Montana Cherries (4 page)

chapter four

A
nd Cinderella and the prince lived happily ever after.” Dani lowered the book and peered down at the two four-year-olds snuggled in tight, one on either side of her under Jenna’s pink comforter. The girls both wore matching smiles of contentment while their eyelids drooped with much-needed sleep.

This was the fourth night Haley had stayed at the house, and as on every other night, the two girls had crawled into the same bed before talking Dani in with them.

Ben had spent the better portion of his days in the orchard with Gabe, leaving Haley with Dani. Which was okay; she’d offered to keep an eye on the girl while he caught up with her brother. It gave Jenna someone to play with, and Michelle less time to complain that she had to do anything for her daughter. With Haley and Jenna keeping each other company, it even allowed Dani to get more work done than she’d anticipated. She had several projects needing completion before she left town, so she’d been working steadily to wrap them up.

But Dani got the feeling Ben was doing more than remembering good times with his friend. She thought he might be avoiding his daughter.

She supposed that was the easy thing to do. He did seem overwhelmed with his new responsibilities, and Haley certainly hadn’t made it any easier on him. No matter what Dani had caught him saying to the girl when they
were
in the same room together, the child had yet to crack another smile for her father. She barely even spoke.

It had to be frustrating to be getting nowhere with her, but he had to keep trying. They needed to form a connection. Haley had to learn she could trust him. Leaving her with someone else all day, or sitting her in front of a kids’ movie, was not the way to win over his daughter.

Closing the book she’d just read, Dani wrapped an arm around each child and squeezed tight. “Did you like
Cinderella
?” she asked them both.

Not that it was the first time either had heard the story in the last few days.

“Yeah.” Jenna sighed out the word. She pressed both palms to her cheeks, and her mouth puckered in between her two hands. “But I wanna prince.”

“Me too,” Haley agreed. She snuggled deeper into Dani’s side.

Me three
, Dani thought. Then she twisted her mouth into a sarcastic smirk. No. She didn’t. She had no time for a prince.

But she could use a temporary stand-in.

She added an eye roll to the smirk. That was a crazy dream, as well. Ben wouldn’t likely be interested, even if she was.

She leaned back and stared up at the ceiling as the girls listed princely qualities, and thought about Ben. The last few days she’d barely spent any time with him, but her hormones had been wildly attuned to his every move. A warm, outdoorsy smell trailed along behind him whenever he walked through a room. It left her yearning to bury her nose into the side of his neck. She’d just bet it was warm there.

And then there were his jeans. Those babies should be outlawed.

Heck, his
jeans
had even showed up in her dreams.

But other than the quick conversation that first night about him staying here, there had been no further discussions about “that.”

Which was good. He had a daughter to concentrate on.

And Dani had plenty of other things to occupy her time. She did not need a quickie with Ben Denton.

She tweaked her niece’s nose, before doing the same to Haley’s. She shouldn’t even be thinking about Ben like that. “Silly girls,” she teased. “What would you two do with a prince if you had one?”

Blue eyes very similar to her own peered up at her in a fashion suggesting she’d lost her ever-loving mind. “He would play with me whenever I want, Aunt Dani.”

“Even Barbies?” Dani winked. If there was one thing Jenna loved as much as Cinderella, it was Barbies.

Wide eyes grew so round they seemed to fill Jenna’s small face. “Of course. He’ll haf to since you won’t be here no longer.”

“Any longer.” Dani corrected without thought, but couldn’t stop the sadness from creeping in at the thought of how much she would miss this child. She wished she could take her with her.

“I’ll play with you, Jenna.” Haley’s soft voice spoke up from the other side of the bed. “I never played with Barbies before I got here, but I love it.”

Her innocent statement made Dani wonder what Haley’s life had been like before she’d met her dad. She’d never played with Barbies? Hard to imagine. But then, equally hard to envision a mother dropping
her daughter off and never looking back. For someone who’d been through that, Haley was actually doing remarkably well.

Except for the not-speaking-to-her-father part.

“Thank you, Haley,” Dani said. “I’m sure Jenna would love to play Barbies with you.”

“I would,” Jenna agreed around a yawn. “Just like we did today. I like playing Barbies with you.”

“And with Mike,” Haley added. At the mention of his name, the dog lifted his head from the foot of the bed. His tail thumped the mattress, and Haley giggled.

Jenna patted her hand on the bed. “Come up here, Mike. We need you to lay with us.”

Right. Like two munchkins and one adult didn’t take up enough space across the width of the twin bed. But like the good dog that he was, Mike roused himself and scooted closer to his owner. He stretched out along Jenna’s legs and rested his snout on her hip, and Dani let her head sink deeper into the pillow. She closed her eyes. She loved this time of night. Gabe occasionally put Jenna to bed himself, but it was more Dani’s ritual.

Michelle rarely saw the need for more than a simple “Good night.”

If Dani ever had a daughter, she would make sure to—

She stopped herself midthought. She couldn’t imagine that she’d ever have a daughter, so there was no need to let the hypothetical go any further. Not that she wouldn’t love a daughter. A son, too. But given the fact that she was already in her thirties and her career was just now about to start, she didn’t hold out hope. By the time she’d made a name for herself, she’d probably be too old to birth a child, much less find a man who wanted her.

She’d have to be content with the role of aunt, and having cared for her brothers over the years.

It was enough.

Because she wanted New York.

Her broker had forwarded a link for an apartment today, with the email address of the woman already living there. The place was a bit pricier than she’d hoped, but with a roommate, Dani would be able to juggle it. It was definitely a possibility.

Then there was the job.

And the energy of the city.

It had been nineteen years since she’d first visited New York—Aunt Sadie had taken her on a girls’ trip, just the two of them—but Dani still remembered every detail. She wanted that life. And it was finally at her fingertips.

