* * *
MICHAEL GOT UP multiple times throughout the night to stoke the fire.
Every time, Jason rolled over to ask, “Is it time?”
“Not yet. It’s the middle of the night. Go back to sleep, son,” Michael said the last time. Son. He could have bitten his tongue.
Jason rolled over and went back to sleep.
At five, answering the call of his inner clock, Michael got up to tend to the animals. Jason joined him again.
In the mudroom, Jason said, “Something’s wrong.”
“Naw. Nothing’s wrong. The storm’s abated, that’s all. There’s no wind.”
Jason brightened. “That’s what it is. Yeah.” He pumped his fist.
When they stepped outside, the crisp, quiet air brought them up short.
“You warm?” Michael asked.
“Yeah. It’s cold out, but nice without the wind.”
“It’s a good time of day. Calm. Peaceful.” Michael stepped down from the porch, sinking into thigh-deep snow. The path he’d forged yesterday was gone.
He started in on making a new path, muscling his way through.
“Walk in my footsteps, okay?”
They did their chores in silence, like a well-rehearsed team.
An hour and a half later, they entered the house to the sound of Mick and Colt kicking up a fuss.
“They’re bored,” Michael said. He knew from experience children didn’t last long in enforced seclusion.
Michael turned the generator back on and they cooked their breakfast on the stove. The novelty of cooking over the fire had worn off.
They cleaned up after breakfast and brushed their teeth and washed up, all while Michael ignored Samantha, ruthlessly quashing the memories of her flushed face while she sang disco songs last night.
He stood stunned in the chaos of his living room, wondering how he was going to get through the rest of the day.
He needed to find something to fill the hours.
They tried playing cards and board games, but ran out of steam after an hour.
Cabin fever had set in firmly.
“What are we going to do now?” Colt asked.
“We need to get outside to play for a while,” Michael said. “You kids have to burn off energy.”
“Yay!” Colt ran for the back door and looked out. “Let me feel the snow.”
By the time Michael realized his intentions, Cody had opened the back door, hauled off his socks and stepped right out into the snow.
“Hey!” Michael yelled. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“I never felt snow before. It’s cold. It’s fun.”
“It’ll freeze your toes off.” Michael hooked him like a giggling sack of potatoes under one arm.
“Mick and Jason, secure the doors. Lily, bring Colt’s socks.”
He set the boy on his feet in the living room. “Silly kid,” he said. His smile was strained. The house had been without spirit and fun and excitement a long time, but the four walls were closing in on him.
Okay, the fun part of the strangers being here was fine. The rest, the whiff of attraction to Samantha, the unsettling urge to move, to do, to get away from the house and all of its too many occupants, was not. He was tired. He wanted to be left alone.
Chapter Six
All Samantha could see from the back door was a path forged through a thigh-high wall of snow.
The isolation and the close quarters were starting to wear on her. Pulling Michael out of his glumness and keeping the children happy was taking a toll.
She wanted time alone, in particular away from Michael. He was too big, too solid, too present for her comfort.
The silence of the nights away from city streets and the bright lights of Vegas left her antsy and wanting to turn on every lamp she could find. Impossible during a power outage, of course, and frustrating.
She wasn’t willing to throw in the towel yet, though. Not by a long shot.
She’d lived through a lot in her life. She could survive this.
How on earth were the children supposed to play in snow that was almost over their heads? Especially Lily’s.
Michael put his hands on his hips. “Jason, can you go to the stable and get the two shovels we used earlier to open the door?”
“Sure.”
Jason stepped outside and Samantha reached to draw him back. Michael touched her arm, shaking his head.
“He’s fine,” he said, voice low and quiet. “He can do it.”
“Don’t tell me how to raise my son,” she bit out.
“Then don’t tell me how to raise my children,” he shot back.
Stalemate.
He dropped his hand, and she was glad. The tingling awareness his touch generated unsettled her.
She’d managed to keep her distance from him, metaphorically at any rate. Now to keep things that way until she could leave. He made her skin feel too tight.
Jason trudged down the path he and Michael had created earlier in the day. Snow had fallen in from the sides, but he managed just fine.
Samantha turned to look at Michael. “How did you know he would be okay?”
“I was doing the same thing at his age. He’s a really good kid. He seems to like helping.”
“He does.” She bit her bottom lip. “Sometimes I worry he does too much. He’s growing up too quickly. He had to—”
Stop. Don’t tell this stranger too much. He doesn’t need to know more about Kevin.
Ah, hell. They were stuck together for a few more days. Michael should understand who he was dealing with.
“He had to grow up too young. His father was an absentee father even before we divorced and he left the country. At first he was proud that he’d fathered a son, but he lost interest quickly.”
Michael cocked his head. “How could he lose interest in such a great kid?”
“He was self-absorbed. I didn’t realize that when I married him. So Jason has grown up without a father for most of his life.”
