Sweet Child of Mine (8 page)

Then suddenly, the road leveled, opening onto a spacious clearing. To the left she saw a barn and pens and—

“Horses.” A deep sigh escaped her. She loved horses.

He glanced over. “Do you ride?”

She shrugged. “I’m not great, but I love it. How many do you have?”

“Seven. Probably seven too many, but I’m a soft touch.”

“Do you raise them to sell or race or something?”

He chuckled. “Nope. Just to consume staggering amounts of feed and require endless hours of work.”

But she could hear the love of them in his voice. “I missed having horses when I was back east.” The sorrow she’d heard before was there, an undertone of grief.

“So when I came back, I knew I wanted a place with room enough for a horse.”

“But you couldn’t stop at one?” she teased.

He nodded ruefully. “People get horses and then can’t care for them and want to get rid of them, not always in kind ways.” He shrugged his broad shoulders. “The vets in the area seem to have figured out that I’m an easy mark. My place has become the horse foster home for the area.”

“So you just keep them for a while until they find good homes?”

Color dusted his cheeks, and she was fascinated by it. “That was the plan. Unfortunately, I’m pretty picky on what I consider a good home. And then I get attached.”

Every time she turned around, she discovered some new, surprising facet to a man she’d once considered unbearably arrogant and hardheaded. The knowledge disturbed her. He’d made it clear that his heart was not available. Caring too much about him would only break her own heart.

“Bobby will love it. Jim used to ride in rodeos and Bobby has inherited his love of horses.”

“Does Bobby have his own horse?”

She shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

Michael slowed and pointed to a paint. “That mare is very gentle and she’s not too big. Daisy might be a good match for him.”

Gratitude swamped her. She reached out and brushed his arm. “Michael, you’re doing so much for him. I don’t know if—”

“It’s no big deal.” His jaw flexed as he shifted away from her touch. “Daisy needs exercise, and I could use the help. If you’re interested, pick out the one you want to use while you’re here.”

While you’re here. The words snapped her back into what was real. She and Bobby would only be guests, only for a small span of time. She’d do well to remember that.

He drove on, and she studied the house up ahead. It was like nothing she would have ever expected from the man she’d always considered some kind of misplaced urban sophisticate, despite his boots and jeans.

This, she realized, was more than a house. It looked like home, like the very definition of the word, and she couldn’t be more surprised that Michael had chosen it. Two stories and Victorian, it looked big enough to shelter a family, a place where you grew up with traditions and handed them down with love. A dusty blue with darker blue and white trim, it was the jewel in this wonderful, unexpected place, the harbor she’d wished for all of her life.

“It’s beautiful, Michael.” She turned and caught the quiet pride in his smile.

Michael stopped the car in front of the house and pointed to the left side. “I thought I’d get the pen for the pup built there. That way when nobody’s home, he’s safe from wandering so far away he gets lost, but he’s right next to the house so he’ll have shelter. We’ll get him a doghouse, too.”

“I’ll pay for—”

He rounded on her, eyes snapping. “Maybe I’ll want a dog when you’re gone, ever think of that? Dammit, Suzanne, we’re not keeping score here. I can’t be wondering every second if I’m spending money that will beggar you.”

“You’ve never had to worry about money, have you?” It was such a novel idea, she couldn’t quite take it in.

His shoulders stiffened. “For your information, I once had to count every cent.”

“When was that?”

“When I defied my parents and married my wife. They cut me off without a penny. I’ve never accepted anything from them since. Everything I have, I’ve made on my own.”

She’d always assumed his wealth was inherited, that he was a trust-fund kid. “What a terrible surprise that must have been.”

“It wasn’t a surprise,” he snapped. “I knew they would do it.”

“And you went ahead, anyway.” She studied him. “You must have loved her very much.”

He stared into the distance, his jaw rigid. “My pride cost her everything.”

“Why do you say that?”

His head whipped around. In his eyes was a bleakness she’d never seen on a living soul. “I’d call her life everything, wouldn’t you? Her life and our baby?”

