A Piece of Texas Trilogy

by Peggy Moreland

  And then there had been the long drive from Dallas to Lampasas. Most of it had been made in silence, as Addy was still too shell-shocked from the morning’s events to make any attempt at conversation. What faculties she had remaining were stripped from her completely when she got her first glimpse of his home. In spite of his assurance that morning that his home was large and more than adequate to provide her whatever privacy she deemed necessary, it had in no way prepared her for the palatial mansion that had greeted her.

  But her shock over his home’s size and his obvious wealth was nothing compared to what she’d experienced when Zadie had called her son Johnny Mack. She supposed Mack’s explanation made sense, but she still couldn’t believe she hadn’t noticed the facial features that Mack and Ty shared before Mack had pointed them out to her.

  The thought of Ty put the tension right back in her shoulders. Though Mack had told her that she needn’t worry about Ty, she couldn’t shake free from the thought that he might come back to haunt her in some way.

  For God’s sake, she thought, her worry returning with a vengeance. The two men were brothers! What would keep Ty from unexpectedly dropping by for a visit? The very thought of seeing him made her shudder in revulsion. She never wanted to lay eyes on Ty Bodean again. She might have once thought herself in love with him, but that was before she’d discovered that he was a liar and a thief.

  “I hope you’ve found your accommodations adequate.”

  She jumped at the sound of Mack’s voice, then gulped and rose slowly to face him, twisting her hands at her waist. “This isn’t going to work.”

  He peered at her in concern. “Is there a problem with your room? If so, there are several others to choose from.”

  She turned away to pace. “There’s nothing wrong with the room. It’s beautiful.”

  “Then what’s the problem?”

  She whirled to face him. “Have you forgotten that the father of my child is your brother?”

  “Half brother,” he corrected, then opened his hands. “What difference does that make?”

  “What if he comes here? He could cause trouble. Even try to take the baby away from me.”

  He took her by the arm and guided her back to her chair. “Ty can’t take the baby. Lenny is already preparing the adoption papers. Once they’re filed, Johnny will be legally mine.”

  “But he could contest the adoption, couldn’t he? Demand a blood test to prove that he’s the natural father?”

  With a sigh he released her arm and sank down onto the chair next to her. “I suppose he could, but why would he? He knew you were pregnant when he left you. Why would he want to claim the child, when your pregnancy was why he ran away in the first place?” He covered her hand with his. “But you’re worrying about nothing, Addy. Ty won’t come to Lampasas, much less to my house.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Oh, but I do,” he told her, and withdrew his hand. “Ty would do almost anything to avoid seeing me.”

  Frowning, she dragged the back of her hand across her stomach to ease the tingle his touch had left there. “You never talk to each other?”

  “Rarely. And when we do, it’s by phone, never in person.”

  He leaned back and stretched his legs out, his expression confident. “But even if he did come here, he’d never get past the front gate. He doesn’t know the security code, and no one who works for me would let him in without asking my permission first.” He angled his head to meet her gaze. “You’re safe here, Addy. Both you and the baby. I’d never allow harm to come to either one of you.”

  She searched his face, wanting to believe him but afraid to let down her guard. Ty had looked her square in the eye and told her lie, after lie, after lie. Mack could be lying to her, too. Not only about his ability to protect her from Ty, but about his reasons for marrying her, as well. For all she knew, he could be planning to take advantage of her the same as Ty had.

  But what could he possibly want from her? she asked herself honestly. Mack had no reason to steal from her, as Ty had. According to his banker, he was a wealthy man. And there was no way he’d want a physical relationship with her. For God’s sake, she’d just had a baby! He’d seen her at her absolute worst, had even stood by her side while she’d given birth. If that wasn’t a turnoff, she didn’t know what was.

  She supposed it was possible that he was telling the truth. The men he’d brought to the hospital to vouch for him had described him as a wealthy and generous man, and had sworn that he wasn’t crazy, as she had accused him of being. And he seemed to genuinely care about her son.

  “All right,” she said reluctantly, then held up a finger in warning. “But if Ty should come here, I don’t want him anywhere near me or my son. If you allow that to happen, I’ll leave. Understood?”

  “Fair enough.” Flattening his hands against his thighs, he pushed to his feet with a sigh. “I have some paperwork I need to take care of in my office before I turn in. If you want, you can watch TV in the den.”

  She shook her head. “No. I think I’ll go on to bed. It’s been a long day.”

  He dropped a hand on her shoulder as he passed her and gave it a squeeze. “Good night, Addy.”

  Eyes wide, she murmured, “’Night,” then listened to the sound of his footsteps, followed by the soft click of the door as it closed behind him. When she was sure she was alone, she tugged her shirt down over her shoulder and examined her skin, expecting to find a rash there, or at the very least a red mark. When she found neither, frowning, she dragged her shirt back into place, wondering what it was that made her skin tingle every time he touched her.

  Four

  Addy moaned, trying to block the voice that threatened her sleep.

  “Addy,” it persisted. “Wake up.”

  She slowly forced her eyes open and nearly jumped out of her skin when she found a man’s shadowed face inches from her own. Recognizing it as Mack’s, she went limp with relief. “You nearly scared the life out of me.”

