A Family Name (16 page)

"Okay," Charlotte said, not completely
surprised that she was agreeing. "Just let me change into some
warmer clothes."

She felt Will's gaze follow her down the
hall. The heat from his stare made her shiver. While they had never
talked about the
thing
brewing between them, it seemed clear
that they both had acknowledged it to themselves. Even with the
weird distance Will had put between them over the past week and a
half, Charlotte felt herself unable to find fault. He was working
hard—harder than most men ever worked—to support his new family.
Charlotte contributed the meager amount that her vacation time
afforded, but that would be running out soon. She'd have to get
back to work, which would mean leaving the children. Will hadn't
mentioned anything else about the lawyer, so she assumed he'd let
it drop for the time being. Would he let Lexi move back to Rapid
City with her? She knew the answer to that question, but she didn't
let her mind dwell there.

Charlotte shut the door to her room with a
fierceness she hadn't meant. With a deep breath, Charlotte moved to
look out the window with a sweeping view of the pastures to the
west of the house. This land truly was beautiful. She didn't want
to leave, but what kind of future did the five of them have. Shane
and Sierra's grandparents would be there to claim them soon enough.
Lexi would become Will's eventually. The next court date for
custody was in a month, and the judge would certainly grant all
rights to Will since he was Lexi's biological dad. As much as she
had fought to keep the reality of their situation from sinking in,
Charlotte had been forced to face facts as she had watched Lexi and
Will develop a relationship over the past two months.

And she had been developing her own timid
feelings toward the man. Leaning her head against the cool pane of
glass, Charlotte groaned. How could she be so dumb? When every
small touch, every little glance, every movement Will made
overwhelmed her senses and made her feel like a high schooler with
a crush, she should have recognized what was happening. She could
have dealt with a crush. Instead, she had gone blithely on her way,
letting the feelings deepen to… what?

As if the window were electrified, Charlotte
jumped back. There was no way she was going to delve into those
thoughts now. Not with the man in question waiting for her down the
hall. The sensible part of her said that she should probably avoid
the ride, but the rest of her screamed to go. So she threw open her
closet, and hurriedly changed into jeans and a soft denim long
sleeved shirt. The only riding boots she had were a beat up pair
from Karen, but they worked just fine so Charlotte slid them on.
With a quick brush of her hair, she secured the long locks into a
single braid that fell down her back. Satisfied, she cast one final
glance in the full length mirror that hung inside her closet.

"Ready?" Will smiled at her, and she swore
she could feel her heart skip a beat. Even with her steadily
growing attraction to him, Charlotte was sure she had never reacted
quite that way before.

"Is your mom here?" An inane question brought
on by a sudden shortness of breath.

Will nodded as he retrieved their jackets
from the front closet. Charlotte could hear the commotion from the
kitchen. Karen was probably orchestrating a mass cookie baking
party. That seemed to be her favorite activity. She played the role
of grandmother quite well.

Accepting Will's help as she shrugged into
her jacket, Charlotte wondered again at the sanity of going out
alone with him. The proximity to him and the remoteness of where
they were headed certainly wouldn't help her addled brain and
pounding heart.

"We'll be gone a few hours," Will said as
they walked through the kitchen.

Karen smiled at them, with what Charlotte
could have sworn was a knowing smile, but all she said was, "Enjoy
yourselves. Hopefully the trail isn't too muddy. All this rain
lately."

The kids called cheerful goodbyes, even Shane
took his fingers out of his mouth long enough to wave in their
general direction. As Charlotte and Will made their way across the
drive toward the horse barn, Charlotte mused, "Your mom is so good
for all three of those kids. She really loves being a grandma,
doesn't she?"

"It's a role she was born to play," Will
said. "Now let's get going. I can't wait to see you ride."

****

Lexi watched through a slightly parted
kitchen curtain as her dad and Charlotte entered the horse barn.
The way they looked at each other made her want to whoop with joy.
Things couldn't have been going better if she had planned them
herself.

