He’s not going to be part of the family, Soleil wanted to argue, but that wasn’t exactly correct. Her mother was, at least about this, right. As she watched Anne leave the room, doing what Soleil had deemed too immature, she knew she was in for a worse than usual visit if she didn’t find a way to get her mother focused on something else.
It was as if without even knowing it, Anne was conspiring with West to turn Soleil’s life into something she didn’t want it to be.
Conspiring with West…
This gave Soleil an idea. Maybe he’d be the distraction to get both of them off her back.
She drank her coffee, cleaned up the kitchen and once she’d given her mother time to fall asleep for a nap, she crept upstairs to the nursery, where she sat in the middle of the floor to contemplate the view. This room was her favorite in the house now, thanks to the purple wall color she’d chosen. She came here to sit and not exactly meditate, but let her mind trip over all the facts of her life, and speculate about the future.
For a least an hour now, her mother had been holed up in the guest room, napping or, whatever it was she was doing. Composing an angry poem about what a bad daughter Soleil was? It wouldn’t have been the first time.
One of her mother’s more famous poems-one that had shown up in quite a few feminist anthologies over the years-was entitled “Stranger of Mine.”
Stranger not as in strange, but as in, someone you don’t know. As in Soleil, apparently.
She’d never asked her mother about the poem. It had been composed when Soleil was in her teen years, but she hadn’t seen it until thumbing through her freshman anthology in college.
The poem’s theme of alienation between mother and child had felt like an insult all those years ago. As if her mother had announced to the world that she didn’t really know her daughter, without ever telling Soleil herself.
What was not to know?
Was her mother merely being dramatic?
That was a distinct possibility, but the very fact that the notion had occurred to Anne only served to drive Soleil further away.
She wanted to have an entirely different relationship with her own daughter. She wanted to be a loving, fun, strict but kind mother. A sane mother. Someone her daughter could trust to keep it real.
She would be all those things. She was certain she could trust herself to do at least that for her child.
But what else could she do? Could she swallow who she was and give her baby a live-in father? Or give up the farm and go play air force wife in God-knows-where?
No way.
She was just as certain that she couldn’t do that.
CHAPTER TWELVE
A DAY AFTER her mother’s arrival, Soleil was tense and counting the days until Anne would leave. Which would have been a lot easier if she wasn’t in Promise for an open-ended visit.
She’d disappeared in the morning, on her way to a day at the local hot springs, where she’d scheduled a massage and was attending some kind of relaxation workshop.
If it meant she’d learn how to relax without the aid of alcohol, Soleil was all for it. And she was relieved to have her mother gone for West’s visit to assemble the crib.
“So, this is the baby’s room,” Soleil said as she led West into the bedroom next to her own.
It was the smallest bedroom in the house and would work perfectly as a nursery. She’d originally intended to put off creating a nursery until later, once she’d figured out other more important details of her impending motherhood-like how to tell the baby’s father she was pregnant, and how to take care of a baby and run the farm at the same time. Then she’d dreamed of painting the baby’s room purple, so she’d done it.
Now, with West commandeering her life, she could ponder things like where to place the crib in the room, and what view the baby might enjoy best.
Her baby girl.
Preparing the nursery was one more step along the path to the baby becoming a real live person, complete with name and favorite foods and a set of eyes through which to view the world as no one else did.
“Great location. We-I mean, you will be able to hear her when she wakes up.”
Soleil bit her tongue, choosing to ignore his little slip. Maybe it had been an honest mistake, and not yet another example of him insinuating himself into her world. Either way, because he’d been so nice about wanting to help out around the farm when she needed it, and because she was enjoying his company more than she’d thought she would, she was playing the diplomat.
When she didn’t say anything, he apparently took her silence as a sign that she was upset. “I didn’t mean to suggest-”
“It’s okay. I know you’re trying to work your way into my bed,” she joked, but as soon as the words were out of her mouth, they had an unintended effect.
They shined light on a fact she’d been working hard to ignore-that she was still attracted to him physically.
Wildly attracted, in spite of their differences, in spite of her ever-increasing girth, in spite of the stress of the holidays. It had always been her problem.
West smiled, a little too knowingly for her comfort. And, in that infuriating way he often had, he let the awkwardness hang there in the air between them, not saying a word.
“Okay,” Soleil said. “There’s the bed. I’m going to start the second coat of paint. Just let me know if you need any help putting that puppy together.”
He eyed the huge cardboard box. “Do you have any tools inside, or are they all in the barn?”
“In the kitchen there’s a tool set in the first drawer to the left of the sink.”
He disappeared down the hallway, and Soleil put the old T-shirt on that she’d been using for painting. She turned on the radio, tuned in to the local station that was currently playing a tribute to Joni Mitchell, to save them from any more awkward silences. She pried the lid off the paint can, poured more paint into the pan, then started applying the second coat.
They worked without talking for a while, and Soleil tried to get lost in the rhythm of painting. It was something she normally enjoyed doing, finding it meditative and physical in a satisfying way, but today she felt West’s presence like a wild animal that she had to constantly be on the lookout for.
“Could you give me a hand with this part?” West asked, and Soleil turned to see that not only did he have his shirt off-dear Lord-but that he’d managed to put together most of the bed already.
Some part of her was disappointed that he might be leaving soon.
“Sure.” She put down the paint roller and wiped her hands on her stained T-shirt.
“I need you to help me get these two pieces into the headboard, and hold it while I screw them in place.”
“You’re fast,” she said, trying to think what else she could ask him to do, and simultaneously berating herself for wanting to keep him around.
“This was easier than it looked,” he said as he reached for the screwdriver.
His arm brushed against Soleil’s, and a ripple of pleasure traveled from her arm down her chest and past her belly to the apex of her legs.
She shook off the hot flash and forced herself to focus on the bed. The baby bed. The bed for their baby. The one she was very pregnant with.
They guided the final pieces of the crib together while Soleil crouched on the ground. She held the supports still as West screwed them to the headboard, and she tried not to stare at the way his jaw muscle flexed as he clenched his teeth in concentration.
The faint dusting of freckles on his shoulder was what did her in. That shoulder, well muscled, leading down to flexing biceps and triceps, which led to a hard forearm sprinkled with brown hair, which led to large, capable hands that were alternately gentle and teasing or firm and demanding…