Texas Strong (7 page)

“Don’t worry. I’ll be back to get it in just a little while.” In his eyes, she thought she saw understanding, and she smiled.

“I don’t know how to tell you how grateful I am that you were driving down this road. I didn’t know what I was going to do.”

“Somebody would have come along and helped you. We’re right outside Sweetgrass.”

Maybe they would have, but she wondered if any of them would have made her feel so safe.

“You’re not very good at accepting gratitude, are you?”

He shrugged slightly. “Don’t get much practice.” Then he said nothing else until they reached her new home.

Leaving her to wonder what he meant by that.

Chapter Four

I’m sorry. I was going to clean it up, but I got called in. Leave the mess for me. Love, Jake.

A
s she read the scrawled note on the kitchen counter amid spilled coffee grounds and abandoned filters, Laura strolled, note in hand, to survey the dining room.

Contemplated, for the first time in their marriage, walking away from the man who had once been her reason for being. For breathing.

Oh, sure, there had been arguments, fights, disagreements. You couldn’t live with someone for so long and not butt heads, to say nothing of how much the raising of children could strain the harmony between you. She had a temper, and he was pigheaded. They had different ideas about almost everything.

But somehow the marriage had worked. There had been spice in the friction. And love, so much love.

What concerned her now was that Jake seemed clueless about how his obsession with work was affecting them. Once family had been at the center of his life, and his devotion had sustained her through the difficult parts of being a medical widow and a stay-at-home, jeans-clad mom whose handsome husband spent his days with beautiful women. Many of them fell at least a little in love with him, and had Laura not felt so secure in his love, she could have been miserable.

But he’d always come home to her, always been faithful. Of that she was absolutely positive.

Which made dealing with this first-ever mistress so alarming. She could battle a flesh-and-blood woman; she had no idea how to win against the allure of high-stakes medicine. He’d cared about his patients when he’d been in plastics, but that concern paled against the siren call of trauma’s life-or-death drama.

The kids were gone, and suddenly Laura found herself almost an afterthought. She didn’t believe he was doing it on purpose, but somehow his lack of awareness was even more painful.

She was excruciatingly aware that there was no telling how many years they had left together. When Jake’s best friend, Bob Hunter, had died at fifty-two from a heart attack, the shock of it had made her resolve to stop putting off the adventures she and Jake had planned.

But the effect on Jake had been different. That was when he’d closed his practice and switched to trauma. Begun working even harder.

She was terrified of losing him, but when she brought up the subject, he reassured her that she’d be left a woman of means. He’d make sure she was taken care of.

Idiot. She didn’t want money; she wanted him. Laughing together as they once had so often. Traveling the world or simply sitting on their deck in the moonlight, holding hands.

She’d brought up the subject on numerous occasions, though careful not to nag. He spent so much time at home in a haze of exhaustion that she was loath to disrupt what peace he could find here. She kept searching for the wake-up call that would get through to him. To let him know how much she missed him.

She could start that catering business friends urged her to consider, but while that would fill the hours alone, it would be only a half life, a diversion to deflect her from thoughts of what might have been.

They’d been so smug about the infallibility of their love—could she ever have imagined they’d be this out of touch with each other?

Jake Cameron, you lunkhead
. She swiped at the tears she’d sworn not to shed.
Get a clue
.

She walked into the dining room with a trash bag to set the room straight. She thought better when her hands were busy, and the mess he wasn’t here to see was driving her nuts.

The doorbell rang. She set the bag down and went to answer it. The delivery guy was nearly invisible behind the explosion of roses.

Her heart melted a little as she accepted them. Well-tipped, the messenger left, and Laura placed the bouquet on the foyer table. Opened the card.
I’m sorry. I promise I’ll take care of everything. Love, Jake
.

“You’ll mean to,” she murmured. “Until you get called in again.” With dragging feet, she returned to the dining room and cleared away the debris.

The roses were beautiful. Extravagant.

Impersonal. Money was not a problem, thanks to the investments they’d made with the income from his former very lucrative practice.

Roses were too easy. She could accept them, forgive him whenever he finally arrived home, let things rock on this way, as they most certainly would if she let them.

But Laura wanted Jake back. Her Jake. Yearned for him to look at her, really look, not have his vision clouded by exhaustion or worry over his patients, by the blinding light of being the key player in the struggle to preserve life.

What he was doing fell little short of a miracle at times, yes. He was proud of his work, and she was proud of him. She had no wish to rob his patients of his lifesaving skills.

But he wasn’t the only physician on the planet, gifted as he was. He was carrying too much of the load on his shoulders, and she was losing him, a slow bleeding out as deadly as any patient’s.

There had to be some compromise, but thus far, she was the only one yielding. Jake Cameron had been her world for years, but sometimes lately she felt she barely knew him.

There had to be a road back for them. If she had to fight for him, then she would.

Even if it meant fighting dirty.

Inspiration hit. She raced through the cleanup and headed for her kitchen.

Chrissy couldn’t believe how much more quickly their belongings were unloaded from the trailer and pickup bed than when she’d packed them. Everything she had struggled to carry while her children were sleeping this morning seemed to weigh nothing in this big man’s hands.

