Their Other Mother

by Janis Reams Hudson

  Trey slapped him back, grinning. “Yeah. I think he’s in heat.”

  “And about damn time.”

  “Amen to that. You think she can handle him?”

  “With one arm tied behind her back. The question is, can he handle her?”

  “Maybe not,” Trey said with a grin. “But it’ll be a hell of a ride.”

  Chapter Five

  “Look right into the light.” The doctor aimed his little penlight straight into Clay’s eyes one at a time. “Did you get sick to your tummy?”

  “How come everybody wants to know about my stomach?” Clay whined. “It was my head that went whack.”

  Dr. Carver flicked off his flashlight and looked up at Ace.

  “I asked him that first thing. He was just as cranky then as he is now. But I don’t think he was nauseated.”

  “Good.” Will Carver loved working in this small-town hospital where he could get to know the people as people, not just as ailments on a chart. He smiled back down at Clay. “Do you remember what happened?”

  “Yeah.” Clay narrowed his eyes and glared at his older brother. “Jason shoved me.”

  “You shoved me first.”

  “Did not.”

  “Did, too.”

  “Boys.” Ace stopped them with that single word.

  Carver waited until the urge to laugh faded. “Okay. Jason shoved you. Then what happened?”

  “I fell over and whacked my head on the fence.”

  “Steel post,” Ace supplied.

  “Yeah,” Clay said, his eyes lighting up, grin spreading. “It made this really cool sound, like this big gong.”

  “Did you see stars?” the doctor asked.

  “Naw,” Clay said, obviously disappointed. Then he perked up. “But I heard that gong. Does that count?”

  “I suppose,” Will said, smiling. “Did you know where you were?”

  “Well, sure.” The look on Clay’s face made it plain that he thought the question was stupid. “We was at the corral, watchin’ Daddy ride Bingo.”

  “Did he lose consciousness?” he asked Ace.

  “No.”

  The doctor took a final look at the X ray, then taped a thick gauze pad where Belinda’s cartoon bandage strips had been. “You’re a lucky young man, Mr. Wilder.”

  Clay scrunched up his face and looked at Ace. “Is he talkin’ to you?”

  The doctor laughed. “No, I meant you. You’ve got a big ol’ knot on your head—”

  “A goose egg,” Clay supplied.

  “Yes, a goose egg. And I imagine that within the next day or two you’re going to have one, if not two, great big shiners.”

  “Really?” Clay asked hopefully.

  “Just like a raccoon.”

  “Cool.”

  “Other than that,” Carver said to Ace, “he’ll be fine. To raise a knot that size, he had to have hit his head hard enough to cause a concussion, but with no other symptoms, it’s a very mild one, if that. You’ll want to keep an eye on him, keep him quiet. No rough play, no horseback rides for the next couple of days. Once that knot starts to go down, you can pretty much turn him loose.” To Clay he said, “But don’t go hitting your head on anything. If you think this one hurt, it’ll be much, much worse the next time. So you be careful, okay?”

  At the thought of a possible next time hurting worse, Clay’s color faded. “Yes, sir,” he said with a swallow.

  To take the look of fear out of the boy’s eyes, Carver handed out suckers all around.

  As they got ready to leave the hospital, Clay looked up at Ace. “Can I have my ice cream now, Daddy, like you promised?”

  His expression was so deliberately pitiful, it was all Ace and Belinda could do not to laugh.

  But Ace knew that no matter how manipulative the expression, this middle son of his had taken a hard whack to the head and had to be hurting. And he had promised ice cream.

  They went to Smiley’s Burger Barn for hamburgers, followed by the promised ice cream. By the time they got home it was nearing dark and Clay was drooping in his seat. Ace carried him upstairs and got him bathed and in bed—where he fell instantly asleep—while Belinda kept Jason and Grant occupied downstairs. Once their baths were out of the way, Ace tucked them in, feeling extremely lucky that Clay’s injury was minor, that he had three perfect sons.

  Grant conked out the minute his head hit the pillow. Ace bent down to the lower bunk and brushed a kiss across his cheek.

