A Loving Man by Cait London Page A

Estelle misses Louie?”
    Yvette laughed gaily. “No. But she doesn’t want you to think that you have had your way. She wishes you to know it is her choice. You cannot keep Estelle from becoming a woman. Look outside.”
    Stefan frowned at the teenage girls and boys who were talking with Estelle. She looked like any country girl, healthy and laughing and flirting a bit, too. Stefan’s head began to hurt. Memories of his daughter circled him—first a tiny baby, then a toddler and now she was a woman. “Since she was twelve, boys seem to be all around her. I’m losing her.”
    His mother shrugged. “It is life. It is not something you can stop. You did the right thing to try Estelle’s dream for the summer, Stefan. You always do the right thing for your family. Perhaps it is time you started thinking of doing what is best for you. You sacrificed much too early for your father’s demands, and for that I am sad. I tried, but Guy feared failure so much, and he did want the best for you. He loved you.”
    “Yes. And you.” He had often wondered how his mother could bear such a cold man, but then bits of tenderness that he had seen filtered back to him. A woman could change a man, but could a man change a woman?

Four
    “Y ou should see what the house looks like now. I didn’t know Daddy was a carpenter. We’ve only lived there two weeks and, already, he’s got the kitchen the way he wants it, and the house is perfect. Grandma and I had the best time at a farm auction, bidding on furniture and household things. We went to the church bazaar and to yard sales for the rest. We bargained—can you imagine that? And we traded things. Just like Grandma used to do in her village. Grandma says the best things are those that have been well-loved and she’s right. They’re all just great—homey and worn and soft. I’ve got a kitten, Jenny Linn bed and a homemade quilt just like any other country girl,” Estelle said as Yvette and Rose knelt, digging carefully to uproot starts from around the abandoned log cabin.
    The old cabin was falling apart, the barn no more than rusted sheet metal and broken, weathered gray boards. But some long forgotten homestead woman had loved plantsand Rose enjoyed Yvette’s delight when showing the rustic cabin, overgrown with scarlet climbing roses and circled by peonies and violets. The lavender bed had started most of the herb gardens in and around Waterville. The overgrown azalea bushes hid rabbits, and the field of daffodils and tiger lilies had long lost their blooms. After a hard day at the store, Rose hoped that “flower rustling” in the evening with her new friends would relax her. She’d lost too much sleep and it was Stefan Donatien’s fault. He had set her sensors humming and she felt as taut as a bowstring. If she were a paint can and he touched her, she’d explode.
    Yvette carefully dug the daffodil bulbs and placed them within the dampened newspaper for the trip home. “Stefan appears to have a certain amount of excess energy. He works long into the night and he is up before my chickens.”
    Rose carefully slipped her trowel beneath a cluster of lavender, gently easing the roots from their rich earth mooring. Stefan Donatien had cost her sleep. She didn’t want the warmth his touch had brought. She didn’t want that throbbing deep inside, aroused by the memory of his kiss. Though Yvette and Estelle were regular customers at the paint store, he hadn’t appeared; he just might have taken her suggestion about Maggie, a woman more suitable than Rose. Exactly why would a man like Stefan Donatien take a second look at her?
    Why would he move so fast and so certain?
    How could he look so warm and simmering, so intimate as he stood near her?
    Stefan’s trial separation of Estelle and Louie seemed a good game plan for Rose to employ, too. Stefan would get over any notions he had after a time and everything would settle down into the comfortable zone she preferred. She knew she