Jenny winced. “I know.”
He cleared his throat. “Well, anyway, I don’t expect to be married. My job keeps me extremely busy, away from home for long hours—nights and weekends included, when necessary. Not many women are willing to settle for what little time I have left over to give them. The few women I’ve gotten involved with have all ended up leaving in frustration after I’ve been forced to stand them up a few too many times.”
Jenny started to ask just what he did for a living that kept him so terribly busy, but a loud crash from outside made both of them jump. “What was that?” she asked. “It sounded like it was right outside the window.”
Adam had already gone to investigate. “The ice is building up in the trees again,” he said somberly. “The weight is breaking limbs. Let’s just hope nothing comes down on top of us during the night.”
“What a comforting prospect,” Jenny said, drawing the afghan more snugly around her.
“Sorry. I was just thinking out loud. This cabin is sturdy enough. We should be fine.”
A thought suddenly occurred to her. “Did you ever get around to calling your grandmother?”
He shook his head. “I tried. There’s no cellular service. I don’t know if it’s due to the dense woods here or because a tower’s down somewhere.”
“So we’re completely cut off from all communication,” she said quietly.
He nodded. “I’m afraid so.”
The temperature in the room seemed to drop ten degrees. “How long do you think we’ll be stranded here?” she asked.
“It’s hard to tell,” Adam admitted. “Probably another couple of days, at least. These roads aren’t great in the best of weather, and they’re too isolated to receive attention from the county crews when they’re probably scrambling to clear the main highways. But we have plenty of wood and supplies, Jenny. We won’t freeze and we won’t starve. If you can stand being stranded here with me, we’ll be fine.” He smiled a little, obviously trying to reassure her.
Jenny tried to return the smile. “I don’t mind being here with you,” she said candidly. “You’re the one who has been inconvenienced by having an unexpected guest show up on your doorstep.”
“I’m enjoying the company,” he said, and she thought he sounded a bit surprised by the admission. And then he added, “There are people who would be appalled at being trapped in a cabin alone with me. More than a few who’d weep in sympathy for your plight if they knew you’d ended up here with me.”
She chuckled. “You have a reputation of being an ogre, or something?”
“Let’s just say I’ve been called a pompous, arrogant, overbearing son of a—er—gun, on a few occasions,” he explained dryly.
She widened her eyes dramatically. “Surely not.”
He sighed heavily, matching her teasing tone. “I’m afraid so. Still think you can survive a couple more days of my company?”
“I’m tough,” she assured him. “I can survive anything.”
“Even more of my cooking?”
“Even that.”
He grinned, and she smiled back at him. The room seemed to grow warmer again, and Jenny forgot to be afraid.
A moment later, she forced herself to look away from him. She cleared her throat. “Um—are we going to finish this game, or what?”
“Oh, yeah. Right.” Adam picked up the cards he’d spread facedown on the table. And then he spread them faceup. “Gin.”
Jenny sighed and shook her head. “I should have known,” she muttered. “Has anyone ever bested you, Adam Stone?”
His dark eyes were focused on her face. “I’ll let you know,” he said quietly.
After one quick glance at his face, Jenny inexplicably decided not to ask him to elaborate.
* * *
“Tell me more about your cousins,” Jenny said sleepily as she lay on the couch watching Adam eat a sandwich a couple of hours later.
He swallowed and looked at her in surprise. “Why?”
Tucked warmly beneath a pile of blankets, she shrugged against the couch cushions. “Just making conversation,” she murmured. “They sound interesting.”
“Are you sure you don’t want anything to eat?”
“I’m really not hungry right now. But I would like to hear more about your family.”
Adam didn’t seem satisfied with her refusal to eat, but he let it drop, for now. She knew he would nag her again about it later. “What do you want to know?” he asked, instead.
“Tell me about Rachel.” Something in his voice when he’d mentioned that cousin had made Jenny suspect that Rachel was his favorite.
