Look What the Stork Brought (Man of the Month)

by Dixie Browning

  Joe looked at her as if she’d suddenly sprouted a second head.

  Sophie almost wished she had. The first one certainly wasn’t living up to its guarantee.

  Ten

  Joe liked the German shepherd. Sophie hated him on slight. The big dog was arrogant, and she’d had about all the male arrogance she cared to endure in one morning. She’d been that close to winning the argument when the man from Syncho Systems had driven up in his big blue van, slammed a door and called out a greeting.

  And then Iris had tuned up. By the time she’d finished nursing and changing her, there were men tromping all over her house with Joe, swaggering around in his boots, his wide-shouldered shirt and his narrow-hipped jeans, taking charge as if he had every right. When she’d protested, he’d just grinned that lazy, sexy, maddening grin of his, and then one thing had led to another and now here she was, shopping for a dog.

  She was a pushover. So what else was new?

  “What’s wrong with that one?” She pointed several cages down to an overweight, short-legged, charcoal gray mongrel with scraggly hair and an apologetic look.

  “We’re shopping for a guard dog, not a mudroom doormat.”

  “I like her. She reminds me of someone I used to know.” She strolled over to where the animal stood, nose to the wire, gazing up hopefully with a pair of small, pink-rimmed eyes. She had a skin problem. She was as wide as she was long. “All you need is a decent chance, isn’t that right, Lady?” Keeling. Sophie poked a finger through the wire and allowed the dog to sniff.

  “Honey, come away now. She’ll think you’re serious.”

  Every time he called her honey, even though it didn’t mean anything, Sophie felt a quickening around her heart. “I am serious,” she informed him.

  Joe stared at her. Didn’t have to speak, the look said it all.

  “Well, if I have to have a dog, then I’m going to have the one I want,” she said impatiently. “I don’t feel a speck of...of rapport with any of those animals you’ve showed me so far. They all look vicious to me.”

  He’d showed her two German shepherds and a boxer-rottweiler mix. The rest of the four-legged residents were either too small, too old, too friendly or of the feline persuasion.

  “Why don’t we take another look at the—”

  “No.”

  “Sophie, be reasonable. We’re not talking house pets here, we’re talking guard dogs. If you’d rather, we can still go to the breeder.” They’d come to the animal shelter only because Sophie insisted that it was the humane thing to do. Far be it from Joe to hand her any more ammunition to use against him. He’d set out to prove he could be as humane as the next guy.

  All he’d proved so far was that he could be as big a sucker.

  Lady rode in the back of the truck with the camper shut, because Sophie was afraid she might become disoriented and try to jump out.

  Joe figured she couldn’t have made it over the tailgate if the truck caught fire, but he wasn’t about to argue. He could fumigate the camper later, and hose it out.

  Sophie hurried Iris into the house as soon as they pulled up out front. It was that time again. Joe didn’t need to check a clock, or even to hear the baby fussing. All he had to do was look at Sophie’s breasts. Something he’d been doing entirely too much of lately. How was it possible for a nursing mother to turn him on the way she did? Was she even aware of it? Why did she think he spent so much time sitting around with a newspaper spread over his lap?

  It was getting to be embarrassing.

  Retrieving a coil of clothesline from the back stoop, he glanced at the door and thought about going inside—in case she needed help or anything like that. “Woman, you’ve got me tied up in more knots than a Boy Scout troop,” he grumbled.

  He had to drag the mangy mutt out of his truck. She took one look at the coil of rope over his shoulder and dug in her toenails. “Come on, you sorry old fleabag, it’s not a hangman’s noose. I’m just going to hitch you to the trellis while I build you a temporary pen.”

  Sophie called the mutt Lady. Joe thought of her as Tramp. Using a roll of rusty chicken wire and some half-rotted fence posts he found leaning up against the ramshackle shed in the backyard, he set to work. While he had every intention of having a chain-link security fence installed before he left, it could take a few days. A couple of days to convince Sophie—another day or so to get it built.

