"Emma won't eat any except the chicken nuggets. In fact, she's damned picky. We alternate peanut butter sandwich—no jam or honey—noodle soup, or string cheese with crackers."
"She hasn't been that picky at my house," Marian said in surprise. "No more so than most kids, anyway."
"Maybe you're a better cook than I am. In fact, I know you're a better cook than I am! How could you fail?"
Marian was grateful for his admission of helplessness. He sounded as though he really did need help. She had wondered.
"So you want me to just...take over?"
"Exactly." He smiled provocatively. "Play mother."
"I am a mother." Marian knew she sounded acerbic and couldn't help it. What if he launched an all-out assault on her defenses? She wasn't sure she could bear too many more of his smiles, period. She wished she could be like housekeepers of old, who wore somber gowns and their hair in a bun and faded into the woodwork. She was pretty sure John wouldn't let her take her meals separately, however.
She had to find a rental soon. She had to.
*****
It wasn't going to be as easy as he'd imagined, having her in his house. In fact, John wasn't sure it was one of his more brilliant ideas.
He had known he was attracted to Marian, liked her, sensed that she could be someone special to him. The perfect woman, he thought wryly, remembering his first impression of her. The trouble was, he wanted her. God, did he want her. He felt a little like a teenage boy forced to live with the object of his most desperate passion but told to keep hands off. He watched her whenever he could do so without being obvious, he lingered when he passed her bedroom to catch the faintest whiff of lilac that she left behind her. He took the long way around the room if that led him closer to her. He touched her unnecessarily often. Always casually, of course.
Right.
So far, the wariness in her eyes had kept him from doing more. It scared him, the way she looked at him. As though she was afraid of him. But why? Why? Wouldn't you think a woman in her position would be eager to find a new husband who could pay the bills?
So why did her entire self-esteem hinge on her paying them herself? Which brought him to the crux of the matter. Who was her ex-husband—and where was he? Maybe it was none of John's business, but he wanted to know why the twins' father was nowhere around when they had been virtually homeless.
*****
So what was he going to do? John wondered, a couple of afternoons into Marian's stay, as he ran a brush over the sleek chestnut coat of a dainty young mare he had high hopes for. Should he give Marian the space she needed? Or take advantage of proximity?
Maybe it didn't make him a very nice man, but he knew the answer.
Just then Isaiah passed in the shadowed aisle of the barn, leading a yearling he'd been working on the lunge line. His footsteps were silent, though the colt's made a soft clop, clop. "School bus," he said.
John grunted a response, then turned the mare loose in the stall. He paused for just an instant, pleased at her round belly and delicate beauty. This would be her first foal.
Emma's arrival gave John an excuse to head for the house and lurk around the kitchen. Ridiculous, the pleasure he took in watching Marian do something as simple as making dinner. He was dreading having to leave tomorrow, even though this week's game, thank God, was in Seattle, and he'd only be gone overnight. He couldn't remember feeling so reluctant to leave—or spending so little time with game films and stats during the week. If he didn't get his butt in gear, he was going to be caught totally unprepared, no doubt with the camera on him. He wasn't the only one who would be embarrassed. And network executives didn't appreciate being embarrassed.
"Daddy!" Emma flew to him the minute he stepped inside the back door. "I checked out three books from the school library today. Marian said she'd read them to me. And then I can read them to her. Do you want to listen, too?"
"You bet." He lifted her high for a kiss, peripherally aware of Marian, the smile in her dark eyes exquisitely gentle. "After dinner," he added. "I've still got work to do out in the barn."
"Marian says Anna and Jesse are napping. Can I help you? Please?"
He hesitated. Marian intervened. "Maybe she could clean Snowball's stall. He'd appreciate a little attention."
"Can I?" Emma begged.
"Go for it, kiddo. You know what to do."
"Wow!" She was gone.
John shook his head. "How come she's not that excited when I ask her to clean her bedroom?"
Marian had turned back to the oven, from whence floated the delicious smell of baking cookies. "Because there's no horse in it, of course," she said practically.
