The Beauty, the Beast and the Baby (Man of the Month) Read online

  “You already said that.”

  “Oh. Yeah, I guess I d id. Well, look, take care of Jessie, and tell Basil and Myrtiss I’m sorry I couldn’t hang around—but not very.” His grin was more of a grimace, but at least he made the effort.

  “I will. And, Gus, thank you again. For Florida, for the shed and the steps and the plumbing. For last night.” She closed her eyes and groaned. “You know what I mean,” she muttered.

  “Yeah, I know what you mean.”

  He left before he could make a fool of himself big-time, but not before he’d hauled her into his arms so close he could count the lashes on her startled eyes just before they swept down, count the freckles on her nose. She had three. And count the ways she had changed his life forever.

  Fifty-odd years from now, he might even be able to forgive her for that.

  Ten

  Well’…that’s life, kiddo. Shoulders drooping, Ma-riah waved off the last of her visitors, her false smile fading even as she turned ’to go back inside to begin putting her house in order.

  Oh, Lord ha’ mercy, this was going to hurt! Before this past week she hadn’t spent more than a few hours with Jessie, and even then, not alone. Now it felt as if her own child had just been torn from her arms.

  With Gus, it was more like having her beating heart torn right out of her breast. Everywhere she looked there were reminders. The shabby, familiar living room, with all the knickknacks set out of reach of small hands. The kitchen, where Gus had washed while she’d dried and put away, where he’d fed Jessie while she’d cooked their suppers. The bedroom…

  It was going to take more than moving a few shrubs to come to terms with what ailed her this time.

  The phone rang just as she poured herself another cup of coffee. It was Burdy. “Basil said you were back home for a spell. Look, Ri, I need a small loan.”

  “Is it really important?” Mariah asked. “I’ m sort of strapped at the moment, but if it’s important, I can scrape up something.” She was planning to cash in her CD, hoping it would last until she found another job.

  “The guys are going to Myrtle Beach for spring break. I’ve saved up almost enough by working extra hours, but I’m still a little short, so could you please, please lend me a hundred, Ri? I promise, I’ll pay you back.”

  Mariah bad a drawerful of IOU’s from various members of her family. Once they all got established, she was confident they would repay her. It was the meantime that was a problem.

  Still, they were her family. She loved them all dearly, and if they depended on her during an emergency it was only because she’d encouraged them to depend on her. What else was family for?

  She promised to put a check in the mail the next day. Then, after putting the dishes in to soak—Basil and Myrtiss had been in a hurry to get home, but not too big a hurry to eat lunch—Mariah went around to the shed.

  The shed that Gus had spent almost an entire day shoring up so that it wouldn’t collapse.

  She got out her mattock and shovel and surveyed the possibilities. It didn’t seem fair to move the poor azaleas again. She’d moved them the day she had found herself embracing one of Gus’s shirts before putting it in the wash.

  The rain had stopped temporarily but it was still cloudy, which suited her mood just fine. Grimly, she eyed the sap-dripping pine trees that branched out over her driveway.

  By the time Gus crossed into North Carolina again just south of Charlotte, the rain had all but stopped. A streak of lemony sunlight sliced through slate gray clouds, highlighting a patch of luminous yellow for-sythia planted beside an overpass.

  He wasn’t ready for spring. At the rate he was going, he might never be ready for spring. He was tired from a lack of sleep and from—

  Well, what the hell? He was tired, period.

  At any rate, he drove on through, knowing that stopping would be a waste of time. He wouldn’t be able to sleep. He’d spent the entire trip so far trying to convince himself that he’d had a lucky escape—that men who reached the advanced age of thirty-nine-and-a-half without marrying were obviously not cut out to be husbands.

  Unfortunately, he was finding it harder and harder to convince himself.

  There were still traces of gray snow banked up against the rocks in his yard. The small A-frame looked cold and empty and unwelcoming. Inside, it was all that and more. He’d forgotten the mess he’d left behind, taking off the way he had after being laid up for a week.

