A Small Fortune

by Marie Ferrarella

  It was, just as before, all the invitation that he needed. He could feel himself filling with anticipation, wanting her as if he hadn’t just had her minutes ago.

  Nothing else mattered but this moment, this woman and the rising heat between them.

  He took her all over again.

  And savored it as if it were the first time.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Daddy!”

  The urgent, distressed cry scissored through the contented drowsiness that had crept over Marnie and had, against her innate common sense, caused her to remain in Asher’s bed.

  Right beside Asher.

  Intense lovemaking, not once but twice that evening, had left her—she suspected that it had left both of them—really exhausted. It was a very nice, comfortable exhaustion, the kind that caused a person to slip into sleep with a very broad, immensely contented smile.

  But the sudden desperate cry coming from the bedroom down the hall had abruptly and quickly changed the atmosphere, ushering in reality and reminding Marnie that she wasn’t supposed to be staying the night—or any part of the night, for that matter. Her plan had been to leave after her heartbeat had ceased crashing wildly.

  Somewhere along the line, that plan had gotten lost and been forgotten.

  And they had both fallen asleep.

  But they were both awake now.

  Clutching the blanket and sheet up against her torso, Marnie bolted upright, instantly placing the source of the noise.

  “Jace,” she cried, concerned.

  The next moment, Asher, utterly alert now, was sitting up, as well.

  But not beside her.

  Marnie had already bounded out of bed and was searching for her own clothes through the strewn, miscellaneous articles of clothing on the floor. Finding them, she was hurrying into her underwear, jeans and shirt as fast as humanly possible.

  She was half dressed before Asher’s bare feet hit the floor.

  “It’s probably a nightmare,” Asher told her. “He has them sometimes. Not as often as he used to now that he’s grown attached to you,” he added as he pulled up his jeans. In a hurry, he’d deliberately skipped putting on his underwear.

  She tried very hard not to focus on the fact that all there was between Asher and his exceedingly sculpted, hard naked body was just a length of denim. This was no time to start drooling, she ordered herself sharply—but who knew that a former financial VP turned rancher could have a body that brought the word Adonis to mind?

  “You need to go to him,” she prompted.

  “You’re leaving?” Asher asked, reading between the lines as he watched her get dressed. Disappointment as well as an unexpected flash of guilt, encroached over him in annoying waves.

  “Dad-deee!”

  She nodded in response to his question. There was no other choice open to her, and they both knew it.

  “The last thing Jace needs is to find me in Daddy’s bed. Now go, go!” she urged, waving him to the other room as she pulled her boots on.

  Asher lingered for a second in the doorway. He wanted her to know. “I don’t want you to go,” he told her honestly.

  Ambivalent feelings be damned, he thought. He wanted her in his bed.

  She found his protest immensely endearing and more touching than she had thought possible. There weren’t enough words available to tell him, so she merely quietly said, “I know.” Dressed, she got up behind him and pushed Asher across the threshold, into the hall. “Now go, he needs you, and Jace comes first, before everything.”

  He knew that. He’d always felt that way, too. But faced with the reality of it, he couldn’t help feeling a desire to hold on to Marnie, as well.

  Prior to tonight, he hadn’t thought that he even wanted to be with another woman. And he really hadn’t felt up to facing and tackling all the hoops that required his jumping through them when it came to maintaining a relationship.

  But Marnie made it easy.

  Maybe too easy.

  He hesitated one last time, at the mercy of dueling emotions. “Sure you don’t want to stay?”

  Thinking that she could stay would only wind up torturing her. In her heart, she knew that staying wasn’t the right thing to do.

  Marnie shook her head. “Jace is a very bright boy. Seeing me here like this will raise too many questions. Questions I don’t think you really want to answer yet.”

  She suspected that Jace would think they were a couple and say as much to his father. Hearing Asher deny it—as she expected he would—was something she wasn’t up to facing right now.

  Still, she saw Asher hesitating even as his son cried out for him a third time, his small voice swelling to grand proportions and filling up every tiny space of the night air.

  “You’ll come back tomorrow?” Asher asked.

  She nodded. “I’ll come back tomorrow.” Wild horses couldn’t keep me away. “Now go to him,” she urged again, “before Jace thinks the whole house was abducted by aliens.”

  With a nod, Asher began to go, then stopped and spun around to look at her one final time. Impulsively, he hurried back and brushed his lips against hers before retreating down the hall.

  Marnie stood where she was for a long moment, watching him disappear into Jace’s room. She passed her fingertips lightly along her lips.

  She could still feel the imprint of his last kiss.

  Her rapid pulse rate started up all over again.

  She knew she should be going now, before Jace could accidentally see her out here like this. But just for a second, love—and curiosity—got the better of her.

  Taking a few steps toward Jace’s room, she stopped just short of the door and listened as Asher did his best to quiet Jace’s sobs.

  * * *

  As he entered his son’s bedroom, Asher flipped on the light-switch dimmer only halfway. Just enough to chase away whatever specters Jace might have imagined were there in his room.

