The Marriage Maker

by Christie Ridgway

  Cleo was in the rocker again. Somehow, in the hours since he’d last looked at her, she’d turned even more fragile. Shadows darkened her eyes. He knew if he touched her she’d still be shaking and cold.

  That unfamiliar pain twisted inside him again. He rose and walked toward her. “Cleo—”

  “You’re awake.” She popped up, her movements jerky. “Will you watch Jonah? I’ll be right back.”

  He stared at her. She was talking fast, moving fast, clearly fueled by nerves. “Of course.”

  “The doctor should be here in an hour or so. The nurse just checked Jonah. No change.”

  No, all the changes were to Cleo. Her cheekbones poked against skin almost translucent with weariness. No doubt, with the exception of that brief nap, she hadn’t slept the rest of the night. On her way to the door she halted at the cot and frowned. With another jerky movement, she snatched up the blanket, shook it out, then folded it into a precise square.

  Ethan stared at her. The blanket had already been folded into a precise square. Cleo was strung so tight he could practically hear her tendons humming.

  “Cleo—”

  But he was speaking to her back, and then the door.

  She must have run downstairs and then back up, she was back in such short order. In one palm she cradled two cups of coffee, a bag from the hospital gift shop in the other.

  “Here,” she said, shoving the coffees in his direction.

  He grabbed both, fairly sure that worry was the only stimulant she needed right now.

  She dropped the bag onto the seat of the rocking chair. Out came a teddy bear. Three books. A toy airplane. A build-it-yourself model of a race car. Ethan squinted. He thought the age level said over eight.

  More stuff came out of the bag and she arranged it around the room. The only thing she put near the baby was the soft teddy bear, and even that took eleven tries for her to find exactly the right location and pose.

  Then she swung around and found him with the coffees. Before he could protest, she grabbed one and a napkin he’d found on the room’s tiny table. The coffee went down in one gulp.

  She tossed the cup into the trash, then took the napkin and blotted her hands. Next, she used the napkin to wipe down the small table. Then the arms of the rocking chair.

  Ethan set his coffee cup down. “Cleo,” he said softly.

  She pretended she didn’t hear him. Or maybe she just couldn’t stop her frenetic cleaning.

  “Cleo.” He approached her, and still she bustled around the room.

  With a sigh, he grabbed her by the upper arms. “Cleo,” he said, shaking her gently. “Stop. You need to stop, honey.”

  She looked up at him, the woman who had become his wife. There were so many things in the amethyst facets of her eyes. Worry, fear, love for the child that he’d come to her with.

  That pain tore through his chest, no small stab, but a huge hole. Then something swelled to fill it, something like a heart, and it kept getting bigger.

  Cleo’s mouth trembled. “I’m scared,” she whispered brokenly.

  A lump rose in Ethan’s throat. His chest hurt, his throat hurt, he never knew there was this much pain in all the world. “I know, honey.” He pulled her against his chest.

  She broke down then, sobbing against him. He held her tightly, feeling the tension drain from her. “I’m so scared,” she said again.

  Ethan stared out the window as he stroked her hair. The five stars were gone and it was another sunny day in Montana. He leaned his cheek against the top of her head, breathing through the pain that came in beats now, beats that matched the thudding rhythm of the heart he’d forgotten he had.

  The sun was climbing. Its brightness stung his eyes and he blinked away the irritating tears.

  Twelve

  Later that morning, Ethan made a phone call to enlist the help of Cleo’s mother and sister. They arrived at the hospital around noon and, after much coaxing, were able to drag Cleo away for lunch.

  Leaving Ethan with a baby that suddenly seemed better. The nurse had said his temperature was down a degree, which only seemed to make Jonah cranky. Ethan took him up into his arms and the two of them paced around the room, inspecting anything the least bit noteworthy.

  To the tune of the baby’s whimpers, they examined their minute view from the window and the box holding the car model. When neither distracted Jonah, Ethan “flew” the plane over to the crib and retrieved the soft teddy bear. He settled the stuffed toy against Jonah’s chest and the baby stopped his fractious wriggling and smiled.

