By the Tuesday after their confrontation on the cabin steps, with only six days left until she was scheduled to leave for New York, Starr knew she was going to have to put aside her broken heart and swallow her wounded pride and find a way to tell Beau that whether he wanted kids or not, he was going to be a dad.
In the cabin, long after she should have been in bed, she sat at the table under the hard light of the bulb that hung from a bare beam overhead and tried to decide how to give him the big news.
A phone call?
“Hi, Beau. By the way, I forgot to mention it the other night when I told you never to come near me again, but I’m having your baby. Just thought you should know…”
Yuck. Starr put her head in her hands. “Yuck, yuck, yuck…” She raked her hair back out of her eyes and sat up tall again.
No. Not a phone call. No matter how personally fed up a woman might be with a man, when she laid news like this on him, she pretty much had a duty to say it to his face.
But what to say?
“Simple,” she muttered. “Direct.” She had to just…get it out there. Bite the bullet. Say the words. “Beau,” she said to the rough plank walls of the cabin. “Beau, I’m pregnant….”
Oh, God. She hung her head again. There had to be a more graceful way to do it. Some way to kind of ease into it…
Yeah. There had to be at least fifty ways to tell a man you were having his baby.
Too bad she could only come up with one: Beau, I’m pregnant….
Starr threw back her head and groaned at that bare, glaring light bulb overhead.
Tomorrow, she vowed, blinking away the afterimages caused by the brightness. She would do it tomorrow—get it over with, somehow.
Gently, but firmly: Beau, I’m pregnant.
And then she’d have done her duty. He could step up to the plate and try to be some sort of father—or she would manage without him.
In the early morning, before she went into town, Starr stopped at the main house and enlisted Tess’s aid in baking a couple of blackberry pies.
“Pies can make a fine peace offering,” Tess suggested hopefully as she rolled out the dough.
Starr only grunted and sugared the berries.
That evening, Starr packed up the pies and drove over to Daniel’s.
Daniel answered her knock, a paper napkin hanging from the neck of his shirt. “Starr.” His broad face lit up. “Where have you been lately?”
It was a good question. One she had no intention of answering. “Oh!” she chirped, faking lightheartedness for all she was worth. “I caught you at supper….”
“We’re just finishing up.”
She held up the pies stacked in their Tupperware containers and announced brightly, “Perfect timing then, huh?” Well, if there was such a thing in a case like this.
He beamed all the wider. “You do know the way straight to a man’s heart.” Sure, she did. As long as the heart wasn’t Beau’s. “Come on in.”
I cannot do this, she thought as she stepped over the threshold and followed Daniel through the front room to the kitchen.
“Look who’s here,” Daniel announced when Beau looked up from the table.
It was not a good moment. His eyes met hers and narrowed. She could almost hear him thinking, What the hell are you doing here? And was the oven on? It seemed way too hot in there. “Hello, Starr.”
She swallowed. “Hi, Beau. I, um, brought the dessert.”
“Well,” he said, “great.” His tone communicated it was anything but. His gaze dropped—for an instant—to her mouth.
Never mind about the oven. The heat was inside her. It sizzled all through her—just from the way he was looking at her mouth.
She whirled away from him before she melted to a puddle of hopeless lust and longing right where she stood. Get a grip, she commanded herself. “I’ll put the coffee on, why don’t I?”
Daniel asked after Tess and gave a report on his own improving health as the coffee dripped. When the pot was finally full, Starr poured the men each a cup and cut them each a slice of pie.
Daniel frowned. “Aren’t you having any?”
Her stomach was so knotted up, the thought of eating made her want to gag. Still, she gave the old sweetheart a blinding smile. “Well, sure I will.”
She dished up a small piece and took an empty chair—directly across from Beau. He looked at her, a thousand questions in his eyes. She picked up her fork and concentrated on her plate. Even if she couldn’t eat the pie, looking at it kept her from having to meet that brooding, too-watchful blue gaze.
Daniel had two slices and yakked away as he gobbled them down. She was so nerved up over the job ahead, she hardly heard what the older man was saying until he asked her if something was bothering her.
Blinking, she glanced up from her careful study of her untouched pie. “Uh, no. I’m fine.”
Beau spoke up then. “You’re not eating your pie.” To her, the words sounded like some sort of accusation.
She wanted to pick up that slice of pie and throw it right in his face. But she really had to watch her temper. If she had a fit every time something he said rubbed her the wrong way, their baby would be all grown up before she ever managed to tell him she was having one.
“Well, you know, the truth is, I had a big dinner.” A flat-out lie. But only a little one. She pushed her plate away. Now or never, as they say. “Beau. I wonder if we could take a little stroll?”
“Good idea,” said Daniel before Beau bothered to answer. He tipped his balding head Beau’s way. “Be nice to him, now. He’s had a—”
“Daniel,” Beau cut him off.
“Ah,” said Daniel. “Forgive an old man.” He winked at Starr. “Talking out of turn. Gotta watch that.”
Beau pushed back his chair. “Let’s go, then.”
She followed him out. When they got down the front steps, she caught up with him and they strolled, side by side but careful not to touch, across the yard, out to that little stream north of the house.
