Home Field Advantage (13 page)

"Daddy!" Emma flew
to him the minute he stepped inside the back door. "I checked out three
books from the school library today. Marian said she'd read them to me. And
then I can read them to her. Do you want to listen, too?"

"You bet." He
lifted her high for a kiss, peripherally aware of Marian, the smile in her
dark eyes exquisitely gentle. "After dinner," he added. "I've
still got work to do out in the barn."

"Marian says Anna and
Jesse are napping. Can I help you? Please?"

He hesitated. Marian
intervened. "Maybe she could clean Snowball's stall. He'd appreciate a
little attention."

"Can I?" Emma
begged.

"Go for it, kiddo. You
know what to do."

"Wow!" She was
gone.

John shook his head.
"How come she's not that excited when I ask her to clean her
bedroom?"

Marian had turned back to the
oven, from whence floated the delicious smell of baking cookies. "Because
there's no horse in it, of course," she said practically.

Feeling ridiculously nervous,
he strolled toward her. "You seen Esmerelda lately?"

The damn goat had claimed the
run of the place. The five-foot fences were apparently no obstacle. She could
open the stall door in two minutes flat. He'd tried a long rope; she had chewed
through it. And probably eaten a few feet while she was at it. He could chain
her—but he didn't like the idea. So far, she hadn't hurt anything and hadn't
wandered off the place. And the horses seemed to like her.

His suspicion that Marian
enjoyed Esmerelda's string of triumphs was confirmed when her chuckle floated
over her shoulder along with the realization that the cookies she was baking
were raisin-oatmeal. His favorite. "She peeked in the kitchen window a few
minutes ago," Marian said. "I'm glad you don't have a garden
yet."

"Yet?" He was only
a couple of feet away now. She bent over to peer in the oven, and John savored
the view of her nicely rounded derriere.

Marian straightened with the
cookie sheet, her hands protected by oven mitts. "You are planning to have
a garden, aren't you?" she asked, looking shocked. "I just
assumed..."

"I hadn't thought about
it," he admitted. "The house was only finished this spring. I did put
in those little apple trees out back. I don't know anything about gardening.
That's one of the things..." He stopped.

Their eyes met and she said, "That
your wife did?"

"Yeah." Funny, the
jolt he felt remembering Susan and looking at Marian in Susan's place.

"But you do a lot of the
things she used to," Marian observed softly. She nudged the oven door shut
with one hip and slipped past him to set the cookie sheet on the range.
"Did she love to garden?"

"Yeah," he said
again. "Yeah, she loved color. Middle of the summer, I used to think the
yard was gaudy. Too much yellow and red and flaming orange. Colors she wouldn't
have been caught dead wearing. But she always said nature was gaudy."

Marian looked at him, her
thoughts impossible to read, the pancake turner held uselessly in her hand.
"Was your wife like that? Flamboyant?"

Why did she want to know? But
if he asked, the fragile mood would be broken, so John followed where Marian
led. "She could be," he admitted. "Not her looks. Susan
was...pretty, but not spectacular." Not like you, he thought, and had
sense enough not to say. "But she was alive. Do you know what I mean? Had
a hell of a temper, but mostly she seemed to have a gift for happiness. She
liked other people, liked taking chances. Susan always did drive too
fast..." Unexpectedly his throat closed, so that he couldn't finish. And
she didn't wear a seat belt. Damn her, he thought fiercely.

Shocked by the anger he had
thought gone, John turned abruptly away to look out the kitchen window toward
the mountains and paddocks. His chest felt seared. What had brought it back so
vividly? They had only been married five years, and she'd been gone nearly
three. In another five, he might need a picture to remember her face. Emma's
memory of her mother was already fading, something she could hold up to the
light and faintly see, like a four-leaf clover preserved between sheets of
onion-skin paper. Not a source of pain anymore, just...sadness. Gentle and
distant. So why was he angry?

