Her nails were quite long, the very same shade as her suit, a fact she had taken some pleasure in this morning.
When she had been a completely different person.
“Doreen and Danny will like her,” Gumpy said.
“I hope you’re not suggesting she stay.”
She looked up from her fingernails to see Gumpy nod, once, with grave dignity.
The cool, angry note in Ethan’s voice as he bit out a single word woke the children. They struggled to sit up, rubbing their eyes, taking her in with only mild curiosity. Then they slipped off the couch and disappeared down the hall.
“Don’t touch my hat,” Ethan called over his shoulder, though he did not turn around.
The children giggled and broke into a run that did not bode well for his hat, though at the moment she could not imagine anyone who valued their lives defying him.
But Gumpy did defy him. “I think she should stay.”
“You crazy old coot! She is not staying. You are putting her back in that truck and taking her back wherever you found her.”
“So,” Gumpy said softly, “now I’m a crazy old coot. But when you want something, it’s Grandfather.”
“You’re his grandfather?” Lacey asked Gumpy with surprise.
“No!” Ethan snapped.
“For the People, Grandfather is a term that denotes respect,” Gumpy said softly, his dark eyes locked on the gray ones of the younger man.
To her immense surprise, Ethan looked down first. A small muscle jerked angrily in his jaw. But when he looked up again at Gumpy, the flash of fury was gone from his eyes, though they were as cool and as unnervingly steady as ever.
“She can’t stay,” he said quietly.
“He’s right,” Lacey said, moving to Gumpy and putting her hand on his sleeve. “Of course I can’t stay. I’ve made a dreadful mistake. I’ll go. Really.”
Gumpy studied her face, saw the resolve in it and sighed.
The little girl danced into the room. “Gumpy, I flushed your keys down the toilet.”
Ethan said that word again, so that Lacey just barely heard it. Not a very nice word at all.
“Don’t you just love flush toilets?” the little girl asked, looking right up at her.
She had the most beautiful blue eyes, Lacey thought, and exquisite bone structure, very like her uncle’s. Short dark hair scattered around a cherubic face. Out of the corner of her eye, Lacey saw Gumpy struggling to suppress his laughter. His thin shoulders were shaking.
“I do,” Lacey said, though she had to admit she had never given the topic a single thought in her entire life. “I like flush toilets very much.”
The other little imp materialized, and looked up at her with eyes amazingly like his uncle’s. “I’m Danny.”
“Hi,” Lacey said.
“And I’m Doreen,” the other one said.
Ethan was not being sidetracked by introductions. “You can take my truck,” he said grimly to Gumpy. “You’ll be back in plenty of time for us to use it to feed cattle.”
Lacey looked at Gumpy with concern. Surely he would not be expected to drive back and forth all night and then feed cattle in the morning?
“Never mind,” Ethan said, evidently reaching the same conclusion. For a moment in his eyes a barrier came down, and she could see his affectionate concern for the old man outweigh his substantial irritation. “I’ll take her.”
He strode out of the room, and it was as if something went with him. Energy. Light. Lacey realized his physical nearness had made her edgy, aware of something beating, pulsing, deep within her.
Danny and Doreen raced around the room and then disappeared down the hallway.
Lacey studied the living room. It was only slightly homier than the kitchen she had come through earlier. The couch looked worn but comfortable. A bright scatter rug was underneath it, no doubt to keep feet warm on icy winter nights. The coffee table, a beautiful old scarred wooden trunk, held a cup of coffee, half-full, and a well-thumbed book that looked like a medical manual on cattle. There were no pictures on the walls.
Keith, she knew, would hate this room. His taste ran to authentic Persian rugs and antique oriental vases. But she found herself drawn to it, to the lack of clutter, to the simplicity.
She glanced, covertly, at the four movies lined up under the televison, wondering what they would tell her of the man who lived here. Toy Story, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Dances with Wolves and Chris Irwin, Horse Whispering Demystified. Gumpy shuffled over and sat on the couch, looking peaceful and unperturbed, but she felt driven to apologize anyway.
“I’m sorry, Gumpy,” she said softly, “I never should have let it go this far.”
He just smiled, that wise and knowing smile she had come to like very much.
They heard a drawer slam in the kitchen.
“Where the hell are my keys?”
From a different part of the house, Lacey heard breathless giggles.
Ethan must have heard them, too. Because the silence was suddenly very silent. She could hear the fridge motor.
“Doreen?” he called. “Danny?”
Silence.
“Where are my keys?”
Hushed giggles.
Lacey turned to Gumpy and widened her eyes. She mouthed, “The toilet?”
He nodded and she waited for an explosion, but none came.
Ethan came back into the living room. He sank down on the couch and closed his eyes for a long moment. He looked tired and discouraged, much, she thought, how she must have looked when Gumpy found her at the airport.
“You probably can’t even cook,” he muttered in her direction.
“You haven’t eaten until you’ve had my vegetarian chili,” she told him proudly.
“Vegetarian?” he said with flat dislike.
Even loyal Gumpy was looking at her with distress. “Vegetarian?”
They heard a toilet flush and then flush again, followed by childish laughter.
“My life,” Ethan said, slowly and deliberately, “could not possibly get any worse than it is at this moment.”
She felt it was wise to say nothing. Apparently so did Gumpy.
“Miss?” Ethan said, opening one gray eye and looking at her.
“Ms.,” she corrected him.
His sigh of long suffering said his life had just gotten worse. “You’re on a cattle ranch,” he told her, reclosing his eyes. “As in beef. We promote the edibility of red meat.”
“Oh.”
The phone rang, and for a long time it seemed as if both men planned to ignore it.
“You know who that is, don’t you?” Ethan asked Gumpy.
“Not a clue.”
“It’s a hopping-mad fifty-seven-year-old woman who has successfully raised four children on a diet of meat and potatoes.” Except for the hopping-mad part, he sounded distinctly wistful.
He unfolded himself from the couch and went and got the phone.
Chapter Two
The phone was wall mounted in the hallway. Ethan picked it up and