by Susan Lute
“She gave Zach a hundred dollars and left us at a homeless shelter. She wants to marry George. George doesn’t want kids.” As if that explained it all, and perhaps it did, she quietly followed her brother upstairs.
When he looked at Jane and saw the defeated resignation on her beautiful face, his frustration broke free. Not against himself. Or the kids who’d lied to protect themselves. Or the woman who held his heart in her gentle hands, but couldn’t believe she had a right to her own happiness. All his anger targeted the irresponsible woman who’d treated her children’s hearts and safety so cavalierly.
This time he wasn’t going to walk away. From the kids. Or from Jane.
*
Their mother wasn’t dead.
Jane swallowed the raw emotion that rose like bile into her throat. She’d almost fallen for it. This picture Chase had started to make her believe in. A family of her own that no one could take away from her.
She sank into the chair Zach had deserted. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to have a little talk with them.” Chase shot her a hard look before heading for the stairs.
Gus placed a plate of French toast in front of her, shaking his head. “Poor kids.”
His sympathy galvanized Jane. She caught up with Chase before he reached the upper landing.
“What will talking accomplish? Shouldn’t we just hunt the mother down and...I don’t know...make her pay somehow?”
He stopped mid-step. Giving her a chance to back down, he gripped her shoulders, pulled her close, and ambushed her with a quick kiss. “Nice idea, but the system doesn’t work that way.”
She bristled, feeling the heat of dashed hopes along with reawakened awareness on her skin. “I know, but I don’t see what talking is going to accomplish.”
A grin spread across his face. If it was an option, Jane would have fallen for him right then, maybe even used the L word.
“You’re a remarkable woman, Jane Donovan,” he told her before firmly settling her against his chest, his heart thumping beneath her hands.
The kiss was the kind of kiss every school girl dreams of; the kind that leads to happy-ever-after. The only problem was Jane didn't believe in storybook endings.
A little dazed, when he released her, she followed him into the kids’ room, where a belligerent teenager swung to face them. “We’re not going back to her.”
Chase didn't give Zach any wiggle room. “I don’t want to send you back, but I have to know the whole truth before I can make any claims.”
Jane’s stomach fluttered. The man was pretty remarkable himself.
“You said we could stay,” Abby whispered brokenly, sitting forlornly on her bed.
The man staking his claim on Jane's heart sat beside the little girl. Lifting her onto his lap, he turned his razor sharp gaze on Zach. “So what’s the deal with your Mom?”
The teenager glared down at his shoes. “She keeps chasing after these rich dudes. They say they’ll marry her, so she dumps us in a shelter somewhere and takes off with them. But they don’t, so then she comes back and takes us away again.”
Squaring his shoulders, Zach’s eyes overflowed with the hurt and pain of being rejected over and over. Jane remembered how that felt. Anger boiled in her chest on the kids’ behalf. Mothers like that shouldn’t be allowed-
Zach kicked at the rug covering a small square of the floor. “She doesn’t want us. She only wants the money the state gives her for keeping us. That’s why I thought, if we could live with Pop-”
“Can’t we just stay here with you and Miss Jane and Gus?” Abby begged, tears slipping down her cheeks as she clung to the man gently cradling her.
The little girl’s misery sneaked into Jane’s heart, squeezing hard.
Marines do not cry! Impotent fury threatened to spill from her lips in the form of colorful sailor words that shouldn’t be uttered in front of innocent children.
Abby switched tactics. Her sweet eyes pleading, she gave Jane a wobbly smile. “You and Mr. Chase could get married. Then it would be all right if you adopted us. If you pay her money, Goldie would never take us away again.”
As though he thought the idea a perfect answer to their problem, Zach looked first at her, then at Chase, hope springing into eyes that perfectly matched his sister’s.
Shocked at how reasonable it sounded, and how truly appealing the thought of marrying Chase Russell was, Jane didn’t dare look at the man.
