The Maverick Marriage Read online

  Trace nodded as he cut the potatoes into fries. “You remember the details, don’t you?” She acknowledged that she did and he went on. “They got out okay when the building they were in collapsed,” he reflected, unable to believe how much the loss of his parents still hurt, even after all this time. “But they went back in to help save others. And that’s when they were killed in the falling debris.”

  Susannah drew a breath, the empathy she felt for what he had been through reflected on her pretty face. Somehow, Trace ruminated, though it did nothing at all to change things or in any way alter his loss, her simple gesture of compassion helped.

  She wiped her hands on a towel and touched his arm gently. Trace sighed, his mood turning bleakly introspective once again. For a moment, he concentrated on cutting the potatoes. Aware Susannah was waiting for him to speak, he forced himself to push on, to tell her the things he hadn’t been able to bring himself to talk about when they were married, because the wounds had still been too raw, too fresh, he too immature to know how to handle them well. “Max came to our home, and I knew, even before he took me and Patience aside and told us what had happened and that Mom and Dad were among the missing.” Trace found himself running short of breath, so he had to pause and inhale deeply.

  He went back to slicing potatoes with extraordinary care, while Susannah continued to peel them in much the same, ultracautious way. “Max told us that our parents had last been seen trying to help others, which made sense since Dad was a doctor and Mom was a nurse, and neither of them would have ever turned away from anyone in need of medical assistance.” Trace fell silent a moment, recalling the mixture of shock, grief and fear that had all but immobilized him.

  Again, he forced himself to push on. He knew it was therapeutic to talk about his loss, especially on the heels of yet another. “Max felt Cody was too young to be told anything, until we knew for sure what had happened to Mom and Dad. And he asked me to try and hold it together for Patience, so Cody wouldn’t be upset unnecessarily. I agreed. And that was the end of my carefree youth.”

  Trace paused, watching as Susannah moved to the sink and began washing lettuce and tomatoes. Wanting to be just as casual, he concentrated on peeling a red onion. “A few days later, when we learned the worst had happened and my parents had been killed, I had even more responsibility. I knew Mom and Dad would’ve expected me to take care of both Patience and Cody. And Max, because he had never married or had any children of his own, needed a lot of help, too. I think at that point in time, I grew up in just a couple of days.”

  “So,” Susannah concluded softly as she spread the cleaned, sliced vegetables on a serving platter with efficient ease, “no more play for you.”

  Trace added the onions, and watched as she covered the tray with plastic wrap and slid it back into the refrigerator to chill. “Not until I had kids of my own.” Glad to be on safer emotional ground, he added informatively, “Speaking of whom, I think you and I have our work cut out for us if we’re going to make the next forty-eight hours, never mind the years after that, work.”

  Susannah raised an eyebrow, whether in mild agreement of his assessment or simple wariness, Trace couldn’t be sure. “It’s going to be odd, living together—” Susannah drew a shaky breath.

  He watched as she lifted the platter of meat, switched on the lantern-style deck lights and headed out the French doors to the rough-hewn deck overlooking Silver Lake. Moonlight glimmered on the surface of the water. A gentle breeze blew across the lake, stirring the crisp clean air, and reminding them just how cool it could get at night in this part of Montana, even in June.

  “I know.” He turned on the gas grill, and adjusted the flame, while below them, the sounds of cicadas and bullfrogs could be heard.

  Susannah put the platter of burgers on the grill. Together, they waited for the briquettes to heat up. “But maybe if we make a team effort—” she supposed.

  “It’s the only way,” Trace agreed with deep-seated practicality as he followed her over to the edge of the low-set deck. He propped a hip against the railing and stared at her. The darkness of night had never enchanted him before. Now, he found it suddenly very romantic to be standing out here in the summer evening with her, the granite mountains rising in the distance on the other side of the lake, and stars shining in a black velvet sky overhead. “I’ll lead, of course.”