As if in confirmation of her guess, Adam’s eyes softened in the firelight. “Rachel,” he murmured, and there was a warmth in his voice that made Jenny’s throat tighten in a way she couldn’t have explained. “She’s the eldest of the Carson siblings. She’s—hmm—seven years younger than I am, which would make her thirty-one.”
Which told Jenny that Adam was a bit younger than the forty she’d guessed. Must be that officious air of his that made him seem older, she mused, watching him as he talked. And those very attractive streaks of silver in the dark hair at his temples.
“Rachel married young and had two children, Paige and Aaron. Cute kids. Her husband died from injuries he sustained in a car accident several years ago.”
“How tragic,” Jenny whispered, thinking of how hard it must have been for Adam’s cousin to find herself alone with two small children to raise. She knew firsthand that it was a daunting prospect to consider raising a child without help.
“I offered to help her out financially, but she’s proud and stubborn—rather like someone else I’ve recently met,” Adam said pointedly.
Jenny only smiled faintly and squirmed against the pillows. Her back was hurting worse than usual this evening, though she had no intention of mentioning it to Adam. He fussed enough over her lack of appetite; heaven only knew what he’d do if he thought she was experiencing any discomfort.
“Anyway,” Adam continued, taking her silence as an urge to go on, “Rachel recently met a young attorney named Seth Fletcher, and two weeks ago they were married—on New Year’s Eve. It was a small, simple ceremony held at Rachel’s church in Percy. The whole family was there. The kids were ecstatic.”
“Everyone approves of her new husband, I take it.”
“Yeah. It was quite an event. Everyone’s delighted for Rachel.”
“You, too?”
“Sure. Fletcher’s a decent guy, from what I’ve seen, and he’s obviously head over heels for Rachel. Seems fond of the kids, too. I think he’ll be good for all of them. If not, he’ll have me to answer to,” he added conversationally.
Hearing the very serious undertone to the lightly spoken words, Jenny shook her head. “Does the family know that you consider yourself their caretaker?”
He only chuckled and washed down the last of his sandwich with a gulp of lukewarm canned cola.
“Tell me about the other two—Cody and Cecilia,” she urged, trying to remember the names.
“Celia.” Adam corrected her. “She’s the youngest. Twenty-four, pretty, impulsive, a bit pampered by the family. Spunky. Mouthy.”
“You’re nuts about her,” Jenny said with a smile.
“Yeah. Which doesn’t mean I haven’t thought she needed a paddling occasionally. Like this last stunt she pulled...” He shook his head.
Jenny was intrigued. “Tell me.”
“She ran off to southern Texas with a jet-setting hotel magnate—Damien Alexander. I didn’t know anything about it, of course, or I would have done something to stop her.”
“Damien Alexander?” Jenny repeated, startled. “The tabloid heartthrob?”
“That’s the one,” Adam said grimly. “The guy goes through women like a shark through a school of fish. He met Celia when he was on a business trip to central Arkansas, and he started chasing her. I thought she had more sense than to fall for his practiced lines—especially
after Rachel and I warned her about him...”
Jenny could just imagine Adam’s stuffy, indulgent “warning” to his younger cousin. If Celia had any spirit at all, she’d probably jumped into the playboy’s arms out of sheer defiance. “What happened?” she asked.
“As I said, Celia went to Texas for a tryst with the guy—but while she was there, she met someone else. An ATF agent on an undercover assignment. Celia got involved somehow in a gun-smuggling investigation, nearly got herself killed in the process. Instead she ended up married.”
“To the ATF agent?” Jenny asked, trying to follow the story.
Adam nodded. “She’d known the guy all of two weeks when they eloped. Everyone in the family thought she’d lost her mind. I checked him out, of course. He seems okay. His superiors think highly of him, anyway.”
“You checked him out?” Jenny repeated.
“Of course.” He seemed surprised that she would ask. “Celia’s family. I couldn’t take a chance that she’d gotten impulsively involved with someone who would hurt her.”
Jenny’s mouth tilted downward. “And what about Cody? Have you investigated his wife, too?”
