he was awake now and the nightmare was over.
Still, it felt so real he had to open his eyes and look around to be sure.
He drew an unsteady sigh of relief at the sight of his dresser across the room, of Jenny’s robe on the hook by the door.
He was here where he was supposed to be—in his own bed.
He sighed and began to stretch—and stopped.
His body hurt—in places that had nothing to do with riding horseback. His head ached. His mouth tasted foul. He hadn’t felt like this since the morning after his “bachelor party” when he and Taggart and Jed had got tanked on a couple of fifths of Wild Turkey and he’d met the flock going the other way the next morning.
He shuddered.
And he remembered . . . the Six Gun, Rooster, Sherpa’s. The judo-chopping college prof. The coffee. The car ride.
Jenny.
Ah God, yes. Jenny.
He looked around for her. Listened for her.
She wasn’t there.
He supposed he shouldn’t be surprised. Why would she be?
She didn’t need him. She couldn’t want him.
And yet . . . a flicker of memory—of warmth—surfaced in his brain for an instant. It vanished.
He tried to focus on it, to drag it back. It was gone.
The effort to bring it back, to expand on it, caused a small shudder to run through him. He could hold a glimmer—the memory of love deep and intense and desperate.
But that was all.
“You’re dreaming, Nichols,” he muttered to himself. “It’s called wishful thinking.”
Because God knew it was.
“You’re drunk.” And God knew he was that, too.
Or hung over.
He didn’t have the cushion of oblivion that true drunkenness provided anymore. He had the pounding head, the vile mouth, the sense that the real world was a cotton batting away. He wasn’t sure he wanted to tear at the cotton batting. He had a feeling that reality was a little more than he could cope with at this point.
Carefully, still keeping one hand against his head, Mace hauled himself to his feet. God, yes, he hurt. His back. His butt.
He groaned and straightened and stumbled into the bathroom.
A hot shower helped. But not much. Not nearly enough.
He stumbled back out again, wrapped in a towel, to look for clean clothes.
He vaguely remembered Jenny having taken out an old pair of boxers and a T-shirt that he’d left in his drawer last night. He never remembered managing to put them on.
He saw them on the floor now. Had he kicked them there during his restless night?
He put them on. There were no clean jeans. No clean shirts. He’d taken everything back to the cabin when he’d come down that Sunday she’d stayed home from church to take care of Neile.
Sunday. Church.
He squinted at the clock. It was after ten. Late. Very late. But at least he knew now where she was.
He put back on his grubby jeans. His shirt was really awful, and he scavenged through her drawers to find a sweatshirt he could wear. There was a new one right on top. Dark blue. It said:
MONTANA STATE
Mace pushed past it and pulled out an old grey one advertising the National Finals Rodeo that he’d bought her the year they’d gone to Vegas to watch Taggart compete. It had always been big on Jenny. He tugged it over his head.
There was coffee still hot in the kitchen. The memory of last night’s coffee made his insides clench, but he knew he had to put something in his stomach sometime. And Jenny made good coffee. Lots better than he made every day for himself.
When would he ever again get to drink Jenny’s coffee?
He poured himself a cup.
Then he carried it into the living room and stood, breathing in the pungent aroma, while he let his mind and his stomach adjust.
As they did, he gazed around the room, taking it all in—the fireplace he and Jenny and Taggart and Jed had built by hand from stones they’d carried out of the mountains and up from the rivers; the rug that Jenny had braided for three long winters that lay on top of pine floors that he himself had laid; the rocking chair that had been her mother’s, the one piece of furniture she had brought from her family home because she remembered being rocked in it as a child; the beat-up old sofa that they’d used in the mountain cabin when they’d first got married, the one that Jenny had sewn slipcovers for more than once; the afghan that lay folded along the back of it, the one she’d knitted for the baby she’d always wanted.
The baby they’d never had.
Mace swallowed hard against the sudden thickness in his throat. He remembered how young she’d been when she’d finished it, how bright-eyed and eager, how she’d twirled it around her like a cape and he’d snagged it and hauled both her and the afghan into his arms and kissed her senseless.
He picked up that afghan now and curled his fingers around it. He let it slide through his hand. It was soft, worn. It had been washed plenty of times since that day. It had ceased to be “the baby’s blanket” and had become the one Jenny wrapped herself in when she sat on the sofa to watch TV or read a book.
He bunched it up and rubbed it against his cheek. It smelled of soap, of wool, of Jenny.
He shut his eyes, pressing the woolen blanket against them, fighting against the tears that pricked behind his lids, fighting the need, the ache, the desire—
If only . . .
He turned, still holding the afghan, and walked back into the kitchen, daring for once to think, maybe. . .
But before he dared articulate that tentative fledgling hope, he saw the dishes in the drainer where she’d left them. Two plates. Two cups. Two knives. Two forks. Two spoons.
Not one.
Not just Jenny’s. Tom’s and Jenny’s.
Tom, who was going to be his replacement.
Mace’s fingers strangled the afghan. His lips pressed together. His throat felt thick. His heart ached.
He blinked, looking down at the counter, and saw a photo lying there. It was of Tom and a young girl with brown hair and freckles just like his. Mace felt as if he’d been sucker punched. As if God didn’t think he was bright enough to figure it out for himself and so had decided to spell it out for him.
He got it: Jenny wanted a family. Always had. Always would. And she could have it with Tom. Tom was fertile. Tom had a daughter. He could give Jenny what she wanted.