  “Sorry, but the baby’s hungry.”

  Instantly awake, she dragged herself up to a sitting position and held out her arms. “God, I’m sorry,” she said guiltily. “I never heard him make so much as a peep.”

  He shifted the baby into her arms. “He didn’t wake me. I heard him stirring when I got up to get a drink of water. Figured I’d rock him for a while, so you could sleep a little longer.”

  Grateful for the darkness, she quickly adjusted her nightgown so that the baby could nurse. “I appreciate the thought, but you didn’t have to do that. I’m getting plenty of rest.”

  “I didn’t mind.”

  Instead of leaving as she’d thought he would, he sank down on the edge of the bed and tucked the blanket around a bare foot the baby had managed to kick free. “In fact, I enjoyed rocking him,” he added. “Brought back a few memories.”

  She heard the wistfulness in his voice and wondered about it. “Do you have children?”

  “A son. He died when he was six.”

  “Oh, Mack,” she said, her heart breaking for him at his loss. “I’m so sorry.”

  He lifted a shoulder. “It happened over twelve years ago. Time has a way of lessening the pain.”

  “Still…” She glanced down at her son, unable to imagine what it would do to her to lose him. As she considered that, it occurred to her that if Mack had a son, he probably had a wife, too.

  “You’re divorced?” she asked hesitantly.

  “Widowed. My wife and son died together. A car wreck,” he explained, saving her from asking.

  She stared at his shadowed face, unable to fathom the magnitude of that kind of loss. “That must have been very hard for you.”

  “You have no idea.”

  Because she didn’t, she turned her gaze to her son and said nothing.

  They sat in silence while the baby nursed, the soft suckling noises the infant made the only sound in the room.

  “Better change sides,” Mack warned. “You
don’t want him to fill his tummy before he nurses your other breast.”

  “Right,” she murmured, and placed a finger between her breast and the infant’s mouth to separate him from her nipple. She started to shift him to her shoulder to burp, but on impulse, offered him to Mack. “Do you want to burp him?”

  He sat up. “Yeah, I would.”

  With an ease that might’ve surprised her if she hadn’t just learned that he’d once had a son, he placed the baby over his shoulder and began lightly patting his back. It wasn’t until that moment that she realized Mack was wearing only a pair of jeans. Though she tried not to stare, she couldn’t help but notice the dark hair that swirled around his nipples before plunging in a shadowed line down his abdomen to disappear behind the waist of his jeans, the bulge of muscles in his arms, as he held the baby.

  The baby’s loud burp made her start.

  Chuckling, Mack said, “Good one,” and passed the infant to Addy.

  Amused, she guided the baby to her opposite breast. Though the darkness offered its own form of cover, she found it odd that she didn’t feel more self-conscious about nursing in front of Mack. She supposed his presence during the birth had stripped her of whatever shyness she would ordinarily have experienced.

  She lifted her head and looked at him curiously. “Do you consider this weird?”

  His forehead pleated in confusion. “What?”

  “This,” she said, and lifted her arms slightly to indicate the baby. “Me nursing in front of you.”

  He pressed a palm against the mattress, as if about to rise. “If you want me to go—”

  She laid a hand on his arm. “No. I was just thinking how odd it is to be doing this in front of a complete stranger.”

  “I’m hardly a stranger,” he said wryly, as he settled back on the side of the bed. “I’m your husband.”

  Hearing him refer to himself as such was a little unsettling. “That may be true,” she conceded, “but we’ve only known each other…what? Two days?”

  He glanced at his wrist watch. “Two and a half,” he corrected.

  She sputtered a laugh. “Right. And that half day makes all the difference in the world.”

  “I’ve known people longer than I have you and know less about them.”

  She raised a brow, intrigued. “Oh? And what do you know about me?”

  “You’re stubborn as a mule.”

  “Well, that’s certainly flattering,” she said dryly.

  Biting back a smile, he stretched out across the bed at her feet and braced himself up on an elbow. “I wasn’t finished.”

  “I’m not sure my ego can stand hearing any more.”

  “You’re brave, independent, resourceful.”

  She nodded smugly. “Now you’re talking.”

  “And you’re really good at hiding your feelings.”

  She looked at him in dismay. “Are you kidding? How can you say that, after all the fuss I kicked up about marrying you.”

  “I’m talking about the emotions you don’t let anyone see.”

  “Oh? And exactly what emotions have I been hiding?”

  “The ones concerning your mother. Her inattentiveness hurts you.”

  Embarrassed that he knew that about her, she averted her gaze but remained silent.

  “She doesn’t deserve you. You’re a much better daughter to her than she is a mother to you.”

  The compliment, though sounding sincere, irritated her. “You don’t know that. You’ve never even met her.”

  “I’ve talked to her. That was enough.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I disagree, but go on. Tell me what else you think you know about me.”

  “You’re disappointed in yourself for letting a man like Ty get you pregnant.”

  Her embarrassment morphed to anger in the blink of an eye. “You make it sound as if I tried to get pregnant. I insisted he use condoms. Obviously one of them was flawed.”

