The Magnificent Seven

by Cheryl St. John

  The sound of the bunkhouse door echoed from the monitor. He was barefoot, but she could hear the creak of floorboards and then a rustle.

  "Miss me?"

  The whisper echoed from the monitor, a trifle distorted, but plainly Mitch's voice. She smiled.

  She heard him use the bathroom and once again the sound of the door. A minute later he appeared in the hallway.

  "Yes," she replied to his earlier whispered question.

  He approached the bed and stretched out full- length beside her. "They were sound asleep."

  She nodded.

  He faced her and feathered touches along her arm. Once again, Heather snuggled into comfortable closeness, cherishing each minute so unique and different from her experience.

  "I get the impression that it wasn't like this with your husband," he said, as though he'd been reading her mind. Maybe he didn't have to read her mind. Maybe her ignorance was embarrassingly obvious.

  The comment caught her off guard. "Ex-husband." She really didn't want to expound. There was nothing to say, really. Nothing.

  "Ex-husband," he agreed. "So what was it like?"

  She flattened a palm over his heart. "Not like this."

  "No?"

  "No." Mitch was so open and honest, and she hated the fear she experienced at the thought of opening up to him. She mentally chastised herself. She had an incredible man in her bed, a man willing to talk and listen, besides share what they'd just shared.

  He was interested, genuinely interested, and the dangerous knowledge was intoxicating. She was drunk on Mitch.

  She rolled onto her back, threw an arm above her head, and studied the ceiling with a sigh. "I thought I'd experienced it. I thought because I'd had sex with the man once or twice a week for nearly ten years that I knew what it was about. I was wrong."

  "This is different?"

  He was curious, not fishing for compliments. She knew him well enough to know that. So for the first time she shared something personal—besides her body—with him. "What you and I share isn't about control. It's not about duty."

  He didn't say anything, and she turned to read confusion in his eyes.

  "There's a—a freedom I've never known."

  "Freedom from what?"

  She couldn't even begin to tell him. "Bondage."

  "You mean marriage."

  "From worrying that I'll do something wrong. From never just being myself for fear it's not good enough. From showing my pay stub as proof that I'm an equal partner."

  He dragged the sheet to her waist and traced a lazy circle around her nipple with his fingertip. "What about the good times? What about in the beginning?"

  "In the beginning I was simply grateful to get away from here."

  "What did you want to get away from?"

  She'd said too much already. Even in privacy, she didn't examine the loneliness and neglect of her childhood; she wasn't about to open a door to a subject she had closed off. "What about you?" she asked, changing the direction. "You and your wife."

  He flattened his palm against her chest as though it took all his concentration to remember. "It was good."

  "Real good?" She couldn't imagine anything better than how it had been between the two of them. And for some reason it bothered her to think of this man with the woman he'd loved.

  "We were in love," he stated, and it probably did explain a lot. She wouldn't know. She had started out thinking she loved Craig. She had tried.

  "You were happy?"

  "Yes."

  "I'm sorry. Sorry you lost her, I mean."

  "You know what's hard?" he asked.

  "Tell me."

  "When people avoid talking about Jamie, or saying her name.Like she never happened. Like they can't say it around me or I'll go to pieces or something," He told her how his life had gone from near perfect to tragic in the space of a year. How he stayed strong for Jamie and the girls, but how he'd wanted to burst apart and rage at the unfairness.

  "Some days I didn't think Í could go on," he said, his lips against her skin. "But I did. And four years have passed."

  "And now?"

  He inhaled. "Now I've faced the fact that I have gone on, and that I will go on. Now I can remember the good things, rather than the pain and the loss that was all there was at first. She would want me to be happy."

  Happy with a woman who welcomed him into her bed, but not into her heart? He'd had the real thing once. Heather envied him for it. She envied his dead wife. "Think she'd approve of a fling with a divorcée?"

  He grew still beside her. Her heart raced in the strained silence. She'd wounded him in her dogmatic determination to make sure he didn't romanticize this thing into anything more than it was.

