A Child on the Way

by Janis Reams Hudson

“No,” she said with a laugh. “Just a new Louis L’Amour fan.”

  An hour after supper they ran out of reading material. Jack broke out his deck of cards.

  “Good grief,” Lisa said with a laugh. “What else do you have in those saddlebags?”

  God, he loved hearing her laugh. “Nothing much.” He didn’t know when he’d ever felt so lighthearted. “Just my dirty socks.”

  He wanted to kick himself the minute the words were out of his mouth and he saw the light in her eyes dim. He’d just reminded her of a couple of the million questions that haunted her—who and where was her baby’s father.

  “So,” she said after a long moment, “what are we going to play?”

  Okay, he thought. If she could carry on and act as if he hadn’t just stuck both boots in his mouth, so could he. “Ever play five-card stud?”

  “You mean poker?”

  Jack paused. Was that look of blank innocence on her face for real, or was it just a bit too casual? “Yeah,” he said cautiously. “I mean poker.”

  She flipped her hands in the air. “I have no idea. I guess we’ll find out, won’t we?”

  They found out. But only after they determined what they would play for. There were no matchsticks or toothpicks to be found in the house. Jack had no money on him at all.

  “All we need is some loose change,” Lisa said.

  “I just spent three days alone in the mountains. There was no need to take any money, change or otherwise. Nowhere to spend it.”

  Lisa nodded her understanding.

  “That settles it, then.” Jack gave her an exaggerated leer and wiggled his eyebrows. “We’ll have to play strip poker.”

  “Oh, yeah, right.” The idea was so ludicrous and his expression so comical that Lisa burst out laughing. “Like anyone would want to see this misshapen body.” Then, ignoring the odd look that crossed Jack’s face, she straightened and said, “I’ve got money.”

  Slowly his expression cleared. “Your stash?”

  “Whatever you want to call it.” Lisa figured that if it was her money, she was certainly within her rights to use it to play poker. If it wasn’t her money, well, it would all go back in the bag when they finished playing, anyway. It wasn’t as if they were going to wear it out or anything.

  So they divided the money in half and settled on the mattress before the fire. Jack explained the rules, the different hands, what beat what, while Lisa nodded and took notes.

  “You’re writing it down?” Jack nearly laughed at the idea.

  “How else am I supposed to remember everything?”

  He shrugged. She had a point. He definitely had her at a disadvantage. Which, in poker, was the whole idea.

  And wasn’t it cute? he thought with a secret smile, watching her look at her cards, then refer repeatedly to her notes. When she won the first hand, he felt like a proud papa.

  “This is fun,” she decided as she raked in her winnings. “Can we play again?”

  “I’m counting on it.” He gathered the cards and handed her the deck. “Your deal.”

  During the course of the next few hours, she took him for every one of his thirty-five-hundred-plus dollars.

  It took Jack a long time to go to sleep that night. He was used to long days filled with hard physical work, but for the past several days he’d done nothing more strenuous than carry a feather-light woman from her car to the house.

  That same woman lay only a few feet from where he lay on the couch. She was curled up, facing away from him toward the fire.

  Watching her sleep was keeping him awake. After the fire burned down enough that he could add more wood, he turned his back to the room, and the woman.

  It didn’t help. He might not be able to see her, but he still knew she was there. He could still think about her. About sitting across the breakfast table from her. Sharing the mundane chore of washing dishes. Dancing with her.

  God, he shouldn’t have done that. Shouldn’t have held her in his arms. Shouldn’t have been holding her when the baby kicked. Shouldn’t have let her press his hand there so he could feel it.

  Damn, he was never going to fall asleep at this rate.

  But he must have, for the next thing he knew, he was awakened by a high keening moan.

  Lisa.

  Jack rolled from the couch and landed on his hands and knees beside her on the mattress. She was moaning and rolling back and forth in agony, the blanket a tangle around her legs.

  “Lisa, what is it?” Visions of premature babies stopped the breath in his lungs. “What’s wrong?”