“Cody isn’t married. And, no, I don’t investigate all his dates, if that’s your next question. He’s perfectly capable of taking care of himself.”
“Because he’s a man, of course,” she said in disgust.
“I didn’t say that.”
“Then why aren’t you as protective of him as you are of your female cousins?” she challenged.
“Who said I wasn’t?” Adam asked with a cool smile. “How do you think he got a loan to start a restaurant-dance club in Percy, Arkansas, when everyone else predicted the place would go belly-up within six months?”
“You gave it to him?”
“No. But I spoke with the bank president for him. Sort of guaranteed the loan, I guess you could say.”
Jenny searched his face. “Does Cody know you did that?”
Adam cleared his throat. “Not exactly.”
“He wouldn’t like it if he knew, would he?”
Adam shrugged and avoided her eyes. “Probably not. Fortunately it’s never come up. The club has been successful and Cody and his partner haven’t had any trouble making their payments, so it’s a moot question. And you, of course, wouldn’t tell him, would you?”
“How could I tell him?” Jenny asked, startled rather than amused by his wry question. “I don’t know him, and the chances are slim that I’ll ever meet him.”
“Uh, yeah. Right,” Adam muttered. “I forgot. I just didn’t like your implication that I’m sexist.”
“Okay, I was wrong. Your arrogance knows no gender boundaries.”
He frowned. “Somehow, I don’t think that’s a compliment.”
Jenny giggled softly. “You think about it,” she said around a sudden yawn. “I think I’m going to take a nap.”
“Are you sure you don’t want something to eat first?” he asked, still worried about her lack of appetite.
Her eyes were already closing. “I’m sure,” she said. “But Adam?”
“Yeah?”
“Thanks.”
She fell asleep, glad she’d managed to let him know that she appreciated his concern, even if she couldn’t help teasing him about his techniques. She didn’t hear what, if anything, he said in response.
Chapter Five
Unlike Jenny, Adam couldn’t sleep. For one thing, after a day of inactivity, he wasn’t tired. His foot was a bit sore, but not really painful, so he had no trouble moving around on it. He hadn’t finished his book, but he was tired of reading for one day. He’d straightened the kitchen after finishing his sandwich, so there was nothing left to do except sit and listen to the fire pop and the storm rage outside.
He stood occasionally to pace to the windows and check the weather. By midnight, it appeared that the snow was letting up some, but ice still weighed heavily on the trees surrounding the cabin, and there was an occasional crack as overburdened limbs broke beneath the weight.
There would be no leaving this place for several days yet, Adam thought, turning back to his sleeping guest. Fortunately they were safe enough here, pending any unforeseen circumstances.
Jenny seemed to be sleeping restlessly this evening. Her face was pale in the firelight, and there was a little frown between her dark eyebrows. She’d wriggled around until she’d dislodged the blankets that had covered her. Adam knelt beside the couch and smoothed them back over her, careful not to wake her.
His hand lingered at the mound of her belly. Even through the blankets, he could feel her baby moving, kicking lazily. He smiled faintly, wondering how anyone could sleep with that going on inside her.
The baby gave a strong kick against his palm, as though sensing Adam was there and wanting to make sure he had his attention. Adam’s smile deepened. “Brat,” he whispered.
He wondered if the baby would be a boy or a girl. And whether Jenny had taken his advice about names seriously—she wouldn’t really name the kid Ashley, would she?
And then he wondered how Jenny would get by alone with a baby to support, no job, no home, no family to turn to.
His smile vanished, and his jaw tightened.
Over his dead body, he thought grimly, patting the child to reassure it that Adam Stone had no intention of abandoning either the baby or its mother to that lonely fate.
Jennifer Newcomb might not realize it yet, but she had a friend now. And Adam Stone took care of his friends, just as he did his family.
Sometimes whether they liked it or not.
* * *
Something woke Jenny before dawn. She wasn’t sure what it was. She lay still, eyes closed, listening. The fire was still burning, and there was an occasional distant cracking sound from outside the cabin, but those by now familiar noises hadn’t been enough to rouse her from a sound sleep.
