A Conard County Courtship Page 14

  Then came a large piece of flannel-backed oilcloth for Matthew to work on.

  Tim showed Matthew how to match all the puzzle pieces to the list of parts, then sat back and let him make sure they were all there.

  A builder instructing his son. Vanessa enjoyed the moment, enjoyed watching the interaction, thinking that Tim was a pretty good father. He showed an awful lot of patience as Matthew threw questions his way and started to hurry and needed to be slowed down.

  “The thing is, son, you’re not going to be able to finish this tonight, so put the brakes on. The box says six hours. You don’t have six hours before bedtime.”

  Matthew scowled but listened.

  Vanessa finally volunteered a word of caution. “Six hours is actually optimistic, I think.”

  “I suspected.” Tim smiled. “But if he doesn’t want to mess this up, he can’t rush no matter how long it takes. Right?”

  Matthew nodded, echoing, “Right,” as his brow furrowed and his tongue stuck out between his lips. His concentration was intense. From time to time he looked at the picture on the front of the box as if to assure himself that these pieces would eventually look like the photo.

  Tim brought coffee for himself and Vanessa and milk for Matthew. He looked over his son’s shoulder at the directions and remarked, “This is going to go together in pieces.”

  Matthew looked up. “What’s that mean?”

  “You’ve seen me build things. Well, this works the same. You’re going to put the legs together. Then the feet. You’ll connect them. Then the spine and tail. Then the head. When you get all those pieces done, it’ll be time to put them all together.”

  “Okay,” Matthew answered and returned to his work.

  Vanessa spoke. “We have summer camps for kids. They come to the museum and work on projects. Anyway, some of them get seriously frustrated that they can’t see it all go together at once.”

  “I won’t,” Matthew announced. “I know what Dad means.”

  Vanessa smiled at him, but he was too busy to notice. She glanced at Tim and caught him staring at her. The heat in his gaze was obvious, causing a pleasurable shiver to run through her. Almost at once he returned his attention to his son, but she hadn’t missed the message. He wanted her.

  The hard part was facing up to the fact that she wanted him, too.

  * * *

  Matthew had painstakingly organized all the pieces on the dining table before Tim sent him up to bed. He seemed resigned to being unable to put any of it together until tomorrow, but he wasn’t difficult about it.

  “This is going to be so cool,” was the last thing he said to his father as Tim switched off the light and left the room.

  “So cool indeed,” Tim responded as he shut the door.

  Downstairs he found Vanessa still sitting at the table, looking at all the carefully laid out pieces. “He’s going to be like you,” she remarked. “I’ve rarely seen that much organization from a boy his age.”

  “Well, you gave him a really great present. He thinks it so very cool, according to him. So thank you, Vannie.”

  She smiled at him. “My pleasure. I never fail to get a kick seeing a child excited by science...even if it’s a wooden puzzle.”

  “I know he can barely stand waiting to see it finished. Half the fun is getting there, though. I hope he’s beginning to learn that.”

  “A lot of us never learn that.” She leaned back in her chair and stretched a bit. “I need to move.”

  “Pace if you feel like it. Or we can move to another room. These dining chairs weren’t exactly designed to sit on for a long time.”

  He hoped he wasn’t imagining that she was relaxing with him again. The past few days had been uncomfortable while she tried to keep her distance and he tried to give it to her. They were together almost all the time. How much better if they could just relax.

  She opted for the living room. He was sure after the days they’d spent scraping, peeling and carting, she probably felt physically tired. He was used to it, but he doubted she was. Her lab job must be largely sedentary.

  “Why did you decide to leave excavating the fossils?” he asked. “I know you said it was hard work, and the lab is more exciting, but I think I’d be happier with the physical activity.”

  “Digging was hot and dusty, like I said. Discovery was as exciting as anything could be. But I realized after a few years that I was thinking more about the questions attached to each bone than about the work in progress. I’m fortunate, though. Our museum supports a number of digs, so if I wanted to take a turn at it again, I could.”

  “I think I’d like to try my hand at it. I’m sure Matthew would, although he might get bored fast.”

  “Maybe so. Every dig I was on started with a spectacular find of some kind, some bone jutting out of recently washed-away earth or recently revealed limestone. Still, after the first few exciting weeks, things would usually slow to a crawl while we hunted around for other finds. Finding a complete skeleton is extremely rare, because after the animal died, its remains were subjected to the elements and carrion eaters. So bones got washed away, rolled around, worn away, and only some of them would end up in a situation good enough to preserve them, if any of them did. While it may seem like we find loads of fossils, the truth is they’re rare. Compared to the numbers of animals that must have roamed this planet, the fossils are few and far between.”

  “I guess so. But if they weren’t we’d be tripping over them all the time.”

  She laughed, the sound pleasing him.

  “What got you into this field?”

  “Partly that when I was kid we lived for a while in upstate New York. Our driveway was gravel and the gravel was full of seashells. That rock came from a nearby quarry, so I asked about the shells in school and was told that long ago the whole area had been under the sea. That stuck with me enough that I got truly curious. When the school took us to the Museum of Natural History in New York City, the bones won the day. It was all I could think about doing when I got to college.”

