by Tina Leonard
“I know. I think I’ll turn in now.” She couldn’t look at him, instead she cast a worried eye at the door. “Do you think Lucy is all right?”
“All right?” He chuckled. “She’s not that far away, and one of my brothers will bring her home when she’s had enough of them. That could be any time now.”
“Do you think?”
“Absolutely. Most people have a ten-minute window of patience around us.”
“All right.” She visibly relaxed. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to sit here and sip my coffee. Make sure the fire dies down and doesn’t throw a spark out. Then I may sleep on the sofa until your sister gets here.”
“Thank you,” Clove said. “I appreciate you…what you’re doing for me. In spite of everything.”
“We’ll answer all the big issues another time. Let’s not try to figure them out at once.”
“You’re right.” She smiled, the first time he thought he’d seen her smile in a long time. “Good night.”
“’Night.” He tipped his hat to her.
She disappeared into the bedroom with Tink. “Lucky cat,” he muttered. Still, he was under the same roof with Clove, and for now, he’d be happy with that.
A man never knew when he might have a chance to kiss the mother of his children, and he intended to hang around for the next opportunity. It might arrive sooner than later, if he was patient.
Clove poked her head around the door. “Archer?”
“Yes?”
“What does Tonk do when it rains?”
“She’s in the barn with the other horses. We put them up earlier.”
“Is she warm?”
“Very. Quite content is that spotted equine.”
“You’re sure?”
He smiled. “Clove, the horses here are babied like you’re babying that kitten.”
She raised her chin. “Good. I was only curious.” In a second, she’d disappeared, taking her feline with her. Archer grinned to himself. A woman who worried about a man’s horse was a very good woman. And he liked her more now than he had even five minutes ago. “You’re going to like being married to me,” he said to the empty spot where she’d been standing.
CLOVE STOOD INSIDE the doorway with her kitten in her arms, looking at the big bed that wouldn’t have Archer in it tonight. She thought about how kind he was and about how nice his brothers were being to her. She and Lucy had never known that type of warm acceptance.
Crossing to the bed, she sat down, putting Tink into the old hat Archer had provided for her. For a moment, she watched the kitten pick at the straw of the hat experimentally, testing her limits and her strengths.
Clove knew about testing her limits and her strengths, too. But now she wondered what would have happened if she’d just come to Texas to meet Archer, without a plan any more involved than simply meeting the man she’d corresponded with for two years. Would they have liked each other? Would he have been this focused on her?
She didn’t think so. They probably would have laughed a bit, gotten to know each other better, marveled at each other in person, and then gone their separate ways. He would never have come to Australia to see how she lived.
It bothered her now. Having gotten to know him and having spent time with his family who wanted to buy her a house, she realized she had set the clock on fast-forward for a relationship that would never have happened without her pregnancy. Their pregnancy.
She had changed Archer’s life and it didn’t feel right. He was being a very good sport about everything.
She walked back out to the den. “Archer?”
“Yes?” He sat up. “Are you all right?”
“Please stop worrying about me.” Hovering in the doorway, she looked into the eyes of the man who she was trying desperately hard not to fall for. “In every good romance story, there is usually an evil villain to keep two people apart.”
Archer nodded. “I know. I was just thinking how happy I am that Lucy turned out to be so sweet. She could have not liked me, you know.”
Clove stared at him. “Lucy! Why would you think of Lucy when you worry about villains?”
“I don’t know. I was worried she wouldn’t like me, I guess. And that she might sweep you off back to Australia. That she might feel like slapping me for not taking proper precautions with you.”
Clove’s face scrunched with a frown. “Archer…Lucy knows what I did and why I did it. She’s not proud of it, but she knows you had no part in what happened.”
“Well, I did. Mason’s real big on the condom song he sang to us as kids. You’d have to be part of our family to understand, but it goes something like this, ‘Condom, condom, where’s my condom? Oh, my gosh, it’s gone to London. Without a condom, I can’t play. Why oh why did condom go away?’”
He looked at her incredulous face. “The next verse is, ‘Here is condom, at the store! Buying it is not a chore! Condom, condom—any color!—is my friend. Otherwise my freedom I will spend.’”
She stared at him.
He shrugged. “It’s ugly, Mason’s doggerel, but effective, believe it or not. The singsong quality of it sears into the mind so that we never had a chance to forget it. He said he had to be creative for thirteen-year-olds, to short-circuit the raging hormones in our brains.”
“You needed condoms when you were thirteen?”
“Nah.” Archer sipped his coffee, frowning when it was too cold. He got up to put the mug in the microwave. “Mason believed in scaring us to death to keep us in line. When you’re young and impressionable and all you want to do is kiss Missy Tunstine just once if you could catch her at her locker at school, well, that song unnerves a boy so bad he never makes the first move.”
“I don’t believe you. You’re telling me a fairy tale, Archer.”
He got his coffee out of the microwave when it dinged, and then held up a hand. “I am telling you the truth. The condom song was a deterrent in more ways than one. Hey, at that age, a guy is trying to summon a little courage around a girl. When you have to start thinking about your condom running off to London, you just freeze up.”
