Choices of the Heart (23 page)

“Hello, Tom,” she called out just before slamming the car door.

She felt no excitement over seeing him again. Once, she’d found him handsome, but after watching Reese’s muscles work as he toiled in the field, watching him play with their children on the floor and seeing his silly smile after they made love at night, she knew what handsome really meant. It wasn’t perfect white teeth, or hair that never moved from its place. Beauty was something that lived inside a person. Reese had it; Tom did not.

“You have your hands full,” Tom said, stepping off the porch to stand before her. He bent forward as if he meant to kiss her, but Chloe took a quick step back, out of his reach.

“I come all this way to see you, and I don’t even get a kiss?”

“No. Sorry.” She shook her head and took more two steps backward. “I’m married now.”

“What?” Shock ripped across his perfect face. “Married? No one said anything about that to me! When? To whom? You were going to marry me, Chloe!” He grabbed her shoulders, gave them a gentle shake.

Charlie began to cry.

“Get your hands off her,” Reese yelled as he galloped toward them. In a flash, he was off the horse and standing next to her, placing a protective hand on her shoulder.

“This is my husband, Reese Lloyd.” She threaded her arm around his waist. “Reese this is one of my former supervisors, Dr. Thomas Fields.”

Reese recognized his name from the letter. Chloe saw it in his eyes.

“What do you want out here?” Reese asked, a cold edge in his voice.

“Chloe and I are…
were
…involved… In Lincoln. I was
more
than her supervisor, and when she resigned so suddenly and said she wasn’t coming back to Lincoln, I wanted to know why.” Tom reached into his pocket, took out a cigarette and lit it. “Guess I know now.” He blew out a stream of smoke.

“I wrote you,” Chloe said, glancing at Reese. They’d never finished their conversation about Tom. “I told you I had married and wouldn’t be returning to Lincoln and St. Elizabeth’s.”

“I never got it,” Tom bit off. “I wouldn’t have come so far out of my way if I had.”

“I’ve been gone several months, Tom, surely it was obvious I wasn’t interested in you any longer?” Chloe said.

Tom groaned. “Can I speak with Chloe alone for a moment?” he asked Reese.

Her husband looked at her, and when she nodded, he sighed.

“I’ll take the boys inside for their nap.” Reese glared a warning at Tom as he passed but didn’t say another word.

“Shall we go on the porch?” she suggested, walking that way, not caring if he followed or not. All she wanted to do was get out of her uniform and apologize to Reese for this whole scene.

“Why would you settle for
this
, Chloe?” Tom asked as he sat on a rocker. “You could have had so much more with
me
.” He stamped out his cigarette. “Who are these children? Did they come with the marriage?”

“The older boy is my nephew, Bobby. The baby is a boy Reese and I adopted.” She’d lost track of time. Already couldn’t recall how long they’d been together as a family. “We took in the baby’s sister and three brothers, as well.” She sat on the other rocker.

“Six children?” His voice was incredulous. He flounced backward on the other rocker. “You gave up a promising career and the opportunity to marry well, for this?” He spread his hands wide.

“
This
is what I wanted, Tom.” She set her chair to rocking, anger stiffening her spine. “As for marrying well, I couldn’t have done any better than choosing my true love.” She looked at him, really
saw
him for the man he was.

“But, Chloe, you and I were so good together.” He looked ugly when he whined.

“You can find someone else to dance the Charleston with,” she suggested with a placating smile. “I was never that good at it, anyway.” She looked out over the barnyard where two small cats were chasing after each other. “I never enjoyed it nearly as much as you did.”

“There was more to us than the dancing,” he spat. “You’re fooling yourself if you don’t admit that.” He flung his second cigarette off the porch and then gave her a once-over. “You’re wearing a uniform?”

“A new doctor came to town. William Babcock. He’s building up his clinic and hired me for two mornings a week.”

“Is that so? I don’t know that name.” He leaned forward with a frown and rested his elbows on his knees. “How, pray tell, will you manage working, when you have
six
children to rear?”

She smiled. “I have a very helpful, very progressive husband, who is more supportive than I ever could have imagined. It will be a challenge but something I am looking forward to.”

He snorted. “I’ll be going now.” Abruptly he stood, the rocking chair swaying as his weight left it. “My plan had been to pick you up and head into Denver for the week. My parents rented a cabin in the mountains and are expecting to meet my fiancée.” He laughed without a hint of humor. “I’ll still go. Explain to them you’ve married your true love and he’s nothing like me.”

