Montana Secrets (5 page)

“Only if you take care of him. He's your responsibility, and your mama has enough to handle right now getting ready to have the baby. She can't be taking care of a cat on top of everything else around here.”

“I know! I will! Thank you, Uncle Seff! Thank you, Grace!” As fast as Lexi had run into the room, she was back out again, her ponytail bouncing behind her.

“You just made her day,” Grace murmured softly.

He turned his attention away from the empty doorway and focused on the woman in front of him. “You deliberately let me think you'd already given her permission to keep the cat.”

She tossed him a satisfied smile, one that lit up her features and softened the angles of her face. “What did it feel like?”

“What did what feel like?”

“Caring about something again? Enough that you actually forgot about your present circumstances long enough to concentrate on something else?”

He rubbed a hand over his thick beard and glared
up at her. “Don't do anything like that again, Grace.” He refused to acknowledge her question. “If everyone's busy and Lexi needs anything—consult me. Better yet, leave and it won't be a problem at all.”

“Quit locking people out and beat me at arm wrestling and I will.”

He snapped his mouth shut, grinding his teeth as he shook his head at her and himself. What was it about her that made him want to regain the strength he'd lost just so he could prove to her he was still a man? Prove to her he could still kiss her senseless and more if she'd just let him.

“Sit down,” he ordered abruptly. “I hate looking up all the time.”

Without comment Grace snagged the tray from the seat of her chair and made herself comfortable. “I'm going to eat with the family tonight, so while you eat, I thought I'd fill out those papers we talked about earlier.”

Knowing she wouldn't fall for his trick twice, he picked up his fork and dug into his food. “Suit yourself.”

Silence settled in around them, and after a second's hesitation, Grace began writing. She paused every now and then to ask for specific information. His social security number. What level of pain he felt.

Now, there was a joke. Pain would be preferable
to the big fat nothing his legs represented now. He finished eating before Grace completed her paperwork, so he sat back in his wheelchair and watched her.

With her hair pulled back in a neat ponytail, Grace looked like the teenager he'd known. “Remember that night in the barn?”

Her head tilted to the side and the pen in her hand wobbled before she abruptly began gathering up her papers and stood, clutching the folder to her chest once again. “These are nearly finished. I don't need help with the rest, so I think I'll go give Maura a hand in the kitchen—”

So she could push him, but not the other way around? “I'm not going to therapy, Grace.”

The starch reappeared in her shoulders as she turned and stalked toward the door. “Life's funny, don't you think?”

“Hilarious.”

“I'm serious. I never took you for a coward, but—”

“You little—”

“—you're acting like one.”

“Come back here and say that,” he ordered.

She paused in the doorway, a thin brow arched high. “I will, but in the morning. I'm up for the challenge. Are you?”

“U
NCLE
S
EFF DOESN'T COME
out to eat with us,” Lexi murmured, a thoughtful frown on her face as she carefully picked a pink crayon from the box in front of her.

Grace sat on a pillow on the floor across from Lexi, absently coloring the picture the little girl had chosen for her. “You miss playing with him, don't you, honey?”

Lexi nodded, not looking up. Maura stood in the kitchen stirring something on the stove, and Grace was surprised to note her expression. Anger, upset. Frustration. Maura's face revealed a range of emotions, none of them particularly pleasant or healthy given her pregnant state.

Grace turned her attention back to the child. “You know, Lexi, sometimes it's hard to accept being hurt. And when everyone else around you behaves as they always did, walking and talking and working, it makes it even harder for your uncle Seth not to be able to do the same.”

Lexi stopped coloring, her big blue eyes dark with concern. “Can you make him better?”

Considering she'd already been locked out of his room, given a thorough put-down regarding her boundaries where his niece was concerned, and ordered not to bother him about therapy in the morning, she wasn't so sure. “I'm going to try.”

“But what if he don't ever walk?”

She glanced at Maura once again, wishing she were in the kitchen with her instead of being put on the spot. Maura stood within easy hearing distance, and either she wasn't paying attention or she simply chose not to join the discussion due to her feelings regarding Seth—whatever they were.

Grace sighed, set her crayon down and leaned against the couch behind her. “Well, if he doesn't, will you not love him anymore?”

Lexi shook her head, her curls bouncing. “I'll always love Uncle Seff. He tooked care of me when Mommy and Daddy both worked.”

Grace smiled at her. “That's all that matters, then, isn't it? I'll do my best to help him walk, but if he can't, you'll love him, anyway. We'll make a good team.”

“But I want him to get better now.”

“I know you do, honey. We all do, but it takes time.” Grace tried to think in terms the child would understand. “Have you ever fallen down really hard and had the breath knocked out of you?”

“Uh-huh. One time when I tried to roller-skate. I fell down and cried 'cause I couldn't breathe.”

“So after you stopped crying, did you get back up and skate right away?”

Lexi shook her head firmly. “But I did later,” she added.

“Well,” Grace said, picking up her crayon to color again, “your uncle's sort of like that. He's had the breath knocked out of him and he's sitting in his room waiting until he's ready to try again. It's just taking him a while longer than it did you.”

