Love's Haven (7 page)

Besides, he knew that no matter how hard he tried, he would never live up to Todd’s example. Todd had been a real Christian—one who knew the rules and regulations of religion. More than that, Todd had been a man of faith. Todd had surrendered his life to Jesus Christ, and he didn’t have any trouble regularly reminding his best friend about the positive changes that decision had brought.

Brock, on the other hand, kept a tight rein on his existence. Though he was a believer, he wasn’t about to give up any of his hard-won control. He knew his stubborn self-reliance somehow made him a lesser man in Mara’s eyes, but to him there was no other way to get through life.

“Thank you,” Mara whispered, dabbing the corner of her eye. “For praying about Abby.”

“You’re welcome.”

“I don’t want anything to happen to her.”

“It won’t, Mara. She’s safe here.” He downed another spoonful of soup, but it was tasteless. So much for all his self-reliance and confidence. Mara didn’t trust him with her baby, and why should she? Look what had happened when he’d gone off with her husband.

“Could you have your parties in the east wing?” she asked.

“What is all this about parties?”

“Rosa Maria told me you have a bunch of friends from Las Cruces who come out to the ranch for parties in your lounge. You have a bar and a pool table, and they spend the night. Brock, I won’t have drunk strangers around Abby.”

“Drunk strangers?” He set his spoon beside his bowl. “My friends come out here a couple of times a year, and they don’t get drunk.”

Her voice went hostile again. “Well, I don’t want them near my daughter.”

“Mara, they are good people. They’re old college friends, business associates, ranchers. All we’re doing is having a little fun.”

“I know about what you call fun! Todd told me the things you do.” Her green eyes blazed as the tears vanished. “You just keep your friends away from my baby.”

“What are you going to do—hide for the rest of your life?”

“Hide?”

“Lick your wounds?”

“Oh, what do you know about pain?” Mara stood and grabbed her doughnut pillow. “Abby’s mine, and I’ll raise her the way I want to. You have no say in it whatsoever. Abby’s the one I’m protecting, and if that means hiding her from bad influences, that’s what I’ll do. The wounds that need to be tended are Abby’s—and the man who wounded her is you.”

Tucking the pillow against her stomach, Mara stalked across the dining room and headed down the hall.

Brock clenched his jaw as her words reverberated through him. She was the one who was hurting, he thought bitterly. Mara was the one who had been wounded, and he wondered if anything could ever heal her.

“R
osa Maria, where’s my laptop?” Brock hollered the next morning as he strode into the dining room and tossed his Stetson onto the table. “I left it in the study next to the fax machine, and it’s not there now.”

He thunked his briefcase on the floor and dropped a handful of pencils beside his plate. Where could that laptop be? He stored all his records for the ranch in the small computer, and his backup files were in the safe.

“Leave things in someone else’s hands for a week,” he muttered as he dropped into his chair. “Chaos.”

“Eggs Benedict,” Ermaline announced. Breezing into the dining room, she balanced a silver tray on her upturned palm. “Hey, where’s Mrs. B.?”

“Where’s Rosa Maria?” Brock demanded to know. “I’ve called her three times.”

“Isn’t she in the living room? That’s where she always starts dusting in the morning.”

“She’s not there now.” Pushing back from the table, Brock grimaced. He’d let everything get out of control. For most of the night he had sat on his porch or wandered the courtyard and tried to figure a way to put a stamp of order back on his life. Now he was dead-tired, he’d misplaced
his computer, his housekeeper had vanished and he was supposed to be in the north section in fifteen minutes checking the cattle.

He walked to the intercom and flipped the master control switch. “Rosa Maria,” he barked. “If you’re anywhere in this house, get yourself to the dining room.”

He waited a moment, then opened the intercom to every room in the house. A baby’s loud wail blasted through the mesh screen and filled the dining room.

“Oh, no,” Mara’s voice groaned from her bedroom in the west wing. “Thanks a lot, Brock. It’s okay, Abby. Mommy’s coming.”

Standing half a house away, Brock winced. It hadn’t occurred to him that he might wake the baby. Well, that was the crux of the problem. With Mara and Abby in the house, nothing was functioning the way it should. Things didn’t feel normal.

“Here she is, Mrs. B.,” Rosa Maria’s voice said softly through the intercom. “Here’s your baby girl. You stay in bed there. You’ve been up all night, haven’t you?”

“Most of the night. Well, hello there, precious girl. Are you hungry? Oh, Rosa Maria, I’m so tired and sore. It’s really great to have your help. Thanks for bringing her to me.”

“I’m glad to do it. I was here checking on Abby, anyway. Look at that, she doesn’t want to nurse. She was just scared by that crazy Mr. B. yelling over the intercom. Tsk. He doesn’t think sometimes, that man.”

“I believe Brock wants you in the dining room, Rosa Maria.”

“I heard him bellowing like one of his old bulls. He’s forgotten he put his precious laptop in his car when he went to the hospital to visit you. He can’t get through breakfast without his computer and all his pencils and papers.”