When she’d married Kevin, she’d thought her dreams of a secure family life and all of the things she’d missed in childhood had finally been answered. She’d been so wrong.
She shrugged and felt Michael studying her. Finally, she looked up at him.
“You’ve done a fine job. He’s a great person.”
High praise from such a self-contained man. Oh, high praise, indeed. She tried to resist the warmth that spread through her, but couldn’t. Yeah, she’d done a great job with her sons. Take that, Kevin, and put it in your hookah and smoke it wherever you are. We don’t need you. We’re during just fine on our own.
When Jason returned, Michael pounded the shovels against the steps to remove snow and carried them down the hallway.
Over his shoulder, he said, “Jason or Samantha, one of you bring the shovel from the porch.”
Jason snagged it before Sammy could and followed him, her son so eager to please. What if he developed hero worship for Michael?
We’re leaving soon, Jason. Be careful, honey.
Jason already had a bad case of that with Travis, but that was okay. Travis would always be there for his nephews. This stranger would not.
“Come on,” Samantha said, and she and the children trooped the length of the house to the front door where the snow wasn’t piled quite as high on the veranda as it had been against the back door.
They could actually stand outside.
Michael snagged another shovel from the wall and handed it to Samantha.
He dug out two child-sized plastic shovels and handed them to the boys.
“Okay, everyone shovel.” To Samantha, he said, “Can you and the children clear the veranda while Jason and I shovel a path to the truck?”
She stared at the landscape, snow blue-
white in the day’s brilliant sunshine. “Gorgeous,” she whispered.
Whiteness dappled by silvery glitter stretched across fields as far as the eye could see. Fat blobs of snow weighted the branches of trees.
Michael’s garage was covered in a layer of snow that looked like it should cave in the roof.
The road beyond his property hadn’t been plowed. Only the slightest mound of snow in the distance hinted at a car stuck there.
Michael moved to step off the veranda, but Samantha stopped him with a quiet question. “We’re not going anywhere today, either, are we?”
“Nope,” he said. He didn’t sound happy. She didn’t know what to do about that. She was trying to be amenable and pleasant, but something was bothering this man.
Shrugging, she turned to the children. “Shovel,” she said, softening the order with a smile.
They dug in. Samantha’s arms got more of a workout than they’d had in a long time.
“Whew! This is harder than lifting weights.”
Michael’s answering smile could only be termed a mocking tilt of his lips that said, tell me something I don’t already know.
It irritated the hell out of her. Of course he knew all of this stuff. He’d grown up with it. She hadn’t.
Michael and Jason stepped up onto the veranda. “Good,” he said. “That’s done. Thanks for your help.”
“That’s it?”
His brow creased. “What do you mean?”
“We get to shovel the snow, but we can’t play in it?”
“It’s too deep for the little ones.”
Samantha took off her borrowed mitten and shoved wayward locks of flyaway hair back under her borrowed hat. Staring at the front yard, she tried to come up with something more the children could do. She wanted to give them at least another half hour outside.
Besides, they all had cabin fever, and this break from it hadn’t been nearly long enough.
Michael made an impatient sound low in his throat.
“I’m thinking,” she cracked out, then just as quickly adjusted her attitude. This family was being put out by hers. She needed to hold on to her patience. “Sorry. There must be some way to play out here.”
She snapped her fingers, then pulled her big mitten back on.
“I’ve got it!”
The children picked up on her excitement. “What, Mom?” Colt jumped up and down.
Lily wrapped her arms around Sammy’s leg and stared up at her, waiting.
Mick shouted, “You got what?”
Michael rolled his eyes. “Mick, when we get back inside, what do you have to do?”
“Put in my hearing aids?” he yelled.
“Yup.”
Mick grinned.
Samantha studied Michael, glanced down at Jason and then the other two children. She blurted, “Snowball fight!”
The kids hooted, but the man scowled. “How do you plan to manage that?” He tilted his head at the thigh-deep snow.
Talk about attitude adjustments. He needed one.
“Listen.” She stepped close to him. She knew she was being bossy, but couldn’t help herself. “There are four children who need to be out in this snow. If we take these kids inside now, we’ll still have half the day and all of tonight for them to get stir-crazy again.”
Michael had the good grace to respond with, “You’re right.”
“The longer we stay outside the better, and the more settled they’ll be later on.”
He nodded reluctantly, but agreed nonetheless.
Lily patted her leg for attention. Samantha bent down. She shouldn’t interfere, should just let Michael raise his children his way, but her resolve couldn’t withstand those dark chocolate eyes that so matched her father’s.
In Lily, she saw herself at that age.
No way, Sammy. No comparison. Her life is completely different from yours as a child. Compared to you, Lily is living like a princess.
Even so, Samantha read notes of loneliness in Lily’s need to get close to her. Sammy was a stranger, but clearly the child needed something from her.
In that need, Sammy saw vestiges of her own loneliness in childhood. She did not want this child to be lonely.
Leave it, Sammy. None of your business. Leave it.
