“Oh, for—” she began when he took her by the hand, lifted a finger to his lips and said, “Shhh, don’t wake the baby.”
Nine
You got what you came for, man. Now get out Get out before you get in any deeper!
But Joe knew he wasn’t going to do it. He was courting disaster, but hell—he’d been doing that on a regular basis all his life. So what else was new?
There were two chairs in her bedroom, a straight chair and the wicker rocker from the nursery. He took the rocker. At least his survival instinct was keeping him out of her bed.
So far.
Iris didn’t stir. Sophie looked as if she didn’t know where to go, what to do or say. He couldn’t much blame her. This was uncharted territory. He’d lain awake in the bed upstairs for hours after he’d turned in, reliving that kiss. Wanting to pick up where they’d left off, even knowing that under the circumstances, it couldn’t go any farther than that.
He was no kid anymore. When he kissed a woman—really kissed her—it usually led to sex. The fact that he hadn’t kissed a woman, or come anywhere near it, for a long time, might explain why he was in the condition he was in right now.
If he had any brains, he’d get up, pack his duffel and get the hell out of here, right now. He’d done what he’d set out to do. Mission accomplished. No way was he going to give her grief for selling a piece of the collection. Q.E.D., as his old algebra teacher used to say. It stood for something profound in Latin, like “That’s a wrap, guys, I’m outta here.”
He shifted his weight in the rump-sprung old wicker chair. It creaked. Iris made a sucking noise in her sleep. Sophie leaned back and lifted her feet up onto the bed, and in the dim pink glow of the night-light Joe thought she was starting to look drowsy.
He yawned and shifted again on the thin chintz-covered cushion. It occurred to him that he ought to apologize for showing up for the party in his underwear, but then, why bother? She hadn’t even noticed it. Not nearly as much as he’d noticed that old-flowered wrapper of hers. With the sash knotted at the waist, she looked ripe and soft and womanly. All the things he was drawn to for all the wrong reasons.
“I’d better go and let you get some sleep.” He covered a yawn. Funny thing—for a woman who turned him on the way she did, she was surprisingly restful.
Easygoing. That was another way of saying it. Joe had never been around such a woman before. His sisters were so uptight he came away from a session with either of them wrung-out and ready for a drink. Before her stroke, Miss Emma had been a lavender-scented, lace-edged martinet. As for Leeza, his ex-wife, she was about as soothing as a cheap banjo strung too tight and played too fast.
“I’m afraid I’ll dream again,” Sophie murmured.
“Then make sure it’s a good one.”
“How do you do that?” she asked with a plaintive little smile that tugged at something buried deep inside him. “Is there a formula for good dreams?”
Several moments ticked by. And then she said, “Joe, I don’t suppose you’d...”
“Don’t suppose I’d what?”
“Oh, nothing. Go to bed, I’ll be just fine.”
“You don’t suppose I’d do what, Sophie?”
“Honestly, it’s not important. I was just thinking about something I used to do when I was a little girl, whenever I had a bad dream. I couldn’t have been very old—I can’t even remember it all that well—but I do recall running into Mama’s bedroom this one time, tripping over her slippers and crying because I split my lip when I struck the edge of the bed.”
Joe’s eyes widened. His body came slowly to attention. “You want to trip over my slippers?”
She laughed. Softly, so as not to wake the baby. “Of course not, I meant Mama used to take me into her bed and hold me whenever I had a bad dream, and it felt so—oh, I don’t know. I told you it was silly.”
“So what, honey? It felt so what? So safe?” he prompted, and she nodded, her eyes speaking the words she lacked the courage to voice.
Joe, grateful for the shadows that concealed his instant reaction, came slowly to his feet. If she had any idea what he was thinking right now, he told himself, safe was the very last thing she’d be feeling. Which made it all the more curious that a few minutes later he found himself lying in her bed. A bed that smelled of Sophie, sunshine and herbal soap. Lying there on his side, with one arm around her, her soft behind pressed up against his throbbing groin and her hair tickling his chin.
