A Small Town Thanksgiving

by Marie Ferrarella

  Even though he’d turned his head away, she heard him.

  Sam felt her mouth curving. She couldn’t help it. Even with his customary gruff manner, Mike made her feel like smiling and when he was friendly like this, he made her willing to do almost anything to keep him this way.

  Because “this way” made her pulse race and her heart rate hit new highs.

  So what? Jogging has the same effect on you and you don’t run the risk of being disappointed in the end. Exasperated with herself, Sam pushed the thought away.

  “What?” Mike asked out of the blue.

  Since she hadn’t said anything, Sam could only stare at him.

  “What-what?” she asked.

  “You were staring at me, so I thought that maybe something had occurred to you—or I had some of the mashed potato on my lips.”

  “What you had on your lips was a smile,” she told him.

  “Yeah, so? What’s your point?” He didn’t understand where this was going.

  “My ‘point’ is that you should do that more often. Smile,” she emphasized in case he wasn’t following what she was saying. “Your whole face seems to soften when you smile.”

  He looked at her somewhat doubtfully. “And that’s a good thing?” he asked.

  “That’s a very good thing,” Sam assured him with feeling.

  She could feel desire stirring within her, longings that she’d thought she’d buried along with her husband. Apparently they didn’t stay buried.

  Mike inclined his head. “I’ll keep that in mind,” he told her. “Listen, let me know when you want to go in. No point in you camping out here—unless you want to,” he interjected in a voice that told her he was highly skeptical of the latter scenario.

  “Same goes for you,” she told him.

  “I don’t understand. What goes for me?”

  “I’m very capable of walking around by myself out here,” Sam pointed out. It wasn’t as though she was taking a walk in a dangerous place and needed his protection. “You don’t have to stay with me. I’m sure you’ve got things you’d rather be doing.”

  He would have thought that himself—except that he didn’t have anything he would have rather been doing than spending this time with her.

  “Offhand, can’t think of any,” he said casually. “Besides, ‘capable’ though you are,” he said and for once his words weren’t shrink-wrapped in sarcasm, “it’s just too easy to get lost around here in the dark. People who were born here have done it. Strangers are a lot more prone to getting lost than you think,” he assured her. “And it’s not just here in Texas, if that’s what you’re thinking. Every year,” he went on to illustrate his point, “hikers all over the country go missing because they took a wrong turn, or lost track of the trail, or stayed out after dark. Things always look a whole lot different in the dark than they do in the light,” he said simply.

  “I’m not hiking, I’m strolling.” And this wasn’t off the beaten path but, for all intents and purposes, in Mike’s own backyard.

  “And that’s supposed to make a difference?” he asked her.

  It did, but she knew he meant well and in light of all the latent feelings he’d reawakened within her, she let a potential difference of opinion drop by agreeing, “I suppose not.”

  Sam paused for a moment, debating between continuing out here a little while longer and turning back to go in. The air was crisp with the definite smell of fall, but it wasn’t cold, just reasonably cool. All in all, it was close to perfect.

  “Your dad’s right,” she told him, “it is beautiful out here.”

  “I guess it is,” he agreed quietly, except that he wasn’t looking up at the sky and the outlying area the way she was. When she glanced in his direction, she saw that he was looking at her.

  Sam felt a very strong blush taking hold of her, beginning at her toes and working its way right up to the roots of her hair at lightning speed. She was grateful for the darkness.

  The smile on his lips really hadn’t abated since they had left the house and now it grew a little more intense. “I’ll be sure to tell him you said so,” he finally said to her. “He’ll undoubtedly take personal credit for making it that way, even though we know he didn’t.” Again, he was looking directly at her.

  His thoughts remained hidden and she had no way of knowing that Mike was fighting the very real urge to take her into his arms and kiss her again, the way he had in the study.

  But there was one very large difference.

  When he’d kissed her in the study, that had been on an impulse that germinated and flowered. What he was feeling now wasn’t so much an impulse as a need.

  A need that shimmered between them for a very long, tempting moment—until he cleared his throat and said, “It’s getting kind of windy out here. That sweater you have on—” he nodded toward the one his father had handed her as he all but pushed her out the back door “—isn’t going to do much to protect you if it gets any colder than it is now.”

  She tugged it a little more tightly around her shoulders. “Is that your subtle way of getting me to go in?”

  The shrug was careless. “Don’t know about subtle, but the going in part sounds about right.”

  Sam rotated her shoulders a little, fighting off a kink that threatened to set in, bringing an uncomfortable ache with it.

  “Maybe you’re right.”

  Mike’s lips curved a little more as he said, “I usually am.”

  Definitely no failure for his ego to thrive, Sam thought, but the observation was laced with humor rather than annoyance. “At the risk of possibly making you utterly impossible to live with, I think I’ll go in now.”

  “Wise choice,” he told her, lightly pressing his fingertips to the small of her back as he ushered her in the right direction. “And, contrary to what some of my brothers might say, I’ve never been impossible to live with.”

