Kitabı oku: «A Husband's Watch»

A Husband’s Watch
Karen Templeton

MILLS & BOON

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To Pat McLinn

who talked me down from the ledge

when jumping sounded much more pleasant

than trying to finish this book!

Acknowledgments

With many more thanks to Kasey Michaels,

for her input on my hero’s injuries;

and to Loren Berger, who by three already

knew more about cars than his mother ever will.

Contents

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Epilogue

Coming Next Month

Chapter 1

At the moment, the only thing keeping Darryl Andrews from kicking the crap out of something was the fact that his foot was just about the only part of his body that didn’t already hurt.

So instead he hung back close to the road, where there was nothing to kick except a few dried-up weeds, or a stray soda can, hoping maybe a little distance would make the scene easier to absorb. To accept. Slung low in a sky his oldest girl, Heather, called “forever” blue, the morning sun barely warmed his right temple through the thick wad of gauze, although the badass November wind drilled right on inside the old baseball jacket Faith’d dug out of the church’s thrift shop donation box. So he wouldn’t have to cut up the sleeve on one of his own coats, she’d said in that matter-of-fact way of hers, as if attending to that one little detail was the key to solving all the rest of it.

He kicked at one of the soda cans anyway, hurling it out onto the paved road to clatter mournfully for several feet before getting hooked up again in a small pile of trash across the way.

Darryl would’ve sucked in a breath, but his bruised ribs had other ideas. With his good hand, he scrubbed his eyes, only half kidding himself they were stinging because of all the wood smoke in the air. Oh, sure, he’d gotten choked up at his kids’ births. And there’d been Griff Malone’s ten-seconds-left-on-the-clock, state-title clinching touchdown his senior year, but, hell, everybody’d been blubbering at that one. Nothing wrong with a little display of emotion now and again, long as it was the right emotion, let loose at the appropriate time.

This wasn’t it.

He swallowed, blinking until he could clearly see his father and the claims agent pick through the tangle of shingles, twisted metal siding and two-by-fours where not twenty-four hours before his auto shop and filling station had stood. Where he had as well, come to think of it.

Yep. The general consensus was that he was damn lucky to be alive.

He’d never even heard the tornado siren go off, not between his radio blaring and the earplugs he wore to muffle the sound of the air compressor. But then, who the hell expected a twister the day before Thanksgiving? Let alone five, if you counted the two that touched down between here and Claremore. Most of ’em had been puny little things, but even a puny tornado had few qualms about chewing up whatever got in its way. At least the one that’d visited this part of Haven had seen fit to bypass the gas tanks. If those lines had ruptured, especially so close to the downed power lines…

No doubt about it, coming that close to biting the big one definitely makes a man reassess his priorities. Still and all, Darryl’s means of supporting his wife and five kids had been reduced to a pile of toothpicks. Maybe that business hadn’t made him, or his daddy before him, rich, but Darryl’d been doing okay. Sure, they could have used a bigger house, even if Faith did insist there was a certain comfort in knowing she could go to the bathroom and still hear what every single kid was doing. But then, it wasn’t in Faith’s nature to complain, not about the house, or the ten-year-old Suburban Darryl kept jump-starting back to life, or even that she was still wearing the same dresses to church she had when they first got married. Those she could still get into, at any rate.

He looked over at her now, standing where the second bay used to be, eleven-month-old Nicky balanced on her round hip. Faith’s blond curls, longer than they’d been in a while, danced around her face in the breeze; she was already dressed to go to her parents for Thanksgiving dinner later—no sense upsetting the kids any more than necessary, they’d both agreed—in her “good” jeans and a soft-looking sweater. And that puffy orange jacket she’d bought the first winter after they were married, the one that made her look like a pumpkin, although Darryl had the good sense to keep that particular opinion to himself.

It wasn’t always easy to figure out what was going on inside Faith’s head—although most every male he knew swore it was better that way—but the creases between her sandy brows, the flat set to her mouth, didn’t leave much room for interpretation. Yeah, the insurance would cover rebuilding, but that would take months. Months in which he wouldn’t be able to work, or even help with the reconstruction, not with an arm broken in three places.

As if she could hear his thoughts, Faith glanced over. It’d been real late by the time they got back from the hospital last night; she’d slept on the pullout couch in the living room, insisting he’d be more comfortable in their double bed without her crowding him, especially since he had to keep his cast elevated on pillows. Only, except for the times Faith had been in the hospital after the first three were born, they’d never spent a night apart. More comfortable? Hell, he might as well have been sleeping on a bed of nails for all the rest he got.

He started when his father’s hand landed on his shoulder. “How’re you feelin’?” the older man said, in a voice not unlike an idling lawnmower.

“You really want the truth?”

“Think of the alternative.”

“Trust me, I have been.”

L.B.—short for “Little” Bud, Darryl’s granddaddy having been “Big” Bud—gently squeezed his shoulder, then folded his arms across a barrel chest. At six foot two, there hadn’t been anything “little” about L.B. for years, although none of his three sons had inherited whatever genes had determined their father’s height, Darryl being the tallest of the three at five foot ten.

“It’s mostly structural damage,” L.B. said. “Looks like a lot of the major equipment came through okay, the office just needs a new roof. And it’s all covered. That was a stroke of genius, takin’ pictures of everything, keepin’ ’em in a binder with all the invoices.”

Darryl managed a small smile. “I’ve got Faith to thank for that.” As well as her insisting that the policy covered replacement value, not purchase price.

“Yeah, she’s a smart gal, all right.” L.B.’s gaze followed Darryl’s, watching Faith talking to the adjuster. She hiked Nicky higher up on her hip, like he was getting heavy for her. Darryl sensed more than saw his father purse his lips, and he braced himself. Sure enough, L.B. said, “You thought about what you’re gonna say if her folks offer to help? Financially, I mean?”

“I doubt they’ve got any more than we do, L.B.—”

“But if they do. You know how I’ve always felt about goin’ outside the family. You need help, you come to us, you hear me?”

Never mind that Darryl had been part of Faith’s family for more than twelve years now. But then, Darryl understood this wasn’t about money near as much as it was about pride—the pride of a man who’d determined early on that nobody would ever call his sons trailer trash. A man who’d gone white as a ghost when Darryl’d told him he’d gotten the preacher’s daughter pregnant. Hell, if Darryl hadn’t stepped up to the plate to marry Faith on his own, it would have more likely been his father, not Faith’s, standing at the altar with a shotgun in tow.

Darryl met his father’s coffee-brown gaze, as penetrating as ever underneath heavy, dark brows, even if these days the occasional white hair jutted out like a stray broom bristle. “You know I’ve never taken a dime from Faith’s parents, and I have no intention of starting now,” he said, and some of the muscles in his father’s face loosened a bit. But assuaging his father wasn’t going to solve the problem, was it? God knew, Darryl wasn’t any more keen than his father on accepting help from the Meyerhausers. But it hadn’t only been Faith’s absence from their bed, or even his injuries, that had kept him awake most of the night, but rather the incessant, nauseating tattoo of Whatnowwhatnowwhatnow…?

Faith was really struggling with the baby by now—why she’d brought him when she’d left the other four with her folks, Darryl had no idea—so he excused himself and slowly headed in her direction. Every muscle screamed in protest; whatever hadn’t been gouged or broken had been banged up pretty good. Par for the course, he supposed, when an entire roof falls in on top of you.

Nicky saw him and broke into a big dimpled grin, clapping his chubby hands. White-blond curls poked out from the edge of his red sweatshirt hood, his eyes a deeper brown, even, than Darryl’s. “Da!” he squealed, his breath fogging around his reddened cheeks as he lunged forward, arms spread.

“No, no, Butterball,” Faith said, straining to keep the kid from falling on his noggin. “Daddy can’t hold you right now—”

“Sure I can.” Darryl stretched out his good arm, even though his ribs clearly wondered what the hell he was doing. “Come here, Mr. Chunks.”

But Faith pivoted, settling the baby more securely up on her hip. “Darryl, for heaven’s sake…you can’t possibly hang on to a wiggly baby right now!”

“I’m perfectly capable of holding my own kid, Faith. Like everybody keeps reminding me, I’m not dead yet!”

Nicky’s face crumpled up, his lower lip quivering. Wordlessly, Faith shoved the baby into Darryl’s outstretched arm, then walked back to the Suburban and grabbed hold of the door handle, her head bent as if she was trying to pull herself together. Or maybe she was praying. Not all preachers’ kids ended up being particularly religious, he knew that, but this was one case where the apple had definitely not fallen far from the tree. More often than not, Darryl found that comforting. Other times he found it a big pain in the butt. Especially when he got the definite feeling he was the one being prayed over.

At his elbow, the claims adjuster cleared his throat. His son clutched to his side, Darryl turned to the bland-faced little man, meeting a watery blue gaze behind slightly crooked rectangular glasses.

“Looks like I’ve got everything I need for now, so I’ll just be on my way. The wife’ll have five fits if I don’t get home soon.”

“Oh. Yeah, sure,” Darryl said, trying not to flinch every time Nicky grabbed for the bandage covering the ten stitches marching over his temple. His broken arm throbbed—he needed to get it elevated, put ice on it like they’d told him to do. “We really appreciate you coming out on a holiday like this.”

“No problem, I was in the area, anyway. Figured I may as well get a jump start on things. ’Specially as here and Ivy Gardner’s were the only two places to sustain any significant damage. Can’t say the same for Claremore, unfortunately—the outskirts got hit pretty bad. No loss of life, though, praise the Lord. Craziest darn thing, tornadoes this time of year—”

“I don’t mean to pressure you, but any idea how long payout might take? I’m pretty anxious to get things set to rights again.”

Behind the man’s glasses, apology flashed. “Yes, yes, I’m sure you are, I’m sure you are. Might take a touch longer than usual, with the holidays and all, and they’ll probably want to send somebody else out for a second look-see….” The man turned to set his briefcase on the hood of his runty little sedan, dropping his clipboard inside. “I’ll be in touch shortly, but if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to give me a call. Our aim is to make the process as painless as possible.”

It did not escape Darryl’s attention that the man never directly answered his question, but he probably had no idea when they’d fork over the money. So Darryl thanked him for his help, then watched him drive off to have his Thanksgiving dinner, during which Darryl doubted whether he, or his annihilated livelihood, would be given a second thought.

“I best be gettin’ on, too,” L.B. said behind him. “Unless you still need me to stick around…?”

Darryl shifted to face his father, who tickled Nicky’s tummy. The baby gave one of his gurgly laughs, while Darryl thought his arm was about to fall off. Damn, this was one heavy little dude. How five-foot-three Faith lugged him around every day was beyond him. “No, you go ahead. I’m sure Mama’s an inch away from crazy with SueEllen’s folks joining you this year.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” L.B. said, referring to Darryl’s youngest brother’s in-laws, who hadn’t accepted their daughter’s pregnancy at eighteen with nearly as much grace as Faith’s had. Darryl glanced over at his own wife, who seemed to have given up praying for silently fuming. “Every year,” L.B. added, “Renee threatens to skip Thanksgiving, but you and I both know she’d go nuts if she didn’t have something to fret over…”

L.B.’s eyes followed Darryl’s. “Go on, son,” he said quietly. “I imagine she needs some reassurin’ right about now.” He patted Darryl’s back, then set off toward his truck, parked a few feet away. “And give your mother a call later,” he called out as he climbed into the driver’s seat, “let her know you’re okay. You know how she worries.”

“You know something, Mr. Chunks?” Darryl said to the baby as he made his way back to the car. “Being indispensable isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

Faith reached for Nicky, who happily lunged back into his mama’s arms. “You might be able to haul him around for a few minutes,” she said with a grunt, “but you sure as heck aren’t going to be able to get him in the car seat.”

“Hell, I can barely manage it when I’ve got both arms in working order,” Darryl said, surreptitiously working the kinks out of his shoulder while nostalgically gazing at his wife’s bottom as she strapped the kid in. He was crazy about his kids, but their presence definitely wreaked havoc on the concept of spur of the moment.

