There didn’t seem to be a woman here. Where was Lily’s mother? He hadn’t said anything when she’d mentioned his wife, but the man had not looked happy.
Something had happened.
None of your business, Sammy. Keep your concerns and your opinions to yourself.
If his wife wasn’t here, Samantha suspected the guy was probably run off his feet managing this ranch and taking care of two children.
As a way to thank him for letting them stay, she said, “I can put it all away if Lily will show me where it belongs.”
He frowned at her use of the word belongs, as though she’d been criticizing him. She hadn’t, but she could see how she might have appeared to. She was going to have to walk on eggshells with him.
“Here.” Lily patted the unmade bed against the near wall. “I sleep here.”
“Thank you, Lily. I figured you did. You would drown—” she gestured to the clothing “—in this stuff.”
She tickled Lily’s tummy and the child giggled. Lily turned to her father and wrapped her arms around his leg. So shy. Maybe she wasn’t used to getting a lot of attention.
Lily lifted the scruffy doll by the hair and said, “This is Puff.” She hugged her close.
Puff was an untidy, poor-looking doll, but Samantha oohed and aahed over her.
Michael smiled, but it looked grim. Samantha couldn’t get a grip on who he was.
“Boys,” she said, “go get your knapsacks and take them to Michael’s room.”
He gestured down the hallway. “Back here.”
Jason and Colt returned with their knapsacks and dropped them where Mick told them.
“This is Dad’s bed,” Mick said a little too loudly. He looked like a small version of his father, with adorable dark eyes framed with long lashes and brown hair curling over his collar and onto his forehead.
The boys tossed their bags onto the bed without concern. For them, a bed was a bed was a bed. For Samantha, it was different. This was the rancher’s bed. She didn’t know him, probably wouldn’t be here long, and yet the intimacy of using his bed felt strange.
When he said, “I’ll get fresh sheets,” she breathed a sigh. Yes. That would make her feel better, help cut through this surreal sense of intimacy.
“Come see my room,” Mick yelled to the boys and they ran out.
“Mick,” Michael started, but the boys were already gone. “Sorry. Mick doesn’t moderate his voice level very well.”
“He yells a lot,” Lily said.
She followed her father to a cupboard down the hallway. They returned with clean sheets, pillowcases and pillows.
Samantha helped Michael strip the bed even though he told her not to. She needed to help. Now that she was here, she realized how much she was putting him out.
Michael shook the clean fitted sheet over the bed just as Lily threw herself onto the mattress. It fluttered down on top of her.
“Lily—” he started, but Samantha cut him off with a smile and wave of her hand.
She smoothed the sheet over the girl and said, “Mr. Moreno, I appreciate that you’re letting us use your bed, but we can’t possibly sleep here. There’s a terrible lump!”
A tiny giggle emerged from beneath the sheet.
“Help! It moves,” Samantha squealed. “Your bed has a moving bump!”
Lily giggled a bit more.
“It’s a beautiful big bed,” Samantha went on, “but I’ll squish this wriggling bump flat if I lie on top of it.”
Lily giggled loudly now.
Samantha laughed and looked up at Michael to share the joke, only to see a look of pain cross his face.
What was he thinking? What had Samantha set in motion with her joke?
She didn’t like sadness, hated what it brought up in her. She couldn’t get away from it quickly enough.
Grasping at any distraction, she picked up Lily and set her on the floor. “We’d better get this bed made.”
She and Michael finished making the bed and lined the headboard with three pillows.
Michael carried his pillow and an extra quilt to the sofa in the living room.
Samantha dropped her purse onto the bed. It was all she’d brought in with her. Her suitcase had been too heavy to drag through the snow.
She joined the boys in Mick’s room. He had bunk beds and a spare single bed across the room. It was a lot of sleeping space.
“This is a great room for having sleepovers. Do you do it often?”
She felt Michael’s presence behind her in the doorway.
Mick looked past her toward his dad. He wrinkled his small brow. Another lock of hair fell onto his forehead. “Dad, have I had friends for sleepovers?”
“No.” The single word was as curt as his tone, effectively cutting off the conversation.
What had she been thinking? Mick was still small, quite young for sleepovers. She kept making mistakes here left, right and center. Though why else would he have so many beds in his room?
Michael reached for something on the blue bedside table. “C’mere, Mick. You forgot again.”
“Aw, Dad, do I hafta?”
“What do you think?”
Mick pouted but stood still while his father fitted what looked like hearing aids into his ears.
“How’s the level? Good?”
Mick nodded and said, “You guys want to see the playroom?”
They all ran out of the room with little Lily trailing behind, still dragging her unfortunate doll by the hair.
Sammy stared after them.
Once she was alone in the room with Michael, the silence stretched. Strange, she could usually talk to anyone, but this taciturn man intimidated her with his silence.
She rushed to fill it. “How old are your children?”
“Mick is five and Lily’s four. Yours?”