Standing in the dining room, Brock scowled at the
intercom. Half tempted to turn off the eavesdropping and half tempted to throw both women out of his house for their disrespect and ingratitude, he shoved his hands into his pockets.

Come to think of it, he
had
left the laptop in his car.

“Do you think Abby’s all right, Rosa Maria?” Mara asked in a low voice. “I’m worried she’s sick or something. Is it normal for her to be awake so much of the night?”

“She doesn’t know it’s night. All she knows is she’s hungry or wet or lonely in that big new crib. Remember this was only the first night. She’ll start to sleep better after a while. In the meantime, you’re the one who needs some sleep.”

“I feel like I’ve been run over by a truck.”

Rosa Maria chuckled. “I know, I know. I remember how it was with all of mine. But you’re doing good. It’s hard by yourself. If you had a nice man to look after you—” She caught herself, then tried again. “I’m sure Mr. Rosemond would have stayed by your side…Oh, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t talk about your husband—”

Brock snapped off the intercom. He was Mara’s husband, not Todd. As much as everybody missed him, Todd was gone. Never coming back. But Todd—who’d never actually been a father—was doing a better job of it than Brock.

He studied the lumps of eggs Benedict in their cold white hollandaise sauce. Though he might be Mara’s husband, he wasn’t Abby’s father. Mara had made that clear enough last night. Even if he wanted to go to Mara…comfort her…support her…she didn’t want him. So, she could just cope with motherhood on her own.

Mara and Abby were nothing more than another of Brock’s financial obligations. He had committed his resources to their care. He had offered a place to stay, food to eat, a car to get around in, money to spend. But he didn’t owe them anything else.

Besides, he thought as he grabbed his hat from the table, he wouldn’t know the first thing about helping Mara with her baby. He had never learned how to be a husband or a father, and he wasn’t inclined in that direction anyway. Good enough.

Brock settled his hat on his brow and headed for the back door. So, there were two extra people in the house? He would put them into a file in his computer like a couple of head of cattle he might have bought at the state fair. He’d factor them into the ranch budget, calculate the cost of food and clothing, add their projected medical expenses and figure the outlay for wintering them. They wouldn’t be economical, and there was no potential return on his money.

But those were the breaks.

Mara finished nursing Abby and adjusted her robe. For a moment she gazed down at the tiny face nestled in the crook of her elbow. Her daughter’s eyes had dropped shut, their long, curling lashes brushing the round apples of her cheeks. Her miniature nose bore a blush from being pressed against Mara’s soft skin. Like a pale pink rose, Abby’s mouth formed a delicate bud, barely open with lips so soft and sweet, Mara thought her heart might overflow.

Four days had passed since Abby’s birth, and already Mara loved this child more than she had ever known she could love anyone or anything. Long nights awake didn’t matter. An aching body and a sore tailbone didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but this precious weight in her arms.

Mara blinked back tears, wondering if she was ever going to be in control of her emotions again. Had she actually yelled at Brock last night? Had she really admonished the man for failing to pray before dinner? And what did she know about his Las Cruces friends anyway?

Shaking her head, Mara wrapped Abby in the warm
white blanket she had crocheted during the summer. Brock had been nothing but kind and good to her since Todd’s death, while she had chastised him and found fault with everything he did. She owed him an apology.

Easing herself up out of the rocking chair, Mara started toward the crib with its billowy white canopy. Halfway across the room, she stopped. Maybe she would just go and find Brock right now. It was almost noon, and he’d come in for lunch. With Abby sleeping in her arms, maybe they wouldn’t be so tempted to argue. Maybe she could tell him how she felt.

For a moment, she hesitated again. She hadn’t had a shower this morning, and she was still in her blue bathrobe. But she couldn’t bear to put her maternity clothes back on, even though she had a sinking certainty they were all she could fit into.

Lifting her chin, she decided it hardly mattered how she looked to Brock Barnett. She walked out of the nursery and started down the hall. “Brock, I wanted to thank you for taking Abby and me in,” she would say. “You’ve been so kind.”

Kind? Brock Barnett? Mara had to smile. The word hardly fit her image of the man. Tucking Abby more closely into her embrace, she passed the lounge. Remembering her discussion with Brock the night before, she felt a sudden temptation to investigate his den of iniquity. She paused briefly, and then she pushed open the door.

“Oh, you scared the living daylights out of me!” Ermaline gasped as she lifted her head from behind the long wooden bar. Feather duster in one hand and spray wax in the other, she leaned her elbows on the sleek, aged wood. “Well, hey there, Mrs. B. What brings you in here?”

“Just looking around. What about you?”

“I clean this place every morning before I go to the kitchen to help Pierre with lunch. My job is the west wing
and the meal serving. Rosa Maria takes care of Mr. B.’s rooms and the main living areas. Pierre’s in charge of the kitchen, and Mr. Potter keeps up the gardens and courtyard. So, what do you think? Ever seen the likes of this little playroom?”

Mara surveyed the long room with its warm
saltillo
tile floor, comfortable seating area, entertainment center, pool table and neat kitchenette. “I thought…I thought it would be…different.”

