by Tina Leonard
The porch shook under his feet with the sound of more approaching women. He hadn’t taken his eyes off Laura, for reasons he couldn’t quite explain to himself. She opened her pretty pink lips to say more, introduce all her gift-bearing friends, when suddenly something wrapped itself around his thigh.
Glancing down, he saw a tiny towhead comfortably smiling up at him. “Daddy,” she said, hugging his leg for all she was worth. “Daddy.”
For the first time in his life, including the time he’d temporarily lost part of his hearing from an underwater mine explosion near a sub he’d been monitoring, he felt panic. But the women laughed, and Laura didn’t seem embarrassed as she disengaged her daughter from his leg.
“Oh, sweetie, he might be a daddy, or he will be one day. Can you say Mr. Morgan?”
The child smiled at him beatifically, completely convinced that the world was a wonderful, happy place. “Morgan,” she said softly.
So he’d be Morgan, just like Pop. He could remember people yelling his father’s name, cursing his father’s name, cheering his father’s name. It was always something along the lines of either “Morgan, you jackass!” or “Morgan, you old dog!”
It didn’t feel as bad as he thought it might. Gabriel wondered where the child’s father was, and then decided it was none of his business. “I should invite you in,” he said reluctantly to the gathering at large, his gaze on Laura. He could tell by their instant smiles that being invited in was exactly what they wanted. “Too hot in June to keep ladies on the porch. We can all see the new place at the same time and make some introductions.”
“You haven’t been inside your home yet?” Laura asked. “Mimi said she thought you might have arrived later than you planned.”
“Tell me something,” he said as he worked at the lock on the front door. The lock obviously hadn’t been used in a long time and didn’t want to move. “I’d heard Union Junction was great for peace and quiet. Is this one of those places where everybody knows everybody’s business?”
That made everyone laugh. Not him—for Gabriel it was a serious question.
“Yes,” Laura said. “That’s one of the best parts of our town. Everyone cares about everybody.”
Great. The lock finally gave in to his impatient twisting of Key Number Four and he swung the door open. The first thing he realized was how hot the house was—like an oven.
The smell was the next thing to register. Musty, unused, closed-up. The ladies peered around his shoulders to the dark interior.
“Girls, we’ve got our work cut out for us,” an older lady pronounced.
“That won’t be necessary,” Gabriel said as they brushed past him. Laura smiled at him, swinging her grocery sack to the opposite hip and taking her daughter’s hand in hers.
“It’s necessary,” she said. “They can clean this place so fast it’ll make your head spin. Besides, we’ve seen worse. Not much worse, of course. But your father’s been gone a long time. Almost six months.” She smiled kindly. “Frankly, we expected you a lot sooner.”
“I wasn’t in a hurry to get here.” Neither were any of his brothers. During their curt email transmissions, exchanged since their father’s letter had been delivered to them, Dane had said he might swing by in January if he’d finished with his Texas Ranger duties by then, Pete said he might make it by February—depending upon the secret agent assignments he couldn’t discuss—and Jack hadn’t answered at all. Jack was the least likely of them all to give a damn about Pop, the ranch, or a million dollars.
His chicken brothers were making excuses, putting off the inevitable—except for Jack, who really was the wild card.
“Well, we’re glad you’re here now.” She didn’t seem to notice his grimness as she set her grocery sack on the counter. “Hope you like chicken, baby peas and rice.”
“You don’t have to do that.” He heard the sound of a vacuum start up somewhere in the house, and windows opening. The fragrance of lemon oil began to waft from one of the rooms. The little girl clung to her mom, her eyes watching Gabriel’s every move. “Really, I’m not hungry, and your little girl probably needs to be at home in bed.” It was six o’clock—what time did children go to bed, anyway? He and his brothers had a strict bedtime of nine o’clock when they were kids, which they’d always ignored. Pop never came up the stairs to check on them, and they used a tree branch outside the house to cheat their curfew. Then one year, Pop sawed off the limb, claiming the old live oak was too close to the roof. They devised a rope ladder which they flung out on grappling hooks whenever they had a yen to meet up with girls or camp in the woods.
