Redeeming Rafe

by Alicia Hunter Pace

  He sat on the side of the bed. If he had a horse, he’d ride it—really fast and really far away. But he didn’t. All he had was a promise hanging over him to feed oatmeal to some baby girls. His phone buzzed on the nightstand, indicating he had a text. What now? Better and better. It was Abby. He wouldn’t have thought she was the type to send sext messages, but after last night, who knew? He’d certainly moved them to a place where it wouldn’t be considered out of line, if you ever thought that kind of thing was in line.

  He opened the message.

  15 minute warning until breakfast. Will you help me get them downstairs?

  That was a relief. Sort of. He keyed in his answer.

  Sure. Jumping in shower now.

  Then he rethought it and typed instead:

  Sure. I’ll be ready. He didn’t want to make her think about him in the shower—and thinking that made him think about her in the shower.

  He groaned out loud.

  His phone rang. What now? Oh. Missy. They had gotten into the habit of talking about this time every few days. She was determined that he bring Bella and Alice to Merritt for the weekend so they could get to know their cousins, but he was nowhere near ready to take another road trip with those two. Come to think of it, he wasn’t ready to take a trip to the dining room with them, but there was go getting out of it. He’d call Missy later.

  Fourteen minutes later, Rafe stood outside the nursery door. Bella and Alice were dressed in matching blue outfits—something Abby called smocked rompers. She’d made him look at everything she’d bought for them, when he had really just wanted to pay the bills.

  Abby had her back to him and was fastening Phillip’s overalls—though they didn’t look like anything you’d ever catch a farmer in, unless farmers took to wearing dark green overalls with short pants and knee socks.

  “There you go.” She kissed the top of Phillip’s head and set him on his feet. She still didn’t catch sight of him, but Alice did.

  “Daddy!” And she raced to the Dutch door as fast as her chubby little legs would carry her. “Cookie!”

  “Sorry, kid. Abby put the kibosh on the cookies.”

  When Abby turned and met his eyes, pink washed over her cheeks, and she looked at the floor.

  “About last night,” he began. Might as well get it over with.

  She lifted her head again. “That can never happen again.”

  Relief came over him. He did not want to be the one to have to say it.

  “I don’t know what came over me,” she hurried on. “That’s unlike me.”

  Rafe nodded. “Regardless of evidence to the contrary”—he placed a hand on Alice’s head—“it’s unlike me, too.”

  “Good.” Abby nodded. “Then we are agreed?”

  He sighed, hoping she would take his regret as a compliment. “Probably for the best.” Except best wasn’t the word he should have used. What would be best would be to strip those modest, khaki shorts off her, lay her down on that rug, and show her what it could be like without all those layers of clothes between them. But best did not always equal appropriate; maybe it never did. Best meant doughnuts, sleeping until noon, running from your kids, and hot, no-strings, fabulous sex with your classy, Boston girl nanny.

  Appropriate sucked.

  Hey, Alice, Bella—want a little brother or sister? Or maybe one of each? Or two of one and one of the other? Yeah. Just his luck, it would be triplets.

  Was there such a thing as a monastery for old, broken-down cowboys? And if so, did they take Methodists? He’d look into that.

  “We should go down.” Abby affixed a bow to Alice’s hair. Yeah, we should go down—on each other. “Gwen will have our food ready by now. She usually comes up and helps me get the children down, so I appreciate the help.”

  It had never occurred to him to wonder how Abby got three toddlers up and down the stairs.

  “How do we go about this?” he asked.

  She picked up Alice and handed her to him. “You take Alice.” She swung Bella to sit on her hip and opened the bottom part of the nursery door. “Now, you take one of Phillip’s hands, and I’ll take the other. And we go slow.”

  Rafe was not wired up for slow. He was wired for fast, where eight seconds would make or break you.

  “Daddy rocked me!” Alice said. He could have sworn she was taunting Bella.

  “No!” Bella yelled. Either she was responding to Alice, or she wasn’t wired up for slow either, because Phillip had stopped on the third step to inspect a spot on the step.

