Black Hills Baby

by Debra Salonen

  “Never?”

  She shook her head. “I might have come close once or twice. Then I’d look at them-–or myself-–and realize I wasn’t feeling the kind of light-you-up excitement and joy you’re supposed to get from being in love. That’s the goal, right? Or am I as bad as my brother? Chasing my own sort of fool’s gold?”

  She looked at him, wondering how he’d answer. He didn’t. Instead he closed the distance between them and said, “Brace yourself. I’m going to kiss you. And there aren’t any pillows on the floor to break my fall.”

  “I don’t—”

  He put his finger to her lips. “Don’t think. Experience. Isn’t that the real reason you went searching beyond the borders of Sentinel Pass to find someone to father your child? You wanted to feel something new, something fresh and exciting?”

  “But I never planned to…” To what? Get emotionally involved with her baby’s father? Was that even possible? Once someone entered your life, you were involved. But how much that affected you was your decision. Wasn’t it?

  “You want a child without any of the usual strings that comes with love, marriage, extended family and all the commitments those things bring. I get that. But the fact that you reached out into the bigger world tells me you were bored with the choices available here.”

  She shook her head. “You’re wrong. I love Sentinel Pass. This is my home. But I know all the available men and I don’t love any of them. I had to look someplace else.”

  His hands settled lightly on her shoulders. “You have another option. You could do something to open up the town’s tourist trade. Draw in new businesses that would add fresh fish to your dating pool.”

  Libby shuddered from his words, not his touch, which she found warm and inviting. “No, thank you. Sentinel Pass may look dull and boring to you, but I like it the way it is. We’ve had developers give us the eye in the past, but we’ve made it clear we’re content to grow at our slow, measured pace.”

  “I didn’t say it was dull and boring. In fact, I think your town is quite charming. It’s exactly the kind of place my mother used to promise me we’d move to after I got rich and famous. For years I thought she meant it.” He looked past her a moment, then suddenly shook his head. “If I were going to live in a small town off the beaten path, this would be my first choice. But tourism can be a good thing. The people leave their money and go. Are you speaking as the town’s mayor or as a private citizen?”

  Mayor. She’d nearly died when Jenna mentioned earlier that most citizens of Sentinel Pass considered Libby the de facto leader of the town. “The Citizen’s Council runs things. And I’m a member, but that doesn’t make me the one in charge.”

  “People respect you and turn to you for guidance.”

  That was true. And lately she’d felt the burden of that responsibility more than she cared to admit. But she wasn’t going to tell him that.

  “We’re more like a family than a town. Weird as it may sound. So you’re right about me looking outside for a sperm donor. It makes the process seem less incestuous.”

  He smiled at that. “Less incestuous,” he repeated more to himself than to her. “That’s good.”

  “Good for what? Are you taking notes or something?”

  The question seemed to startle him, and instead of answering, he moved his hands to frame her face and lowered his mouth to just above her lips. “I was about to kiss you and you got me sidetracked. I fantasized about this today in the mine when your brother tried to lose me.”

  Mac tried to lose him? Not surprising, she guessed, but Coop didn’t stay lost. Instead, he’d wound up earning Mac’s respect by keeping his head and staying put. Fantasizing about kissing me. That, Mac wouldn’t like.

  His breath was warm, and her bones started to melt like ice cream in a bowl. Left on the counter too long. Much too long.

  “In my dream, you kissed me back. Can you do that, Libby?” he asked, his lips barely touching hers.

  She peered into the bluest eyes she’d ever seen and felt compelled to give him the answer he was waiting for. “Yes.” The word came out as a breathless little gasp.

  Surely that sound didn’t come from my lips. But thought disappeared when Cooper took her answer for an invitation. And maybe it was. She wanted to kiss him. Her curiosity demanded it.

