Priceless Marriage

by Bonnie Gardner

  Ruby smiled. She should have known that Sam would be here bright and early. Of course, maybe that was why she was sitting here on the porch.

  Waiting.

  For Sam to come home.

  The car bumped closer, sending up clouds of dust as it approached down the unpaved country road. Reluctant to leave her cozy seat, but eager to greet her husband, Ruby got up and went inside. She’d have a cup of coffee ready for him, and maybe they could sit for just a few minutes alone on the porch and enjoy the quiet before they started their day.

  As Ruby stepped outside with his mug of coffee, Sam pulled into the drive and parked behind the SUV, which Nick had returned. She hurried down the porch steps and met Sam halfway.

  “You’re up early,” she said as he strode up the walk. She offered the steaming cup of coffee to him, and he accepted gratefully. “Where’s your stuff?”

  “That’s all I had.” He nodded toward the Corvette. “Didn’t want to bother having it shipped here till I was sure I was gonna stay.” He accepted the mug and took a long swig. “Yeah,” he said. “Just what I needed. I didn’t even take the time to make instant this morni—” He stopped abruptly, and Ruby wondered if he was afraid to let her know just how eager he was.

  Well, she was eager, and she didn’t care who knew it—Sam, Nick, everyone in town. “Yes, I think this is the first time I’ve gotten up this early without the alarm, too. Come.” She patted the seat of the swing. “Join me on the porch while we drink our coffee. Nick will be here soon enough, and I’ll have to get breakfast ready.”

  Sam looked toward the silver-colored trailer where he knew Nick slept. “Have you spoken to him…about…Have you talked to him this morning?”

  Ruby chuckled into her coffee mug. “Don’t worry, Sam. I won’t tell him anything about our little…” She paused long enough to take a deep drink, then sighed. “Our little misunderstanding. We’ll just let that be our own secret.”

  Just then the subject of their conversation stepped out of the trailer. The door swung open wide, sending a flash of morning sun their way. Nick yawned and stretched, then looked toward the house. He must have seen them, for he waved.

  “Good morning, Nick,” Ruby called, returning his wave. “Come join us. Coffee’s ready in the kitchen.”

  She sighed contentedly and leaned against Sam, snuggling closer to him and relishing the strength and the warmth of his body. This was what she’d imagined when she’d first heard that the Tanner farm was for sale and she’d learned of the lottery win and knew she could finally afford to buy it. This was what she’d wanted Sam to come home to. Now it looked as though it was finally happening.

  Nick had detoured through the kitchen for coffee then stepped out through the front door and seated himself in the rocking chair across from them. He took a sip of his coffee and seemed to be waiting for one of them to initiate conversation. Of course, Nick had always been silent and slow to talk. Maybe it was the Native American in him.

  “Ruby tells me you got some good news yesterday, Nick,” Sam said. “Congratulations.”

  A huge smile spread across Nick’s face, transforming his almost stern expression to a grin. “Yeah, man. It was touch and go there for a while. All I had to offer was some know-how from the Seabees and my reputation. The bank wanted collateral.” He chuckled. “I offered ’em my truck and my trailer. They weren’t impressed.”

  “Oh. You’re the cousin who was in the navy,” Sam said. “I didn’t make the connection.”

  Nick grinned again. “What? With this hair you couldn’t tell?”

  “Well, you got out of the navy a long time ago,” Ruby interjected. “I guess I’d better go start cooking breakfast. As much as I’m enjoying sitting out here, we’ve got work to do.” She reluctantly pushed herself out of Sam’s arms and got up. “I guess now that you’ve got the loan, Nick, you’ll be leaving soon.”

  “I think I can manage to hang out here long enough to get your kitchen finished,” Nick told her. Then he grinned again. “They’re delivering your appliances tomorrow afternoon. That means we need to take out the old ones today and get everything ready.”

  “Yes!” Ruby cheered. “I cannot wait to get my new, un-avocado stuff.” She hurried inside and left Sam and Nick alone to get acquainted. For real this time.

