Tom suddenly looked like a lightbulb had gone off. “She is hot. Even in flannel.” He shut up then as Tara glided back into the room, holding the fancy package aloft.
“What do you think?”
“It’s real nice, Tara,” Tom said hurriedly.
Tara beamed at him as she slid the gift into the shopping bag and added even more deftly folded pieces of shimmering white tissue. “Give it to her after a nice dinner. With candles. And no kids.”
Tom’s jaw dropped a little. “Er, yeah. Okay.”
She handed over his change and the shopping bag.
Knowing when the getting was good, Tom grabbed both and hustled out of the door like the devil himself was at his heels.
The second the jingling door closed, Tara covered her mouth and giggled. Her eyes were dancing in a way that he hadn’t seen in four long months. “That man has no idea what’s in store for him,” she said when her giggling finally stopped. “Janie Griffin has been in this shop every week oohing over that negligee set. But she was afraid to buy it herself, because she thinks Tom would laugh at her if she tried wearing something like that for him.” She giggled again, shaking her head. “I see this sort of thing happen all the time.”
“I take back what I said about you not being involved in the town anymore than you have to be,” Axel said.
Her brows quirked. “Excuse me?”
“You’re not just a shopkeeper.” He eyed the lingerie corner. “You’re probably responsible for keeping all the married folks around here from getting stuck in a rut.”
“I don’t know about that. But I do sell an amazing amount of it. Your mother—”
He held up his hand. “No. God, no. Please don’t tell me about anything from that corner over there that my mother wears. Or that my father buys for her.”
Tara’s laughter filled the store. “Okay. I won’t.”
He pressed his face to the gleaming wood counter, but it was too late, because the notion was already there.
He lifted his head again as she went into the back room, still laughing.
It was also the first time he’d heard her laugh in four months. Truly laugh.
One way or another, he was going to make damn sure she never had a reason to stop.
Chapter Ten
The next night, Tara sat propped in her bed and stared at the small article in the newspaper buried at the bottom of the “Nationally in Brief” page.
Trial Begins for Deuce’s Cross Leaders
She’d read all ten sentences of the article about a hundred times since that morning when Axel had silently handed over the newspaper section, but she still read them again. As if she could glean something about Sloan from a total of seventy words.
Of course, there was no mention of her brother. Just the basics. That the long-awaited trial was finally beginning that day in Chicago.
Had Sloan been there? Was he safe? Would Axel at last unstick himself from her? Would she be able to go home to Chicago?
Did she even want to?
They were all questions that had churned behind her locked lips since Axel had given her the article and she’d told him, point-blank, that she didn’t want to discuss it.
Her stomach rumbled despite the chamomile tea she’d been sipping. She set aside the newspaper and snapped off the bedside light. Turning on her side, she bunched the pillow into a more comfortable shape.
It was nearly midnight. She should be sleeping.
Instead, she was still lying there trying to will away the nausea that had dogged her all day. Crackers hadn’t helped. Dry cereal that she’d snuck into her mouth when Axel wasn’t looking hadn’t helped. Tea hadn’t helped.
Laying down definitely wasn’t helping.
She sat up against the headboard and pressed her hands against the small swell of her abdomen. “Come on, baby,” she whispered. “Give your mama a break.”
But no break came. Her mind was too busy with fractured thoughts about Sloan, about Axel, about the baby. Finally, she shoved aside the covers and got up.
She silently opened her bedroom door and peered out into the hall. It was the fourth night Axel had slept on her couch. As usual, he made no sound as he slept. She padded to the other bedroom and closed the door before snapping on the task light above the larger of her two worktables.
If she wasn’t going to sleep, then she might as well get something accomplished.
At least Axel wasn’t distractingly glued to her hip.
Since that first day when he’d come to her, he hadn’t left her even for an hour. She knew word about the two of them keeping constant company—even at her shop—was spreading around town, because the traffic in her store had easily doubled. As if the curious townspeople of Weaver wanted to see for themselves that Axel Clay was not only living in sin with the shopkeeper, but that he was so smitten he could even be found in her shop dusting shelves and running the register.
To her, Axel was a maddening distraction and not just because of the pregnancy she was keeping from him.
She slid out several trays of beads and stones and with no real plan in mind began arranging them on a specially grooved, felt-covered board. Eventually, the simple act of arranging and rearranging, of stringing and unstringing, managed to accomplish what bed and tea and crackers had not.
Her stomach stopped churning. Her head stopped pounding. Her thoughts stopped whirling.
Time slid by until she finished attaching one last clasp on a bracelet. She laid it next to the necklace and earrings. Each had been nothing but pieces in her supply trays when she’d first closed herself in the room. She’d take the jewelry to the shop the next morning—correction, later that morning—and price them there.
She left the worktable, tugged the sleeves of her oversized nightshirt back down her arms, and left the room as quietly as she’d entered. There were still a few good hours of sleep she could fit in.
But as she began crossing to her bedroom, a soft, unfamiliar sound made her stop cold.
Nothing but darkness was coming from the rest of the painfully silent house.
