Nobodys Baby But Mine

by Susan Elizabelth Phillips

  He postponed leaving until he had barely enough time to get to the airport. As the Jeep flew down the driveway, she smiled and hugged herself.

  Everything was going to be all right.

  * * *

  The best country western band in Telarosa, Texas, played a lively two-step, but Cal turned down invitations to dance from a Dallas Cowboy cheerleader and a knockout Austin socialite. He was a pretty good dancer, but tonight he wasn’t in the mood, and not just because he’d played a semilousy round of golf in the tournament that day. Depression had settled on him as thick and dark as mountain midnight.

  Part of the reason for his depression sidled up next to him, looking a lot more cheerful than a man who’d given up football should ever look. A blond-haired baby girl, who showed every sign of being a future mankiller, snuggled in the crook of his arm, occupying the same space all those game balls used to take up. As far as Cal could tell, the only times Wendy Susan Denton hadn’t been glued in her daddy’s arm were when Bobby Tom had been swinging a golf club or letting her mother nurse her.

  “Did Gracie show you the new addition we put on the house?” Bobby Tom Denton said. “With the baby and everything, we decided we wanted more room. Plus, ever since Gracie was elected mayor of Telarosa, she’s needed a home office.”

  “Gracie showed me, B.T.” Cal glanced around him, looking for an escape route, but he couldn’t find one. It occurred to him that having spent a few minutes alone with B.T.’s wife, Gracie Snow Denton, had been one of the few pleasures of this weekend. At the time, Bobby Tom had been charming sports’ reporters and carrying Wendy around, so Cal hadn’t been forced to look at that delicate wiggling bundle and see his own future.

  To his surprise, Cal liked Wendy’s mom a lot, even though Mayor Gracie wasn’t the type of woman anybody ever figured a legend like Bobby Tom would marry. He’d always hung around with gorgeous bombshells, while Gracie was pretty much a cute BB. She sure was nice, though. Straightforward and genuinely caring about people. Sort of like the Professor, although she didn’t have the Professor’s habit of fading out in the middle of a conversation to ponder some theory only she and a dozen other people on the planet could possibly understand.

  “Gracie and I sure had ourselves some fun designing the new addition on the house.” Bobby Tom grinned and pushed his Stetson back on his head. Cal decided Bobby Tom could give Ethan a few lessons when it came to being movie-star handsome, although B.T. had more character lines in his face than the reverend. Still, he was a good-looking son of a gun.

  “And did she tell you about the brick street I bought from that town in West Texas? Gracie found out they were tearing it up to put in asphalt, so I went over there and made a deal with them for it. Nothin’ like used brick for beauty. Be sure you take a look at the back of the house and see what we did with it.”

  Bobby Tom went on about antique brick and wide-plank flooring as if they were the most important things in the world, while the baby nestled blissfully in the crook of his arm sucking her fists and making goo-goo eyes at her adoring papa. Cal felt as if he were suffocating to death.

  Just two hours earlier, Cal had overheard a conversation the great wide receiver was having with Phoebe Calebow, the Stars’ owner, about breast-feeding! It seemed B.T. wasn’t sure Gracie was doing it right. He didn’t think she was taking it seriously enough. Bobby Tom, who’d never taken anything but football seriously, had acted as if breast-feeding a baby was the most important topic in the world!

  Even now, the memory made Cal start to sweat. All this time Cal had figured Bobby Tom was just putting on a front, pretending everything was wonderful in his life, but now he knew Bobby Tom believed it. He didn’t seem to realize anything was wrong. The fact that the greatest wide-out in the history of pro ball had turned into a man who was centering his life around a wife and a baby and wideplank flooring was horrifying! Never in a million years would Cal have thought that the legendary Bobby Tom Denton could have forgotten who he was, but that’s exactly what had happened.

  To his relief, Gracie came up and drew Bobby Tom away. Just before they walked off, Cal saw the look of utter contentment on his face as he gazed down at his wife, and it felt like a kick delivered to his very own stomach.

