Nobodys Baby But Mine

by Susan Elizabelth Phillips

  Chapter Twelve

  A nnie called Jane shortly before eight o’clock on Monday morning and announced she wasn’t up to doing any gardening for a few days, and she didn’t want either of them bothering her until she asked. As far as she was concerned, she said, a pair of newlyweds should have something better to do anyway than pester an old lady to death.

  Jane smiled as she hung up the phone and returned to the oatmeal she was cooking. When she was an old lady, she hoped she had the guts to be as good at it as Annie.

  “Who was that?”

  She jumped and dropped her spoon as Cal, all bedroom-rumpled and gorgeous, wandered into the kitchen. He wore jeans and an unbuttoned flannel shirt. His hair was tousled, and he was barefoot.

  “Don’t sneak up on me like that!” She told herself the unwelcome thudding in her heart was caused by fright and not the sight of him so disheveled and outrageously handsome.

  “I wasn’t sneaking. I’m just a quiet walker.”

  “Well, stop it.”

  “You are one grouchy fud.”

  “Fud?”

  “P.H.D. Us dumb jocks call you guys fuds.”

  She snatched up a clean spoon and jabbed it back into the oatmeal. “Us fuds call you guys dumb jocks, which just goes to show how smart some of us fuds really are.”

  He chuckled. What was he doing here? He was usually gone by the time she came downstairs for breakfast. Even on the mornings last week when he’d stayed around to drive her to Annie’s, they hadn’t eaten together. He’d been in his study.

  “Who was on the phone?” he repeated.

  “Annie. She doesn’t want us bothering her today.”

  “Good.”

  He walked over to the pantry and came out with one of the half dozen boxes of Lucky Charms he kept there, along with potato chips, cookies, and candy bars. She watched from the stove as he poured a mountain of the multicolored cereal into a serving bowl, then walked over to the refrigerator, where he got the milk.

  “For a doctor’s son, you have an abysmal diet.”

  “When I’m on vacation, I get to eat what I like.” He grabbed a spoon, slung one leg over the counter stool, and sat with his knees splayed, bare heels hooked over the rungs.

  She tore her eyes away from those long, narrow feet only to shudder at the sight of him digging in. “I’m making plenty of oatmeal. Why don’t you eat some of it instead of that stuff?”

  “For your information, this isn’t stuff. It happens to be the culmination of years of scientific research.”

  “There’s a leprechaun on the box.”

  “Cute little guy.” He gestured toward her with his milky spoon. “You know what the best part is? The marshmallows.”

  “The marshmallows?”

  “Whoever thought of adding all those little marshmallows was one smart guy. I’ve got it written in my contract that the Stars have to keep the training table stocked with Lucky Charms just for me.”

  “This is fascinating. I’m talking with a man who graduated summa cum laude, and yet I could swear I’m in the presence of an idiot.”

  “The thing I wonder about is this… As good as Lucky Charms are, maybe there’s another cereal just waiting to be invented that’s even better.” He took another bite. “That’s what I’d do with myself if I had a brain as big as yours, Professor. Instead of messing around with that top quark, I’d come up with the best breakfast cereal in the world. Now, I know that’d be hard. They’ve already added chocolate and sprinkles and peanut butter, not to mention all these different-colored marshmallows, but answer me this—

  Has anybody thought about M&Ms? No, ma’am, they haven’t. Nobody’s been smart enough to figure out there’s a big market for M&Ms in breakfast cereal.”

  She absorbed this as she watched him eat. He sat there at the counter—bare feet, naked chest showing through his unbuttoned shirt, muscles rippling like liquid steel every time he moved. A gorgeous picture of dumbness. Except this gorgeous dummy was smart as a fox.

  She filled her bowl and carried it over to the counter along with a spoon. “Peanut or plain?”

  He thought it over. “It prob’ly wouldn’t pay to get too fancy right off. I’d go with plain.”

  “Wise decision.” She added her own milk and sat down next to him.

