by Sandra Brown
She smiled across the interior of the car at him. “I’m fine.”
Her smile was returned. He seemed about to speak, but changed his mind and steered the small car onto the narrow highway. It bounced over the bumpy shoulder until it gained the pavement. Leigh bit her lip against the discomfort.
“I’m sorry. I know you’re sore, but you didn’t seem to have much bleeding or anything. I don’t think you’ll suffer too much once you get treatment.”
Leigh rummaged through the overnight bag on the seat. In it she found an old comfortable T-shirt and wrapped the baby in its softness. “Lucky I had this along,” she said absently.
“Where had you been or where were you going as the case might be?”
“I had been to Abilene. A sorority sister of mine got married last night. I had taken my one good maternity dress to wear to the wedding,” she said, indicating the garment bag hanging on the hook beside the back seat. “But I knew when some of us got together, it would be like a slumber party. So I packed some other clothes for comfort.”
He grinned down at the orange University of Texas T-shirt she had covered the baby with. “It was Providence.” His brows lowered over his eyes, and he shifted them off the road long enough to look at her seriously. “You had no business driving alone like that. When were you due?”
“Not for two more weeks. But you’re right. I was asking for trouble. I wanted to go to that wedding so badly, and there was no one to go with me, so…” She let the end of the sentence trail off.
“Why didn’t you stay on I-twenty? It goes straight from Abilene into Midland.”
“I was driving a friend home from the wedding. She lives in Tarzan. I had to see a town named Tarzan, Texas. My pains didn’t start until I’d left there.”
He cursed on a soft laugh.
She looked down at her fretful daughter. “I only hope my baby’s all right.”
“Her lungs are okay,” Chad said, grinning.
The baby girl wailed. Her face became mottled as small limbs thrashed against her mother. Worried the baby’s crying would irritate him, Leigh looked nervously at Chad. He was concentrating on his driving, which wasn’t difficult since there wasn’t another car on the highway. What would have happened to me if Chad hadn’t come by when he did? Leigh thought as she shifted the baby from one arm to another.
They were still twenty miles from Midland when the baby’s cries became even more strenuous. Leigh looked at Chad, who met her worried gaze across the seat. He slowed the car, stopping in the middle of the highway. On this stretch of road there was nothing between Leigh’s car and the horizon in any direction.
“What should I do?” Leigh asked in consternation. What would this man know about babies? He wasn’t even married. Yet she found herself turning to him and not even examining why it seemed so natural to do so.
He ran a weary hand around the back of his neck and pushed away a loose strand of sun-bleached hair from his forehead. “I don’t know. Maybe if you… uh… fed her…”
Leigh was grateful that the violet light of dusk covered her confusion. “I won’t have any… any milk for a few days.”
“I know, but maybe just… you know… an instinctive need for… comfort.” He shrugged.
The baby screamed louder. The tiny blue veins on her head stood out alarmingly as her flailing fists pummeled her mother. Making the decision for her, Chad slid his hand across the back of the seat and pulled at the tied shoulder strap of Leigh’s sundress. Not able to look at him, she shook her shoulder, easing the dress down until her breast was free. Cupping it, she nudged it toward her daughter’s angry face. With a surprising accuracy, the baby’s mouth found and greedily fastened onto her mother’s nipple.
Spontaneously Leigh and Chad started laughing. For long moments they chuckled over the baby’s avid, noisy sucking. When Leigh raised her eyes to Chad’s, he was no longer looking at the baby, but at her. And his look halted her laughter abruptly.
She saw in his admiring gaze that even in her current state of dishevelment he found her lovely. His words confirmed it.
“Maternity becomes you, Leigh,” Chad said softly. “With those long chestnut curls, those gray-blue eyes the color of thunderstorm clouds, that mouth as soft and pink as your baby’s—and most of all your expression when you look at your child—you remind me of one of those fifteenth-century Italian paintings of the Madonna. Only you’re not a painting.” He continued to look at her appreciatively.
