Jed shrugged and looked away.
But if he thought the men were hostile, their reaction was nothing compared to their wives'.
Tess and Felicity and Brenna pointedly turned their backs on him when he looked their way. It was so noticeable that he could see Taggart's bull-riding students look twice in his direction.
He felt heat rise on his neck and turned away, pretending extreme interest in fixing a buckle on his bullfighting vest.
The moment he did, he could feel the women's eyes on him, and he heard the mutters and whispers as he moved away.
A muscle ticked in his temple. Tension knotted in his neck. His fingers fumbled with the buckle. He cursed under his breath. But he told himself he didn't care.
They didn't understand—any of them! If they did, they'd applaud him for his selflessness.
But he wasn't going to tell them. No way was he going to admit such a thing to his friends and their wives.
It was between him and Jenny. It wasn't anyone else's business at all!
So he kept his chin up and his gaze firm. He fixed the buckle on the vest, then went about checking the chutes and sorting the bulls the way he always did. He was cool and efficient. Steady and dependable. They didn't need to talk to him. He didn't need to talk to them.
There was none of the usual camaraderie that made him look forward to Taggart's weekend schools. There wasn't a hint of the habitual needling and easy teasing that he and Mace and Jed and Noah shared.
So, who cared? He'd survive.
He was surviving now. Surviving without something—without someone—that hurt a lot worse.
It was easy enough to ignore the silence until lunchtime. But when he went to get a hot dog and some chili from the pot that Brenna was ladling out of, she was always serving somebody else. At first he thought that in the crush of hungry cowboys, she just didn't see him standing there with an empty plate. But then the crowd thinned out and still he stood there, and she didn't even look at him.
He understood then, felt the lead settle in the pit of his stomach. But he didn't move away.
"I'd like a hot dog, please." He kept his voice even, tried to make it sound casual, as if it wasn't choking him to have to ask for something so simple.
She slapped a hot dog and a bun on his plate and never once looked his way.
"Thanks."
But she had already left.
At least the spoon was in the chili crock. He helped himself to that. Then he carried his plate to the table with the condiments and took his time putting mustard and ketchup on the bun. No reason to hurry. No one was waiting for his company.
Taggart, his back turned, was deep in conversation with two students. Three or four others were talking to Noah. Jed, standing a little to one side, eating, glanced Mace's way, then moved deliberately to join Noah's conversation.
Jaw set, Mace carried his plate to his truck and sat on the tailgate. He took a bite of the hot dog. He hadn't eaten anything since yesterday evening.
"El hambre es la mejor salsa," he remembered from high school Spanish. Hunger is the best sauce.
The hot dog tasted like sawdust. He chewed it, anyway.
Conversations went on around him, past him, over him—never once included him. Tess and Felicity came down from the house, each carrying one of the twins. Brenna followed with Neile, her baby. Taggart stopped his conversation to take a twin in his arms and, grinning, jiggle it up and down. Jed came across and took Neile away from her mother.
"How's my baby?" Jed asked, and nuzzled his nose against Neile's rose petal cheek. Mace looked away.
"I brought you some lemonade this time." The voice at his elbow made him jerk.
Becky was holding out a paper cup.
A corner of his mouth lifted. At least Becky hadn't abandoned him. He took the cup she offered and drained it in one gulp. "Thanks."
"Want more?"
He glanced toward the table where the coffee urn and the lemonade cooler sat. He'd have to walk past Jed and Taggart and their wives to get to it. He'd had too much pointed snubbing for one day. He shook his head. "I've had enough."
Becky followed his gaze. "I'll get it," she said.
She took the cup and marched across the yard. He watched her go, surprised at how she'd taken charge, surprised, too, at how tall she seemed. It was just yesterday she'd had to crane her neck to look up at him.
"Time flies when you're havin' fun," he muttered under his breath.
She came back with two cups, handed him one, then set hers down on the tailgate and boosted herself up to sit alongside him.
"I wasn't sure you'd come today," she said. She was staring straight ahead, not looking at him.
He shot a quick glance in her direction. "I always come. When have I ever missed a school?"
"You haven't." She took a swallow of lemonade. "But you haven't ever got a divorce before, either."
She looked up at him then, and her green eyes were dark with worry.
Of course she knew. Why had he figured she didn't? He turned his head to stare across the yard at the corral. "Not the same thing. One has nothing to do with the other."
Becky didn't say anything to that. Out of the corner of his eye he could see her booted feet swing back and forth.
He could feel the questions she wasn't asking. What does it have to do with? Why are you getting a divorce?
But she didn't say a word.
He took off his hat and shoved a hand through his hair. "Look," he said, "sometimes things happen. Things you don't count on. Things you don't plan. Things you don't want! But they do and then … you got to deal with them."
Becky's boots stopped swinging.
"Yeah," she said, her gaze settling on her father and stepmother and the babies they held. Then, in a voice that sounded like it had to work its way up from China, she said, "I know."
The 164 days dwindled to 155, and Jenny hadn't made any headway at all.
How could she when every time she even caught a glimpse of her stubborn husband, he headed in the other direction?
