The Texan's Baby Bombshell (The Fortunes 0f Texas: Rambling Rose Book 6)

by ALLISON LEIGH,

  “As a matter of fact, I would not.”

  He killed a few minutes sipping the now-lukewarm coffee while he framed an answer. “It’s not all that complicated. Or that long of a story,” he warned. “I collected a city paycheck that was healthy enough to keep me from starving and I tended bar a few nights a week to save me from boredom.” The problem with rehashing the last decade was picking his way around the part she’d played in the decisions he’d made. “I told you about Gerald Robinson. Learning we were related.”

  “Yes.”

  “In the process, we learned we had a lot of other relations, too. The number of cousins would—” He shook his head and distilled it down. “It’s pretty astonishing. Anyway, last year, when Kane and Dad and I went to Robinson’s wedding, I got to talking with some of them—Callum Fortune in particular.”

  “Oh, I read about him!” Then her tone dimmed a little, obviously recognizing his surprise. “When I was, uh, using the computer in Utah. There was a thing on the municipal website about the hotel he’s trying to get approval to build.”

  “The Hotel Fortune. That’s just the latest project.” He switched lanes, accelerating past a slow-moving semi. Their rental car didn’t offer the height of luxury, but it did have an engine with a respectable amount of pickup. Long as he managed not to score a speeding ticket along the way, he intended to take advantage of it.

  “Kane’s been working on the plans for the inn, too, since we moved there a couple months ago. He tells me they’re finally making some progress. Rodrigo has also teamed up with Fortune Brothers Construction—that’s Callum and his brothers’ company that’ll be building the hotel. It’s Callum’s baby sisters—Ashley, Megan and Nicole—who own Provisions. I’ve heard talk that Nicole—she’s our sous-chef—will be heading over to the inn’s new restaurant as the executive chef. She’ll be working with a local woman who has a really loyal clientele they’re hoping will follow her.”

  “Ashley’s your cousin, too?”

  “I told you. There are lots of cousins. Can’t swing a cat in Texas without hitting one of them and particularly in Rambling Rose. My dad and their dad and Gerald didn’t know anything about each other, but they’ve all inherited the same knack for populating the earth. We’ve all got huge families.”

  “As big as yours? I remember you telling me there are six of you. And I remember Kane.”

  “How about the twins?”

  She hesitated. “No. Sorry, but I don’t—”

  “I think you only met them once,” he assured. “Brady and Brian. They were still in high school when you and I were toge—when we met. Josh was learning to drive and Arabella was—” he thought a moment “—fourteen.”

  “The only girl,” she murmured. “Driving all of her overprotective big brothers positively mad, no doubt.”

  He smiled wryly. “Something like that.”

  “And your parents? Your mom? I feel like she was a teacher or something.”

  “Not a teacher, but she did work at a school.”

  “They’re well?”

  “Mom’s good. Dad’s the same.”

  “Same as what?”

  He shook his head ruefully. “Doesn’t matter. Callum’s family is two bigger than ours. And Gerald’s—Well, let’s just say there are a lot of them from that particular uncle. Legitimate and otherwise from what I’ve heard.”

  “I can’t imagine what that’s like,” she murmured. “My parents were only children. I’m an only child.”

  Was Linus going to grow up as an only child, too? he wondered.

  Adam told himself that it didn’t matter. As long as Linus had a chance to grow up.

  He loosened his death grip on the steering wheel. “There were plenty of times growing up when I wished I was an only. Most of Callum’s brothers and sisters have landed in Rambling Rose. The only one there who isn’t involved that much with the development end of things is Stephanie. She works at the vet clinic.” He drummed the steering wheel with his thumb a few times. Hell. Putting it off wouldn’t keep Laurel from learning it soon enough and it would be better if it came from him. “She was Linus’s foster mom for a while.”

  Laurel’s silence was weighty. Too weighty to think she’d suddenly dozed off in the middle of their conversation.

  “Don’t know for sure,” he added, feeling like he was handling a live explosive, “but I believe she was hoping for a more permanent deal. When... After you—”

  “—abandoned him.” Her voice shook.

  “You left him at the pediatric center.” He flexed his fingers again.

  “Oh, that makes it all perfectly all right, then.”

  He ignored the facetiousness. “You left a note in his car seat. It was kind of cryptic.”

  “Meaning what?”

  He flexed his fingers around the wheel again. “The note said something about him belonging at Fortune’s Foundling Hospital.”

  “Foundling! Like an orphanage?”

  “Assume so. It used to stand where the pediatric center is now.”

  “That doctor talked about that on the news story. So there were Fortunes in Rambling Rose before now who were taking care of babies without a mother.”

  “You’re making me wish I hadn’t said anything.”

  She sighed heavily.

  So did he.

  They drove in silence again.

  He finished the lukewarm coffee. She tossed the empty cup in the back seat and replaced it with one of the water bottles she’d brought. She opened another for herself. “So you were bored in New York.” Her words were abrupt, as if the thick silence between them hadn’t occurred. “Decided Texas sounded more exciting?”

  “Something like that.”

  “And the restaurant fits the bill?”

