The Baby Notion

And Eddie, whoever he was, had run off to marry another woman. Jake figured the jerk must’ve been neutered before puberty, else he’d never have let this one get away.

He watched the Caddy roar off down Main Street and thought about what he’d learned. For all the good it was ever going to do him. Her name was Pricilla Jones. She had an expensive address. She was studying to be a landscaper. She liked stuffed animals, but she didn’t have kids.

And she was thinking of going to a damned sperm bank!

Leave her be, Jake told himself, knowing there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of that. The lady was just a mite weird, but it was a classy kind of weird. He had a feeling she might be one of those high-maintenance women. He’d had himself one of those once. It had taken him years to recover. Some lessons a man learned the hard way.

And some he never learned at all.

Feeling frustrated and slightly depressed, which was a lousy combination, he headed for the parking lot behind the hardware store where he’d left his truck. A few minutes later he was headed north, certain of only three things. Number one, that women were nuts—the haystack blonde a little more so than most.

Number two, a man was plumb out of his natural element in any store that called itself a boutique.

And number three—no matter how risky it was, sooner or later the lady in the tight jeans and the pink plastic sandals was going to wind up in his bed—bangles, mascara and all.

At age thirty-five, Jake Spencer knew himself pretty well, both shortcomings and “longcomings.” He had no illusions left, and damned few ideals. What he did have was a good, solid reputation as an honest horse broker, a modest spread a few miles north of New Hope, and a powerful allergy to rich, society types.

He had both a short-term goal and a long-term goal. His short-term goal concerned the haystack blonde, and he figured he’d made a pretty good beginning. They were now on speaking terms.

As for his long-term goal, that was easy. By the time he reached forty, which was how old his old man had been when Jake was sired, he was going to be richer, meaner and one hell of a lot tougher than the old bastard had ever been.

So far, he was right on schedule on all three counts.

It was the same man. Priss had seen him around town several times, but never close enough to get a real good look. He was the kind of man a woman couldn’t help but notice. Lean, lanky, with shoulders wide enough to fill a door frame and a way of walking that set loose all kinds of wicked ideas. Before she’d even met him, she’d had this tingly, excited feeling whenever she happened to see him.

Of course, he was only a wrangler. Her father would roll over in his grave if he knew she was even thinking thoughts like that about any man, much less a wrangler.

But mercy, it had certainly been a learning experience. She knew now why she’d never been able to get real steamed up over Eddie Turner, even though they’d gone together for months and she had let him kiss her with his mouth open and even unbutton her blouse.

Tripping over the wrangler’s feet had been the high point in an otherwise dismal birthday. At least this time, she thought with amusement, nobody could accuse her of trying to buy friends the way they had when she’d thrown that birthday barbecue in the park last year and invited the whole town. Nobody but Faith and her mother had come until Sue Ellen had brought a handful of men over from the café, which was real sweet of her, since Sue Ellen was in the food business herself.

Priss had ended up donating the cake and barbecue to the volunteer fire department, but evidently the barbecue had sat out too long in the hot July sun. Five of the firemen had gotten sick. The whole thing had been written up in the paper, with a picture of her wearing that wretched white dress she’d worn to the debutante ball in Dallas when she was eighteen.

She’d been embarrassed to show her face around town for weeks.

But even that wasn’t as bad as the party her mother had given her when she was twelve. Nora Barrington had invited six girls and six boys—sons and daughters of the town’s most prominent citizens. Four had shown up. The two girls had huddled together the whole time and whispered, ignoring Priss, while the boys had tossed food and paper hats into the swimming pool and made nasty remarks about her bosoms, which had just started to grow.

But the crowning blow had come when she’d overheard Rosalie, their housekeeper, telling the cook that the beautiful Cartier watch her parents had given her for her birthday had been selected, ordered and gift-wrapped by her mother’s social secretary. “Miz B., she didn’t even take the time to look at the thing,” the housekeeper had confided. “I’ll tell you the God’s honest truth, Ethel. That poor little young’un puts me in mind of them puppies folks are always dumpin’ out on the side of the road, hopin’ somebody’ll come along and adopt ’em. Lord help the poor baby the first time some no-good man comes along and offers her a pat on the head. She’ll be a-lickin’ his boots from then on.”

Furious and embarrassed, Priss had flushed her new watch down the toilet, which had ruined the watch and stopped up the plumbing. As punishment, she’d been left behind when her parents went to Europe three days later.

Not that they had ever taken her on any of their other trips, but this time they had promised.

Well, she was twenty-nine years old now, not twelve. She still had Rosalie, even if both her parents were gone. As she’d never really known them, she’d never really been able to mourn them. She was old enough now to stop wishing for the moon. She was who she was, and if people didn’t like her, that was just too bad, because she certainly tried her best to be friendly to everyone she ever met.