  He wondered what things might strike Matthew that way, or if he’d even know until much later. Of course, nothing might strike him that way at all. If there was one thing he’d learned from his son, it was that interests could pass rapidly and be forgotten in the changing of the days and his age. Watching his son grow was the biggest adventure in his life.

  “Anyway,” she continued, “I was lucky, too. I went to college on a full scholarship. I discovered an aptitude for geology, which really helps in this field, and paleontology seemed to be in my own bones.”

  “A full scholarship?” he repeated. “How many brains have you got tucked in that head?”

  She blushed faintly. “Enough.”

  “Well, I guess so. I knew you were smart, but wow.”

  He could tell he was making her uneasy, so he dropped it, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t impressed. He’d gotten to college the hard way: on loans and money from working for his father.

  “I wouldn’t have been able to go any other way,” she said after a moment. “I worked, but that had to help out at home. So I was very, very lucky.”

  “I didn’t finish college,” he admitted. “Three years in, my dad was injured on the job, and he needed me to take over. And frankly, given that I had a company to take over, school seemed increasingly irrelevant. Dad wanted me to finish, but I didn’t want him spending his savings on hiring someone to do what I could do. I’m glad I didn’t. He and Mom were able to follow their dream and travel. I doubt they’d have been able to do that if I’d stayed in college. The way it turned out, they had enough savings to go, and I was able to send them a bit every month to keep them going.”

  She looked at him, her expression a mixture he couldn’t quite read. “You did a remarkable thing.”

  He shrug
ged it off. “We do what we need to do. That was the right decision. Easy as rolling off a log, so I’ve got no complaints.”

  Except for Claire, he thought with the inevitable twinge of loss and sorrow. Since her passing, he’d been short on dreams. Very short. All he wanted was to see Matthew grown and ready to stand on his own two feet. Then...well, then maybe he’d find he could dream again. But once upon a time, all his dreams had been wrapped around Claire. More children. A houseful of grandchildren eventually. Big family holidays. Eventually retiring to sit on the porch of a summer evening holding his wife’s hand as night fell. Simple dreams, gone now.

  He’d never wanted a great adventure, had never wanted to leave his mark on the world in some fashion. That probably made him boring, but it also had made him content.

  Now he was sharing a sofa with an extremely bright woman who probably had bigger dreams.

  “Vanessa? Do you have dreams?”

  “Dreams?” She looked perplexed.

  “About where you want to be down the road. Ambitions. Director of something? Make a discovery that changes everything in your field?”

  “Those big things are few and far between. Progress comes in small increments most of the time. If I can add an increment or two, I’ll be happy.”

  That sounded reasonable enough. Why that relieved him he couldn’t have said.

  “What about you?” she asked.

  “I want to see Matt grow up. Then I’ll consider other things. I don’t seem to be very ambitious.”

  “I think you’re plenty ambitious. You want to raise your son. Isn’t that big enough?”

  “I think so. Others may not agree.”

  She shook her head a little. “I wish my dad had been concerned about seeing me grow up. His money and his reputation were more important. Maybe I learned something from that. Maybe all the wrong things, but I learned. Money’s not that important. As for reputation...well, you spend your whole life building that, and one mistake doesn’t have to ruin you forever.”

  He felt his brows rise. “That’s a strong criticism of him.”

  “He deserves it,” she said, a note of anger creeping into her voice. “He might as well have ditched my mother and me. At least then we wouldn’t have had to watch him drink himself to death. Anyway, I can get that it hurt like hell to lose the family ranch, but that didn’t make him a failure. Drinking made him a failure.”

  Once again he felt his heart squeeze with pain for her. This woman was still suffering in quite a few ways. He waited for her to let the demons escape in any way she decided.

  But then she changed tack. “Anyway,” she said, “I think you’ve chosen a great path. Matthew’s an amazing boy, and he seems totally secure. I can’t imagine how wonderful that must feel, but I’m very glad he doesn’t have to question it.”

  “And here I was feeling boring and unadventurous.”

  She smiled, the last anger vanishing from her expression. “Raising a child is the most important thing anyone can do in life. Doing it right is the best thing. You appear to be doing it right. Pat your back, Tim.”

  “I’m a long way from being able to do that,” he said lightly. “Check back with me when he’s thirty. But even then it won’t be all my doing. Kids are born with their own personalities, and I have no doubt he’ll do most of the hard work himself. All I can do is guide a bit.”

  Her expression shifted, and she looked away. Had he just put his foot in it again? Probably. He had no idea just how much she blamed her father for. How many scars he had left her with. “You’ve turned out pretty good,” he said cautiously. “I think you get all the credit.”

  At that she smiled crookedly. “There were others along the way. Teachers and so on.”

  “I’m glad you had them.”

  “So am I. Anyway, I don’t want to go over that all again. I’ve spent most of this week wrestling with myself, and I’m tired of it. I am who I am. I’m not going to be able to rearrange myself in one fell swoop.”