“So you never kissed Missy Tunstine.”
“I didn’t say that.” He gave her an eyebrow and maybe a bit of a smirk.
She sensed a challenge. “Well?”
“Luckily for me, Missy didn’t have hang-ups. She caught me at my locker and smooched me so fast my toes curled in their boots.”
Clove felt a momentary dislike for the brave and forward Missy. “And then?”
He shrugged. “And then when we turned fifteen, Mason put condoms in our Christmas stockings. It was all very straightforward as far as he was concerned. As a single parent, his role was to make certain we didn’t get ourselves in trouble.”
Clove hesitated, trying to decide if she should concentrate on the trouble part—a heading she fell under—or the rest of the Missy story. Sighing, she said, “So back to my point, which you got me off of quite effectively, I am the evil villain in this story, Archer. I’ve been thinking about it, and I feel we need some time apart to sort this out.”
“No,” he said, “I’ve never been more sorted in my life.”
She shook her head, looking at his honest face and alarmed eyes. “You’re a good man, Archer.”
He set his mug down. “What you’ve done is give me the possibility of three children, Clove. I’m beside myself with joy.”
“But with me. If I hadn’t been playing the part of the brave and forward Missy, you would not have picked to spend your life with me. You would not have chosen me as the mother of your children. In fact, you would have probably gone off with a girl like Missy, into the sunset, a woman who made your toes curl in your boots and who understood life in Texas.”
“I see what you’re worried about,” Archer said, “but you have to understand I like my ladies a bit forward. I like the fact that you jumped me.”
“Well, I think that’s a bit strong—”
“Th
ere I was,” he said, his voice dreamy, “minding my own business, and here comes this little scaredy-cat girl, looking like she just got off the train from Lost and didn’t have a ticket to Found.”
“Archer!”
“And then she goes and gets dangerous on me, with a ’do and some makeup and heels, courtesy of the Never Lonely Cut-n-Gurls. I have to beat my brother off of her, practically, explaining to him that I got first dibs on the babe, even if she doesn’t look like scaredy-cat anymore.”
“I have never in my life been a scaredy-cat!”
He caught her by the hand, pulling her close. “You are scared of me, babe.”
Chapter Fourteen
Archer and Clove stared at each other for a moment. If he wasn’t so handsome, if he wasn’t such a tall, well-built specimen, if he wasn’t so manly, maybe she would actually believe that this man wanted her forever. But in the nerdy-girl stories she’d read, the woman had to stay beautiful to have her “revenge” by winning the man.
She was about to get very broad and misshapen. Slowly, she pulled her hand away from him. “I’m afraid,” she admitted.
“I know,” he said, “and I suspect it’s about all the wrong things.”
“I want to say, let’s start over…let’s see if you really like me, without the fact that I’m pregnant being part of it.” Her heart felt very sad as she said this. “And yet, the babies are the best part. A miracle.”
“That’s right,” Archer said. “And since I put them there, you should cut me some slack. I should be racking up points for good aim.”
She tried not to smile at him. “I can tell that you are the kind of man who moves his way through life by making people feel better. A laugh and a smile are your emotional props.”
“Yeah, but I can be serious, too. I’m feeling pretty serious about you.”
They stood a foot away from each other, thinking about what was growing between them.
“And you know, I’m not just another pretty face,” he said, coaxing a smile from her.
“Another story?”
“Yes, and this one’s just as true as the one about the condom song.” He pulled his shirt off, pointing to a scar on his upper chest, opposite from his heart. “This is where my twin, Ranger, shot me with a BB gun at close range. It was an accident, but it hurt like a son of a gun and I went boots over ass into the pond. My brothers had to fish me out, and then they had to hold me down so I wouldn’t kill Ranger.”
Her eyes widened. “That’s a terrible story!”
“Yeah. I was lucky it wasn’t a rifle or something. Mr. Misfire got grounded for a week by Mason, and we got the lecture of our lives on how firearms were to be properly handled before we put someone’s eye out.”
“Oh, dear,” Clove said. “That tiny little scar does ugly you up a bit.”
“Yeah,” Archer said, “and take a look at this.” He pulled his jeans down to the top of his underwear, where she could see a very shapely ridge of buns. Her throat dried out, and she stepped back.
“I’m looking,” she said, “and everything appears to be in its place.”
“But roll down the waistband a fraction.”
Was he daring her? She darted a glance at him. He was staring ahead, waiting.
With trembling fingers, she pulled the waistband of his boxers down. His skin was smooth and medium brown, as if he’d spent most of his life outdoors without a shirt on. “There’s nothing there,” she said.
“There’s a chicken-pox scar. I had one lingering, festering pox even after all the others were gone. My twin thought he was being funny and pounded it with a magazine. Mason then pounded his head.”
“Gross.”
“Brothers are gross. Don’t you see it?”
She let the waistband snap back. “No.” But he’d made her want to see more, and she had to resist temptation. Missy might have been a brave lockermate, but Clove had already thrown herself at him once.
“Huh.” Archer craned to look. “I guess it is gone. I have a scar along my collarbone from where—”
She turned away from him. “It’s not going to work, Archer. I will always see myself as the villain.”
