Authors: Kate Welsh
M
eg’s first stop after landing in Denver was the hospital in Greeley. She didn’t really know what she expected to find when she peeked in Beth’s door, but it wasn’t her daughter-in-law looking as if she were knocking on death’s door. Thin and wan, Beth lay sleeping in her bed. The muted sunlight filtering through the drawn shade at the window made her light blond hair glint with an unearthly glow. For one second Meg felt fear overcome her. Was she too late?
Then she saw Beth’s chest move, but it was clear her breathing was shallow. The thought of Jack, and all of them, losing her was too immense.
Dear Lord, I don’t know what You’re up to, but please don’t let Beth die. I don’t want Jack to feel that kind of pain. I know he’s up to the test, but he’s been alone for so many years.
“Mom?” Jack said from the hall behind her.
Meg whirled and held out her arms. Jack hugged her for all he was worth. “How is she doing?” she asked.
Jack stepped back and shook his head, tears in his eyes. He took her hand and pulled her from the room, closing the door behind them. Across the hall was a sun-drenched solarium. He led her in there, and they both sat on the wide slate windowsills overlooking the snow that covered the area. It was clear Jack needed to unload.
“She’s not getting better, Mom,” he said, sounding stuffed up from fighting tears. His eyes were red rimmed from the moments when he’d obviously failed. “This morning there was a doctor from the CDC in with her when I got here. He said it looks like something he called a superbug. That means it’s resisting conventional antibiotics. He had them change her medication again. I don’t think I’ve ever been more afraid in my life.”
“How are Beth’s spirits holding up?”
Jack winced and looked away out the window. “Before she fell asleep about an hour ago, she made me promise to find a mother for the twins.”
“I hope you told her what utter nonsense that is.”
“I did but she just kept insisting.”
Meg sighed. “So you promised.”
Jack shook his head, pursing his lips, and still stubbornly fought the tears pooling in his eyes. “I told
her I’d never find anyone else, so she’d better start planning to make a full recovery.”
Ah, that was her stubborn son talking. “Well, good for you!”
“It feels like a nightmare,” he whispered, and turned to lean the back of his head against the cool glass pane. “Three weeks ago we were the two happiest people in the world. And now I’m losing her.”
Meg straightened and stood in front of him. “Jack, look at me.” He opened his eyes. “You are
not
losing her,” she insisted. “And just to make sure, I called Pastor Jim and he’s started a prayer chain. All your friends at the Tabernacle are praying for Beth. Until we call and say she’s better, not a minute will go by that someone won’t be praying for her. Tabernacle members are strong prayer warriors, son. They won’t let you down, and neither will God. Now you go back to your wife, and when she wakes up again, it’s your job to convince her that this is a fight worth winning. I’m going on to the ranch so you two can concentrate on getting Beth well. You tell her I was here, and that I said she’s to stop this gloomy talk about leaving you behind. And tell her I’ll come see her soon to make sure her attitude has changed.”
Jack grinned a little and stood to hug her again. “That alone should scare her into getting better. I love you, Mom. I thank God every day for letting me find you.”
She stepped back and cupped his cheek. “And I
thank Him for leading you back to me, son. Now, you take care of our Beth, and I’ll see to those grand-babies of mine.”
“Mom,” Jack said as he raked his fingers nervously through his hair. “Uh…could you take it easy on Dad? He really has tried these last months. He did everything he promised to do about the Circle A. And he’s been a rock through this since Beth got sick.”
Meg blinked. She’d have to brush up on her acting skills. Jack wasn’t supposed to have noticed her hostility toward Evan Alton. She smiled sweetly. “Why, darling, if you have no problem with Evan, why should I? I’m here to relieve him. That’s all.”
Jack nodded, but he didn’t seem completely convinced. She’d have to work harder at masking her dislike for the man her son called father. As far as Meg was concerned, Evan Alton had been a poor substitute for Wade Jackson. Wade would have thrown himself into fatherhood the way he’d done with everything else in his life. She had to fight a little twinge of anger at him. Perhaps if he hadn’t seen himself as invincible he wouldn’t have re-enlisted, and he’d have lived to be the father her son had deserved.
Soon she was following the directions Jack had given her to the ranch. As promised, it took her through the center of Torrence, then meandered across the countryside to the entrance of the Circle A. Hanging on a wooden crossbeam across the nar
row road was a carved sign reading “Circle A Ranch.”
“Welcome to the Wild West, pardner,” Meg drawled, and turned onto the private gravel road. “I guess this is the Circle A.”
