The Baby Notion

Barrington? As in old man Horace T. Barrington, king of the bigtime swindlers? Holy hell!

“Ma’am, maybe you’d better start callin’ around for somewheres to stay tonight, else you might have to drive near ’bout to Dallas. Like I said, most folks have already gone, and there ain’t that many places to stay around New Hope.”

Priss swallowed hard. She was beginning to feel sick in her stomach, as if her body had been violated instead of her home. “Um, what about the bathroom? Couldn’t I just go inside long enough to use the bathroom?”

“I reckon you could use the one out there by the pool. Fire didn’t reach that far.”

With a doleful glance over her shoulder at what used to be her home, Priss picked her way through puddles of filthy water, coiled firehoses and a few pieces of splintered furniture someone had tossed off a balcony.

Evidently she wasn’t the only one who had sought refuge in the pool’s dressing room. The once-white plumbing was smeared with sooty handprints, and there wasn’t a clean towel to be found anywhere.

Nevertheless, several minutes later, after splashing her face and throat, she felt marginally better. At least she wasn’t shaking quite so hard. Taking a deep breath, she faced herself in the mirror and groaned. Her lipstick was gone. Whatever blush remained was buried under layers of soot and streaked mascara. She looked like a speckled raccoon after a three-day binge, and as for her hair…

She groaned again. Priss had never been vain. Her mother had seen to that, constantly harping on the fact that she must take after her father’s side of the family, because no one on her side had ever had freckles and such common, peasant-type bone structure.

Nora Barrington, tall, reed-slender, with black hair and skin the color of a magnolia petal, had come from one of those Virginia families that was reputed to be older than God.

Priss had been a disappointment to her father because she wasn’t a son, and to her mother because she wasn’t a beauty. After she’d graduated from Mary Washington, in a deliberate attempt to prove she didn’t care, she had patterned herself after the most outrageously feminine country singer she could think of.

It had driven them both wild.

Jake was waiting outside the pool house door when she emerged, her face scrubbed right down to the freckles and her own straw-colored lashes. She felt as if someone had carved out a great big hollow place in her stomach, and it was going to take more than a fresh layer of makeup to fix it.

Priss tried and almost succeeded in ignoring the man. What she wanted to do was to run and hide, only there was no place to hide. She could barricade herself inside the bathroom again, but that wouldn’t solve anything. The best she could do was summon up the attitude her mother used to call presence.

She tried. It was simply too much trouble. Besides, as much as she would like to find a scapegoat to pin all her troubles on, Jake Spencer wasn’t it.

Her shoulders slumped. Jake stepped forward. She stepped back. If he touched her right now, she was going to come apart, and she knew as well as she knew her own name that once she did, not all the king’s horses nor all the king’s men would be able to put her together again.

Which reminded her of something else. She’d have to call the hospital to see if one of the other volunteers could read to the children—she’d never be able to make it now.

“Well? What are you hanging around for?” she snapped. “Aren’t you through gawking?”

He was just standing there, in his worn jeans, his sweat-stained work shirt and his pearl-gray Stetson with the mascara-stained brim, looking calm and tough and arrogant all at the same time. It was more than any woman could take under the circumstances. “Don’t you have anything better to do?”

Gratuitous rudeness had never been her style, but at this point, Priss was beyond caring.

“Honey, are you sure you’re all right?”

Her chin quivered. She tightened her grubby fists and tried to hang on to her attitude. “No, dammit, I am not all right! My apartment is ruined, and I’m late for an appointment, and…and I forgot to get my hair-dryer!”

Jake eyed the jumble of parcels she’d parked on the poolside chaise longue. “What’s all that stuff?”

“What it is, is none of your business,” she retorted.

What it was, was her mother’s second-best set of flatware—the best set, a complete service for twenty-four, had been sold at the auction three years ago. With the fireman hovering over her every step of the way, she had only had time to dump her makeup drawer into a plastic bag, snatch up her hair rollers and a change of underwear, and grab her new Clint Black CD. She’d clean forgotten about her jewelry case and her hair-dryer.

“Oh, for pity’s sake, it’s just some odds and ends I needed,” she muttered. “I asked you what you were doing here.”

“Like I said,” he explained patiently, “I heard the call on the fire channel and thought you could use a hand.”

Priss could have used more than a hand, she could have used a place to stay. She could have used her walk-in closet full of clothes, and she definitely could have used her best friend and housekeeper, Rosalie, who had practically raised her.