  SAM STOOD INSIDE the gutted kitchen and wondered how they were ever going to have this place ready for the appliances to be delivered tomorrow. He rolled up his sleeves and considered taking off his shirt, but if he was hot now, it might still be hotter later in the day. Moving the appliances had been easy, as was pulling up the worn linoleum. The hard part was yet to come.

  “Time for a break,” Ruby said, carrying a platter of sandwiches she had made earlier and stored in the refrigerator, which had been moved to the mudroom.

  “Didn’t think you’d ever ask,” Sam said, gratefully taking one and looking around for a place to sit.

  “I thought we’d go out on the front porch again,” Ruby said, seeming to read his mind. Of course, she’d always been able to anticipate his needs. Maybe if he’d been as good at figuring out hers, they wouldn’t be in this fix now, Sam thought.

  Nick came in, shirtless, his dark skin glistening with sweat. Funny, Sam thought, yesterday he would have been green with jealousy—as green as those appliances they’d taken out. But today it was just Nick, no longer a threat, but a friend.

  Sam chuckled and tossed a canned soda at his former rival.

  “Something funny, man?” Nick caught the can adeptly and popped the top.

  “Naw. Just remembered something.” He shrugged. “You had to be there.” And Sam was damned glad that Nick hadn’t been there in his head when he had been thinking so ill of the man. You learned a lot about a man working side by side with him, whether on a combat control team or a work crew. Of course, he’d been too blind with jealousy to notice until now.

  Maybe if he hadn’t been so overwhelmed with all that uncertainty about Ruby, he might have figured Nick out sooner.

  “Come on, you guys. The more time you waste fooling around, the longer it will be before my beautiful new kitchen is up and running,” Ruby called, beckoning them toward the porch.

  The sun had moved to the other side of the house, leaving the porch in blissful shade. In Georgia, where Sam had grown up, a little bit of shade wouldn’t have made that much difference, but in the low humidity of the high plains it was as different from full sunlight as night from day. Winters in Montana might be brutal, but Sam suspected his attitude was more of the Southern phobia about cold weather than a real dislike. He’d made it through an assignment in Alaska, and the comfortable summers there more than made up for the cold winters. Sam looked out into the beautiful, sunny day. And if this was what summer was like, maybe he wouldn’t mind it so much.

  Not as long as he had Ruby in his bed to snuggle up to and keep him warm on those cold winter nights.

  “You know anything about wiring, Sam?”

  Sam looked up, not sure he’d heard the question. “As in electricity?” He shook his head. “Not a heck of a lot. How much wiring we got to do?”

  Nick shrugged. “You saw the kitchen. We’re gonna need a lot. Good thing I have that electrician coming in from Pine Run tomorrow morning. I can do some, but I want to make sure whatever gets done is up to code.”

  “Amen to that,” Sam said.

  “What kind of code?” Ruby looked up from her tuna sandwich.

  “Electrical code,” Nick clarified. “I don’t have an electrician’s license here in Montana, and I don’t know what all the regulations are. Better safe than sorry.”

  Ruby frowned. “I guess I can’t quarrel with that.” She took another bite of her sandwich and chewed thoughtfully. “Are you sure you’ll be able to get all that done in one day?”

  “Nope. It might take a couple,” Nick said.

  “Several days?” Ruby wailed with obvious dismay. “What are we going to do for food until then?”

 
Nick looked at her. “What’s the big deal? We’ve got sandwich stuff. Cereal for breakfast. We’ll survive.”

  “You can put the coffeemaker in the living room and it’ll work fine,” Sam said. “And I happen to know of a nice little place in Jester where they make great steaks and have a jukebox to dance to.”

  “Burgers there aren’t bad, either,” Nick added. “It’ll only be for a few days, Ruby. Think about what it’ll be like when we’re done. Don’t dwell on what you’re gonna be doing without while you’re waiting.”

  “Yeah, sure. You haven’t been working with antique equipment while you’ve been waiting,” Ruby said sourly. “And living without a microwave oven,” she added.

  Nick glanced over his shoulder toward the rounded shape of his travel trailer, glinting bright in the noonday sun. “Oh, yeah?”

  “And you’ve never had to eat raw rattlesnake when there was nothing else,” Sam said, remembering his two weeks of desert survival school with a shudder.

