Husband By Inheritance

Hard to do, considering he was standing out here in his undershorts. But not impossible.

He went to the bottom of the stairs, and with the cold authority that came so easily to him, he said, “Put your hands up where I can see them. Don’t turn around.”

The figure bolted upright and then froze.

“You heard me. Hands up.”

“I can’t.” Fear had made the voice high and girlish.

“You can’t?” he said, his voice cool and hard. “You’d better.”

“I might drop the baby.”

The voice was so scared that it was quivering. The baby?

Shane went up the steps two at a time, put his hand on intruder’s shoulder and spun him around.

Her.

Two hers, a full-grown her, and a baby her, both looking at him with the same saucer-huge blue eyes. Blue eyes tinged with a hint of brown.

He dropped his hand from her shoulder, ran it through the dampness of his hair, and swore.

When her foot connected with his shin, he was reminded, painfully that he had forgotten rule one: never let your guard down ever.

“Fire,” she screamed. “Fire.”

Without thinking he clamped his hand over her mouth before she managed to roust the whole neighborhood, something he was not exactly dressed for.

She was beautiful. Blond hair, very short and straight, poking out from under a Cubs ball cap and framing a face of utter loveliness—perfect skin, high cheekbones, a shapely nose. Her eyes were her dominating feature, though. Huge, the color partly a sea blue he had only seen once, a long time ago, off the coast of Kailua-Kona, in Hawaii, and partly brown. The combination was nothing short of astounding.

Those eyes were sparkling with unshed tears.

He swore again. She was shaking now, and the baby looked anxiously at her mother, screwed up her face and began to howl.

The noise seemed to reverberate in the fog, and he glanced uneasily at the neighbor’s houses again.

“Promise you won’t scream,” he said. “Or yell fire.” Fire. All right. She was beautiful, but obviously deranged.

She nodded.

He moved his hand fractionally, and she backed away from him until she could back away no more, her shoulder blades right up against his front door, her eyes wide, her arms folded protectively around the baby. It wasn’t a small baby. In fact, she was quite sturdy looking, possibly two.

“Stay away from us, you pervert.”

“Pervert?” he sputtered. “Pervert?”

“Hiding in the bushes in your undershorts waiting for a defenseless woman to come home. That’s called a pervert.”

“Home?” He stared at her. Her voice was shaking but her eyes were flashing. She probably weighed less than him by at least eighty pounds. And he knew she was going to take him on if he came one step closer.

She nodded, licked her lips nervously. Her eyes darted by him, looking for an escape.

He folded his arms over his chest. “This happens to be my home. I thought you were a prowler.”

Her mouth fell open, and then her eyes narrowed with suspicion.

He could see what she was thinking: that perverts were damnably clever. But he could also see the confusion in her face, her eyes searching for and finding the black iron house number over the wall-mounted porch light.

He was not sure he’d ever been quite so insulted. A pervert? Him? And she didn’t seem really deranged. Just exhausted. He could see dark crescents bruising the skin under those beautiful eyes.

She studied him a moment longer, and then he could see some finely held tension ease slightly.

“Oh, God,” she said. “I’ve made a mistake. I’m very tired. I—”

To his horror, little tears were slipping down her cheeks now, too. She wasn’t wearing any mascara, which he liked for some foolishly irrational reason. Her shoulders were shaking under a jacket that looked too thin to offer any kind of protection from the penetrating chill of the night.

The baby’s howls intensified when she saw the tears dribbling down her mother’s cheeks.

Striving for dignity, the woman pulled back her shoulders, lifted her chin. The gestures wrenched oddly at a heart that he would have sworn, only moments ago, had been cast in pure iron.

“Could you just direct me to a motel?”

“I could, but you won’t have any luck.” This did not seem to surprise her. “Why fire?”

“Pardon?”

“You yelled fire,” he reminded her. “Are perverts scared of it? Like holding a cross up to a vampire?”

She laughed nervously. “I read once that nobody listens when a woman calls for help. But they will if someone calls fire.”

She wasn’t from around here, he decided. Not even close. Survival tactics of a big city woman. Her voice was intriguing. It wasn’t sweet, like her face. It had a little raspy edge to it.

“Why aren’t there any motels? There were ‘No Vacancy’ signs on every motel for the last fifty miles it seemed.” She wiped impatiently at her eyes with the back of her sleeve, and then wiped the baby’s face, and kissed her on the nose.

A magical effect. The baby, an exact replica of her mother, except with blonder hair that was, wildly curly and unruly, ceased howling. The girl turned her head enough to look solemnly at him out of the corner of one eye, but apparently the glance failed to reassure, and she began to cry again, louder than before.

“There’s a major resort going up on the edge of town. We have contractors, carpenters, plumbers…you name it they’re here.”

He doubted there was a room to be had anywhere this night.

Unless you counted his empty house. Three bedrooms. One up, two down. The place had been a duplex until a few months ago when, with his landlord’s permission, he had turned the upstairs kitchen into a workroom.

Don’t, he told himself.

But he did, feeling slightly put out that he’d frightened her so badly, but even more put out that the baby was going to wake up the whole bloody neighborhood.

“Look, maybe you better come in for a minute.”