A Child on the Way

by Janis Reams Hudson

  Lisa was grateful. As long as she could watch the play of firelight over the chiseled planes and hollows of his face as he spoke, and listen to the sound of his deep voice, she didn’t have to think about the fact that she couldn’t remember. She could ignore the storm, the snow, the lack of electricity—and the likelihood that the situation in which she currently found herself might not improve for days.

  So she asked Jack questions, encouraged him to talk. He told her about his family’s ancestor, a young baron from England, who, nearly penniless, had come to America to make his fortune. He’d ended up in a poker game in Cheyenne, where he’d gambled everything he had on the deed to a Wyoming ranch. He’d won on a bluff. The only card of any significance in his hand had been an ace.

  “So the ranch wasn’t named after your brother?”

  “No, it’s been the Flying Ace since 1880-something.”

  “Tell me about your family.”

  “You don’t want to hear all that.”

  “Oh, but I do,” she said. “Families fascinate me. I always wanted one.”

  Jack cocked his head. “You did?”

  Lisa frowned. “I don’t know why I said that. It just came out.”

  “You’re starting to remember.”

  “How sad,” she said with a smile that matched her words, “that the one thing I can remember about myself is that I never had a family. I don’t remember it, really, I just…feel it.”

  No, that wasn’t quite right, either, she thought. She didn’t feel it, but she remembered the feelings. And that made no sense whatsoever. She could remember the longing, the terrible deep yearning for a family of her own. Yet here and now, stranded in this house with the fire blazing and the wind beating against the windows, she didn’t feel that yearning, that longing. She no longer even felt the tension that had plagued her since she’d realized she’d lost her memory.

  No, sitting there and listening to Jack’s deep voice as he spoke of ancestors, poker games and a ranch called the Flying Ace, she felt peace. And that feeling felt…new. As if she hadn’t known much peace in her life.

  “You’re tired,” Jack observed.

  She gave him a wan smile. “I guess I am. I should go to bed.”

  Jack shook his head and stood. “The bed’ll come to you. By morning that bedroom will be cold.”

  “You’re going to move the bed in here?” She sat up straighter on the couch. “Don’t be silly. I can sleep on the couch. Oh, but then where would you sleep, right?”

  “I can sleep anywhere,” he said. “You’re the one who’s sleeping for two. I’ll bring the mattress in here and put it in front of the fire. You pick the place—mattress or couch—where you’re most comfortable.”

  His idea was so logical that Lisa decided they would both be better off if she helped him rather than argued.

  In the bedroom she held the flashlight while Jack stripped the bed. She’d forgotten about the cash she’d stashed beneath the mattress. At the first good tug on the sheets, stacks of it came flying out.

  “What the hell?” Jack muttered.

  Lisa was too stricken to say anything. Shocked, because she’d forgotten the money. Confused because she couldn’t imagine any legitimate reason for a person to be carrying that much cash. Guilty because she feared she may have stolen it.

  Jack shook his head. “Since I seriously doubt Belinda was quite that thorough when she stocked the house, I have to assume the money is yours. What are you doing stuffing it under the mattress? What a cliché. Not that we’re likely to be seeing any burglars around here, but if we had one, this would probably be the first place he’d look. Come on, give me the flashlight so I can—Ah, hell,” he said when he saw the look on her face. “You were hiding it from me. You don’t know me from Adam. You were worried I might steal it.”

  “No,” she protested. “No. I was afraid that if you saw it you might think I’d stolen it.”

  The idea that this beautiful woman with the wounded look in her eyes could steal money was so ludicrous to Jack that he burst out laughing.

  Lisa bristled. She had worried herself sick over that money when she’d found it, and now he was laughing. “What’s so funny?”

  “The thought of you,” he said, his laugh trailing off to a chuckle, “as a hardened criminal.”

  Fear trailed up her spine. “But what if I am?”

