Their Other Mother

by Janis Reams Hudson

  After they finally turned in for the night, he closed himself in his office. To go over ranch records, he told himself.

  To avoid a certain woman, his mind countered.

  Okay, so he was avoiding her.

  He stayed—hid—in the office until long after he heard her go upstairs. He spent most of that time searching for a missing invoice he knew he needed to pay, and not finding it. Frustrated, angry with himself, he finally gave up and called it a night.

  Then he slept poorly, what little sleep he got. Who would have thought he would ever dream about Belinda Randall and satin sheets? Together. After waking up in a pool of sweat, guilt had kept him awake the rest of the night. Cathy’s sister. Good grief, he’d had an erotic dream about his wife’s sister.

  He was, he decided, a disgusting creep, and the whole damn world sucked.

  By the time he got up the next morning, his outlook had not improved. Then he opened his underwear drawer. Staring down at the contents, he didn’t know whether to bellow with rage, whimper in defeat, or laugh like a loon.

  Belinda came sharply awake at what sounded like the howl of a wild animal coming from down the hall. Her clock told her it was 4:30 a.m. It would have been pitch-black except for the greenish glow through her window from the utility light not too far from the house.

  Her first concern was for the boys. Something had happened to the boys. Without a thought she jumped from the bed and threw open her door.

  But the sound, she instantly realized, was not coming from the boys’ room. It came from the end of the hall. Ace’s room.

  Heavens, it sounded like he had lost his mind in there. Was he... God, were those sobs? In five running leaps she was down the hall and flinging open his door. “Ace! Wha—”

  Not sobs. Her heart slid back down from where it had lodged in her throat and settled in her chest, where it belonged. If it still beat too fast, it was because of irritation, plain and simple. She pushed the door shut behind her and marched toward the bed, where he lay sprawled on his back, hysterical with laughter.

  “What’s the matter with you? Quiet down before you wake the boys.” She had a bad moment an instant later when she realized that all he wore was a towel around his waist. She told herself not to be an idiot. The towel covered the essentials, didn’t it?

  Just because it left that wide, glorious chest bare, with its contour of muscles and its dusting of black hair, was no reason for her heart to jump. Nor were his bare arms, ropey with strength, nor those long, strong legs.

  “Dammit, Ace.” She jerked her gaze back up to his face. “Would you stop that and tell me what’s so funny?”

  He sat up and let out another gust of laughter, then stood. “I am. You are ”

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “This.” Laughing again, he dipped a hand into the open drawer of his dresser and came up with a pair of jockey shorts dangling from one finger. Pink jockey shorts.

  Belinda bristled. “Well, how was I supposed to know those red sweatpants of yours would bleed all over your underwear?”

  He hooted again, then grabbed her by the shoulders. “If nothing else, you’ll keep me grounded in reality.” Then he kissed her. Full on the mouth.

  Belinda was so shocked, she couldn’t think how to react. Couldn’t think—That was it. She couldn’t think at all. “What the hell did you do that for?”

  Ace was asking himself the same question. He shouldn’t have done it. Shouldn’t have touched her at all, let alone kissed her. But before his brain could get the message to the rest of his body, or at least to his mouth to wipe out that intriguing taste of her, he pulled her close and kissed her again. A real kiss this time. openmouthed, with his tongue dipping in for a better taste.

  And heaven help him, she was suddenly kissing him back.

  If he was wearing nothing more than a towel, and all she had on was a thin T-shirt that barely covered the essentials, and if things just happened to get out of hand, so be it. He wasn’t in the mood to care. And he wasn’t laughing anymore. He was. suddenly, starving. For more of her. For all of her. He didn’t know where this had come from, or why. But just then he couldn’t see his way clear to caring. All he wanted was more. Of her. Of Belinda.

  It was the watery feeling in her knees that brought Belinda to her senses. Never before had a man made her knees go weak. More than slightly panicky, she shoved at his chest and stepped back. She wiped the back of her hand across her mouth and glared at him, daring him to comment on the way her hand shook. “What the hell was that for?” she demanded, not caring if she was repeating herself.