Grandma Karen was letting Sierra dump flour
into the mixing bowl. Lexi had never made so many cookies before in
her life, and she had to admit she loved those moments in the warm
kitchen with her actual grandmother. None of her foster
grandmothers had ever taken much interest in her. A wave of
self-pity washed over Lexi, and she felt tears prick the backs of
her eyes. Things felt so right, she lived in constant fear that
something, or someone, would mess it all up.

She had a dad, and a mom, and a brother and
sister. She had grandparents and uncles. She had a home. Lexi
didn't remember when she had started thinking of Shane and Sierra
as her brother and sister, but she did. They were closer to her,
more important to her, than any of her foster siblings had ever
been. That counted for something. Lexi knew it did.

Charlotte had told her that eventually Shane
and Sierra would be going to live with their real grandparents, but
no one had said anything else since, so Lexi hoped it wouldn't
happen. If Dad's friend had wanted him to take care of his kids,
maybe that's how it would stay.

"Would you like to measure out the chocolate
chips?" Grandma Karen asked, distracting Lexi from her
thoughts.

She shook her head. "Naw, how about you do
it, Shany? I'll help you, okay?"

Lexi reached out for the little boy, who
clambered willingly into her arms. She walked him over to the
counter where the bag of chocolate chips and a measuring cup sat
ready and waiting. Propping Shane up on the counter, Lexi opened
the bag for him. With his free hand, Shane reached in, grabbed a
fistful of morsels, and dropped them into the cup. Then he stuck
his hand back in, snagged a few more, and popped them into his
mouth. Lexi giggled. Shane smiled the way he always did when he
made her laugh. Lexi knew he would snap out of his sadness. She
could see it in him.

"All done," Lexi said as she lifted Shane
gently off the counter. "I'm going to give these to Grandma Karen
now, okay Shane?"

Shane nodded and followed Lexi back to the
table. Grandma Karen took the chocolate chips and stirred them into
the dough. After she doled out the right amount on the baking
sheets, she allowed each child to eat a spoonful of the raw cookie
dough.

"I shouldn't let you," she said with a laugh.
"But I think everyone needs to take some safe risks in their
lives."

Lexi didn't really know what Grandma Karen
meant, but she ate her spoonful of cookie dough happily. While the
cookies baked, Sierra and Shane settled into the living room to
build with blocks and watch a cartoon. Lexi stayed at the kitchen
table while her grandmother washed the dishes.

"Grandma? Do you think Dad and Charlotte like
each other?" Lexi asked. She felt embarrassed asking but she had to
know. Her heart had been broken too many times by misplaced
expectations, and she knew she couldn't let it happen again.

Grandma Karen dried her hands on a dish towel
and took a seat across the table. "I think it's safe to say that
they like each other just fine."

Lexi picked up a napkin from the lazy Susan
in the middle of the table. Carefully she folded it into triangles
and began to rip out small geometrical patterns. "No, I mean, do
they
like
like each other? Do you think they'll fall in love
and get married?"

With the question laid out bare, Lexi felt
vulnerable. She couldn't bring herself to look at her grandmother.
Instead she focused on the snowflake that she was creating. The
silence stretched on for what seemed like one million years.

Finally Grandma Karen said, "I hope so, Lexi.
I really do. Of course, folks all go about love in their own way,
and you never can tell, but I think your dad and Charlotte have a
fighting chance. I really do."

Lexi exhaled happily. That was just what she
had wanted to hear. A burst of energy sent her up from her chair
and around the table. After a tight hug for her grandmother, Lexi
nearly skipped into the living room to show Sierra and Shane the
snowflake.

****

"This is the perfect place to do a dig
because the land is pretty much unusable for pastureland. It's too
sandy." Will found that he liked explaining the logistics of the
dig site to Charlotte almost as much as he liked riding along
beside her. He felt knowledgeable. Plus the way she oohed and ahhed
over the scenery made him nearly dizzy.

