Mavis threw up a palm. “Things is different now. There’s a little girl in the house who’ll be askin’ questions, and Benjy is here on Saturday mornin’. If you must bring home women, then do it on Saturday night and kick them out before breakfast on Sunday morning.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Justin said, and then picked up a plate.
“Are y’all talkin’ big people stuff?” Zaylie frowned.
“Yep, we are,” Justin answered. “So why did y’all sleep in the barn last night? Were you campin’ out?”
“Nope,” Zaylie answered. “We was savin’ Nomie.”
Levi told the story again of the poor little calf that had gotten separated from her mother. Claire watched his face as he talked. It lit up when he talked about how Zaylie was a calf whisperer. He really would make a good father to the dozen kids that he talked about.
“This is good breakfast,” Zaylie declared. “Allison can come back and cook for us again when we sleep with Levi in the barn.”
Justin’s laughter echoed off the walls. “You goin’ to yell at Levi, Mavis?” He wiped at his eyes with a napkin.
Claire bit the inside of her lip to keep from giggling. It was a double standard all right. She’d spent the night with Levi out in the barn, and no one was throwing a fit about that. But Justin bringing a woman home after the bar closed down was evidently a major sin.
“They were sleeping,” Mavis said.
“Not all the time,” Zaylie piped up. “We was feedin’ Nomie when she was hungry.”
“Okay, enough about last night,” Claire said. “Let’s talk about Retta and Cade coming home on Monday.”
Claire let the conversation float around her as she drifted off to her own thoughts. If she inhaled deeply she could still get a whiff of the hay in the stall, and by shutting her eyes she could pretend that she was back there, curled up against Levi’s broad back. To anyone else, it might seem like a strange night, but to her it had been a night in paradise.
Chapter Seventeen
Zaylie stomped her foot and crossed her arms over her chest. “Benjy gets to go to the barn, and he’s not a big person.”
“Benjy is going to work, not to play.” Claire picked two pieces of straw from Zaylie’s tangled hair. “Besides, I’m sure your kittens are wondering where you are. They haven’t seen you since before supper yesterday.”
The arms slowly uncrossed and she smiled. “I need to tell them all about Nomie. We need to go to the bunkhouse so I can see them.”
“Maybe for an hour but then we should come back and help Miz Mavis and then get dinner ready,” Claire said.
“Take all the time you need,” Mavis said. “I’ll put on a pot of beef stew for them. If you’re back thirty minutes before time to eat to make a pan of cornbread, we’ll be good. I bet both of you would like a nice long shower, or a bath after sleeping with the cows last night.”
Claire draped an arm around Mavis’s shoulders and gave her a sideways hug. “Thank you so much.”
“I understand that deal you’re workin’ on is going to be finalized a week from Monday. You might as well stick around here until after that. You’re welcome, and I can use the help for the ranch party. Besides, it’d be easier to be right here to run in and take a look at things as you change your mind about how you’re goin’ to do things,” Mavis said.
Claire finished getting Zaylie’s jacket on her and reached for hers. “Mavis, are you playin’ matchmaker between me and Levi?”
Mavis tucked her chin down to her chest. “Looks like somebody needs to do something. I can see you’re attracted to each other, and I like you, Claire. Don’t sit on your hands and let him get away. He’s a good man, but he’s never been in a real serious relationship, so he might not know how to go about this courtin’ business.”
“What makes you even think we are anything other than friends?” Claire put on her jacket and laid a hand on Zaylie’s shoulder to point her toward the front door.
“He’s happy, and I’ve meddled enough. But I’d like for you to stay now that”—she nodded toward Zaylie and winked—“the deal is solid.”
“Are y’all talkin’ about my Christmas again?” Zaylie asked.
“Yes,” they said in unison.
“You will be close by after the holidays anyway. Might as well just stick around and help me through then,” Mavis said.
