“You aren’t havin’ another one already, are you?”
She blinked Jimmy Joe’s face into focus and found that he was frowning at her in alarm, and realized only then that she’d been gazing at him-with God only knew what sort of dopey expression on her face.
“No,” she said quickly, looking away. Swallowing hard. Telling herself, It’s just the circumstances. As soon as this is over he’ll be gone. And I’ll be glad, won’t I?
“That’s good.” His frown eased into something else-something she couldn’t read. Then he reached unexpectedly to touch her face, rubbing his thumb over the place between her brows where tension gathered. “We want to be ready for the next one so it doesn’t sneak up on us again. Get you relaxin’… breathin’ right.”
“Right,” Mirabella whispered. His eyes were so dark and warm…as bracing as coffee on a cold morning. She wanted to hold on to them, wrap herself around them and drink in their strength and certainty.
His smile blossomed slowly, almost without her noticing… until, like a finger of sunlight reaching into a dark corner, it touched something deep within her, and she felt stirrings like the fine tremblings of a moth’s wings-like the first tiny movements of the new life inside her.
“We’re gonna do okay, you and me,” he said in a husky voice, drawing a feathery line across her forehead with his fingertips like someone leaving stroke marks in velvet. “Don’t you worry now, y’hear? Everything’s gonna be just fine.”
She nodded, and her hand rose unguided to touch his where it cradled her cheek-touch, then catch and hold it there. She made what was for her an unprecedented sound, a laugh so saturated with emotion it sounded almost like a sob. Embarrassed by it, she closed her eyes…and felt the soft brush of his mouth on hers. Just that, there and then gone, so quickly she might have imagined it, if his next words hadn’t blown like a whisper of breath across her lips.
“You’d best go now…get outta those clothes while you can.”
Dazed and disoriented, she let him turn her and guide her into the sleeper.
“I got that out of your car for you,” he said, pointing to the navy blue overnighter that she’d somehow failed to notice sitting in the far corner of the bed compartment. “Don’t know what all you got in there-hope it’s somethin’ you can use. If you need anything of mine, just go on and help yourself.”
She murmured her thanks, and heard the curtain slide across the opening. A moment later she heard the crackle of radio static, and his growly CB drawl saying, “Mayday, Mayday, we got us an emergency here…anybody out there listenin’? Come on…”
My overnight bag. She reached for it and pulled it toward her, smiling mistily and shaking her head even though she knew she ought to be used to Jimmy Joe’s ways by now. But she wasn’t, and she didn’t think she would ever get over being a little bit awed by him-and grateful. At least she hoped not. People like him shouldn’t ever be taken for granted, she thought. Like roses and robins, and the Grand Canyon.
Mostly her overnight case held cosmetics and toiletries, her hair dryer and changes of underwear, none of which she was likely to be needing anytime soon. This trip, however, she had thrown in a nightgown, for convenience during one-night motel stops. It was her favorite, an enormous T-shirt with a picture of a glowering cat on the front and the words, I Don’t Do Mornings. Made for comfort rather than modesty or style, it did absolutely nothing to camouflage her swollen breasts and bulging belly. It wasn’t very warm, either, but it was long enough to cover her legs to mid-calf, and since she wasn’t going to be wearing any bottoms, that seemed a big plus. For warmth and modesty she could always wear one of Jimmy Joe’s shirts on top of it.
No bottoms… A little spasm of queasiness gripped her. I feel like a virgin preparing for my wedding night, she thought. And then the irony of that struck her and she had to sit down, holding her stomach and hiccuping with silent laughter.
“How you doin’ in there?” Jimmy Joe called from the front.
She jumped guiltily and began to shuck off clothing as fast as she could, managing to answer with a muffled, “Fine…just about done.”
After a pause, his voice rode in on a ripple of laughter. “Hey, I thought of a good water song.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah…how ‘bout ’The River’? Garth Brooks.”