Unlike him.
*
When would she ever learn?
It was like the refrain of the old song that Jenny made herself sing over and over as a penance.
When would she ever learn not to be so unfailingly sanguine? When would she learn not to trust her hopes and dreams as if they were inevitably going to become her future?
When would she accept that her marriage to Mace was over, that while the physical side of their love seemed as bright as ever, the rest of it was dead?
“I’m like that donkey you have to hit on the side of the head to get its attention,” she told Brenna in dry-eyed, toneless disgust the next day, after she had come home smiling from church to discover that Mace was gone.
Brenna patted her hand and gave her a cup of tea and a dose of sympathy. But since she didn’t know the bottom line, she couldn’t do much more. Jenny knew Brenna was being kind. She also knew there was nothing much Brenna could say.
It was up to her now.
She had been a doormat long enough. She had tried to keep things together long enough. She’d had the door slammed in her face once too often.
Especially since before he’d slammed it, Mace had liberally sampled the wares.
The very thought made her teeth come together with a snap. The mortifying memory of how eagerly she had loved him and how willingly he had accepted it—and then walked out!—straightened her up and stiffened her spine as nothing else had so far.
Was she going to spend the rest of her life waiting for Mace to come to his senses?
No, she damned well was not!
She took out the last letter from his lawyer, the one in which he had tried to respond to her nit-picking questions about the division of property, including the herd and the horses, the barn and the house and the furnishings.
She had been stalling when she’d written it. She’d been giving Mace time.
Mace had had time enough.
*
His lawyer was gleeful when Mace returned his call later that week. “It’s all set.”
“What’s all set?”
“What did you hire me for? The divorce!”
Mace had thought it would take months. For a ‘no-fault’ divorce, Anthony had told him, they would have to live apart for a hundred and eighty days before he could petition. “Already?”
“The only exception is if there’s serious marital discord. If there’s no way things are going to change,” Anthony had told him the first time they’d talked.
“There’s no way things are going to change,” Mace had said then.
Jenny, in her letter back to Anthony, had disagreed. She had urged counseling. Mace had said no. She’d urged a cooling-off period. Mace had shrugged. It didn’t matter how cool he got, he was never going to have any sperm.
“It’s over,” he said to Anthony then.
“Yeah, well, unless you both swear to it, the fat lady takes six months to start singing.”
It had been less than two months since he’d left her. “She . . . changed her mind?” Mace said. Shouldn’t he have been feeling elated, not like he was staring into an abyss?
“Said so. Got a letter from her day before yesterday. She said you’re right. The marriage is irrevocably broken. She’s done.”
Of course she was. Mace almost couldn’t breathe. “What . . . what about the division of property?” he managed to ask. His mouth was so dry he could hardly speak. He tried to joke. “I thought she was going to argue over the custody of every cow.”
“Apparently not,” Anthony said. “She isn’t going to fight at all. She said she was counting on you to ‘do the honorable thing.’” He sounded as if he was quoting verbatim. “She said you were very good at that.”
Mace could tell that Anthony was grinning. He couldn’t tell for sure whether Jenny was being sarcastic or not.
“So she’s . . . she’s just . . . giving up?”
“Or put a positive spin on it and say she’s finally agreeing with you. And she’s saving herself—and you—money. No long court battles, things can be done relatively economically. You keep more o
f the cows, basically,” Anthony said. “You gotta like that.”
“Yeah.” Mace’s brain was whirling. “I can’t afford to buy her out!”
“She doesn’t want you to buy her out.”
“What? Why not?” That didn’t make sense.
“She didn’t give a reason.” There was a rustling of paper, and Anthony read, “‘Dissolve the partnership so that Mace can have the ranch. It doesn’t matter to me. He will do the honorable thing. He always does. I have no use for it. I’m moving on.’”
Moving on.
Mace sucked air. Marrying Tom. She didn’t say so. She didn’t have to. Mace might not have a college degree, but he could read between the lines as well as the next guy.
“You don’t find many women that generous,” Anthony went on cheerfully.
Mace swallowed. “No.”
There was a long pause, and in it Mace heard Anthony’s unspoken question: Then what the hell are you divorcing her for?
He didn’t answer it.
“So,” he said, as carefully as if he were stepping into a minefield, “it’s pretty much a done deal?”
“Yep. I do the paperwork. Then you and I go to court and get it finalized. Piece of cake.”
“And that’s . . . it?”
“A few days, a week or two at most—depending on the judge’s schedule—and you’re a free man.”
A free man?
“Swell.” Mace’s voice was toneless.
He didn’t bother saying there would never be any chance of that.
*
Tom called on Wednesday. “So, do you want to ride fence?”
“No.”
Her abrupt answer seemed to startle him. For a couple of seconds, he didn’t say anything. Then: “Well, of course we don’t have to. I just thought . . . I . . . don’t want to intrude. If—”
“I don’t want to ride fence,” Jenny said in a more moderate tone. And then she made herself explain, “The ranch isn’t mine anymore. Or it isn’t going to be soon. I’m going to move.”
“Move?”
“Yes. So, if you want to do something . . . maybe we could go for lunch and let me check out apartments in Bozeman or Livingston?”
*
Mace had cattle to check on the summer range.
“I’ll see to yours, too,” he told Taggart and Jed a few days later. “No sense more than one of us goin’.”
The Cowboy Finds a Family Page 17