“That’s not going to work.” The words flew out of her mouth in a hurry, jagged as if she’d just chewed on slivers of glass. “I mean, I’m not going to be here much longer. I have to get back to the base.”
A wife and mother? That took courage. And maternal skills. All she knew how to be was a soldier, and most recently, not a good one at that.
The hope in Zach and Abby's eyes was fading. Jane straightened. She had to make them understand.
“Chase and I can’t get married.”
“Why not?” Zach demanded, his fists perched on his hips.
“We’re not in love.” She looked at Chase. His handsome face was impassive, though his eyes broiled darkly with an emotion she was afraid to put a name to. Those shards of glass got sharper. “Right?”
“No, I suppose not.”
He supposed not?
For a second, Jane thought she saw disappointment skip cross his face, and was surprised by the wallop it gave her. But then it was gone, and she figured it must have been a mistake.
Understandably desperate, Zach wouldn’t give up. “That doesn’t matter, does it? Do you have to be in love to get married? You like each other. Isn’t that enough?”
She suddenly wanted it to be, but knew it wasn’t. She respected Chase, admired his dedication. Sex with him was a whole lot more than she’d expected. Heartfelt. Fantastic. Fourth of July fireworks.
When everything was said and done, they could end up friends. But, married?
Chase couldn’t take his eyes off Jane and the internal battle he could see she was fighting. His stomach clenched.
He loved the lady; had plotted to find a way to get her to stay. But, marriage? Now that the kids brought it up.
He knew what it took to make a marriage work. Plain stubbornness and a love that could survive anything. His parents had set a good example.
The Marine had enough stubbornness for the both of them, but from the look on her face, she didn’t feel the kind of love it would take. And, why should she? He needed time to convince her.
“I’m not looking for a quick fix here. If things are as bad as you say with your mother, I need a plan that will convince the authorities you should stay with me permanently.”
Zach looked skeptical.
“Promise you won’t do anything rash. Give me a chance to work things out.” He spoke to the boy, but looked straight at Jane.
Zach hesitated before agreeing, “Okay.”
Suddenly, four people in the small room was one too many for Chase. Moving Abby to the bed, he rose, coming face to face with Jane.
Her barricades were up, as though the night they'd spent together never happened. Of course marrying him, even to give Zach and Abby the break they needed, was the last thing she’d bargained for when she first came to the ranch.
He shouldn’t give it a moment’s consideration either, but then, why did he feel like he’d just been soundly kicked in the gut?
*
It took only moments for Jane to make her way out of the house and to the barn. The good thing about her good buddy, Mr. Harley, was that the bike didn’t make her heart ache with dreams that couldn’t possibly come true.
She clamped on a helmet. Pushing the big machine out of the barn, she climbed aboard, revved up the engine and let the resulting roar block out the heart-stirring image of Chase Russell, sitting on a child’s bed, offering comfort to a little girl who had no one else to turn to.
Flying out of the ranch yard, she turned toward town. When she passed the graveled ro
ad that ended at the hot springs, she made a sharp u-turn, gunned the engine in a roar that brought the front tire off the ground.
In that brief second before regret flitted across his handsome face, Chase had reached out to her, silently asking her to join him in his crusade to take care of Zach and Abby. A crusade she’d pushed him into taking on in the first place.
But, he was asking too much.
Parking the bike, she left the helmet on the seat and walked up to the steaming water. The scent of sulfur filled the thick air.
Squatting at the edge of the natural spa, she rested one arm on her knee. The other skimmed the swirling surface, her mind filling with images of what she’d done the last time she was there.
She snorted, cursing the blush that warmed her skin. A marriage for convenience was absolutely out of the question. Only a kid who found himself in a hopeless situation would think that the perfect solution.
