Their Other Mother

by Janis Reams Hudson

  Having left his muddy boots in the mudroom, Ace crossed to the coffeemaker and poured himself a cup. A muscle in his jaw flexed. “Don’t start.”

  “Don’t start what?”

  “You were about to nag me about coming home for supper and letting the rest of the men do all the work.”

  Belinda blinked. “I was?”

  He shot her a narrow-eyed look. “Weren’t you?”

  “No, as a matter of fact, I wasn’t. You wanna talk about it?”

  “Talk about what?”

  She refilled her own cup and leaned back against the counter. “Is that what Cathy did when you had to put in these kinds of hours? Nag you to stop?”

  Ace pressed his fingers into his eyes and rubbed. “Forget it.”

  She didn’t want to forget it. She’d just had her first real inkling that maybe, just maybe, Cathy wasn’t as perfect as Belinda had always thought.

  Oh, and damn, that was disloyal. If Cathy wasn’t perfect, Belinda didn’t want to know, because it would mean there was no hope for the rest of the world.

  “I’ve got some of that chili left,” she offered. “Why don’t I heat up a bowl for you?”

  He eyed her suspiciously. “Now who’s being nice and acting out of character? But then,” he added softly, “it’s not the first time you’ve been nice to me lately, is it?”

  Belinda resisted the urge to press a hand to her stomach to still the sudden fluttering there, but there was nothing she could do about the heat that rose to her cheeks. He was talking about the night Clay was hurt, how she had turned to Ace and offered comfort, how he had accepted it.

  “Watch it,” she managed, her voice only slightly shaky. “I’ll have to make you heat your own chili just to save my reputation.”

  One corner of his mouth curved up. “Don’t worry. Your secret’s safe with me.”

  “I don’t have any secrets,” she lied. She put down her coffee and took the covered bowl of leftover chili from the refrigerator. The chili the men had smacked their lips over, claiming they’d missed tasting the secret Randall family chili recipe during the past couple of years.

  Now there was a secret. One that had stunned Belinda. Cathy had been the world’s best cook. She’d gone in for gourmet, but she could cook plain meat and potatoes with the best of them. And chili from scratch. If Belinda’s chili tasted just like Cathy’s, as the men proclaimed, then Belinda hadn’t known her sister quite as well as she’d thought. Since no one had apparently caught on, Belinda could only assume—with a secret smile—that Cathy had been just as careful as she had been to hide the cans deep in the trash where no one would spot them.

  Belinda’s grin widened. Secret Randall family recipe, my hind end.

  “I get nervous when you smile like that.”

  Belinda laughed. “And well you should.” She started dishing up a serving of chili into a smaller bowl for the microwave. “And well you should.” She laughed again.

  Ace topped off his coffee, then sat at the table. “You’re in a rare mood these days.”

  “Got you worried?”

  “Damn straight.”

  Belinda served him his chili, with leftover corn bread, and started to leave the kitchen. She wasn’t running from Ace, she assured herself. Wasn’t running from anything, except maybe the feelings he set to stirring inside her.

  Ace saw her head for the door and suddenly knew he didn’t want her to leave. It was crazy, he knew, but... “How are the boys?”

  Belinda paused and turned back, unwilling to admit she’d been hoping he would give her a reason to stay. “They’re fine. A little cabin fever because of the rain.”

  “Clay’s head?”

  She crossed back to the table and took a chair. “The swelling on his forehead is down to a small knot. He says it doesn’t hurt, but there’s a bruise.”

  Ace frowned down at his chili. “What about his black eyes?”

  Belinda chuckled. “Blacker than ever. Jason says it makes Clay look like a pro football player with those black streaks beneath his eyes. And older brother is pea-green with envy.”

  “The little rascal.”

  “Both of them. I caught them talking about which would be better for making a good set of black eyes on Jason—their bedroom door or the bathtub.”

  Ace choked on a bite of corn bread.

  “They decided on the bathtub.”

  “They what?”

  “Easier to wash away the evidence in case there was blood.”

  “Good God.” Ace closed his eyes and swallowed. It really wasn’t funny. They obviously hadn’t carried through with their plan or Belinda wouldn’t be sitting there talking about it so calmly, as if discussing the weather. Her lips wouldn’t be twitching.