She couldn’t.
“So, what we have to do is this,” she blurted, reaching beyond her common sense, her caution and her fear of this man’s reaction.
She pointed to a spot about eight feet from the house. “Can you and Jason go down the path and then cut another path across the front of the house parallel to it?” she asked Michael.
His jaw worked, as though he were chewing on something small. Clearly, this man did not like being told what to do. “Why?”
“I’m going to get the smaller children to gather up some of that snow we pushed to the ends of the veranda and pile it against the railing here at the front.”
A puzzled frown marred a face that would be handsome if he weren’t so grouchy.
“After we finish, we’ll all make snowballs.” She gestured toward the front railing. “The children will hide down here with me, behind our wall. You and Jason will hunker down in the trench you make down there.”
Jason grinned. “Then we’ll throw them at each other. We can’t play in the snow, but we can still play with it.”
She smiled broadly at her smart son. “Exactly, Jason.”
Michael’s face lit with subdued appreciation. “We can do that.”
When he stepped onto the path to plan their trench, Jason said, “My mom always has the best playing ideas.”
“This is a good one,” the rancher conceded, wide in his shearling coat and cowboy hat. “Yeah. It’s all right.”
One grouchy cynic at a time, Samantha thought. This is how the arguments of the world are won.
The younger children threw themselves into the challenge just as soon as Samantha told them they were building a veranda fort.
After that was done, she sat on the bottom step with Lily and helped her to form snowballs while Mick and Colt ran down the sides of the path and made their own.
Mick had to teach Colt how to do it. “You’re getting the hang of it really well, Colt,” Samantha said.
“I love it, Mom. I wish we’d always lived with snow.”
“You say that now,” Michael said from the new pathway he was shoveling. “But just wait until you’ve had to shovel it a couple of dozen times a winter.”
About to call him out for raining on Colt’s parade, Samantha pulled herself back.
Michael’s comment might be negative, but there was a nice smile in his voice.
He might be grouchy with her and deeply unhappy about the situation, but he didn’t take it out on her children.
When they had a stockpile of snowballs, Samantha squatted with the younger children behind the railing.
Mick peeked around the newel post, then yelled, “Now!”
The kids and Samantha stood up and tossed snowballs at Jason and Michael, standing up in their snow trough.
Samantha took a snowball to the face. Lily, whose head barely cleared the top of the railing, laughed when Sammy spit out snow.
“Woohooo! Let’s get ’em,” Samantha shouted, and the children tossed volley after volley of snowballs at Jason and Michael.
Once they’d exhausted their supply, they lay down behind the snow and giggled until Samantha’s sides hurt.
She could hear Jason and Michael talking, but ignored them when Lily threw herself against her and squealed, “That was fun! I like snowball fights.”
“Do you usually win or lose?” Sammy asked.
“I never had one before.”
Samantha stared at her and then at Mick, who said, “Yeah. That was the first time. I loved it. Let’s do it again.�
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Unsettled by their artless sharing—they lived with all of this snow, but had never had a snowball fight—she redirected their attention.
“It was fun, wasn’t it? Sure, we can do it again, but let’s eat first. I need to make lu—”
When the snowball hit the side of her head, the children burst into gales of laughter.
Samantha cleared the snow from her face and turned to find Jason smiling at her. “Gotcha, Mom.”
“You sure did.”
Just then, Michael reared up from behind him and grabbed Mick, throwing him into the snow in front of the veranda. He did the same with Colt.
When he picked up Lily, she started to cry.
Bewildered, he stared helplessly at the girl.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
Lily buried her face against his jacket and clung to him.
“I think she was scared when you burst onto the veranda,” Samantha explained quietly. “I don’t think she understands it’s a game.”
She lightened her tone. “Lily, look at the boys!”
Lily lifted her tearstained face and looked at Mick and Colt rolling in the snow like a pair of puppies.
“They’re having fun. Your daddy was playing a game.” Samantha noted how Lily rubbed her eyes with her wet mittens. “Do you want Daddy to toss you into the snow, too? He’d be happy to.”
“No, Sammy. Maybe amorrow.”
“Okay.” To Michael, she said, “Someone’s t-i-r-e-d. We should go in for lunch.”
He whispered to Lily, “You want bacon for lunch?”
Watching him now, Samantha saw a man who might be reserved and more than a little uptight, but he loved his daughter.
“Bacon, Daddy.”
“Lots? A million slices?”
“A million, Daddy. And one more. ’Kay?”
“A million and one it is.” He called to the boys. “Do you need help getting out of the snow?”
“Yeah! It’s deep.”
Michael tried to put Lily down, but she clung to him like a burr.
“Will she come to me?” Samantha reached out to her.
“Sammy!” Lily all but jumped into Samantha’s arms.
After a brief flash of emotion that Samantha couldn’t decipher, Michael passed the child over and stepped off the veranda to rescue the younger boys.
Rodeo Rancher Page 7