  “Dad?” Jason said from the upper bunk.

  Ace straightened, and tugged the blanket up to Jason’s chin. “Yeah?”

  His eldest son looked at him with big damp eyes. “I didn’t mean to hurt Clay.”

  “I know you didn’t, son.” He stroked his fingers along Jason’s forehead and smoothed his hair back. “But when people fight, somebody generally gets hurt, even if you don’t mean it.”

  Jason grimaced. “I guess I’ll try not to fight with him anymore.”

  “I’m sure he’d appreciate that.”

  “I guess,” Jason said with a heavy sigh, “I’ll just have to stick with calling him names.”

  From the doorway, Ace heard a muffled squeak. He glanced over to find Belinda with a hand clapped across her mouth and laughter dancing in her eyes.

  Planting his tongue against the inside of his cheek, Ace looked back at Jason. “We’ll talk about it.”

  Jason rolled to his side, yawned and tucked his fist beneath his cheek. “Okay.” His eyelids slid closed.

  For Ace it was like seeing a switch flipped. The kid was out. After another moment of counting his blessings, he moved to the doorway and turned out the light.

  “Don’t you dare laugh,” he told Belinda once they were in the hall. “Neither one of his parents ever had an ornery streak like that. He gets it from his Aunt Binda.”

  “Yeah,” she told him with a cheeky grin. “Right.”

  He followed her downstairs to the kitchen, where she poured herself a cup of coffee, then held the pot up and gave him a questioning look.

  “Yes, please,” he said to her unspoken offer.

  She poured him a cup. and they both gravitated to the table, where they sat and sipped.

  “Poor little guys,” Belinda said. “It’s been quite a day. Especially for Clay.”

  “Yeah, it has. I want to thank you.”

  “For what?”

  First things first, he thought. “For staying.”

  She looked away quickly.

  “For the way you handled Clay when I brought him in. You were good with him. A natural.”

  She shook her head and stared down into her coffee. “It was nothing.”

  “As the father of that little boy who was hurt and scared and crying, I beg to differ. It was everything.”

  She gave him a look of pure irritation. “Don’t be nice to me, Slick. It’s out of character for you.”

  “Most people think I’m a pretty nice guy.”

  “Humph. Good for them.”

  “I guess this means the lull is over, huh?”

  “What lull is that?”

  “The one where, for several hours today, you didn’t seem to hate my guts.”

  “Why, Ace Wilder. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you almost cared whether or not I hate your guts.”

  Ace closed his eyes and shook his head slowly in frustration. Damn stubborn, irritating woman.

  “Besides.” She took a sip of coffee and met his gaze with nothing more than a slight smile. “I don’t hate your guts.”

  “Couldn’t prove it by me,” he muttered.

  “I think we just rub each other the wrong way.”

  The first thing that popped into Ace’s mind—that he’d sure like to rub her, all right, in several very right ways—shocked him so badly that he took a big gulp of coffee to drown the words, and got a scalded tongue for his efforts.

  Maybe Elaine had been closer to the truth than he’d realized. Not that he needed a wife. He wasn’t ready to eve
n think of that yet, might not ever be. But a woman... Maybe that’s all this meant—he’d been too long without a woman.

  But when he decided he was ready to break his fast, it wouldn’t be, couldn’t be, with his wife’s sister.

  The clock beside Belinda’s bed read 1:00 a.m. What had wakened her? A sound. A noise. She sat up and thought she heard the low murmur of a voice.

  Clay? Was he all right? Was he still sleeping? How good was that Dr. Carver, anyway? Suppose the injury was worse than he’d thought. What if it was a concussion, a severe one?

  You ninny. Now you sound like Cathy, panicking instead of thinking.

  Okay. she wouldn’t panic. She would think. And she’d think a whole lot better after she’d looked in on Clay.

  Climbing out of bed, she eased her door open and tiptoed across the hall...and nearly screamed as a large shadow loomed up from beside Clay’s bed across from the bunk beds. The form turned. and the meager glow of the night-light revealed Ace’s face.

