Texas Vows: A McCabe Family Saga

Kate wasn’t surprised by her mother’s suggestion. Joyce believed in community service, though she would avoid becoming too involved in anything that might turn out to be emotionally painful or difficult. Mike was the same way. Even when Kate’s brother had died, her mom and dad had simply toughed it out and expected her to do the same. They’d never talked about the accident, except to declare Pete innocent and apportion blame for Pete’s bad judgment on others. They’d never shown or talked about their feelings, or allowed Kate to do so with them, either. Grief, uncertainty, despair, angst, sadness were not allowed in her family. In her family you moved on, period. And you avoided like mad anything that might tempt you to do otherwise. In her family, you were part of the team or you had no place there. And Kate was perilously close to getting benched. At least temporarily.

But she couldn’t worry about that. She had to concentrate on Sam’s boys. She had only to look at them to know they were suffering exactly the way she had suffered for years after Pete’s death. Everyone was telling them everything was going to be fine—when it wasn’t. Everyone was pretending things were fine—when they weren’t. If it continued, the boys would start to think the problem wasn’t the tragic situation they’d found themselves in, or their unresolved feelings about their mom’s death. They’d begin to believe there was something wrong with them because they weren’t dealing with their grief. They had enough to contend with, just losing their mother and their previously happy family life, without adding the burden of low self-esteem, anxiety and depression, too. Sam and his boys needed her and the help she could provide—whether they realized it or not. What they didn’t need was another temporary solution like her mother’s, which was no solution at all.

“Assume you and I could work out the cooking and cleaning and all that by some round-robin system, Mom, the bottom line here is child care. Do you really want to put teenage girls in the house while Sam’s not home, knowing he’s got three teenage boys there already?”

Joyce paused, thinking hard. “Maybe the little one could go into day care?”

“That would work for Kevin, sure, as long as Sam doesn’t have to travel. But then you’ve still got the other four unsupervised, and believe me, you don’t want to leave those boys without round-the-clock guidance the rest of the summer.” Not the way they were acting out. “But not to worry, Mom, Dad. Sam’s still looking for a housekeeper. As soon as he finds one, I’m out of there.” In the meantime, she’d try to figure out the best way to help each of the boys. Maybe they would get to know her and regard her as a friend, eventually becoming comfortable enough to talk to her on an informal basis. Kate didn’t care about being paid for her services. She just wanted to help the boys deal with their feelings so they could get on with their lives. If she ended up eventually helping Sam, too, all the better.

Mike sighed as he popped yet another antacid tablet into his mouth. “I still don’t see why this is your problem, Kate.”

Maybe it wouldn’t have been, Kate thought uncomfortably, if what the boys were going through wasn’t so close to what her family had suffered. Like Sam, her parents had ignored the warning signs about her brother, when he first began acting out his unhappiness. They had reassured each other and everyone else it was just growing pains, when even Kate—at age twelve—had been able to see that it was much more. Her brother had died as a result of that naiveté. She didn’t want to see it happen again. Not to anyone. And especially not to Sam McCabe’s family who had already suffered such a devastating loss.

“Sam has family in the area,” Mike continued.

“Yes, he does, and they’re all being too easy on him, cutting him too much slack because of what he’s been through.” Kate felt for Sam, too. But she wasn’t afraid to confront him.

Kate’s dad sighed, shook his head. “You should never have gone and gotten that Ph.D. in clinical psychology. You should have kept your job at the high school. You should be spending your time helping kids get into college—” A task Kate knew her father considered much more practical, respectable and laudable “—instead of pushing your way into situations you have no business getting involved in.”

It was Kate’s turn to sigh as she packed her toiletries into a tote. “I became involved, Dad, when I was asked to talk to the boys at the hospital after Kevin’s fall off the porch roof.”

Mike gave Kate a stern look. “And your involvement ended when he was sent home, with little more than a sprained wrist and a few stitches.”

Joyce laid a restraining hand on Mike’s arm. “Honey, we don’t want to fight about Kate’s choice of careers. That’s not why we came over here.”

“Why did you come over here?” Kate asked, exasperated.

“To make you see that moving in with Sam and his boys, even for a few days, is a mistake.”

He was beginning to sound like Sam.

“First of all, you don’t owe that man anything, and neither do I. Maybe if he’d been there for your older brother the way a best friend should have been, I’d feel differently, but the way it is…I don’t.”

Tension stiffened Kate’s shoulders as the conversation veered into dangerous territory. She folded her arms in front of her and squared off with her dad. “Pete’s death was not Sam McCabe’s fault.”