Or watch Jack practice at the forbidden rodeo in the fields lit only by the moon.
“Oh, Penny’s fine. Don’t worry about her. You’re always happy, aren’t you, Penny?”
Penny beamed at Gabriel. “Morgan,” she murmured in a small child’s breathy recitation. He felt his heart flip over in his chest as he returned the child’s gaze. Heartburn. I’m getting heartburn at the age of twenty-six.
“I have a smaller version of Penny who is being watched for me right now.” Laura smiled proudly as she unloaded the grocery sacks the ladies had loaded onto the kitchen counter. “Perrin is nine months old, and looks just like his father. You love your baby brother, don’t you, Penny?” She looked down at her child, who nodded, though she didn’t break her stare from Gabriel.
Gabriel felt his heart sink strangely in his chest. This woman was married, apparently happily so.
He was an idiot, and probably horny. The house was swarming with women and he had to get the preliminary hots for a married mom.
Good thing his yen was in the early stages—one pretty face could replace another easily enough. “Listen, I don’t want to be rude, but I just got in. I appreciate you and your friends trying to help, but—”
“But you would rather be alone.”
He nodded.
“I understand.” She flicked the oven on Warm and slid the casserole inside. “I would, too, if I was you.”
She knew nothing about him. He decided a reply wasn’t needed.
“You know, I really liked your father,” she said, hesitating. She stared at him with eyes he felt tugging at his desire. “I hated to see Mr. Morgan go.”
“Josiah,” he murmured.
“I didn’t call him by his first name.”
He shrugged. “You didn’t know him too well, then.”
“Because I didn’t call him by his name or because I liked him?”
He looked at her, thinking, Both, lady.
“Mr. Morgan was fond of my children.”
His radar went on alert. Here came the your-father-wants-you-to-settle-down chorus. He steeled himself.
She ran a gentle hand through Penny’s long fine hair. “Of course, he dreamed of having his own grandchildren.”
Gabriel frowned. That topic was none of her business. His family was too raw a subject for him to discuss with a stranger.
“You’re going to hear this sooner or later.” She gazed at him suddenly with clear, determined focus. “I’d rather you hear it from me.”
He shrugged. “I’m listening.” He reminded himself that whatever she had to say didn’t matter to him. What Pop had meant to the town of Union Junction was not his concern.
“Your father put a hundred thousand dollars into a trust for my children.”
She’d caught his attention. Not because of the amount, but because Pop had to have lost his mind to have gone that soft. Pop was as miserly as he was stubborn, even complaining over church donations. All he was interested in was himself.
Or at least that had been the Pop of Gabriel’s youth.
Truthfully, it astonished him that this tiny woman had the nerve to tell him she’d managed to wheedle money out of his father. Maybe Pop had finally begun to crack, all the years of selfishness taking their toll. More importantly, Laura was obviously the kind of woman with whom Gabriel should exercise great distance and caution. “Congratulati
ons,” he finally said, trying not to smirk. “A hundred grand is a nice chunk of change.”
“Each.”
He stared at her. “Each?”
“Each child got their own trust. Penny and Perrin both received a hundred thousand dollars. Your father said it wasn’t a lot, but he wanted them to have something later in their lives. He doesn’t want them to know about his gift, though, not until they’re grown up.” She smiled, and it seemed to Gabriel that her expression was sad. “They won’t even remember him, then.”
He had no idea what the hell to say to this woman. He was suspicious. He was dumbstruck. Perhaps he was even a little envious that she’d gained some type of affection in his father’s heart, when he and his brothers had struggled for years and had received none.
She picked up Penny. “I just thought you should know.”
He watched as she turned, heading for the front door. Over her mother’s shoulder, Penny watched him with wistful eyes. What had been the relationship between Pop and Laura that such an astonishing gift would be given to her kids?
