Stand-In Mom Read online

  When she came into the room, she saw that Ike had taken his sling from around his arm and was attempting to pick Celine up.

  “Wait,” Marta ordered, crossing to him. “One of you is bound to get hurt.” Carefully, she took the baby from the crib.

  Ike smiled. “Thanks for looking out for me.”

  “I was thinking more of Celine.” She nodded at his arm. “Ready?”

  “Always.”

  Because Sara was in the room, she didn’t say what immediately came to mind. Instead, she just placed Celine in his arms. The baby quieted down immediately. “A few days old and she’s spoiled already.”

  “They don’t spoil at this age,” he countered, looking down at the tiny face that had already won his heart. “They’re too fresh.”

  “You’re getting better at it,” Marta observed.

  “It just takes practice.” He glanced at her. “Some things come naturally to me, other things I have to work at.”

  She wished he wouldn’t look at her like that. With everything she’d been through, it wasn’t supposed to affect her. But that was logic speaking, and it wasn’t logic that was being affected.

  “I think she just wants some company. What do you think, darlin’?” His question was directed to Sara, who looked very pleased at being included in the adult conversation.

  “I think you’re right. Little kids don’t like being left alone.”

  He looked at Marta. “I like consulting with experts whenever possible.” Then he grinned at Sara. “Then I guess we’ll just have to take her downstairs, won’t we?” Sara’s head bobbed up and down.

  “Back again?” Sydney asked when they came downstairs. She was looking at the baby as she said it.

  “She wants company,” Sara declared.

  “How would you know?” Mac challenged. He was sitting on the sofa, schoolbooks spread out in all directions.

  “’Cause I’m an expert. Ike says so,” she added when her brother hooted.

  “That’s enough, kids,” Shayne said sternly, walking in with the last of the bags.

  “Oh, Shayne, I’m sorry, I should have helped.” Guilt nipped at Marta for having left Shayne to bring in all the packages.

  Shayne shook his head. “No problem. These days, I don’t get as much exercise as I should.” He smiled significantly at his wife.

  “Show me everything,” Sydney entreated, her eyes sweeping along the cache of goods on the floor.

  Laid out this way, it certainly looked like quite a haul, Ike thought. He laughed, turning toward Sydney. “You have no idea what you’re in for. Your friend shops as if they were about to declare possession of money a major felony and she only had until dawn to get rid of a huge quantity.” He grinned easily, glancing at Marta. “Pretty good at spending other people’s money, aren’t you?”

  He saw the strange look that entered Marta’s eyes, saw her closing off. “What?”

  Marta shook her head. “Nothing.” Abruptly, she crossed to the front door. “Excuse me for a minute,” she murmured to Sydney just before she went out.

  Confused, Ike handed Celine to Sydney and quickly followed Marta out the door. He found her standing a few yards away, staring off at the horizon.

  “If I said something to offend you, darlin’, I’m sorry.”

  She didn’t bother turning around. She might have known he couldn’t leave her alone. “I said it was nothing.”

  Her voice was almost as cold as the weather, but he wasn’t about to let it put him off. Since she wasn’t turning around, he circled Marta until he was in front of her. “Your mouth did. Your eyes said something else. I’m very good at reading eyes.”

  “Oh?” Her eyes narrowed as she regarded him. “Then what are mine saying right now?”

  He laughed. “I don’t think that’s anatomically possible.”

  “Very good,” she conceded with a laugh despite herself. “Maybe you can read eyes at that.”

  That look was still there. She was trying to distract him, but it was still there—the look that said he’d somehow hurt her. “Was it the crack about spending other people’s money? I didn’t mean anything by it.”

  She shrugged, rubbing her hands along her arms. Even still wearing her parka, she felt cold. Why would anyone in their right mind ever make the choice to stay when they could leave?

  “I know. Sometimes I overreact.”

  She didn’t believe that, he thought. “You’re still not answering me.”