  He knew how that could be. He could remember growing up with the same sort of fears.

  Asher had gotten a night-light for the boy, and it was always on from the moment he went to bed, but this was the kind of nightmare that required something stronger than the tiny illumination that came from the single five-watt bulb.

  The light had to chase away something more than just dim shadows.

  “Hey, buddy, what’s going on?” he asked as if he were stopping by the room just to shoot the breeze with his son. Asher sat down near the head of Jace’s bed.

  Jace instantly scrambled up so that he could get close to him and huddled in his arms. Only after he’d settled in and felt as if he was protected did the boy finally blurt out what was bothering him.

  “A bad man came,” Jace cried.

  Holding the boy to him, Asher stroked the silky blond hair, hoping the contact would soothe Jace enough to calm him down.

  “It was just a nightmare, son. There’s no bad man here,” he assured him in a low, tranquil voice. “There’s just you and me here, nobody else.” Even as he said it, he ached a little, thinking of Marnie.

  Jace raised his tear-streaked face, looking up at his father. “No, he took her, Daddy,” he insisted again, trying to make him understand. “The bad man took Mommy away with him.”

  Out of the mouths of babes, Asher couldn’t help thinking, remembering that one of his brothers had told him Lynn was engaged again. This after she’d told him that she just wasn’t ready for marriage and really wasn’t ready for motherhood.

  Apparently what she’d meant at the time was that she wasn’t ready to be married to him, and really wasn’t ready to parent his child, which was the way he knew she thought of Jace. Not as theirs but as his.

  The discovery of her engagement still smarted and had delivered a pretty crushing bl
ow to his ego. But he was working his way through that and he was getting better all the time.

  But having Jace talk about Lynn, even though a nightmare was responsible for bringing her up, reminded him once again that as a judge of character, he made a great rancher.

  And that in turn made him wonder—what if he was wrong about Marnie, as well?

  Struggling, Asher banked down the fresh wave of hurt that threatened to seize him. He wasn’t completely successful, but he continued working at it.

  Out loud, he told his son, “A bad man didn’t take Mommy away, Jace. She just didn’t want to be with me anymore. Not you,” he said quickly, knowing how Jace’s mind worked. He was determined to spare the boy’s feelings as much as possible. “If she could have taken you with her, she would have, but I wouldn’t let her.”

  It was a lie—she hadn’t wanted to take Jace with her—and it made him uncomfortable to lie to his son, but at the same time, he felt that in this case, it was necessary.

  “I wanted you so much, I was afraid that my heart would break if she took you away with her.”

  Jace was hanging on every word. For now, the nightmare he’d just had was temporarily forgotten. “I won’t let your heart break, Daddy,” he promised.

  “Good boy,” Asher said, patting the boy’s shoulder. Thinking the crisis over, he got up and started to cross to the doorway. “Well, good night, son.”

  “Daddy?” Jace called out uncertainly.

  So near and yet so far, Asher couldn’t help thinking, turning around again.

  He supposed that it was ultimately a good thing that Marnie had left. He wouldn’t have wanted her waiting indefinitely for his return and apparently, he wasn’t going anywhere just yet.

  “Yes?”

  He saw Jace’s eyes sweep fearfully around his room, looking especially hard into corners. “The bad man might come back.”

  “The bad man won’t come back,” Asher tried to assure him.

  He wasn’t convincing enough.

  “But he might,” Jace insisted. The next moment, he gave his father the solution. “Can I stay with you tonight?”

  Lynn would have berated him for being too permissive. But then, Lynn wasn’t exactly up for a parent-of-the-year award, now, was she? he asked himself. So rather than stand there and tell his four-year-old son that he needed to “man up,” the way he knew that Lynn—and his own father, for that matter, another person not up for that award this year, or any other year, either—would say, he held his hand out toward the boy in a show of support.

  “C’mon, let’s get back to my room before dawn finds us.”

  Jace scrambled out of bed and came to his side faster than Asher would have thought possible. The boy snuggled up against him much in the same way a pet puppy might to show affection.

  Raising this little boy was a huge responsibility. He only hoped he was up to it and did right by him.

  Asher felt a definite pang as he entered his room with his son.

  It was empty.

  He supposed a part of him—a very small part of him, he silently insisted—had hoped to find Marnie there even though he knew she was right about leaving.

  The fact that he automatically looked for her worried him.

  Jace quickly scooted into the king-size bed ahead of him, automatically taking the right side because he knew his father preferred the left.

  As Asher began to get in on his side, Jace suddenly exclaimed, “Marnie!”

  Asher had to stop himself from looking around—she wouldn’t still be here, would she?

  Holding his breath a moment in an effort to regulate his heartbeat so that it was back to normal, Asher told him, “Marnie went home a long time ago, Jace.”

  It was all relative, he thought, absolving himself of the white lie. Lengths of time increased when you were younger.

  He saw Jace’s small brows knit themselves together closely, giving him the appearance of someone contemplating an extremely large puzzle.

