The Widow's Protector Read online

  He just shook his head. No way was he going to eat and leave her hungry. He could go a night without food, no problem. She was in a different category.

  He popped up from the table. “Mind if I invade your pantry?”

  “Go ahead. Help yourself.”

  While he wasn’t exactly a chef, Brandy’s illness had taught him how to cook—otherwise they both might have starved for long periods or been reduced to take-out, which wasn’t always the healthiest thing. So he figured he’d find something he could patch together into a meal without a big problem.

  Once in the pantry, though, he froze, suddenly caught in a wave of grief. Brandy. How much he’d had to take care of her and in the end it hadn’t helped her at all.

  Sometimes it hurt so freaking bad he couldn’t stand it. Then he thought of the woman out there he was trying to help and wondered if he wasn’t doing the same thing all over again.

  Or maybe he was just doing penance. God knew he needed it.

  Chapter 4

  Micah returned before darkness had fully settled over the county. By flashlight, he worked with Ryder to bring some power to the refrigerator and offered him a few more cords to hang on to in case they needed some other power.

  The humming of the refrigerator sounded loud, Marti thought, after it had been silent for more than twenty-four hours. She was relieved to hear it come on, although she suspected it was probably too late for the milk and some other things. She began to pull them out for the trash or to pour down the sink.

  On the counter was an assortment of things Ryder had pulled from the pantry and the fridge: carrots, lentils, cabbage, onions…a whole lot of stuff that looked like it might make a good soup. She glanced at the clock, though, and wondered how late they would eat.

  Before she could decide to start cooking, she heard the tromp of booted feet and turned to see Micah coming in with an ice chest and Ryder on his heels with a big box.

  “Just some stuff Faith sent to get you through a few days,” Micah said.

  “But can you spare it?”

  Micah just looked at her. “We have five kids. Do you think Faith would send anything if it would leave the kids hungry?”

  Some reluctance in Marti let go and she laughed. “No, I guess not.”

  It wasn’t enough food to make her feel awful about it, but it was the right amount to make her feel grateful. Milk, some butter and other perishables, and in the box some bread and peanut butter and a crock full of stew.

  “Stew’s from last night,” Micah remarked as he at last sipped a cup of the coffee she had made for him. “Just pop it in your oven for an hour, she said. And she said to thank you for taking it because there’s not enough to make another meal for seven, and getting the kids to eat leftovers otherwise is impossible.” He winked. “And I’d like to thank you, too, because much as I like her stew, eating it every day for lunch for a week or more gets to be bit much.”

  Marti released the last bit of her tension about the generosity and sat at the table with the two men until Micah announced he needed to get moving. “More places to check on,” he explained. “I’ll be back tomorrow with some gas for the generator.” With him he took the list that Ryder and Marti had barely put together.

  Night was creeping in, and a single oil lamp did little to hold it at bay. She studied Ryder across the table as delicious aromas began to emerge from the oven.

  He looked tired, she thought. As well he should be. But there was something else. She had noticed a change in him after he went to the pantry. He’d seemed to stay in there awfully long to look for just a handful of items, and when he had emerged, something had changed.

  He seemed more withdrawn. Perhaps even sad. Was he thinking about Brandy? She would willingly have listened to him talk about his late wife, but she wasn’t sure bringing it up would be the wise thing to do. Maybe it would just be better to leave him alone with his demons.

  “You know,” she said suddenly, “I’ve become a wimp.”

  That startled him. All of a sudden he was totally focused on her, and that focus nearly took her breath away. She’d noted before that he was an attractive man, but it hadn’t struck her before how amazingly good his full attention felt. Places inside her that hadn’t felt warm in a very long time grew warm. In fact, some of them became instantly hot. She hoped he couldn’t see her blush.

  “Why in the hell do you think you’re a wimp?” he asked her almost roughly.

  She was startled by his tone and almost folded in on herself. But just in time she caught the response and reminded herself this wasn’t Jeff. “Because I second-guess everything I think or might say.”

  He tilted his head a little. “Jeff?”

  She nodded. “I always had a leash on my tongue. And I couldn’t even make up my mind to divorce him.”

  “So unleash your tongue. The divorce question is moot now, don’t you think?”

  That made her laugh a little. “Most certainly. Did you ever think about divorce?”

  As soon as she asked it, she wished the words unsaid. She had an urge to cut out her own tongue. His entire face, handsome and full of strength, seemed to melt and sag a little.

  “Sometimes,” he whispered. “Sometimes. Hell.”

  After a few moment she murmured, “You’re only human.”

  “Yeah, I know. I really do get that. It’s just that…” He hesitated. “I guess human wasn’t good enough.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “Why not? It’s true. Not for Brandy. Not that she ever berated me—because she didn’t. Bless her, she spent a whole lot of time telling me it wasn’t my fault she was sick. Her doctors even told me. But she was still my responsibility and I couldn’t help her. And sometimes I got tired of trying constantly and still watching her curl up in a ball and just cry. Sometimes I felt like heading out and never coming back because, damn it, I just couldn’t make it any better and I always wondered if I was making it worse. Believe me, I’m no saint.”

