by Susan Fox
Claire made eye contact with him as he passed her the steak platter. “Eventually someone will notice that his closest male role model doesn’t p-r-a-y before meals.”
She knew Logan had caught her meaning, but she couldn’t miss the fact that he didn’t make any reassuring remark to let her know he meant to change that situation. Claire kept silent as she filled both her plate and Cody’s.
If Logan didn’t yet recall her specific requests yesterday about setting a good example in such things, she’d remind him later. Though it might seem trivial to others, Claire considered Logan’s example as a man crucial, since Cody would grow up imitating him. Cody’s development was all important to her and she’d proved that by obligating herself to a loveless marriage she’d probably have to live with the rest of her life. The least Logan could do was live up to the few things she’d specified.
It was certain Logan would insist on her living up to his specifications for a combination hostess/glamour girl/bronc rider, so the few things on her list hardly put any demands on him in exchange.
The silence during those first few minutes at the table felt anything but comfortable, so she introduced a natural topic.
“There are several things I’ll need to take care of at home. I might as well get started tomorrow.”
As she’d expected, that earned her Logan’s complete attention. “I’ll give you a hand. The sooner it’s done the better.”
Claire gave him a mild smile. “Cody and I can take care of it, though it’ll take a few days. And I’d rather not drag him to and from San Antonio every day, so we’ll stay over.”
“No.”
That one soft word carried the verbal power of a sledgehammer, which gave it an impact far out of proportion to her proposal.
Claire couldn’t help the swift rise of temper, but she mentally reviewed all Logan’s other dictates. So far, she’d gotten almost nowhere opposing them. If she was going to have any kind of a livable marriage with him, she’d have to solve these problems without creating a war zone. But how? Perhaps the first thing to do was get him to talk rather than dictate. She made a calm start.
“Will you elaborate a bit on your ‘no’ verdict?”
Logan stared at her a long moment. “I won’t have a wife who lives in town. Or one who wears out the road between this ranch and San Antonio.”
Claire was a little taken aback. What a radical conclusion to draw from so little! It struck her that there was a world of insecurity in what he’d said, and the perception was startling. Though she couldn’t deny she’d hoped to have time away from him to adjust to all this, she truly did need to settle things in San Antonio. She was well aware that he’d oppose any sign that she was drawing things out unnecessarily, so she’d not likely get away with more than one or two attempts to do so.
But she couldn’t allow him to be her jailer, whatever paranoia was afflicting him. Claire gave him a level look.
“I won’t deny that I enjoy living in the city. I might enjoy living here too, but I’m not sure yet.” Claire smiled stiffly. “However, I can guarantee that I’ll resent every moment here and look for any opportunity to escape if I’m not free to come and go whenever I please.”
Logan’s gaze sharpened and she sensed his frustration with that. “You’re anything but a prisoner.”
“I appreciate knowing that,” she said carefully, “but everything today and everything yesterday makes me feel…trapped.”
She saw the flush that bloomed dully beneath his tanned cheekbones and suddenly knew she’d scored some sort of victory. As if he hadn’t really thought too deeply about her feelings until that moment. The way his gaze flashed away from hers was a confirmation that she’d nicked his conscience.
The silence between them stretched and Claire wasn’t certain what to say. After several moments more she realized nothing else needed to be said. At least she shouldn’t say anything more. If there was any reason to hope Logan Pierce might turn out to be a halfway decent husband, he needed to provide her with a bit of solid proof.
“Wait till Monday,” was all he said then, but it was enough to give her a spark of hope.
Particularly when she sneaked a glance to see that he was frowning down at his plate as he selected a forkful of food. Was he troubled over this or merely angry?
Cody managed to ease into the tension with a quiet, “When do we see the pony, Momma?”
Claire smiled at the eager little boy, noting that he’d only half finished his food. This was a prime opportunity for her to demonstrate a little good faith to Logan.
“You might ask your uncle Logan.”
The boy looked Logan’s way and Claire did, too, only to see him doing another intent search of her face. His mistrust of her was palpable. Was he only secure when she was challenging him? He’d evidently taken her suggestion to Cody as deference to him, but he seemed suspicious of it.
Would he understand that it was meant to help facilitate his relationship with the boy? And would he realize she was willing to do that because it was better for Cody? Or would he think she was doing it in order to get her way with something else later?
When Cody hadn’t yet asked his uncle directly, she added a soft, “The pony belongs to your uncle.”
Cody looked over at Logan and said a bashful, “I wanna see the pony.”
Logan looked at the boy and his stony expression softened magically as he actually smiled. “Better finish that supper first,” he said, nodding toward Cody’s plate.
The boy reached eagerly for his small fork to comply, and Claire stared, touched by the gentle look that lingered in Logan’s gaze as he watched Cody.
Whatever his shortcomings, the big man obviously felt strong affection for his brother’s small son and the fact was, the man was too complex to either write off or fully accept.
Looking at him now, it was easy to believe Logan had enormous potential as a family man. And maybe even as a husband. Claire felt a small glow that smoothed away a significant number of her reservations, and she began to feel a bit more optimistic.
