Daddy's Little Matchmaker

From the frown that instantly crossed his face, throwing the angles of his cheeks into sharp relief, Laurel fully expected him to deny the child. But as he half turned to peer at her through the door, the lines softened measurably. “You want to go, honey? Are you positive?”

“I want to see how to get yarn out of sheep’s wool. And I like Ms. Ashline.”

“Is that what you’re going to do?” Alan practically barked at Laurel, blaming her with his eyes for the fact that Louemma thought she was nice.

She could have ended it then and there. But the eagerness on Louemma’s face wouldn’t let her. “I plan exactly that,” she mumbled at last. “I’ll demonstrate washing, carding and spinning yarn from sheep’s wool, and thread from raw cotton bolls.” The stab of guilt she felt over her testiness toward him also came with an unexpected reward in the slow smile that lit the girl’s dark eyes.

“Uh, so I’ll see you next week, Louemma,” Laurel said. “I’m glad Mrs. Madison has a van big enough to transport all of you girls.” She abruptly sidestepped the Ridge Jeep, waved to the girl and ran across the street to where she’d parked. As she felt Alan Ridge’s smoldering gaze tracking every inch of her progress.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE OUTING TOOK A TOLL on Louemma; she fell asleep on the drive home. Still furious about the way Laurel Ashline had fouled his attempt to stonewall a second meeting, Alan carried his sleeping child into the house. It galled him that Laurel had sashayed off in that sugar-wouldn’t-melt-in-her-mouth manner after setting him up.

She’d planted the suggestion in Louemma’s mind by mentioning she could ride there with Charity. As if he’d entrust his daughter’s transportation to anyone else! Her own mother had disregarded something as basic as weather warnings.

The house was silent, so he walked quietly along the hall. Entering Louemma’s room, he placed her gently on her bed, then removed her jacket and shoes. Finding a lightweight coverlet, he settled it over her, thinking he’d let her nap until dinner. Then he might ask if she’d like to go see the Disney movie that Charity had mentioned. He wanted their lives back to normal. Wanted Louemma to have friends again.

Alan knew he was guilty of hovering. Marv Fulton, their family physician, said to quit treating Louemma like an invalid. He said they should plunge back into their pre-accident routines. Ha! Marv obviously didn’t understand how hard that was.

Finding Louemma’s favorite stuffed animal, a plush brown bear she’d had since birth, Alan propped it on the pillow where she could readily see it if she woke suddenly. She was still prone to nightmares, although she never said what they were about. The accident, everyone assumed. Marv thought maybe they’d never know. He hoped in time they’d fade. So did Alan.

He left the bedroom and bumped into Vestal.

“Oh, you’re back from the weaving demonstration.” She peered past him, into Louemma’s bedroom. “How’d it go?” she whispered.

Pursing his lips, Alan left the door ajar. With a slight shake of his head, he led the way to his office. Leaving his grandmother to choose a seat, he rummaged in the small fridge and extracted a bottle of water. “Can I get you something to drink?” he asked, not looking at her, but rather out the window at the budding tulip trees.

“Nothing, thanks. I take it from your evasiveness that things didn’t go well. I’m so disappointed. I’d hoped—”

“What?” he snapped, whirling. “Did you think a weaver would have some magic potion? That she’d succeed where the very best medical talent has failed?”

“Maybe,” Vestal admitted wearily, sinking onto a high-backed leather chair, which had been her husband’s favorite. She rubbed the brass studs on the rich green armrests. “I’m sorry if Louemma hated the demonstration, or if being there made her feel worse. What’s next, Alan? Find a new bone doctor? Or another psychiatrist?”

He took a deep swig from the icy, sweating bottle. “I didn’t say Louemma hated the demonstration. It…just opened a can of worms. She’s begged to go to the woman’s cottage next week. She’ll be spinning thread like some damn black widow spider.”

The old woman leaned forward eagerly, adjusting her trifocals over her myopic eyes. “Why didn’t you say so right off the bat? That’s good! Think how long it’s been since Louemma took an interest in anything outside the house.”

“I’m afraid I don’t agree it’s good to foster an interest in something she’ll never be able to do, Grandmother. Is it wise to throw her in with peers who only make her feel more inept? Sarah Madison was such a pain today. According to Charity, it’s only a phase. All I know is that Sarah caused Louemma’s problems at school, too. I thought those two were best friends. Was I so blind and naive before the accident?”

“Girls are fickle, Alan. Sarah may not know how to handle what’s happened to Louemma. Maybe its her way of coping. Your friends haven’t all known how to act, either. Shoot, most of them don’t know what to say or whether to even mention Emily. These are just kids. Go a little easy on them.”

“I’ll try. But I’m not letting Louemma ride out to Bell Hill next week with Charity, and that’s final. It’s not that I think she’s a bad driver. She’s probably fine. But Emily drove fine, too.” He brooded for a minute, staring into his water bottle. “Anyway, hauling Louemma and her wheelchair across the footbridge needs a man’s strength. Did I tell you that Ms. Ashline has a ferocious watchdog? Oh, and horses. You know how hysterical Louemma got over our horses when she came home from the hospital. How will she react to a yapping dog?”

Vestal rose. “It sounds as if you’re making a laundry list of excuses so you can avoid the next Camp Fire meeting yourself. Is this really about all the things you just brought up? Or do you plain dislike Laurel Ashline?”

“She’s pushy. And takes independence to extremes.”

“Hmm. I thought she was attractive and quite gracious. With a smoky voice that reminded me of a young Lauren Bacall. But you know how I love Bogie and Bacall’s old movies,” she said, absently straightening papers on Alan’s cluttered desk.