After a mile she came to the first building. It was the ranch-style house she’d seen in Jack’s pictures. It appeared to be a long one-story log home but a deeply pitched roof added a second floor at the rear. Different as it was from Laurel House, Meg was charmed by its rustic simplicity. From Jack’s description and the odd snapshot from Christmas, she pictured the interior with its rustic beamed cathedral ceiling and a balcony edged with artfully twisted branches that had been used to fashion a sturdy railing.
The squared-off logs used in the construction of the walls and the rustic red clay tile roof above them did nothing to alter her perception of rustic comfort. Now that she saw the building “in person,” it reminded her of the side view of a faceted jewel—a ruby.
Big terra-cotta pots planted with specimen trees, which Jack had mentioned in letters, dotted a patio edged with a red-stone wall. A patio and wall surrounded the house and she saw that the wall was topped with a thick layer of snow. Towering elms lined the outside of the wall and patio, giving the house a nestled-in feel. The bare branches of all the
trees were ice coated and glistened in the strong winter sunlight, adding to the jewel-like quality of the home.
In the distance she could see more squat buildings and several corrals. The other buildings all matched the house as far as construction and color went, but the roofs with their shallower pitches were slightly snow covered. The heart of the Circle A operation seemed to have settled in for a long winter, just as Laurel Glen had back home.
As she tooled along next to the house, she noticed several work vehicles parked in a circular parking area just beyond the house that Jack had mentioned. Meg pulled in there, turned off the engine and got out. Her boots crunched in the dry snow as she walked toward a stone path that led to the back door.
The air was crisp and dry, so unlike most winter days in the east, where higher humidity levels made summer seem hotter and winter feel colder. The icicles dripping from the eaves of the house shone like diamonds in the sun. Her analogy of seeing the house as a ruby made more sense than ever. It really did glisten.
Meg stopped halfway up the path, her heart pounding. She would have to face
him
in a moment. She didn’t understand it, but something about the tall, handsome man with the iron-gray hair and commanding presence—her adversary, Evan Alton—undid her. She couldn’t face him like this. Then it oc
curred to her that there was something she hadn’t done since leaving the hospital. More important, there was Someone she needed to lean on.
“Lord,” she prayed aloud. “I praise You for being my Father. And I beg forgiveness for not leaning on You. I ask You to give me strength and patience with this man who has so disappointed me, for my child’s sake. And, again, please bless Jack, Beth and the twins with the return of her good health. If there is a lesson here for one or all of us, let it be learned from her illness and not her death.”
Feeling better able to face Evan Alton on his home turf, Meg walked the rest of the way up the path and across the stone patio. As with most homes in rural areas, the door was unlocked, so she opened it. She stepped into a homey kitchen with soapstone counters and back splashes and natural-colored, pine bead-board cabinet fronts.
Any other impressions she got were short-circuited somewhere on their way to her brain by the troubling cries of what sounded like a dozen babies. They sounded hungry. Good grief! Had the man abandoned the twins?
Meg quickly followed the wails to a sprawling sitting room with the vaulted ceiling she’d expected. And there she discovered a sight more startling than walking in on all that howling.
Evan Alton sat in a rocker with a baby on each shoulder, attempting to burp both fussy babies at the
same time. “Come on, you two,” he was saying in a low voice that even she had to admit had a soothing quality to it. “You’ve got to stop conspiring against your granddad. One little burp. I promise. Just cooperate and we’ll get you back to the feedbag.”
“Well, this is a photo op the local newspaper editor would probably kill for,” Meg drawled. “The great and powerful Evan Alton brought low by fourteen pounds of newborn.”
“Do you always walk right into a man’s home and attack him with your smart-mouthed comments?” he demanded.
“If and when I attack, you’ll know it. As for the house, I was invited. And I was under the impression that this was Jack and Beth’s home now. Or did you renege on that promise, too?”
“I have never once reneged on a promise to my son.”
Meg waited a beat, raised one dark eyebrow and said, “No, just on several to his mother.”
He shook his head. “Nope. Not to Martha, either.”
She clenched her teeth. “I was referring to
me.
”
The twins, who had stopped their crying when she’d spoken, apparently got bored with the sound of a new voice and started bawling again. “I assume you’ve come to help,” Evan said over the din. “So help. Take Maggie. She’s the easier to handle.”
“Are you implying that I can’t handle Wade?”
“No, I’m saying it right out plain and simple. He’s
having a problem with the bottle, poor little tyke. I’m not turning him over to some inexperienced second stringer who’s never done more with a baby than give him away.”
