When I'm With You

by JoAnn Ross

  “Caitlin’s fine—I talked to her an hour ago. She’s over the morning sickness, and she and Peter are coming for a visit in a couple of weeks.”

  “That’s good news,” Teague said, sliding a hand up under Joanna’s T-shirt and bra to cup her breast.

  “There’s more,” Joanna said, tugging his hand from her breast—much as she’d loved being fondled—and gripping it in her own. “Come with me.”

  “The bedroom?” Teague murmured. “Not very imaginative.”

  “The bathroom,” Joanna said, pulling him along behind her.

  “Not very romantic.”

  “You seemed to like it well enough yesterday when I gave you a blow job while you were trying to shave,” Joanna reminded him sweetly.

  A slow grin spread across his face. “Oh—yeah.”

  “Forget it, Gramps,” Joanna said. “This isn’t about getting you off.”

  “Damn,” Teague said, disappointed.

  They’d reached the bathroom doorway, and the kit Joanna had bought at the supermarket a week before but been afraid to use lay on the counter next to the sink.

  “What—?” Teague murmured, clearly confused.

  Joanna picked up the stick and showed him the little plus sign in the window.

  His expression was priceless as it went from bafflement to possibility to realization.

  “We always said we wanted more kids,” Joanna said.

  He stared at her. “But I’m—you’re—we’re—”

  “Almost grandparents,” Joanna supplied.

  “A baby, Joanna?” His eyes were alight with joy, with hope, with ecstatic amazement.

  All the things she’d hoped for.

  “A baby,” she confirmed.

  He threw back his head and shouted. Then he lifted Joanna off her feet, squeezing her so tightly she couldn’t get her breath for a moment. His face was a study in fatherly concern as he loosened his grip.

  “A baby?” he marveled. “After all this time?”

  “After all this time,” Joanna said softly.

  “How did—?”

  “I suppose it was the fucking,” she answered.

  He laughed.

  “But it was also fate, probably,” she added. Spending these weeks virtually alone with Teague, she’d begun to see that there was something beyond the things they said to each other, ordinary or incendiary. There was a space, a magical silence, almost meditative and certainly sacred, where words simply could not reach.

  And there, with not only their bodies but their souls joined, this new baby had been conceived.

  Teague looked worried. “Have you told Caitlin?”

  “Of course I haven’t,” Joanna said. “I wanted you to be the first to know.”

  “We’d better get you to a doctor.”

  “Right now, this instant? I feel fine, Teague. Better than fine.”

  “But you need to be on special vitamins and have sonograms and stuff. Joanna, we have to do this right.”

  She stood on tiptoe, wrapped her arms around his neck, and kissed him. “I’ve already called our doctor, and she referred us to an OB-GYN guy. My appointment is tomorrow morning at ten.”

  Teague huffed out a relieved breath, but his eyes were troubled. “Joanna, you’re—we ’re—not young. There could be problems.”

  “There can always be problems, Teague. And these days, a lot of people are having healthy babies in their forties.”

  “How do you think Caitlin will react?”

  “She’ll be shocked at first,” Joanna said. “We’re her parents, and this is proof positive that we have sex.” She grinned, waggling her eyebrows.

  “Sex?” Teague gasped, pretending to be horrified.

  “Old and decrepit as we are,” Joanna replied. She moved to pick up the test stick and drop it into the trash.

  “Wait,” Teague protested. “Shouldn’t we keep that? Put it in a frame or a scrapbook or something?”

  “Teague,” Joanna pointed out, “I peed on it.”

  “Oh,” he said. “Right.”

  She disposed of the stick and washed her hands at the sink.

  “What do we do now?” Teague asked. “I guess the red-hot sex is out for a while.”

  “Only if the doctor says so,” Joanna said. “As for what we do now—well, I’d like to see what progress you’ve made on that boat of yours. Then we could have lunch and take Sammy for a walk.”

  Teague made a grand gesture, indicating that she should precede him through the bathroom doorway. “Your barge awaits, Cleopatra,” he said.

  She laughed, dried her hands, and stepped into the corridor.

