The Baby Notion Page 7

  If he had a single regret it was that he hadn’t straightened out in time to do more for his mama. Hadn’t even told her that he loved her. Not until she was gone had he come to realize that she had sacrificed her whole life for him, giving him a home, seeing that there was food on the table. She never raised her voice when he got into one scrape after another, trying to prove himself to a town that didn’t give a sweet damn about a wild young bastard from Shacktown.

  She’d been young, too—not even eighteen when he’d been born. And pretty, although he hadn’t realized it until he’d come across some old pictures. She’d had auburn hair with a streak of premature gray right in front, and a smile he remembered to this day. He had an idea she could have married, but no man wanted a kid with a redwoodsize chip on his shoulder and a real talent for getting into trouble.

  By the time he was twelve, Jake was helping out at home between bouts of hell-raising—taking every odd job he could find. He’d always been big for his age, not afraid to tackle anything for a few bucks. Looking back, it was a wonder he’d managed to stay out of serious trouble because there was always money to be made if a kid didn’t mind risking a little jail time.

  Thank God, he had never stepped too far over the line. It would’ve killed his mama, whose health hadn’t been too good from years of working twelve hours a day to keep them in food and him in the clothes and boots he kept outgrowing almost as fast as she could buy them.

  Not until she ended up in the hospital did Jake meet his old man face-to-face. Jaylene had been sick in bed for more than a week, claiming it was only a little tad of food poisoning from eating potato salad that had gone off. Jake had stayed home from school to look after her until he’d got scared and called in Earline, who had left work to come down to Shacktown. She had taken one look and called an ambulance, and Jake had followed them to the hospital, so scared he couldn’t have spit if his boots were on fire.

  They’d put her in the charity ward, which had been mostly full of old folks, whimpering and coughing, spitting and moaning. The whole place had smelled of snuff and antiseptic. He had stuck it out for nearly half a day, waiting for a doctor to come by and tell him she could go home, and then he’d screwed up his courage, eaten his pride, and driven his old pickup out to what was commonly known as Baker’s Acres.

  To her credit, he didn’t think Jaylene had ever told a soul who the father of her baby was. But keeping a secret in a town the size of New Hope was next to impossible. Miss Agnes, Miss Minny and Miss Ethel could ferret out anything, and anything they uncovered was all over town within hours, so Jake had grown up knowing who he was.

  He hadn’t called ahead, not wanting to give the old man warning, which was why he also didn’t give his name at the gate. He’d barged past the gateman, shoved past some high-muck-a-muck in a striped coat, and when Baker had come out into the hall to see what all the ruckus was about, he’d told him to his face that an old friend of his by the name of Jaylene Spencer was lying over at New Hope General in a charity bed, and Jake damn well wanted her in a private room, with a doctor who did more than just walk past her ward and then bill the government.

  What’s more, he wanted her to have flowers—the biggest batch of roses anyone in New Hope had ever seen, so that everyone would know that Jaylene Spencer was somebody special.

  Jake had bought the roses himself. To pay for them, he’d pawned the guitar he’d been trying to learn how to play, which was no great loss to the music industry. He’d found a doctor who had agreed to do everything he could for Ms. Spencer and take his payments on time, but as it turned out, there wasn’t much anyone could do except make her last days as easy as possible.

  For the first time he could ever remember, Jake had cried when he heard that. He’d gone out and beat the hell out of the door of his truck, denting it so bad the latch never did work right. And then, after learning how to give her the shots she needed, he’d signed Jaylene out of the hospital with the doctor’s connivance and stayed by her bed day and night until she’d passed over in her sleep.

  She’d had flowers. Jake had sold every stick of furniture in the trailer, knowing they wouldn’t be needing it again. He’d bought some flowers with the money and stolen others from the gardens that weren’t fenced in. The last couple of days, neighbors had come in to spell him, bringing food and washing Jaylene’s bedding, but Jake had stayed right there, sleeping in the cracked plastic recliner he’d dragged into her bedroom.