Zaylie ran on ahead of her as usual, giving Claire time to analyze what Mavis had told her. There was definitely chemistry between her and Levi—like nothing that she’d ever experienced before.
Zaylie hurried inside the bunkhouse, threw her jacket toward the sofa, and dropped down on her knees in front of the basket of kittens. “Did you miss me? I was helpin’ Nomie.” She went into a long narration about the new calf.
“I’m going to take a bath, sweetie.” Claire’s tone sounded strange in her own ears. “You stay right here until I get done, and then you can have one.”
“’Kay.” Zaylie nodded as she took all the kittens from the basket. “Where is Gussie?”
As if she knew her name, the cat pranced out of Claire’s bedroom and went straight to the door and meowed. Claire opened it, and she darted outside.
“I’ll take care of the babies,” Zaylie said. “Levi says I’m good at ranchin’.”
“You are good at everything you do,” Claire agreed as she kicked off her shoes and undressed on the way to the bathroom.
When the tub was half full she added bath salts and then sank down into the warm water with a long sigh. She slid down on the sloped back and went over the last couple of days in her mind. Was Levi really the one?
She was jerked back to reality when her phone rang. “Zaylie, can you get that?”
“It’s Daddy!” Zaylie squealed.
Claire quickly washed her hair, rinsed it, and pulled the plug on the tub. She wrapped herself in a big fluffy white robe and twisted a towel around her head. When she made it to the living room, Zaylie was holding up each kitten to show her dad. “I want all three of them for my Christmas present, Daddy. That’s what I asked Levi to give me.”
“Oh really?” Grant chuckled. “It’s official, baby girl. I get to come home for Christmas and your birthday. You’ve told me what you want for Christmas, but I haven’t heard a word about your birthday present.”
“I want a mommy of my very own like Teresa has,” Zaylie answered without a moment’s hesitation.
“I don’t think they sell mommies at the base store,” he teased.
“Well, then go to the mommy store and get me one,” Zaylie told him.
“I’ll see what I can do, but what’s your next idea just in case?”
“I’ll take a ranch. Levi says I’ll make a good rancher, but I need a ranch,” she said.
“That might be harder to get than a mommy,” Grant said. “Hey, do I see Claire back there with a towel on her head?”
“Yep, you do. Talk to her now, Daddy. Grumpy is cryin’, and I need to tell him a story.” Zaylie handed the phone off to Claire.
“Take it off video and speaker,” he said.
“You don’t like to see me wearing my towel turban?” she joked.
“That’s part of it,” he answered.
She hit a button and put the phone to her ear. “Okay, shoot. What’s goin’ on?”
“Angela and I are both so eager to start a life together, and with Zaylie asking for a mommy for her birthday, it seems like an omen.” Grant’s voice was more upbeat than it had been in years. “Things might be moving faster than we thought with this and with me coming home, but I don’t want to jinx it too much. How’s your new project going?”
“I’m signing the deal a week from Monday,” she said. “And Mavis has asked me to stay another week.”
“Pretty soon you’re going to week-at-a-time it until you just move in on that ranch for good.” Grant laughed. “Got to go, but know I love and support you.”
“Good-bye, and thanks,” she said.
There was
no doubt in Claire’s mind that Angela would make a wonderful mother to Zaylie, but Claire felt that she was somehow still getting the short end of the stick.
Chapter Eighteen
You sick, son?” Skip asked at Sunday dinner.
“No, just not hungry. I hate to eat and run, but I need to check on the calf.”
Skip raised his eyebrows. “Really? That calf seemed fine to me.”
Levi sighed. “I reckon I just need some thinkin’ time.” He pushed back his chair.
“About a new calf or about a girl?” Skip asked.
“There is a fifty percent chance that a calf will be born a girl and the same for it to be a boy, just like human babies,” Benjy said.
“You got that right, Benjy,” Levi said. “And maybe both, Skip.” He bent and gave Mavis a quick hug. “Thanks for a great dinner.”