She was determined to do her share of the summer field work, figuring that it would bring her together with him. It didn't. If she went to help with the irrigation, he stayed on the other side of the field. If she ventured to ride along a fence line and discovered him there, too, he said, "I'll do this," and waved her away.
The one time she did actually get to exchange words with him—when the letter finally came about the land they'd been trying to buy and she went up to the cabin with it—he met her at the door and said tersely, "Obviously we won't be buying it now."
She thought he looked like hell. He was thinner than she'd ever seen him. Wearier looking. There were dark circles under his eyes. She wanted to put her arms around him and couldn't stop herself from taking a step forward.
He immediately stepped back behind the half-closed door, holding his hand out for the letter at the same time. "I'll take care of it."
"Mace, please don't do this."
He shook his head. "I've got to."
He'll come to his senses, Jenny told herself. She knew he would.
At least she prayed he would.
In the meantime, she didn't know what else to do.
"You think I should what?" Jenny stared at Felicity, certain she had heard wrong. Of course she was preoccupied and missed half the things that were said to her these days.
But had Felicity really suggested she—
"Go out on a date."
She had heard right. She stared at her friend. "You're joking of course."
"Actually, I'm not." Felicity grimaced as she eased a strand of hair out of a nursing Willy's eager grasp. "Though I would have hated anyone who suggested it to me," she admitted, forestalling Jenny's next protest. "I did hate people who suggested it to me when I was still getting over Dirk's death."
"So why are you suggesting it now?"
"Mace isn't dead."
"I know that." But sometimes these days she wanted to
kill him!
It would be a damn sight easier than living with the pieces of her life that he had so determinedly shattered, then thrown away.
She'd called his lawyer and tried to get him to talk some sense into Mace. But Anthony Hollis was just as pompous an ass as he'd been in high school. You couldn't talk to him then, and Jenny couldn't get him to listen to her now.
"I can't talk my client out of a divorce that he deems in his best interest, Mrs. Nichols," Anthony had said in his most patronizing voice.
"His best interest!" Jenny had sputtered. "Do you know why he wants this divorce, Tony?"
She heard Anthony's teeth come together with a snap and she remembered he did not like to be called Tony. Tough.
"He doesn't need a reason beyond irreconcilable differences," Anthony said.
"We can reconcile them, damn it, if he'd sit down and talk to me."
"Sometimes it's better to let the lawyers do the talking," Anthony said in his stuffy voice.
"Are you telling me to get a lawyer?"
He was.
And now Felicity was suggesting she get a date!
The world was conspiring against her.
"I think, under the circumstances, a date would be a wonderful thing," Felicity continued doggedly. "It would take your mind off you-know-who. It would show you that there are other fish in the sea."
"I don't care if there are other fish in the sea."
"And—" Felicity continued just as if Jenny hadn't spoken "—if Mace found out, it just might wake him up."
"Wake him up?"
"Make him jealous."
"Mace? Jealous?"
Mace had never been jealous in his life! He'd never had reason to be. Since the day she'd laid eyes on him, Jenny had never looked at another man. "Why not Mace?" Felicity said. "He still loves you."
Jenny wondered how everyone knew that.
Most of the time when people got divorces, at least one person had fallen out of love. She pointed that out, but Felicity wasn't convinced.
"Not in this case," she said.
Why did they think she and Mace were getting a divorce, then? She didn't ask. "I don't want to go out on a date," she said.
"Neither did I," Felicity said complacently. "But I went, anyway."
"And did you have a good time?" Jenny asked with more than the tiniest bit of sarcasm.
"No. But I'm not sorry I went. It made me aware of how dead I felt. And how alive I became around Taggart."
"Mmm." Trouble was Jenny already knew how alive she was—around Mace.
"Besides," Felicity said smugly, "I've got the perfect date for you."
Jenny groaned. "Some pie-eyed doughboy who eats garlic sandwiches?"
"Close," Felicity said. "My brother."
"What brother? I didn't mean—" She broke off, embarrassed now.
Felicity laughed. "His name is Tom. He teaches English and Literature at a college in Iowa."
"I think Iowa's a bit far to go for a date."
"Ah, but he's coming here." Felicity shifted Willy to the other side, then smiled up at Jenny. "Tomorrow."
Jenny froze. She shook her head quickly. "No. I can't."
"You could…"
"No." She was backing toward the door.
"Relax," Felicity said easily. "I won't make you do it. I just thought—" she gave a faint shrug "—maybe it would help."
Jenny knew that all their friends wanted to help.
She knew they were all poised to do anything they could. For her. For Mace. For both of them. If they only knew what to do.
But there was nothing anyone could do. She smiled a little wistfully. "Thanks for the thought."
"Tom's a nice guy. He's divorced. Has a five-year-old daughter, Katie. He was going to come out for a couple of weeks and bring Katie, but his ex-wife just got remarried and so Tom is coming on his own."
"I see." She wasn't sure she saw, actually. But she didn't see what it had to do with her, in any case. No matter how nice Felicity's brother was, he wasn't Mace. She wasn't interested.
"Think about it," Felicity said.
Becky had been doing a lot of thinking.
About what was going on at her house. About what was happening to Mace and Jenny.