Faith backed out of the car, her curls all messed up; ribs or no ribs, Darryl automatically lifted a hand to smooth her hair away from her face. But he knew damn well there was nothing he could do, not really, to ease the worry from those wide, blue eyes, the same “forever” blue as the sky. Still, habit prompted, “It’s gonna be okay, baby. You know I’d never let you or the kids down.”

The corners of her mouth curved up, sort of, before she nodded. Then she took the car keys out of his hand. “I’m drivin’.”

“I got us over here—”

“Against my better judgment. Last thing I need is for you to pass out while you’re behind the wheel, get us all killed…” Her mouth clamped shut. “Get in,” she said, yanking open her door. “The kids’ll be wonderin’ what happened to us. And Mama is probably waiting on me to mash the potatoes.”

He grabbed her hand. “Honey, I know things have been tense lately—”

Her eyes shot to his, shiny with unshed tears. “Not today, Darryl. Tomorrow, we can start figurin’ out how to put the pieces back together. But today all I want is to go to my parents’ house and eat turkey and pumpkin pie and act like everything’s normal. Today I’m just gonna be grateful my babies aren’t fatherless. Okay? Can you give me my one day?”

You know, it was kinda hard reassuring a woman who clearly didn’t want to be reassured. Even harder when he had no idea what she did want.

And he never really had, not once in twelve years of marriage.

“Yeah, I can do that,” he said, then tramped around the car to get in the passenger side, every step making his head feel like it was about to explode.

“I don’t suppose there’s much point in asking if you’re comfortable?”

A towel-wrapped ice pack perched on the elevated cast, Darryl grimaced at his father-in-law from the plaid sofa in Faith’s parents’ den. Over in his playpen, a bouncing Nicky gnawed on the thickly padded edge, occasionally squealing at the overfed, overfurred cat cautiously regarding the far too noisy, temporarily caged human from where she lay sprawled across most of the coffee table.

“Actually, between the turkey and these pills I’m taking, I’m not feeling much of anything at the moment.”

With a soft laugh, Chuck Meyerhauser lowered himself into his navy-blue La-Z-Boy, the football game on TV flickering in his glasses. He must’ve gone outside for a minute—a leaf or two clung to his striped sweater, while several strands of graying red hair floated over his freckled, balding head as if they couldn’t decide where to light. “Way my joints’ve been acting up lately, I wouldn’t mind some of those pills myself.”

“Oh, yeah, this is good stuff.”

Chuck smiled, then focused on the game, as usual leaving a whole mess of unspoken thoughts shimmering between them. Faith’s daddy was one of those rare preachers who spent more time living what he believed than yakking a person’s ear off about it. Not once had either he or Didi made an issue of Darryl’s getting their only daughter—their only child, for that matter—pregnant right out of high school. That didn’t mean, however, that the situation hadn’t thrown them for a loop. Probably more, in some ways, than it had Darryl, even though marriage and fatherhood at eighteen hadn’t exactly been something he’d figured on. In any case, he’d been well aware of Faith’s folks’ concern about what might happen down the road, that the marriage might not make it.

A concern that still lingered like an odor you couldn’t completely get rid of, no matter how hard you tried. Which was why, from the moment Faith eagerly accepted Darryl’s weak-kneed proposal, he’d made a silent vow—to himself, to her, to her parents—that he’d never give them the slightest reason to think their daughter had married a loser.

A commercial came on; Chuck punched the mute button. “I suppose the town got off easy, considering,” he said. “Not that that’s any consolation to you, I don’t suppose.”

“Oh, believe me, I’m grateful nobody else got hurt.” Darryl took a swig from his plastic glass of sparkling cider. He hated the stuff, frankly, but mixing beer with painkillers probably wasn’t a real smart idea. “Never did buy into the whole misery-loves-company thing.”

Nicky shrieked at the cat, who took that as her cue to get the hell out of Dodge. Chuck fondly regarded his youngest grandson for a moment, then said, “Faith says the insurance will probably cover most of the rebuilding, but I was wondering…you guys have supplemental insurance? To cover your loss of income while you’re out of commission?”

Darryl nearly laughed out loud. They’d been doing well to make the insurance payments on the property as it was—Oklahoma had one of the highest rates in the nation. Not to mention health insurance premiums, which they could only afford with a huge co-pay. Still, having to say no hurt like all get-out.

“Listen,” Chuck said, the sympathy in his voice nearly making Darryl cringe, “we’ve got a little put by, if you guys need any help….”

“No, we’ll be okay,” Darryl said automatically. “Need to have the pumps inspected, but it doesn’t appear they were damaged, so I’ll still have income from gas sales. And once the cast is off, I’ll be back at work in no time. The wrecker wasn’t touched, did Faith tell you?”

“Yes, she did. But three or four months can seem like forever when there’s not enough money coming in. Believe me, I know. Let us help, son—”

“I’ll admit, this is a setback I hadn’t counted on,” Darryl said through the painkiller fog, “but it won’t keep me down for long. You’ll see.”

The pastor’s gray eyes all but looked straight through him. “There’s not a soul alive who’d think ill of you for accepting a little help to get you through this. And if you really have Faith’s best interests at heart,” he said over Darryl’s next objection, “you won’t let that pride of yours cloud your reason. Do I make myself clear?”

Heat crawling up his neck, Darryl focused on Nicky, who held out his arms, squealed, then promptly toppled onto his diapered butt in the playpen. “If we do have to borrow from you,” he said at last, “I’ll pay you back every penny, I swear.”

“I know you will. But there’s no hurry. Oh, for crying out loud, wipe that look off your face—sticking together is what families do.” Chuck grabbed a tissue out of a nearby box and leaned forward to wipe drool off Nicky’s chin, the recliner squawking when he settled back into it. “You know, it’s easy to see where you get your dedication to your family. Your daddy was always talkin’ up you boys, when you were little—‘Guess what that Danny did today?’ he’d say, or ‘Hope you don’t mind me braggin’ on my oldest.’ And the way L.B. dotes on your mother…I think he’d move heaven and earth for her, if she asked him to.”

“Yeah, that’s L.B.” Darryl shifted, trying to get comfortable. No such luck. “From the time I was little, I remember him saying a man’s most important duty is to make sure he never gives his wife a reason to regret marrying him.”

“A code more men would do well to live by, I’m sure.”

“Yes, sir.”

Except, over the past dozen years, Darryl had come to realize good intentions weren’t always enough to put theory into practice. Because way too often these days he’d catch this look in Faith’s eyes as if she couldn’t quite figure out how she’d gotten there. She never nagged, never complained, but still, it was enough to make a man wonder if his best was even remotely good enough.

Faith came into the den just then to announce that dessert was ready and did Darryl want her to bring his to him so he didn’t have to get up? Before he could answer, though, their eldest son pushed around his mother and streaked across the room, fully intent on launching his solid six-year-old self right at Darryl’s chest.

“Jake, no!” she yelled, as her father grabbed the kid around the waist before he made contact.

“I just wanted to hug Daddy!”

“I know, sugar. But Daddy’s kinda banged up right now. The last thing he needs is you using him for a trampoline….”

“Come here, Jakester,” Darryl said, carefully lifting his arm. “I need a hug, too.” He lowered his head as best he could to peer up underneath the boy’s shaggy bangs. “Only, you need to be real gentle. I’m basically one big bruise.”

Somber-faced, the boy walked into Darryl’s one-armed embrace, gingerly wrapping his arms around his neck. Even so, it still hurt, a little. Okay, it hurt a lot—Darryl ached in places he never knew he had.

But what really hurt was the odd, unreadable look on Faith’s face.

Faith slapped Cool Whip on top of the piece of Mrs. Smith’s pumpkin pie so hard it splattered clear across her mother’s countertop. Thank goodness whichever kids weren’t in the den with Darryl and her father were outside playing tag. Yeah, she’d wanted her day, and she’d gotten it, but now that it was mostly over she was plumb worn out from leaning against the door to her thoughts in a lame attempt to keep the big, bad truth from shoving its way inside.

Her mother glanced over from where she was trying to lift a piece of apple pie out of the plate without leaving half its insides behind. “Well, well…look who just got back from the Land of Hunky-dory,” Didi Meyerhauser said mildly, ripping a paper towel off the rack and handing it to Faith. “I wondered how long it was gonna take for this all to hit.”

Faith snorted, wiping up her mess with more energy than was required. A frisky Dolly Parton oldie came on the radio, one Faith herself used to sing, once upon a time; she turned up the volume, thinking maybe the lively tune would bolster her sagging spirits. The silverware drawer jangled when she yanked it open to grab a handful of dessert forks, letting them clatter onto the counter. She grabbed one and attacked the piece of pie she’d just cut.

“Oh, believe me,” she said, guillotining the bottom third of the pie and shoving it into her mouth, “it hit the second I got the call from Pete tellin’ me the paramedics had just pulled Darryl out from what was left of the garage.”

Just the memory of hearing the sheriff’s, “Faith, honey, there’s been an accident….” was enough to send her heart right back up into her throat. Chewing, she finished wiping up her mess, then wadded up the dirty towel and tossed it into the garbage can under the sink, banging shut the cabinet door. It was definitely a day for taking out one’s frustrations on inanimate objects. “I don’t think I breathed normally until after we got back from the hospital.”

Her mother tilted her head to regard her through the top part of her glasses. “So is this called you bein’ in denial?”

“No, it’s called me trying to keep it together for the kids’ sake.”

“Like I said.”

Faith shoveled in another forkful of pie, wishing she could soak up at least some of the patience in those soft blue eyes, that she could lose herself in them the way she used to. “If anybody’s having a dicey relationship with reality right now, it’s that man I married. I swear, if he says ‘everything’s gonna be okay’ one more time, I’m gonna lose it for sure.”

Returning her focus to the apple pie, her mother chuckled, her silver-blond waves barely moving when she shook her head. “That’s just who Darryl is, honey. Has been for as long as I can remember. And once those painkillers wear off, I imagine he’s going to feel like a bug on its back. Which means he’s gonna do a lot of kicking until he figures out how to right himself again.” She opened the freezer door to get the vanilla ice cream. “Count your blessings, honey. He could’ve…”

“Died,” Faith finished softly, pinging her fork on her plate. “Believe me, I’ve hardly thought of anything else for the past twenty-four hours.”

The ice cream abandoned, her mother wrapped one arm around Faith’s shoulders, enveloping her in a Wind Song scent. “I’m not scolding you, baby. But it’s real easy sometimes to let the bad stuff blind us to the good, you know? Now what do you suppose happened to all those napkins I put out this morning?”

Her mother hustled off to the pantry, leaving Faith to continue stuffing her face as she glared out the window, thinking about those words she’d happily lived by her entire life. Except more and more she found herself wondering if that seeing-the-good-in-everything business wasn’t sometimes just an excuse to avoid facing the parts that weren’t so good. Like somehow, if you ignored them, they’d either fix themselves or self-destruct.

On the surface, she and Darryl had beaten the odds. They were still together after twelve years; he was devoted to the kids and the marriage; nobody was a harder worker than he was. But…

But.

There it was, that stinking three-letter word that had taken to making her feel lately like her skin was too tight. Then again, her skin feeling too tight might have something to do with the fact that for the past twenty-four hours she’d been eating everything that wasn’t nailed down.

She ditched the fork: much more efficient to eat right out of her hand.

Granted, maybe her motives for wanting to marry Darryl weren’t as solid as they should have been. She’d been barely out of high school, for pity’s sake. But blind trust in her own determination to make things work had fueled her initial enthusiasm, kept things chugging along nicely for at least the first few years. Now, though, it was getting harder and harder to deny they’d been drifting apart almost from the beginning, slowly but inexorably, like the plates in the earth. Not so’s anyone could tell, she didn’t imagine—they rarely argued, they still had sex probably about as regularly as any couple with five young children, they treated each other with as much consideration as they always had. Yet, she wondered…If she hadn’t’ve gotten pregnant, would they even still be together?

Her father stuck his head in the doorway the same moment her mother returned from the pantry with a bag of paper napkins. “Just wondering what the dessert holdup is,” he said pleasantly.