  But it really wasn’t funny.

  “Jason wanted to know how bad it was going to hurt, so they wanted to try it out on Grant first.”

  Ace braced his elbows on the table and covered his face with his hands, trying not to laugh. “1...” But when Belinda chuckled, his laughter broke loose. He howled until his eyes watered. It probably wasn’t hysterically funny that two of his sons were plotting to bonk the youngest on the head, but there was no meanness in any of it, in any of them. It was a typical boyhood prank, and considering the week that Ace had just put in, with more of the same staring him in the face, he needed a good laugh.

  Between his sons’ plotting and their Aunt Binda’s laundry skills—or lack thereof—Ace figured he just might be able to keep not only his sanity but his sense of humor, as well.

  During the next couple of days his sense of humor came and it went.

  It came when the rain finally stopped. The sun came out, and with it, three little boys streaked outside to play. While Belinda followed at a slower pace, they raced down to the barn, splashing through puddles, squishing gleefully through mud to see their dad.

  Ace had spent the morning losing his sense of humor. He’d gone to town to argue with the oil company over where they wanted to sink their next well on Wilder property. Ace had learned years ago to accept the necessity of oil and gas wells on the Flying Ace. When the drilling had first started, oil and gas prices had been better than good. The wells had brought in much-needed money, what with the way beef prices kept dropping.

  But now the price for a barrel of oil was so low it wasn’t worth it to him to lose another acre of his pasture or rangeland. Not that he had a whole hell of a lot to say about it, since the oil company owned the mineral rights. Legally they could drill just about anyplace they pleased, including right under his damn bed. But now they wanted to sink a well in the middle of the hay field, and they were going to have a fight on their hands. If he lost his hay, he lost his ability to feed his cattle in the winter.

  Yes, yes, they understood his qualms, they said, but surely he was exaggerating, and anyway, what harm could a little crude oil, or the salt water they would inject into the ground, do to his stupid hay, anyway? It was just grass, wasn’t it?

  Just grass.

  He’d explained as carefully and as calmly as he could that grass was all they had, but that since they couldn’t earn a living on grass, they put the grass into their cattle and sold the cattle.

  “Hell, Riggs,” Ace had told him. “We’ve always cooperated with you, and you’ve always done right by us. Don’t go screwing up a good thing now.”

  “I’m not trying to screw up anything. I’m trying to drill for oil, dammit.”

  “Yeah, yeah. But you know good and well that if you show up out there at that hay field with a drilling rig, my brother Trey’s gonna greet you with his shotgun. Then you’ll have to call the sheriff, and I’ll have to call the governor, and my sister will probably call the media. Hell, you do it while my sister-in-law is here, she’ll probably put it on the Internet for the whole damn world—literally—to see.”

  Riggs heaved a long, slow sigh. “You’re not threatening me, are you, Wilder?”

  Ace’s smile was grim. “I wouldn’t dream of
it. No more than you’re threatening my entire family, our way of life, our livelihood, our ability to earn a living.”

  “All right, all right. Let me talk to our chief geologist again and see what we can come up with.”

  Ace nodded. “You do that. And I appreciate it.”

  Remembering the discussion now, Ace jerked another fifty-pound feed sack out of the pickup bed and tossed it onto his shoulder. He turned to carry it into the feed room in the barn, and stopped cold.

  For one blood-freezing second, he thought his sons had carried out their little plot to whack each other on the head. Logically, he knew it wasn’t possible. It would take a day or two before the skin around their eyes turned black. Yesterday, according to Belinda, the boys had been fine.

  Setting the feed sack down so that it leaned against his leg rather than lay in the mud, he glanced up at Belinda, who trailed along behind the boys. She wore jeans today, tight ones. Ace wished he hadn’t noticed. She reached down and took something from her hip pocket and held it up for him a moment before slipping it back out of sight.

  Ace bit the inside of his cheek. Unless he missed his guess, that was a woman’s eyebrow pencil she’d held up. From the looks of his sons, she’d done a credible job with it, too.