  He patted the air, as if to calm her. “I worded that poorly. Let me try again. You’re disappointed in yourself for becoming intimate with Ty. To be honest, I’m a bit surprised myself. You don’t seem at all his type.”

  Though he was right about her regrets concerning Ty, she wasn’t about to admit to her gullibility. “So what type am I?”

  “The type who wants the whole package. Love, marriage, family. The whole ball of wax.”

  She stared, wondering if she was truly that transparent or if Marjorie had done more blabbing than Addy was aware. “And how did you arrive at that conclusion?”

  “First, your house. The flowers along the walkway. The baskets of ferns on the porch. The bird feeder hanging from the tree out front.”

  “And from that you deduced that I’m Suzy Homemaker?” She tipped her head back and laughed. “You are so wrong.”

  “Am I?” he challenged. “Then why did you have the baby?”

  She sputtered a laugh. “There was a choice?”

  “Other single women in your situation have chosen to have abortions, rather than be saddled with a baby.”

  “So I’m pro-life. Shoot me.”

  “More like pro-family,” he argued. “You may not have intended to get pregnant, but you weren’t about to destroy your chance of having a family, even if it was missing one important element. The father.”

  Irritated that he was so close to the truth, she lifted the baby to her shoulder. “Okay, Freud. That’s enough psychoanalysis for one night. I want to go to sleep.”

  He stood and held out his arms. “I’ll put him to bed.”

  She resisted a moment, tempted to tell him that she was more than capable of putting her own child to bed, then decided why argue, when he had to pass through the nursery on the way to his room, anyway.

  After handing over Johnny, she slid down and pulled the covers to her chin. “Don’t forget to cover him up,” she called to him.

  “I know the drill.”

  In spite of her irritation with him, a smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. She could get used to this, she thought, as she nestled her cheek against the pillow.

  It was kind of nice having someone wait on her for a change…even if the someone who was doing the waiting was a bossy know-it-all.

  From the rocking chair, Addy watched Mary bustle from the bedroom to the nursery and back, putting away the baby’s things. After over a week in Mack’s house, she still couldn’t get used to people waiting on her.

  “Mary, really,” she scolded gently. “You don’t need to put those things away. It’s enough that you’re doing our laundry. Just leave the basket on the bed, and I’ll put everything away later.”

  “It’s no trouble,” Mary insisted. Dipping into the basket again, she pulled out a sleeper from the pile of clothes she’d laundered and held it up to admire. “Oh, and isn’t this just the sweetest thing,” she said, and couldn’t resist pressing the sleeper against her cheek. “Reminds of me when my kids were babies.”

  “How many children do you have?”

  “Four.”

  “Four?” Addy repeated, then glanced down at the baby placidly nursing at her breast and wondered how on earth a mother took care of that many children, when one seemed to her a full-time job. “How do you do it?”

  Chuckling, Mary plucked out a blanket to fold. “Didn’t you know? Mothers come equipped with an extra pair of hands.”

  Addy glanced down at her own and frowned. “I was cheated.”

  “How?”

  Addy looked up to find Mack standing in the doorway…and had to blink twice to make sure it was him. Dressed in scuffed boots, faded jeans and with his hair mussed from the wind, he looked younger and much less imposing than the stone-faced man who, less than a week before, had promised to love and cherish her until death did them part.

  She averted her gaze, still finding it hard to think of him as her husband.

  “Mary says that mothers are given an extra set of hands,” she explained. “I told her I was cheated, because I only have
one.”

  He gestured toward the baby. “Little thing like that? One set is all you need.” He started toward her. “Give him to me. You women have had him all morning. It’s my turn.”

  Daddy’s home! That wasn’t at all what he’d said, but those were the words that shot into Addy’s mind as he strode toward her, wiping his hands across the seat of his pants and wearing a grin that stretched from ear to ear.

  Rising, she passed him the baby, then stepped aside, letting him have the rocker.

  As Mack sat down, Johnny began to fuss, and Mack looked up at Addy in alarm. “Did I do something wrong?”

  “Probably needs burping.” She pulled the burp pad from her shoulder and draped it over Mack’s. “He just finished nursing.”

  He shifted the baby up high on his chest and began to rub his back. “Come on little guy,” he murmured, pressing a kiss to the top of the baby’s head. “Give ol’ Mack a big burp.”

  Johnny Mack complied almost instantly.

  Laughing, Mary picked up the empty laundry basket. “Looks like you haven’t lost your touch,” she called to Mack, as she left the room.

  Addy saw the shadow that passed over Mack’s eyes and knew Mary’s comment must have reminded him of his son. Hoping to distract him from what must be a sad memory, Addy sat down on the side of the bed opposite the rocker.

  “Mary is determined to spoil me. She did Johnny’s laundry this morning, then insisted on putting it all away.”

  Mack shifted the baby to cradle in his arms, but kept his gaze averted. “She’s crazy about kids. Always has been.”

  Addy racked her mind for something else to say. “Has she worked for you a long time?”

  “Fourteen years. Worked for my mother before that. I hired her on after Mom passed away.”