Such a strong man should have thick meaty paws, but his were not. They were big, yes—the span of his fingers would wrap around Thad’s little chest—but they were long fingers and wide palms.

She shivered a little looking at them, but not from fear. A man’s hands could be so sexy. Or such a turnoff.

Tank’s were the former—not that it mattered. Even if she were in the market for a man, she’d been warned off this one. She kept a careful eye on him, watching his manner with her children.

He wasn’t comfortable with them, no. He said little to any of them.

But she noticed that he allowed Thad to carry things, seemed to understand that her son wanted to be considered bigger than the skinny little boy he was. Tank gave him no effusive praise, didn’t coddle him. Still, he treated the boy with respect, acting as though of course Thad could carry things, when other men might be shooing him away.

Thad flowered under Tank’s regard.

Becky, while still leery of the big man, also did her share, and he let her. He was gentle with her, but he didn’t belittle her or make her feel useless, either. He was choosing carefully what the children would carry, just as he discouraged Chrissy herself from trying to manage anything too heavy.

But he also didn’t give them token burdens to carry, and once he even allowed Thad to help him move a table that had Thad huffing and straining to do his part. Thad’s glow at the end of it was glorious to see. His pride made Chrissy realize that too often she still babied him. He was her baby, of course, but he yearned to be considered big. Tank wasn’t affectionate, no, but at the same time, he accorded Thad the honor only a man can convey to a boy, that sense of being another man, if an unformed one, something no mother on earth could replicate.

If he said next to nothing to any of them, still she was surprised at how comfortable his presence was. There had never been a man in their little family, not really, and certainly no one half as strong and powerful a presence.

“Anything else I can help with before I go pick up your car?” he asked, clearly ready to go.

“No. Thank you so much.” She hesitated, held back by his reserve. But right was right. “May I fix you supper as a thank you? It’s not enough, but—”

His eyes met hers, clearly hesitating, probably unwilling.

“Never mind. You must have better places to—”

“I’d—that would be nice,” he admitted. “But you don’t have to.” He looked everywhere but at her.

Why did people think he was so hard, so mean? All she could see was an endearing awkwardness.

But she thought she saw interest, too. Maybe he didn’t get many home-cooked meals. She didn’t possess her sister’s genius in the kitchen, but she could manage the basics. Immediately she cast around for what she might have in the ice chest that would satisfy this big man who’d expended so much effort on her today. “I haven’t shopped, so it won’t be fancy. You don’t have to say yes, if you’d rather not.”

He shifted on his feet. “It’s not necessary for you to cook for me.”

“It’s very necessary,” she said firmly. “I don’t know what I’d have done without you. As it is, I have to find a way to return the trailer by morning or I’ll lose my deposit—”

“I’ll take care of that and pick up another serpentine belt before I get the car.”

“I don’t feel right about you doing the work.”

“If you’d rather have a professional, Jonas does excellent work. I can drop off the car there.”

Dismay suffused her as she contemplated her meager savings dwindling to pay for repairs. She needed more time to work and save. “It’s not—I just don’t want you to feel that you should—” She looked away because she didn’t want his pity. “If you really don’t mind bringing the car here, it doesn’t have to be repaired yet. I can walk to work, and the bus will pick up the kids for school.”

“I know how to do the work. You should let me.” In his gaze she saw sympathy, yes, but not crippling pity.

Jake and Laura would give her the money to repair her car anytime she asked. Jake had offered to buy her a new one, for that matter. But Laura hadn’t been the one to make Chrissy’s mistakes. She had never rebelled. She had no tattoos and no children with a deadbeat dad. She’d gotten an education, and she’d married a doctor. Raised three smart, beautiful children and created a home to envy.

Chrissy had made every mistake in the book, but she wasn’t going to compound that by relying on charity. Her own smart, beautiful children would have a good example for a mother. They might not have all the toys and clothes and privileges Laura’s children had enjoyed, but they would have all the love in her heart, and they would see that there was nothing wrong with good, honest work. They witnessed their mother struggling, yes, but they never saw her take the easy way out. Not anymore.

“I…this is hard. But yes, I’d really appreciate that. Now you have to let me start making it up to you by at least fixing supper.” She hated being in anyone’s debt.

“That’s a lot of work.”

Her gaze rose to his. “You’ve spent so much of your day already on helping us. It’s the least I can do.”

He shrugged. “It sounds pretty great to me. I don’t get home-cooked meals very often, not if you don’t count Ruby’s. Her food is great, but…”

He seemed to honestly mean it. Chrissy thought over the supplies she had. Thank goodness she’d bought the basics before they’d left Austin. Rapidly she calculated. “I can do it tonight.”

“You must be tired.”

She was, but when wasn’t she tired anymore? “I’m fine. is there anything you can’t or won’t eat?”

She surprised a quick grin from him. He really did have a beautiful smile. “Nothing that doesn’t eat me first.”

Thad giggled, and even Becky smiled. Chrissy smiled herself. “Let’s plan to eat at six, if that’s okay.”