The Baby Notion

by Dixie Browning

  The old man hooked his thumbs under his apron sash, the effect probably not as threatening as he supposed. “I done made chili.”

  “Good,” Jake said flatly. And to Priss, “Pete makes right tolerable chili.”

  “It’s got to be better than what I did last night.” Priss’s slow smile had a remarkable effect on both men. “Maybe before I leave you could show me a few tricks so that I don’t poison myself if I ever have to do my own cooking again,” she suggested, which made the old man swell with pride until the buttons strained across his chest.

  Jake shook his head in disbelief. Another good man shot down. Was she even aware of her power?

  God help us all, he thought as he watched her pick up two bulky tote sacks and wobble her way upstairs. Those shoes were going to have to go. For his sake, if not hers.

  Six

  Saturday. Priss had missed two readings at the hospital. She had hoped to make it up tonight, but she didn’t know how she could manage to get herself into town. Her car was going to take at least a week to repair, and the loaner she’d been promised was not yet available. She thought several unflattering things about a town the size of New Hope that had only a single rental agency.

  It had to be the holiday weekend. The Fourth was always a big event in New Hope, and when it fell on a weekend it was a three-day whoop-de-do. People came from all around, and every available vehicle was turned into a float for the parade.

  Jake had mentioned finding her something to drive, but then she’d be even more beholden to him than she was now. The thought made her nervous for reasons she didn’t care to dwell on.

  “Ants in yer pants?” Pete asked, and she nodded. That about described it. Jake had left early in the morning for Fort Worth to see a man about a horse.

  Actually, it was about twenty horses, which, according to Pete, who was showing Priss how to boil coffee, Jake would then arrange to have transported to the Bar Nothing, where he would pasture them, finish them off and sell them in the fall sale.

  And she didn’t miss him, she really didn’t, Priss told herself. Pete was surprisingly good company, now that they’d agreed on the fact that Priss was a total disaster in the kitchen and that Pete could cook circles around any chef in New Hope, from Antonio’s famous kitchen magician to Sue Ellen at the diner.

  “Sue Ellen does bake an outstanding lemon meringue pie, though,” Priss opined, out of loyalty to a woman she admired more than almost anyone she could think of. Except, perhaps, Rosalie, who’d been orphaned at seven, gone to work at nine, and supported herself ever since, never once losing faith in her God, her church, or herself.

  “You ain’t never tasted my bread puddin’,” Pete told her, to which Priss could only reply that no, she never had.

  “Coconut, raisins an’ pineapple juice. Makes it real tasty. I’ll bake one fer supper tomorrow night. Jake’ll be home by then, I reck’n.”

  Priss hadn’t asked. She had sort of hoped he’d be back later on today, but then, she hadn’t the least notion of how long his business would take. Or what other business he had in mind to do. He could have a lady friend in Fort Worth. He could have a dozen of them. He was single. He was the kind of man any woman with a viable hormone in her body couldn’t help but respond to. Goodness knows, Priss had enough trouble keeping her head anchored on when he was around.

  Which was one more reason why she needed to find herself some wheels and another roof and get out of Jake’s way as soon as possible.

  “Is that eggshell you just put in the coffee?” she squawked.

  “Yep. Settles the grounds.” Pete took down one of the heavy white crockery mugs and poured her a sample. “Now this here’s the way to make real coffee, not that sissy stuff folks makes nowadays in one o’ them electric pots.”

  Priss took one cautious sip, grimaced, diluted it half and half with milk and added two heaping spoonfuls of sugar. “Interesting,” she said.

  By the time the sun had dried up most of yesterday’s rain, leaving only a few shallow puddles in the deepest ruts, Priss was aching in places she had never ached before. She had blisters on her hands from wielding a mop, and more than once she’d had to knead cramps from the calves of her legs. Pete operated the machinery, but after a few trips upstairs to carry yesterday’s laundry, strip the beds, carry the freshly laundered linens back up and make the beds again, she changed into her new lizardskin boots. By midmorning she was barefooted, her frosted-pink toenails a close match for the blisters the new boots had worn on her little toes.

