Montana Mail-Order Wife

“I don’t know.” She told the truth, not only because he deserved it, but because he’d know if she lied. “I haven’t decided yet.”

“Guess you don’t want to be around a kid who causes so much trouble.” His narrowed eyes and the aggressive jut of his chin dared her to disagree.

She rose to the bait with honesty. “If I do stay, you’ll be the main reason.”

“Me?” Astonishment replaced his pugnacious look.

“You.” The smile of warmth and approval she gave him originated deep inside. “I think I’m going to like you very much.”

Grinning as if she’d given him a priceless gift, Jordan turned and rushed out the door.

A FEW HOURS LATER, with Band-Aids plastered on her cuts from the potato peeler, Rachel crossed the grassy back lawn and followed a dirt track toward the barn. The Forest Service firefighters and volunteers had already gathered at makeshift picnic tables on the side lawn and helped themselves to Ursula’s grilled steaks, mashed potatoes and fresh-picked salad. When she and Ursula had served the apple pies and Wade still hadn’t appeared, Rachel had gone in search of him.

She found him at a large washtub beside the barn, stripped to the waist.

He dunked his head into the water just as she approached, and the broad, smooth muscles of his back glinted golden in the last rays of the sun as it dropped behind the mountains. He pulled his head from the water and whipped his streaming hair back from his face, radiating strength and virility like the sun projects light.

At the sight of him, she wondered anew why every unattached female in the county wasn’t set on marrying him. He’d said he wouldn’t marry a local girl because of Maggie’s memory, but had refused to elaborate. His unspoken anger at the mention of Maggie’s name suggested his reluctance had nothing to do with honoring Maggie’s memory. But what else it could be was a mystery. If Wade wouldn’t tell her, maybe Ursula would.

Still, it was a shame some woman couldn’t wake up every morning to those seductive brown eyes, closed now as he groped along the bench beside the tub for his towel.

She scurried forward and grabbed the cloth, which had fallen into the dirt. Flicking it clean, she thrust it into his hands. He dried his face before opening his eyes.

“Thanks.” He toweled his hair, seeming unsurprised to find her there.

She averted her eyes from his bare chest and muscled arms and gazed instead over the adjacent field of tall grass that stretched toward the river. But looking away didn’t prevent the scent of spicy soap and a faint whiff of wood smoke from reminding her of his presence.

His deal with her was only business, she reminded her mutinous senses.

“You had supper?” he asked.

“The others are almost finished, but I was waiting for you.”

“Why?”

At the surprise in his tone, she wheeled to face him. “I want to talk to you about Jordan.”

He shrugged into a clean denim shirt and began fastening the buttons. “What about him?”

She’d spent a half hour with the boy while he picked at his supper and cast anxious glances toward the barn in anticipation of his father’s return. “He’s scared to death.”

Finished with his buttons, Wade turned his back, a small concession to modesty, unzipped his jeans and tucked in his shirt. The intimacy of standing with a man she barely knew as he bathed and dressed in the gathering twilight would have unnerved her more if she hadn’t been so concerned for the boy.

He zipped his jeans and swiveled to face her. “Jordan doesn’t have anything to be scared of.”

She wanted to shake Wade as, without a clue to his son’s torment, he calmly rolled up his sleeves. “He’s scared to death of you.”

He flinched as if she’d struck him. “Me? That’s ridiculous.”

“Is it?” She had learned a lot from the boy in her short interval with him. “When did you last spend any time with him?”

“I can’t be everywhere. I’ve been at the hospital with you for almost two weeks.”

Lucky for him, a trace of guilt filtered through the defensiveness in his voice, or her anger would have exploded. “And before that?”

He stopped and thought. “Week before last, when final report cards came out. I set him straight about his C in language arts.”

“What were his other grades?”

He shrugged. “A’s and B’s.”

Common sense told her to back off from the man who was offering her the hospitality of his home, but the terror she’d witnessed in Jordan’s face prodded her on. “What did you say about his good grades?”

He combed his damp hair with his fingers. “What was there to say? They were fine.”

When he set off toward the house, she took three strides to his one to keep pace. “Wade Garrett, if you want me to honor the promise I made before my accident, you’d better stop right now and hear me out.”

“We’re not married yet, Rachel girl.” He stopped and faced her. A muscle twitched at the corner of his mouth in an insinuation of a grin. “It’s a little early for you to start bossing me around.”

“Bossing…?” She held her breath and counted silently to ten while he stared with a provocative half smile on his too-darned-handsome face. She exhaled, calmer, and broached the reason for her confrontation. “Jordan’s terrified you’ll punish him for starting the fire.”

A rock-hard grimness replaced the half smile. “He should be punished.”

Her stomach churned with frustration. “Punished for trying to get his daddy’s attention by doing something you’d be proud of?”

The harsh line of his mouth remained taut. “I don’t recall anybody handing out prizes to firebugs. The boy’s got to learn the difference between right and wrong.”

“He knows the difference. What Jordan needs to learn is that his father loves him.” If Wade hadn’t been so huge, with a build like a boulder, she’d have jostled him till his teeth rattled. “He didn’t set that fire on purpose. You should know him better than that.”

Wade lifted one dark eyebrow in question, but his mouth remained stern.

Undeterred, Rachel plowed ahead. “From the short time I’ve been around him, I can tell Jordan’s not a troublemaker.”

“He could’ve fooled me.” Wade lowered his face to within inches of hers and heaved a frustrated sigh. “I could make a list as long as my arm of the trouble that kid’s been in, just in the last month.”

She crossed her arms over her chest and glared. “And it never occurred to you to wonder why?”

“Because he doesn’t have a mother to keep him in line, that’s why. That’s where you come in.” His slow grin sent shivers of delight coursing down her back.

But she refused to be distracted. “Jordan wants you to notice him.”

Wade regarded her with a look half quizzical, half amused. “What are you, a psychologist?”

She gritted her teeth. “It doesn’t take a psychologist, or a rocket scientist, to see Jordan needs your attention. Today he was trying, all by himself, to fulfill the requirements for a camping award.”

“What?” At least Wade had the grace to look bewildered.

“You didn’t know he was working on the project?”