  The “barge,” really a sleek twelve-foot rowboat, rested on a special arrangement of sawhorses in the garage behind the cottage. Teague had been as secretive about it as Joanna was about her novel, and probably for the same reasons.

  Both the boat and the book were creations of the heart and mind, fragile in their beginnings.

  Joanna drew in her breath. The craft was far from finished, still rough slats in need of endless sanding, not to mention varnishing—not unlike her novel, she thought—but the intent was there.

  “Oh, Teague,” Joanna said, marveling. “It’s beautiful.”

  Teague caught her face in his hands—the palms felt work roughened and strong against her skin. “You’re beautiful,” he said.

  She drew in the Teague scents of sawdust, sun-dried cotton sheets, toothpaste, and soap. “I love you so much,” she told him.

  He kissed her, long and deep. When he lifted his mouth from hers, he opened his eyes and said, “And I love you, Joanna. I have, always. Even when I didn’t know how to show it.”

  She swallowed hard and nodded. It felt dangerous to be so happy, but delicious, too. “I don’t suppose you’d like to take a look at my novel, after lunch and Sammy’s walk?”

  “I’ve been waiting for you to ask,” he said.

  An hour later, with lunch over and Sammy sleeping off a happy trot down the beach, Teague settled into one of the armchairs in the living room, the sixty-odd pages Joanna had written in his hand.

  His expression was solemn with concentration as he read.

  Joanna tried not to watch his face, but she couldn’t help it. Every nuance either plunged her into despair or sent her rocketing skyward.

  When he’d finished, he set the pages aside and stared thoughtfully through Joanna for a long time.

  “Well?” she finally demanded. “What do you think, Teague?”

  “I think you’re amazing,” he said.

  “The book, Teague!”

  He stood, crossed to her, and took her shoulders in his gentle boat builder’s hands. “It’s so good it makes me scared,” he told her.

  “Scared?”

  “Scared it won’t be enough for you, living here on the island, in this cottage, with Sammy and the baby and me. Scared you won’t want this simple life anymore.”

  She touched his cheek. “Never gonna happen. I’m thriving here, Teague.” She laid her hands against her still-flat belly, and tears of joyous wonder sprang instantly to her eyes. “Are you? Are you happy here? Do you miss the mansion and the business and all those meetings?”

  He placed his hands over hers. “I’m happy, Joanna.” A grin lit his face; he looked inspired. “And I can prove it.”

  “How?”

  Teague went to the coffee table, picked up that week’s issue of the Island Tattletale, Madge’s modest but interesting sheet, opened it, folded it, and brought it to Joanna.

  “The classified ads?” she asked, confused.

  Teague tapped one of the little squares.

  Joanna beamed as she read the bold print.

  It said: For sale cheap, one sports car.

  Batteries Not Required

  LINDA LAEL MILLER

  The last thing I wanted was a man to complicate my life. I came to that conclusion, on the commuter flight between Phoenix and Helena, Montana, because my best friend Lucy and I had been
discussing the topic, online and via our BlackBerrys, for days. Maybe the fact that I was bound to encounter Tristan McCullough during my brief sojourn in my hometown of Parable had something to do with the decision.

  Tristan and I had a history, one of those angst-filled summer romances between high school graduation and college. Sure, it had been over for ten years, but I still felt bruised whenever I thought of him, which was more often than I should have, even with all that time to insulate me from the experience.

  My few romantic encounters in between had done nothing to dissuade me from my original opinion.

  Resolved: Men lie. They cheat—usually with your roommate, your best friend, or somebody you’re going to have to face at the office every day. They forget birthdays, dump you the day of the big date, and leave the toilet seat up.

  Who needed it? I had B.O.B., after all. My battery-operated boyfriend.

  Just as I was thinking those thoughts, my purse tumbled out of the overhead compartment and hit me on the head. I should have realized that the universe was putting me on notice. Cosmic e-mail. Subject: Pay attention, Gayle.

  Hastily, avoiding the flight attendant’s tolerant glance, which I knew would be disapproving because I’d asked for extra peanuts during the flight and gotten up to use the rest room when the seat belt sign was on, I shoved the bag under the seat in front of mine. Then I gripped the arms of 4B as the aircraft gave an apocalyptic shudder and nose-dived for the landing strip.

