The Daddy Survey

by Janis Reams Hudson

  But they were running low on other things, so she’d begun a list. After supper she would ask Rose about doing some shopping tomorrow.

  She was going to be darned busy after supper, it seemed. Clean up the kitchen, confront Sloan, talk to Rose, and, before the sun went down, in the cool of the evening—if it ever got cool in the evenings in Oklahoma—she wanted to sink her hands into that rich, red soil in the garden. She was itching to play in the dirt. The girls could help her.

  By the time the roast was ready to come out of the oven, she heard someone enter the utility porch. From all the stomping, it had to be one of the men. Rose might wear cowboy boots, but she had a quiet tread. Besides, she was already upstairs taking a shower.

  Emily opened the oven just as someone came in from the porch. With an oven mitt on one hand and a thick pot holder in the other, she reached into the heat for the roasting pan.

  “Here, I’ll get that.”

  And before she could blink, she was pushed aside—gently, but definitely aside. She opened her mouth to protest, but by then it was too late. Sloan had taken her mitt and pad and was lifting the hot, heavy pan from the oven.

  “This thing weighs more than you do. Where do you want it?”

  Wary—this man rushing to her aid with such a thoughtful gesture was the same man who hadn’t spoken to her since he’d taken her and the girls on the tour yesterday afternoon—Emily motioned toward the stove top.

  “There.” He set the pan down and smiled at her.

  Emily’s heart lifted. He wasn’t upset with her, at least not anymore, if he had been. He had just gone out of his way to be nice to her. No way could he think she actually required help lifting a roast from the oven.

  Her return smile was wide and genuine. “Thank you.”

  He shrugged in an “Aw, shucks, ma’am” sort of way. “You might have burned yourself, or dropped it and splattered hot juice all over your…” His gaze trailed down past the hem of her shorts. “…legs.”

  Emily felt the heat of his gaze as if the hot juice from the pan had, indeed, splashed against her. But it was not an unpleasant heat. Not in the least. It was, however, shocking. She couldn’t remember the last time her blood, her very skin, had heated at a mere look from a man.

  Wow.

  As the heat raced upward toward her face, she spun abruptly toward the sink and turned on the cold water. She thrust her wrists beneath the cold flow and hoped he couldn’t hear the sudden pounding of her heart.

  The rushing sound of the water did nothing to calm her, but emphasized the speed at which her blood was racing through her veins.

  From just a look? What was happening to her?

  “Emily?” Concern filled his voice. “Are you all right?”

  With a deep breath, she offered him what she hoped was a steady, friendly smile. “I’m fine.” He would be appalled if he knew the lonely widow he’d hired to keep house for his grandmother had a sudden case of the hots for him.

  “You sure?” He took a step toward her. “You look a little flushed.”

  Naturally, her cheeks heated even more. She could only imagine how bright a shade of red they were. “Really. I’m fine. It must just be the heat from the oven.”

  At the reminder, he stepped back and blinked. The oven door still gaped wide open and three hundred-plus-degree air was filling the room. “Oh.” He shut the door.

  “Thank you,” she said again, for lack of anything intelligent.

  “Well, I’ll just, uh, go upstairs and tell Grandmother her truck is fixed.”

  Emily turned off the water and reached for a hand towel. “She’ll be pleased.”

  He stood there another long moment, during which Emily held her breath, hoping. That he would linger there in the kitchen? That he would smile at her again? That he would kiss her?

  Before her cheeks could heat again at the thought, he finally turned and headed for the stairs.

  Her hands didn’t stop shaking until dinner was on the table. Then they started trembling again, because he looked at her.

  “Did you get the fence fixed?” Sloan’s words were for one of his brothers, but his gaze stayed locked on her.

  Justin snickered. “Was Emily going to fix the fence?”

  Libby evidently thought the idea of her mother fixing a fence was funny. She giggled. Even Janie laughed.

  Sloan blinked and frowned at Justin. “Emily? I was talking to you, numbskull.”

  This set the girls off again.

