On the other hand, he didn’t think he’d ever seen anything more beautiful than Lisa sleeping, with her cheeks flushed, her lips pouty, her hand curved protectively over her unborn child.
Beautiful.
But that was beside the point. He had no business watching her sleep, no business thinking about some of the things he was missing in life. He didn’t need a wife of his own, or children. He had his family—brothers, sister, nephews.
He’d thought about a family of his own before. Had taken it as far as convincing himself he was in love with Marsha. He’d asked her to marry him.
She’d turned him down. What a kick in the teeth that had been. She said he didn’t love her enough. She wasn’t important enough to him.
The hell of it was, she’d been right. He’d liked her, cared about her, had a lot of affection for her, and in bed they’d been great together. But he knew that if he had looked in the mirror he would never have seen that goofy dopey look on his face that he’d seen on Ace’s every time big brother thought about Belinda.
Marsha had also said that with his past, he had no firsthand knowledge of what it took to be a good father, so how could he be one himself?
Jack tugged on a boot and resisted the urge to stomp his foot into it. No sense waking Lisa just because Marsha had hit the nail smack on the head.
And no sense watching Lisa sleep again, either. Somewhere out there a man was surely wondering where she was, when she was coming home. A man who loved her.
And if there was one thing Jack Wilder was not, it was a poacher.
Anyway, he didn’t figure he had it in him to love a woman the way a woman deserved to be loved. If he did, he figured he’d have tumbled by now, be married by now. But he didn’t, he hadn’t, and he wasn’t, so that was that. She would need a good father for her baby, too. Marsha had been right about him on that—he wasn’t good father material, wouldn’t know the first thing about how to raise a kid.
He tugged on his other boot, then thought of coffee. God, he wanted a cup.
The electricity was still off. No surprise there. Depending on the nature of this particular outage, it could come back on any minute, or, if ice had weighed down the power lines so much that they had snapped somewhere miles from town, the power could be off for days.
That being the case, he gave the automatic coffee-maker a sorrowful glance and pulled out the small dented coffeepot from his saddlebag. Thank God the stove in this house was gas.
By the time he had the coffee on, it was light outside. He bundled up in his coat and gloves, gritted his teeth, tugged his hat on tight and stepped out into the blizzard to see about his horse. By the time he got back, if he didn’t freeze solid and fall over and get buried in a snowdrift on the way, the coffee should be just about right.
Chapter Four
The sound of the back door closing woke her. Lisa sat up with a start. “Jack?”
He didn’t answer. But then, she’d known he wouldn’t. She knew, simply by the feel of the air in the house, that she was alone.
He’d left her.
“Don’t be a ninny.” She tugged her slippers on and struggled to her feet. He’d only gone out to check on his horse, to feed it, make sure it had water. He hadn’t left her here alone, hadn’t abandoned her.
And why, she wondered as she tugged on her robe and rushed into the kitchen, would she think he’d abandoned her? Was that a common fear of hers, being abandoned? What an unsettling thought. She was a grown woman, about to become a mother. She might even be some man’s wife, although she wore no wedding ring. She was an adult. She made her own life, didn’t she?
Yet the more she thought about it, the more certain she became that that sudden sharp fear of having been abandoned was an old fear, one she had known intimately.
Who had abandoned her? Her parents? Her baby’s father?
She told herself it was the draft of cold air in the kitchen that made her shudder, not the almost-memory that teased her before disappearing back into that black void that was her past.
“Stop it,” she told herself. “Stop looking for trouble. There’s enough right here and now to deal with.”
The top half of the back door held five diamond-shaped panes of glass. Lisa looked out to discover a screened porch, with waist-high stacks of firewood along two sides. The screen, all the way around, was packed with snow. She couldn’t see a thing through it.
She moved to the window over the sink, which looked out on the side yard, and caught a glimpse of a dark shape—Jack. He was only about twenty yards from the house, with snow nearly to his knees, and he was already disappearing into blowing blinding snow.
