LED ASTRAY

by Sandra Brown

  "He went upstairs with me. I…" She lowered her gaze and drew in a tremulous little breath. "I pleaded with him not to go. He wouldn't be swayed. Then I tried to lure him into bed. But he left me."

  "Then I don't understand—"

  "He came back awhile later and we … we made love."

  Several moments ticked by while neither of them spoke, each lost in his own thoughts. Jenny was remembering that burst of joy she had felt when the door opened and she had seen Hal's silhouette against the narrow strip of light. Cage was recalling the same thing, only, from his perspective. Jenny sitting up in bed, her face awash with tears.

  "That was the first time you ever…"

  "The first and only. I never believed that a woman could become pregnant from one time." She plucked at the paper napkin growing soggy beneath her sweating glass. "I was wrong."

  "Was it good for you, Jenny?" Her eyes flew up to meet his. "I mean, if you were a virgin," he improvised quickly, "didn't it hurt?"

  "A little, at first." She smiled in a secretive, Mona Lisa way that made Cage's heart constrict. Then she looked him square in the eye. "It was wonderful, Cage. The best thing that's ever happened to me. I've never felt that kind of close­ness to another human being. And no matter what happens, I'll never regret what I did that night."

  Now it was his turn to drop his gaze. He felt dangerously close to tears. Emotion churned in his throat. His loins were thick with it. He wanted to hold her against him, to feel her body soft and warm against his. He longed to confess that he understood exactly how she felt because it had been the same for him.

  "You must be about—"

  "Almost four months," she supplied.

  "And you haven't had any unpleasant symptoms?"

  "Now that I know I'm pregnant, I recognize them. I wasn't looking for them before. I've been tired and listless. Right after we came back from Monterico I lost some weight, but I've gained it back. My breasts—" She stopped midsentence, glancing up at him modestly.

  "Go on, Jenny," he coached softly. "Your breasts what?"

  "They, uh, they've been tender and tingling sort of, you know?"

  He grinned lopsidedly. "No. I don't know."

  She laughed. "How could you know?" It felt good to laugh, but she covered her mouth. "I can't believe I'm laughing about something this serious."

  "What else can you do? Besides, I think it's cause for cel­ebration, not tears. It's not every day a man brings in an oil well and learns he's going to be a … an uncle."

  She reached across the table for his hand and clasped it tightly. "Thank you for feeling that way, Cage. When I left the doctor's office, I was flabbergasted. I didn't know where to turn or where to go. I felt lost and alone."

  "You don't have to feel that way, Jenny. You can always come to me. For anything."

  "I appreciate your attitude about it."

  If only she knew his real attitude about it. He was incredibly overjoyed and incredibly sad. He was having a child, but no one would know it was his. Not even its mother.

  "What do you plan to do?"

  "I don't know."

  "Marry me, Jenny."

  That stunned her speechless. She stared at him blankly while she tried to get her heart to calm down and stop hopping around in her chest like a wild bird in a cage. She knew he was motivated by pity, possibly family loyalty, but out of sheer desperation to grasp the security his offer promised, she was tempted to say yes. That was ridiculous, of course. "I can't."

  "Why?"

  "There are a thousand reasons against it."

  "And one very good one for it."

  "Cage, I can't let you do that. Ruin your life for the sake of me and my child? Never. No, thank you."

  "Let me decide what would bring me ruination, please." He squeezed her hand. "Should we elope tonight or wait until tomorrow? I'll honeymoon anywhere you say. Except Mon­terico," he added with a grin.

  Her eyes were soft and shiny with tears. "You really are wonderful, you know that?"

  "That's what they tell me."

  "But I can't marry you, Cage."

  "Because of Hal?" His face lost all vestiges of humor.

  "No. Not solely. It has to do with you and me. We would be getting married for all the wrong reasons. Jenny Fletcher and Cage Hendren. What a joke."

  "Don't you like me anymore?" he asked, pouring all the charm at his command into his smile.

  She smiled with him. "You know it's not that. I like you very much."

