Chapter 7
Over the next several days, Ellie and Clark settled into a routine with baby Marjorie.
In the morning, Ellie got up quite a bit later than Clark.
He was up with the roosters, starting his workday on the ranch early.
Since it was summer, Ellie enjoyed sleeping later.
She had never been a morning person, and unfortunately the American school system—and indeed all of capitalism—demanded that a person acclimate to early mornings.
So did small babies, apparently, though Marjorie woke later than cows and schoolchildren.
Ellie was usually up and around by seven thirty, after a night of somewhat broken sleep. Then she would make Marjorie her bottle and start on a fresh pot of coffee.
She had the whole house to herself during the day. And it was such a lovely home, so much nicer than the single room she’d had at Angelica’s house. She really did appreciate the more luxurious surroundings, she had to admit.
She liked to believe she was past all that. After all, she knew that money didn’t buy happiness.
But it did buy comfort. And this was more than comfortable.
At lunchtime, she made herself a sandwich and sat out on the back patio with Marjorie, enjoying the sunshine. She cleaned, because at the moment she didn’t have work to occupy herself, so she didn’t mind pitching in around the house.
Doing Clark’s laundry was a little too intimate though. Touching his jeans, T-shirts, underwear. Anything that had been on that big, powerful body. It would start her thinking about his body, his muscles, and she would be a little bit of a mess.
She was a thirty-three-year-old woman; she wasn’t a giddy teenager. She really needed to get over her sexual fixation.
He was her coparent.
That was all.
He was gorgeous, yes. But there were a lot of gorgeous men.
Okay, there were not that many men as gorgeous as he was, who were also over six feet tall, incredibly capable, and good with children.
But still. He was her partner in child-rearing.
She didn’t need him to be anything else.
And even attempting to change their relationship would be a terrible risk.
Not that he had shown any interest.
Though there had been that moment the other day before dinner when their hands had touched. She’d felt a bolt of desire move through her body, and for a moment she’d been certain he felt it too. And then, just like that, she was sure she’d made it up. Which was a safer thing to assume anyway.
After lunch, she put Marjorie down for her nap and usually had a shower. And by the time she was finished, Clark was back and ready to start dinner. Even though he worked out on the ranch all day, dinner was his domain. She had to admit he was a better cook than she was.
She could prepare easy meals—spaghetti with jarred sauce, white people tacos, yeah, she pretty much had that down.
But Clark knew what he was doing. He cooked beautiful steaks, roasted perfect chickens, and made legendary hamburgers, complete with homemade baked beans.
That was what they were having tonight, along with generous handfuls of original potato chips.
It was beyond a treat. And so was Clark’s company, which she never would have imagined.
But that was before she had really gotten to know him. Before she’d realized he was the only other person in the world who was facing the same challenges she was, and that made him an ally, not an enemy.
They sat down at the dinner table together, with Marjorie nestled in the crook of his arm.
“So, how are the cows today?” she asked.
“Doing good,” he said. “Why do you ask?”
“I realize that I don’t ask what you do out there all day.”
“Well. There are always fences to fix. There’s always some disaster or another around the fence.
Flood, or sometimes the dumb animals just run through the thing.
Tree limbs, shifting ground, genuinely, it’s always something.
I’m constantly checking to make sure the cows don’t decide to rehome themselves. ”
“Well, could you really blame them?”
“I guess not. After all, this is their fate,” he said, gesturing to the hamburger on her plate.
She looked down at it, suddenly feeling slightly guilty.
“Oh no,” he said. “You don’t have a sense of humor about your food having feelings?”
“Not really,” she said. Though she ended up taking another bite, because it was really good.
“Sometimes I’m moving the cows from one pasture to another, sometimes mowing the fields. There are all kinds of things to do.”
“I’d love to see it.”
“Sure. Why don’t you come out tomorrow at lunchtime? I’ll swing by and pick you up if you’ll make us a picnic lunch.”
“Okay,” she said. “That sounds pretty fair.”
“Well, I’m deeply concerned with fairness.”
He grinned at her, and it made her heart race.
What was it about a big strong man and a tiny baby? The way he held her, so gentle, when she knew he was strong enough to lift boulders. He was just so big, so solid, and yet the tenderness he exhibited with Marjorie was …
It made her breath catch. The way he held her now, eating dinner with one hand …
She needed to get it together.
She did not need to be indulging in lustful thoughts.
“All right. I’ll make the sandwiches. And I’m sure Marjorie will love seeing the ranch too.”
He looked down at the baby. “Everything the light touches is your kingdom,” he said.
She laughed. “Oh, little Simba.”
And at the same time, she felt overjoyed that he had this legacy for Marjorie.
That she was his to protect.
“My own dad is just so uninterested in us. I never felt that he wanted to show us anything. Protect us. Pass anything on to us. He’s just so disconnected.
It’s easy to be angry at my mother. Really easy, because she’s difficult.
But I’m sure that having a husband who just didn’t engage wasn’t easy for her.
And I don’t know if she wanted more from him, if that dynamic suited them or …
I don’t know. What I do know is that it was never like this.
Marjorie is so …” She realized that she was almost saying it: that Marjorie was lucky.
But she didn’t mean it in the way a couple of other people had said it.
She didn’t mean it in the sense that Clark was saintly to have agreed to take her on.
She meant it in the sense that a dad like him was a singular, special thing.
How had she never realized, watching Clark take care of his brother over the years, show up endlessly, love unconditionally, that Clark was more than a good man?
He was exactly the kind of good man who would make a wonderful father, who was being a wonderful father, in action, right in front of her, even though he hadn’t been prepared for it. She thought that men often got too much credit for doing the bare minimum, but that wasn’t Clark.
Not at all.
And it was a funny thing, because when she had been rooming with Angelica, sometimes they had eaten dinner together, but sometimes not. Living here with Clark felt much more like being a family.
Not roommates. Not even simply coparents.
She felt a little sad, thinking ahead to a future when they wouldn’t be sharing a home.
Wow. She had to stop that, because they weren’t a nuclear family.
They were just doing their very best to come together.
It was tempting to give in to that fantasy, to take risks they had no business taking.
She wanted to make a perfect picture out of something broken. But that could end disastrously.
If they actually tried to have a romantic relationship, and it went south, it would compromise Marjorie’s future.
“Great,” he said. “I’m looking forward to tomorrow’s picnic.”
He smiled at her. And she felt her heart flip.
Anxiety swirled in her stomach.
He wasn’t the problem. She was. Her own feelings were. She needed to get hold of herself, so that she didn’t blow everything up.