A Bride for Jackson Powers (Desire, 1273)

by Dixie Browning

  “I’m supposed to board at four tomorrow afternoon. Thank goodness I allowed extra time and made a room reservation for tonight near the airport there. My friend at the agency suggested it.” She chewed on her lower lip. “Do you think I ought to call and tell them to hold it in case I’m late?” She answered her own question. “No, there’s no chance of that. Once we’re able to leave, it won’t take long to get there.”

  “Have you checked in with your friend to let her know what’s happened?”

  “Do I need to?”

  “It wouldn’t hurt.”

  Jax knew it would mean standing in another line, waiting for a pay phone to be free. He would’ve offered her his cell phone, but reception was lousy. Too much interference.

  He watched her weave her way through the crowd, wondering if she did it deliberately—that slight swing of the shoulders counterbalanced by the subtle sway of her hips.

  Probably something to do with bone structure. He was no expert, but even under those limp, floppy layers, hers looked pretty damned fine, from the high forehead, to the delicate cheekbones and elegant neck, right down to those world-class ankles. Not even the clunky sandals could detract from her classy lines.

  Beside him, Sunny experimented with a new sound that involved humming and gum smacking. Jax laid a hand on her warm little belly. “Nice friend you’ve got there, kid. Let’s hope we can find you someone just as nice once we get home.”

  Home. That was another problem to be dealt with. His Norfolk apartment was strictly adults only. Maybe he’d better call his secretary and get her started on lining up a few prospects. A nice house in a quiet neighborhood, with a big yard and a nearby school. While she was at it, she might arrange for him to interview prospective nannies and housekeepers. He’d need one of each.

  Still no sign of Hetty. He could go after her, but he didn’t particularly want to risk losing their space. Besides, he could easily miss her in this throng. She might even have found somebody else. Teamed up with someone who didn’t have a kid needing attention every few minutes.

  The idea was surprisingly unwelcome.

  Having learned a long time ago not to expect anything from a woman, Jax had seldom been disappointed. He couldn’t quite figure this one, though. Something about her didn’t add up.

  Or was it that the sum total wasn’t what he expected of a woman who looked like a model, walked like a model and talked like a small-town housewife from flyover country?

  Actually, she didn’t talk all that much, which in itself was unusual. Most of the women he knew, especially the beautiful ones, were inclined to chatter.

  Dismissing the woman from his mind, he turned his thoughts to the domino effect the addition of one small daughter was going to have on his once-orderly life. Oddly enough, the idea wasn’t quite as disturbing as it might have been mere hours ago.

  He glanced at his watch again, then scanned the crowd for a familiar head of short, reddish-brown hair. Sunny began to whimper, and he dug out the rubber teething ring Hetty had discovered under the cushion of the carrier. “Don’t sweat it, sugar, we’ll be home before you know it.”

  “Mercy, do you know what time it is?”

  His head came up, and he frowned to cover his relief. She was back again, slipping through the fragile barricade with an air of having made it home safely.

  “Time?”

  “It’s the middle of the night.” She planted her back against the wall and lowered herself gracefully to the floor beside him. Her first act was to check on Sunny, which gave him a funny tight feeling in his throat. “It’s crazy, isn’t it? The way time loses all meaning? I can’t even remember how long we’ve been here, much less—”

  “How long until we get out,” he finished for her.

  She smiled, but the smile didn’t quite reach her eyes. He wondered if she was finally going to lose her grip. He’d been waiting, expecting tears, complaints and the rest of the package to come pouring out. It had been his experience that women were quick to let the world know when things didn’t go to suit them.

  “I never saw so many fancy phones. When I finally got to one I knew how to use, the office was closed. They have a twenty-four-hour, 800 line, but it stayed busy for so long I gave up.”

  “Hardly surprising, under the circumstances. I figured you were having trouble getting through, you were away so long.”

  He’d figured no such thing, but he wasn’t going to admit it.

