A Forever Family. Mary J. Forbes

      With the salary he’d laid out? Unable to think, much less speak, she managed a “No.”

      Without pause, he scribbled in the notebook. Thirty seconds passed. Forty.

      Had she been dismissed? She read the check again. She should feel elated. She’d gotten the job. With a lucrative wage. For a few more months, Jason’s college fund and her night school accounting courses would stay intact.

      So what was the problem?

      Michael Rowan.

      He intrigued, confused, and beguiled her into silly daydreams.

      Get real, Shanna. The man wouldn’t look twice at you.

      Staring at his bent head she unloosed a mental sigh. The logistics were as elemental as the points of a triangle. Point A: Their lifestyles—right down to his pen—were macrocosms apart. She observed the gold stylus flying across the page. Hardly a Bic special. Point B: Their natures didn’t concur. His reflected the Grinch while she, fool that she was, would give her right arm to safeguard and coddle the powerless, the tender-footed and the ugly. She shook her head.

      Why couldn’t his grandmother be the one hiring?

      Why couldn’t his face be broad and flat-boned?

      His hair sparse and colorless?

      He slapped shut the book, tossed it on the desk, and strode from the den. “That pickup down by the barn yours, Ms. McKay?”

      She leapt after him. “Yes, I—”

      A shrill bleep arrested his progress. She almost bumped into his back. He checked his pager. “I need to make a call. Wait here.” Back in the study, he closed the door with a quiet snick.

      In the silence, the room lay at her feet: the tall windows, the tea set, the portrait of the woman.

      What had she been thinking, Shanna wondered, envisioning herself in this house? It wasn’t her. Houses like this…

      A glance at the closed study. Men like that…

      Like Wade. Charming in face, honed in body. Women drooling with one look of his sinful eyes and one flash of his sexy smile.

      Still, standing where she was, a sense of homecoming seeped into her blood, warm and favorable. She thought of Caleb and Estelle’s farmhouse where she’d spent most of her adolescence. Where she’d come to realize Brent—her father—would forever be a rodeo hound. Loving her and Jase, in his own skewed way, from miles down the road.

      What she felt here couldn’t compare to those days.

      Why this strange house?

      She saw herself curled on one of the two love seats bracketing the octagon coffee table. Browsing one of the magazines scattered there. Dreamily admiring the big African violet. Touching the child’s tea set…

      Her heart sank into its battered furrows. Had fate been kinder, had life taken a different route, toy trucks and trains might have covered her coffee table….

      Oh, Timmy, my sweet little baby.

      Fool. You’ve got to stop dreaming.

      Ah, but she’d always been a dreamer. Marriage, kids, a house with a garden… But not in this house. Still, she couldn’t shake the feeling of rightness.

      An illusion, that’s all. A lovely, horrible illusion.

      She had to get away before the fantasies overwhelmed her. She could not work here. Not for Michael Rowan, who muddled her common sense. And not in a place that had home written everywhere she looked. No matter how, she’d find an office job—or wash dishes, scrub floors, flip burgers—anything but milk cows for a man who had the capability of holding her elusive hopes in the palm of his hand.

      Shouldering regret, she walked into the kitchen and set the check on the corner of the oak table. Seconds later she stood outside, shoving her feet into her wearied sandals. Already, she could feel the jerk of the old Chevy’s tires rumbling off Rowan land.

      She jogged down the stoop.

      His leather loafers waited in the grass.

      She walked past them.

      Halfway down the flagstone walk, she stopped, looked back, sighed.

      Ah, shoot.

      She’d always been a mark for brooding men.

      Michael dialed Cliff Barnette’s number. Prayed his Realtor had what he wanted. He wasn’t crazy about Cliff handling the sale of the estate, but the man was Blue Springs’ best.

      Barnette picked up on the first ring.

      “It’s Michael Rowan.”

      “Hey there, Doctor Michael,” the Realtor crooned—as if he and Michael were beer-chugging buddies. “We got some bad news. That fellow who was ready to sign the deal this morning backed out a half hour ago. Couldn’t get the loan, apparently. Sorry, guy, but it looks like we’re back to the drawing board. Don’t be disgruntled, though, it’s only been a few months. Big place like yours takes a little doing.”

      “Yeah.” Michael rested an elbow on the desk and massaged his forehead. Just what he needed. Another dose of the long haul. He was so tired of this selling business.

      Oh, Leigh. Why’d you have to go and die?

      He jerked upright. It wasn’t his sister’s fault that rig had lost its brakes on a corner and catapulted into her husband’s rattletrap pickup. It had been Michael’s inadequacy that didn’t save her.

      And the limitations of a small-town hospital.

      “You there, pal?” the voice in his ear boomed.

      “Yeah.” He scrubbed a hand down his face. “Do what you can, Cliff. Maybe something will come up in the next week or so.”

      “I plan on zipping a couple ads into the southern regions. Los Angeles and the like.” He chuckled. “See if we can draw some interest from those rich gentlemen around Tinseltown who think farming is a hobby or a lark.”

      “Fine. Let me know if anything looks favorable.”

      “Will do.”

      Michael set the receiver back in its cradle. What if it took years to sell the place? He wasn’t cut out to milk cows, plow fields, or ride fence lines. That had been his twin’s niche, her dream. Like a point of proof, she’d chosen to live on the land where they’d been raised by their grandparents. When their grandmother retired, Leigh had gone after her second goal and married Bob, a local man. She’d settled in this very house and had attained a stalwart status in the dairy industry.

      They had been a threesome of heirs to the land, with Michael as the silent partner.

      He wanted to laugh at the appalling irony. Now, Leigh and Bob were the silent ones. Eternally.

      And Jenni. God, what to do about their six-year-old daughter? How to resume his career, run this place, and raise her? He knew nothing of kids. Hell, he could barely face the tyke most days. When her whimpers came in the night…

      He set a thumb and forefinger against his tired eyes. He had to get rid of Rowan Dairy. Get rid of the memories. Take Jen away—away from the only home she knew.

      Forget about easing her into her loss. He wanted to simply move them both back to his town house in Blue Springs—like he’d done right after Leigh’s death.

      “Why can’t we live at the farm, Uncle M.? Why do we have to stay in your town house?”

      Okay, so he’d keep them here. But, dammit, the longer they stayed in this house, the harder it would be to leave later.

      Still, Jenni required adjustment time. Before he removed her from the community—a hundred miles south—to Seattle. Where he had a chance as partner in a flourishing clinic, and where, God help him, first-class