Chase understood it wouldn’t work, right? It was her bad luck that the man had grit, exuded it with a sexy, come-hither aura that drew her like a she-wolf to her mate. Whether he was helping Gus repair a fence, teaching Zach and Abby to ride horses, or talking a Marine off the ledge she’d backed herself onto - for those things alone, she could fall hopelessly in love with him.
Which was why she wasn't going to go there. The military, with its inherent long separations was not easy on a family no matter how much love was involved. If she took the risk, then lost Chase - because no matter how hard you tried, holding on to the one you loved the most didn’t work - it would literally kill her.
“It can’t work,” she told the gurgling water. “Thanks to Chase, I survived the last go around. But, one more hit like that, with a man I could honestly give my whole heart to, I won’t survive it.”
The water had no answers. Jane hung her head in acceptance. Better to keep their relationship on a casual, friendly, sexual-ships-passing-in-the-night level.
She would go home, get back into the swing of things, and forget all about her little interlude with the most spectacular man she’d ever met.
Jane mounted the Harley. It was too bad really, because if anyone could make a believer out of her, while at the same time cut through all that discouraging, social services red tape, it would be the man who was getting too close to her heart for comfort.
“Wouldn’t I love to stick around and see him do it,” she whispered to the bubbling pool.
*
Later that night, when the phone rang, Jane was sitting alone in the kitchen having one last cup of coffee before she turned in. She’d spent most of the afternoon after returning from the springs, implementing a workout regimen that would rival her early days in boot camp. When her leave was up, she was going to be physically, as well as mentally, ready to go back to work.
Gus had returned to his cottage after dinner, to hunker down to a John Wayne movie, he said. She’d read a few more chapters of Harry Potter to Zach and Abby, but Chase was noticeably absent, closeted in his office making calls.
None of their hearts had been in the story. She’d finished up by making sure the children got to bed without any mishaps.
Swallowing the last of her coffee, she drummed her fingers on the table. Really, she did trust Chase to do what was right for the kids.
When the phone rang again, unable to sit still any longer, she decided to check on his progress, telling herself it was all about Zach and Abby, and not about wanting to see if she could coax one of his crooked grins out of hiding.
The office door was opened a crack, his back to her as he stared out the window, the phone scrunched between his ear and shoulder. She leaned against the door frame. From her vantage point, she had a great view of the man, which she took advantage of. There was a good portion of the night left.
“There’s got to be a way.”
Dragging her gaze away from his perfect backside, she studied her cleanly trimmed fingernails.
“They said Goldie abandoned them.” Frustration rolled off his shoulders like a thick fog coming off a South Carolina bayou.
“They don’t want to go back to her.”
His back stiffened. Annoyance became anger. “I get it. She’s their mother and she has rights. But, don’t the kids have rights too?”
Pulling roughly on a piece of loose skin on one finger, Jane started to steam, too.
“I know the courts rarely find in favor of children in these cases.”
Her heart got heavy. What had she expected? One of those miracles? Zach and Abby didn’t stand a snowball’s chance.
A sniffle had her spinning around to find both kids right behind her. By the scared looks on their faces, she knew they’d been there long enough to overhear.
She glanced over her shoulder. Chase was still busy with his call. The siblings weren’t stupid. They’d had the score battered into them long ago.
She urged them toward the living room. “I thought you guys were in bed.”
“We couldn’t sleep.” Zach’s defiance was gone. All that was left was a frightened kid who didn’t know what to do next, or who to trust.
“Chase is doing the best he can.”
“Goldie’s not going to let us stay. Neither will a judge.” He faced her, his arm snaking around his sister’s slumped shoulders. “He’s going to send us back. It’s not fair.”
No it wasn’t. “You don’t know that.”
“I wish we could stay with you and Mr. Russell.” Abby’s brown eyes were awash in unshed tears. If wishes were currency... “You’d make the best mom.”
Uneasy at the little girl's assessment, Jane gulped back her own water-works. “Maybe things aren’t as bad as it sounded.”
