Romance: JADEN: An MMA Fighter Romance (Bad Boy Tattoo Romance) (New Adult Pregnancy Short Stories)

by Kristen Chase

  Curiously, her car was completely empty. When she walked in, there were two shiny brown seats facing each other, and she chose one nervously. After six hours and two stops, it became clear that someone was unlikely to be joining her that evening. A short walk up and down the train showed that it was mostly empty anyhow. It was something she was secretly hoping for, but never dreamed it would actually come to be. Kate didn’t want to be sandwiched in between strange men and women, and she wanted to engage in small talk with said strangers even less; Heather May, her old friend from the bakery, had warned her that both were inevitable.

  “When I came east, I couldn’t breathe out of my nose for a week,” Heather chirped while making the crusts for an order of apple pies. Her big hands easily punched the dough and curled the edges of the circular crusts in a way Kate still hadn’t mastered. “I was sat between two men who might as well have been horses, they snorted and sweated so much. I had to throw away the dress I was wearing.”

  “You didn’t!” Kate gasped, fear gripping her stomach as she imagined Heather disappearing between two mountainous men and emerging smelly and damp.

  “I didn’t,” Heather admitted darkly. “But I almost did.”

  The conversation, like all others about her going west, had made her have second thoughts. She was so used to having second thoughts that perhaps it ought to be called something else by this point, as she was well into double digits. Kate doubted her decision every day, not only because she had never met Jason Barrett--- Mr. Barrett, she kept calling him in her head and in their letters, even though he’d insisted on her being informal---and all she had to go on were the drawings of him from his show posters. Jason and The Giant Bear, they read, under drawings of an enormous bear spreading his claws wide above his head as a man nearly his size stood proudly in front of him. Sometimes the bear was colored black, other times it was dark brown, but the man was always the same: tall and gorgeous, with impossibly broad shoulders, a chiseled jaw, full lips, a close-cut beard, and rippling forearms bursting out of the frayed ends of the sleeveless shirt he wore---a shirt presumably destroyed by the flexing of his mighty muscles. Sometimes his face was grim, but often his breathtaking features were twisted into a knowing smile: a smile that managed to convey valor, wit, and determination all at once. She couldn’t tell what color his eyes were; sometimes they were blue, and sometimes they were green, and a few times in six months they’d been colored an odd golden-brown that she’d never seen on a human before. He wrote her every week, and his letters were detailed enough that she truly felt like she was growing fond of him---but there were too many gaps in her knowledge for her to feel comfortable.

  For one, she knew nothing of what he did before four years ago--- before, that is, he became a touring cowboy. He danced around telling her so often she’d stopped asking. Kate knew that men who sought mail order brides were often not exactly the saintliest of souls, but she hadn’t expected complete silence on what drove him to uproot his old life so thoroughly. All she knew was that he used to be a school teacher in Virginia, and that he kept a home in California between traveling for shows. He traveled out of state once a month, and was gone from the area two days out of the week, so Kate could understand why he would want someone around to tend house. On good nights, she allowed herself to keep her mind entertained by imagining all the exercises he must do to keep his body to fighting fit, and when her images grew lewd, she reminded herself that they were as good as married, anyway. On bad nights, her fear and anxiety held her so close that she avoided thinking about Mr. Barrett at all, choosing instead pare down her items in preparation for the journey west. She tried not to think about his odd lack of a social life and no past marriages at age thirty-four, and what he might say to a curvy, soft-voiced woman of twenty-eight with apparently the same baggage. One of the main reasons Kate hadn’t retreated from the arrangement was that she hadn’t been entirely honest with Jason, either---though she hadn’t lied, she’d still omitted the fact of her barrenness. Heather insisted that a man of his age and occupation would likely not want children anyway, or even like them, which terrified Kate even more.

  “What sort of man doesn’t mention to his bride that he doesn’t like children?” she asked. Heather had no answer.