CHAPTER EIGHT
HOW had she ever thought Logan might have potential as a husband? Yes, their time at the corral with the pony had gone far better than the night before, and Cody had been just as reluctant to come back to the house as he’d been after his first ride on the pony.
But Logan was as bullheaded on the issue of where she slept on their wedding night as he’d been about getting married today. She might as well nickname him El Toro.
When they’d come back from the corrals, Claire had gone to her room to wash up while Cody went with Logan to the den. She’d discovered that all her things had vanished from the bathroom and closet. It didn’t take a Sherlock Holmes to conclude that she’d find them in the master bedroom and bath.
Because Elsa had gone home, Claire’s impending showdown with Logan promised to be a no-holds-barred shouting match after this. She thought about reclaiming her things right away but since Cody was still up, she prudently stayed in her room, pacing as she tried to calm down and think rationally about the ramifications before she rushed into battle.
The idea of sharing a bed this soon was ridiculous. Surely Logan knew that, because the man wasn’t dense. She believed it was an issue of male pride as he’d said, rather than anything sexual, but it probably also had a lot to do with the fact that Logan Pierce was simply determined to have his way in everything. Because Claire was used to having things all her way, they were bound to have some horrendous clashes if neither of them was willing to compromise.
On the other hand, though she’d been strong-armed into this marriage, it was surprising how much she wanted it to succeed. And yet she knew logically that success couldn’t happen in a marriage full of one-upmanship and hostility.
Claire sat down on the edge of the bed in the guest room to give that serious thought. Picturing the man’s earlier gentleness with Cody at the corrals made her feel warm toward him. It was obvious that Logan was capable o
f becoming just as wrapped up in Cody as she was, and of wholeheartedly parenting him in all the right ways, which could benefit Cody immeasurably.
Though Logan was awkward with the child and clearly didn’t yet comprehend the maturity level of two-year-olds, it was clear he was trying to understand, trying to do the right things.
He’d glanced her way a couple of times as if to silently seek her guidance and approval, and that worked powerfully on her estimation of him as a man. It had also worked powerfully on her heart.
In truth, she was no longer quite as averse to Logan’s dictate about tonight as she should have been. Part of that was because of those little glimpses of good in him. She couldn’t allow sexual intimacy, but perhaps simply sharing his bed wouldn’t be so terrible.
Confused by her seesawing attitude toward Logan but calmer now, Claire stood and left the guest room to see how Cody was doing with Logan. When she reached the den, she stood silently just outside the open door.
The scene on the carpet in front of the massive built-in shelves along one wall grabbed her by the heart. Logan lay on his side on the floor, with Cody kneeling opposite him. Between them was an impressive selection of small horses and cattle and mounted cowboys on other little horses, that obviously dated back to Logan’s childhood.
A rough wooden chest she’d noticed before in the hall now sat open behind Logan, and it was crammed with boyish treasures that included little cars and trucks, Tinkertoys and Lincoln Logs. Several colorful rocks that might have been collected by Logan and his brother on some childhood adventure lay scattered beside the chest and placed in various spots among the herd of horses and cattle and cowboys they played with.
Logan was setting some plastic fence panels just beyond the cattle herd to form a big corral. Cody looked on intently, holding horses and cattle in both hands as he watched every move Logan made as if he were memorizing everything the man did.
“All right, little cowpoke,” Logan said when he finished. “Better get some of those cows herded to the pen.”
And then he moved one of the mounted cowboys toward a cow before he released the cowboy and shifted his hand to the cow to “walk” it toward the corral.
Cody caught on and thrust the cow he had in one hand to the floor to scoot it on the carpet into the corral. In his eagerness, he knocked over a fence panel, but Logan calmly righted it then reclaimed his mounted cowboy to guide the small piece toward another cow.
The boy found a little bowlegged cowboy of his own, painstakingly stuck it on the horse he held, then pushed his horse and cowboy along the carpet to keep up with Logan’s. It was a beautiful demonstration of how to play with the old toys, and Cody’s little face was beaming with both joy and excitement as he tried to imitate the play.
Claire managed to pull her gaze away from the child to focus on the man. Logan was so gentle, and he appeared just as intent on the toy scene on the floor as Cody was. Claire didn’t want to say or do a thing to interrupt because the sight of all this was precious.
The jealousy she’d felt over Cody’s small acceptances of Logan last night was gone. It wasn’t just that marrying Logan had made her feel more secure, but that Logan hadn’t set out to manipulate the boy with either the pony or these toys. Claire sensed that everything Logan was doing was not an effort to win the boy away from her and cut her out, but to find some way to genuinely connect with his nephew and build a good relationship.
She probably ought to step quietly out of sight and find something else to do for a while, but Claire couldn’t seem to drag herself away.
Cody bumped down a row of fence panels and Logan again righted them as if it was merely part of the play. But then he stopped herding his cattle to simply watch Cody. There was a world of tenderness in Logan’s dark eyes and his harsh face was remarkably relaxed.