“Jason is nine.” He nodded as though he’d already figured that out. “Colt is five.”
Silence fell.
“Mick has hearing issues?”
“Yeah. It’s why he yells. He forgets to put his aids in every morning unless I remind him. He doesn’t like them. He’s just being stubborn, I think.”
She nodded.
The silence between them stretched. Sammy’s inner neurotic raised her head again. No. Nope. Not saying anything this time. When she rushed to fill the void, she ended up saying the most inane things. People tended to take her less seriously than they should because of it.
Words clogged her throat, begging to be released.
“Why do the rooms have so many beds if they don’t have friends over?”
“We—I thought maybe they’d want to someday. It just hasn’t happened yet.”
We? He and the children’s mother?
She tried to gloss over the awkwardness of the moment. “Maybe after they start school.”
“Maybe,” Michael said, and changed the subject.
“We’d better take a look at the food situation,” he said.
Oh, yes, food. “We’re putting you out a lot, aren’t we? I’ll make sure the boys don’t eat too much.”
He waved a hand. “I have plenty of food in the freezer.”
“Why?” she blurted before realizing it was an impertinent question. She tended to shop for fresh food every day.
“This is the third bad storm in two months. Meteorologists predicted a bad winter this year, and they were right. I like to be prepared.”
He left the room and headed for the kitchen. She followed, interested in what he might have. She’d sensed his disapproval of her vegetarianism.
“Earlier in the week when I heard we were likely to be snowed in again, I put in an extra supply of stores. Wasn’t expecting company, though.”
Her hackles rose. “I’m sorry. If I could have stopped at a mote
l I would have.”
“I’m not complaining about that,” he said, as though there were other things he wanted to protest.
Like what?
He opened the refrigerator. “Come here and check everything out. What will your boys eat?”
“Anything.”
He looked at her skeptically. “Really?”
“Just about.” She studied the contents of the fridge’s shelves lined with ground beef, chicken and steaks. “You’ve got a lot of meat.”
She opened the crisper to find only root vegetables. Not a single salad green in sight.
“No greens?”
“Nope.” He sounded defiant. “I don’t eat ’em and the kids don’t want ’em.”
A loud bang at the back of the house startled her. Michael rushed down the hallway and opened a sturdy-looking exterior door. The storm door was banging against the wall of the house.
Michael latched it firmly and closed the door again. The gust of frigid air that had rushed in like an invader brought home to Samantha just how lucky she and the boys were to have found this refuge.
Grumpy guy or not, Michael had taken in three extra people who would need to be fed. It would behoove her to keep a generous heart and an open mind.
Mick stepped out of the bedroom where the children played. “Sorry, Dad, I guess I didn’t hook it properly when I came in this morning.”
Michael rubbed his son’s hair. “It’s all right. No harm done.”
When he returned to the kitchen, Samantha said, “Thank you.”
He pulled up short and looked behind him. Maybe he thought she was talking about closing the back door?
“I mean for taking us in,” she clarified. “For letting us stay here when you don’t want us here.”
When he opened his mouth to protest, she said, “It’s okay. I understand. We’re strangers. We’re an unexpected burden. When this is all over, I’ll make it up to you.”
She didn’t have a clue how. What on earth did she have to offer a man who seemed to have everything while she would spend the next few years fighting for control of her own life?
Chapter Three
Michael felt a distinct unease wash through him, a sense of shame that she knew he didn’t want her here.
He’d been raised to be hospitable, to share whatever he could. Had he become such a loner that he no longer knew how to extend a helping hand to someone in need?
Well, if he had, so what?
The naked truth was that he didn’t like strangers in his home.
He needed his solitude and his isolation. He didn’t want this violation of the safe distance he’d established between himself and everyone else.
He wasn’t mean-spirited or stingy. He was just hurting and his pain was nobody else’s business.
He couldn’t say that, though, could he?
Even as rusty as he was with etiquette, he knew he couldn’t just come right out and say, “I wish your car had never broken down near my home.”
He would do whatever he had to do to make them comfortable for the night, and then he would wish them well and go back to his quiet, unadorned life.
The lights he’d turned on earlier to dispel the gloom flickered.
The woman—Samantha—glanced around nervously. He’d rather just think of her as the woman. Giving her a name was too dangerous in the forced intimacy of the storm.
He would think of her as Samantha because he had to, but never the more familiar Sammy she’d offered.
“Does the power go out when it storms like this?” she asked.
“Usually. I’ve got systems in place. I have a generator that’ll kick in if we lose power, but I’ll use it conservatively.”
She tilted her head. “Why?”
“It runs on diesel, and we’ve been put on rations because of the last two storms. Gas stations were overwhelmed yesterday with everyone getting ready for this one to hit today.”
“There isn’t enough diesel around?”
“The county’s been cleaned out this winter. It’s been a bad one. Hence, the rationing.”
Samantha looked nervous. “What happens when it runs out completely? What if your generator stops working?”
