When they pulled into the big parking lot, she assumed he was going to get gas at first. But he kept driving around to the side and parked close to a door. When he came around and helped her out, she realized this…this bar was the place where this party, this wedding dance, was being held.
As she watched, a couple of cowboys sauntered in, followed by two couples. Every single one of the men wore a hat and everyone had on blue jeans. Her heart sank.
“Why didn’t you tell me everyone would be wearing jeans?” she asked.
Marty looked blank. “I didn’t think about it.” He surveyed her dress dispassionately, then took her elbow and urged her forward. “You look fine.”
She wanted to cry. She looked more than fine and she knew it. But she felt as out of place as a swan in a lake full of ducklings as she picked her way across the parking lot. At least it wasn’t knee-deep in mud like the yard of her new home.
He yanked open the door and they stepped inside, and every face in the room turned their way. She could feel her cheeks turning hot.
The place was all chrome and black with huge speakers and a microphone at the front of the room. The bar to the right was crowded with cowboys, but Marty led her to a couple standing not far from the entrance. He took her coat and tossed it over a nearby chair, then turned and indicated the pair.
“This is my brother Deck and this is his wife, Silver. This is Juliette.”
Deck was a slightly taller version of Marty and his eyes were a darker, deeper blue beneath the brim of his black hat. He wasn’t quite as blatantly in-your-face handsome as his brother, but his rugged, formidable good looks were compelling all the same. His features looked as if they didn’t smile easily as he took her hand. “So you’re really married to my brother. Guess I’d better say congratulations.”
“Thank you.” She smiled at him and the coolness in his eyes warmed slightly, a glint of humor surfacing.
“I wish I’d met you before the wedding. I could have warned you about Marty—”
“Shut up,” Marty growled. There was no amusement in his tone and the grin faded from Deck’s face as he stared at his brother with narrowed eyes.
Silver, Deck’s wife, stepped into the uneasy silence. “It’s so nice to meet you, Juliette.” Silver took her hand. She was a lot taller than Juliette would be even in her highest heels, and she was lovely, with a heavy cloud of black hair and the most striking eyes Juliette had ever seen. It was obvious where her name had come from. “That’s a lovely dress.”
“Thank you.” Juliette looked down at herself ruefully. “I’m afraid it’s a bit too dressy for tonight.”
Silver laughed. “You’ll find it’s a bit too dressy for any night around here. South Dakotans live in Wranglers.” She smiled. “I’m originally from Virginia and I still haven’t gotten used to the fact that most of my pretty clothes are going to turn to dust before I have a chance to wear them again.”
Wranglers. A new dismay struck her. She didn’t even own real jeans, just one pair of lightweight denim pants that she’d brought from California. She hadn’t been here long enough to need them, since she had dressed up for work at the mall, and the only other clothes she had were unsuitable, being made for California’s mild climate.
“Wranglers,” she said slowly. “That could be a problem.”
“We’ll get together in a day or so and have a real visit, and I’ll help you get a head start on your cowgirl wardrobe.” Silver said. “I probably won’t be here long tonight—I’m a bit more tired than usual these days.”
Silver was pregnant. Very pregnant, if the rounded shape beneath the black sweater was an indication.
“When are you due?” Juliette asked. It was the first, and most crucial, piece of information most women wanted to know—
“Juliette has a baby,” Marty said.
The conversation stopped again.
“Say that again.” Deck was clearly used to issuing orders.
Her cheeks were burning, but she forced herself to keep her chin up and smile. “I have an eleven-week-old son. My husband died unexpectedly ten months ago.”
Deck and Silver stared at Marty, then turned back to look at her. Their faces were equally dumbfounded, and she was sure she knew why. They probably couldn’t believe Marty had married a woman with an infant son.
Silver recovered first. “I’m sorry about your husband,” she said. “What’s your son’s name?”
“Robert, but I call him Bobby.”
“I like Robert,” Silver said. “We’ve been arguing over names for months now.”
Deck touched his wife’s arm. “I’m going to buy my brother a drink. Would either of you ladies like anything?”
