The Baby Notion

by Dixie Browning

  He hadn’t seen the inside of her place on Willow Creek Road, but even messed up with smoke and water, it was bound to be a whole lot better than his. The thought made him feel defensive, and as Jake had never much cared for feeling defensive, he got mad instead.

  “Dump your gear in the the guest room. Upstairs, last door on the left. Bath’s across the hall. Make yourself at home. I’m going out for a spell.” He tossed the words in jerky little bunches over his shoulder on his way to the front door, which he couldn’t slam even if he wanted to, on account of the compressed air gadget that took its own sweet time, no matter how damned mad he was.

  “Well, mercy me, aren’t you a sweet one,” Priss murmured, amused, surprised, but not hurt. After all, she hadn’t pushed herself off on him, he’d been the one to insist. She’d just as soon have gone to the hotel. They could have found a place for her somewhere if she’d insisted. If there was one thing she had learned from her daddy it was that no door was ever really closed if H. T. Barrington wanted it open, only she’d never been good at pushing her way in where she wasn’t wanted.

  Taking Jake at his word, Priss climbed the stairs in search of the guest room, hoping it was better than what she’d seen so far.

  It wasn’t. There was an iron bed, a plastic veneer nightstand, an old-fashioned chiffonier with drawers that stuck, and a chair that matched those in the kitchen except for the rung that had been broken and patched with duct tape. The bed frame was painted gray, obviously with paint left over from the floors and the kitchen table. It was stark naked, the mattress covered in yellowed blue-and-white ticking. She decided then and there to turn the mattress before she made the bed.

  It occurred to her that the ticking was the same blueand-white striped material that had looked just fine in the raincoat she’d bought from Neiman Marcus some years ago, only her raincoat had been trimmed with a red collar and cuffs and fancy brass buttons, whereas the mattress sported only a rust-brown stain and a few gray cotton tufts.

  A slash of hard rain struck the side of the house, hammering on the tall, uncurtained windows. Priss told herself she was lucky to have a roof over her head at all. If it hadn’t been for Jake, she would probably still be standing out by the swimming pool arguing with that poor fireman. She purely hated to lose an argument when she knew she was in the right.

  Well. Whining wasn’t going to get anything accomplished.

  First she located a broom and commenced to sweeping, which raised more dust than it removed, but at least it made her feel better. Action always did, but along with her kitchen, Rosalie guarded her mops, brooms and vacuum cleaner like a dragon. So when Priss was feeling upset, she usually made do with playing a few games of tennis when she could find someone to play with her, or swimming a few lengths of the pool when she couldn’t, or messing about in the flower beds—which upset the super whenever he caught her at it, but she did it anyway.

  When none of that worked and she was feeling really needy, she went for a long, fast drive in the country with the top down.

  The linen closet Priss finally located was in no better condition than the rest of the house. It smelled of pine oil and mothballs instead of her favorite gardenia sachets, but at least the sheets were clean. She looked for a pretty spread, but the best she could find was a cotton plaid that, after years of hard water and harsh sun, had faded to shades of gray, olive drab and khaki.

  She dusted off the furniture with her lace-edged, monogrammed handkerchief, wrinkled her nose at the results, then looked automatically for the pink satin laundry bag that hung on the back of her closet door at home, where she always put things she could rinse out with toilet soap. Rosalie allowed her to do her own hand wash, but like the rest of her cleaning equipment, Rosalie’s washer and dryer were off limits. Priss had never really had any burning desire to wash clothes or clean house, but it was the frustration of not being allowed to do it that irritated her.

  Peering out into the hallway to make sure she was still alone in the house, she set out to explore. She found the bath, which was just about what she expected. Antique plumbing, the gloss long since worn off the old cast-iron tub, and a speckled mirror. There were two more bedrooms, with male clothing draped over chairs, bedsteads, dressers, and a few more articles scattered on the floor alongside several pairs of boots.