  Ace dropped his hands from her shoulders as if she had suddenly burst into flames and scorched him. “Damned if I know.” And he’d be damned if he knew why he wanted to do it again. The wanting swamped him in guilt. Made him furious. “Get out of here.”

  “Oh, that’s rich.” Cheeks flaming with shame, with anger, she advanced on him. “I come in here because you’re making enough noise to wake the dead, expecting to find you being attacked by a madman or something.”

  The closer she advanced, the faster Ace backed up. “What were you going to do? Battle the madman with your bare hands?”

  “You grab me and put the make on me, then tell me to get out? You’re damn right I’ll get out, cowboy.”

  “Rancher.”

  “I’ll get the hell clear out of Dodge.”

  “Wait a minute.” He snared her by the arm before she could jerk the door open.

  “Let go of me.”

  “What do you mean you’re getting the hell clear out of Dodge?”

  “What do you think I mean, buckaroo? I said let go of me.”

  “You’re running out? Running out on the boys?”

  “Oh, yeah, lay a guilt trip on me.”

  Suddenly he did let go of her, as all the adrenaline disappeared and left him bewildered. “You’re that scared of me that you’d hurt the boys that way?”

  She snorted. “Don’t flatter yourself.” But he was right. She was that scared of him. Of herself. Of what she’d felt just now when he’d kissed her, when she’d kissed him back.

  He turned away from her, hands low on his hips, his head hanging. Even to her jaded ears, his sigh sounded filled with self-disgust. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I...”

  “Oh, shut up. Put on your pink shorts before you lose that stupid towel. I’ve got breakfast to cook.”

  He whipped his head around. “You’re staying?”

  “Not for you, big boy. I’m staying for your sons, and because if I go home, my mother will get up out of her sickbed and drag herself up here. You just keep away from me, Ace Wilder. Just keep the hell away from me and go milk your damn cows.”

  Ace milked his damn cows. It wasn’t a job the operator of a large ranch normally took upon himself. Usually it was given to the greenest hand—or a woman, but God help him if Belinda ever heard him make such a sexist remark—because milking cows wasn’t considered macho enough for a real cowboy. But Ace liked it. Leaning his face against the warm side of the cow, hearing the milk fill the pail, sending a squirt now and then to the barn cats who stood by waiting. The quiet of it. The sameness of it. Those things worked together to soothe him, to start his day off with a good feeling.

  Usually.

  Today he didn’t figure much of anything was going to soothe him, or ease the knot in his gut.

  He’d kissed Belinda. Belinda Randall, of all people.

  She was the first and only other woman he’d kissed since the day he met Cathy, more than ten years ago. He felt, he admitted, as if he’d just cheated on his wife.

  And that was just plain ridiculous, he told himself. Cathy wouldn’t expect him to spend the rest of his life alone. He hadn’t really thought about it himself one way or the other. Hadn’t been able to think about having a woman in his life again. But if anybody had asked him, he’d have had to admit that he sure never thought to spend the rest of his life celiba
te.

  Hell, if a kiss made him feel this guilty, he’d never work his way up to making love.

  Maybe it was just this particular woman he had a problem with. Belinda. Maybe if he went out and found himself another woman to kiss, someone who wasn’t his wife’s sister, for crying out loud, he wouldn’t feel quite so much like a low-down, cheating son of a bitch.

  It was a sad day when a man had to hang around the barn after the milking, waiting for the rest of the men to head for the house so he wouldn’t have to face a woman when no one else was around.

  Belinda and Ace tiptoed around each other, refusing to so much as make eye contact, much less speak to each other, during breakfast. It was the same again at lunch, when Ace, Trey and Jack were the only men there, the others having begged sandwiches from Belinda earlier to take out to the pastures with them.

  They might have gone on that way for days, but for the shoving match Jason and Clay got into. Ace had taken the boys with him after lunch, hoping to give Belinda a little breathing room so the idea of leaving wouldn’t crowd in on her again. He needed her, dammit. For the boys.