  “Maybe you expected too much of yourself.”

  “Probably. I’ve been accused of that.” He sighed. “She wasn’t depressed when we met. It didn’t get bad until after the first year. And then it got really bad. At first I had trouble even understanding. Maybe I still do. I don’t have a reference point for hurting so badly for no reason at all that life is intolerable. I have a blind spot. Never been there, never done that. I couldn’t understand why nothing could cheer her up, nothing could make her happy. Couldn’t understand how she could be too tired to even get out of bed, how she could say things about buying a gun or slashing her wrists. Although I guess I’m glad she did say them because then I was able to race her to a hospital. Then we got on the treatment treadmill. Or maybe a better description would be a treatment roller coaster. They must have tried every antidepressant in the books. She’d get better for a little while—not top-of-the-world better, but functional—and then crash again. They even tried shock treatments. God, that was scary. That made her forgetful in ways that seriously worried me, although I was warned to expect it. But not even that did the trick. Finally a new drug came out. It seemed to be working. I thought Brandy was coming back.”

  “But instead she went away.”

  “For good.” He passed a hand over his face, then leaned back. “I guess she’s not hurting anymore.”

  “I’m sure she’s not, but she sure left you a world of pain.”

  “Suicide does that,” he said flatly. “Even her own brother…” He stopped himself.

  “Ben doesn’t hold you responsible, does he? How could he? Doesn’t he understand she was sick?”

  “Sometimes I think he does, and sometimes I’m not so sure. Anyway, he’s got as much crap to deal with as I do about Brandy. She left a whole lot of question marks behind her.”

  He fell silent and s
he let him be. She figured she had already stirred up his demons enough.

  “Ben’s an okay guy,” he said presently. “He just didn’t see her illness up close and personal the way I did. So I figure we’ll talk until we make some kind of peace with it. I don’t think we’ll ever get that closure everyone talks about, but we’ve both got to learn to live with it. Her sickness killed her as surely as if it was cancer. That’s the hard part to get.”

  “I’m sure it must be.”

  He looked at her again, giving her the faintest of smiles. “Sorry. That was a downer.”

  “I brought it up. I guess I’m lucky. My husband killed himself, too, if you want to look at it that way. I’m just glad he didn’t kill anyone else in the process. He made a stupid decision, to drive drunk. But if it hadn’t been that, he probably would have killed his liver before long.”

  “He was drinking that much?”

  “Constantly. Maybe it was a different version of what happened to Brandy. People don’t feel a whole lot of sympathy for alcoholics, either. It’s a disease, an addiction. Like you, I tried to help. But with alcoholics, there’s really only one person who can do it. One doc tried to get him to take that medicine that makes you sick if you drink but he wouldn’t. And without a run-in with the police, nobody was going to make him do anything.”

  She shook her head. “Sorry. But sometimes I used to wish he’d get a DUI so they’d send him to rehab. Unfortunately, the one time turned out to be the last time.”

  “So neither of us are wearing halos?”

  The dryness of his tone caught her by surprise, and a chuckle escaped. “I guess not,” she admitted and felt again that warm, full-bodied sense of attraction. Amazing—she hadn’t felt like a truly sexual being in years, not even the night Linda Marie had been conceived. Then she’d felt used.

  So she could still look at a man and respond as a woman? That felt good and she tucked it away inside. He couldn’t possibly see her that way himself, not when she was so pregnant, but even so she didn’t mind feeling the response to him. It meant she was still alive, that she might someday have a real life again. A real life for her and her baby.

  Just then Linda Marie kicked hard and she jumped. Her hand flew to her belly. “Wow. She could have put that ball through the goal posts.”

  Ryder suddenly laughed. “Would it be okay for me to feel it? I’ve never felt a baby kick inside the womb.”

  “Sure.” She smiled and waved him around the table. Then she took her hand and placed it on her firm belly. How warm and big he felt.

  “Just wait,” she said. “Linda doesn’t do command performances, but she seems to be awake now.”

  “Does it hurt?”

  “Almost never. Once in a while she seems to find a sensitive place, but that’s rare. Mostly it just feels like little pokes.”

  Then Linda Marie obliged with a kick, almost as if she felt the warmth from Ryder’s big hand.

  “Oh, wow,” he breathed, and his face brightened. “Oh, wow. It felt like a tiny foot.”

  “Maybe it was. Sometimes I can almost see it but not usually. I can feel it when she turns over, too.”

  He waited a few more minutes, but the baby was evidently done for now. He returned to his seat, looking awed. “That is so amazing,” he said and smiled. “Phenomenal! Thanks.”

  “It is pretty amazing,” she admitted, rubbing her tummy with her palms. “I love it when she’s active because I’m sure everything’s okay. I hate it when she gets quiet for too long.”

  “I can imagine.” His whole demeanor had lightened and she was thankful for the distraction the baby had provided.

  “I feel blessed,” she said after a moment. “I guess I am. This pregnancy is a blessing, and somehow I’ll deal with the rest of it. I kind of have to.”

  He nodded, his expression growing thoughtful. “Well,” he said after a few moments, “I’ve got some time, so before I leave I’ll make sure you don’t have a whole lot of big things to worry about.”

