Marrying an Older Man Read online

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  and he would eat later when he had the time. What he'd really meant was that he'd eat when Caroline was long gone. It was no doubt cowardly, but he couldn't face her again just yet not with her wearing that tight shut that showed clearly what he'd already suspected: Caroline Moncton wasn't built like a kid of any age, which didn't mean that she wasn't one, just that his body couldn't quite seem to appreciate the finer points of the reality. It was best just now that he kept his distance; so his belly button was kissing his backbone and his cold, tired body yearned for the comforts of home.

  He kept his head down as he trudged up the low hill toward the house. The night had an edge to it that made his bones ache and threatened to bite the end off his nose. Welcome warmth flowed over nun when he opened the side door and stepped up into the darkened hall. He divested himself of his outer gear, stomped his feet clean on the inside mat and ventured on into the house. The television hi the den was on, the volume turned low. His dad was probably watching the evening news. He would join him as soon as he'd found something to eat

  What he found was a heavy stoneware plate heaped with a thick hamburger steak, rice, mushroom gravy and a hot bean salad in the warming oven. A pair of Caroline's tall cream biscuits were wrapped in tin foil. Ravenous now, he ate standing up and washed the meal down with half a glass of cold milk. That second half would sure go good with something sweet. He poked around a bit but found nothing to interest him. Carrying his glass into the den, he noticed that his father's chair was empty, but a rustle of movement told him that someone was stretched out on the couch.

  "Any of that chocolate cake left?" he asked.

  A feminine gasp was his first clue that he wasn't talking to his father, then Caroline Moncton sat bolt upright on the sofa, blinking her eyes. He leaped back, nearly dropping the glass of milk.

  "Oh. I guess I fell asleep," she said thickly.

  While he stood there mentally kicking himself for not checking to see if her car was still parked in the driveway, she lifted her arms over her head and stretched like a lazy cat, bowing her back and thrusting forward ample breasts. Jesse's mouth went dry. He

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  couldn't help noticing that her shirt was held together with a safety pin. At the moment the soft flannel fit her like a second skin, and he wondered where the button was and just how long that pin would hold. Finally she slumped forward, sighing, and got to her feet. That was when he realized he'd been holding his breath.

  "How's the horse?"

  "Huh?"

  "How's the horse? Tiger said you had a horse coming down with something."

  "Oh. False alarm. H-horse seems fine now."

  She beamed him that thousand-watt smile. "Good. Well, I guess you're wanting your dinner."

  "No, uh, actually, I've already eaten."

  She seemed momentarily disappointed, then her gaze fell on the half-empty glass. "Well, how about some dessert? I made a coconut custard pie today."

  "Uh, no. No, thanks."

  Her face fell. "Don't you like coconut?"

  "I like coconut fine. I just don't... That is, I'm really beat. All I want to do is go to bed. I mean, turn in. I'm, uh, just going to turn in now. Good night." He nearly made it. He had turned and was almost into the hallway when she stopped him.

  "Jesse, don't be like this."

  He thought about ignoring her words and heading straight down the hall to the stairs, but the sound of her voice, all husky and soft, had brought him to a complete halt. He couldn't very well plead ignorance now when it was so obvious he had heard her. He put on a devil-may-care expression and turned back to face her. Lifting his glass, he took the time to drink his milk before saying with a smile, "I don't know what you mean, hon. I'm just tired, and since you were asleep when I came in, I figured you were probably as tired as I am."

  Caroline sighed and folded her arms just beneath her breasts. "You aren't being fair."

  "About what?" He was proud of himself; he sounded totally perplexed.

  "About me."

  7f

  He shook his head. ' 'Caroline, don't you realize how much we value your work around here? Why, Mom literally sings your praises. You've worked out real fine. No cause for concern."

  She stuck out her chin pugnaciously, her mouth drawn into a pretty pout. "I'm not talking about that."

  "No?" He threw his arms out. "Well, I can't imagine what you're talking about, then, but I assure you, everyone here is pleased with everything you've done. Okay?"

  She didn't answer him, just stood there, holding him with her eyes. He made himself smile as if she'd given him just exactly the reply he'd expected. "You better get on home now. See you tomorrow."

  He attempted to flip her a wave, forgetting that he held the empty milk glass, and covered his unease with a self-deprecating chuckle. He sounded like a duck choking, but he wasn't sticking around any longer to see how she was taking it. With a light-heartedness he surely didn't feel, he turned and went on his way, stopping by the kitchen to rinse out his glass and leave it beside the sink with his plate. She still hadn't left by the time he was finished, so he whistled tunelessly as he hurried down the hall to the stairs. She let him go, but he couldn't help wondering if it was going to be that easy. Just how long could he sidestep her? And just how blatant was she willing to be? He had the feeling that he might have unwittingly declared war and that she had just begun to fight.

