The Daddy Survey

by Janis Reams Hudson

  When he could breathe again, and think a little, Sloan raised himself onto his elbows and looked down at the woman who had just turned his world inside out. His movement made her hands slip off his shoulders. Her arms fell back, palms up, in the straw. Her eyes were closed, and she was grinning.

  Sloan chuckled. “I sure do like the way you kiss and make up.”

  Emily felt his brief laughter through the vibrations that ran from his belly straight into hers. Heaven help her, even his laughter was arousing. How could she be aroused again after what they’d just shared?

  Something unwanted niggled at the back of her mind, something she wasn’t ready to face and couldn’t yet name. She refused to think about it, refused to let it intrude on this glorious experience.

  “As much as I like that smile on your face,” Sloan said, “I think we should get dressed before we get caught.” That was all they needed, he thought as he rose to his knees and pulled her until she sat before him. To get caught naked as a couple of plucked chickens by her daughters, or his grandmother. Or even worse, one of his brothers, who would tease them until doomsday.

  “Ohmygod.” Emily twisted left and right, jabbing her hands into the straw. “My clothes. Where are they?”

  “Hey, easy. No one’s coming yet. We’ve got time for this.” He cupped her cheek, still warm and flushed, and kissed her softy. “I’m going to want to do this again, you know.”

  The shyness in her smile touched something deep inside of him. “So am I,” she confessed.

  “Maybe we can find someplace more private than the barn next time.”

  This time it was Emily who chuckled. “With two little girls, there’s no such thing as privacy.”

  “We’ll find a way.” He kissed her again. Then, unconcerned about his own nakedness, he stood and retrieved Emily’s clothes, then his own.

  When they were dressed and had finished picking straw off each other, Emily turned to head for the house, but Sloan took her hand in his and drew her to a halt.

  “One more,” he said, pulling her to his chest and kissing her hard.

  Emily’s head spun. The man certainly packed a punch. “I’ve got to get back to the house. The girls’ downtime should be about up, and Justin is probably tired of waiting for me.”

  “I’ll go with you. I need to find out if he was able to straighten out that feed invoice.”

  Both of them had things to do, people waiting for them, yet neither hurried on their way to the house. They ambled slowly, reluctant to let go of this brief spell of private intimacy.

  “So,” he said when they were nearly at the sidewalk leading to the back door. “You can’t pull a car engine, huh?”

  Emily smirked. “Pull an engine, ha. I can give birth. Can you? I can change a fan belt, put in a new battery, install a new kitchen faucet, unstop a clogged toilet, bandage a skinned knee and still have dinner ready on time. What can you do?”

  Sloan gnawed on the inside of his jaw. “Never mind. I concede.”

  When they entered the kitchen Emily checked the clock on the wall and noted that the girls still had ten minutes left on their hour of “rest.” Justin was at the table eating a sandwich.

  “Haven’t heard a peep out of them,” he told Emily.

  “Thank you, Justin. I really appreciate it.”

  Justin looked from her to Sloan and grinned. “I just bet you do.”

  Emily felt her cheeks sting. Could he see on their faces what they’d been doing? Heaven forbid. To distract him, she asked, “Did I not feed you enough lunch?” She motioned toward his sandwich.

  “Lunch was fine, I just wanted a snack. I’ve got a hot date later tonight, and if I’m lucky, I’ll need all the energy I can find,” he said with a cheesy grin.

  Sloan made a sound that was half grunt, half laugh. “What’s the story on the invoice?”

  Justin made a face. “Still working on it. That sorry old goat couldn’t find his nose with a flashlight and a road map.”

  “So what else is new?”

  “What’s new is his daughter finally agreed to go out with me.”

  “Blaire?” Sloan looked surprised. “I thought she had better taste than that.”

  When they started with a little good-natured bickering, Emily went to check on the girls. She found them together on the top bunk, leaning off the side and watching television, with the volume down low. That they were both on one bunk meant they were friends again. Emily was relieved.

  “Can we go play outside again now?” Libby asked. “Pretty please?”

  Emily laughed. “I think that would be all right. Put your shoes on.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Emily waited while they put on their shoes, then turned off the television and followed them into the kitchen.

  “There they are,” Sloan said with a big smile. “Everybody okay now?”

  “Yes, sir,” Janie answered. “We’re going back outside to play now.”

  Justin scooted his chair back from the table and carried his empty milk glass to the sink.

  “Wait, Mr. Justin.” Janie stooped and picked up a small red packet from the floor and held it out to him. “You dropped your condom.”

  Justin, in the process of turning away from the sink, back toward Janie when she called his name, froze in midstride, his eyes wide, his jaw dropping.

  Sloan coughed, covered his mouth and turned his back, his shoulders shaking.

  Emily could do nothing but gape at her eight-year-old daughter. Then a new thought intruded.

  Sloan must have had the same new thought, for he turned and looked at her. Neither had to say a word. They had both just realized that they had not used a condom when they made love.

  But that was for later consideration. First things first.

  “Uh.” Justin cleared his throat. “Thanks, Janie.” With his face an interesting shade of red, he took the condom packet from Janie and stuffed it into his back pocket.

