“You’re feeling well?” Rose asked. “You look as if you do.”
“I’m fine, truly.”
“Any morning sickness?”
Blaire rolled her eyes. “Yes. I’m afraid I gave Justin a demonstration of it yesterday morning.”
Rose smiled widely. “Good for you. I always said women should share more of the joy of pregnancy and childbirth with their men.”
Chapter Eleven
How ironic, Blaire thought that evening, that the only person who accepted her right to make her own decision about marriage was the grandmother of the very man Blaire refused to marry.
Oh, to have such acceptance from her own parents!
But that, Blaire knew, was too much to hope for.
Rose had stayed only a few minutes, but in those few minutes Blaire felt as if she’d found a true friend. Someone she could confide in, perhaps, who would not judge her.
Blaire wasn’t fool enough to believe that Rose Chisholm would befriend anyone who hurt one of her own, though, so this tentative friendship could be temporary, indeed, if Blaire and Justin couldn’t come to an amicable agreement regarding the baby. But Blaire felt they could. Hoped, prayed they could.
The dust had yet to settle from Rose’s departure from the parking lot when Blaire’s father flew out the back door of the store and marched across to the house.
“Well?” he demanded. “What did she want? Is she going to make that boy marry you?”
“Daddy!” Blaire stared at her father in shock. “You know perfectly well that Justin has asked to marry me, several times. I’ve told you that myself.”
“Then why aren’t you married, little girl?”
“Because,” she said tightly, “I said no. No more!” She held her hand up to stop whatever he’d been about to say. “I’m not going to talk about it. Rose Chisholm trusts me to make the right decision. You’re going to have to trust me, too.”
Without waiting for her father to remark, Blaire spun on her heel and left the house. “I’m taking an early lunch.” She dashed across the driveway to the garage and climbed the stairs to her apartment. There she slammed the door and locked herself in. And the world out.
What she wanted most in that moment, she realized, was Justin. And that realization appalled her. She had always winced in embarrassment whenever one of her girlfriends felt like running to a man so he could take care of things for her. Even her own mother was prone to expecting her husband to solve her problems for her.
Blaire refused to become that kind of woman, dependent upon a man to get through the day.
Good grief, she’d had an argument with her father and she wanted to run to Justin and cry on his shoulder? When had she turned into such a weak-kneed, lily-livered wimp?
On the other hand, she thought, what was wrong with a person wanting a little comfort, someone to take her side of things? The need for a little emotional support now and then didn’t constitute a weakness. Did it?
To be on the safe side, when her phone rang that night, she did not answer.
No one left a message on her answering machine, and she didn’t have caller ID, but she was sure it had been Justin. No one else would call her at ten o’clock at night.
The next night no one called. Neither did anyone call the night after that, nor the night after that. In fact, Blaire’s phone did not ring for a solid week.
It was amazing, Justin thought, how much strength and energy and willpower it took not to make a phone call. Not to hop in his pickup and drive into town.
Not to grab his grandmother by the neck and shake her until she told him what went on at the feed store that day.
He must have it bad, not to be able to make it through a single day without talking to Blaire, seeing her. Being near her.
All he’d managed to learn was that yes, Grandmother had gone to the feed store, and yes, she had spoken with Blaire. Blaire was a nice girl and it seemed as if she had a good head on her shoulders.
As for anything else that might have been discussed between the two most important women in his life, Cherokee Rose Chisholm’s lips were apparently sealed. With superglue. The woman was flat not talking.
That, Justin could probably have lived with. But that new twinkle that had been in his grandmother’s eyes since her return from town was driving him crazy.
“I will say one thing,” his grandmother told him as she stopped before her bedroom door on her way to retire for the night. “That young woman needs a break. She’s under a great deal of pressure from her parents, you, even herself. Everyone, including you, needs to back off for a few days and give her a chance to breathe, a chance to think for herself instead of being told what she should or shouldn’t do.”
“You think I’m pushing too hard?” he asked, already knowing the answer.
“If you aren’t, I know you would like to.”
Justin chuckled and kissed his grandmother’s cheek. “You know me too well. I’ll give her some time and space, but I’m not about to let her get away from me.”
“No.” She kissed his cheek in return. “I never thought you would.”
He watched her enter her room and close the door, then he closed himself into his own bedroom. He would do his best to keep his word to his grandmother, for Blaire’s sake, because he knew his grandmother was right.
But he couldn’t just not call. He’d left her with the impression that she would hear from him today. One call, that would be all, and then he would back off for a while.
She didn’t answer. He let it ring and ring and ring, and she didn’t answer.
Maybe she was ready for that breather now instead of later.
A man who couldn’t take a hint was at best a nuisance. At worst, a creep. All things considered, he would just as soon the mother of his child not think of him as a creep.
But as one day turned into another he began to wonder if maybe he really was in love with her. Why else would he feel this need to be with her, to hear her voice? Why else would he feel this constant yearning?
How was a man to know?
