Forever's Affection (Forever In Luck Series Book 3) (13 page)

He
shrugged. “It’s hard to explain. When I look at her, I see this intelligent,
talented woman who shares many of the same interests as me. Once we get past
all the scrappy insecurity, we have so much to do and talk about. She loves to
hunt, and fish, and she works with animals, she doesn’t complain, she works
hard, and she enjoys simple easy things. She’s not the typical girly, girl,
thank God, and I found this all out before I saw what she actually looks like.”

“Did
you sleep with her?”
Jake asked, straight up.

“No!
Not even close.”

Jake
didn’t appear convinced. “Then what do you mean, what does she actually look
like?”

“You
saw her, she dresses like a man. Couple that with her tough girl talk, and it’s
like she wants to be unattractive.” He started laughing. “I went over there
unannounced, brought her dinner, and she came to the door wearing hip-waders.”

There
were chuckles all around.

“By
the time I set the food on the counter and found her in the next room, she was
standing there in a tank top and shorts looking over fishing lures.”

More chuckling and snickering.

He
continued, “We all know she’s tall, which is a bonus with a capital B for me,
but she’s thin for her size and you wouldn’t know it for the clothes she wears.
And get this, her hair,
its
naturally curly. She has
long, wavy, loose curls everywhere. There’s absolutely no doubt she’s a woman,
and she’s damn attractive.”

“So
you’re serious about this one, is that what you’re saying?” Nate said, summing
it up more than truly asking the question.

Taking
a deep breath, he nodded his head. “Yep, pretty much. She is, by far, the most
interesting person I’ve ever met in my life, and come four o’clock this
afternoon, I’d pretty much decided I’d found the one person in the world who
could get me to change my mind on the future. Then the phone rang and
everything started unraveling at the seams.”

Sitting
back in her chair, Linnie asked the billion dollar question. “So what do you
want to do now?”

Frustration
flared to life in him. “I don’t know what to do? All I could think about while
all this was going
on,
was getting home and talking
with all of you. I remember thinking about you being a nurse, and what we’ve
learned from Nate in dealing with PTSD, and Jules being alone and having had to
navigate the court system, and…and…I just don’t know what to do. She won’t
accept my help, that’s for damn sure, but I wonder if she’d accept it from you
and Jules.”

Linnie
and Jules stared at one another for a bit,
then
Linnie
took a deep breath and turned back to him. “We’ll try, we will, but you need to
know it can be really hard to get a woman out of situations like this, because
the reality is most of them have very little to work with in a way to help
themselves. So, all I can say is, we’ll try.”

CHAPTER 7

Dani
was in the pasture brushing down the Friesian while Junie played in the shade
with her toy horses. It’d been all her mother had sent, some stupid toy horses
in a nasty, dirty backpack. She really hated that woman, and damned if she
didn’t struggle with the guilt of it. Regular, normal people do not go around
hating their mothers, she thought, but then they hadn’t had Tippy Reed for a
mother either.

Dani
couldn’t do anything but shake her head, she was so disgusted, and she felt a
growl bubble up inside her. Oh, did she loathe that woman. She honestly didn’t
know of any other mother who cared less for her children than hers did. It was
unfathomable to her, why just looking at Junie filled her heart with so much love
it was breathtaking.

Licorice
nickered and took a couple steps back.

“Sorry
boy,” Dani said, patting and soothing the horse, “didn’t realize I was getting
a little rough.”

Hearing
a car approaching, Dani turned to see Linnie’s car coming down the driveway.
Great, either here to sprinkle cheer and wisdom on the stupid who should know
better,
or here to spy and take stock for a report to the
county.
Lot of good that would do, other than make their
lives more difficult than they already were.
She gave it a week till
children’s protective services showed up.
So much for
starting over, new place, same old stuff.

“Hey, Dani,” Linnie yelled and waved, as
she got out of the car.
“Jules and I saw you in the pasture on our way to
Café Wren to get coffee. We brought you back some. Black as pitch and thick as
tar was what we ordered.
How you doing?”

May
as well get this over with, she headed their way. “I’ll say thanks, but you
shouldn’t have done that. I’m sorry but I’m not feeling up to company.” Well
there, rather straight forward and to the point.

Linnie
and Jules looked at each other uneasily,
then
turned
back to Dani.

“We,
ahhh
, kind of wondered if you’d feel that way,” Jules
said, gently. “You must be tired with everything that’s happened in the last
week.”

Pure silence.
Dani let that
statement dangle out there. The three of them simply looking at one another and
not saying anything.