What was Rosalie going to think when she got back and the apartment was such a mess? Oh, my mercy, she would have to call and warn her.

Drawing in a deep breath, she willed herself to remain calm, but it wasn’t easy. One look at those steady, silver-gray eyes and it was all she could do not to throw herself into Jake’s arms and cry her eyes out. Which didn’t make sense, because in the first place, she didn’t even know the man, and in the second place, she never cried.

Well…hardly at all. Naturally she’d cried when her mother had died, but except for that she hadn’t shed a tear since she was eight years old and had fallen out of a tree and broken her arm. She’d been showing off for the gardener’s son, who’d been ten at the time but who couldn’t climb a step stool.

Actually, there had been one other time when she’d cried, the year she’d gone off to college. Priss had been barely seventeen when she’d overheard Mike Russo telling a visiting cousin that messing around with Prissy Barrington wasn’t worth the risk, because her old man had put out the word that any guy who did would wind up singing in the soprano section of the choir.

Embarrassed to tears and mad as a hornet, she had drunk up half a bottle of her father’s most expensive French wine and cried until she got sick and threw up, but that was absolutely the last time she’d ever shed a tear.

“Look, I really appreciate your concern,” she said, once more in control of her voice. “I’m just fine, thanks. I don’t need anybody.” There were things she had to do, but first she had to get herself organized, and she could hardly do that under the glare of those steely gray eyes.

The young fireman came back, sloshing through puddles of dirty water on the turquoise pool surround. “Ma’am, I’m leaving now, but I just wanted you to know, the place’ll be guarded. You don’t have to worry none about looting or anything like that. Soon as things cool down some, they’ll start the inspection. In a few days we’ll know how long it’ll be before you can move back in.”

“A few days,” she wailed.

“I’ve got a phone in my truck,” Jake said. “Why don’t we start calling around? If the hotel’s full, we can try that new motel out near the airport.”

Up went the chin again. A motel? Barringtons didn’t stay in motels. “Thanks, but I’ll be staying with friends.” Priss shied away from the fact that the only friend she would even consider asking for help was Faith Harper, and she happened to know that Faith’s place would never fit the two of them.

“Fine, then we’ll call your friend and tell her you’re on your way. Honey, you don’t want to hang around here any longer. There’s a fresh batch of thunderheads making up over to the west.”

Priss glanced over her shoulder. Oh, fine. Just what she needed. More water on her leaky apartment.

“Besides, you’re starting to shake again. You look like hell, and—”

“Really, I can’t tell you how much better that makes me feel.” She glared at him, but her heart wasn’t in it. “Oh, all right. If you insist, I’ll let you help me carry this stuff out to my car.”

“Thanks,” Jake said, his voice deceptively soft. What he ought to do was throw the lady over his shoulder, haul her off to the nearest hotel and dump her in the lobby. Now that he could see past her butt, what he saw was the kind of female he’d always gone out of his way to avoid. Spoiled little rich girls who pranced around like they were shod in solid gold.

On the other hand, it didn’t take much to see that this spoiled little rich girl was barely hanging in there. Somewhat to his surprise, Jake admitted that in a little less than a couple of hours, what had started out as a simple, wholesome case of lust had run the gamut from amusement to dislike, and was rapidly turning into a grudging case of admiration.

Gathering up an armload of boxes and bags, he followed her down the shallow steps to the parking lot, which was almost empty except for a utility truck and a pumper. The fireman was right. She was getting a late start on finding herself another bunk.

Over in the far corner behind the utility truck, Jake spotted the peach-colored tail fin just before he saw her stop short and heard what sounded almost like a moan, but might have been thunder. Setting his load down on a raised flower bed, he hurried forward just as Priss dropped out of view. By the time he reached her, she was on her knees, stroking a crumpled fender that was wrapped halfway around her left rear tire. Someone had evidently been in one hell of a hurry to get out of there.

“I don’t believe it,” Priss wailed. “I just don’t believe it! Do you know, this has been absolutely the worst birthday of my entire life?”

Jake could commiserate. From what he’d seen so far, it sure hadn’t been cupcakes and lemonade. Stroking his chin and trying to look judicious, he walked around her car, surveying it from all angles. He had a feeling even touching up a scratch on one of these vintage babies was no small deal, but then, what did he know? His auto repair skills began and ended with baling wire and duct tape.

“Frame might not be bent, but I doubt if you can drive it like that, even if I could pry out the fender.”

“I don’t know who to call first, the hotel or the body shop.”

“I thought you were going to stay with friends.”