“Tell Jake that I think it’s very sweet of him to invite us, but I’m afraid Sydney and I will have to take a rain check.”
“Oh. Sure. Okay.” Anderson would have thought that he’d be relieved. After all, that was what he wanted, wasn’t it? To have her turn down his invitation. And he was relieved—to some extent.
But he was also experiencing something else. Something, for lack of a better description, that felt akin to disappointment.
It was official. He was going crazy, he thought.
And then, to cinch his impression, he heard himself asking her, “Mind if I ask why?”
Marina had expected Anderson to accept her declination—maybe even cheer a little—and just hang up. He certainly hadn’t sounded as if he was eager for her to accept the invitation.
So why was he asking her to give him a reason?
He knew the answer to her declination as well as she did.
“Look, Mr. Dalton, I wouldn’t want to put you out,” she told him.
“Put me out?” he repeated, completely perplexed. What was she talking about? More than anything, he wished that women would come with some sort of an instruction booklet. It would make life a hell of a lot easier. “What makes you think having you come out to the ranch would be ‘putting me out’?”
She sighed. She was beginning to think that the man took a certain perverse pleasure in making things difficult.
“I’m trying to be accommodating here, Mr. Dalton,” she began and got no further.
“I don’t understand,” Anderson said. “If you were trying to be accommodating, wouldn’t you have said yes to the invitation?”
“To your son’s invitation,” she emphasized. Didn’t he see the difference?
He missed the point for a minute and was about to tell her again that he didn’t understand what she was trying to tell him when he managed to successfully play back her words in his mind.
“Wait, what? Why did you just refer to it as Jake’s invitation?” he wanted to know.
“Well, isn’t it?”
He saw no reason to lie. After all, this had started out specifically because it was Jake’s idea. “Yes.”
The word felt like a burst of cold water, shocking her in its honesty. Well, at least he wasn’t trying to snow her, she told herself. Then again, he didn’t seem to care about her feelings, either. It would have been nice to have him indulge in even a little white lie.
She discovered that she was having trouble holding on to her temper. That only happened when she had exhausted her own deep well of patience.
“Anyway,” she managed to say, “the only thing that should matter to you is that I’m letting you off the hook.”
“You keep talking about some ‘hook.’ I’m not on a hook,” he insisted, shortly.
“Yes, you are,” she countered, digging in. She absolutely hated being lied to. The worst truth was better than the best lie in her opinion. “Jake asked you to invite us and you did, but it’s obvious that the invitation to come to the ranch is coming from him and not from you.”
The woman was coming close to dancing on his last nerve. “It might be obvious to you, but not to me.”
“Don’t try to spare my feelings, Mr. Dalton,” she cautioned. “It’s a little too late for that.”
He was about to let it go at that, thinking it was for the best for both of them since he firmly believed that the woman could make a saint crazy. But then he caught sight of Jake watching him, looking so hopeful that it all but stabbed him right through his heart. Because of that, he gave it one more try.
For Jake.
“The invitation is really from both of us,” he informed her. Then, before she had a chance to launch into some sort of full-scale rebuttal, he shot down any possible argument she had in her arsenal.
“Do you really think I’d be inviting you to come to the ranch for the day if I didn’t want you and your daughter here?”
Okay, so it was a lie, he silently admitted, but it was a well-intentioned one and it had been undertaken for the best of reasons. Namely because something about Marina Laramie not only made his son happy, but made him light up like the proverbial Christmas tree.
He would have extended an invitation to a Tasmanian she-devil if the prospect of having one over to the ranch would have had the same effect on Jake.
He realized that the other end of the line had gone quiet and for a second, Anderson thought he’d lost her because she’d seen through his fabrication—otherwise known as a lie—and hung up. He hoped not because that meant that he would have to call her back.
“Are you still there?” he asked, raising his voice.
“Yes, I’m still here,” he heard her say in a voice that was definitely subdued.
He plowed on. “So what’s your answer?”
“You’re really asking us to the ranch?” she asked, wanting to make sure one final time.
“I could try to get it across with hand puppets,” he volunteered. “But you really wouldn’t be able to see that over the phone—I’m calling from a landline,” he explained, vaguely aware that these days, there were ways for people calling one another on the phone to be able to see the other person.
Personally, he thought that the whole world needed to take a few steps back and have a time-out. There was just too much tech stuff out there for his liking. It interfered with human relationships—when there were any, he quickly inserted, mentally backing away from the subject.
“So, what’s it going to be?” he asked her. “What do I tell Jake—and what are you going to tell me?” he added out of the blue.
It was almost as if the words had just come out on their own volition without any prompting or effort on his part.
“What day would you like us over?” she asked him tentatively. What was she doing? She felt as if she was about to make a fifteen-foot dive into a half-filled teacup. Her stomach clenched, even as excitement skittered over her nerve endings.