  Meanwhile, Tramp needed a pen of some sort, or else he’d have to shut her up in the shed or keep her tied to the trellis. No point in even having a guard dog unless it was free to patrol the perimeter.

  Guard dog. That was a laugh!

  Fortunately he’d soon have a first-class security system in place, including new locks and stoppers on all the windows. No system was foolproof, but this one should do the job for her. He could go back home with a clear conscience.

  When Sophie came out to announce lunch and examine his handiwork, the job was nowhere near finished. Joe had managed to break the shovel handle, bruise two fingers and a foot. He’d also acquired a lump on his forehead when a fence post had fallen over and caught him off guard, and that was only for starters. The mutt had chewed her rope in two, then promptly sprawled out in the sun beside the ragged ends and gone to sleep. Which proved she was either smarter than she looked or totally brain-dead, he wasn’t sure which.

  “Handy with tools, are we?” Sophie drawled. He shot her a resentful look, placed a hand on the small of his back and straightened up. She was teasing him. He figured it was a good sign. At least if she could joke about it, it meant she was resigned to being protected.

  “I can change a tire and program a VCR,” he said modestly. Mopping the sweat from his brow with a mud-streaked forearm, he winced when he came in contact with his rapidly darkening lump.

  “Me, too. More to the point, I can make iced tea and bacon, lettuce, cheese and tomato sandwiches. Could I interest you in any of the above?”

  She could have interested him in a good dousing with a garden hose at the moment. “Sounds good. I’d better clean up some first, though.”

  He limped after her as far as the back door, admiring the subtle sway of her hips, telling himself she was doing it deliberately—knowing she wasn’t.

  Pausing on the back stoop, he began easing a muddy boot off one foot while he hopped around on the other, which didn’t do his bum knee any good. It was a painful process. Evidently he’d bruised a bone or two in his foot when he’d missed the hole with the shovel and come down in the wrong place with the business end. The handle had gotten busted when he’d tried to wrap the damned thing around a sapling.

  “Did you hurt your foot?”

  He glared at her. She was standing in the back doorway, looking calm, cool and clean in a sleeveless, sunflower-printed dress. “No, I didn’t hurt my foot,” he snarled.

  “Hot Epsom salts might help.”

  “It’s nothing, not worth worrying over.”

  “What if it swells up and you can’t get your boots on again?”

  “Look, I just struck it a glancing blow with the damned shovel, all right?”

  “You’re hungry, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah...I reckon.”

  Joe was thoroughly ashamed of himself. From the time he’d gone to live with his grandparents he’d been taught the proper way to treat a lady. Hell, he’d even had to be polite to his sisters!

  But he’d overslept this morning, thanks to lying awake, wondering what she’d say if he were to climb in bed with her again. After a sleepless night, before he’d even had time to grab a bite of breakfast, the crew had come to get started on the security system. Sophie had climbed back up on her high horse, so he’d invented an appointment with a dog breeder and hustled her and the baby out of there before she could cause trouble.

  And then ended up taking her from one county pound to another until she’d found what she was looking for.

  He was finally learning how to handle her. The trick was to be firm and devious
at the same time. Arguing against her brand of logic didn’t work.

  “You broke the shovel on your foot?” she asked now, all innocence. “Oh, my—that must have hurt!”

  Joe shot her a sour look. He’d scored close to the top on every test he’d taken in all his years on the force. Blindfolded, he could dismantle his service revolver, clean it, put it back together and reload faster than any other man in the department. He’d even worked with the bomb squad for a couple of years.

  But when it came to anything involving hammer, nails and a handsaw, he was strictly out of his element, a failing he put down to having spent his formative years around a slew of servants who did everything but cut his meat for him.

  He limped inside in his sock feet and washed up at the sink. Miss Emma would’ve had a fit.

  Which might’ve been good for her, come to think of it.

  Joe was on his second messy, delicious sandwich when he remembered the dog. “Oh, hell, I forgot to tie the tramp up again,” he said, raking back his chair and limping toward the front door.

