Liz Ireland

by Trouble in Paradise

  No, love had rarely turned out as she’d thought it would.

  That thought made her frown. Now faced with the prospect of what she had hoped would be her third marriage, she found that she was as timid and confused as a flustered schoolgirl. How to start?

  Of course, a part of her thought perhaps she should simply remain a singleton. Being a working widow had its appeal. It gave her a certain amount of freedom. And there was much she wanted to do—work, mostly, but she would also cherish the opportunity to finally spend more time with her boys.

  She chuckled to herself. They certainly weren’t boys anymore, but men on the verge of having their own wives and families. She was glad of that.

  And maybe that’s why she knew she wouldn’t remain unmarried. Jolly as it was to be independent, she now had the opportunity to finally find what she’d always most wanted in her life—true, deep love. Not simply to be one of two, but to love another so much it would seem more like two as one. That’s what she hoped for, at least.

  She turned away from the mercantile and headed back toward her new house—she would be moving into it this week. And maybe when she had her home set up, she would work up the courage to make her move toward matrimony!

  Chapter Eight

  “A big tree branch fell in Whitman’s Pond. Wind must have knocked it in.” Roy stood in the middle of the living room, waiting for his brother to respond. When he didn’t, he added emphatically, “Guess we should go pull it out.”

  Parker barely looked up from his book, which he and Ellie were taking turns reading aloud. Seated on opposite sides of the fire, they appeared, as Clara might have said, dangerously companionable.

  “I suppose it will keep till later, won’t it, Roy?”

  Roy frowned. “I wouldn’t want to wait too long. For instance, till afternoon.”

  Parker narrowed his gaze on him. “Is there some schedule for pulling limbs out of ponds that I’m not aware of?”

  He was smirking. And what was worse, Ellie was also grinning at Roy as if he were being boyishly unreasonable. At the same time, she was twiddling her fingers, inciting the kitten in her lap to play.

  Roy felt his cheeks heat. Granted, it was a Sunday, and he and his brother sometimes gave themselves a day of rest, but in emergencies they always did what needed to be done. “I would call a fine oak branch lying in the water going bad with winter coming on a circumstance that needs to be dealt with.” He became so indignant as he spoke that he almost forgot the oak branch in question was purely a figment of his imagination. “We’ll be grateful for that branch come January.”

  Parker began to stare at him as though Roy had lost his mind. “Come January we won’t remember whether our firewood stayed in a pond one day or two.”

  Roy crossed his arms, barely holding back a churlish wave of irritation. He hadn’t reckoned on Parker being so difficult. But now, as if the matter had been settled, Parker was back to reading to Ellie.

  Ellie looked more beautiful than ever, with her hair braided around the green hair ribbons he’d bought for her yesterday at Trilby’s Mercantile. He’d imagined—correctly—that the green would exactly match the color of her eyes. He’d held off on the plaid fabric, thinking that it would be a more suitable gift once they were better acquainted, but, daringly, he’d gone ahead and purchased the stockings and received a becoming blush when he’d given them to her.

  He couldn’t tell whether she was wearing the stockings today. Her skirts modestly covered the tops of her boots at all times. Maybe if they were outside…?

  He grumbled to himself. Slim chance he would ever have of getting Ellie alone outside when she and Parker were so toasty here in the parlor! They looked as comfy as two peas in a pod, and that book they were reading was as thick as a dictionary. It would take them a coon’s age to finish it. And unfortunately, it was an absorbing story. Roy had only been half listening yesterday evening as they read, yet all night long he’d been unable to keep his mind off the crazy tale of a woman who seemed to be in love with three men at once, none of them very suitable. And of course the silly heroine was bound to pick exactly the wrong one. Probably already had. People always did, it seemed.

  He stood up quickly and stretched. “Well I’m going out to the pond.” The announcement only caused a ripple of a disturbance in the dramatic reading.

  “Whatever you think best, Roy,” Parker said.

