Megan smiled. “Now do you really think Hank would do that to the pair of you?”
They looked innocently at Hank and he burst out laughing. “Go on, the pair of you. Tell Megan what you want.” While they walked over to the counter and ordered, Hank turned off the open sign and put the closed sign on the door and made a big production of locking it.
Room was made for the twins at the table and after hellos were given and they shrugged out of their wet jackets and hats and Hank had poured them coffee Jason said, “Can you believe Christmas is in two weeks? Think we'll have a white one this year?” “My kids are hoping,” said Monty. “Although I don't think the youngest really understands what all the fuss is about.”
Hugh chuckled. “Just wait next year—he'll be three then, won't he?” At Monty's nod, he went on, “My youngest grandkid is three and believe me, he knows exactly what it's all about.”
Emerald eyes dancing, Jason flashed a glance at Jeb. “Well, I know someone who's going to get switches and a sack of coals for Christmas this year—if my cousin Roxy has anything to say about it.”
Morgan laughed, almost choking on his coffee. Looking at Jeb, he asked, “Man, what did you say to her? Sam and Ross are home for the holidays and we'd stopped by to see them. Just as we were getting ready to leave, Roxy came tearing in the back door, spitting fire. Your name was mentioned frequently, along with some language that I won't repeat before such tender ears.”
A burst of laughter greeted that statement.
“That so?” Jeb murmured, smiling. “Can't imagine why she'd be upset with me. Everyone knows that I am always the epitome of gentlemanly behavior.”
Mingo and Danny hooted insultingly, the twins grinned, Hank and the others just laughed out loud.
“You should have seen her when she left here,” Hank said, his expression amused. “She was sure mad then—thought she'd dump her soup over his head. Left him to pay her bill.”
“So what'd you do?” demanded Morgan. “Pat her on the butt? Make an obscene offer? I'm telling you, Jeb, she was pissed!”
Jeb liked the Courtland twins—it was hard not to—they were both charming and likable. He just wished they'd keep their damn mouths shut about Roxanne. Related to the Ballingers on their father's side—Helen Ballinger was his older sister—they came from old valley stock. Their grandfather had been a big cattleman and the family still owned a nice chunk of land in the area. Their father, Steve, had left the valley as a young man to make his fortune in Hollywood, even married a gorgeous starlet. After acting awhile, mostly small parts, he'd eventually become a very successful producer. The twins had grown up in Hollywood, but they'd spent summers and as many school vacations as they could with their grandparents in the valley. As adults they'd spurned the glamorous life of their parents and had returned to the valley. Morgan opened a real estate office, sold a little insurance, and ran a small herd of cattle on some of the family's land. Jason followed a more artistic bent and was noted worldwide for his exquisitely handmade furniture. There was currently a two-year waiting list of eager clients who just had to have a Courtland table or armoire. Thirty-six years old, unmarried, and considered by many women to be as handsome as any two devils, next to Jeb and Mingo, they were the most highly sought-after bachelors in the valley.
“You can tell us,” Jason urged, his lips twitching with laughter. “You can trust us—you know that.”
Jeb cast him a dry look. “But why would I want to?”
“Because we'll tease you unmercifully and hound you to death until you do?” quipped Morgan.
Jeb smiled, asking gently, “Now do you really think the pair of you could do that?”
They eyed him a long moment. Then grinned, Jason admitting, “Probably not, but it sounded good.”
Hank rose from the table. “Well, it's been fun, folks, but I better go help Megan cook or I'll be in the doghouse for sure.”
Hank's departure gave Jeb the excuse he needed. “Think I'll head on home. See you guys later.”
A couple of the other men followed Jeb's lead. Seated in his truck, watching the others disappear into the rainy afternoon, Jeb considered driving to the Ballinger mansion and trying to head off Roxanne from telling Ilka about his flapping tongue. He shook his head, still unable to believe he'd been so indiscreet. Groveling was his only option, but he didn't think it would get him out of the doghouse. Apologizing to Ilka might help, but he doubted it. The more he thought about it, the less the idea appealed. Roxanne was furious with him and he suspected that Ilka soon would be. Nope. He'd leave it alone and be wise … for once.