  "You make it sound cheap," he said at last.

  "I didn't mean it like that. I'm sorry."

  He sat up then, facing away from her on the edge of the bed. "I'll get over it."

  She rested a hand on his shoulder. "Mitch, I'm sorry."

  "Okay." He turned and his gaze touched her soul. "I'd better go get some sleep. Good night."

  Heather's mind crowded with desperate ravings. He didn't deserve to be hurt. She didn't want him to leave. She needed him to hold her until this frantic need passed, until she could absorb the hurtful words back inside her where they belonged.

  But there was no choice. She'd already laid out the dictates of their relationship. They'd gone too far tonight, shared too much, been too intimate. She wanted him. She was afraid of him.

  She was afraid of herself.

  Fourteen

  The air between them was tense the following day, and Heather knew it was her fault. She'd drawn a line, more clearly arid forcefully than before. Within the frame of Mitch's love and respect for his wife, she'd made what the two of them had shared seem tawdry. Doing so had hurt him. Doing so had hurt her. But she wouldn't have taken it back.

  When she called him for lunch, he sat on the back porch with the girls, and she left them to their time alone.

  That night he left and took the girls to Billingsfot- pizza, and Heather didn't see them when they returned.

  On Friday afternoon Heather received a call from her boss. Their important project couldn't wait any longer. After six weeks of delay, they were going to move forward without her. They'd hired a consultant to finish the work.

  She moved through the afternoon in a fog of confusion. For so long her work had defined her; now being unneeded changed how she saw herself She'd given years to the firm, but it went on operating without her. Those years seemed insignificant. Her work seemed insignificant.

  That, combined with the strain between her and Mitch, caused her attitude and confidence to waver.

  She took all the kids except Jessica for a walk in the foothills and returned to find her daughter sitting on the porch steps.

  "We got a call," Jess told her.

  Immediately Heather thought of her boss in San Francisco.

  "It was Mitch's grampa. He wants you to call him. I wrote the number down."

  "Thanks, honey."

  Heather dialed the number Jess had taken and waited while the woman who answered the phone went to get Garrett.

  "Heather," he said. "Thanks for getting back to me. We haven't met yet. I'm Mitch's grandfather, Garrett Kincaid."

  "I'm glad to hear from you," she said kindly.

  "I'm having a little get-together at my ranch tomorrow and I'm hoping this isn't too late of a notice to invite you to come."

  "Well, I—"

  "Do you already have plans?"

  "No, but—"

  "Well, then, there's no reason why you can't join us for the afternoon."

  "I have the children," she said.

  "There'll be other kids here. I'm planning something special for them, in fact. Be here at two."

  "Well, all right. Thank you."

  "Great. See you then."

  She hung up the phone and puzzled over the odd invitation, wondering if Mitch had put him up to it
. But why would he if he was avoiding her, which seemed to be the case the past two days.

  "Come in for supper?" she asked Mitch after his workers had gone for the day. He was making a pile of old boards.

  "I need to shower," was his reply.

  "We'll wait for you."

  He straightened and met her eyes finally. "All right."

  After placing his power tools in his lockbox, he headed for the bunkhouse.

  Heather called the children to wash and help her set the table. Patrick climbed up and settled on a chair. "I'm gonna sit by Mitch."

  "That's my place," Taylor objected.

  "I'm here first."

  "He's my dad."

  Heather saw the hurt in Patrick's eyes the moment the words left Taylor's lips.

  "I got a dad," Patrick said defensively.

  "Where is he?" Ashley's eyebrows rose inquisitively. "Is he in heaven like our mommy?"

  "He's in Los Angeles," Jessica replied matter-of- factly. "He doesn't live with us."

  "Why not?"

  "'Cause him and my mom got a divorce," Jessica said.

  Ashley accepted that explanation. "Oh."

