The Last Chance Cafe

by Linda Lael Miller

  “The meadow, above my place,” he answered. He indicated the sky with a motion of his thumb. “Look. There’s a full moon.”

  She offered no protest, but tossed him a come-hither look. “Madge has the girls,” she said. “So I’ve got all night.”

  He chuckled. “We’re going to need all night,” he answered, and he thought he saw her give a little shiver of anticipation, out of the corner of his eye.

  The meadow was blanketed by a sky full of stars and moon, and the grass smelled sweet. The air was cool, but Hallie was oblivious to such mundane matters. She stepped down off the running board, only to find herself deliciously pinned in the open doorway of Chance’s truck. He kissed her, his weight resting against her, and her bones turned to liquid and seeped into the earth at her feet, leaving her more spirit than mortal. She slid her hands up the front of his shirt and then around his neck, gave herself up, just as she had dreamed of doing for so long.

  The kiss went on forever, it seemed; galaxies flared to life during that interlude, while others finished their span and went dark. Finally, slowly, Chance undid the buttons of Hallie’s cotton top, spread the fabric, pulled her bra down to bare her breasts to his hands, his eyes, his mouth.

  She surrendered utterly, with a little cry of welcome, tilting her head back, closing her eyes. He enjoyed her until she was sure she would die of the pleasure, and then he unsnapped her jeans, pushed them down and away. Her panties vanished soon after; he must have torn them off and flung them aside, because she never saw them again.

  When he hoisted her, half-naked, onto the seat of his truck, she laid her hands on his shoulders. “Oh, God, Chance,” she whispered, “I love you, and I’ve missed you—and this—so much.”

  He eased her backward onto the seat, murmuring love words of his own as he stroked her bare thighs with his strong, rancher’s hands, and arranged her just so. He draped her legs over his shoulders, soothed her when she arched her back and cried out in a spasm of delight, and then burrowed through the silken veil to please her in earnest.

  She stretched her arms back over her head and raised herself to him, like a sacrifice on an altar, and Chance showed her no mercy at all. He consumed her, tamed her like some wild goddess, captured and ravished in a moonlit field, and when at last, at last, her climax came, it went on and on, endlessly, her body buckling, her heels digging into Chance’s back.

  Presently, he lifted her down, laid her on a blanket in the sweet grass a few feet from the truck, stretched out beside her and, after taking his maddening time, took her back over the bridge she’d just crossed, into a place where rainbows arched from star to star.

  “What’ll it be, Cowboy?” asked the saucy waitress. She might have carried off the vamp act, if she hadn’t been eight and a half months pregnant. One thing was for sure, though. She was cute as hell. Chance Qualtrough leaned over the counter, caught his wife’s face between his hands, and kissed her soundly. “You tell me,” he chuckled, and reached to pat her rotund belly. “What’ll it be?”

  She laughed, came around the end of the counter, and perched on his lap. It was late, and they had the café to themselves. “The doctor says we’re having a boy,” she said. “You know that. You were there when they did the sonogram.”

  He kissed her again, this time lingering on and around her mouth. “Sometimes those things are wrong,” he said. He winked. “Come on home now, woman. You shouldn’t be working this late, especially in your condition.”

  “You know I just supervise,” she said. She gave a little whimper when he kissed the side of her neck. “Besides, it’s only four o’clock in the afternoon.”

  “Where are Fred and the others?” Fred was the fry cook. Hallie had hired him and four waitresses when she took the place over, and still she could barely keep up with the business.

  She wriggled out of his arms, tossed a coy little smile over one shoulder, and went to the window, parting the blinds with two fingers and peering out. “I sent them home early,” she said. “Looks like snow.”

  He grinned, remembering the first time he’d ever seen Hallie, covered with snow, scared as a rabbit, and at the same time, ready to take on the whole world, two-fisted, if she had to. He figured he’d fallen in love with her way back then, though the truth of it didn’t gel in his mind for quite a while after that.

  “Are you happy here?” he asked, meeting her in the center of the room, where they’d practically worn a path in the linoleum with their after-hours dancing. “In Primrose Creek, I mean?” With me, was what he meant.