After three days of not calling her and not going to town, he still didn’t know if he was in love, but everyone else came to believe he’d lost his marbles. He rode his horse out to the middle pasture, but came back without the calf he’d gone out there to get.
At supper that night six-year-old Janie was confused. “How come Daddy said Uncle Justin was out to lunch? It’s suppertime, and he’s not out, he’s right here.”
Her big sister, older by two years, rolled her eyes in disgust. “It’s an expression, silly.”
“Libby,” Emily cautioned her daughter. “No name calling.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Well, what’s it mean?” Janie demanded.
“It means,” Libby said in her my-sister-is-an-imbecile tone, “that he’s cuckoo.”
“Oh.” Janie slurped up another strand of spaghetti between pursed lips. “You mean like this afternoon when he tried to use the paintbrush to fix the flat tire on his pickup?”
“Yeah,” Libby said. “Like that.”
Justin made a face. “Didn’t anybody ever tell you two it’s not polite to talk about people when they’re sitting right here?”
“Well, golly.” Janie’s little eyebrows lowered. “If you can’t talk about people when they’re right here, and you’re not supposed to talk about ’em behind their backs, when can you talk about them?”
Emily cleared her throat to get the attention of her daughters. “I believe the lesson there is that it’s not polite to talk about other people at all.”
Libby’s eyebrows climbed up her forehead. “If we can’t talk about people, what are we gonna talk about?”
There was the unmistakable sound of muffled and choked laughter as Sloan picked up the large bowl of mashed potatoes and started it around the table.
A full week after Justin had brought Blaire home from Stillwater, he finally gave in and drove to town. If asked, he would swear that hi
s pickup turned off Main into the parking lot of the feed store all on its own. Surely he himself had more willpower than to play the lovesick high school teen and drive by his girl’s house.
Hell, he thought. At least he hadn’t driven by and honked.
Of course he hadn’t. He’d parked and gotten out, walked into her father’s store without proper mental preparation. And Tom Harding was waiting for him with both barrels, metaphorically speaking.
“Why haven’t you married my girl yet?” Harding demanded.
Justin glanced around to find himself the only customer inside. The others, who belonged to the other vehicles in the lot, must have been out in the warehouse. It was a common place to run into friends and hang around for a visit.
“Well?” Harding barked.
How was he supposed to answer? The simple truth was, he would marry Blaire in a heartbeat, had asked her several times, but she had turned him down. If he said as much to her father the man was likely to take it out on her in some way.
In the end, Justin shrugged. “That’s something Blaire and I will have to work out between the two of us.”
“Well, get to working it out, before the kid graduates high school.”
“Thanks for the advice.” Having completely forgotten the excuse he had used to come to the store, Justin turned and left.
Outside, he stepped off the porch-cum-loading dock and drew to a halt. Beyond his left shoulder stood the Hardings’ house, where Blaire was probably working at that very moment. Straight ahead sat his pickup.
To the left, possible—probably—humiliation, because he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from asking her yet again to marry him, and she would once again turn him down.
Straight ahead, escape.
From the window in her office, the same window from which she had watched Rose Chisholm arrive nearly a week ago, Blaire saw Justin standing in the parking lot.
She’d seen him arrive about ten minutes earlier, had still been at the window when he left the store. Now he simply stood there, as if trying to decide what to do.
Blaire smoothed her hair and unrolled the sleeves of her shirt. Her makeup could use a little refreshing, but she didn’t have time. He would be knocking on the door any second.
This is, if he ever decided to move, she thought with a frown. What was he doing just standing there? Oh, he looked good. The weather was mild enough that he wore a flannel shirt with no jacket or overcoat. The breeze was strong enough to ruffle his hair back from his face and redden his cheeks.
She had missed him. She could admit that to herself, privately. She had missed his face, his phone calls, his laughter.
Why was he just standing there? Why wasn’t he coming to the house to see her?
Whatever she’d eaten for lunch—and for the life of her, she couldn’t remember what it was even though she’d eaten it less than an hour ago—must not be agreeing with her, because she felt a burning ache beneath her ribs. It had come on sharply the instant she’d realized Justin was not coming to see her.
This was…well, it was wrong, that’s what it was. He wasn’t supposed to ignore her, and if he did, she certainly wasn’t supposed to ache because of it.
The man was turning her life upside down, making her want him, giving her a child, expecting her to marry him, sending his grandmother to see her. Then, ignoring her?
No, this wasn’t right. Tugging on her cardigan sweater, Blaire marched out of the house and across the parking lot. She was twenty feet away from Justin when he turned and took a step toward her. Only then, after he’d turned and moved in her direction, did he seem to notice her.
“Blaire.”
She stopped about five feet away. “Justin.”
“Hi.” He stuck his hands in his hip pockets. “How are you doing?”
“Just fine.” Not that he’d bothered to call and find out all week long, she thought with an odd mixture of pain and anger and sadness. And maybe just a touch of peevishness, but that was neither here nor there. Then she went and ruined her aloof act. “I thought maybe you would have called this past week.”
He dragged his boot heel through the gravel beneath his feet. “I wanted to.”