  “Ryder…”

  He held up his hand. “Please. Don’t argue. I need the work, I need to do something useful. You’ll be doing me a favor.”

  She hesitated, then asked, “If work is so important to you, why did you sell your business?”

  “That’s complicated.” He rose and refilled their coffee mugs. The aroma coming from the oven was growing more enticing with each minute.

  “You don’t have to tell me,” she hastened to say.

  “It’s complicated but it’s not tough,” he said a bit dryly. “Not some mega-emotional upheaval, although what happened may have helped it along. I got into the business working as a framer.”

  She nodded as he sat across from her again.

  “Hands-on. I still love the smell of freshly cut lumber. Anyway, with time I moved up, developed more skills, got more responsibility. About the time I met Brandy I’d become a GC, a general contractor, the guy who organizes everything and then supervises. From there it was a relatively small step to setting up my own business as a GC. Unfortunately, over the years, the job became less hands-on. Other people were doing the work I loved while I was in a mess of paperwork and business-related stuff. It didn’t seem so important because Brandy was keeping me pretty busy. Going to work was one way I took care of her needs. But after she was gone…” He shrugged. “It felt hollow. I wasn’t doing any of the stuff I loved doing. None of it. So finally I decided I needed a new start. Maybe I was trying to escape.”

  Again she kept her response to a nod, afraid of silencing him.

  “I don’t know exactly. I just know I needed to stop feeling so hollow. I couldn’t get Brandy back but maybe I could get back to doing what I loved. I was even thinking about getting into cabinetry, really highly skilled carpentry, and I couldn’t do that with the business hanging around my neck. It took me a couple of months to sell after I made the decision, and then I decided to take this break and go talk with Ben. It was clear he was as messed up about the whole situation as I was, and I thought maybe if we got together things might settle a bit for us both.”

  “I hope they will.”

  He sighed. “I don’t know. But working on your roof yesterday reminded me how much I absolutely love to work with my hands. So if you don’t mind, I’m going to indulge myself around here. You could say this opportunity is God-sent for me—if you don’t find that callous of me, that is.”

  She thought about that. “I don’t find it callous,” she said. “That tornado was going to come through, regardless. So maybe you were God-sent for me, too.”

  Then she smiled. She had to admit she liked the way he responded, with a slow-growing smile of his own, one that reached his gray eyes and crinkled the corners. Man, he was handsome, with cleanly chiseled features and a slightly weathered face. He was sun bronzed and healthy-looking, and his entire body boasted the compact strength of someone who worked hard. She liked that, especially after Jeff, who had looked neither healthy nor hard-working the last couple of years.

  Then she saw a light in those eyes she would have found unmistakable years ago, before Jeff had made her feel so unattractive. Surely he couldn’t be responding to her, too? Not when she was so big with child?

  For just a few seconds she allowed herself to entertain the thought, allowed herself to feel the first delicious stirrings of sexual awareness, then she stepped down on it. It would do her no good to let something like that grow. He was going to move on to Fresno in a few days, and she had no business even thinking about something that could only sadden her one way or another.

  No attachments. Not now. And certainly not when they would be so ephemeral.

  “I wish I could help more,” she said, trying to get her mind off the acute sensitivity that seemed to want to grow between her legs.

  “Lady, you’re helping me plenty by lett
ing me get back into practice around here. Damn, it feels good.”

  This time he insisted on doing the dishes while she put her feet up in the living room. He set an oil lamp on the table beside her, telling her frankly that she looked worn out and asking if pregnant women weren’t supposed to get some rest.

  She would have hated to tell him just how much rest she had taken that afternoon while he’d been laboring so mightily to clear her fields. Inevitably, she’d taken a nap, so she shouldn’t be feeling tired at all.

  But it felt good to be pampered, and her ankles had swollen a little bit, so she didn’t argue when he pulled the old hassock over for her and waited until she put her feet on in. Then he brought her a cup of fresh herbal tea and disappeared into the kitchen.

  The sounds that emanated from that direction made her smile. She listened to him talk to himself a bit as he figured out that he needed to boil water, and then he started humming.

  Darn, he even had a nice baritone and good pitch. She let her head fall back and closed her eyes and tried not to wish that she could know moments like this into the indefinite future.

  But this was how it was supposed to feel, wasn’t it, in a good relationship? She wouldn’t know from experience. She tried to remember even one time that Jeff had coddled her this way and couldn’t. Not one.

  She dozed off as she had insane visions of many more evenings just like this one. It didn’t matter that her house was falling apart, that the fields might be ruined, that there might be no money come harvest time. If she could just have more and more evenings like this one…

  * * *

  When she awoke, Ryder was sitting on the easy chair across from her, an oil lamp beside him on an ancient table, his hands folded across his flat belly and an odd smile on his face.

  She started a bit. “Sorry. I guess I dozed.”

  “I was enjoying watching you sleep. It was soothing, so don’t worry about it. Sleep whenever you need to.” He waved his hand around. “Everything here is old and rickety,” he remarked. “So what exactly is the story of the place? You said your husband inherited it?”