His Partner's Wife (17 page)

"No, it wasn't that. Really. I just…" She was
trying damn hard to sound offhanded, even humorous. "I guess I felt odd,
the way I threw myself at you earlier."

"You were scared. I held you." His voice was
gritty. "Isn't that what friends do?"

She seemed to shake herself. "Yes. Of course it is.
We've just never…" She heaved a sigh. "Oh, forget it. I was
self-conscious, which is ridiculous."

"Yes, it is." He nodded at the mug she held.
"Drink your coffee and tell John all."

They sat on the stools at the breakfast bar where they had
that night when he'd come home late. Sitting side by side, shoulders nearly
touching, thighs inches apart, made him painfully aware of her, yet the fact
that they weren't facing each other made it easy to talk.

He didn't have to prod. After a meditative silence, she
began, "My father died when I was two. I don't remember him. He had his
own small plane. He came in too low for a landing and hit an electrical
wire." Natalie cradled the mug in her hands and inhaled the scent.
"Mom remarried two years later. He—my stepfather—thought we should all be
grateful to him. After all, he'd rescued us from poverty, which was true,"
she added in fairness. "But he never let us forget it. He wasn't abusive,
exactly. He never hit us kids, and I'm pretty sure he didn't Mom, either, but
he was lord of the castle and he couldn't stand even being taken for granted.
We were supposed to adore him and be constantly grateful for the bread he put
on the table and the fact that we had decent clothes and a roof over our
heads." Bitterness laced her voice. "I went through a stage in my
early teens where I was always on restriction. I'd hear him downstairs giving
my mother hell because she'd raised an ungrateful brat."

John watched her gaze at her past as if it were playing
right here in his kitchen in living color. She'd become nearly unconscious of
his presence as she talked.

In the midst of remembering, she squared her jaw. "I
finally figured out a way to best him. I did things for him. I brought him his
newspaper. I cooked favorite meals. I mowed the lawn so he didn't have to on
Saturday. If he took us out to dinner, I made sure I'd already done something
to even the score, so he couldn't say, 'Look at what I do for you.'"

"You knit him sweaters," John said, understanding.

Suddenly Natalie bowed her head and pressed her hands to her
cheeks. "Oh, Lord. I even did that. It was a game, a war. He knew it, but
he couldn't prove it, which ate at him. I was so sweet, and I hated every
minute. I hated him."

"How did your mother feel?"

Starkly Natalie said, "She was grateful."

John waited.

Finally she lifted her head and looked at him, eyes wide and
dark. "I swore I'd never owe anyone again."

"I never expected payment." He wanted to make sure
she knew that.

"I didn't really think you did. It's just
automatic." She held her head high. "I want you to know that. I
didn't consciously think,
He
hopes I'll be grateful.
I tried
to make sure I didn't have to be. That's all." Natalie frowned. "The
trouble was, you did big things for me, and I couldn't think of anything but
small ones to do in return. I'm in arrears."

Please, God, don't let her have thoughts of offering
herself,
he prayed.

His gaze holding hers, he said, "Your debt is hereby
dissolved."

"That easy?" she marveled.

"Nothing to it." Something was bothering him.
"You were married. Didn't Stuart tell you the same thing?"

"I didn't—" Realization crossed her face like a
shadow, stopped her mid-sentence. "Of course I did," she said softly.
"I suppose I always do with all my friends, too. Little gifts, I pay for
lunch, I recommend them for jobs."

"None of which is so bad."

"Except for my ignoble motive." Natalie heaved a
sigh. "Stuart never noticed.
I
never noticed. I was supposed to
love him, which made it natural for me to buy him things or make special
dinners or—"

John didn't want to speculate on what brought her to an
abrupt stop this time. What would she have said if she'd finished?

Or met him at the door in my teddy and garters? Indulged his
fantasies in bed?

Until this moment, John hadn't been actively jealous of
Stuart Reed, but now he was. Pretty damn ridiculous, considering the man was
dead and buried.

Sounding curt, he said, "It was natural."

"Except for—"

"Yeah, yeah. Your ignoble motive." He felt
impatient, almost angry, but knew damn well it had nothing to do with her
confession. "Nobody's generosity is uncomplicated, Natalie. We all have
selfish moments. And you weren't even being that. You were defending
yourself."

"Defending myself." Her eyes went soft, unfocused.
"Maybe."

John took an unwanted slug of thick, strong coffee.
"You didn't let me say my piece earlier."

Her gaze sharpened. "I'm sorry. What…?"

"I was trying to apologize for being a jerk. Connor
tells me I'm always in a bad mood the night before I take the kids to see
Debbie."

"Oh." Natalie scrutinized his face. "I've
noticed before."

His mouth twisted. "Everybody but me, apparently."

"I know it must be hard."

"Hard? For whom? Me?" He gave a harsh laugh.
"I came out of this with everything, didn't I? Sure, it's a nuisance to
have to drive to Bremerton to see my ex-wife every other Sunday, but 'hard'? I
don't kid myself. For Maddie and Evan? Yeah. I don't know whether they want to
go or not. They think they should, but then they get so damned quiet when we're
almost there. On the way home they look beaten. I try to do something to make
it up for them, ice cream or a stop at a playground or even a movie, which
makes me feel like I'm in some kind of competition with Debbie. See? Daddy is
more fun than Mommy." He rotated his shoulders and made himself return to
the bitter point. "Hard for Debbie? Oh, yeah. She wants to see the kids
desperately, but all I can give her is a tantalizing taste. Hi and bye. I hear
her crying as we leave."

