The Mercenary and the New Mom

by Merline Lovelace

  Laughing, Jack assured him that they’d both come out winners on that deal. He hung up, wondering how he was going to get through the rest of the morning.

  It was tough. Impatience to be away bit at him. As a result, Jack presided over the marathon, back-to-back meetings Pete had compressed into the next few hours with something less than his usual attention to detail. He barely waited until the door slammed behind the last group before he spun on his heel and headed for his private bathroom. He emerged mere moments later, tucking the tails of his white shirt into his jeans. Grabbing his straw Resistol, he made for the door.

  He spent the drive out to the diner thinking of Sabrina as he’d last seen her, wide-eyed and flushed, her mouth swollen from his kiss.

  Flushed and close to panting from the heat in the kitchen, Sabrina backed through the swinging door. Her knees cracked as she crouched to slide a heavy rack of clean mugs under the counter. Straightening, she arched her back to ease the ache the rack had caused and surveyed the crowded café.

  One-thirty, and the lunch crowd had barely started to thin. The cash register had been pinging steadily for the past two hours. They’d run out of Hank’s meat loaf special just past noon, and were now almost out of pie.

  Not bad for a Wednesday. Not bad at all.

  If only her nerves would stop bubbling and boiling like the fresh pot of chili Hank had just put on, she might take some satisfaction from the full register and her aching feet. She might not jump every time the front door opened. She might even stop expecting to see Jack Wentworth walk in.

  He’d made it plain enough at the Petroleum Club last night what he wanted from her. Hot, mindless sex.

  Okay. All right. Sabrina wanted the same thing. So bad her knees shook every time she remembered the feel of his mouth on hers. But during that sixteen-story plunge, she’d discovered that she also wanted more.

  Like his arms around her for more than just a night.

  Like a commitment he wasn’t ready to give, a commitment she’d wasn’t sure she wanted until that damned elevator ride.

  Oh, Lord. Why didn’t she just admit it? She wanted Jack Wentworth. With every breath she took. She’d gone to bed aching for him last night, and woken up to the same vicious ache. She’d driven to Stillwater in a daze, hadn’t taken a single note in class. All morning long, desire had sizzled just below the surface of her skin, hot, urgent, a woman’s need she no longer tried to deny. It rose up now, almost suffocating her with its heat.

  She leaned against the counter, hands flat on the gray Formica, her stomach clenching. The noisy sounds and lively scents filling the air faded. She saw Jack, only Jack, his palms planted on either side of her in that tiny elevator, his blue eyes locked with hers, his mouth—

  “Hey, Sabrina! Where’s that chocolate pie?”

  Reality came down with a thump.

  “It’s coming, it’s coming!”

  Hastily, she pulled an almost empty tin out of the refrigerated display case. She’d just picked up a spatula and started to slide it under the last wedge when the front door opened. The man who’d kept her tossing and turning for most of last night walked into the diner—tall, wide-shouldered and so darned handsome that the spatula slipped and her hand plunged deep into gooey chocolate.

  Jack strolled up to the counter, his blue eyes glinting as he took in her predicament. “Hello, Sabrina. I hope that’s not the last of the chocolate pie.”

  “Hey!” The burly-chested trucker seated at the counter growled out a protest. “That piece is spoken for.”

  Red-faced and more than a little dazed by the joy that danced in her chest, Sabrina wiped her gooey hand on the apron wrapped around her waist.

  “I’m sorry, Dave. Looks like I did a number on this piece. How about some carrot cake? I promise I won’t put my paw through that.”

  Her rueful smile raised a tide of red on the trucker’s neck. “Aw, hell. Sabrina, a little rearrangin’ don’t matter to me. Just scoop the remains onto a plate and shove ’em my way.”

  The fact that she did just that said volumes about her state of mind. While Dave attacked his mangled dessert, Sabrina tried to catch her breath, and failed. Still dazed, still breathless, she smiled at Jack.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I promised last night that I’d put you in touch with the owner of that old motel that’s going to be torn down, remember?”

  Silly question. She remembered everything about last night, including how close she’d come to melting into a puddle of need in this man’s arms.