  “Yes, well, like I said, there are so many kinds of phones now that I’ve never learned how to use, and then I got to talking to this nice woman who was traveling with her three teenage sons. They’re from Omaha. Her husband’s a cement contractor, and the boys are all planning to go into the family business as soon as they graduate from high school. I think that’s real nice, don’t you?”

  What he thought was that it was highly irrelevant, and wondered where she’d been all her life that a simple pay phone was beyond her experience, but he refrained from saying so.

  “I guess you think I’m ignorant—about the phones and all, but I told you I haven’t traveled much.”

  Sunny started to fuss. Hetty reached over and captured one of her tiny feet, cupping it in her hand. “Did you wash the bottle after last time?”

  “I did the best I could without soap. Damn, I hate this! What if she gets sick? What if her rash gets worse?”

  “You simply climb on a chair and ask if there’s a doctor in the house. At least that’s the way it’s done in the movies.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “Jax, don’t worry so much. Most babies have a diaper rash at one time or another. We’ll just have to keep her dry, that’s all.”

  “What if she catches something? There are people from all over the world here—one of them might be carrying a germ or a virus.”

  Hetty couldn’t help but be amused, even though she knew better than most how scary caring for a baby could be for an inexperienced parent. “She’ll let you know if she’s not feeling well.”

  “By crying. Right. Only, how’m I supposed to know if she’s sick or just wet again? Or worse?”

  “Worse, you’ll know. Wet’s pretty much a given. A lot of her fussiness is teething, though. She’s got two tiny nubbins almost through, didn’t her mama tell you?”

  It wasn’t the first time she’d referred obliquely to Carolyn. Jax had a feeling she was curious about why he was traveling alone with a baby he obviously didn’t know a damned thing about. Luckily she seemed as disinclined as he was to discuss personal matters.

  Which was just one more way in which she differed from the women he knew.

  One bottle and two stale pimento sandwiches later, the weather picture hadn’t improved. At last report, nothing was moving on land or in the air. Every airport east of the Mississippi between Nashville and New England was either iced in or fogged in. On one of the runways, a scraper had run into the wing of a 747, damaging both. Even after the weather cleared up, things were going to be in a hell of a mess until they sorted out the logistic tangles.

  Hetty’s head had once more settled on his shoulder, her soft breath purring warmly against his throat. Sunny was draped across her lap sleeping, fed, dried and burped. The burping was news to him. Carolyn had forgotten to mention it, but it seemed to make a difference. Whoever and whatever else Hetty Reynolds was, she was a godsend, given the circumstances.

  He wondered if she had kids of her own. Where were they? Had she given them away? Dropped them off in a diner the way his mother had done him when he was six years old and then forgotten to come back for him for the next thirty-three years?

  Jax blinked sleepily and considered easing them into a more comfortable position. Maybe later, he thought, his gaze on the hand that was resting protectively on Sunny’s back.

  No rings. Funny things, hands. They said a lot about a person. Hers weren’t at all the kind of hands he would have expected on a woman whose traveling outfit consisted of slinky sweaters, long, flowered skir
ts and a subtle perfume that reminded him of summer nights in Virginia, a long, long time ago.

  His stomach growled. His eyelids drooped. They’d all be a lot more comfortable lying down, with Sunny in her carrier between them, but if he woke her now, she’d go all self-conscious again.

  Funny woman.

  Nothing had changed when Hetty opened her eyes. Every bone and muscle in her body protested, and she blinked several times to clear her vision. The light hadn’t changed. It could be noon or midnight. The crowd, if anything, was thicker, but at least it was quieter now. Exhausted travelers were sleeping wherever they could find a few clear feet of floor. Those who were lucky enough to have snared a seat were snoring, their heads either tipped back at an awkward angle or resting on their chests. One man had draped a newspaper over his face. Hetty stared, fascinated, as it lifted and fell, lifted and fell with each breath.

  Only gradually did she become aware that she was lying on the floor on her side, with Jax’s arm around her and Sunny sleeping peacefully in the carrier between him and the wall.