  Downstairs, she found a pantry with rows of canned goods, mostly tomatoes, chili beans and peaches, a set of wooden bins that weren’t labeled, an upright vacuum cleaner that had been webbed in by an industrious spider, a bucket and a mop.

  Feeling like a trespasser, she opened another door off the kitchen and found what was obviously an office of some sort. It was no prettier than the rest of the house and not even as neat. There were several framed horse pictures on the wall, and a photograph of a group of men standing beside a racetrack that looked more eastern than western. The men all wore suits and Panama hats; only one wore a Stetson.

  She wanted to take a closer look, to see if Jake was the one in the Stetson, but she was too embarrassed. He had invited her to make herself at home, but that didn’t mean she could pry into his personal belongings.

  Last of all she found what must be a utility room. There was a chest-type freezer, what she supposed was a hot water heater, and something that might be a heat pump—then again, it might not. Priss was no expert on the machinery that kept a house operating smoothly. Her father’s staff had included two maintenance engineers who saw to that sort of thing.

  In the corner, under a shelf that held what looked like a fifty-pound box of detergent and half hidden under still more dirty clothes, was a machine she recognized as a washing machine. Beside it was a gleaming white dryer so new it still had the stickers attached.

  Which was a good thing, because it was raining up a storm outside and except for underwear, she hadn’t thought to bring along a change of clothes, not even so much as a nightgown. She’d been so certain she’d be able to go back inside once all the hubbub died down.

  Now everything she was wearing was damp and stained with soot, and if there was one thing Priss couldn’t stand, it was to be dirty.

  While she was at it, she might as well gather up what needed washing from the other two bedrooms. She might not have inherited much from her parents, but she had definitely inherited an overdose of pride from somewhere. One other thing she could never stand, along with being dirty, was being beholden.

  It was several hours later when Jake drove into the yard. He’d been down at the training pen, working a roan stud that was about as ornery as a three-legged jackass, especially with the weather spitting rain and lightning the way it was. They’d gone a round or two just that morning, with Jake coming up on the short end. This time, they’d called it a draw.

  God, he was tired. And filthy. And wet.

  He peeled off his shirt and slung it over onto the passenger seat. He was almost too tired to make it upstairs to the bathroom. What he should’ve done was sluice down at the horse trough, but he’d been in a hurry to get home.

  So much for working Priss out of his system.

  While he was rubbing the roan down, Petemoss had come into the barn and Jake had asked him if he’d mind bunking down in the tack room for a night or so.

  “Got ye a womun up there, ain’t che?” The arthritic old ex-rodeo clown had slapped his good knee and spit a stream of tobacco.

  “It’s not what you think,” Jake had protested.

  “Heck, I can’t even remember what it is I do think when it comes to wimmen!”

  “Yeah, well…her place was smoked up real bad in a fire. She’s sort of a friend of a friend, you might say. I felt obliged to offer her a place to stay until she can get straight.”

  “Why? Can’t the friend put ’er up?”

  “I didn’t ask.”

  “You the one set ’er house on fire?”

  “No, dammit. Lightning hit it. And it’s not a house, it’s an apartment. And anyhow, it wasn’t hers that burned. They all got messed up, tho
ugh, and she can’t stay there until the inspectors go through the place and it gets put back together again. Now, are you going to cut me some slack, or aren’t you?”

  “Sure, sonny, I’ll cut ye all the slack ye need to hang yerse’f, on’y don’t come crying to me when she’s got ye thrown, tied and branded. Who’s gonna cook fer ye? She gonna make ye breakfast in bed?”

  “No, dammit, and it’s not like that! I can cook. Hell, we can eat out of cans. It won’t be for more than a day or two, anyhow. I just thought she might feel uncomfortable in a house with two strange men.”

  “I ain’t strange. Got me a few doubts about you, boy. But me, I’m just as natur’l as the flowers in May.”

  Jake made a rude noise, and Pete made a few more cracks, which Jake pretty much ignored. The old man didn’t have much to laugh about, being so busted up after a lifetime of rodeoing that about all he could do was cook and keep house.