  Emily frowned. “No name-calling at the table, please.”

  The instant the words were out of her mouth, she wanted them back. Her hand flew to her lips. “I’m sorry.” She was an employee here, nothing more. What right did she have spouting rules? “You all make me feel so at home, I forget, sometimes, that… Well, you know what I mean. I didn’t mean to over-step.”

  “Nonsense,” Rose said, smiling. “You’re absolutely right. There should be no name-calling at the table. Or anywhere else, for that matter. Especially around the girls. Maybe the three of you will have a civilizing influence on my grandsons.”

  “Civilizing?” In mock outrage, Justin placed his hand over his heart. “We’re the most civilized grandsons you’ve got.”

  “A bunch of wild Indians is more like it,” Rose said, one corner of her mouth twitching.

  Libby and Janie covered their mouths and giggled even harder.

  “Tsk, tsk, Grandmother.” Sloan’s lips twitched. “No name-calling.”

  There was no chance now that the girls would stop laughing anytime soon. Emily couldn’t help but join in this time.

  “Besides,” Caleb added, “you know good and well that the Cherokee were civilized long before the white man ever came to this country. After all, we’re not one of the Five Civilized Tribes for nothing.”

  Rose rolled her eyes and shot a look of helplessness at Emily. “You see what an old woman has to put up with in her own home? It’s a disgrace, that’s what it is. Such disrespect for an elder.”

  “Oh, no, Miss Rose.” Janie’s laughter disappeared and she spoke earnestly. “They don’t disrespect you, they only tease you because they love you so much. Isn’t that right?” The latter she directed at the brothers.

  Emily pursed her lips to keep from grinning. Gotcha, she thought. Now the three grown men were going to have to openly admit how much they loved their grandmother.

  The Chisholm brothers took Janie’s words with good grace and smiled.

  “Of course that’s right,” Sloan told Janie. To his grandmother he said, “We only pick on you because we love you so much.”

  “Then perhaps,” Rose said, “I should wish you didn’t love me quite so much. Please pass the potatoes.”

  “I forgot to ask,” Sloan said. “Anybody hear from Mel while I was gone to New Mexico?”

  “I saw her in town,” Justin said.

  “Melanie Pruitt is our nearest neighbor,” Rose explained to Emily. “She’s like a little sister to these boys.”

  “Men, Grandmother,” Justin said. “I keep trying to tell you, we’re men.”

  Rose nodded gravely while her eyes laughed. “I stand corrected.”

  “Is she still dating that guy from Oklahoma City?” Caleb asked.

  “Who,” Justin said. “Grandmother?”

  Caleb smirked. “Melanie.”

  “Oh.” Justin shrugged. “She didn’t say.”

  A loud clap of thunder punctuated Justin’s statement.

  Emily had been unaware that outside the windows the sky had rapidly turned dark during the past few minutes. “It’s going to rain?”

  “It’s going to come a toad-strangler,” Sloan told her.

  “A toad-strangler?” Libby broke up again, with Janie following right along.

  “That means it’s going to rain so hard,” Caleb said, “that even critters who like water are likely to drown.”

  “Oh, no!” Libby lost all urge to laugh. “Mommy, the little toads are going to drown?”

/>   “No, honey.” Seated next to her youngest, Emily reached over and smoothed a hand down Libby’s hair. “Caleb was just teasing. It’s just an expression, isn’t that right, Caleb?”

  Looking chagrined, and casting glares at his brothers, who were trying unsuccessfully not to laugh at him, Caleb gave Emily, then Libby, a pained smile. “Sorry, little one. Your mother’s right, it’s just an expression. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  “Oh.” Libby grinned. “Good.” Then she sobered again. “But, Mommy, if it’s gonna come a toad-strangler, does that mean we can’t work in the garden?”

  Emily glanced toward the window over the sink behind her. “If it rains on the garden and gets it all muddy, then we’ll have to wait until tomorrow.” Her own disappointment took back seat to Libby’s. Libby loved to play in the dirt and had been looking forward to helping in the garden. “I’m sorry, baby.”