“I’m sorry if I hurt you.” She did feel some remorse. She never would have married him, even if Reese hadn’t wanted her, but she perhaps had led Tom to believe otherwise.

“Don’t be. I was never sure if you’d be a good enough hostess. After all, you lacked the social graces I needed in a wife to propel me forward in society. I figured you could learn, but now I’ll just find someone better schooled.”

She swallowed back the insult. “You do that,” she encouraged.

He slammed his hat back onto his head and stalked by her, down the porch stairs and climbed into the car. He gunned the engine and pulled away. A light rain was just beginning to fall, making the dusty gravel turn to mushy mud, splattering all over his car as he sped down the lane.

She waited a few minutes, enjoying the cool breeze brought by the rain, before going into the stuffy house. She’d open the windows a crack to let the fresh air in. She headed into the living room, where she found all the menfolk sleeping. Reese lay on the sofa, with Charlie on his belly. Bobby had curled up on the other, smaller sofa with his blanket, and as Chloe approached, he snored quietly.

Her heart swelled nearly to overflowing with love as she took in the sight of their precious faces. Maybe life in Broken Bow wasn’t quite as exciting as a trip to Denver and being married to a doctor who wanted to be a state senator and then president, but Chloe wouldn’t give up Reese and her children for anything.

“Chloe?” Reese whispered.

She walked closer, and he opened one eye.

“Did he leave?”

“Yes, of course.” She bent over him and kissed his lips. “I love you,” she whispered.

He opened both eyes and shifted to a sitting position. “How long before you have to go fetch the children from school?” He handed the sleeping Charlie to her.

“Hours,” she answered, breathless, understanding well why he was asking.

“Let’s put the boys to bed and use the time for ourselves.”

Chapter Twenty-One

“I’m thinking we need to have a little chat ’bout the good Dr. Thomas Fields.” Reese joined Chloe out on the porch just after all the kids had been bathed and put into bed later that night.

“What do you want to talk about?” Chloe asked, accepting the glass of lemonade he handed her.

The rain that began as a drizzle had turned into a steady downpour. It had continued all afternoon and now, well into the evening, it was still raining. The days were definitely getting shorter, and while Chloe had always loved fall, it still made her a little sad to watch all the flowers and trees fade away.

“Will he be back?”

She looked at him, confused by the question. “Why would he come back here?”

“It looked as if the two of you had some unfinished business. Kind of how we ended things back when you moved to Lincoln.” Reese lit a cigarette. He still hadn’t fully quit the nasty, smelly habit. “Did you leave him heartbroken, too?”

“You make it sound as if it was intentional. Hurting you. Hurting him.” She glanced at him and then looked away.

“Unintentional or not, that’s what happened.” He took a long drag and blew out a puff of smoke. “At least, with me.”

“Reese, what do I have to do to make it up to you? Can you tell me that?” Her voice rose on a wave of anger. “You sulk around all day, hardly saying a word to me, even though I’ve told you I love you. I have apologized many times, too. I just don’t know what else to do or say! I’ve tried to show you every way I know that I am happy to be here, being with you, being your wife.”

“Did you do the same to Fields?”

“What do you mean?”

“You must have done
something
to make him think you’d marry him?” Reese charged. “If you didn’t go
all the way
with him, did you kiss him?” He leaned forward on his elbows. “Did you touch him like you touch me? Did he touch you, put his mouth on you? Was he at that petting party you told me about when we were at the speakeasy? Damn it, why did he come here?” He stood and stomped to the railing and leaned against it, crossing his arms against his chest and staring down at her.

“Reese, I told you…”

“Did he touch you in your private places? Did you touch him where you touch me?” he repeated.

“No!” she shouted. “Kisses that made me feel dirty, like an adulterer, that’s all I did with him.” She stood heavily and walked to him and put her hand on his shoulder.

“He wanted to marry you. He wrote that in his letter, and now he came here to follow up.”

She sighed.

“He asked me to marry him, and I wasn’t even sure if he was serious. We were from such different backgrounds, and I had no reason to believe he really
wanted
to marry me. He never gave me a ring, or introduced me to his parents or even to his colleagues. So I never gave him an answer. If he read that as a yes, then it was his fault.”