  The day after he buried her in Shady Grove Gardens, he lit out and kept on going, sore of heart, thousands of dollars in debt, and without a single goal other than to get as far away from New Hope as he could in as short a time as possible.

  Now, sitting on the top rail staring out at the training pen, Jake absently rubbed his left thigh, which always ached some when a front came through. He’d broken more than a few bones in the following years. He had scars from being dragged, thrown, kicked, gored and stomped, and once he’d come close to losing a kidney when a big Brahma bull had taken a particular dislike to him. The devil had thrown him, hooked him up off the ground by his belt and then shaken him like a feather duster.

  The day after he won his first calf-roping money, he’d taken himself a wife. Tammi had been about the most gorgeous woman he had ever laid eyes on, and she’d had a real weakness for cowboys. He’d taken her to bed the first time they’d gone out together, which should have told him something. But he’d been living too fast and hard to learn lessons in those days, trying his damnedest to live down the memories that had followed him out of New Hope, Texas.

  Tammi had stuck with him for almost ten months before she’d split, taking everything that wasn’t nailed down and leaving him with a bunch of bills to pay when he still hadn’t quite managed to pay off all the bills he’d left back in New Hope. He’d been laid up with two broken legs at the time, compliments of a sunovabitch sunfishing paint he’d been counting on to put him in the big money.

  Eventually he’d gotten on his feet again, paid off the last of his New Hope bills and got started on the rest. Along the way, he’d finally managed to learn a few basic survival lessons. First off, he’d quit rodeoing and gone into wrangling, which was hard work, but not quite as dangerous. The money wasn’t as good, either, but it came in a lot more regular.

  Because he had a way with horses—at least those that didn’t outright try to kill him, he’d worked his way up, gone bust and then worked his way up again. Eventually he’d paid off the last of his hospital bills and gone into the risky business of horse brokering, where, surprisingly enough, he’d done real good.

  Through it all, the ups and the downs, he’d been driven by one goal—to be bigger, meaner and richer than the man who had sired him and then refused to acknowledge him.

  Along the way he had learned another valuable lesson: never set store by possessions. Anything a man could possess, he could lose a damn sight quicker. Which was one of two reasons Jake had never bothered to fix up the old house after he’d bought the spread nearly six years ago, the other being that the horse barns were more important. Any money he had to spare went toward improving that end of the business.

  Still…maybe, he thought, watching another bank of purple clouds move in from the southwest—maybe a little paint wouldn’t hurt. A few rugs—some furniture that hadn’t come over on the ark.

  And a syrup pitcher, he added, grinning as his thoughts turned back to the woman he’d left sleeping on the parlor couch.

  He wondered if she had any idea that she was enjoying the hospitality of a bona fide bastard. The world had gone around a few turns since he’d been born. A little thing like illegitimacy didn’t cut much ice these days, even in a small town like New Hope.

  One thing he did know—her old man, if he’d still been alive, would have gelded him first and then run him out of town on a rail for fooling around with his little girl.

  Still grinning, Jake eased his aching left leg down a rung or two and then jumped the rest of the way. He rec
koned it was time he went back and woke up his houseguest. Then he’d better round up Petemoss and see about wiring up the new dryer before she took a notion to tackle it herself.

  The first thing Jake noticed when he walked through the door was that the house smelled different. It could have been any house in the world and he could have been blindfolded, and he still would have known there was a woman close by.

  It wasn’t her perfume, although he had noticed that right off back at the baby store. Good stuff. Not overpowering like the five-bucks-a-pint perfume the ladies in waiting at New Hope’s unofficial bordello over on Bent Street wore.

  “Priss?” Funny, he’d never noticed the way voices echoed in the high-ceilinged old house.

  The clatter of heels drew his gaze toward the stairs. She had managed somehow to dry her clothes—leastwise, she was wearing them again. There was a brown streak up one side of her pink knit top. “I have to go to town,” she announced.

  “Right now?”