  He glanced over at her. “You’re really going to eat that?”

  “Of course I am. This is cereal as God intended.”

  He reached over without an invitation and scooped up a heaping spoonful that included all the brown sugar melting at the center.

  “Not bad.”

  “You took my brown sugar!”

  “But you know what’d really be good on it?”

  “Now let me think… M&Ms?”

  “You are one smart lady.” He picked up the Lucky Charms box and shook a few on top of her oatmeal. “This’ll give you the crunch that’s missing.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  “I do like those marshmallows.”

  “So you’ve said.” She pushed the Lucky Charms to the side, and took another bite. “You know, don’t you, cereal like that is made for children?”

  “Then I guess I’m a kid at heart.”

  The only thing about him that reminded her of a kid was his immature attitude toward women. Was that what had kept him out until three in the morning? Picking up younger women?

  She saw no need to keep herself in suspense any longer. “Where were you last night?”

  “Checking up on me?”

  “No. I wasn’t sleeping very well, and I heard you come in late, that’s all.”

  “Where I was doesn’t have anything to do with you.”

  “It does if you were with another woman.”

  “Is that what you think?” He let his gaze ramble down over her body in what she could only interpret as a gesture of psychological warfare. She was wearing a red T-shirt with Maxwell’s Equations printed on it, although the final equation disappeared into the waistband of her slacks where she’d tucked it in. His eyes lingered on her hips, which certainly weren’t as slim as the hips he was accustomed to seeing on his women. Still, she took heart from the fact that he didn’t look all that critical.

  “It’s crossed my mind.” She pushed away her oatmeal and studied him. “I just want to know what the rules are. We haven’t talked about this, and I think we should. Are we free to sleep with other people while we’re married or not?”

  His eyebrows shot up. “We? What’s this we?”

  She kept her expression carefully blank. “I beg your pardon? I’m not following you.”

  He shoved his hand through his hair. It had grown a bit longer in the last few weeks, and a spike stuck up on one side. “We’re married,” he said gruffly. “That’s it.”

  “That’s what?”

  “It!”

  “Uhmm.”

  “You’re a married woman, and a pregnant one, to boot, in case you forgot.”

  “And you’re a married man.” She paused. “In case you forgot.”

  “Exactly.”

  “So does that mean we’re going to mess around with other people while we’re married or we’re not?”

  “It means we’re not!”

  She concealed her relief as she rose from the stool. “Okay. No messing around, but we can carouse until all hours of the night with no explanation and no apologies, right?”

  She watched him mull that one over and wondered how he’d work around it. She wasn’t entirely surprised when he didn’t try. “I get to carouse. You don’t.”

  “I see.” She picked up her oatmeal bowl and carried it to the sink. She could feel him waiting for her to rip into him, and she knew him well enough to suspect he was relishing the challenge of defending a position he knew very well was indefensible. “Well, I suppose from your point of view that’s only logical.”

  “It is?”

  “Of course.” She gave him a silky smile. “How else can you possibly convince the world you’re still twe
nty-one?”

  * * *

  On Wednesday night she took her time dressing for the mysterious date she’d finally agreed to go on, despite her misgivings. She showered, powdered, and perfumed. Then she was ashamed of herself for placing so much importance on the occasion. But she’d had such a good day, it was hard to be annoyed with herself for long. Her work had gone well, and she was enjoying the fact that Cal seemed to be hanging around the house a lot more this week. Today he’d even made an excuse to accompany her on her walk, saying he was afraid she’d get so preoccupied solving some damn formula that she’d get lost.

  She didn’t like admitting how much she enjoyed being around him. She’d never met anyone who made her laugh as he did, while his razor-sharp mind kept her on her toes. It was ironic that the intelligence that made him so attractive to her was also the source of her greatest concern.