  Ethan felt like a million bucks.

  He sank into the rocking chair with Jonah and the teddy bear. One foot flat on the floor, he rocked the three of them in a soothing rhythm. At first it seemed that Jonah might protest again, but then Ethan started talking too. He told Jonah about the day he was born. He told him how sad he’d been when Della died. He told him about the vow he’d made at his sister’s side. That no one he loved would ever be taken from him again.

  He stared down, into his nephew’s—his son’s—wide blue eyes. “That’s right. I love you, champ.” He swallowed. “I love you, son.”

  Jonah’s hand reached out and patted Ethan’s chin. “That’s why I came back to Cleo,” he continued. “I wanted the best for you. For us.”

  The door squeaked as it was pushed open and Ethan lifted his head. Cleo stood framed in the doorway, her mother and sister standing behind her. Her eyes widened. “Is everything okay?”

  He nodded, his foot still gently rocking the chair back and forth. “Fine.”

  She stepped into the room, and his heart clenched. The lunch hadn’t made her look any less tired or less fragile. “Do you want me to hold him?” she said hesitantly.

  He didn’t. But suddenly he realized that Cleo needed to hold the baby herself. It would comfort her, as strangely, it had comforted him.

  He stopped rocking the chair. “Come here,” he said, rising from it.

  She dashed forward and he gently transferred the baby and the teddy into her arms. Then, just as gently, he pushed her into the rocking chair. From the cot, he fetched the mint-green blanket and unfolded it. Hunkering beside the chair, he carefully tucked the soft fabric around Cleo and Jonah.

  With a sigh, she closed her eyes and laid her head against the back of the chair. Ethan stroked her hair off her forehead, then put his hand on the arm of the chair. He pushed, setting it to a very slight rocking.

  Celeste spoke quietly from the doorway. “Would you like to go get something to eat now, Ethan?”

  He shook his head, his gaze not leaving the faces of the mother and child.

  His wife and his child.

  As long as they were in the hospital, he wasn’t going to leave their sides. He’d always wanted to provide for them, but now they needed something else, too.

  They needed his love.

  After one more backward look at the baby, Cleo shut Jonah’s bedroom door. She rested her forehead on the wood, inhaling a long breath. The past three days were finally over. Jonah was home, and while he was still recovering from a virus, a serious bacterial infection had been ruled out.

  A few more days and he’d be completely recovered.

  Cleo shivered. She might be able to convince herself the entire episode had been a nightmare, if it wasn’t for the chill she couldn’t seem to shake and the smell of antiseptic that had found its way into the fiber of her clothes.

  She walked into her room and pulled out some fresh clothing and headed for a hot shower. Oh, how she wished she could pretend it had all been a dream. But the truth was, she’d fallen apart. She, who was always so calm in an emergency, who was always so practical under pressure, had cracked.

  And Ethan had picked up all the pieces.

  He’d picked up Jonah, too.

  Under the hot spray of the shower, she remembered walking in on them in the rocking chair that second day. While he’d surrendered the baby readily enough when she’d asked, for the next fort
y-eight hours Ethan had held the baby as much as she did. He’d also asked intelligent, calm questions of the doctors and the nurses.

  He’d brought her tea and soup and wrapped her in blankets when he sensed she couldn’t get warm.

  The practical, capable, sensible person in that scary, sterile room had been Ethan. In that crisis, he hadn’t needed her.

  She’d failed him.

  Cleo stepped out of the shower, dried off, then pulled on her clothes. She sat on the bed to tie her shoes and thought about just crawling under the covers and going to sleep herself. The sheets were fresh—changed in the hours between the Covingtons’s leaving and their departure for the hospital—and maybe in sleep she could avoid the knowledge that was pounding like a bad toothache in her brain.

  She’d failed Ethan.

  With a sigh, she pushed to her feet. She didn’t want to be a coward, too.

  In the kitchen she stared at the contents of the cupboards and thought about heating some soup for their dinner. Ethan was in his office, she could hear his printer humming away and his fingers clicking at the keyboard. With another sigh, she turned away from the pantry and looked idly through the small tower of mail and the three-day stack of newspapers.