  Now, on the way to a town in Southern California she hadn’t heard of, Kate still didn’t have answers to most of her questions. She didn’t know what she would say if Jason asked about children, or what she would do if time went on and he never did. She had considered the possibility that Jason wouldn’t even be the man he said he would be, and she would be carried away by some deranged, foul-smelling criminal who thought he was receiving a fertile woman. Kate---whose heart-shaped face, chocolate brown hair and pleasingly plump hourglass figure had won her many suitors eve until now---knew that she was often approached because of her potential to birth healthy, beautiful children. Her sisters had each had at least two boys, and so had her mother and her mother’s mother; Logan was so confident in her ability to give him sons that they’d settled on names as soon as they were married. But then two years passed, and another two, and their desperate trying had yielded no offspring. After a chilly year-long separation, he’d struck out West at the end of their fourth year of marriage, leaving Kate humiliated and heartbroken at the tender age of twenty-four. It was all her mother could do to keep her from spiraling into depression, and a few years later, she could hear her former husband’s name without more than a brief twinge of pain. She hadn’t heard from Logan after he stopped sending her money the year before, and she took it as a sign that their marriage was well and truly over. He’d presumably found a new wife, but the letters that came for her every few months never made any mention of another woman. Truthfully, they were so short and sparse that Kate knew she wasn’t getting the whole story, but she had held out hope that he would be honest when he found love. When word never came, the last bit of warmth she had for Logan died, and she started scouring ads under her mother’s suggestion.

  The empty train car had been growing dimmer and dimmer, and finally the train pulled into the tiny station at Davinia, California. It was so small that Kate wouldn’t have thought the train would stop at all---it was more like a shack or a shelter with a lonely bench on a platform. On the other side of it was a road, and she could see that the road led through a wood and presumably toward her new hometown. The trees were too close together to tell how far it spread, but the road was wide and welcoming, and Kate felt better knowing it was well traveled. She was thousands of miles away from the only home she’d ever known, and even small comforts felt significant.

  Kate adjusted her chocolate curls under her hat and stood, smoothing her skirts around her wide hips. A man passed her carriage slowly, doing a double take at her through the class of her car door. He blushed, and Kate smiled patiently, waiting for him to realize he was staring. It took another moment, and his mouth had actually fallen open slightly before he remembered himself and turned forward, round face now tomato red. At least I know I look as good as I can, Kate thought dryly as she slid the door open and stepped out into the hall. The man had disappeared from sight, thankfully, and she was able to exit the strangely empty train without being gawked at again. Her shoes made oddly sharp noises against the ground as she stepped down, and she realized she must have put on her dress shoes instead of her riding shoes this morning after sleeping. She groaned inwardly, startling the man who came forward to give her the luggage she was traveling with.

  “Something wrong, miss?” The porter had a high voice that didn’t sound right coming out of his mustachioed face. His blue eyes widened slightly as Kate smiled at him, shaking her head.

  “No, everything is fine, thank you.” She started to turn from him to look around for Mr. Barrett---Jason, she corrected herself---but the porter spoke again.

  “Are you moving here?” his voice was curious, but it his gaze was too intense for her comfort. Kate took a step back, feeling her smile falter under the heat of h
is eyes. “You don’t have much luggage. Will you be here a while?”

  “Yes,” she said uncertainly. She wanted very much to turn from him, but she was oddly unable to look away from his eyes. She felt like he’d wrapped a heavy, warm blanket around her shoulders when he’d begun to talking to her, and he was gripping the ends. His face was oddly pale, she realized distantly. “I’m living here now.”

  “Good, good.” The porter took a step forward, and Kate felt thrill of alarm move through her brain, but she couldn’t acknowledge it. Her heart was pounding against her chest, and the muscles in her thick thighs were screaming to push her into motion, but his deep blue irises were too arresting to look away from. “I come through here a lot. If you tell me where you’re staying, I can take these bags there for you. And maybe we can visit sometime.” He smiled, and it lit up his features----but the grin seemed empty and cold. “Wouldn’t you like that?”