  An indignant harrumph built in his throat, but he swallowed it back. His brother never would have spoken to him that way before Ellie’s arrival. Oh, a woman changed things all right! More evidence that they should be avoided. But how could you avoid them when they were in the same house, serving as a corrupting influence, turning brother against brother?

  How could you keep them from being so damned companionable?

  With a melodramatic lift of his head, he stomped from the room, heading outside.

  But once he did, he immediately regretted it. It was cold, and there was nowhere to go except to Whitman’s Pond to meet Clara Trilby—a singularly unappetizing proposition.

  There was no use trying to concentrate on Thomas Hardy. “I hope we haven’t upset Roy,” she said, interrupting Parker’s reading in midparagraph.

  “How?”

  She felt silly bringing up the branch in the pond again—and yet Roy had seemed unnaturally irritated that Parker didn’t want to go extricate it. “You don’t think Roy would go to Whitman’s Pond and pull the tree out himself, do you?”

  Parker shrugged. “He might ask Ike.”

  “But Ike’s not here.”

  Really, she was surprised at Parker! Since the weather had turned colder, and they’d started spending their free time reading by the fire, his personality had altered, and not for the better. He seemed more gloomy, less talkative, and oftentimes she’d catch him staring into the fire and swear there was something like a moan coming out of him.

  “Oh, I forgot Ike went off to check on Uncle Ed,” Parker said.

  Ellie had heard about Uncle Ed in letters, but so far, this was the first mention of the older gentleman since she’d come to Nebraska. “His house is near here?”

  “About five miles. Ike should be back by evening, no doubt with a wagonful of apples.”

  “Apples?”

  Parker smiled. “You could say apples are Uncle Ed’s vocation.”

  She smiled, uncertain what he was talking about—but she remained too preoccupied with Roy to question Parker more thoroughly about his uncle. “I hope Roy won’t do anything foolish. It would be terrible if he reinjured his toe.”

  She was tempted to trot after him, but she didn’t want to appear forward. Nor did she want to get them into another untenable position.

  Perhaps after their kiss she should have left the McMillan farm. Although Roy had seemed apologetic, and even brought her gifts as a peace offering, including a warm pair of stockings she was thoroughly grateful for since she could ill afford them herself, she feared her remaining after their disgraceful conduct in the kitchen was leading him to have wrong ideas. People said all sorts of things about widows…especially in relation to bachelors.

  And yet she was still faced with the same problems as before. Money, money, and finally, lack of money. Other than that one kiss, the brothers had been so kind to her. And then there was the possibility that the kiss hadn’t been an insult. Maybe he really was attracted to her. It was a possibility.

  Unrealistic, perhaps. Unproductive, certainly. But tantalizing.

  She wondered if she should approach Parker now about the possibility of her staying on as their housekeeper. She needed to say something soon. If she didn’t, they would certainly begin wondering when she was going to leave. She had already been there a month—a long time for anyone to put up with a visitor.

  And yet, with Roy so unpredictable and Parker so mournful and faraway looking, she wasn’t sure how to broach the subject. She wasn’t certain they would think she was irreplaceable.

  She jumped up and beg
an to pace restlessly, with Polly batting at her skirts as she passed. “I feel like taking a walk. Why don’t you come with me?”

  Parker shook his head. “No thank you.”

  “Are you sure?” she asked, wanting to make it absolutely clear that she wasn’t going out to meet Roy. Which truly she didn’t intend to do.

  Not purposely, anyway.

  “Don’t worry—I won’t read ahead while you’re gone, Ellie.”

  She grinned, grateful that he wasn’t making jokes about a rendezvous with Roy. “See that you don’t! I’ll be back soon anyway,” she said, donning her coat. “Just going out for a stroll.”

  He laughed. “No destination in particular?”

  She shook her head, realizing with sudden disappointment that this was in fact the truth. Even if she did want to accidentally bump into Roy, she didn’t have the slightest notion where Whitman’s Pond was.

  Parker got up and poked at the fire. “If you’d enjoy a scenic view, you might try taking the path behind the barn.”

  She nodded. “Thank you.”

  As she walked out the door, she could have sworn she heard one of those moans.