By dinnertime that night, Roxanne was still stewing. The worst of her temper had abated though, and upon reflection, she'd decided that there was nothing to be gained by telling Ilka of Jeb's indiscretion. Nobody liked a tattletale. It killed her to keep her mouth shut, but she'd never been a troublemaker and telling Ilka that her best friend had diarrhea of the mouth would certainly cause trouble. Not only between Ilka and Jeb, but probably Ilka wouldn't be happy that Roxanne was privy to things that were meant to be private.
The worst of it was that Jeb's words had given Roxanne food for thought. OK, maybe she had been pushing Ilka a little too hard. Maybe she'd been a little too enthusiastic about wrenching Ilka out of her cozy, boring life. She made a face as she descended the stairs for dinner. Of course, that was just her opinion. Her bottom lip drooped. She'd only been trying to help. She wanted Ilka to be happy. She sighed. Being a big sister, she decided, wasn't all that it was cracked up to be.
Roxanne took some teasing of her own that evening at the dinner table. Since everyone had seen the fury in her eyes when she had come home and heard some of the curses she'd called down on Jeb's head, they were all curious.
“I can't stand it a moment longer … what did Jeb do to put you in such a snit?” asked Ross, seated across the table from her. After Sam, the baby of the family, he was the next youngest. With his height, dark hair, and amber-gold eyes, he was clearly a Ballinger. As with all of her younger siblings, Roxanne didn't know him very well, but what she had learned about him during visits at home and brief telephone conversations, she liked.
Toying with her baked potato, she mumbled, “Private stuff. Not for the ears of children.”
Sam and Ross exchanged laughing glances. “Come on, Roxy,” Sam coaxed, her big golden-brown eyes dancing, “we're all grown-up now. You can't get away with that children designation anymore. What did Jeb do?”
“You're always going to be children to me,” said Mark, cutting his broiled swordfish with a fork.
All four of his children groaned. “Don't we know it,” said Roxanne. “If it was up to you, we'd all still be living at home and you'd be driving us everywhere we wanted to go.”
Mark chuckled. “Unfortunately, that's probably true.”
“Yeah,” added Ross, “Mom was much better about cutting the apron strings than you were.” He looked at Sam. “Remember when I moved to Santa Rosa to attend college? You'd have thought there was a death in the family.”
“And when I announced that I was getting mar ried,” Sam said, “I thought you were going to hire the CIA to look into Mike's background.”
“And I should have,” growled her father. “Denning was no good.”
Sam laughed, although there was a shadow at the back of her eyes. “Oops. Wrong example. My ex-husband is definitely a sleazebag, but"—and she pointed her fmger at her father—“even if he'd been perfect, you'd still have been unhappy about my leaving home.”
Mark looked pained. Glancing at Helen who sat at the other end of the table, he said, “I could use a little help here. They're ganging up on me.”
Helen shook her head. “Sorry, dear. I side with the children.” She flashed him a loving smile. “You really did take their leaving home hard. You wanted to wrap them in cotton wool and keep them safe from harm.”
“Well, it's hard to have done just that for eighteen or twenty years and then all of the sudden, they're out there on their
own, and you can't protect them anymore,” he said gruffly.
“It's called growing up, Dad,” Roxanne said softly, her eyes tender.
He grimaced. “I know.” He glanced around the table. “And you've all done a fine job of it. I'm proud of you.” A sly look crossed his face. “Of course, a few more of you could follow in your brother's footsteps and get married. A grandchild or two would be nice before I drop dead.”
Roxanne sent a worried look at Ilka, who sat beside her. Would their father's careless words hurt Ilka? Bring tragic memories to the surface? They didn't seem to. Ilka joined in the laugh that followed and Roxanne relaxed. Maybe she was getting too protective of lika.
Dinner was over and Roxanne had just shut her suitcase when Ilka tapped on her bedroom door and peeked inside. Seeing Roxanne's two suitcases all packed, she muttered, “You're really going to move out there, aren't you?”
