Mary Forbes - A Forever Family

“Toilet working okay?”

He whipped around, the bucket clanging against a drawer. Arms crossed, she leaned in the doorway, one bare ankle slung over the other. Behind him the tiny round window let in the day’s light, tipping her cheekbones with rose.

“Yes,” he said, voice gruff. “It works.”

She smiled, glanced at the counter where he’d tarried. “Find anything interesting?”

He stepped toward the doorway. Her smile faded. A bouquet of meadows in summer caressed him. Oh, yeah. All woman. Easy angles, sweet-eyed. “Maybe I have.”

Her nostrils flared. “And it would be…?”

Today, three filigree chains swung like wind chimes from each of her tiny lobes. He tapped a trio. “Just…” You. “Little things.”

“Is there one in particular you favor?” Those blue eyes ringed in black swallowed him.

He perused the edge of her jaw, the line of her throat. “There is.”

A snippet of air against his knuckles. Hers.

Once, twice, his thumb grazed the satin of her neck. He tilted her chin. Her sweet mouth. Waiting for him. God, decades down the road he’d look at her features and be captivated. Still.

Paralyzed, he stared. Giving one woman, this woman the rest of his life? Out of the question. He wasn’t about to chance fate. Fate could involve kids. Fate had taken his parents’ plane into a mountainside. Left him and Leigh orphaned.

Like Jen.

Settling down was not in his Tarot cards. Neither was waking up beside the same woman until he was ninety-plus. Trouble was, within the space of two days his ethics had taken a lopsided turn out to left field. Because of her. Shanna.

Caught in her eyes, finger crooked under her chin, he wanted to wrap her up like a Valentine’s gift, kiss her till the cows came home, lead her through the open door of the bedroom five feet away, fly her to the stars.

But not forever.

“Mike?” she whispered.

He dropped his hand and stepped back.

“What’s wrong?”

“I have to go.” Two strides and he was down the hall. “I’ll find a guy in town to paint this joint.”

In a flash she was on his heels. “My brother can do it.”

He stopped. “Your brother.”

“Why not? He could use the money.”

“Fine.” She was close again. Too close.

The kettle whistled. He headed for the door, yanked it open.

“Where do I buy the supplies?” she called.

“Spot O’ Color. It’s on Riverside and—”

“I know where it is.”

“Great. Tell your brother to get on it ASAP. I want the dairy sold before fall.”

He slammed out of the cabin before she answered. Before he changed his mind, stormed back inside and kissed her like…hell, like a crazy man.

She washed the bag of the last big-bellied black-and-white Holstein with Santex disinfectant. “Almost done, Rosebud.”

In the metal stanchion, the cow chewed her cud peaceably. Shanna hung the Westfalia Surge milking unit on a hook and affixed the suction cups to the animal’s sanitized teats. Hiss-click-hiss-click. The machine streamed milk to the sixteen-hundred-gallon stainless steel tank in the milk house.

Dressed in green overalls and rubber boots, Shanna knew a contentment she hadn’t felt since growing up on the Lassers’ farm. She liked the cows’ broad, docile faces, their big, dark eyes, their gentle natures. She fancied the classic bovine odor within the big flatbarn: a fusion of hay and manure and sweaty hide. And, physical as it was, she liked the work.

She’d like it more if she could stop thinking about the doctor and those moments in her washroom. When she thought—knew—he’d wanted to kiss her.

For the past two days, since striding from the cabin, he’d kept himself and Jenni hidden. Late at night the Jeep’s headlights would come down the lane and stop at the farmhouse. The next morning, after milking was finished, the car was gone again. She wondered if the child came and went with him.

Ah, why worry? she thought, releasing Rosebud from her milking apparatus. He made it clear you weren’t to interfere.

Prickles ran up her nape.

He stood five feet away, hands shoved deep into the pockets of black trousers. The sleeves of his gray dress shirt were flipped back on his forearms, the collar liberated of its tie.

Her breath quickened.

Ignoring the broody expression on her employer’s face, she pressed a wall button and, on a clang of metal, relinquished the last group of ten cows of their stalls.

“Checking to make sure I’m doing my job, Doctor?”

“Nope.”

“Good.”

Down at the far end of the parlor, old Oliver Lloyd, whistling to Tim McGraw’s “Where the Green Grass Grows,” hosed manure and urine from the step-dam gutter. On Tuesday, the slurry man would haul away the two-week store. The animals clopped down the alleyway toward the open double doors at the rear of the long barn. Shanna tagged behind them with Michael at her shoulder.

Approaching the paddock where the cows fed at extended troughs filled with a silage of corn and alfalfa, she scanned the doctor’s dress slacks—with creases down those long runner’s legs—and his black buckled shoes. “Fresh patties ahead. Sure you want to walk through here in those?”

His lips moved. “Where you going?”

Away. Far away. “To check the water system.”

He surveyed the galvanized vat near the opposite gate. “What’s wrong with it?”

“Nothing, but I check it regularly.”

He stared out over herd and land. A cluster of sparrows chirped in the eaves. From the western hills, the sun slanted long, spindly shadows beside the cattle as they found their places at the feed stanchions, tails lazily swishing flies.

“You’re an amazing woman, Shanna McKay.” He spoke without looking at her. “You come here out of the blue, answer my ad personally, befriend my niece who’s barely talked to a soul in three months, and milk ninety head of cows twice daily as if it’s the most natural thing for a woman to do.”

“It is,” she said and meant it.

He turned, his gray eyes searching hers. “No,” he replied. “It’s not. It’s damned hard work.”

In the natural light, he looked exhausted. Beneath the shirt, his big shoulders slumped a little. Shadows, like the prints of inked thumbs, lay under his eyes.

“And doctoring isn’t difficult?” she asked, beating back the urge to lay a cool hand to his cheek. She didn’t want to feel sorry for him.

A rueful smile. “At times.”

“There you go. All jobs have their rough moments.”

As if he hadn’t heard her, he said, “I don’t know how you do it. But then you’re unique.”

“That’s not what you said in the cabin.”

His eyes returned to hers. “What did I say in the cabin?”

“That I was different.”

He flicked one of the three-inch gold dream-catchers she’d slipped into her ears at dawn. “Unique,” he repeated softly. A corner of his lips curved. “And possibly a little atypical.”

She felt the look he gave the ball cap controlling her messy hair clean to her toes. She wished she wasn’t in hot, heavy barn gear, but in some light, airy thing. Ah, who was she kidding? She wasn’t the light, airy type.

He looked back at the land. He did that a lot, she noticed. Gazed off as if taking a detour from what was on his mind.

A slight bump rode high on his long, thin nose. An austere, masculine mold cast his lips. Was he a timid kisser? She doubted it; she’d bet he was an openmouthed, migrant sort of guy. A tongue dancer. How many of those cute nurses have you kissed?

More than I want to know.

She headed for the metal vat. Plunging her bare arm into the cold water, she felt along the bottom for the outflow. Good, free of blockage. Stepping back, she shook her arm and swiped at the water droplets.