  "You'd be amazed at how many married couples I know who can't stand each other. We'd have more going for us than most."

  "But a wife and child hardly fit your life-style."

  "I'll change my life-style."

  "I won't let you make that kind of sacrifice."

  He wanted to shake her and shout that he wouldn't be mak­ing any sacrifice. But now he had to give her room. She needed time to adjust to the idea of the baby before she could consider taking on a husband with a reputation for being a philanderer. This would only be a temporary postponement. Nothing in heaven or earth would keep him from marrying her, making her his forever, rearing his child in a home filled with love rather than censure.

  "So if you're going to break my heart and turn me down, what are you going to do?"

  "Can I still work for you?"

  He frowned at her. "You have to ask?"

  "Thank you, Cage," she murmured earnestly.

  She let herself relax against the back of the booth and un­consciously smoothed her hands down her abdomen, which was still flat. She's so damn tiny. Cage thought. Was it pos­sible that his child was growing inside her?

  She had been so small. He almost groaned with the memory of his intrusion into that smooth sheath. He had loved her tightness then, but now it worried him. What if she had dif­ficulty delivering the baby?

  His eyes wandered up to her breasts. They weren't notice­ably larger, but there was a ripe fullness to them. They were round and maternally plump and he wanted nothing more than to caress them softly and cover them with adoring kisses.

  "Your parents will have to know."

  Reluctantly Cage pulled his eyes away from her breasts and his mind from its fantasy. "Would you like me to tell them?"

  "No. That responsibility falls to me. I only wish I knew how they are going to take it."

  "How else can they take it? They will be delighted." It cost him tremendously to say it, but he added, "They'll have a living legacy of Hal."

  She fiddled with the wet napkin. By now it was almost shredded. "Maybe. Somehow I don't think it will be that sim­ple. They're very moral people, Cage. I don't have to tell you that. For them the boundaries of right and wrong are clearly defined. To their way of thinking, there are no gray areas of morality."

  "But my father has preached Christian charity all his adult life. God's grace and loving forgiveness have been the topics of many sermons." He covered her hand with his. "They won't condemn you, Jenny. I'm certain of that."

  She wished she could be as confident, but she smiled at him as though she were.

  Before they left he made her drink a chocolate malt, saying that it was more important than ever that she gain weight and keep up her strength. They toasted the oil well and the baby with their glasses.

  "I might have to share my teddy bear with the baby," she said as they walked outside, hands clasped and swinging be­tween them.

  "Put up a good fight," he said, smiling down at her. "For a long time, you'll be bigger than the baby." He walked her to her car and unlocked the door for her. "Go home and take a nap."

  "But I've only put in half a day," she objected.

  "And it's been a bitch. Rest this afternoon. I'll call and check on you tonight."

  "Sometimes between now and then, I'll have to break the news to Sarah and Bob."

  "They'll be as thrilled about the baby as I am."

  That was impossible. No one was as thrilled about the baby as he was. God, he was bursting at the seams to decl
are how happy he was, how much he loved her, how much he loved the child they had made.

  He was forced into silence, but he yielded to the temptation to hold Jenny. He drew her against him. She went into his arms willingly, and they held each other close in broad day­light, unaware of everything around them, prying eyes in­cluded.

  His heart beat steady and strong beneath her ear. She drew warmth from his body. Cage had become important to her, almost unnervingly so. But she desperately needed a friend and he hadn't failed her. So she clung to him for strength and support. And while she was at it, she enjoyed the blended fragrances of sun and wind and spicy after-shave, scents that belonged so uniquely to Cage.

  Cage cradled her against him, loving the feel of her lush breasts against his chest. He pressed his lips to the crown of her head for a prolonged kiss that really wasn't a kiss at all. It hurt like hell that he couldn't thank her for blessing him with a child. He couldn't lay his hands on her tummy and foolishly talk to the baby nestling inside. He couldn't fondle her breasts and tell her how he longed to see his baby suckling there. Worst of all, it hurt to have to let her go.