  “I called him this morning, and it’s a good thing that I did. He’s already got a demolition crew lined up for tomorrow. We need to get out there this afternoon to beat the bulldozers.”

  “This afternoon!” Dismayed, Sabrina glanced around the busy diner. “I can’t this afternoon.”

  “Sure you can.” Peg strolled up, her dark eyes smiling. “I’ll take care of these boys. You go take care of yours.”

  Sabrina didn’t dispute the claim. With everyone in the diner observing the almost visible sparks that arced between her and Jack, she knew it was hopeless even to try. Heat stained her cheeks as she made a last check.

  “Are you sure you can manage?”

  “Honey, I was slinging plates and pouring Hank’s undrinkable coffee before you were born. Go on, get out of here.”

  “Thanks. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  Peg’s gaze slewed to Jack. “Take your time,” she drawled.

  Her face redder than ever, Sabrina pushed through the door to tell Hank about her expedition and snatch her purse from the desk in the little office at the rear of the diner. Wishing fervently she had a clean shirt to change into, she dragged a brush through her hair and sneaked a quick spritz of Rachel’s Christmas gift to her. White Diamonds and Hank’s meat loaf, she thought ruefully. If that combination didn’t get to a man, nothing would.

  It definitely got to Jack.

  They’d no sooner crossed the parking lot to the red Wentworth truck than he spun her around. His hands were rough and urgent. His mouth even more so.

  Sabrina’s pulse stopped dead, then took off like a thoroughbred just out of the chute. Her knees almost folding under her, she dug her fingers into Jack’s upper arms for balance, for support, for the sheer jolt that touching him gave her.

  The dusty, sun-heated parking lot was spinning when he dragged his head up. Sabrina held on, waiting for the universe to right itself. Jack recovered long before she did, although there was a ragged edge to the smile that started at a cornjr of his mouth and creased one tanned cheek.

  “Damn! I swore I wouldn’t do that.”

  “Why not?” she croaked.

  Groaning, he rested his forehead against hers. “Because I was afraid that once I started, even those bulldozers couldn’t stop me.”

  Sabrina started to tell him that she didn’t want him to stop, not now, not ever, but he was already pulling away from her.

  “Let’s get out to this motel,” he said with a savage note in his voice that thrilled her to the tips of her toes. “Then we have to talk.”

  Talk was good, she decided. Talk meant he had something on his mind other than meaningless sex. Now if only she could think of something, anything, else herself!

  Her heart knocking, she climbed into the red truck with the Wentworth Oil logo on the side panel. In that bright, sunlit moment, with the dust rising in lazy swirls and bees humming through the alfalfa fields around the diner, Sabrina couldn’t know that she and Jack would never have their promised talk...or that she’d barely survive the visit to the dilapidated ruin that band once provided only shelter and comfort.

  Chapter 9

  The accident happened so swiftly, so unexpectedly, that Sabrina hardly knew what hit her.

  Afterward, she would remember waiting impatiently while Jack dug a toolbox out of the truck. She’d also remember following the broken chunks of concrete that once formed a stretch of the original Route 66. She coul
d almost smell the rich aromas of hot, verdant earth, of old asphalt baking in the sun, of the wild honeysuckle that clung and curved and twisted in riotous glory along what was once a neat picket fence. And she would certainly recall Jack’s insistence that he go first, since he was wearing tough leather boots, which would provide more protection than her sneakers against any snakes they might disturb.

  Most of all, Sabrina would remember her first glimpse of the Sleep Well Motor Court. When the cluster of ramshackle structures came into view, she stopped in her tracks, enchanted.

  “Oh, Jack, look at that well!”

  The handcrafted, shingle-topped wishing well that must have given the place its name tipped drunkenly in the center of the weed-grown yard.

  “I bet every kid who stayed here begged a penny from their parents to toss into that little well.”

  Jack grinned. “No doubt that was what the management had in mind.”

  “No doubt,” Sabrina agreed, laughing. “But I’d like to think some of the folks who traveled the Mother Road got their wishes at the end of it.”