  He finished off his beer and tried to tell himself he’d never once looked at the Professor like that, but the thing was, he couldn’t be sure. The Professor’d been turning him inside out lately, and who knew what kind of goofy expression he had on his face when he was near her.

  If only she hadn’t told him she loved him, he might not feel so panicky. Why did she have to say those words? At first when she’d said them, he’d felt kind of good about it. There was something satisfying about winning the approval of a woman as smart and funny and sweet as the Professor. But that insanity had vanished when he’d hit Telarosa and run head-on into Bobby Tom Denton’s life after football.

  Bobby Tom might be happy with all this permanency crap, but Cal knew he couldn’t ever be. There was nothing waiting for him on the other side of playing ball, no charity foundation to run, no honest work he could care about, nothing that would let him hold up his head like a man should. And that, he admitted to himself, was the crux of it.

  How could a man be a man without honest work? Bobby Tom had the Denton Foundation, but Cal didn’t have B.T.’s talent for making money multiply. Instead, he pretty much let it sit around in a few accounts here and there and pick up interest. Cal didn’t have any worthy life waiting for him on the other side of the goal line. All the other side of the goal line held for him was exactly nothing.

  It also held Jane, and yesterday afternoon when he’d said good-bye to her, he’d known she was no longer thinking about the short term like he was. She was thinking about wide-plank flooring and monogrammed bath towels and where they should settle down when they were old. But he wasn’t even close to being ready for that, and he didn’t want her telling him she loved him! Next thing, she’d be asking him to look at paint chips and pick out wall-to-wall carpeting. Now that she’d said the words, she was going to expect him to do something about it, and he wasn’t ready for that. Not yet. Not when the only worthy work he knew how to do was throw a football. Not now when he was facing the toughest season of his life.

  While Cal was playing golf in Texas, Jane took long walks up the mountain and daydreamed about the future. She considered places they might live and ways she could rearrange her schedule so she could occasionally go on road trips with him. On Sunday afternoon she pulled the ugly rose metallic wallpaper from the walls of the breakfast nook and made a pot of homemade chicken noodle soup.

  When she awakened on Monday morning to the sound of the shower, she realized Cal had returned some time after she’d fallen asleep last night and was disappointed that he hadn’t slipped into bed with her. In the past few weeks she’d gotten into the habit of keeping him company while he shaved, but the bathroom door remained firmly shut, and it wasn’t until she made her way to the kitchen for breakfast that she finally met up with him.

  “Welcome home.” She spoke softly and waited for that moment he would take her in his arms. Instead, he muttered something unintelligible.

  “How was your golf game?” she asked.

  “Crap.”

  That explained his bad mood.

  He carried his cereal bowl over to the sink and splashed it full of water. As he turned, he stabbed one finger toward the bare walls of the breakfast nook where she’d stripped off the wallpaper. “I don’t like coming home and finding my house torn apart.”

  “You can’t have liked those awful roses.”

  “It doesn’t matter whether I liked them or not. You should have talked to me before you took it on yourself to start redecorating my house.”

  The tender lover she’d spent the weekend daydreaming about had disappeared, and uneasiness crept through her. She’d begun to think of this awful place as her house, too, but obviously he didn’t regard it the same way. She drew a deep breath and r
epressed her hurt as she struggled to speak reasonably. “I didn’t think you’d mind.”

  “Well, I do.”

  “All right. We can pick out some new paper. I’ll be happy to put it up for you.”

  A look of abject horror crossed his face. “I don’t pick out wallpaper, Professor! Not ever! And neither do you, so just leave it alone.” He snatched up his car keys from the counter.

  “You want to leave the wall like that?”

  “You bet I do.”

  She debated whether she was going to tell him to go to hell or cut him some slack. Despite her hurt, she decided on the later. She could always tell him to go to hell later. “I made some homemade chicken noodle soup. Will you be back in time for dinner?”

