The Farmer's Wife Read online

“If you don’t like how I turned out, then why do you hang around?”

  “I never said I didn’t like you just the way you are. In my opinion you were always too cheerful. That yippy-skippy stuff used to drive me nuts. Only idiots are that happy.”

  Brian’s lips twitched. Trust Dean to put everything in perspective. He had been an idiot back then. Just call him a fool for love.

  “I don’t want you to backslide,” Dean continued. “Maybe if you’d nail someone else, you’d get over her.”

  And trust Dean to take the most wonderful experience of Brian’s life and reduce it to smut. But then, Dean had never been in love. Considering his suave manner and charming vocabulary, one had to ask why. Brian snorted.

  “That’s better.” Dean reached out to punch Brian in the shoulder, then thought better of it and let his fist drop back to his side. “I’ll go and milk your cows before they explode. Then I’d better get back to mine.”

  He trotted toward the barn, leaving Brian alone as the cool night mist settled in his hair. He glanced up to discover a full-moon rising. No wonder this day had been nothing short of insanity. There was something to be said about full moon madness. Animals and people behaved differently when the moon hung bright and heavy in the sky.

  “Baaa!” The ewe butted his hip, angling for a pat, but Brian was fresh out of arms. Instead, he rubbed her head with his elbow, letting her lean against him as he contemplated the moon and his life.

  In the world of men, what was never said had never happened. Therefore, because Dean and he had never discussed his sleeping with Kim, he never had. Lucky for Brian. Because even though Dean might not want to hug and kiss his sister, that didn’t mean he wouldn’t be happy to kick the ass of anyone who had done that and more—even if that someone was his best friend. He’d be honor bound. It was a guy thing.

  Dean’s question about sex since Kim suggested that he knew there’d been more between Brian and Kim than snuggling in the back seat of a Chevy Nova. But once again, if Brian didn’t tell, Dean would continue to pretend it had never happened. Brian wished he could do the same.

  There had been other women since. Not many, but enough to know he’d had something special with her. Kim had been his first; she wouldn’t be his last. She was merely his only.

  He might still love her . . . . Brian sighed and turned away from the bright, shiny moon. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t hate her, too.

  Kim was able to get home, throw what she’d taken out of her suitcase back in and escape before anyone saw her. She left a note for whoever might care and got back into the car.

  Tempted to put the top down and let the fresh air stream through her hair, across her face—anything to release the tight, trapped feeling in her chest—she refrained. The temperature was near freezing, with a freezing drizzle expected before morning. She might be tired, sad and a bit scared, but she wasn’t stupid. She did not need a cold on top of everything else.

  Five minutes later, she parked her car next to Dean’s truck. Her lip curled at the sight, and the desire to flee nearly overwhelmed her. But she wasn’t going to run. Not this time.

  She owed Brian. Not only for what had happened today, but for what had happened before. Maybe if she could do something for him now, she might be able to get over what had happened then.

  Kim climbed the steps, suitcase in hand and knocked. Then, remembering Brian’s injury, she turned the doorknob and stepped inside.

  He leaned against the wall, directly across from the door, arms crossed over his chest, not by choice but because of the slings supporting them. A frown creased his forehead as he contemplated the suitcase in her hand.

  A dizzy sense of déjà vu swept over her. Though this particular situation had never happened, she must have imagined it a thousand times.

  He raised his gaze from the suitcase to her face. His frown was gone, replaced by an expression she was beginning to loathe. Complete blankness, utter stillness, as if there was no one home behind those eerie gray eyes. This was a man she did not know, a man far different from the one she had loved, and he scared her.

  “Leaving so soon?” he murmured. “And saying goodbye? My, my, times have changed.”

  She deserved his sarcasm. But that didn’t make it any easier to take.

  “More than you think,” she snapped. “I’m moving in.”

  His eyebrows shot up. His shoulders came away from the wall. At least he was moving; at least he had some expression on his face, some life in his eyes.