“And I suppose what he did to Ellie that year wasn’t his fault, either,” Mike countered sarcastically.

Kate flushed. “Sam loved Ellie, Dad.”

“He ruined her reputation, Kate.”

Just as Mike now feared Sam would somehow ruin hers, Kate thought. “Maybe for five minutes,” Kate allowed, remembering how the scandal had rocked the town initially. Kate went over to the bureau and got her brush. “Once they were married, I don’t think anyone cared.”

“Nevertheless, he proved he can’t be trusted around innocent young women.”

“Dad, I’m thirty-one years old,” Kate said wearily as she caught her hair in a French twist and pinned it in place.

Mike’s face softened. “And still as sweet and innocent as the day is long, thank God.”

Kate was silent. She had lost her virginity to her fiancé a long time ago, but her father would never accept that she was not a kid anymore. No, as far as Mike Marten was concerned, she was still daddy’s little girl! Wondering when it was going to get easier to deal with her dad, she slipped her hairbrush into her tote bag and regarded her dad steadily. “I’m old enough to take care of myself.”

“That won’t stop a man like Sam McCabe from making a pass at you,” Mike warned grimly.

He already has. Pushing the memory of Sam’s lips and hands away, Kate turned back to her suitcase. “There are going to be five boys there as chaperones. Sam is not going to do anything in front of his sons, especially when they are so clearly grieving the loss of the mother they loved so much.” Otherwise, she probably wouldn’t be able to stay over there, given what had already happened between her and Sam.

“I still think you ought to concentrate on your upcoming marriage to Craig and let the McCabes take care of their own.”

Kate wondered how her dad would feel if she were involved in the solution. Would he at long last be really and truly proud of her? As proud as he’d been of Pete at the height of Pete’s high school football career? Even as she wondered she knew the only thing her dad was likely to respect her for was becoming Craig’s wife—and providing a few grandchildren for him and her mom to love. Mike was desperate to carry on the family name, and had even talked Craig into naming their first son Marten Michael Farrell.

“It may just be for a couple of days, at most a few weeks.”

Gently, Joyce asked, “What does Craig think about this?”

Kate shrugged. “I didn’t ask him.”

“But he’s your fiancé,” Joyce protested, upset.

“That doesn’t mean he controls my life,” Kate countered stubbornly.

“Honey,” Joyce said, aghast, “this is the kind of thing…moving into another man’s house…that a young woman should discuss with her fiancé.”

Kate knew Craig wouldn’t mind. She grabbed her laptop computer and headed for the door. “I’ll tell Craig what I’m doing the next time I hear from him,” she promised.

“When will that be?” Mike asked, exchanging concerned looks with Joyce.

“I don’t know. I never know.” That was one of the frustrations of being involved with a military man. “Soon.” She hoped.

“I’ll tell you one thing,” Kate’s dad said as he carried her suitcase and tote bag down to the car for her. “That Sam McCabe better appreciate what you’re doing for him and do right by you or he’s going to find himself answering to me.”

CHAPTER FOUR

LATE SUNDAY AFTERNOON, Sam summoned his boys to the living room to tell them Kate Marten would be taking care of them temporarily.

“Starting when?” Will asked, belligerent as ever.

“She’ll be here any minute,” Sam said. And he was dreading it.

“Why’d you wait so long to tell us?” Riley demanded at once.

Because I was hoping she’d come to her senses and change her mind, Sam thought. He gave his most brashly outspoken son a stern look. “I’m telling you now.” Not that she’d be here more than a day, anyway, Sam reassured himself. Once Kate had refereed a few fistfights and put up with temper tantrums, surly moods and nonstop rowdiness, she’d understand what it was really like to ride herd on five boys twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. She’d want out. And no one, least of all him, would blame her for packing up and going back to work at the hospital, where she belonged.

“It seems to me—if we really want a total babe like Kate Marten to help us out for the next few weeks—that we should be doing the opposite and really cleaning up our act.” Brad pulled mint breath freshener from his pocket, sprayed some in his mouth, then paused to check his reflection in the mirror.

Sam frowned. It was exactly this kind of thing he sought to avoid. He did not want his home life turning into some sort of B movie with a bunch of underage kids lusting after the “baby-sitter.” “That’s enough,” he warned. “I don’t want anyone coming on to Kate Marten or calling her a babe, even on a lark. She’s a nice woman.” If ill-advised, Sam amended silently to himself. “And she deserves your respect.”

“Just not yours?” Riley guessed, his shiny silver trumpet dangling from his fingertips.

Sam tensed. “What do you mean?”