“That's the plan,” Roxanne said cheerfully. “Can't wait. Tonight I sleep under my own roof, if I have to sleep on the floor.”
Sam stuck her head around the door. She was almost an exact replica of Roxanne—same wild black mane of hair, same glittering eyes, and the same stubborn chin. There were differences, Sam was an inch shorter, her cheekbones were not quite as sculpted as Roxanne's, her nose shorter and her figure a bit more curvy, but they had been mistaken for each other more than once. Even though Sam was seven years younger, they still bore a striking resemblance to each other.
“I don't suppose,” Sam asked hopefully, “that you'd like some company?”
Ilka's face lit up. “What a great idea! We can help you celebrate. Like a slumber party. Just the three of us. Ballinger girls' night out.”
Roxanne's heart sank. She couldn't very well tell the pair of them that she could hardly wait to get away from them, not that she didn't love them or enjoy them, it was just that she needed the privacy and solace of her own space. All day she'd been looking forward to having her house all to herself. Gleefully anticipating. Looking forward to being alone, able to consider just her own wants and not worry about anybody else. Did she want her sisters' company? Absolutely not.
She glanced from one face to the other. There was a touching eagerness on both faces that stabbed her heart. Oh, what the hell. “Sure,” she said, smiling. “Grab what you need and let's go.”
Chapter
9
As she looked back on that first night in her new home, Roxanne was glad that she'd given in to her heart's prompting and invited Sam and Ilka to share that time with her. They had a ball. They drank wine and munched on pretzels, crackers, and cheese pilfered from home. Camped out on Roxanne's mattress on the floor of the bedroom, they laughed and giggled and told “do you remember” stories until the wee hours of the morning. Half tipsy, standing at the French doors in the great room, they looked out and oohed and aahed at the sight of the glittering lights of the valley floating below them and later ran through the house shrieking with laughter for no reason at all. It was, Roxanne decided, a bonding experience. A soft smile curved her mouth. A “do you remember” story for the future.
Christmas came and went. Roxanne enjoyed spending the holidays with her family. It was the first time she'd done so in probably a decade and so it took on special importance. She even relented and came down from “Roxy's Roost” as Ilka and Sam had christened her house and stayed the night on Christmas Eve at the family home. They exchanged small gifts from each other that night—long ago a twenty-five-dollar limit having been set. Christmas Day had always been reserved for the expensive gifts from Santa. Roxanne had bought the women in her family earrings made from delicately twisted gold wire by a friend of hers in New York, the men receiving handmade bolo ties fashioned out of silver and braided horsehair. She might have fudged on the cost, but not too much. She was touched that as a group they had all gotten together and purchased her an industrial-sized bright red wheelbarrow and an assortment of tools—shovels, rakes, and a couple of different pairs of pruners. She guessed that they had gone way over the limit, but she wasn't going to ruin the moment by talking about such a sordid thing as money. A lump filled her throat and looking at their grinning faces, she said, “I take it you all plan on me working in the yard … a lot.” She smiled mistily. “Thank you. You couldn't have given me anything I'd have liked better.”
Christmas Day Sloan and Shelly drove in from their place in the mountains to join in the festivities and for the first time in ages, except for his indefatigable eighty-seven-year-old mother, currently tearing through … er, touring Europe, Mark had his entire family safe under his own roof. He beamed.
Accepting Shelly into his family had been difficult for Mark; she was, after all, one of those Grangers. But once Sloan had taken him aside and informed him that his marriage to Shelly was the only way he'd ever get a grandchild from his eldest son and that if he so much as looked cross-eyed at Shelly, it'd be the last time his son set foot in his house, reluctantly he set aside his prejudices. It helped that his son was madly in love with his new wife and that Shelly obviously felt the same way about Sloan. That Shelly had a warmth and charm all her own helped alleviate some of Mark's prejudices against the Granger family—and as Sloan had reminded him, Shelly was a Granger no longer, she was now a Ballinger. There was a glow about the pair of them that only someone a lot more hard-hearted than Mark would have wanted to destroy. As long as Sloan was happy his father would put up with anything—even a Granger daughter-in-law.