“Wouldn’t think you’d have room for pie,” Didi said, “what with all that turkey and mashed potatoes you put away.”

Grinning, her father sidled up to Didi and slipped his arms around her waist, making her giggle like a girl. “But there’s always room for apple pie…”

Faith turned away, nearly overcome with annoyance that her life had turned into some sad-sack country song. She fixed Darryl a plate of pie—a slice each of apple and pumpkin, like always; the man was as predictable as the moon—then cut herself another piece of pumpkin, just to be sociable. But when she started out of the kitchen, she saw he’d hobbled back to the dining table instead of staying in the den. He glanced up at her, his smile stopping short of those melted-chocolate eyes that could still rattle her to her toes, nodding and saying “Thank you” when she set his plate in front of him. She grabbed Sierra as the boisterous three-year-old flew past, plopping her back into her booster seat at right angles to her daddy; Faith’s heart ached at Darryl’s barely suppressed wince when the child let out a shriek of protest.

“Sierra, no,” she said firmly, which was met with a tiny glower. Then, to Darryl: “If you want, I can give the squirts their pie in the kitchen—”

“I’m hardly so bad off I need to be quarantined from my own kids.”

“That’s not what I meant and you know it,” she said in a level voice, strapping Sierra in. Not that it would do much good, since her youngest daughter had figured out how to spring herself a year ago. “I was only trying to make things easier for you, that’s all.” He stiffened, not looking at her. “You know I hate being coddled,” he said, his voice even deeper than usual.

Faith shoved her hair out of her eyes with the back of her wrist, thinking it was a good thing she had a hair appointment coming up, only to remember she probably shouldn’t spend the money on a haircut, considering. “Yes, I do. But you’ve been working your butt off since the day we got married, with nothin’ even remotely resembling a real break in twelve years. So, since nothing I say seems to get through, maybe that tornado was God’s way of tellin’ you to ease up for a minute.”

A bite of apple pie halfway to his mouth, Darryl gaped at her from underneath his long, dark lashes. “My business is a pile of rubble—a business that supports you and the kids, in case you’ve forgotten—and I can’t even pick up any freelance work long as I’ve got this dumb cast on my arm, and you’re tellin’ me you think that’s God’s work?”

They’d never exactly seen eye to eye on spiritual matters, and her bringing up the subject now probably hadn’t been the smartest move she could have made. However, his reaction jolted something inside her brain.

Duty. The word stuck to the roof of her mouth like stale peanut butter. A word that more than defined the man sitting in front of her. Not for a second had Darryl hesitated asking her to marry him when she’d told him she was pregnant, or even considered shirking the first of what would become a hundred obligations. Now he struggled under their accumulated weight like that Greek dude with the world on his shoulders.

She crossed her arms. “You telling me everything isn’t going to be okay?”

Everything in his posture told her she’d just stepped over a line she hadn’t fully realized was there until this moment.

“Of course not,” he said, his voice controlled, even as the veins stood out on the back of the hand clutching his fork. “I’ll get us out of this, somehow….”

He started when she leaned over and laid a hand on his arm; when he looked up at her his eyes were loaded with suspicion. “We’re in this together, Darryl. We’ll work it out together.”

After a glance at Sierra, happily smushing her pumpkin pie with her baby fork, he looked back at Faith, every muscle in his face sharper, harder. “And I don’t want you worrying about this, you hear?”

Lord help her, for a long time she’d found his macho protectiveness endearing. Comforting. And heaven knows, a major turn-on. That quality, perhaps more than any other, was why she was here. But a dozen years, five kids and a close, personal relationship with reality had a way of changing a person’s perspective. Especially when that person’s husband had a head harder than granite.

Still, she snorted a laugh. “Short of giving me a lobotomy, ain’t gonna happen. So deal with it.”

They stared each other down for several seconds, then she turned to call the rest of the children to the table, running smack into her father’s questioning gaze.

“Faith? Everything okay?”

As she’d done for the past twelve years, she tacked on a bright smile and said, “Nothing I can’t handle,” because she’d put out her right eye before admitting a few ancient concerns had come back to take a big old chunk out of her rapidly expanding butt.

Chapter 2

In his pajama bottoms, Darryl stood in his and Faith’s tiny master bathroom, glowering at his banged-up reflection in the medicine chest mirror. At his side, Dot, a young brindle boxer some fool had abandoned at the station a year or so ago, stood with her front paws on the sink, regarding him with bug-eyed apology—her standard expression—as if his injuries were somehow her fault. Faith was of the opinion that the dog suffered from low self-esteem, although whether brought on or exacerbated by her abandonment, she couldn’t say.

He glowered some more—how the hell was he supposed to change this bandage? Discovery Number Twenty-Two about having one hand out of commission: he could get the old bandage off, but no way could he get the clean one on. While he was contemplating this new aggravation, Jake shoved his way into the little room—already crowded with Darryl and the dog—and banged up the toilet seat to pee like he’d been at a keg party.

“Heather’s in the other bathroom,” the gap-toothed boy said by way of explanation, knocking the seat back down and flushing, but only after Darryl glared at him. “A body could ’splode waitin’ on her to get out.”

“Yeah, I know how that goes. Put the lid down, too, buddy.”

That earned Darryl a pained look. “What for? Whoever uses it next only has to lift it again.”

“I know, but your mother has a hissy whenever she finds the seat up. You really want to deal with that?”

Jake slammed down the lid, the effect muffled by the fluffy, dark-green toilet seat cover. One thing about Faith—she’d always kept the house looking nice without resorting to lots of flowers and ruffles and crap like a lot of other women. The kid plopped his skinny behind on the seat and leaned his elbows on the edge of the sink, frowning up at Darryl’s stitches. Dot got down, wriggling her head onto the boy’s lap to get her floppy ears scratched, groaning in what Darryl assumed was ecstasy. “You look like Frankenstein or somethin’. Does it hurt?”

Only when he moved. Or breathed.

“Let’s just say—” Darryl raised the one arm that was working and gingerly lifted his hair away from the wound “—it’s an experience I’d’ve been more than happy to have lived without.”

The boy seemed to think on this for a second, then said, “You know what would be really cool? If you could come to school for show-and-tell—”

“Jake Michael Andrews!” Faith said from the bathroom doorway. “Didn’t I put you to bed ten minutes ago?”

“I had to pee an’ Heather was in the other bathroom. ’Sides, it’s only ten o’clock.”

“Which is only an hour past your bedtime. And yes, I know you’re on vacation, but I’m not. So you need to get back in bed. Go on, scoot. And take the dog with you.” She swatted the boy lightly on the backside as he zipped past.

“Night!” he hollered, thumping from one side of the narrow hallway to the other on the way back to his room, prompting Faith to say with a sigh, “Well, the others were asleep.”

“You know,” Darryl said, “one of these days we seriously need to think about letting the dog sleep outside.”

His wife gave him one of her don’t-talk-crazy looks, then crossed her arms over her wrinkled satin pajamas and open fuzzy robe, both in some light color that might have been either blue or green, at one time. She frowned at him in the mirror. “You plannin’ on standing there all night staring at your boo-boo, or do you need help?”

“I can’t use my other arm to change the dressing.”

“I can see that. Sit down.”

“It’s pretty gross.”

“I can see that, too. Sit. And get that cast elevated.”

Darryl lowered himself onto the toilet seat, his arm on the sink, which put him eye level with his wife’s breasts. Something resembling interest stirred. At least in his head. Other places seemed to be having a little trouble getting with the program, probably on account of these damn pills. Although there was something to be said for the who-gives-a-rat’s-behind? buzz they produced.

Faith ripped open a clean gauze pad and soaked it in hydrogen peroxide. Darryl carefully shook his head. “Already did that.”

“Could’ve fooled me. Quit squirming,” she said when he flinched before she even made contact. “Honestly,” she said, grabbing his chin, her breath wicking away the dampness on his forehead as she gently dabbed at the stitches. “You’re worse than the kids.” She’d already put on the lotion she wore to bed every night; she smelled so good his mouth watered. Hers pulled tight as she wet the other end of the gauze. “That ER doc did a good job. Looks to me like you might not even have a scar.”

“Too bad. A scar might add a certain bubba appeal, don’tcha think?”

She almost smiled.

He lowered his eyes and watched her nipples shifting restlessly against the satin, like kittens playing underneath a sheet. “Sorry about earlier. At your folks, I mean.”

She glanced down at him for a second, then went back to her dabbing. “’Sokay. We’re both pretty stressed out, I guess. You take your pain pills?”

So much for talking things over. Not that Darryl really wanted to talk, especially not tonight. Half the time, talking only made him confused. Or mad. If not both. But he wasn’t so clueless as to not know that Faith’s not wanting to talk was a bad sign. “Just one, a couple minutes ago. Gonna try to go without tomorrow, though. Last thing I need is to get addicted to the things.”

“Yeah, like that’s gonna happen. What are you staring at so hard?”

“Give you one guess.”

She shook her head; Darryl went back to staring. “Heard your father say Olive Pritchard’s askin’ after you again, wondering when you’re coming back.”

“And if I told her once, I told her a million times… Sorry,” she said softly when the wince popped out. “Long as the kids are still little, there’s no sense me bein’ in the choir. Shoot, I’m doing well to get us to church on time as it is, let alone early for practice… Darryl, for heaven’s sake!” she yelped when he reached underneath her pajama top to cup one breast. “What on earth do you think you’re doing?” she said in a frenzied whisper.

“I think it’s called living in the moment.” An odd sense of well-being came over him, as all his troubles seemed to fade…away… He rubbed her nipple with his thumb, grinning when it snapped to attention. Grinning even harder when other things did. “When was the last time we lived in the moment, Faithie?”

“At least four kids ago,” she said with kind of a sad look on her face. “But this is not the night to rekindle those memories.”

“Why not? Seems to me we could both use the tension release, don’t you think?”

“That’s the meds talking, Darryl, not you. Besides, Heather’s still awake. Honestly!” Faith said in a gasp when he pinched her nipple between his thumb and forefinger. “Cut it out! I’m tryin’ to get you dressed!”

“And I’m tryin’ to get you undressed. And yeah, you can grit your teeth all you want, but those little dots of color in your cheeks give you away every time.” He leaned close enough to tongue her nipple through the satin, and she made that gurgly noise in her throat that still got him, even after more than a dozen years.

“Mama? Daddy?”

Darryl yanked his hand down so fast he smacked his own knee, a move his banged-up ribs had definite issues with, even with the pain meds. Fortunately, since Faith’s back had been to the bathroom door, Heather hadn’t gotten an eyeful. But that didn’t stop a blush from racing up Faith’s neck and across her cheeks like a brush fire. It was kind of cute, actually. Like they were teenagers again, fooling around in the storeroom in old man Prickett’s pharmacy that summer Faith had worked the soda fountain.

Except she’d never looked mad when they’d fooled around in Prickett’s.

She yanked her robe closed, nearly strangling her waist with the belt as Darryl said to his daughter, “We’ll be out in a minute, sugar. Soon as Mama finishes patching me up, okay?”

“’Kay. C’n I wait on your bed?”

“Sure, honey,” Faith said, finishing up the bandage with a stone-faced expression that gave no clue to how turned on she’d been not thirty seconds before. “There,” she said, tucking everything neatly back into the first aid kit, which she set on the shelf over the toilet. “Let me go check on the little ones and I’ll be back in a minute—”

He grabbed her hand. “Later?”

“Oh, right.” Her expression was wry. “With a doped up man held together with tape, plaster and…whatever the heck they use for stitches these days. Darryl, for goodness’ sake—be real.”

After she left, Darryl stood, checking out his reflection. The new bandage was half the size of the one they’d put on in the hospital, he noted. Neat and efficient, just like everything Faith did.