  “Hi Daddy.” Jason beamed up at him.

  “Hi there, slugger.” He dragged his gaze away from where that eyebrow pencil had disappeared and looked down at his raccoon-striped son. “What’s new?”

  Jason frowned and propped his fists on his hips.

  “Daddy, Daddy, look.” Grant jumped up and down for attention. “Look at me, Daddy.”

  “Hey, pard. how ya doin’?”

  “Daddy.” Clay tugged on his arm. “Don’t you notice anything?”

  “Well...” Ace tugged on the brim of his hat, then scratched his jaw. “I noticed it quit raining.”

  “No, Daddy.” Clay bent and swayed, his face tight with disgust.

  “About us,” Jason said. “Don’t you notice anything about us?”

  “I notice you all came out to see me, and I’m mighty glad. But...well, now, wait a minute. Now that you mention it, there is something different.” Ace frowned and gave each boy a close look. “Yeah, there’s something different, all right. I just can’t put my finger on it.”

  “Dad-dy,” Jason moaned.

  “Just give me a minute,” Ace said. “New clothes? Naw.” He shook his head and looked again. “It’s not haircuts, either, but... Well, I’ll be. Would you look at that, Aunt Binda? Jason and Grant must have hit their heads just like Clay did. They’ve got black eyes just like his. Well, I’ll be.”

  All three boys giggled and jumped up and down.

  “Well, guess we better load you up in the truck and head for the hospital. The doctor’ll want to take X rays and poke around on your heads to make sure you’re okay.”

  “Then we can stop for ice cream on the way home,” Jason stated.

  Ace shook his head. “Sorry, son, not today. Won’t have time.”

  “No ice cream?” Jason complained.

  “Sorry. Just X rays. Maybe stitches.”

  Jason’s face paled. “Stitches?”

  “We’ll have to see what the doctor says.”

  “But there’s no blood,” Jason protested. “Me and Grant don’t gots any goose eggs or nothin’.”

  “No goose eggs,” Grant repeated, shaking his head.

  “That may be,” Ace said, struggling hard not to whoop with laughter. “But you never can tell about these things. Head injuries can be tricky. If you hit your head hard enough, you could be bleeding inside your skull. Might have to drill a hole in it.”

  “No, Daddy,” Jason said earnestly. “We didn’t hit our heads at all, honest. Aunt Binda, tell him we didn’t hit our heads.”

  “But you made me promise,” Belinda protested.

  “You gotta tell him, Aunt Binda. I don’t want no hole drilled in my skull.”

  “Well, I can’t blame you there.” Belinda paused a minute. Who would have thought, she wondered, that big, tough Ace Wilder had such a playful side to him? Oh, she’d seen how much he loved his sons. He showed it to them and to the world in countless ways. But she couldn’t recall ever seeing him have fun with them, tease them this way. She was nothing if not eager to go along with him. To Jason she gave a nod, then spoke to Ace. “Okay. They didn’t hit their heads. I’ll swear to that.”

  Ace stroked his jaw with his thumb and forefinger. “They didn’t, huh? The only other thing it could be is that they caught them from Clay, but I sure didn’t know black eyes were contagious.”

  “That’s it.” Jason jumped up and down, and Clay and Grant followed suit. “We caught ’em from Clay.”

  “Oh, boy.” Ace nudged his hat back a little. “If it’s this bad, this fast, we better get you boys into bed and quarantine you before everybody on the ranch comes down with black eyes.”

  Jason must have seen something in Ace’s face that gave him away, for he narrowed his eyes, then grinned. “Ah, Daddy, you’re pullin’ our leg. You know these black eyes are fake.”

  “Fake?” Ace straightened and blinked.

  “Aunt Binda drew ’em on for us with her eye-bow pencil, didn’t you, Aunt Binda?”

  “You made me promise not to tell that. And it was an eyebrow pencil.”

  “See, Daddy?” Grant rubbed a fist beneath his eye and smeared black all over his cheek and hand.

  Ace gave up and broke out laughing.

  Belinda laughed, too, but not before her heart gave a little lurch. That same little lurch that happened on those other rare occasions when Ace laughed.