  He was working with a two-year-old colt in the near corral. The boys were sitting on the ground just outside the corral fence watching. Ace didn’t hear or see what started the shoving match, but he saw how it ended, when Jason shoved and Clay lost his balance and hit his head hard enough on the corral fence to make the steel post ring.

  Ace’s heart stopped. Just flat stopped when he heard the scream and saw the trickle of blood streaming down his middle son’s face. Leaping from the colt’s back, he vaulted over the fence and dropped to his knees in the dirt. “Let me see, Clay.”

  Clay was wailing loud enough to have the colt shying away to the other side of the corral. He kept both hands clamped over what Ace feared was already a growing knot on his forehead. The poor baby’s face was beet-red and scrunched up in distress, with great racking sobs shaking his whole little body.

  Ace wanted to cry with him. It ripped him apart when one of his babies got hurt.

  Then Jason started crying. “I’m sorry, Clay, I’m s-sorry.”

  Then Grant, who probably didn’t know why his brothers were crying but was scared because they were, started crying, too.

  “Come on, Clay-boy, let me see your head.”

  “H-huuurt.”

  “I know, son, I know.” Gently Ace tried to pry Clay’s hands away. Ace was certainly no stranger to bumps on the head. Usually the injury was more painful than serious. But sometimes...

  Footsteps pounded in from two directions as Jack and Trey came running.

  “What happened?” Jack demanded.

  “How bad is it?” Trey wanted to know.

  “Fell and bumped his head,” Ace said above the crying of all three boys. To Clay he said, “Let me see, now. I won’t hurt it. Just let me take a look, okay?”

  “No-o-o, Daddy, huuurrrt.”

  “Maybe I can help it stop hurting, but you have to let me look at it.”

  Finally Clay let Ace pry his hands away. Just below the hairline, above the outside corner of Clay’s left eye, was a small, bloody scrape in the center of a large knot. “Good-looking goose egg,” Ace said over the wailing. “Might even get a black eye.”

  Ace needed to get Clay to the house and clean him up, get a better look at that bump before taking him in to the doctor to make sure everything was okay. He dreaded going up to the house. Aunt Mary had been steady as a rock, but Cathy had been a different story. Cathy, Lord love her, had been a panicker when it came to the everyday bumps and scrapes of little boys. Big boys, too, he thought, remembering the time he’d sliced the palm of his hand open. She’d fainted dead away at the sight of him bleeding over her kitchen sink. Jason had stepped on a nail once, and she hadn’t fainted but she’d gotten hysterical.

  Belinda being her sister, Ace feared he’d get the same reaction. She wasn’t used to being around kids. Wouldn’t realize that despite the tears and sobs, this really wasn’t serious.

  No help for it, though. “Come on, champ, let’s get you up to the house and clean you up.”

  He doubted Clay heard him. The poor baby was too busy crying to hear much of anything. As were Jason and Grant.

  Belinda heard the noise through her bedroom window. When Ace had taken the boys with him after lunch, she had gone to her computer and put in a couple of hours on the new web site she was designing. She was using a two-column layout with a sidebar for the main index page, and the product photos she had scanned were going to look spectacular with text flowing around them. She was trying to decide whether to add borders to the text when she heard the crying through her open window.

  She jumped up and threw the curtains aside to look out. Her window faced the back of the house, and she had a clear view of the barns, garage and other buildings. The sight that greeted her wasn’t one to smile over, but she couldn’t help a slight quirk of her lips.

  Side by side, three strapping, macho men strode up the dirt and gravel drive, each carrying a crying little boy.

  God, she thought. Look at them. They’re magnificent.

  But as she raced from her room and down the stairs, she thought, Those poor babies. And she wasn’t sure if she meant the three little boys who were crying, or the three men, who looked like they wanted to.

  Ace entered the kitchen first, and she saw at once the blood on Clay’s face.

  “What happened?” she demanded as she pulled a clean rag from the drawer and wet it under the faucet.

  Ace pulled out a chair from the table and sat, with Clay on his lap. While he told her what had happened, she cleaned the gash on Clay’s head as gently as she could.

  “Ow.”

  “I’m sorry, Clay-boy, I know that hurts. I’ll make it feel all better in just a minute.”

