The Beauty, the Beast and the Baby (Man of the Month) Page 4

  Gus knew for a fact that some women took one look at his battered face, scarred from one too many foot ball collisions and the usual run of on-the-job accidents, and took a fast hike. But just because this one‘ hadn’t, didn’t mean she was feeling the same pull of sexual attraction he was feeling.

  And he was definitely, undeniably feeling it, all right. It was a good thing they would be splitting pretty soon, or else Gus might just find himself forgetting a few hard-learned lessons from his own recent past.

  Three

  Dinner was devoured quickly, with little conversa tion. Mariah told herself there was nothing at all wrong with finding herself alone in a motel room in a strange town with a strange man. It happened.

  A small inner voice, one she had never quite managed to outgrow, whispered that it might happen to some women; it had certainly never happened to Sara Mariah Brady.

  As a model, Mariah’s social life had been even more limited than it had been back home, if for an entirely differ ent reason. The novelty of beautiful clothes, beautiful people and exotic locations had quickly worn off. After initial training, her days had begun early, and by the time she’d gotten back to the apartment all she’d wanted to do was devour an enormous meal and fall into bed.

  Instead, she usually made do with a quick shower-cool, so as not to dry out her skin—a manicure touch-up, half an hour of yoga and a light supper of fruit, rice and vegetables. Then she would fall into bed.

  Back in Muddy Landing the store had closed at five in the wintertime, six during the summer. By the time she’d cooked supper for whoever happened to be living at home, she’d been tired, but not too tired to have gone out for a few hours if anyone had asked her.

  The trouble was, in Muddy Landing, there was no “out” to go to. Nor was there anyone to go with once she’d discovered that Vance Brubaker, charming, attentive sales rep for a garden tractor manufacturer, had four motherless children at home, and was seeing a woman in Darien and one in Wayne County at the same time he was courting Mariah, in the hopes that one of the three would be willing to take on his family. Nor did he particularly care which one. Mariah had almost convinced herself she was in love with the man when the whole affair had started to come unraveled.

  Sighing, she finished supper and deftly closed the remains inside her box with her left hand. “I never knew I was ambidextrous.” It was the first thing either of them had said since Gus had opened her salt and pepper packets and she’d thanked him.

  “Good thing you are. Let’s see about getting that mitt of yours iced down again before I leave you.”

  Thunder and lightning had set in about half an hour earlier. Now a blast of thunder rattled the windows, making her flinch. “Actually, I’m not all that sleepy. I wonder if there’s a weather channel we could tune in to.”

  There was. While Mariah washed her hands, then studiously stared at all the L’s, the H’s and the curving dotted lines on the weather map, Gus filled the ice tub from the machine outside.

  “What’s the prognosis?” he asked when he came back inside. He refilled the bag, arranged her right hand on the chair arm, spread a small towel over the swollen bruise and then carefully placed the ice bag in position, trying not to admire her graceful, long-fingered hands too much. Trying not to let his imagination run away with him.

  “Prognosis? Oh, the weather, you mean. I forgot to listen.”

  The truth was, Mariah had been too busy thinking about Gus. Wondering who he was. Where he was from. Why he was traveling alone.

  To a job, perhaps. Maybe he was looking for work. She’d spent hours in his company, yet she didn’t know the first thing about him except that despite his rough looks, the semipermanent scowl that was etched on his bearded face and the pallor she had first taken for something sinister, he was kind. Most men would have walked away long before this, but for some reason he seemed determined to help her.

  Whether she wanted him to or not! “Gus, where are you headed?”

  The narrowed glance he sent her way spelled Keep Out in dark, electric blue. “South,” he said tersely. Removing the bag, he unzipped it, popped out a few cubes, resealed and replaced it.

  “I’m going home to Georgia,” she confided. “I guess I already told you about Muddy Landing, didn’t I?”

  “Yep.” He stepped back to frown down at her, his fists bracing a pair of narrow hips. “Need a couple more aspirin before you turn in?”

