Home Field Advantage (18 page)

Marian gave a watery chuckle.
"Yeah, that's her. Lizzie was my first child. I'm going to miss her."

"Maybe she'd like to
come over and play one of these Saturdays. Ride Snowball."

"Do you mean that?"
she asked, then flushed. "Good heavens, I sound like I expect you to be
Scrooge. And you like children, don't you?"

"Sure I do." He
gave her braid a tug. "Have 'em all over. Have a party. Do whatever you
want. Speaking of which, you're on your own in about one hour. I'd better go
pack. Kansas City this weekend."

The juxtaposition of topics
chilled Marian. I love children. So take good care of mine for a few days.
Sometimes she could almost kid herself that he was her Prince Charming. Only
then Friday would roll around. And Fridays meant a casual flip of the hand, a
kiss on his daughter's cheek, and his car disappearing down the lane. John
McRae was a wonderful father only until he'd rather be somewhere else. She
couldn't help wondering if he would be the same kind of husband.

"What do you
think?" John asked proudly.

Marian inspected the
six-foot-high wire pen. It looked like something designed for a prisoner-of-war
camp. "I think you can keep her in this time," she conceded. "At
least, if you fixed the latch so she can't get her nose through... You did.
Congratulations," she teased, applauding. "Of course, she can't eat
too many blackberries in there."

"She wasn't eating the
damn blackberries, anyway." He scowled at Esmerelda, who stared through
the wire at them. "She likes the grain I buy for the horses better."

"Not to mention my
compost," Marian said. She had started a discreet pile behind the barn in
hopes of adding it in a few months to the small flower beds she had begun
digging out around the house. She had wondered why her pile wasn't growing,
until she circled the barn one day to find the goat happily crunching away on
carrot peels and wilted celery.

John tapped his knuckles
against a corner post. "Solid construction. I've foiled her now."

"My hero," Marian
murmured, batting her eyes.

"Hey, watch it," he
said in mock threat. "I'll let her in your garden if you don't behave
yourself."

Marian wrinkled her nose.
"Do you suppose she'd like rosebushes?"

"Are you kidding? An
animal that eats blackberry vines for breakfast? She must have a mouth like
industrial-grade sandpaper."

"Pretty close," Marian
admitted, poking her fingers through a wire square to scratch Esmerelda's rough
head. "Has she ever licked you?"

"I don't let her get
close enough." He sighed and picked up his hammer and bag of nails.
"I'd better get back to work."

"Me, too," Marian
said. "The twins will be waking up any time."

Neither of them made any move
to leave. Marian knew why she didn't want to, but John was usually more
decisive. At last, in a surprisingly diffident tone, he asked, "Any chance
I could talk you into going riding tomorrow?"

"Horseback riding?"
she asked, foolishly.

His brows rose. "Is that
so strange? We do breed horses here, you know."

"Well, of course I
know..." She threw up her hands. "It's just that I haven't been on a
horse in...heavens, probably ten years. I outgrew Snowball a while ago, you
know."

His grin was crooked and
disarming. "No kidding. What were you in, first grade?"

She made a face at him.
"Maybe third."

"So? Are you trying to
tell me you haven't ridden since?"

"I rode regularly with a
friend until I got married. But that's been a long time." She stopped.
"Am I making excuses?"

' 'Mm-hmm.''

Marian surrendered. "I'd
love to go riding. As long as you realize I' m better at leading a fat little
pony around the pasture than I am at staying on one of your Arabians."

"Rafcarah is gentle as a
lamb. Trust me."

Did she? Of course, she knew
the answer: up to a point. She trusted him Monday through Thursday; Friday she
wavered, Saturday she was angry, and Sunday she longed for him to come home.
She'd only been here two weeks and already it was a pattern.

"When the twins are at
playschool?" she suggested tentatively. They had started at the cooperative
preschool the previous week, giving Marian a couple of mornings a week on her
own.

"You're on."

*****

Which was why she found
herself atop a dainty dappled gray mare the next day, heading out on what John
called "the two-hour loop."

"It won't take longer
than that, will it?" Marian asked nervously. "I do have to pick up
Anna and Jesse."

His grin flashed. "Won't
take that long if we hurry."

Considering that she had
ridden regularly once upon a time, Marian felt ridiculously precarious in the
saddle. Rafcarah was mannerly, but every so often she tossed her head so that
her silver mane foamed across her sleek neck, or the mare danced sideways just
a step or two to let Marian know that she was eager.

"I don't know if I'm
ready to hurry."

"Not even for a nice
lope?" he coaxed.

Really, she wasn't any
likelier to fall off now than she would be in ten minutes. "What the
heck," she agreed, feeling reckless.

There was an approving glint
in John's eyes. Or was it the way he looked at Marian that made her feel
reckless in the first place?

"Lead on," he said,
gesturing like a gendeman escorting a lady onto the dance floor.

Marian didn't even have to
squeeze her legs around the mare. The loosened reins were enough of a signal.
The lope was gende, smooth, exhilarating. The pasture, green turning to gold
with winter nearing, sloped down toward a creek and the stand of white-barked
alders mixed with darker cedars that rose from its other side. The leaves of the
alders were brilliant yellow and orange, falling in drifts that covered the
trail and made Marian think fancifully of the yellow brick road.

John urged his horse ahead of
hers, and both Arabs splashed into the creek without hesitation. Marian grabbed
for the saddle horn when Rafcarah bounded up the other side.

"Race?" John
challenged. His hair was windblown, his lean face relaxed. In faded denim he
looked like the cowboy he was, as graceful on horseback as he ever was on a
football field.