  Sophie was right behind him. “Lady won’t run away.” He gave her that look again. “Well, she won’t. She knows where her home is, don’t you, darling?”

  The dog was on the porch, right outside the screen door. Her stub of a tail gyrating, she was grinning like a hyena. “I think she’s still hungry,” Sophie said in that tone of voice women reserved for babies and small fuzzy animals. “Maybe I’d better fix her another plate.”

  “She’s already had a pork chop, applesauce and potato salad. What she needs is to lose a few pounds. Not to mention a few thousand fleas.”

  “It’s not her fault she’s been neglected. I’m going to shampoo her as soon as I put the dishes in to soak.”

  Joe grumbled something under his breath about hedge clippers and kerosene and stalked off, wondering, not for the first time, why he was still here. Why he hadn’t left as soon as he’d gotten what he’d come for. It wasn’t as if he didn’t have family, friends and some unfinished business waiting for him back in Dallas.

  So how come instead of getting on with his life, he kept finding one excuse after another to hang around in a seedy old house with a nutty female and her fat-faced daughter, doing the kind of work that could cripple a man if he weren’t careful?

  It was almost dark when Sophie stepped outside to inspect the pen Joe had finally managed to put together. To the west, past the grove that surrounded a nearby creek, streaks of slate gray cloud fingered their way across a hazy gold sunset. She paused long enough to admire the effect and to enjoy listening to the familiar sounds of crickets and tree frogs, chimney swifts and distant traffic.

  Home. She’d been here less than six months, but already it felt more like home than her apartment in town ever had. Evidently she was a nest-builder by nature.

  “Well, what do you think?” Joe called to her, and she went on down the steps and out into the backyard.

  Joe had wanted to call a fencing company and have some fancy, highfalutin security fence put in, but she’d drawn the line at that. Told him she didn’t need it and couldn’t afford it. Back in the spring when she’d first moved out to the country, she’d explored the shed and discovered—besides a few basic gardening tools, some canning jars and a five-foot rat snake—several rolls of rusty chicken wire. She’d used a roll and a half around her garden.

  Joe, it seemed, had used the rest. Trying hard not to laugh, she examined the oddly shaped, haphazardly fastened wire pen. He’d used three posts—all of them leaning at a different angle—two trees, and a corner of the shed. She didn’t know where he’d found all the nails, but the supports were practically bristling with them, all driven halfway in and bent over.

  A carpenter he was not.

  “Hmm,” she said thoughtfully. “She’ll need a place to sleep.”

  “I already thought of that. There’s a fifty-five gallon drum out behind your shed. I’ll roll it into the pen, tip it onto its side and rake up some pine straw to make a bed.”

  Sophie had in mind a folded blanket in one corner of the kitchen, but that could wait until after Joe left. Which would be most any day now. Maybe when the time came, having a dog in the house would help to distract her. Keep her from dwelling on things best forgotten. Such as how much she was going to miss his bossiness. His steadiness. His unfailing kindness. His humor. The way he looked holding Iris. Those sweet, sexy, smiles that made her imagine all sorts of impossible, inappropriate thoughts.

  By the time they’d finished supper and Sophie had settled Iris for the next few hours, Joe was moving as if every bone in his body ached. Coming in through the back door after checking on the dog, he collapsed onto a kitchen chair. The knot on his head had gone down, but he was obviously hurting more than he would admit.

  “I told you to soak your foot,” she said.

  “I thought you said to soak my head.”

  She would’ve expected him to complain. Instead he teased. There was a lot to like about Joe Dana. She ran him a basin of hot water, knelt beside his chair and set it carefully on the floor. “A bathtub full would be better, but by the time the tub fills up, the water’s already cooled off. Number one on my list of things to be done as soon as I sell—” Guiltily she lifted her eyes to his. “Oops.”

  “There’s always the reward. That ought to cover a complete plumbing overhaul, a new roof and a set of new tires.”