She hadn’t always been so efficient. So predictable. When they’d first gotten married, she never went to the grocery store that she didn’t have to turn right back around and go get the five things she’d forgotten. She’d put in a load of laundry and not get around to drying it for two days, or start a pan of eggs to boil and not give them another thought. But if their first years of married life had been filled with the occasional blackened pan or slightly mildewed clothes or not being able to make a sandwich because they’d run out of bread, Darryl also fondly remembered unplanned camping trips and parties for no particular reason and—his personal favorite—surprise intimate encounters in the shower or the kitchen or the laundry room.

He missed that. Even more to the point, he missed the Faith who used to do those things. And if he could only shake the feeling that her changing was somehow his fault…

“Daddy? You okay?”

Leaning heavily on the sink, Darryl carefully turned to look at his oldest girl. The reason they’d gotten married in the first place, he obliquely thought. An excuse to get married he’d welcomed with everything he had in him.

“I’m fine,” he said with a rush of air, then ushered her out of the bathroom.

“You don’t look fine.”

“Appearances can be deceiving.”

Swallowed up in one of those baggy, too-long sleep tees, she flopped onto her tummy on their bed. Pushing twelve, the girl straddled that fine line between innocence and wisdom that sometimes scared Darryl half to death, especially since most days he wasn’t all that sure which side of it he was on himself. “We’re in serious trouble, aren’t we?” she said, her narrow chin propped in her hands, those wide blue eyes fixed on his. “Because of the tornado destroyin’ the shop?” When he hesitated, her pale brows crashed over her nose. “You can tell me the truth, Daddy. I’m not gonna freak on you or anything.”

Faith returned just in time to hear this last line; now they exchanged a glance that ended in Faith’s giving him a go-ahead nod. So he lowered himself to the bed and said, “Let’s just say things are gonna be kind of tight for a while.”

“Will we have to move?”

“No,” he said, even though he hadn’t thought that part of things through. They’d refinanced last year and lowered their payments, but without his income… “I promise we won’t end up camping out in somebody’s pasture.”

She looked mildly relieved. For a moment or two. “But we don’t have money for extras, right?”

Faith sat beside Heather, wearing her “Oh, dear” face as she rubbed the girl’s bony back. “Honey, this probably isn’t a real good time to bring this up…”

The girl twisted around to look up at her mother. “But it’s gonna eat me alive until I know—”

“What’s going on?” Darryl asked.

Gently sifting Heather’s slippery blond hair through her fingers, Faith said, “You know how Heather and I were taking dance classes over at Carly Stewart’s?”

Yeah, he knew. Carly’d recently moved to Haven, had started up a dance school in an old barn next to Sam Frasier’s farm. Faith had been real excited about the exercise class she’d started, hoping to work off some of the weight she’d put on from the pregnancies. And Heather had started taking ballet classes, too.

“What about it?”

Faith stroked Heather’s hair some more. “Turns out Carly thinks Heather has real potential. To be a ballet dancer, I mean. But because she’s starting so late—most little girls begin lessons when they’re five or six—she’d need private lessons to catch up. We’d only found out yesterday, so I was planning on talking it over with you last night….” Her sentence ended in a one-sided shrug.

“I see,” he said, although he didn’t really. Not that he didn’t want his kids to do whatever made them happy, but…Heather becoming a ballet dancer? Anybody becoming a ballet dancer? Besides, kids changed their minds all the time. Look at his older brother, Dave, who’d begged their father for oboe lessons, only to lose interest after six months.

“Carly already offered me a partial scholarship,” Heather said, the hopefulness in her eyes searing straight through him. “So maybe it wouldn’t cost all that much.”

Darryl pushed out a sigh, then faced the mirror over the dresser. Both females watched him, waiting for an answer he couldn’t give.

“You know how I hate sayin’ no to any of you kids,” he finally said to his daughter’s reflection, “but I honestly don’t see how we can swing it right now. Maybe next year.”

“It’ll be too late by next year!” Heather’s eyes filled. “You don’t have to get me anything for Christmas. And I’ll contribute my whole allowance. Please, Daddy? I want to do this more than anything in the world!”

Out of deference to his ribs, Darryl carefully turned, his heart squeezing in his chest at the earnestness in her expression. “How can you be so sure of something you only just started doing?”

“I don’t know. Except…maybe I think it must be like how you feel about fixing cars. It just feels really, really right.”

He caught Faith’s gaze, saw how much the whole thing was tearing her up inside, too. And unlike him, Faith didn’t tend to indulge the kids. Saying no came a lot easier to her than it did him. Which meant this must be really serious. And real important. But that didn’t change the facts of the situation.

“I’m sorry, baby, I really am. But I honestly don’t see any way of pulling it off right now.”

Her lower lip caught between her teeth, Heather traced the quilted spread with one finger for a second. Then her head popped back up, hope making her face shine. “Maybe…maybe she’d teach me for free?”

“Oh, sweetie…” Faith wrapped herself around Heather’s shoulders, pressing her cheek to her temple. “That wouldn’t be fair to Carly, would it? She has to make a living, too. It was already generous, her offering that partial scholarship. I know this is horrible, horrible timing, but—”

“It’s okay, I understand.” Heather scrambled off the bed, not looking at either of them as she scurried through the door. Faith shot Darryl an indecipherable look, then followed, leaving him feeling several notches below snail slime.

“She okay?” he asked when Faith returned a few minutes later.

Instead of replying, she wordlessly motioned for him to get up so she could remove the peach-colored, tailored bedspread she’d bought maybe a month ago. Not that he’d thought there was anything wrong with the old one, but Faith insisted the room needed “freshening up,” or something. Darryl pushed himself to his feet, helping her fold the spread back as best he could with one hand. Anything to keep from feeling helpless. Useless.

“What else could I have said, Faith?” he said in a hushed voice, standing to one side so she could set the folded spread on the chair in the corner, like she did every night. “You know what the bank balance looks like as well as I do.”

“Yes, I do. But do you have any idea what a big deal this is for her?”

“Oh, come on…lots of little girls want to dance. Not that I don’t feel bad that I can’t let her have her fun, but it would probably run its course anyway, right?”

“We don’t know that. Maybe this is an incredible opportunity for her to work with a real professional dancer, maybe become one herself and not end up stuck in this town for the rest of her life!”

Her eyes widened slightly, as if she hadn’t expected that to come out of her mouth. Darryl got a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach, but he replied, “Or she could get a bum leg like Carly and end up back here, anyway.”

“It’s not about how she’ll end up, it’s about what she has the chance to do in between. It’s about giving her opportunities that—”

Faith stopped, then grabbed her pillows off the bed.

“That what?” Darryl said quietly, catching out of the corner of his mental eye the stirrings of an elephant he’d thought had moved on a long time ago. “That you never had?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You don’t have to.” He grasped her arm, probing her gaze with his own. “Is that what’s going on here? That you feel stuck? In this marriage? With me?”

For several moments, he saw his own frustration mirrored in her eyes. “It’s not that simple,” she said at last, and the bad feeling got a whole lot worse.

“Care to explain that?”

“Believe me,” she said with a harsh sigh, “if I could, I would. But anyway, this isn’t about me. It’s about Heather. And how we’re going to solve this. At some point. Not tonight. I’m way too tired to figure any of it out right now.” Clutching the pillows to her chest, she headed toward the door.

“You’re spending the night on the sofa again?”

“You have to sleep on your back. And nowhere in our marriage vows does it say I have to sleep in the same room with a snoring man—”

“Do you love me?”

Already in the doorway, she spun around. “What?”

“You heard me.”

“Darryl, we’re both exhausted, and stressed—”

“Simple question, yes or no. Do you love me?”

Their gazes warred for several seconds before she reached behind her to quietly shut the door. When she faced him again, she looked…worn-out. “We’re part of each other by now, aren’t we? All braided together like a pair of saplings planted side by side. After all this time, I wouldn’t know how not to love you. But let me ask you something….” Her mouth quirked, and she leaned against the door, strangling the pillows. “Would you have married me if I hadn’t been pregnant?”

Her words slammed into him like fists. “For God’s sake, Faith—after everything we’ve been through together, after everything I’ve done for you and the kids…how can you even ask that?”

“Because,” she said, her eyes hooked in his, “there’s a difference between love and…and obligation. There’s doing what’s right, and doing what’s right.”

Darryl’s brows pulled together. “You think I married you because I had to?”

“Didn’t you?”

He looked at her as if she were speaking another language. “Have you forgotten how we couldn’t keep our hands off each other? Hell, there’s still times I want you so bad I can hardly think straight!”

“That’s hormones, Darryl. And proximity. But what I’m wondering now is…was it ever more than that? Really?”

He dropped onto the edge of the bed, swallowing hard before saying, “Dammit, I’m doing my best here.”

“I know you are,” Faith whispered. “And you always have. God knows there’s plenty of men in your situation who would’ve headed straight for the hills, rather than faced their responsibilities the way you did. And I love you for that.”

He smirked. “For doing the right thing?”

“Is that so terrible?” She sat beside him, laying her hand on his uncasted arm. “But in any case, this isn’t about you. It’s true,” she said when he snorted. “Which is exactly what makes this so…so weird. I wanted to marry you, too. To be with you. So I don’t understand this craziness any more than you do.”

While he sat there, hoping to hell it was the meds causing her words to make so little sense, she got up, hugging the pillows to her chest. “You need anything before I leave?”

“No.” Then his gaze slashed to hers. “How is it we can say all the right things, and yet the answers still feel all wrong?”

“I don’t know,” she whispered, then left the room, the elephant lumbering along after her…leaving behind a not-so-little reminder of its visit.

Wasn’t a painkiller in the world strong enough to dull this pain.

The sky was just beginning to pink up the next morning when Faith heard Darryl shuffle down the hall, yawning loudly. He paused at the door to the kitchen, frowning at her and Nicky, prompting Faith’s heart to start beating loudly enough to echo inside her head.

“You had pumpkin pie for breakfast?” he said in his morning-roughened voice, nodding toward the empty foil pie plate on the table in front of her.

“It was the last piece. I figured it wouldn’t be any good by lunchtime.”

He shook his head, one side of his mouth tilted up. “I didn’t know you were still nursing the baby.”

The plastic clock over the sink sounded like an old woman clucking her tongue at her as she sat at the kitchen table, Nicky at her breast. “Just once a day, in the morning,” she said, smoothing down the baby’s curls so she wouldn’t have to look at her husband. “After you’re gone, usually.”

“Don’t recall you keeping the others on the breast so long.”

“I know. Seems harder to wean him, I guess because he’s the last one….”

Her words faded into a silence that positively screamed between them.

“Didn’t expect you awake this early,” she said, as much to shatter that silence as anything else. “Sun’s not even up yet. Neither are the rest of the kids, thank goodness.”

She sensed him inching toward the refrigerator, barefoot as usual even though it was none too warm this early in the morning. Usually Darryl propelled himself through space like he could never get where he was going fast enough; today, however, he moved cautiously, as if he was trying to sneak past the pain. Sympathy twanged inside her—this was a man who rarely got sick, even when everybody else in the house was like to die from some crud or other. And everybody knows pain’s all the worse when you’re not used to it.

One hip propping open the door, he pulled out a carton of orange juice—he never had been a coffee-first-thing-in-the-morning kind of person. In the glow from the open fridge, she could see he hadn’t bothered combing his thick hair, that he looked to be wearing the same T-shirt he’d had on yesterday. That the waistband snap to his jeans was still undone.

“You need help doing up your pants?”

He stilled for a second, then twisted off the cap to the carton one-handed, poured the juice into a glass. “No.”

She swallowed. “Soon as I finish with Nicky, I can fix you some breakfast—”

“I’m not hungry.”

Faith took in a deep breath, trying to break the bands constricting her chest. “You get any sleep?”

“Not a whole lot, no. But thanks for asking.”

“Darryl, I—”

“There’s nothing to say, Faith,” he said, not looking at her. “Like you said, I was the one who brought up the subject.” He set the juice back in the fridge and let the door slam shut, making Nicky jump. The baby stopped nursing for a second, then latched back on, his blue eyes wide and trusting. Now standing at the window, Darryl sipped the juice, then made a face. “This our regular stuff?”

“No, they got a new brand in, I thought I’d try it—”

“Is there somebody else?” he said quietly.