  “I don’t know. You’ll see me when you see me. Don’t try to tie me down, Professor. I won’t have it.” With that, he disappeared into the garage.

  She sat down on one of the kitchen chairs and told herself not to overdramatize what had just happened. He was jet-lagged, upset about performing badly in the golf tournament in front of his friends, and that had made him surly. There was no reason to believe his withdrawal had anything to do with what had happened between them the day he’d left. Despite this morning’s churlish display, Cal was a decent man. He wasn’t going to turn against her just because she’d taken off her clothes in broad daylight and told him she loved him.

  She made herself eat half a piece of toast while memories of all the reasons she’d been reluctant to let him see her naked came back to her. What if her fears had proved correct? What if she’d stopped being a challenge to him, and he was no longer interested in having her in his life? Two days ago, she’d been so certain he loved her, but now she wasn’t sure. About anything.

  She realized she was brooding and got up, but instead of going to work, she found herself wandering through the house. The telephone rang, two quick tones that indicated a call was coming in on Cal’s business line, which she never answered.

  As she passed the door of his study, the machine clicked on, and she heard a voice she remembered all too well. “Cal, it’s Brian. Look, I have to talk to you right away. While I was on vacation, I figured out how we can do this. Nothing like a white sand beach to unlock the brain cells; I’m just sorry it took so long. Anyway, I met with someone over the weekend to make sure it was possible, and it looks like we have a winner. But if we’re going to act on it, we should do it now.” He paused and his voice dropped. “I didn’t want to use your fax for obvious reasons, so I sent a report to you express mail on Saturday that explains everything. You should get it this morning. Call me as soon as you read it.” He chuckled. “Happy anniversary.”

  She remembered Cal’s attorney, Brian Delgado, all too well: greedy eyes, arrogant carriage, disdainful manner. Something about the call disturbed her, probably that gloating note she’d heard in his voice. What an unpleasant man.

  She glanced at her watch and saw that it was nine o’clock. She’d already wasted too much time this morning brooding, and she wasn’t going to add Brian Delgado’s call to her worry list. Returning to the kitchen, she poured herself a mug of coffee and carried it to her room, where she turned on her computer and logged in.

  The date flashed, and the hair on the back of her neck prickled. For a moment she didn’t understand why, but then she finally took in what she was seeing, and it came to her. May 5. She and Cal had been married two months ago today. Happy anniversary.

  She pressed her fingertips to her lips. Was it a coincidence? She remembered Delgado’s gloating. I didn’t want to use your fax for obvious reasons… What obvious reason? The fact that she might read this mysterious report before Cal saw it? She jumped up from her chair and went down to the study, where she sat behind the desk replaying the message and thinking.

  Shortly before ten, the FedEx carrier arrived. She signed for the package, then carried it into Cal’s study. Without a moment’s hesitation, she ripped it open.

  The report was several pages long and contained numerous typos, indicating that Delgado had probably prepared it himself. No wonder. Heartsick, she read every damning detail of Delgado’s proposal and tried to absorb the fact that all the time Cal had been making love to her, he’d also been plotting revenge.

  Over an hour passed before she could bring herself to go upstairs and pack. She called Kevin and asked him to come over. When he saw her packed suitcases, he immediately began to protest, but she refused to listen. Only after she threatened to carry the computer downstairs herself did he finally do as she wanted and load it into her car. Afterward, she made him leave, then she settled down to wait for Cal to come home. The old Jane would have slipped away, but the new one needed to face him down for the last time.

  Chapter Eighteen

  J ane hadn’t left!

  Cal spotted her through the sliding doors in the family room as she stood in the backyard looking up at Heartache Mountain. Muscles he hadn’t even realized were tense began to ease. She was still here.

  He’d been working out at the Y when Kevin had burst into the weight room with the news that his wife had packed up her computer and was getting ready to head back to Chicago. It had taken Kevin a couple of hours to track him down, and as Cal had sped home, still dressed in his sweat-soaked T-shirt and gray athletic shorts, he’d been terrified she might already have gone.