  Susannah had been looking out at the lake, a dreamy expression on her face. At his proclamation, she whirled toward him, as suddenly as if she had been given an electric shock. “What do you mean, you’ll lead?” she demanded incredulously.

  Trace shrugged, his mind made up about that much, even if she did intend to argue. “One of us has to,” he explained practically. “And since I’m the dad—”

  “Wait a minute, Trace,” Susannah interrupted. “I am not—I repeat, not one of your subordinates.” She propped both her hands on her slender hips. “You handle your boys. I’ll handle mine.”

  Trace blew out a gutsy breath, wondering all the while how he ever could have forgotten, even for one second, what an exasperating woman Susannah could be when she set her mind to it. “That will never work if we are going to successfully combine households, Susannah,” he told her firmly. His tranquil gaze zeroed in on her incredibly long-lashed, sable brown eyes. “We’re going to be living in one house. We ought to have one set of rules.” And they would be his.

  Susannah drew a breath. “In case you haven’t noticed, we seem to have two totally different styles of parenting, Trace,” she said humorlessly. “And probably two very different sets of rules, too.”

  Trace agreed grimly. “I’ve noticed. And for the record, Susannah, you are way too lax with your boys. You let them get away with murder, negotiate practically everything, even offer to help them clean up the irresponsible messes they make. Which in turn just encourages such frat-house behavior like water-balloon fights inside the house. Keep it up and they are going to walk right over you.”

  Susannah flushed bright red. “Yes, well, you are too strict,” she retorted, giving him no quarter, either. “You bark out orders like a drill sergeant, insist this house be kept like a boot-camp barracks and you tolerate no chicanery at all, which, I might add, all boys that age need a little of in their lives. Heck, everyone does! Hence, your boys went overboard with the water-balloon shenanigans tonight because they were probably never cut loose before in their lives. If you keep up that nonstop strictness, heaven only knows where it will lead.”

  Trace hated to admit it, but his sons had been awfully solemn. Not always, mind you, just since their mother had died and he had found himself having to really scramble to keep things together. Just as he was scrambling now. It worried and annoyed him to realize that he may have inadvertently put his boys in the same spot he had been in upon his own parents’ death.

  “Keep your voice down,” he told Susannah quietly, worried about upsetting the kids this evening any more than they had been, with the announcement about the will and their impending marriage. Deciding the grill could wait, he dropped his voice to a chastising whisper. “Do you want the boys to know we’re fighting about this? Especially since in a couple of days, we’ll have to tell them we’ve decided to combine households not just for forty-eight hours, but permanently?”

  Susannah rolled her eyes in obvious exasperation. Once again, Trace noted despairingly, it seemed they agreed on very little.

  “It will not kill them to know we disagree on something, whether we combine households or not,” she stated emphatically. “Furthermore, I am not the same person you married, Trace.” Her eyes narrowed as she watched him loosen the knot of his silk tie, then, scowling in frustration, take it off altogether. Still pursing her soft sexy lips in indignation, she watched as he tossed it down on the redwood picnic table. “And I am not going to pretend it is okay with me for you to completely take over our life together, when it is not okay with me at all!”

  Trace frowned. He could see her digging in her heels.
This was not going at all the way he had planned. But it was not for lack of trying on his part. Considering how she had deceived him, and left him out of the first sixteen—count ‘em—sixteen years of his son’s life, he thought he was being extremely reasonable. And accommodating. Loosening the top two buttons on his shirt, he strode forward until they were standing toe to toe, and stood, looking down at her. “I am not the same person you married, either, Susannah,” he announced with the kind of dead-on implacability that characteristically had his employees and his children standing at attention. “These days,” he continued to tell her with a steadfastness that made her shiver, “I leave nothing—” especially my personal relationships, he added silently “—to chance.”