  Pete, claiming kitchen duties, disappeared after giving Priss a list of things that still needed doing. Not until she had worn herself to a frazzle while he “Whomped up a feast fit fer a rodeo queen,” did she discover that he had merely put a pot of beans on to boil, slipped into the office and spent the next few hours in the recliner, watching soap operas on the tiny television set that had been half hidden behind a stack of letter files.

  They ate lunch, which Pete called dinner, in the kitchen amid a sinkful of dirty dishes and an ironing board piled high with shirts and pillowcases. Pete had promised her an education, and if she survived, Priss supposed she’d be educated.

  “Cook don’t never wash the dishes,” he declared, rising from the table and hitching up his belt.

  “Oh? Who does?”

  “You.”

  “Oh. Well…I can do that. Where’s the dishwasher?”

  The grizzled old rodeo clown nodded in her direction. “There she be.”

  By dinnertime, which on the Bar Nothing was called supper, Priss had learned how to spray-starch and iron a pillowslip so that it was as crisp as a sheet of vellum. She had even learned how to iron a man’s shirt after a few minor mishaps. There was an iron-shaped scorch on the back of one of Jake’s chambray work shirts, and as for the black silk…well, it had looked sort of tattered, anyway, even before the hot iron scrunched up the piping on the yoke and ate a hole in the fabric.

  Amid the noisy Fourth of July celebrations, which would go on all weekend, Jake left Fort Worth with a signed contract in his pocket that should translate to a tidy commission, depending on how many potential buyers he could interest in the Trowbridge stock. It was top quality breeding stock, but a lot would depend on the market. He had intended to stay over, make a few calls, look up a certain widow he hadn’t seen in a couple of months, and maybe set off a few fireworks of his own.

  Instead, he found himself back on the highway headed north, knowing he was riding into trouble, calling himself seven kinds of a fool. All day Priss had been busting up his concentration. For near onto three hours he’d sat across the table from Ben Trowbridge, sharing steaks, drinks and cigars, with Ben talking horse and Jake doing his damnedest to stay one step ahead of the wily old pirate.

  Then, right in the middle of a discussion of prospects, prices and pedigrees, he found himself gazing off into space, picturing a certain well-filled pair of jeans, a certain heart-shaped face with a pair of big, whiskey-brown eyes and a pouty mouth…wondering how she would taste.

  Trowbridge was no fool. He might look a little slow, but his beady little eyes saw entirely too much. Again he went over the particulars while Jake did his best to focus his mind on the tricky business of horse trading.

  He’d been lucky to get away with his shirt on his back, much less a halfway decent contract.

  Damned female. Jake reminded himself that she was off limits. It didn’t help.

  He reminded himself that all he ever wanted in the first place was the temporary use of her body for a little wholesome, mutually satisfying sex between consenting adults, which he figured was a perfectly natural craving.

  But that was before he’d found out that she was the kind of woman he’d avoided like tick fever all his life. Barrington’s daughter out of some high-rumped female from back east.

  Jake knew exactly where he’d gone wrong. His first mistake had been following Priss into that baby store and tripping her up just to get his hands on her. His second had
been taking her home with him. As for his third mistake…

  He wasn’t going to make a third mistake. No way. He was going to get her out from under his roof if he had to drive her all the way to Dallas and book her a suite in the best hotel in town. He’d like to think it was a matter of honor, but he had a feeling that by now it was down to a matter of survival.

  A burst of fireworks lit up the darkening sky, punctuating his irritation. Jake told himself that at the advanced age of thirty-five, with his life finally on the right track, the last thing he needed was to tangle with a snooty, high-maintenance female with fog for brains. No matter how sweetly she was put together.

  Sex, he told himself, was a legitimate human need. Like vitamins. Jake tried to be conscientious about looking after his health. He ate right. He allowed himself a single beer each night, and mostly, he stayed away from the hard stuff. Mostly. He got enough sleep. He made it a point not to get himself thrown more than twice a week. When it came to sex, he wasn’t as quick out of the chute as he used to be, but then, as a man grew older, he learned to be a mite more discriminating.