If it was her out there, she’d surely get lost. But she had to assume Jack knew where he was going. That he knew exactly where the barn was. That he wouldn’t get lost in the blizzard.
He was bound to be frozen by the time he got back. She turned toward the stove and saw the pot of coffee there on the front burner. Now that she’d seen it, the smell made her mouth water. The same coffee can she’d seen yesterday now sat on the counter beside the stove.
Decaf. Lisa’s knees weakened in gratitude. She’d never been worth a damn without a cup of coffee first thing in the morning. If it had been regular coffee she wouldn’t have been able to drink it. Caffeine was bad for the baby.
No wonder Belinda was her best friend.
Lisa paused. Without realizing it, she had just uncovered another piece of herself. She wasn’t worth a damn without her morning coffee—decaf or not.
With a wide smile—she’d remembered something about herself!—she rushed to the bathroom, then to the bedroom to get dressed. Jack was going to need something more substantial than a cup of coffee, but Lisa didn’t intend to get caught at the stove in her gown and robe.
A few minutes later she was dressed and stirring a pot of oatmeal on the stove when Jack stomped the snow off his boots out on the porch, then came in.
The utterly domestic scene wasn’t new to Jack. Countless times he had walked into a kitchen to find a woman at a stove. And like now, it had always been someone else’s woman. His stepmother. His brother’s wife. Aunt Mary. The housekeeper.
But whichever woman it had been at any time, she hadn’t been there cooking for him. She’d been cooking for the family and hands. For the ranch. It had never been personal.
But this time it felt personal. This woman made him want it to be personal. And he resented that wanting. His life was just fine the way it was. He didn’t need a woman in it, didn’t want one.
She turned, a big spoon in her hand, her cheeks flushed, her eyes bright. “I know how to cook oatmeal, and how to make toast in the broiler.”
She looked so pleased with herself Jack couldn’t help but smile. “Sounds good,” he said. This wasn’t personal. She was just cooking oatmeal. Nothing personal in that.
She looked like a cupcake, all round and sweet. And wasn’t that a hell of a thing to think about a woman!
“But if I ever made coffee on a stove before, I don’t remember it. How do you know when it’s ready?”
“I’ll take care of it.” He unbuttoned his coat and hung it on a peg beside the door, then tugged off his boots and set them below his coat.
“Oh, look at you!” she cried. “You’re freezing to death, and here I am going on about knowing how to cook oatmeal.” She put down her spoon and rushed toward him. She cupped her hands over his icy cheeks.
For a moment Jack couldn’t move. He’d come in the door irritated with himself, then she’d somehow managed to delight him. Now he couldn’t think of a word to describe what he felt as she stood there pressing her hands to his face. He wanted to close his eyes and sink into her touch. Just sink right in to the warmth of her palms, their softness, their strength. Had a woman ever touched him this way before? Had a woman ever seen the coldness he felt inside and offered to warm him with her own flesh?
Never. Not like this.
Lisa wasn’t even aware how profound thi
s moment was for him. And Jack planned to keep it that way. He smiled and stepped back. “I’m fine. Really.”
“You’re sure?” she asked.
“I’m sure.”
Together they put breakfast on the table. While they ate, Jack fiddled with the battery-powered boom box, trying to find any news about the storm. Such as when it might abate. All he could get was an oldies-rock station. Everything else was static. He left it on the oldies station in hopes there would be a weather update soon.
“I have a cell phone in my purse,” she offered. “But I tried it and it says there’s no service.”
“The signal doesn’t hit this area. We’re below a ridge.”
When they finished eating, Jack heated water on the stove for washing dishes. As they did the night before, he washed, Lisa dried. On the radio Anne Murray was asking if she could have this dance for the rest of her life.
Listening to the dreamy waltz, Lisa shook water from Jack’s coffee mug and started drying it. “I wonder if I know how to dance.”
