“Where’s Zeke?” Jonathon asked, saying his name correctly.
“Probably working on that puzzle in the other room,” Ruth replied. “Go look for him.”
Jonathon sprinted from the kitchen.
“Can I help with anything?” Abby asked.
“How are you at peeling potatoes?”
“My specialty,” she replied, and accepted a knife.
“I’ll give the men a hand with chores,” Brock said, and left.
Abby needn’t have worried about Ruth’s reaction to her arrival; the woman was friendly and accepting as always, chatting with her about this thing and that as they finished putting a meal together.
The enormous kitchen and the long table were adequate to seat all of them when Brock, Caleb and John arrived. The boys joined them, and Ruth plopped Barton in his wooden chair.
Caleb and Brock wore their guns to the dinner table, John displayed an enormous knife in a leather sheath on his thigh, and Ruth didn’t blink an eye. Her obvious acceptance of their weapons eased Abby’s discomfort. She had begun to realize that her fear of guns had come from her brother’s careless use of them. He had constantly fired off shots at anything that moved or angered him.
The casual chitchat and friendly banter around the table were a welcome change to Abby, and she knew why Jonathon enjoyed his visits to the ranch so well. While she and her son were happy together, this family atmosphere warmed a person’s heart clear through.
“Did I smell an apple pie?” Caleb asked, touching his wife’s waist as she removed his empty plate.
“You did,” she replied, flashing him a smile.
Abby observed their underlying exchange, and the obvious love in their eyes was almost painful to watch. She had a most embarrassing thought cross her mind, wondering about their intimacy, and whether or not Caleb made Ruth lose her head when he looked at her like that, touched her, made love to her.
She observed Brock, who glanced away from his brother and sister-in-law at the same time, and their gazes collided. Caleb was stable and responsible, but somehow Abby didn’t think those had been the deciding factors in Ruth’s decision to marry him. Heat rose in Abby’s cheeks, as if Brock knew what she was thinking. She tore her gaze from his and stood to help Ruth.
After dinner, Ruth shooed her into the other room with the men and boys, where Caleb and John promptly set up a checkerboard, and Caleb puffed on a fragrant pipe.
Jonathon and Zeke created a ranch from a set of blocks and miniature horses, and Abby entertained Bart, so he didn’t destroy their play world. Brock played with the boys, his long form stretched out in front of the hearth.
When Ruth came to take Bart to bed, Abby gave him up reluctantly, then watched the boys. Brock retired from the make-believe ranch to sit with Abby, and the boys moved back to their puzzle.
Some time later, Caleb knocked the tobacco from his pipe into the fire. “Think I’ll join my wife,” he said, and wished them a good night.
John helped the boys place a few puzzle pieces, and then excused himself to head upstairs.
Jonathon’s yawns had grown in frequency, and finally, he came to lay his head on Abby’s lap. She stroked his silky hair and watched his eyelids grow heavy. Abby looked up to find Brock’s deep blue gaze tender.
“Can Jonathon come sleep in my room?” Zeke asked.
Brock questioned Abby with a raised brow.
She nodded. It was too late and too cold to carry him home now.
“Come with us,” Brock told her, so she followed, surprised to learn that Brock adeptly observed their preparations for bed and made sure they cleaned their teeth.
Ruth came to check on the ritual, giving both boys a hug and leaving Brock to tuck them into matching narrow beds.
“Read us a story, Uncle Brock,” Zeke begged.
Brock took a book from a shelf and flipped through until he found something he liked. The story, of a boy on an adventure into a forest after a lost colt, took on life when read with his melodious deep voice. This was a side of the man Abby had never seen, and while she sat across the room and listened, her gaze moved from one boy’s sleepy face to the next, to Brock’s marvelous mouth as he formed the words, then to the guns he wore.
Only at Abby’s home did he remove them—an act of respect for her wishes. Here, they were a part of him, like his voice or his smile. No one seemed to mind, and she realized that the presence of his revolvers no longer bothered her as it once had.
The children slept long before the story ended, and Abby experienced a pang of disappointment when Brock closed the book. He extinguished the lamp and led Abby from the room and down the stairs.
He showed her to the sofa and seated himself a respectable two feet away. “Thanks for letting him stay.”
“It was best for him. He was too tired to ride home.”
“I would have hitched a team and a wagon.”
That sounded like a lot of work, and she still had to go home herself.
“I want you to stay tonight, too,” he told her, his voice gruff, but somehow vulnerable.
Abby’s heart dipped at the request that she couldn’t admit she’d wanted to hear.
Chapter Fourteen
“I have something I want to show you tomorrow,” he said.
“There’s church tomorrow.” A shallow objection. Her heart fluttered erratically.
“We can get up early. Or you can miss one time. It’s important.”
She was tired, and a cold ride home in the dark did not appeal. “Where would I sleep?”
“You can have my room. I can go to the bunk house.”
“I wouldn’t want to put you out.”
“I’ve slept a lot worse places than a warm bunkhouse, believe me. It’s settled. You’re staying.”
She shrugged. “Ruth and Caleb won’t mind?”