Feeling ridiculously nervous, he strolled toward her. "You seen Esmerelda lately?"
The damn goat had claimed the run of the place. The five-foot fences were apparently no obstacle. She could open the stall door in two minutes flat. He'd tried a long rope; she had chewed through it. And probably eaten a few feet while she was at it. He could chain her—but he didn't like the idea. So far, she hadn't hurt anything and hadn't wandered off the place. And the horses seemed to like her.
His suspicion that Marian enjoyed Esmerelda's string of triumphs was confirmed when her chuckle floated over her shoulder along with the realization that the cookies she was baking were raisin-oatmeal. His favorite. "She peeked in the kitchen window a few minutes ago," Marian said. "I'm glad you don't have a garden yet."
"Yet?" He was only a couple of feet away now. She bent over to peer in the oven, and John savored the view of her nicely rounded derriere.
Marian straightened with the cookie sheet, her hands protected by oven mitts. "You are planning to have a garden, aren't you?" she asked, looking shocked. "I just assumed..."
"I hadn't thought about it," he admitted. "The house was only finished this spring. I did put in those little apple trees out back. I don't know anything about gardening. That's one of the things..." He stopped.
Their eyes met and she said, "That your wife did?"
"Yeah." Funny, the jolt he felt remembering Susan and looking at Marian in Susan's place.
"But you do a lot of the things she used to," Marian observed softly. She nudged the oven door shut with one hip and slipped past him to set the cookie sheet on the range. "Did she love to garden?"
"Yeah," he said again. "Yeah, she loved color. Middle of the summer, I used to think the yard was gaudy. Too much yellow and red and flaming orange. Colors she wouldn't have been caught dead wearing. But she always said nature was gaudy."
Marian looked at him, her thoughts impossible to read, the pancake turner held uselessly in her hand. "Was your wife like that? Flamboyant?"
Why did she want to know? But if he asked, the fragile mood would be broken, so John followed where Marian led. "She could be," he admitted. "Not her looks. Susan was...pretty, but not spectacular." Not like you, he thought, and had sense enough not to say. "But she was alive. Do you know what I mean? Had a hell of a temper, but mostly she seemed to have a gift for happiness. She liked other people, liked taking chances. Susan always did drive too fast..." Unexpectedly his throat closed, so that he couldn't finish. And she didn't wear a seat belt. Damn her, he thought fiercely.
Shocked by the anger he had thought gone, John turned abruptly away to look out the kitchen window toward the mountains and paddocks. His chest felt seared. What had brought it back so vividly? They had only been married five years, and she'd been gone nearly three. In another five, he might need a picture to remember her face. Emma's memory of her mother was already fading, something she could hold up to the light and faintly see, like a four-leaf clover preserved between sheets of onion-skin paper. Not a source of pain anymore, just...sadness. Gentle and distant. So why was he angry?
Because Marian made him feel again? Or because he knew that she could hurt him as badly?
"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I didn't mean..." She touched his arm so fleetingly he might not have noticed if he hadn't been so aware of her.
>
For Marian's sake, he tried to smile. "Nah, it's okay. It's been a long time. She died because she wasn't wearing a seat belt. Maybe it's not fair of me, but I blamed her. I wanted to yell at her and shake her and..." He shrugged, still hating his own helplessness. "But I couldn't do any of that."
"You wanted her to be there so you could yell at her."
"Yeah." The anger was gone suddenly, leaving a desire to hold Marian in Susan's place. Or did he mean, instead of Susan? He didn't wrestle with the impossible, just said, "I should probably have told you about her, anyway, in case Emma talks about her mother. She does sometimes."
"I'm glad she does." Those fathomless dark eyes gazed at him for a moment longer, and then she smiled. For the first time, he noticed a tiny sprinkling of freckles on her nose, a disarming counterpoint to the elegance of her translucent skin. "Would you like a cookie?" she asked, with all the practicality that entranced him.
"In a minute," he said. "After I kiss you."
"After you..."