  Wrapping her coat around her against the cool wind, she strolled across to the barn, where she found the path Parker had spoken about. As she walked, her mind drifted back to that moment in time, so brief, when she’d found herself in Roy’s arms. She shivered just at the memory of the swell of feeling his kiss had caused within her, and tightened her coat around her even though her brisk pace had taken the chill out of her bones.

  But she had to be wary of Roy. She’d been so luckless in love, and Roy seemed so unpredictable; theirs was a bad combination. She didn’t want to create a scandal in Paradise, the place she’d come to with the purpose of giving her baby a start with a clean reputation. Carrying on with Roy McMillan, without knowing his intentions, would be a sure way to tarnish that reputation.

  For both her sake and the baby’s, she needed to resist the temptation Roy posed and put him out of her mind.

  As she arrived at that noble determination, she crested a swell in the landscape and took a deep breath, ready to set forth on a plan of romantic self-denial. So it was very surprising to her when she looked down the slope and saw a picturesque small pond surrounded by trees, and a man and a woman embracing. The romantic tableau was all the more stunning for the fact that the man was none other than Roy! The woman he cradled in his arms she recognized vaguely as the pretty but hostile blonde from the store in Paradise.

  For a moment she stood frozen, visually eavesdropping on what was apparently a very emotional moment between the two lovers. She was too far away to hear any of their conversation, but from the frantic way the woman clung to Roy, she guessed that this must be a reunion of some sort.

  Fire seemed to circulate through her veins. Roy, the man who had bought her hair ribbons and stockings and given her a kitten, who had kissed her so passionately, the man who half a minute ago she’d vowed with such self-sacrifice to renounce, was standing before her in an intimate embrace with another woman! He’d kissed her when obviously he’d been involved in some romantic to-do with this blond girl.

  Ellie spun on her heel and scurried back down the hill, hoping to escape detection. The last thing she wanted Roy to know was that she had seen his little love scene by the pond!

  She frowned. Was that Whitman’s Pond? If so, he’d made quick work of that branch!

  Then again, judging from sly Roy and his romances, the man was a pretty fast worker all around.

  “How was your walk?” Parker asked when they were again seated by the fire.

  “It was fine,” she said, trying to compose herself. Her mind was still in a tizzy.

  Parker frowned. “You didn’t see anyone?”

  “No, of course not. But then I didn’t go far.”

  “You didn’t go to the pond?”

  “Pond?” She batted her eyes in all innocence. “What pond?”

  He shook his head. “I thought maybe you’d walked out that way.”

  She shrugged and tried to stroke Polly slowly to seem as if nothing was amiss. “Perhaps I did, but I must not have walked far enough.” What a liar she was! “Aren’t you going to read?”

  Parker gazed at her, and for a moment she feared he could see right through her. But then he opened the book and began reading. He had a wonderful voice, and he did characters very well during the dialogue passages. But though the story had until this morning absorbed all her interest, it was no use now. Parker might as well have been reading in Japanese.

  She interrupted him after less than a page. There was no stopping herself. She knew she had no claim on Roy, but that fact did nothing to cool her burning curiosity. “I was just curious…I saw a woman in town the other day.”

  Parker smiled patiently.

  “A young woman. With blond hair.”

  His smile disappeared. “You saw her at the mercantile, I suppose.”

  The town of Paradise, it appeared, was not bursting at the seams with youthful blond women. “She was quite attractive…in a way.”

  Now that she’d had time to reflect on the young woman’s appearance, she decided she hadn’t really found her so pretty. She was thin to the point of being wraithlike, and her clothes showed a passion for showiness without any sense of particular style. Not that Ellie knew too much about clothes, of course. But she did think the girl’s partiality to frills and gewgaws, along with a nose that was too turned up, only added to her already haughty manner.

  Well. Not just haughty. When Ellie had seen her in that store—her natural habitat, she assumed—the woman had been downright belligerent. In fact, the more she thought about the woman, the less and less she liked her.

  Parker didn’t appear to care for her, either. She’d never seen such a sour look on his face. “She’s Mr. Trilby’s daughter. He owns the mercantile.”