  Kate felt herself nod, but a voice in her head told her that it was wrong. There was a reason she couldn’t see him, and she couldn’t remember it right now, but it was very important. She was rooting around for the reason in her mind when a huge hand gently touched her shoulder from behind, and a low, strong voice stabbed through the fuzz wrapped around her brain.

  “I’ll take those, actually.”

  Kate gasped and stumbled backward, slamming into something hard and wide before pitching forward toward the ground. She felt two strong hands catch her around her waist, pulling her back to her feet as though she weighed nothing. Fear, panic, and relief all came flooding into her body at the same time as her mind started to finally process what was happening. The porter was backing up, his blue eyes shot through with horror. His head was tilted upward, and Kate thought for a moment that she must have stumbled into a monster. Then she turned around and gasped again---it was Jason, looking every bit as heroic as he did in his show posters. His eyes were a deep forest green, she could see now, and they were watching the porter run away with satisfaction and something like disgust. His handsome face was set in an expression of rage, and it made her heart skip a beat. He was wearing a simple black button-up shirt and a worn black jacket over it, and dark blue pants paired with black boots. Her eyes took in how the pants clung to the muscles of his legs, the slight strain of the fabric stretched across his chest. When his eyes finally dropped to meet hers, his expression softened so dramatically that Kate was suddenly unsure if she’d seen rage at all. His lips curled upward into a friendly smile.

  “Miss Green, I presume?” Kate shivered as his voice poured over her like thick, warm honey “Lovely as you are, you must be.”. She nodded, then shook her head roughly, still dazed from the encounter with the porter.

  “Are you alright?” Mr. Barrett asked, frowning. He was a full foot taller than Kate, and it was a little disorienting to have him stand over her and peer down at her, even if it was from concern. She sucked air into her lungs, trying to formulate a sentence.

  “I’m fine now,” she said shakily, forcing herself to smile. “I just felt so queer talking to the porter. That man was so...strange.” She looked up into Mr. Barrett’s---Jason’s---face, looking for something there to stem the rising tide of panic taking over her body. Her new husband’s face was sympathetic, but something else was under the surface: he looked almost guilty, as though it were his fault the porter had been so unnerving.

  “Let’s get on the road,” he said, gesturing toward a mint green carriage waiting for them on the other side of the platform. Kate hadn’t noticed it before. “I’ll explain there…and I hope you won’t be terribly sore with me.”

  What? Kate started to ask what he meant, but then Mr. Barrett stooped and picked up her heavy trunk and duffel with one hand. It was surprising even given his size----together, her luggage weighed as much as she did. She didn’t know anyone who could lift her or any other fully grown woman with one hand, and his pace was as brisk and bouncy as a man without a burden. She trotted after him in her dress shoes, questions forming in her mind as the haze from earlier drained away. He was tall--- six and a half feet, easily---but he seemed somehow bigger. There was a powerful air about him, and she puzzled through it as he helped her into the carriage and threw her luggage in the back.

  “It’s a short ride to home, and a little ways past that is a town,” he said nervously as he climbed in after her. “I’m sorry there’s no depot in town, but it’s awfully small and sort of far from a big city.”

  “You don’t live in the main city?” Kate asked, startled. “But you’re a cowboy.”

  Mr. Barrett’s laugh was loud and rich, filling the carriage up and making Kate’s spine tingle curiously. “I got enough of the city when I was younger,” he said cheerily. “And once you have a job that requires you to perform for thousands of people twice a week, the noise and bustle becomes overrated.” He was sitting so close to her that if he were to lean down a few inches their faces would have been touching, and Kate smiled despite her reservations. “Besides, I think you’ll like living here. The wood is our back yard, and we even have a river a stone’s throw away. Wildflowers as far as the eye can see, a few animals, even some chickens. Got a cow that roams around, too.” Mr. Barrett’s---Jason’s---eyes were sparkling with excitement while he talked, but now the light faded. “I suppose I should tell you the rough of it.” His broad shoulders suddenly slumped, and he sat back in his seat. Kate turned her head toward him, alarmed by his sudden change in demeanor.