  Ace had never been so relieved in his life as when he realized how calm and capable Belinda was. By the time she had the wound cleaned, Clay was down to an occasional sniffle, and Jason and Grant were dry-eyed and watching her every move.

  When she came at Clay with a bottle of hydrogen peroxide and a cotton ball, Clay shrank back against Ace. “Is it gonna sting?” Clay asked.

  “Would I do that to you?” she said, soaking the cotton ball. “It will just feel cool, that’s all. Ready?”

  Eyes wide and red from crying, Clay looked up at his father. For advice. For support.

  Ace’s throat thickened at the look on his middle son’s face. He cleared his throat, then nodded. “It’ll be okay. Aunt Binda wouldn’t hurt you.”

  Clay swallowed hard, then looked at his aunt. “Okay. I’m ready.” He scrunched up his face, squeezed his eyes shut and held his breath.

  As she pressed the cotton ball gently against the wound, Jason and Grant scrunched up their own faces in empathy.

  “You can open your eyes now.” There was a hint of laughter in Belinda’s voice, but her expression was suitably somber so as not to bruise a young man’s ego.

  Clay blinked his eyes open and smiled.

  “Did it sting like fire?” Jason wanted to know. “Like that stuff Aunt Mary used?”

  “Naw,” Clay told him. If he’d been standing up, he’d have been swaggering with pride. “Didn’t hurt a bit.”

  “Didn’t hurt a bit,” Grant mimicked.

  Jack and Trey, standing almost far enough away to give Ace, Belinda and Clay a little breathing room, chuckled at Grant’s comment.

  Belinda put two strip bandages, each sporting a different cartoon character, in the shape of an X over Clay’s cut. Then she brought a bag of frozen peas from the freezer. After placing a clean, dry hand towel over the bandages, she carefully placed the peas over it.

  “Cold,” Clay said with a giggle.

  “Yeah. It’ll make it feel better, and maybe keep that goose egg from getting as big as an elephant egg.”

  Clay giggled again, and his brothers joined him.

  “How’s your tummy?” Belinda asked the boy. “Are you sick?”r />
  Clay frowned indignantly. “I hit my head, not my tummy.”

  “Can you see okay?”

  Clay’s eyes grew to the size of saucers. “You mean I could go blind?”

  “No.” Belinda smiled. “I just wondered if everything looked all fuzzy or anything.”

  “Naw.”

  “Okay, then. I think you’ll live.”

  “You’re pretty good at this,” Ace told Belinda.

  “You mean, unlike Cathy?” she said, a twinkle in her eye. “Don’t give me that puckered-up look,” she said to Ace. “I knew my sister a lot longer than you did. The least little bump or scratch and she got hysterical. I have to guess that if it was her own child who was hurt, she would have been about as useful as feathers on a mule.”

  Jason frowned. “What good’s feathers on a mule?”

  “My point exactly,” she said, touching a fingertip to the end of his nose. “No use at all. Your mama just couldn’t stand to see anybody hurt. Not that I like it much myself, but Clay-boy, here, is going to be just fine.”

  “So says Dr. Belinda,” Ace said, his lips twitching.

  “So says Hockey Player Belinda,” she countered. “I’ve taken enough pucks in the head in my youth to know exactly how it feels to get a goose egg like this one. After a while, you learn not to get too excited about a little bump on the noggin.”

  She gently ruffled Clay’s hair. “But I can’t forget the most important medical treatment of all.”

  Clay’s eyes widened. “What’s that?”

  “A kiss.” She lifted the frozen peas and the towel beneath them, and placed a kiss on Clay’s bump.

  Then to Ace she said, “Still, I imagine you’ll want to have a doctor look at him.”

  “That’s where we’re headed next,” Ace said.

  Ace and Belinda drove off a few minutes later with all three boys. Ace drove while Belinda held Clay in her lap and kept the frozen peas pressed to his head. After the visit to the hospital, they planned to stop off for ice cream. For medicinal purposes.

  Jack watched them go and gave Trey a hearty slap on the back. “Little brother, things are starting to look up around here.”