Then suddenly he was out of the car, leaving the air behind him stinging with an angry grief bigger than she knew how to handle. She wanted to understand. She wanted to go to him, to soothe him, but he’d walked around to grab their things from the back, and every implacable line of his frame shouted out a warning not to trespass.

Something festered deep inside him, but she was a stranger. She had no right to pry into something so obviously painful. If his friends and family hadn’t been able to find a way past his guard, how could she expect to do so?

But she still wanted to help, so she opened the car door and emerged, following him up the steps. “Michael, maybe it would be good for you to talk about—”

His hand stilled on the screen door. Slowly, very slowly, he turned. His face was the mask of a stranger, a hard man she didn’t want to know. “Suzanne, get one thing straight. This marriage is a cha
rade we will act out for the benefit of others. I will do my best to get along with you and your son and make this time as comfortable as possible for all of us.”

Then his voice lost its careful neutrality. “But if you want to stay in this house past the next second, you will never, ever ask me about my wife and son again.” The green eyes that could be soft and warm and funny were hard as malachite now. “Is that clear?”

She felt like nothing so much as a chastened child. If she hadn’t heard the enormous relief in Jim’s voice that she would be able to take Bobby, she’d turn around right now and walk back to town, right after telling Michael Longstreet to go straight to hell.

But her son and the good man who loved him were depending on her. So she clenched her jaw and bit out the words. “Very clear.”

“Fine.” He held the door open for her. “After you.”

“Fine.” She swept ahead of him in high dudgeon, not sparing a glance for her surroundings. “If you’ll show me my room, I’ll take a look and then you can take me home.”

He didn’t try to mouth any platitudes about this being her new home. It was abundantly clear now that this would never be more than a way station. She would check first thing Monday morning on getting someone else to help her with gaining legal custody
of Bobby. She would bite her tongue off before she asked this man for the tiniest favor that wasn’t absolutely required by this sham of a marriage.

She followed him upstairs, mentally making a list of all she’d need to do to get this over with as soon as possible. When Michael stopped at a doorway, she almost plowed right into him.

He stepped aside and gestured. “Here it is. Bobby will be over there.” He pointed to a room diagonally across the landing.

She didn’t ask where he would be. In the barn would suit her fine. Then she stepped into the room and almost gasped with pleasure.

It was a woman’s room, that was obvious. A stunning mahogany four-poster bed was set diagonally in the far corner, its coverlet a pale lavender satin. Fluffy, lacy pillows were mounded at the head. Gleaming oak floors were topped with a beautiful rug in pale cream, mint green and all shades of lavender and rose. An antique vanity with a big rounded mirror stood against the wall nearest the door, and in the corner to her left, a chaise angled by the window, a place to read and dream.

She’d never seen a more beautiful room in her life. Then an uneasy suspicion grew. “You shouldn’t have gone to all this trouble.”

“I didn’t. The former owners sold it to me fully furnished. I’ve remodeled and replaced some things
in the spaces I use most, but I left this room as it was. I don’t know why.”

He sounded almost embarrassed, and some of the hurt leaked out of her.

Be an adult, Suzanne. He has a right to his secrets.

She was about to turn around, an apology on her lips, when she spotted the door just before the chaise and walked to it, pulling it open, expecting a closet.

What she found was far too big to be called simply a closet. To her left, she spotted racks of men’s clothing and shelves filled with shoes and other decidedly male gear. To her right were empty racks and shelves. “What is this?” Before he could answer, she spotted a door across from her and was almost certain she knew.

“It’s a dressing room,” he answered.

But she hadn’t read a million historical romances for nothing. She whirled and pointed a finger at him. “Don’t tell me your bedroom is through that door.”

His eyes went flat. “All right. I won’t tell you.”

“Michael, this won’t work. Give me another room.”

“There isn’t another room.”

“Give me Bobby’s room.”

“A ten-year-old boy would hate this room. It would attack his very tenuous manhood.”

“Then use some of that money you’re so free with and redecorate it for him.”

“What am I supposed to do with all these furnishings? They won’t fit in the other room.”