“We go back to the way things used to be done. I have firewood. If the furnace cuts out, the house will stay warm for a while. Once it cools down, we can all bunk in the living room on air mattresses with quilts. We can cook with camping equipment. We’re good.”
He didn’t usually talk so much—he’d just made a speech, for God’s sake—but she seemed to need reassurance.
She relaxed fractionally. “Would you mind if I use your phone? Mine stopped working a while ago. Travis thinks we’re arriving tomorrow. I was pushing hard to get here today to surprise him. I need to let him know we’re close but safe.”
“Sure.” He pointed into the living room. “At the far end of the couch.”
He left the room while she made her call.
* * *
SAMANTHA DIALED TRAVIS’S NUMBER. When he answered, an out-of-proportion rush of relief left her dizzy. She hadn’t realized how much she needed to see her brother.
“Sammy!” he said, and his voice was so familiar and so dear her eyes filled with tears. After all, they had only each other. Their parents were gone and they didn’t have anyone else, not even the usual aunts, uncles and cousins.
“Where are you?” Travis asked. He sounded concerned.
“I made a mistake and missed the turnoff for Rodeo.”
“When?”
“About an hour ago.”
“What? You’re out in this weather?”
Cripes. Was she the only one who didn’t know snowstorms got this bad? She and Travis had been raised in southern Arizona, and she’d lived in Nevada for years and then California for the past year. She’d seen snow a handful of times in her life, but never a storm.
“I’m not out in it now,” she replied. “The car broke down.”
“But you just bought it before you left.”
“I know.”
“You didn’t buy used, did you?”
“No! It’s brand-spanking-new. I don’t know what happened. It just stopped running and the boys and I were stuck.”
“Stuck? Are you still in the car?” His voice had risen.
“No. We walked to a rancher’s house.”
“Whose house? What rancher?” Her older brother was fiercely protective of her and her sons.
“Michael Moreno.”
“Hold on.” She heard Travis talking to someone else. A second later he came back on the phone. “Okay. Apparently Michael’s a good guy.”
“That’s my impression.” A good guy, even if he was grumpy.
Travis sounded calmer, as though whoever he’d just spoken to had done a good job of reassuring him. “You can trust him.”
She sort of, kind of already did, even though he was obviously not at all happy to have them. Her instincts about people were pretty good.
“We’re going to stay here tonight,” she said.
“At least for tonight. This storm system is massive.”
“I had no idea. I usually check the forecast on my phone, but it’s been acting up.” Unease raced through her. Now that she’d heard Travis’s voice, all she wanted was to be with him. “Honestly, Travis, I didn’t know what I was heading into.”
She cupped the phone and her mouth with her hand so Michael wouldn’t hear her. “I was so scared, Travis. I will never drive in a snowstorm again.”
“This is a bad one. You and the boys stay put until this whole thing passes and I can come get you, okay?”
“Okay.” She exhaled. She would be able to relax soon. All of the trouble of the past two years would be over once they made it to Travis’s house. “Who’s there with you? Your new g
irlfriend?”
“Rachel. Yeah. I can’t wait for you two to meet. I love her, Sammy. She’s the one.”
“Oh, Travis. I’m so happy for you.” She was. Truly. “I’ve wanted this for a long time.”
It was just strange for Travis to have someone. Not just a girlfriend, but the one. He’d never talked about love before though he’d had plenty of girlfriends, even that phony Vivian he’d been so infatuated with. Thank God that hadn’t lasted.
But who was this Rachel? How had he fallen so hard so quickly? What was she like? Could Sammy trust her to love Travis as much as he deserved to be loved?
“I’m going to marry her, Sammy.”
Samantha choked. When she stopped coughing, she whispered, “Marry?”
“Yep.” Her brother had never sounded more certain.
“I’m happy for you, bro.” She was, but a tiny part of her knew that this changed everything.
She bit her lip. “Where will you live? In the house?”
“Yes, with her two children.”
Rachel had children? “But—” She’d thought the house would be a home for her and the boys.
“It will all work out, Sammy. We’ll make it work. You’re going to love Rachel and her girls,” Travis said, and his calm confidence soothed her even while she still worried. How on earth was it all supposed to work?
Sammy and her boys would never again have her brother’s undivided love and attention.
Well, wasn’t that the point you were going to make when you arrived at the house he bought for you? Weren’t you determined to pay him every cent he paid for that house, even if it took years?
Weren’t you the one who was going to finally fight for independence from every single man, even your brother?
Her father and her ex-husband had let her down. Depending on men sucked. Only Travis had been trustworthy.
“I love you, bro.”
“And I love you, sis. Tell the boys I love them, too.”
“I will. Bye.” She hated to hang up, hated to wait another day or two before seeing him, before moving to a happier home than this one seemed to be. But the house she was moving to with Travis would soon contain another woman and two more children.
Rodeo Rancher Page 3