  She wasn’t kidding, Jack thought. It was there in her eyes, the dismay, the fear that she might have done something wrong. He shook his head. “In the first place, if you were the type to steal money, you probably wouldn’t be so worried about it after the fact.”

  “How can you say that?”

  “Look at you. You’re appalled at the very idea of stealing. That alone should tell you that you’d never do such a thing.”

  “You can’t know that,” she said with a little hitch in her voice.

  “All right, then try this. I know Belinda. She would never be friends with anyone with criminal tendencies.”

  “Maybe she doesn’t know me as well as she thinks she does.”

  “Yeah, right,” he said with a snort. He reached to take the flashlight from her so he could collect the cash that was now scattered all over the floor, but her hand was clenched around the casing like a vice. “Give me the flashlight,” he told her. “I’ll pick all this up and you can stash it in a drawer or somewhere.”

  “You’re being awfully casual about this,” she told him, her voice wavering.

  “Why are you so eager to believe the worst about yourself?” Jack frowned. “Maybe I’m wrong. If you really think you stole the money, maybe that’s your subconscious talking to you. Maybe it’s telling you it’s true.”

  Lisa felt her stomach wind itself into a tight greasy knot. “Maybe it is.”

  Jack shook his head. “No, I just can’t see it. What would you have done? Waddled up to the bank teller, waved a gun in her face, then waddled back out through the lobby?”

  He was making fun of her. She didn’t know whether to be hurt, insulted or charmed. “I do not waddle.”

  He took the flashlight from her grasp and started around the bed collecting twenties and hundreds into loose piles. “You obviously haven’t seen yourself walk lately.” Over his shoulder, he tossed her a wink. “You waddle, Ms. Hampton. You waddle.”

  The money was once again stashed in the black bag in which Lisa had found it that afternoon. The bag was tucked into the bottom drawer of the dresser in the bedroom.

  Jack had carried the mattress into the living room and put it on the floor before the fire. Together he and Lisa had spread the sheets and two blankets over it, then Jack had dragged the couch up next to it, directly across from the fire.

  The couch formed a wall, of sorts, a barrier to help trap the heat and reflect it back over the mattress. It would help avoid Lisa’s roasting on one side and freezing on the other.

  Every minute or so she rolled over, shifted, bunched her pillow.

  Maybe it wasn’t working, Jack thought. “Are you comfortable down there?” he asked from where he lay stretched out on the couch. “Are you too hot, too cold? Or maybe hot on one side and cold on the other?”

  “No,” she told him. “The temperature’s fine.”

  “I can bring in the box spring to put under the mattress if it’s too hard there on the floor.”

  “There’s no need for that. It’s fine, Jack. Thank you for asking, though.” Lying on her back near the fire, Lisa rolled her head on the pillow and looked at him. “What about you?”

  “Fine.” The couch was about six inches too short, but he’d get over it. It was cooler this far away from the fire. He wanted her closer to stay warm. He wanted her to be able to stretch out, turn over if she wanted. And he damn sure didn’t want to worry through the night about her falling off the couch.

  “You’re sure?” she asked.

  “I’m sure.” What he was sure of, more sure every second, was that she didn’t want to go to sleep. They’d been bed
ded down for nearly an hour and she had yet to settle. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Come on. Out with it. Are you sick? Does your head hurt?”

  Lisa bit the inside of her bottom lip. Obviously she wasn’t fooling him. Particularly not when her restlessness was keeping him awake. “No, nothing like that. I’m sorry. I just…I’m afraid to go to sleep.”

  He raised himself on one elbow and propped his head on his hand to look at her. “Why?”

  “It’s silly, really. I’m afraid that when I wake up I may not even remember what’s happened since you found me in the car. I told you it was silly.”

  “I don’t know. In your place I might be thinking the same thing. But you know that won’t happen. You’ve got a concussion, that’s all.”

  “I know. I guess.”

  Jack waited, and when she didn’t say anything else, he began to relax. He was dog-tired and wanted nothing more than a few hours of sleep. A six-inches-too-short couch, no matter how cushy, wasn’t as comfortable as the bed up in the cabin, where he’d just spent four days and nights of coveted solitude, but he was too tired to care.