  Ruby lifted her hands in a gesture of surrender. “Okay, okay. I give up. I know I’ve been spoiled with all my modern conveniences, but I am a millionaire, after all. I expect you both to take me out to the Heartbreaker for dinner tomorrow night,” she said primly. “I want to be the talk of the town, coming in with two handsome men on a date.”

  They’d already been the talk of the town, but if Ruby had already forgotten the accounts of their problems in the paper, Sam wasn’t about to remind her.

  He looked at Ruby, her coppery hair fluttering about her face in the light summer breeze. She was what really mattered to him.

  Without Ruby in his life, he had nothing.

  RUBY STOOD IN THE DOORWAY and watched as Sam and Nick worked together with the silent precision of a surgeon and his scrub nurse. They seemed to have little to say, and what words were spoken were terse and concise, but it was easy to see that the tension between them had lessened. They even managed to share an occasional laugh, though Ruby didn’t know what they thought was so funny.

  As long as they were getting along, it didn’t matter what they were laughing about.

  Ruby had been so excited about the new kitchen equipment being delivered that she had almost missed seeing the friendship forming between Sam and Nick. But once she had noticed, it was good to see. Maybe it was because they both had a military background that they seemed to be able to anticipate each other’s needs, or maybe there was some sort of silent communication that went on between men that women would never understand.

  Whatever it was, it was better than the silent rivalry and the angry stares.

  Standing in the middle of the barren kitchen, Ruby found it difficult to imagine that it would ever be the beautiful, modern kitchen she had imagined. Though Nick assured her that the details were coming together right on schedule, she looked at the empty expanse with a growing sense of dismay. She knew, of course, that Nick had held off making many of the physical changes necessary to the kitchen until now because she’d still needed to use it, but the amount of work remaining to be done seemed daunting to her inexperienced eyes.

  Not knowing whether to be discouraged or hopeful, Ruby leaned against an exposed wall stud and let out an impatient puff of breath.

  Waiting was one of the things that she had hated so much about being an air force wife. She had thought she knew what to expect when she’d married Sam, but the reality proved far more taxing than the romantic notion she’d had about it all before she’d actually lived it. She hated waiting and wondering when she wanted to be in the thick of things. Of course, she’d never been able to fly a plane or jump out of one, so rather than finding something else that interested her, she’d stayed home and pouted.

  The realization came as a sudden revelation to her. Had she been the one in the wrong?

  She’d have to think about that, but not now. Now she was about to go out of her mind.

  Her head ached from the constant hammering and the raucous drone of the circular saw, and she rubbed her temples tiredly. She had to get away from the noise and the sawdust. She had to get out of here.

  “I’m going to go to town,” Ruby announced, not caring whether the men answered her or not. “Honor said we’re supposed to be getting a new shipment of fabrics in at the Mercantile today, and I want to pick something out for curtains for the kitchen. Honor said the wallpaper I ordered came in, too.”

  “Good idea,” Nick said. “Pick up some more finishing nails and a few other things for me at Faulkner’s Hardware, okay? I’ll make a list.”

  “Anything you need, Sam?” Ruby asked petulantly as Nick got up to make his list. Here she’d expected that she would be the center of attention between her two favorite men now that Sam had stopped competing with Nick, and suddenly they were treating her like some kind of lowly errand boy.

  Maybe this newfound friendship wasn’t such a good thing, after all.

  “Only you, darlin’. Only you,” Sam said, his gray eyes glistening, and every one of Ruby’s disgruntled feelings simply melted away.

  Chapter Eleven

  “I saw Sam this morning,” Honor Lassiter announced as soon as Ruby entered the Mercantile. “He said he was moving out to the farm. Is the divorce off?” she asked, sotto voce.

  Ruby looked around the store to see if anyone was listening. She didn’t need any more snippets of her private life showing up in the newspaper. The account of her date at the Heartbreaker had been innocuous enough, but it had still been an invasion of her privacy.

  With the exception of two of their own employees, who were busy shelving baby clothes in the children’s section, they seemed to be alone. But she wasn’t about to take any chances until she knew who was behind the gossip, so she dragged Honor into the office and closed the door just to be on the safe side.