They stood on the bank under a wind-stirred cottonwood, not far from the place they’d sat that day she first came to him, when he said they could see each other—if she’d give it a week’s thought first.
She stared out over the water and tried not to remember the happiness and promise she’d felt on that other day. How long ago was that—six, seven weeks? It seemed longer. It seemed years away….
She sent him a glance.
Those watchful eyes were waiting. “You shocked the hell out of me, showing up here.”
Irritation prickled through her. She ordered herself to ignore it. She simply had to get past getting mad at him for everything he said. Really, if she tried a little harder to be fair, she’d have to admit that his tone hadn’t been critical—just wary. Just…not getting it.
And why should he get it? She’d told him to stay away—and now here she was, showing up at his door, leading him out to walk by the creek.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
A smile kind of tugged at the corner of his mouth. “Sorry doesn’t cut it.” They were her own words of the other night, given back to her. With considerably better humor, she had to admit.
“Good point,” she admitted with a sigh.
“So…something going on?”
And there it was. The moment to say it: Beau, I’m pregnant. “Well, I just…”
“Yeah?”
She just…couldn’t quite do it. “Uh, let’s sit down.” With that easy long-boned male grace that always stole her breath, he dropped to the bank. She sat down beside him. “I…”
“Yeah?”
She cleared her throat. “Um…” Her mind went skittering away from the words. Instead of saying them, she asked, “What was that about, with Daniel?”
He studied her face for a long, too-quiet moment. Then he shrugged. “I got a call today, from a certain lawyer down in Rawlins….”
A call from a lawyer… “T.J.?” His rotten oldest brother had
been in prison so long, sometimes it seemed like he’d never been out.
Beau nodded. “He lost another appeal.” His mouth quirked in a wry smile. “Too bad for T.J.—but a good thing for every honest, upstanding citizen in the state of Wyoming.”
“So what happens now?”
He was shaking his head. “Forget T.J. for a minute. What are you doing here? I don’t get it. The other night you sent me away. I didn’t like it, but I gotta admit, I understood. Now, here you are, bringing on the berry pies, asking me to take a little walk with you. It’s pretty damn confusing, Starr.”
He was so right.
And she could not do it. She couldn’t tell him. Not today…
“Starr?”
“I just…well, now I’ve had some time to think about it, I guess I’m realizing it’s not very fair for me to, um, expect things of you that you warned me from the first weren’t going to be happening.” Surprisingly, as she fumbled over the words, she found there was actually some truth in them. “I keep thinking about six years ago, how it ended so ugly. I keep thinking how important you are, in my life, even if you won’t be, um, everything I wish you could be. I keep thinking that I’d like to do a better job of it, of you and me, this time. That I’d like to leave here a week from now with some kind of…oh, I don’t know. Some kind of peace and understanding between us.”
“You think that’s possible?” His voice was low. There was hope in it now—and the darkness of doubt, as well.
“Well, I’d sure like to give it a try.” Yes, she was thinking, warmth spreading through her. She really did want peace between them. Though he couldn’t give her the love she longed for, he had given her a baby. They were going to have to deal with that. If they couldn’t be a family, they should at least manage somehow to put the anger and hurt behind them.
She thought of Tess then, of the sadness in her eyes, of her brave smiles. Tess had lost her baby. But she would get on with her life. She would cherish what she did have: her husband, her children, the good life they had made. Tess was the kind of woman Starr longed to be.
So okay. Starr had lost something important, too—what might have been with Beau. But you couldn’t live your life looking back on might-have-beens. You had to take what you still had, make it work the best you could.
“We’ve got a few days left,” she said, accepting within herself that she would be on that plane to New York, after all, as she’d originally planned. “Why can’t we make the most of them?”
He was frowning. “Go back…the way we were?”
She almost said yes, but then she considered all that would mean. Maybe not. “I don’t know. Maybe that’s not possible. And maybe it’s not a good idea, anyway. The truth is, when you touch me, when you make love to me, I can’t help hoping for things that aren’t going to happen.”
He asked, sounding cautious, “Hands off, you mean?”
It was exactly what she meant. She wanted to come to some kind of peace with him before she left. She didn’t think she could do that if they kept stirring up the flames. “Yeah,” she confessed. “That’s pretty much what I was thinking. Is that…something you could do?”
He grunted. “Maybe. If I stayed drunk all the time.”
“No. I don’t think that would…” She saw the gleam in his eyes. “Ha ha. Very funny.”
He caught her hand. The familiar thrill shimmered through her as he pressed a kiss to the back of it.
She dared to ask, “Should I take that as a yes, then? We can have our last few days, in a hands-off kind of way?”
With clear reluctance, he let go of her fingers. “You’re a hell of a woman, Starr.”
“Does that mean yes—or no?”
“It means you knock me over. You blow me away. You always have.”
“Yes or no?”
He answered at last. “What you said—about not wanting it to end ugly like it did before, about us doing a better job this time of…letting each other go?”
Letting each other go. It sounded so sad. Still, she did feel hopeful. “Yeah?”