  Her face was a grimace of pain. “Cramp.”

  “Oh, God, honey.” More than alarmed, he pulled the blanket away from her and reached beneath her down-stretched arms to gently spread his hands across her abdomen. “Easy does it.”

  But she wasn’t having any of his easy. She thrashed back and forth, eyes scrunched shut, breath hissing between her teeth.

  “Lisa, honey, baby, you’ve got to be still and let me feel. You’re going to hurt yourself. You might hurt the baby.”

  “I already hurt,” she managed in a tight voice. “But it’s not the baby, it’s my foot.”

  “Your what?”

  “My foot, my foot.”

  Was the pain making her delirious, or was she out of her mind with panic? “What about your foot?”

  “I have a cramp in my foot.”

  Jack figured that later he might think back on this event and feel like a fool. But for now he was just so damned relieved she wasn’t going into premature labor that he wanted to laugh in sheer relief. A cramp in the foot—that he could deal with.

  And he did. Now that he knew what was wrong, he realized she was trying to grab her right foot, but was having trouble reaching over her stomach to get to it. He took the foot in his hand and stretched the cramping muscle by pulling her heel down toward him and pushing her toes toward her knee.

  It was such a small foot, dainty and delicate. Pale in his weather-darkened hand. Soft as a baby’s behind against his rough calluses. While he pushed her toes up to stretch the muscles in her arch, he smoothed his thumb along the curve to help ease the ache.

  After a long moment Lisa let out another whimper, this one of relief.

  “Better?”

  “Oh, yes,” she said with a sigh. “Thank you.”

  Jack knew that if she could see over the mound of her stomach she would realize that in all her thrashing around, her nightgown had worked its way around and up until it barely covered the tops of her thighs. He wasn’t about to tell her. There was no point in causing her any embarrassment. But as he gave her arch a final massage, it was all he could do to keep from staring at that expanse of pale creamy flesh. Mercy, she had great legs, long and lean and curved in all the right places with feminine muscles.

  One more deep rub with his thumb along her arch, and he placed her foot gently on the mattress and pulled the blanket up to her waist.

  “You scared ten years off my life,” he admitted with a crooked grin. “I thought you were going into premature labor.”

  Lisa closed her eyes and stroked her stomach. “Don’t even say it. Besides,” she added with a soft smile, “this little girl wouldn’t do anything so rude as to arrive early.”

  “Let’s hear it for polite little girls,” he said fervently.

  A moment later Jack was back on the couch, knowing he wouldn’t sleep for the rest of the night. Visions of long legs and a soft smile would keep him awake.

  Chapter Five

  The radio declared the blizzard to be the worst in fifty years. Jack didn’t doubt it. The storm stretched from southern Canada clear down into northern New Mexico, and according to all reports, showed no signs of letting up soon.

  It was late afternoon, two full days since the blizzard had started, before the wind finally died.

  At first Lisa didn’t realize the significance of the silence. She was dozing on the couch when she slowly became aware that something was different
. She blinked her eyes open and sat up, looking around the living room, trying to decide what that difference was.

  She could hear Jack shuffling cards at the kitchen table. She could hear the fire crackling quietly in the fireplace. She could hear…absolutely nothing else.

  “Jack,” she called, pushing herself up from the couch and rushing to the kitchen.

  Jack heard her and dropped his cards. “Lisa?” He jumped to his feet, the chair scraping loudly across the floor. He started toward the living room. “What’s wrong?”

  They met each other where the kitchen met the living room.

  “Jack, listen,” she said intensely.

  “What? Are you all right? I don’t hear anything.”

  “The wind stopped.”

  By damn, she was right. “Finally.”

  He went to the back door and stepped out onto the screened-in porch. Lisa followed him. Because of the snow still packed against the screen, they couldn’t see out. He pushed open the screen door. A large clump of snow was dislodged and fell to the snow-covered ground.