Including the man she’d nearly mowed down in Faith’s place. My mercy, Priss thought, he was really something. Even better up close than he was from a distance. And the way he had looked at her—as if she were a great big bowl of Heavenly Hash ice cream…

The sky had turned dark and threatening. Lightning flashed west of town. Priss tried to remember whether or not she’d left anything out on the balcony that rain would hurt, but she couldn’t concentrate. She was too busy thinking about the way Jake Spencer had made her feel. He’d been so handsome…

Well, no, he hadn’t. Not really. He was too hard, too weathered, to be truly handsome. He had smelled of horse, hay, hair tonic and sweat, and as Priss pulled over to the curb to run into the drugstore for some fingernail adhesive, she had to smile, wondering if he knew how much more appealing the smell of honest sweat was than the overpowering colognes some men wore.

She was in the drugstore almost fifteen minutes—Miss Ethel was looking for denture cleanser and Priss helped her compare prices. Finally back in the car and heading south on Oak Street, she switched on the radio, which was set to her favorite country music station. Clint Black was singing about his last broken heart and it occurred to her that the cowboy in the Baby Boutique sort of looked like an older, taller, tougher version of Clint Black. He had the same kind of crinkly-eyed smile.

She wondered if the cowboy could sing. Wondered, too, if he’d felt the same jolt of static electricity she had felt when he caught her. Mercy, it had been powerful, but it was probably due to the storm.

Still, she wouldn’t mind getting to know him better. Not that there was much chance of that. He looked like a wrangler, and wranglers usually hung out at Sue Ellen’s Diner or Little Joe’s Café, which was actually more of a saloon. Sue Ellen had better food, except for the chili, but Joe had a pool table in the back room.

Priss ate at Antonio’s, when she ate out at all, which meant she probably wouldn’t run into the wrangler again, because wranglers didn’t patronize Antonio’s.

Before heading home, Pnss stopped by the hospital to drop off the toys she’d purchased at Faith’s boutique, in case any of the children were asleep when she came back after supper to read bedtime stories. Toys and stories would probably be too much all at once. She had learned a lot about children in the year and a half she’d been volunteering in the children’s ward.

Next, she went by the supermarket to pick up some frozen dinners she could microwave while Rosalie was away visiting her sister.

Finally turning off onto Willow Creek Road, she sniffed the air and decided someone must be burning stumps. Probably taking advantage of the rain that was about to come pouring down, if the sky was anything to go by. The lightning and thunder was almost constant now. Wouldn’t you just know? Priss thought. It was the crowning touch for a birthday that had gone wrong from the moment she had lost a fingernail trying to get a new tube of toothpaste out of the box.

Feeling a little bit sad, a little bit let down, Priss told herself that her birthday wasn’t over yet. She still had this evening and the children. Maybe next year she’d be reading stories to her own baby.

Seeing a fire engine coming toward her, she pulled over, even though the siren wasn’t sounding. Stump burning. She’d been right, then. Probably got out of bounds and started a grass fire.

Jake was halfway home, his mind partly on the upcoming sale in Dallas, partly on the haystack blonde, when a dispatcher’s voice on the scanner snagged his attention.

“Fire out at Willow Creek Arms is under control.”

Willow Creek?

“New Hope, head on over to a house fire at the corner of Matlock and Guntrum. Billy, stay there with the pumper truck to wet down any hot spots. South Fork’s sending—”

There was a burst of static and a few more remarks, but Jake had stopped listening. Pulling a U-turn in the middle of a two-lane highway, he downshifted and roared back toward town without giving a second thought to Petemoss and the rest of the crew, who were waiting for the concrete, re-bar and forming plywood in the back of the truck to get started on the foundation of the barn extension.

Two (#ulink_d99bdd96-2cb6-5741-8c91-285b9d95c7b8)

Priss was going a few rounds with a fireman when Jake arrived on the scene. Hair in ruins, her hands black with soot, she was gesturing wildly while the tired-looking volunteer fireman shook his head. “Ma’am, I sure wish I could, but I just cain’t.”

Thunder rolled overhead. The air had an eerie greenish look. “But it’s safe,” she argued. “You said yourself the roof wasn’t going to fall in. Most of the damage to my apartment is smoke and water.”

“Ma’am, rules is rules, and I’ve already done bent ’em right bad.”

Jake noticed she was holding on to what looked like a small wooden chest, a leather case and several plastic bags bulging with various lumpy articles. “Where do you expect me to sleep? On the sidewalk?”

“I reck’n if I was you, I’d start callin’ round to family. That, or get me a room at the hotel before they’re all booked up. Most folks are already gone.”

“But I just got home! How was I to know—” It was then that she noticed Jake. “What are you doing here, did you get smoked out, too?”

Jake shook his head, surveying the ruin all around him. Structurally, it didn’t look too bad, but it was going to take considerable cleaning before it was fit to live in.

Even so, it was pretty swank. Definitely a cut or two above Shacktown. “Heard the fire call, came to see if I could help out.”

“Miz Barrington,” the young fireman said earnestly, “I just cain’t let you go back inside again. Goin’ in for valuables, medicine and important papers—that’s one thing, but I cain’t let you haul out everything—if I was to let you do it, everybody else would be wanting to do it, too. Chief Clancy would be all over me like flies on a roadkill.”