Juliette declined as did Silver, and a moment later Deck had hustled Marty up to the bar. Silver suggested that they sit down, which Juliette did gratefully. She felt ridiculously out of place here, in this bare little bar with its metal tables and vinyl-covered chairs and bright neon signs advertising beer behind the bar. She’d never been much of a bar person at all. She didn’t drink alcohol except for the obligatory sip of champagne at weddings, and as she’d told Marty the day they’d met, she wasn’t the world’s greatest dancer.
Someone had taped up big white paper wedding bells on one wall, and a sheet cake covered in white icing was set on a nearby table. It apparently wasn’t intended for a grand cake-cutting ceremony, since a cowboy came over and cut himself a whopping chunk as she watched. Frankly, she was relieved. A wedding reception with its attendant rituals could only make this whole mess worse.
And then someone started clanking a spoon against a glass. Within seconds, the bar resounded with the sound of metal clanking against beer bottles as people used utensils, pocketknives and anything else they could find to clang out the signal.
Juliette knew what it meant and her heart sank even lower. It wouldn’t stop until the groom kissed the bride. At the bar Marty appeared oblivious until his brother poked him in the ribs and said something, pointing in her direction. Marty shifted his body toward her and their eyes met. Then, unsmiling, he stood and strode her way.
She put out a hand to stop him as he approached. “I don’t think—” But it was like trying to stop a freight train.
He grabbed the hand she extended and dragged her to her feet. Then, before she knew what he intended, he scooped an arm beneath her knees and lifted her high against his chest, his mouth coming down on her startled one even as she gasped in surprise.
Her arms went around his neck more out of reflex than passion, but as he kissed her hungrily, she clutched at his shoulders and her mouth opened under his, allowing his tongue to seek out hers in the automatic response she’d been unable to hide since the first time she’d seen him. Her fingers tightened on him and her hands stole up around his neck. How could she love him so much?
And then the bar erupted in cheers and catcalls and whistles. Marty lifted his head with a grin, the first hint she’d seen of his normal good humor since he’d learned about Bobby. “Those suckers will be lining up asking me to help them write ads for wives after tonight. You’re about the best-looking thing most of them have ever seen.”
The words were a splash of cold water on the moment of passion. “Great,” she said, trying to mask the hurt his casual comment had caused. “I’ll add that to the list of reasons you married me.”
The grin faded from his face. Slowly he set her down. “I told you exactly what I wanted when we met,” he said and his eyes were angry. “You’re the one who didn’t play fair.”
She collapsed into her chair as he stalked back to the bar, resting her elbows on the table and putting her face in her hands.
“Juliette?” Silver’s voice sounded worried. “You do know about Marty placing an—”
She nodded, dropping her hands and attempting a smile. “I know. I answered his ad. We came to a very civilized agreement about marrying.” She looked at Silver and was moved almost to tears by the sympathy in the other woman’s eyes.
“He didn’t know,” she said before she could catch it back. “Marty didn’t know about my baby until after we got married today.”
Silver’s mouth rounded and her lovely eyes widened in evident dismay. “That explains it.”
“What?”
“Why he seems so…odd tonight.” Silver shook her head. She appeared to be holding a debate with herself for a long moment. Finally she said, “Has he told you about his wife and son?”
“I knew he was a widower,” she said quietly. “But I only learned about his little boy after…”
The dark-haired woman put a soothing hand over hers. “You couldn’t have known,” she said. “I never knew her but Deck told me Lora went into premature labor with their second baby. She had to drive a truck out through the fields to find Marty. He rushed her to the hospital but he had to stop to deliver the baby on the way and she started to hemorrhage badly. She bled to death before he could get there.”
Juliette felt as if someone had hit her squarely in the chest. Suddenly, with full clarity, she could understand why the horror of his loss would make it difficult for Marty to talk about it. “And the baby died.”
Silver cleared her throat. “Three days later. He was just too little and his lungs weren’t developed enough. Marty took it really, really hard, Deck says, but you’d never know it to talk to him. He’s covered up his true feelings with wit and charm for years. I suspect that probably started when his sister Genie died. Nobody gets close to the real man beneath that killer smile.”