  She let out a huff of breath and felt her heart slide back down into her chest where it belonged.

  “Sorry,” Ace said quietly. “Didn’t mean to wake you.”

  She moved closer and looked down at Clay. “How is he?”

  “He’s okay. Cranky because I woke him.”

  “That’s to be expected.”

  Ace’s voice, when it came again, came as a low, ragged whisper. “He’s so small.”

  Belinda turned, and the unguarded look on Ace’s face brought an ache to her heart. He looked so alone, so lonely. She wanted, very badly, to reach out and touch him. To smooth the lines of uncertainty from his face with her fingers, her lips.

  Of what, she wondered, was he uncertain? But she would not ask. He’d always seemed so sure of himself. Cocky with it. But not now. Now he looked as though he needed someone to cradle and comfort him, and she wished with all her heart that someone was her. She hoped that wish was not in her voice when she whispered his name.

  “So small,” he whispered again, gazing down at Clay.

  The wish spread out from her heart, bypassed her head and settled in her fingers. She reached up and stroked his brow, his cheek.

  For one shuddering moment of weakness, Ace turned his face into her hand. He’d known, at some level, that she had a generous heart. While he’d never expected any of that generosity to be directed at him, now that it was, he didn’t have the strength to turn away from it. Just then, he needed...something. Comfort, he admitted, and just then he needed it so badly that he didn’t care if that made him weak. He wanted to slip his arms around her, feel her slip hers around him, and just hold on. He wanted someone to share this incredible burden with. For a few minutes. Just a few minutes. Until he got his balance back.

  “Belinda, I...”

  “Shh.” She pressed her fingertips to his lips, stilling whatever it was he’d been about to say. Then, as if reading his mind, she slipped her arms around his waist and rested her head against his shoulder. “Don’t say anything.”

  He didn’t. Couldn’t. When was the last time a woman had held him, asking nothing, giving everything? He wrapped his arms around her shoulders and rested his cheek against the top of her head. His breath came out in a long, quiet sigh.

  It wasn’t the sigh so much as the quiet, trusting way he rested his cheek against her head that tore a hole through Belinda’s heart and left it gaping. As truth rushed out and swamped her, pain washed in. Great big waves of it. She was in love with him.

  With that realization, she understood so much about herself that she’d been denying for years. This, then, was the real reason she purposely kept him at a distance, deliberately irritated him. It was her unconscious defense mechanism against wanting something she could never have. Her sister’s husband.

  Of course, he wasn’t her sister’s husband any longer. Hadn’t been for two years. Her head knew that. But it didn’t make her feel any less like she was trying to snatch at something that by rights belonged to Cathy. Cathy’s husband. Cathy’s children

  In abject misery, she pulled away from Ace and stepped around him toward the door. “Good night.”

  Twice more during the night she heard Ace go in and check on Clay. Each time, she fisted her hands in the sheet and pulled the covers over her head, fighting the urge to run to him.

  Ace wasn’t sure he could face her the next morning. He stood outside his own back door, as he had only a few days ago, her first day there, trying to work up his nerve to walk into his own kitchen.

  She shouldn’t have felt so right in his arms. She shouldn’t have offered him comfort.

  He shouldn’t have needed it. Hell, the boys were always getting scrapes and bumps. It was part of growing up. Jason had done worse to himself in the past than he’d done to Clay yesterday. While Ace hated to see any of his boys get hurt, yesterday’s incident hadn’t amounted to much in the overall scheme of child rearing. He should have been able to handle it better. Especially after his unkind thoughts of how Cathy would have fallen apart over that knot on Clay’s forehead. She had been just too tenderhearted to be able to stand the sight of anyone—above all her own babies—in pain. That was nothing to be ashamed of. Definitely nothing for a husband to complain about.

  But Belinda had handled the situation as though she’d been dealing with little boys’ hurts all her life. And later, in the darkness of the boys’ room, she’d handled him with the same warm compassion.