He could remember a cold, wet night in Poland, hunched behind a snowbank, listening to a radio he’d held with frozen fingers to pick up conversation in a bedroom in Gdan´sk. He’d retrieved the information he’d needed, turned it in and got cleared to return home. Chilled, he’d called his father, thinking maybe his soul could use a good thawing and their relationship a delayed shot of warmth. He was young, idealistic, mostly broke, lonely. Damned cold in every area of his life.
He needed a bus ticket from the base, he’d told his father. The military would get him stateside, but he only had a few zloty in his pocket.
Pop had told him not to come crying to him for money. He said the greatest gift he could ever give him was the knowledge of how to stand on his own two feet.
That was ten years ago, and he could still hear the sound of the receiver slamming in his ear. He followed behind Laura, catching up to open the front door for her. “You must have meant a lot to my father.”
She turned, slowly, her gaze meeting his, questioning. In a split second, she got the gist of his unspoken assumption. “Your reputation preceded you,” she said softly. “You really are a jackass.”
The door slammed behind her. Gabriel nodded to himself, silently agreeing with her assessment. Then he went to shoo his well-meaning friends out of the house he didn’t want.
Chapter Two
Laura returned to her house, steaming. She put Penny down on the sofa and went to find Mimi, whom she could hear quietly singing to Perrin in the back of the house. “Thank you for watching my little man, Mimi.” She looked down into the crib at her baby, and all the tension flowed from her.
Together they walked from the nursery. “So what did you think of Gabriel Morgan?” Mimi asked.
“Not much. He thinks I sucked up to his father to weasel money out of him.” Laura shrugged her shoulders. “He’s everything Mr. Morgan said he was. Cocky, brash, annoying.”
Mimi laughed. “Not a man’s best qualities. Wasn’t he nice at all? He just seemed sort of shy to me.”
Laura went to fix them both an iced tea. “I suppose I compare every man to my husband.” Her gaze was reluctantly drawn to the framed, fingerprint-covered photo of Dave. Penny liked to look at the picture of her father, enjoyed hearing stories about him.
Dave had been such a kind man. Warm. Funny. Easy to talk to. Nothing like the man she’d met today. Laura wrinkled her nose and tried not to think so tears wouldn’t spring into her eyes. Heaven only knew Dave had his moments; he was no angel. They’d had their spats. But he’d been her first love and that counted for so much. It had been such a shock to lose him.
At least she had his children.
“I suppose it would be hard for me not to compare every man to Mason.” Mimi smiled. “No one would measure up.”
Laura nodded, appreciating her friend’s understanding.
“Some would say there never was a tougher nut to crack than Mason Jefferson.”
“Really?” Laura found that hard to believe. Mason loved his wife, loved his kids. Was always looking at Mimi, or holding her hand.
“Suffice it to say he was really difficult to get to the altar. Sometimes I even wondered why I wanted him there.” Mimi laughed. “Talk about stubborn and hard to get along with.”
“Dave was easy,” Laura murmured. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m not looking to replace Dave in my life at all. But I was hoping for a connection with Gabriel, something like the one I’d had with his father. I miss the old gentleman.” She smiled sadly at Mimi. “I can’t understand why his boys don’t want to be close with him.”
“Mr. Morgan was a different person with us than he was with his sons. They say people show themselves differently to everyone, and we probably saw his best side. He was a good man.”
“Obviously his sons believe they understand him better, and they probably do.” She and Mimi moved to the kitchen table. Penny came into the kitchen and crawled into her mother’s lap. Laura handed her a vanilla wafer from a box left out on the table since yesterday. “I swear I do keep house. We don’t always have food left out from the day before.” She glanced at the sink where the pots were piled up from making the welcome meal for Gabriel.
“Try living in a house where grown men come and go all the time. They make a bigger mess than the kids.” Mimi sipped her tea. “I’ll help you clean it up in a bit.”
Laura shook her head, appreciating the offer but not wanting the help. She didn’t mind washing dishes. It was soothing to have her hands in warm dishwater, and somehow comforting to submerge dirty dishes in suds and then pull them gleaming from the water. “I didn’t want him to misunderstand my relationship with his father.”