Silence dragged between them. She didn’t know what else to say. What
could
she say that he would listen to and believe, or that would break the barrier still standing between them?

“Why didn’t you give him an answer?”

She’d wondered that herself. “Honestly, Reese, I thought he just wanted to sleep with me, and he thought the only way to accomplish that was to make me believe he would marry me. He thought I was a dumb Dora from the boonies who would fall for his charm. He didn’t know I had already given my heart to you. And since I didn’t believe he was legitimately interested in marriage, I didn’t think he really needed an answer.”

Why hadn’t she just said
no
from the start? Was it because she was flattered that he’d asked her, excited to think she could marry a dashing doctor so far above her in social class?

“Plus, he asked me just weeks before Daisy was murdered.” Chloe stared off into the darkness, catching the glint of an occasional raindrop off the light from inside the house. “I’ll admit he’s a handsome man, Reese, but I didn’t have any intimate feelings for him. I certainly didn’t love him. He came from money and has grand schemes for his future. He talked about taking me to exotic places I never thought I would see, painted pictures of mansions and traveling on huge ships overseas.”

“Chloe, you made the wrong choice, honey.” Reese flicked his spend cigarette and then moved away. “You should have gone with him instead of getting stuck out here with me.” He walked into the house, letting the screen door slam gently behind him.

“What in the world is his problem?” Chloe asked herself.

And then she got mad.

She ground her teeth and balled her fists, her fingernails biting into the skin of her palms. How dare he make such a comment and then leave her to wonder? She ought to…no. She sank back onto her rocker. It was harvest time, one of the most stressful times for a farmer. Surely he was simply tired, angry about the rain, which would keep him from the field for the next day or so. Why take it out on her, though?

Reese had some thinking to do. If he took the time to just look at their life, he would see she didn’t make the wrong choice. His fickleness—loving her one minute hating and doubting her in the next instant—was insane! She couldn’t keep up with his moods, and she decided she really didn’t want to, either.

He had to work it out for himself.

~*~

Two days later, they still weren’t talking to each other. Not beyond the absolute necessary comments. It was late when Chloe finally came to bed, and he’d been tossing and turning for hours. He had an inner fight he was working through. A fear of letting himself finally give in to his love for her, while at the same time worrying she would leave him again. When he saw the Lincoln doctor at the house, he thought for sure they were through, that she would pack up and go back to Lincoln. Life had to be so much easier there. No matter how hard he tried to convince himself, Reese couldn’t get beyond the worry that she would up and leave them.

It didn’t help that he saw Graham Whitman in town the day before, reminding him again that wives do sometimes leave their husbands. Whitman’s wife left him with two kids and never looked back. Chloe could leave too…and then what?

She’d given up the moon to stay in Broken Bow, and as disappointed as she’d been with her first few days of work, surely she wouldn’t last here much longer. The only thing saving him from completely losing his mind was the reminder that she said she loved him. She not only said it at every opportunity, but she showed him through everything she did for him, as well.

The telephone rang, and he pretended to be sleeping.

She slipped out of bed, her light footsteps racing downstairs, surely to avoid waking him and the children. He listened as quiet as a church mouse, wondering if that call was why she’d not come to bed sooner. Had she been waiting for Dr. Tom to call her so they could set up a secret meeting?

His stomach ached with the grief of it all. How could she do it to him again?

Her voice was muffled. Was she trying to hide her words, keep her betrayal a hideous secret?

He stood up, prepared to fight for his wife, even if she didn’t want him. She wasn’t going to leave him with six kids for the fancy doctor.

He ran right into her at the top of the stairs.

“Reese, I was just coming to get you.” Her face was a picture of worry. “There’s a man on the phone for you.”

“For me?” Relief struck him like a lightning bolt. “What does he want?”

“Just come and talk to him.” She took his hand and led him back down the stairs to the kitchen. “He refused to speak to me.”

“This is Reese Lloyd.” He spoke into the phone that she’d left hanging from the wall.

“This is Jimmy Calabrese, calling from Chicago.”

“Chicago?” Reese looked up at the clock hanging on the wall. “Sir, do you know what time it is?”

“I don’t really give a damn what time it is,” he told Reese. “I’ll make this short and sweet, so you can back to bed for your beauty sleep. Them children yous got down there are mine. I didn’t know my Minnie had up and died until them state people took ’em away.”

“How did you get this number?” Reese worried they’d soon have a whole gang of the Chicago underworld on their doorstep.