  I squeezed my eyes shut.

  The plane bumped to the ground, and I would have sworn before a hostile jury that the thing was about to flip from wingtip to wingtip before crumpling into a fiery ball.

  My stomach surged into my throat, and I pictured smoldering wreckage on the six o’clock news in Phoenix, even heard the voice-over. “Recently fired paralegal, Gayle Hayes, perished today in a plane crash outside the small Montana town of Parable. She was twenty-seven, a hard-won size 6 with two hundred dollars’ worth of highlights in her shoulder-length brown hair, and was accompanied by her long-standing boyfriend, Bob—”

  As if my untimely and tragic death would rate a sound bite. And as if I’d brought Bob along on this trip. All I would have needed to complete my humiliation, on top of losing my job and having to make an appearance in Parable, was for some security guard to search my suitcase and wave my vibrator in the air.

  But, hey, when you think you’re about to die, you need somebody, even if he’s made of pink plastic and runs on four “C” batteries.

  When it became apparent that the Grim Reaper was otherwise occupied, I lifted the lids and took a look around. The flight attendant, who was old enough to have served cocktails on Wright Brothers Air, smiled thinly. Like I said, we hadn’t exactly bonded.

  Despite my aversion to flying, I sat there wondering if they’d let me go home if I simply refused to get off the plane.

  The cabin door whooshed open, and my fellow passengers—half a dozen in all—rose from their seats, gathered their belongings, and clogged the aisle at the front of the airplane. I’d scrutinized them—surreptitiously, of course—during the flight, in case I recognized somebody, but none of them were familiar, which was a relief.

  Before the Tristan fiasco, I’d been ordinary, studious Gayle Hayes, daughter of Josie Hayes, manager and part owner of the Bucking Bronco Tavern. After our dramatic breakup, Tristan was still the golden boy, the insider, but I was Typhoid Mary. He’d grown up in Parable, as had his father and grandfather. His family had land and money, and in ranch country, or anywhere else, that adds up to credibility. I, on the other hand, had blown into town with my recently divorced mother, when I was thirteen, and remained an unknown quantity. I didn’t miss the latest stepfather—he was one in a long line—and I loved Mom deeply.

  I just didn’t want to be like her, that was all. I wanted to go to college, marry one man, and raise a flock of kids. It might not be politically correct to admit it, but I wasn’t really interested in a career.

  When the Tristan-and-me thing bit the dust, I pulled my savings out of the bank and caught the first bus out of town.

  Mom had long since moved on from Parable, but she still had a financial interest in the Bronco, and the other partners wanted to sell. I’m a paralegal, not a lawyer, but my mother saw that as a technicality. She’d hooked up with a new boyfriend—not the kind that requires batteries—and as of that moment, she was somewhere in New Mexico, on the back of a Harley. A week ago, on the same day I was notified that I’d been downsized, she called me from a borrowed cell phone and talked me into representing her at the negotiations.

  In a weak moment, I’d agreed. She overnighted me an airline ticket and her power of attorney, and wired travel expenses into my checking account, and here I was—back in Parable, Montana, the place I’d sworn I would never think about, let alone visit, again.

  “Miss?” The flight attendant’s voice jolted me back to the present. From the expression on her face, I would be carried off bodily if I didn’t disembark on my own. I unsnapped my seat belt, hauled my purse out from under 3B, and deplaned with as much dignity as I could summon.

  I had forgotten why they call Montana the Big Sky Country. It’s like being under a vast, inverted bowl of the purest blue, stretching from horizon to horizon.

  The airport at Helena was small, and the land around the city is relatively flat, but the trees and mountains were visible in the distance, and I felt a little quiver of nostalgia as I took it all in. Living in Phoenix for the decade since I’d fled, working my way through vocational school and making a life for myself, I’d had plenty of occasion to miss the terrain, but I hadn’t consciously allowed myself the indulgence.