Mimi nodded. “Men don’t always temper their thoughts before they speak. Anyway, nobody tells Josiah Morgan what to do. Gabriel knows that.”
Gabriel, too, struck Laura as the kind of man willing to fight any battle life threw at him.
“Besides, it’s really none of Gabriel’s business.”
That was also true. She’d only told him about his father’s gift to her children because she wanted him to know up front. “Okay, I give up on being mad. It’s a waste of time.”
Mimi got up from the table. “Let’s wash these dishes.”
“No, you go on home to your family. You’ve done enough for me, Mimi. I really appreciate you watching Perrin so he could nap.”
“Did the doctor say how long it would take for the medicine to do some good?”
Perrin had colic, long bouts at night that worried Laura. Someone had suggested that the colic was stress-induced, and that Perrin was sensing his mother’s sadness. It had been a shock when Dave had died, and she certainly had grieved—was still grieving—but it was an additional guilt that she was causing her son’s pain. “The doctor said babies sometimes go through colic. The medicine might help, and putting him on a different formula. Or he could grow out of it.”
Mimi patted her hand. “I’ll come by to see you later at the school.”
Laura nodded. “I’d like that.”
She closed the door behind Mimi. Penny handed her a vanilla wafer, and for the first time that day, Laura felt content.
* * *
ON FRIDAY NIGHT, THREE days later, Gabriel finally drove into the small town of Union Junction. He could see what had drawn his father to this place. For one thing, it looked like a melding of the old West and a Norman Rockwell card. There was a main street where families were enjoying a warm June stroll, ice-cream cones or sodas in hand. A kissing booth sat in front of a bakery. Other booths lined the street in front of various shops.
He glanced at the kissing booth again, caught by a glimpse of blond hair and the long line outside the booth. All the booths had lines, but none as long as the kissing booth, which Gabriel figured was probably appropriate. If he was offered the choice of getting a kiss or throwing rings over a bottle, he’d definitely take the kiss.
“What’s going on?” he asked a young cowboy at the back of the line.
“Town fair.” The young man grinned at him. “You’re Morgan, aren’t you?”
He looked at him. “Aren’t you too young to be buying kisses?”
He got a laugh for that. “Get in line and spend a buck, Mr. Morgan.”
“Why?” He wasn’t inclined to participate in the fun of a town fair. He’d just been looking around, trying to figure out why Pop had settled near here, trying to stave off some boredom.
“We’re raising money for the elementary school. Need more desks. The town is certainly growing.”
“Shouldn’t the town be paying for that from taxes or something?”
“We like to do some recreational fundraising, too.”
Gabriel reluctantly fell into line. “So who are we kissing?”
“Laura Adams.”
“We can’t kiss her!” He had to admit the idea was inviting, but he also wanted to jerk the young man out of line—and every other man, too.
The line kept growing behind him.
“Why not?” His companion appeared puzzled.
Gabriel frowned. “She’s married. And she’s a mom.”
The young man laughed. “Mimi Jefferson was working the booth an hour ago. It’s the only time any of us can get near Mimi without getting our tails kicked by Mason, so most of us went through twice.”
Gabriel’s frown deepened.
“It’s for a good cause,” his new friend said. “Besides which, Laura’s not married anymore.”
Gabriel’s mood lifted slightly. He felt his boots shuffling closer to the booth behind his talkative friend. “She’s not?”
“Nah. Her husband died shortly after she gave birth to Perrin.” His friend looked at him with surprise. “You should know all this. Your dad loved Laura’s kids. Said they were probably the only—”
“I know. I know. Jeez.” Gabriel rubbed at his chin, trying to decide if he liked how quickly the line was moving. And the young man was right. The gentlemen were leaving the line to catcalls and whistles and hurrying to the back of the line for another kiss. It was a never-ending kiss line of rascals. “I’m pretty sure I don’t belong here.”
