“Not until you hear me out, Sam Warne.” Nadine blocked his path to the back door. “Don’t you ever, ever, leave my sons alone in a
parking lot again. And don’t even think about driving them anywhere after you’ve had a few, okay?”
Sam winced. They both remembered the night while they were married when he’d rolled his pickup. If not for his safety belt, he would have been thrown from the crumpled vehicle and possibly killed. At that time he’d sworn off liquor. His abstinence had lasted all of three months.
“You can’t tell me how to handle my sons,” he said.
“Oh, yes, I can, Sam. And I will,” she proclaimed. “They’re my boys, too, and when it comes to their safety—”
“I don’t have to listen to this.” He hiked his jeans up beneath the sag that was his belly and stormed out. The back door slammed behind him and his truck, as he backed out of the drive, sent a spray of gravel beneath screaming tires.
“Mom?”
Nadine froze. Dread tore at her heart as she turned and found John wrapped in a yellow bath sheet, his skin blue, his hair wet and his eyes round. “You’d better get dressed or you’ll catch your death.”
“Don’t yell at Dad.”
“Oh, John.” She folded him into her arms and felt his teeth chattering against her shoulder. “I don’t mean to argue with him.”
“It was okay. Me and Bobby, we were fine in the car.”
“He shouldn’t have left you.”
“I wasn’t scared.”
“How about Bobby? Wasn’t he afraid?” she prodded, knowing about her younger son’s vivid imagination.
John shrugged a slim shoulder.
“Tell me.”
“Well, just a little, maybe, but then he fell asleep and everything was all right.”
She held her oldest son at arm’s length and saw the pride in his reddened eyes, felt him square his shoulders. He was just too young to try to be the man of the house. Her heart squeezed painfully and she kissed his damp forehead. “Go on and get your pajamas on and I’ll have dinner on the table.” She gave him a playful swat on the bottom and he hurried upstairs to the loft.
By the time he came down again, she had a fire roaring in the grate and was trying to awaken a groggy Bobby.
John’s appetite was enormous, and Bobby, though he usually liked Stroganoff, was glum and too tired to show much interest in food. After dinner, she bathed him, hauled him off to bed and turned out the light after John climbed into the top bunk. They were asleep before she finished the dishes.
Still inwardly seething at Sam, she made herself a cup of coffee, grabbed her sewing kit and glue gun and dragged the nearly finished jacket out of the closet. A few more beads and rhinestones dripping down one sleeve and it would be finished. She felt a small sense of pride. At least this jacket would be sold before Christmas. It was a special order from a bareback rider whom Turner Brooks had known during his days on the rodeo circuit. The woman, buying a horse from Turner, had seen a jacket Nadine had made for Heather and commissioned one for herself on the spot.
“Just make it a little more flashy,” she’d said around a long, slim cigarette. “You know, a few more sparkles.” Well, the jacket was definitely flashy.
The doorbell rang before she finished. Expecting Sam again, Nadine braced herself for another confrontation, flung open the front door and found Hayden, his hair windblown, his face flushed with the cold. Her stomach slammed hard against her abdomen.
“This is a surprise.”
“For both of us,” he admitted. “I didn’t expect to come back here.”
“Did I forget something this time?” she asked, her voice brittle, though her heart was pounding against her ribs.
He shook his head. “I’m the one who forgot.”
Her brows drew together. “Forgot? Forgot wha—” Before she’d finished asking the question, he’d grabbed her and clamped his arms around her. His mouth found hers and with anxious, hungry lips, he kissed her.
She couldn’t let this happen again! She wouldn’t! With all the strength she could muster, she tried to push him away. “Hayden, please…don’t…”
Every muscle in his body grew rigid. Slowly he drew his head away from hers and stared into her eyes. What he saw in her gaze, she could only guess, but slowly he released her. “I…” He shoved the hair from his eyes and swore beneath his breath. “Hell, Nadine, I didn’t mean to come on like a Neanderthal. But it seems I can’t do anything else when I’m around you.” He shook his head, disgusted with himself.