  She took hold of his hand, raised it to her lips, kissed the knuckles one by one. “My life started,” she said softly, “when I walked through that door right over there. Everything before that was just getting-ready.”

  He nodded. “So did mine,” he said, and kissed her.

  A strange expression crossed her face, all of a sudden, and she laid both hands to her basketball stomach. “Chance,” she whispered, not afraid, but marveling. Her brown eyes were wide, luminously joyful.

  “What?” he asked, too quickly. Maybe she wasn’t scared, but he was. Right about then, he’d rather have dealt with a full grown grizzly than a woman in labor. Even if she was his woman.

  “It’s time,” she told him, her eyes shining with love as she looked up at him. “Oh, Chance, he’s coming. The baby is coming.”

  He took a few deep breaths, centered himself, then panicked anyway. “Come on,” he said, half-dragging her to the door, pulling her coat on over her arms, trying and failing to button it in front. She laughed, and the sound echoed like the peal of bells through the long corridors of his heart, empty for so long.

  “Chance,” she said, grasping his face between her hands. “Calm down.”

  How could he calm down? His son was getting ready to be born, and they were miles—forty-five minutes, at least—from the nearest hospital.

  “Breathe,” she said.

  “I’m supposed to tell you to breathe,” he said, half-dragging her outside to his truck. He left the café door unlocked, and all the lights on. He had a moment of déjà-vu, but he couldn’t place it.

  She giggled as he hoisted her, with comical awkwardness, into the seat. Then he flashed briefly on the night they’d made this baby, he and Hallie, up there in the high meadow, under the stars. They’d been married a week later, and made love a million times since, in a million other places besides that one, and each time had been better than the last. For Chance, an ordinary world had turned into a place where miracles were commonplace, and dreams came true as a matter of course.

  “The girls,” she reminded him. He was in the process of adopting them legally, and they used the name Qualtrough. He loved them as his own, and was already bracing himself for their teen years, still almost a decade away, when he’d have to start beating the boys off with a club. He believed in being prepared.

  “They’re with Jessie,” he said, a little short of breath, scrambling behind the wheel. “Fasten your seat belt.”

  She fumbled, he fastened it for her. She smiled at him.

  “Breathe, Chance,” she coached. “Breathe.”

  He drove down the mountain like a wild man, but a careful wild man. Hallie lay back in the seat, hands clasping her belly, now grunting, now panting, practicing the stuff they’d learned in natural childbirth class. “Am I turning you on, Cowboy?” she asked once, with a devilish little smile.

  They finally reached the hospital, the same one where Chance had spent several weeks after the shooting and the subsequent surgery, but the place barely seemed familiar. All of that stuff belonged to another time, another life.

  Hallie was rushed into an exam room, and her doctor was summoned. Chance stood beside her, holding her hand, when they wheeled her into the elevator on a gurney, headed for Delivery.

  An hour and a half later, during which Hallie did considerable yelling and cursing, not to mention plain old screaming, their baby was born, an eight-pound boy with the lung power of an Italian
opera singer. Chance, who had been present throughout, feeling faint and powerful by turns, stood there, in his green hospital garb, stunned by the scope of his good fortune, and held his son close to his chest for a long moment. Then, solemnly, guided by instinct, he raised the child to the sky, to receive a blessing.

  Hallie’s eyes were full of tears and smiles as he laid the infant on her chest and smoothed her hair back with his free hand. “I love you,” she said. “Did I do good?”

  “I love you,” he replied, bent to kiss her. “And you did great.” He gazed into her eyes for a long, long time. “Hallie?”

  She was holding his hand, and she kissed it. “What?”

  “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you for coming back. Thank you for loving me. And thank you for giving me this baby.”

  She touched his face, too overcome with emotion to speak.