  “Right now.” Loaded down with her purse and her assortment of parcels, she was wearing full warpaint and the same roadkill hairdo that had been the second thing he’d noticed about her the first time he’d seen her. When she stopped about three feet away, he took the time to admire the way her eyes looked surrounded by navy blue lashes about a foot long, and the pale, metallic pink of her lips.

  Inhaling, he appreciated the soft corn-tassle scent of her perfume, mingled with the smell of soap, scorched cotton and something else that never failed to set his juices to flowing.

  “I told you I forgot to bring my hair-dryer?” Priss continued. “I almost never got all my hair dried! I thought maybe you might have one, but I looked and couldn’t find one. Oh, and by the way—you’re nearly out of deodorant.”

  Jake blinked at that. “It’s a good thing you noticed. Then I reckon I’d better go clean up some.”

  “You don’t need to change for my sake. If you’ll just drop me by the apartment, you can come on back home.”

  “They’re letting you move back in already?”

  Her gaze slid away, and Jake lifted one dark eyebrow. She couldn’t lie worth a hoot.

  “By the time I get to town—I mean, there’s no real reason why I can’t—and by the way, Jake, while I think of it, I owe you for three toll calls. The garage said they picked up my car yesterday right after you called.”

  “I told you they would,” he said blandly. She was squirming. Jake discovered that he liked setting her at a disadvantage. He’d take any edge he could get.

  “Yes, well—they said it’ll take at least a week, so my insurance company’s going to find me a decent loaner to use in the meantime.”

  “You’re welcome to stay on here, you know. I could find you something to drive.”

  Her chin came up. She had the damnedest little chin. It was the kind that started out to be pointed, changed its mind at the last minute and ended up soft and round, with a shadow of a dimple.

  He knew from experience it wasn’t near as soft as it looked. Like the roan stud, she had her stubborn little ways.

  “No, thank you,” she said in that tea-party accent that had irritated him so much the first time he’d heard it. Now he found it amusing. He found her amusing. And touching. And irritating.

  Not to mention arousing.

  If he’d been smart, he would have stuck to watching her from a distance, letting his imagination off the leash for a little while and then going on about his business. He had a sneaking suspicion that from now on it wasn’t going to be quite so simple.

  Jake reached for the wooden chest Priss had left on the hall bench at the same time she did. Their arms collided and Priss jumped back, looking as if he’d branded her with a hot iron.

  What would she do, he wondered, if he was to sweep her up in his arms and kiss the living daylights out of her, the way he’d been wanting to do ever since he’d gotten his first good look at her?

  Scream, probably. Scream and hightail it down the road. With her bags flapping and her crazy plastic shoes, she’d probably break a leg before she even reached the cattle gate.

  “Sorry,” he said, trying to keep the amusement and frustration out of his voice. He’d been feeling a lot of that in the past twenty-four hours—amusement and frustration.

  “It’s my fault. I’ve always been sort of clumsy.”

  “Honey, face it, you’re no clumsier than I am. It’s just that we strike sparks off one another.” He could tell from her expression she knew exactly what he was talking about. Not that she’d ever admit it.

  But then she went and did. “You mean, you felt it, too? It’s crazy, isn’t it? I mean, we don’t even like each other,” she said earnestly.

  Was she waiting for him to deny it? It wasn’t that he didn’t like her, he just wanted her so damn bad there wasn’t a whole lot of room for anything else.

  Her eyes clouded up and Jake thought, Oh, hell.

  “But don’t feel bad about it,” she said with a shaky little smile that wouldn’t have convinced a tombstone. “It’s not your fault. I’ve just never been real good at making people like me.”

  He could only stare at her. She said it as if she really believed it, which made him want to shake some sense into her. Fortunately, he knew better than to lay a hand on her again, what with all the electricity in the air.

  “Let’s go, if we’re going,” he muttered. “I’ve got to get back here in time to feed up.”

  On the road south, neither of them talked very much. Jake came to the conclusion that Priss was insecure, which surprised him because he couldn’t figure what the devil she had to be insecure about. She’d grown up rich, hadn’t she? And legitimate? It sure as hell couldn’t be on account of her looks.