Jack’s response came without thought. Quickly drying his hands, he turned and took the cup and towel from her and said, “Let’s find out.” He placed her left hand on his shoulder and took her right in his. “Don’t think.”
“What?”
He led her off in the simple one-two-three of the slow waltz. “Don’t think about it. Don’t wonder if you know how.”
He had already distracted her enough with those few words that she wasn’t thinking, wasn’t wondering if she knew how to dance. She was following his lead. She was dancing.
A slow smile spread across Jack’s face. “There you go. I’d say you’ve danced before.”
It didn’t matter that the hand that held hers was rough with calluses, or that he was in his socks and she in her slippers, or that there was more static than tune coming from the radio. Lisa was in heaven. Her smile was at least as wide as his. “I know how to dance.”
Then, without thinking, she began humming the melody.
Jack took it slow and easy, with small steps at first, but as confidence bloomed across her face, he altered his steps until he was turning in one spot, whirling her around him. To him, her laughter was better than any music.
He was just slowing her down as the song came to an end when she hit a wet spot on the floor and slipped. Before the small cry had even left her mouth, Jack caught her. His arms slipped around her and pulled her flush against him.
“Oh.” She looked up at him, startled.
“I’ve got you.”
But the minute Jack spoke the words, he wondered who had whom. Yes, he had his arms around her and was holding her, but she had him, too, with those big green eyes, that soft lush mouth that tempted him to taste, to feel. To take.
He’d been celibate too long. That was the only explanation for why she was affecting him so strongly.
Bullhockey, bud.
The truth was, she was a beautiful alluring woman. It just stunned him that he could be so attracted to her when she was so pregnant. Not that her being pregnant took anything away from her beauty, her allure. But Jack had a deep and abiding respect and reverence for life, and for any female of any species who carried that life inside her. He’d never been sexually attracted to a pregnant woman before. It was a new experience and not a little unsettling.
He wasn’t going to kiss her. Her hands were on his shoulders, his arms around her rib cage. Her face was close to his, her lips unconsciously inviting. But he wasn’t going to kiss her.
Lisa’s breath caught. He wasn’t going to kiss her. Surely he wasn’t. And surely she didn’t want him to. Too many unanswered questions weighed on her mind. She didn’t need this kind of temptation. Didn’t want it. She could not, absolutely could not, be physically attracted to him. He was practically a stranger. She was mega-pregnant and might be married.
Raging hormones. Didn’t pregnancy cause hormone levels to fluctuate? That was all this was. Of course it was.
And he couldn’t really want to kiss her, anyway. There was nothing the least bit enticing about a woman whose belly stuck out to there.
That belly, or rather, the baby inside it, settled the matter by giving Lisa a strong kick.
Jack felt it right through his belt. Startled, he looked down to where her abdomen pressed against him. “Whoa.”
“Oh,” Lisa said on a breath. She stepped back from Jack and covered her abdomen with both hands. “Oh…” With her hands cradling her womb, she closed her eyes and tilted back her head. The miracle of life moved beneath her touch. She knew she had felt it before, but she couldn’t exactly remember it. This was, for all practical purposes, the first time she’d felt her baby move. And suddenly she had the overwhelming urge, the need to share it.
Without thought, she looked up at Jack, took his hand in hers and placed it on her stomach. “Feel.”
Jack wanted to pull away, step back, avoid this. Touching her this way seemed too…intimate. It wasn’t his place to be the man she shared this with. He knew that. Yet something held him there. Maybe it was the look in her eyes, the plea that begged him to let her share this with someone. And he was the only one there.
Then he felt it, a slight movement at first, then a definite little jab. And he was lost. “God,” he whispered in awe. “I felt it. Lisa…” Something deep inside Jack Wilder was forever changed. For as long as he lived, no matter whom she was married to, this woman and her child would be a part of him.
Lisa’s eyes were glazed with moisture. “She likes you.”
Jack swallowed hard. “She?”