  The trouble came when he started thinking beyond sex. Thinking of ways to finagle a smile instead of ways to get into a lady’s bloomers.

  While sporadic fireworks lit up the sky in the distance, Jake swore softly, turned off I-35W onto 380 and headed east. When, he wondered, had life got so dangblasted complicated?

  Priss had already made up her mind to forget about Jake. The last thing she needed in her life right now was some hardscrabble wrangler who didn’t even own a dishwasher or a microwave—who had all the finesse of a bulldozer. Whose slightest touch set off quivers that started in her belly and ran all the way down to her toes. Lord have mercy, she might not be the smartest woman in Texas, but even she knew better than to grab hold of a live wire.

  Which was why she flat-out refused to ask another leading question, refused to listen to another Jake-story from the old man he had rescued from the streets and given a home and a job.

  The trouble was, Pete enjoyed having an audience too much to stand on ceremony. While Priss washed the dishes, he told her all about the first time Jake had taken top money in the bronc-busting division. It had been a small rodeo, the competition mostly small-town boys trying to prove their manhood.

  Nevertheless, Jake had been proud as punch. To celebrate, he’d stood a couple of rounds, blowing off about maybe tackling Calgary next time around. Still basking in glory, he’d gone off to check into the fanciest hotel in town and soak some of the dirt and hurt out of his carcass.

  In no time at all he’d come roaring back into the saloon, demanding to know what lousy jackass had been messing around in his bedroom, fooling around with his blankets—even leaving a chunk of candy on his pillow just to let him know they were smart enough to bust into a locked hotel room without getting caught.

  Pete shook his head, chuckling at the memory, but Priss had no trouble at all picturing a younger Jake Spencer, unused to the turn-down service in a first-class hotel, getting his back up over what he thought to be a practical joke. The man had more defenses than a porcupine.

  Neither Priss nor Pete was expecting him before morning, which was probably why Priss had let her hair down after supper, both literally and figuratively. They were dancing. At least, Priss was dancing and Pete was keeping time to the beat of the radio with two tablespoons. He claimed to have played professional spoons with a bluegrass group once when the rodeo circuit was on the eastern swing.

  “Are you two having fun?” Jake drawled from the doorway. He was staring at Priss’s hair, which had finally surrendered to the laws of gravity.

  She froze in mid-shimmy, hands over her head, fingers in snapping position. “We weren’t expecting you tonight,” she said breathlessly as Pete rammed the spoons into his shirt pocket and hobbled over to silence Brooks and Dunn.

  “How’d it go?” the old man asked, giving Priss time to pull herself together.

  “Not bad.”

  “See ye come away with yer scalp.”

  “Yep.”

  “Heard tell that Trowbridge bunch is slicker’n owl droppin’s.” Pete cackled. Priss looked from one man to the other, feeling like an outsider—a feeling that was all too familiar.

  “Got anything to eat?” Jake asked, taking off his hat to run his fingers through his hair. He looked tired. Or as Pete had said about her earlier that evening, he looked like he’d been rode hard and put away wet.

  “P.J. here, she’ll fix you up a bait o’ beans an’ cornbread. Plenny o’ coffee left over.”

  “P.J.?” A glint of amusement flickered briefly in Jake’s shadowed eyes.

  “Go ’long, gal, heat ’im up some o’ them beans. Medium high, an’ don’t fergit to stir ’em.”

  “Never mind,” Jake said. “I had a steak for dinner. That’ll hold me.”

  He was still standing in the doorway, staring at her so intently she wondered if the label was sticking out of the neck of her shirt. “Should I go ahead and heat the beans anyway?” she asked uncertainly.

  “Nah, Jake hates beans. Mama bean-fed ’im till he was near ’bout growed. Oughtta see this young’un dance, boy. She c’n twist an’ shake prettier’n that little sunfishin’ paint that busted your two front legs that time up in Tulsa. Y’ought to dance with her. Doc Bender, he says a man that don’t get enough exercise, his joints seize up on ’im so he can’t hardly move.”