  Beyond the door, the landscape looked like a fairy-tale wonderland. Drifts curved elegantly, as if sculpted by a master artist. Dips and hollows added contrast, while giant perfect snowflakes floated lazily from the sky. The path Jack had forged to and from the barn was no more than a shallow dip, but still visible.

  “Oh,” Lisa breathed. “It’s so beautiful.”

  “It is.” There was at least two feet of snow, with some of the drifts more than four, maybe five feet in places. Jack forced away worries about how many cattle had died in all this beauty. It ate a hole in his gut, but there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it just then, and there was no point spoiling Lisa’s pleasure. Watching the delight on her face was putting another very different type of hole in his gut.

  “If I had a pair of boots,” Lisa declared, “I’d be out there right now making snow angels and catching snowflakes on my tongue.”

  “As high as some of those drifts are,” Jack teased, “you’d need boots up to your armpits.”

  “Are you trying to tell me my slippers and loafers won’t do?”

  Jack shook his head and laughed. “I’m still trying to figure out why a person would come to Wyoming in the middle of a blizzard without bringing along a pair of boots.”

  “According to the radio—and you—this blizzard was a complete surprise. Besides, my feet have been so swollen for the past few weeks that my loafers are the only shoes I can get into.”

  When Jack merely grinned at her, she frowned. “What?”

  “You did it again. Remembered something.”

  “I don’t—”

  “You remembered that your feet have been swollen.”

  She made a face. “The sad state of my feet is more than obvious. Even if I can’t see them most of the time,” she added ruefully.

  “True, but just because they’re swollen now doesn’t mean they’ve been that way for weeks—yet that’s what you said. You remembered it.”

  She sighed and looked back out at the falling snow. “For all the good it does me. I still can’t go out there.”

  The look of yearning on her face was so intense he could practically feel it. She’d been cooped up in the house for two full days, not even sticking her nose out the door until now. How was he supposed to resist when he had the power to safely grant her wish to go outside? “Sure you can,” he heard himself say.

  Within a very few minutes they were both bundled up in their coats. The only gloves Lisa had were thin kid-leather driving gloves, but they would have to do. Jack made her put on her thickest socks and her loafers. She found a pair of earmuffs in her coat pocket and put them on.

  Then Jack scooped her up in his arms and carried her out into the snow. He had to check on Skeezer anyway, and he figured it wouldn’t hurt Lisa to get a little fresh air. The barn was close, the wind had died and the temperature felt as though it hovered somewhere just barely below freezing. As long as she stayed dry and warm and wasn’t out for more than a few minutes, she would be fine.

  When he swept her up in his arms, Lisa shrieked with delight. “I think I’m going to start calling you Sir Jack.”

  “How’s that?”

  “This is the second time you’ve rescued me. The first time from my car, this time from cabin fever.” She settled in his embrace and, feeling perfectly at home there, wrapped an arm around his neck. “My very own personal knight.”

  No one had ever called him a knight before. Jack kind of liked the sound of it. It was nonsense, of course, but he still liked it.

  He carried her through the snow toward the barn, placing each foot carefully so as not to slip. The Coleman lantern, held by the bail in his left hand, banged gently against his thigh.

  Lisa threw back her head, face to the sky, and laughed for the sheer pleasure of it. “This is wonderful.” With her mouth open, she stuck out her tongue to catch the icy flakes. “Snow ice cream,” she declared. “That’s what we need, snow ice cream. Oh, but I bet Belinda didn’t stock any vanilla. Surely she wasn’t that thorough.”

  “I doubt it, but we’ll look when we go back.”

  Still holding her, Jack managed to get the barn door open. Once inside he put her down on her feet and quickly closed the door. It wasn’t warm inside, by any means, but Skeezer gave off a great deal of heat, so it wasn’t as cold as it was outside.

  But it was dark. He lit the lantern while Skeezer nickered a greeting.

  Lisa didn’t know if she’d ever been in a barn before, but despite an air of abandonment—it was empty but for Jack’s horse—she liked the smell. And she liked the way the horse looked at her, as if eager for her attention.