“What?”

He turned, his expression flat. “I said, is there somebody else?”

She caught the laugh a split second before it escaped. “Of course not! What on earth put that idea into your head?”

“I’d be a fool not to ask, wouldn’t I?”

The baby done with his feed, Faith shifted him to sit up, fingering his fluffy curls as he let out a trucker-size belch, then gleefully slapped the table in front of them. “No, Darryl, there’s nobody else.” A rueful smile pulled at her mouth. “When on earth would I have had time?”

He smirked. “Still. I don’t know as I much like being thought of as a habit you can’t break.”

“It’s not like that—”

“Isn’t it? Oh, you said it prettier, all that stuff about us being like a pair of trees that have grown together, but the upshot’s the same. So.” He downed the rest of the juice. “You want out?”

“No!”

“Why?” He banged the glass onto the counter, the sound reverberating through the semidarkness. “Why would you want to stay if you’re not sure what you feel for me anymore?”

“Stop twisting my words!” she said in a low voice. “I said I loved you, what more do you want?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe a little honesty?”

“I am being honest! As honest as I know how, at least. For heaven’s sake, if I didn’t feel anything for you, do you think I’d still be sharing your bed?”

She was throwing him scraps, and she knew it. Just like the hard set to his mouth told her he knew it, too. “Thought that was just the hormones talking.”

“Maybe it is,” she retorted, exhausted and scared and frustrated, with him, with herself, with everything that was going on. “And maybe habit and hormones is the best most people can hope for after twelve years, I don’t know.”

“And that’s enough for you?” he said, the bitterness in his voice lancing through her. “’Cause I’m here to tell you, it sure as hell isn’t enough for me.”

Faith got up to set the baby in his play yard, hanging on to the side and watching him pick up what she knew was the first of many toys to be jettisoned onto the kitchen floor. “I know this is going to sound lame,” she said, blinking back tears, “but this isn’t any picnic for me, either. Especially knowing how much distress this is causing you.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

“I may be messed up, Darryl,” she said quietly, “but I’m not stupid.”

The sun peeked over the horizon, flooding the kitchen with softly pearled light. “So…what now?” he said. “We just pretend everything’s okay, is that it?”

Faith looked over at him, her heart cracking at the confusion swimming in his eyes. “What choice do we have? For one thing, we’ve got five kids who for sure don’t need another crisis to deal with on top of everything else. And for another, you really want our parents to know about this?”

After a moment, Darryl snagged that old jacket she’d ripped up to accommodate his cast off the pegboard by the back door, awkwardly shrugging into it. She couldn’t tell if the pain contorting his features was due more to his bruised body or their conversation. “I’m going down to the garage,” he said, turning toward the back door.

“What? Why? There’s hardly anything left!”

His eyes touched hers, his voice like steel. “Oh, I’m pretty sure underneath the wreckage, there’s more left than you might think. Sooner I can get it cleared away, sooner I can start rebuilding.”

Chapter 3

Somebody or other was cheerfully belting out “Jingle Bell Rock” as Faith pushed her cart alongside the meat bins in the Homeland, keeping an eye peeled for the Reduced for Quick Sale stickers. There was something almost anesthetizing about the upbeat music, the swags of silver and red tinsel draped between the aisles, the rows of tightly plastic-wrapped chicken parts and pork chops and steaks, the quiet purposefulness of the other Monday morning shoppers. With the three oldest in school, she only had Sierra and Nicky in the cart. Which was more than enough. To keep them quiet, she’d snatched a bag of animal crackers off the shelf and practically thrown it at them, not even caring—too much—that they’d ruin their lunch. Not even caring—too much—that she’d just bought herself a one-way ticket to Bad Mama Hell.

Soon as she got out of the one for Bad Wives, where basically she’d lived for the past three days. Cramming a small handful of the crackers down her own gullet (Lord, she felt like she had this gaping hole inside of her that just would not get filled up) she pounced on a chuck roast—one of the few things she could actually cook—marked down forty percent, wedging it into the cart someplace where hopefully Sierra wouldn’t grind her Barbie sneaker into it.

Now that the Truth had moved in—and theirs was far too small a house for something that big and ugly and stinky—every conversation between her and Darryl had become so guarded and polite Faith was ready to tear her hair out. Given a choice, habit and hormones wasn’t looking so bad. And heaven knew this was no time for her to be going off the deep end. Even if Darryl seemed hell-bent on driving her there himself.

Honestly! Why was all this stuff coming to the surface now?

Because, chickie, it was bound to eventually, wasn’t it?

She shoved more animal crackers into her mouth, thinking at this rate she was going to have to retrieve her maternity clothes from the church giveaway box just to have something she could get into.

A scream from the cart brought her back to attention. Nicky had twisted around and grabbed his sister’s hair, a move Sierra wasn’t taking too well.

“Nicky, sugar…” Faith leaned across the cart to untangle the baby’s sticky fingers from his sister’s fine hair, half of which remained in the chubby fist when Faith finally separated the two. By this time, Sierra was howling, not good for the nerves of someone who’d been on the breaking point for several days already.

“Nicky, no! It’s not funny!” Faith peeled a half-dozen silky blond hairs out of his clenched fist. “You hurt your sister! You can’t do that!”

At her stern tone, the baby’s sunshiny smile vanished, to be replaced by a quivering pout that rapidly gave way to a full-out wail.

Faith shut her eyes and prayed for patience. And that she wouldn’t break down into sobs along with her children, right here in front of God and everybody.

“Faith! Yoo-hoo, Faith!”

Not today, Lord, she thought, her eyes still closed. Please?

Too late.

Plastering a smile to her face, she turned in time to see Luralene Hastings huffing and puffing up the aisle, her white, crepe-soled slip-ons squeaking like mice against the beige-and-white-tiled floor. “What’s the big idea, missy, canceling your hair appointment!” said the skinny redhead, oblivious to the cacophonic bellowing coming from the cart. “I tried callin’ you, but I guess you were already gone. Darryl answered the phone. How’s he gettin’ on, anyway? ’Cause, frankly, between you and me? He didn’t sound so good. That was a real shame, the service station gettin’ hit by the twister like that. A real shame. Any idea how long it’s gonna take before it’s up and runnin’ again, ’cause Coop says he’s in no mood to go lookin’ for another mechanic this late in the game.”

Faith suddenly realized both babies had gone stark still, staring wide-eyed at Luralene, who was clutching a plastic-wrapped deli sandwich to her heaving chest. Not that Faith blamed them—a tornado had nothing on the far-side-of-fifty owner of the Hair We Are when she was in full sail. Faith took advantage of the momentary lull to stick Nicky’s pacifier in his mouth, only it popped right back out. She fumbled for it, catching it a foot before it hit the floor and a split second before the wails once more reached eardrum-splitting level. She plugged him up again, trying to decide which question to answer first. Not that she was inclined to answer any of them, but sidestepping Luralene was like trying to pass an eighteen-wheeler on a two-line highway.

“We don’t know yet when Darryl’ll be back in business,” she finally said. “It depends on, well, a lot of things. And sorry about the hair appointment, but…I decided to let it grow out for a bit. It’s been ages since I’ve had it long.”

Luralene squinted at her, stopping just short of tangling up her false eyelashes. Her lids were all done up in a medley of purples and lavenders today, not one of which even came close to matching her violet smock. “And you know full well that any longer than shoulder length and your head looks like a tumbleweed. And that was your description, not mine, before you go getting your panties in a twist.” Then she laid one hand on Faith’s wrist, her frosted-rose acrylics shimmering in the glow from the freezer case. “Going through hard times is nothing to be ashamed of, honey,” she said in an uncharacteristically low voice. “There’s not a soul in this town who hasn’t, at one point or another. So come on over, let me give you a trim, on the house. Won’t take but twenty minutes—”

“No, I couldn’t, really. I mean, I’ve got the babies. And frozen food—”

“It’s thirty degrees outside, nothing’s gonna happen to the food. And the babies can play in the kiddy corner, I’ll put you in the chair right beside it so you can keep an eye on ’em. Beatrice Moody canceled her eleven o’clock, so I can fit you in, no problem. Honey,” she added when Faith started to protest again, “all this is is one woman lookin’ out for another. ’Cause nothin’ bolsters a woman’s ability to cope with a crisis better than knowin’ she looks good.”

Faith supposed there was more than a little truth in the older woman’s words. She’d always found life’s challenges much less formidable when armed with the right shade of lipstick and a good haircut, although she’d never quite been able to decide if this made her shallow or simply adaptable.

“And besides,” Luralene said, leaning so close Faith nearly choked on the Aqua Net, “I imagine it wouldn’t hurt to give Darryl a little pick-me-up as well, if you get my drift.”

Faith let out a sigh, surrendering as gracefully as she knew how.

Darryl slouched in one of the plastic chairs in Ryan Logan’s home office waiting room, tapping his heel against the dark, scuffed wooden floor. Except for the chairs, nothing much had changed since this’d been old Doc Patterson’s office, even down to the worn set of wooden blocks stacked in one corner. Magazines were a trifle newer, though that wasn’t saying a whole lot. But the same wooden blinds covered the mullioned windows, the walls were painted the same manila-folder color, the rug taking up most of the bowed floor was the same multicolored patterned number he remembered from when his mama used to bring him and his brothers here for his shots, except it was more faded now. And now, as then, he couldn’t sit in this office without a sense of trepidation, a suspicion he wasn’t going to feel better for having been here.

“Darryl! Didn’t know you were here already!” Ryan, who’d taken over for the old doc after his retirement, stood in his office doorway, looking more like a cowboy than a doctor in his jeans and denim shirt. Lines fanned out around bright blue eyes as the doctor’s dark-blond mustache curved up at the corners. Clearly, marriage and fatherhood—Ryan had married a young widow with three little kids a couple years back, then added one of their own to the brood—agreed with the former recluse. “Come on in, come on in!”

Darryl pushed himself to his feet. “I really appreciate you seeing me. I know I should’ve gone out to the clinic and not bothered you on your day off—”

“Forget it,” Ryan said, leading Darryl into his office. “Those your records from the hospital?”

Nodding, Darryl handed them over.

“Can you get up on the exam table on your own speed, or you need some help?”

“No, no, I’m good,” he said, although it was no mean feat getting his butt up on the paper-covered vinyl with only one hand to steady himself.

“So,” Ryan said, “all things considered, how’re you feeling?”

“So-so. The ribs still ache, but not as bad. And the stitches are itching like hell….”

“Yeah, let’s just take a peek at that.” The doctor carefully removed the dressing, nodding in approval before tossing the bandage in a metal can. “That’s healing up real nice. You don’t need to keep it covered anymore if you don’t want to. We’ll yank those stitches out in a couple days, and that’ll be that. No headaches, I take it?”

“Not from the accident,” Darryl muttered, which drew a curious look from the doctor. “No,” Darryl said, more clearly. “No headaches.”

“You still taking the Vicodin?”

“Not since the first day. They made me…I don’t know. I didn’t feel like myself on ’em.”

“Your arm’s not paining you, then?”

“Actually…that’s why I’m here. I remember breaking my other arm when I was a kid, and it hurt like hell for a couple days, till the bone started to set. What I don’t remember, though, is losing the feeling in my fingers.”

The doctor’s brows crashed together. “Some of the feeling, or all of it?”

“It comes and goes. There’s times when it feels like my hand isn’t even there. Other times it tingles like it’s on fire.”

Ryan walked back to his desk and picked up Darryl’s folder. For several seconds, he read silently, flipping a couple of the pages back and forth, the seriousness of his expression making a cold, hard knot form in the pit of Darryl’s stomach.

“Doc? What is it?”

“The good news is it’s not as bad as you might think.”

“And…what’s the bad news?”

Ryan’s sympathetic blue gaze met his and Darryl came real close to blacking out.