Oh! Meg folded her arms over her chest. “I wish I’d known then that you have no real respect for adoption. But you lied through your teeth to hide your feelings.”
“I didn’t lie,” Evan said emphatically. “I hold adoption and the ability to love someone else’s off-spring as one of the finer qualities humans have. It’s the parent discarding a child I still have trouble with. Especially when they turn around and storm back into the lives of those children three decades later, disrupting everything.”
Meg snatched up the infant in pink from his shoulder, and the bottle with the pink charm from the table next to him. “If you’ll remember, Jack came looking for me. It seems there was a void in his life he hoped I could fill. It isn’t my fault he felt that way. It’s yours.”
Evan gritted his teeth as Meg Taggert settled in the other rocker at the far side of the hearth. He’d probably ground a year’s worth of enamel off his teeth when she’d arched her dark eyebrow in that superior way of hers. Blast the platinum-haired witch! Knowing she was right really stuck in his craw.
Evan smirked in spite of his annoyance. For some reason, matching wits with her always made him feel
more alive than he had in the years before meeting her. “It must really get your goat that Jack chose to come back and run the Circle A and live here with me over Laurel Glen and that foreman’s job your brother gave him.”
Again that annoying but lovely eyebrow arched. “Ross didn’t
give
Jack a thing. He earned that position on his own merit. My brother hired Jack with no knowledge whatever of who he was. In fact, I was away at the time. Doesn’t it bother you that Ross saw the potential in Jack during a one-hour interview when you never had, even after living a lifetime with him?”
Evan arched his eyebrow in a mocking parody of her own expression. “I knew his potential,” he drawled. “He and I differed on the future of the ranch. It was Jackson who cut and ran. I finally decided that if I’d worked for years to build this ranch to where it was for his and Cris’s future, it was time he take over the reins and relieve me of the burden. That’s the difference between you and me. I’ve admitted my mistakes. You just keep living a lie, usurping other people’s children and flitting around the world when real life bores you or gets too tough.”
“Odd that you feel qualified to assess my life when yours has been such a dismal parody of really living. At least I’ve been there for the people who needed me and I haven’t spent over a year in therapy only to continue lying to myself. You weren’t build
ing this ranch for the kids. You worked yourself 24/7 so you wouldn’t have time to feel anything and so you’d be the great big fish in this little tiny pond called Torrence.” She stood, shaking the empty baby bottle. “Now that Maggie has finished this, I’ll change her and put her in her bed. Don’t bother showing me the way. I’ll just poke around till I come to the nursery.”
With that she floated from the room, leaving him with hundreds of comebacks erupting in his brain when it was too late to use any of them. And she left him with a terrible, hollow feeling about his obsession with the ranch and about his life for the past twenty-five or so years. He couldn’t deny that he hadn’t actually
felt
anything for years. Nothing but the loss of Martha and the fear of losing the children she’d prized above all else. Was that why he’d held them at an emotional distance all those years?
He hadn’t thought himself such a coward.
W
atching from the window at the end of the second-floor balcony, Evan saw Meg Taggert heft her big suitcase out of the trunk of her rental car, extend the handle and drag it behind her awkwardly up the uneven path toward the house. He tried not to feel small and mean, but it wasn’t working.
If she’d asked for his help, he’d have given it to her without a thought, but they hadn’t spoken a word to each other since he’d gone into the nursery to change Wade’s diaper, only to find that she’d rearranged the shelf above the dressing table. He always kept the baby wipes in the same place, between the rash ointment and the powder. That way they were at his fingertips in those moments when seconds counted.
She’d carelessly tossed off his complaint, saying
she hadn’t rearranged a thing. She just hadn’t remembered where everything went. So he’d patiently explained about having a place for everything and everything in its place so that changing two diapers before feeding the twins went more quickly. Twins changed certain moments of child care from a one-person labor of love to an assembly-line mentality. Bottles were made in twos. Bottoms were diapered in twos. Baths were a dual affair, as well. And these two, though male and female, were exactly the same in every way except for Wade’s bottle problems. So if there was no organization there was instant chaos, because they both wanted everything at the same time. And like their grandmother they weren’t long on patience!
The thump-thump of that heavy suitcase on the stairs shook him out of his reverie. He watched for a long moment as she struggled with the weight on the steps, then couldn’t let it go any longer. Evan turned from the window. “Here, let me get that,” he groused, then went down the wide stairs to stand next to her.
“I’m fine,” she said, and kept pulling it up by the handle, the wheels giving her no help on the steps.
He held out his hand to take the handle, but she showed no signs of relinquishing her burden. “Don’t be a fool,” he told her. “You aren’t going to do the twins any good in traction.”