  But eventually he did.

  "Promise me you'll lie down as soon as you get home."

  "I promise."

  He tucked her into the front seat of her car and made her fasten the seat belt. "To protect you and baby from drivers like me," he said with a self-derisive smile.

  "Thanks for everything, Cage."

  He watched her drive away, wondering if she would thank him if she knew he was responsible for the predicament she now found herself in.

  * * *

  Cage arrived at the parsonage shortly after seven o'clock.

  After sending Jenny home, he had spent the remainder of the afternoon at the drilling site. Busy as he was, she was never off his mind. He was worried about her, her mental state, her physical condition, her anxiety over telling his parents about the baby.

  From the outside, the parsonage looked as it always did. Jenny's car was there, parked next to the one belonging to his parents. There were lights on in the kitchen and living room. Nonetheless, Cage had a gut instinct that something was wrong.

  He knocked on the front door and then pushed it open. "Hello," he called out. He went in without invitation and found Bob and Sarah sitting together in the living room.

  "Hello, Cage," his father said unenthusiastically. Sarah said nothing. She was twisting a handkerchief round and round her index finger.

  "Where's Jenny?"

  Bob was apparently finding it difficult to speak because he swallowed several times. When he did manage to make a sound, he spoke economically. "She left."

  Anger and fear began to coil inside Cage. "Left? What do you mean she left? Her car's here."

  Bob dragged his hand down his face, distorting his features. "She chose to leave without taking anything with her except her clothes."

  Cage turned on his heel and bounded up the stairs two at a time, the way he had done in his youth. It had been an in­fringement of house rules, but he had ignored them then and he did now.

  "Jenny?" She wasn't in her room. He lunged for the closet and yanked open the door. Except for a few garments, all the hangers were empty. In the drawers he frantically pulled from the bureaus, he found the same mute testament that she was gone.

  "Dammit!" he roared like a thwarted lion and went charg­ing down the stairs again. "What happened? What did you do? What did you say to her?" he demanded of his parents. "Did she tell you about the baby?"

  "Yes," Bob said. "We were appalled."

  "Appalled? Appalled! You found out Jenny is carrying your first grandchild and your only reaction is that you're ap­palled?!"

  "She claims it's Hal's baby."

  Had it been any man other than his father who maligned Jenny's integrity and virtue that way, Cage would have jerked him up by the shirt collar and beat him until he lived to regret ever having uttered so much as a breath of slander against her.

  As it was, Cage only made a low growling sound in his throat and took a threatening step forward. That, in fact, it wasn't Hal's child didn't matter at the moment. Jenny thought it was. She had thought she was telling them the absolute truth.

  "You doubt that?"

  "Certainly we doubt it," Sarah said, speaking for the first time. "Hal wouldn't have done anything so … so … so sinful. Especially not on the night before he left for Central America as she claims."

  "This may come as a surprise to you, Mother, but Hal was a man first and a missionary second."

  "Is that supposed to mean—"

  "It means that he had the same apparatus as every other man since Adam. The same drives. The same desires. It's only a wonder to me he waited so long to take Jenny to his bed." Hal never had taken Jenny to his bed, but Cage wasn't think­ing very reasonably at the moment.

  "Cage, for heaven's sake, shut up," Bob hissed, rising to face his oldest son. "How dare you speak to your mother in such crude terms."

  "All right," he said, slicing the air with his hands. "I don't give a damn what you think about me, but how could you have driven Jenny out at a time like this?"

  "We didn't drive her out. She made the decision to leave."

  "You must have said something to provoke her into taking such a drastic action. What was it?"

  "She expected us to believe that Hal had … had done that," Bob said. "Mother and I conceded that he might have. As you pointed out, your brother was a man. But if he did, she must have tempted him to do it beyond his endurance to resist."

  Frankly Cage didn't know how Hal had resisted her that night. He never could have. Not in a million years. Not if the jaws of Hell had opened up to welcome him as soon as it was over. "Whatever happened, it was done out of love." That much was the truth.