  He didn’t seem inclined to give her any more information than that.

  “Oh.” Ellie smiled. “Thank you. I’m sorry if I sound overly inquisitive. It was just idle curiosity on my part. Please go on reading.”

  Parker read another paragraph, and it was another paragraph that was completely lost on Ellie. Try as she might to picture Thomas Hardy’s rural England, the only country tableau in her head was that of the pond, with Roy and the fair-haired girl embracing.

  Before she knew it, she was blurting out, “What is her name?”

  Parker flicked his gaze up from the page, thinly veiling his annoyance. “Trilby.”

  “I meant a Christian name.”

  He swallowed. “Clara.”

  There was that look again—as if he’d just bitten into a sour persimmon.

  “I’m sorry for interrupting you, Parker. I was just wondering…” Parker tapped his fingers impatiently. Which was strange. Parker was usually the soul of forbearance. “…I was wondering about Roy. Doesn’t it worry you that he’s been gone for so long?”

  Parker seemed surprised. “It’s barely been over an hour since he walked out the front door.”

  “Has it?” She felt a blush creep into her cheeks. “It seems longer.”

  Naturally it would, since she’d spent the entire time moping over Roy. She’d come to some startling realizations. Yes, he’d kissed her, and given her little gifts, but he’d never told her he loved her or made any promises.

  Was Roy in love with Clara Trilby?

  The question stung far more than it should have. “Parker—” she blurted out before she could remind herself that she wasn’t supposed to waste her time moping over Roy. And even though Roy was nowhere near the house, she crossed to the settee so that she could speak to Parker more confidentially. “Has Roy ever had a sweetheart?”

  Parker laughed.

  Ellie blinked. “Well, has he?”

  Parker folded his arms. If he thought her question was bold or transparent, he didn’t indicate so. “I’ll just say this. I’ve never seen my brother show any more interest i
n a woman than he’s shown…” he grinned, “…than he’s shown for you.”

  Ellie gasped in surprise at his answer—and then gasped again when the door flew open and Roy appeared, followed quickly by a chill in the air. As if by reflex, she jumped away from Parker and back to her straight-backed chair. How much darker Roy’s glower would be if he knew they were having a tête-à-tête about him!

  She tried to compose her expression to look a shade less guilty, but when she looked into Roy’s dark eyes, she immediately thought of him standing by the pond with Clara Trilby clasped to his bosom. In fact, she realized, causing a flush to heat her cheeks, she’d spent practically the entire day so far either thinking about Roy, spying on Roy, or trying to squeeze information out of Parker about Roy.

  Behind Roy came Ike, who laughed at Roy’s immobile stance in the open doorway. “Get a move on, Roy, you’re lettin’ the chill in and I was hopin’ I’d be able to thaw out.”

  Roy shuffled aside, never taking his piercing glance off Parker and Ellie.

  He knows, she thought. He probably spotted her running down the hill after she’d seen him at his trysting place. Or perhaps he simply guessed that she was gossiping about him. She felt red with shame. Also, she was still shaking with excitement at Parker’s words. I’ve never seen my brother show any more interest in a woman than he’s shown for you.

  But how could that be, given what she’d witnessed at the pond?

  She jumped up, eager to flee the tension in the room. “I’ll help you thaw out, Ike, by getting you some tea.”

  Ike grinned. “That’d be better’n a warm blanket, Ellie.”

  She rushed to the kitchen, where she threw herself into the process of making tea. Now that she was alone, she could let her thoughts focus on Roy and what Parker had told her about him.

  “…never show any more interest in a woman than he’s shown for you.”

  Parsed more closely, the answer that had bolstered her spirits now seemed like something vague and unsatisfying that she could chew on forever and never understand the meaning of. Perhaps it meant Roy was interested in her. Or perhaps he was interested in her, but had shown equal interest in several other women. Or more depressing still, maybe Parker was simply trying to indicate that he paid very little attention to his brother’s affairs and therefore was surprised to see Roy show an interest in any woman.