As the year drew to an end, except for a few minor things, Roxanne's house was completed. She had unpacked some of the personal belongings she'd had shipped from New York and now had some furniture and a kitchen that worked and had pretty much settled in. She loved it. The quiet. The spaciousness. The privacy.
Sipping coffee this rainy morning in late December, she stared out of her front kitchen window, picturing how the yard would look in a few months. The stiff green foliage of the bulbs she had planted, was beginning to push up through the damp earth and she could hardly wait for the first bright yellow daffodil to bloom. And for construction on the barn to begin. And the new well house and new garage. All the improvements she had planned in her head. Impatience gripped her. Oh, for spring.
She was happy. Almost contented. She wished, not for the first time, that Roman hadn't returned to New Orleans. To everyone's surprise, he'd flown home to Louisiana in early October, promising to return for a visit after the first of the year. Business, he explained, could only be left on automatic pilot for so long and he'd been in Oak Valley for almost five months. Any decisions that had needed to be made had been done via phone and fax, but as he'd said, it was time for him to make his presence felt. He had fitted in so well in the valley that it was a shock for everyone to realize that Roman's life was not centered in the valley. That he had family and a whole different life waiting for him in the South. Roxanne missed him more than she had thought she would. Not in a romantic way—she simply liked Roman. He made her laugh; she enjoyed his company and she would have liked his opinion about the house and what she was doing with it. Not, she thought with a grin, that she would have done anything different. It just would have been nice to hear his comments—good and bad.
The house still dominated her thoughts; it still needed all those finishing touches, still felt new and unfamiliar—there were times she couldn't find common, ordinary things in her own kitchen or bathroom, but she didn't care. Most of the time, she hugged the solitude and reveled in it. And if she wanted company, it was waiting for her just a few miles away on the valley floor. She was almost totally content. She frowned. That “almost” bothered her. Then she tossed her head. So what if now and then the thought crossed her mind that it might be nice to have someone special, someone other than friends and family to discuss plans with and to share the pride in the place? Big deal. She didn't need anybody. A scowl crossed her face. Especially a man.
Flouncing out of the kitchen, she spent the rest of the day hanging a couple of pictures and tryin
g out different arrangements of furniture. She'd sold most of her furniture before leaving New York and since arriving in Oak Valley, she hadn't done much about replacing it, but she'd gotten the basics, with a few treats she just couldn't resist like the large screen television for the living room and the huge, ornate cherry-wood armoire that matched her equally large canopied bed and nightstands. Eventually, she planned on a small table and chairs to place near the windows, maybe a desk and another chair for her bedroom, but for now, she was satisfied. And of course, the guest bedrooms, the dining room, and the great room would require more furniture, but she wasn't in a rush. She was too busy savoring the quiet pleasure of owning and living in her own home. No place she had ever lived, no matter how elegant and costly, had filled her with the same possessive joy. She loved her house!
She frowned. And she resented anything that took her away from it … such as Sloan and Shelly's impetuously planned New Year's Eve gathering tomorrow night. She sighed. She'd been looking forward to spending New Year's Eve in solitary splendor—she'd already selected the crimson silk lounging pajamas she'd wear, even the perfume—Red to match the pajamas. She'd planned to put on the latest Gipsy Kings CD, open a bottle of really good wine, red naturally, bake an artichoke frittata and sitting on the floor before the fire in the great room, revel in her privacy. And if she spied the lights from her neighbor across the way, she'd drink a toast to him or her. She'd be alone, but not lonely. Big difference, she thought. She'd dreamed of waking up on New Year's Day in her own bedroom, of later pouring herself a cup of coffee, and then if it wasn't raining or snowing as predicted, walking out on the half-completed terrace at the back and looking down at the valley. She wanted to savor the moment as she stood there on her own terrace and stared down at the valley, St. Galen's spread out below her like a child's toy village. She pictured standing there enjoying the simple pleasure of a hot cup of coffee as she reflected on all that had been accomplished these past months and all she hoped to accomplish in the coming year.
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