He started counting down backward from a hundred.
She made a little sound in her throat that reminded him of a purring cat. Desperately, he visualized ice bergs and counted those. He tried to pretend he was swimming upstream in a cold, white-water river.
When none of that worked, he groped for a topic of conversation.
“You’ve never mentioned your father. What was he like?”
“I don’t know much about him, really. His name was Sam, and he was in the army in Vietnam. I seem to remember Mama saying be went to Alaska with a lady and two gentlemen friends—I used to picture him racing dogsleds across frozen deserts. I’m not sure, but I don’t think Mama ever heard from him after he left us.”
So he asked about her mother and she told him the basics, or as much as came to mind. “Her name was Althea and she drank hot tea instead of coffee and kept dried flowers in paper bags in the closet. I was six—I’d just started the first grade—when she took me to this big brick building one day and told me she had to go away for a while, but she’d always be within call if I needed her.”
Ah, jeez, Joe thought, I don’t want to hear this. He had too many memories of his own, dating from about that same age.
“I kept thinking she’d come back. I waited and waited, but she never did. Then one day I overheard one of the teachers talking to the housekeeper about poor Mrs. Bayard, who’d died of some awful disease called metastasis. It wasn’t until years later that I learned she’d had breast cancer.”
Joe could only embrace her. He couldn’t take away the pain of her loss. As sad as her story was, he’d heard sadder. For fourteen years he’d been exposed to the seamiest side of darkness. That was the downside of being a cop.
He stroked her shoulder and fitted himself more closely around her body. “My folks died when I was eleven. Did I mention I have a couple of younger sisters, Donna and Daisy? Any parent who’d name a child Donna Dana—well, you have to wonder.”
He’d hoped for a chuckle, but there was no response. Moments later he heard that puffy little sound she made with her lips when she was dozing.
Mission accomplished. Time to go.
He didn’t stir.
Move it, sergeant!
Joe knew he’d walked into this one with his eyes wide open. She’d asked him to hold her the way her mother had held her. In another woman he might have suspected an ulterior motive—a ploy designed to further her own interests. But not Sophie. What interests could she possibly have that he could further?
Lust?
On his part, sure. Enough so that he was surprised she hadn’t noticed back there in the kitchen.
But she’d just had a baby. It was too soon, even if she’d been interested. If it was about the jade, they both recognized he wasn’t going to give it back. He couldn’t. And she’d refused everything else he had offered.
With a quiet little sigh, she drew up one knee, shifting her hips in the process. Joe ground his teeth and told himself he could handle it. One of the things he’d better remind her of before he left, though, was that women didn’t invite men into their beds without risking certain consequences.
One of those consequences was in that crib on the other side of the room. And that was one of the more benign consequences. Where the devil had she been all these years, hiding out in the cabbage patch?
He was about as far from sleep as he’d ever been, but brainpower wasn’t going to pull him out of this one. Unfortunately, his intellect didn’t function below the belt. The only sensible
thing to do was to get up, pull on his clothes and get out.
Which he vowed to do, just as soon as he could make arrangements to get her house secured. He’d formed some pretty definite ideas along those lines. The first project in his new career as a security specialist, you might say.
She needed a dog. The right kind of dog would make a big difference. He’d see to that, and maybe a good fence, too. Chain link, not chicken wire. He ought to be able to talk her into accepting that much at least. For Iris’s sake.
As for the leaky roof...
Oh, hell. Maybe he could arrange for her to win a lottery.
Sophie rocked and sang softly so as not to disturb Joe. She couldn’t believe she’d actually invited the man into her bed, but there he was, sleeping peacefully between her flowered sheets. She’d woken up in his arms, her hair trapped under his shoulder, one of his legs draped over her thigh. She blamed it on the fact that she’d been startled out of a dream in the middle of the night. There was something about the hours between two and four o’clock in the morning that lent themselves to all manner of fantasies. The illogical magically became logical. The impossible, possible.