  “Like hell.”

  “Yes, I’m sure it will be.”

  She plowed past him and into the kitchen. There wasn’t much he could do to stop her with both arms strapped to his chest.

  “I don’t need your help.”

  Kim set the suitcase on a chair. “We’ve already had this discussion. You needed me once and I wasn’t here. Blah, blah, blah.”

  His eyes narrowed; his lips thinned. Why was she baiting him? Because seeing him angry was so much easier than seeing him indifferent.

  “I’m here now,” she continued. “And I’m not leaving.”

  “Until things get rough, anyway.”

  Now her lips tightened. “Listen, I feel responsible.”

  “Responsible? You? Since when?”

  “Dammit, Brian!” she exploded. Then she saw him smirk and realized he’d been baiting her as much as she’d been baiting him. She took a deep breath, counted to ten and tried again.

  “I’ll stay until you can take care of yourself. Someone has to.”

  “Why does it have to be you?”

  “My question exactly.” She rubbed between her eyes with her thumb. “Do you have a better idea?”

  “Yeah, anyone but you.”

  The silence between them was so complete she heard the cows lowing in the barn.

  “Is there anyone else?” she asked quietly.

  Brian had been a late-life miracle for the Rileys—his mother in her forties when she had her first and only child, his dad in his fifties. Brian was all that was left of them both.

  Her eyes burned, and she blinked hard and fast. Now was not the time to bring up the loss of so many things.

  “You know there isn’t,” he said.

  She nodded. “My family will help as much as they can, but with Dad out for a while, they’re going to be shorthanded, too. I’m dispensable.”

  “I wouldn’t say that.”

  She cast him a glance, but he had already turned away and she let the comment go. This was going to be difficult enough without analyzing every little thing.

  “I’ll put my suitcase in the extra room.”

  He grunted, which she took as a yes because it wasn’t a no. She grabbed her bag and went into the room off the kitchen, once reserved for a cook or a hired man. The quilt on the bed was an heirloom, handmade by Bridget O’Riley in the land of Eire and brought to the New World, where some smart-ass clerk on Ellis Island had dropped the O and rechristened her Bridget Riley.

  The first Rileys in America had worked as domestics. They’d built a railroad and fought for the Union in the Civil War. Kim had always loved to hear stories of Rileys past. That they’d known where they came from had fascinated her.

  While her own family tree obviously had roots in Italy, the branches were somewhat tangled. No one knew, or much cared, when the seeds of the Luchettis had hit the shores of the good-old USA. Her mother’s family—White by name—was even worse. When Kim had once asked her grandfather where the Whites had come from, he’d said, “Paduka,” and that had been the end of that.

  Kim tossed her suitcase onto the bed and let her gaze wander over the room. The cracks in the ceiling had been patched; the walls, recently painted. The furniture was heavy, dark and old, but it shone with loving care and a good coat of polish. The floor was clean; the bathroom, too. Not only was Brian a superior farmer, but he appeared to be a superior housekeeper, as well.

  Kim wasn’t much good at either one. Her mother had tried to mold her
into a farmwife, but Kim had resisted every inch of the way. As a result, she was one step above awful when it came to anything domestic. That hadn’t mattered a whit in Savannah, where she was a respected career woman. But here . . .

  Kim shook her head. Here her lack of skills in the home would be a serious problem. The more she thought about it, the more stupid the entire plan became. But she’d agreed, and she would stick this out. If only to prove that she could.

  The Rileys’ farmhouse was even older than the Luchettis’ and had been in Brian’s family for four generations. The first Riley to farm had been Conner, Brian’s great-grandfather. He had bought the place with money earned from working the stockyards of Chicago. After half a lifetime dealing with the end of a cow’s life, Conner had dreamed of starting with the beginning. He had made that dream come true and given everything to his son, and the son of his son, and then the son after that.

  Kim’s eyes were caught by the mirror atop the vanity. Time rolled back and she could see herself sitting on the bench seat, staring into the antique fogginess of the glass.