  “Jack?”

  Hell. Didn’t women ever run out of things to say?

  “Are you asleep?”

  He thought about letting out a snore for an answer, but he couldn’t do it. She was scared, and he didn’t really blame her. Besides, she already knew his eyes were open. They were open because his gaze was drawn to the way her hands lay curved protectively over the baby in her womb.

  What did that feel like? he wondered. To create brand-new life, to carry the miracle of creation inside your own body and feel it there, feel it grow and come to life.

  What did it feel like for a man to know that his love for a woman had created that new life? Did the baby’s father have any idea how lucky he was to have such a caring woman carry his child?

  “No,” he said quietly, meeting her gaze, telling himself it wasn’t any of his business to wonder where the man was, to want to throttle him for letting her take off alone into the back of beyond in the winter in Wyoming, for pity’s sake. “I’m awake.”

  Lisa had been scrambling frantically for something to ask him to keep him talking. Maybe if he talked long enough, that deep voice of his would sooth the edges of her raw nerves and she could sleep. She was physically tired. Exhausted. But her mind, holes and all, refused to shut down.

  Then something Jack had said earlier triggered a question. “When you were telling me why your sister wasn’t named Queen, you said something about her mother.”

  “Yeah?”

  He sounded irritated that she’d asked. “I’m sorry. It’s none of my business.”

  Jack let out a breath and flopped back down to stare at the ceiling. “It’s no big deal. Hell, you must be the only person in the county—half the state, maybe—who doesn’t know that my mother was a barmaid over in Cheyenne.”

  “That’s a tough job,” Lisa offered. “A hard way to make a living.”

  “Would have been, if she’d been trying to make a living. She was more interested in catching some rich man’s eye.”

  Lisa smiled dreamily, spinning a story in her head. “I don’t know about the rich part, but she obviously caught your father’s eye.”

  “Yeah. It was just her dumb luck that he already had a wife.”

  “Oh.” The fairy tale in her head burst and disappeared. “I’m sorry. That must have been difficult for her, raising a child on her own. Difficult for you, growing up without a father. Unless…did she ever marry?”

  Jack snorted in disgust. “I doubt marriage was ever in her plans. She just wanted some rich man to take care of her until she found the next, richer, man. But she knew even before I came along that King Wilder wasn’t that man.”

  “But you ended up with him eventually, didn’t you? I mean, your name is Wilder, and I take it this was his ranch.”

  “Yeah, it was his, and I ended up here. She died when I was twelve. Her sister didn’t want anything to do with me. Can’t say I blame her much for that—I was more than a handful, and I meant less than nothing to her. So she brought me to the man she said was my father. Dropped me on the doorstep. Literally. You should have seen the look on his face.”

  Lisa would have had to have been deaf not to hear the bitterness in Jack’s voice. Her heart ached for the boy he had once been, lost, unloved, unwanted. She felt a deep empathy and wondered, because of the strength of it, if her own life had been similar.

  But something good must have come of those events in Jack’s early life, because he had a family now and spoke of them with affection, with love.

  “Your father didn’t know about you?”

  Jack’s brief laugh was hard and dark. “Took him completely by surprise. Him, and his wife. And their three kids. It was an interesting day, the day I showed up, any way you look at it.”

  “It must have been terrible for you,” she said softly.

  “It was no picnic, that’s for sure. Not for any of us. Except maybe King. After the initial shock wore off, he was too busy proudly proclaiming he had another son to worry about much of anything.”

  “So he wanted you?”

  “He wanted another Wilder trophy. I fit the bill.”

  “I can’t imagine how difficult that must have been for you to be thrust into that situation.”

  “I think it was harder on them. Ace was fifteen, and suddenly here’s this twelve-year-old punk being forced on him.” He chuckled. “God, how we fought.”

  “What about your other brother, Trey?”