“I feel the same way.”
She gulped. “So…”
“So yeah, Starr. I want us to be okay with each other. If there’s some way I can keep you from hating me when you go, I’ll take it. I’ll take these last few days with you—and I’ll keep my hands off you if that’s how you want it.”
Chapter Thirteen
For the first time in over a week, Starr actually felt good about something. Okay, she hadn’t managed to lay the big news on him yet. But she would get to that. She would.
She had five days—well, four, since she knew she wouldn’t do it tonight. And now they were speaking again, now they were on friendly terms, it should be a lot easier. She’d find the right moment.
Eventually…
“I’m glad—that we’re going to give ourselves another chance to do this right.” It kind of shocked her that she actually meant it.
He nodded. “So am I.”
“So.” She gathered up her knees and rested her cheek on them. “What about T.J.? What happens to him now?”
Beau picked up a pebble from the yellowing grass. “Well, I don’t think he’s got his date with the needle yet.”
She touched his arm with a tentative hand. “More appeals, you mean?”
He looked down at where she touched him, then into her eyes. She saw the warning there: If it’s hands off, then don’t touch me. She pulled her hand away and he tossed the pebble into the stream. “Yeah. That’s what the lawyer said.” From the tree overhead, a jay scolded them. Beau looked at her again. “The lawyer asked me to go down there.”
She studied his face. Unreadable. “T.J. wants to see you?”
He shifted, stretching his long legs out, crossing them at the ankles. “Yeah. He asks to see me every now and then. God only knows why. I sure as hell don’t want to see him.”
“When will you go?”
He rested back on his elbows. “I didn’t say I’d go.”
“It doesn’t matter if you said it or not, I know you will. Whatever awful things he did, T.J.’s still your brother.”
That jay kept squawking. “Did you have to remind me?”
“When will you go?”
He uncrossed his legs. “Tomorrow morning. I can see my brother in the afternoon, visit the lawyer afterward and be home by eight or nine tomorrow night.”
A long drive, up and back. Lots of time to talk. It could be the perfect opportunity to say what needed saying—plus, well, he shouldn’t have to go down there alone. Someone should be there with him. Someone who cared for him….
“Is Daniel going with you?”
“He offered. But I’ll do it alone.”
“Why should you?”
“It’s just better that way, I think.”
“Better because…?”
He stared out across the narrow stream, toward the bank on the other side and the pasture beyond. “Hell. It’s not going to be a happy kind of trip. No reason I’ve got to drag Daniel along. Plus, he’s doing a lot better now. There’s plenty of work to do around here and he can keep after it. Just because I’m wasting a whole day on a trip I don’t want to make doesn’t mean he has to waste the day, too.”
“Would you…take me?”
He looked straight at her. “Bad idea.”
“No. Really. I want to go.”
He moved away an inch or two. “You can’t go in with me. Only family allowed in there—not that you’d want to go in.”
“I can wait in the car.”
“Starr. There’s no damn point.”
“Yeah, there is. It’s a long drive. You can use a little company on the way.” She slid over a fraction, closing the gap he had made between them. Her arm brushed his—but only once. She was careful not to let it happen again. “I promise to keep up a steady stream of meaningless chatter.” Except for the part about the baby, she silently amended, if the moment seems right and I can get up the nerve…
“I’ll bring a good book.”
“You have to work.”
“Jerry’s a flexible boss. It’s one of his best things.” She reached out—and again had to remind herself of the terms she’d just laid down. She let her hand drop to the grass. “Come on. Sometimes you have to do things you wish you didn’t. But there’s no law that says you’ve got to do them alone.”
He came to pick her up at daybreak, looking grim. The first thing he said when she opened the door to him was, “You know you don’t have to do this.”
She waved his objections away and suggested they take the Suburban. “Roomier,” she said with a cheerful smile. “And the ride is smoother. And I’ll even let you drive.”
He grumbled, but they did it her way. They rolled out of the yard as the sky bled to orange off toward town.
It was a much quieter ride than she’d intended. He really didn’t want to talk. She’d ask a question and he’d answer with a “Yeah,” or “Uh-uh” or a low grunt that could have meant just about anything.
Eventually she gave up on making casual conversation. They sped down the highway, the land getting flatter and drier as they went. Her idea that she might tell him about the baby seemed ridiculous now.
It was so not the time.
Still, she didn’t regret coming along. Once or twice he looked over at her, just a quick glance. She would smile at him and he’d turn his attention back to the road ahead.
“Thank you,” he said once, so low she almost didn’t hear the words.
“Anytime,” she replied, thinking that whether she told him today or not, it didn’t really matter. It was the right thing to come with him, the right thing to be there, at his side, for this.
And besides, she wasn’t completely giving up on telling him today. Maybe, if it felt right, she’d do it on the way home….
He wouldn’t let her go out to the South Facility with him. He said she didn’t need to be anywhere near that place. He let her off in town, at a coffee shop on Cedar Street. She could eat and read the book she’d brought—maybe look around town a little, check out the shops and the Territorial Prison, which had been shut down years ago and now was a big tourist attraction.
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