She didn’t know what else to say; how to make what was most likely going to happen easier for Sergeant Malone's kids.
She knelt, pulled them both tightly against her chest. When they clung to her, she cleared her throat and whispered roughly. “You’d better go to bed now.”
Shoulders sagging in resignation, Abby clung to Zach. They trudged up the stairs. Jane's heart literally broke.
When she’d first come to the ranch, she’d thought nothing could be more horrible than waking up in a Madrid hospital and being told by a harried doctor Linus was dead. And then, realizing it was her fault because she’d failed to do everything she could to keep him safe.
She was wrong. Watching Zach and Abby drag themselves up the stairs was by far much worse.
CHAPTER
XV
“I’m not letting Zach and Abby go back to that woman.” Chase balled his fist. The hills on this side of the ranch were dark shadows beyond the illumination from the yard light. “There has to be a way to get a judge to see how dangerous it is to give them back to her.”
On the other side of the line, Beth heaved a sigh. “Unlikely, but worth a try. What do Zach and Abby want to do?”
Chase had no intention of telling his friend what Abby’s wish list included. “Do you know a judge who would be sympathetic to their case? I want custodial guardianship.”
“Let me work on it.”
After Beth hung up, he returned to his desk, swiping from his mind the murmur of Jane’s voice as she’d read to the kids earlier that night. He’d wanted to join them, sit at her feet and give into the illusion that whatever was happening between the two of them was something special.
He thumped his fist on the desk. It was something special. At least to him it was.
He massaged the back of his neck. It'd been hard not to go to her, but he couldn’t forget the look on her face when the kids asked why they didn’t get married. And, the sight of her recklessly pushing the Harley to its top speed, in an effort to get as far away from the debacle in the house as she could, stayed with him.
He wished he could call her a coward for that. Instead, all he wanted was to snatch her up and tell her everything was going to be okay.
But, how could he make that promise? Maybe marriage right this minute wasn’t the right answer, but
it hadn’t taken him two shakes of a lam's tail to realize that was in fact what he wanted. Spending the rest of his life waking up to Jane would be pure heaven. Giving her family, growing old with her, icing on the cake.
He’d let ego get in the way, hadn’t offered one convincing reason why they should give it a try. And, before he could make it right, explain they were more than two people offering comfort to one another at a time when they both needed the warmth of someone who understood and cared, she’d taken off.
There had to be a way to keep the Marine in the game long enough to get her to switch teams. Satisfied that he a direction to go in, nebulous though it was, he went to work on the kids with renewed purpose.
Half an hour later, Gus interrupted. “I’m heading over to Maxi’s. She needs some help birthing one of her horses.”
From the day he’d hired Gus to help with the restoration of the ranch, Chase had found a good friend in the older gentleman. Before he could rein in his curiosity, his mouth got away from him. “You’re sweet on the lady, aren’t you?”
His foreman turned red, but stepped further into the room. “Same as you’re sweet on Miss Jane.”
Sweet on Miss Jane? Wasn’t that the truth. Heaven help him.
Chase smiled ruefully. “Jane’s not interested. Seems to me Maxine is though.”
“Maybe. Maxi was my wife’s best friend. Donna’s been gone six years now. It’s been lonely for both of us since she passed on.”
He didn’t know what made him ask, except all of a sudden he wanted to know how an older man with more experience went about courting a woman. “Are you going to ask her out for dinner?”
Gus snorted. “Have you asked Miss Jane out?”
Not if you didn’t count their drink in the bar after the rodeo, but it was a little late for conventional dating. They’d gone from, may I have this dance, straight to sending rockets to the moon. “No.”
“That’s probably a good thing. She’d likely turn down an ugly fella like you, anyway.” Humor sparked the old gent’s eyes before they went as serious as a papa wolf protecting his pup. “That gal’s been hurt real bad. She needs gentle handling and a lot of understanding...I’m thinking about asking her to marry me.”