  “Janie,” Emily said. “How do you know what a condom is?”

  Janie shrugged. “At school. All the boys carry one. They think it makes them look cool, but they’re really just babies.” With no apparent concern at all for the shock she’d just given her mother, Janie motioned for Libby to follow, and they went out the door, chattering about who was going to be “it” first.

  As soon their voices trailed off, Justin whooped with laughter.

  Emily sank onto a chair and dropped her head with an audible thunk onto the table.

  Sloan coughed again.

  “I guess I’m outta here.” Justin waggled his eyebrows. “Here’s hoping I need that condom tonight.”

  Sloan stood in the middle of the room for a long moment, then took the chair next to Emily. “I’d laugh,” he said, “but I have to apologize first.”

  Emily took a deep breath and let it out again before raising her head. “What do you have to apologize for?”

  His serious gaze was steady on hers. “For not using a condom.”

  Emily gave him a half smile. “Yeah, nothing like having an eight-year-old remind you.”

  “Emily, I have no excuse—”

  She waved away his words. “There were two of us out there in the barn. It’s as much my fault as yours. But as far as the timing goes, I should be safe from getting pregnant.” Dear God, let her be safe. Not that she wouldn’t dearly love to have another child; she’d always wanted a big family. But not now, not when she was trying to get to Arkansas, to get her feet under her and be able to support her children. How could she do that with her head in the toilet every morning for weeks on end? Because there was no doubt in her mind that the hideous morning sickness she’d suffered with Janie and Libby would pay her another visit with the next baby she carried. Just a little gift from Mother Nature to make you value your newborn all the more for having gone through hell to bring her into the world.

  Mother Nature obviously never had any children of her own and never suffered morning sickness.

  “Sti
ll,” Sloan said, “I should have—”

  “We should have,” she corrected. Then she smiled. “Or, rather, maybe we shouldn’t have. But we did. Just so you’ll know, I don’t have any diseases.”

  “Neither do I.” Then he shook his head. “Jeez. Snakes in the morning, and condoms in the afternoon. I guess I never realized what a parent goes through.”

  Emily chuckled. “Oh, you haven’t seen the half of it.”

  After a glass of iced tea and a few awkward silences, Sloan and Emily each went back to work. He had chores to do, and she had a meal to prepare.

  Emily had been torn. She had wanted him to stay, wanted to sit with him and share the quiet of the kitchen. The chances of them getting another few minutes alone in the middle of the day were slim to none.

  On the other hand she was relieved when he left the house. She didn’t know how to act around him now that they’d been intimate. She wanted to reach out and touch him, run her fingers through his thick, dark hair. She wanted to lean over and kiss that hard, square jaw. But she hadn’t felt sure enough of herself to do either.

  She’d never had to go through this awkward phase with Michael. She was out of her element with Sloan.

  That unwanted something that had niggled the back of her mind just before they’d made love tried to push its way into her thoughts, but she refused it. She wanted time to savor their lovemaking, hold it tightly to herself lest the memories start to fade too quickly.

  Who was she kidding? She would remember every second of their time together in the barn until her dying day. She’d never felt that way before.

  And boom, that quick, the unwanted something settled heavily on her heart and announced its name. Its name was guilt.

  She had never felt before the way she’d felt with Sloan earlier. Not even with Michael.

  Feelings of disloyalty staggered her. She closed the cabinet door, disregarding whatever it was she’d been about to do, and eased onto a chair at the table.

  It was ridiculous, of course, to feel as if she were cheating on her husband. Realistically, she had no husband. But Michael had been in her heart since childhood, nearly all the years of her life. A mere two years without him could not erase the past.

  Logically, feeling guilty for making love with another man was absurd. She didn’t want to feel guilty. She felt, oddly, that Michael would be disappointed in her for clinging to his memory instead of moving forward with her life, even to and including finding a man to share her life with. Michael would want her to move on. And she had moved on. Today was a definite move forward. She should be celebrating rather than burying her face in her hands.

  She had no right to feel guilty. She certainly could not regret being with Sloan. How could she, when he had shown her what she was capable of?

  That, she realized, was the problem. It felt incredibly disloyal to even think, much less acknowledge, that Sloan was a better lover, that he made her feel things she’d never felt before.

  Yet, if she thought about it, it made sense. Michael had never been with any woman but her, and he was the only man, until today, she’d ever been with. Whatever they had learned, they had learned together. They had enjoyed making love with each other, but after today, Emily realized that enjoyed was such a pale term for what could be.

  Sloan had more and varied experience than either she or Michael. Of course, she didn’t know how much experience he had, but it was certainly ample as far as she was concerned.

  When she realized the nature of the thoughts running through her mind, her faced heated up.

  She pushed herself from the chair and turned toward the cabinet. She was not going to ease her mind and escape the sense that she was betraying Michael by sitting at the table. She had a job to do, hungry people to feed. And two little girls who were counting on her to keep her head squarely on her shoulders.

  The bottom line was, she would be leaving here in a few days. She would never forget her time with Sloan, but it was a brief interlude that would soon come to a close. He hadn’t asked her to stay.