  He stirred and mumbled something without waking up. The baby whimpered. Hetty thought, never in a million years would anyone believe this. Meeting a handsome stranger, sleeping with him on the floor of an airport? Surrounded by thousands of people, all going nowhere?

  Uh-uh. This was like a play by that Kafka fellow. Surreal. Done in shades of gray, with no discernible plot, or at least, none she could follow.

  Her eyes fuzzy with sleep, she tried and failed to focus on her watch. At this rate she was going to be cutting it awfully close. What if she didn’t make it in time? What then?

  It never occurred to her to feel sorry for herself. Instead she thought, All that insurance money, wasted. I’m sorry, Gus.

  She’d spent most of Gus’s insurance, after his burial expenses, on his mother and daughter. Jeannie had a habit of running up bills that Hetty had paid, rather than see her rebellious stepdaughter get into any more trouble.

  Jeannie’s boyfriend, Nicky, had been a dreadful influence all through junior high, but nothing Hetty said had made a difference, and by then Sadie, Gus’s mother, had suffered the first in a series of strokes. She’d been no help at all.

  In the end, the young lovers had dropped out of school and run away. Eight months later Jeannie had come home long enough to leave her infant son. That had been five months ago.

  “Here, now that I’m gone, you might as well have somebody else to boss around,” she’d said. “Daddy and I were getting along just fine before you tricked him into marrying you.”

  Hetty let it pass. That hadn’t been the way it was at all, but by then, she knew better than to argue. People heard what they wanted to hear, believed what they wanted to believe. For the next several months she’d had her hands too full to worry.

  Robert had thrived. Sadie hadn’t been able to help, but she’d been a wealth of information. They hadn’t heard from Jeannie except indirectly. Someone had seen them in a bus station in Oklahoma City. Someone else said they were both working at a truck stop grill outside Tulsa.

  Then Sadie died in her sleep. An embolism, according to her doctor. She had willed her car, which had sat up on blocks for years, to Hetty. She’d left her house to Jeannie. Hetty had finally located the girl, too late for her grandmother’s funeral, but not too late for Jeannie and Nicky to claim the house, their son, and to inform Hetty that her services were no longer needed.

  Which was when she’d impulsively decided to take what was left of the insurance money and blow it all on this trip and a wardrobe suitable for a romantic, once-in-a-lifetime cruise. Foolish?

  Try stupid. Try silly, impractical, selfish and all the other things she’d tried so hard all her life not to be, because when he was drinking, which was most of the time, her father used to accuse her of being a dumb, selfish slut just like her mama.

  Lying awake, she gradually became aware of her surroundings. Of the mingled smell of popcorn, stale chili, baby powder. The leathery, masculine smell of Jax’s coat.

  She tried not to think about all the what-ifs, but it was no good. They crowded in, anyway.

  What if she missed the cruise? What if she wound up in Miami with no job, no friends, no place to stay and not enough money to get home again? Wherever home was.

  What if Minco, Oklahoma, was only a figment of her imagination? What if the world began and ended right here in this madhouse of an airport?

  “What if you just go to the bathroom, splash your face with cold water and stop all this silliness,” she muttered aloud.

  Beside her, Jax stirred. He was spooned around her body, his right arm draped over her waist. Her mind might be racing like a hamster on a treadmill, but physically she felt incredibly safe.

  Or maybe she didn’t….

  Against her back she could feel Jax’s hard body shifting. He flung his free arm over his head. His knuckles struck the wall, and he mumbled a curse word.

  Hetty didn’t utter a sound. Did he realize she could feel what was happening to him? Was it…intentional, or was it just that thing that happened to men early in the morning?

  Gus had found it embarrassing, but then, Jax was nothing at all like her late husband. She couldn’t imagine Jax ever apologizing for being…well…aroused.

  Hetty knew the instant he became aware of the situation, because he began to draw away from her. She wished she could sink through the floor, but as that was hardly likely, she tried to pretend she was just waking up.