Even now, with the sunlight streaming in through her window, slanting across a muscular masculine chest and a lot of crisp, dark body hair, it still seemed right.
He stirred. She shifted Iris to her other breast, suddenly aware of a sense of well-being that was frightening in its very intensity. Knowing perfectly well that it was only an illusion, she set out to enjoy it while she could. Perfect moments were never lasting ones. Daydreams, rainbows, morning glories and dew-span-gled spiderwebs—alt were ephemeral, but none the less precious for it.
She sighed, feeling a familiar warmth against her forearm. “You’re wet, sweetheart,” she murmured, and Joe groaned and turned over.
“Hmm?”
“Not you,” she said, smiling. Wanting to laugh. Wanting to crawl into bed with her baby and hold them both close for a little longer.
The phone rang. Joe opened his eyes. “Who on earth—” she wondered aloud as she shifted Iris onto her shoulder.
“I’ll get it.” He was up, his eyes alert, before she could even finish running down the list of people who might be calling her before eight o’clock in the morning.
He reached the phone first. She was right behind him. “It’s my phone, after all,” she muttered. There were times when the man was impossibly bossy. She didn’t know if it was a policeman thing, a Texas thing or a male thing.
“Joe?” she whispered. He’d identified himself and was paying attention to someone on the other end. “Joe, who in the world is it?” she persisted.
He held up a hand for silence, then listened another few seconds. “Right. Keep me posted, will you?”
The instant he hung up, she said, “Well, for heaven’s sake, are you going to tell me, or not?”
“Sheriff’s office. They caught two people in Randolph County—where the hell is Randolph County, anyway?”
Sophie waved a hand in a generally southeasterly direction. “Caught who? Are they our burglars?”
“Possibly.” He raked a hand across his stubbled jaw and grimaced. It occurred to Sophie that he ought to look like the very devil, with his beard, his rumpled shorts, his rumpled hair and his bony, bare feet.
Instead he looked beautiful. Like a sexy, grumpy bear fresh out of hibernation. When he scratched his chest, furthering the image, she had to smile. “Well, I’m glad that’s over. Now we don’t have to worry anymore. Who are they?”
“I said possibly. It’s too soon to know. Look, if you don’t want the bathroom right now, I need a liberal dose of cold water applied externally.”
“Jo-oe,” she wailed plaintively, watching him disappear into her one bathroom.
By the time he joined her in the kitchen, Iris had been changed and put down for a nap. Sophie had brushed her hair, tied it back and slathered moisturizer on her face. The window unit was struggling to get ahead of the August heat and humidity, and she was trying hard not to dwell on what she would do after he left. Which would probably be later on today.
She couldn’t think of a single reason why he shouldn’t leave today, except that she was dangerously close to doing the unthinkable. Falling in love. Again.
“So who did it?” she asked.
Instead of answering her, he said, “I’ll cook if you want to grab a shower.”
“Cooking’s woman’s work.”
“Female chauvinist. The world’s best chefs are all men.”
“Not anymore they’re not, but thanks, I guess I will. You’re obviously not going to talk until you’re good and ready.” She handed over the spatula, shot him an exasperated look and left, imagining several wildly inappropriate thoughts, none of which concerned the pair of suspects being held in Randolph County.
Hormones, she chided herself as she stripped off her robe and gown and turned on a rusty trickle of lukewarm water. It had to be hormones. If jangled postpartum hormones could cause depression in certain women, they could just as easily cause this crazy, head-over-heels-in-love syndrome.
“Your antique dealer, so far as we know, isn’t involved. A woman who worked for him apparently is. Whenever anything interesting came in for appraisal, she’d make a note of the particulars and then she and her boyfriend would go after it. They specialized in antique jewelry but weren’t above heisting small furniture, art—anything that could be sold to another dealer.”
