His for the Taking - By Ann Major Page 0,58
Landing is your ranch. I want you to be able to come here whenever you like or need to and enjoy it without worrying about me. I want you to be able to bring Noah here, and for Noah to feel safe and accepted.”
“The ranch is just a place.” He wrapped his arms around her and kissed her hard. She turned into him and clung with a desperation that drove out his doubts, at least temporarily.
“All my life I’ve wanted to be accepted and loved. Even here. I’m just so afraid that the past and these people will find a way to make you regret marrying me.”
“That’s not going to happen. I’m not going to let it happen. When are you ever going to learn that other people’s opinions don’t matter all that much?”
“That’s easy for you to say, since you’ve always enjoyed their good opinions.”
Holding her close made his breath quicken. She’d been baring her soul, and suddenly all he wanted was her naked. He needed to make love to her so he could focus on what mattered instead of the town’s vicious lies about her. “Hey,” he murmured, “I was wondering if you think we could sneak off for a swim? Just the two of us?”
Her sparkling gaze lifted teasingly to his. “I’d have to ask Miss Jennie to watch Noah.”
“Do it.”
* * *
“Can we please get chocolate pudding for our picnic with Cole?” Noah asked as Maddie pushed their grocery cart down the aisle past a row of boxes of instant pudding.
“Pudding is not on Cole’s list.”
Noah scowled as he struggled to read a label on a box.
“However…he did put down chocolate chip cookies.”
“But can we have pudding, too? Please, can we?” Noah’s bright green eyes pleaded.
“Okay,” she said, smiling. “One. Just pick one.”
“Oh, boy!” Noah leaned closer to the puddings so he could concentrate on the words and pictures.
Maddie caught a whiff of all-too-familiar whiskey breath and looked up in alarm.
“Is that your brat?”
The woman who’d spoken was shuffling clumsily toward them. When she burst into rough laughter, Maddie felt an icy chill race down her spine. Kneeling, Maddie clutched Noah closer.
Caught off balance, he dropped a box of pudding and sent it sliding down the aisle straight at the woman.
“Hey, my pudding!” he cried and would have run after it if Maddie hadn’t held him fast.
“You’re a bad child!” the woman scolded. “Just like your mother was.”
“Pick another pudding,” Maddie ordered through clenched teeth even as she stood up and whirled her cart around to escape.
But the woman, who was faster, lurched toward Maddie and seized her cart. “You think you’re too good to speak to your own mother, do you? Because that fool Coleman gave you a big rock and says he’s marryin’ you? Well, you’re not, girlie. You’re no different than me. You should hear what people around here are saying about you. They say you snuck around…chasing him when you were a girl ’cause he was rich. They say you lucked out…havin’ ’is baby, keeping it a secret, so as you could make him pay for it later. If they play, make them pay. That’s what I taught you, baby girl, didn’t I?”
Maddie was desperate to get Noah away from this woman, who was kin to her biologically but in no other way. Several shoppers, who had frozen to watch their embarrassing exchange, were standing together in a tight little clump, their mouths hanging open. No doubt they’d heard every ugly word and believed every ugly lie and would repeat them to anyone who would listen.
Feeling the weight of their contemptuous gazes, Maddie’s mouth went dry. But it was her mother she most wanted to escape. Feeling queasy, it was all she could do not to abandon her grocery cart, grab Noah and race out of the store.
But she wouldn’t cower or give any of them the satisfaction of seeing how devastated she was, so, instead, she notched her chin higher and drew herself up straighter. Shoulders back, she marched toward the checkout counter where she waited patiently while Noah tugged at her jeans, begging for candy while the teenage checker with multiple piercings took forever to scan their groceries.
Seventeen
Tears streaming down his cheeks, Noah burst into Miss Jennie’s kitchen like a tornado.
“Don’t stomp or run in the house,” Maddie said to Noah as Cole, who was drinking coffee at the table, looked up from an agricultural journal.
“I hate Bobby Mueller! I hate him!”
“Remember now, we don’t hate people. We may get