  Yawning and stretching, she wondered if her eyes were either puffy or shadowed or both. Both, probably. It was the way she reacted to lack of sleep. She’d never particularly worried about her lack of looks, but at this moment she’d have given everything she possessed to be beautiful. To have hair that wasn’t flat on one side from being slept on and fuzzy everywhere else, thanks to some distant ancestor who was obviously related to a sheep.

  She probably had finger marks on her cheek, too. Great.

  “You awake?” Jax whispered. He’d shifted enough so that his arousal was no longer probing her backside. Either that or one look at her had cooled his early-morning ardor.

  “About half-awake.”

  “Looks like nothing’s changed.”

  “I don’t see people rushing toward our gate. Maybe if we went around to the south side of the terminal, things would be different.”

  “This is the south side,” Jax said wryly.

  “Oh.”

  “You want to take a bathroom break first?”

  “If you don’t mind.” She’d give her last five dollars for a toothbrush. Why hadn’t her friendly travel agent warned her about things like this? She’d have stuck one in her purse.

  “Toothpaste and shaving soap in my briefcase. You’re welcome to anything you want.”

  Hetty sat up, raked her fingers through her hair and said, “Bless you! I’d have brought my own supplies in my purse if I’d thought about it.”

  He handed her a small tube of shaving soap, the old-fashioned kind that required a brush, and one of toothpaste. Hetty thought it was sweet. The only two men she’d known well enough to know their shaving habits used the stuff in an aerosol can.

  “When you get back, I’ll go and then reconnoiter for supplies. Coffee and anything else I can find, right?”

  They disentangled assorted limbs, straps, coats and shawls, and in the process Hetty was reminded all over again of just what an attractive man Jackson Powers was. Even rumpled, unshaven, his thick hair looking as if it had just been combed with a thresher.

  And to think she’d slept with him.

  Mercy!

  Ten o’clock came and went. Hetty popped a cold, limp French fry into her mouth and wondered whether to call it breakfast, lunch or an early dinner. At this point she was no longer even sure what day it was. “I’ve been thinking—what if this thing we call an airport is really a small planet circling in outer space? What if we’re all alone in the universe?”

  “Read a lot
of science fiction, do you?”

  “If the library has it, I’ve read it. Some of it’s boring, but it’s still another point of view. That’s always—well, almost always—enlightening.”

  “Interesting perspective.”

  “I think so, too. That’s why I’ve plowed through so many boring books.” She checked the snap on her purse, then laid it aside. “I tried the travel agency’s 800 number again on the way from the rest room. It was still busy.”

  “I’m not surprised,” Jax said. He snagged the last French fry, wondering how long it was going to have to last. He’d had to search two different concourses before he’d found food this morning. Instead of coffee and pancakes, or anything else faintly resembling a breakfast, he’d had to settle for saltines, French fries and Bloody Mary mix. For ten bucks he’d managed to get a pint of whole milk for Sunny. He only hoped it didn’t make her sick. Evidently formula had more ingredients than plain milk.

  Hetty’s shoulders were drooping. He told her to brace up, that things could be worse. Judging from the way her chin trembled, she wasn’t far from tears.

  God, he hoped she didn’t start crying. When it came to dealing with feminine tears, he was at a dead loss, regardless of the age of the female.

  She blew a wisp of hair off her forehead. “You reck’n?”

  “I reck’n,” he said, amused by the colloquialism.

  “You’re right. We could’ve been diverted to Alaska and had to make connections by dog sled.”

  “Or we could be in the air in all this mess. Or one of those poor devils trapped out on the runway. Given a choice, where would you rather be?”

  He was trying to cheer her up, and Hetty appreciated it, she really did, only there was nothing cheerful in knowing that the one time in your life you did something truly frivolous, it turned out to be a monumental flop.

  “You’re a nice man, Jackson Powers.” She managed a smile, despite the fact that she was probably going to miss her cruise. In spite of the fact that she was practically broke, with no job and no home to return to until she patched things up with Jeannie.