  As he went about unpacking his truck and cleaning up his house, he was reminded of Mariah’s slap-dash housekeeping. She’d kept things clean, but not exactly tidy. Actually, he’d kind of liked it that way. Even with baby gear crammed in between pieces of furniture that bore mute witness to years of hard living, with her muddy sneakers and his muddy boots beside the door, and a few boxes still waiting to be unpacked, it was a lot more inviting than his place at its neatest.

  Hell, except for the basics—a bed, a man-size sofa, a kitchen table for eating, sorting fishing tackle and for the occasional poker game—he’d never even got around to buying furniture.

  After putting away several sacks of groceries he’d bought on his way through Marion, he set out a few things for supper. Store-bought sandwiches, store-bought cake, and beer. He ate half a sandwich, drank half a beer and ignored the cake.

  Then he snagged a pencil and notepad, dragged a chair up to the telephone and started retrieving his messages. Never one to borrow trouble, he seldom bothered when he was on the road.

  Angel had called twice. No news. Just checking up on him. He was to give her a call when he got home from his vacation.

  Yeah, right. Some vacation.

  His for eman, Pete Davies, had called to say all permits were in hand, and he was headed on down to the coast to get started on the pilings, which would be pumped in by a local crew, which was standard oper atingprocedure.

  His dentist had called to remind him of his six-month checkup. That was Angel’s doing.

  And Kurt called. Gus reached for the bottle and downed the rest of his beer, a grin spreading over his face as he listened to his old buddy telling him that he was finally down from Alaska, out of the coast guard, and looking around for a charter boat with a few good years left in her. And incidentally, he could use a mate if Gus was tired of building houses.

  Sweet salvation, Kurt Stryker—a fisherman?

  Gus thought nostalgically of the old days when he, Kurt and Alex had been known as tall, dark and handsome. Although not necessarily in that order. As a trio, they’d been invincible on the football field, both in high school and later on at N.C. State.

  Pretty damned invincible among the cheerleaders, too, come to think of it. Especially Kurt. Fresh off the farm, he’d been so damned handsome he could have been a real pain in the butt, instead of which, he’d turned out to be one of the kindest, most decent men Gus had ever known. He’d been shy, due to a childhood speech problem, but that had made him even more attractive to the women.

  The guys had liked him because he was loyal, hardworking, and damned good company. Thanks to years of tossing heavy bales of hay into a wagon, he also happened to have a punishing right cross that came in handy in a brawl.

  Good old Kurt, the perennial designated driver.

  Gus dialed the number Kurt had given and let it ring a dozen or so times. No message machine. But then, Kurt had never been a gadget freak. Keep it simple and cut your loses, that was the Stryker philosophy. He’d joined the coast guard right out of college, for pretty much the same reaso n Gus had dropped out just short of graduation. Because they’d both been crazy in love with Dina, the woman Alex had married, who had later divorced him.

  Thinking about the past and all the water under the bridge since they’d last been together, Gus hung up the phone, wondering why a man who’d spent all those years flying rescue missions for the U.S.C.G. in Alaska would end up buying a charter boat on the East Coast. Somethingdidn’t square up here…

  Five nights later in the middle
of a poker game with a few members of his building crew who’d be headed down to the coast the next day, Gus threw down his cards, pushed his chips to the center of the table and stood. “I’m outta here, guys. Finish the game, help yourselves to whatever’s in the fridge and lock up when you leave, okay?”

  “Hey, it’s only Thursday, man. We can’t get started until the pilings are all in. That’ll be Monday, earliest. What’s the big rush?”

  “No big rush. I’ll meet you on the site at seven Monday morning. You’ve got your instructions. You know where we’ll be staying. If I’m a day or so late, go ahead and start without me. Pete’s got all the paperwork and the building accounts are all set up.”

  It was long after midnight when Gus reached Durham. Angel’s old house now served as an office for her landscaping business, but Gus still had a key. He let himself in, tossed his gear in a corner and headed for the bed that was still made up in his old room.