  “Bug!” he said.

  “No, sweetheart,” Abby said patiently. “It’s not a bug. This is a very old house, and that’s a mark on the wood. We’ll go outside and look for bugs after breakfast.”

  “You don’t think he understood all that, do you?” Rafe said.

  “Of course not. But they’ll never understand anything if we don’t talk to them. Probably what he got was that we’ll look for bugs, because that’s the part that interests him.”

  That didn’t stop Phillip from pausing every three steps, sure that he’d found another bug. Eventually Bella and Alice picked up on it and became bug cheerleaders.

  “Bug, bug, bug!” they chanted in unison. Maybe there was something of Missy in them after all.

  “Does it always take this long?” Rafe asked.

  Abby nodded. “Sometimes longer. I’m teaching them to scoot down the steps on their bottoms, but they can’t do it yet. Though I doubt that would be any faster. It’s just safer.”

  After two more rounds of alleged bug discovery and bug cheerleading, they still weren’t halfway down the steps, and Rafe’d had all he could take.

  “Hey, Phillip,” he said. “Do you want to go fast? Gallop like a horse?”

  “Yes!” The boy forgot all about bugs.

  “What?” Abby asked.

  Rafe scooped the boy up in his other arm and pounded down the stairs, as Alice and Phillip screamed with laughter.

  It was only when he reached the bottom that Rafe realized he might be in trouble. He turned and looked at Abby, who still stood halfway up the staircase, her mouth open and eyes wide with surprise.

  From Abby’s arms Bella screamed, “My turn!” Even Rafe could tell that was one mad little vampire. Clearly, she did not like to be cheated, left out, or to go last. “My turn!” she screamed again, just in case they hadn’t heard her the first time.

  “Well?” Abby said. “You heard her. It’s her turn.”

  After four more stampedes, Abby put her foot down and made them go into the family dining room where, to their surprise, everyone was gathered around the big, round table, and breakfast was laid on the sideboard.

  “What’s up?” Rafe asked. They never all gathered for breakfast unless it was a holiday or weekend. With everyone going in twenty different directions mornings, they usually fended for themselves. But today in addition to Jackson, Emory, Gabe, and Neyland, Dirk and Sammy were seated at the table, and Gwen was fussing over the food in the warming dishes.

  “We’ve been summoned.” Gabe looked up from the newspaper he was sharing with Neyland and took a bite of his eggs.

  “And I bet I know by who.” Rafe still held Bella from her last gallop.

  “That would be me.” Jackson took a sip of his coffee and looked at Rafe with approval. “Go ahead and settle the kids in and get some food. We have a little business to discuss.”

  Abby put Phillip in a highchair and picked up Alice. “What are you waiting for?” she asked.

  He almost told her he’d signed up for helping feed kids, not figuring out a chair that had so many buckles, locks, and switches that it belonged on a spaceship.

  “Let me help you with that,” Dirk said. “Now, watch so you’ll know how next time.”

  Next time. Everyone in this room was expecting next time out of him. Unfortunately, there would be no next time for the one thing he wanted—Abby in his bed, on the porch, in a back seat, any way he could get her.

  “
Here.” It was the woman in question handing him a plastic plate. “Help Bella with her food. I’ll take care of Phillip and Alice.”

  It was easier than he had expected. She fed herself strawberries and pieces of waffle, and he spooned the occasional bite of yogurt and grits into her mouth.

  When Gwen finally filled her plate and took a seat beside Dirk, Jackson stood up and put a hand on Emory’s shoulder. “We weren’t going to tell this until after the wedding because we don’t want to steal Nickolai and Noel’s thunder, but it’s going to be a crazy busy weekend, and I’m going to need a little help watching out for my wife. Emory is pregnant.”

  There was a moment of surprised silence and then the applause, chatter, and hugs broke out. Only Dirk continued to eat his eggs.

  “You don’t seem surprised,” Rafe said to him.

  Dirk shrugged. “Neither do you.”

  No surprise there. Dirk had probably known before Emory had.

