He'd been thinking about her all day.
Was he simply intrigued because he didn't have her? Was it the chase he was interested in? The thrill of pursuit?
God knew he hadn't pursued a woman for a good long time. It hadn't seemed worth the trouble.
It did now.
He wanted to go to bed with Ellie in the worst way. It had been a vague hunger since yesterday's encounter with her underwear. It had teased the edges of his unconscious while he tossed and turned on the straw last night.
But it had taken hard and urgent shape this morning when she'd appeared in the kitchen, sleepy-eyed and rumpled, then fled in embarrassment at the desire in his gaze.
At least now he knew she was aware of him as a man. Yesterday he hadn't been quite sure.
Now, though, he had another problem. What was he going to do about it?
They weren't unencumbered college kids anymore. And if he was still footloose when it came to relationships, she most definitely was not. Five other people had definite claims on her time.
And if his hormones clamored for him to focus on pursuing the awareness that still existed between them, real life, he'd discovered this morning, had other ideas.
He'd come back in to pick up the lunch he'd asked for—hoping at the same time for another few moments' worth of heated looks, even if Ellie was dressed this time.
But she'd been making oatmeal and packing lunches for the kids, and she'd hardly turned around when he came in.
"It's there on the table," she'd said over her shoulder. "Four sandwiches, an apple, some cookies and your coffee. Is that enough?"
"Sure, fine," he'd said. Turn around, Ellie. Smile at me.
But she'd just said, "If you end up still hungry, let me know and tomorrow I'll fix more." Then she'd gone to the bottom of the steps leading to the attic and shouted, "Hurry up, you guys! Oatmeal's almost ready."
At the sound of boys clumping down the stairs, Rance had given up. "I'll just go check on that calf that's coming. Thanks, then," he'd said, and headed out the door.
He'd gone back to the barn for a heavy jacket, when a truck had pulled up and parked next to his and a woman in her fifties climbed out.
She was a little taller than Ellie, with graying dark hair and a slender, lithe figure. She was, he'd guessed, the grandmother. He understood what Ellie meant now about the woman not being in her dotage.
She'd looked at his truck curiously as she passed. He didn't come out of the barn. He figured he'd have plenty of time to meet her later. And somehow, right then, as aware as he still was of Ellie's attractiveness, he hadn't wanted to meet Ellie's husband's mother.
He felt rewarded a little bit later, just as he was about to set out, when the back door opened and, shrugging into her jacket, Ellie came out. His eager body propelled him out of the barn toward the truck to intercept her, to talk to her, to get a smile from her.
But he barely got three words when the back door banged again and all three boys came hurrying toward the track. They had plenty to say, and the twins smiled and Josh said his arm was doing okay. And then Ellie had the track warmed up and was chivying them to get in.
"I'll be back to help pretty quick," she told him, putting the track in gear.
As they passed by him, Daniel had rolled down the window and hung out. "Thanks for feedin' Lilly Belle."
"Who? Oh, the calf? Sure. No problem."
Daniel grinned. "Really glad you came."
Rance wasn't so sure Ellie's mother-in-law was as thrilled.
He spent the morning alternating between checking on the mother cow and working with the new geldings Ellie had bought. And if he'd hoped, somewhere in the back of his mind, that Ellie might come to the corral and join him, well, it hadn't worked out quite like that.
He'd had company, all right. But when the roan gelding decided to take exception to his rider and pitch Rance to the dirt, it wasn't Ellie who sat across the corral on the fence rail and watched him stagger up.
"Anything broken?" his spectator called.
Rance slapped at his jeans with his hat. "Just my pride."
Ellie's mother-in-law smiled. "Well, that happens to all of us now and then. I'm Sandra O'Connor, by the way."
"Rance Phillips." He took one last swipe at the dirt on his clothes, then walked over to speak with her. She watched him come, and as she did so, her smile faded. So, Rance noted, did the color in her face.
"Something wrong?" he asked her, looking up at her.
