Home Field Advantage (12 page)

"Why?"

She hardly knew the answer.
It had to do with a distant relationship with her father, with never having had
anybody to lean on, except Mark. It had to do with...

Marian finished her thought
aloud. "After my husband walked out, I swore I'd make it without him. I
swore I'd do it myself."

"But you don't have
to." John was just behind her. She could feel the force of his
personality, hear the determination in his voice. "My offer is still open.
You and the kids are coming home with us. If you don't want to stay, that's up
to you. But today I won't take no for an answer."

She didn't turn to look at
him. Instead, she continued to gaze out the window, seeing past and present
together; empty swing set, laughing children, a square of sand with a ruined
castle, patient Snowball gone, fat, useless Esmerelda, late-season apples she
wouldn't be here to pick, even a trace of Mark's presence. They had made love
once out there in the grass, smelling the lilac and the apple blossoms.

But her bitterness was locked
away. She sounded only a little sad when she said, "I couldn't say no even
if I wanted to, could I?"

*****

"Would you pass the
jam?"

Marian passed it. Just as she
had imagined he would, John tilted his glasses down and smiled at her over
them. Smiled with unmistakable...satisfaction. That was it. He'd gotten his
way. She was in his bailiwick, his turf, his... How did the sports page always
describe it? Marian saw it like a headline. John had the home field advantage.
She knew it, he knew it, and it scared her.

That was the precise moment
when she was sure she couldn't stay. It might be the logical, sensible thing to
do, but... She didn't feel logical and sensible. She only knew that she
couldn't bear sitting here, morning after morning, passing the jam, sipping
coffee with him, listening as he commented over the newspaper.

He had started breakfast more
formally than that, and Marian had sat on the other side of the table feeling
like the guest she was.

Most of her possessions had
been unloaded in John's garage, where they sat forlornly. She and the twins
were ensconced in the two side-by-side guest bedrooms, though Anna and Jesse
had actually slept in the queen-size bed with Marian. Emotionally exhausted,
she had gone to bed early and slept like the dead, waking to find sunlight
streaming across the gleaming wood floor and the twins gone. A distant giggle
reassured her and a shower resuscitated her enough to shuffle downstairs in
search of her children, following the smell of bacon and eggs. When she stepped
into the kitchen, her first realization was that the twins were happily
playing with Emma; her next was that John, thank God, wasn't wearing a
bathrobe. She didn't think she could handle that. Though she couldn't help
wondering how muscular his long legs were, whether they were hairy or sleek.
And then there were the scars on his knees...

But he wore jeans, a sloppy
sweatshirt, and brown slippers. Her gaze shied away from the slippers. She'd
only seen two men in her entire life wearing slippers. They were cozy, homey,
comfortable. She didn't feel comfortable with John McRae.

Emma chattered at the
breakfast table, filling the silence. Anna and Jesse each sat on piles of
books, since the booster seats were heaven only knew where. They ate shyly,
whispering small responses to Emma's enthusiasm.

John listened to his
daughter, interjected an occasional remark, dished up more scrambled eggs for
Anna, and smiled at Marian, who realized guiltily that she should be cooking
breakfast.

Finally she burst out,
"Don't feel like you have to entertain us. I mean, if you like to read the
newspaper or something like that..."

He tilted an eyebrow.
"Was I entertaining you?"

"I just don't want to
get in your way..."

John regarded her for a long,
thoughtful moment, his clear gray eyes disconcertingly perceptive. Then he
said, "I do usually read the paper over breakfast. Do you want the comics
first?"

"Uh…sure. Why not?"

John stood. "You done,
hon?" he asked his daughter. "How about you, Jesse?"

"Can we go play?"
Emma asked.

"Anna hasn't quite
finished. Besides, kiddo, you have to hop on the school bus in exactly..."
He glanced at his watch, "Ten minutes."

"Can't I stay
home?" she pleaded as he carried dirty dishes over to the kitchen sink.

"Nope." Back at the
table, he bent to kiss the top of her head. "They'll still be here when
you get home."

Her lower lip stuck out.
"Oh, pooh!"

John grinned, unfolded the
paper and handed half of it to Marian, who was staring down at her eggs and
bacon and wondering how much she would have to eat before she could gracefully
excuse herself.

Excuse herself to do what? a
little voice whispered. Go upstairs and sit on her bed? Volunteer to muck out
stalls? Grocery shop? Mow the lawn? What was she going to do? Play housekeeper
even though she had no intention of staying?

How could she not? She had to
repay him somehow. The least she could do was be useful. After she politely
ate the breakfast he had cooked.

She pretended interest she
didn't feel in the comics, then opened the classified page. The columns of
rentals didn't take long to peruse, because there were only a couple of new
listings. One a four-bedroom house with a hot tub for twelve hundred a month,
and the other a one-bedroom fixer with a low rent in exchange for carpentry
skills. One extreme to another.

Marian was frowning down at
the page when John said, "Still looking for a rental?"

She flushed like a kid caught
with Mom's lipstick on, feeling inexplicably guilty. Would he think she was
ungrateful?

"I'm sorry, I
just..."

He sliced a finger across his
throat. "Watch it."

Her brow crinkled.
"Watch it?"

"No more apologies.
Okay?"

It was harder than she'd
expected to meet his eyes, but Marian bit her lip and kept her gaze steady.
"Okay. Yes, I am still looking for a place of my own. I really think
that's best. But while I'm here, I intend to be useful. I don't want you to
think I don't appreciate..."

"Are you trying to
apologize again?"

She opened her mouth, closed
it, then chuckled. "Probably. See? That's why being dependent is bad for
me. I feel like I should shuffle my feet and bow out of the room."