  Jesse climbed the steps to the loft, appalled with himself and the whole situation. He couldn't believe he was doing this, but what else could he do? She'd lain in wait for him more often than not lately. Mornings, afternoons, evenings, he never knew when she was going to turn up. It was like walking around waiting for an ambush, knowing it was coming, dreading it. Wondering if he could prevail.

  The awful truth was that the woman, girl, scared him to death.

  Even when she wasn't around, she harried him. He wished for the millionth time that she hadn't kissed him on Thanksgiving night, that she hadn't worn that tight shirt the next day, that she wouldn't smile at him with her blue-green eyes all smoky and go j

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  out of her way to do sweet things for him: cook his breakfast, bring him coffee, press his no-wrinkle shirts, put extra starch in his jeans just the way he liked. He wished she wouldn't look at him with naked longing in her eyes and that her voice wouldn't go all husky and soft when she spoke. Most of all, he wished he could forget how it felt to stand close and let her mouth work against his, her small hand stroking his skin. He didn't want to think about how she smelled or how she looked with her straight pale hair falling down her slender back. He wanted to sleep peacefully again, without dreaming of a girl much too young and much too innocent for what he had in mind. What he couldn't quite get out of his mind.

  Sighing, he looked around him. He hadn't turned on the over

  head light, and much of what he saw was cloaked in pure dark

  ness, but he knew this place, like every other on the ranch, as

  well as he knew his own face. An enormous white freezer, used

  for storing everything from stud and bull semen to mare's milk

  and vaccinations, stood at the top of the stairs. Bags of feed were

  stacked at one end of the long room. Two large round bales of

  hay took up the other end, one of them more a mound now than

  a bale. Along the sides were trapdoors set at regular intervals in

  the floor. The chutes below went straight to the feeding boxes

  built into each stall on the ground floor of the big bam. In the

  center of the room stood a long metal table and a pair of mixers,

  operated much like oversize flour sifters, that emptied into buck

  ets. ^

  He spent part of every day here blending feeds for his horses and dumping them down the feed chutes or, sometimes, carrying them back downstairs to hand-feed a sickly or nervous animal. This was one of his favorite places, redo
lent of the clean, loamy fragrance of grains and animals. It was always possible to find a warm or cool—as the case might be—corner here. Sometimes he came here just to think and look out across the property at the mountains from the big loading window that faced the house.

  He went there now, unlatching and opening the heavy shutter just wide enough to see outside. There in the driveway beneath the untidy glow of a sensored lamp atop a high pole sat Caroline's tiny, decrepit foreign excuse for an auto. Damn. Didn't she ever

  go home? He closed and latched the shutters, shivering in the bitter breeze.

  What was he going to do now? He wished he'd had the foresight to bring a book or a magazine with him, then he grimaced. Why was he hiding out here in the barn like a wayward child when a comfortable chair and a warm, cozy fire waited for him in the house? But the answer to that was all too obvious. He was hiding out here because Caroline waited for him in the house, too. He'd fled immediately after dinner, when she'd told him that she wanted to discuss something with him at his convenience. He'd hoped that "his convenience" would prove so inconvenient to her that she would just let it go, but as- usual, Caroline was nothing if not resolute. Well, she wasn't going to wear him down.. He had lots more experience at keeping himself out of involvements than she could possibly have at forcing them. Meanwhile, he was stuck here with nothing much to do.

  He figured he might as well check on each of the horses personally once more and moved across the floor to the stairwell, unaware that his heavy footsteps clumped loudly enough to be heard below or that anyone was there to hear them. He was halfway down the bare wood steps when she spoke.

  "There you are."

  He nearly jumped out of his skin, but the instant after that he was angry.

  "Damn it, Caroline!"

  "Sorry," she said contritely. "Didn't mean to startle you."

  Suddenly he felt like a heel, but he wasn't about to apologize. Instead, he said gruffly, "What are you doing here?" Only belatedly did he realize mat he'd just opened himself up to conversation. In order to discourage an answer, he pushed by her and went straight to the first stall, letting himself in with the horse. She followed him.

  "I told you I wanted to talk to you about something."

  "I'm busy, Caroline," he said brusquely, peering into the feed bin. He ran a hand lightly over the bay's sleek back, watching the animal shiver, as if it was the most important thing he'd seen all day. Caroline stood patiently. When he couldn't bear it any longer, he demanded, "Can't this wait?"

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  "No, it can't wait," she told him softly but firmly, hanging her elbows over the stall gate. "I'm busy, too, Jesse. I have a schedule to meet every day, and tomorrow, along with putting three meals on the table—"

  ' 'Two," he retorted without thinking.' 'You don't have to cook my breakfast every morning, you know."

  ' "That's beside the point. Breakfast or not tomorrow, I still have to do the shopping."