Juliette took a couple of deep breaths, hoping the sick feeling in her stomach would subside. Was there any way she could ever make up for forcing Bobby on him?
The rest of the evening didn’t get any better. Marty came over to check on her once in a while but she didn’t know what to say to him, so after a few stiff encounters, he hung out by the bar with a gang of men who guzzled beer while she sat at the little table with Silver. She tried not watch him, but she couldn’t help but be aware of his unusually quiet presence nearby. She was relieved to note that he wasn’t drinking much at all.
Silver’s sister-in-law Lyn McCall joined them, and other people came by occasionally to introduce themselves. The speakers and the mike up front, she discovered, were for karaoke, which Lyn and most of the people in the bar pronounced “croaky,” a fact that brought the first genuine smile of the evening to her face.
Lyn had recently announced her own impending motherhood, and if Juliette hadn’t been so aware of her husband’s brooding presence at the bar, she would have enjoyed the talk of pregnancies and babies with the other two women.
“Juliette needs clothes,” Silver shouted at Lyn above the caterwauling of one off-key karaoke performer. She glanced at Juliette. “Boots, too?”
Juliette nodded. “Almost everything but underwear.”
“We can get jeans in Phillip,” Lyn said. “And boots and a coat there, too. Did Marty keep any of his first wife’s things?”
“Wouldn’t matter,” Silver said. “I’ve seen pictures of her. She was as tall as I am and—” she made an indelicate motion that conveyed exceptional size in the chest area “—well-endowed.” Then she gave an enormous yawn. “Sorry,” she said, chuckling. “It’s getting past my bedtime.”
As if he’d heard the words, Deck detached himself from the group of men at the bar and came over to the table. “Are you ready to go?”
Silver nodded. “And I’m sure Juliette’s exhausted, too.” She gave Deck a meaningful look.
“Why don’t I tell Marty she’s ready to go?” He turned on his heel and headed back to the bar.
“We need to get going, too.” Lyn stood and walked across the room to her husband, Cal. She stretched on tiptoe to whisper something into his ear when she reached him. Juliette’s heart ached at the way the man’s arm went around her and his finger tilted her chin up for a lingering kiss.
Then Marty was coming toward her, and they all walked out to the parking lot together.
The air was brisk and biting and a lot chillier than it had seemed on the way in.
Deck pointed at the moon, and Juliette glanced up at the red halo surrounding it. “Snow before morning,” he said.
“Oh, great.” Lyn shook her head. “Your first week of marriage and already South Dakota’s giving you a taste of its miserable winters. Call me if it gets to you.”
On the way home, Marty explained that Lyn and Silver were both newly married, also. Juliette was relieved to learn this would be Silver’s first winter in the area. At least she wouldn’t be alone in her newness.
Cal and Lyn turned off the highway ahead of them, and when Marty turned off a few minutes later, Juliette was pleasantly surprised to realize how close—relatively speaking—Lyn lived. When they arrived at the house, Marty paid the baby-sitter and took her home while Juliette hurried upstairs to check on Bobby.
And Cheyenne, she reminded herself. She was a mother of two now.
She checked on both children. Bobby was still sleeping in the same position she’d left him, lying on his side. He had a funny habit of stretching one leg clear out, and sure enough, his little leg was extended as if he were planning on taking a walk upon awakening.
Cheyenne was sleeping on her back with both little hands outflung. The child looked totally angelic, and Juliette smiled ruefully as she brushed a kiss over the soft cheek. Life wouldn’t get dull with this one around. Cheyenne had come out of her room with a whispered apology as pleasant as you please after Marty had disciplined her earlier, and Juliette had taken special pains to include her in the dinner preparations. All in all, she thought their first day together hadn’t gone too badly after the initial shock.
She shut the little girl’s bedroom door and went back downstairs to let Inky out one last time before going to bed, then shut him in the kitchen. Though he normally slept on her bed, she had a feeling Marty would have a few choice things to say about that. Weary, she slipped off her shoes and carried them as she trudged back up the stairs.