  “Hello, fella,” Lisa said softly. “He is a fella, isn’t he?”

  “Mostly. He’s a gelding.”

  Lisa approached the stall where the horse stood with his sturdy neck arched over the stall door. “What’s his name?”

  “Skeezer. If you scratch him behind his ears, he’ll be your friend for life.”

  “Is that so, Skeezer boy?” He was so big, Lisa thought, both enchanted and leery. “Will you let me scratch behind your ears? I think I could use a friend for life.”

  In response the horse nickered again.

  “Well, then, you’re going to have to bend down here to me, because I’m not as tall as Jack. I can’t reach your ears.”

  As if understanding her and deciding to play, the horse lowered his head and butted her gently in the chest.

  Lisa stumbled backward with a startled laugh that was part nerves, part delight.

  “Easy, boy.” Jack was there instantly to make sure Lisa didn’t fall. “She’s not some ol’ cowhand you can knock around like that. You have to be gentle with her.”

  “I’m all right,” Lisa protested. “He just surprised me, that’s all.”

  Jack made a low humming noise and took Lisa’s gloved hand in his. Together they reached up and stroked the horse’s jaw. That was all it took for the big animal to lower his head and tilt it until their hands, which hadn’t moved, were just behind his ear. Letting out a whoosh of breath, Skeezer moved his head slightly up and down.

  Lisa laughed. “He’s petting himself.”

  “He’ll do this all day if you let him.”

  Jack stayed there for several minutes, assuring himself that Lisa was all right. He didn’t ask, because he figured she didn’t remember one way or another, but he assumed she hadn’t been around horses much.

  While she scratched behind the gelding’s ears, Jack took the bucket out to the well house and used the hand pump to fill it. When he got back, he cleaned out Skeezer’s stall and put out more hay and a little grain, then placed the bucket of water in the corner of the stall.

  “Ready?” Jack asked Lisa a few minutes later.

  Since Skeezer had abandoned her in favor of the grain Jack had put out, Lisa reluctantly nodded.

  Jack turned off the lantern. He didn’t want to carry it li
t while he had Lisa in his arms.

  “Now that the blizzard has stopped,” Lisa asked, “do you think anyone will come looking for us?”

  “Nobody’s going to come looking for me. As far as anybody knows, I’m snowed in up at the cabin. But if anybody knows you’re here, they might start plowing the road, even with this much snow still coming down.”

  Lisa let out a sigh. She didn’t know how she felt about being rescued, and that troubled her. Maybe if she knew why she had come to this isolated house in the first place, she might be able to decide if she wanted to be rescued.

  When the hiss from the lantern was finally silent, Jack said, “Here we go,” and scooped her up in his arms again. He acted as though her weight was of no consequence.

  “After all this lifting, I’m going to have to find something really hearty to feed you for supper to rebuild your strength.”

  Jack snorted. “You don’t weigh as much as a feather pillow.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding. I’m as fat as a pig.”

  “You’re not fat, you’re pregnant.” He squatted to grab the lantern in his left hand, letting the weight of her legs rest in the crook of his left elbow.

  “I can carry that,” she offered.

  “I’ve got it.”

  She released a dramatic sigh. “Yes, Sir Jack.”

  Jack chuckled and let them out of the barn, closing the door securely behind them. They were about halfway to the house when Lisa began shifting in his arms.

  Jack stopped. “What’s wrong?”

  She arched her back and made a funny face. “I’m fine. It’s just that someone is poking a foot in my ribs.”

  He smiled in sympathy. “From the inside, huh?”

  “Yeah.”

  Jack started off again, walking carefully through snow that came halfway to his knees in the places he’d already walked and above his knees when he stepped in fresh snow. It was hard to judge where to step when he couldn’t watch his feet.

  Suddenly Lisa gasped and arched again, throwing his balance off just enough that he knew what was going to happen but couldn’t do a thing to stop it. All he could do was twist sideways so that he fell backward into a big soft drift, with Lisa still cradled in his arms, the lantern still clamped in his hand.