  She caught the narrow differentiation. “Your brothers, not your sister?”

  “Alma always thought I could do no wrong,” he told her with a straight face that she’d decided could only be arrived at with painstaking practice.

  “And if I asked, would she verify what you just said?”

  “Sure,” he told her. “But maybe you’d better not. Why bother her with trivial matters? Especially at this time of her life, with the pregnancy and all?”

  This time she was the one with the grin and it filtered up into her eyes, which he noted seemed to light up.

  “I didn’t think so.”

  They were back at the door. The lights had been dimmed and she assumed that Miguel had either turned in or was in the family room, dozing before the big screen TV that his children had bought him for his last birthday. Ray, she guessed, had probably gone to town to see which girl he’d spend the next few hours with.

  Which meant that for now, they were technically alone.

  Temptation undulated through her, completely surprising Sam. She wasn’t the type to think this way, or feel this way. And yet, here she was, thinking and feeling just this way.

  Make a clean break and get out while you can, a voice in her head urged. But still she remained just where she was, at the back entrance.

  Hesitating.

  She turned toward Mike and murmured, “Thanks for keeping me company.”

  “Don’t mention it. I did it for selfish reasons.”

  “Oh?” Was he actually going to say he had feelings for her? Sam highly doubted it. She waited to hear what he was going to come up with.

  “Yeah. I didn’t want to spend my time being part of the search party looking for you in the morning.”

  He was quick, she’d grant him that, Sam thought. “Looks like you were spared,” she said. Pulling open the door, she turned toward him for a moment, said, “Thanks ag
ain,” and brushed a very quick kiss against his cheek before swiftly moving out of his reach and out of the back area.

  Two minutes later, her heart pounding, she’d made it up the stairs and to her bedroom.

  Her lips tingled from the feel and taste of his skin. It seemed to her that they tingled for a long time.

  * * *

  SLEEP STUBBORNLY ELUDED her despite the fact that she had gone to bed shortly after getting back from her walk. After all but rumpling the sheets with her tossing and turning, Sam decided to give up trying to fall asleep for a while.

  She felt tired, but at the same time, as if an old-fashioned clock had been wound up to its limit, its coil so tight that it threatened to spring right out of its housing and go shooting across a long space.

  This was all Mike’s fault.

  And a little bit hers, she finally admitted.

  Didn’t matter whose fault it was. She needed to make the best of the situation and utilize her time well.

  Thinking that, she reached for another one of the diaries, the one she’d brought into her room and left on her nightstand. It was one of the books she hadn’t gotten a chance to peruse at all yet.

  No time like the present.

  Reading had put her to sleep once tonight, maybe it could do that again. This time, though, there was no danger of her falling asleep on top of it.

  Propping up the pillow behind her, she sat up in the bed and began reading from the beginning of the journal.

  My heart aches and I do not know how I am to go on any longer. Robert was the light of my life and now that light has been extinguished. I wanted to marry him when I was old enough. I think he had wanted it, too. But now it will never be possible. How can I continue when my heart has no reason to go on beating?

  And yet, there is something inside of me that will not let me give up, will not let me just die quietly. Something that will not allow those terrible killers of my beloved Robert to win. I will survive despite what they will do to me and with me. I will survive so that Robert will not be forgotten. His will be the name on my lips when I am rescued. And I will be rescued.

  THE WORD WILL was underlined at least five times. So much so that the page just beneath the word was actually slightly torn from the sheer pressure of the underlining.

  Sam sighed. As from the very beginning, she found herself silently rooting for Marguerite to triumph over her captors.

  She read a little more and doing so had the desired effect. She was getting sleepy.

  Finally.

  As her eyelids began to feel heavier and heavier, Sam laid the volume down beside her bed. No doubt about it, this woman who’d lived all those years ago had been strong and exceedingly admirable. Miguel would be proud to be related to her, proud to have her be a part of his family tree.

  This was going to be a really good story to pass on to his grandchildren. She wouldn’t rest until she’d turned all these diaries into the very best memoir that she could. In addition, she decided, the originals should be carefully preserved and placed in a vault so that these same grandchildren and future grandchildren would be able to access them and read them for themselves.

  This was a really wonderful project and she was very glad that she could be a part of it.

  It seemed that the moment her eyes were closed and her mind released its grip on her thoughts, she began to dream. And in her dream, she was reliving everything that she had just read in the diary.

  She literally felt the ache that Marguerite felt over losing Robert.

  Except that the face of Robert did not belong to the man who had lived so long ago and had been so vividly described in another one of Marguerite’s journals. Neither did that face belong to Danny, the way she would have thought it logically would, since he had been her love the way Marguerite had thought of Robert.

  When she felt the ache of loss, the face of the man she was remembering belonged to Mike.

  Sam woke up abruptly in a cold sweat just as dawn peeled away the darkness outside her window.