  Sophie thought it best to change the subject. Dipping her elbow into the water, she said, “There, that feels just about right.” She dumped in half a box of Epsom salts and ordered, “Now, roll up your pant leg.”

  He leaned over and groaned, and she brushed his hands away and said, “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” and did the job herself. “For someone supposedly in the prime of life—a man who looks as if he’s spent years riding the range under a hot, Texas sun—you’re in terrible shape.”

  And then she listened while he told her that contrary to popular belief, not every man from Texas wore chaps and a ten-gallon hat and spent his life ya—hooing back and forth across the prairie.

  “Then why do you wear cowboy boots?”

  “They’re not cowboy boots.”

  “They have pointy toes and high heels.”

  “They do not have high heels!”

  “Why not wear sneakers, or cross trainers, or something like that? Most men do when they’re out in the country.”

  “Dammit, I’m not most men!”

  Sophie, still on her knees after rolling up the leg of his jeans, looked up. Once again their eyes caught and held. “No, you’re not,” she said quietly, deciding he could read into that what he will.

  It was the truth. The longer he stayed, the more she realized that Joe Dana was like no other man she’d ever known. If she’d been asked to write down a list of specifications for the perfect man, Joe wouldn’t have come within a mile of qualifying.

  He wasn’t Hollywood handsome.

  He was impatient to the point of surliness.

  He dressed like a—well, he was on the road, after all, she rationalized. He probably hadn’t packed much besides jeans and khaki shirts. All the same, she couldn’t imagine him in a suit and tie, much less a policeman’s uniform. Eddie Dinsmore looked as if he’d been born in a suit and tie. She couldn’t imagine him in anything else.

  And Eddie Dinsmore was about as exciting as wet bread.

  Sophie sighed.

  Joe reached out and laid a hand on her head. Just that. He didn’t say a word, but all the same, she read in that one simple gesture all the things she wanted to hear.

  I’m sorry to be such a bear. Sorry I insulted your dog. Sorry I offended your pride. Sorry I’m not the man you want me to be.

  Sorry he couldn’t hang around long enough to woo her and win her and marry her and live happily ever after?

  She sighed again and got to her feet, feeling exhausted, discouraged, overly emotional. Once more, she blamed it on her hormones. How long did it take to get back to nor
mal after having a baby?

  However long it took, Joe would be gone.

  It rained again in the night. Sophie got up to close windows. To save on her power bill, she usually turned off the air conditioners once the heat of the day was gone, preferring to open the house and let the cool evening air flow through.

  She awoke with a headache. Sinuses, she told herself.

  Joe was in the kitchen, fumbling around on the shelf where she kept her various pills. “Headache,” he muttered.

  “That lump on your forehead.”

  Funny, she thought. With any other man she’d be embarrassed at being seen with her hair all tangled and her rumpled cotton nightgown with the milk stains on the front.

  This time he’d put a shirt on over his white boxers. It didn’t help. All she could think was that he was here now, and soon he would be gone. There were so many things they hadn’t done together that she wanted to do. So many things they hadn’t talked about. Against all reason, she had come to think of him as belonging to her, yet for all she knew, there might be a special woman waiting back in Dallas.

  Unless all the single women in Texas were out of their minds, there had to be.

  “Tramp’s sacked out in her barrel. I shone a flashlight out there, and she didn’t even stir. Great watchdog you’ve got there.”

  “I had a dog named Lady when I was little. She looked a lot like this Lady, only smaller. I used to sneak her into my room after Mama went to sleep, thinking I was getting away with something, only looking back, I’m pretty sure Mama knew. The bed always smelled doggy, and there were probably dog hairs, too. I never even thought to brush the sheets before I pulled up the spread.”

  Chatter, chatter, chatter. As if he were interested. Embarrassed, she watched as he poured out four tablets, handed Sophie two, popped two into his mouth, and then drank from the faucet. Sophie got herself a glass. “You can’t swallow pills with your head upside down,” she chided.