If only she felt as optimistic about her marriage as she did about stepmotherhood. She couldn’t imagine how they were going to manage to get through the days ahead if Marty couldn’t even bear to be around babies. Tears stung her eyes and she blinked them back. She wasn’t a quitter, she reminded herself. She’d married Marty and she’d keep the promises she’d made in the judge’s chamber.
He just needed time to get used to the changes her presence and Bobby’s would bring to his life. He had good friends and family who were obviously deeply in love with their wives. Maybe there was a chance that he could grow to love her, too.
Oh, boy. Might as well wish on a shooting star, girl.
Quickly she got ready for bed, but when it actually came time to slide into the big oak bed where Marty slept, she hesitated. She stroked an absent hand over the quilt as she acknowledged the hopes she’d had for tonight, the fulfillment of the attraction she’d felt since the moment she’d seen him. She wanted Marty to make love to her in a way she couldn’t ever remember wanting a man in her whole life.
But Marty wasn’t here. And worse, when he did come home, he was going to be as quietly miserable as he’d been since she’d come down the stairs from her apartment with her son in her arms.
She didn’t want her first night in her new marriage to be like that.
Slowly she turned. Leaving one small lamp burning on the bedside table, she made her way back to the room where Bobby slept and crawled into the king-size bed there.
Marty entered the house after dropping off the baby-sitter to find the place totally dark. In the kitchen, his new wife’s little dog gave a halfhearted yip that stopped the moment he said, “Can it, critter.”
Then he took the stairs to the second floor. Anticipation had created a steadily growing arousal that burned in his system, and he headed directly for his bedroom—
Only to find his bed as cold and empty as it had been every night for more than two years. Disappointment rushed through him, killing his desire. It was swiftly followed by anger, the only other emotion he could allow himself to feel at the end of this hellish day.
He’d hoped she would be waiting for him. Hoped that perhaps they could salvage something from the collapse of the relationship he thought they’d been building. But apparently Juliette wasn’t interested in a relationship with him, except as it pertained to having his ring on her finger. Why in hell had she married him?
She’d hooked him, but good. And he’d fallen for every flirtatious bat of her eyelashes, every swish of those slim skirts across her trim little bottom, every hesitant response she’d given him.
Now it was painfully clear that he’d been the biggest kind of idiot. He’d been so hot to get married before she got away, and she’d had no intention of getting away. She’d been as desperate as he had for this marriage. The only question now was: why?
To gain a father for her fatherless son? He didn’t think so. If that were the case, she wouldn’t have hidden the kid from him, she’d have checked him out right away to see if he was a good parent candidate….
He felt as if he was missing something important, as if some crucial piece of information was eluding him. Why hadn’t she been up front with him about her baby?
The answer was suddenly crystal clear, even if the reason behind it wasn’t. She had been desperate to get married. So desperate that she wouldn’t take a chance on jeopardizing the opportunity by scaring away the potential spouse with a baby that wasn’t his. She needed to get married.
Now all he had to do was figure out why.
She was in the guest bedroom that had been his brother Deck’s, sleeping alone in the big bed with her baby in the little portable thing nearby. He pulled the door almost shut, weariness and sadness tugging at him, and quietly returned to his own room, where he stripped and crawled into the bed he’d hoped to share with his bride.
And his dreams were a restless, anguished jumble of hospitals, red flashing ambulance lights and crying babies.
The house was chillier than usual when Marty awoke in the morning. He dressed and went downstairs to the kitchen and turned up the heat. Juliette’s dumb little dog danced around his feet, and he figured if he didn’t want it to have an accident he’d better let it out.
It was snowing when he opened the door of the utility room, little tiny flakes that had already piled several inches of fluffy stuff on the ground, and it was cold. Really cold. The thermometer on the porch post read ten degrees, and there was a vicious north wind blowing, which probably meant it was at least fifty below. Damn. He and the men couldn’t ride more than a quarter mile in that without freezing solid.
