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

  Still, it paid awfully well. According to Kaye, fashion models weren’ t limited these days to walking a runway. One of Vic’s girls had recently landed a small role in a soap opera, another had won an exclusive contract with a cosmetics firm.

  It had seemed like a good idea at first, with no one at home depending on her. Seldom a month passed that one of her three sisters didn’t call needing advice or a small loan. Financially, at least, her modeling career had been a godsend. Knowing that her family still depended on her in an emergency, she had saved every penny she could.

  The trouble was, no matter how glamorous the life of a model looked from the outside, Mariah had never really gotten used to being treated like a side of beef—being handled, draped, pushed, pulled and spokenof as if she weren’t even present by men who wore more jewelry and perfume than she ever had.

  Selling hardware was a lot simpler. Muskrat traps, salt licks, well pumps and fescue seed. It was far from lucrative, but then, living in Muddy Landing didn’t cost an arm and a leg, the way even breathing in Palm Beach or New York did.

  Besides, she told herself as she squinted through the mixture of fog and rain for a sign of a service station, Muddy Landing was home. Be it ever so humble. which it was. The glitzy life that had seemed so promising months ago had turned out to be mostly hard work, long hours, nastiness and one-upmanship.

  Marian flexed her shoulders, shifted on the rump-sprung bucket seat and glanced at the gas gauge. The needle nudged the empty mark and then bounced a zillionth of an inch. “Oh, Lordy,” she muttered, searching the flat gray horizon for a faint gleam of neon. All she needed now was to run out of gas in the middle of I-95 in a cold, driving rain, with night corning on.

  She took the first exit, but by the time she spotted the convenience store, her engine was beginning to cough. She flicked on her turn signal, praying that it still worked, and rolled off the highway onto the apron of the sm all store.

  “Whew! Made it,” she said with a sigh of relief.

  Because she’d been lucky enough not to be stranded on the highway and because she was worried about Basil and Myrtiss ’and the baby, and was still undecided about her own future, Mariah decided to treat her car to a tankful of high-test, and herself to the biggest cherry drink she could find. And maybe a bag of boiled peanuts.

  “And a rest room!” she added, shivering in the damp, chilly air. It had been warm enough when she’d set out, and she’d tossed her vinyl slicker and her white denim car coat into the back seat, then buried them under bags and boxes of cloths, books, curlers and makeup.

  The rest rooms were inside, and as she had to pay before the attendant would turn on the gas pump, she made a dash for it, chill bumps covering her skin before she even made it through the door. After freshening up, she got her drink and peanuts and made her way to the counter. There was no one in the store except for the clerk and two grungy-looking men who were studying a girlie magazine rack near the counter. Wedging her way up beside them, she said, “Ten dollars’ worth of gas, please. High-test.”

  Reluctantly the clerk turned away from the TV set. There was a basketball game under way. “That’ll be ten for the gas, two-fifty for the peanuts, and with a Giant Freeze that comes to…lemmee see…”

  Mariah plopped her purse on the counter beside her purchases, preparing to dig out her billfold. One of the two men abruptly left, letting in a blast of cold, wet air. She shivered. Just as the second man turned to follow, his elbow struck her drink, drenching her with the icy red liquid.

  Mariah gasped. Appalled, she stared down at the spreading stain on her yellow linen pants and matching tunic and gingerly plucked the sodden fabric away from her body. Oh, blast! Why hadn’t she taken the time to change into jeans? Now she was either going to have to dig out her suitcase and change clothes in the closet-size ladies’ room, or drive the rest of the way home wet, cold and sticky.

  Oh, fine. This was all she needed after rushing around all morning like a. chicken drunk on sour mash, trying to tie up two dozen loose ends.

  Get a grip, Mariah! You ’re supposed to be Fearless Leader.

  That was what her younger siblings had always called her. Ha! If they’d only known what a fake she was.

  “Hey, you!” yelled the clerk, and she glanced up in time to see the clumsy dolt who had drenched her running out the door—with her white shoulder bag under his arm!