John frowned a little as he
looked at her, but the twist of his mouth was rueful. "Yeah, I do
see," he admitted at last. "I'd probably feel the same—"

"Mommy, I want
down," Anna interrupted.

"Me, too," Jesse
said.

"A budding yes
man," John murmured.

"Wait until you see one
of his temper tantrums," Marian said under her breath.

"I want to play with
Emma's toys," her daughter demanded, sounding like the autocrat she was.

"Me, too," Jesse
agreed.

Stifling her amusement,
Marian glanced at Emma, who said graciously, "It's okay if they play with
my toys."

"Then I don't see why
not," Marian said. She helped the twins down from their perches and wiped
their faces while John handed Emma her lunch box and herded her out the front
door, watching from the window as she climbed on the school bus. When he sat
back down with his coffee in the now peaceful kitchen, Marian hesitated, then
joined him.

"Can I thank you
again?" she asked softly. "Or is that verboden, too?"

"Definitely off
limits." He grinned with that rakish charm she found so hard to resist.
"Want to talk about the weather?"

"No," she
straightforwardly said. "What I'd like to talk about is what my duties
should be while I'm here."

"If you're not going to
take the job, you don't have any duties," he said calmly before sipping
his coffee.

"Then I can't stay,"
she said with equal firmness.

Their gazes clashed. At last
John shook his head, a glint of humor in his gray eyes. "Stubborn, aren't
you?"

She smiled. "Gee, I
think we've had this discussion before."

He shook his head again,
laughing. "You win! What do you want your duties to be?"

"I guess whatever your
last housekeeper did."

His expression became oddly
sheepish. "Would you believe me if I told you I don't know the half of
it?"

"You mean, you don't
know what she did?" Marian asked.

"I hired her right after
my wife died. She...well, sort of took over. Dinner was on the table, clean
clothes in the drawers, the bathrooms were clean..." He shrugged.
"Now that I'm on my own, I keep discovering things I should have been
doing. In about two weeks the house started falling apart around my ears. At
least I have a cleaning service coming now. But... Oh, for example, I
discovered the other day that Emma was bringing stuff home from school that I
should have been reading, but it seems Helen knew enough to go look in Emma's
bookpack. I didn't. I found a wad of papers an inch thick. I've missed a couple
of things at school that I should have gone to. And then there's packing school
lunches. That's been an adventure."

"Hot lunches?"
Marian ventured.

"Emma won't eat any
except the chicken nuggets. In fact, she's damned picky. We alternate peanut
butter sandwich—no jam or honey—noodle soup, or string cheese with
crackers."

"She hasn't been that
picky at my house," Marian said in surprise. "No more so than most
kids, anyway."

"Maybe you're a better
cook than I am. In fact, I know you're a better cook than I am! How could you
fail?"

Marian was grateful for his
admission of helplessness. He sounded as though he really did need help. She
had wondered.

"So you want me to just...take
over?"

"Exactly." He
smiled provocatively. "Play mother."

"I am a mother."
Marian knew she sounded acerbic and couldn't help it. What if he launched an
all-out assault on her defenses? She wasn't sure she could bear too many more
of his smiles, period. She wished she could be like housekeepers of old, who
wore somber gowns and their hair in a bun and faded into the woodwork. She was
pretty sure John wouldn't let her take her meals separately, however.

She had to find a rental
soon. She had to.

*****

It wasn't going to be as easy
as he'd imagined, having her in his house. In fact, John wasn't sure it was one
of his more brilliant ideas.

He had known he was attracted
to Marian, liked her, sensed that she could be someone special to him. The
perfect woman, he thought wryly, remembering his first impression of her. The
trouble was, he wanted her. God, did he want her. He felt a little like a
teenage boy forced to live with the object of his most desperate passion but
told to keep hands off. He watched her whenever he could do so without being
obvious, he lingered when he passed her bedroom to catch the faintest whiff of
lilac that she left behind her. He took the long way around the room if that
led him closer to her. He touched her unnecessarily often. Always casually, of
course.

Right.

So far, the wariness in her
eyes had kept him from doing more. It scared him, the way she looked at him. As
though she was afraid of him. But why? Why? Wouldn't you think a woman in her
position would be eager to find a new husband who could pay the bills?

So why did her entire
self-esteem hinge on her paying them herself? Which brought him to the crux of
the matter. Who was her ex-husband—and where was he? Maybe it was none of
John's business, but he wanted to know why the twins' father was nowhere around
when they had been virtually homeless.

*****

So what was he going to do?
John wondered, a couple of afternoons into Marian's stay, as he ran a brush
over the sleek chestnut coat of a dainty young mare he had high hopes for.
Should he give Marian the space she needed? Or take advantage of proximity?

Maybe it didn't make him a
very nice man, but he knew the answer.

Just then Isaiah passed in
the shadowed aisle of the barn, leading a yearling he'd been working on the
lunge line. His footsteps were silent, though the colt's made a soft clop,
clop. "School bus," he said.

John grunted a response, then
turned the mare loose in the stall. He paused for just an instant, pleased at
her round belly and delicate beauty. This would be her first foal.

Emma's arrival gave John an
excuse to head for the house and lurk around the kitchen. Ridiculous, the
pleasure he took in watching Marian do something as simple as making dinner.
He was dreading having to leave tomorrow, even though this week's game, thank
God, was in Seattle, and he'd only be gone overnight. He couldn't remember
feeling so reluctant to leave—or spending so little time with game films and
stats during the week. If he didn't get his butt in gear, he was going to be
caught totally unprepared, no doubt with the camera on him. He wasn't the only
one who would be embarrassed. And network executives didn't appreciate being embarrassed.