  Not even remotely. “Provisions isn’t the worst gig I’ve ever had.”

  “Faint praise,” she murmured. “You haven’t said anything about brewing.”

  He gave a surprised jerk. “Brewing?”

  “Beer.”

  “I know what you meant.”

  She shifted and he could tell she was looking out the side window to hide her yawn. “On my birthday that time, up in the balloon, I remember you said engineering was the smart choice. Good field with lots of potential. But what you really wanted to do was open your own craft brewery. You said there was too much risk, though. More chance of failure than success.”

  His chest ached. “Anything else you remember?”

  He felt the weight of her gaze when she shifted again. “I guess you’re right,” she said instead of answering. “About it being a small world. You being in the right place at the right time to help my son.” Her plastic water bottle crinkled softly in her hand. “Who could have predicted that?”

  Truer words, he thought.

  “Climb in the back seat.” Aside from the occasional long-distance truck, there was no traffic to speak of. He wouldn’t even need to pull off to the side of the highway first. “You can stretch out and sleep.”

  “You’re not going to sleep. So neither am I.” The declaration was somewhat ruined by the yawn that followed.

  “Laurel, please. Just—”

  “Why did Dr. Granger say she’d refund your credit card?”

  It came out of the blue and he frowned at her. “What?”

  “In her office the day we left. She said she’d make sure the charges were refunded to your card.”

  He knew perfectly well what she was referring to. He just didn’t know how to answer.

  “You were the arrangement, weren’t you? You were going to pay the fees so that I could stay there. I know how much money that takes. Mrs. Grabinski told me what she has to pay for Mr. Grabinski.”

  He exhaled loudly. “Does it matter?”

  But she wasn’t finished with out-of-the blue ques
tions, it seemed. “Do you know what he looks like?”

  Linus. Of course she meant Linus.

  “Although I guess you wouldn’t have any reason to,” she answered before he could.

  “I saw him at the hospital,” he admitted. “Through a window.”

  “And?” She sounded almost breathless.

  “And he’s a baby.” He wasn’t the artist. Nor a man blessed with the gift of words. “He’s got a round little head and kind of a pointed chin. Not much hair. One day it’ll be the color of an oak barrel, but right now, it’s just...wisps of brown. He didn’t even really look sick. He had a blue blanket in one hand and was beating the hell out of the floor with the plastic toy in his other.”

  She undid her safety belt and started clambering over the seat. Her hair slid over his shoulder as she pressed a kiss to his cheek along the way. “Thank you,” she whispered.

  His cheek burned. “For what?”

  “Being you.”

  Then he heard rustling as she arranged herself in the back seat, followed by the distinctive click of a safety belt.

  The rearview mirror told him she was lying down. He figured it wouldn’t be long before she was sleeping. The silence that ensued seemed to confirm it.

  He lifted the water bottle again and drank. He’d stock up on more caffeine when they hit Albuquerque. He was going to need it. Caffeine and another packet of aspirin. Because his back was killing him again.

  “I don’t think it was Eric I was afraid of.”

  Her words were soft. Not at all asleep.

  “I think it’s just me,” she went on huskily. “I think I’m the one I’m afraid of.”

  He looked in the rearview mirror again. She was still lying out of his sight. “Why do you think that?”

  But no answer came.

  And he kept driving. The tires inexorably eating away the distance between them and the son she still didn’t know was his.

  Chapter Twelve

  It was the cessation of motion that woke her.

  Laurel’s eyes felt gritty when she blinked them open. The twisted safety belt was strangling her and she unfastened it and stiffly pushed herself up to a sitting position.

  She was alone in the car. And it was dawn, but only just.

  A gas pump sat outside her window. Out the other side, pink fingers of light were just creeping along the horizon. She felt around for her shoes, then remembered she’d kicked them off when she’d been sitting in the front seat with Adam.

  Adam.

  She rummaged through her canvas bag until she found her hairbrush and quickly restored some order. She still probably looked like she’d been put up wet, but given the limitations, it was the best she could do. She could see that while she’d slept, he’d gotten into more of their provisions. One bruised banana and only half a package of cookies remained.

  “Still love your Oreos, I see.” The memory of lying on a couch, her head on his lap while she sketched and he studied and demolished cookies was disturbingly bright in her mind.

  She grabbed her toothbrush and toothpaste and awkwardly climbed into the front seat again to push her bare feet into the tennis shoes before getting out of the car. The air was dry and cool enough to send chills dancing all over her.

  The gas station seemed to be located in the middle of nowhere.

  She had no way of knowing what state they were in, much less what town—if there even was a town—since the only thing in every direction were wide, flat plains.

  She assumed Adam was inside the small building on the other side of the lone pump and headed toward it. Gas stations always had a bathroom. Even ones on an empty road in the middle of nowhere.

  The dirt-streaked glass door let out a musical ping when she entered and Adam, standing in front of a gigantic coffee machine, glanced around. His five o’clock shadow had darkened even more. It would only take another day and he’d have a beard. His thick brown hair was rumpled over his forehead and the too-small shirt clung to very, very male muscle and sinew.

  Her skin suddenly felt one size too small and her cheeks felt five shades too hot.