The little dog, Inky, didn’t like the cold much. He scampered out, did his duty and ran right back to Marty’s feet again.
Marty couldn’t help but laugh. “Good job,” he told the dog. “Gotta keep it quick so we don’t freeze out here.” He took Inky in with him, and the kitchen was still empty.
He’d hoped Juliette would be up, but he ate his breakfast and she still didn’t appear, so he shrugged into his warm clothes. She probably was wiped out after yesterday. She might need to catch up on her sleep.
He headed for the garage where he’d had the good sense to put the truck last night, and disengaged the heater from the engine block, then went out on a scouting trip.
He drove the ranch roads slowly, keeping an eye out for early cows that might be calving. He and Deck had been trying to get all the breeding cows into pastures closer to the house since the weather was supposed to turn, but some of them were wily old sneaks that managed to elude the men. They would calve out in the snow somewhere and the calves would freeze to death. On the radio, the weatherman was talking about a blizzard developing. One look through his windshield confirmed it. Small flakes like this usually meant they were going to get lots of snow.
Deck was at the barn when he got back and they went down to the pastures to feed.
“Morning.” His brother’s greeting was normal, but the speculative look he aimed at Marty wasn’t.
“Morning.” He ignored the look. “This looks like it could get ugly.”
“Probably will.” Deck heaved bales of alfalfa off the back of the truck. “So how’s your bride settling in?”
“Fine.”
Deck raised his eyebrows. “You all right?”
“Fine.” The note of concern in his brother’s voice nearly undid him, and Marty set his jaw. Deck had been intimately acquainted with grief since their sister had been killed; he, more than anyone, knew the hell in which a part of Marty had lived since Lora and the baby died. Marty swallowed. “Let it be for now.”
Deck nodded his head. “Okay.”
They finished feeding and then spent the rest of the morning chopping ice on the dam before heading to their respective homes.
By the time he’d put the heater on the truck’s engine at the house, his fingers were numb and clumsy with cold. He stomped the snow off his jeans and boots on the porch but when he reached for the doorknob, it wouldn’t open. It took him a full minute of fumbling with the knob before he realized it was locked. And by that time he could see Juliette hurrying toward the door.
She pulled it wide and stepped back so he could enter.
“We never lock doors around here,” he barked at her.
“I was here alone with two small children,” she said, tilting her little chin in the air. “I’m not accustomed to leaving my doors unlocked.”
Damn. He hadn’t intended to start off the day on this note. He knew he owed her an apology, and instead here he was yelling at her. “I was just surprised,” he said, peeling off his gloves. His fingers were white with cold and his legs felt numb, too. He hadn’t been dressed for this kind of weather when he’d early that morning. “Sorry I shouted.”
She was staring at his hands. “That doesn’t look good. Is that how frostbite starts?”
His clothes were soaked now that the snow was melting and he shivered. “It’ll be all right. I’m going to take a hot shower.” He started forward, then stopped again, watching her face as he spoke. “We have to talk.”
“I know.” But her gaze slid away from his. “Would you like me to get you a hot lunch while you’re showering?”
He nodded, grateful that she was making an effort. “That would be nice.”
He was halfway up the stairs before he noticed her little dog bouncing along behind him. He started to holler that the damn dog couldn’t stay in the house, but then he realized he couldn’t, in good conscience, put the critter in the barn where the other dogs holed up when it got this cold. He was just too little; he’d freeze. And if it made Juliette feel more like this was her home, he supposed he could get used to having one small dog in the house. “Just stay out of my way,” he growled at the mutt.
When he came out of the shower, the dog was lying on the bed, right in the middle of the clean shirt he’d tossed there before he went into the bathroom. He swore it had a smile on its face and he scowled, yanking his shirt out from under it and sending it rolling end over end across the bed. “Scram, mutt.”
The critter leaped off the bed and its nails clicked on the wood floor as it raced around the foot of the bed, but it didn’t scram. Instead, it came to stand in front of him, tail waving in a perky arch over its back.