An inexplicable feeling of triumph volleyed through Anderson. He didn’t attempt to analyze it, understand it or even question why it suddenly turned up. Those were all things he told himself he’d deal with later. Right now he needed to nail down the woman’s response to the invitation before she changed her mind or had second, paralyzing thoughts. If she did, Jake would be severely disappointed. It was his job to make sure that didn’t happen.
That was his story and he was sticking to it.
“So is that a yes?” he asked her.
“It’s a yes,” she agreed.
“How does tomorrow sound?” he asked. “I know it’s kind of last-minute, but it’s a Sunday so I thought you both might be free.”
“As it so happens,” she told him in carefully measured out words, “we are both free. Tomorrow sounds fine.”
“Great. Why don’t you and your daughter plan on coming out here around nine and we’ll make a day of it.” He gave her the straightforward directions, ending with, “You can’t miss it.”
She laughed softly. “I wouldn’t take any bets on that if I were you.” Then, before he could interject anything else, she said, “We’ll see you there at nine,” and with that, she hung up.
Chapter Eight
Marina’s sigh seemed to echo all around. Why was she doing this to herself? Sunday was supposed to be a day of rest, not a day of extreme tension.
She shouldn’t have said yes.
“This is a mistake.” She looked down at her daughter. “Listen very carefully, Sydney, because Mommy’s not going to say these words very often during your formative years, at least not about herself where you can hear them. I think I’ve made a mistake saying yes to Jake’s daddy. A really big mistake.”
Marina had stopped her futile search within the bedroom of her small apartment. There was no poi
nt in looking for the right outfit to wear, she thought, feeling more and more insecure by the minute.
In an effort to calm down, she’d begun talking to her daughter as if she were an equal and a confidant instead of an infant strapped into her car seat on the floor.
For her part, Sydney was following her around the room with her eyes, looking as if she was hanging on every word even as she was trying to shove her tiny fist into her mouth and swallow it whole.
“I know that every woman is supposed to say this sometime in her lifetime,” she told Sydney, “but in my case, it’s true. I don’t have anything to wear.”
She’d gone through all her clothes and nothing looked right to her. She was attempting to find something casual, but all she could find were outfits that were either too formal, or looked as if she’d spent the morning scrubbing floors—and gotten the worst of it.
“I know, I know,” Marina continued with her conversation, filling in what she felt would have been Sydney’s responses if her daughter was capable of making responses. “You want to see the horsies but we can do that some other time—with somebody else’s daddy doing the hosting, not Jake’s daddy.”
Sinking down on the edge of her bed she looked down at her daughter in earnest and for the second time in as many minutes, she sighed.
“You’re right, we’re not exactly awash in social invitations, are we? But they’ll come. Just you wait, they’ll come.” Sydney made a gurgling sound. Marina blew out a breath, resigned. “But you want to go now, don’t you? Okay, Mommy will just have to put her brave smile on and face this like an adult. After all, if I can deal with a roomful of eleven-year-olds, I can certainly deal with one adult. It’s not like he’s going to bite me or anything, right?”
Sydney gurgled again and this time, bobbed her head a little, which Marina took to be a nod. She got up again. “Good talk, Sydney. Good talk.”
Just then, the doorbell rang and Marina could feel everything inside her instantly freezing up. Every insecurity she’d previously experienced was back, bringing along a friend.
“Maybe it’s not too late to make a getaway out the back window,” she said aloud, glancing toward it longingly. The doorbell rang again and Marina sighed. “Too late.” Looking down at the outfit she’d wound up in—worn jeans and a blue-gray pullover—she shook her head. There was absolutely no time to change again. “This is going to have to do.”
Sydney jabbered, as if responding to that statement.
“Right, easy for you to say,” Marina told her. “You look adorable in everything.”
She picked up the car seat and carried her daughter into her living room. Once there, she parked Sydney on the floor beside the sofa.
“Coming,” she called out when the doorbell rang a third time.
Opening the door, Marina found herself looking up at Anderson Dalton. For some reason, he looked taller today than he had the other times.
A lot taller.
Or maybe that was just her nerves making him look taller.
But he smelled nice, she couldn’t help noticing. He smelled of sunshine and wind.
Marina felt her stomach tightening and prayed that this outing she’d agreed to wasn’t going to be something she was going to regret.
“Sorry it took me so long to get to the door,” she apologized. “I was in the bedroom, looking for something to wear.”
His eyes skimmed over her slowly—as if appraising what she had on, she couldn’t help thinking. “I see you found it,” he murmured.
The sound of his voice made the ripples in her stomach increase to storm-warning size. She shifted her eyes to Anderson’s shadow, who had moved right to his father’s side the moment he heard her voice.
On familiar ground again, Marina grinned at him. “Hi, Jake.”
The boy’s chest seemed to immediately puff up in response to her greeting. “Hi!”
Only when her eyes shifted back to him, Anderson realized he was staring at her. Marina had divided her hair into two pigtails and looked like a kid herself instead of the mother of one and the teacher of many. He mumbled a greeting, realizing that he hadn’t done so when she came to the door. And then he felt compelled to explain.