He grinned. “She already put out a few things for you and instructed me to bring you water.” He got up to tend the flame, and Abby watched the play of golden light on his strong profile and shiny hair. He hunkered before the fire, one knee drawn up. “Tell me things, Abby,” he said. “I need to hear.”
“What kind of things?”
“Things like what you told Ruth tonight about Jonathon as a baby. I want to know about the day he was born, and when he first walked, and his first day of school….” His voice sounded oddly thick and choked, and the sound gave Abby a ponderous ache in her breast.
The need to tell him rose up in her like a restlessness that had never been satisfied. Through the years, Brock had been there, in the back of her mind. Like the missing piece to an unfinished puzzle that, if she at last told him about the events of her life, would be complete.
Not better. Just complete. The facts, nothing more. He didn’t need to know how he’d hurt her and how she had silently cried for him. “It was a day in late spring,” she began. “We’d had flooding that year, and the rivers were brown and muddy and overflowing their banks. A train was washed off the tracks near Butte and we lost a shipment. Most of the men from town went to help with the cleanup. Jed, too, to save what he could of our supplies.
“I was hurting all day that day, thinking like many women do that it was another backache. But this one didn’t let up, and got worse and worse. I was alone at the store, so I closed and went upstairs, stopping for Daisy’s opinion. She came and sat with me while I slept, but I woke with stronger pains, so she sent for Haley.
“By then I knew it was time, and I prepared myself, though it’s nothing you can prepare for.” She laughed a little at her foolish thoughts and memories. “It seemed an eternity before Haley got there.”
“What about Jed?” Brock asked, moving to sit at her feet. “Was he still gone?”
“He came home sometime that night. I didn’t know when, really. The night became a blur. I thought once Haley got there everything would suddenly be better.” She managed a wry smile. Just like Mary Rowland had imagined, she thought to herself. “Haley’s presence was comforti
ng, but Jed insisted on Dr. Leland being there, too. Somehow I got through it, and had a beautiful baby boy to hold and take away the pain.”
“What did he look like?”
“He was pink all over…just amazing, really. He had a lusty cry…and a fringe of dark hair.”
“Dark, Abby?”
She nodded. “It grew out lighter as he got older.”
Brock’s chest ached so badly, he could have cried with the cold, empty pressure. Imagining the tiny infant taking his first breaths, crying that beautiful first cry, he found tears welling in his throat for all he’d missed. How he would have loved to have held him, to have smelled his newborn skin and to have touched his feathery hair.
“Jed had a cradle built for him,” she went on. “He was afraid to hold him at first, because he’d never been around an infant, but eventually he held him and played with him. He ordered toys and enjoyed giving gifts to him.”
Brock let himself picture the gruff-looking man he remembered as being a parent to a new baby. He must have been a kind and accepting man. What a surprise it must have been when Jonathon’s hair turned from dark to light. What had Jed thought? What had Abby thought? “What did you think?” he asked. “Did you think he looked like me? Even back then?”
“Babies look pretty much the same when they’re tiny,” she said. “At least that’s what I told myself. And as he got older, well, I saw what I wanted to see.”
“Did Jed know he was mine?”
“We never discussed it,” she replied simply. “I don’t know what he thought. He accepted him, loved him, and that was all that mattered.”
The layers of resentment that Brock had harbored since he’d learned of Jed peeled away to reveal a grudging appreciation. He’d taken Abby for his wife and embraced as his own a child who belonged to another man. Brock had to wonder if he would feel as favorable toward Jed today if he were still alive. Since the man was no longer a hindrance between him and Abby, Brock could afford to be gracious now. Being honest with himself wasn’t pretty.
Abby talked about Jonathon getting teeth, learning to walk, taking spills and bumps, weathering childhood diseases and saying his first words.
Brock listened to her as though she held the mysteries of the universe, hanging on her every word, asking for details and picturing the scenes and days in his mind’s eye. He sat deep in thought, wondering what he’d been doing those weeks and months and years, and how his life would have been different if only…if only it had. Regret was a waste of time. Each day was a chance to start over. And he had. In some ways.
He’d left behind his old life and come here to begin again, but once he’d learned about Jonathon…and Abby… he’d taken up his old tactics to get what he wanted. He had used Abby’s fear of exposure to give him an edge. Now he recognized how wrong that was. He didn’t want either one of them because they had no other choice.
He realized she’d stopped talking some time ago, and had been sitting in silence, studying him. He had planned to make it up to her for the way she’d been forced to marry a man she didn’t love, forced to live an unfamiliar life, but how could he do that? He had to put his past behind him if he was ever to know a measure of peace, but Abby was a part of his past that he didn’t want to bury.
What kind of man did he want to be? The kind of man Abby could love and respect. The kind of man who could respect himself. The kind of man a boy would be proud to call father.
He stood and reached a hand down to her. “Thank you, Abby.”
Hesitantly, she took his hand and stood, somehow instinctively understanding his need to hear all about the child he’d fathered and had never known about. It was plain to see his feelings for Jonathon were genuine. But would they keep him from leaving again when things got rough?