  “What is it?” Her voice was higher and more panicked than she intended to show. This was it; he was going to tell her his dark secret, and she would finally know what the fatal flaw was.

  “This town is…not normal.” Jason looked at his hands, which were clasped together in his lap. He pressed his lips together into a line, weighing his words before he chose them. “I noticed it when I first moved here, and when it started changing me, too, I found out the whole truth.”

  Kate was holding her breath without realizing it, and now she exhaled. Changing him? How?

  “There’s plenty of things we can’t explain, I know you know that,” he continued. Kate thought he was referring to swapping stories about ghosts; what else could he mean. “But there are some things that you can explain, but no one would believe you if you did.” Jason raised his eyes, and Kate felt a chill pass through them her body at the desperation there. “But you felt what that porter was doing to you, so I know you’ll believe me.”

  Kate felt a bubble of hysteria rising in her chest. “What are you talking about?” she asked a softly. “You mean, when I felt like he was hypnotizing me…” she waited for Jason to nod mutely. “That was real?”

  “Yes,” Jason said soberly. “I know this is going to sound crazy, but he was a vampire.” Jason paused and looked at Kate, hesitant to go on. “I’ve seen him bite people before. It doesn’t kill them, just makes them sick and stupid. “

  “I thought vampires were handsome,” Kate said, remembering his pale, round face with its uneven mustache. “That man looked like a toad.”

  Jason shook his head and patted Kate’s shoulder; the motion was more soothing than she thought it would be. “They can look like anyone. Anything can.”

  “Anything?”

  “Anything,” Jason repeated. “There aren’t really a lot of dangerous creatures, and as long as you never go past a certain point in the woods alone, you’ll be fine. But we have shapeshifters, vampires, elves, all sorts here.” His eyes were wide with fear, and he was watching Kate for a reaction.

  The carriage had stopped, but Kate couldn’t move. She was too busy pondering his words, trying to find the hole in the story. It sounded so outlandish that she could hardly be blamed for assuming the entire thing was a lie---except she had been there. She’d felt the porter’s odd power, the irresistible pull of his baffling charm. She remembered his words---he wanted to come through and visit sometime. She shuddered violently. If she had decided to go with him, would she a mindless shell now, or would it have taken
longer? What had she gotten herself into?

  “Katherine,” Jason said sharply. The sound of her full first name brought her out of her reverie suddenly, and she jumped so high she knocked her head against the top of the carriage.

  “I’m fine,” she grumbled, rubbing her fontanelle. “I’m just thinking.”

  “Well, I understand you need to think,” Jason said gently. “But I want you to know you shouldn’t worry.”

  Kate laughed bitterly. “There are vampires and werewolves in this town, but I shouldn’t worry.” Tears flooded her eyes, both from the pain and the sudden burst of emotion. “I have no family, no friends, but my new husband says he can protect me from the paranormal, so I shouldn’t worry!”

  “No, you shouldn’t.” Jason pushed open her carriage door and gestured outside. “Now come on in. I need to show you your new home. Your safe new home.”

  Katie hopped out, still grumbling and holding her head. Dust flew up and settled around her shoes as she stood in the twilight, silently fuming. Her mood softened as she gazed at the sprawling butter yellow house at the end of the long dirt driveway. It had wide bay windows, and the doors were thrown wide open to invite in the breeze. There were indeed wildflowers around the home as far as she could see, stretching into the forest to form a colorful carpet she knew she wouldn’t have trouble treading for fear of disturbing its beauty. She could into the house and through the back door, where there was a lazily running river about one hundred yards beyond the start of the wood. Katie felt herself moving toward the house as if in a trance, eager to sit down on a surface that wasn’t moving.