She tried not to feel the pang of loss over a room she already adored. “I don’t care. Store them or whatever.”

“No.”

“No? Just like that, no?”

“If you want it, you pay for it.”

She sucked in a breath. “You know I can’t afford that. It would cost a fortune.”

“Exactly.”

“You could do it, Michael.”

He shrugged. “But I don’t want to.”

“I can’t believe you’re behaving like this.”

His cold eyes challenged her. “Are you saying you can’t resist me? That you don’t have the self-control to stay in your own room?”

“Of course not,” she snapped. “It’s just—”

“There are two doors between us. You can shove a chair under the knob if you think your charm is so fatal that my self-control will fail.”

She thought of hot, deep kisses and his hard male body pressing into hers—but then she reminded herself that she’d just seen a side of him she hadn’t known. That he could be hard and cold, that he’d just demonstrated vividly how unsuitable she’d always known they were.

This man had women aplenty only too happy to
fall into his arms. Women who were hothouse flowers, not sturdy weeds.

“Fine. But you knock before you enter the dressing room, and I’ll do the same.”

He quickly shuttered his gaze and nodded. Walking to the bed, he laid her packages on the coverlet. “I’ll be downstairs whenever you’re ready to leave. Look around all you want. I have no secrets.”

She watched him go, mouth agape at the blatant falsehood. Maybe he really believed that, but she knew she’d never met a more complicated or mystifying man in her life.

She started to follow him down, then decided a break was in order. A few minutes apart, after the intensity of the last two days, would be very welcome.

She should go see what Bobby’s room looked like. It still didn’t seem real that someday soon her child would live with her, that she would be the mother she’d wanted to be for ten years. Fear set down roots in her chest, a fear she’d been keeping at bay until now, caught up in the whirlwind of this marriage.

She’d dealt with kids for years and had been good with them, but being a mother was completely different. What if she couldn’t give Bobby everything he needed? What if he and Michael didn’t suit? Worse, what if he got attached to Michael?

Fear was a hammer tattooing a beat on her heart. Nothing had ever meant more in her life than doing
this right, than reclaiming the child she’d never wanted to give up. She could still recall his tiny features, the perfect shell of his ears, the nose smaller than a button, the dark hair so like hers that lay against his fragile skull. She’d only had a few moments with him, and she’d spent too many of them wanting to take back her promise, to forget everything she’d known was best for him.

Drying up the milk in her breasts had been painful, but it had paled against the agony of drying up the love in her heart. The best she’d been able to do was to lock down the forbidden chamber where yearning for her child still dwelled to this day. She’d done the right thing for Bobby because she’d been too young, had had no resources to care for him the way he deserved.

But knowing that had never seemed to lessen the pain. The best she’d been able to do was to transfer that need to the children she tried to help.

Which brought the children of Hopechest Ranch to mind. Time to stop thinking about this marriage and its dilemmas and get back to work. She couldn’t see Bobby until the weekend, but these kids needed her now. With quick steps, she crossed the landing and opened the door, eager to get a quick peek and get back to work.

Bobby’s room was smaller, but it was in a corner with two sets of windows that gave him a wonderful view of the horses, the barn, and the area where Mi
chael would build Maverick an enclosure. The furnishings were simple, and the walls mostly bare. She liked that. It meant Bobby could put his stamp on the room, if Michael were willing, and that she could provide some things, at last, for her own child.

Satisfied, she closed the door, then moved down the hall and opened the next room, which turned out to be a basic hall bath, nothing fancy. Updated since the house’s Victorian roots, but still with nice touches like the pedestal sink and clawfoot tub with shower. A little crowded for all of them to use, but they could make do. It still dwarfed the tiny bathroom in her apartment.

The final door on that side opened to what had once been a bedroom but was clearly Michael’s home office. Sleek laptop computer, a color printer and fax combined. Lots of shelves filled with books surrounded a huge cherry partner’s desk covered with papers. She’d like to look at the books on his shelves to learn more about him, but she’d have to get too near his papers, and despite what he’d said, it seemed an invasion of his privacy. She closed that door and headed for the stairs.