  She pushed the unhappy reminder of her baby’s future aside and thought about the battered red Ford Escort that had been delivered a few hours ago and hidden away behind an old shed in the far corner of the estate. Buying a used car by telephone might defy conventional wisdom, but she was satisfied with her purchase. True, the car wasn’t anything to look at with its dented door, broken front grill-work, and bad touch-up job, but it had fit comfortably into her budget, and all she needed was basic transportation to get her through the next few months until she returned to Chicago and the perfectly good Saturn waiting in her garage.

  She also didn’t intend to keep the car hidden, but she knew Cal was going to be furious, and she wanted to enjoy her evening before she broke the news to him that her imprisonment was at an end.

  She smiled as she finished dressing. She’d followed his instructions about wearing jeans, but instead of the halter top, she’d chosen a mulberry silk blouse and a pair of semi-trashy gold hoop earrings that were more appropriate for one of Cal’s baby dolls than a theoretical physicist. She couldn’t figure out why she liked them so much.

  She unbuttoned the top button of her silk blouse and watched it fall open to show the lacy top of her black bra. She studied herself, sighed, and rebuttoned the blouse. For now, trashy earrings were as far as she was prepared to go.

  Cal came out into the foyer as she descended the stairs. He wore an old Stars’ T-shirt that outlined all of those beautifully developed chest muscles and was tucked into a pair of jeans so tight, faded, and threadbare he might as well have been naked.

  His gaze traveled over her like a lazy stream on a hot summer day. She flushed, then stumbled on the step and had to grab for the rail.

  “Something wrong?” he inquired innocently.

  Jerk. He knew very well what was wrong. He was a walking, talking sexual fantasy. “Sorry. I was contemplating Seiberg-Witten theory. Quite tricky.”

  “I’ll bet.” His eyes swept over her in a way that made her feel her primping time hadn’t been wasted. “Couldn’t find a halter top, huh?”

  “They were all in the wash.”

  He smiled, and as she watched that unexpected dimple pop into the hard plane beneath his cheekbone, she wondered what she was doing with a man like this? He was so far out of her league, he might have come from another solar system.

  She realized she’d forgotten her jacket and turned on the stairs to go back and fetch it.

  “Runnin’ scared already?”

  “I need a jacket.”

  “Wear this.” He went to the closet and pulled out his gray zippered sweatshirt. She came down to meet him, and as he set it around her shoulders, his hands lingered there for a moment. She caught the heady scent of pine, soap, and something that was unmistakably Cal Bonner, an intoxicating hint of danger.

  The soft folds of the shirt settled over her hips. She glanced down at it and wished she were one of those women who looked cute in men’s clothes, but she suspected she merely looked pudgy. He didn’t appear to find anything wrong with her, however, so she took heart.

  He’d left the Jeep in the motor-court, and, as always, he opened the door for her. As he started the car and headed down the drive toward the highway, she realized she was nervous, and she wished he’d say something to break the tension, but he seemed content to drive.

  They passed through town, where the stores were closed for the night, along with the Petticoat Junction Cafe. Down one of the side streets, she saw a lighted building with a number of cars parked around it. She deduced that was the Mountaineer.

  They reached the edge of town and drove around Heartache Mountain. Just as she’d decided he was taking her to Annie’s, he slowed the Jeep and turned into a badly rutted gravel lane. The headlights picked out a ramshackle structure no bigger than a tollbooth sitting just beyond the heavy chain that stretched across the road.

  “Where are we?”

  “See for yourself.” He stopped the car and pulled a flashlight from under the seat. After he’d lowered the window, he shone the beam outside.

  She ducked her head and saw a starburst-shaped sign made up of broken lightbulbs, peeling purple paint, and the words, Pride of Carolina. “This is where you’re taking me for our date?”

  “You said you’d never gone on a drive-in date when you were a teenager. I’m making it up to you.”

  He grinned at her dumbfounded expression, flicked off the flashlight, and got out of the car to unfasten the chain that barred the road. When he returned, he drove forward, jarring her as the car hit the ruts.

  “My first date with a multimillionaire,” she grumbled, “and this is what I get.”