Preoccupied with peeling off her wet pants, she had to confess she’d never heard of either the song or, “Garth…who?”
Which clearly appalled Jimmy Joe. “Come on, now. You don’t mean to tell me you never heard of Garth Brooks? One of the biggest country singers the last couple years. Songs’ve been at the tops of the charts-Where you been, woman?”
Mirabella sniffed. “Oh…well. I told you, I don’t listen to much country music.”
“Huh.” There was a little silence, then, on a note of curiosity, “What’ve you got against country music, anyway?”
“I don’t have anything against country music. I just consider it a contradiction in terms, is all.” But she was smiling, exhilarated by the prospect of a new battle. Arguing with Jimmy Joe was such fun.
He gave a loud disdainful snort and to her delight countered with, “Don’t know why that surprises me, comin’ from a woman who thinks Pinocchio was Walt Disney’s best movie.”
“What?” She swept back the curtain with a grand gesture. “Oh, not again. How can you even argue that? It’s common knowledge Pinocchio was Disney’s masterpiece. All you have to do is look at the artistry, the animation, the characterizations, the themes… What?” Jimmy Joe was solemnly shaking his head. “Okay, why not? Just give me one good reason.”
“One’s all I need,” he said, watching her with his soft, unreadable eyes, smiling a quirky half-embarrassed smile she’d never seen before. “And I’ll tell you what it is. It hasn’t got a romance in it.”
“What?” Mirabella blinked, then laughed. “Romance? What’s that got to do with anything?”
He shrugged, then got up and came around the seat. Disconcerted, she took a step backward. “It has to do with everything, that’s what. Don’t you know that? Pretty near every great story’s about love. You notice every other Disney movie has one? Cinderella has one, Snow White has one-even Bambi has one. Only Pinocchio doesn’t. Shoot, the only female in it’s that fairy.”
She sat on the edge of the bed and stared at him. “I can’t believe it. You’re a romantic.”
He accepted that with that same half-serious, half-embarrassed little smile. “And you’re not,” he said thoughtfully.
The sleeper felt crowded and too warm, and she didn’t know whether it was because of his presence in it, or the subject under discussion. “As far as I’m concerned,” she said tightly, “the whole business is overrated. I’ve never met anybody in love who was happy about it. It just seems to make everybody miserable.”
“You ever been in love?”
She just looked at him; opened her mouth to answer, then closed it again and gripped the edge of the mattress with both hands.
Another one. He’d been half expecting it. He was puzzled, though, and a little disappointed because now he didn’t know whether it had been the contraction coming on or the mention of love and romance-particutarly the question he’d asked-that had made her tense up like that.
If it had been the latter, that might explain a lot, he thought as he thumbed his stopwatch, glanced at it, then set it again. Say she’d got her heart broken, the baby’s father had run out on her-now that was a possibility that hadn’t even occurred to him, but it sure would explain her being where she was and the situation she was in. Not to mention the attitude.
Hard to imagine any man doing that, though. Especially to her. If she’d been his…
He squelched the thought, but it lingered in his voice as he coached her with a fierce kind of tenderness. “Don’t tense up on me, now. Breathe…”
Chapter 9
“How you doin’ back there?” “I’m droppin’ back a little, but I’ll make it
.”
I-40-New Mexico
“Why do you always say that?” she asked in a strained and testy voice. “You and Charly-always the same thing: Breathe. I am breathing, dammit. Otherwise I’d be dead. Oh-ow. That hurts.”
“It hurts,” Jimmy Joe scolded, “because you’re not breathin’ right. And you’re all tensed up. Look at you.” Although he couldn’t exactly blame her, considering the knot his own insides were in. “You gotta relax, now.”
He peeled one of her hands off the mattress and sat down beside her. Holding it with both of his, he began to delicately manipulate the small bones in her palm, gently bending each finger, lightly stroking along the tendons in the back of her hand as if he were fine-tuning a musical instrument or an intricate piece of machinery.