  Eagerly, she eyed the dozen or so cabins that hunkered in a semicircle behind the well. Shaded by pungent, orange-flowering mimosa trees, the one-room structures were now almost uniformly gray, although faint traces of the original white paint and green trim showed here and there. Most of the roofs had collapsed inward. Broken windows stared sightlessly at the sun. Despite the motor court’s sorry condition, Sabrina had no difficulty picturing the place as it once was.

  Fan-shaped iron chairs much like the one she lazed in during her breaks at the diner would have dotted the porches. Pictures cut from the glossy magazines of the day would have decorated the walls. She could almost see the chenille bedspreads, smell the damp and mildew in cold, dreary Januaries, hear the ancient plumbing groan when the toilets flushed.

  Families would have stopped here, she mused, crowding into a single cabin to save on expenses. Businessmen traveling America’s most famous highway no doubt parked their huge Hudsons or DeSotos in front of those green-painted doors. Lovers slipping away for a stolen night sank into sagging mattresses.

  Sabrina had a good idea of the laughter these old walls would have absorbed, the tired sighs, the tears, the muffled groans. She and Rachel had spent more nights than she could count in modern-day versions of this old motor court. Her father still called them home, when he didn’t just pull over and sleep in his truck cab.

  That impermanence was part of Sabrina’s past... but not her future, she reminded herself. Her dreams were built on the lure of the old road, but they were grounded in the red dirt of Oklahoma. Or more specifically, in the diner planted atop that red dirt.

  She eyed the crumbling ruins, eager to get on with her explorations. “The owner said we could salvage whatever we wanted, right?”

  “Right. And anything we can’t haul away today, he’ll have the demolition crew pull out before they raze the place tomorrow. He warned me that there isn’t much here except cobwebs and rusty pipes, though. This hunting expedition might be a total bust, Sabrina.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. Let’s find out.”

  She started toward the end unit. Jack caught her with a firm hand on her arm.

  “I’ll go first.”

  Seriously hoping that they didn’t encounter anything more annoying than the gnats that swarmed around her with each step, Sabrina followed him up the weed-clogged gravel drive to the cabin at the far end of the semicircle. She bit her lip nervously when he tested his weight on the rotting floorboards of the porch, then shouldered aside a door hanging by only one hinge.

  “Watch out for bees,” he warned as she stepped around him. “They like to hive in ruins like these.”

  She poked around cautiously. Aside from hanging strips of water-splotched flowered wallpaper and a rusted floor heater with broken elements, she found few traces of a bygone era.

  The roof of the next cabin had remained more or less intact, but the floorboards were so warped and rotted that Jack refused to trust them with his weight or hers.

  By the time they’d checked out the third and fourth cabins, Sabrina was beginning to doubt she’d find anything worth scavenging. To her delight, they hit pay dirt in the fifth. Under a fold of sagging wallboard, she spotted some iron light fixtures. Their etched glass shades were miraculously intact.

  “Jack, look! Wouldn’t those look perfect mounted on either side of the jukebox.”

  “You’ll have to have them rewired.”

  “No problem. I know an electrician who’ll take care of that in exchange for a free meal.”

  Under her anxious direction, Jack propped up the wall and wrestled the fixtures loose. Sabrina wrapped them in the newspaper they’d brought along for just that purpose and happily tucked them in a cardboard box.

  In the seventh cabin, Jack found some moldy, tattered Look magazines. She snatched them up in the fervent hope that some of the pages had survived the ravages of time. To her delight, she found colorful advertisements and fifties-era stories perfect for framing.

  In the tenth, they discovered the remains of a bedroom set. Rot had eaten away most of its blond veneer and art deco styling, but Sabrina was sure she could restore the dressing table to its original glory.

  “That’s perfect for the ladies’ room at the diner,” she declared. “I know where I can get a mirror to match!”

  Obligingly, Jack carted the piece out to the truck.