  At first he’d thought she was obnoxious and a little bit nutty, in spite of being about the sexiest woman he’d ever laid his eyeballs on, but now he didn’t know. He just didn’t know…

  As for Pnss, she didn’t know which she dreaded moreseeing her own place all grimy and soggy from smoke and water, or spending another minute in the company of a man who kept her so bumfuzzled she couldn’t open her mouth without saying something stupid. She’d told him the truth—except for the kids at the hospital and Rosalie and Faith and Sue Ellen, she never had been real good around people, especially around men. But with Jake, she was hopeless. The more she tried to make a good impression on him, the more she ended up sounding like a fruitcake.

  Priss knew she wasn’t stupid. She’d graduated from college with a liberal arts degree, which didn’t seem to be worth a whole lot in today’s marketplace, but she wasn’t really stupid.

  The trouble was, whenever she got flustered, her tongue outran her brain. All she had to do was watch Jake Spencer walk toward her with his hat pulled down and his belt buckle drawing her attention to where it had no business being, and she started chattering like a cageful of squirrels.

  Clutching her mama’s wooden silver chest on her lap, she made up her mind to call Rosalie and ask her to please come home right now. She would make it up to her later, but right now she needed her in the worst kind of way, and not just for cleaning up the mess in their apartment, either.

  As to that, they were going to have to come to some sort of an understanding about who did what from now on, but that could wait. All her life it had been Rosalie who dried her tears, kissed away her hurts and generally kept her out of trouble. When she’d grown up and started dating—not a whole lot, but some—it had been Rosalie who warned her that most men were lazy, trifling scoundrels who were usually up to no good, and that a girl had to watch out to see that they didn’t sweet-talk her out of her crown jewel before she could even think to cross her legs.

  Between Rosalie and her daddy, Priss thought a little sadly, it was no wonder she ended up having to go to a sperm bank to get herself a baby.

  And that was another thing she was going to do as soon as she got settled back into her apartment—find out when Miss Agnes wasn’t going to be on duty
at the sperm bank and finish what she’d started. And this time she wouldn’t let herself be talked out of it!

  Five

  “Now, don’t forget,” Priss said minutes later as they turned into the parking lot of the Willow Creek Arms. “I gathered up all the laundry and washed everything, but it’s all still out on the clothesline, so if you’re missing anything, you’ll know where to look.”

  Jake said nothing.

  “You don’t have to thank me. It was no trouble—I mean, it seemed like a shame to have that great big old tubful of water just for my handful of clothes, only I couldn’t get the dryer to work, so I had to hang everything outside, but then I had to dry my things in the oven, because I couldn’t very well wear your shirt and long underwear home—”

  “Petemoss’s longhandles, not mine.”

  “What?” She fiddled with the seat belt, which had a tendency to slide up over her bosom and catch her in a stranglehold around the neck. “Anyway, I knew better than to try to dry your silk shirt in the oven. Silk’s delicate, even wash silk.”

  Still Jake said nothing. He didn’t know what wash silk was, but the label on his shirt said Dry Clean, so he damn well dry-cleaned. It was a hell of a lot easier, anyhow. Maybe he ought to take to dry cleaning his jeans and work shirts.

  Priss hurried to fill the silence. “I do all my own hand laundry, but Rosalie insists on doing everything else. I do know how to use a washing machine. I mean, what’s to do? You put stuff in, dump in some soap and turn it on, right? And when it’s done, you take it out and pop it in the dryer. Only, like I said…”

  Jake looked as if he might have a stomachache. She knuckled him on the arm to get his attention. “Jake? Is something the matter?”

  “Darlin’, you remember what you and your friend were talking about in that baby store yesterday just before you tripped over my feet?”

  Yesterday? How was she supposed to remember yesterday when he was calling her “Darlin’”? Eddie had called her sweetie—he called all females between the ages of fourteen and forty-five sweetie. Darlin’ was different. She’d never been anyone’s darlin’. Oh, she’d been called sugar and honey before. Most folks around New Hope called people sugar and honey. It didn’t really mean anything.