It
was back to Linnie, who said softly, “Dani, can we be honest and up front with
you?”

Dani
stood looking at them, thinking there was nothing these women could say or
do that
would make one lick of difference, she trusted no
one. “Sure, why not, then you can report back that you tried,” she responded
with a clip.

More Silence.

“Okay,
yes,” Linnie said, “Kris asked us to come here, out of concern for you and
Junie. He had hoped that as we are women that you might be more apt to accept
our offer of assistance, as his attempt to talk with you didn’t—”

Dani’s
laugh carried the cynicism she felt inside. “Oh that’s rich! Is that what he
said? That he attempted to talk with me? That’s a load of horseshit. You tell
him that when people in Luck, Wisconsin
talk,
they
can’t be heard all the way to Minneapolis. It’s a shame, you two must’ve been
sleeping,
it
was quite the show.”

Undeterred,
Jules stepped in. “
Ummm
, Dani, I wonder if Kris has
told you anything about us? Linnie and me, I mean.”

Dani
shrugged her shoulders, like seriously, who cared. “
Ahh
,
not really, you’re married to his brother and were hurt real bad, and you’re
his sister and your husband has PTSD. That’s about it.”

Linnie
stepped closer, and looked Dani directly in the eyes. “If at all possible, I’d
like to take Kris out of this, and I want to be completely honest with you. I’m
an ER trauma nurse, I work in the hospital, and Jules is a pharmacist, whose
background is in research. Given our professions, we respect and value
confidentiality. We come to you on the level, Dani, woman to woman, and offer our
assistance to you should you want it, as we have the means and ability to do
so.”

“My dad, he has
a little saying, it goes,
everything
happens for a
reason…I can tell you this, of all the families in Wisconsin you could have
met, you were brought to ours for a reason.”

Dani
didn’t spend the time thinking about it because she’d never been good with the
smart
stuff,
instead she went with what was in her
heart, love for Junie. “Yes. Yes, I need help. I need to get Junie to a
doctor.”

Linnie
reached out and gave her hand a squeeze. “Alright, we can help you. How about
we all go inside and talk a little. You can introduce us to Junie, and we’ll go
from there. Does that sound acceptable?”

Dani
couldn’t speak, so she just nodded her head. Walking over to Junie, she took
her in her arms, grabbed her backpack, and headed for the house.

*****

Sitting
on the couch later that evening, Kris stared at the television, but couldn’t
have told you what was on or what was being said. His mind was on Dani and
Junie. He had worried about them all day.
All day.
All
damn day. If you would’ve asked him, he wouldn’t have been able to explain it,
because he’d never worried like this before. Not even when the crops were
failing, or livestock commodities were falling, or dairy futures were going
sour, and there had been plenty to worry about there.

This
was different, it was like a level of panic with an angry edge, and his extreme
desire was to swoop in and take control of her situation. Except people in her
situation were not looking for a hero, they were looking to be strong on their
own. They needed to be in control of their own life to gain back some level of
confidence and trust that had been taken from them.

The
worry was damn near killing him, and the only thing that was keeping a lid on
it was his knowing that Linnie and Jules had been with her all day. Getting up,
he went outside and walked along to the northeast edge of the property, to a
little alcove surrounded by trees that hid the structure of his house. Stepping
up the makeshift stairs, he opened the door and went inside. The sound of him
walking across the barren floor echoed throughout the rooms.

Stopping,
he looked around him. He’d been working on this for darn near two years now,
his dad having given him twenty acres. Farming the land during the summer, he
drove bus and plowed snow in the winter, all the while paying for things as
he’d gone along. With time on his hands, he’d always placed himself here, happy
and alone. Except now, he didn’t want to be alone, and realized he’d simply
been building a house, not a home.

God,
what had happened? It was like he’d had a lobotomy. Six days ago, he’d been a
content bachelor sneaking off to some woman’s bed without a thought or care to
his motivation, but now…not so much so. It was a decent house, and he
remembered telling the builder he wanted high ceilings and doorways to
accommodate for his stocking-footed six-five height, throw on some boots and
his head was grazing the average doorway. The builder had had a simple solution,
get rid of as much ceiling and doorway as possible. He went with it, and now
had a nice little modified A-frame, with a loft and open floor plan below.

It
intrigued him that he could look in any direction of this place and
envision
Dani and Junie there. He could see it, clear as can
be, and he wanted it to be so. Junie…his little koala
bear
.
That’s what his mind saw when he thought of her, those little arms of hers
holding on tight, her head resting on his shoulder. Then the two little
pigtails… Oh man, it had been one day, one stinking day since she’d captured
his heart, and he cared deeply for that little peanut. All he could think was
that he had to of lost his mind.