  “I don’t know if we’re getting together or not,” Ruby said. And she didn’t know. She was still wondering what had made her issue that invitation, especially after Sam’s accusation, but having him move out there just seemed like the natural next step.

  “Why don’t you know?” Honor demanded, flicking her long, honey-blond hair over her shoulder. “He’s gorgeous, and he obviously wants you back.”

  Ruby sank into the swivel chair in front of the rolltop desk. “I know,” she said. “But I need to be sure he’s lost his need for excitement. I’m afraid life in Jester, Montana, might prove too boring for him after a while. You know, how can you keep him down on the farm after he’s seen the world?”

  “Stop thinking in the negative, Ruby,” Honor said. “He came looking for you. Not a lot of men would do that after what you did to him.”

  Ruby felt as though she’d been smacked. “What do you mean, after what I did to him? He was the one who broke his promise to me. What was I supposed to do?”

  “Did you ever ask him why?” Honor asked simply. “Did you give him a chance to explain?”

  “Not until the other day,” Ruby said. “I jumped to conclusions, and I should have waited to find out what the circumstances were.” She drew in a deep breath. “And it was my fault he got hurt,” she said.

  “How can that be?” Honor asked, taking a seat on a ladder-back chair across from Ruby. “You were nowhere around him.”

  “Oh, Honor, I really messed up.” Ruby looked over at her friend and struggled to hold back her tears. “Sam and I have talked about how he got his injury.” She drew in a long shuddering breath. “He said when he heard that I wanted out of the marriage, he thought I didn’t love him anymore, and he started taking chances. He walked into a minefield and almost lost his leg because of me.”

  Honor blinked her large, gray eyes, but didn’t comment on Ruby’s confession.

  “I’ve shocked you, haven’t I?”

  “But you didn’t mean to have that happen, Ruby. You didn’t know it would happen.”

  “That’s true. And I’ve tried to explain to him that I didn’t want out because I didn’t love him anymore, but because I loved him too much.”


  “Did he understand?”

  Ruby drew in a deep breath and clenched her hands in her lap. “He seemed to, but how can I be sure? I have to be positive I won’t find myself left at home again and waiting for him to come back from some other dangerous missions. I don’t think my battered heart could handle any more hurts.”

  Honor took a deep breath, reached over and clasped Ruby’s hands in hers. “You can, Ruby. You can. You’ve found yourself a wonderful man who obviously loves you, but you don’t seem to believe that you deserve to be happy.”

  Swiping at a tear, Ruby swallowed. “Maybe you’re right. I was so unfair to Sam, and I jumped to so many wrong conclusions. I know that now, but what do I do about it? How do I make it right with Sam?”

  “You’re asking me? I’m hardly the one to ask about relationships. I’ve pretty much given up on finding love myself, even if I am stupid enough to keep hoping.”

  “Oh, Honor. We are a couple of sad characters, aren’t we?” Ruby let go of Honor’s hand, reached behind her and snapped a tissue out of the box she kept on the desk. “I have a husband I’m not sure I can keep, and you’d give anything for half of what I have, and can’t seem to find it.” She blotted her eyes. “Do I look all right?”

  “You always look gorgeous, Ruby,” Honor said. “Now let’s go check out that new curtain fabric.”

  Ruby nodded and blotted her face with a fresh tissue. “Okay, let’s go.” She opened the door, then stopped before going into the main store. “You know, Hon, maybe you’re looking in the wrong place.”

  “You may be right. What do you think about me taking a trip to some big city, like New York or San Francisco?”

  “I think it’s a terrific idea. It’s not like you can’t afford it,” Ruby said, stepping out into the store. She bumped right into Wyla Thorne, local busybody and sourpuss since the lottery win.

  “Humph,” Wyla grumbled. “You just have to rub it in, don’t you?” the woman said bitterly. It was no secret that Wyla had been disgruntled because she’d not contributed to the lottery pool the week they’d won. She’d gone all over town complaining that Jack Hartman, who put in a dollar that week instead of her, had stolen her fortune, though in fact the decision not to play the lottery that time had been hers alone.