“Don’t organize my controlled mess,” he said testily, setting his plastic bottle atop a particularly precarious stack of shipping orders.

“Laurel or something else really rattled you today. It isn’t like you to snap, Alan. I’ve always said you were the most even-tempered of all the Ridge men. Unless…” She paused. “Unless it wasn’t her at all. Maybe it had to do with being in Charity and Pete’s house again—without Emily.”

“Vestal, why are you bent on giving me a hard time?”

“I’m not. I know what’s it’s like to lose the other half of your heart.”

As if noting how Alan stiffened, Vestal sighed, stood and glided quietly from the room. Over her shoulder, she called, “Dinner’s at seven, remember? Birdie’s fixed chicken and dumplings.”

Alan grunted a reply, crushing the thin plastic of the water bottle. Instead of getting straight to work as he’d planned, he moved restlessly back to the picture window and stood silently evaluating empty rows of paddocks and bluegrass growing too tall inside unused corrals.

Perhaps his grandmother was unaware of the strains within his and Emily’s marriage. Probably just as well. He never wanted Vestal or Louemma to know the full extent of the questions raised by the police who’d investigated the accident. The note Emily had left on their dresser for him to find had said she and Louemma were spending a week in Louisville shopping for school clothes.

The police had asked a million times why, if Emily had gone on a shopping spree, so many suitcases brimming with clothes were packed in the trunk of her Mercedes. And why she had left Alan a note instead of simply calling the distillery to apprise him of her plans. There’d been plenty of whispers floating around at the funeral, too. Thankfully, Louemma hadn’t been well enough to attend. Alan wished he really knew why a woman he’d known all his life and lived with for a lot of years would ruthlessly run off with the one thing they both loved more than life itself. Except he knew, deep down, that Emily felt they were in competition for Louemma’s affections.

Was he afraid of the truth? Was that the real reason he hadn’t wanted to rekindle old friendships, like the one he and Emily had shared with the Madisons? Alan didn’t want Louemma’s memories of her mother ever to be marred by unsubstantiated hearsay. And if that meant forgoing social pleasures, so be it.

JUST BEFORE THE SECOND Camp Fire meeting, Laurel had to ready the loom cottage for the invasion of children. A long bench set with hand looms and plenty of chairs were already in place. Her grandmother had given lessons, but not to women from Ridge City. Laurel was unsure why.

She’d been prevented from attending Hazel’s funeral by the most serious of Dennis’s drinking binges. An attorney had sent her the sympathy cards collected by the funeral home. Several women from a nearby town had spoken fondly of the hours they’d spent at Hazel’s, learning how to weave.

If anything had given Laurel the impetus to sever the bonds of a marriage she’d tried so hard to hold together, it was the fact that Dennis had found and destroyed those cards, plus a letter from the attorney saying Hazel had wanted Laurel to attend her funeral without her husband. That had sent Dennis into an uncontrolled rage. He’d been drinking a lot in the weeks before. But the cards and the letter had set him off. His anger had apparently made him crazy—so crazy he’d smashed her loom and her spinning wheel and cut up finished products that would’ve kept a roof over their heads for another month. For the first time in their marriage, Dennis had raised his hand and struck Laurel, so hard she fell, bruising her cheek and her shoulder.

That was the end. Up to then she’d maintained the marriage. She’d kept a spotless house. Had paid bills on the sly so he wouldn’t feel emasculated. And she’d accepted his hat-in-hand apologies time after time. But he’d never hit her before.

She was just sorry that it took her grandmother’s death to give her the strength and the means to stand up and walk away. Hazel had offered a ticket out more than once, and Laurel had always refused. Not a day passed that she didn’t wish she’d come sooner. Now she could only hope her grandmother was looking down to see how much this place meant to her. “Well, Dog, we’re as ready for them as I guess we’ll ever be.”

He raised his head from his paws. Then he jumped up and loped to the door, running back to Laurel, then to the door again, barking loudly.

“It’s okay, boy. There’s no one in this group I need protecting from.” But because she wasn’t sure how he might act around noisy kids, Laurel snapped a leash to his collar. Together they followed the winding creek down to the footbridge.

She stopped short of the bridge, realizing Charity Madison hadn’t brought all five girls. Alan Ridge’s Jeep had pulled in behind.

“Maybe I do need protecting,” she murmured to her pet. But even as the words left her lips, she chided herself for such silliness. She hadn’t met a soul in town who didn’t speak highly of the man. She didn’t need twenty-twenty vision to see he was a doting father. And by all reports, cared for his grandmother.

So why did she get squirmy merely watching him climb from his Jeep? Maybe because she liked the way he looked in his tight blue jeans and open-throated white shirt. Laurel frowned. It wasn’t like her to swoon over a man’s looks. Yet there was a definite shift in her equilibrium.

Dog growled deep in his chest and didn’t let up.

“Hush. I know you recognize him. He’s not bringing flowers this time, but he will be carrying his little girl. She’s fragile, Dog, so if you don’t want to be shut in the house for the next hour, start making them feel welcome.”

As if he understood, the animal dropped to his belly at Laurel’s feet. And as the children trooped across the wooden bridge, he woofed softly, letting his tongue loll out the side of his mouth as the girls gathered around, lavishing attention on him.

“Big change in that animal between now and the last time we met,” Alan said in a husky voice. He held Louemma aloft and pushed her empty wheelchair.

Laurel, who kept an eye out for any adverse reaction from his child, ignored Alan’s remarks. “This is Dog,” she announced. “Don’t let his size or bark fool you into thinking he’s mean. He might look fierce, but he’s a big gooey marshmallow inside.”

All the girls laughed.