And all the while his jaw was clenched tight and his mind was screaming, Charlie? Who’s Charlie?
“Charlie-that your husband?” he casually asked as he watched his fingers work their way from the base of her palm to the incredibly fragile bones of her wrist. He told himself it was to get her mind chewing on something else besides the pain she was in.
But it was hard to overlook the way he felt when she replied, with a funny little snort of laughter, “She’s my coach.” He felt light-headed and sort of goofy, like he wanted to smile but knew he shouldn’t.
“Well, she’s right. You should listen to your coach.” He crooned the words with a perfectly straight face. But inside, his heart was singing like a set of jakes on a downhill grade. She. Not a husband. Not even a boyfriend. She. “Here, why don’t you lie over there, now. Let me rub your back…get that breathin’ goin’ right.”
She shook her head rapidly, emphatically. Her eyes were closed and he could see that she was in that other place now, the place he couldn’t go, concentrating hard on the breath she was taking. The hand he was holding had gone limp and boneless and the other appeared to have relaxed its grip on the edge of the mattress, so he kept his mouth shut and rode it out with her. Which was all he could do.
“It’s going,” she whispered on a long exhalation, slowly rocking herself back and forth. And finally, “There.” And she smiled and opened her eyes. “Gone.” She looked triumphant.
He noticed then the nightgown she was wearing, the outlines of her body clearly visible beneath the cartoon character on the thin T-shirt material-the fullness of her breasts, the pert little button of her turned-out navel. Her bare arms and her feet swathed in his thick white socks looked oddly defenseless, almost childlike.
“You warm enough?” he asked her, lightly brushing her arm with the backs of his fingers, frowning when her skin suddenly roughened with goose bumps. “Let me get you somethin’ to put on…” His voice thickened in his throat.
He loosened his hand from hers in a hurry, heart thumping, and got up to rummage through his closet. He found a plaid flannel shirt, one of his favorites, nice and soft with some blue and green in it that he thought would look nice with her hair.
“Here you go,” he muttered, the words crowding his chest, getting mixed up with air he seemed to have forgotten to exhale. “Put your arm in here.”
It smells like him, she thought as she pulled the shirt around her. She inhaled deeply, closing her eyes as she took in his scent, letting her mind drift, free to follow paths and currents of its own choosing. She saw-no, felt-a beautiful shimmering spring, its water warm and clear and life-giving; felt it surrounding her, bathing her in comfort and security. And then somehow the water wasn’t there anymore and instead it was Jimmy Joe, and for a moment it was he who held her, safe and comforted, in his arms.
“That’s good,” she heard him say softly. “You’re relaxin’ better already.”
She felt his fingers on her forehead, on the spot between her brows where the tension knot would be. And for some reason his touch made her face ache and her sinuses burn with an overpowering urge to cry. She let the breath out abruptly and pushed herself erect, compelled by a confusing combination of fear and birthing instincts to stand, to move, to flee.
“Let me out-I want to go to the bathroom,” she said, querulous and demanding, knowing she was being unreasonable. And not caring.
A chuckle came from close behind her, near enough to stir the hair behind her ear. “You’d freeze to death out there, dressed like that. Come on, now…settle back down here.”
His hands brushed her upper arms. She pulled away from him like a contrary child, insisting, “But I have to go.”
“No, you don’t. You just think you do. You just went not ten minutes ago, you know that?” His voice was gentle, patient. “Wait a little bit. Then if you want, I’ll wrap you up in a quilt and take you.”
“You’re not going to carry me!” Mirabella rounded on him, raw and furious. “I’ll walk, or I won’t go at all.”
“Suit yourself,” he said with a shrug. And to her added fury, she caught a fleeting glimpse of a dimple.
Suddenly she felt smothered, as if she was being buried beneath an avalanche of emotions. Confusing, conflicting, overwhelming emotions. “How am I supposed to do this?” she demanded, gesturing wildly. “I can’t do this!”