  “If I do, I’m sure I have some somewhere.” He obviously wanted to get away. That, for some reason, irritated her. After protesting her independence earlier, for all the good it had done her, she was suddenly in no mood to be alone.

  Too much to think about. Too many questions with no answers that she’d just as soon put off asking as long as she could. Which wasn’t like her at all.

  But then, nothing about this whole messy business was typical of the practical, unflappable woman she’d always been. While finishing high school, holding down a part-time job and later, a full-time one, all the while taking care of her siblings, Mariah had dealt with every childhood disaster imaginable.

  Of course, she’d had her own method of dealing with stress in those days. Digging. Planting and transplanting. There were too many things in her life she couldn’t change, so she changed the things she could. Rearranging furniture had never given her half the satisfaction that rearranging shrubbery had. She had the greenest thumbs in Muddy Landing—every body said so—but Basil had once told her that all she had to do was step outside the back door with a certain look on her face, and every shrub in the yard flinched.

  Lately, she’d had to make do with yoga.

  “Well…good night, Gus. And thank you for my supper and the room. And all the rest. Naturally, I’ll mail you a check just as soon as—”

  “Yeah, sure,” was the gruff response.

  The man was a bear. If it weren’t for those remarkably beautiful eyes of his, he wouldn’t even rate a second glance, she told herself, stung by the fact that he could obviously hardly wait to get away.

  Oh, yes, he would, too. In spite of surface appearances, the man radiated authority. He was intensely masculine. And while some women might be put off by the beard and all that shaggy black hair, with those wide shoulders and narrow hips, and those strong, amazingly gentle hands, he most definitely rated a second look.

  Maybe even a third.

  And that was not even taking into account what a thoroughly nice man he was underneath his grizzly bear disguise.

  “I left a call for both rooms for seven. Is that too early?”

  “Seven’s fine,” she assured him. “I always get up early.”

  “Yeah, sure you do,” he growled.

  His skepticism irritated her, but Mariah put it down to the weather. Thunderstorms always made her edgy. “For your information, Mr. Wydowski—”

  “It’s Gus. Or plain Wydowski.”

  “Well, for your information, Plain Wydowski, I’m used to working a minimum of twelve hours a day.” Which was no less than the truth, if one included marketing, personal laundry and her grooming and exercise routine. Or holding down a full-time job in addition to keeping house. “You’d think I did nothing but loll about half the day eating Twinkies and reading juicy horror stories.”

  “How about boiled peanuts and romances?” Was there the suspicion of a twinkle in his eyes? Probably just a reflection of the lightning.“ Seven it is, then,” he said, letting himself out the brick red door just as a blast of thunder exploded overhead.

  Nursing the slippery ice bag, Mariah wasted no time on indignation. She had a lot of worrying to do and she needed to organize it into manageable lots. Money was the first problem. She would have to cash in her CD. The penalty couldn’t be all that much, but at the moment she didn’t have a single dollar to spare. Her health insurance was due and she’d have to stock up on supplies, including baby food and diapers and whatever else an eight-month-old baby needed. Knowing Basil, it would never occur to him to bring them alo
ng.

  Just as it hadn’t occurred to him that Mariah’s work was every bit as important as his own—that she couldn’t just walk away when it suited her.

  Yes, well…she had, hadn’t she? Which was an other problem.

  Nor had it occurred to her brother that she’d had absolutely no experience with infants. Rosemary had been three when their mother had more or less abdicated her role, Alethia nearly five, Burdina six and Basil nearly eight. Mariah, as the eldest, had taken over and looked after them all until the last one had left the nest.

  They were all more or less settled now. Rosemary was training to be a nurse, Alethia working for an insurance firm in Decatur, Burdina was in her third year at Emory. Burdy had always been the brainy one. She had earned a full scholarship. And then there was Basil, with a family and a business of his own in Atlanta.

  But they still needed her. Seldom a week went by that she didn’t hear from at least One of them, and as often as not they needed something, if only a small loan.