  Heather placed dishes of vegetables on the table. "Taylor, would you like to sit by me, so Patrick can have a turn beside your dad?"

  "I wanna sit by you," Ashley piped up immediately.

  "That's nice, honey. Patrick, you move to the chair on the other side of Mitch's, okay?"

  "Okay."

  The seating was finally arranged by the time Mitch arrived, scrubbed and wet-haired. Heather passed food, served for the kids, and got warm bread from the oven.

  "Garrett invited us to his ranch tomorrow." She stood just behind him and spoke softly so only he could hear.

  "For the barbecue? That's nice."

  "Would you rather we didn't go?" The mealtime chatter covered her words.

  He turned to glance at her. "Why would I not want you to go?"

  Indeed. Why not? He was getting pretty good at ignoring her. "I just wondered."

  She took her seat at the other end of the table.

  "I don't want to eat this," Taylor said, poking her slice of roast with her fork.

  Mitch deftly reached over to spear it from her plate, sliced the tender meat and ate it without a word of discussion on the subject. The child sat forward and ate her potatoes, gravy, and vegetables with apparent enjoyment.

  Mitch cracked a smile and glanced at Heather.

  They shared a moment of silent gratitude and relief over the food problem that had been resolved since they'd met.

  "Wanna catch some frogs after supper, Mitch?" Patrick asked.

  "You know, sport, I was thinking I was going to take the girls and go visit my brother, Cade. Thanks for asking me, though. We' ll do it another day. All right?"

  Patrick nodded, and Heather sensed his disappointment. Mitch must have, too. He leaned over and gave Heather's son a hug. "I promise."

  Patrick grinned then.

  It was her he was avoiding, not Patrick, Heather realized with a measure of guilt. He'd always seemed to have time for the kids, hers as well as his own, whether it was to tie a shoe or to read a bedtime story or to catch frogs.

  Getting involved on a physical level had impaired their relationship, and now everyone had to suffer. She'd known it would happen, but she'd been greedy. Selfish. Now they all had to pay.

  Without helping clear the table, Mitch excused them and ushered the girls to the bunkhouse. Heather was finishing the dishes when she heard his truck start and pull away.

  She busied herself with going through file cabinets in her father's study that evening. She'd become lax and forgotten her purpose here. There was still a lot to be done before she could sell the ranch and empty the house.

  She'd been procrastinating.

  Sitting at her father's desk, sorting papers and packing a box, she faced the truth.

  Being forced to stay and renovate the house had been the excuse she needed, and she'd hidden behind it for weeks now. Finding her employer could get along just fine without her was not as devastating as it should have been—if she'd truly derived all her self-worth from her work.

  Perhaps that approval wasn't all that important anymore. Perhaps she'd finally slowed down enough to see what it was she really needed—and wanted. And perhaps that reality was frightening her.

  She'd had time to get to know her children better and to develop a stronger relationship with each of them. She'd raised some pretty fine kids, and that was an incomparable accomplishment.

  She'd enjoyed every day here with them.

  She'd begun to think that proving her worth wasn't impressing anybody anymore. But she was so good at fooling herself that she'd fooled everyone else, including Mitch.

  Heather rubbed her fingers across the scarred desktop, studied the black-and-white photograph of her mother, a woman she didn't remember, and toyed with a brass letter opener.

  She didn't see much of herself in the woman's face. The woman whose death had so destroyed her father that he'd shut out the world. Heather had forgiven him, years ago in counseling. But that hadn't erased the sadness or the nagging thoughts of how things might have been different.

  She'd never proved her worth to her father. Pete Bolton had never taken note of her or her accomplishments, small or large. Craig Johnson had only seen the value in her earning power, not in her as a person.

  She was okay, she told herself. Heather Bolton had been an okay child, someone to be proud of. Heather Johnson was a good mother and a worthwhile person. She had a lot of good qualities, and could probably list them if a person asked her to.

  She still had a lot of healing and growing to do.

  But she would do it.