Both girls inched closer, and Dani’s elation waned. She would miss this a lot.

She pressed a kiss to the top of a silky blonde head, then to the top of a silky brown one, the scent of baby shampoo filling her nostrils, and she sent up a prayer that she was making the right choice. She worried so much about leaving Jenna.

“I like this.” Haley’s soft voice floated up to Dani.

“Like what, honey? Sleeping in here with Jenna?”

“Yes, but . . .” She lifted one of her hands, let it hover momentarily in the air, before touching a single fingertip to Dani. “I like you.”

Dani’s heart pinched. “I like you too, baby. A whole lot.”

She reached out and clicked off the lamp as she felt the two bodies at her sides growing heavy with sleep, and stared up at the stick-on stars glowing from the ceiling.

No amount of logic about stars and constellations had been enough to sway Jenna from what she’d wanted. Dani and the little girl had spent hours this summer planning exactly what would twinkle down on her every night, and Dani had to admit that Jenna’s ideas were far better than anything that could be seen nightly from outside their back door.

There were the “constellations” Pumpkin Carriage and Cowboy’s Hat. And of course, The Big Heart and The Little Heart. Jenna was a dreamer. Dani hoped that never changed.

“I still wish I had a prince,” Jenna whispered.

“Me too,” Haley echoed.

Dani stared into the darkness and admitted something she hadn’t let herself acknowledge for a long time. Being alone hadn’t been part of her plan.

Her gaze traced the outline of Cowboy’s Hat. “Me three,” she admitted softly. A sigh slipped out with the word.

“What’s the matter, Aunt Dani?” Jenna asked. “Are you sad?”

“No, baby. Not sad. Just thinking about princes.”

“Oh.” Jenna grew quiet, then spoke in a hushed voice. “I hope you find one.”

Dani kissed her niece’s forehead.
Someday.
Right now she had something else to do.

Lifting the covers, she shifted Haley so she lay right next to Jenna, and Mike flipped his tail as though acknowledging he was on watch duty. Instead of leaving immediately, though, Dani lay back down, this time on top of the covers.

She perched on her side. “It’s time for you two to go to sleep, don’t you think?”

The light filtering in from the hallway made it easy to see Jenna shake her head back and forth. “I don’t wanna until my daddy gets home. I need to give him and my mom a bedtime kiss.”

Gabe and Michelle had gone out to dinner for date night. “They’ll be out for a while longer. How about you kiss me, and I’ll pass it on to them?”

After a slight hesitation, Jenna agreed. She puckered her little mouth and Dani leaned in to accept the kiss. She then caressed Jenna’s soft cheek. Soon there would be no more times like this. Logically, she’d known that, but it seemed to be sinking in hard tonight.

Haley lifted up on her elbows and pressed a timid kiss to Dani’s cheek as well, catching her slightly off guard. “Will you give that one to my daddy?”

Dani’s thoughts shot instantly beyond a kiss on the cheek to something very, very different. But explaining why she would
not
be kissing Ben in any fashion seemed harder than simply agreeing. “Sure, sweetie. I’ll give it to him.”

She’d at least tell him about it. Maybe that would loosen him up a bit when it came to his daughter.

“Thank you,” they said in unison.

“Go to sleep now, sweethearts. When you wake up, we’ll play Barbies for as long as you want.”

“Okay,” they returned, and Dani began to rise.

“Aunt Dani . . .”

She paused. “Yes?”

“I’ll miss you lots when you’re gone.”

Tears suddenly appeared and slipped over her cheeks. “Me too.” She leaned down and gave both girls one last hug. “Lots.”

Straightening, she headed for the bedroom door, needing to get out before more leakage occurred. She wiped her face and stepped into the hall, pulling the door shut behind her.

And when she turned, Ben stood waiting for her, an unreadable expression on his face.

After several seconds, he finally muttered, “You’re great with them.”

Embarrassment crashed over her that he’d caught the moment. She looked away, ending up fixating on the woven rug running the length of the hall, as she worked to get a handle on her emotions. “Thank you,” she mumbled.

“You’re close to Jenna.”

She nodded.

Several more seconds ticked by as she waited, wanting nothing more than to escape to her room—certainly not to stand there with her heart open and Ben looking in. But she found herself unable to kick her feet into gear.

His hand reached out, and he swiped at a tear with his thumb. Two more followed in its path.

“Can I ask you something?” he said.

She nodded again, still keeping her eyes averted, and rubbed at her cheek.

There was a long pause before his voice came out so low and quiet that she caught herself leaning closer to hear it. “How’d you learn to do that?” he asked.

She peeked up. “Do what?”

A slight inclining of his head toward the closed bedroom door was all the information he gave. She focused on the shellacked wood separating them from the girls. And then she got it.

He wasn’t avoiding Haley because he didn’t want to be around her. He had no idea what to
do
around her. “Let’s go back in,” she said. She reached for the doorknob, but he caught her hand before she could turn it.

“Don’t.” His voice was barely audible. “Don’t bother them.”

“But she would love it. Don’t you want to tell her good-night?”

“Nah.” He gave a quick shake of his head, his eyes wearing a quietness that strummed a sad song through her heart, and took a small step back. He didn’t let go of her hand. “She didn’t ask for me.”

“Yes, she did, she . . .” Dani clamped her lips shut when she realized what she was about to say.
She wanted me to kiss you.

Electricity filled the space as his gaze tracked to her mouth. “I heard what she said.”

Dani swallowed. “So you see? She
was
thinking about you.”

“Sure.” He released her hand. “She thought of me.” He took another step back and motioned toward the room again. “What I want to know is how all that is so natural to you. How do you know what to do? What they need from you?”