  “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the one I love most of all?”

  The words echoed in the room. Had she actually said them? She wasn’t sure. But childhood games were best left in childhood, along with the answer to that question.

  Kim backed out of the room and returned to the kitchen, where Brian stared out the window at the bright lights of the barn. She could tell by the set of his shoulders that he wanted to be out there with the animals instead of in here with her.

  “I’ll fix you something to eat.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “Too bad. Because you’re eating.”

  “You can’t make me.”

  She laughed and he turned around. She lowered her gaze to his arms. “I can’t?”

  Annoyance sparked in his eyes, turning them a darker shade of gray. “I never took you for a bully.”

  “Yeah? I had some very good teachers. Sit.” She dragged a kitchen chair back from the table. The legs scraped loudly across the yellowed linoleum, and they both winced. “The only way you’re going to get better is to take care of yourself. And the only way you can do that, is if I do it for you. So you’re eating. You’re sleeping. You’re not lifting a finger—”

  “As if I could.”

  “Exactly.” Kim jerked her thumb at the chair. After some hesitation, he sat.

  Standing behind and above him, she could see every streak of sunshine in his hair, the whirls and the curls. His neck was brown, smooth, strong. Her fingers ached to touch him as she had so many times before. She even took one step closer and reached for—

  “Well, hello, Princess, what brings you out slumming?”

  Dean was back from the barn. Kim snatched her hand away and hid it behind her back. But from the cool calculation in Dean’s eyes, he’d seen everything. She tilted her chin and met those eyes. “I’m staying.”

  Dean’s gaze flicked to Brian’s, narrowed, then returned to Kim. “I don’t think so.”

  “I don’t care what you think. He needs live-in help. Here I am.”

  “I’ll stay.”

  “Daddy says no.”

  Dean muttered something vile that would have once earned him the mouth washing to end all mouth washings if Mom had heard.

  “Never mind,” Brian said. “I already tried to get rid of her.”

  “Figures that when you want her to go, she just has to stay, and when you want her to stay—”

  The wet dishrag hit him in the face. From Dean’s expression, Brian didn’t hold with rinsing the thing overly much, if at all. Dean choked and wiped droplets from his cheek.

  “Kim, behave,” Brian admonished, though his voice sounded suspiciously choked, too.

  She smirked at her brother and sidled to the side of the chair, keeping Brian between them. Not that he’d be able to do anything if Dean decided to retaliate, but she felt better anyway. She took a gander at Brian’s face and sighed. He might have sounded as though he was laughing, but he didn’t look like it. Would she ever be able to make him laugh again?

  “What she says makes sense,” Brian continued. “She’s got time on her hands. And I don’t have any hands.”

  “Princess, you don’t know the first thing about working a farm or tending a house.”

  “I’ll learn.”

  “You never wanted to learn before. Hell, you left him because you were too good to be a farmer’s wife.”

  She winced and glanced at Brian. “Is that what you told him?”

  “I didn’t tell him anything.”

  That surprised her. But then again, what could Brian tell? Certainly not the truth.

  However, his words explained why Dean seemed to loathe her now even more than before. He thought she’d left Brian for selfish, foolish reasons, and it was better for everyone if he continued to believe that.

  “Why don’t you tell me what happened, Kimmy?”

  Brian watched her without a hint of expression on his face. She closed her eyes so she wouldn’t have to look at him as she lied.

  “You’re right. He had to stay—I just had to go. No farmer’s life for me.”

  “Princess,” Dean muttered.

  “It wasn’t her fault,” Brian said.

  Kim’s eyes snapped open, but Brian had stood and turned toward Dean. She couldn’t see his face. She had to sidestep just to see her brother’s.

  Dean rolled his eyes. “You always say that.”

  Kim blinked. He did?

  “What happened between Kim and me is between Kim and me. And she isn’t the only one to blame for what went wrong. It takes two to make—” His voice broke. Kim’s eyes burned. She wanted to touch him again, but she knew better.