She wasn’t going to ask. It would sound too pitiful, too needy. She wouldn’t give him that much of an edge over her. Then she did. “Why didn’t you?”
He glanced out at the cars going past on Main. “You asked me for breathing room. I said I’d give it to you.” He nodded toward her compact parked beside the garage. “I see you got your car back. I thought you were going to call me for a ride back to Stillwater to get it.”
“They called yesterday. Mama took me.”
“Oh.” He stared down at his feet, then glanced back up at her. “Did they fix everything?”
“It looks fine. Now all it needs is painting, but I’m in no hurry for that.”
“I can—”
“No, you can’t,” she told him. “But thank you for offering. I got a cell phone yesterday.”
“That’s…” It did her heart good to see him look both relieved and disappointed. She knew he’d wanted to get it for her himself. “…great.”
“Have you got something to write with? I’ll give you the number,” she offered.
He had a small notebook not much larger than a business card, and a short pencil stub in his shirt pocket. She gave him the number of her new cell phone and he wrote it in his notebook.
They stood there another few minutes, looking everywhere but at each other.
“Justin, what’s wrong?” she finally asked.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean you’re acting like we’re strangers or something. Are you angry with me?”
“Why should I be angry with you?”
She shrugged and hugged her arms around her middle. “Because I won’t marry you?”
“Ah,” he said with a slight smile. “There’s where you’re wrong.”
“Wrong?”
“I think you will marry me. You just haven’t realized that’s what you want to do yet.”
“Ah,” she mimicked. “There’s that ego we all know and love. I’d wondered what had happened to it.”
He chuckled. “Just like a woman. Give her what she says she wants and she wonders what’s wrong. Have lunch with me tomorrow. Maybe we can regain our footing with each other.”
“All right.” She didn’t even have to think about her answer. Not with the way her heart lifted at his invitation.
For their lunch date the next day, the weather decided to be their friend. The temperature soared to sixty, the air barely stirred, and the sun shone true and bright. A two-shirt day at the most.
Blaire dressed in jeans, shirt, boots, and an oversized red flannel shirt as a jacket.
To Justin, when he pulled up and she stepped out of her apartment and started down the stairs toward him, she looked adorable. But then, she always looked adorable to him.
He rounded his rig and opened the passenger door for her. Before he could offer her a hand up, she climbed in unaided.
Okay, he thought with reluctance. She’s not ready to be touched yet. That was a shame, because he certainly was, as long as the person doing the touching was her.
All of this obsessing he’d been doing lately, thinking of her, dreaming of her, wanting her. It had to mean something, didn’t it?
“Where are we going?” she asked when he jumped into the driver’s seat and pulled out of the parking lot.
“It’s a surprise.” And a gamble, he thought. A gamble for him.
“Oh? Okay.” But her agreeable tone turned wary a moment later when he took the road out of town. “Justin?”
“Hmm?”
“You did say we were going to lunch, didn’t you?”
“I did, and we are. Just trust me. You’ll like it.” He hoped.
He stayed on the highway for several miles, then turned off onto a secondary road before reaching the main gate to the Cherokee Rose Ranch. He followed the s
econdary road for a mile and turned to drive along the back side of the ranch until he reached his favorite spot.
He pulled off onto the narrow shoulder and parked.
By this time Blaire had her arms crossed over her chest as if to protect herself, but she was looking around with interest.
“I thought you might enjoy a picnic, since it’s so nice today,” he said.
She studied the landscape outside her window. “This is the place you told me about, isn’t it.”
“Yeah,” he confessed, wondering what she thought of it. “Yeah, it is.”
She opened her door and got out. She walked over to the barbed-wire fence and looked around. Justin got out and followed her. The land sloped gently up from the fence to crest about fifty yards away from where they stood. The Bermuda grass was winter brown now, but in the summer it would be a thick green carpet, broken here and there by the occasional scrub oak.
“I guess I don’t know what a persimmon tree looks like,” Blaire confessed. “Or a buffalo wallow, either, for that matter.”
He couldn’t say how pleased he was that she had remembered his description of the place. “Come on, I’ll show you.” He crawled through the fence, then pushed one strand down with his boot and held the one above it up with both hands while Blaire climbed carefully through.
Then, because he had opportunity and a good excuse, he took her hand in his as he led her toward the small grove of tall, rather narrow trees at the far end of the clearing with scarcely a leaf left on them anywhere.
“These,” he said with a wave of his free hand, “are persimmon trees. Although, I can’t prove it because the deer picked them clean months ago.”
“It’s just as well,” she said. “But I’m wondering if a ripe persimmon is as awful as a green one.”
“Ripe ones are sweet,” he told her. “You can try one out next fall.”
He could have kicked himself for referring to the future that way, when they might not have a future together at all. But she didn’t protest, and she had yet to pull her hand from his, so he held on and led her up the slight incline to the crest and over.
“Have you ever seen a buffalo wallow before?” he asked her.
The Cowboy on Her Trail Page 15