  "What are we doing today, Mom?" Jess asked. They'd cleared away breakfast, and Heather was standing at the door, sipping a cup of tea.

  She turned to her daughter, who sat at the table, a book open in front of her, and a realization came to her: she hadn't planned the morning. She chuckled to herself. "We don't have to be at Mitch's grandfather's until two. What do you want to do until we have to get ready?"

  Jessica's eyebrows rose. "Really? Cool! I was just looking at this book of fun things for kids to do."

  Heather came to peer over her shoulder. "What is that, clay?"

  Jessica ran her finger down the columns of instructions until she came to the ingredient list. "It's just cornstarch and stuff. You make it up into modeling clay and shape it and bake it. See?"

  Heather read over the list of simple ingredients. "We can try that. The boys will love it."

  "All right! This is gonna be fun!"

  "And there's nothing in it that will hurt Andrew if he eats it," she said with a smile.

  "Don't you mean 'when' he eats it?" Jess asked.

  They laughed and Heather called the boys.

  Andrew did eat some of the pasty clay, but he spit it out and asked for a drink.

  "Must not be as tasty as crayons," Heather said to Jessica, and they shared another laugh, one of many that morning. Before she knew it, she glanced at the clock and realized she hadn't thought about their lunch yet.

  The freedom of allowing the day to come to them, without planning and plotting, was a new and liberating experience, one she'd fallen into quite easily— thanks to Mitch's help.

  He talked as though she'd been the one to make all the positive changes—helping with the twins and their eating dilemma. But he'd brought about some changes in her, as well, by making her look at the benefits of being flexible.

  "Look at my horse, Mama," Patrick said. "Can we bake 'im now?"

  Footsteps hit the back porch and the kitchen door flew open, startling all of them. Taylor stood inside the doorway, her blue eyes wide with her unshed tears.

  "Heather! Heather! Ashley's cryin' and she won't stop!"

  They hadn't seen the girls that morning, as Mitch hadn't joined the crew who had shown up to scrape and paint the west side of the house. It was S
aturday, and she'd figured he was spending some time with his daughters.

  "Jess, watch the boys," Heather said calmly, and let Taylor take her hand and lead her toward the bunk- house. The child urged her into a run. "What's wrong, honey? Is your sister hurt?"

  "You gotta come, is all. You gotta help or she won't never stop cryin'."

  Ashley's cries were audible before they reached the porch and Heather experienced a moment of panic. What on earth had happened?

  Fifteen

  Taylor pulled Heather up the steps and yanked open the screen door.

  Heather held back, torn between not wanting to intrude on a family crisis and wanting to help if she could. She called out, "Mitch? Ashley?"

  Mitch stood at the foot of a bunk where Ashley lay facedown on her pillow, great wailing sobs shaking her small body.

  "Ashley Nicole Fielding, you stop that racket right this minute," Mitch said forcefully. "Now you've got your hair a wilder mess than ever."

  "I told ya," Taylor said, staring imploringly up at Heather.

  Heather took a few steps closer. "Is there anything I can do?"

  "Heather!" Ashley practically flung herself into Heather's arms. "It gots to be a fresh braid, and he said it was f-fine the way h-he did it. But it wasn't! I told 'im y-you could do it right."

  "I redid it three times," Mitch said helplessly. "She kept saying she wanted a fresh braid, and I can't get it any fresher than that."

  One side of Ashley's blond hair stuck out as a result of her conniption fit on the bed, but the back was fashioned into a passable braided tail. "It looks pretty good to me," Heather told the near-hysterical girl. She wrapped an arm around her and patted her back. "It's not bad at all, sweetie."

  "But it's not a fresh braid, Heather. I want it to be special to go to the party at my grandpa's."

  "A fresh— Oh my goodness! You mean a French braid!"

  Ashley nodded vigorously. "Tell 'im you can do it right."

  Heather turned and studied Mitch's confused face with sympathy. "She wants a French braid. Like I fixed their hair the other morning."