  The next morning he had just finished loading his pickup when Angel pulled into the parking lot. “Gus! Why didn’t you let me know you were…What the dickens are you doing, anyway? Good Lord, don’t tell me you finally decided to landscape the mountainside around that crazy tent of yours!”

  “That tent, as you call it, happens to be a flawlessly designed, flawlessly constructed, supremely efficient—”

  “Yeah, yeah, it’s the Taj Mahal. Now come here and give me a hug.”

  “I’m not sure I can reach around you. Sure you didn’t swallow a watermelon?”

  Proudly, Angel smoothed her green coveralls down over her protruding belly. “Kindly show a little more respect for your nephew, Wydowski.”

  After dusting off his hands, Gus enveloped sister and nephew together in a gentle bear hug. “You’re looking great, honey. Alex must be walking on air these days. By the way, what grows in a soggy, wetland area of east central Georgia? I picked out a few things, but—”

  “A few things! You’ve wiped out my entire spring stock!”

  “What, these runts? They’d never have sold, anyway. I picked out the scrawniest stuff I could find, and by the way, I made a list of everything I took. It’s on your desk along with a blank check. Just let me know how much so I can square it with the bank, okay?”

  Angel rolled her eyes. “If you keep your business accounts the same way you keep your personal accounts, it’s a wonder you aren’t bankrupt by now.”

  “Hey, just because you’ve got a cash register for a heart, that doesn’t mean everybody lives by the bottom line. Some of us set our sights on higher things.”

  Angel leaned against the tank-size luxury sedan Alex had insisted on buying her, telling her he didn’t want her rattling around in her old van anymore. “By ‘higher things,’ I take it you mean long-legged women, Mexican beer, anything sweet, and that fancy 4x4 pickup truck of yours. Gus, why’ve you trimmed your beard and cut your hair? Unless I’m very much mistaken, that’s a new pair of khakis you’re wearing, too, and—oh, my, you’ve even polished your cowboy boots!”

  “They’re not cowboy boots, they’re—”

  “Trust me, they’re cowboy boots.” She narrowed her eyes, which were one shade darker than his own. “Gus, what are you up to?”

  “Jeez, can’t a guy get a haircut without—”

  “I know you, remember? It’s a new woman, isn’t it? And this one’s special, because you didn’t trim your beard for Lisa. In fact you’ve hardly trimmed the thing ever since you grew it right after Dina and Alex”

  “Oh, for crying out loud, would you just get off my back? I happen to be doing a favor for a friend, all right?”

  “A woman friend.” It was a statement, not a question.

  “So?”

  “Gus, I’m your only living relative, not counting Ashfield, here, so would you please just tell me what’s going on?”

  “Ashfield!”

  “It happens to be a family name on Alex’s mother’s side. Don’t change the subject. Now, who is she and why didn’t you just go to a florist and buy her a few dozen roses instead of raiding my spring stock? The kind of women you collect wouldn’t know a ficus from a fiddlehead fern.” Looking suddenly worried, Angel placed a small, square hand on Gus’s arm. “Gus, is this serious, or is it some kind of a practical joke?”

  Gus shook his head in resignation. “Put away the thumbscrews. I give up. You’re right, it’s a woman, and I think maybe it might be serious. On my part, at least. And yeah, I know I’m asking for trouble but I’m going after her anyway, so you might as well wish me luck.”

  Myrtiss called from Atlanta late on the night they got home. Mariah nearly broke her neck getting to the phone, and then had to force down the surge of disappointment when she heard her sister-in-law’s voice.

  “Is Jessie all right?”

  “She’s in bed, and yes, she’s just fine, but Mariah, what on earth is a dus? She keeps asking for a dus-dus.”

  Mariah made a sound that was somewhere between a laugh and a sob.“ She’s picking up new words right and left these days, isn’t she? By the way, I found a teethin g ring under the sofa. Shall I mail it, or does she have spares?”

  “Just trash it, I’ve got half a dozen, at least. Mariah, I didn’t thank you properly. I wanted to explain, but not with Basil there.”