  Even though the rain had stopped, the hours, for the men, were still long. But at least they weren’t as miserably cold and wet.

  The streams and creeks still raged. Cattle had to be kept away, leaving a considerable number stranded on the wrong side of a stream. Ace could only be thankful that they had a few days to spare before they needed to gather the herd for the move to the high pasture. And he prayed, as he had every day since the rain began, that it wasn’t snowing up in the pass.

  If his late hours made him miss the time he was used to spending at night with the boys, the up side was less time around Belinda. One minute she was conspiring with the boys to make him laugh as he hadn’t laughed in years. Then she was nice, warm, friendly.

  But in the blink of an eye, the damn woman could aggravate the spines off a cactus. Where did she get off moving his recliner and not telling him? He hadn’t noticed the move when he’d gone up to bed last night, but he’d found it easy enough when he’d come downstairs this morning in the dark. Nearly killed himself falling over it.

  She’d heard the commotion, of course, and come running to see what had happened. Laughed her head off at him.

  With a snarl Ace hefted his saddle and resisted the urge to rub at the bruise on his shin.

  “What’s got you in such a pleasant mood this morning?”

  Ace settled the saddle squarely over the saddle blanket on his horse’s back and sighed. Most men wouldn’t come near him in the mood he was in, let alone taunt him. But then Jack wasn’t most men. “Nothing,” Ace bit out.

  “Oh-ho. Do I detect another round in the mating ritual?”

  Baffled, Ace turned and faced his half brother. “The what?”

  With a smirk, Jack ran his hand along his own horse’s back. “You heard me. Mating ritual. That thing you and Belinda do when you snipe at each other.”

  For a minute Ace had trouble finding his voice. “Good God,” he finally said. “You are out of your everlovin’ mind.”

  “Don’t you wish,” Jack taunted with a wicked grin. Jack, who seldom grinned. Then he turned back to his horse. “I think it’s kinda cute, myself, the way the two of you tap dance around your hormones the way you do.”

  Somewhere in the back of his mind, Ace was aware that his mouth was hanging open; he just didn’t seem to be able to do anything about it. Him? And the Wicked Witch of t
he West? The woman who blamed him for her sister’s death?

  The woman who held you late in the night when you needed holding?

  “No way, man,” he said fervently. “You’ve got it all wrong.”

  “It’s about time, too. You’ve been alone long enough. And no disrespect intended,” Jack said easily, “but I’m glad to see you’ve got a woman this time who’ll stand toe-to-toe with you and give you a good run for your money instead of agreeing with you all the time and letting you have your way.”

  “You,” Ace said, pointing his finger, “are obviously suffering from delusions of sanity.” Realizing his finger was trembling, Ace jerked his hand down. “The woman detests me, and believe me, most of the time the feeling is mutual. And that’s a hell of a thing to say about Cathy.”

  “Yeah.” Jack snorted. “But true. You just keep on lying to yourself about Belinda, bro. She’ll, have you roped and branded before you know what hit you.”

  The shaking in Ace’s hands made its way into his stomach. “Get a grip, Jack.”

  “Yes, sir,” Jack said, leading his horse out of the barn and mounting up. “There’s enough sparks in the air when the two of you are together to light up the state. Ought to be a damn good show when the fuse hits the powder.”

  Ace stared in shock as Jack rode off in the early-morning light. His brother had lost his mind. There was no other explanation.

  “Come on, fella.” Ace grasped the reins and led his own horse out of the barn. “Let’s go check cows. Cows are starting to sound damned intelligent after listening to Jack run off at the mouth.”

  Ace started to lift his boot to the stirrup before he realized he hadn’t buckled the cinch.

  “Damn nosy brother,” he muttered, setting to work. Imagine Jack thinking Ace was attracted to Belinda.

  What about those flukes?

  Flukes were nothing. They were just...flukes. He’d just been celibate too long. That was all.

  And she damn sure wasn’t attracted to him. She hated his guts.

  She held you.

  She did. She did that, all right, he remembered, looking back up the drive toward the house. Why did she do that after ripping into him the way she had the night before about getting Cathy pregnant a third time? She’d hated him that night, for sure. But when he’d needed her...