  Shopping on Friday. That's right. He'd forgotten all about her system. Laundry on Mondays, floors on Tuesdays, bathrooms on Wednesdays, dusting on Thursdays, shopping on Fridays. The house seemed to stay effortlessly spotless and the pantry fully stocked all the time since she'd come. "What's that got to do with me?" he snapped, uncomfortable suddenly with her surprisingly sophisticated organization of her duties.

  "I want to discuss doing the shopping in a different way."

  He finally had to stop pretending to work on the horse and give her his attention. "You'll have to explain that."

  She gathered her thoughts and did so succinctly. "The first Friday of every month your mother and I sit down and make out menus for every day. Then once a week we go through the pantry to see what we have on hand, make a shopping list, and go to town. Sometimes we have to hit three or four stores to get the best prices, and it's usually too much for your mother. She winds up shivering in the car while I try to finish up at hyper-speed."

  "So what's your solution?" He had no doubt that she had one.

  "A warehouse store has opened up not too far away. They have a good reputation, excellent products, the very lowest prices, but you have to buy in bulk. Also, they require a membership fee every year. So the initial outlay would be like three times the weekly grocery budget, but I've done the figures repeatedly, and I'm convinced we could get at least a month of meals for the cost of those three weeks, even figuring in the extra meals while your brother's family is here for Christmas and Christmas dinner itself. Now we have the storage space for buying bulk, and it would mean very nearly one-stop shopping but at a greater distance, and the grocery budget would have to be disbursed differently. And before you decide, I should point out that the weather may some-

  times rule out the trip, which is just under fifty minutes, meaning mat we could find ourselves winging it through the local grocery stores at times, and that could—probably won't but could—negate the savings. So, what do you think?"

  He had to mull it over. She'd certainly done her homework. Frankly, he'd had no idea food shopping was such a chore. Hadn't given it much thought, really, but now that he did, he realized that she'd been providing all those rich, abundant meals on die same budget on which his mother had been operating with a good deal less results. Obviously his mother couldn't manage the shopping with the same efficiency as Caroline—either because of her infirmity or because she just hadn't thought of doing it Caroline's way or both. He put his mind to the thesis with which she had presented him and came up with a question.

  "Could we maybe buy for, oh, two or three months in advance? That way the weather wouldn't be such a big factor."

  She bit her bottom lip, giving his question some thought "Two maybe, but not three. We'd have to have a good deal more freezer .space, and also, we'd need to run into town every so often for fresh vegetables and such."

  "Won't we have to do mat, anyway?"

  "Yes, you're right. We will."

  "So, if we had a bigger freezer in the house we could buy in bulk maybe once a quarter and augment that with fresh goods from town, say once a week."

  She nodded. "You'd sure save a bundle on your grocery budget that way, and your mother wouldn't have to endure the weekly shopping marathon. I've tried to get her to let me handle it alone, but she knows it's really a two-person job."

  "But this way you could handle the weekly shopping by yourself?"

  "I don't see why not."

  "Okay, let's do it."

  She stared at him in obvious surprise. "Just like that? But what about die freezer?"

  "I'll trade with you," he said. "There's a freezer upstairs about half-full of various stuff. If it's suitable for your purposes, I'll have it switched with the one in the house."

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  She shrugged happily. "Let's take a look at it."

  "Okay."

  He let himself out of the stall and led her up the stairs to the top. This time he flipped on the overhead light "It's not real attractive, I know. Pretty scratched up. But it works fine. It's actually newer than the one in the house."

  She shook her head.' 'Nobody goes in the pantry but your mom and I and sometimes your dad. I can't imagine that they'd mind. I sure don't. Can I look inside?"

  He fished a key out of his pocket and fitted it into a tiny, round lock beneath the handle. The lock clicked softly, and Jesse nodded. "Go ahead."

  She opened the door and poked her head inside. "Shelves are all intact. I like these two big pullout bins here. The door has really deep, keeper space." She straightened and closed the door. "I only see one problem."

  "What's that?"

  "The freezer in the house doesn't have a lock."

  He shrugged even as he put the key in and turned it. "I'll get a padlock. This one really isn't enough to stop a determined thief, anyway."

  She lifted her arms and smiled. "Works for me."

  He felt rather pleased with himself. "I'll have them switched tomorrow."

  "Terrific."

  Th
ey stood there smiling like idiots for a moment before Jesse remembered that he was supposed to be keeping his distance. He was just about to suggest that she go on her way and let him get back to "work," when she turned away and'took a look around the loft.

  "Oh, this is great!" she said. "Just like a barn is supposed to be. What are those things in the floor?"

  He heard himself answering before he'd even thought about it. "Those are feed chutes. The traps slide open so you can pour feed down the chutes straight into the feed bins in the stalls downstairs. That way you don't have to carry everything up and down the stairs."