Leigh studied him with the same thoroughness. How could she ever have thought this sensitive man posed a threat to her? She had seen only his dirty clothes, his sweat-streaked, beard-stubbled face. Now she saw the gentleness in his eyes. His hands, though callused, seemed sure and strong and capable of tenderness. When she remembered the intimacy with which he had seen her, had touched her, she lowered her dark lashes to shutter her eyes from his.
Looking down at her daughter, she saw Chad’s hand extending toward the baby. Closer. She held her breath. His long, well-shaped index finger touched her daughter’s cheek. Stroked. Leigh could feel that caress against her breast.
“What are you going to name her?”
“Sarah,” she said without hesitation.
“I like that.”
“Do you?” she asked, looking at him again. “It was my mother-in-law’s name.”
He yanked his hand back as though he had been burned. “I thought you said you weren’t married.”
“I’m not. Not now. My husband was killed.”
A full minute ticked by as he gazed out at the setting sun, a huge red ball at the end of the highway. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “How long ago?”
“Eight months. He didn’t even know I was pregnant. He was a narcotics agent. He was shot during a raid.”
A whispered expletive sizzled through a short silence. Chad looked down at the baby again. She was sleeping, her only movement an occasional sucking motion of her rosebud mouth. “I think you’re both very special ladies,” he murmured before shifting the car into gear again.
Leigh must have dozed after that. The next thing she knew, Chad was wheeling up to the emergency entrance of the hospital. He honked the horn of her small car long and loud as he braked to a stop and cut the motor. Turning toward Leigh, he lifted the infant away from her breast. “Better fix your dress,” he instructed brusquely. With clumsy haste, she tied the shoulder strap. Sarah started fussing again. Chad handed the baby back to Leigh. “Wait right here,” he told her.
This was another Chad, issuing orders like a general to orderlies and nurses who had rushed out to see what the commotion was about. The car door was pulled open and eager hands relieved Leigh of her baby. Then she was hauled out and lifted onto a stretcher. The journey from her car to the examination room made her dizzy and slightly nauseated. She was moved to an examination table and her feet were shoved into cold metal stirrups.
Where was her baby? She hurt. Was that blood she felt running down her thighs? How did they know her name? It hurt when they touched and probed. Who was this doctor who kept telling her not to worry about anything? Were they giving her a shot?
Where was Chad?
Chad…
* * *
“Leigh?”
She was very sleepy. Her eyelids could barely be coaxed open. The room was dark. There was a tight, pinching sensation between her thighs when she tried to move her legs, and her face felt hot and prickly. Gradually Leigh realized that her hair was being smoothed back by a gentle hand. Everywhere else she felt battered. Her eyes opened wider and she saw Chad Dillon’s handsome, concerned face bending over her.
“Leigh, I’m leaving now. I hated to wake you, but I wanted to say good-bye.”
“Sarah?”
He smiled. “She’s fine. I just looked in on her in the nursery. She’s in an incubator, but they assured me she’s strong and healthy. No problems with the lungs. Perfect.”
Leigh closed her eyes again to offer up a quick prayer of thanksgiving. “When ca
n I see her?”
“When you’re rested. You went through quite an ordeal, remember?” His palm settled lightly and briefly on her cheek before he withdrew it.
Embarrassed, confused, and disoriented, Leigh looked around the room, spotting an enormous bouquet of yellow roses on the portable tray at the foot of her bed. “Flowers?” She looked at him questioningly.
“No new mother should be without them.”
Inexplicably tears came into her eyes. The roses must have cost a fortune and he couldn’t afford new boots. “Thank you. That was sweet of you, Chad.”
He ducked his head boyishly, shyly. “The doctor who treated you called your parents in Big Spring. I found their address and phone number in your wallet, on one of those notify-in-case-of-emergency cards. They’re on their way. I told the doctor where your car is parked. The keys are with the head nurse. Your insurance card got you and Sarah into the hospital without any hassles. Your own doctor will check you over in the morning, but they told me you only needed to rest. I don’t think I did you much damage. How do you feel?”