Glancing
over to the dining area, he could see the three of them sitting at their imaginary
table eating, and then cuddled up on their imaginary couch talking in front of
the fireplace that went to the peaked ceiling above. It felt serene, and it
felt right. Looking to the kitchen, he saw Junie standing on a chair playing
with soapy bubbles in the sink, and then at the counter making cookies with
Dani. He smiled. He wanted it, all of it, and he wanted it bad.

Going
down the hall, Kris peeked into the two bedrooms the builder insisted be
included in the design and decided which one he’d want to be Junie’s if it was
ever to be. He needed to send the builder a thank you for not listening to him
when he said he wouldn’t
be needing
these rooms. Now,
he was damn grateful, and his mind could imagine kid stuff everywhere.

Walking
to the other room he stared inside,
then
looked to the
ceiling above, imaging him and Dani in the loft working on filling this room.
This was crazy. This was absolutely crazy, he thought, and it was way, way, way
too premature to be thinking like this. He didn’t even know if she wanted more
children. There was so much that had to be figured out and dealt with, that
this future as he imagined it, was really nothing more than a pipe dream.

The
tapers and
mudders
would be done in a couple days,
then time for painting, cabinets, and flooring. Going to the door, he stopped
and looked back through the dimming light, and figured that if all he’d
imagined was nothing more than a dream, it was nice while it lasted. Turning,
he headed out the door.

*****

A
few days after their argument, Dani came home to a yard full of neatly trimmed
trees. Getting out of her truck, she looked around, pleased with what she saw.
She’d been gone all day, and Kris had obviously been here working for most of
it. She could see the tire tracks of a large truck throughout the yard. He’s a
good man, he meant well, and he was only looking out for you and Junie, she
heard her heart say, but still, she was mad. Well, kind of.

She
should probably pay him and call it done, but she couldn’t bring herself to do
it quite yet. After all, he was the one who had yelled at her. Ah hell, who was
she trying to kid, she was a glutton for
punishment,
it was her life’s purpose so it would seem. Hearing her counselor’s words, she
thought of things they had talked about.

She
should not let Kris get away with yelling at her, and she was right to not let
him get away with cutting her off when she tried to explain things. She should
have used their code word though. Was she trying to rationalize and excuse his
actions?
Where was the line between poor behavior and verbal
and emotional abuse.
Was his behavior, albeit poor, still normal? Is the
how, what, and why of what happened, the way normal functioning people argued?

She
didn’t know, but what she did know was that although he’d yelled at her and cut
her off, it was the most normal argument she’d ever had with a man, or woman
for that matter. There was no name calling, nothing was thrown, there was no
hitting or swearing, no one was physically maimed, or forced into something
they didn’t want, there were no guns, or knives, and they both walked away when
needed without incident. Now that was saying something, she thought. Given her
book of life, this was pivotal.

She
needed to be honest. She didn’t want to give that up. Seriously, this was progress
for her. He’s a good man, whose heart is in the right place, she heard herself
saying again. He’s just missing a ton of details and once he has the full
story, he’ll understand you did everything you could. She needed him to be at
the rodeo Friday night, and she needed to look her best. No more hiding away.
She’d moved here to reclaim her life and she needed to do just that, here and
now.

Grabbing
the stack of papers off the front seat of the truck, she called for Junie who’d
let herself out of her booster seat and was playing with Coco. Carrying their
stuff inside, she placed all the papers in an ever increasing folder, tucking
them away on her desk amid the other stationary stuff and her electronic
dictionary. Junie loved to play with that thing and hear it talk.

“You hungry, sweetie?”

Junie
nodded.

“What
do you want?”

“Peanut
butta
thamich
and
thoup
.”

“Okay,
I know you can say
sssandwich
and
sssoup
,
let’s try that again, take it slow.”

“
S
,s,anndwi,i,ich
and
s,s,soooup
.”

Dani
nodded and smiled, “Very good, Junie, very good. You pick out the soup you want
and I’ll make you a sandwich.”

Going
about their business, Dani thought about their week. Tons of appointments,
doctors, therapists, the attorney, tons of other resources the women’s shelter
in a neighboring town had connected her with. And she needed to get ready to
get back in the saddle. Which meant a new
outfit,
she’d left her others in Wyoming. It was going to require a trip to the cities
and probably the craft store. Making a mental list, she was glad she had a
credit card, but she hated using it, preferring to pay with cash.