Muttering under her breath, Faith hesitated before squeezing her car into one of the angled parking spaces in front of the Hair We Are between Dawn Logan’s Explorer and Maddie Logan’s ancient Impala. Running into her friends right now provoked some real mixed feelings, that was for sure. Especially Dawn, who’d been Faith’s best friend in high school. On the up side, even though Dawn had spent ten years in New York City becoming a lawyer, at heart she wasn’t any different after her return to Haven last year than she had been before. Actually, she and Faith had resurrected their old relationship with hardly a missed beat, and Faith knew she could always count on Dawn to be a true and honest friend. Still and all, not only was the woman extremely successful by Haven standards, a fact that had led to Faith’s praying to be delivered from envious thoughts on more than one occasion, but she was also technically a newlywed. All that unbridled bliss grew downright tedious after a while.

However, there was nothing to be done for it now, Faith thought as she hauled her children out of the car and herded them inside. It was face Dawn now, or Luralene later. No contest.

And yet the moment Faith set foot inside and five people greeted her as though her arrival had made their day, at least half her troubles sloughed off her shoulders. As usual, the shop smelled of freshly brewed coffee and hair spray and nail polish, the exuberant pastel decor a radical declaration of femininity, a sanctuary from all that was ugly and depressing outside its doors. Faith had had her first haircut here when she was ten and her mother finally gave up on her daughter’s unruly hair. And now, more than twenty years later, she realized being here settled her frazzled nerves far more than a drink in some bar could ever do.

She couldn’t say the same for her children, however. Although Nicky had conked out in his car seat on the way over, poor Sierra was not at all sure about the shrieking ladies swooping down on her. The child ducked behind Faith’s legs, burying her face in the folds of Faith’s jeans at the knees, which God knew was the only place clothing was likely to bag on her body these days.

“Back off, y’all,” Luralene barked to her staff—Stacey, who everybody still called the “new girl” even though she’d been there for two years already; Evelina, the manicurist; and Vyanna, whose beehives (both hers and her customers’) had more than once been compared to a perfect meringue. “Can’t you see you’re scarin’ the poor baby half to death? Hey, sugar,” she said, her knees cracking like gunshots when she squatted. “Your mama’s gonna have a seat in that big chair over there right beside that big old toy chest and get her hair cut. And I bet there’s some doll babies inside just waitin’ for you to love ’em, what do you think about that?”

Faith smiled down into Sierra’s questioning gray-green eyes, thinking she wouldn’t mind a little loving herself, a thought she immediately replaced with a stern Don’t go there.

“Come on, sweetie,” she said, Nicky’s baby seat banging against her leg as she led Sierra over to the play area. She lowered the seat to the floor where she could still see him, then knelt in front of the three-year-old, pointing to the empty chair. “See? I’m right here. So you go on ahead and play, okay?”

Sierra peered around her at Luralene, then whispered, “The lady’s scary.”

“You’ll get used to it,” Faith said, giving her a kiss on the forehead, then climbing into the chair. After a couple of very skeptical seconds, Sierra began to systematically haul each toy out of the open wooden box by the wall, inspect it, then toss it over her shoulder, rejected.

“Tough customer,” Dawn shouted over the roar of a hair dryer from the next chair.

“Don’t I know it,” Faith said, the incongruity of her friend’s being here finally hitting her. As long as she’d known her, the brunette had always worn her hair natural and nearly to her waist. “Oh my God—you got your hair cut!”

“Don’t she look great?” Stacey said from behind Dawn’s chair, grinning underneath two inches of spiked black hair. “Like some actress or something, huh?”

“Oh, Lordy, Lordy,” Luralene said. “Where’s my camera?” She abandoned Faith to scurry back to the reception table, banging drawers open and shut for several seconds until she finally unearthed an old thirty-five millimeter. “Here it is, here it is….” She scurried back, the camera already up to her eye. “We have got to put this up in the front window! Stacey, you have outdone yourself this time, gal…for pity’s sake, Dawn—smile! Think of Cal or something!”

“Yeah, that’d sure do it,” Evelina said from over at her table, where she was doing Hazel Dinwiddy’s nails, and more than one woman there squelched a sigh at the thought of those smoky green eyes and that smile a woman only had to see once to remember the rest of her life.

Anyway. Like everybody else, Faith joined in the oohing and ahhing over Dawn’s hair, which was still past her shoulders, but now a mass of wavy layers with wispy, sexy bangs that made her brown eyes look positively enormous.

“You know,” Maddie Logan rasped from three chairs over, “you already had an unfair advantage over the rest of us, having the best boobs in town. This is just plain out-and-out overkill.”

“No, I think Faith’s got me beat in that department,” Dawn said, glancing over. “Pardon me for saying this, but that is one impressive rack, lady.”

“Five kids’ll do that to you.”

“Yeah, right,” Maddie said, fluffing her fingers through her just-trimmed, golden-brown shag. “It took me four to work up to a full A. At that rate I’d have to have twenty-two to get anywhere near you guys.”

“Honey,” Luralene said, “the bigger they are, the harder they fall. Long as Ryan isn’t complaining, you’ve got nothing to worry about.” She turned Faith’s chair around so she could tilt her back to wash her hair in the sink. “He’s not, is he? Complaining?”

A comb flying across the salon was the last thing Faith saw before she closed her eyes, savoring the warm water streaming over her head. “So why’d you do it?” she asked Dawn. “I thought you loved your hair long.”

“I did. Until I went to check my makeup in the mirror yesterday and my mother looked back out at me.”

Faith chuckled—with her eccentric clothes and long gray hair, Ivy Gardner, Dawn’s mom and the midwife who’d delivered two of Faith’s babies, was a definite holdover from the hippie era. That she was going to be the new mayor come January was a testament to Haven’s being on the cutting edge of something, Faith supposed.

“How’s she doing, by the way?” she asked, eyes closed.

“Still bummed about losing her refrigerator,” Dawn said, referring to Ivy’s own close encounter with Mother Nature the week before. In Ivy’s case, the wind had uprooted a fifty-foot mulberry from her backyard and smashed it into her roof, right on top of her kitchen. Fortunately, Ivy hadn’t been in the house at the time; unfortunately, the house was currently uninhabitable, which meant Ivy was staying with Dawn and Cal at his horse farm outside town, which Faith guessed had something to do with Dawn’s precipitous decision to change her hairstyle.

The old rotary phone on the front desk jangled as if it’d been goosed. Luralene went to answer it, then shouted over, “Faith, honey? I need to pop over to Coop’s for a sec, I’ll be back in two shakes, okay?”

Faith heard the redhead scoot through the door to her husband’s barbershop next door, startling the little silver bell over it into a tingling tizzy. She opened her eyes to find herself the object of a pair of worried gazes.

“So how are you and Darryl doing?” Dawn whispered, dark eyes huge underneath her newly cut bangs.

Faith smiled brightly. “Oh, you know us, we’ll muddle through.”

“Hey,” Maddie said, poking her. “This is us you’re talking to.”

“That’s right.” Dawn waited until Olive passed, then took Faith’s hand in hers. “I know things weren’t exactly copacetic between you two before—”

Faith’s gaze shot to Dawn’s. “What are you talking about? I never said—”

“It’s not what you said, it’s what you didn’t. And I doubt losing the garage is making things any easier between you two.”

And the sympathy in Dawn’s eyes was nothing compared with the empathy in Maddie’s. Having landed in Haven two years before with no money, two small children and another on the way, Maddie more than understood the concept of “financially embarrassed.” Faith tamped down a sigh that was equal parts annoyance at their nosiness and gratitude for their friendship. One of the ironies of life in a small town.

Sierra brought Faith a dolly, begging to get in her lap; Faith gestured to Maddie to hand her a towel, which she wrapped around her dripping hair. With her munchkin ensconced, singing softly to her new “baby,” she checked to be sure no one else was eavesdropping, although people around here tended to have highly developed listening skills.

“Frankly, I’m not sure what’s going to happen,” she admitted, explaining about how long it would take to get back on their feet, as well as Darryl’s refusal to accept help from her parents. “And Christmas is coming, and Heather wants to take dance lessons, and…” She shrugged. “I know how it looks, that we didn’t have a contingency plan in case something like this happened, but when you’re barely getting by as it is…”

“Shoot, honey,” Maddie said, “you don’t have to explain that to me.”

“Me, either,” Dawn said, then frowned. “Maybe you could get a job, at least for the time being.”

Faith’s eyebrows flew up, even as a tingle of possibility sparked over her skin. “A job? With five kids still needing me at home?”

Dawn frowned. “It’s not inconceivable that Darryl could hold the fort while you’re gone, at least with the older kids. It’s amazing how much a person can do with only one arm,” she said over Faith’s protest. “Besides, you’ve already got Nicky and Sierra in day care a couple mornings a week, right?”

“Well, that’s true. But what on earth would I do?”

That got a chuckle from the brunette. “Oh, come on…after twelve years of marriage and motherhood, you must have some marketable skills.”

Faith snorted. “None I could exactly exploit, if you get my drift.”

Dawn said something about that being a shame as Maddie tentatively said, “Well, I s’pose you could come help me make pies. I’ve got three restaurants in Tulsa that’s takin’ ’em now. I could use the extra help.”

Faith burst out laughing. “This is the woman who burns fish sticks, remember? Thanks, honey, but you’ve worked long and hard for your success. The last thing you need is me in your kitchen.”

The younger woman looked extremely relieved. Then Dawn remembered her secretary was going out of town for a couple weeks, but they all decided by the time Faith learned the computer program for the billing and such, Marybeth would be back.

“Working at the day-care center with your mother?” Maddie said, but Faith shook her head.

“No openings. And the church can’t afford to hire me out of pity.”

“Cleaning houses?” Dawn gently suggested.

“Around here?” she said, and both ladies agreed she had a point. Then Maddie hit herself on the side of the head.

“I am slow today, boy,” she said, her eyes bright. “There’s going to be an opening at the Homeland, starting next week. Melva Rice told me she’s quittin’, that she just can’t take standin’ on her feet all day anymore. It’s not a bad job, and there’s benefits once you’ve been there for a while. Melva said she was giving notice yesterday, so you’d better go get your application in, like now.”

“Now, wait a minute, I never said—”

“She’s not goin’ anywhere until I get that hair under control,” Luralene announced over the tinkling bell as she returned, marching across the floor like an army sergeant.

“Geez, Luralene,” Maddie said, “you got this place bugged or what?”

The older woman shooed the others out of her way, smiled for Sierra—who flinched—then set the girl on the floor with instructions to go play for a little longer, Mama needed to get all prettied up now. Then she spun Faith around, shoving her back toward the sink so hard she bounced. “She’s already missed one appointment, she’s mine now. However, to save time…” She took the hose to Faith’s hair again, working shampoo into her scalp hard enough to deep-clean her brain. “Why don’t one of you gals go over to the Homeland and pick up an application for her?”

There was no point in arguing.

Chapter 4

With his good arm, Darryl yanked open the doors to the freestanding garage out behind the house, his nostrils flaring at the blended scents of motor oil, paste wax, gasoline. With a reverence usually reserved for undressing his wife, he slowly peeled back the tarp he kept over the restored ’59 Big Bird. His breath caught, as it did every time, at how beautiful she was. It was probably stupid, hanging on to the car when he couldn’t even afford the insurance to drive it—it’d probably been a good three, four years since he’d last taken her for a spin—but to this day, he remembered the kick to his gut when he caught sight of her in Coop Hastings’s garage. More rust than paint, her white vinyl roof ripped and cracked, her chrome trim dull as a dead man’s eyes…and Darryl knew, with all the intensity of a sixteen-year-old in love, that it was up to him to save her. And if saving her meant months of agony and grossness by working his ass off on old man Yaeger’s farm to earn the three hundred dollars to buy her…well, let’s just say he’d yet to regret it.

He skimmed his hand along the gleaming, icy fender, restored as near as he could manage to the factory-finish Cherry Red, her new roof as pristine and unmarked as fresh snow. Underneath the hood sat a completely rebuilt V-8, packed with three hundred horses itching to be given their heads. He’d even managed to track down a decent set of white leather seats to replace the trashed originals. Oh, yeah, she was seventeen feet of sex on wheels, his Marilyn, with her lush curves and velvet purr. And she was all his, a thought that, for whatever reason, somewhat dulled the pain of the news he’d just been given.