  As one they took a deep breath. “It takes two to make a relationship,” he said. “And it takes two to ruin it.”

  “You’re a lot more forgiving than I am.”

  “There’s a surprise,” Kim murmured.

  Dean shot her a glare, opened his mouth, then shut it again. “Do whatever the hell you want.” He threw up his hands. “You always do anyway.”

  The door slammed behind him, and seconds later his truck roared to life. Gravel spun; the sound of the motor receded until only silence remained.

  “Was he talking to me or to you?” Kim asked.

  “Not sure. Does it matter?” He sat down as if it standing any longer was too much of an effort. His head hung between his shoulders as he stared at the tips of his boots.

  “Brian?” He raised his head, tilted it until he could meet her gaze. “Why is he so mad about what happened between you and me?”

  “You weren’t here when you left.”

  “By definition.”

  “Very funny,” he said, but he didn’t smile. “When I found out you were gone . . . It wasn’t pretty. You broke me, Kim. I didn’t think I’d ever put the pieces back together again.”

  Though his words tore at her, his voice and his expression reminded Kim of a robot in a B-grade sci-fi movie. Brian had always been able to share his heart; he’d been very good at putting feelings into words and into actions. It seemed he hadn’t lost his touch with words, only the feelings behind them. Perhaps that was what he’d meant by “broke.”

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  “Yeah, well, sorry and a dollar fifty will get me a cup of coffee these days.”

  Once again not a speck of emotion flickered on his face. He hadn’t managed to put himself back together yet, either. But then, despite appearances, neither had she.

  “You know, behind all of Dean’s sarcasm and crabbiness is a soft heart.”

  Kim found that hard to believe, but she remained silent.

  “He bled for me. I’ll never forget that when I was the most alone I’ve ever been, Dean was here.”

  “Never forget him, never forgive me.”

  “Should I?”

  Kim didn’t bother to answer. Why should he forgive something she
could not?

  “You never told him the truth,” Kim observed.

  “I don’t know the truth. You seemed perfectly happy to marry me one minute, then the next you were gone.”

  “There was a little more to it than that.”

  His sigh echoed her own. “I know. So it’s easiest to say, if I say anything at all, that we didn’t want the same things. We didn’t, right?”

  She glanced away. “Right.”

  She’d left and only she knew the reason why. But Kim wasn’t going to confess her deepest, darkest guilty secret. Not now when it was too late. The truth would only hurt him more.

  Needing something to do with her hands, Kim opened the refrigerator and found herself peering into a great big empty. “Huh,” she muttered. “Looks familiar.”

  Kim rarely cooked, because she couldn’t. When she wanted something other than PB and J, she got a date, felling both the hunger bird and the loneliness bird with one stone. Too bad neither one flew away for very long.

  She snatched a half-empty jar of jelly from the shelf, opened a cabinet, found the peanut butter, then the bread. She didn’t even have to think about where to find a knife. She’d been in this kitchen a hundred times before. Nothing had changed—at least in location.

  Moments later she plopped a sandwich in front of Brian and sat down across from him with another for herself. “Mmm, good,” he murmured.

  “You don’t give a girl a lot of options.”

  She’d meant his lack of food made it difficult to cook, but as soon as she heard her own words Kim caught her breath.

  “Shut up, Kim,” he said. But there was no heat in the words, no expression on his face to reveal she’d stuck in the knife and twisted it.

  She didn’t bother to apologize. What could she say? Neither one of them had had any options back then. Or at least they hadn’t thought that they had. They’d learned differently soon enough.

  He continued to sit in his chair, not eating, almost as though he were waiting for the sandwich to leap up and bite him. The light dawned.

  “Oops.” Kim jumped to her feet, came around the table and picked up the sandwich. Then she held it to his lips as if he were a baby. Her mind cringed at the thought; she nearly dropped the bread.