Lisa smiled at him. “She. It’s a girl.”
A girl. God, a baby girl. Right there beneath his hand. He felt like a man who had never been around imminent birth before. As if the miracle of life and birth didn’t go on around him as regularly as clockwork. Just then, none of that meant anything. This was Lisa’s baby. This was special.
A girl, she’d said. “Does this mean you’re starting to remember?”
Lisa shook her head and her smile faded. “No, it’s not like that. I mean, I guess maybe remember is the wrong word. It’s just that…it’s familiar.”
Suddenly feeling like a fool as well as an interloper, Jack took his hand from her belly and stepped back. “What about her father?”
Lisa’s jaw hardened. Fire sparked in her eyes. “She may never know she has one if the jerk doesn’t back off.”
“Lisa?”
“Oh, my God. Why would I say something like that? What does it mean?” With her arms wrapped tightly around her belly and her shoulders hunched, she looked up at Jack with such confusion and devastation that something deep inside him ached for her.
“You don’t remember?”
Lisa forced herself to think. Think hard. “I don’t…” It was there, she knew it was. The answer was there in her mind…but the harder she tried to grasp it, the more elusive it became. Pain shot through her temple. She squeezed her eyes shut and pressed the heel of her hand against the pain in a futile effort to ease it.
“Lisa?”
“I can’t grasp it. It’s there, but…then it’s not. It hurts!” she cried. “God, it hurts.”
“Lisa, stop.” He pressed his hand over the one she held against her head. “Ease off. Don’t think, just relax. Take a deep breath.”
She couldn’t think, couldn’t move. By rote she followed his soft-voiced instruction and inhaled deeply.
“That’s it. Now let it out.”
She exhaled.
“Again. Slow and easy,” he crooned. “That’s it, just slow and easy. Don’t try to force it.”
As he continued to talk, to comfort her with his deep voice, Lisa felt her tension gradually ease.
“Okay,” she said. “I’m okay.”
“Look at me.” Jack waited until she raised her gaze and he could look directly into her eyes and judge for himself. “All right.”
“It’s not all right,” she countered.
“You said you w
ere okay.”
“I am,” she said. “The situation isn’t. Why would I say something like that about the father of my baby?”
Jack shrugged and urged her toward the living room. As they passed the end of the kitchen counter, he reached out and turned off the radio, cutting off what had become in the past few minutes nothing more than nerve-racking static.
“It was probably something simple,” he said, “like maybe he left his dirty socks in the middle of the floor.”
The idea that she might have run all the way from Denver to Wyoming with her medical records and more than seven thousand dollars in cash to stay in the middle of nowhere by herself simply because a man left his dirty socks lying around was so absurd that Lisa burst out laughing.
“Hey, husbands have been known to do stuff like that.”
The word husbands gave Lisa pause. She searched her mind, her heart. Did she have a husband? Was she married? Did she love the man who’d fathered her child?
Nothing. There was nothing there but emptiness. How could she forget such a thing as a husband?
She looked down at her hands and frowned. “I don’t have a wedding ring.”
Jack guided her around the mattress on the floor and over to the couch. “You know that doesn’t mean anything. A lot of married people don’t wear wedding rings.”
“I would.” Somehow she knew that. “I would want that visible symbol.” She looked up at Jack. “I don’t feel married.”
“That’s your amnesia talking,” Jack said. “But it doesn’t really matter right now, anyway, does it? It’ll all sort itself out once your memory returns.”
Would it, Lisa wondered. Would it really?
As a distraction, Louis L’Amour turned out to be a good one. Jack had dug out the three slim paperbacks from his saddlebags, and Lisa, who had never read a western, had to be dragged away from her second one so she could eat the sliced-turkey sandwiches Jack had made for lunch.
“It’ll still be there after you eat,” he told her.
“But they’re just about ready to—”
Jack rolled his eyes. “I’ve created a monster.”
A Child on the Way Page 6