  Janie speared a piece of roast on her plate. “That’s okay, Libby.” Janie didn’t particularly enjoy getting dirty. “We’ll just watch TV instead.” As far as Janie was concerned, the problem was solved.

  At least, until the time came to decide what they would watch on television. Libby would want cartoons. Janie would want something educational. There would be whining, on both sides.

  Emily sighed and served herself more potatoes. She sure hoped the sun came out tomorrow.

  At 1 a.m. another round of thunderstorms hit the Cherokee Rose. A loud clap of thunder and brilliant flashes of lightning woke Emily. She checked on the girls, but they slept on, unaware of the noise and fury surrounding the house. Her girls, bless them, could sleep through a nuclear blast.

  They must take after their father, because Emily had never had the knack for sleeping through loud noises, nor for going back to sleep easily once awakened. With a sigh of frustration, she slipped on her robe and made her way to the kitchen. A small glass of milk usually helped.

  The kitchen, as was the rest of the house, was dark, but the frequent lightning helped her make her way to the counter. She felt her way to the stove and turned on the small light in the vent hood.

  “Storm wake you?”

  At the sound of the low, deep drawl behind her, Emily shrieked and whirled. Her hand flew to her heart, to keep it from jumping right out of her chest.

  “Sorry,” Sloan said from his seat at the kitchen table.

  She managed one breath, then another, but they came hard, staring as she was at the strip of bare chest teasingly revealed by his unbuttoned shirt.

  “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  She gave a nervous laugh and moved her gaze up to his face. “Well, you did. I think you just shortened my life by a couple of years, at least. What are you doing sitting here in the dark?”

  “Couldn’t sleep.” He raised his beer bottle and wagged it in her direction. “Want one?”

  Her heart was starting to settle, as long as she didn’t look at his chest again, but her throat would be dry for a week no matter what she drank. “No, thanks. I came for milk.” She turned and got a glass from the cabinet beside the sink then made her way to the refrigerator. She felt the need to move, to keep busy. Unexpectedly sharing kitchen space in the night with Sloan was the most intimate act she had experienced with a man in months. Years. It left her feeling unsure, vulnerable. Itchy.

  “Somehow,” Sloan said with a smile evident in his voice, “milk suits you better.”

  “Thank you.” She opened the fridge and poured herself half a glass of milk. “I think.”

  He chuckled. “I just meant that you seem the sweet, wholesome type, instead of the type to swill beer in the middle of the night with some man in his kitchen.”

  Sweet and wholesome. She frowned over those words, wondering if they were accurate and trying to decide how she felt about their being applied to her.

  “Is something wrong?” Sloan asked, his voice quiet against the backdrop of the storm outside.

  “No.” She pulled out the chair across from him and sat down. “No, nothing. Why?”

  “The way you were frowning just now,” he said, “I wondered if I’ve offended you.”

  She gave him a small, wry smile. “Funny, but that’s the question I’ve been meaning to ask you.”

  “You’ve been meaning to ask me if I’ve offended you?”

  “If I’ve offended you,” she corrected. “If I’ve said or done something I shouldn’t have since we got to the ranch.”

  He studied the label on his beer bottle as if it held the secrets of life. Or next month’s beef prices.

  “If you’d rather not talk about it,” she began.

  “No,” he said quickly. “I’m glad you asked. In fact, I meant to bring it up myself earlier this evening.”

  Emily felt her stomach sink. He had changed his mind about her working here. He was going to ask her to leave. She swallowed. Hard. “What have I done?”

  “Nothing.” He jerked his gaze from the bottle to her. “You haven’t done anything wrong. That’s what I wanted to tell you.”

  She cupped her cold glass of milk between her hands and waited for a boom of thunder to fade. “I don’t understand.”

  He drew a figure eight on the table with the bottom of his beer bottle. “I guess you probably noticed that I haven’t said much to you the past couple of days.”