  “The bed smells like Marnie,” he told his father. As if to prove his point—and verify his findings—Jace stuck his face down into the sheet and blanket on his side and took in a deep, exaggerated breath.

  Clearly finding evidence to support his declaration, he looked up again, his blue eyes darting toward his father.

  “How come the sheet and blanket smell like Marnie?” he wanted to know.

  Asher’s mind raced around madly, searching for something plausible to offer in the way of an explanation. He told the boy the only thing that had come to mind.

  “I guess she must have been up here and changed the bedding. She said that everyone should sleep on fresh linens,” he added, recalling something that Marnie actually had said. “Sheets,” he explained when Jace’s face began to pucker in consternation all over again.

  “Oh,” Jace said, nodding and seemingly accepting the explanation his father had tendered.

  Asher began to settle back against his pillows—Marnie had obviously neatened all this just before she left. He congratulated himself on being so “quick on his feet” and coming up with what Jace deemed to be an acceptable answer.

  The next moment, the boy turned toward him in the bed. Asher could see by the look on Jace’s face that he wasn’t out of the woods yet.

  Sure enough, a couple of seconds later, Jace asked, “How come she didn’t change my sheets?”

  “Good question,” Asher agreed. “I guess I’m going to have to ask her why she forgot to change yours.” He was stalling for time, but another excuse didn’t present itself.

  Jace had a possible solution for him. “Maybe she ran out of time,” he said to his father.

  Asher was more than happy to grasp on to anything as long as it made the boy stop asking questions. “Maybe,” he answered, nodding again in agreement. “Now, why don’t you—”

  “Daddy?” Jace interjected before he could tell him to go to sleep.

  Now what? Asher wondered impatiently, then forced himself to push his impatience aside. The kid, he decided, was going to have a great legal mind someday. He was willing to bet money on that.

  “Yes, Jace?”

  “Don’t ask Marnie why she didn’t change my sheets,” he requested.

  While he would have wanted to believe that this was finally the end of this drawn-out discussion, Asher’s curiosity had been piqued and he couldn’t help asking, “Why not?”

  Jace had a very good reason for his request. He’d thought it all out, leaving nothing to chance. Convinced that he had to help his father before Marnie walked out on them, too.

  “Because she might think you were telling her that she forgot to do something and I don’t want her to get mad and go away,” the boy told him honestly. “I don’t care about the sheets,” he said with feeling. “I just want Marnie coming back to us.”

  If she came back each day because of Jace, Asher thought, then they could keep on seeing each other, leaving everything just the way it was.

  He liked that.

  “Sounds good to me,” Asher agreed.

  “I like Marnie,” the boy added needlessly. His eyes beginning to close, he asked, “How about you, Daddy? Do you like her?”

  He knew Jace would keep after him until he got the answer he wanted to hear. Agreeing at the outset just saved him some time, Asher reasoned.

  “Yes, I like her,” he answered.

  But apparently Jace wasn’t through. “A lot?” he wanted to know.

  Asher knew he was in too deep to reverse course now, so he said, “Yes, a lot.”

  “Good,” Jace responded, a long, relieved breath punctuating the single word.

  It was the last thing Jace said before finally falling asleep.

  The same answer that had allowed Jace to fall asleep was the one that was
destined to keep Asher awake for several more hours to come before he could finally reach the same state as his son.

  Chapter Fourteen

  He was moving too fast.

  Asher knew he had to put on the brakes. He just had to assure himself that what he felt for Marnie was not a lasting emotion.

  He was rushing through the stages of a relationship in order to arrive at what might have been an inevitable reaction, a reaction that hadn’t been given enough time to develop at an acceptable pace.

  People on the rebound did that.

  There was no other conclusion for Asher to reach, early the next day, but that he had to be on the rebound from his failed marriage. And he didn’t have to be told what happened to relationships that were formed because one of the participants was on the rebound.

  He knew.

  They were doomed to failure.

  He’d had enough of failure.

  What he was doing was trying to fill the void, the emptiness he felt inside him. He’d freely admitted to himself that he wanted to love again, to be in love again, and maybe that need was what was coloring the way he looked at Marnie.

  In his desire to blot out what had transpired in his life not all that long ago, was he on the verge of making another huge mistake? A man in his state certainly wasn’t clearheaded enough to make lasting decisions, that much he was aware of.

  The truth of it was that the very sight of Marnie stirred him to such a point that making rational decisions seemed to be completely out of his realm.

  What if he actually married Marnie and then it turned out that they were all wrong for each other? He couldn’t put Jace through another divorce. Couldn’t put himself through another divorce.

  Better to back off and just take this at a slow, responsible pace.

  Better yet, he thought in the next moment, he should call for a time-out. That way, he could see if, separated from Marnie, he wound up missing her more with each passing day.

  Or if, as the days went on, his feelings for her progressively lessened. It would be a way of discovering if, in his case, it was a matter of absence making the heart grow fonder.