It tagged along at his heels as he walked back down the stairs and into the kitchen. Juliette had a mountain of grilled cheese sandwiches waiting for him. She’d made tomato soup from a can as well, and she poured him a mug of hot coffee. The baby was in its little cradle on the counter again and for a second he marveled at how content the little guy seemed to be most of the time. Cheyenne had been a fussy baby; he could remember taking turns with Lora walking the screaming infant for hours at night.
“How’s Cheyenne been?” he asked abruptly.
The question brought the first smile to her face that he’d seen since yesterday morning. “Great,” she said. “We built log houses and played with dolls this morning.” She went to the door of the living room and called Cheyenne, then took a seat across from him as his daughter bounced into the room.
“Hi, Daddy!” She ran to him and threw her arms around him exuberantly. “Me ’n’ Juliette played all morning.”
“Sounds like fun.” He kissed her and set her in her seat.
“An’ I fed that baby!”
Her little face was beaming, and he knew she expected some comment, so he said, “Good,” even though the very word baby made him flinch.
Involuntarily he glanced at the infant seat, still facing away from him. Thank God the kid was quiet. It made it easier to pretend he didn’t exist.
“What’s this?” Cheyenne was sniffing suspiciously at the tomato soup. “I don’t like it.”
“Tomato soup,” said Juliette. “I made sandwiches, too. Do you like cheese?”
Cheyenne nodded. “But I’m not eating that soup.”
His daughter crammed two sandwiches down her throat in the time it took him to eat his first one, then demanded to get down and go play. Not feeling like arguing, he merely nodded, and she disappeared.
“You may be excused,” Juliette called after her.
“Sorry,” he said sheepishly. “I guess her table manners need some work.”
“Eventually.” Juliette looked across the table at him. “What did you do with her during the day…before?”
“Anything I could,” he told her. “Lora’s mother and her sister Eliza each took her one day a week. Silver’s been doing that, too, since she and Deck got married. I hired a sitter sometimes; one of the hands’ wives kept her other times. The rest of the time, she had to come along with me.”
“Will she miss that?”
“Not a chance. She hated being dragged around. Although she still can visit her grandmother and her aunt once in a while. I’m sure you’ll need a break occasionally.”
Juliette gestured toward the window. “It’s really cold out today.”
“The weatherman says it’s supposed to stay cold for a while.” He shook his head. “I’ll have to go back out this afternoon.”
“But isn’t that dangerous?”
He couldn’t prevent the smile that curled at the corners of his mouth. “If I stopped doing everything on this ranch that was dangerous, I’d be sitting around the house all day.”
“What do you have to do?”
“When the snow gets too deep for the cattle to get to the grass, we feed bales as well as cake.”
“Cake?” She looked totally bewildered.
“Not birthday cake.” He grinned. “It’s a supplemental feed.”
Her eyes still looked worried, but she didn’t pursue the subject.
He indicated the boxes still sitting unpacked on the counter. “Are you planning to finish settling in today?”
“I suppose.” Uncertainty colored her tone. “Maybe you should make me a list of things to be done that you think are most pressing.”
He stared at her. “Why? The whole house needs help.” He shook his head. “You can start wherever you like and do whatever you want. I’m not particular.” Then he remembered. “Except that I’m not real fond of blue.”
She looked down at the cornflower-blue wool sweater she was wearing with a pair of tan slacks. “You’re not?”
He laughed. “I don’t mean like that. I mean as in redecorating. Color schemes.”
“Oh.” She considered. “Not a problem. I can live without blue rooms.”
“Good.” His relief was heartfelt. Then he looked at her again. The blue sweater made her eyes a deep, intense color that was striking with her fair skin, and her cheeks were a pretty pink. She’d pinned her hair up again; it suddenly struck him that he’d never seen her with it down.
That thought invariably led to others and he shifted in his chair as his jeans became uncomfortably tight. “You look very pretty today,” he said.
“Thank you.” Her voice was quiet; she studied her coffee mug.
He reached across the corner of the table and took her hand. “I’m sorry we got off to such a bad start yesterday.”
Her cheeks colored and he knew she was thinking about why they’d gotten off to that bad start.