Because Marian made him feel
again? Or because he knew that she could hurt him as badly?

"I'm sorry," she
whispered. "I didn't mean..." She touched his arm so fleetingly he
might not have noticed if he hadn't been so aware of her.

For Marian's sake, he tried
to smile. "Nah, it's okay. It's been a long time. She died because she
wasn't wearing a seat belt. Maybe it's not fair of me, but I blamed her. I
wanted to yell at her and shake her and..." He shrugged, still hating his
own helplessness. "But I couldn't do any of that."

"You wanted her to be
there so you could yell at her."

"Yeah." The anger
was gone suddenly, leaving a desire to hold Marian in Susan's place. Or did he
mean, instead of Susan? He didn't wrestle with the impossible, just said,
"I should probably have told you about her, anyway, in case Emma talks
about her mother. She does sometimes."

"I'm glad she
does." Those fathomless dark eyes gazed at him for a moment longer, and
then she smiled. For the first time, he noticed a tiny sprinkling of freckles
on her nose, a disarming counterpoint to the elegance of her translucent skin.
"Would you like a cookie?" she asked, with all the practicality that
entranced him.

"In a minute," he
said. "After I kiss you."

"After you..."

He didn't let her think about
it. Instead, he reached up to stroke wisps of dark hair off her forehead, then
held her gaze as he bent his head very slowly. John touched her lips the way
she had touched him, the kiss of a bee brushing a flower petal, the wind a
fragile leaf. Just a taste of sweetness, tantalizing. He lifted his head as
slowly, seeing the dark fan of lashes that fluttered open, the quiver of her
lower lip, the dreaminess in those night-dark eyes that sought his, the
delicate sculpting of cheek and jaw. Unable to resist, he trailed his
fingertips along her jaw, then down her graceful neck. Was the rest of her as
fragile? As silken and gentle and feminine? She still stared mutely up at him,
and he bent his head again on a sudden rush of hunger that was nearly anguish.

But from behind him came a
small voice. "Mommy?"

God. John's muscles locked,
and he had to will himself to step back. He saw a tide of color wash over
Marian's cheeks, the ragged breath she drew in, the confusion in her eyes.

"Jesse?"

The little boy who sometimes
seemed like a shadow of his twin sister scampered across the kitchen. One
shoulder of his overalls was unfastened and his toes were bare. "Can I
have a cookie, Mommy?"

"Is Anna still
asleep?" With practiced ease, Marian hoisted her son to her hip. She
kissed Jesse's forehead, but her cheeks were still flushed with rose.

"I'd better go back out
to the barn," John said, hearing the rawness in his voice.

Marian's gaze met and then
shied from his. "You'll check on Emma?"

"Yeah," he said
huskily. Damn. You'd think he would have more sang-froid. "And round up
that goat."

Suddenly a smile trembled on
her mouth and more than shyness was in her eyes. "Good luck," she
said, and he realized her voice was a little husky, too. With laughter? Or
passion?

His body tightened almost
painfully, and he made himself turn away. "Thanks," he growled, and
let the kitchen door slam behind him.

He'd come in feeling like a
lovesick teenager, and he was going out the same way.

With a sigh, Marian looked
around the kitchen. What was she trying to do, win a Homemaker of the Year award?
Yesterday, enough cookies and lasagne to feed all of them for a week. Today,
homemade bread, blueberry muffins, and a huge pot of chili. She'd also mended
a laundry basket full of John's shirts and Emma's clothes. Ragged tears,
missing buttons, crumpled and worn—all had ended up hung crisply in closets,
while the smell of baking muffins and cookies had floated through the house.
She felt like—what else? Mother, of course.

Mother, wife, and lover. The
memory of yesterday's kiss popped up like a jack-in-the-box. It even wore a
mocking grin.

Marian's hands stilled as she
gazed unseeing out the window. What did John want of her? Her body, or her
heart? Was she ready to give either?

