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“What I have,” Madelyn said very clearly, “is a pigheaded husband who needs to be taught a lesson.”
“Hmmph. Never seen a man yet wasn’t pigheaded.”
“I’m pregnant, too.”
“Does he know?”
“He does.”
“He knows where you are?”
“He will soon. I’m not hiding from him. He’ll probably come through the door breathing fire and raising hell, but I’m not going back until he understands a few things.”
“Such as?”
“Such as I’m not his first wife. He got a dirty deal, but I’m not the one who gave it to him, and I’m tired of paying for someone else’s dirt.”
Floris looked her up and down, then nodded, and a pleased expression for once lit her sour face. “All right, the room’s yours. I always did like to see a man get his comeuppance,” she muttered as she turned to go back into the kitchen. Then she stopped and looked back at Madelyn. “You got any experience as a short-order cook?”
“No. Do you need one?”
“Wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t. I’m doing the cooking and waitressing, too. That sorry Lundy got mad because I told him his eggs were like rubber and quit on me last week.”
Madelyn considered the situation and found she liked it. “I could wait on tables.”
“You ever done that before?”
“No, but I’ve taken care of Reese for nine months.”
Floris grunted. “I guess that qualifies you. He don’t strike me as an easy man to satisfy. Well, you in good health? I don’t want you on your feet if you’re having trouble keeping that baby.”
“Perfect health. I saw a doctor yesterday.”
“Then the job’s yours. I’ll show you the room. It’s nothing fancy, but it’s warm during the winter.”
The room was clean and snug, and that was about the limit of its virtues, but Madelyn didn’t mind. There wa
s a single bed, a couch, a card table with two chairs, a hot plate and a minuscule bathroom with cracking tile. Floris turned on the heat so it would get warm and returned to the kitchen while Madelyn carried her suitcases in. After hanging up her clothes in the small closet, she went downstairs to the café, tied an apron around her and took up her duties as waitress.
WHEN REESE GOT home that night he was dead tired; he’d been kicked, stepped on and had a rope burn on his arm. The cows would begin dropping their spring calves any time, and that would be even more work, especially if a cold front moved in.
When he saw that the car was gone and the house was dark, it was like taking a kick in the chest, punching the air out of him. He stared at the dark windows, filled with a paralyzing mixture of pain and rage. He hadn’t really thought she would leave. Deep down, he had expected her to stay and fight it out, toe-to-toe and chin to chin, the way she’d done so many times. Instead she’d left, and he closed his eyes at the piercing realization that she was exactly what he’d most feared: a grasping, shallow woman who wasn’t able to take the hard times. She’d run back to the city and her cushy life-style, the stylish clothes.
And she’d taken his baby with her.
It was a betrayal ten times worse than anything April had done to him. He had begun to trust Maddie, begun to let himself think of their future in terms of years rather than just an unknown number of months. She had lain beneath him and willingly let him get her pregnant; for most of a year she had lived with him, cooked for him, washed his clothes, laughed and teased and worked alongside him, slept in his arms.
Then she had stabbed him in the back. It was a living nightmare, and he was living it for the second time.
He walked slowly into the house, his steps dragging. There were no warm, welcoming smells in the kitchen, no sound except for the hum of the refrigerator and the ticking of the clock. Despite everything, he had a desperate, useless hope that she’d had to go somewhere, that there was a note of explanation somewhere in the house. He searched all the rooms, but there was no note. He went into the bedroom where she had spent the past two nights and found the dresser drawers empty, the bathroom swept clean of the fragrant female paraphernalia. He was still trying to get used to not seeing her clothes in the closet beside his; to find them nowhere in the house was staggering.
It was like pouring salt into an open wound, but he went into the other bedroom where she had stored her “New York” clothes. It was as if he had to check every missing sign of her inhabitance to verify her absence, a wounded and bewildered animal sniffing around for his mate before he sat down and howled his anger and loss at the world.
But when he opened the closet door he stared at the row of silk blouses, hung on satin-padded hangers and protected by plastic covers, the chic suits and lounging pajamas, the high-heeled shoes in a dozen colors and styles. A faint hint of her perfume wafted from the clothes, and he broke out in a sweat, staring at them.
Swiftly he went downstairs. Her books were still here, and her stereo system. She might be gone now, but she had left a lot of her things here, and that meant she would be back. She would probably come back during the day, when she would expect him to be gone, so she could pack the rest and leave without ever seeing him.
But if she were going back to New York, as she almost certainly had been planning, why had she taken her ranch clothes and left the city clothes?