  She turned, an enigmatic expression crossing her lips. There was no way she was about to tell him that someone had accused her of that very thing when she was fifteen. The foster father she’d had at the time had discovered that she’d spent three dollars more than she’d been instructed to. He’d sent her to the supermarket on an errand and had become enraged when she hadn’t returned with the proper change. When he’d discovered the item he’d wanted had gone up in price, he’d made a halfhearted stab at apologizing, but the scar was already there.

  “I know.” With that, she walked back inside. If she was going to be in what amounted to two places at once, she had her work cut out for her. Timing was everything.

  “Are you sure you don’t mind my leaving?” Marta looked at Sydney, wavering.

  She knew she’d volunteered, but now that she was about to go with Ike, she had her doubts about the wisdom of her offer. Marta glanced toward Ike. A lot of doubts. Not the least of which was that she didn’t like the idea of leaving Sydney. After all, Sydney was the reason she’d come out here in the first place, not Ike.

  Definitely not Ike, she silently underscored with feeling.

  Sydney gave her a quick hug, correctly reading her concern. “Will you stop worrying? Go with him,” she urged. “Ike needs you more than I do.”

  Though Marta hated to admit it, it was true. She’d only be keeping Sydney company. She’d be helping Ike. And Celine. It was Celine she focused on.

  “All right, I’ll go with Ike.” Since she was going in Ike’s car, there might be a problem about getting back. He wasn’t to drive for the remainder of the day, and he did need his vehicle back. “Would it be too much trouble for Shayne to pick me up on his way home?”

  “I can run you back,” Ike said. “I don’t need two hands.”

  Marta looked at him. “What about Celine?”

  “She won’t be driving for a few years, yet, will you, darlin’?”

  Celine cooed in response, as if she were actually listening to him. How did he get females to do that? Marta wondered. “I mean, won’t you have to stay with Celine?”

  “Luc can watch her for me. Or we can put her in the back seat. We did buy that car seat for her.”

  The details could be worked out later, Marta thought. But in order to come back, she first had to leave. “All right, let’s go.” She kissed Sydney, then looked down at the stomach that got in the way. She placed a hand fondly on the swell. “You be good in there,” she admonished.

  Marta walked out with Ike, Celine in her arms. Ambivalent emotions ricocheted through her like kernels of popcorn exploding in a microwave. She hoped she wasn’t making a huge mistake by agreeing to go back with him. She might feel as if she saw right through him, but there was something dangerously hypnotic about the way he looked at a woman.

  As she’d observed, even Celine wasn’t impervious.

  Chapter Nine

  “I think you should know that the men around here generally outnumber the women about five to one.”

  Bringing Ike’s vehicle to a stop in the small garage he’d pointed out to her, Marta pulled up the hand brake and turned to look at him. Behind them, secure in her infant seat, Celine woke up as the car stopped moving. Tiny fussing noises began.

  “Is there any particular reason you chose now to give me this little tidbit of touristy information?”

  “I just wanted you to be prepared.” He said it innocently enough. Doubting he’d ever known an innocent day in his life, Marta was wary.

  She glance
d toward the large, two-story building. The first floor was completely devoted to the Salty Saloon. It looked too innocuous to be a den of iniquity, but then, hell probably didn’t come with neon signs either.

  “And just what am I supposed to be prepared for?” she asked suspiciously.

  “To be stared at.” He winked at her, reaching over to release his seat belt. “More than usual. Would you mind?” He indicated the release, unable to quite get it himself.

  Without glancing at it, she pressed the button and the metal tongue slid out of its retainer. She was too busy trying to ignore the effect of his wink. Why would a simple movement of molecules and atoms, cells and tissue, have almost the same effect on her as being in a plane and dipping into an air pocket? It was utterly absurd. Ike was just flirting with her. The man flirted with every breath he took, every step he made. She knew that. So why did that wink get such a rise out of her? Or find her so unprepared?

  She wasn’t unprepared, or at least she shouldn’t be. She’d walked this route before, knew there was nothing but emptiness at the end. Having lived through it all once should have bred a certain immunity in her.

  The theory was sound, the execution of it, however, was far more shaky.