Understanding welled in her huge, dark eyes. "It's
unfair, and you feel guilty."

He shoved the stool back and stood in one frustrated, angry
motion. "Shouldn't I?"

"You are not responsible for her illness. You didn't
leave her because of it."

"But it's still goddamned unfair and I dread Sundays
when I have to rub her face in it."

Her brow knit and she slipped from the stool. "You
don't honestly think Debbie feels that way, do you?"

John made a raw sound. "No. God. No. She's …
grateful." His laugh wasn't a laugh. "There's your idea of torment.
She has to be grateful, and she can't pay me back in any way."

"Don't you really go for Maddie and Evan?" Despite
the aching compassion in her eyes, Natalie's tone was brisk.

He scowled. "Who analyzes why the hell you do something
like this?"

"You, evidently. Isn't that what you're doing?"

His scowl deepened. "Can't I just feel guilty?"

"Why not? I was just making the point that Debbie knows
you're doing your best for the kids you both love. Of course she's grateful she
chose a father for her children who she could trust to do that."

"For better or worse." He had to say the words.
"Where am I, now that the worst has come?"

"Taking care of your children, which is what she needs
most from you." That same brisk, practical tone should have grated but,
oddly, comforted instead.

His grin was wry but real. "Okay, okay. I give up
self-pity. For tonight, anyway."

Chapter
8

«
^
»

A
fter tossing the saddle
over the top rail of the fence, Natalie slapped Foxfire's
sweaty neck. He whickered softly and turned to playfully close big, yellowing
teeth on her arm.

"Bite me and I'll bite you," she warned.

The stallion rolled his eyes and paused just long enough to
say,
Yeah, but I've got bigger
teeth.
Then, releasing her, he
nickered again and tossed his head, for all the world as if he were laughing.

She did laugh, feeling the carefree, belly-deep joy a good
joke might bring. She wished Stuart could know what a perfect gift he'd given
her. Foxfire might occasionally be exasperating—like the time he'd tossed her
on an asphalt road a mile from the ranch and left her to hobble home in the
rain. But he also gave her wonderful moments of freedom and companionship,
letting her experience his power and speed. She found a simple pleasure in the
crisp air, open fields and hard gallops. This past year would have been so much
tougher without her three or four times weekly escapes to ride her Arabian.

Today she walked him until the dark patches on his coat
dried, carefully avoiding the quarter horse mares pastured below the barn. The
one time he'd frightened her was when he caught the scent of a mare in heat and
began fighting her. It was then that she knew she should geld him if she wasn't
going to put him up for stud.

This walk was peaceful, the sun warm on her back, the
stallion's hooves clopping on hard-packed dirt as he ambled behind her. Twice
he nuzzled her back and made her laugh again. They paused so he could snuffle
curiously in a pile of fallen maple leaves, huge and lemon-yellow and crunchy
when he nibbled one experimentally. Like a child, Natalie kicked the edges of
the heap until she gave guilty thought to the ranch hand who had tediously
raked these.

She groomed Foxfire and restored him to his stall and
paddock, leaving him contentedly munching on hay. It was only two o'clock. How long, she wondered, did the trip to Bremerton take? Would John stop today to take
Maddie and Evan to a movie or … what else? Visit a toy store? An arcade? Or
would they come straight home?

And why should she care?

They were friends, she told herself defensively. Couldn't
she worry about him? Want to see that he hadn't been made silent, withdrawn and
frowning by the visit to his ex-wife?

Getting into her car, Natalie sat for a moment without
putting the key in the ignition.

Yeah, okay, they were friends. Gripping the steering wheel,
she closed her eyes for a moment. Friends. Only, she had a suspicion that
friends
didn't
have quite such a tangle of feelings for each other. Compassion for his anguish
was mixed with jealousy for the hold his ex-wife still had on him. Natalie's
loneliness because she was excluded today turned all too easily into a desire
to hold John when he did brood.

Please, God, never let him suspect,
she prayed.

Natalie took a deep breath, opened her eyes and started the
car. Proximity, she told herself desperately, that's all it was. She'd been
fine until the day she found Ronald Floyd's body in her house and had to go
home with John. It had to be the fact that she was staying in his guest
room—sharing a bathroom with his children, passing the milk at the breakfast
table, peaceably inquiring what time he'd be home for dinner, as if she had a
right—that was doing this to her. Giving her ideas.

She would be fine again once she could go home.

Quelling her deep reluctance, even repugnance, at the idea,
she thought tartly,
If
people would quit breaking in and leaving dead bodies, the house might start
seeming more like home again.

And if not—she would sell it. Simple as that. What equity
she got out of the sale, Stuart's modest investments and Foxfire would be the
only legacies from her marriage. Which was okay with her.

Thinking about the house made her realize she'd
automatically taken the turns that would bring her home rather than to Old Town and John's shingled cottage. This would be a good time to grab some more clothes,
Natalie decided. She'd be safe in her own house for a few minutes in the middle
of a Sunday afternoon. It wasn't quite the same as being alone there in the wee
hours of the night.