“Darryl?”

He hadn’t heard Faith’s approach, despite the thin layer of ice covering the ground. She was standing in the doorway to the garage, her hair blowing every which way, Nicky in her arms. Behind her, Sierra chased Dot around the yard, giggling her head off. Or the dog was chasing her, it was hard to tell.

Darryl’s gaze veered back to Faith, who looked like she’d been lit up from inside. Her hair was shorter, too, he noticed. Frankly, he liked it long, but he damn sight knew better than to come between a woman and her hair. “I thought you said you canceled your appointment with Luralene?”

“I did, but I ran into Luralene in the Homeland. She took one look at my head and did everything short of dragging me bodily back to the shop. It was a freebie,” she said, as if she was trying to cover her butt. “Well, sort of. I traded for some of those blackberry preserves your mother gave us, since we’d be in our nineties before they got used up. Anyway…I’ve got news! I got a job!”

Darryl frowned. “Come again?”

“A job, at the Homeland.” She swiped Nicky’s curls off his forehead. “As a cashier, startin’ next week. Now I know this is going to take some adjustment, especially since you’ll have to supervise the older kids with their homework and on weekends. I know—the weekend part is the pits, but it’s the only job in town. That I can do, anyway. The pay’s not great, but it’ll help fill the gap, at least. And there’s benefits, if I end up staying on for a while….” Her brows pushed together. “Why aren’t you saying anything?”

Because he felt like that roof had caved in on him all over again? “How on earth did this happen?”

“I’m not sure, it certainly wasn’t something I’d consciously thought about. But there I was, trying to figure out how we were going to manage, and then somebody, um, at Luralene’s said she’d heard there was going to be an opening, and, well, the pieces just sort of fell into place. The manager—Roya Gibbons from church, you remember her?—hired me on the spot. Darryl,” she said with one of her exasperated breaths.

“What?”

“I’m only goin’ to work at the Homeland, not runnin’ off with the circus.” She hitched the baby higher up on her hip. “This is a good thing, okay? Go with it.”

Darryl lightly banged the heel of his hand against the front fender, then looked at his wife, his muscles pulling at his temples. “Did I miss something? I thought you always said you didn’t want to work outside the house?”

“We don’t exactly have any choice in the matter, do we? And I’m not about to watch my children starve because of some macho pride thing about you being the designated breadwinner.”

“We’re not in any immediate danger of starving, Faith. Maybe we’ve got to cut back on the frills right now—”

“Like what? The gas bill? The mortgage? Lord, Darryl—when’s the last time we all went to the movies? Or out to eat someplace other than Ruby’s? We were already riding about as fine a line as you could get. Of course…I suppose we could let my parents help—”

“Don’t even say that.”

“Well, then, buddy, it’s me or them. Take your pick.”

“It’s just…this seems so, I don’t know. Upside down.”

“You really don’t get it, do you?” she said in that tone of voice that sends chills up a man’s spine, and not in a good way. Against his better judgment, Darryl faced her.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means I feel good about this, you know? Real good, in fact. That I’ll be doing something concrete instead of sitting around and worrying to death about the situation. And for another thing…”

She lowered the baby to his feet, keeping her fingers curled in his hood so he wouldn’t topple over. “Look—I haven’t regretted a single moment I’ve been home with the kids,” she said, “and that’s the God’s honest truth. And I doubt seriously I would have considered looking for outside work if this crisis hadn’t pushed me into it. But…oh, it’s hard to explain.” She drew a deep breath, then turned to him, her brow crinkled. “It’s like…never going hungry, but never getting dessert, either. After a while you begin to feel…well, a little cheated, I guess.”

“And you’re blaming me for that?”

“No,” she said immediately. “How could I, when…?” She sucked in a breath, as if trying to regroup. “It’s just that you’ve always been sure of who you were, what you wanted to do…” Her sentence ended in a half-assed shrug.

A million and one emotions churning inside him, Darryl looked out over the yard, trying desperately to wrap his head around what she was saying. “Well,” he said at last, “I suppose if it’s dessert you’re looking for, a grocery store would be a logical place to look for it.”

A soft laugh drifted from her lips. “At least it’s a chance to be somebody besides ‘Mom’ for a few hours a day.”

“I thought that’s what you wanted,” he said, stubbornly.

“I did. Do. It just not all I want. Not anymore.” Her gaze flicked in his direction. “And then there’s Heather.”

“Heather…? Oh. You mean her dancing?”

“I know you think it’s foolishness—” Faith touched his arm when he blew out a breath “—and maybe nothing ever will come of it. Then again, I don’t see anybody with a crystal ball around here, do you? So who knows? But the point is, the child’s never asked for anything else her entire life.”

“We’ve already had this conversation.”

“So we’re having it again.” Faith reached over to stroke the Bird’s front fender; Darryl had to wrestle with envy for a second or two, but he got over it. “You remember telling me how badly you wanted this car,” Faith said, “and what you had to do to get it? Well, did you know your daughter’s been trolling for odd jobs herself, anything to earn a few dollars to pay for her lessons?”

His gaze snapped to hers. “On her own?”

“Of course, on her own, You don’t think I’d put the child up to it, do you? And guess what? She’s got herself two little jobs, helping Heddy Lancaster up at the library shelve books on Saturday mornings and reading to Minnie Hawkins’s old mother a couple hours a week.”

“Good Lord. How’s she think she’s gonna do all that and her schoolwork, and take dance lessons besides?”

“Exactly what I asked her. But she’s got it all figured out, showed me a schedule and everything.”

Feeling woefully left behind, Darryl walked over to the open garage door, leaning his good arm up against the frame. “Lord, Faithie…everything’s changing, isn’t it?”

“It was bound to happen eventually, I suppose,” she said softly behind him.

He grunted, then twisted to look at her. “You really think this job thing will make you happy?”

Long moments passed before she spoke. “I’ve never been unhappy, Darryl,” she said at last. “It’s just lately I’ve been feeling…I don’t know. Unsettled. Itchy. Like…like I needed to give birth to myself, or something.”

How anybody could look determined and vulnerable at the same time, Darryl had no idea. But his gut constricted with the urge to touch her, to draw her close and bury his cheek in all that bouncy hair, to let her soft scent both soothe and inflame the hunger gnawing at his insides. Only that’s when it hit him like an avalanche that he had no idea who his wife was anymore. Or worse, how he fit in with this new life she envisioned for herself.

“What do you want from me, Faith?” he said quietly, and her eyes veered to his. Finally, her mouth tilted into a small smile.

“Patience?”

Darryl shoved his good hand into his jeans pocket and let his gaze roam the yard. “Don’t you sometimes wish we could turn back the clock? To when we were still too young and dumb to know how hard it was gonna be?”

“Oh, Lord, no,” she said with a low laugh, her curls gleaming in the waning light when she shook her head. “I may not know who I am now, but for sure I don’t want to be that clueless eighteen-year-old again.” She shivered, then bent down to heft the baby into her arms, smiling for him when he grabbed her face with his pudgy little mitts and gurgled at her. “I need to grow, Darryl,” she said, her voice soft as a breeze. “We need to grow. So maybe this challenge has come along so we can do just that. Land sakes, it’s cold out here…c’mon, baby,” she called to Sierra. “Let’s get inside.”

Pretty sure it wasn’t his still sore ribs constricting his breathing, Darryl watched them troop back to the house before he slowly drew the tarp back up over the T-bird. He didn’t get it—one of the things that had drawn him to Faith from the beginning was how uncomplicated she’d been. Easygoing. Like him. How their roles had been so neatly defined—protector, protectee. Simple. Predictable.

Although, if he thought about it for more than two seconds, he didn’t suppose he could blame her for feeling whatever she was feeling. Hell, her entire world had just been turned ass over teakettle, what else was she supposed to feel? Except…except she’d said she’d already begun to feel this way long before the tornado.

Dammit! Hadn’t he been doing all along just what he’d promised? To be there for her and the kids, to provide for them, to put them first… If that had been enough at the beginning, why wasn’t it enough now? Because he knew it hadn’t been his imagination that once upon a time she’d looked at him as if he’d been her world. When he and the kids had been all she’d needed, when she’d found the same comfort in routine that he did. Only, since he had no idea what he’d done to earn those looks at the outset, he had even less of an idea how to go about getting them back now.

The knot in his chest tightened, rising to lodge in his throat as he stood in the open doorway to the garage, the icy air making his cheeks tingle. Slowly, steadily, he breathed out the temptation to panic, that his marriage—hell, his life—had hit a slippery patch and was skidding out of control.

Right toward the edge of a cliff.

Except…except a good driver, a smart driver, knows to turn with the skid, not against it, in order to get straightened out again.

Huh.

He flicked off the light switch, plunging Marilyn into darkness, then clanged shut the garage door. His cowboy boots, which he’d taken to wearing because they were a helluva lot easier to get on single-handed than his lace-up work boots, crunched the brittle, frosted grass as he crossed the yard. The sky was cottony and heavy, as if it was fixing to snow. He hoped not—shoveling snow one-handed was going to be a real bitch.

Again the panic rose in his throat. Again he refused to let it get a foothold. Because right now, he was steering with the skid. Avoiding tailspins. Focusing on nothing except getting back to normal, on doing whatever it took to win back that look of adoration he used to see in his wife’s eyes.

She was in the kitchen, fixing graham crackers and peanut butter for after-school snacks. Her cheeks were still flushed from the cold, making her blue eyes even brighter when she looked over at him. Tenderness, mixed with a healthy dose of anxiety, stole his breath. The one thing he feared most in the world was letting this woman down, of not being the man she needed him to be.

“So…what will I have to do?”

Her brows dipped. “Excuse me?”

“Around the house. Taking care of the kids. While you’re at work.” He rubbed his cast, as if he could will life back into his arm. “You think I can manage one-handed?”

Her expression thoughtful, Faith set the knife on top of the open jar, licked a smudge of peanut butter off her thumb. Even after all this time, even with two kids and a dog there with them, the gesture was enough to mess with his breathing. “With some modifications, I’m sure you’d do fine.”

“Okay, then. If me being Mr. Mom for a couple months is what it’s gonna take to…to get us through this, then I’ll just have to do the best job I can.”

Slowly, Faith smiled. And Darryl felt the tires once again grip the road, heading in the right direction. Except then she said, “By the way, your mother called a little bit ago, inviting us all to supper on Friday night,” and Darryl realized he didn’t dare relax behind the wheel just yet.

Try as she might, Faith couldn’t actually remember Darryl ever being afraid to go inside his parents’ house before this. Well, maybe afraid was too strong a word. Reluctant, maybe. But then, in his shoes, she’d be halfway to the next county by now.

She hauled Nicky out of his car seat, then joined her husband, standing in front of the house. The sky was already twilight-bruised, dark enough for his folks to have already turned on their Christmas lights. Thousands of them, outlining the roof, snaking up the porch posts, smothering every tree and bush in the yard, flashing and twinkling and glowing with irritating cheerfulness. Still, the kids were beside themselves, oohing and ahhing and jumping around like fleas, squealing their little hearts out. And that’s what was important, not her disgruntled mood. Even Heather, who being nearly twelve was far too dignified to run around and act like a child, stood in the center of the yard with her arms wrapped around herself, awestruck.

“Look, Mama!” Sierra yelled. “The horsie moves his head!”

A few feet away, Darryl chuckled. It was the first time he’d looked even remotely relaxed since they’d left the house. “That’s a reindeer, sweet pea. You know, like Santa has on his sleigh?” He pointed to the roof, where a lighted St. Nick and more deer precariously perched. Along with an angel, a snowman and a three-piece Nativity scene. L.B. and Renee believed in covering all the bases.