  It took a moment for it to sink in. “Stop him! You come back here!” she screamed. She lunged for the door, flinging out her hand to try to grab the flying strap of her purse.

  Two things registered simultaneously as the door slammed shut on her fingers—the dark car that pulled up to the entrance, then sped off with a screech of rubber, and the pain that nearly brought her to her knees.

  Clutching her right hand in her left one, Mariah shouldered open the door and barged into a solid wall of flesh. A tough-looking man with a black beard and a fierce scowl caught her by the shoulders.

  “Get out of my way!” She shoved at him with both hands. Pain threatened to cripple her again.

  “Whoa,” the man growled. “What the hell’s the big hurry?”

  “Lady, you’ll never catch him now. He’s long gone,”the attendant called after her.

  Mariah ignored him. “Oh, God, he’s getting away!” She dodged to the left just as the dark stranger did. She sidestepped right at the same time he did. The man’s hands clamped down on her shoulders again, and Mariah glared at him, distractedly taking in the image of shaggy beard, battered, black leather jacket, rumpled khakis and worn Western boots. He looked unnaturally pale. “Would you please just let… me…go?” she wailed.

  “What’d you do, rob the joint?”

  The attendant stood behind her, surrounding her with his beer-and-onion breath. He squinted off into the veil of heavy rain. It was really pounding down now, dancing up off the pavement. A hundred-odd feet away, a steady stream of traffic raced by, headlights and taillights glowing fuzzily in the preternatural darkness. “Sorry, lady. They’re long gone by now.” He turned to go back inside, looking relieved that she instead of he had been the victim.

  Breathing in a crazy mixture of lilacs, diesel fuel and cherry extract, Gus stared down at the woman in his arms. But not too far down, because she was almost as tall as he was.

  Cheekbones. He’d always been a sucker for good bone structure. She had it. Man, did she ever have it! As long as she was there in his face, so to speak, he figured he might as well take inventory. He might be barely recovered from the lingering flu, but that didn’t mean his male hormones were out of commission.

  Her eyes were not quite brown, not quite gray—sort of a pale combination of the two. Her hair was the same no-color shade. Actually, she reminded him of a weimaraner that had taken up at his house a couple of years ago. He’d grown pretty fond of the mutt before the owner had finally shown up to claim him. “What happened?” he growled, wishing his voice didn’t sound quite so rough. It hadn’t been used much in the past week.

  “That creep stole my purse! He poured Cherry Freeze all over me and then he grabbed my purse!” She tried to pull free, but Gus held on because, cheekbones or not, she looked pretty shaky. “Let me go! I’ve got to try and catch him!”

  “Tall guy, short guy. Two of ’em. One had a base ball cap, the other one had sort of dirty blond hair and crooked teeth,” the attendant said helpfully. “Didn’t see no gun, but that don’t mean nothing. Lot o’ that kind o’ thing going on these days.”

  The woman wilted visibly. For one brief moment she allowed her head to rest on Gus’s leather-clad shoulder. “My keys,” she whimpered.“ He even has my car keys.”

  Gus glanced at the attendant, who hovered in the doorway. “Don’t look at me, man, I can’t leave this place. For what it’s worth, they headed south in a dark Chevy—looked like a ten-to twelve-year-old model, but they’re long gone by now. I’m real sorry, lady. You got any money on you? You still owe me for the drink and the—”
r />   Gus swore. He jerked out his wallet and handed over a fistful of bills. “Take it out of that!”

  While the two men were thus engaged, Mariah left the cover of the canopy. The rain had slacked up momentarily, and she’d spotted something pale and flat lying near the edge of the highway. It was probably only a bit of trash someone had tossed out, but…

  Just as she reached the edge of the pavement, an eighteen-wheeler whipped past, throwing up a barrage of dirty water. She gasped at the second icy deluge within minutes.

  “Are you crazy? Get the hell away from that highway, dammit!”

  She just had time to snatch her purse when another truck roared past. Someone grabbed her hand—her left one, fortunately—and hauled her back from the edge of the highway. Before she could protest, her bearded assailant—or would-be rescuer—swung her off her feet and started jogging back toward the service station. “What the hell is it with you, lady? You got a death wish or something?”

