Daisies in the Canyon(68)

“Why would you need a nanny?”

“Maybe my wife will mean more to me on a tractor than chasing down a dozen kids all day.” He grinned.

“A dozen, huh?”

“Well, there are seven bedrooms upstairs. I figure if half share rooms with the other half, an even dozen would be nice,” he answered.

“And if your wife would rather not hire a nanny, but take care of her children?”

“Then the wife and I could move into the master bedroom and give the kids the upstairs and we could have two more.”

A smile tickled the corners of Abby’s mouth. “You’re thirty-one, right?” He nodded. “I reckon you’d best find a woman about eighteen if you want someone to produce a dozen or more kids before her biological clock flat-out shuts down.”

He chuckled. “Way I see it is if I say a dozen kids or more, then when I tell her that what I really want is three or four, it’ll be such a relief she won’t argue with me.”

He threw open the door into the room. It smelled like potpourri. She scanned the whole room before she saw the bowl of dried leaves and flowers filling a basket on the dresser. A white chenille spread covered the four-poster bed. Two overstuffed rockers shared a small round table with a lamp. An ashtray and a Bible were placed on the table.

“Your grandpa smoked?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Granny smoked cigars, but never outside the house. She was partial to the story of David in the books of Samuel, so she’d sit with a cigar while Grandpa read the Bible to her before they went to bed. These days she would have been diagnosed with dyslexia, but in her time they thought she was too dumb to learn to read.”

“That is the sweetest thing I’ve heard in a long time,” she whispered.

He kissed her softly on the forehead. “They had what it took to withstand a hell of a lot of disappointments and joys. I want what they had.”

“But they only had one child?”

“Just my dad. They wanted more, but Granny said God gave her a perfect son and she guessed he just didn’t intend to try to outdo himself with another one.”

Abby could feel the memories in the room and she envied Cooper having them. She wished the housekeeper hadn’t put the potpourri on the dresser and she could catch a faint whisper of cigar smoke still lingering in the chairs. She’d missed that since her mother had been gone—that little touch of smoke the ocean breezes couldn’t quite remove from her shirt when she stepped outside in the alley for a cigarette.

“And over here”—he steered her to the other side of the foyer—“is the kitchen where the ice cream is kept.”

It was one of those huge square country kitchens with cabinets on two sides, an enormous window that looked out into the backyard and a round dinner table that would easily seat ten people. She shut her eyes for a moment and imagined Cooper as a little boy, running in and out the back door, slamming the screen every time. She could feel the pain his grandmother had felt when she lost her only child and the bittersweet joy of raising her only grandchild because of that loss.

“And through that archway is the living room.” He led her in that direction and flipped on another light. It was twice as big as the kitchen, with a fireplace on one end. Comfortable, buttery-soft leather furniture was arranged like a woman had had a hand in it, and beckoned to her to sit down.

“I love it,” she whispered.

“Have a seat and I’ll dip ice cream. You want rocky road or butter pecan?”

“Both.” How sweet of him to remember her favorite was rocky road.

A big yellow dog peeked out from the shadows of a corner and wagged its tail. It was gray around the nose and it limped when it got up and came forward. Sitting down right in front of her, it lifted one paw and almost smiled.

She knelt before it and shook the paw. “I’m Abby Malloy. And you are?”

“That’s Delores. I told you about her, remember?” Cooper said. “Named for a great-aunt that my granny hated. She didn’t want Grandpa to bring that puppy into the house when he found it on the side of the road with a busted leg. He named it Delores just to needle Granny and it worked. She declared that she hated the dog but when no one was lookin’, she’d talk to it like it was a baby. It was the last year she was alive, so that makes Delores seventeen this spring.”

“Well, Delores, I’m glad to meet you.” Abby scratched her ears and the dog flopped down flat on the floor.

Abby sat down and Delores scooted closer until her head was in Abby’s lap. “Why did your granny hate her great-aunt?”

Cooper sat down beside her and said, “Because the great-aunt was a pistol. She didn’t have children and she thought all kids should be seen and not heard. Granny was not a quiet person. If she had an opinion, the whole damn world knew what it was.”

“That’s not such a bad thing,” Abby said.

“Abby, why did you want to come here rather than going for a long ride and then visiting an ice cream parlor?” he asked.

“I dreamed about this house last night. I wanted to see if it was like my dream,” she said.

“And is it?”

She shook her head. “No, Cooper, it’s better. I’d like to see all of it, if you don’t mind.” It was better because he was there in the flesh and the sensations she felt were so much deeper and more real than what she’d seen and felt in the dream.