  Getting out, she opened the rear passenger door and unbuckled Celine before Ike could start fumbling with the belts. She wondered how much of that was real and how much was strictly for her benefit. He struck her as far too able a man to be impeded by a bandaged hand, even if his fingers were temporarily covered.

  “I’d think,” she murmured, protecting Celine’s head as she drew the child from her seat, “that Celine would arouse more curiosity than I would.”

  Ordinarily, Ike might be inclined to agree with her. But Celine was a mere baby, while Marta was a full-fledged woman in every sense of the word. Had she been the hag from Hansel and Gretel, she would have attracted some male attention in Hades. Being so much more than that guaranteed her a captivated audience.

  He tugged Celine’s cap beneath her hood back into place just as Marta began picking her up.

  “Word spreads fast around here, for all the distance between us. I’m sure they all already know about Celine.” And about Junie, he added silently. A look, a nod, would generally convey one man’s sympathies to another. There was no need for words. There was, in fact, a certain discomfort in voicing them. “Men like to avoid certain subjects.”

  She looked at him knowingly. “Like commitment.”

  “Like condolences,” he corrected. “Out here, no matter what you might think, most men have an easier time committing than in the lower forty-nine.”

  She waited while he looked through the trunk, trying to locate the bag with Celine’s formula. “Gives them somebody warm in bed?”

  He glanced over his shoulder at her. Whoever had had this woman’s heart before had really put it through the threshing machine, he decided. “Something like that.”

  Marta began to rock the infant, trying to divert Celine’s attention as the baby’s fussing increased in volume. She stared at Ike’s back. The man was broader than Shayne, she thought, and his hair was a tad darker. That would be the Native American in him.

  Why was she scrutinizing him? It didn’t matter what he looked like or where his features came from.

  “So why haven’t you committed?” She knew the answer to that. For men like Ike, commitment was against their credo. But she was curious to hear what sort of a spin he’d put on it.

  “Aha.” Finding the bag he was looking for, Ike extracted it from the rest. Pleased, he turned around to look at Marta. The woman spent far too much time looking solemn, he thought. “Never quite found the right woman.” His eyes smiled at her. “And I don’t believe in settling.”

  There were no promises in his eyes, only a sheer appreciation of what he saw. Marta felt flattered. Beautiful.

  And foolish if she bought into it, she told herself. She moved the top blanket so that it lightly covered Celine’s face. It was time they fed the baby. “Okay, I’ve been forewarned. Let’s go.”

  There was a moment, just after she followed Ike inside and before the room fell silent, when she felt as if she’d stepped onto the set of a western.

  Had she every word in the world at her disposal, she wouldn’t have been able to find one that suited the surroundings better than saloon. From the crystal chandelier that refracted and played with a myriad of lights, making rainbows out of them, to its wooden walls, its darkly tinted mirror that ran the length of the actual bar, and the wide, colorful mural on the back wall, it was a saloon through and through.

  There were perhaps forty-five men in total, either at the bar or seated at some of the freestanding tables or booths that were scattered around the premises. Ike hadn’t exaggerated, Marta thought.

  Judging by the polite and appreciative looks the men gave her, Marta knew a woman could easily have her head turned in a place like this if she wasn’t careful. But she was nothing if not careful. She’d learned at least that much.

  Marta squared her shoulders just a little as she met, without flinching, the unabashed scrutiny.

  The man closest to the end of the bar shouted a greeting to Ike. “Hey, who’s the new talent?” The grin was even wider than the man’s grizzled, unshaven face.

  “She’s a lady, not ‘talent,’” Ike informed the man easily. Was it her imagination, or had he taken a step closer to her as he said it? Was that his way of being protective, or just his method of staking a would-be claim? She warned herself against feeling safe, but something about his manner made it hard not to. “And I’d mind my manners if I were you.”

  Someone in the back laughed, pointing. “Looks like you didn’t.”