  "I believe that. Even so," Bob said, stubbornly shaking his head, "Hal wouldn't have distracted himself from his mission unless he was sorely tempted. And possibly, just possibly, he was still distracted, or feeling guilty about the sin he had com­mitted, or was otherwise in conflict with himself when he was in Monterico. Maybe that's why he was careless enough to get himself captured and killed."

  "My God," Cage breathed, falling back against the wall as though he had just sustained a stunning blow. He stared at his parents, wondering how two such self-righteous, narrow-minded, judgmental people could have spawned him. "You told Jenny that? You blamed her for Hal's death?"

  "She is to blame," Sarah said. "Hal's convictions were so steadfast, she must have seduced him. Can you imagine how betrayed we feel? We reared her as our own daughter. For her to turn on us like this … to have an illegitimate child… Oh, Lord, when I think of what this is going to do to Hal's memory. Everyone loved and admired him. This will destroy everything he stood for." Sarah clamped her lips into a thin white line and turned her head away.

  Cage was torn by indecision. They were laying the blame for Hal's death on Jenny, thinking she had seduced him. Hal's death couldn't be blamed on anyone but Hal, because he hadn't been distracted or guilty over a night of passion with Jenny. Cage could absolve her now by telling them that she had been with him instead. But if they condemned Jenny for sleeping with Hal, they would stone her in the streets for sleep­ing with him.

  Their attitude made him sick. He had reassured Jenny that they would be glad about the baby. Instead they had judged her and scorned her in a most unchristian way. He wanted to call them hypocrites to their faces, but he didn't have the time. And why waste the energy? As far as he was concerned, they were a lost cause. He had only one purpose in mind now. To find Jenny.

  "Where did she go?"

  "We don't know," Bob said in a tone that indicated he didn't care either. "She called a taxi."

  "I pity the two of you," Cage said before storming out.

  * * *

  "How long ago?"

  "Well, let's see." A gnarled finger traveled down the col­umn of departure times, then traced a line across to the listing of cities. "'Bout
thirty minutes ago. It was due to pull out at six-fifty, and as well as I recollect, there weren't no delays."

  "Does it make any stops?"

  The clerk at the bus depot checked the schedule again with a meticulous precision that was driving Cage crazy. Didn't the man know anything without having to consult the damn sched­ule?

  After talking with the owner of the town's only taxi service and learning that Jenny had been chauffeured from the par­sonage to the bus depot, Cage had driven there at top speed. A rapid survey of the dingy passenger lounge assured him she wasn't there. Only one ticket had been sold to a young woman matching Jenny's description. A one-way ticket to Dallas.

  "Nope. No stops. Not until Abilene, that is."

  "Which highway do they take?"

  The clerk told him and by the time he finished his pains­taking directions, Cage was already running toward the door. The idling Corvette was shoved into gear, but Cage cursed when he checked the gas gauge. He couldn't go forty miles on what was in the tank. Turning into the next service station he came to he filled the tank with gasoline as fast as the pump would permit.

  "You've only got a fifty-dollar bill?" the attendant whined. "Jeez, Cage, that's gonna take practically all the money out of my till."

  "Sorry. That's all I have and I'm in a hurry." Damn, be needed a cigarette. Why had he promised Jenny he'd give them up?

  "Heavy date?" The attendant winked lecherously. "Blonde or brunette tonight?"

  "As I said, I'm in—"

  "Yeah, a hurry, I know, I know," he said, winking again. "Is she the one running hot or are you? Well, let's see what we can do here." He peered down into the cash register's tray over the top of his eyeglasses. "There's a twenty. Nope, it's a ten. And here's a five."

  Had the whole damn town been drugged with a mind-stealing chemical? Everyone had been reduced to an imbecile. "Tell you what, Andy, you keep my change and I'll pick it up later."

  "Got the itch that bad, have ya?" he called to Cage's retreating back. "She must be somethin' special."

  "She is," Cage said as he slid into the Corvette. Seconds later darkness swallowed his taillights.