He was silent for a moment. “Will it help if I told you I like bad girls?”
She shook her head.
“All right.” He passed her and put his hat on. “If I know one thing, it’s that a woman who’s made her mind up about something is fairly predictable. Like I said before, I don’t want to go hunting where there’s no game. Wise men pick the right spots for game if they want to eat.” He went to the front door. “You do what you have to do to feel better, Clove.”
And then he left.
She stared at the door, realizing that the pain in her chest was the price of her actions.
“I’M SORRY,” Lucy said two days later. She and Archer stood in the barn, where he was tossing hay into stalls. “My sister doesn’t know what she’s thinking right now. She’s been through a lot very quickly.”
“You have nothing to apologize for.” He kept his face averted from Lucy. It was just too painful to think about Clove. Never in his life had he experienced the type of pain he was feeling now. It never left him.
“But I do,” Lucy said. “You know, I came here prepared not to like you. I felt that you’d taken advantage of my little sister. But then I met you, and I’ve spent time with your family, and you really are everything a family should be.”
“We have our faults.”
“I know. And so do we. That makes us who we are. But deep inside, this is a good family that’s done its best. And so have Clove and I. The thing is, she’s making decisions based on the past.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes. She felt abandoned when our parents died. In her soul, she fully expects to be abandoned by everyone she loves. I’ve tried very hard to make certain she understood, when I married Robert, that she was part of our family. Of course, Robert’s decision to leave is abandonment. But it’s not her fault. Nor could she fix it.”
“Why are you telling me all this?” He stopped pitching to fix her with a glare.
“Because you need to know. This is not Clove not wanting you. It’s Clove not knowing how to get from one side to the other in a relationship.”
He put the fork against a stall door. “Some things can’t be fixed.”
“Not by people,” Lucy agreed. “Sometimes only by time.”
“I don’t have a lot of time,” Archer said. “Those are my children your sister is growing. My psyche tells me I should be a father to them. I should take care of their mother during her pregnancy. I should see their first steps. These are not difficult concepts.”
“No,” Lucy said with a sigh, “but the two of you started off running before you were ready to crawl. Relationships take time. And healing.”
“How much time are you suggesting she needs?” Archer asked.
“I can’t say that. I don’t know if it’s five minutes or five years.”
“Years!”
Lucy put her palm up. “Wait, Archer. I don’t have the answers. I’m only suggesting that my marital difficulties and separation are hard on her. You’ll probably be happier in the long term if you allow the dust to settle.”
He sat on an old chair in the barn, thinking. “It runs counter to everything I believe.”
“I know. You’re from a family of fixers. Clove tried to be a fixer, and it blew up in her face. Then when she was feeling guilty, you tried to give her a house.”
“That wasn’t the smartest move, but Mason’s pretty obtuse when it comes to family matters. We’d just been through Last’s paternity suit. It all worked out, but the idea that one of the Jefferson children might not be part of the family really tore at him. Hence the overeager offer to put Clove in Mimi’s house.” He pulled at his jaw for a second. “To be honest, it was a bad idea all the way around.”
“Because you wouldn’t have wanted to live next door to your family?”
“No,” Archer
said. “Because Last said it really hurt Mimi’s feelings that Mason wanted to buy her house and land.”
“Oh, my,” Lucy said. “Does she like your brother?”
“There’s some history there. No one’s really sure what the history is, but it’s always there, threatening to bubble up and boil over.”
“I see.”
Archer sighed. “And now Mimi’s accepted the offer, but she told Last she thought Mason was a sap not to propose the deal himself.”
“Ah. Sounds unhappy.”
“And now Mason’s even more miserable. He knew that if Mimi said she was going, then she was, and there was nothing he could do about that. Clove just got caught in his misery.”
“Did Mimi want Mason to talk her out of moving?”
“I don’t know.” Archer stood, tossing more hay into the stalls. “Mason gets so worried about the Family Problem, as he calls it, that he gets tunnel vision. Family first, everybody else last.”
“That sounds like Clove,” Lucy murmured. “I’ve relied on her for that over the years.” She sat straight, looking at him. “You know, I have a part in this, too. I should have realized that Clove would take my marriage problems as hard as she did. I should have realized from her job choice alone that Clove was trying to maintain control over unpredictable circumstances. Always pushing the limits to prove she could rely upon herself. I haven’t been there for her as much as she’s been there for me,” she said sadly.
“Hey, it’s never too late,” Archer said. “You’re sitting here, aren’t you? Bending my ear?”
“Yes,” Lucy said, laughing.
“Well, then. You’re ‘there’ for her. She’s just got to settle down a bit and realize we’re all here for her.”
“It’s going to be the first time in her life she’s had that,” Lucy told him. “I’ve paid more attention to the farm than to Robert or Clove.”
“Well, then,” Archer said, “we’re all just worthless.”
Lucy smiled. “No, we’re not. We just need to get to know each other more.”
“I like you, Lucy from Australia,” Archer said honestly. “Even though I was pretty certain you were going to be a big burr under my saddle.”
