An Accidental Family. Loree Lough
road is like in a storm…”
Yeah, he knew. The hard-packed runoff would turn the blacktop into a swift-moving river of muddy water. But his place was just over the next rise. If he floored the pickup, he could make it home in ten minutes flat. Plenty of time to spend with Nadine—
Thunder boomed directly overhead and lightning exploded, brightening her yard.
Okay, Lord, I can take a hint…
“Guess I’d better make a run for it,” he said, jamming the Stetson onto his head. “Thanks for the tea.”
And as he hotfooted it toward his truck, he couldn’t help but wonder if he was running from the storm flashing all around him…
…or the one roiling in his heart.
Chapter Three
Nadine tossed and turned for hours, alternately staring at the ceiling and punching her pillows. Flipping the covers aside, she stepped into her bedroom slippers and headed downstairs, belting a light terry robe on the way. No need for lights for, even in the dead of night she could navigate these rooms with her eyes closed. No surprise there, with all the practice she’d gotten while Ernest was alive. How many times, she wondered, filling the teapot with water, had she paced the floors, trembling with fear and rage and bitterness as she waited for the throbbing aches and pains of yet another beating to ease?
“Too many to count,” she whispered, staring at the blue flame that she turned on under the kettle. She’d worked hard to keep the cuts and bruises camouflaged, a job made easier because Ernest had always been careful to leave evidence of his brutality in places that could be covered. If she didn’t know better, she would have said he took those lessons from her own father.
When had the switch flipped, she wondered, turning Ernest from the loving young man who vowed to protect his sweetheart from her father’s manhandling, to the mean-spirited husband who made her pa seem gentle as a kitten? A jagged scar on her forearm, the remnant of a long-ago beating, caught her eye. Instinct made her tug at the sleeve of her robe to hide it.
Old habits die hard, she glumly thought. If Nadine had a dollar for every time someone asked why she’d worn trousers and long-sleeved shirts in the dead of summer, maybe she could pay one of the steadily mounting bills that lay in a tidy stack on her desk.
These past three years had been tougher than any in memory. The run of bad fortune began when her stud bull broke free of his pen and wandered into the path of a speeding eighteen-wheeler. Two calves born that spring had been too weak to survive. The following fall, weevils had attacked her fields, destroying the harvest that would have fed the livestock. Then, three years of oppressive, unrelenting drought.
Somehow, Nadine managed to hang on through the first two years, even as other ranchers filed for bankruptcy. But this year? This year, her grip was slipping with each passing day.
She carried her tea outside and stood on the porch. The crisp scent of rain made her heart ache with dreary acceptance, because the steady downfall that now pounded the hard-packed earth had come weeks too late to save this year’s crops.
Lamont’s spread, by contrast, seemed untouched by nature’s cruel hand. But then, he’d had the financial resources to dig deep wells that helped irrigate his fields. If one of his bulls died? Well, he had dozens of others grazing in white-fenced green pastures. Neighbors envied Lamont’s knack for turning profits into wise investments. Some went as far as to ask his advice about where to put their money, when there was money left after filling their creditors’ pockets. Nadine respected and admired Lamont’s talents but, God help her, she envied them, too.
And envy was wrong. Spiteful and sinful. “A sound heart is the life of the flesh,” she quoted Proverbs, “but envy the rottenness of the bones.”
Shivering, she tilted her face toward the Heavens. “Lord, a little more backbone might be useful right about now.”
Backbone. Lamont had it in abundance. Truth be told, it was his grit and his guts that she envied more than anything else.
Bowing her head, she hugged the thick ceramic mug to her chest. As the steaming brew warmed her face, she took a deep breath, pictured him sitting at her kitchen table, looking as though he belonged, stirring sugar into his cup with a spoon that, in his powerful, callused hand, looked like one from Amy’s tea set.
Just thinking about him made her pulse race.
And she didn’t welcome the reaction, either. Several times tonight, she would have sworn he aimed to kiss her, and the thought made her scramble for legitimate excuses to keep plenty of space between them, physically and emotionally.
She’d seen Lamont lose his temper—during cattle auctions, in the feed and grain, at the hardware store. Ernest personified the “street angel, house devil” rule; if Lamont behaved that way when people were around, how much more aggressive might he be one-on-one?
She couldn’t afford to find out.
Nadine leaned against a porch support post as a mist of rain bounced up from the flagstone steps and onto her slippered feet. She barely felt it, though, as she thought of Rose. In all the years Nadine had known her, Lamont’s wife hadn’t given so much as a hint of being abused. But then, it wasn’t likely Rose would have guessed what often went on inside Nadine’s house, either.
Could she be wrong about Lamont? Did he fit the “His bark is worse than his bite” adage?
Not that it made a bit of difference. Nadine didn’t trust herself to make smart decisions where men were concerned, so except for the few who worked for her at Greeneland Ranch, she’d avoided them altogether. And despite hard times, she’d held on as well as any male rancher she could name.
Shoulders sagging, she went back inside, bolted the door behind her and resigned herself to spending a few hours with the Good Book. God’s word had helped her keep “white knight” dreams at bay in the past. By morning, any romantic notions about Lamont would be a distant memory, and she’d go back to accepting her lot in life.
But she didn’t have to like it.
Bright and early the next morning, it was still raining when Adam padded into the kitchen, looking rumpled and frazzled as the weather outside. “Look at this mess,” he said, stacking coloring books and construction paper on the table. He flopped onto a straight-backed chair as she closed her crossword puzzle book. “You can’t even get a minute’s peace and privacy since we invaded your house.”
“You know I love having you…”
“It’s only temporary,” Adam said, “until Julie and I get this mess straightened out.”
How many times had he said that since they’d moved in, weeks ago? Lord, she prayed, help me find words to comfort him. “I feel terrible admitting it,” she said, sitting beside him. “But your cloud has been my silver lining. I haven’t been this contented since before you and Julie got married and you left me all alone.”
Adam chuckled at her deliberately exaggerated misery. “You’re the best, Mom.”
She’d been listening to her boy’s laughter all his twenty-six years and knew when it was sincere and when it wasn’t. Her heart ached for her only child. Maternal love hadn’t protected him from measles or chicken pox; hadn’t saved him from skinned knees, sprains and fractures; hadn’t spared him the anguish of a breakup once he reached dating age. She couldn’t protect him from this, either, but she aimed to try.
“Maybe while we’re here,” he said, “Julie will learn a thing or two from you about how to be a good wife and mother.”
“Thank goodness I sent her to the cellar to sort laundry, because if she heard a thing like that, she’d be crushed. I’ll admit she did some pretty ridiculous things, but you know in your heart she didn’t do them on purpose. Why, the way that poor girl was raised, it’s a wonder—”
“I’m tired of letting her off the hook