  “He was only seven, and he resented the hell out of me. But he was too little for me to beat up on, so it was mainly me and Ace. Didn’t last long, though, only a few months.”

  “You came to terms with each other?”

  “We didn’t have much choice. Rachel put her foot down.”

  “Your sister?”

  “Mm-hm. She was barely five. A little angel, I remember thinking. She told Ace and Trey that I was just as much her brother as they were so they had to be nice to me, and that was that.”

  “That’s sweet.”

  “Rachel’s a gem, all right. She even got Betty to try to be nice to me.”

  “Betty?”

  “Her mother. King’s wife. She’s the one my existence hurt the most.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “No,” he said quietly. “You can’t. The whole reason King went to Cheyenne all those years ago and spent the weekend with my mother was because the Wilders’ two-day-old son, their second son, had just died. King couldn’t handle it, so he figured getting drunk and making it with a barmaid would take his mind off his troubles.”

  “Nice man, your father.”

  “Nice woman, my mother. The dead baby’s name was Jack. I figure my mother chose my name nine months later deliberately.”

  Lisa sucked in a sharp painful breath. “I’m sorry, Jack. So sorry. I shouldn’t have pried.”

  “If it still bothered me, I wouldn’t have said anything. Don’t worry about it. Try and get some sleep.”

  “All right. Good night.”

  “Night.”

  Lisa rolled toward the fire to toast her front for a while and bit her tongue on any more questions. It wasn’t fair of her to pry into Jack’s life, particularly when he couldn’t pry right back into hers.

  She wondered what, if anything, she would have told him, had she had any memories upon which to draw. Was she an outgoing person whose life was an open book? Or was she private? Maybe even secretive?

  Beneath her hand the baby stirred.

  Whatever and whoever Lisa was, she was about to become a mother. She closed her eyes and smiled.

  “Jack?”

  “Hmm?”

  “I don’t waddle.”

  Jack got up twice during the night to add wood to the fire. Each time, he knelt on the mattress and woke Lisa. If that hit to her head was hard enough to cause amnesia, he worried about wh
at other effects it might bring on. The possibilities gnawed at him. Dizziness, blurred vision. Coma.

  Each time he woke her she was progressively crankier. Lucid, still with no more of her memory than when she’d first come to out in the car. And cranky.

  Damn his hide. He shouldn’t think cranky was cute.

  Each time after replenishing the fire and waking her, he’d gone back to the couch and told himself he was a fool. The moaning wind seemed to agree with him.

  One time he had looked out the blinds and seen the blowing snow, so the next morning he wasn’t particularly surprised to find the blizzard still raging.

  He wasn’t one damn bit happy about it, but he wasn’t surprised. And he was kicking himself for picking this particular week to take off for the mountains. With Ace gone, and Frank, their horse trainer, off to see his grandkids in Provo, that left only Stoney and Trey to haul hay out to the cattle.

  But hell, they couldn’t even do that until the damn storm quit. If Jack was home, all he’d be able to do was pace the floor and wait with them for the weather to clear. Worry with them over how many cattle they might lose.

  Instead, he was here and they were there, probably worried about him. Not that either would admit it, to him or to each other. Trey would grumble and curse him for being gone when he was needed. Stoney, the foreman who had taught them all how to run a ranch when their parents died and who was now retired from that job but still working for the Flying Ace, would tell Trey not to worry. After all, hadn’t Stoney taught Jack everything he knew? “He’ll be fine. Mark my words,” Stoney would tell Trey.

  Still, Jack was feeling guilty for not being there when he knew he was needed. He would just have to make sure he got there as soon as he could.

  Being as quiet as possible so he wouldn’t wake Lisa, Jack added more wood to the fire, then carried his boots into the kitchen before putting them on.

  He’d watched her during the night. Watched her sleep. He’d never done that before, watched a woman sleep. It wasn’t something he was going to be in a hurry to do again. It had done funny things to his chest, making everything in there feel tight.