  Mariah, as tired as she was, felt a small glow of satisfaction. It was nice to be needed. Exhausting but nice.

  Outside, the thunderstorm was in full spate, the noise nearly drowning out the sound of the rain. Inside, the TV set droned on and on. A perky young man in a bow tie cheerfully described the probable effects of the southward swoop of the northern jet stream. Rain with the possibility of a few flurries unless something or other happened, in which case, the flurries might add up to one to three inches of frozen precipitation.

  Lord ha’ mercy, if that wasn’t just what she needed! It didn’t snow often, which made it worse when it did. Nobody was prepared. Oh, for a shovel and a few shrubs to transplant.

  As she couldn’t change the forecast, Mariah did the next bestthing. She switched channels to a movie that featured a ride-’em-down, shoot-’em-up Western. At least the noise of that, plus the thunder, drowned out her own nonproductive thoughts. Clutching the ice bag to her injured hand, she began to pace. On the thin carpet, her platform sandals made a satisfying clunking sound.

  In the room next door Gus tried to concentrate on the newspaper he’d brought from home, but yesterday’s news might as well have been written about a different planet. What the hell was he doing in a cheap motel in the pouring down rain, somewhere in northern Florida, anyway? He’d been headed for sunshine. For summertime. All the way to Key West if that was where he had to go to find it!

  And what the bloody hell was she doing in there? he asked himself, glaring at the thin wall that separated the two rooms. Guns blazed, cattle stampeded, and now she was stomping around in those godawful shoes of hers that made her a full inch taller than he was.

  Gus told himself she’d probably worn them deliberately. He was wise to women and the little tricks they used to manipulate men.

  Well, let her tower over him—he didn’t give a sweet damn in hell. His manhood wasn’t threatened by a woman who could look him in the eye. He might still be half dead with the flu, but his manhood was alive and well, thanks. He’d already had evidence of that fact.

  Women! It would serve her right if he dumped her out at the station, bought her a tankful of gas, and took off. It was no skin off his nose if she had to drive one-handed all the way to Newfoundland. At least then he would be able to get his mind on track again and keep it there.

  Maybe if he put in a call to his sister, she could set him on course again. Angel had always been good at putting him in his place and making him laugh about it. She was the only family he had left—the most important person in his life.

  But Angel had her own life now. She and Alex were expecting their first kid in June. Which would make him an uncle. Which was something, at least, only suddenly, unclehood didn’t seem all that fulfilling.

  Clump, clump, clump. Bang, screech, clump! He could pound on the wall, but she would never hear him over all that ruckus. If those walls had passed muster with any inspector, Gus couldn’t say much for the building code in this neck of the woods.

  And then in a rare moment of silence came the sound of breaking glass, followed by a shrill little yelp. He had a gut feeling it wasn’t a part of any TV Western. Pausing only long enough to grab his room key, Gus barged out the door of 102 and beat on the door of 103. Getting no results, he moved to the wide window, wiped off the glass and peered through a crack in the draperies.

  She was standing there, stiff as a stalking heron, near the back of the room. God, she was something to look at, even with one towel-draped hand clutched to her chest, the other one hanging on to the plastic handle of a broken coffee maker. There were shards of glass around her feet, and—

  And she was crying. Oh, hell. No way could he walk now. Tomorrow he would cut his losses and get the hell out of range, but right now…

  It took rapping on the glass with his pocketknife before she even glanced his way. She blinked a few times and he watched her visibly pull herself together. Tears and a busted fist notwithstanding, this was one feisty broad.

  “Did you want something?” she inquired coolly through the crack in the door.

  “Unhook the chain.”

  “I don’t-”

  “Mariah, unhook the chain, please.” If he had to, he would manufacture another coughing spell. Come to think of it, he probably wouldn’t have to try too hard. His throat still felt as if it were lined with dou ble-ought sandpaper.

  She let him in and then stood by, her face expressionless, while he switched off the TV. Next, he found a wastebasket and began gathering up broken glass. “How the devil can you hear yourself think with all that noise?” he grumbled.