It felt like the world was coming apart. Like nothing was working anymore at all. She didn't much like it—any of it—but she didn't know how to fix it.
She thought about discussing it with Susannah. But she was embarrassed. She didn't like admitting that things were less than perfect at home.
After all the work she and Susannah had done to get her father and Felicity together, it would seem like she'd failed if she had to admit that things weren't super.
They had been—until Willy and Abby.
But there wasn't much she could do about Willy and Abby. It wasn't like anyone had asked her if she wanted twins! They'd simply told her.
She could still remember how happy her dad and Felicity had looked when they'd given her the news.
She remembered how grouchy her dad was these days and how distracted Felicity was, and she wondered if they were still so thrilled.
It wasn't something she thought she could ask.
She didn't have anybody to ask about Mace and Jenny, either.
It was true—about the divorce. Before she'd gone to sit by Mace on the tailgate of his truck at bull-riding school, she'd hoped Felicity was wrong, that she'd made a mistake. But one look at Mace had told her Felicity was right.
Why? she wanted to ask him. What happened?
But she couldn't. When she looked at Mace that day, he'd reminded her of her dog, Digger, the day he'd been shot by that hunter.
He'd hurt so much he even bit her dad who was trying to help him. The good news was that Digger eventually recovered.
She wasn't so sure about Mace.
She would have liked to ask Susannah's opinion about that, at least, but there wasn't time, and anyway, Susannah had her own problems.
She had to leave the Monday after bull-riding school to go to her aunt Maggie's mother's funeral down in Wyoming.
And even if she'd been there, Becky wasn't sure what she could have said. There was stuff about Mace Susannah didn't know.
She didn't know about those talks Becky used to have with God, for one thing. The ones where she sort of said she wouldn't mind having Mace for her own.
She wasn't sure she wanted to tell Susannah that.
Susannah didn't know that Becky's pillowcase had a lot in common with Mace, either. Susannah's pillowcase had flowers on it, and the hem wasn't frayed.
Becky had never told Susannah that she felt wobbly in the knees sometimes when Mace grinned at her, either. And she'd never told anyone whose lock of hair she kept in the envelope in the trick box on her dresser!
One time when she was staying at Mace and Jenny's for the weekend, Jenny cut Mace's hair, and Becky had volunteered to sweep up after.
"Your grandma trained you right," Jenny had laughed, handing her the broom.
Becky swept. And when she was dumping it, she just happened to hang on to one shiny, black lock for her own.
No one knew whose it was—not even her father.
He thought it belonged to Digger. "What do you need the hair for when you've got the whole dog?" he'd asked her.
"I like it," Becky had answered with a shrug. It wasn't exactly a lie.
But Susannah would know right off it wasn't Digger's hair. She'd want to know whose it was.
And Becky had never been ready to talk about that.
So she couldn't talk to Susannah, even when she came back from Wyoming.
Later she wondered if maybe God sent her Tuck.
She and Tuck McCall had been friends as long as she could remember. Tuck had been with her, watching on television when Taggart won the National Finals Rodeo. And he'd been there the next day when Taggart and Noah were badly hurt.
Becky was the first person he'd told when Brenna, his uncle Jed's new wife, decided they wer
e going to exhibit his sketches along with her watercolors at her New York opening. Three years earlier she had been the one he'd told when his mother, Marcy, was dying. They'd cried together at her death.
She hadn't spent as much time with Tuck recently. Maybe it was because she had Susannah now, or maybe it was because Tuck was older and had bigger fish to fry and more important things to do.
But she was glad when Brenna called and asked Taggart if Tuck could spend the weekend with them while she and Jed went down to Jackson Hole for an opening of one of her art shows.
He'd been with her that day they'd seen Mace's truck at the cabin. And he'd known Mace and Jenny all his life, too. Plus he was pretty smart. He didn't talk much, but he saw a lot.
He'd probably know if it was her fault that they were getting a divorce—if she could figure out how to ask him.
It turned out to be easier than she thought.
Saturday afternoon they were sitting by the creek, skipping rocks, counting how many splashes they could make.
Tuck was usually better at it than she was, but she'd done a lot of practicing lately. The creek was one of the places she could go where she couldn't hear crying babies.
She asked him where Neile was, because she was actually sort of surprised that her parents didn't have Neile, too—though how they could possibly have managed a third baby she didn't know!
"Jenny's got her," Tuck replied absently. He was searching out rocks and piling them up in front of him.
The rock Becky had been about to skip dropped from her fingers. "Jenny?"
"Yeah. Brenna reckoned it'd give her something else to think about."
"Other than … the divorce, you mean?" Becky said carefully.
Tuck picked a blade of grass and stuck it in the corner of her mouth. "Yep."
Becky wrapped her arms around her knees. "Do you know why?" she asked cautiously. "Why they're getting the divorce, that is?"
"Nope." He studied the rocks he had collected, then looked over at Becky's to see if any of hers looked more promising.
"No idea?" Becky persisted.
Tuck frowned. "Why? What difference does it make?"
Becky shrugged. "I was just … wondering. My dad always said they were meant for each other. Always had been. So I was sorta surprised."
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