  Once everyone settled again, Jackson carried on. “After the wedding, we’ll tell a few more people who are close to us, but until then, you’re the only ones who know. We’ll hold off making a press announcement for a while.”

  Gabe raised his glass. “To more babies. Maybe you’ll have twins, too.”

  Everyone laughed—except Rafe, who busied himself by going across the room to fill his own plate from the buffet.

  “Best bacon I’ve ever had. Gwen sprinkles brown sugar and chili powder on it.” Sammy stepped up beside him and picked up the silver tongs on the platter of bacon. “You should have some.”

  “I will.”

  “Here, let me.” Sammy placed four pieces on Rafe’s plate.

  “Thanks.”

  “Your kids are really cute,” Sammy said.

  “Thanks.”

  “They look like you.”

  Rafe laughed. “Are you saying I’m cute, Sammy? I didn’t know you cared.”

  “You know what? Abby’s boy kind of looks like you, too. Y’all looked like a family when you came into breakfast today, all blond and blue-eyed.”

  “Are you trying to be a matchmaker, Sammy?” Please, God, let him not have seen what went on last night on the side porch.

  “You could do worse,” Sammy said.

  “No doubt. But she couldn’t. She ought to have a husband who doesn’t ride bulls and wants to have some more kids. And I’m done with that.”

  Sammy shook his head. “She’s not going to have any more babies. She can’t.”

  Rafe’s hair stood on end. “How do you know that?”

  Sammy put some more scrambled eggs on his plate. “Everybody knows it. She almost died when Phillip was born. They had to do a hysterectomy. I don’t know exactly what that means, but I do know it means no more kids.”

  Abby had almost died? Rafe felt sick to the point of weightlessness at the thought. As for the no more babies—he didn’t know what to feel. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. My aunt had one. For sure, no kids. I guess it’s lucky Abby already has one, huh?”

  “Lucky. Yeah.”

  This could change everything. It probably shouldn’t, but it could.

  Rafe stood motionless and might have never moved again, if Jackson’s voice hadn’t rung out again. “Sammy? Rafe? Can you come back to the table? We’ve got a little wedding housekeeping to take care of.”

  Oh, what now?

  Jackson picked up a legal pad. “We’ll be leaving tomorrow morning at nine o’clock for Louisville. I’ve been working out rides. Christian is going with Nickolai and Noel, but will come back with Gwen and Dirk. Neyland and Gabe will go together, but Gabe has to leave after the wedding Saturday night to fly to Cincinnati. So Neyland will ride back with Emory, Sammy, and me. So, Rafe, that leaves you and Abby to ride together. Is that okay?”

  He and Abby looked at each other as they nodded and said, simultaneously, “Yeah, sure. Whatever.”

  But she looked as apprehensive as he felt.

  Chapter Ten

  “Are you sure you and Darcy will be all right with all five children until Hannah and Bethany get out of school?” Abby asked Mrs. Perkins, the temp nanny they’d hired for the weekend.

  “Of course.” She had the children lined up in front of the house to say goodbye to the adults like little princes and princesses outside of Buckingham Palace. Mrs. Perkins might be old enough to have been nanny to Prince Charles—maybe even Queen Victoria’s kids—but that didn’t make her any less capable. The only reason she wasn’t a full-time nanny anymore was because she didn’t want to be. Abby had gotten the feeling that Mrs. Perkins had interviewed her and Gwen instead of the other way around. “Darcy!” Mrs. Perkins said. “You don’t need to hold Julie’s hand. She’s a big girl, aren’t you, Julie? She knows not to go into the driveway.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Darcy said, though she had cared for Julie and Carter many times. She was probably afraid of Mrs. Perkins, something Abby could relate to.

  Still Abby nattered on. “Five children is a lot. I could stay until the other girls get here and drive myself to Louisville.”

  Please say yes! After last night, I don’t need to be in the same vehicle with Rafe Beauford for three hours.

  “Pshaw!” Mrs. Perkins said. “We’ve got this. You’ll miss the party tonight if you wait.”