She opened her eyes. Adam had put out the lantern at some point, so that the fire provided the only illumination in the room. Adam lay in his sleeping bag near the wood box, obviously prepared to keep the fire going during the night while Jenny slept.
The firelight flickered on his face, causing intriguing shadows to dance across it. Jenny lay for a time just looking at him, wondering about him...
And then it happened again. A sharp pain seemed to creep from somewhere behind her to concentrate in her middle. She felt as though her entire body tightened from the chest down, held a moment, then slowly relaxed. She released a slow breath as the discomfort subsided.
What on earth was that?
She’d been lying on her side, her knees drawn up as far as possible on the narrow sleeping surface of the couch. She hadn’t changed position in hours.
That had to account for it, she abruptly decided. Her body was protesting the inactivity, was asking that she stretch and move around a bit.
Very slowly, she pushed herself upright, aware that she needed to go to the bathroom.
Adam must have been sleeping very lightly. He roused as soon as she rose to her feet.
“What is it?” he asked gruffly, lifting his head.
“Bathroom,” she whispered, rather embarrassed. “Go back to sleep.”
“Be careful,” he warned. “You don’t want to trip and fall in the dark.”
“I can find my way by now,” she assured him.
“Take the flashlight,” he urged, motioning toward the coffee table where he kept the flashlight handy during the night. “Do you need any help?”
“Adam,” Jenny said, exasperated more than embarrassed now. “I don’t need help going to the bathroom. Go back to sleep, okay?”
He chuckled quietly and stretched back out in the sleeping bag. “Yes, dear,” he murmured mockingly.
She couldn’t help smiling at his exaggerated—and completely unbelievable—subservient tone.
Jenny was washing her hands when the pain struck again. This one was strong enough to double her over. She gripped the edge of the sink to stea
dy herself, still uncertain exactly what was going on.
A sudden gush of warm liquid soaked her knit slacks and puddled around her red-stocking feet. It happened without warning, so quickly and so forcefully that it took Jenny a moment to understand what had happened.
When the realization hit, her first reaction was to panic. “Adam? Adam!“
He appeared almost instantly in the doorway, flashlight in hand, as if he’d been waiting for her call. “What is it?”
Dripping, hurting and frightened, she turned to him. Her voice was little more than a whisper. “I don’t know what to do,” she said bleakly. “Please. Help me.”
It was the first time Jenny Newcomb had asked for help—from anyone—in longer than she could remember.
* * *
At first Adam couldn’t imagine what had happened, only that something was dreadfully wrong. Jenny’s face was stark white in the harsh glow of the flashlight, her amber eyes huge and terrified.
And then he saw the liquid. And the way she suddenly clutched her side and grimaced. And he knew.
For one fleeting instant, his first reaction was much the same as hers. Sheer panic.
And then years of medical training kicked in and took control. “Let’s get you back into the other room,” he said, his voice amazingly calm. “Lean on me, I’ll support you.”
“My water broke,” she whispered, sounding dazed. “And the pain...”
“I know.” Shifting the flashlight to his left hand, he wrapped his right arm around Jenny’s side and urged her toward the doorway. She moved as though in a trance.
“It’s not time,” she said, and now her voice was sharpened by an edge of incipient hysteria. “Oh, God, it’s not time. This can’t happen now.”
“Jenny,” Adam said, tightening his hold on her as he led her inexorably toward the couch. “Calm down. Whatever happens, we can handle it. I’ll take care of you.”
“What are we going to do? I don’t—” She broke off with a gasp and bent into another contraction.
They were coming fast, Adam thought. Much too fast for his comfort. But they seemed to be of relatively short duration, so maybe they had some time yet. There was always the chance the contractions would ease when she was lying down again, though there was little doubt in his mind that she was in labor. He just hoped the process would go slowly enough for him to remember what to do.
A Home for Adam Page 6