Part 6 (1/2)
”Have you said you love him?”
”No, and I don't intend to.”
”Why not?”
Lacey considered that question-and decided against answering it. Tess didn't seem to mind. She got to
work threading her needle, rolling a knot into the end of the thread. She took her first st.i.tch.
Her head still bent over her mending, Tess spoke again. ”Whatever Dr. Severance feels for your sister, it's obvious he cares for you. And he also feels ... what a man feels when he looks at a certain woman.” Lacey sat a little straighter on the railing. ”s.e.x, you mean?” ”Yes. I mean s.e.x.” ”Oh, come on. He did ... want me. Nine months ago. But now...” ”He wants you,” said Tess patiently. ”And I am not talking about nine months ago. I am talking about what I saw on his face last night.” ”You imagined it.” ”No, I didn't.” Tess glanced up in mid-st.i.tch. ”And youdo lovehim .” Lacey considered a lie of denial and rejected the idea. Tess would know a lie when she heard one.
Lacey looked out, over the yard, past the silvery foliage of the Russian olive tree growing in the center of the driveway, to the rolling green land that would soon parch to gold beneath the summer sun. ”I'm not going to marry him.” She said it very softly.
”Excuse me?”
Lacey turned back to the shade of the porch. A fly buzzed near her ear. She waved it away. ”I said, I'm not going to marry him.”
Tess kept her gaze on her mending, but a smile curved her mouth. ”He's a fine man. And he cares for you. He wants you as a man wants a woman. And you love him. It's enough.”
”Enough for what?”
”Enough for a start. Enough to build on. That's all that's really needed at the first in a marriage, if the two
people are honorable. If they're willing to persist.” Lacey peered more closely at her cousin's wife. ”You sound as though you're talking from experience.” ”I am. Zach and I started out with a strictly practical arrangement. He needed a wife. And I needed ... a place like this ranch. Somewhere to call home.” Lacey let out a short laugh of pure disbelief. ”You and Zach? You're kidding. I can see when he looks at you how he feels. And when you look at him...” A sweet pink blush crept upward over Tess's soft cheeks. ”Yes. But it wasn't always that way.”
Bracing her hand more firmly beneath her heavy stomach, Lacey lowered her feet to the porch boards.
”Well. Call me a fool. Call me a romantic. But I want to have my husband's love when I marry him.”
”Ah, but not justany husband. You want Logan Severance's love.” Right then, as if the forces of nature had some vested interest in proving Tess's point, a gust of wind blewdown the porch. It ruffled back the cover on Lacey's sketch pad. The drawing Lacey had just beenworking on-ofLogannapping in the cabin-was right there for Tess to see. She glanced at it.
”Very nice,” she said.
Lacey stepped forward, flipped the cover in place and turned the pad over so the cardboard backing
would hold it shut. ”All right. So it'sLogan's love I want. So what? Sometimes people can't have what they want.” ”That's true. And they certainly will never get what they want if they don't even try.” ”And just how do you suggest that I 'try'?” Tess took a few more perfect st.i.tches, her head tipped thoughtfully to the side. When she pulled the thread through for the third time, she spoke. ”Marry him. Build a life with him. Raise that baby together. Givelove a place to grow.”
Give love a place to grow. What a captivating idea.
Too captivating. ”That might work for some couples. But not for Logan and me. There are just a hundred ways we don't mesh.”
”And those ways are?”
”Well, for starters, at least with me, he can be unbelievably overbearing.”
”And you're a born rebel. Your lives will never be dull.”
”You don't understand, Tess. You don't know. He is a fine man, just as you said. But I'm not ... wife
material. Not the kind of wife Logan's always wanted, anyway.”
”You will be an excellent wife. You're strong and good-hearted and full of life. Logan Severance is a
lucky man to have your love.”
Lacey shook her head. ”Tess, you're not listening. It simply can't work.”
”Shall I tell you what my wise old Aunt Matilda used to say?”
”I'll pa.s.s.”
Tess chuckled. ”Listen up.”
”Oh, all right. Go ahead.”
”Whether you think you can or you think youcan't -you're right.”
Logan, Zach andJobeth returned about half an hour later. Tess went in and brought out a pitcher of lemonade and five tall iced gla.s.ses. For a while, they all sat together on the porch.Loganasked questions about what he'd seen on his afternoon tour and Zach answered him in that low, pleasant drawl of his.
Lacey sat in the rocker, sipping lemonade and sometimes sketching, listening to the others talk. Now and thenLoganwould glance her way. Their eyes would meet and she'd find herself thinking about what Tess had said.
Marry him. Raise that baby together. Give love a place to grow...
Somehow, right then, in the shade of her cousin's porch on a hot summer afternoon, Tess's lovely, impossible words sounded like excellent advice. Lacey felt good, lazy and content and happy with the world and her own rather insecure place in it.
Even the ache in her back wasn't that bad, though sometimes it did seem to reach around, feeling like thin yet powerful fingers, and squeeze at her distended abdomen. She wondered, as she sat there idly rocking, if she might be having contractions-and then decided that if she was, there was nothing urgent about them. They came irregularly and were never less than ten or fifteen minutes apart.
Edna strolled across the yard with the baby at a little after five and Starrcame spinning down the driveway in a dusty sports car a few minutes later.
Tess picked up her mending and her cloth-covered sewing box and stood. ”I think it's time I started thinking about getting some food on the table. Lacey?Logan? I hope you'll join us.”