  Solemnly, Jessie took down the McQuarry Bible from its new place on Chance and Hallie’s bookshelf, laid it on the table beside the fireplace, and turned to the page listing births. She smiled, running her finger over the long columns, two centuries of McQuarrys, being born, marrying, living and dying. Then, making room for Chance beside her, with Hallie standing opposite, holding the baby and looking for all the world like an angel come to bide awhile on earth, Jessie dipped the pen reserved for this purpose and handed it to Chance. Trace Qualtrough, he wrote. Born the seventh day of January to Chance and Hallie Qualtrough.

  He added the year, with a flourish, and then looked up at Hallie. When their eyes met, Jessie would have sworn the earth shifted. They were in the prime of their lives and of their love, Chance and Hallie were, and she envied them just a little, though at the same time, she was glad she was past that kind of passion. Frankly, she hadn’t the strength for it.

  She smiled fondly at Doc, and he smiled back. There were other kinds of passion, she reflected. Her husband might not take her breath away as often as he once had, when they were younger, stealing the moments they had together, but his touch was tender, and it brought her bliss. Her soul knew his, and was known, and rested there safely, wanted and welcome. He reached across, squeezed her hand.

  New beginnings were all around. Jessie squeezed back, and smiled.

  It was late, and the kids were all sound asleep, Kiera and Kiley in their room, Trace in his nursery, next door to Hallie and Chance. A wolf howled in the far distance, and Hallie Qualtrough lifted her head to listen, and something in her, something wild and wise, called back to that creature in silent acknowledgment. Chance, just in from the barn, crossed the room and stood behind her easy chair, where she’d been curled up, reading the last of Bridget’s letters and diaries, as well as those of Christy Shaw, Skye Vigil and Megan Stratton. Coming to Primrose Creek had changed those women, just as it had changed her.

  Her husband began to knead her shoulders lightly. “What are you thinking?” he asked, and something inside her leaped with happiness, because she knew he really wanted to know. He would listen.

  “That I’ve grown since I came here,” she said. “I’ve learned to trust myself.”

  He leaned down, kissed the top of her head. Later, in the quiet of their room, they would make sweet, slow love, as they did nearly every night, and Hallie felt her senses quicken in anticipation of that. “I love you, lady,” he said. He came around the chair, pulled her gently to her feet, sat down, and tugged her onto his lap. “Don’t ever leave me.”

  She snuggled against him, and he covered them both with an afghan Jessie had woven as a wedding gift. “I couldn’t,” she said, and they sat like that, just soaking in each other’s presence, for a long time. Then, languid as a cat, Hallie stretched in her husband’s arms, yawned.

  He chuckled. “Long day?”

  “Long day,” she confirmed, turning to kiss his neck. “I made an important decision, though.”

  He turned her on his lap, smoothed her hair tenderly back from her face, kissed her lightly on the mouth. “What?”

  “I’m going to find out as much as I can about my mother’s parents, and my biological father. So everything can come full circle.”

  “Thus making your life complete?”

  She smiled at him. “My life is already complete,” she said. “I just want to solve as many mysteries as I can.”

  “Makes sense,” he said. He began eyeing the buttons on her shirt with a look of speculation she’d long since come to recognize. Something widened inside her, and melted, preparing the way for the inevitable union of their two bodies. “I’d say my life is pretty complete, too,” he told her. “Though a little nookie wouldn’t go amiss.”

  She laughed. “Chance Qualtrough,” she said, “you are insatiable.”

  “Where you’re concerned, yes,” he told her drowsily. He worked the first button, and a thrill shot through her.

  “Have you forgotten that we made love this afternoon,” she whispered, “in the barn?” The kids had been at school, and Jessie and Doc had been at the house, fussing over the baby like a pair of grandparents.

  He chuckled. “I doubt I’ll ever forget that,” he said. He undid another button, kissed the bit of flesh left bare.

  “Me, either,” she admitted, with a soft sigh and a smile. They’d climbed into the hayloft, like a couple of kids, and despite the chill, they’d removed their clothes and made fierce, fiery love on a scratchy bed of straw. At the height of her ecstasy, Hallie had glimpsed a ghost moon, through a space between the boards of the weathered roof, and made a wish. Now, she wanted to distract Chance, prolong things a little bit. “Katie and Jase are thinking of having another baby,” she said.