  “You don’t have to explain, I think I understand.”

  “Do you, really? Did you know that I was always sort of intimidated by you?”

  “You were?” Mariah had sometimes suspected her young sister-in-lawmight resent her, but intimidate? She couldn’t intimidate her own shadow.

  “I mean, you’ve always been so tall and sure of yourself and everything, and—”

  “Tall, I’ll admit to. I hire out as a flagpole on holidays. But sure of myself? Honey, you just don’t know!”

  “Well, Basil always talks about how you worked so hard to see them all through school, looking after them while you were working a full-time job, and all. He’s always holding you up as an example, saying Ri does this and Ri does that. I hate to say it, but sometimes I used to wish he’d been an only child.”

  “Good gracious, in that case, I don’t blame you. That brother of mine has always had a few chips missing when it comes to relating to other people. I think part of the problem is that he was the only boy in a household of females, but more than that, he never had time to play while we were growing up. Now his computers are like a game to him. Lucky for you and Jessie, he’s good enough to make a living at it, but you have to remember that in some ways, he’s still just a boy, and boys need discipline. The trick is to be firm and consistent and at the same time, make sure he always knows you love him.”

  “Yes, well…first you have to get his attention.”

  Mariah chuckled. “Oh, I think you managed to do that, all right. It took a lot of courage to go off and leave Jessie with my brother, even knowing he’d scout out a baby-sitter before the first diaper neededc hanging.”

  This time it was Myrtiss who laughed. It occurred to Mariah that she sounded not quite so young and resentful as she had only a moment ago. “You know I’d never have dared to leave if I hadn’t been pretty sure Basil would call on you for help and you’d manage somehow to be there for him. I knew Jessie would be in good hands. And Mariah, it worked. Basil says he’s learned his lesson, and that it didn’t take him long to find out that working and looking after a baby single-handed can be a real hassle.” She giggled. “I don’t know how we’re going to manage with the next one. We’ll probably have to call on you for help again. Have you considered moving to Atlanta? We have models there, too, you know.”

  “No, I haven’t, and the next what?”

  “Well, of course nothing’s certain yet, but we sort of had a second honeymoon on the way back home. Basil insisted on staying at this place that had a Jacuzzi and these funky beds and all, and…well, you how those things are.”

  Mariah didn’t. She would like to, but so far, she hadn’t been offered the opportunity. “Steamed up his
glasses, huh? Am I to infer that Basil didn’t spend all his time playing with his laptop?”

  “Ma-ri-ah!”

  “Computer! I meant his computer!” They both giggled. Hanging up the phone a few minutes later, Mariah told herself it was beginning to look as if her entire future was being mapped out without any input from her.

  Move to Atlanta? No way. “Dammit, sooner or later, I’m going to have to wean that mob,” she muttered.

  That had been Tuesday night. On Wednesday morning, she mailed out a carefully composed résume to every hardware store she could find listed in Waycross and Brunswick on the off chance that they needed an experienced assistant manager. If she had to go farther afield than that, she’d try Savannah or Athens, not Atlanta.

  If worse came to worst, she could always go back to Vic. She had jumped at the chance of a modeling career the first time because it looked so glamorous and exciting. It hadn’t taken her long to discover that glamour and excitement were not all they were cracked up to be.

  Oh, she could do it if she had to—and it was nice to know she had the option—but she’d much rather muddle along at her own speed, in her own comfort able neck of the woods.

  The trouble was, her neck of the woods didn’t offer much in the way of a livelihood.

  The next morning she cashed in her slightly imma ture CD, paid the seven-dollar penalty, sent a check to Burdina and had Moe Chitty give her car a thorough going-over, replacing whatever needed replacing, tightening up all the nuts and bolts that driving on bumpy clay roads had loosened.

  That afternoon she set her houseplants outside under the eaves, filled all the bird feeders and scattered the last of the sunflower seeds on the ground for the doves and the squirrels to fight over.