She didn't know if Lexi understood her explanation or not, but the child went back to coloring her picture without further questions or comments.

The front door opened and shut with a bang. “Anybody home?”

“In the kitchen!” Maura wiped her hands on a towel.

Grace watched as Jake walked directly to his wife and dropped a kiss on Maura's mouth before wrapping an arm around her shoulders and palming her stomach. “How's all my girls?”

Lexi giggled. “Grace's not your girl. Just me'n mommy'n baby.”

Jake chuckled and continued to rub Maura's pregnant belly. “Well, I suppose you're right. But Grace and I have been friends for a long time so she'll have to be my girl until she finds somebody to claim her.”

Grace raised a brow at Jake's statement.
Claim
her? Not likely.

“She can marry Uncle Seff!” Lexi exclaimed. “You telled Mommy they used to like each other. Uncle Seff'll have a wife and a therapist, too!”

Grace glanced from Jake's amused features to Lexi's hopeful expression. “Lexi, honey, therapists don't marry their patients.”

“Why not? Don't you like Uncle Seff?”

“Well, Grace?” Jake prodded, his eyes twinkling. “Don't you?”

“Jake, hush,” Maura scolded, sliding her a sympathetic look.

Grace scowled at Jake. “Yes, hush,” she added before turning back to Lexi. “I like your uncle fine, Lexi, but I'm not going to marry him. I'm just his therapist, and when he gets better, I'll leave and go help someone else.”

Lexi's smiling face abruptly turned sour and her eyes filled with tears. “But I want you to stay!” She scrambled up from the table and ran across the room to the stairs, stomping up them as fast as her little feet could take her.

“Did I miss something?” Jake asked tiredly.

“That child is such a drama queen. She reminds me so much of—” Maura broke off with a frown as Jake muttered something under his breath.

Grace used the back of the couch to push herself to her feet. “I'll, uh, go talk to her.”

Jake glanced her way. “She was crying awfully hard, Grace. Maybe you ought to let her calm down.”

As if cued to the words, Lexi's wails rose in volume. “Jake, it's just a temper tantrum,” Maura argued firmly. “Every child has them occasionally, and Lex is no different.” She looked at Grace. “Her room is the second on the right.”

Grace nodded, conscious the couple spoke in low tones as she turned and made her way up the stairs. Outside Lexi's closed door, she knocked softly.

“Go away.”

A smile pulled at Grace's mouth as she remembered those very words coming from Seth that morning. “I'm coming in,” she murmured as she opened the door and gasped, unable to take in the explosion of soft, brilliant colors. Apparently Lexi had taken after her father, because she'd definitely left out a few details about her Aunt Arie liking to “paint.”

The bedroom was gorgeous. Three of the walls were rolling hills of green grass, trees, flowers, mushroom houses, unicorns and tiny fairies with iridescent wings. Meandering here and there, up and down the walls, paths led to the fourth wall, where a castle was made all the more lifelike because of
the room's peaked ceiling. A glance farther up had her mouth hanging open.

On one side of the ceiling more sparkling fairies played hide-and-seek in a sun-filled sky dotted with clouds. On the other half, the moon and stars glistened in the dark, swirling night, shining from the glitter in the paint.

Grace thought back to her own childhood bedroom. Pink walls and carpeting, sheer white curtains and a canopied bed. Her mother had tried to make their house into a home despite the yelling and flying fists. Tried to hide the abuse behind the picture-perfect facade.

A muffled sniffle drew Grace's attention. Lexi's head was buried in the mane of a stuffed unicorn that was bigger than she was.

“Lexi.” Grace walked over to sit beside her on a satin comforter that matched the moat flowing around the castle walls. “Stop crying.”

Lexi raised her face from the unicorn and glared at her. “Why?”

Grace crooked a finger at her. Lexi slowly pushed herself to her knees and crawled over to sit on Grace's lap. “Listen to me. I'm your uncle's therapist and nothing else. Yes, at one time, we dated because we liked each other, but that's over now. Soon your uncle Seth will be able to take care of himself and I'll have to leave.”

“But why?”

After wiping a tear from Lexi's baby-soft cheek, Grace sighed. “Because I help people like your uncle. People who've been hurt and need me. It's my job and I like it very much.”

“More than him?”

Grace faltered.

“Stay here 'n' do it,” Lexi demanded before she had a chance to answer. The child batted her lashes coyly. “If you like us you will.”

Grace chuckled warily at the stunt. Drama queen was right. “No, Lexi, I won't, and it has nothing to do with liking you. You may have your uncle and daddy wrapped around your finger, but those looks won't work with me. Now, are we clear? You know your uncle Seth and I are just…friends?”

Lexi looked disgruntled as she nodded. “'Kay, but that doesn't mean I can't wish it like in the wishing book at the lib'ry, right?”

“Lexi—”

The child grabbed hold of the necklace Grace wore around her neck. “Uncle Seff wants Daddy and Mommy to leave and take me with 'em, but they don't need me no more.”