“What is it you can’t do?” Jimmy Joe’s eyes were soft, his voice tender. She wanted to hit him.
“This! I can’t have a baby here. There isn’t any room. I can’t even walk around. How am I supposed to have a baby if I can’t walk around?”
She hardly heard her own words, but it didn’t matter. They weren’t what she wanted to say anyway. She didn’t know the words for what she was feeling-frightened beyond imagination, utterly overwhelmed by what was happening to her; and not just to her body, but to her heart and soul. And the most incredible thing was that Jimmy Joe seemed to understand it all.
“Shh,” he said. And again, “Shh…hush, now.”
And she felt his arms come around her, wrapping her in his own special scent, his warmth and comfort, just as in her vision. She felt his heartbeat thumping against her cheek and his hand stroking her hair, and the trembling and fury inside her cleared away like storm clouds before a fresh spring wind. She felt her breathing calm and time itself to his…she felt warm again, and safe.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m sorry.”
“I know…I know. It’s okay.”
“I’m not really… This isn’t your fault. I know it isn’t. I’m just being…” She paused and gave a small, liquid laugh. “I suppose this is normal, isn’t it?”
His chuckle rumbled softly against her ear. “I imagine it is.”
“I guess you’ve been through all this.”
“How’s that?”
“With your wife.”
“Oh.” He coughed, and she felt him jerk slightly; his hands moved restlessly over her back. “Yeah… well. To tell you the truth…”
It was coming again. She could feel it. Feel it lurking like something dark and terrifying just beyond the reaches of her consciousness. It was coming, and there was nothing she could do to stop it.
“Jimmy Joe, it’s starting again.”
How calm her voice was. But he knew. He could tell by the way her muscles went rigid beneath his hands and her breathing suddenly seemed to drag as if even her lungs had stiffened.
“Don’t tense up on me now… Relax.” His voice growled in his throat. Calm… Stay calm, he thought. How you gonna keep her calm if you’re not?
He clicked his stopwatch, then cleared his throat and asked, “You want to lie down?”
She shook her head, too busy coping with the pain now to answer. He took a breath. Closed his eyes. “Okay.” He heard himself sigh. “Hold on to me now. Let it come…let it come.” And he felt her weight come against him and her breathing time itself to his, while he held her and rode it with her, all the way up the long, dark climb…and down the other side.
All the time he was thinking, Oh God, how am I gonna tell her? Here she was depending on him, counting on his knowledge and experience. How was he going to tell her he was as muc
h a novice at this as she was? God knows, he didn’t want to tell her; she was scared enough as it was. But he knew he had to, because sooner or later he was going to let her down. Better now, he figured, than later, when she was apt to be going to pieces anyway.
“It’s going,” she said on an exhalation, telling him what he already knew.
Then for a while neither of them spoke. He felt her skin quiver beneath his hands and her breath flow warm and easy against his throat, and he thought how much like the aftermath of sex it was; the sweet, fragile time when bodies grow quiet and whispers of secret fears, drowned out by the drums of passion, are heard from again.
Presently she stirred and said, “They’re coming faster, aren’t they?”
He nodded without looking at his watch. Faster, longer, harder. Just like it was supposed to. He wondered how much time they had-half of him wanting things to hold off as long as possible, preferably until help arrived; half wanting it to be over so she wouldn’t have to hurt anymore. He just wished they had some way of knowing. In a hospital, he knew, they would have ways of telling how far along she was. But he didn’t, and all he could do was stay with her and try to make her as comfortable as he knew how, and when the time came, pray to the Good Lord to help them both.
“You know what?” she said, straightening and pulling away from him, restless again. She pushed into the space between the seats, stared for a moment through the windshield, then turned and came back again. He could see the tension between her brows, like the pleats in a tiny accordion. “Is there anything to eat in here? I’m hungry. And thirsty. Really thirsty.”
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