  He practically shoved her through the door before she could protest. The moment he set her on her feet again she tugged at the flap of her sodden purse, unthinkingly using her right hand.

  Tears sprang to her eyes and she must have made a sound. Blackbeard took the dirty canvas shoulder bag from her, slung it over his own shoulder, and led her around behind the counter t o the attendant’s stool.

  “Sit down before you fall down,” he commanded. Very much to her surprise, she did. He handed over her purse. “I can tell you before you even look inside what you’re going to find. Zilch. A lipstick, maybe a hanky, but nothing of value. Might as well face facts right up front.”

  Mariah glared at him, daring him to have spoken the truth.

  But of course he had spoken only the truth. Gingerly, she held her ruined purse on her lap, wedging it under an elbow, and slid her left hand inside. Out came one sticky comb, one wad of damp, sticky tissues and a few sticky shards of the tiny jar of guava jelly she’d bought when she’d filled up her tank in West Palm. It had evidently broken and leaked all over the inside of her bag.

  She didn’t cry. Mariah never cried. Having learned a long time ago that tears were a waste of energy, she had developed her own way to deal with stress. If a few tears escaped now to slither down her rain-wet cheeks, that didn’t mean she was crying. She would deal with this setback the way she had dealt with everything else since she had put away her dolls and taken on the job of raising a family.

  Well…perhaps not exactly the same way. At least, not until she got home.

  “What happened to your hand?” She glanced up as the pale-skinned, black-bearded stranger reached for her right hand, wondering if he was so pale because he’d just gotten out of prison. She wasn’t ordinarily given to snap judgments, but it was hard not to be a little paranoid when she’d just been robbed and her hand was swollen, aching and rapidly turning an ugly shade of reddish purple.

  It was also sticky.

  Gus wiped his hand off on a clean handkerchief, wishing he’d never pulled off the highway for a break. Some break! He’d been feeling washed out, run down, mean as a junkyard dog—and that was before he’d had the misfortune to tangle with this p articular walking disaster.

  Oh, hell. The woman, her damp hair straggling around her wet face, was staring down at her own hand as if it belonged to someone else. If she hadn’t looked so damned defeated, he might have been able to walk away. But Gus had always been a sucker for lost causes, and with those big, shimmering eyes and that naked, vulnerable mouth of hers, she was about as lost as it got.

  “I’m going to wake up any minute now, and y’all are going to disappear. I just thought I ought to warn you.” She tried to smile but her chin was trembling too hard. Her eyes were red-rimmed and the tip of her nose—her elegant, patrician nose, Gus noted almost absently—was beginning to turn pink.

  Oboy. Here we go again.

  Lilacs. She smelled like rain and lilacs. Backing away, he leaned against the snacks counter. If shadows had a color, that was the color of her eyes. The trouble was, even rimmed with red, they packed a wallop. And her legs—Oh, man, that was the clincher. Under a layer of thin, wet cloth, he could actually see the glow of her skin, the lines of her panties and bra. She didn’t have a whole lot upstairs, but it was adequate. And it didn’t take much imagination to tell that her nipples were all puckered up from the cold.

  Why the hell wasn’t she wearing a coat? “You ought to dress for the weather,” he said gruffly, embarrassed at being caught staring at her body. He’d always had a weakness for her kind of looks, but when a guy was half dead from the flu, when he’d just been dumped by a woman he had actually bought a ring for, when his stomach was growling from hunger and acid was burning a hole in his gut, he had to be some kind of a pervert even to notice things like that.

  Especially in a situation like this.

  He made up for it by ratcheting up his scowl. “Look, this is Florida, lady, but let’s get real. It’s raining out there. It’s February, it’s cold as a well-digger’s assets, and the overhead pipes have busted big-time. You got a coat somewhere?”

  The attendant glanced out the clouded window as two cars pulled in.“ Lady, you’re gonna hafta move your car, okay? You’re blocking the high-test.”

  “Shut up,” Gus said without even glancing up. “What about a spare key? You got one stashed out someplace?”