He banked the fire and extinguished all but one lamp, which he handed to her, instructing her to head upstairs while he drew her water. Carrying a pitcher, he found her waiting in the hallway, the lamplight flickering across the roses on the wallpaper.
“This one.” He ushered her into a room at the far end of the hall. Tentatively, she perused the heavy wood furnishings and the wide bed covered with a multicolored quilt. A crackling fire burned in the brick fireplace. Brock poured water into the bowl on the washstand and set the pitcher aside.
Ruth had laid out a plain cotton nightgown, a wrapper and wool socks, as well as towels and a bar of fragrant soap.
“Anything else you need?” he asked.
Abby shook her head. She was too weary to desire anything but the comfort of the bed.
Stepping close, Brock touched her cheek with a gentle caress. “I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life,” he said hoarsely. “You’re not one of them. Neither is Jonathon.”
Unbidden tears sprang to her eyes and burned her nose at his words. She’d never believed her son was a mistake, either, and to hear Brock say so with such assurance sealed her own feelings.
“The mistake I made was not staying and facing your anger, not dealing with the situation and the consequences. A man prides himself on not being afraid,” he said. “But I was a coward when it came to seeing how you’d been hurt, and avoiding how you would react. I ran.”
He’d never even come close to admitting his fault, and his confession took her by surprise. In all the years she’d lived with the secret of what they’d meant to each other and how he’d left and broken her heart, she had never cried. Not since those first emotional days when she’d learned of the baby she carried, and her father had discovered the truth, had she allowed herself to break apart under the hurt and betrayal.
She’d girded up her defenses of anger and mistrust, gritted her teeth and made a life for her son.
“I accept the blame,” Brock told her gently now, “for your fear, and the years of living with a man you didn’t want to marry. I understand your anger and all the things you hold against me.”
Abby squeezed her eyes shut and spun away from him, her chest wrenching with the unexpressed grief. She clamped a hand over her mouth and held her other arm to her aching middle.
This was what had hurt—not the tragedy of Guy’s death—and she experienced a flood of guilt over the admission. Brock’s leaving—even though she’d played a part in forcing him away—had broken her heart, not her brother’s death. Guy had been a hothead, looking for an opportunity to use his guns. Brock had been caught in the middle of a bad situation, with no way out. And she had helped place him there.
Relentlessly, Brock smoothed his palms over her shoulders and pressed his hard length comfortingly along her back. With his face buried in her hair, he whispered, “Go ahead. Cry, Abby.”
Guiding her to the bed, he turned her and pulled her to him as the tide within her broke and tears poured out in a torrent of release. Brock pulled the quilt around her, muffled her sobs against his chest and stroked her hair, wiped her tears, kissed her temple.
A great emotional dam exploded, and Abby was in no condition to turn back the flood. She cried until her chest hurt, until her throat was sore, until no more tears came, until her eyes felt dry and hot and she grew weak with exhaustion. Years of penned-up resentment and suffering burst from her like nails from a dropped keg. Abby wept until she was weak from the emotional drain. Brock leaving her was worse than her own brother’s death. Guy was the excuse she could admit to the world, but the thing that had really ripped her apart was her own responsibility.
Quite naturally, when Brock released her to remove her shoes and stockings, Abby complied. Without question or forethought or embarrassment, she allowed him to unbutton her dress and untie her petticoats, and she watched him hang them neatly on hooks beside his jackets and hats.
He picked up the cotton nightgown and held it out with a question in his eyes. She removed her chemise, seeing the way her action changed his expression, and raised her arms for him to drape the gown over her head. She adjusted the garment, pulling it down, and stood to remove her drawers and fold them with her chemise.
Leaning over her, he gently caressed her skin with the back of his knuckles.
“Don’t go,” she said simply.
He opened and closed his mouth once before finding his voice. “You know what would happen. I can’t stay and not touch you the way I want to touch you.”
“Stay and touch me,” she said, daring him, arousing him with the words.
“But you hate me,” he said, and she thought she heard a thread of vulnerability in that statement.
She had certainly told him enough times that she hated him. She’d been quite sure that she had, in fact. But she didn’t have enough energy left to hate. “I can’t hate you tonight,” she told him. “Not now.”
“What about tomorrow?” he asked, wisely thinking ahead to the consequences that would follow a moment’s weakness. “I won’t give you more reasons to be mad at me.”
She didn’t hate him anymore. She never had. She had hated her own weakness—her weakness for him. “I’m done being angry,” she told him sincerely. “I need you to hold me. Kiss me.”
Brock pulled his hand away to cross the room, and for a moment she feared he intended to leave. But he turned the key in the lock, returned and sat on the bed to remove his boots.
He stood and unbuckled the holster, rolled it and tucked it under the edge of the bed. After removing his shirt, he washed his face and hands in the basin of water, brought a damp cloth forward and bathed Abby’s face, kissing her eyelids, which she knew must be swollen and red.
He’d grown from a handsome youth to a beautiful man, and she was still wicked enough to appreciate the arousing sight of his hard-carved body in the lantern light. From the very first, desiring him had been her weakness, and that hadn’t changed.
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