  Whirling away from him once again, Susannah paced the deck, the breeze blowing her hair in a soft halo around her pretty face. “Well, I have news for you, Trace,” she stormed, ignoring his cool disregard and waving her arms to effectively and defiantly punctuate her words. “You can’t orchestrate everything. Not about your life alone, or my life alone, or our life together,” she finished, arrowing an index finger in the direction of his chest.

  It annoyed him to see her looking as though she wanted to walk out on him again. It irritated him even more to think he might lose her before he’d had a chance to enjoy being with her again, or somehow make things right—with her, with Scott, the child he’d never known he had, even with their failed marriage.

  “Want to bet?” Trace gave in to impulse and tugged her into his arms. A stunned expression flashed on her face as he tunneled his hands in her hair and brought her mouth up to his, a brief whiff of her perfume seemed to caress him, and then all was forgotten as he was completely caught up in the sensation of her lips against his.

  He had always wanted her, even at the end, even when their marriage was over. Even so, it had never been like this, he thought as she threaded her hands through his hair and passionately returned his kiss. Desire flowed through him in hot waves and he kissed her long and hard and deep. He kissed her until she clung to him and moaned softly and melted in his arms. He was amazed at the depth of his arousal, the intensity of his feelings. Susannah was so beautiful she took his breath away. In all the years they had been apart, he had thought—hoped—he had forgotten what she did to him. Instead, the passion he felt for her—had always felt—had only gotten stronger…along with his equally entrenched desire to take her and make her his, and only his.

  Susannah knew she shouldn’t be giving in to temptation this way. But it had been so long, she thought, since she had been really loved, touched, held, or kissed. So long since she had felt like a woman, and not just a mom. As Trace’s kiss turned unbearably sweet, intimate and seductive, as his arms swept down her back, to bring her even closer to the uncompromising warmth and heat of his tall frame, she couldn’t say no, couldn’t resist—couldn’t seem to do anything but move closer still. And that was when it happened. When she heard the sound of the patio door slamming open behind them. The clatter of feet. Then several shocked gasps and one very loud, very indignant male voice behind them. “Hey! We thought there was gonna be no sex!”

  Chapter Five

  “Guess we were wrong,” Scott drawled as Susannah and Trace flushed and broke apart.

  “And how,” Nate agreed.

  “Unless they’re administering mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to each other,” Jason kidded.

  Beside them, Mickey blinked. It was clear he still didn’t know what was going on. “Well?” he asked finally, turning to the other boys for confirmation, like the baby of the family that he was. “Is this sex or isn’t it?” he demanded plaintively.

  Susannah’s oldest child exchanged looks with Trace’s oldest son. “Well, Mom?” Scott echoed.

  “And Dad?” Nate echoed, picking up the thread with the same witty determination.

  “What’s going on?” Scott asked, his deep blue eyes narrowing as he, too, apparently tried to decide the import of finding his mother in her ex-husband and coinheritor’s arms.

  Susannah flushed all the more, for once in her life so embarrassed she was completely at a loss. Trace, she could not help noting humorously, did not appear to be faring much better.

  “Actually,” she began.

  “The grill is about ready, I think,” Trace said. He turned around to put the hamburgers on.

  “You’re not getting out of this that easily, Dad,” Nate said.

  Susannah knew the boys deserved some explanation, but was just not sure what that should be. “It was—”

  “—just a kiss for old time’s sake,” Trace finished for her.

  She turned to glance at him, so only he could see the look in her eyes. It had felt like more than that to her.

  Trace cleared his throat. “We, uh, we’re sorry if we alarmed you by getting a little carried away, but…” He cleared his throat again and gave the boys all looks that were strictly man-to-man. “Sometimes that happens.”

  I’ll say, Susannah thought.

  She turned to Mickey, figuring since Trace had taken it upon himself to answer for both of them, he could field all further questions for both of them, too. At least from the older boys. There were some things her youngest did not need to hear. “Mickey, honey, would you come in the kitchen with me? I need someone to help line up celery and carrot sticks on a tray.”