  Three days’ worth of front pages focused on Raven’s skeleton, his obvious murder and what it would mean to Lyle Brooks’s Laughing Horse project. The name Jeremiah Kincaid caught her eye several times.

  The past will rise up to meet you. That was the warning Aunt Blanche had sent to her mother in her nightmare. Cleo shivered.

  “Are you all right?” Ethan’s voice sounded from the entrance to the kitchen.

  Cleo looked up, then ducked her head. His golden hair was dark and wet and he smelled like soap. He’d exchanged the deal-maker suit he’d been wearing for three days for a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt, the sleeves pushed up to expose his powerful forearms. She wanted him more than she wanted to be happy.

  Because it didn’t seem that both could coexist.

  “Cleo,” he said sharply. “What’s going on?”

  She gestured vaguely at the newspaper in front of her. “Just catching up on the latest White horn news.”

  His gaze flicked to the paper, then back to her face. “A sick baby can put a thirty-year-old murder into a little perspective, don’t you think?”

  “I suppose.”

  He came forward. “It puts a lot of things into perspective.” His fingertips stroked her cheek. “Cleo, honey—”

  The phone rang.

  Ethan frowned when she stepped away to reach for it. “Let it ring,” he said.

  Cleo didn’t. The person on the other end was Ethan’s secretary in Houston. He frowned again as she handed him the receiver.

  Hearing one side of the call wasn’t easy to avoid, but was easy to understand. Ethan had put his business—all his business—on hold for the next few weeks. Though it appeared his secretary was having trouble appeasing some of his clients, Ethan was adamant. He was going to be in Montana spending time with his wife and child.

  Cleo shivered again. She didn’t blame him for not trusting her anymore, but that feeling of failure rose once more. He’d married her because she could care for Jonah.

  The receiver clicked against its cradle. She smelled the delicious fragrance of Ethan as he approached her. His hand ran down the back of her hair. “Now. Where were we?” he said softly.

  Cleo knew what she had to do. Had known it from the moment she’d fallen apart in his arms in the hospital room. She whirled to face him. “I won’t contest our divorce,” she said. Quietly. Firmly. She couldn’t believe her voice hadn’t broken.

  His jaw dropped. “What?”

  Cleo swallowed, holding on to her control by just a thread. “I know what kind of marriage we were supposed to have.”

  His eyes narrowed. “What kind is that?”

  “We had a deal. You’re very good at arranging those, and I agreed to it.”

  There was heat in his slitted blue eyes. “I am very good at deals. Maybe too good.”

  “No!” Cleo wasn’t about to lay the blame at Ethan’s door. “I went into our marriage with my eyes wide open. I knew that you wanted someone who could keep custody of Jonah for you.”

  His mouth twisted. “I said something to that effect, didn’t I?”

  Cleo nodded. “You were completely honest.”

  “About that—”

  “And I want you to know that I was being honest, too. I really thought I could make Jonah a great mother. I am—was—always practical and capable. It’s just…just—”

  “This time it was your child.”

  She blinked. He understood. Seeing Jonah in the hospital had made her feel helpless and frustrated, and so very, very afraid.

  “Cleo, I didn’t like it any more than you did. Seeing Jonah in that hospital crib and thinking something might happen to him was like losing Della all over again.”

  She looked away. “But you didn’t turn into Miss Clean and Tidy.” He’d remained calm while her excess nervousness had surfaced in the oddest ways. At one point Ethan had bodily restrained her from remaking the cot for a fifth time. And then there was her small obsession with stacking in alphabetical order the magazines her mother had brought her. Vanity Fair always before Vogue.

  He grinned faintly. “Mrs. Clean and Tidy Redford.”

  Her brows drew together.

  That faint grin again. “Just a little name the nurses had for you.”

  Mrs. Redford. The hospital staff had called her that for three days and she’d felt a fraud each time she’d heard it. She met his gaze squarely. “I’m not holding up to my side of our deal, Ethan. You wanted to continue with your life, your business, while I was supposed to be the caretaker for Jonah.”