Levi waved one more time over his shoulder as he left and almost made it to his truck when Skip caught up with him. The north wind blew so hard they had to hold their cowboy hats down, or they would have ended up in the Gulf of Mexico.
“Get inside the truck,” Skip yelled over the noise.
Skip asked, “Okay, kid, ’fess up. What’s eatin’ on you? You’ve never turned down dessert, especially when it was cobbler. So spit it out.”
“Claire.” He answered with one word.
“Go on.” Skip removed his hat and held it on his knees.
“Kind of hard to explain. I asked her to the ranch party and she said yes, and we seemed to be gettin’ along real well. But today she didn’t want me to go to Randlett with her after church. She said she had to get some stuff for her quilts and asked if she could drive the work truck. I told her I’d go help, but she said she needed to get away and think about things,” Levi told him.
Skip chuckled. “You’re fallin’ for that woman, son, and you want to spend time with her, but you can’t smother her. From what your mother says, she’s an independent woman, and she’s got to have her own space.”
“Kind of like that butterfly sayin’ about not cagin’ it up?” Levi asked. “I feel kind of stupid. I’m looking at thirty and acting like a lovesick teenager.”
“Most of us have walked in your boots, son, and age don’t have jack squat to do with it.” Skip laid a hand on Levi’s shoulder and squeezed.
“How do you know when it’s the right one?” Levi asked.
“I don’t know about all men, but I can tell you that when I met Mavis, my heart started skippin’ around in my chest, and when I had to be away from her it was heavy like a stone. You don’t always get to throw down a quilt in a clover field and hold hands and look into each other’s eyes and fall in love. Where’s the fun in that? You got to run the obstacle course like all of us did. That what comes easy ain’t worth havin’, and it won’t last. You fight for something, and then you’ll cherish it and hang on to it.” He settled his hat back on his head and got out of the truck. “Good luck.”
“Thanks, Skip.” Levi started up the engine and headed toward the ranch.
When he arrived at the corral, Nomie was romping around with Little Bit. It was probably time to turn her and her mother back out into the pasture, but he hated to take the calf away from the donkey. He leaned on the railing and let his mind go back to what Levi had said about talking to Claire.
He usually turned to walking or working when he had something to mull over in his mind. That day he started walking with Beau at his heels. The wind had died down, but there was enough of a breeze to blow dead leaves across his feet. He kicked at them with the toe of his boot and drew his work coat tighter around his broad chest.
“Let’s go home, old boy. We got us some thinkin’ to do of our own. And the first thing we’d better be learning is how not to smother someone with too much attention. I should have known that from all the strays I’ve brought in. You’ve got to let them come to you—not rush them.”
Claire made a cup of tea and curled up on the end of the sofa after she’d loaded the boxes of quilts that had sold on Etsy this week into the bed of the truck. She planned to ship them out tomorrow. Thank goodness, she still had plenty of stock, but she knew she needed to create many more with the new venture she was about to begin. She walked through her grandmother’s house, making decisions about what she should take with her and what she should leave behind for Angela and Grant.
Her mind was racing with what-ifs. What if she went through with the deal, got everything in her shop up and running, and then things did not work out with Levi? What if Mavis thought Claire had done Levi wrong and ended their friendship? What if it ruined her business?
She shook her head to shake all the negative thoughts away. Good glory, girl! It’s not like he proposed to you. He asked you for a date, and you were already looking at that house before you had a wreck.
“Anybody home?” Franny called out as she pushed her way into the living room. “I brought brownies and thumb print cookies. You got the coffeepot on? Don’t answer that. I can smell it and I’ll pour my own.” She set the plate on the coffee table, went to the kitchen, and returned with a steaming mug in her hand. “Where is Zaylie?”
“In her room talking to Teresa on the phone.” Claire reached for a brownie. “She’ll be out soon. She can smell your brownies a mile away. Have a seat.”
“Did you buy that old truck out there in the driveway?” Franny chose a rocking chair close to the end of the sofa where Claire was sitting.