  Chapter Twelve

  Sam was hesitant about venturing downstairs for breakfast. So much so that she deliberately took her time in getting dressed and ready, knowing that mornings on the ranch began early and if she was slow enough, the men would finish their breakfast and leave before she came to the table.

  She was counting on that.

  Ordinarily, she looked forward to the interaction she both witnessed and took part in. She truly enjoyed the conversation—as well as the grunting—that went on around her. It made her feel, for a little while, that she was included. That the life she had always longed for in her daydreams, being in a family, had suddenly materialized—even though she was well aware that it hadn’t, that once this project she was working on was completed, she would return to her solitary existence and these people she’d come to like so much would go on with theirs.

  Eventually—most likely sooner than later—her presence here would be forgotten.

  But this morning was different from the other mornings. This morning she was still very vividly aware of the sexual reaction she’d had to Mike in her dreams. Unable to keep her guard up while asleep, her mind was free to extrapolate on the feelings she was attempting to smother. Feelings that had been brought to the foreground when he’d kissed her in the study.

  Feelings that were even now growing.

  Feelings for Mike.

  She was afraid he’d see that in her eyes, in her very expression. She wasn’t much of an actress and it was better not to risk exposure just for the momentary thrill of experiencing another family breakfast.

  And yet, like the proverbial moth that couldn’t resist the seductive allure of the flame, Sam found herself making her way downstairs, drawn to the voices coming from the dining room.

  Miguel was not the first to see her. Mike was. His father must have noted the direction his oldest was looking and saw that their houseguest was finally entering the room.

  Picking up his napkin from his lap, Miguel half rose in his seat and was the first to greet her.

  As always, his smile was warm, welcoming. And—was that her imagination?—a little wider this morning.

  “Good morning, Samantha,” he called out in his booming voice. “I hope you slept well.”

  As long as she could remain vague, she could be honest, Sam decided. “Off and on, actually.”

  Miguel looked at her for a moment before going on to express his concern. “Is there anything I can do?” But the way he asked gave her the impression that he didn’t believe that there was.

  Or that he was the reason for her sleeplessness.

  She was being paranoid, Sam thought, upbraiding herself.

  In response to Miguel’s polite question, Sam shook her head. “Maybe you were right,” she allowed, grasping at the first excuse she could think of. “Maybe I’ve been working on the project too hard.”

  “I am glad to hear you say that,” Miguel told her.

  She raised her eyes to his, wondering if perhaps they’d hit a language problem. But before she could try to correct him, the next thing he said explained his feelings more clearly.

  “I was going to suggest that you accompany Miguel into town today, perhaps stop by at Miss Joan’s. She is asking about you and I thought, as you writers always say, a picture is worth a thousand words, so how much more is the actually living, breathing person worth?”

  “You planning on selling Sam, Dad?” Ray asked wryly, glancing in his direction.

  “Of course not,” Miguel answered indignantly, looking appalled at the very suggestion. Then he directed his soft brown eyes toward his guest. “See what I have to put up with? They like to play their little word games and corner me whenever they can because they think they are so much more clever than an old man.” His smile grew and his
eyes crinkled as he looked at her. “You are a breath of fresh air compared to these two.”

  “If I’m such a breath of fresh air, why are you sending me off to town?” she asked, amused despite herself.

  “I am sending you to town because you have been stuck in that study with the dust of the past far too long. A good balance between work and enjoying yourself is necessary for a healthy mind,” he told her, sounding as if he wholeheartedly believed this philosophy.

  “And just how is making her go to town with Mike going to keep her mind healthy?” Ray asked as he took a second helping of everything—sausages, eggs, pancakes—onto his plate. “If you ask me, it’ll do just the opposite.”

  “But I was not asking you, was I?” Miguel pointed out.

  “Maybe you and I should go into town, Miguel,” Sam suggested.

  She knew she’d feel a lot more at ease if it was the older man she was traveling with, not his son. Just looking at Mike this morning had her thoughts scattering like so many dandelions caught up in a strong spring breeze.

  “Ah, if only I could,” Miguel lamented with a deep, heartfelt sigh. “But I’m afraid that I am going to be very busy.”

  In between bites, Ray fixed his father with a quizzical look. “Doing what?”

  “Busy things,” Miguel informed his youngest tersely, clearly not prepared to elaborate at this moment just what that involved.

  “That’s why he asked me to go to town in the first place,” Mike told her, finally speaking up.

  He knew his father was up to something and knew, too, that begging off, making things difficult, or bedeviling his father with questions as to why things had to go this particular route was not the way to go. When his father got a notion into his head, nothing short of a burning bush on the front porch would dissuade the man from pursuing that notion.

  “If you’d like to come along,” Mike continued telling her, “I’ll be leaving in about half an hour.”

  Okay, she thought, this was where she begged off, saying that she was making a breakthrough in the journals, or that she was coming down with something and didn’t want to risk giving this “something” to him or his family. This was the exact moment for her to say, “Thanks but no thanks,” perhaps even adding “Maybe next time” so that she didn’t sound rude.