The front door swung open, instantly sucking all the kids into the house, trading them, it seemed, for the scent of roast pork and cornbread and some kind of pie. “Y’all coming in?” L.B. bellowed, but Darryl said they’d be there in a minute, Nicky wanted to see the lights. Actually, Nicky was giving Faith that “Uh…should I be scared?” look, but that was beside the point. The door closed again, bouncing the plastic holly wreath. Anxiety once more vibrated from her husband, vaporizing what little sense of peace she’d been able to hang on to.

For all they seemed to have gotten over the immediate hurdle of Darryl’s accepting their temporary role reversal, tension still clung to their marriage like baked-on grease. Not really a surprise, considering it had taken her about ten seconds to figure out he was only going along with her as a means to get back in her good graces. Or at least in her bed. Or her back in his, whatever. But that was Darryl for you. She’d never seen a person so set in his ways, so content to live his life the same way, day in and day out. For somebody who refused to give up an article of clothing until it literally disintegrated off his body, or who had a fit when his favorite TV show changed to a new night, that tornado had flattened a lot more than his business.

But that was nothing compared with the hell of having your wife put your sex life on hold.

Not a conscious decision on Faith’s part, but with everything going on, she just hadn’t been in the mood, for one thing. Which was very strange for her, because in theory, sex ranked right up there with long hot baths and Baskin-Robbins Jamoca Almond Fudge ice cream as one of God’s great gifts. Okay, in practice it did, too. So why she was in this I’d-rather-sit-on-an-anthill mood, she had no idea. She just was.

And she was losing the feeling in her cheeks from the cold.

She looked over, frowning. There he stood, staring at the lights. “Darryl?”

“I know, I’m working up to it.”

Faith sighed. “Or we could just wait until your mother sees me standing behind the cash register, let her draw her own conclusions.”

“I already told L.B. about you going to work,” he said, which was news to her. “Which is why I’m still out here.”

“When’d you do that?”

“Yesterday, actually.”

“I see.” Her gaze swung to the blinding house. “You know, this is not exactly a groundbreaking event. Me going to work, I mean.”

“Tell that to L.B. Besides, it’s not about you going to work. It’s why you have to go to work that’s the problem.”

“Only if you let him make it one.”

“Easy for you to say. You’re not the one who got reamed for not having a backup plan.”

“Oh, and he did?”

“Actually, yeah. He was insured up the wazoo.”

“When he was just starting out, when you guys were still babies?” She shook her head. “I somehow doubt it. He was lucky, Darryl. Real lucky, that nothing happened. I do know where your father’s coming from,” she said gently. “I always have. But this isn’t about him, it’s about us. How we decide to work through our challenges. And besides, you most certainly do have a backup plan.”

“Oh, yeah? And what might that be?”

“Me,” she said. “Now can we go inside before my ears fall off?”

Although the conversation stayed in safe territory all through supper, Darryl didn’t miss the glances passing between his parents, the unspoken worry like an untouched side dish planted on his mother’s Sears-issue maple dining table right between the mashed potatoes and the three-bean salad. The meal over, it was as if his father’d just scooped it right up and carted it into the TV room, where he was clearly determined to force several helpings down Darryl’s throat, never mind that he’d already had more than his fill before he got there.

The kids were all in the living room, helping his mother decorate the new artificial tree they’d carted home from the Wal-Mart in Claremore earlier, while Faith was down the hall, changing Nicky’s diaper on his parents’ bed. Over the past day or so, the initial panic in the aftermath of the tornado’s damage had given way to something far more terrifying—a sense of foreboding that things were never going to be the same, no matter how much he might want it. Not in his work, and not in his marriage.

At this point, he wasn’t sure which scared the bejesus out of him more.

He wondered now why he’d thought that proving his willingness to handle the house and kids while Faith was at work would be enough to lure her back into their bed. But nope. Not even after he’d told her he’d figured out how to sleep on one side so he wouldn’t snore. So he’d finally ditched the subtle approach and just flat out asked her if she wanted to fool around.

She’d said she was too tired.

Too tired? Since when? In all the time they’d been together, she’d never avoided sex, unless it was that time of the month, she had the flu or something, or she’d just had a baby. Or one of the kids was sick. Other than that, every Tuesday and Friday night, like clockwork, she’d be there in bed, all naked and sweet-smelling, waiting for him. And he’d prided himself on learning where all her sweet spots were, on what each little moan and hitched breath meant, on making himself hold off until she was satisfied. In fact, he had it down to a damn science, is what. Now, suddenly, she didn’t want it anymore? What the—?

“You look like you could use this,” his father said, jerking him out of his thoughts. Darryl almost smiled at the sight of the pair of longnecks in L.B.’s hands. “Or are you still on those painkillers?”

“Hell, no,” he said, relieving his father of the extra bottle. “I stopped those after the first day.” They both took long swallows before Darryl said quietly, “This some kind of peace offering?”

With a grunt, L.B. sank into the worn corduroy recliner that had probably grown roots into the sculpted pile carpet. The “den,” they euphemistically called the converted, fake-paneled half of his parents’ double garage. What it was was a sanctuary for Y chromosomes. His mother’s idea, actually, to keep everybody from “stinking up” the rest of the house. Whatever. Barcaloungers, a pool table and oversize electronics were the order of the day, the air permanently stained with the scent of nachos and hops.

“Maybe,” L.B. said. “I feel bad about coming down on you so hard. It’s just…you know how I feel about…about how it’s going to look, is all.”

So much for the peace offering. Leaning stiffly against the door frame between the den and the kitchen, Darryl forced another swallow of his beer down a tight throat. “To whom?” he finally asked. As if he didn’t know.

“Her parents, for one thing.”

“Dammit, L.B.,” Darryl said quietly, “it wasn’t like I asked that tornado to rip apart the garage. Or my arm. And you know something—I’ve busted my butt these past twelve years to prove myself to Faith and earn her parents’ respect. So how come I can’t seem to get yours?”

His father’s eyebrows shot up. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about the fact that you’re so all-fired concerned about what everybody else is gonna think, you haven’t stopped to consider what I might be going through. Because, believe me, the last thing I want is to look like a failure in Faith’s eyes.”

The words had escaped before he’d even known they were there. Silently swearing, Darryl pushed himself away from the doorway and walked over to the window, staring out at the glittering reindeer on his parents’ front lawn.

“You two having problems?”

The worry in his father’s voice scraped through him. He hesitated, then said, “All I’m saying is that it’s going to be a lot easier for Faith and me to sort through this mess without having to deal with your old-fashioned ideas about who’s supposed to do what, on top of everything else. No, maybe I don’t like it either, but right now, I’m up the creek without a paddle. Or much of a boat, for that matter. I can’t work, I have no place to work and…” He stopped.

“And what?”

“Nothing.”

“Cut the bull, Darryl. What’s goin’ on?”

Darryl walked over to lower himself onto the edge of the second recliner, glaring balefully at the cast before lifting his eyes to L.B.’s. “The doctors think I might have some nerve damage in my arm.”

His father stared at him for a good long time before he finally said, “But it’ll go away, won’t it?”

“That’s the part nobody knows.”

“Are you saying…you might not be able to work again?”

“How many one-handed mechanics do you know?”

L.B. let out a curse.

“Yeah, that’s about the size of it,” Darryl concurred. “The ironic thing is, of course, if I’d died, Faith would at least have gotten the life insurance money. This way…well, frankly, I’m not sure what she’s got.”

“And you can stop that talk right now,” L.B. said, thunking his empty beer bottle on the end table beside the recliner. “It’s a setback, son. Not the end of the world.”

The world, no. His world was something else again. Fixing cars was the only thing he knew how to do. Only thing he’d ever wanted to do, ever since L.B.’d hauled him up to get a look under the hood of their old Ford pickup when Darryl was four years old. He scrubbed a hand down his face and said. “True. But I got an awful lot of ‘I don’t knows’ to work through. Ryan said we can start with therapy soon as this cast gets off, maybe even sooner. I might get better, might even have a full recovery, but I can’t count on it. He said nobody really knew what caused these things, so there was no way to predict what might happen. All we can do is hope for the best.”

L.B. sagged back against the chair. “I take it Faith doesn’t know?”

“No. And I’d like to keep it that way for now. No sense worrying her any more than she already is, especially if the condition clears up on its own in a few weeks. So don’t you tell Mama, either.”

After a moment, his father nodded, then said, “So, what is this, exactly? A numbness or something?”

Darryl shrugged. “Sometimes. Other times my arm hurts like a bitch.”

“So that’s a good sign, right?”

A tight smile stretched across Darryl’s face. “I suppose.” He stood, walking over to stand by the door, listening to his kids’ laughter spilling from the living room on the other side of the kitchen. “You know, everybody says we’re a lot alike, you and me.”

“And how’s that?”

“I don’t really know how to let a woman take care of me, either. It feels…backwards. Unnatural. Like I’m not holding up my end of the bargain.”

His father pushed himself out of the chair and came to stand beside him, planting a firm hand on his shoulder. “Now you listen to me—I don’t care what those doctors say. They don’t know what they’re talkin’ about half the time, anyway. You remember how that hotshot in Tulsa told Edie Samson she had six months to live? That was, what? Ten years ago? And she’s still goin’ strong. So you’re gonna lick this, you know you are. Son, look at me.”

After Darryl carefully twisted around to meet his father’s gaze, L.B. said, “It’s not always easy for me to put my feelings into words, so I probably don’t say this as often as I should, but I’m proud of you. Real proud. You’ve done good by Faith and your kids, as good as any man could have, if not better. And since I didn’t exactly have a shining example of what a father was supposed to be when I was growing up, I can’t take credit for how you turned out, that’s just who you are. And all I know is, whatever it is inside you that’s made you like that, it’s not gonna let you down now.”

It wasn’t until some time later, though, after they were back home, the kids all in bed, that L.B.’s words got through. Darryl had gone to the kitchen to get a snack when the murmuring of the ten-o’clock news lured him to the living room doorway. Already in her robe and pajamas, Faith sat cross-legged on the pulled out sofa bed, the steely light from the TV slicking over her face and arms and breasts as she swiftly folded the mountain of fragrant laundry in front of her, the routine so familiar he could predict her every move—sorting everything into piles like a card shark, snapping out every T-shirt before she folded it so there wouldn’t be any wrinkles, her fingers a blur as she tucked pairs of socks into tight little balls. He stood there, watching, letting the ordinariness, the consistency of the moment seep into his soul, easing the various nagging aches in his battered body. Maybe it wasn’t much, this life of his, but it was his life. And it was real.

Oh, they’d known about each other from toddlerhood; in a town the size of Haven, that went without saying. But oddly enough, their paths hadn’t really crossed all that much. Now and then at church, maybe, or when her mama or daddy came into the filling station and she’d be in the car. She hadn’t struck him as the kind of girl to be stuck up, but she never exactly went out of her way to be friendly, either. So he’d been more than a little amazed when she’d started flirting with him once they reached high school. Didn’t believe it at first, frankly, thinking maybe she’d been put up to it by some of the other girls. Or that maybe she’d turned into one of those people who got off on making the conquest without any intention of following through.

Oh, how wrong he’d been. Because Faith had followed through, all right. Every chance they could get. Not right off the bat—there’d been a whole lot of cold showers in those early days. And Darryl had never once pressured her to go any further than she wanted to. In fact, more often than not, it was him calling a halt to things, if for no other reason than he wanted her respect every bit as much as he wanted her to know she had his. Although the truth of it was, he didn’t just respect her, he’d come about as close to worshipping her as a person could, and still retain at least some ability to function.

Eventually, though, nature won out, and Darryl’d found himself sneaking off to Claremore for condoms. Guess he should’ve read the fine print, though, ’cause that first box was still half-full when Faith told him she was pregnant. Man, he’d been scared. Couldn’t breathe properly for two weeks. Still and all, at least he knew he had something to offer her. Maybe it wasn’t much, by some folks’ standards, but he knew they’d never starve. Cars and trucks always broke down, eventually, especially around here where folks weren’t inclined to trade up every two years, just because. And as long as cars and trucks broke down, they’d need fixing. And that, he was good at. Damn good. So even though the timing hadn’t been ideal, there’d never been a question about him being able to support Faith and the baby. As well as all the babies that had come along afterward.