  It was only a kiss, right? Not an invitation to fall in love. She put her arms across his shoulders and leaned into him. She knew how to kiss. She’d even been told she was good at it. She was less confident about the parts that came next, but when she put her mind to it…

  Coop wasn’t expecting her to tilt her head slightly and lean into the kiss. Her tongue made the tiniest foray against his lips as if testing his willingness to play. And he responded. He was trained to respond. He could kiss on demand-–even if his co-star had just consumed a Caesar salad with extra anchovies for lunch.

  And that wasn’t the case with Libby. Her warm breath was sweet and delicious. Her mouth opened a little wider with a tiny sigh that sent all the right messages to the wrong part of his anatomy. He hadn’t given sex much thought since his mother’s death. Mourning and abstinence seemed to go together. Fitting. And he was still mourning.

  But this felt right. Too right. And right was wrong. All wrong.

  He lifted his head, ignoring the voice in his mind that cried for more. “It’s late. I should go.”

  She opened her eyes and looked around, as if regaining her bearings. “I…I’m sorry. I don’t know where that came from.”

  He did. “Maybe we’re both a little needy right now. I haven’t thought about anything remotely amorous since my mom passed away, but I've had an awful lot of people tell me that life goes on.”

  She nodded. “I hate that aphorism. We heard it a lot after Misty died. Sadly, it’s true.”

  He moved back to open some space between them. He remembered a question he’d planned to ask her earlier. “What was it like for you when your parents died? You were really young, right? Did you understand what happened?”

  “Probably not when my mother passed, but I was at the mine when they pulled Dad out of the cave-in. I was eleven. It was tough. Scary. But…” She looked at the recliner he’d been sitting in earlier. “Gran and I talked about it. In a way, the accident was a blessing because Dad’s heart really stopped beating five years before that when my mother died. It was like a light had been extinguished in his soul.”

  “Wow. You lost both your parents just five years apart.”

  She returned her focus to him. “I was lucky. I had Mac. And we both had Gran. And there was insurance money to make sure we didn’t lose the house or the mine. Plus, Dad hadn’t touched the settlement he got from Mom’s employer-–one of the biggest mining operations in the Hills.”

  “What kind of settlement?”

  She hesitated. “Mom was one of four young, healthy office workers, who came down with lung cancer within a couple of years of each other. One was a smoker, the rest–-Mom included–-never smoked. The company settled out of court, but everyone believes their cancer was caused by asbestos in the building where they worked.”

  “Asbestos? They’ve known for years that that was carcinogenic. Why didn’t the company get rid of it?”

  She shrugged. “The owners weren’t big on safety--above ground or below. They’re not in business anymore-–at least not around here. Or they’ve morphed into a new conglomerate. I gave up trying to keep track of them.”

  “Your dad was healthy?”

  “Yes. He was built like Mac. A powerhouse. Worked underground from his teens on. Handled dangerous chemicals his whole life. Gran said he was ‘hell on wheels’ when he was growing up. Smoked and drank until Mom got sick. Honestly, I think it was the injustice of Mom’s death that upset him most. She wasn’t just too young to die, she was a really good person. Lived healthy. Loved by everyone who knew her. He felt it should have been him to go, not her. I can remember him ranting about how unfair life could be.”

 
Coop could sympathize. What was fair about his mother dying and leaving him up to his eyeballs in debt?

  Another question popped into his head. One that asked whether or not what he was planning to do with Libby’s life story was fair.

  An uncomfortable knot formed in his stomach.

  “Hey, I’m making headway,” he said, starting toward the door. “This time I kissed you without bodily injury. Cool. But I’m going to quit while I’m ahead. I’m going to the cabin, now. Night.”

  She didn’t try to stop him. He closed the screen door and started down the steps. Too bad, he thought, because now he was going to be alone with his conscience. Which meant he wasn’t going to sleep worth crap.

  ---

  Soaking in her freesia-scented bubble bath twenty minutes later, Libby fretted about what had transpired that evening. Her friends. The inquisition. Sharing a second kiss with Cooper.

  “What is wrong with me?” she cried, sinking up to her chin in the hot, silky water. The best part of a claw-foot tub was its depth, but she didn’t want to take the time to dry her hair before bed, so she didn’t dunk all the way under.