  They were a pair, all right, Jake thought as he rattled up a pockmarked dirt road that turned slick as boiled okra every time it rained. It had been restlessness that had driven him away, but he was beginning to feel guilty about going off and leaving Priss alone in an empty house. He’d thought to work some of the tetchiness out of his system so he could take things nice and easy, keep a cool head on his shoulders.

  All it took to set him off again was seeing the clothesline full of laundry sagging in the driving rain. What the devil was she up to now? Dammit, those were his jeans hanging there, getting spattered with mud. And wasn’t that—hell, yes! It was his favorite shirt, hanging by the collar, getting stretched all out of shape.

  He floored the accelerator, feeling the tires slide as they shot across rainslick ruts. It served him right, letting his hormones lead him into a damn fool situation like this. He could have found her a place to stay without inviting her to move in with him. There were still a few women in town who wouldn’t mind doing him a favor.

  What the devil had he hoped to achieve?

  Well, he knew what he had hoped to achieve, all right. What he hadn’t counted on was coming down with a bad case of honor at the last minute. Jake had never claimed to be a gentleman—his tongue wouldn’t wrap around a lie that big—but neither was he scoundrel enough to take advantage of a woman who was a guest under his own roof, not when she’d been practically forced into the position of accepting his hospitality by a streak of personal misfortune.

  As he jogged across the front yard, lightning ripped the sky apart, illuminating the clothesline Petemoss had strung up until they could get the new dryer wired in.

  Jake did a double take. That couldn’t be his—

  Oh, hell, it was. His brand new black silk shirt, also hanging by the collar, and a pair of light-tan, worsted, western-cut pants that were part of a suit he’d had tailormade in Dallas. They looked about five sizes too small now.

  So much for his wheeling-and-dealing outfit. He’d left them out on a chair, meaning to drop them off at the cleaner’s next time he went to town, only he kept forgetting because, hell—it wasn’t like he wore them every other day.

  Now she’d ruined them. Just like she’d ruined his best hat.

  Jake was mad as hot pitch all over again—madder than a suit of clothes could account for. He could afford to buy himself a dozen suits and silk shirts, and anyhow, the only time he ever wore anything other than work clothes was when he went to a sale in Kentucky.

  Kentucky folks were different. They had what you might call a dress code. Here in Texas or in Oklahoma, everybody dressed pretty much the same at a working sale. The only way to tell the wranglers from the owners from the brokers was to wait to see who got sent out for coffee.

  It sure as hell wouldn’t be the owners or the brokers.

  But dammit, that woman had no call to go invading his privacy, jangling her jewelry in his bedroom where he had to sleep every night—smelling up the place with her perfume!

  Jake’s anger was all mixed up with the sexual energy that had been seething inside him ever since he’d first caught sight of Priss tooling down Main Street earlier that day. He leapt onto the front porch. His wet boot soles, slick as creek mud on the painted surface, skidded so that he had to grab hold of the storm door handle to steady himself, which riled him even more.

  “Woman, what the devil do you think you’re doing?” he roared before he was even inside the house. He stomped down the hall, loaded for bear, just as she appeared in the kitchen doorway.

  He’d clean forgot about leaving his shirt in the truck, but when he saw where she was staring—saw how her eyes got big as a pair of billiard balls, he felt like hiding behind the door and begging her pardon.

  “Jake?” She sounded breathless.

  He wondered if it was because of his scars, or because of something else. His gaze dropped to the front of her shirt, and he pictured her in the same condition he was in. Although, come to think of it, it was physically impossible for a woman to be in the same condition he was in at the moment. What he needed wasn’t a shirt, it was one of Pete’s damned ruffled aprons.

  “I, um, I wasn’t sure what time you wanted supper, but I was hungry, so I made pancakes and sausage. I hope that’s all right?”

  She was squeaking like a mouse, bless her sweet buns. “Yeah, I reckon it’s long gone suppertime. What with the storm and all, it kind of snuck up on me.”