  Chance was not about to be distracted. He reached a finger inside-her bra and began chafing her nipple to attention. “Is that so?” he drawled, concentrating on the task at hand.

  Hallie groaned, stretched a little. “Oooh,” she said. “Yes, it’s so.” She closed her eyes for a few moments, in sweet surrender, and gasped when Chance bared her and took the tip of her breast into his mouth. Her fingers entangled themselves in his hair. “Jase—oh, God, Chance—is going into ranching. Using the . . . the land he inherited.”

  He tongued her thoroughly before lifting his head. “I know,” he replied. “Guess he’s tired of the sheriff business.”

  Hallie pressed her husband’s head back to her breast, drew in a sharp breath when he made contact. “I guess so,” she murmured. “How . . . how would you feel . . . about—?”

  He chuckled against the plump bounty of her flesh, teasing the hard knot of a nipple with tiny flicks of his tongue until Hallie thought she’d climax before they even got upstairs to bed. “Right now,” he said, “I feel pretty damn good.”

  She made a whimpering sound. “Damn it, Chance,” she exclaimed softly, between small, breathless gasps, “I’m trying to have a serious conversation here.”

  He laughed. “Oh, trust me,” he said. “I’m dead serious.” He tugged down the other side of her bra, so that she was bared to him, her breasts gilded in firelight.

  “I want another baby,” she managed to say.

  “This seems like a good way to go about getting one,” he said, very busy again.

  Hallie eyed the bear rug on the floor in front of the fireplace, wondered if they’d make it even that far. She could think of several occasions when they hadn’t, and the memories sang warm songs in her blood.

  “What about the kids?” she whispered. “What if they—?”

  “Sleeping,” he answered, and reached up to switch off the lamp beside the chair.

  The room fell into darkness, the fire glowed crimson on the hearth, sent light dancing over the soft fur of the bearskin rug.

  Hallie found herself lying there, on her back, with her shirt open and her jeans and panties down around one ankle. Chance, as naked as she was, lay half covering her with his body, kissing her mouth, her eyelids, the underside of her jaw and chin.

  “Do you really want another baby, Mrs. Qualtrough?” he asked, between nibbles. “We’ve got
three kids already.”

  “Yes,” she said, and drew in a quick, shallow breath as he encircled her navel with his tongue. “I’ve counted and come up with the same total.” She reveled in his touch, in the warmth of the fire and the deep, cosseting softness of the rug. “I think we should have one more, at least. Trace needs a brother or sister close to his own age.”

  “If you say so,” Chance murmured. God in heaven, he was driving her crazy. He loved to drive her crazy. He poised himself over her—mercifully, he had decided not to make her wait interminably the way he usually did—and she felt his hardness pressing against her, seeking entry. Seeking solace and sanction inside her.

  She spread her legs to welcome him, and opened the portals of her soul as well, and he claimed her, making them one spirit, one flesh, one mind and heart. When it was over, and they lay exhausted, sweating and sated, entangled in each other’s arms, Chance rested his head on her breast.

  “Do you think it took?” he asked, in good time. “Or should we try again?”

  Hallie laughed. “Oh,” she said, “I definitely think we should try again.”

  “You’re right,” he agreed solemnly.

  “But let’s wait until tomorrow, okay? I’ve pretty much given you all I have to give, between that session in the hayloft and what we just did right here.”

  “That,” he said, “is what you think.” He got up, helped Hallie to her feet, wrapped her in the discarded afghan, and hustled her toward the stairs.

  “Wait,” Hallie said quickly. “Our clothes.”

  Chance went back, pulled on the jeans he’d shed at some point, without Hallie’s noticing—she’d been preoccupied, to say the least—and snatched up the rest of their things. Hallie giggled, and they dashed for their bedroom.

  The next morning, Chance was up before the sun, as usual, while Hallie lay sprawled on her belly in the middle of the bed, yearning for one more hour of sleep. Just one more hour. It wasn’t to be. She heard Kiera and Kiley scuffling in the hallway, arguing over who got to use the bathroom first, and hastily covered herself, lest her daughters decide to come in and bid her good morning.