“I’m a lot stronger than I look. And don’t let the hair fool you. I can run rings around you.”
Maybe her hair was more prematurely white than platinum, but there was still a golden glow of youth to the color and shaggy cut that brushed her long, graceful neck. Maybe that was what had kept him thinking of it as glamorous rather than an effect of aging. Or maybe it was her pretty and still unlined face. He looked at her, taking in her lithe figure and the unmatched determination in her bluer-than-blue eyes.
For years he’d been coming up against that same stubborn pride reflected in his son’s nearly identical eyes. He sighed, not doubting her stamina or her determination to have things her way. “No, woman, you just look like someone who’s bitten off more than she can chew with that steamer trunk. And you look like someone who’s going to put her back out. Now, let me carry that before we wake the twins arguing about something so stupid.”
She nodded and let him grab the second handle on the side. “It’s a suitcase. Not a steamer trunk.” She must have felt the need to explain. “I have gifts for the twins and I may be on my way to Hawaii after Beth is on the mend. I had to pack for two climates.”
He snapped the handle back in at the top and hefted the oversize case up the steps. He couldn’t believe she’d gotten it as far as she had. “How long did you plan for Beth to be sick? A year?”
“If you ever left your little kingdom,” she drawled, “you’d know there’s a large variety of activities on a cruise ship that all require different types of clothing. Plus we always dress for dinner at Laurel House. So I needed winter clothes for meals here, too.”
“Well, la-de-da. This isn’t Laurel Glen. Here, we eat in the breakfast room, or in the bunk house with the men, and sometimes even out on the range. Don’t go trying to impose your snooty ideas on us.”
She went on as if he hadn’t spoken. “As well as clothes for hospital visits and everyday wear while caring for the twins and the house.” Then she added one of her signature little zingers, proving she’d heard him after all. “Oh, don’t worry. I’m not here to civilize you. I never take on an impossible task. I just intend to take care of the twins until Beth is able.”
“I don’t remember asking for help with them.”
“I know. In fact, you talked Jack out of calling me when he should have. If he had, he wouldn’t be an emotional and physical wreck right now from trying to cope all alone every night. By the way, I also noticed just how well you were doing on your own when I arrived.”
Was the woman ever wrong? He decided to just ignore the comment. A wise choice, since this time he couldn’t think of a single comeback.
“Your room will be here,” he said instead of ad
mitting to that embarrassing truth. He carted the suitcase in and dropped it on the double bed. “There’s a private bath through that door.”
“What’s wrong with the one next to the nursery?”
“I’m staying in there so I can hear the babies in the night.”
“I thought I’d take care of the twins’ middle-of-the-night feeding.”
“If you really came to help, you can take Maggie, and I’ll take Wade. That way Jackson might sleep through the night if he comes home at all. I would have been over here before Beth was hospitalized if he’d let me. But telling Jackson what to do hasn’t worked since he was two years old. Or haven’t you noticed how stubborn he is?”
There was the most annoying light of pride in her eyes when she tipped her chin and said, “Oh, I’ve noticed. It’s a Taggert family trait. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to change out of these travel clothes before the twins wake again. Have you thought about dinner yet?”
“There’s a casserole defrosting,” he said, and turned away. “This isn’t Laurel Glen. I hope Your Majesty can adapt to something simpler than five-course meals served in a dining room,” he muttered.
Meg balled her hands into fists and flopped onto the bed as the door snicked closed behind maddening, infuriating, annoying Evan Alton. She uncurled her
hands and let them rest on her flat stomach. She was strung so tight she felt as if she were about to explode. What had happened to all her noble intentions?
She’d taken one look at him looking exasperated but unruffled by those hysterical, frightening infants and she’d gotten all defensive on him—after all, the best defense is a good offense. So she’d gone on the attack. There was nothing else to call what she had done. She closed her eyes and fervently prayed,
Lord, help me get rid of this awful anger.
The distressed cries of the babies woke Meg from a sound sleep. Looking at the clock on the bedside table, its digital numbers glowing green in the darkness, she realized she’d slept for over an hour. Then another spate of cries sent her into action. In record time she changed into carefully ironed jeans and a sky-blue-and-white ski sweater, then slipped into a pair of docksiders before going off to beard the Colorado lion in his den. Or the nursery, in this case.
“Now, what’s all this caterwauling?” she said in a sunny tone as she breezed into the adorable nursery.
Beth and Jack had done the room half pink and half blue above, and below a border with a white background. The well-known nursery-rhyme characters in the border cavorted along on a soft blanket of crisp green grass.