Hopelessly muddled, scared,
sad, and exhilarated all at once, Marian took the last batch of muffins out of
the oven. At least he wouldn't forget her in a hurry, she thought ruefully. For
weeks he would be taking neat little packages wrapped in aluminum foil out of
the freezer and following the directions written tidily on the tags. As though
he hadn't been managing nicely without her.

Mother. Who was she kidding?

He had left this afternoon
for Seattle.

"I have to spend the
night so I get a chance to talk to some of the players and coaches." He'd
grimaced. "As if anybody ever says anything new."

"Don't you?" Marian
asked, curious at how he saw himself.

He gave a bark of laughter.
"Are you kidding? Week after week after week? I just tell the guy in front
of the TV set what every player on the field already knows. That's what they
pay me for."

"False modesty,"
she chided.

"Nope. Humility."

She had thought he was going
to kiss her goodbye, but Emma came flinging down the stairs just then,
followed by Anna and Jesse who slid on their bottoms. The moment, if it had
ever existed, was gone, and she waved with the children from the wide front
porch as he drove away. Glancing at Emma, Marian saw a look of quiet desolation
that wrung her heart before she saw the five-year-old disguise it.

And no wonder! How long had
Emma known Marian? Six weeks maybe? And there went Dad, driving off for his
weekend in the big leagues, his daughter and house left in the charge of a
woman he really didn't know very well. Why? Why was this job so important to
him?

Marian had discovered from
Emma that Isaiah often had meals with them, so after John left, she nerved
herself to hunt him down in the barn and invite him to have dinner with her and
the children.

The big black man looked at
her in that unnervingly expressionless way, then gave a brief nod.

"Maybe six
o'clock?" she said, and he nodded again.

Conversation at the dinner
table was going to be stimulating, she thought ruefully, retracing her steps
past Snowball's stall so that she could give him the carrot stuck in her back
pocket. Oh, well. Emma could fill any silence. In fact, she would be thrilled
if there was a vacuum for her to fill!

It didn't turn out as badly
as Marian had begun to fear. Isaiah presented himself at six o'clock on the
dot, still wearing jeans and cowboy boots but neatly washed.

"Hi," Emma said
happily. "I bet you wish you could go watch the football game with Daddy,
don't you?"

He shrugged and followed
Marian and Emma into the kitchen, where Marian had already set the table. The
dining room didn't seem quite suitable for the present company, considering the
odds of spilled milk or dribbled chili. She remembered her own kitchen with the
scarred linoleum and miscellany of high chairs and booster seats. Cats sitting
on the window ledge and dogs waiting hopefully under the table. She had a wave
of homesickness that left her feeling even more out of place. What was she
doing here? She didn't belong.

She saw the first expression
ever on Isaiah's face when she handed him a basket of sourdough biscuits fresh
out of the oven. Just a flicker, but undeniably pleasure.

"Help yourself,"
she said, before going back for the chili. When Isaiah ladled himself a
bowlful, Marian apologized. "It's not very spicy. Anna and Jesse like it
better this way, and I guess I've gotten used to it…

"Smells good," he
said.

"Well...thank you."

No wonder he had needed a
partner in the horse business! He would be hopeless with potential customers.
Which reminded her...

"Do you and John show
your horses very often?" she asked curiously. Somehow the subject hadn't
yet come up with John.

"Daddy says I can ride
in the costume class when I grow up," Emma announced. "I want to wear
purple and silver."

Another flicker of expression
showed in Isaiah's dark eyes. Amusement. "We show 'em," he agreed.
"Have to, if you want the foals to be worth anything."

Downright talkative, Marian
thought. And maybe she was the one who had jumped to conclusions.

"When I was growing up,
I always wanted an Arab," she said. "I read quite a bit about them.
The Polish and Egyptian and Spanish..."

Isaiah nodded. "Ours are
Polish descendants. Bask."