“Let’s just say I have my ways.”

“You coming to get them?” Reese couldn’t imagine what he would do if Calabrese said yes. The children were part of Reese and Chloe, the only thing keeping her here, with him.

“Hell, no! What would I want with six children?”

“Five,” Reese dared to correct him.

“Five, what?”

“We have only five of your children. The authorities couldn’t find your oldest girl.”

“Is that right?” A pregnant pause hung on the line. “I’ll have to look into that, Mr. Lloyd. You need money, or anything else, you call this number.” He rattled off a long phone number that Reese jotted on the back of an envelope. “Whoever answers will know where to find me. Tell ’em it’s about the brats. You tell them kids that I’m dead. They’re better off thinking that than knowing the truth.”

The line went dead. Reese pulled the phone from his ear and stared at it before looking at Chloe.

“What did he say to you?” Chloe demanded the minute he hung the phone on the receiver.

“I had trouble understanding him,” Reese told her, still trying to understand the turn of events. “His speech was slurred.”

“Well, what did you understand?” she pressed.

“He told me he’s the father of the children and his name, I think, matches the one on all the birth certificates.”

Her eyes widened, and she held her stomach. “He’s coming for them?”

“No.” Reese shook his head and then ran a shaky hand through his disheveled hair. “He has no use for them, he said. Told me if we needed anything, we could call this number”—he held up the slip of paper—“and he’d help out.”

“Thank goodness!” Chloe moved into his arms and gave him a hard hug. “I was scared he was coming to get them—that he would take our children away, just when we are finally turning into a family.”

Reese hugged her back. What an emotional ride. How could he let himself keep believing the worst of her?

“We best be heading back to bed. Since the rain quit, I’ll have lots of rows to pick tomorrow.”

“All right.”

Was it just his imagination, or did she seem disappointed?

He flipped off the gas jets and followed her back upstairs. They settled into the dark, quiet room, neither one saying goodnight. Tension sizzled between them as they both waited for the other to speak. Reese understood all it would take would be a few choice words to change their whole marriage for the better.

Stubborn and scared, he refused to say them.

~*~

“I’m going to fetch my pay today. Dr. Babcock said he’d have it ready. And then your mother invited me to her quilting group, and I plan to go to that as well,” Chloe told Reese. “I figured it was a good way to get involved in the community again. Reacquaint myself with women my age.”

When he stared at her without comment, she whizzed by him and down the stairs into the kitchen. She heard him following her but didn’t turn around as she kept talking.

“I’ll be gone all morning. There’s a sandwich in the icebox if you get hungry before I get home. Boys, get your coats on; there’s a chill in the air. You too, Rosie.”

The children bolted out the door, racing for the front seat of the Model T. She slipped a coat on Bobby and then wrapped a blanket around Charlie. She grabbed her handbag and sewing bag.

“I love you, Reese. Try to get over the mood you’re in. We’ll all be happier when you do.” She cupped his face in her hands. “I am happy here, with you. I am not going anywhere, ever.” She leaned forward and kissed him.

“Take your paycheck and buy yourself something pretty,” he told her.

“I have a better idea for it.” She kissed him again, thrilled when he kissed her back, finally showing some of the intimacy he’d hidden behind the wall he’d kept between them the past few days.

“Now that is more like it, Mr. Lloyd.” She smiled. “I’ll see you later this afternoon.” She kissed him one last time and headed out the door, leaving him an empty house.

Let him stew on it. She was tired of walking on eggshells. He had to work things out for himself.

Chloe dropped the children off at school and then stopped at the mercantile to pick up the clothing and supplies she’d ordered for the children and Reese weeks earlier.

“Hello Linnea, I was hoping to see you sometime soon.”

“Well, Chloe Lloyd!” Linnea Barker came around the counter and embraced her. “I am happy to see you. You’ve been back for months, and this is the first time we’ve run into each other! How are you?”

“Fine, fine.” Chloe laughed. “Settled in, I think.”

“Six children! I couldn’t even believe it when I heard! Daisy was the one who always took in strays, not you!” Linnea handed Bobby a piece of candy and then touched Charlie’s head and got a slurpy smile for her efforts.

“Well, I didn’t really have a choice.”

“Oh! I have your order.” Linnea rushed behind the counter and into a small back storage room, returning a quick minute later. “So, is being married to Reese as wonderful as you always thought it would be?”