“Like I’ve had a baby in the back of a pickup,” she said, hazarding a grin. “My face stings.”
He chuckled softly. “You’re sunburned.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No. Do you want some lotion on it? The nurse left some.”
“Do you mind?” It was a ludicrous question considering everything he’d done for her and his expression told her so.
He poured some of the lotion into his palm, and then, with the fingers of his other hand, applied it to the burning skin on her forehead, nose, and cheeks. His touch was light as his fingers glided over her face, spreading the emulsion evenly. He tracked the path of his fingers with his eyes. Brow, cheekbone, nose, chin, all came under his gaze as he smoothed it with his finger. Once he accidentally touched the corner of her lips. His hand stilled and his eyes lifted to hers. Her heart stopped and didn’t start up again until he continued his ministration. After that he finished quickly.
“That feels better,” she said unevenly when he was done and recapping the bottle of lotion. Why was she so emotional? Were all new mothers this sensitive? She was battling a compelling urge to weep and she didn’t know why.
“Glad to have been of service, ma’am.” He grinned, but his words were strangely solemn. Leigh wondered if she imagined the slight tremor of his mouth.
“You were…” She swallowed the hard lump in her throat. “I don’t know what I would have done without you. Thank you, Chad.”
“Thank you, Leigh, for trusting me. I wish you and Sarah all the best.” He straightened from his bending position and turned away, taking two steps before coming to a stop. His head dropped forward as though it were hinged at his neck, and he stared at the tile floor beneath his booted feet as though the answer to a great dilemma were written there. Quickly he turned around. What had taken him two steps before, he now covered in one.
His sinewy arms supported him as he leaned over her again. “Leigh.” His lips closed over hers, moving slowly, parting gently. Softly, with no urgency, he kissed her. Then he was gone, his tall, muscular form absorbed by the deep shadows of the room. The door clicked shut behind him.
Leigh wondered at the tears that trekked from the corners of her eyes to be absorbed by the hard hospital pillow.
Chapter Two
“Are you sure, Dad? Chad Dillon. What about initials? Did you check for a listing with the initial C?”
“Yes, Leigh. I told the operator to check for anything like that, but she swore there was no such listing.”
Propped up on the pillows of her bed at home, Leigh’s brow wrinkled in vexation. “I wanted to pay him back some way. It never occurred to me to get his address or telephone number.”
“Are you sure he lived in Midland?” Lois Jackson asked, visibly perplexed by her daughter’s determination to contact the man who had delivered her baby four weeks ago and then rudely disappeared.
Leigh’s eyes narrowed as she concentrated. “Now that you mention it, no, I’m not. He only said he was on his way to Midland. He never said he lived here.”
“Well, it’s probably just as well you can’t find him.” Lois drew herself up and took a huffy breath. “I’ll be forever grateful to the man for helping you and Sarah,” she cast a glowing look toward the sleeping baby in the crib across the room, “but he doesn’t sound like the sort of person you’d want to mix with.”
Leigh suppressed a grimace. She tried to make allowances for her mother’s snobbery, but her denigration of Chad after all he’d done for Leigh and Sarah seemed the height of ungraciousness. “I didn’t want to mix with him, Mother. I only wanted to compensate him. He looked like he could use some extra cash.”
For a moment her thoughts turned back to Chad, to how he had looked bending over her, clasping her hand while a contraction wrung her inside-out. His eyes were so blue. Strange eyes with so dark a complexion. His gentleness had belied his strength and brawn. He spoke eloquently, like an educated man. He had even compared her to a quattrocento Madonna.
Her obstetrician had commented on Chad’s thoroughness. Leigh remembered the newspaper. “The young man could have done you great harm had he not been so conscientious.”
She had no way to thank him if she couldn’t find him. Chad Dillon was a mystery that would forever remain unsolved, and that vexed her. More and more she found her thoughts dwelling on the elusive man.