“No, it’s on loan from the ranch until I can decide what I want to buy, or if I want to drive Nanny’s car,” she answered.
“Honey, that old car eats gasoline worse than a young calf goin’ after fresh green grass. It’ll be fun to have, and to drive around town once in a while, but to drive it all the time would break you. Get something a little more economical,” Franny said. “But that’s not what’s got your forehead in a frown today, is it?”
Claire slowly shook her head. “Not really. Franny, how long were you married?”
“Sixty years when my Joe died. Your Nanny and Poppa weren’t married quite that long, but we had good marriages,” she answered.
“How’d you know that Joe was the one you wanted to share your life with?”
Franny leaned back in the rocking chair, and the expression on her face said that she’d left the present time and traveled back more than sixty years.
“It was a hot July day, the last Sunday in the month. He’d come to a church picnic with his cousin, and I took one look at that long, tall cowboy and decided I would marry him if I had to chase him all the way to the moon. Didn’t have to do that because he said he felt the same way when he saw me across the lawn. I was seventeen that summer, and he was twenty. Mama hated him. Daddy threatened to shoot him.” Franny smiled.
“Why?”
“Oh honey, that boy had a reputation with the women, and he didn’t have jack squat. He’d worked on a ranch from the time he was fifteen, didn’t finish school, and my folks said there wasn’t no way I was going to even sit on the porch after church on Sunday and talk to him,” Franny answered.
“But you did?”
“Oh no, we did not! We met in town behind the school on Sunday afternoons. Mama planned on me goin’ to college and bein’ a schoolteacher, but that was her dream, not mine…” She sipped her coffee before going on.
“The ranch owner offered him a job as foreman about that time and said if he’d sign on for five years he’d give him five acres and a little house. And when I say little, I mean it was one room,” Franny said.
Claire immediately thought of the cabin. Could she live with Levi in that small space? Yes, her heart said before she could blink.
“So he proposed and we eloped. Daddy was so mad that he wouldn’t even let me come home for a month, but hell, honey, we was in love so that month went fast,” Franny said. “Mama finally drove out to see me and brought me a carload of my clothes and stuff, and we both cried because I wasn’t goin’ to be a teacher. Before she and Daddy both p
assed on they told me that they’d been wrong about Joe. Only regret I ever had after we married was not adoptin’ a kid or two after we found out we couldn’t have any of our own.”
“How long did you date?” Claire asked.
“Two weeks.” Franny giggled.
Claire gasped. It had been a little more than two weeks since she’d met Levi, and she was twenty-eight, not seventeen, but she couldn’t fathom eloping with him tomorrow.
Not even if you could spend every night with him in that little cabin? the annoying voice inside her head asked. Think of sharing one of those bunk beds with him.
Or maybe replacing those with a nice big king-size bed. She felt the blush rising to her cheeks at the thought.
“And I ain’t never looked back and wished I’d done something different with my life. Me and Joe added to that little parcel of land every year, and when he died we had three hundred acres. We’d built us another house, but on our anniversaries we still went back to our first house for a night or two.” She finished off her coffee and set the mug on the coffee table. “Now let’s talk about you.”
She told Franny about all the doubts. “He’s a good man, and he loves animals and kids. You should see him with Benjy and Zaylie.”
“That’s all good and fine, but what happens when he kisses you?” Franny asked.
“My knees go weak, and I don’t want it to ever end,” Claire said honestly.
“Then honey, that’s worth givin’ a chance. Has any other man ever made you all breathless like that?”
Claire shook her head. “No, ma’am.”
“Then what are you waiting for?”
Claire sighed. “You know what kind of parents Grant and I came from. What happens if Levi and I get into a relationship, and I figure out I’m like my mother. That I’m more interested in my quilting business than I am in Levi, or being a wife and mother.”
“The fact that you are worried about that says you’re not a bit like your mother,” Franny told her.
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