Her knuckles were white on the rail, and as he watched, she loosed her grip and climbed down. "N-no. Just … got a little light-headed for a moment." She took the hand he offered. "It's nice to meet you," she said almost gravely.
"You, too, ma'am."
"Ellie said you went to college with her?" It wasn't exactly phrased like a question but Rance understood the intent.
He nodded. "She got me through my first semester. She was in my English class. Read all my papers. Shaped 'em up," he went on, trying to make it sound as platonic as he could.
"Oh, yes. Ellie was always good with words."
"She shoulda stayed in school," he said without thinking, then remembered she'd left to marry this woman's son. "I mean, well … I'm sure she had better things to do."
Sandra took pity on him. "Ellie's always known what she wanted to do," she said. Then she continued talking easily about her daughter-in-law, and Rance, finding that he was starved to hear whatever he could about Ellie, hung on every word.
Sandra asked him questions, too, and before long he'd told her quite a lot about himself. Sandra, he decided later, would have had a great career before the bench. Subtle cross-examination seemed to be her forte. Before he even realized it, he was telling her the story of his life—about his rodeo career and its precipitous end, about his decision to go to school but to do it on his own terms. He told her about being a Phillips, about the pressures and demands that had come with being the only son of one of the most prominent, wealthiest, most determined men in the state. "Being a Phillips is only slightly less demanding than being in line for the British crown," he complained. "I belong to them, not to myself."
He told her he wanted more than anything to be his own man.
He told her more than he'd ever told anyone, as if they were sharing confidences.
Sandra told him what a good mother Ellie was, what a good wife she'd been to Spike, how happy she and her husband had been to have her as their daughter-in-law.
"Yeah, I can see that," Rance said. And when he thought about all the things Sandra had said and the few things he had seen of this grown-up, adult Ellie, he had an inkling for the first time what his stubborn refusal to consider marriage had cost him.
Would they have married if he'd been willing? he wondered.
It was the food for thought he took with him while he went out on the mountain to check on the cattle that afternoon. He had plenty of time to think about it—plenty of time to think about her. His mind's eye played over Ellie in the T-shirt, Ellie in the kitchen surrounded by kids, Ellie looking into his eyes for just one shattering moment this morning.
What would it have been like to be married to Ellie?
Did he really care?
She hadn't.
She hadn't come back to school in the fall. She hadn't bothered to wait and see if he'd had a change of heart and mind. She'd found someone else she loved better.
She'd stayed home and married Sandra O'Connor's son.
The best defense is a good offense.
Spike had always said that about football, hockey, parent-teacher conferences and rounding up a balky steer.
On the theory that it also applied to intrafamilial relationships, Ellie breezed into the kitchen as Sandra was making dinner that evening and said, "So, what do you think of my new hired hand?"
She hadn't seen her mother-in-law all day. By design. She'd been trying to figure out her strategy on how to act regarding Rance.
He was the first man to stay over on
the ranch—even if he had stayed in the barn. He was the first man of her generation to breach the pleasant but distant demeanor Ellie had shown to every male who'd crossed her path in the past two years. He was the first man Ellie thought Sandra might see as a possible replacement for Spike.
Even though Ellie knew Rance wasn't interested in marriage, Sandra didn't. She didn't want her mother-in-law jumping to conclusions. And she knew that protesting Rance's lack of interest was not going to accomplish that. There was such a thing as protesting too much.
No, the best tack, Ellie decided, was to be cheerful, up-front, straightforward. Honest.
More or less.
There was no doubt in her mind that Sandra had formed an opinion by now. When Ellie and Carrie had come back from a quick trip to town for baling wire this morning, she'd seen Sandra in conversation with Rance by the corral. It had been her first impulse to rush over and push them apart. Of course she couldn't do that, so rather than stand by, tongue-tied and desperate, she'd taken herself and Carrie off for the rest of the day, doctoring cattle, bringing in the few she found near Bryce Creek and then spending an inordinate amount of time with Daniel's Lilly Belle out in the barn.
