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  “There is no happily ever after, that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,” Josh said heavily.

  “Maybe you don’t believe there is, but I do,” Carrie practically shouted. “And it’s what I mean to have. I apologize profusely, Mr. Greene, for having played such a dreadful trick on you as lying to you and marrying you. Since your major concern in life seems to be money, then perhaps what I spent on your house will partially make up for what I did to you. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to pack.”

  As she started toward the house, Josh caught her arm. “It’s the middle of the night. You can’t go anywhere.”

  “Yes I can. If you can spare your second-best horse, I mean to go into town. Surely, after the amount of money I spent in that town today, someone will give me a bed for the night. And think, sir, of the satisfaction you will have in telling your children that I have gone. You can give them a much-needed lesson in the perfidy of women.”

  “Carrie,” Josh said, reaching out his hand to touch her.

  “Oh, so you know my name. I had no idea I was so honored. I thought that Miss Montgomery was all that you knew of me, but then, for you, my name is all you’ve needed to know—that and my looks, of course.”

  When Carrie marched onto the porch of the house and flung open the door, she was greeted by two white-faced, scared-looking children who had obviously heard everything that had been said outside.

  “You aren’t going to leave, are you?” Dallas said in a tear-filled voice, her little face white.

  With a quick glance at Josh, Carrie saw that his face had an I-told-you-so smirk on it that she wished she could knock away with a baling pin. It was at that moment that Carrie decided to tell the children the truth. She’d often thought that adults terrified children by telling them there were things they were too young to understand and that it was ignorance that frightened people, not knowledge.

  “I want both of you to sit down and I want to tell you everything,” she said.

  Just as she thought he would, Josh began to protest, but she turned on him in fury. “Whether you like it or not, I am legally part of this family.”

  The children sat at the table solemn and quiet while Carrie told them everything about how and why she came to be at their house.

  “You loved us from the picture?” Dallas asked.

  “Yes,” Carrie answered. “I did. But now I have to leave, because your father is afraid that if I stay here longer, when I do leave, I will hurt you very much, and he doesn’t want that to happen.”

  “Will you leave us?” Tem asked in a very adult voice, but there was a child’s fear underlying the voice.

  “If your father and I don’t love each other, then I guess I’ll have to. I’m afraid that I played a rather nasty trick on your father, and he’s very angry about it.”

  Tears welled in Dallas’s eyes. “Don’t be angry, Papa.”

  Taking the child onto her lap, Carrie held her in her arms. “Don’t blame your father. He’s probably right. I might get bored living here in this little town. You see, where I live I’m used to parties and dancing and laughter.” She was lying, but she knew it was for a good cause. She couldn’t bear to leave and make the children think her departure was their father’s fault. It was better that they dislike her than their father.

  As Dallas clung to Carrie, Josh looked away. A five-year-old little girl was still a baby, for all that Dallas sometimes acted very grown-up.

  “You can stay with us for the week, and we won’t cry when you leave,” Tem said, for once not looking at his father for approval.

  Everyone turned to the boy.

  “I don’t think—” Josh began.

  “She can stay!” Tem shouted, and it was easy to see that he was on the verge of tears, all his self-control about to break.

  It was Carrie who at last spoke. “Temmie,” she said, gently. “I am genuinely flattered that you’ve come to like me so much, but I know what you’re thinking, that maybe I’ll stay. I can assure that I will not. The only way I’d stay would be if I fell in love with your father, and I can promise you that will not happen. I rather stupidly thought that I knew what your father was like from looking at his photograph, but I didn’t. Your father is a judgmental, pigheaded, know-it-all who has no sense of humor whatsoever, and I could never possibly love anyone like him.”

  Josh was looking at Carrie in horror as she delivered this pronouncement of him, while the children were staring at their father as though considering her opinion.

  “Papa used to laugh,” Tem said seriously. “But since Mother—”

  “That’s enough,” Josh said sharply, cutting his son off.

  “Stay,” Dallas said, begging. “Please stay. It’s so nice when you’re here.”

  As Carrie held the child, she had to blink back her own tears. Perhaps it was the children she had come to love from the photo, for they were just as she’d hoped they’d be. She knew that if she’d come to love them this much in two days, it would be unbearable if she stayed a whole week and then had to leave them. “I think it’s better that I leave now,” Carrie said softly.

  “We will vote,” Tem said, but looking at his father for permission.

  Josh took a moment, but he nodded his consent. Carrie was sure that the vote was going to be a tie, two for her leaving, two for her staying, but when Tem asked who was for Carrie staying as long as she could, both children put up their hands, then, slowly, so did Josh.

  Carrie looked at him. “I want my children to be happy,” Josh said softly in explanation, “even if it is only for a matter of days.”

  Carrie sighed, for she felt that she was making a mistake. She already loved these children, and she was going to love them more in the next few days. She didn’t know how she was going to be able to leave them in just a few days’ time.

  “Sometimes the stage is late,” Tem said, hope in his voice.

  Smiling, Carrie reached across the table and took his hand in hers. Yes, she thought, who knew what could happen in a week? “All right,” she said at last. “I will stay for as long as I can.”

  Chapter Seven

  “How do people fall in love?” Dallas asked her brother.

  It was early morning in the loft, and since Carrie had arrived, Josh had tried each night to fit himself into Dallas’s narrow bed, but he complained that Dallas wiggled too much. This morning he had risen early and gone down to chop wood for the new stove so Carrie could cook breakfast. Dallas had heard her father mumble that the idea of Carrie cooking was a joke, but she hadn’t heard her father laughing.

  “I don’t know,” Tem said, but he’d given the idea some thought. “I think the man gives the woman flowers and they hold hands, then they get married. I don’t know what else.”

  “Could we ask someone? Aunt Alice maybe.”

  “I don’t think Uncle Hiram knows about love,” Tem said, and Dallas nodded in agreement. One couldn’t very well put love and Uncle Hiram in the same thought.

  Silently, Tem got out of bed, put his dirty work clothes back on, then helped Dallas into her plain, worn brown dress before they went down the ladder together.

  Both of the children stood out of the way as Carrie and their father went about preparing breakfast. Tem knew that Dallas was much too young to understand what was going on, besides, she was too busy spending her time running her fingers over the roses on the wall to pay attention to much else, but Tem was all too aware of everything that went on between his father and Carrie.

  Carrie and his father sniped and spat at each other like a dog and cat. Josh said that Carrie couldn’t cook, that for all that she could buy a stove with her father’s money, she didn’t know what to do with it. Then Carrie said that if Josh had any decency, he’d teach her how to cook.

  Tem nearly groaned at that, for as far as he could tell, his father was the worst cook on the face of the earth. Before Carrie came, if it hadn’t been for the women in town and Aunt Alice taking pity on the children, who kept growing