  She held up her toothbrush, desperately trying to banish the alluringly graphic memory of him rising over her. Of his hands and his mouth—

  “Bathroom,” she squeaked.

  Adam jerked his head. “Through the door over there. You want anything to drink? We have another twenty-five miles before we reach Horseback Hollow. We’ll stop for breakfast there. Ernie’s been telling me there’s a good place to stop.”

  “That’s right. The Grill,” the clerk—Ernie—advised sagely from his position behind the register. “Place isn’t much to look at, but they slap down the best waffles and bacon this side of Vicker’s Corners.”

  “Can’t ignore such a rousing recommendation,” Adam said, sending her another look. “So?”

  She was grateful to her eternal soul that he didn’t know what was going on inside her head. She crossed her arms over her chest and shrugged. She’d do better with a cold shower than something to drink. Her nipples were so tight they hurt, and there was a hollow warmth deep inside her that she hadn’t experienced in...

  “Laurel?”

  She gulped. “O-orange juice?” Thankfully, her words didn’t sound as strangled as they felt.

  “Oh, yeah.” The clerk seemed to take it as a question. “I’ve got all kinds of juice. Far end of the cold case there.”

  “Great.” She didn’t dare look at Adam again. “I’ll just, ah, just, ah...be quick.” She bolted through the door he’d indicated.

  She slammed the door behind her and flipped the lock. The bathroom was unexpectedly clean, scrupulously so. The smell of disinfectant was so strong it was almost overpowering.

  She wished she could clean out her mind so thoroughly.

  She stood there, back against the door, her hands pressing hard against her aching breasts.

  The memories were so vivid. It could have been just yesterday. Or ten minutes ago. Or right now, this very moment.

  She lifted the back of her hand to her mouth, stifling the hard, hard breath she drew.

  The feel of him. Moving inside her. Filling her.

  Oh, the way he tasted her.

  Touched her.

  Drove her.

  There hadn’t been an inch of her body that he hadn’t explored. An inch of his that she hadn’t known.

  She wrenched away from the door, her toothbrush and toothpaste clattering in the sink as she slapped the water faucet. She barely had the presence of mind to yank off her sweater so she didn’t soak it right through with the water she threw over her face, trying to douse the memories that were flooding her mind. Filling her veins.

  Eventually, thankfully, she found some control again.

  Though she felt exhausted, like she’d just run a marathon.

  She used the toilet. Then back at the sink where her sleep-creased face looked back at her through the water running down the cracked mirror. She used way too many paper towels mopping up. Not just her face and arms, but the floor and the mirror and the sopping front of her thin camisole pajama top.

  She should have thought to bring in fresh clothes from her bag. But it was too late now.

  She brushed her teeth. Twice. And raked her hair into yet another braid that she had no way to fasten.

  Sunlight began slanting through the little window high up on the wall. She’d spent too much time in there. Adam would be wondering what was taking her so long.

  She couldn’t very well explain, either.

  Their relationship was in the past.

  Before different paths.

  Before life and everything else that had resulted in her leaving her own baby.

  Didn’t matter that—at the moment—what she and Adam had shared all those years ago felt exquisitely, excruciatingly al
ive.

  She blew out an unsteady breath and reached for her cardigan. The slant of light shined brightly over the scars on her wrist.

  Her vision pinpointed and her mind suddenly felt like it was exploding.

  She barely had time to reach the toilet before she retched. And retched. And retched.

  After, she sank down on the floor, feeling too weak to do anything else.

  She didn’t know how long she sat there before Adam came looking for her. Just as she’d known he would. Because that was the man he was.

  Concern was in his voice as he sharply rattled the locked knob. “Laurel. You in there?”

  He didn’t deserve any of this. He shouldn’t need to come looking for her. To rescue her. She was a grown woman.

  It still took everything she possessed to get herself off the floor. To her feet. Her legs felt like unraveling cotton. Her feet felt like blocks of wood.

  It took two tries to unlock the door and she pulled it open. “Where else would I be?” She squeezed toothpaste for the third time that morning onto her toothbrush and turned on the faucet again.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Toothbrush in mouth, she shook her head. Tears still managed to squeeze out of her closed eyes. She was a basket case. That was what was wrong. And if he had a lick of sense, he’d stay far away from her.

  She held her unraveling braid behind her neck and continued trying to brush the enamel right off her teeth.

  Adam finally muttered an oath and took the toothbrush out of her hand. “Laurel.”

  She leaned over, splashing water on her face all over again. It trickled down her cheeks, her neck, wetting her already damp camisole.

  And still the tears burned, but no more so than the realization still charring her mind.

  He grabbed her shoulders, forcing her to look at him. His eyebrows were nearly fused over his nose and lines creased his cheek where his dimple usually hid. He slid his hands around her wet face. “What’s wrong?”

  “She killed herself. My mother. I remember it now.” She could no more hold in the thick admission than she could stop her tears. She lifted her wrist between them. Her wrist that was scarred so similarly to her mother’s. “She tried the first time when I was in grade school. A-and the second time before I started college. She was so vain you’d think she’d have preferred pills. But it was always her wrists.”