  Her eyes were the color of sourwood honey. Of good whiskey. Of creek water running clear over a bed of rocks. She was smiling, sort of half hopeful, half fearful, like she was waiting for his approval, but not really expecting it.

  “Sounds great,” he said, the dregs of his anger fizzing out like air from a flat tire on an eighteen-wheeler. He hated pancakes. Hated waffles or anything that had to be sopped in syrup to make it edible. Pete was the pancake man. “I’m real partial to sausage patties.”

  “Patties?”

  “Cakes. You know—the way you cook bulk sausage.”

  She looked sort of doubtful, but then she smiled again and it was like the sun coming out through a bank of dark storm clouds. Jake had a sinking feeling he was in even more trouble than he’d thought.

  “I’d better clean up and put on some clothes,” he said, and the doubtful look was back.

  “Oh. Um, I’m not sure, but I don’t think you have any more shirts. As soon as it slacks up some, I’ll bring in the wash and hang it in the kitchen to finish drying, but I couldn’t get the dryer to work. Oh, and I borrowed some clothes—I hope you don’t mind?”

  She was chattering like a squirrel. He figured she was either nervous or cold, and as she was wearing one of his flannel shirts over a pair of Pete’s old long johns, she couldn’t be too cold.

  Actually, they looked sort of cute on her, like the tights and big tops a lot of women were wearing these days. He wondered what she’d do if he demanded his shirt back. If he backed her into a corner and started to unbutton it real slow, and then eased it off her breasts, over her shoulders, down her arms…

  Oh boy. This wasn’t going to work.

  Jake crossed to the thermostat and nudged the temperature down another couple of degrees. “I could’ve told you the dryer’s not hooked up yet if you’d thought to ask,” he grumbled.

  He headed for the stairs to wash up, and she followed along behind him, talking all the way. If she was going to follow him up to the bathroom, Jake decided, with the way he was feeling right now, they might as well skip supper and get on with dessert.

  He made it halfway up the stairs before his stomach growled noisily. On the verge of begging her pardon, he bit back the words. Dammit, it was his belly and his house, and if she was offended, why then, that was just tough. Working off a bad case of the willies—not to mention a wagonload of frustration—gave a man an appetite.

  So now he had two kinds of appetite to deal with.

  “So that’s why I couldn’t get it to work,” she was saying in that finishing school drawl of hers that was beginning to grow on him. “I thought it was just
me. I’ve never been real good with…you know—stuff. Oh, and I looked in the freezer, but everything was frozen. So I just cooked what was in the refrigerator. The sausage, I mean. There was only one egg, so I made pancakes. I think you’re supposed to put eggs in the flour, aren’t you?”

  That was when Jake started to have doubts.

  “Anyway, they’re all done, so you go ahead and change for dinner and I’ll just go pour the wine. I’m afraid it’s only screw top—I couldn’t find your good wine.”

  “The wine?”

  She had already turned away. Now she glanced over her shoulder. With her hair stacked loose and sexy and his shirt falling halfway down her thighs, she was enough to fuel a year’s worth of night sweats.

  Jake cleared his throat. “The only wine I know of is Pete’s private stash of arthritis medicine.”

  “Oh. I’m afraid I opened it already. To breathe, you know.”

  “To breathe. Right.” He hoped the wine was having more luck breathing than he was. Priss looked even better in Pete’s long johns than she did in tight jeans.

  “See you in the front room as soon as you’re ready, all right?”

  All wrong. When the devil had he lost control of his own home?

  And what was that business about the front sitting room? Nobody ever used the front sitting room. It was too grim for anything short of a wake.

  She had cleared the junk off the old mission oak table, dragged it to the center of the room, covered it with a tablecloth she’d found God knew where, and set it with the flowered dishes Pete had bought at a salvage place, which nobody ever used because they were so damned ugly.

  Evidently she’d ferreted out his supply of emergency candles, too. Candlelight and wine. Hell’s bells. Maybe he ought to go down to the barn and drag Pete back up here. There was safety in numbers.