  “You haven’t said much, no. You’ve barely looked at me.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  “May I ask why?”

  He let out a loud sigh. “I thought I needed to back off and give you some room.”

  Emily frowned. “Give me some room?”

  “You know.” He shrugged. “Room. I practically dragged you here, you barely know me, and I toss you into a house with two other strange men. I wanted to give you plenty of room so you wouldn’t feel threatened here.”

  “Threatened?” God, she was starting to sound like a parrot. “I haven’t felt threatened here.”

  “Some women might. Might at least feel vulnerable. Anyway, I didn’t want you to feel that way, so I backed off.”

  “You mean you quit speaking to me, quit looking at me.”

  He shrugged again. “That’s about it. I apologize if I made you uncomfortable.”

  Emily laughed lightly, her tension easing. She’d been right earlier when he had taken the roast from the oven for her. He wasn’t upset or angry with her.

  “What’s funny?” he asked.

  “You, making me uncomfortable because you were trying to keep from making me uncomfortable.”

  “Well.” He laughed, too. “When you put it that way. Can we start over?”

  “I’d like that. Aside from what we just talked about, you and your family have gone out of your way to make me feel at home here, and I do. You took a chance on a stranger, a stranger with two kids. Your brothers and grandmother welcomed me and my children into your home. How could I possibly feel uncomfortable?”

  “I’m glad you don’t,” he said softly.

  The deeper, softer tone of his voice made the room, the situation, feel even more intimate. Her gaze seemed to move all on its own to the bare strip of hair-covered flesh revealed by his open shirt. When she finally realized that she was staring, she forced her gaze up along the column of his strong, tanned throat, over his chin, those sharply defined lips, his straight nose and into those dark brown eyes.

  He’d been watching her. She could tell by the look in his eyes that he’d watched her stare at his chest.

  “It’s late.” She tore her gaze away, only then noticing and remembering the glass of milk in her hands. She had yet to take a sip. In two long gulps, she downed it all and rose from the table. “The storm’s moved on.” At least the one outside, if not the one suddenly brewing within her.

  The maelstrom inside her, however, had nothing to do with the weather. It had more to do with the fact that it was the middle of the night, the kitchen was dimly lit, she was in her gown and robe with a man who was half dressed. It had to do with the
way her blood rushed through her veins, hot and fast, with the way her nipples tightened, her breath caught.

  It had, she thought, stunned, to do with sex.

  Good grief. She hadn’t even thought about sex, not in relation to herself, in a long, long time. Now here she was getting hot and bothered by a man who was merely being nice to her by hiring her to keep house for his grandmother while he saw to her car repairs.

  Get a grip, Emily, she told herself silently.

  At the sink she rinsed out her glass and set it on the counter. She hadn’t yet emptied the clean supper dishes from the dishwasher.

  Her hands were shaking. She gripped them together to hide that fact from the man behind her.

  Beyond the window above the sink, rain still fell, but it was a slow, quiet, soaking rain, good for the grass and garden. She turned away, toward Sloan, doing her best to avoid looking at his chest again. She wasn’t sure her pulse could take much more.

  “Well.” Her voice came out too loud in the quiet room. Then, next to her, the refrigerator cycled on and made her jump. “Time for me to go back to bed.”

  As she rushed past him toward the hall, he called her name. “Emily?”

  She paused, her back to him. “Yes?”

  “I’m glad you came.”

  She smiled at the dark hall before her. “Thanks. So am I.”

  Sloan listened to the soft whish of her bare feet as she went down the hall to her room. He took a deep swallow of beer. There wouldn’t be much hope for sleep now, not for a while, at least. Not with the memory of sharing a dark kitchen with a woman in her nightgown and robe. A woman with big eyes and a dainty, vulnerable neck that made his fingers itch to trace its length.

  Chapter Five

  Happy to have her Suburban running again, Rose proposed a trip to town the next morning. They went over the list Emily had started and decided on the grocery store, the drug store, and, if they left lunch for the men at the house while they were gone to town, the ice-cream parlor.