  She wiggled her shocking-pink toenails poking out of the water across the bubbly expanse. Silly waste of time and money when she was the only one who ever saw her bare feet. Every day those bright, sexy digits were crammed into shoes one step removed from old-lady orthopedics.

  She’d learned the hard way that Gran’s advice was spot-on. “Buy shoes designed for the kind of work you do or you’ll wind up with sore feet and 'very-close' veins.” She’d used the expression Libby had coined as a child to describe the raised purplish-blue strands just under her grandmother’s skin on the backs of her legs.

  Libby sat forward and pulled her right foot toward her chest, searching for any sign of aging. So far, so good, she thought with a sigh. But everyone said age was as much a factor of attitude as of calendar dates. And she felt older than her years. Except when she was with Cooper.

  Why? Because he seemed so much younger than his years? Blissfully optimistic. Glass half-full. Happy-–except when the subject of his mother came up.

  That could help explain why she felt so drawn to him. As she’d told Mac, smiles and laughter weren’t the first thing that came to mind when she thought of her childhood. Her father had always seemed intense and remote. Only after he was gone and she watched Mac working the Poke did she begin to appreciate the pressure their father must have been under to make a living from the mine.

  She wished she could remember her mother better. Gran always spoke highly of her only son’s wife, but as Mom’s mother-in-law the two hadn’t been as close as mother and daughter. Gran had given birth to a baby girl three years after her son was born, but she’d died in infancy. Libby always wondered if that had compromised her ability to love Nieva, Libby’s mom.

  Nieva Coolidge. No relation to the president, she remembered somebody saying. President Coolidge visited the Black Hills once, and his visit was still mentioned in historic lore.

  Nieva had been working for a mining supply company in northern Minnesota when she met Libby’s father, Marshall. Even Gran admitted that what happened was love at first sight. The two were married less than a month later.

  Libby’s maternal grandparents apparently hadn’t been thrilled by the speed of the courtship but eventually came around. They were both gone now. They’d been present at their daughter’s funeral, and Libby and Mac had visited them a couple of times later on in St. Cloud, but that was a long way from the Black Hills. And once Dad was gone, Gran had had her hands full working full-time and raising two kids at a time in her life when most women were beginning to think about slowing down.

  She used her big toe to nudge the stopper out of the drain then stood and reached for a towel. After drying off, she slipped on her cuddly plush robe, then rinsed the bubble bath residue around the tub. After brushing her teeth, she tossed her robe on a chair and slipped into bed.

  The sheets were eight hundred thread count. A luxury she’d grown to love. With sheets this soft, it seemed a crime to wear pajamas. Sexy toes and no nightgown. She wondered what Cooper would say if he knew.

  Smiling, she snapped off the light. His kiss had surprised her, but she had a feeling she’d shocked him even more by kissing him back. What would he have done if I’d invited him to bed?

  She pushed the question out of her mind without speculating on an answer. A kiss was one thing, sex something totally different. It wasn’t going to happen.

  Before rolling to her side, she made a mental note to visit her grandmother in the morning before work. Coop, she’d noticed, wasn’t an early riser. She’d peeked in the window that morning to see if he wanted one of the pasteries she’d bought. His bedroom door had been closed. The living room and kitchen looked as though a college rugby team had been living there for a week on spring break. The man was a complete and utter slob.

  Strangely, his flaws were of the things she liked best about him. His outward perfection unnerved her. His odd mutterings and moments of disconnect concerned her. But his human qualities made her want to curl up with him under a thick quilt for the whole winter.

  “I wonder if there’s a demographic for women like me on some number cruncher’s desk,” she murmured. Over thirty. Single. No kids but hungry for one. Pathetic excuse for a dating pool. Financially set but emotionally challenged.

  Cooper had been right about why she’d started looking beyond Sentinel Pass for a sperm donor. Distance had implied a certain degree of safety to her. This part of the country wasn’t a quick plane flight from any major airport. Tourists to the Black Hills seldom bothered with the sharp turn onto the narrow, frost-pitted road that led into town, and those who did were irked to discover they had to take the same road back once they’d viewed Sentinel Pass’s few meager sights.