She sighed heavily, and her parents misinterpreted her disappointment as fatigue. “You rest now, Leigh,” her father said. “Come on, Lois, let her sleep.”
“Maybe we shouldn’t leave tomorrow. Sarah’s only four weeks old. Do you want us to stay with you longer?”
“No,” Leigh said sharply, then softened her tone by adding, “I’m fine. Truly. You were more than generous to stay with me all this time. Sarah is an exemplary baby. She’ll be sleeping through the night in another couple of weeks. I’ll be able to take her to work with me for the few hours a week I need to be there. We’ll be just fine.”
Tears came to her mother’s eyes. “I just can’t believe this has happened to you, Leigh. Why did Greg have to get himself shot? Why are you left alone, a widow at twenty-seven, with a baby? I begged you to come live with us when Greg got killed. My granddaughter wouldn’t have been born on the side of a state highway if you’d been at home with us where you belong. You’re dooming yourself to unhappiness.”
Lois dissolved into a fit of sobbing. Harve Jackson placed a supportive arm around her and led her from the room. At the doorway he looked over his shoulder. “Go to sleep, Leigh. Get all the rest you can before we leave.”
He closed the door behind them and Leigh sank gratefully into the pillows. At times she forgot her situation. Invariably some well-meaning person, usually her mother, would remind her of it.
The pain of Greg’s violent death was sometimes too much to bear. She had always feared it, had almost dreaded it with the certainty that it was preordained and only waiting for the destined moment. But she hadn’t been prepared for the reality, the suddenness, the irrevocability of her husband’s murder.
They had argued the night before he was killed.
“Where are you going this time?”
“I can’t tell you, Leigh. You know that. Please don’t ask me.”
“To the border?”
“Leigh, for God’s sake, don’t do this every time I leave.” He paused long enough in packing his duffel bag to place impatient hands on his hips. “Do you think I can do my job, concentrate on what I’m doing, if every time I leave, the image of you I take with me is a tearful, resentful one? You knew what I did before you married me. You said you could take it.”
“I thought I could.” She buried her face in her hands and wept. “I can’t. I love you.”
He expelled a half-exasperated, half-affectionate sigh and came to her, wrapping his arms around her. “And I love you. You know I do. But I love my job, too. It’s important
work, Leigh.”
“I know—at least on an intellectual level. I’m not asking you to give it up completely. But you could take an administrative job. You could plan raids without actually executing them.” She shuddered as she looked down at the automatic pistol lying on the bed, as much a part of his gear as the socks and underwear he was packing. “I hate the thought of you working undercover.”
“Leigh, I’d go crazy behind a desk and you know it. I’m a good actor. They need me in the field.”
“I need you.”
“The government needs me. Those kids in grade school who get hooked on speed and smack need me. No matter how many busts we make, we’re only skimming the surface. It’s a losing battle, but I’ve got to keep fighting. Support me. Trust me. I’m not going to let anything happen to me when I know you’re here waiting for me.”
She pushed away from him and smiled a shaky smile. “I’ll always be waiting for you. Come home soon and safely.”
He kissed her hungrily. “I will.”
But he didn’t. The next time she saw him, he was lying in a casket the government had provided.
They never got to eat the celebration dinner Leigh had prepared. She never got to surprise Greg with the news about the baby, which she had planned to tell him that night. And Leigh had sworn that she would never again get involved with a man whose job was more dangerous than that of an elementary school principal’s.
Greg had worked out of El Paso, but soon after the funeral Leigh had been offered a job in Midland. She had read about the new boom town springing up out of the west Texas plains. Midland was an oil town. Where there was oil, there were jobs, and money being made and spent. It seemed a good place to start over. In spite of her mother’s vehement protests and tearful pleas that she come live with the Jacksons in Big Spring, Leigh had taken the job in Midland. With the salary she’d been promised, Greg’s pension, and frugality, she could live comfortably. She was determined to make it on her own.
Leigh listened to the light, rapid breathing of her baby, saw the rise and fall of her dainty back. “The worst is over, Sarah. We’ll make it.”