“This place hardly gets used anymore,” Ermaline said. “Shame. Mr. B. used to have some dandy parties. Folks would come out from Las Cruces and make use of the pool, the barbecue pit, the whole shebang. There’d be lanterns strung across the courtyard and a band playing and everybody having a big ol’time. Christmas we’d have a bonfire. Frank and me got to come, too. Mr. B invited everybody, is what he did. New Year’s we’d have a big time, too. Things are sure quiet now.”

Mara studied the long linen drapes that covered the wall of windows, blocking the late-November light. “What happened?”

“Mr. B. told us he’s just too busy for parties nowadays. Pierre was the one who finally faced him head-on about it. You know how Pierre likes to cook, and he gets tired of making meals for one. You should have seen the French stuff he used to turn out of that kitchen for Mr. B.’s shindigs.”

“What keeps Brock so busy?”

“Running this ranch. I’m telling you, that’s all he does day and night. He’s either branding or roping or doing something to those crazy cows. He rounds them up and moves them here, moves them there. He goes to market, goes to shows, goes to the fair. He buys a prize bull, and we all have to take a gander at it. ‘Come on, Ermaline,’ he’ll say. ‘Don’t you and Rosa Maria want to see my new Simmental?’ As if I’d know one kind of cow from another.”

“Why doesn’t he take those friends of his to admire his cattle?”

“Well, he used to take your husband.”

“Oh.” Mara lowered her head and focused on the wedding band Todd had given her. Again, she had been brought face-to-face with the realization that he had not belonged to her alone.

“They’d go look the ranch over, your husband and Mr. B.,” Ermaline went on. “There’s some ruins over toward the mountains where the cliffs are, you know. Those two couldn’t get enough of rooting around there and talking about the olden days. Once in a while Mr. B.’s friends from Las Cruces still come out here. The truth is, he’s got nothing in common with them anymore, but he just doesn’t like to admit it.”

“Has Brock changed so much over the years?”

“Sure he has.” Ermaline sprayed the top of the bar and began to rub it with a cloth she dug out of her apron pocket. “Used to be, Mr. B. was out all night and slept most of the day. That was in high school and college, when his daddy—we always called him Mr. Barnett, too—ran this place. The boy had lots of girlfriends, lots of fancy cars, big stereos, that kind of thing. Now, he just works all the time. His Las Cruces friends have become accountants and bankers and office types. They don’t care much about Simmental bulls, and Mr. B. knows it. I suspect they want him back the way he was with his freewheeling life—easy money, fast cars and all that. But he wants this ranch to do good, and that can’t happen if you’re up all night having fun. You know how Mr. B. is. He doesn’t do anything unless he wants to.”

“I’ve learned that.”

Ermaline laughed. “It’s his way or no way.”

Mara strolled down to the end of the room, admiring the bold paintings on the walls and the thick wool rugs on
the floors. A huge fireplace dominated the end of the lounge, its grate loaded with heavy, unburned logs.

Beside the hearth sat an intricately crafted chair built from the sinuous branches of an alligator juniper. Mara touched the strange piece, its arms constructed from whole limbs twisted together and then jointed into the massive legs. A soft green cushion formed the seat, and she couldn’t resist settling into it with Abby.

“Mr. B made that chair, you know,” Ermaline called from the other end of the room where she was dusting lamps. “He likes to build stuff.”

Mara glanced at the piece in surprise. “This?”

“Yep. He’s got a big workshop over on the other side of the house with all his tools. When he can’t sleep, that’s where he’ll be if he’s not in the courtyard. Half this stuff I dust every day is furniture he made. That table there, the bench over yonder, that cabinet by the window. He made you that rocker.”

“The one in the baby’s room?”

“Sure. Every day last week after he got back from the hospital, he’d come into the house, change clothes and go straight to the shop. Sawdust just flew, I’m telling you. He was a man possessed. Now, Rosa Maria and me remember what he told us about this marriage being only to take care of you because you’re his best friend’s wife, and all. But we think he’s got a heart for you anyway, Mrs. B. You, and for sure the baby. He made that rocking chair just for you, no doubt about it.”

“Oh, Ermaline, I don’t—”

“When he brought it into the house, he said, ‘Put this in the nursery, Ermaline. It’s for the baby’s mama.’ That’s what he said.”

Mara stared at Abby as she tried to absorb this news. Brock had made that beautiful rocker—for her? She could hardly believe it. She’d treated him so coldly even though
he had come to the hospital every day. Because of what had happened to Todd, she had thought nothing but the worst of Brock. And all the while he’d been building her a rocking chair.

“I’m going to talk to him this minute,” she announced, standing suddenly. “We need to clear up some things.”

“Good luck finding him,” Ermaline said as Mara carried Abby to the door. “He’s usually gone from sunup to way past dark.”

Mara paused in the hall. “He doesn’t come home for lunch?”

“Not even for supper sometimes. I know, I know—if he’s around, supper’s at seven sharp. But Mr. B. likes to eat with the ranch hands when he can. Drives Pierre crazy, of course, but that’s the boss for you. I reckon I’ve gone a whole week without laying eyes on the man.”