  Even if he did, she couldn’t do it. No matter how much she might want to further explore her growing feelings for him, she had to put her daughters first. And that meant getting them to Arkansas and getting hired at the factory. Her job here would end with Earline’s return, and Rose Rock, Oklahoma, wasn’t exactly a hotbed of employment opportunities.

  Her heart chimed in and told her that the sooner she left, the better off she would be. Both she and her girls were becoming more attached to the Cherokee Rose than was wise.

  Sloan stayed away from the house for as long as he could, but when he saw Caleb heading in and Justin leaving for his date, he made a beeline for the door.

  He shouldn’t have left Emily the way he had. There should have been tender words, but he wasn’t sure he had them. There should have been soft kisses, to make sure she didn’t forget what they had just shared in the barn.

  But she hadn’t looked approachable, sitting beside him at the kitchen table. Not after realizing that he’d forgotten to use protection, damn his hide. And certainly not after finding out her eight-year-old daughter not only knew what a condom was, but what one looked like in its little plastic pouch. Talk about a mood breaker.

  He chuckled and shook his head. It was himself he was laughing at, but what he should do was kick himself. After seeing her handle Libby’s screaming incident in the garden, he couldn’t believe he had ever thought Emily helpless and in need of rescuing. He’d been terrified, while Emily had been calm and collected. How did she do that?

  He stepped into the utility room and headed for the bathroom there. He checked his watch and noted that he had time for a shower. He looked in the closet just outside the bathroom and found a clean change of clothes.

  One whiff of himself told him he needed to make good use of the shower. When he caught himself checking his appearance in the mirror after his shower a few minutes later, he laughed. Okay, so he wanted to look good for her. Just because it wasn’t like him didn’t mean it was dumb. Nothing wrong with wanting to look good for a pretty lady.

  Now, if he could just tuck away those heated memories of their time in the barn, he might be able to look at her in front of his family and avoid pouncing. If he tried really hard, he could possibly even get out a sensible word or two.

  He put on his clean clothes, gave his hair another lick with the comb, then headed for the kitchen.

  He was the last to arrive, but that didn’t keep him from seeking out Emily with his eyes.

  As if there were some sort of internal radar operating between them, she turned to look, found him, met his gaze. Her shy smile made his heart twist. Had a woman ever made him feel this way before? Strong and tender at the same time? He didn’t think so.

  Then her smile faded and something else came into her eyes, something he couldn’t identify, but that might have been regret. She looked away, busying herself with a skillet on the stove.

  Sloan turned abruptly away, not wanting to be caught staring at her. What had that look meant?

  A moment later dinner was on the table and everyone was sitting down.

  Emily busied herself helping the girls fill their plates. They didn’t need her help, but she had to do something to keep from looking at Sloan. She feared that all her uncertainties would show on her face if she met his gaze again.

  Sloan asked his grandmother about her trip to town, and Rose filled him in. For the life of her, Emily couldn’t have said a moment later what Rose had told him. Her own thoughts of guilt and betrayal, overlaid with the pleasure and excitement she’d felt in Sloan’s arms, kept whirling in her mind. She didn’t come out of that fog until she heard Caleb say something about her car.

  “I can’t figure what happened to it,” he said.

  Emily blinked and looked at him across the table. “I’m sorry. I was thinking about something else. What happened to what?”

  “The oil pickup tube on your car. I left it lying on the tarp under
the engine, and it’s gone. I’ll have to order a new one. I’m sorry, Emily. It’s my responsibility, so you won’t have to pay for a new one, but it will take a few days to get the new part.”

  Days? “How many days?” she asked. If she wasn’t in Fort Smith in a week and a half she would lose out on the chance at a job.

  “I don’t know,” he confessed. “A car that old, it might be hard to find an oil pickup tube for it. I’m sorry.”

  Emily’s mind raced. She couldn’t lose that chance for the factory job. What would she do if it took too long to get the new part? If she waited until the last minute, she would be too late. But how would she get to Fort Smith without her car? She had seen no bus station in Rose Rock.

  Sloan might take her, but she couldn’t ask him. That would be too much, for him to drive her all the way to Arkansas. She would offer to pay him, but he wouldn’t accept, she knew.

  Brenda. If Emily reimbursed her cousin for gas, Brenda would come get her. But she could come only on Saturday or Sunday. Fort Smith was about three hours away, so a round-trip in one day was doable, if long.

  Now that she was directly faced with the reminder of her need to get to Arkansas, Emily felt dazed. She had thought she had more time. Now she realized she did not.

  She cast a brief look at Sloan, but he was looking at Caleb.

  “We can get on the phone and call around in Oklahoma City,” Sloan suggested.

  “Yeah, I plan to start that this evening.”

  “If you could tell me what you find out,” Emily said, “I’d appreciate it. If you can’t get the part and get it installed by the end of next week, then don’t rush.” This was Wednesday. That gave him a week and a half. It sounded like a long time to fix a car, but she knew Caleb was only able to work on it during his spare time, of which he had little. “I’ll have to call my cousin, Brenda, to come get us.”

  Sloan’s fork clanked against his plate. He stared at her in silent shock and denial.

  Her daughters were not so quiet with their objections.