She cocked her head, listening harder while chills crept under her flesh.
Then she heard it again. More clearly. Her mind managed to identify the sound. Her plantation shutters were sliding open.
Was it Axel?
Or someone else?
She tried to swallow, but her mouth was suddenly too dry. She quietly stepped to the end of the hall and peeked around the corner. Axel’s laptop was sitting open on the coffee table, emitting a faint, bluish glow. But it was enough to tell her that he wasn’t sprawled on the couch—feet hanging over one end and arms over the other.
Instead, she could make out the shape of him standing near the front window.
“Stay there.” His voice was almost soundless, and nearly startled her out of her skin.
How had he heard her?
The corner of the wall felt blessedly solid beneath her hand. “What’s wrong?”
“There’s a car out there that doesn’t belong.”
Her knees felt rubbery. “How—” She didn’t bother voicing the rest of her question about how he could tell.
This was what he did, after all. Hadn’t he told her that more than once?
She turned her back to the wall and slid down it until she was sitting on the floor. She wanted to tell him to get away from the window. Wanted to bury herself in her bed and pull the covers over her head, pretending that none of this was occurring.
Instead, she stayed right where she was, huddled in a ball with her head on her bent knees that she’d tucked under her nightshirt. And waited.
Just like she’d done so many times as a child.
She tried to close off the thoughts, the memories. Close off everything. But it was futile.
Then Axel said her name. His voice was soft, but not nearly the soundless whisper it had been before. “It’s okay, Tara. You should go back to bed. It was Cynthia from across the street. Looks like she had a date. Everything’s f
ine.”
She lifted her head only to realize that he’d crouched down next to her. “All clear.” Her voice was thin. “That’s what my father used to say. It’s all clear.”
Axel’s hesitation was almost unnoticeable. “When did he say that?”
“Whenever it was safe again from whatever danger he figured we were in.” After he’d sent her and Sloan and her mother into a huddled panic. “And then we’d have to leave. Move. My mother would grab the family photos and her mother’s teapot. Sloan and I could only take what would fit into our backpacks. He’d take his favorite clothes.”
Axel folded his hands around hers. “What did you take?”
She frowned a little. “Homework. From schools that I’d never go back to. Notes from the friends I’d managed to make who I’d never see again. Daddy would be annoyed, so my mom would always add as much of my clothes as she could to her suitcase. And my father—” she continued, but her throat felt knotted “—my father would get the briefcase.”
“The briefcase?”
“Heavy. Black. Always locked and never unpacked. My mother told me once that it held all of our important stuff. Birth certificates. School records. Things like that.” She’d dreaded seeing the briefcase come out, because it always meant more change.
She straightened her head again and looked at Axel. It was just as dark as ever, but her eyes had adjusted and she could make out the frown on his face and the faint gleam of his naked shoulders. “Sloan told me that he’d seen the briefcase open one time, and the only thing inside it was money.”
“How often did you have to move?”
She lifted her shoulders slightly. “I don’t know.” That was a lie. “Thirty-seven times. All I ever wanted were roots somewhere.” She heaved a sigh. “But I suppose my childhood is detailed in your logbook somewhere, too.”
He exhaled. “Until you moved to Weaver, I didn’t know a single thing about you. Hadn’t heard of you or your brother.” His hands tightened and he drew her to her feet. “Let’s get you back to bed.”
She went with him, feeling ridiculously docile. “You didn’t know about my father?”
“No.” He nudged her toward her four-poster, taking her robe from the mattress and tossing it over the back of the slipper chair in the corner.
Maybe she was the only one who heard the rattle of her prenatal vitamins still hidden in the robe’s pocket.
“He was CIA,” she said and felt defiant, even now, at saying the words aloud. But the rattle of those vitamins was rattling her even more. “To the rest of the world, he was a traveling salesman. But he wasn’t selling anything. He was buying. Secrets. From all around the world. Doesn’t that shock you?”
“No.” He pulled back the covers and somehow, she obediently slid into bed. Then he snuggled the covers up, tucking her in like she was a baby.
She was acting like one, so why not?
Then he sat on the edge of the bed, his hip nudging against hers and she suddenly didn’t feel infantile at all. Particularly when he was only wearing jeans and his shoulders stretched above her, broad and bare.
“It doesn’t shock me. But I can see that it would be a hard life for a kid,” he added.
She didn’t want his sympathy or his understanding. Not when it made her conscience ache. “It’s no life for a child.”
“Probably not.”
His sober agreement made her feel even worse and in the largest irony of all, she wanted more than anything for him to just lay down there beside her.
“It’s that trial,” she blurted out huskily.
He folded over the edge of her comforter. “You want to talk about it now?”
“No.” She was painfully aware of his fingers on the comforter, so close to her breasts. “How, uh, how long do you think the trial will last?”
“They’re predicting eleven weeks.”
Dear Lord. Nearly three months.
She wouldn’t be able to hide her pregnancy for one more month, much less three.
Nor could she seem to keep her hormones under control where Axel was concerned. His hip was burning through the layers of her blankets and cotton nightshirt right to her flesh. “I can’t take three more months of this.” It was true on every level.
