“Yes. All she wants out of life is to take care of Mike and their ever-growing brood of children.”
“You have not been reading what I have. Today, the heroines of romance novels want a career and control of their own lives and—”
“A husband and babies.”
“Perhaps. Stand up,” she ordered and began unfastening his trousers. She’d undressed many patients, and she was doing so now without thinking too much about the action.
“How many heroes have you read about who said, ‘I want to go to bed with you, but I don’t want to get married and I never want children’?” he asked.
“I guess normality is a requirement in a hero.”
“And to not want marriage and children is abnormal?”
She smiled coldly at him. “I’ve never met anyone like you, but I assume you are not married, never want to be, never will be, and will have no children. But then, if you did, you would only visit them by court order.”
She had him stripped to his undershorts and T-shirt and he was certainly in fine physical form, but she felt no more for him than she would have for a statue.
“What makes you think I have no wife? I could have married many times.” He sounded more curious than anything else.
“I’m sure you could have, but the only way a woman would marry you is for your money.”
“I beg your pardon?”
Maybe it was rotten of Miranda, but she felt a little thrill at having upset his calm. “You are not what a woman dreams of.”
“And what does a woman dream of, Mrs. Stowe?”
The thought of that relaxed Miranda as she pulled back the blankets on his bed. “She dreams of a man who is all hers, a man whose whole world revolves around their family. He might go out and solve world problems and be seen by everyone as magnificently strong, but when he’s at home, he puts his head on her lap and tells her he couldn’t have accomplished anything without her. And, most important, she knows he’s telling the truth. He needs her.”
“I see. A man who appears to be strong but is actually weak.”
She sighed. “You don’t see at all. Tell me, do you analyze everything? Take everything apart? Do you put it all into an account book?” She gave him a hard look. “What are you making your billions for?”
As she held back the covers, he stepped into bed. “I have many nieces and nephews, and I can assure you that my will is in order. If I should die tomorrow—”
“If you should die tomorrow, who will miss you?” she asked. “I mean, miss you?”
Suddenly she was very tired. Turning away from him, she pushed the blanket partition aside and went to her own bed. She had never felt so lonely in her life. Perhaps it was Eli’s going away to college, or maybe it was this man’s talk of her looking as though she should have many children. When Eli left home, she would be alone, and she didn’t think some man was going to come riding up to her front door on a black stallion and—
She didn’t think anymore but fell asleep.
When Frank heard the soft sounds of her sleeping, he got out of bed and went to the fire. Without seeming to think about what she was doing, she’d banked the fire before they went to bed.
In fact, Mrs. Stowe seemed to have done every good thing without conscious thought. It seemed to be natural to her. Whe
n he’d first entered the cabin, for a moment it was as though he’d been transported back to his childhood. The delicious smell of food, bits of clothing draped on the furniture, wildflowers in a vase, had brought it all back to him. He’d almost expected his many brothers and sisters to come running to him. And then his mother would call to him to please help her with . . . anything and everything.
His mother, overburdened with so many children and wanting to show that she could do everything herself, often said Frank was her “rock.” He was her helpmate, a child who never complained, never threw tantrums, who always shared. His father said Frank had been “born old.”
What none of them realized was how much Frank hid inside himself. He’d had to develop great inner strength to keep quiet and repress urges to run away and hide. Sometimes he wanted to scream, “I don’t want to take care of three toddlers. I want to be all by myself and read a book or look at the stars.” Gradually, being alone, being quiet, and having no little kids around him had become the ultimate goal of his life.
Frank threw a couple more logs on the fire, then sat down on the couch. He had achieved his goal so well that . . . Well, he’d almost become a joke to his family. His childhood had been inundated with sticky siblings leaping on him, trying to stick wet crackers in his ears. By the time he was twelve he could change a diaper with one hand while feeding strained carrots to another child.
But his adulthood was the opposite. Over the years his siblings had married and begun producing children of their own, and Frank had nearly run from them. He’d found that he had a talent for making money—and his ability to hide his true feelings had helped greatly. He had used what he earned to give himself an extremely orderly life. Peace. Calm. Quiet. It had all been such a glorious relief to him.
Until Eli, he thought. It was as though meeting the boy had unlocked something inside Frank. Eli wasn’t like Frank’s gregarious, laughing, rambunctious family. Eli was like Frank. They understood each other, thought alike, wanted the same things in life.
Frank found himself telling the boy things he’d never shared with anyone else. And Frank had begun to change. When he’d been shown his latest niece, her dad had laughed and said, “I know you’re not interested, so you don’t have to hold her.”