He didn't let her think about it. Instead, he reached up to stroke wisps of dark hair off her forehead, then held her gaze as he bent his head very slowly. John touched her lips the way she had touched him, the kiss of a bee brushing a flower petal, the wind a fragile leaf. Just a taste of sweetness, tantalizing. He lifted his head as slowly, seeing the dark fan of lashes that fluttered open, the quiver of her lower lip, the dreaminess in those night-dark eyes that sought his, the delicate sculpting of cheek and jaw. Unable to resist, he trailed his fingertips along her jaw, then down her graceful neck. Was the rest of her as fragile? As silken and gentle and feminine? She still stared mutely up at him, and he bent his head again on a sudden rush of hunger that was nearly anguish.
But from behind him came a small voice. "Mommy?"
God. John's muscles locked, and he had to will himself to step back. He saw a tide of color wash over Marian's cheeks, the ragged breath she drew in, the confusion in her eyes.
"Jesse?"
The little boy who sometimes seemed like a shadow of his twin sister scampered across the kitchen. One shoulder of his overalls was unfastened and his toes were bare. "Can I have a cookie, Mommy?"
"Is Anna still asleep?" With practiced ease, Marian hoisted her son to her hip. She kissed Jesse's forehead, but her cheeks were still flushed with rose.
"I'd better go back out to the barn," John said, hearing the rawness in his voice.
Marian's gaze met and then shied from his. "You'll check on Emma?"
"Yeah," he said huskily. Damn. You'd think he would have more sang-froid. "And round up that goat."
Suddenly a smile trembled on her mouth and more than shyness was in her eyes. "Good luck," she said, and he realized her voice was a little husky, too. With laughter? Or passion?
His body tightened almost painfully, and he made himself turn away. "Thanks," he growled, and let the kitchen door slam behind him.
He'd come in feeling like a lovesick teenager, and he was going out the same way.
CHAPTER 7
With a sigh, Marian looked around the kitchen. What was she trying to do, win a Homemaker of the Year award? Yesterday, enough cookies and lasagne to feed all of them for a week. Today, homemade bread, blueberry muffins, and a huge pot of chili. She'd also mended a laundry basket full of John's shirts and Emma's clothes. Ragged tears, missing buttons, crumpled and worn—all had ended up hung crisply in closets, while the smell of baking muffins and cookies had floated through the house. She felt like—what else? Mother, of course.
Mother, wife, and lover. The memory of yesterday's kiss popped up like a jack-in-the-box. It even wore a mocking grin.
Marian's hands stilled as she gazed unseeing out the window. What did John want of her? Her body, or her heart? Was she ready to give either?
Hopelessly muddled, scared, sad, and exhilarated all at once, Marian took the last batch of muffins out of the oven. At least he wouldn't forget her in a hurry, she thought ruefully. For weeks he would be taking neat little packages wrapped in aluminum foil out of the freezer and following the directions written tidily on the tags. As though he hadn't been managing nicely without her.
Mother. Who was she kidding?
He had left this afternoon for Seattle.
"I have to spend the night so I get a chance to talk to some of the players and coaches." He'd grimaced. "As if anybody ever says anything new."
"Don't you?" Marian asked, curious at how he saw himself.
He gave a bark of laughter. "Are you kidding? Week after week after week? I just tell the guy in front of the TV set what every player on the field already knows. That's what they pay me for."
"False modesty," she chided.
"Nope. Humility."
She had thought he was going to kiss her goodbye, but Emma came flinging down the stairs just then, followed by Anna and Jesse who slid on their bottoms. The moment, if it had ever existed, was gone, and she waved with the children from the wide front porch as he drove away. Glancing at Emma, Marian saw a look of quiet desolation that wrung her heart before she saw the five-year-old disguise it.
And no wonder! How long had Emma known Marian? Six weeks maybe? And there went Dad, driving off for his weekend in the big leagues, his daughter and house left in the charge of a woman he really didn't know very well. Why? Why was this job so important to him?
Marian had discovered from Emma that Isaiah often had meals with them, so after John left, she nerved herself to hunt him down in the barn and invite him to have dinner with her and the children.