It suddenly occurred to
Marian that she couldn't remember the last time she had done something
impetuous, foolish, glorious. Or when she had been so happy. That thought was a
wondering one. This was one of those rare moments when she was aware of her own
emotions with every fiber of her body. She wasn't just content, but radiantly,
blissfully happy.

So she held on tightly to the
saddlehorn and kicked the mare. "Let's get 'em, Rafcarah!"

The words were snatched away
by wind as the mare sprang forward. She caught one glimpse of John's startled
face, then heard him laugh.

It really wasn't much of a
race. For the most part the trail was too narrow for John's gelding to pass,
anyway. But the run—the wind tugging Marian's hair from her braid, the power of
the animal beneath her, the muted thud of thundering hooves, the crisp air and
peaceful autumn countryside—conspired to make her laugh with joy. When at last
the trail came out of the woods onto a dirt lane, Marian pulled Rafcarah up.
Her legs ached and she knew she would regret this gallop tomorrow.

John eased his horse to a
stop beside her. "God, you're beautiful," he said abruptly.

Marian's cheeks were already
glowing, but she would have sworn they became hotter. "More like the
wicked witch of the West," she protested, trying to keep the moment light.
"My hair..." She reached up to run her fingers through the tangled, wind-whipped
mass in an unsuccessful search for the ponytail holder.

"Beautiful," he
repeated, his voice a notch huskier. "Don't you believe that?"

"I..." His
disturbingly intense gaze robbed her of coherent thought. "I don't
know."

He reached out and gently
lifted her chin, his touch a potent caress. "That husband of yours has a
lot to answer for."

"I don't know what you
mean..." she said self-consciously.

"This is what I
mean," he said, and urged his horse close enough to Rafcarah for him to
bend his head and kiss Marian. The kiss was brief but thorough, and as
exhilarating as the gallop.

When he raised his head,
there was a molten glow in his eyes and his mouth was tender and sensual. He
looked down at her for a moment, during which she couldn't breathe or think,
and then as suddenly as the interlude had begun, John kicked his gelding into a
trot, leaving Marian and Rafcarah to trail behind.

He scared her, Marian
thought, her feelings as tangled as her hair. No, she scared herself. When
John kissed her, when he touched her, she didn't care what kind of parent he
was. She didn't care if he was too much like Mark for comfort. She knew only
that she had been sleeping, and he had awakened her.

*****

John had set his lawyer to
the task of finding Marian's husband the morning after the dinner when he'd
coaxed her story from her.

"What we want is a
private investigator," said the attorney, George Browder. "If you're
willing to take my recommendation, we have one who does work for our firm
regularly."

"Hire him," John
said. "I'll try to get some more information from her, but no matter what
happens, she isn't to find out I'm behind this. I want the SOB to pay, but
she'd never agree to my taking on the expense of finding her ex-husband. That's
a condition for the investigator. Got it?"

"Got it," the
attorney agreed.

John hung up the phone with
the unpleasant awareness of having taken an irrevocable step. He sat behind
his desk brooding, facing the fact that he almost hoped the PI couldn't find
Marian's ex-husband.

"Damn," he finally
said softly. "Damn."

*****

The tension between Marian
and John came out into the open that Friday. It started when Emma's teacher,
Mrs. Rogers, called at ten-thirty in the morning.

She introduced herself and
said, "May I speak to Emma's father?"

Alarmed, Marian said,
"Is something wrong? He's out in the barn. I'm Marian Wells, the
housekeeper."

The teacher's voice relaxed.
"No, no, nothing serious. The thing is, we're on a field trip at the TV
station..."

"Yes, I remember."

"Well, Emma isn't
feeling very good. We've had a flu going around, and I'm afraid she has it.
Fortunately, we'll be ready to board the bus to go back to school in just a
few minutes, but I'm hoping you or her father can come get her once we're
there. She's thrown up only once, but..."

"Of course I'll pick her
up! Can I meet you there in Seattle?"

"No, really, we're about
to leave. You couldn't get here any faster than it'll take us to get back.
Probably just a little over an hour, if that's convenient."

"Of course," Marian
said again, and rang off. Poor Emma! For the first time, she'd invited a friend
from school to come over Saturday to play and ride Snowball, and Emma had been
so excited. At the very least they would have to cancel her friend's visit, and
at worst Emma would be stuck in bed feeling wretched. After which Anna and
Jesse would undoubtedly catch the bug, and then Marian probably would, and then
John and then...Isaiah?

The barns seemed to be
deserted, with even Isaiah nowhere to be seen. The two stablehands must have
left for lunch, which came early after the horrible hour they started in the
morning.

"John?" Marian
called, when she slipped in the huge double doors to the smaller stallion bam.
Her voice echoed, and she was answered by the thud of hooves against a wooden
stall door.

The next moment, John
appeared in the doorway of a stall halfway down the aisle, wearing jeans, high
rubber boots, and a heavy sweater. A pitchfork twined with straw was in his
hand. "Yeah?"

Marian hurried toward him.
"The school just called, Emma's sick."

Frowning, he leaned the
pitchfork up against the wall. "Seriously?"

"Well, no, the teacher
says probably the flu, but she wants me to pick Emma up as soon as they get
back from their field trip."

"Oh, Lord, the TV
station. She was hoping they'd recognize her as a star on sight so she could
give up school and be in a sitcom. She's going to be crushed if she had to sit
it out."

Marian laughed, despite her
worry. "She said she'd settle for a commercial. Maybe for Barbie
dolls."

John laughed, too, and wiped
the sweat off his forehead with his shirt-sleeve. Catching sight of his watch,
he said, "Damn, I've got to get cleaned up."