“When you didn’t answer the door after I rang the doorbell two times, I was going to leave,” Anderson confessed. “I didn’t think you were home, but Jake didn’t want to give up so fast. He made me ring again.”
“I call that patient stubbornness,” Marina told him, smiling fondly at the boy. “It’s a very good quality to have.” She turned her attention back to Anderson. “That means he doesn’t give up right away when things don’t go his way.”
“Oh, he can be pretty stubborn, all right,” Anderson vouched, thinking of how persistent Jake had been until he’d gotten him to invite his teacher over against his own best instincts.
Looking past Marina into the living room, Anderson saw the swinging arms and legs first, then realized that he was looking at Marina’s daughter, who, if she hadn’t been strapped into the car seat, appeared ready for takeoff like a tiny helicopter.
“You need any help with that?” he asked, nodding at the baby. “You know, carrying it?”
What was it about this woman that turned him into an awkward, tongue-tripping idiot? He was behaving like the people he held in low esteem or actual contempt most of the time.
“The car seat,” Anderson specified as an afterthought.
“I know what you meant,” Marina assured him. “And no, I don’t. Carrying around this much weight has become second nature to me. I don’t even know I’m doing it. And,” she added, “truthfully, lugging the car seat around has helped me build up my biceps.”
But Anderson had already moved past her and was picking up the car seat with Sydney in it before she had a chance to get to her daughter.
“I’ve got it,” he told her matter-of-factly, as if this was business as usual instead of an outing he would have preferred to have no part of.
“What’s a biceps?” Jake wanted to know, practically skipping next to her as they went outside and toward the truck.
The cab of Anderson’s truck was large enough to accommodate all of them, including Sydney’s car seat. Anderson had checked all that out beforehand. Otherwise, he would have been forced to borrow his sister Lindsay’s car for the errand—and that would have required way too much explaining.
Following Anderson to his vehicle, Marina paused for a moment to answer the boy’s question. “Make a muscle,” she instructed. When he did, she pointed to the tiny ridge that was formed. “There,” she told him, “that’s your biceps.”
Jake turned his head and looked at his upper arm as if seeing it for the first time. “I have one.”
Marina never hesitated. “Absolutely. And it’ll get to be very big if you do your exercises,” she assured him and then added encouragingly, “It looks like you’ve already gotten started.”
Jake beamed in response. “Maybe a little,” he confided.
“Well, it’s very impressive. Keep it up.” Marina turned her attention to Anderson’s struggles with her daughter’s car seat. “Here, let me.” Very gently, she edged him out of the way. “It’s very frustrating until you get the hang of it,” she said matter-of-factly.
Within a few seconds, she’d untangled the hook Anderson had gotten caught in the back of the seat and successfully attached Sydney’s car seat to the truck’s seat.
“There,” Marina declared with relief. “Done.”
He took her word for it. It certainly looked as if it was well secured. “I guess maybe I could use some of the patient stubbornness you were talking about,” Anderson observed.
Getting into the backseat next to her daughter, Marina buckled herself in.
“I thought that was where Jake got it from,” she said innocently. “You.�
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Her answer struck him as funny. “Not hardly.” Anderson laughed shortly. “He probably developed it trying to impress you.”
She was about to deny having anything to do with it when Jake climbed into the backseat next to her. She looked at her student in surprise.
“Don’t you want to sit up front next to your dad, Jake?” She didn’t want the boy hurting his father’s feelings by having so blatantly picked her over him. “Most boys want to be right up front, where the action is.”
But Jake, she quickly found out, wasn’t like most boys.
“No, that’s okay, Ms. Laramie. I’d rather be back here with you.”
Marina leaned over and whispered to the boy, “You don’t want to hurt your dad’s feelings, do you? He’ll think you don’t like him if you sit back here with me instead of up front with him.”
Anderson watched the little exchange in his rearview mirror. Since Marina was whispering to his son, he didn’t hear what was being said, but he felt he could make a pretty educated guess.
“That’s okay,” he assured Marina as well as his son. “I don’t mind him sitting back there with you if he wants. Jake is just trying to make you feel more welcome.”
Marina wasn’t sure if that was actually true or not, but she grasped at the excuse that Anderson had handed her and gave the boy a quick one-armed hug.
“Well, he certainly accomplished that,” she told Jake fondly.
Jake’s eyes sparkled. “We’ve got a surprise for you,” he confided in what amounted to a stage whisper. “You and Sydney.”
“A surprise? I love surprises,” she told him with the proper enthusiasm, knowing that was what Jake was hoping for. “I can’t wait.”
She couldn’t have said anything better to Jake if she had tried, Anderson thought, catching sight of his son’s face in his rearview mirror.
His son looked proud enough to burst and seemed as if he could hardly contain himself. Jake gave the distinct impression that any second now, he’d go off like a Roman candle.
A Maverick and a Half Page 8