“I told her you two are like this,” Evan said as he fastened the tab on Wade’s diaper. “You both want changing at the same time. And feeding and
bouncing. A full-time job is what you two are,” he said, speaking more to the baby than her. “Now that Meg is here, she can change sister Maggie and Granddad can feed you right away. Doesn’t that work out just swell?” He lifted Wade off the changing table and into his arms, then walked toward the doorway.
“If you’re going to speak using the children as a filter, kindly refer to me as Grandmom. I don’t want them confused,” she said to his back. He stopped, his shoulders stiffening, then he walked forward. “Do you hear that, Wade? She wants to be called Grandmom. Who’d have thought a woman who’d never been called Mom until a couple of years ago would be ready for grandchildren? We’ll have to remember that, won’t we?”
Meg gritted her teeth. “Did you see him, Maggie?” she asked the fussy infant as she lifted her from the pretty white cradle that was all decked out in a soft pink. Wade’s white cradle was dressed identically, but in blue. “Did you see that superior expression he was wearing? Remember this, dear one. Handsome men are the ones we all want at first glance, but my, are they an arrogant lot. They start out sweet and smiling. But once we get to know them, we figure it out. They can’t hide their true selves for very long. The trick is to get to know them and not love them. That one, well, he won’t be a problem for me, but just you watch yourself, or he’ll
be running your life.” Maggie cooed and Meg laughed. “Me. Oh, don’t worry about me where he’s concerned. So far I haven’t been able to handle being in the room with that one for two minutes, so how could I find time to fall for him?” She glanced toward the door Evan had exited minutes earlier. “But he is handsome. I’ll give him that. And your daddy was wrong. He says his daddy’s eyes are blue, but they aren’t. They’re as gray as a snow-laden sky. Nope, not blue at all.”
Meg heard someone talking in the nursery at the ungodly hour of four-thirty the next morning. The twins had been up between one and two, and she and Evan had once again divided the care duties and kept them from waking Jack, who’d come in around midnight looking tired and more than a little defeated. Beth showed no signs of improvement from the change in medication.
As Meg tossed on her robe, she counted out the usual three-and-a-half-hour span between feedings. If the twins had awakened, they were up early and had been unusually quiet in their demands for once.
But when she opened her door, she let out a sigh. It was Jack talking in a low timbre to one or both of his children. As quietly as she could, Meg crept to the door that was slightly ajar and peered inside. Jack sat in a glider that had clearly been bought for Beth’s frame and not her son’s wide-shouldered build. He
held both twins, one in each arm, as they slept the sleep of the innocent in their father’s embrace.
“She really misses you two,” he was saying. “I’m going to download those pictures I just took and blow them up to poster size. That way every time Mommy opens her pretty green eyes she’ll see the best reason I know for her to fight to get better. Daddy’s going to miss you two, but I’ve decided to stay near the hospital to be with Mommy. I know it’s important for me to be with you two, but right now Mommy needs me there to be strong for her. Grandmom and Granddad are here for you, so I know you’ll be fine. But you both have to be good for them.”
Meg couldn’t handle the heartbreaking scene for another moment. She started to turn away, but the floor gave a telltale squeak, giving away her presence. Jack looked up and their eyes met.
“Mom. Join us. The kids and I were just having a chat. I guess you heard. I’m going to take a room at the motel near the hospital so I can be with Beth more.”
“That’s a good idea, Jack,” she said, and walked to stand next to him. With a hand on his shoulder she continued, “Beth really does need you right now. Your father and I will be fine here with Maggie and Wade.” Meg tilted her head, looking down on the sweet faces of the infants in Jack’s arms. “My, but Maggie looks like Beth.”
Jack smiled. “Except her coloring is all Taggert.
Who does Wade look like, do you think? He has Beth’s blond hair, but…”
Meg shook her head, feeling a poignant tug on her heartstrings. It seemed that history—or more truthfully, the Lord—had a way of righting inequities. “He has Wade’s hair. Actually he looks exactly like his grandfather. Right down to that little dimple in his chin. I’d keep him away from helicopters, if I were you. And most definitely the hayloft. Your father apparently tried to fly sans chopper when he was seven.” She chuckled, remembering Wade’s boyish smile as he told her about that chapter of his too-short life. “He broke both his legs and several ribs. He swore he’d still have been grounded if his parents hadn’t been killed when he was in his teens.”
“You loved him a lot.” Jack paused. “But isn’t it time, Mom?”
Meg frowned. “Time?”
“Time to start living life for yourself and not everyone else.”