“Let’s talk tonight.” He could tell from the look in her eyes that she knew he wanted to do more than just talk, and he kept his gaze steady as he waited for her answer.
Her whole body went still and for a long moment there wasn’t a sound in the kitchen. “All right.” It was a whisper.
Her nearness was having a powerful effect on his body. He stood, pushing back his chair without letting go of her hand, and pulled her to her feet. She placed both of her hands flat against his chest but he circled her slender body with his arms and pressed her close enough that she couldn’t miss feeling what she did to him.
He made a sound deep in his throat and bent his head, searching for her lips. Her mouth was passive beneath his at first and he forced himself to gentle the hungry edge that urged him to devour every sweet inch of her. Her mouth quickly softened in the generous response he was beginning to expect, and he used his tongue to deepen the kiss. Her little hands gradually slid up his chest and around his neck, stroking the skin there and making him shudder with need.
He tore his mouth from hers. “I want you,” he growled.
She bent her head and let her forehead rest against his broad chest, and he could feel her breathing as heavily as he was.
He held her a moment more, then lifted her chin and kissed her once, hard, before letting her go. “I’ll be back in a few hours,” he said.
He struggled into the layers of clothing that would protect him from the worst of the bitter cold again, although his body was so warm he figured he could walk to the barn buck naked and not even notice the chill.
Juliette decided to tackle the kitchen first, since it looked as if that was where she’d be spending a good part of every day. She thought she’d made too many sandwiches, but to her everlasting shock, Marty had eaten every single thing she’d placed on the table. She’d watched him tuck away the food, bemused, wondering whether he’d have eaten more if she’d set it in front of him.
Her body still tingled where he’d held her against him. Was she stupid to be planning on sleeping with him after the misunderstanding that still lay between them? Although Marty had said that this was a permanent decision on his part, before they ever married, she couldn’t help but wonder if he still felt that way.
He hadn’t so much as looked at Bobby, even when Cheyenne had talked about him. How could she make a family with a man who couldn’t stand to be around her son? Even though she understood his reasons and the pain that must haunt him, it still hurt when he rejected her child. It felt like a rejection of her, which she supposed it was, in a way.
The wind still howled around the corners of the snug ranch house but now the tiny ping of ice crystals bouncing off the windows joined the sound. Well, she wasn’t going anywhere today, that was for sure. So she might as well get something done in this house.
She went into the living room to see if Cheyenne wanted to “help,” a trick she’d quickly discovered kept the little girl too interested and occupied to be objectionable, but the child was sprawled across the sofa, sound asleep. Smiling, Juliette covered her with an afghan and let her sleep.
She started with basics, scrubbing the walls and the floor and tossing the rugs into the washing machine. She put Bobby down for a nap, then emptied the refrigerator after putting the mountain of newspapers scattered on the counter into bags for Marty to take wherever they went to recycle around here. She washed the counters and then started emptying out the kitchen drawers, one by one, and reorganizing after she’d thoroughly scrubbed them as well.
Cheyenne came into the kitchen almost two hours later, yawning, her hair a messy tangle of curls sticking out every which way.
“Hello, sleepyhead,” said Juliette.
Cheyenne ignored her, climbing into a kitchen chair and laying her head on the table.
Juliette went to the table and knelt down beside the child. She wanted badly to cuddle the little girl, but she almost could see tiny porcupine prickles raised and ready. “Cheyenne?”
The child flopped her head over on her arms so that she was looking at Juliette.
“I thought you and I could plan something special to do each afternoon while Bobby is napping. What would you like to do today?”
Cheyenne thought about it for a minute, then slowly sat up, and in a queenly manner that had Juliette hiding her smile, the little girl raised her arms for a hug. When Juliette put her arms around the fragile body, Cheyenne clung surprisingly tightly for a long moment before they each drew back, and Juliette felt tears prickling at the backs of her eyes. She was suddenly fiercely determined to make a difference in this child’s life, to give her a normal childhood and all the love she had within her.
“I wanna make cookies,” Cheyenne said.