  “Under the hood, on the right side, on the thingamabob.”

  “The thingamabob. Right. Don’t go away, I’ll be right back.”

  And he was gone, leaving Mariah feeling lost and alone. Which wasn’t like her at all. Ever since she’d answered the phone at four-thirty this morning and heard poor Basil’s latest tale of woe, she seemed to have screwed up everything she touched. She was miles away from home and practically all the money she had in the world had been in her billfold, and now it was gone. She was wet, sticky and cold. The jet stream had moved south for the winter, and all her winter clothes were in the attic of her house back in Muddy Landing.

  Truly, she’d had better days, she thought. When the bearded stranger came back inside, she tried to force a smile, but evidently it wasn’t very convincing. He walked right up to her and clamped his big square hands on her upper arms and squeezed.

  Hard.

  “Here, I found this in your back seat. Better put it on before you catch something”. He held out her vinyl slicker, and she slid her arms into the sleeves, wincing as the stiff plastic scraped her injured hand.

  At that moment Mariah wanted nothing so much as to lean against the tough-looking stranger with the beard and the worn Western boots, close her eyes and forget everything. At least for a moment. For just a single minute, until she could think of what to do next.

  Instead, she tilted her chin and tried to look as if she had everything under control. Which, evidently, was no more convincing than her smile had been.

  He moved in closer until she could feel his heat, smell the mingled scent of leather and coffee and something essentially male. Which, oddly enough, was more reassuring than threatening.

  “Hey, hey, now,” he rasped. “It’s not so bad. We’ll get you sorted out in no time.”

  Two

  Mariah made a real effort to pull herself together, if only because her bearded good Samaritan seemed to expect it of her. She never liked to let anyone down, and besides—he was a lot kinder than he looked. Aside from that prison pallor of his and his shaggy beard, and the fact that he had a tendency to scowl a lot, he wasn’t unattractive. Not handsome, certainly, but there was a rugged strength about him that was mighty appealing at the moment.

  “I’ll be fine,” she murmured huskily. She fully intended to be, only it was going to take a bit of doing. “I’m just not used to being robbed,” she said with a smile that was part bravado, part an effort at self-deception.

  Turning away, she asked the clerk if she could use his telephone to call the police, not that she expected any results.

  “Pay phone’s outside nex
t to the compressor,” the attendant told her. She glared at him, and he had the grace to look embarrassed. Grudgingly, he indicated the private phone between the cash register and the jar of pickled eggs.

  Dialing was a problem. Just one of several she was about to face, Mariah suspected, hanging up the phone a few minutes later.

  The other man had gone outside again. He came in just as she was hanging up the phone, looking concerned under his intimidating scowl.“ You got a name?” he asked.

  “Mariah Brady.”

  “Gus Wydowski,” he returned. “Look, Miss Brady, what about credit cards? If you had ‘em, you might want to put in a stop call.”

  “Oh, Lord, my cards.” She was beginning to tremble. Panic hove red just over the horizon.

  “Driver’s license, checkbook, keys…” He frowned, and Mariah wondered if he were capable of another expression.

  “At least they headed south. I live north of here.”

  He nodded absently, his mind obviously miles away. Probably eager to be shed of her problems and be on his way. She noticed for the first time that his eyes were an unusual shade of dark blue, and that he had two scars on his face, one leading into his hairline, another disappearing under his beard.

  “Were you carrying much cash?” he asked, and she was tempted to tell him it was none of his business, but she supposed she owed him a civil answer.

  Her hand was beginning to throb painfully.“ Don’t ask,” she said, which was about as civil as she could manage at the moment. She’d been carrying four hundred and seventy-three dollars and odd change. To some people, it might not be much. To Mariah, it was a fortune. Except for a minimum balance in her hometown bank, a five-thousand-dollar CD that wouldn’t mature for several months and a run-down house in a tiny community where property values were a standing joke, it represented her entire life’s savings.

  It had been Vic Chin who had told her once that her face—or to be more precise, her bone structure—was her fortune. The trouble was, bone structure wouldn’t pay the bills. Nor would it buy many groceries.