  “Maybe I didn’t want to hear myself think.”

  “Yeah, well, maybe I did.”

  “I’m not stopping you. Go home and think all you want to, I don’t need you to clean up after me.”

  She sounded so damned haughty, standing there in her skinny jeans and her baggy shirt. Damned if she didn’t have a rumpled tea bag dangling from her little finger. Gus had to grin. Lady, you don’t even know when you ’re down for the count, do you?

  “Where’d you get the tea bag?” he asked gruffly, smothering an urge to laugh.

  “I found it in my coat pocket.”

  “Looks like it’s left over from last season. Got any coffee stashed away there?”

  “It wouldn’t do you any good. In case you hadn’t noticed, I broke my pot.” There’d been a wall-mounted coffee maker in each room, but no coffee. But then, this was not exactly a top-of-the-line establishment.

  “Stay put. I’ll get my mine.”

  He was back in less than a minute. She hadn’t moved an inch. Gus had an idea she was hanging in there against some pretty stiff odds, which meant he was probably slated to put in a few hours of listening while she dragged out her worries and hung them out to dry. For some reason he’d never been able to figure out, women always seemed to want to confide in him.

  His sister, Angel, said it was because he looked older than his years, and age was an indication of wisdom. Gus hadn’t been particularly flattered, but then, Angel had never been one to sugarcoat the truth. With a few choice words he’d told her what he’d thought of her theory, but it had started him to thinking about growing old. More specifically, about growing old alone.

  Which was probably why he’d even considered asking Lisa to marry him. Up until then he’d liked his life fine just the way it was.

  He was just beginning to realize what a narrow escape he’d had. Looking back on a few of Lisa’s more irritating little habits, such as being uninterested in any conversation that wasn’t focused on herself, Gus figured he’d got off lucky. He could glance at a blueprint and size up a job within minutes, but when it came to reading women, he still had a few blind spots. So much for age and wisdom.

  The water came to a boil. Gus turned to where Mariah stood, still dangling her mangled tea bag. “ Wher e’s your cup?”

  “I thought…the glass?”

  At least it was glass, not plastic. Gus took t
he bag from her finger and dropped it into one of the room’s two glasses, then poured boiling water slowly down the side until the glass was full. He got a washcloth from the bathroom and wrapped the glass before handing it over.

  “Go sit down before you drop,” he said. She was looking a little too pale to suit him.

  “You do that so well, you must be an expert.”

  “Do what, make tea?”

  “Order people around.”

  “Oh. That.”

  Except for the drone of rain, it was quiet. The TV was silent; the thunder had moved on. Gus hooked the toe of his boot around the other chair, dragged it closer and sat down. “So…let’s have it. What’s got you so all-fired worried you’re trying to drown out your own thoughts with a high-decibel cow opera?”

  “I don’t know what gives you the idea that I’m—”

  He cut her off at the pass. “If you want some sugar for that tea, I’ve probably got a few packets in the truck.”

  She shook her head. “I like it bitter. How’s your cough?”

  “Fine. Come on, lady—give. What’s got you Strung up tighter than a two-dollar fiddle?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said brightly. Too brightly. “Do you mean aside from the fact that some creep stole practically every cent I have in the world and I can’t use my right hand, and I’m miles from home and my car’s out of gas, and Basil’s coming home on Saturday with his baby daughter, expecting me to take care of her until he can find Myrtiss and talk her into going back home? Because outside that, I don’t have a single worry.”

  Gus stared at her for the longest time, for once oblivious to her classical cheekbones, her flawlessly sculpted nose, a pair of spectacular eyes and a chin that had a tendency to square up at the least hint of a challenge.

  “Uh-huh,” he said dryly. “That’d just about do it, I guess.”

  He didn’t have the foggiest notion who Basil and Myrtiss and their baby were, or what they had to do with Mariah, but if there was one thing he was, it was a damn good listener. He told her so.