But by suppertime she knew it was time to tackle Sandra. And better to do it when they could be alone.
So she settled Carrie in the sandbox with Clarissa for company, hoped that Josh and Daniel and Caleb would stay outdoors until dinner was ready, then went indoors to face her mother-in-law.
"He's very nice." Sandra looked up from the potatoes she was mashing. "Well-spoken. Well-mannered. Bright." The adjectives were tossed out like accusations.
"Yes, he is," Ellie said, smiling brightly.
"With a Harvard law degree. And with a home of his own. I don't exactly think he needs a place to stay," Sandra added.
Ellie felt herself flushing. "Not a place to stay exactly," she agreed hastily. "He just said he … wanted to get away for a while."
"From the women."
Now it was Ellie whose brows shot up. "He told you?"
"Only in passing." Sandra smiled. "Smart of him, actually, to get out before he did something he'd regret."
"Like marry one of them?" Ellie asked.
Sandra laughed. "I was thinking more of shooting one of them. Or his father."
"He told you about his father, too?" It sounded like Rance had told Sandra his life story. Had he told her he and Ellie had been lovers, for heaven's sake?
"He didn't have to tell me much about his father," Sandra said. "Tom and I knew Trey Phillips from way back. Hard not to know one of the biggest ranchers in the state."
"I guess," Ellie mumbled. She turned away, got the plates from the cupboard and started putting plates out on the table.
"Wash your hands," Sandra said.
Chagrined, Ellie did. She didn't say anything else as she set the table. She couldn't think of anything to say.
It was actually better than she'd expected, she assured herself. Sandra liked him. She didn't seem to think Ellie was trying to replace Spike with someone else. Everyone was being very mellow. Maybe, Rance being who he was, Sandra had realized right away he wouldn't be interested in Ellie.
But just as she thought it, Sandra said, "Yes, I like your Rance Phillips," and set the mashed potato pot down with a thump.
It was on the tip of Ellie's tongue to say he's not my Rance Phillips! But she remembered about overreaction and protesting too much. Instead she smiled her agreement and said, "Mmm."
"Nice of him to help out. We can use a man's help."
"Yes, well, don't start depending on it," Ellie warned her quickly. "He's not going to be here long."
"No?" Sandra seemed surprised.
"Of course not. As you've just pointed out, he's certainly got a life beyond riding for our brand. This is just an interlude."
There was a pause as she let Sandra digest that. Then her mother-in-law asked, "Are you going to let him go?"
That brought Ellie up short. Her brows drew down. Her fingers tightened briefly around the spoons in her hands. "Of course I am."
Sandra just looked at her. Outside Ellie could hear Daniel and Caleb arguing and Carrie singing a hopscotch rhyme. Beyond that there was the steady thunk of an ax into wood.
"You're going to let him mend the fence, help with the branding, cut the wood and walk away?" Sandra asked, her voice carrying a tone of quiet challenge.
"Of course," Ellie said impatiently. "What else am I supposed to do?"
Their gazes met again for just a moment.
Then Sandra went over and started to make the gravy. She mixed the flour-and-water paste, then began to stir it into the beef drippings. She didn't look at Ellie. "I'd say you're going to have to tell him eventually," she said almost conversationally.
Time seemed to stop as Ellie stared at the worn red-and-white oilcloth on the table. Tell him… Sandra's words echoed in her ears. Tell him…
"Tell him?" she echoed faintly.
Sandra turned her head slowly. The gravy bubbled and steamed unattended as their eyes met once more.
Sandra's were warm and compassionate and caring, and she smiled with a mixture of resignation and infinite gentleness as she said quietly, "When a man has a son, Ellie, he has a right to know."
Chapter 5
« ^ »
Ellie gasped. "How did you—" She broke off and stared at her mother-in-law.
Sandra smiled slightly. "You've only got to look at him. At the two of them."
Ellie felt as if the ground had been cut from under her—as if she'd been holding back a flood for years, only to be swept away by a wave she hadn't even seen coming. "It's that easy? But—he never said! He doesn't know!"