The knot in Grace's stomach grew. “They don't?”

“No. 'Cause of the baby. But if you get Uncle Seff better, I could stay here with him and keep him comp'ny.”

Grace put a finger under Lexi's chin and raised her face so that the little girl met her gaze. “Lexi, your daddy and mommy wouldn't think of leaving you behind. You're their baby, too.”

“But—”

“It would absolutely break their hearts to lose you even if they thought your uncle Seff would like it. Now, listen to me, okay? The baby won't ever replace you. After all, who's going to help your mommy take care of it if you're not with her?”

Lexi's brows pulled down into a fierce frown exactly like her father's—and uncle's. Grace pulled Lexi onto her knees on her lap so they were eye to eye. “So, would it be all right if I mentioned this worry of yours to your mom?”

Lexi was silent a long moment before she shyly tucked her face in the crook of Grace's neck and shrugged. “Uncle Seff
would
be all alone, but if you marry him—”

“No more talk about me marrying your uncle, remember? I mean it.” She gently pushed Lexi away and pointed to the castle. “Before I forget, I want to tell you how much I like your room. It's beautiful.”

“Aunt Arie painted it. Isn't she pretty?” Lexi pointed across the room.

Grace looked to where the child indicated and saw several framed photographs sitting atop a dresser. She spied one of Maura sitting next to
someone who looked enough like her to pass as twins. But there was a uniqueness to Arie, a vibrancy and energy Maura just didn't have. Maura was the girl next door whereas Arie was…different. Spirited. Unusually striking.

“I like you, Grace.”

Grace turned away from the photo, purposefully ending her curiosity over Seth's wife as she pulled the girl to her feet on the bed. “I like you, too. And now it's dinnertime. Want a piggyback ride downstairs?”

“Yeah!”

“And you'll remember what we've talked about?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

Grace bit back a smile and helped Lexi climb onto her back, bouncing them out of the room with Lexi's giggles in her ear.

 

S
ETH LOOKED UP FROM
the laptop computer Jake had loaned him and frowned when his brother entered his room without knocking.

He turned his attention back to the screen. “Why'd you do it, Jake?”

“Hire Grace?” Jake asked, scowling. “You wouldn't work with any of the others. What could it hurt?”

“I don't want her here.”

“Grace is the least of your worries. Do us all a favor and cooperate.”

Jake's cryptic comment drew Seth's gaze. “There a problem?”

Jake snorted and began pacing back and forth at the foot of his hospital bed. “Yeah, there's a problem. Phil Estes pointed out to me today that I'm a lawyer, not a rancher. You're going under, Seth, and I don't know what to do.”

There was nothing Jake could do, and he didn't need his brother reminding him his livelihood suffered because of his lack of mobility. He'd made do before by working himself hard to make ends meet, but that wasn't possible now. All the hospital bills had taken a toll, and combined with the expense of Arie's funeral and the general maintenance of the ranch, he was about to lose the land passed down in his family for the past six generations.

He wouldn't sell, not even an acre, but if he had any chance of surviving at all he had to open his mind and consider the alternatives.

“You shouldn't have hired her,” he said, going back to his original argument with Jake. “She's draining what little money I've got left.”

Jake stomped across the room and snagged the straight-backed chair, flipping it around to straddle the seat and bracing his forearms over the back. “Seth, I know we've argued about your therapy be
fore, but this is different. You don't want Grace here? Then pull yourself together. I can't support my family and this ranch indefinitely, and it's not fair that Maura graduated from cooking school only to give up her dream to stay here and play housekeeper for you.”

“I never asked you to give anything up.”

“You didn't have to ask, we're
family.
That's what family means, helping one another, supporting one another even during the worst of times. You did it with me and Maura, now it's our turn.”

Seth laughed, softly at first, then loudly. “Since when are you in this chair with me?”

Jake's face darkened. “Seth—”

“I'm telling you to do what's best, Jake. Do what's right. Take Lexi and Maura and leave. Move to Helena, let Maura get settled, have the baby and then she can find a chef job in some fancy restaurant like she wants.”

“And what about you? I'm supposed to leave you here? Like this?” Jake swept a hand out, indicating the wheelchair and the hospital bed, before shoving himself out of the chair. It toppled and landed on the floor with a carpet-muffled thud as Jake stalked across the room to the door. “You know, it's a good thing Dad can't see you. He put everything he had into this land, thinking you'd keep it safe.”

“I can't walk!”

“No, you can't, can you? But every doc you've seen says you've got the potential to make a comeback and what do you do? You lie there and lord your disability over all our heads!”

Seth stared at Jake. “You think I
want
to be here?”

His brother slammed his fist against the wall. “No, I don't,” he grated out. “But Maura's right. You can do more, you just won't. Your legs might not work, but your brain does and you won't even look at the ranch's paperwork while I'm bustin' my balls trying to make heads or tails of the stuff! You're lying here surfing the Net and feeling sorry for yourself while I'm
drowning!
” He hit the wall again.