“Why don’t you close the shop tomorrow?”
She stared up at him. “And do what? Pretend that none of this is happening? The shop is all I have. I can’t just close it on a whim.”
“The shop isn’t all you have. You’ve got me.”
There was an ache deep inside her chest. “You’re here because it’s your job.”
He didn’t deny it. “Your shop is yours and you can do with it what you want.”
About the only time in recent memory that she’d done what she wanted had been that stolen weekend in Braden with him.
And look what happened.
Her body…her heart…her life. They’d all been changed.
“If, for a day, you could go anywhere you wanted—do anything you wanted, what would it be?”
Frustration filled her. “I don’t know.”
“Come on, Tara. Use your imagination.” His voice seemed to have dropped a notch.
Or maybe that was her imagination.
“Antiquing,” she tossed out. “I can always find something for the shop when I go antiquing.”
“That’s work.”
She exhaled. “Visit the bead shop down in Cheyenne, then! I don’t know!”
“More work. Come on, Tara.”
Make love.
It was all she could do to keep the words from escaping.
Her hand flopped, only to accidently brush against the satiny bulge of his bicep. Or maybe not-so-accidentally, considering. “What do you want me to say? And for the record, I love making jewelry. It’s not just work to me.”
“Okay then. We’ll leave first thing in the morning.”
His sudden capitulation threw her. “But—” She broke off. Because truly, what would be the harm in closing for just a day? “I can spend hours when I go there.”
“Thanks for the warning. But we’ve got nothing but time.”
She sank her head deeper into the pillow, peering at him. “Why are you being so agreeable?”
“Why are you being so suspicious? Changing your routine now and then is good for what ails you.”
She nearly choked over that.
If he only knew.
“Will Mr. Hyde follow us down there, too?”
“Yes.”
She absorbed his immediate response. At least he hadn’t tried hiding it.
“So we’ll leave in the morning.” He pushed off the bed and for some reason, her mouth went dry as he stood, tall and broad, towering over her. “Everything will be okay, Tara. I promise you.”
She couldn’t manage a response to save her soul. So she just nodded. He must have seen, even in the dark. Or maybe he didn’t, and it didn’t matter.
Because he turned then and walked out of her room, closing the door quietly after him.
She stared after him, wide-eyed in the darkness, until she finally conquered the urge to call him back.
Only then did she finally hug the extra pillow against her and sleep.
“What are these things used for?” Axel held up a long, thin piece of metal.
Tara gave him an absent glance before looking back down at the tray of beads she was sorting through. “Making earrings.” They’d been in the store for nearly two hours and it was pretty evident to her that Axel was bored out of his mind.
She wasn’t going to let her conscience rush her, though. Not when she was so thoroughly enjoying poking and selecting and letting her creativity take the lead.
There were several chairs near one corner at the front of the shop, but Axel didn’t go near them. The farthest he strayed from her was moving on the other side of the long display tables, covered from edge to edge with clear containers holding everything from tiny alphabet blocks to elegant cut stones and strikingly modern
medallions.
He could say that the day was a little getaway, but his vigilance where she was concerned remained constant.
Oddly enough, though, she discovered that she didn’t mind it so much. He wasn’t hovering over her, looking menacingly at anyone who happened to brush too close. He was just…there.
“Stevie Stuart, you stop running this very instant.” The woman’s harried voice wasn’t quite enough to prepare Tara for the dark-haired bullet that shot past her out of nowhere and she hastily lifted her tray out of the way.
“Sorry.” A young woman, heavily pregnant and looking apologetic, huffed along the path burned by the little speed demon. “I should have known he’d go wild if I brought him here.”
“Hold on there, buddy.” Axel caught the young boy by the back of his shirt as he sped past him. “Where’s the fire?”
The little boy stared up at Axel, abruptly fascinated. “There’s a fire?”
“There is no fire, Stevie, except the one burning under your feet.” The boy’s mother waddled around the table to grab her son’s hand and drew him away, muttering to him in hushed tones.
Axel was grinning as he watched them go. “Cute kid.”
Tara opened her mouth, only to realize what was on the tip of her tongue. “Yes,” she agreed hurriedly and knelt down to pick up the items that had fallen out of her tray before she could make the monumental mistake of telling him about the baby. Right there in the middle of the Bead Me Up store.
“Here.” Axel crouched next to her and handed her a medallion that had rolled under the table.
She couldn’t look at him. She took the medallion and dropped it in the tray, then pushed to her feet, brushing her hands down the sides of her slacks. “I’m done.”
He straightened, too. “Great. In time for something to eat.”
She couldn’t help her start of surprise. “We had lunch two hours ago.” They’d stopped at a café when they’d arrived in Cheyenne.
“So?”
She shook her head a little and drew out her wallet as the salesclerk tallied up her selections. Axel handed her coat to her and took the bag when the clerk finished, and with Axel’s hand on the small of her back, they returned to his truck and he drove to a nearby ice cream parlor.
A Weaver Wedding Page 11