  “Okay.” Mickey fell into step beside her. “So,” he asked importantly as he shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans and they went inside the house. “What is all this kissing stuff about, anyway?”

  “ENOUGH ABOUT the birds and the bees and the-time-and-season-for-everything stuff. I still don’t get why you and Trace were kissing, Mom,” Mickey said impatiently ten minutes later as he painstakingly added black and green olives to the sliced vegetables on the relish tray. “What does it mean?”

  Good question, Susannah thought as she turned the sizzling fries with a slotted spoon.

  “Does it mean you like each other? That you’re boyfriend and girlfriend? What?”

  Seeing that the French fries were done, Susannah removed them from the skillet and spread them out on paper towels to drain. “It means we were once married, and now, because of Max’s will, we’re going to be again.”

  “But are you friends?” Mickey persisted doggedly.

  “We’re trying to be.”

  “Good friends? Boyfriend and girlfriend? Sleepover pals, what?”

  “People who are Mom and Trace’s age aren’t supposed to be sleep-over pals,” Scott informed his younger brother as he came through the door, carrying the charbroiled burgers. Trace, Nate and Jason were fast on his heels and listening intently. “Not unless they’re married, anyway,” Scott continued. “At least that’s what Mom always says. She wants us to wait until we’re married to sleep over with someone of the opposite sex. In our case, Mickey, that would be girls,” Scott explained patiently. “But since Mom and Trace are going to be married again, and they were already married before, that kind of muddles things. At least that’s what I think they would tell you if they could get their tongues untied long enough to do so.” Scott looked at Susannah, long and hard. “Or am I wrong?”

  “I think that about sums it up,” Susannah murmured self-consciously, wondering when their roles had switched and Scott had suddenly become the responsible one, she the romantically reckless “teenager.”

  “Me, too,” Trace agreed firmly, before breaking into a broad smile. “And that being the case, I say we eat.”

  ALL SIX GATHERED around the big oak table in the country kitchen of the log-cabin lake house. To Susannah’s relief, no sooner had they said grace and filled their plates, than the talk turned to fishing. “You mean you guy’s never fished in a mountain stream?” Nate asked her two sons.

  “No. Have you?” Scott asked, looking very interested.

  “All the time,” Nate enthused. “We know some great places for trout, right on the Silver Spur. And there’s some really fine white water, too. Jason
and I can show it to you and Mickey tomorrow, if you want.”

  “The fishing is okay. You know where the approved places are,” Trace said. “If you guys behave yourselves, and Susannah and I both agree it’s okay, timing-wise and so on, you all can go. But stay away from the white water, unless I’m there with you. It’s dangerous.”

  His boys looked disappointed but did not argue. Apparently, this was a family rule, one she approved of.

  “Can we go in the morning then?” Scott asked Susannah.

  “Actually, I was counting on your help tomorrow morning. They’re going to be shorthanded over at the logging camp dining hall. I thought maybe you and Mickey could bus tables for me during the breakfast shift.” Susannah turned to Trace. “Unfortunately, that means you’ll have to go, too, since I’ll be there from 5:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m.”

  “And so will Nate and Jason.” Trace volunteered his sons cheerfully. “They can bus tables, too.”

  All four boys looked less than thrilled.

  “Work before play, guys,” Trace reminded them.

  There was some good-natured grumbling all around. And then once again the talk turned to the wilds of Montana, and the quarter-million acres of timberland that Trace and Susannah were jointly inheriting from Uncle Max.

  “IF YOU HAVE to get up at 4:00 a.m. to get to work by five, I think you’d better get to bed now,” Susannah told her sons once the dishes were finished.

  “Morning will be here before you know it,” Trace told his sons.

  Nate and Scott exchanged hopelessly pained looks. “Doesn’t sound as if they’re giving us much choice, does it?” Scott drawled.

  “Nah, but then that’s parents,” Nate agreed as he and Scott headed for the stairs, their two younger brothers not far behind. “Always giving orders.”

  “Especially mine.”