  For most of her life, Libby had considered her town’s relative isolation a good thing. But lately-–especially since meeting Cooper-–she’d begun to wonder if it was possible to suffocate from too much safety.

  Chapter 10

  Libby petted the squirming little dog on her lap as she studied her grandmother. The early-morning light coming through the east window behind Gran’s well-padded glider was soft and flattering, but nothing could disguise the fact that Gran was showing her age.

  Her heart squeezed with emotion. “How’s Onida doing?” She raised her voice since Gran's hearing seemed to be failing, too. “Calvin said he had to take her to the vet yesterday.”

  Gran frowned at her pooch, who seemed pretty lively given her age and infirmities–-she was practically toothless and given to bouts of incontinence. “She’s old. Like me. Parts wear out. The vet says her kidneys aren’t so hot. Mine either, come to think of it. Guess we’re both running out of time.”

  Hearing what they all knew was inevitable voiced aloud wasn’t what Libby had come for. “Now, Gran, don’t exaggerate. You’ve been saying for years that Onida had one paw on a banana peel. And look at her. She’s just fine, aren’t you, girl?”

  The dog lifted her head and licked Libby’s cheek.

  “Poor thing. Any praise at all makes her giddy.”

  The statement caught Libby’s attention. Praise had been pretty hard to come by in her home growing up. Her dad had hardly ever expressed any pride in his children or their accomplishments. Lately, Libby had started to wonder if that need for reinforcement had caused her to take a job where everyone looked up to her and came to her for advice.

  “Gran, why did you become postmaster?”

  “It was postmistress back then,” Gran corrected. “Sure beat delivering the mail. My dad did that for years. Rain or shine, snow or sleet, seven days a week. You know what the winters are like around here. He got stuck in a drift one time and would have died if he hadn’t found a box of Christmas cookies old lady Lytle was sending her son. He ate the whole thing, and burned the box to keep warm. Don’t tell anybody.”

  Libby smiled. She’d heard that story be
fore. Many times. “I won’t. Gran, do you have regrets about living your whole life in Sentinel Pass?”

  “I lived in Colorado with my aunt and uncle after I finished school. Got a job with the phone company. Didn’t like it much and was thinking about going home when I met your grandpa. He was mining coal on the western slope. When he found out I was from Sentinel Pass, he said he’d heard there was still some independent mining in the area and had been thinking about checking it out. I thought he was giving me a line, but the week after I moved home he showed up. And never left.” Gran looked at her and smiled. “You can endure most anyplace when you’re with someone who thinks the sun rises and falls because of you.”

  Libby sighed. She’d heard that story a couple of hundred times, too. She blamed it for making her hold out for that kind of someone. But coincidence and chance brought her grandparents together, not an ad on the Internet. And Cooper was not looking for a love match. Actually, she wasn’t sure what he wanted, but the idea that he might be her soul mate was ridiculous. The man was flighty, privileged, and very, very temporary.

  “Gran, do you think a little of that kind of feeling would be better than none at all? Even if the relationship was bound to fail, would the short-term benefits be worth the letdown when it was over?”

  “Everything ends at some point. Hearts give out. Kidneys quit working.” Gran patted her lap and Onida dropped any pretense of liking Libby to try to jump to the old woman’s lap. Libby helped her scramble across the distance and managed to get scratched in the process.

  She pressed her thumb to stop the bleeding on the gash between her second and third knuckles.

  “Even if your marriage lasts, there’s no guarantee your husband won’t keel over. I know. I’ve buried two. So I say grab on to whatever happiness you have for as long as you can."

  Grab on to whatever happiness you have for as long as you can. The phrase echoed in Libby’s head throughout the rest of her visit. For a person looking for permission to do something her rational mind was firmly against, Gran’s advice seemed pretty clear. And it also affirmed Libby’s heart’s desire.