Between Strangers

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He wished they’d had a chance to finish their conversation. What did she think about him being from a half-and-half heritage? He’d faced every kind of prejudice over his lifetime, so it was a little startling when Marcy’s response seemed more important to him than any of the others.

And he didn’t know why he felt that way.

Well, he would simply have to get over it, whatever it was. By tomorrow morning he would be on his way home to Montana, and Marcy Griffin, her baby and all her attitudes would be only pleasant, and increasingly distant, memories.

Marcy dropped her spoon in the soup bowl and fought to keep her eyes open. She couldn’t imagine why she felt so tired. Was the frigid weather finally getting to her?

“You look as if you can’t hold your head up to eat another bite,” Lance said from across the table. “Are you ready to try the cot Harriet promised?”

He was so kind. Since the moment he’d picked them up on the side of the road, he’d been the most solicitous and gentle man she’d ever been fortunate enough to meet. Now if only he would agree to take her and Angie to Cheyenne so they would be there by the first of the year. Somehow she was sure she would be able to convince him.

“You won’t leave here without us, will you?” she asked him. “I mean, while we’re napping you’ll be sleeping, too, won’t you?”

Lance scowled and for the first time she noticed how fierce he could look. Marcy had been glad to know she was right about his Native American heritage. She’d never met a real Navajo before and was thrilled to get a chance to personally know one. The idea of someone being part of the founding heritage of the country had always intrigued her.

At least, she’d thought she had been thrilled about the opportunity…until he turned that ferocious glare in her direction.

“I’ll try to get a few hours in before I leave in the morning,” he told her at last. “But you and the baby aren’t coming with me.”

His expression softened as he reached over and tenderly touched her arm. “It’s better that you two go on back home when the storm is over. You’ll be safer that way. I’ll see to it you have enough money to keep you both going for a while.”

The anger hit her fast and hard. How dare he tell her what to do? Come to think of it, the things he’d done that she’d considered as kind might be described as controlling by a more dispassionate observer.

Then again, if anyone would be familiar with controlling behavior it was her. And she felt positive that Lance had just been trying to help—in his own way.

But to think of offering her money? He really was the most arrogant…the most infuriating…the most…

She took a deep breath. He was also probably her only way out of here.

“Look,” she began as reasonably as she could. “I thought you understood. Angie and I don’t have a home to go back to. There is nothing for us anywhere—except in Wyoming.”

“Oh, but surely your parents will take you two in until you get back on your feet.” Lance dragged his hand away from her arm in order to use it to make his point. “And that scum you—uh, your ex-husband, can certainly be made to pay child support even if he refuses to be a real father to Angie.”

Angie shrieked at the mention of her name, and Marcy dug in her bag for something she could play with. Without much thought she placed the baby’s binky into her mouth and handed over the squishy, plastic dog the little girl loved so much. Angie’s outburst provided the distraction she needed to rethink what she wanted to say. She had to make Lance see that he should take the two of them with him when he left.

Lordy, but Marcy hated to talk about her problems. They always sounded melodramatic when she said them out loud, and it usually seemed as if she was using them as a ploy for sympathy. But this situation was becoming desperate and it called for desperate measures.

She ground her teeth and racked her brain for a way to make him understand. “My parents are both dead. They died in a car crash a couple of years ago. Angie and I are all alone in the world with no family.

“And as for my ex-husband, Mike…” Marcy rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Now that I’m legally free of him, I’d just as soon that he never has the opportunity to find Angie and me again. I can’t take money from him without running the risk that he might come back into our lives.”

Lance searched her eyes and seemed to be looking for a truth that she hadn’t yet made him see.

“I had a little money saved up from baby-sitting jobs when Mike ran off,” she said quietly. “But it took every dime for the hospital bill and for Angie’s baby doctor, and then to pay the lawyer who got me the divorce. Angie and I left our studio apartment where we’d been living right before the electric company cut off the lights.”

Yeah. It all sounded too melodramatic to her ears. But she couldn’t help the awful truth. The only way she could make a difference was to change their future. And she had to make a new and better future for herself and Angie.

She just had to.

“I was at the end of the line,” she continued. “Trying to make enough by baby-sitting to keep food in our mouths. We were living out of that old car of mine when this fabulous job opportunity came up.”

Lance was staring with no expression on his face. She didn’t know if she was getting through to him or not.

Baby Angie didn’t seem to care much about her mother’s story one way or the other. She spit out her binky, then squealed as she lifted her arms toward her mother. It didn’t take long for her to begin bouncing in her high chair.

“Oh, Ange,” Marcy sighed.

“What does she want?” Lance asked. He was still trying to absorb everything Marcy had said. The two of them were really all alone in the world. Their circumstances were so far from what he’d always wanted in life that he couldn’t quite get a grasp on how these two sweet females had gotten so messed up.

“Angie wants to get down,” Marcy replied. “She probably needs to crawl around a little to let off some steam. But I’m just too tired to…”

“I’ll watch her for you,” he broke in. “While you clean up…or get your stuff repacked…or whatever. I think I can manage her for an hour or so.”

Whatever had possessed him to blurt that out? He didn’t know the first thing about taking care of babies.

But Marcy looked too tired to be able to care for her daughter. And he’d suddenly wanted to give her a few free moments.

“Uh, what would I have to do, exactly?” he hedged.