It made Claire curious to know what he was thinking. Perhaps he was remembering his brother and something from their childhood. She wondered briefly how much Cody resembled Logan’s brother, because he looked nothing like Farrah.
Claire began to realize that all her aggravations with Logan were evaporating as she stood there spying, and she liked him far more than she wanted to at this point.
She didn’t truly know Logan, and yet she suddenly had the feeling that she knew the most important things about him simply because of his treatment of Cody. As bizarrely as all this had started, Claire felt far less opposed to Logan after watching him like this. Instinct told her that love and family were much more important to Logan than he’d ever admit.
And she no longer believed he didn’t care about having love in his marriage. Judging by what she saw now, the real Logan Pierce wasn’t a heartless, cold-blooded dictator who had to have everything his way. There was some other reason that a man like him used everything at his disposal to arrange and rearrange the world around him. People who were driven to do that had likely been through something so painful that everything they did was an effort to protect themselves from other disasters.
Was that why he’d blackmailed her into marriage? He’d said he didn’t want the kind of wife who’d wear out the roads between here and San Antonio, which suggested some kind of extreme experience with that. Was it something to do with his mother? Some former lover or potential wife? And he was so uncertain of her that he wouldn’t allow her to go to settle her business in San Antonio without him.
Claire was swiftly rethinking all this, and wondering even more how she should handle things between them after these little insights. She could be mistaken about everything, but what if she’d figured out at least a few things?
Perhaps she should have stepped quietly away, because it wasn’t much longer before Cody stood up to brace his hands on Logan’s hip and reach into the toy box behind him. When he did, he caught sight of Claire, and immediately called out.
“Mommy! Come see! I gots horsies ’n’ cowboys.”
Claire walked on into the room just as Logan glanced her way. Another faint flush crept along his cheekbones, as if she’d caught him doing something unmanly, so she fixed her gaze on Cody instead as the little boy stood up to run to her with his cowboy and horse.
“See, Mommy?” he asked, barely giving her a chance to look at his new treasures before he turned to run back to the toys on the carpet.
Claire walked over, then got down on her knees to give Cody her complete attention as he showed her the little herd and picked out a horse and bowlegged cowboy for her to play with. She gamely put the small cowboy on the toy horse and posed it next to a couple cows that had fallen on their sides. She took a moment to right them, then glanced at Logan.
“Any orders from the trail boss?” she asked.
Logan gave her a sparkling look that she found quite appealing. “My top hand’s got most of them rounded up. Except for your two cows.” Logan nodded toward the ones she’d just straightened. “Better get ’em penned before dark.”
Claire gave him a small salute. “Do I say, ‘Sure thing, boss’?”
That got a faint smile out of him. “It’s time for workin’, not talkin’.”
Claire moved one of the cows forward, then the other, then moved her mounted cowboy along behind them. As she walked the two feet to the corral on her knees to accomplish that, she had the attention of both males.
“Will someone please close the gate?” she asked as she walked her cows inside. Cody eagerly reached over to slide a fence panel into place to close the corral, but he knocked over three other panels in the process. Claire watched as he and Logan put the panels back into place.
Claire eased back. “Well, now that the work’s done for the night, it’s time for little cowboys to get their bath done and their jammies on.”
It took Cody a moment to register what she’d said but when he did, he came up with an immediate, “No, Momma, no baff.”
“You and Uncle Logan can play tomorrow, sweetheart.”
“No, Momma, I wanna play.”
Claire was familiar with the re
fusals and delays Cody regularly came up with at bedtime, but instead of handling them herself this time, she looked over at Logan. “What do you think, Uncle Logan? Is it too early for little cowboys to get ready for bed?”
“It can’t be too early for little cowboys, because it’s about time for the big cowboys to do the same.”
His answer went completely over Cody’s head, and Claire pointed discreetly at the little boy who was now hoarding several of the small pieces as if he was determined to keep playing.
“It probably needs to be said a little plainer, Uncle,” she said and Logan sat up.
“Come on, son, let’s get the toys put away.”
Cody glanced up and Claire watched the wordless byplay between the two. Logan’s face was stern, though his dark eyes were alight. She held her breath while she waited to see what Cody would do.
As comfortable with Logan as Cody seemed to be, the big man was still a bit intimidating and Cody wasn’t as certain of him as he was of her. The boy looked down at the cattle and horses he’d gathered to himself, then picked up a few and got to his feet to walk around Logan and put the small toys in the big box.
Claire was content to watch as they picked up the pieces and stowed them away. The pleasure she felt watching the little boy do his best to imitate the big man made her emotional.
It was so, so clear to her that Logan would be good for Cody. In fact, she realized now how tragic it might have been if Logan hadn’t come into Cody’s life. Being without a father would have left a huge gap in the child’s upbringing, as well as in his heart, and Claire couldn’t help that she was more than a little glad Logan had pursued custody.
Though she knew that left her with a husband she hadn’t chosen and one she still wasn’t certain she could have a happy future with, it was a fact that this marriage might turn out to be no better or worse in the long run than if she’d been the one to do the choosing.
As Claire got to her feet, she decided this was as good a time as any to involve Logan with the whole bedtime process.
