Only in My Arms Read Online Free

butter, and add the sweetened raspberries. She appreciated his appetite and wondered when he'd last eaten, though good manners dictated she couldn't ask. "How do you know Walker?" she said, lifting two pancakes to her own plate.
    "We met at West Point." He saw her startled pause. The reaction didn't surprise him. "I was two years older than Walker, but we began at the same time. He finished. I didn't." She resumed preparing her pancakes. "But then that's probably more in line with what you'd expect of me."
    Mary's red-gold brows arched. "I don't believe I've formed any expectations regarding you, Mr. McKay. We've only just met."
    He said nothing and applied himself to his meal.
    She was silent for a few minutes and then asked, "How is it that you came to go to West Point?"
    Ryder looked at her frankly. "How is it that you came to go to the convent?"
    Mary's head jerked a fraction in response to his candor. He couldn't have let her know any more clearly that she was intruding upon his privacy.
    "Look, ma'am," he said. "If the price of breakfast is having to answer your list of questions, I think I'll pass." Waiting for her reply, Ryder leaned back in his chair and pushed away his half-eaten plate of food.
    Mary found herself apologizing for the second time that morning. "You're right," she said softly. "I was being unconscionably rude. There are no strings to breakfast." She pushed his plate toward him again, even as she felt her own appetite fading. "Eat your fill. I won't bother you again." She noticed he did not require a second invitation. He tucked into his food with relish while she mostly pushed hers around her plate.
    "This is a big house for just you," he said, looking around the kitchen again. "Are you here alone?"
    "Right now I am. Jay Mac and Mama were up here for most of June and they'll return again next month. They hire some help in Baileyboro to maintain the house. I didn't want anyone here, so I sent them away." Her sigh was a trifle wistful. "But you're right, it's a big house to ramble in alone. Every room has memories, this one perhaps more than any other. Sometimes I can almost believe I hear the Marys laughing and bickering and chattering." She smiled gently now, thinking about squabbles at the kitchen table over who would clean the berries and who would make the piecrust, who would set the table and who would pour the milk. "There were too many of us and not always enough jobs."
    "The Marys," he said thoughtfully, interested. "Is that what you call yourselves?"
    Her smile deepened to a grin. "No. My father called us that. He came up with it after we started calling him Jay Mac. He mostly used it when he was thinking of some collective punishment."
    "Collective punishment?"
    "You know, when one of us had done something wrong and wouldn't admit to it. Jay Mac would line us up, oldest to youngest, and pace the floor in front of us, speaking to our mother as if we weren't in the room at all." Mary's voice deepened, her brow furrowed, and she tucked her chin lower and looked up, as if she were looking over the rim of invisible spectacles.
    Ryder watched, fascinated by this imitation of John MacKenzie Worth. The man was a leader of industry, the owner of one of the most powerful and successful rail lines in the nation, a personal friend of presidents and generals. He was not a man to be taken lightly or to be made light of. Yet his daughter showed no compunction about sharing this intimate glimpse into their family life.
    " 'Moira,' he'd say, 'the Marys have perpetrated a most heinous crime. I count two of my cigars missing from the humidor on my desk. Not one Mary will admit to it, so all the Marys must bear the responsibility.' " The impression she gave of Jay Mac was quite credible, but then all her sisters agreed she'd had more years to practice it. Mary straightened and resumed her own sweetly melodious voice. "He'd go on for a few minutes, hoping to wear us down, I think, but he never did. Being one of