He couldn't know! Surely if he did, he would have said.
"He just sees Josh, not himself," Sandra pointed out.
"But—" Ellie shook her head "—it's that … obvious?"
"Certainly it wouldn't be to everyone. People in general wouldn't probably notice. After all, Josh has Spike's coloring. The dark hair, the light eyes. For all anyone knows the rest of him must be from someone on your side. They aren't looking for anything else. You were married to Spike when Josh was born. Spike never told them differently. They have no reason to think he's not Spike's natural son."
"But you knew? I—I didn't know that you knew," she said faintly.
Of course Spike had always been close to his parents, and there was no reason he shouldn't have shared such knowledge with them. But if he had, he'd never told Ellie. And in almost eleven years, Sandra had never once intimated that she had any idea Josh was not her blood kin.
"Spike never said Josh wasn't his," Sandra said gently. She finished with the gravy and poured it into a bowl. "As far as he was concerned, Josh was every bit as much his son as Daniel and Caleb were. But he was living at home with us while you were in Bozeman at school. We knew—or thought we knew—what your relationship was.
"When the two of you came to us and said you were getting married, that you were pregnant, well, we thought it was possible that you'd slept with Spike and he'd gotten you pregnant, but it didn't seem likely."
Sandra regarded her daughter-in-law with gentle understanding. "We didn't think you'd sleep with a man if you weren't in love with him. Especially not Spike. He loved you too much for you to trifle with his feelings. At least that was the way we saw it. Spike was your friend."
Spike had always been Ellie's friend. He'd been her best friend and her greatest confidante—from the time she'd been five and he'd been six, and they'd shared a tent when they'd gone with their fathers to move cattle to the summer range.
From shared secrets to scuffles and wrestling matches, from how to rope a balky steer to how to get a boy to kiss you, no one had ever known Ellie like Spike had. And no one had known Spike like Ellie.
But sometime long ago she'd realized that Spike's love for her was different than her love for him.
"I … wouldn't," Ellie whispered now. "I didn't." She bent
her head. I—" She stopped, couldn't say the words.
"Loved Rance," Sandra finished for her when Ellie's courage failed.
"Yes," Ellie admitted. She twisted her fingers together. "At the time, anyway." Then she lifted her gaze to meet Sandra's. "But he didn't love me."
"Don't be too sure," the older woman said promptly, startling her again.
Fiercely Ellie shook her head. "He didn't want me! He didn't want to get married. He certainly wouldn't have wanted the baby. He was completely antimarriage. Antikid. We were reading Coleridge—The Rime of the Ancient Mariner—when I found out I was pregnant. I was so scared. I didn't know what to do."
The panic she'd felt was so strong that even thinking about it now brought it right back to her.
"I hoped, if I told him, he'd think it was wonderful, that he'd tell me it was all right, that we'd get married and live happily ever after. So that night when we were studying, I brought up babies. I said something about having children someday, and he looked horrified. 'I don't want kids,' he told me. 'I'm trying to make my own life. Talk about albatrosses,' he said."
The memory of that night could still send a shudder through her eleven years later. Her dreams had died that night. There had been no room for question. No doubt about how he felt.
"I couldn't tell him then," she said. "He would have felt cornered, hemmed in, tied down. He would have 'done the right thing'—it's the way he is—but he didn't want marriage and, unlike Spike, he would have ended up hating me and Josh both!"
She stood quite still in the middle of the kitchen, remembering how terribly alone she'd felt in those days. Later that week Rance had met her at the library, ecstatic over an offer to go to Ireland for the summer and work for a horse trainer. He'd seen his world opening up again.
"The world I want to live in," he'd told her, supremely satisfied. "Not the world my old man has cut out for me."
Ellie couldn't cut out a world and force him into it, either. So she'd rejoiced with him as best she could. He'd taken her not-quite-wholly disguised sadness as an indication that she wished she was going along.
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