"What made you decide to start teaching in
the first place?" Charlotte asked, tugging her horse up as it
dipped its huge head to munch on a snack of buffalo grass. "I mean,
you have such a passion for the actual dig it seems. Why didn't you
do that?"

Will sighed. Why did she have to delve into
that area? Couldn't they have kept this day light? No matter. The
subject couldn't just hang between them; he might as well bite the
bullet. "I was going to. After I got my PhD, I was all set to go
off and make the most important discoveries made in decades. I
planned to discover a new dinosaur species that they'd name after
me."

He paused and glanced over at Charlotte. They
had stopped on the top of a high ridge. The valley stretched out in
front of them to the scrubby pine tree line, which sloped up
dramatically. Instead of looking at the scenery though, Charlotte's
gaze was trained right on him. She had a way of looking at him that
made him feel like she could see past all the walls, right to the
heart of the matter.

"Mary and I had just gotten a divorce. We'd
gotten married in Vegas after a real bender of a weekend. It's such
a cliché, but sadly true. Mary and I had been on a few dates, and
we headed out there with a bunch of friends. We tried for about a
month to make it work. Obviously we know how that turned out." Will
ran a hand through his dark hair and replaced his hat. "So I had
just gotten accepted onto a dig in Russia. The team was doing some
amazing work, and I couldn't wait to be part of it."

He heard Charlotte draw in a quick breath.
"So what happened?"

"My dad had a heart attack. Walker called me
while I was waiting to board the plane."

"So you came back here, and abandoned your
dreams."

Will squirmed in the saddle. "Come on, let's
get going again. We don't want to get caught in a rainstorm like
we've been having lately."

He got his horse to a fast trot before
Charlotte caught up to him. When she was riding beside him again,
Will felt a pang of regret at his childish response. "I'm sorry,"
she said, her voice so soft, he almost couldn't hear her over the
hoof beats against the ground. "I didn't mean to pry."

Nice one, jerk,
he scolded himself.
Reining in his horse, Will waited for Charlotte to stop as well.
When she was facing him once again, he looked directly into her
eyes, and said, "You have nothing to apologize for. It's my pride
making me feel this way. My teaching position at the Institute is a
dream in and of itself. Dreams change. I came back because my
family needed me."

Charlotte bit her lip, so Will could tell
that she had something else on her mind, perhaps another question
or insight. Was he really so gruff that she didn't feel like she
could ask him? "Tell me," he said.

"Tell you what?" The surprise in Charlotte's
voice evident as her eyebrows lifted gracefully into her thick
fringe of bangs.

Will laughed softly. "I can tell something
else is on your mind. Just tell me."

Charlotte joined his soft laughter. "I guess
I was just wondering if that's why you and your dad don't get
along."

The words hung thick in the air between them.
No wonder she hadn't wanted to voice her thoughts, especially given
his most recent spate of behavior where his father was concerned.
Childish to the core. "It might be part of it. Not all of it,
though. You have to understand, things between me and my father
have always been… tense. We just can't seem to get along no matter
how much my mother gets us to try. Well, my mother, and now
you."

A flush of color rushed across Charlotte's
face, and even as he felt bad for teasing her to embarrassment, he
had to admit he liked how pretty she looked with her pink cheeks.
The desire he had been trying so hard to suppress boiled up in his
veins. What he wouldn't give to kiss her right now. To get away
from making an inappropriate move, Will turned his horse toward the
western rim of the pasture.

He cleared his throat. "The dig site is just
over there. We should probably leave the horses to graze and walk
the rest of the way. I don't want to disturb any of the sites."

Charlotte nodded, but didn't say anything
else. If she noticed any tactless behavior on his part she didn't
let on. Instead she swung down off her horse, and waited for him to
do the same, a pleasant smile on her face.
Wait a second.
Will stole another glance at Charlotte. He had to wonder if the
smile might actually be a smirk. Once again he thought just maybe
he was in over his head.

****

The trench of the dig site was deep and wide.
Will had pointed out several interesting areas that were marked
with small yellow flags, signaling that further digging was
required. Charlotte had never seen anything like it.