  She might have argued further if Rafe had not stepped up beside her. “I put your luggage in the truck. There was a suitcase, makeup bag, and a garment bag. Was that all?”

  “Did you get the white hanging bag with my bridesmaid dress?”

  “No. Noel said she was taking all the bridesmaids’ dresses with her to her mother’s house since y’all will be doing your primping there. She also said you and Christian were staying there and that’s where I’m to take you before I go to the hotel.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Do you know how to get there?”

  “I’ve never been, but I have the address.”

  “That’ll do. I can put it in the GPS. Jackson’s talking about caravanning, but I refuse to participate in that.” He looked over his shoulder where the others were still milling around in the circle drive packing their cars. “In fact, we’re in front, so we can go ahead and leave.”

  “Sure.” Why prolong the inevitable? “Mrs. Perkins, we’re going now. I’ll check in, and don’t hesitate to call if anything at all comes up.”

  “I have you on speed dial.” Mrs. Perkins held up her iPhone. “Phillip. Bella. Alice. Time for goodbye kisses for Mommy and Daddy. Then we’re going to have a fun surprise.”

  Bella and Alice immediately dropped to their bottoms, removed a shoe, and stuck a foot in the air.

  Abby had to give Mrs. Perkins credit. If she thought there was anything odd about Rafe kissing the bottoms of his girls’ feet, she didn’t betray it.

  When Rafe took Abby’s arm and put a hand on her waist to help her into his truck, the lightning struck even harder than before—probably because she knew now what it felt like to move against him and how it could end.

  What had she been thinking? That was the point. She hadn’t been. She’d been feeling.

  And she was feeling now. Was it an accident that his hand ended up on her hip as she settled into her seat? Did he even know what he was doing?

  “Let’s get you fixed up right and tight. I drive fast, you know.” No, she didn’t know, but she wasn’t surprised. “But don’t worry. I’m a good driver.”

  And with that, he leaned across her and buckled her seatbelt. He smelled like Irish Spring soap and felt like a bonfire—that is if bonfires were hotter than other fires. And they had to be, because they were festive, happy fires. Lord, love a duck. What a thought. Why was she thinking such stupid, irrational things?

  Because he was letting his hand trail lightly over her midsection as he stood back.

  Finally, he closed her door and crossed in front of his truck on the way to the driver’s side. But he stopped, smiled, and gave her a little wave through the windshield. An
d just when she thought it couldn’t get any worse, he flashed those eyes at her.

  It was going to be a long drive.

  And she’d do well to remember he had every intention on getting on the back of a bull in a few weeks—just like Gregory had gone into that cave, though she’d begged him not to. And she could never go there again.

  Chapter Eleven

  If Rafe had been disgruntled at watching Emile Giroux, crazy goalie extraordinaire, fawn all over Abby before, he was absolutely enraged now. It seemed that since the two of them were paired up for the actual wedding ceremony, Giroux thought he owned her. Rafe couldn’t help but think how good it would feel to run amok through Noel’s mother’s house, busting up this rehearsal party and breaking knickknacks.

  There were too many candlesticks, candy bowls, and little china people anyway. This was the kind of house that made Rafe feel like he couldn’t move or breathe; a good rampage might do it some good. Probably wouldn’t do Noel much good though. She had warned them that her mother worshiped this house and would have nothing in it that wasn’t “period”—whatever that meant. Nickolai had recently spent a fortune getting the plumbing fixed and the roof replaced, but had refused to buy some old Victorian bathtub that Noel’s mother had wanted.

  It had probably been that same persnickety woman who had assigned the bridesmaids and groomsmen pairings for the wedding. And Rafe did not thank her for it. It had been all about height. If Rafe had been a few inches shorter or Abby had been a few inches taller, they would have been put together. But Abby wasn’t quite as tall as Christian, and Crazy Hockey Man wasn’t quite as tall as Rafe, so there it was. And though Rafe and Christian had stood opposite each other and she had processed out of the church on his arm, you didn’t see the two of them acting like they were linked for life. He didn’t even know where she was.