  He shifted uncomfortably. “That’s not exactly—”

  “You knew I’d fall for Jonah, and I have.” She sucked in a breath. “But you deserve to have the kind of wife you wanted. The kind of wife you thought you were getting when we made our deal.”

  “I wish you’d stop calling it that,” he muttered.

  Tears stung her eyes. She was going to lose them both, the baby she loved, the man she loved. “So I’ll make it easy for us to get a divorce. I’m sure with a little research you or your secretary can find the quickest, simplest manner.” A thought struck her. “Maybe because it’s been so short a time we could have it annulled.”

  His jaw was tight and blue fire jumped in Ethan’s eyes. “We have shared a bed,” he said tightly. “Or maybe you’ve forgotten that?”

  At the lethal tone in his voice, Cleo backed up a step. “No, of course not.” She’d never forget. All her life she’d remember the hard planes of Ethan’s body. Of having him beside her, against her, inside her.

  “Good.” He strode closer.

  Cleo stepped away again, the backs of her thighs hitting the edge of the kitchen table. Her heart fluttered at that searing blue in Ethan’s eyes. She swallowed. “Ethan—”

  He cut her off. “I wish—”

  The doorbell rang.

  He swore.

  Ignoring Ethan’s “I wish for once we wouldn’t be interrupted,” she ran to answer it.

  Facing whoever was at the door had to be easier than facing Ethan as they worked out the details of their divorce.

  It was her buddy Gil. Cleo was so relieved to see a familiar, friendly face at this moment that she cried out his name with gratitude and immediately stepped into his welcoming embrace.

  The past three days had been hell, but watching his wife step into another man’s arms—again—moments after bringing up divorce stoked Ethan’s temper.

  “Gil!” Cleo’s voice was light and sweet and no one would never know that she’d just torn out his newly discovered heart and fandangoed all over it.

  He stood behind her, grim.

  Gil squeezed her tight, then pushed her away to kiss her on each cheek, and then lightly on her lips.

  Ethan folded his arms across h
is chest.

  The other man blithely ignored him, his eyes only for Cleo. “I heard you were having a rough time and came by to see if there was anything I could do.”

  Rough time? Ethan wondered if she was going around White horn complaining about their marriage. Hinting at divorce. God knew that would certainly bring dozens of Cleo’s ex-consorts out of the woodwork.

  She was beaming up at this one. “I haven’t seen you in ages,” she gushed. “How have you been?”

  Ethan’s chest ached. She’d never gushed over him.

  “Great. I’m in town visiting Mom and Dad. Had to check on my best girl.”

  That was it. Ethan stepped forward.

  The man’s deceptively friendly brown eyes met Ethan’s over Cleo’s head. “You must be Ethan,” he said, his smile too friendly.

  Ethan bared his teeth. “The husband.”

  The man’s mouth went instantly serious, but Ethan swore there were a few twitches at the corners. He kept his arm curled around Cleo as he held out a hand to shake Ethan’s. “Gil Grayson.”

  As all the rest of the men who adored Cleo, this one didn’t appear as afraid of Ethan as he should have. Ethan squeezed.

  Gil winced.

  Cleo frowned. “Ethan, this is a very old friend of mine.” She dragged her old friend over the thresh-old and into their living room, leaving Ethan to trail behind. “Come sit down, Gil,” she said.

  They shared the couch.

  Ethan shared a menacing look with Gil.

  Gil looked as if he wanted to laugh again.

  Ethan cleared his throat. “So, you’re an old friend of Cleo’s?”

  His wife was staring at him, her expression puzzled. What did she think? That he wouldn’t care that her beautiful curves and her full lips had been so close to another man?

  Gil shot a look at Cleo. “One of the oldest, I think.”

  “He knocked me down on my very first day in school,” she explained, her amethyst eyes warming.

  The other man flicked a long finger on Cleo’s nose. “Because you had the cutest little braids. I had to get your attention somehow.”

  She laughed. “So that was it. The braids. Maybe I shouldn’t have gotten rid of them.”