  “Why do you want to do that? Because coming back here stirred up old memories?” He felt his heart quicken as he waited for her answer. Why it should matter so much to him, he couldn’t imagine. Especially since she was right. If she wanted to change, it was going to take a long time.

  “I don’t even know if it’s possible for me to change,” she answered slowly. “It’s just that I’ve been thinking that living Rapunzel’s life may be safe, but maybe it’s not as interesting.”

  “Rumpelstiltskin could always show up.”

  At last she laughed. “But will he turn into Prince Charming?”

  His heart hit full gallop, and he wondered if he was losing his mind. “Do you want a Prince Charming?”

  “No,” she said, unwittingly making his heart plummet. Then she picked it up again. “If I ever get close enough to someone, I’d just like him to be nice, reliable and good to be around. I don’t want perfection, and I don’t want some guy who spends hours in front of a mirror working out.”

  It was his turn to laugh. “I can understand that. But was Prince Charming that bad?”

  “Think about his name,” she said drily. “It tells the whole story right there. I know it’s a fairy tale, but who would name their baby Charming?”

  “Or their daughter Beauty.”

  They both started to laugh. “Yeah,” she said on a giggle. “They couldn’t have named her Sleeping Beauty unless they plotted against her from birth.” Then she caught her breath. “Oh, I probably just offended a bunch of people.”

  “I’m the only one who heard you. Maybe some girls are named Beauty. It actually wouldn’t be bad unless the poor child turns out homely. But Charming?”

  “Don’t bet against it. Unusual names seem popular now. Matthew will probably never know how lucky he is that you gave him such an ordinary, familiar name.”

  “No, he’ll just grow up and go to court to change it.”

  That sent her into more laughter. When they calmed again, they were both a bit breathless. And then their eyes met.

  In an instant Tim found it hard to breathe. The laughter had done to her what nothing else seemed able to do. She looked utterly relaxed, soft, open. Unguarded.

  He wanted so badly to reach out to her, to kiss her, to just hold her. He was sure she wouldn’t allow more than that, but he was almost as certain she wouldn’t accept his embrace. He reminded himself how she had reacted to his kiss. And certainly her mention of repeating it had been a moment of impulse on her part.

  Or maybe she was actually changing, just a tiny bit. Maybe in the midst of giving herself all that distance, she had been working away at something. She’d said, after all, that she was thinking about change.

  Easy, boy. True change would take time. It wouldn’t happen before she went home. At most he was seeing a few cracks in her armor, but he was glad to see them.

  Then she reached out and touched his forearm. Rockets exploded in his head as he looked down at her hand. What was she about? She’d never touched him freely by herself. In fact, she had always seemed to avoid it.

  He raised his gaze to hers and read an almost painful hope there, along with desire. “Vannie?”

  “I guess I’m crazy, but I want to know...”

  * * *

  Her heart beat as rapidly as a sewing machine. Was she really doing this? Reaching out to a man for his touches, his kisses? Who knew where that would lead? Somewhere bad, she’d always told herself, but Tim seemed to be changing her irresistibly. He pulled her, drew her, touched her in long untouched places. Seeing him with his son had proved to her that he was none of the things she had feared.

  Trying to steady her breath, she didn’t complete her sentence. More avoidance. Talk about everything except a growing hunger that might consume her. “My dad threw himself away because he lost a ranch.
You lost your wife but kept yourself together.”

  “For my son,” he reminded her.

  She shook her head as an ache blossomed in her heart. “Don’t you see, Tim? My dad had me. He had my mother. He had a whole lot more reason to carry on, but he didn’t.”

  He didn’t answer. Not that she really expected him to respond to a statement like that. What could he say? But her heart continued to hammer rapidly, and she felt as if she stood at a cliff edge, ready to take a leap.

  God, this could be such a huge mistake. She looked at her hand, tried to make herself pull it back, but she couldn’t. She wanted more than that simple touch but scarcely knew how to ask for it.

  He probably wouldn’t really want to give her any more, anyway. After the way she’d been acting for a week? After the way she’d fled after he kissed her? She wasn’t blinded by her scars, and she could read in his occasional glance that he wanted her. Or at least he was attracted.

  But handling her must strike him as about as safe as handling nitroglycerin. Even sitting here filled with yearning, she couldn’t guarantee to herself or him that she wouldn’t suddenly panic and run.

  “I’m such a mess,” she murmured.

  “Oh, Vannie, just shut up,” he said.

  Startled, she barely had time to register his words before he pulled her over so she sat across his lap and silenced her by covering her mouth with his.

  Some corner of her mind registered that he was manhandling her, but the biggest part of her didn’t care. In fact, the biggest part of her was thrilled that he’d taken the leap for her.

  She let her head fall back against his arm and opened her mouth, giving him entry to a place no one had been allowed before. The few times she’d kissed, except for the other day, the experience had left her wondering what all the hoopla was about.

  She knew now. As his tongue explored the delicate inside of her mouth, warmth began to pour through her, filling her like hot honey until she felt soft, safe and eager.