  I made my way carefully down the steps to the tarmac, and crossed to the entrance, trailing well behind the other passengers. Mom had arranged for a rental car, so all I had to do was pick up my suitcase at the baggage claim, sign the appropriate papers at Avis, and boogie for Parable.

  I stopped at a McDonald’s on the way through town, since I hadn’t had breakfast and twenty-six peanuts don’t count as nourishment. Frankly, I would have preferred a stiff drink, but you can’t get arrested for driving under the influence of French fries and a Big Mac.

  I switched on the radio, in a futile effort to keep memories of Tristan at bay, and the first thing I heard was Our Song.

  I switched it off again.

  My cell phone rang, inside my purse, and I fumbled for it.

  It was Lucy.

  “Where are you?” she demanded.

  I pushed the speaker button on the phone, so I could finish my fries and still keep one hand on the wheel. “In the trunk of a car,” I answered. “I’ve been kidnapped by the mob. Think I should kick out one of the taillights and wave my hand through the hole?”

  Lucy hesitated. “Smart-ass,” she said. “Where are you really?”

  I sighed. Lucy is my best friend, and I love her, but she’s the mistress of rhetorical questions. We met at school in Phoenix, but now she’s a clerk in an actuary’s office, in Santa Barbara. I guess they pay her to second-guess everything. “On my way to Parable. You know, that place we’ve been talking about via BlackBerry?”

  “Oh,” said Lucy.

  I folded another fry into my mouth, gum-stick style. “Do you have some reason for calling?” I prompted. I didn’t mean to sound impatient, but I probably did. My brain kept racing ahead to Parable, wondering how long it would take to get my business done and leave.

  Lucy perked right up. “Yes,” she said. “The law firm across the hall from our offices is hiring paralegals. You can get an application online.”

  I softened. It wasn’t Lucy’s fault, after all, that I had to go back to Parable and maybe come face-to-face with Tristan. I was jobless, and she was trying to help. “Thanks, Luce,” I said. “I’ll look into it when I have access to a computer. Right now, I’m in a rental car.”

  “I’ll forward the application,” she replied.

  “Thanks,” I repeated
. The familiar road was winding higher and higher into the timber country. I rolled the window partway down, to take in the green smell of pine and fir trees.

  “I wish I could be there to lend moral support,” Lucy said.

  “Me, too,” I sighed. She didn’t know about the Tristan debacle. Yes, she was my closest friend, but the subject was too painful to broach, even with her. Only my mother knew, and she probably thought I was over it.

  Lucy’s voice brightened. “Maybe you’ll meet a cowboy.”

  I felt the word “cowboy” like a punch to the solar plexus. Tristan was a cowboy. And he’d gotten on his metaphorical horse and trampled my heart to a pulp. “Maybe,” I said, to throw her a bone.

  “Boss alert,” Lucy whispered, apparently picking up an authority figure on the radar. “I’d better get back to my charts.”

  “Good idea,” I said, relieved, and disconnected. I tossed the phone back into my purse.

  I passed a couple of ranches, and a gas station with bears and fish and horses on display in the parking lot, the kind carved out of a tree stump with a chain saw. Yep, I was getting close to Parable.

  I braced myself. Two more bends in the road.

  On the first bend, I almost crashed into a deer.

  On the second bend, I braked within two feet of a loaded cattle truck, jackknifed in the middle of the highway. I had already suspected that fate wasn’t on my side. I knew it for a fact when Tristan McCullough stormed around one end of the semi-trailer, ready for a fight.

  My heart surged up into my sinuses and got stuck there.

  The decade since I’d seen him last had hardened his frame and chiseled his features, at least his mouth and lower jaw. I couldn’t see the upper part of his face because of the shadow cast by the brim of his beat-up cowboy hat.

  What does Tristan look like? Take Brad Pitt and multiply by a factor of ten, and you’ve got a rough idea.

  “Didn’t you see the flares?” he demanded, in that one quivering moment before he recognized me. “How fast were you going, anyway?” It clicked, and he stiffened, stopped in his tracks, a few feet from my car door.

  “No, I didn’t see any flares,” I said, and I must have sounded lame, as well as defensive. “And I don’t think I was speeding.” My voice echoed in my head.