  “What happened to your hand?” another man yelled out, his words sounding just the slightest bit slurred. Marta hugged the baby a little closer to her. When she felt Ike’s hand on her shoulder, it took everything she had not to jump. Her nerves were closer to the surface than she’d thought.

  He inclined his head close to her ear. “We’re going through a slow stretch right now,” Ike confided. “The men are kind of starved for excitement around here.” His good hand still on her shoulder, he held up his bandaged hand for the others. “Let this be a lesson to all of you. The lady’s too hot to handle.”

  A mixture of guffaws and comments—some, she realized, in French—met his announcement. Marta could feel color creeping up her cheeks and was grateful that the lighting in the Salty, despite the chandelier, wasn’t the brightest. Annoyed at the comment and her own reaction to it, she shrugged his hand off, only to have her action met with more laughter.

  “Well, if she’s too hot for you, so much for me taking a shot,” an older man bemoaned. He looked far more interested in the contents of his mug than in female companionship. He signaled to the man behind the bar. “Hey Jean Luc, bring another one over here.”

  “They don’t mean anything by it,” Ike assured her. He slipped his hand beneath her elbow, trying to usher her through the room. As they went, he nodded a greeting at several of the men. “They’re a harmless bunch on the whole.”

  “On the whole,” she echoed. “Comforting.” Although, if asked, she’d have to say she’d seen worse leers on the faces of the men in a singles sports bar, the one and only time she’d been talked into going to one.

  “It was meant to be.” Still steering her toward the rear of the establishment, where the stairs leading to the living quarters were located, he nodded at the tall, muscular blond man behind the counter. “This is my cousin, Jean Luc.”

  For all the noise and apparent excitement, Jean Luc, she noticed, looked to be rather shy. She found herself taking an instant liking to him. “I sort of surmised that when that man bellowed his name. Hello, Jean Luc.”

  Ike laughed. “Nothing gets past you, does it? Luc, this is Marta, Sydney’s friend, the one I was telling you about. She’s going to give me a few pointers on taking care of the baby.”

  “Pointers on making a baby
?” someone behind him called out, laughing. “You do not need any pointers, Ike. Or are you slipping?”

  Turning, Ike saw that the comment had come from Yuri Ivanov. A mining foreman whose career had begun somewhere on the plains of Siberia, Yuri had come with the purchase of the bar. He’d been taking over that very same booth he was sitting in for as long as anyone could remember. Every large family had a crazy uncle no one talked about. Yuri was the Salty’s.

  “I’m not,” he told the older man fondly, “but you look like you might. Why don’t you go in the back and sleep it off?”

  Marta looked from the man to Ike, puzzled. “Sleep it off? But it’s only three in the afternoon.” Even though it was already dark outside, wasn’t that a little early to be inebriated enough to need to sleep it off?

  “Yuri got an early start, didn’t you, Yuri?”

  But Yuri made no answer. Slumped in his chair, his head thrown back against the padded cushion, the older man was snoring loudly. Ike smiled. “I love it when they listen to me.” Making a choice, he selected a man closer to him. “When he wakes up, Bart, take him home. Don’t let him drive.”

  “Is that really necessary? There’s nothing to hit.”

  “Maybe not,” he agreed. “But men have been known to freeze to death behind the wheels of their vehicles, either falling asleep or running out of gas. Better safe than sorry. Can’t afford to lose a paying customer,” he added when he saw the dubious look on her face. She’d probably be more comfortable with that explanation than thinking kindly of him, he decided. With a hand to her back, he ushered her toward the doorway that led to his quarters. “Let’s go upstairs.”

  “Works fast, don’t he?” She heard someone laugh.

  Parka or not, Ike felt her back stiffen beneath his hand. “Like I said, they’re bored.”

  She didn’t like them alleviating their boredom at her expense. “As long as you know that nothing’s going to happen.”

  “Whatever you say, darlin’.”

  If the stairs hadn’t been narrow enough to prevent a sudden, abrupt turn, she would have walked right back out. But the width made it difficult to maneuver a turn with him at her back, and the moment that it took her to debate was enough to allow her to cool down. She kept walking.