  “Does that apply to jawbones?” Jake asked dryly.

  Chuckling, the old man sidled out of the room, pausing to switch on the radio again. Priss stared at Jake, wishing she had gone to bed right after supper the way she’d intended to. She’d been so tired she could hardly move, but Pete had pulled a long face and started talking about how lonely it was for an old man with no family of his own.

  On the radio, Hal Ketchum was singing a lonesome, bitter ballad. Outside, she could hear the occasional burst of thunder. It sounded almost like cannonfire—not that she’d ever heard actual cannonfire.

  “Do you…want to dance?” she asked, wondering even as she spoke where the nerve to ask had come from. She could just imagine how it would feel to sway in his arms, to rest her cheek against his shoulder, moving in slow harmony together…

  “Thanks, but I don’t dance.”

  “Oh.” She felt her face grow warm, and he shook his head.

  “Can’t, is what I mean. I’d like it right much if I knew how, but I’d just trample all over those pretty pink shoes of yours.”

  They both looked down at her feet, which were bare. Priss tried to think of something intelligent to say, and then Jake crooked a finger at her. “Come on outside a minute. “I got something to show you,” he said.

  The first thought that popped into her head was that he’d found her a loaner. In her relief, she never even stopped to wonder how he could have driven two vehicles home at once.

  Flustered, she hurried after him, and Jake hooked a hand around her arm and pulled her with him to the edge of the porch. Neither one of them remembered to unhook. “Look over yonder,” he said, and she looked.

  “Where?” All she saw was his truck and the empty horse trailer that was parked next to the shed.

  “Watch the sky over town.”

  “The sky? The pink glow, you mean?” Puzzled, she lifted her gaze. The night air was cool, laden with the smell of grass, dust, horse and honeysuckle. There was no sign of lightning, in spite of the thunder she’d thought she heard.

  And then suddenly there was a starburst—and then another one. “Fireworks!”

  Jake, grinning down at her, looked as proud as if he’d arranged the whole display for her benefit. “Pretty, huh? Thought you didn’t care much for the Fourth,” he teased, his voice quiet against a background of insect noises and distant explosions.

  “Only the parades and the dances. I’ve always loved the fireworks. I used to watch from my bedroom window when I was a little girl.”

  “I used to watch from the
roof of the place where we lived.”

  And from the poolroom. And the garage where the rougher element gathered most nights to shoot craps and drink beer. Once from the backstairs landing of a local prostitute. She’d been his first. The fireworks had been an anticlimax.

  His arm slipped around her shoulder. It was getting to be a habit, being close to her this way. Jake told himself it didn’t mean anything. He was just being friendly. It was just the way folks were around these parts.

  He remembered what she said about not liking to be touched, but then he remembered the way she nuzzled up against him every time he put his arm around her. Like a wet kitten curling into a warm pair of hands.

  “There—watch right there,” he said gruffly, pointing as he leaned down to align his sight with hers. He caught a faint hint of her perfume, but mostly she smelled of soap, shampoo and scorched cotton.

  Priss wrapped her arms across her chest and tried to concentrate on the fireworks display instead of the man who was standing entirely too close. A large circular starburst appeared out of the blackness, looking like nothing so much as a sparkling crystal chandelier. She held her breath as it sloped over toward Denton County and slowly twinkled out.

  Moments later she heard the distant, muffled boom she had earlier mistaken for thunder. Feeling a familiar lump in her throat, she braced herself. Not now. Not now, silly!

  She heard again her mother’s voice. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Pricilla Joan, must you carry on that way? It’s so common.”

  But common or not, Priss had never been able to hide her feelings. They spilled over at the most embarrassing times. How could she explain why watching a marching band made her cry when she didn’t understand it herself?

  Or watching a big airliner taking off and disappearing into the clouds.

  On certain days of the month, she could even manage to choke up watching a Greyhound bus pull out of the terminal.

  Priss gave a ladylike snort, and Jake leaned down. Without quite knowing how it had happened, she was in his arms, her back leaning against his chest. “Did you say something?” he murmured.