  But it was the office that yielded the real treasure. Only a little larger than the other structures, its wooden counter had long since crumbled into dust. Sunlight slanted through its collapsed roof. Vines crawled over the sills of the broken windows and all but covered the walls. Sabrina poked and peered and carefully pried up a fallen board or two. She found nothing to excite her until she turned, ready to leave. The glint of sunlight on something shiny caught her almost at the door. Squatting to see under the fallen roof, she spied the cracked glass of a framed advertisement for Phillips 66 gasoline.

  The poster was done in black and white. Time had given it a patina of yellow, but hadn’t diminished the sultry beauty of the platinum blonde with charcoaled eyes, pouty lips, and geometrically precise spit curls. She had turned her back on an art deco outline of Chicago and fixed her gaze firmly on the dazzling rainbow of California at the end of the road. The faded print underneath proclaimed that even the stars got their kicks on Route 66. And, if that faint scrawl across the bottom wasn’t dirt or a water stain, the print was signed!

  Sabrina gave a gasp of pure delight. Reaching up, she grabbed a fistful of Jack’s shirt and dragged him into a crouch beside her.

  “That’s Jean Harlow! I’m sure of it.” She swiveled on her heels. “Maybe she stayed here once and signed the poster for the owner.”

  The sparkling excitement on her face had Jack grinning. Despite the dirt, the gnats and the stink of rot, Sabrina was in heaven. He had to admit he wasn’t far from it himself. He couldn’t remember a ramble through the past that had given him as much pleasure as this one...or a woman who torched his senses like Sabrina did. Cobwebs coated her hair. A streak of dirt ran across one cheek. Her tank top and jeans were as dusty as his, and he was sure he’d never seen anything as vibrant, as vital, as this woman.

  “I have to have that print!”

  Laughing at her unabashed greed, he pushed off his heels. “Let me find something to shore up the roof first.”

  He’d taken only a step, maybe two, when Sabrina shrieked. Jack spun around just in time to see the rusted pipe she’d grasped to pull herself upright come clattering down. The rest of the sagging roof came with it.

  She flung up her arms to protect her head at the exact instant Jack launched himself through the falling debris. He took her down, covering her body with his as a crashing torrent of rotting timbers, crumbling plaster and tar paper buried them both.

  His muscles flinched at each blow. His nostrils filling with dust and fine, white granules of plaster, he dug his fists i
nto Sabrina’s hair, jerking her head into his shoulder as a chunk of ceiling crashed down mere inches away. Through the groan and shriek of tearing timbers he cursed himself viciously for ever mentioning the damned motor court to Sabrina, for not taking the precaution of having the ceilings shored up before he brought her here, for letting his woman walk right into a crumbling ruin.

  Finally, the raining debris slowed to a trickle, then to sporadic spills. Nose and throat filled with dust, he levered one shoulder against the crushing weight.

  “Sabrina!”

  Her eyes were closed, her face coated a deathly white. Jack’s gut twisted. Panic roughened his voice and his hands still fisted in her hair.

  “Sabrina, are you all right?”

  She lifted one lid, groaned, closed it again.

  “I... can’t... breathe.”

  Jack had been in some tight spots in his time. The summer after his junior year in college, he and the drilling crew he’d been working with had been caught by a racing, wind-whipped prairie fire. They’d plunged to the safety of a river through smoke and scorching heat scant inches ahead of the roaring flames.

  Once, during his stint with the SEABEEs, an underwater demolition charge had gone off in one of his men’s hands, killing the sailor and injuring two others. Face mask shattered and scuba tank pumping air bubbles into the dark, silent sea, Jack had dragged the wounded men to the surface.

  Years later, he’d stood beside Ali in the deserts of Qatar to fight off a vicious, bloody attack by El Jafir.

  But never, ever, in those desperate situations had Jack felt anything like the fear that riffled through him now. Throat tight, panic seeping from every one of his pores, he pushed himself up a few more inches.

  “Sabrina. Sweetheart. Tell me where you hurt.”

  “My...stomach.” Her eyes fluttered open. “Your knee...is...digging a hole in...it.

  The icy fear in Jack’s veins melted in a hot, sweet rush. Half laughing, half groaning, he shifted. The small movement caused another shower of plaster and an ominous creak right above his head. He froze, waited for the dust to settle, then tried again more cautiously.