The big black man looked at her in that unnervingly expressionless way, then gave a brief nod.
"Maybe six o'clock?" she said, and he nodded again.
Conversation at the dinner table was going to be stimulating, she thought ruefully, retracing her steps past Snowball's stall so that she could give him the carrot stuck in her back pocket. Oh, well. Emma could fill any silence. In fact, she would be thrilled if there was a vacuum for her to fill!
It didn't turn out as badly as Marian had begun to fear. Isaiah presented himself at six o'clock on the dot, still wearing jeans and cowboy boots but neatly washed.
"Hi," Emma said happily. "I bet you wish you could go watch the football game with Daddy, don't you?"
He shrugged and followed Marian and Emma into the kitchen, where Marian had already set the table. The dining room didn't seem quite suitable for the present company, considering the odds of spilled milk or dribbled chili. She remembered her own kitchen with the scarred linoleum and miscellany of high chairs and booster seats. Cats sitting on the window ledge and dogs waiting hopefully under the table. She had a wave of homesickness that left her feeling even more out of place. What was she doing here? She didn't belong.
She saw the first expression ever on Isaiah's face when she handed him a basket of sourdough biscuits fresh out of the oven. Just a flicker, but undeniably pleasure.
"Help yourself," she said, before going back for the chili. When Isaiah ladled himself a bowlful, Marian apologized. "It's not very spicy. Anna and Jesse like it better this way, and I guess I've gotten used to it…
"Smells good," he said.
"Well...thank you."
No wonder he had needed a partner in the horse business! He would be hopeless with potential customers. Which reminded her...
"Do you and John show your horses very often?" she asked curiously. Somehow the subject hadn't yet come up with John.
"Daddy says I can ride in the costume class when I grow up," Emma announced. "I want to wear purple and silver."
Another flicker of expression showed in Isaiah's dark eyes. Amusement. "We show 'em," he agreed. "Have to, if you want the foals to be worth anything."
Downright talkative, Marian thought. And maybe she was the one who had jumped to conclusions.
"When I was growing up, I always wanted an Arab," she said. "I read quite a bit about them. The Polish and Egyptian and Spanish..."
Isaiah nodded. "Ours are Polish descendants.
Bask."
Marian recognized the name of a famous Arabian stud. She knew enough to ask a few intelligent questions, which Isaiah willingly answered. She had learned more about the scope of John and Isaiah's farm by the time he was done. They must have invested a huge chunk of capital, she realized. A scary amount. She was left feeling mildly envious, and even more like a poor little girl out of her element.
John McRae was a rich man. The few dreams she had let herself indulge in seemed even more ludicrous now. She wasn't the kind of woman he would give his heart to. She remembered the way he had talked about his wife. Alive, exciting, reckless. Not tired, desperate, and burdened with children. He would want a woman who could travel with him, mix with the wealthy people he must know, think nothing of having her picture in People magazine or Sports Illustrated. So why did he flirt with her? Why had he kissed her?
She had to wonder if he was the kind of man who couldn't resist flirting. Maybe he smiled at all moderately attractive women with that glint in his cool gray eyes.
And maybe she should quit thinking about it—and him—one way or the other. She should concentrate on finding a rental and on being a good mother. To Emma, too, as long as she was here.
*****
The house was too silent. Marian had barely realized that when she heard the first scream.
"Mommy! Mommy!"
She took the stairs two at a time, vaguely aware that Emma had popped out of the living room, where she had been watching a cartoon in the VCR. The sobs escalated and Marian reached the top of the stairs in a panic.
Oh, Lord. She saw the problem before she saw her children. Water was running out of the bathroom into the carpeted hall. She stopped dead in the bathroom door. Inside, Anna and Jesse stood screaming, wearing their T-shirts and nothing else. Water poured out of the toilet over their bare feet. Thank heavens, Marian saw no sign they had actually used the toilet.
She was able to turn the water off behind the bowl, though the flow was already slowing. A worse calamity averted, she picked up both almost-naked children. Their bottoms were slippery on her wet hands.
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