  “Don’t hurt my feelings and tell me you’ve already seen the movie.”

  She smiled and grabbed the door handle to keep from banging against it. Despite her grumbling, she wasn’t exactly displeased with the idea of being alone with him at this abandoned drive-in. It would benefit their baby, she told herself, if she and Cal got to know each other a little better.

  The Jeep’s headlights swept the deserted lot, which looked like an eerie science-fiction landscape with its concentric mounds of earth and row upon row of metal speaker poles. The car lurched as he headed toward the rear of the drive-in, and she grabbed the dashboard with one hand while she instinctively covered her abdomen with the other.

  He glanced over. “Waking the little guy up?”

  It was the first time he’d acknowledged her pregnancy with anything other than hostility. She felt as if a blossom had slowly unfurled inside her, and she smiled.

  He turned into the back row. “He can go back to sleep in a minute. That is, if he’s not too busy solving equations.”

  “You won’t think it’s so funny when she starts grouping her Cheerios in multiples of ten while the other kids are gumming away at them.”

  “I swear, you’re the most worryin’ woman I’ve ever met. You act like having a brain is the worst tragedy on earth. The boy’ll be fine. Just look at me. Having a brain didn’t bother me any.”

  “That’s because you keep yours under lock and key.”

  “Well, lock yours up for a while so we can enjoy the damn movie.”

  There was nothing much she could say to that, so she didn’t try.

  He moved to the center of the last row, just in front of a sagging chain-link fence, and pulled into one of the spaces so that the front wheels were elevated by the dirt mound. He picked up the speaker, brought it into the car, hung it on top of the steering wheel, then closed the window to shut out the chilly night air. She refrained from mentioning that the speaker had no cord.

  He turned off the headlights and the engine, plunging them into darkness relieved only by a sliver of quarter moon. She shifted her attention to the distant screen, which was bisected by a silvery shaft of moonlight. “We should have gotten here earlier so we could get better seats.”

  “The back row’s the best.”

  “Why is that?”

  “No little kids lookin’ through the windows. I like my privacy when I’m makin’ out.”

  She swallowed hard. “Did you bring me here to m
ake out?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Oh.”

  “You got a problem with that?” The moon slipped beneath a bank of clouds, leaving them in darkness. He flicked on the overhead light, and she saw the corner of his mouth kick up, making him the very picture of a self-satisfied man. He twisted toward the backseat, reached down, and came up with a large bag of grocery-store pop-corn.

  Her brain was flashing out warning signals at the exact speed of light, but she was in no mood to listen. She’d wanted to be courted, and he was doing that, even if he’d chosen a peculiar way to go about it. And no matter what he said, she didn’t think he still hated her because he smiled too much when they were together.

  He was also wily as a fox, she reminded herself, and he’d made no secret of the fact that he desired her. Since his moral code seemed to dictate fidelity, at least for the next few months, he either had to seduce her or go without. She wanted to believe he would be pursuing her even if they weren’t caught in this impossible situation, but she couldn’t quite make that leap of faith. Maybe she could strike a compromise.

  “I don’t have a problem with it as long as you understand that I won’t go all the way on a first date.”

  He opened the bag and took out a handful of popcorn. “I respect you for that. ’Course, maybe we should discuss exactly how you’re calculating when we had our first date. I seem to remember a surprise birthday—”

  “Cal…”

  He tossed the popcorn into his mouth. “There’s some beer and juice in a cooler in the backseat. See if you can reach over there and get it.”

  She turned around and saw a small Styrofoam cooler resting on the seat. She knelt and reached back for it, only to find herself being gently, but forcibly, upended. As she awkwardly scrambled to balance herself on the rear seat, she heard a chuckle that had a faintly diabolical sound to it.

  “Good idea, sweetheart. I’ll just come right back there with you.”

  Before she could react, he had let himself out the driver’s door, opened the back, and settled down next to her.

  “Jeez…” She straightened her blouse. “Fathers must have locked up their daughters when they saw you coming.”