“Oh, poor Mr. Lorris. I know he was crushed when he found out. He tried to chisel me, but he was nice about it when I refused his first few offers. I sort of thought he respected me until I found out how much more the thing was worth than what he ended up paying me for it.”
Joe shrugged. He’d put on a shirt. The collar was damp where his wet hair had dripped on it. There was a nick on his jaw where he’d cut it shaving. Sophie gathered up all these little imperfections and stored them away to use against the heartache that was heading her way.
“He’ll be questioned. You might be called on to testify, but that shouldn’t be a problem.”
It shouldn’t, but she wasn’t looking forward to it. “I guess you’ll be leaving now. I don’t know how to—”
“Don’t.” Joe stirred the third spoonful of sugar into his coffee. “We aren’t done yet, Sophie. I told you I was going to see about a security system, and—”
“And I said I’d do it myself.”
“Yeah, sure you will. You can’t even remember whether or not you shut the windows.”
“You’re not being fair. I’ve looked after myself for years, and nothing like this has ever happened to me before. And you’ll have to admit, I’ve had cause for being distracted lately.”
“Yeah, well, one little distraction is all it takes. And this isn’t the first time you’ve been ripped off, remember? Or don’t you count the father of your child?”
She caught her breath. “That’s low.”
“It was meant to be.” He spared her nothing. Not the intensity of his dark eyes. Not the grim set of his razor-nicked jaw. “Now, I’ve checked out several firms around these parts and found a dealer for a system that’s just right for your place. I’m meeting a guy here this morning, and we’ll get started. Next we’ll go pick out your dog, and then see about fencing in the place so he’ll have room to run.”
Silently, Sophie began to name the twelve apostles. It was something she’d been taught to do as a child whenever her temper threatened to get out of hand. She got as far as Matthew, and then she gave Joe the benefit of her opinion.
“You want to know what you can do with your dog? I’ll tell you what you can do with your dog, and your fence, and...and your security system!”
“Now, Sophie—”
“You can put them in your truck and take them back to Texas with you! I’ll even pack your bag!” She was so blessed furious she could cry.
Joe held out a placating hand. “Now, simmer down, honey, I know what you’re thinking.”
“Don’t you honey me, you...you—! If you knew half of what I’m thinking, you’d be clean over the county line by now!”
“With my tail feathers smoking, right?”
“I’m not joking, Joe. I think you’d better leave right now. You’ve got a long drive ahead of you, and since you have what you came for there’s nothing to keep you here. As for the piece I sold, I’m just as sorry as I can be, but I can’t get it back. It’s gone. Maybe your grandmama’s insurance will cover it.”
He made an impatient sound and started to speak, but she cut him off. “I’ll always be grateful to you for all you’ve done, but enough is enough. I don’t want your security system. I don’t want a dog. I don’t want anything that I can’t afford to pay for myself, and no, I am not going to take any reward money!”
“Why? Just tell me that, Sophie—why do you have to be so damned stubborn? It’s not like I was trying to bribe you or anything. All I want is to leave you with a little basic protection. All I want is to be able to go home without having a crazy woman and her baby on my conscience.”
“You want me to take that one item at a time?” She was quietly seething. “In the first place, I am neither crazy nor stubborn. In the second place, your conscience is the least of my worries. If my daughter needs protection, I’ll see to it myself. In the third place...”
What was the third place?
“Oh, yes. The reward. I refuse to take a reward I don’t deserve, and—”
“That’s crazy!”
“Hush up, it’s my turn to talk! I’m not going to take it because once I found out what kind of a man Rafe was, I should have taken the stuff straight to the police and told them to find the owner. And I didn’t. Instead I convinced myself it was a freewill gift, and I sold one piece and spent the money. Spent it wisely, I might add, but it wasn’t mine to use. And then I buried the rest, fully intending to dig it up a piece at a time and spend it every bit as sensibly as I did the first. But I’ll get along just fine without it, so no thank you for your reward. And now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to...to be alone.”
Look What the Stork Brought (Man of the Month) Page 11