  He still didn’t understand why she wanted to do something so drastic. Granted, he’d been surly and rude this morning. He’d regretted it ever since, and he’d already made up his mind to get back in plenty of time to eat her homemade chicken noodle soup. But Jane wasn’t one to run from a fight. He could easily imagine her taking a cast-iron skillet to his head, but he couldn’t imagine her just packing up and leaving.

  Now she stood below him, all buttoned up and battened down, and it occurred to him that the only person he knew whose clothes were as neat as hers were his younger brother’s. She’d chosen one of those high-waisted cotton dresses to travel in, a creamy buttery color, with big tan buttons going all the way up the front. It fit her so loosely no one could tell she was pregnant, but she somehow still managed to look tidy and trim. The dress’s full skirt covered most of her legs, but not those slender little ankles or the narrow feet tucked in a pair of simple leather sandals.

  A tortoiseshell headband held her hair neatly back from her face. He watched the sunlight play in the golden strands and thought how pretty she looked. She was a classic, his wife, and as he watched her, he felt a jumble of emotions: tenderness and lust, confusion and resentment, anger and longing. Why did she have to go and get all temperamental on him now? One bad disposition was more than enough for any family, and that bad disposition belonged to him.

  But his disposition wasn’t the real problem. A couple of hours in the bedroom, and he could make her forget all about what a prick he’d been this morning, let alone any asinine ideas she had about going back to Chicago. No, the real problem lay deeper. Why did she have to tell him she loved him? Didn’t she understand that once those three words were spoken, nothing could ever be the same?

  If only she’d come into his life ten years earlier, before he’d had to deal with getting older and the fact that he couldn’t see anything but a blank space waiting for him after he stopped playing ball. It was easy for the Professor to think about settling down. She had worthwhile work to do that would keep her busy for the rest of her life. He didn’t, and now he couldn’t get past the feeling that his life was careening in a direction he wasn’t ready for it to take, a direction that might suit Bobby Tom Denton, but sure as hell wasn’t right for him.

  As he reached for the handle on the sliding glass door, he felt certain of only one thing. Jane had worked herself into a serious snit, and the best place to coax her out of it was under the sheets. But before he could get her there, he had some serious making up to do.

  “Hey, Professor.”

  Jane turned toward Cal’s voice and shaded her eyes with her hand. He was rumpled, swe
at-stained, and gorgeous as he walked out on the deck. Something caught in her throat, something large and painful that made her feel as if she were choking.

  He leaned on the rail and gave her a wolfish grin. “I’ve been working out, and I haven’t had time to shower, so unless you’re in the mood for some really raunchy sex, you’d better run upstairs right now and turn that water on for me.”

  She pushed her hands in the pockets of her dress and slowly mounted the wooden stairs. How could he behave like this when he had done something so unforgivable?

  “Brian Delgado called this morning.” She stepped onto the deck.

  “Uh-huh. What say you get right in the shower with me so you can scrub my back?”

  “Delgado sent you a report. I read it.”

  That finally got his attention, although he didn’t look particularly alarmed. “Since when did you get interested in reading about my contracts?”

  “The report’s about me.”

  His grin vanished. “Where is it?”

  “On your desk.” She looked him square in the eye and tried to swallow the bubble of pain that choked her voice. “You need to make a decision about me right away because you only have two days before the Preeze board of directors meets. Luckily, your attorney’s already done the initial work. He’s met with Jerry Miles, and the two of them have most of the sordid details sketched out. All you need to do is sign a check with lots of zeros.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Don’t you dare lie to me!” She balled her hands into fists. “You told Delgado to ruin me!”

  “I’m going to call him right now and straighten this out. It’s a misunderstanding.” He turned toward the sliding doors, but she moved forward before he could open them.

  “A misunderstanding?” She couldn’t hide her bitterness. “You give your attorney orders to destroy my career, and you call that a misunderstanding?”