  It didn’t fit with the woman he knew. That, and his own need for that compassion, for her compassion, her warmth, her tenderness, had him worried.

  Just suck it up, Wilder. All he had to do was walk in there and act as if nothing had happened. Because nothing had.

  If, when he finally forced himself into the house, he couldn’t quite meet her gaze, well, he had a lot on his mind, that was all. They needed to gather the cattle and get them moved up into the mountains. There were fences to see to, horses to train...work to be done.

  Not that Belinda would have noticed that he couldn’t meet her gaze, because she couldn’t bring herself to look him in the face. If he smirked or sneered or laughed at her for what she’d done last night, she thought, she would die. She would just curl right up into a little-bitty ball and croak.

  Right after she murdered him.

  Thank God the men came in for breakfast less than two minutes after Ace. And then, that afternoon it started raining. It came in a hard, steady downpour that kept the boys inside and the men—except for Frank, who happily worked his horses in the indoor arena—soaked and cursing. It didn’t let up—neither the cursing, nor the rain—for six days. The mudroom finally earned its name. Belinda made everyone leave their muddy boots there before they were allowed to set foot in the kitchen.

  The boys, of course, couldn’t stay inside all the time. As they reminded her, they had to gather eggs.

  “It’s our job, Aunt Binda,” Jason explained.

  “We gots to do it,” Clay said.

  Clay had long since forgiven Jason for giving him a knot on the head and two black eyes. They were back to being coconspirators.

  “You gots to, huh?” she asked, her lips pursed.

  “Gots to,” Grant mimicked.

  “Grant, my man.” She scooped him up, then sat at the kitchen table with him on her lap. “Let’s talk.”

  “Okay.”

  “Well, that’s an improvement. At least you didn’t just repeat my own words right back at me this time.”

  “Nope.”

  “Good. I know you can talk all on your own, but I sure don’t hear you doing it much.”

  He frowned at her. “I talk.”

  “Yeah? What do you say?”

  He raised his shoulders and flopped his hands out, palms up. “I dunno.”

  “You don’t wanna get him started, Aunt Binda,” Jason said sagely. “Uncle Trey says when Grant gets going, he chatters like a magpie and won’t shut up. ”

  Belinda eyed the boy on her lap. “Like a magpie,
huh?”

  Grant grinned. “Magpie.”

  “More like a mockingbird,” she said. It was obvious she wasn’t going to get him to string a sentence together anytime soon. “Okay, let’s dig out the rain gear and go gather those eggs.”

  A chorus of yippees filled the room.

  Later that afternoon Belinda answered the phone to a caller responding to the reworded ad for a housekeeper.

  “Yes, the job is still open.”

  “The position of nanny?”

  “It’s a housekeeping position,” Belinda stated, knowing full well the ad was more than clear on what the job entailed. “Nanny is only part of the job.”

  “You mean I’d be expected to cook and clean, as well as look after the children?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Never mind.”

  Belinda was left listening to nothing more than a dial tone.

  Dammit, there had to be a qualified person out there who wanted a good paying job and wasn’t afraid to work. There just had to be. She couldn’t stay here all summer, no matter what she’d promised her mother.

  For the men, the rain slowed everything down. Rangeland and dirt roads turned to muck. Streams and creeks roared with all the runoff and inched up out of their banks. Cattle had to be watched, particularly the calves, to make sure they didn’t fall in and get swept away. Each day meant more hours in the saddle than the day before. They packed the lunches Belinda made for them and ate in the saddle, under no more shelter from the rain than could be provided by the brim of a hat. Twice they had to pack their suppers as well.

  Belinda watched Ace drag in later and later each night, trying to act as though he wasn’t about to keel over with fatigue after nearly a week of fourteen-hour days in a cold, wet saddle.

  Wishing she could do something to help him, and irritated with herself for the wish, she frowned. It was after nine and the boys were already in bed, and Ace was just now coming in.

  “How much longer can you keep this up?” she asked, concerned despite herself. Hell, who wouldn’t be concerned? He looked like the walking dead.